CREATIVITY - PART 1

At the core of New Thought teaching, there is the idea that we continuously create our own experience from within; that deep in the innermost reaches of our subconscious mind, we carry the programming that dictates where we are and when, and how we respond to the challenges that fall our way.

Our experience is not the same as EVENTS which happen to us. Our experience is made up of our REACTIONS to events, and these flow from the judgments we make about those events. This is what it means when we speak of 'programming' of our responses.

If we can operate consciously, and choose our responses, we can control these reactions, and in doing so, move away from reactions based on unconscious judgment.

This, on the surface, appears to be a simple principle. What is not so simple is the everyday doing of it. If it were so easy, we would all be rich as kings; the driveways would be filled with Cadillacs and Lincolns, and our New Thought churches would have lineups of people waiting to get in the door. The world would all be wondering how we do it, and of course some would be calling it evil.

Well, since that is not quite the case, something must be trickier than it seems. Dr. Bill Talliaferro, once the Fort Lauderdale pastor, used to say that ours is not a formula religion. A formula religion would be one that has a formula that you follow, and everything is supposed to work for you. It would start with “All you have to do is……” and then comes the formula. It could be to get down and pray, to say the rosary, to say affimations, or to follow the steps of prayer treatment as we call our science of affirmative prayer.

Take Religious Science, for example. How can we call it a science, if there are no formulas that can be applied? Aren’t we saying that there is a process that always works? If we’re not teaching that, then what are we teaching? What is the Science of Mind about, if not the repeatability and predictability of an outcome?

First of all, neither the Science of Mind text or the Bible it is based on say that it shall be done unto you as you THINK. What it says is that it is done unto you as you BELIEVE. The problem is that you can usually tell what you’re thinking; you can’t always tell what you believe. Your belief is not on the surface of your mind; it grows out of your total mentality, both the conscious part and the unconscious or subconscious part. The unconscious is called that because it is hidden from your conscious thinking. You don’t know what’s in it - that's why they call it the unconscious! Nearly all the power of your mind is in that unconscious part.

Here’s an example. Have you ever been driving along the highway on a long trip, and after about thirty or forty minutes you just realized that you hadn’t thought about the road or seen it in all that time? You were thinking about something else. You subconscious mind took over and handled the car, dodged the traffic, just ran your life, while your conscious mind was re-living that argument with the boss or planning that vacation trip to Mexico.

The subconscious also kept your lungs breathing, your heart beating, your temperature stable, and your body upright in the seat. Can you imagine doing all those things while driving your car too, if you had to think about it all consciously? The conscious mind is not up to tasks of that complexity – it hasn’t the processing power. It’s all in the subconscious.

Your subconscious thoughts also tend to hold your beliefs, and your faith. They can be programmed from the conscious level, but only over a period of time, and only by real effort. So as you believe, your whole life is done unto you, little by little.

The subconscious, or unconscious, forms the soul of your being, linked intimately to the mechanisms of your body, and linking you also to all the physical world. You have programmed it; but whatever you have not programmed is instinctive.

The Science of Mind is about programming that subconscious by starting with the conscious mind. We are taught that this programming requires two components. First, there must be an idea; a thought. It must be clear and it must be positively stated. Then there must be an emotion which accompanies that thought, and the power of that emotion drives the idea into the unconscious and anchors it there.

Emotion changes the chemistry of the body; it sets up chemical pathways in the brain, locking things into our memory. Ernest Holmes taught that the two-fold forces of idea and emotion is the key to realizing our desires.


More to come....