Word-of-Mouth The truth is that word-of-mouth is quite powerful because we seem to be very interested in each other's opinion. We see...
T he Bible is a book about humankind in our relation to God, and it therefore starts with certain fundamental statements regarding this re...
E aster is the festival of triumph. It follows what is traditionally called Holy Week. The word “holy,” in the context of our metaphysical...
Never Been Seen Before This book, The Basics of Spiritual Mind Healing , has never been published before. That's important. It'...
GOD, the universal life-force and energy running through everything, is an intelligent presence pervading all space, a beginningless an...- O ur destiny is determined by what we are and by what we do, and what we are to be or do is determined by what we are living for, thinking ...
Success is adaptation to life as it comes to us from within. What makes life “worthwhile,” as we say, is found through appreciation of t...- Introduction to the new e-book from NewtList: “Reading Emerson was like drinking water to me,” Ernest Holmes once said. “I have studied ...
What is meditation? The term meditation is as broad in definition as the term ‘art’ is. Both include a wide range of practices, styl...
/ W ith each of us, there is the strong desire to lead the life that holds the greatest sum of happiness. What is that life? Is it the
Monday, April 21, 2014
What's Going On?
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Wednesday, March 26, 2014
Guest Post by Edward Viljoen: Maybe I'm Not That Interesting?
Word-of-Mouth
The truth is that word-of-mouth is quite powerful because we seem to be very interested in each other's opinion. We seem to have more confidence in the opinion of others than we do in the vast amount of information that comes to us through advertising. That is why word-of-mouth is an important indicator of a movie's success.
A friend who used to work in the advertising industry told me that world-of-mouth, in a way of thinking, is more valuable than just about any other kind of advertising. The way he explained it is that we are likely to change our mind about seeing a movie, even after deciding not to see it, if a friend gives it a favorable report. So what you think, and what you say about a product really does matter.
I Want To Know What You Think
I know that I definitely pay more attention to what friends are interested in and I'm more likely to read a book that a friend recommends than if I read an advertisement for one. If you've read a book recently that fascinated you, I'd love to know what it is and why you enjoyed it so much.
Sometimes Randall Friesen, the editor of Newt List gender neutral, updated New Thought classics will call me very excited about a new text he is working on. At first I may not be interested in the book but quickly his enthusiasm for some new kernel of metaphysical wisdom he discovered infects my thinking and I find myself wanting to read the e-book too.
I Thought I Had To Buy It
Recently I received the best review of my new book, The Power of Meditation, from a friend who called me up to say that he thought he "had to" buy my book being that he is a good friend. It seemed the appropriate and supportive thing to do but he had no intention to read it. Then while waiting for a trip to begin he cracked the book open and began to read it. He called me up enthusiastically to say that he was thrilled with what he was learning from the book. I thought the story was rather humorous and told it to another friend, who, based on the excitement, bought the book too.
Now this second friend had heard of the book, been around it and around me for ages, yet it wasn't until she heard of friend number one's reaction did she become motivated to pick it up.
You really are THAT interesting.
Edward Viljoen, author of The Power of Meditation, graduated as a Sonoma County Law Enforcement Chaplain in April 1999, received a Doctorate of Divinity from Centers for Spiritual Living and was awarded the much-respected Ernest Holmes Award for exemplary demonstration of the teachings of Dr. Ernest Holmes.
Among his passions as a minister is helping other ministers and has served the Ongoing Ministers Education Conference for 10 years. Other passions include music, cats, essential oils, science fiction and leading people on tours to places in the world to experience new cultures and new ways of understanding the Divine.
http://tinyurl.com/powerofmeditation
The truth is that word-of-mouth is quite powerful because we seem to be very interested in each other's opinion. We seem to have more confidence in the opinion of others than we do in the vast amount of information that comes to us through advertising. That is why word-of-mouth is an important indicator of a movie's success.
A friend who used to work in the advertising industry told me that world-of-mouth, in a way of thinking, is more valuable than just about any other kind of advertising. The way he explained it is that we are likely to change our mind about seeing a movie, even after deciding not to see it, if a friend gives it a favorable report. So what you think, and what you say about a product really does matter.
I Want To Know What You Think
I know that I definitely pay more attention to what friends are interested in and I'm more likely to read a book that a friend recommends than if I read an advertisement for one. If you've read a book recently that fascinated you, I'd love to know what it is and why you enjoyed it so much.
Sometimes Randall Friesen, the editor of Newt List gender neutral, updated New Thought classics will call me very excited about a new text he is working on. At first I may not be interested in the book but quickly his enthusiasm for some new kernel of metaphysical wisdom he discovered infects my thinking and I find myself wanting to read the e-book too.
I Thought I Had To Buy It
Recently I received the best review of my new book, The Power of Meditation, from a friend who called me up to say that he thought he "had to" buy my book being that he is a good friend. It seemed the appropriate and supportive thing to do but he had no intention to read it. Then while waiting for a trip to begin he cracked the book open and began to read it. He called me up enthusiastically to say that he was thrilled with what he was learning from the book. I thought the story was rather humorous and told it to another friend, who, based on the excitement, bought the book too.
Now this second friend had heard of the book, been around it and around me for ages, yet it wasn't until she heard of friend number one's reaction did she become motivated to pick it up.
You really are THAT interesting.
Edward Viljoen, author of The Power of Meditation, graduated as a Sonoma County Law Enforcement Chaplain in April 1999, received a Doctorate of Divinity from Centers for Spiritual Living and was awarded the much-respected Ernest Holmes Award for exemplary demonstration of the teachings of Dr. Ernest Holmes.
Among his passions as a minister is helping other ministers and has served the Ongoing Ministers Education Conference for 10 years. Other passions include music, cats, essential oils, science fiction and leading people on tours to places in the world to experience new cultures and new ways of understanding the Divine.
http://tinyurl.com/powerofmeditation
Thursday, March 20, 2014
What If You Don't Have Zest For Life? Passion and Success
The main thing I've learned is...
Through working on New Thought classics in public domain, I've seen a thread that runs through the messages of several New Thought authors. There are definite, consistent ideas that many of them address. I'm guessing these are the important ideas to focus on. For example, there is a thread about the importance of your passion for life and how it relates to being successful. That's an interesting and frequent idea.
But what if you don't have passion for life. What if you don't have zest for living? Then you have to figure out how to get it. In one way or the other New Thought authors say in one way or another that you have to be engaged and interested in life if we want to be successful. And, if you don't have that passion, it can be acquired. That's another repeated thought: you and I can regain our zest for living through spiritual practice.
Repetition is my friend
Practice means the thing you and I do regularly to express our spirituality. Practice means repeat, repeat, repeat. With repetition comes improvement. Through repeating new habits, you can change existing habits, for example through the use of spiritual tools such as affirmations to recondition your thinking. Basically, to me the message I encounter over and over again in public domain New Thought texts goes something like this: talk your self into being passionate and do it over and over again. Repetition helps in this regard. It means presenting something to your mind repeatedly, so as to become familiar with it, as if you are trying it on until it feels normal. I think that is what is meant by changing your mind, practicing something until it becomes normal. Personally, when I've done this, after a while of repeating a new idea I notice sometimes my habits have changed. Almost always I feel better and more passionate about life.
Where to start
Of the book NewtList has published in gender neutral updated language the ones I think will be most helpful to someone wanting to establish different habits are:
Dynamic Thought
Pathway of Roses
Available for Kindle on Amazon
Find us on Facebook
Don't have a Kindle? Read this!
Through working on New Thought classics in public domain, I've seen a thread that runs through the messages of several New Thought authors. There are definite, consistent ideas that many of them address. I'm guessing these are the important ideas to focus on. For example, there is a thread about the importance of your passion for life and how it relates to being successful. That's an interesting and frequent idea. But what if you don't have passion for life. What if you don't have zest for living? Then you have to figure out how to get it. In one way or the other New Thought authors say in one way or another that you have to be engaged and interested in life if we want to be successful. And, if you don't have that passion, it can be acquired. That's another repeated thought: you and I can regain our zest for living through spiritual practice.
Repetition is my friend
Practice means the thing you and I do regularly to express our spirituality. Practice means repeat, repeat, repeat. With repetition comes improvement. Through repeating new habits, you can change existing habits, for example through the use of spiritual tools such as affirmations to recondition your thinking. Basically, to me the message I encounter over and over again in public domain New Thought texts goes something like this: talk your self into being passionate and do it over and over again. Repetition helps in this regard. It means presenting something to your mind repeatedly, so as to become familiar with it, as if you are trying it on until it feels normal. I think that is what is meant by changing your mind, practicing something until it becomes normal. Personally, when I've done this, after a while of repeating a new idea I notice sometimes my habits have changed. Almost always I feel better and more passionate about life.
Where to start
Of the book NewtList has published in gender neutral updated language the ones I think will be most helpful to someone wanting to establish different habits are:
Dynamic Thought
Pathway of Roses
Available for Kindle on Amazon
Find us on Facebook
Don't have a Kindle? Read this!
Why is this book so important?
This book, The Basics of Spiritual Mind Healing, has never been published before. That's important. It's a comprehensive book about healing, using prayer, or spiritual mind treatment. It is written for professional prayer practitioners, but is wonderfully accessible to anyone who is interested in the history and application of spiritual healing.
How You Can Use It
It talks about the idea of metaphysics, the spiritual world and how it all works. Then he funnels it down to affirmative prayer, connecting it all with lessons in the second half of the book where he pin points topics and applications in a beautiful way.
Get inspired, learn and use it
It's like a self-contained mini seminar all in one book. It clear, fresh and was never published. It is inspiring about the ideas of spirituality, and an education too. That's satisfying
Who is this book for?
This is a great book for people who are studying spiritual mind healing, but it is also for regular people like you and me. I'm not a practitioner of spiritual mind healing, but I was engaged by the book and enjoyed it very much. Personally, I learned from reading this book for the first time the WHY affirmative prayer is such an effective method.
Newt List
On Kindle From Amazon
Find us on Facebook
Thursday, August 1, 2013
Guest Blog: Edward Viljoen on The Power of Meditation - An Ancient Technique to Access your Inner Power
The term meditation is as broad in definition as the term
‘art’ is. Both include a wide range of practices, styles and purposes. For
instance, art can be engaged in for therapeutic reasons, or for fun and
recreation, or for many other reasons. Art has different disciplines, each with
its distinct schools of thought, media and tools. Accomplished artists in one
discipline, may not exhibit skillfulness in another, and may not even
understand the methods of a different media.
In the same way, meditation is different things to different
people. There are certain meditative practices that work better for me,
practices I respond to and understand better. By “practice” I mean the daily
method I use to meditate. If I were a water-color artist, I might say
water-color was my preferred medium and I might not care to waste my time
chiseling away at a marble block to reveal a hidden statue therein. As a water
colorist, when I spoke about my art and the benefits, goals and methods of its
practice, I would be talking in a language that other water colorists
understood. Although there would be crossover points universal to all artists,
I would have found my niche, my way and my art. I may have even dabbled with
other forms of art in the journey to discover what fits best, or I might have
been one of those duck-to-water artists that pick it up and simply know how to
do it.
A Practice the Works for You
Similarly, when I talk about meditation, I’m talking about my best practice and I tend, sometimes, to talk as if it is the only way. I know this isn't the case, and I think what is coming through is my enthusiasm for what I have developed in my understanding of what meditation can be for me. I did dabble with all kinds of practices and a little of everything I encountered along the way has lingered in what has become my practice today. I have developed a multi-faceted approach in which three distinct tools form the meditative practice I use, and that I teach to others:
- Mindfulness practices: in which we become absorbed in a purposefully chosen activity
- Sitting practices: in which we reduce the use of mental and physical resources as much as possible by sitting still and silently
- Creative practices: in which we use some device such as journaling, observing, or focusing on an inspirational passage
You can purchase The Power of Meditation
Saturday, June 29, 2013
Guest Blog: Dr. Margaret Stortz "On More Patience"
In my last book, Essays on Everything, I wrote on Patience. I’m writing on it again. I’m haven’t made enough ground; I’m not at the still place I want to be, at least not often enough, and I’m still making spaces for my own thoughts to come to me. There is no doubt in my mind that patience is not a natural, soul quality. It must be learned and practiced over time, more so these days perhaps because there is so much information that clamors for our attention. It is easy to pull out the iPhone and be inundated by the world at our doorsteps, and perhaps we have really come to like this, to never be shut off from news, messages, entertainment…and irritation.
The Irritated Mind
The irritated mind cannot partake of the clarifying flow of patience; it does not think of one thing at a time and is always hurrying through an army of demands. If things are not occurring as we would wish, we are almost certain to be met with frustration, that quality of mind that fights with itself so that the mind takes to churning. No possibility for patience here. Irritation, frustration and patience simply cannot exist together in the same place at the same time. Let’s not fool ourselves either by thinking that if we do not respond to a frustrating situation, we are being patient. For lack of a better word, I call this “reactive impatience,” a silent appearance…perhaps well learned…that masks buried anger. Many of us just crush a rising inclination to boil into a response so that we can appear in control. It may indeed be some kind of control, but it is not patience. Real patience breeds health; the squelched response eventually breeds illness.
There really are just twenty four hours in a day. Are we pushing to fill them so full of stuff to do that we are grabbing for every breath? If we have come to this place, where the body can barely keep up, I think we’re in trouble. My sainted mother, farm girl that she was, kept a very simple perspective about the situations before her. If undue stress was piling up in her life, she would have another “think” about things. This was her way of backing off from a situation loaded with confusion and sometimes heat. People always felt better being around her because of her calm demeanor. She was not disconnected from what was going on; she was one step away from it mentally so that she could see more clearly what needed attention… and what did not.
The Opportunity to Take Another "Think"
I think patience is borne of the opportunity to take another “think” about what is in front of us. Mentally we can do this; we can vacate the swirl in our minds and have a space for relief. It is difficult, especially if we are wired for impatience and worry. I cannot always find the patch of grace I need to take another “think,” but I…and my patience…are still a work in progress.
You can read more from Dr. Margaret Stortz at her blog here:
http://margaretstortz.blogspot.com/
You may also enjoy Dr. Edward Viljoen's guest post "A Fresh Look at Ancient Ideas"
You may also be interested in reading "Don't make that expression, your face will stay that way."
Monday, June 3, 2013
"Don't make that expression. Your face will stay that way."
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Using Masks
Kids love masks. They relish in
painting their faces, wearing costumes, and acting in ways they wouldn't
usually. There is comfort in masks. There is freedom and fun, creativity and
newness. As adults, many of us have chosen our "mask" and live within
its limits. We have forgotten the fun of being someone else. More importantly,
we have forgotten that we can be someone else.
You've heard the admonition,
"Don't make that expression. Your face will stay that way." Remember
the Twilight Zone episode in which
the family had to wear masks, only to find when they removed them, their faces
had assumed the masks' expression? Taken in a different light, this story
becomes a wonderful example of a spiritual principle.
Sometimes we reach a place where
we feel stuck, bogged down by the mask we chose years ago. We long to change
our lives, to be even more than we presently are. Spiritual principles teache
that we inherently possess the power to change. Though it can be as easy simply
deciding, there are times we could use some help to make the shift.
Affirmations can sound like lies.
We announce ourselves as something that we not yet are. We claim "I am
happy," even when we are in depression's grasp. Affirming, though, can be like
putting on a mask. The more we wear the mask, the more we claim our truth, and
the more our mind is open to becoming that which we desire.
Tammy Faye Messner said once,
"People often as me why I wear so much makeup. I tell them my face is a
canvas, ready to paint, always there." We are all divine canvases, created
by Spirit, with the ability to be happy and fulfilled. Masks are fun, but
sometimes they can even be life-changing.
Gender-neutral books about affirmations, metaphysics and affirmative prayer:
These books have been updated to contemporary and gender neutral language.
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