The Future of New Thought

BY HARV BISHOP

A woman facing a life-threatening illness is empowered by New Thought ideas. Another woman grieving the death of baby grandchild was told at a New Thought church that the death was caused by the parents’ consciousness. These are stories from readers of our five-week series on New Thought: What Works, What Needs Reform with Mitch Horowitz.

Can New Thought empower people to reach their full potential and help them cope with the inevitable suffering in living?

Horowitz says New Thought will meet more people’s needs if it continues to evolve and he lays out his ideas for the future evolution of the New Thought/Positive Thinking movement this week. Horowitz is author of the book, “One Simple Idea: How Positive Thinking Reshaped Modern Life.”

What are your ideas? Share your visions for the future of New Thought both in the comments section below and on Facebook. We are not here to persuade or introduce a new dogmatism. Our only goals are to stimulate thought, conversation and, as Horowitz says, “Deeper questions for us all.”

There has been much praise and pushback this last five weeks. Many agreed with one of our reader’s comment “It’s time to put the thought back in New Thought.” Some disown the philosophy accusing it pasting a happy face over the downside of life and the complexity of human psychology, while others say they would not be where they are in life without New Thought.

Horowitz deeply explores the ground between these extremes. He counts himself as person who changed his life using New Thought principles.

He grew up in a financially troubled Long Island household inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson and his sister’s poster that read in part “…what can I do today, to be where I want to be tomorrow.” That teen fascinated by self-determination and positive thinking and wondering how he could afford college eventually became editor-in-chief at Tarcher Penguin, a leading publisher of alternative spirituality and classic New Thought books, including those by Dr. Ernest Holmes. He is also a PEN award winning historian and author of two books on the history and influence of New Thought and other occult thinking in the U.S. He has written for the New York Times and Science of Mind: Guide for Spiritual Living magazine where his new column, Real Positivity, begins in the October issue.

“New Thought is a practical expression of metaphysical ideas that are, in themselves, very mysterious,” says Horowitz, “so it’s difficult to draw precise lines as to when or where it works, so much as to experiment with and study the ways it can be experienced.” The philosophy “is a rich, formative and continually relevant aspect contemporary spirituality and psychology,” he adds.

New Thought: What works?

1) Inspiring people to reach their highest potential based on their soul’s desires. “There is a belief,” says Horowitz, “that every individual is entitled to fulfill his or her highest potential on their own terms.” Writing in his book, “One Simple Idea,” he said this search for your highest self “is … perhaps, the greatest form of mental aspiration to which a person can aspire, and the one that brings the most help,” reducing shame and anger in the process.

2) A DIY approach to spirituality where ordinary people can experiment in a practical way with mind power approaches in their lives. New Thought pioneers, he says, realized the power of the mind years before science caught up through hypnotherapy, cognitive therapy, the still unfolding study of quantum physics, and neuroplasticity studies that demonstrate that the brain can be rewired through meditation and reframing thoughts. These experiments also created tools adapted by diverse groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous, A Course in Miracles, business motivational speakers like Tony Robbins, and Christian ministers such as Norman Vincent Peale and Joel Osteen.

3) A longstanding “radical tolerance” resulting in some of the first female clergy and spiritual teachers, a welcoming of the LGBTQ community, and New Thought adherents engaged in their communities and progressive issues including inequality and the environment.

New Thought: What doesn’t work?

1) A one-size-fits-all explanation for suffering, accidents and tragedy. In short, the belief that your thinking creates the totality of your experience. Horowitz believes that we live under a variety of laws– spiritual, mental and physical. “Mortality alone tells us that,” he says.

2) The belief in the mind as the only cause of life events can leave adherents inadequately prepared to deal with life’s inevitable suffering and can lead some to judge or blame victims of misfortune including large scale tragedies like 9/11. “I part deeply with that view,” Horowitz says.

How does Horowitz envision a reformation of New Thought?

“I want to see a muscular, road-sturdy New Thought that can address all of the needs and phases of life,” says Horowitz.  “I love Norman Vincent Peale, for example, but I have to agree with critics who said he never developed a ‘theology of suffering.’ We in the New Thought culture, and related ones, need an outlook that persuasively meets people at every phase of life. The much-maligned Joel Osteen actually does a good job of dealing with some domestic/economic problems from a personal/spiritual not policy perspective.”

What might a theology of suffering look like?

“I do think that we’ve amassed enough evidence to see that thoughts and emotions are, without question, one causative aspect of disease, addiction, relational fractures and many aspects of what happens to a person. But those of us who live in America also enjoy a social structure in which, for the most part, our day-to-day physical safety is not at risk. The picture changes dramatically in any number of regions that are torn apart by war, famine or natural disaster. The population of Syria is being victimized by terrible political and social fissures brought on by myriad factors.

“There’s no one-size-fits-all answer for that. Life is a mosaic of causes: political economic, physical and spiritual and mental. My only theory, if it can be called that, is to work to continually broaden our perspective; to observe as fully and widely as possible. Don’t fall for the easy solution of any one grand answer or cause. That’s when real thinking can begin.

“I don’t have a viable theory of suffering within the New Thought paradigm – and, in a sense, I’m somewhat relieved to search and find that I do not; because I think then I would summon and organize facts to fit my theory, and that’s when real questions get shut down.

“I would offer one parameter: avoid analyzing the suffering of others. The greatest empirical insight we possess on the spiritual path is inner experience. It is enough to understand your own suffering, which will hold universal lessons. But I do no good if I look at my neighbor and say, ‘Well, this is why he’s going through this.’ If a person has never experienced war or cancer or the loss of a child, he should fall to his knees and try to comfort his neighbor, but not explain his experience.”

This concludes this five part series on New Thought: What Works, What needs Reform. Mitch will return to this blog in the coming weeks.

 

My interview with Mitch Horowitz in the September issue Science of Mind: Guide for Spiritual Living magazine, “The Hidden History of New Thought,” will be available at Barnes and Noble booksellers next week. And watch for Mitch’s new Science of Mind column, Real Positvity, beginning in the October issue.

For previous interviews in this series:

Part 1: What death can tell us about the Law of Attraction

Part 2 and Part 2 continued: How collective consciousness does and does not influence our lives

Part 3: Can the Law of Attraction account for tragedy and misfortune?

Part 4: The ironic historical accident of sorts that created the belief there are no accidents

“One Simple Idea” is available at Amazon. To visit Horowitz’s website click here.