For the last year I have been in the process of ‘shifting’ my awareness regarding ‘thought’ and the role it plays in my life.
I have been allowing myself to be influenced by a man called Thomas Troward. He lived in the early part of the 20th century and is considered as one of the founding minds in ‘New Thought’.
I believe, New Thought is behind the latest movement called the ‘law of attraction’ espoused in the Secret.
Troward’s thinking and writings are apparently hard to read but, I find it very much worth the effort.
In a section dealing with ‘the creative power of thought’, Troward writes: “Thought must necessarily be limited by our conceptions. We cannot think of something which we cannot conceive; and therefore, the more limited our conceptions, the more limited will be our thought, and its creations will accordingly be limited in a corresponding degree.”
Troward always refers his readers back to Source. Think from Source not from your surroundings.
The main concept concerning the human is that the human is ‘made in the image of God’. That CONCEPT is the basis of a whole line of thinking that turns normal thinking on its head.
We tend to think from our experience and based on our memories and the deductions we made from them. We look at the world around us and see it as the starting point. The New Thought movement with teachers like Troward and Emerson turn things around. They encourage us to see life, not from the world of ‘conditions’ around us but from the world of ‘Conceptions” or Cause that are at the source of our being here.
If I am made in the Image of God I need to identify with that fact, first and foremost. Hence I conceive of myself as One with the Original Universal Life-Principle.
In so doing I start to reason from that truth rather than from all the facts and experiences of my life. I don’t start by reasoning from the level of sin, sickness and death.
I start reasoning from the Creative Source which is Omnipotent (all powerful), Omniscient (all knowing) and Omnipresent (everywhere present). Otherwise known as God. Hence, my thought dares to say it is like God.
It then begins to reason from the identification with the creator. I ‘conceive’ of myself as one with God because if I am created in the image of God, I am a chip off the old block. And so I can start by affirming my power and fullness instead of my smallness and limitations.
As the thought learns to ‘identify’ with the Truth it begins to draw new and more uplifting experiences into the life of the thinker and pulls that person out of the wold of pain and limitation.
“Thought must necessarily be limited by our conceptions. We cannot think of something which we cannot conceive;” The key in all of this is daring to believe that we are indeed one with God. This we can do as we allow ourselves to believe there is a higher power that is there to ‘guide’ us. To recognize the guiding Spirit is to place ourselves in the place of receiving new Conceptions that will turn our life on its head, as I said above. We discover that the only way to free ourselves of the limited thinking that has led us this far… is to let ourselves be guided into a higher conception of who we are and have, thus far, known ourselves to be. As our thoughts change…and we take on a New Way of Thinking, our life circumstances change.
A little food for thought on this lovely day.
Peace.
Norm