Yesterday, I listened to an interview with Joe Dispenza, where someone questioned him on the curing his spinal injury with “positive thinking.” I could tell it slightly annoyed him, and he let the interviewer know that it took more than positive thinking to change our lives. Positive thinking means nothing when below the surface of your consciousness your beliefs and feelings are wreaking havoc on your life.

This is to true and it is what many people misinterpret about the New Thought teaching. Those who truly strive to practice this teaching are not people walking around with a everything is perfect facade, feigning positive thinking as the solution for everything, ignoring what is in front of them. It isn’t about just saying everything is good when you know that it isn’t.

As Joe Dispenza put it, positive thinking does us no good unless it is connected to our emotions and feelings. Do we really believe and feel the words we say or are they vain repetitions?

What I know is that when we truly know who we are and practice using the Laws of the Universe in our lives “positive thinking” is an EFFECT, a result. Positive thinking is not a cause and everything comes from CAUSE. Through practice, we begin to  look at everything from a higher point of view. We trust. We have faith. We know that we know. The effect is positive thinking.

I do not always think positively and when I find myself in that energy, I know that something within me isn’t aligned with Truth. When my thoughts begin to sink into my conditions, I know that I am not working from the within to the without. I am trapped in appearances. I have to bring myself back to what I know and then live it. It is a matter of surrendering to the Power within that can do anything.

We have the power to change our lives and live them in any way we choose. There is only one Power. It resides within us, surrounds us and it is ours to use. We impress upon this Power whenever we think; however, we cannot think positively, saying that we want this and such and such, when deep in the recesses of our subconsciousness we feel undeserving and do not practice self-love.

When someone challenges us to “think positively” and we cannot, the place to start is to begin to make contact with the Power within ourselves through meditation, study, reading, practice, practice, practice, and to pray. In our form of Prayer/Treatment, we pray knowing that we already are completely supplied and nurtured and Divinely guided, guarded and protected. No matter what is showing up in our life, it is a mirror of what we are thinking and believing. If we want to change it, we have to change the reflector. It is impossible to start by changing the reflection. Our prayers are answered according to our belief and we cannot trick the Law of our Being.

The New Thought Philosophy and Teaching is more than thinking positively. It is making contact and living from Divine Intelligence. When we practice and live from this place all our experiences give us reason to think positively. We will live as Henry David Thoreau would have said, “with the license of a higher order of beings.”

We won’t be able to think of anything negatively because everything will have meaning and we will know that we know that everything thing is for our highest good, always bringing ourselves back to ourSELVES – God – Good.

Remember authentic positive thinking is an effect of the mind/conscious awareness that believes in the Power that he/she can use. It is an effect that comes from faith, trust and self-love. It comes from within from a heart that is aligned with the Power of the Universe.

Love and Aloha,

Rev. Rita