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  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 see...
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  Bible Meaning

  T he Bible is a book about humankind in our relation to God, and it therefore starts with certain fundamental statements regarding this re...
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  The Story of Easter

  E aster is the festival of triumph. It follows what is traditionally called Holy Week. The word “holy,” in the context of our metaphysical...
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  Why is this book so important?

  Never Been Seen Before This book, The Basics of Spiritual Mind Healing , has never been published before.  That's important.  It'...
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  God

  GOD, the universal life-force and energy running through everything, is an intelligent presence pervading all space, a beginningless an...
• Have Superior Ideals!

  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 ...
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  Success

  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...
• Reading Emerson was like drinking water to me... Ernest Holmes

  Introduction to the new e-book from NewtList: “Reading Emerson was like drinking water to me,” Ernest Holmes once said. “I have studied ...
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  Guest Blog: Edward Viljoen on The Power of Meditation - An Ancient Technique to Access your Inner Power

  What is meditation? The term meditation is as broad in definition as the term ‘art’ is. Both include a wide range of practices, styl...
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  Living the True Life

  / 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 

"Don't make that expression. Your face will stay that way."

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:

How To Use Your Power

Living A Life

These books have been updated to contemporary and gender neutral language.

Reading Emerson was like drinking water to me... Ernest Holmes

Introduction to the new e-book from NewtList:

“Reading Emerson was like drinking water to me,” Ernest Holmes once said. “I have studied him all my life.”

Such endorsement from the originator of the Science of Mind philosophy carries great weight. Not that the work of Emerson has ever required such kudos! Since Emerson began disseminating his ideas through essays and lectures, he has influenced writers, poets and great thinkers around the world.

A Radical Spiritual Thinker

In the nineteenth century when he wrote, Emerson was considered quite radical in his spiritual ideas, believing as he did that all things are divine because everything is connected to God. This caused his detractors to feel that Emerson was removing God from theology as its central figure. Yet nothing, as it turned out, could have been further from the truth.

Emerson believed that every human being is an individualization of God, the sole originating force. He believed that each person is operated on by self-executing spiritual laws. It was his belief that God does not necessarily reveal truth, but that truth could be understood by observing nature and the world around us. Though these were radical ideas for nineteenth century minds, it was just this type of independent thinking that attracted a young Ernest Holmes.

At Age Twenty It  Began

When he was merely twenty years old, Holmes inadvertently pick up his brother Fenwicke’s copy of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Essays. Later, his brother was quoted as saying, “It was at that moment that life really began for Ernest Holmes.

“Reading Emerson for the first time,” Holmes said, “the first half-dozen lectures or essays gave me a realization that in a certain sense every person has to interpret the universe in terms of their own thinking and personal relationships, and that in order to do it, we have to have faith and confidence in our own interpretation.” It is two of these essays, “History” and “Spiritual Laws,” that seem to have particularly influenced Ernest Holmes.

At some point in his career, Holmes wrote “responses” to Emerson’s essays on History and Spiritual Laws. It is unclear when he wrote this, but it appears to have been in the 1920s, after penning his landmark book The Science of Mind. His notes were transcribed (where legible) and numbered to correspond with the paragraphs of each Emerson essay, though whether due to faulty transcription of the original handwritten text or due to mistakes in the manuscript itself, these numbers did not always accurately correspond to the actual Emerson essay. Additionally, the original version of Holmes’ notes did not contain the original sections of the essay to which Holmes referred, hindering readers from easily correlating Emerson’s text to Holmes’ responses.

Side By Side Texts

This first edition of The Philosophy of Emerson incorporates the Emerson passages, followed directly by the corresponding comments of Ernest Holmes, offering itself as a conversation between these two great thinkers, and more strongly illuminating both the influence of Emerson on Holmes, and manner in which Holmes took Emerson’s ideas to an original place of personal power.

As Holmes once said, “You are an individualization of God. There is a depth and meaning to your own being. If you can discover it, it will answer your own questions.” 

Randall Friesen
www.Newt List.com

To purchase The Philosophy of Emerson click here.

Is Your Language Sexist?

By the mid-eighties the movement toward nonsexist usage had gained so much momentum that researchers who studied its impact by analyzing three recently published American dictionaries of new words were prepared to state, in the cautious phraseology of scholarship, that their results showed "a trend toward nonsexism" in written language.  The data, they said, "provided a judgement of the efficacy of feminists' efforts toward nonsexist vocabulary," and they ventured the opinion that the "importance and justice of the subject have been recognized."

The Handbook of Nonsexist Writing, 2nd Edition,
Casey Miller and Kate Swift, Harper, New York, 1988

Have you noticed a trend toward nonsexist language? 

Perhaps in the increase use of 'their' instead of 'his' as a grammatically flawed, but happily gender inclusive solution? Or perhaps in the appearance of such works as The Inclusive New Testament by Priests for Equality (March 19, 2004), or The New Testament and Psalms: An Inclusive Version  by Victor Roland Gold, Jr. Thomas L. Hoyt, Sharon H. Ringe and Susan Brooks Thistlewaite (September 7, 1995).  Or perhaps in the change from "...boldly goes where no man has gone before..." to "where no one has gone before..."

"Manning the event" is giving way to "staffing the event."  Spokesman, man-overboard, mankind, it's all changing.  And in the awkward moments between then and now language struggles to find elegant solutions.

It's an exciting time for our language and Newt List is about the business of producing updated, gender neutral versions of timeless classics.  Producing these versions takes time and mindfulness to maintain the style and voice of the writer while finding elegant solutions to old, and now outdated, language conventions.

You might also enjoy "Why Gender Neutral?"

Living A Life: The Message of New Thought, by Abel Leighton Allen

I read a lot of New Thought writers, but I had not yet come upon Abel Leighton Allen.  I'm glad I did. This little gem sets off right away outlining its goal of setting the record straight.

What is the difference between New Thought and orthodox religions, including Christian Science?

I guess that question is not merely a product of recent times, but has been asked since the beginning of New Thought's young history.

I love these lines from the book "New Thought is the result or creation of perpetually advancing mind.  The growing mind is not content with the past or its achievements."  Wow, what a great reminder to keep expanding and to avoid getting stuck in the rules and dogma of even our own beautiful system.

This is a great little e-book and it's on the 99c special list currently at www.newtlist.com, a good, easy read that I found helped me get back on track with an attitude of exploration, awe and wonder.

Edward Viljoen
www.edblogword.blogspot.com