Prosperity Sunday #3

                   This is prosperity Sunday #3. We are looking at a chapter of Eric Butterworth’s book “Spiritual Economies” on the last Sunday of each month. There are 12 chapters in the book.

Very briefly, the first chapter was about substance. Substance is that everywhere-present invisible creative stuff. Substance lays wait in potential; waiting for our thinking to activate it. Last week I put a little baking soda into vinegar and we saw a dramatic reaction. This is a good metaphor to show the power of our thinking when mixed in with substance.

The second chapter is titled, “Your fortune begins with you,” and it does.  According to your thinking, you will experience your life. Because you have the power to choose your thinking, whether it’s a thought that seems to originate with you or a thought in response to what seems to have appeared in your mind from somewhere else, you have the power to choose. That’s why the chapter is titled, “Your fortune begins with you.” You are in charge of what to think now.

The third chapter in this book is, “The Law of Visualization.” The law of visualization is this: “Having seen and felt the end, you have willed the means to the realization of the end.” (Troward)

I’m just going to leave that there because this chapter tells us how we see and how we need to think. These are two very important things to know.

From the book, page 49, “We have been conditioned to believe that life is lived from the outside-in. We see things “out there,” and we react with attitudes and feelings about them. Without question, what we see is as it is.  [and thus we think] Seeing is believing!”

According to that statement, seeing is believing, our eyes tell us what we see. Our eyes report back to the brain what is there in front of us.

Not so fast. ;0) Did you notice that Butterworth is talking about our conditioning?

A paragraph or so later Butterworth writes, “What the mind sees is not this picture that is communicated to the brain, but what your awareness has conditioned you to see. In other words, seeing is not believing; believing is seeing! You see things, not as they are, but as you are.”

Jane once did a drawing experiment with a friend. Our cat Sammie was lying on the back of our couch. Here’s her picture.

 Jane took it when our friend, Bill, sat down to draw. This is exactly what he was looking at.

This is what Bill drew.

How Bill could see something so different from what was in front of him? Conditioning.

Perhaps the basic problem is that we teach children to name things, and then we carry this habit the remainder of our lives unless something comes along to jolt us out of it. E label and then store it away for later reference.

When children are young we teach them A is for Apple. This is what an apple looks like.

B is for ball. This is what a ball looks like.

C is for Cat. This is what a cat looks like.

Now maybe you’re saying to yourself, “C’mon Brad. You can’t show every kind of apple, ball, and cat… those are just generalizations.”

That’s just it! We have general ideas about what things are, what they look like, how they should be, etc.

May I ask you another question? Where do ideas live? Do they live out there or do they live in the mind?

We see not with our eyes but with our mind. If we see with our eyes, why would we ever be confused about anything? Have you ever said to yourself, “I don’t know what to make of that?”  if you saw with your eyes instead of your mind you’d know exactly what you were seeing.

Can you see now how, “Thoughts held in mind produce after their kind.”

This is a cat.

This is a cat.

This is a cat.

“Hey Bill, would you sit down in front of our cat and draw what you see?”

This is Jane and Brad’s cat.

“Thoughts held in mind produce after their kind.”

Now, you tell me what happens when you look out on the circumstances and conditions of your life and you’ve been endlessly hold in your mind, “This is lack, this is lack, this is lack.”

Thoughts held in mind produce after their kind.

What if I give you the benefit of the doubt and I agree with you that your circumstance and conditions do reflect lack.

Well, how did the reflection of lack get there?

Thoughts held in mind produce after their kind.

1.      We see with the thoughts in our mind.

2.      Our thoughts mix with substance to bring forth according to their (the thoughts) kind.

3.      Your fortune is up to you.

Do you see how all this fits together?

I said to you that this chapter tells us how we see and how we need to think. These are two very important things to know.

The first of those two things, how we see, is, “We see with the mind.”

Now, how do we need to think? When things in our life go awry, we generally think, “I’ve got to set this right.”  Butterworth suggests that, “More important than setting it right is seeing it rightly.”

 Generally we want to manipulate “things out there.” But that doesn’t work. Why? What’s out there is a reflection of what’s in our own mind.

I challenge you to go home today, look in the mirror, get out a comb or a brush, brush the hair reflected in the mirror and see if the hair on your had has changed.

In the same way we can’t comb the hair in the mirror and make any change, we can’t try to manipulate our circumstances and condition “out there” and make any change. Again, what’s out there is a reflection of what’s in our own mind.

What Butterworth means by seeing things rightly is recognizing that our experience of what’s occurring “out there” is a reflection of what’s occurring within us.

If we see according to our thinking, the next thing we need to think about is how we think!

Charles Fillmore wrote, “Turn the great (bulk) of your thinking toward ‘plenty’ ideas and you will have plenty regardless of what men about you are saying or doing.” Prosperity page 13 (insertion is mine)

What are men and women all about us saying? “The sky is falling, the sky is falling.” This is always the view of politicians whose party in not in power. When the power switches sides, so does the alarm. Don’t buy into the alarm of politicians. Don’t buy into the alarm of TV news or talk shows either.

Let me reiterate what Mr. Fillmore advises us, “Turn the great (bulk) of your thinking toward ‘plenty’ ideas and you will have plenty regardless of what men about you are saying or doing.”

We talk a lot about the power of affirmations in Unity and I’m here to tell you it’s all baloney.

That’s right, it’s all baloney. 

It’s all baloney unless you believe in the affirmation.  You don’t have to believe in it fully for it to begin to work in your life, but you do have to believe in it, however small you start.

An affirmation is a form. The content of the form, in other words, the belief behind it, is where the power lies.

Hoping and wishing are weak. Belief is powerful.

I said to you that this chapter tells us how we see and how we need to think.

How we see is, we see with our mind.

The second thing is how we need to think. On page 57 of the book, Butterworth writes one sentence that gives us advice on how we need to think. In my opinion it’s the single most important sentence in the book. In my opinion taking this advice on as your living experience is the single biggest step you can take toward turning you life to one of prosperity.

If prosperity has escaped you, this is what I believe needs to be your living experience: “The secret of achieving prosperity lies in so vividly keeping yourself centered in the inner focus of affluence that you literally exude the consciousness of it.”

We have spoken about other aspects regarding prosperity and we are going to speak about yet more aspects. This one sentence is the core. Don’t forget it.

If you have not yet come to live and understand this, you will.

I believe in you wholeheartedly.

Faith and Prayer

Faith is the key to the Kingdom of Power within me. One of the aspects of the Kingdom of Power within me is the ability to create.

          Some sports use a plus/minus system to grade the efficiency of individual players. In ice hockey, for instance, they use a very simple system: if you are on the ice when your team scores a goal you get a plus one. If you are on the ice when the other team scores a goal you get a minus one.

          So let’s say you’re a +35 at the end of the year. That would show you are a positive force for the team; good things happen when you are on the ice. On the other hand a negative number at the end of the season shows you are making negative contributions to the welfare of the team.

          This might be a way we could look at what we give to our lives remembering that our way of thinking creates the experience of our lives.

By your thinking you are either adding to your good or taking away from your good.  This is an inexorable law. It’s another way of defining what I referred to two weeks ago as the “law of consciousness.”

          Failure, or lack in your life is simply the result of “minus-ing” yourself. Conversely, success and prosperity are the results of “plus-ing” yourself. It is wise to occasionally take inventory of yourself. Are you “negatizing” every thing and everybody around your, or are you “positizing” it?

          I want to tell you a story about two brothers who had positive faith in the power of prayer, but before I do I want to preface it with something Jim T. said to me on Friday. We were talking about all they hype and controversy that’s going on around the return of Peyton Manning to Indianapolis after being let go two years ago. Part of the controversy around tonight’s NFL game was fueled by Jim Irsay, the owner of the Colts.  Here’s what Jim Tallman said to me about Jim Irsay, “If his father hadn’t have made a lot of money (His father is dead and Jim now owns the team) he’d be just like us.”

The point is we tend to think of financially successful people as a breed different from the rest of us, but they’re not. So when I tell you this story is isn’t about a special group of people, it applies to us, too.

This is the story about the McViker family and a soap manufacturing company, the Kutol Company of Cincinnati.  Kutol was founded in 1912. By 1927, the company was facing closure. Cleo McVicker determined to save the company and after taking the matter to prayer was led to hire his brother, Noah W. McVicker, to manage the plant. Noah organized the plant, had it running more efficiently, and, the company's prospects improved. Cleo served as the company salesman, while Noah not only managed the plant but helped to develop new products.

          One thing you need to be aware of is this is all taking place during a time when coal was how buildings and homes were heated. Coal heat put out a lot of dust and homes required constant cleaning. If you’re old enough – and I’m not – you’ll remember that walls had to be cleaned regularly.

In 1933, Cleo approached the Kroger Company about manufacturing wallpaper cleaner for the grocery store chain. Kroger officials agreed to replace their current cleaner with one manufactured by Kutol Products. Cleo agreed to provide Kroger with fifteen thousand cases of cleaner. If he failed to do so on time, Kutol Products was required to pay Kroger five thousand dollars in fines ($88,600 to 1.42 million). This amount of money would have bankrupted Kutol Products. Unfortunately for the McVicker brothers, Kutol Products had never manufactured wallpaper cleaner before. Once again, “What do we do now” was taken to prayer and they were inspired to eventually create a product that worked. It was made of wheat flour, water, salt and a sort of petroleum distillate. When you applied this dough-like substance to the wall and peeled it away, the coal dust and dirt came with it, too.

Kutol Products made the deadline.

Over the next twenty years, Kutol Products primarily manufactured soap and wallpaper cleaner. The company became the largest wallpaper cleaner manufacturer in the world during this period. Unfortunately for the firm, after World War II homes were heated less and less with coal and more and more with natural gas, oil, and electricity.

In 1949, Cleo McVicker died in a plane crash. By the mid 1950s Kutol Products once again faced closure.

Cleo’s widow, Irma McVicker hired her son, Joseph McVicker, and her son-in-law, Bill Rhodenbaugh, to help Noah reverse the company's downward spiral.

Again, this situation was taken into prayer. Our prayers are always answered. With positive faith wee can “see” our answer. With negative faith we become blind to the answers we seek.

Sometimes we have to be open enough to see the answer. Especially when it comes in a form that doesn’t seem to be an answer.

Joseph McVicker sister-in law was a school teacher and she asked if she could take some of the product that was sitting in the warehouse for her – I think it was kindergarten class. She was of the opinion that since the wallpaper cleaner was easier to squoosh for little hands than modeling clay, that her students would have some fun making things with their hands just like the big kids could.

It was a big hit with the little kids and in 1955

the McVickars decided to give some to all the schools in Cincinnati. It was well received but there was a problem, it was a dull kind of grey-white and not very exciting.

In 1956 the packaged their wallpaper cleaner in white along with red, yellow and blue, and called it Play-Doh! (http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Kutol_Products_Company, modified and used without permission)

There are ups and downs in or lives and taking our circumstances into prayer transforms them.

The McVikers weren’t in a special class by themselves. They’re just like you and me and when circumstances changed they “plussed, or positized” their life with prayer and prospered.

Have you ever thought your faith was weak, or that you had none at all? We all have faith, all the time, and its powerful faith. We may have made the assumption that having faith means being confident in the positive outworking of this, that, or the other thing, and when we aren’t positive we are in a state of not having faith. I would say that when we aren’t in a state of positive faith then our faith lies in the negative. And you can’t cop-out by saying your faith is neutral. That’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. I guess I’d say it this way, “If it’s not positive faith/thinking then it’s not positive. If it’s not “positizing” your life then it’s “negatizing” your life.”

Faith is the key that opens the Kingdom of Power within me. You have the power and the faith.

God loves everyone; no exceptions. All prayer is answered with inspiration; no exceptions. Sometimes the answers seem to comes through us and sometimes they seem to come to us… but the answers always come.

Have faith in that.

Prosperity Sunday #2

          This is Prosperity Sunday talk #2. I’ll be addressing the principles and process of true prosperity on the last Sunday of each month for a year.

Last month our topic was “substance.”  Substance is that everywhere-present invisible creative stuff. Substance lays wait in potential; waiting for our thinking to activate it.

Spiritual Ecomonics, page 34. “And it is an important moment in your life when you discover for yourself the great Truth that things may [appear to] happen around you, and things may [appear to] happen to you, but the only things which really count are the things that happen in you.

          The second chapter in Eric Butterworth’s book SPIRITUAL ECONOMICS is titled, “Your Fortune Begins With You” and here he shares with us the idea that everything we think about is out-pictured into our lives.  Our thinking determines how much we restrain or release the creative power within us.

          Let’s get right to it.  I need a volunteer to help me demonstrate a point.  Who would like to help?

What I’d like you to do is to climb up the ladder that’s set up outside this window and walk to the peak of the roof. Then walk to the edge of the building and step off. Would you be willing to do that?

(The answer will probably be, “No.”)

Why Not?

(“because I’d hurt myself”)

Why?

(because of gravity)

“Let me ask you this, then, “How many times would you have to step off the roof, roughly, before the odds would give you a miraculous baby-soft, landing?””

(It would never happen.)

Why not?

(Because gravity works the same way all the time)

What about luck or a miracle?

(won’t make a difference)

          That’s the point. Fundamental laws work the same way all the time otherwise they wouldn’t be laws.

Thank you. Please be seated.

There are two points I want to point out from this demonstration:

1.      Laws work the same way all the time. So if you are trying to make prosperity work for you, stop trying to make it work and get into the rhythm of it.

2.      Neither luck nor the idea of miracles has any effect on Laws.

Let’s talk a little bit about luck and miracles here: expecting that luck will help you, or work against you (“With my luck it’ll all go wrong…”), is expecting the laws of the universe to be changed for you. Seriously, are you that special?

The same is true about miracles.  In the strictest sense there is no such thing as a miracle. I realize that I may be treading on some deeply held beliefs here…

To say there are miracles is the same as to say there is luck. Both require, as Butterworth describes it, “…believing in a God that will give you something through a divine sleight-of-hand process.”

That would be spiritual naïveté.

What we think of as luck, what we think of as miracles is the dependable outworking of the law in a way we cannot see, rationalize, or understand; nothing more, nothing less.

If you want to use the words luck or miracle to describe your experience, please do; I’m not asking you to throw them out. All I am asking is that you be aware that luck and miracles are not extra-normal occurrences.

Here is what we must remember, “The idea of what we might call the rules of prosperity are extremely intriguing, but,” Butterworth says, “it really doesn’t make much sense to enable you to make changes in your life until you accept the law of consciousness.” (Butterworth)

Unity would describe it thus: “Thoughts held in mind produce after their kind.”

That’s why Butterworth titles the 2^nd chapter, “Your fortune begins with you,” because it does.

It begins with the thoughts you are holding in mind, and once you really accept that, you won’t wallow in negative or limited thinking any more than you’d choose to step off the roof of this building and expect a baby-soft landing.

In the film Evan Almighty, God tells one of the characters who had prayed with her husband for the family to have more peace, but has more chaos, “When you ask God for peace, God doesn’t give you peace, God gives us opportunities to choose peace.”

By the same token I would say that God doesn’t give us prosperity but that God gives us ideas to make prosperity in our lives.

Faith: let’s go back to that last Butterworth quote. Notice the words, “accept the law.” I believe from my own observation that saying new, affirmative words does have some effect. However, to turn the corner and fire up the prosperity “after-burners,” to really have a new experience of abundance, you have to fully invest yourself in the idea that thoughts held in mind produce after their kind.

Paul said it this way, “As you sew, so shall you reap.” And, “Conform not to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” (ROM 12:2)

Jesus counsels us that by our faith we are healed. If you hope to be healed of any experience of lack in your life, commit yourself, invest your faith in the idea that thoughts held in mind produce after their kind.  

Here is one last quote. This one from W. H. Murray, “Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to drop back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative, there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too, all sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.”

If I wouldn’t tempt the law of gravity and step off he roof of the church, why would you tempt the law of consciousness and engage in negative or limited thinking?

Until our next Prosperity Sunday (October 27^th) I invite you to write the statement you find at the bottom of your bulletin, “My Faith is the key to the Kingdom of Power Within Me.”

Have faith in the idea that thoughts held in mind produce after their kind, just like you have faith the Sun will appear in the east tomorrow morning, and the power of the Kingdom within you will pour down on you.