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.