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What Are the New Thought Concepts?

By M. Daniel Walsh

Article submitted by A Forever Recovery

Social movements are very organic things, they just sort of happen as people come together with a variety of shared beliefs.  We  call these shared beliefs a paradigm.  Paradigms are fairly loose things, often defying concrete definitions.  Most of the time, as in the New Thought Movement, the movement is sparked by an assortment of characters expounding and exposing distinct yet similar beliefs (paradigms) usually with commonly held elements.

For clarity’s sake; every movement is bound to have an assortment of leaders within it teaching similar, yet distinct version of the same thing.  The common elements held by all of these teachers make up the paradigm itself.  These common elements when taken together make up the paradigm of the movement, regardless of the core concepts themselves.

The reason this is important to understand is that the New Thought Movement has gotten really big all over the world in the last 150 years.  In fact it’s gotten so big and has so many well recognized leaders each offering their own versions of the same thing that it’s become pretty difficult to separate the forest from the trees and pin any sort of definition on it at all.  If you ask ten people what New Thought is, you’ll get ten different answers.

The Common Elements

What if we really did ask ten different people what the core New Thought Concepts are?  Each of them gives a unique answer, but are there elements common to the them all?

The New Thought Movement, like most other social movements has a tendency to both congeal, and defy congealment. Here’s what I mean, organizations like INTA (International New Thought Alliance), AGNT (Association for Global New Thought), and ANTN (Affiliated New Thought Network) have all emerged and sought to become the central body of the movement.

Each of these organizations seeks to present a common, unified face of the movement to the global community.  However, like those ten people who each offers us a different definition, the same thing happens across these massive international organizations.  Three central groups, three different Declarations of Principles.

This is all very natural and happens in any movement of sufficient size.  The problem is that with so many groups attempting to define the same thing in different ways, there’s a tendency for the static to become overwhelming.  So instead of looking at what makes them different, let’s look at what they all hold in common, we’ll call these common elements, “The Core Concepts of the New Thought Movement.”

* Core Concept One: Universal Spirituality and Divine Goodness The first core common across all new thought belief systems is the notion that there is a omni-present divine force of goodness pervasive though all things and people.  In nearly all New Thought Schools of the Thought, the concept of a divine force which is ‘pervasive’ and ‘inherently good’ are cornerstone concepts.
* Core Concept Two: The ability to align with this divine force The second core concept is that we, as humans have the innate ability to harmonize and align with this divine force of goodness.  Fairly universal within the New Thought Movement is the idea that: Health, Prosperity, and Love are all possible through aligning and harmonizing with this divine force. Extremist’s within the Movement hold that any sort of healing (including cancer and AIDS) can be accomplished with this alignment, and fantastic riches, beauty, and accomplishment are also possible through this alignment.

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Is There Such Thing As Too Much Self-Help?

By Maryanne Comaroto

Article selected by A Forever Recovery

What a flipping fantastic question! When I was 33 years old I asked myself that very same question!! My library at the time brimmed with enough self-esteem-building, spirit-lifting, relationship-advising, co-dependent, neurotic, feminist, esoteric, astrological, paleontological, philosophical paradigms and relief to diagnose and heal several galaxies. From the esoteric: psychics, tarot readers, trance channels, holographic re-patterning specialists, aura color healers, palm readers, Reiki masters, past-life regression experts of the Far East Dharma, Karma, Buddha masters. I included the New Age, the poets and even the dead: Kierkegaard, Swedenborg, Kant, Borges. And I didn’t stop there: I devoured books on sex, business, the inner workings of the mind and ecstatic dance. If it was nonfiction and said “help” ANYWHERE in or on the book, I READ IT! I was on a path (with frequent intermissions) to find out EXACTLY how to be free and NOT suffer unless absolutely necessary. And even then was convinced I could find a way to diminish the likelihood of that. Yet, despite my drive in my particular quest to find immunity from pain, this form of my quest came to an abrupt halt at 33. I had crossed a line.

And funnily enough, just prior to that I had asked myself-or rather, I heard that still small voice that I hear and know as the Great Divine (sort of as if The Great Oz was God) inside of me say…and I swear it cleared its throat (okay, maybe not, but I like to think my inner guidance system has a tremendous sense of humor) “Maryanne…dear. Can it be, after so many years of relentless pursuit of the internal fortress you seek, that the answer does not lie somewhere in even one of these books?”

I was actually embarrassed, because for the first time I realized how profound the notion was. When you come down to it, awakening and staying awake is not a new concept. Yes, we are complicated beings, but many great people have devoted their lives to taking on the complex material of spiritual laws and have done a really tremendous job of breaking it down for us. Yet there I was, face-to-face with a question that led me across the abyss of awareness to transformation. It was time, at last, to take all “I knew” and actually create a practice. You see, I had become addicted to the buzz. A self-help junkie. And why not? I am pretty sure that of all my addictions this one actually paid off! But like all things the time had come for me to fish or cut bait. Change or die-well, I wanted to die, anyway.

Despite all this amazing information, I stood and looked at my life and could not figure out why, despite knowing “it all,” I was still suffering. Still in an unhealthy, unfulfilling relationship; still exercising poor choices, maintaining inappropriate boundaries, religiously entertaining recurrent negative self-talk, etc. And I knew it. This, my friends, was painful. They say ignorance is bliss. I said, after a 17-year quest to, in essence, wake up, I instead was faced with (in great detail) precisely what was wrong with me, simultaneously knowing better. Reminds me of a great line from a poem: “The fish in the water that is thirsty needs serious professional counseling.” Kabir

And then I woke up! Yup. Just like that. For me it took what it took, and, like all of us on a path, it takes what it takes. So could it be that had I read one book fewer I would have had my awakening, being delivered from suffering? Would I not have found that which I had sought my entire life? I can never know, it seems. What I do know is that I am often asked this question, I say to anyone that walks through my door or asks my advice on the matter: “What do you want? And what are you willing to do about it?” The answer for me was simple. I wanted true freedom of being and freedom from suffering. I said a prayer. “God, please show me the way!” And I woke up. But not before I had spent almost twenty years trying everything else!  And what I was willing to do about it? The answer was equally as simple; whatever it took! Staying awake for me, is what I had sought my whole adult life, And to stay awake included, among other things, developing a daily practice that fostered this gift I had received.

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