| | |

New Thought’s Blind Spot

Spread the love

BY HARV BISHOP

How does a New Thought icon go from writing and living “the conquest of poverty” to wanting to die? The story of Helen Wilmans, the author of the 1899 New Thought classic “The Conquest of Poverty,” is at once one of the most inspiring and tragic stories in our movement. It also illustrates a blind spot that haunts New Thought teachings to this day.

In middle age, Wilmans left a loveless, difficult marriage and hard farm life, becoming a journalist who wrote about labor issues and women’s rights. She studied with Emma Curtis Hopkins as did Religious Science founder Ernest Holmes. Against long odds, Wilmans achieved her dream of starting a New Thought newspaper and later a magazine and correspondence courses. She also wrote her classic 1899 book “The Conquest of Poverty.” Her message: dire circumstances can be changed by a positive mental attitude alone.

Helen Wilmans1
Helen Wilmans illustration by Tim Botta

This was a view shared by Ernest Holmes in his early writings. In the 1926 edition of the New Thought perennial favorite The Science of Mind he wrote, “This is all there is to poverty. It comes from impoverished thinking.”

In the 1890s Wilmans moved to Sea Breeze near Daytona Beach, Florida, and began succeeding in real estate. Then starting in 1901 something she never expected took place:  her mailings that taught metaphysical and spiritual principles were banned by the US postmaster general as fraudulent. This conspiracy was advanced by male real estate tycoons, relying on corrupt officials, who didn’t like competition from a successful woman. She was eventually cleared in 1904 but her conquest of poverty was short-lived. The court battles depleted her energy and left her destitute. Her second husband died soon after.

“I am not sick, but I am tired of everything on earth,” she wrote a friend. “I would give anything jut to lie down and go to sleep and never to awake again.”

For New Thought to continue the literal belief that thought alone determines our reality, we would have to accept that Wilmans, who had achieved so much using these principles, somehow embraced “impoverished thinking” late in life and attracted to herself gender prejudice, jealous male competitors, corrupt government officials, impoverishment and declining health.

We can also say, I think more realistically, that she was able to use New Thought teachings to overcome many of the limitations of the era into which she was born. And, in spite of her understanding at the time, our lives are determined by more than just our thoughts. Social forces and structures impacted her life and continue to affect our lives in spite of our consciousness.

Contrast her lived experience with some well-known longstanding New Thought dictums: “There are no victims,”  “There are no accidents.”

We know better now.

Thorought the early part of the 20th century there was a deep-seated view that our lives were due more to effort than to luck. The Great Depression shifted that social consensus. It was recognized that people could fall on hard times through no fault of their own. However, the longstanding view that we make our own bed in life has never faded away completely. Combine that with the belief that there are no accidents and you get a shortage of compassion in some New Thought circles.

Western and Eastern mindsets see the world differently argues Joshua Cooper Ramo in his fascinating new book “The Seventh Sense,” which applies the wisdom he learned from Ch’an Buddhism to everything from foreign policy to the power shifts brought about by an interconnected world.

People in the Western world focus on the goal and ignore the environment, he says, while people in the Eastern world first look at environmental and historical influences and then ask what is possible. Crafting foreign policy (or any human endeavor) is like adding to a precarious stack of tea cups, he writes. In the western world we blithely stack away, while in China they pay attention to the wind, weather and other factors that impact the stability of the stack.

To argue that an individual is solely responsible for their reality is like ignoring the wind while stacking your tea cups.

Helen Willmans 3
Helen Wilmans illustration by Tim Botta

Clearly, to say the individual has no control over their life circumstances is profoundly disempowering. But to say an individual has complete and total control over their every life circumstance is to lack compassion and to shirk responsibility for the social structures and inequalities that we collectively create.

Hear me. I am not saying that New Thought teachings are without value. I am not saying that many of Wilmans and Holmes ideas weren’t divinely inspired, but I do believe they also reflected some incorrect time-bound beliefs. We can take the good and let go of the dated.

Many New Thought adherents now embrace quantum physics in their understanding about how thoughts are causative.  Those are understandings that were not available to classic New Thought writers. In the same way, we can be open to new understandings of how people end up in difficult life circumstances. Mind, in my view, does not explain everything.

The teachings can be held in a wider context now.

In a recent interview on Coast to Coast Radio, author Mitch Horowitz said that we live under multiple influences in our lives including our minds. But we are also influenced by our biological and psychological make-up and social forces.

We are, he said, co-creators of our reality.

Horowitz’s view is more modest than saying our thoughts dot every i and cross every t of our experience, but I would believe it is more compassionate and just as miraculous.

Positive thinking is a tool to improve our lives, Horowitz said, not a way to indict ourselves and others.

For the details of Wilmans’ life I am indebted to historian and author Mitch Horowitz who tells her story in his definitive history of positive thinking “One Simple Idea” and in a compelling talk, “Mind as Builder,” for the Association for Research and Enlightenment, available here.  Wilmans letter to a friend is quoted from “One Simple Idea,” chapter 4.

The work of North Carolina-based artist and educator Tim Botta can be seen at his art sales site. Blog readers can receive 10% off a Botta print of New hought heroes ranging from Ernest Holmes to Neville and William James by emailing him at bottaprints@gmail.com .

Similar Posts

17 Comments

  1. So a bunch of rent-seeking real-estate agents misused their connections to the government to stomp out competition.

    This is what progressivism wrought. It’s much like the Kentucky bourbon makers, who, faced with a competitor who was able to produce a good product with just three years aging, got the legislature to require that all bourbon in the state be aged five years.

    There was a CSL minister who had a prison ministry and was told not to continue. The recidivism rate was getting too low.

    Those who look to government as a solver of our problems are going to create circumstances like what happened to Helen Wilmans.

    Get out of the way and let people pursue their highest and best, their most successful lives, in whatever way they can (which will be greatly helped by the right mental attitude), and all of us, as individuals and society, can thrive.

    Mind power is critical to this, and the right policy environment can create conditions that either advance or inhibit it

    1. Corrupt government precedes the progressive era (the Grant era and reconstruction anyone?). We can also look at the era of robber baron capitalism that the progressive era was in part a response to. Monopolies undermine the free market too. Unsafe working conditions, child labor, paying miner’s in script to use at the company store instead of money (upheld by courts as respecting the dignity of free men who “chose” to work for play money instead of real money). Getting out of the way of business wasn’t the answer.More regulation, though imperfect, came for a reason.
      The influence of special interest politics (or rent seeking behavior) is seen as a problem by both left and right. The right, myopically, focuses on the evils of too much government. The left, myopically focuses on too much power held by business. The problem is top down, centralized power whether that is found in the private or public sector.

  2. We are part of that great Mind and a part of that collective consciousness. At the same time each of us has a different degree of consciousness awareness/level of consciousness. I agree that to say that we have either complete control and/or no control is not an accurate statement. When we think about the idea of the cosmic consciousness or the One Great Mind of which we all are a part of–I believe we are not immune from the influences of “other minds” past and present and who knows maybe even future.

  3. Love it ! Reminded me of a congregant who went to the hospital. As her minister I called to talk with her and let her know I would be placing a request for her wellness with our Practitioners. Her response was: “Thanks, but don’t pray too hard. I want them to come up with a diagnosis.”

  4. Good work Harvey – what you point to here is the bridge a social gospel and social justice message of new thought. This comes from the era of new thought history that is steeped in Individualistic thinking. Everything written about One Mind – was assumed to be “the mind of God and your direct influence on it”
    New Thought now is venturing into a Collecitve Consciosuness era – where we understand that our use of the One Mind is combined with everyone’s use of the One Mind. It’s not just Me and My Thoughts – but me, my thoughts and the context in which I live. Further my thought (and actions) contribute to the context of those around me and after me. Thus I am not just responsible for my thoughts and life – I am responsible to the context of collective race-thought that influences everyone. The age of individualism must give way in new thought to our deeper embrace of what Oneness actually means.

    1. Bravo Dr. David! As someone commented on Facebook “I am, but I am not alone in consciousness.” The blend of New Thought with American individualism is indeed a potent cocktail for good or ill. The aspect of freedom of thought was key to questioning old line religious beliefs and experimenting with something new. The combination with our consumer driven acquisitive sense individualism (it’s my SUV and pollute if I want) has a much more mixed result.

  5. Our thought is creative, but we have been thinking for a long time before we knew what we were doing and we are not the only thinkers in our world. The basic laws of the universe introduce a degree of randomness in our experience. Social forces ARE mind. Human beings came up with this stuff through ignorant assumptions, greed and fear. Changing the collective unconscious as Jung called it, is the only way to change how our collective assumptions may influence our personal lives. We are all learning how to make decisions – demands on the Law — that make effective change. There is no blame in this ongoing process.

    1. Nicely said Patricia. Our social conditions are human constructs but we rarely, collectively, question them. That is one reason Dr. Michael Beckwith argues so strongly that our economic system is immature- it is based on a consciousness of scarcity rather than abundance. There are those who argues that economics is more pure than dirty politics because it’s based on observable human traits and allows us to “vote” our preferences. But such a view ignores inequality and how our behavior is shaped by the incentives of the system and widespread beliefs about self-interest and competition.

  6. You say “Mind, in my view, does not explain everything.”

    Are there one or more additional explanatory agent(s) other than Mind?

    Or are you saying that locally individuated Mind does not explain everything?

    Or is there a greater explanatory agent of which Mind is only one aspect?

    Or did you mean “mind” rather than “Mind?”

    1. Hi Noel,
      Fair question.
      I mean locally individuated mind does not explain everything. I thought that would be inferred from context, but precision doesn’t hurt.
      Of course we believe we believe that all creation originates in Oneness or Mind. But as the One becomes the many as the Tao would say there are additional explanatory agents ranging from physical laws to the multiple explanations for suffering including, but not limited to: karma, sin, collective or race consciousness, the nature of an ever changing reality etc. If it becomes apparent that locally individuated mind doesn’t explain all then usually people fall back on one of those. What they usually mean by arguing for these perspectives is asserting that their is a divine right order. I have written more extensively on that question here: https://www.harvbishop.com/?p=685 For me, I do not see divine right order in what happened to Helen Wilmans.

  7. This great blog got me to thinking. I’d like to start by inviting you to accept only what resonates as truth for you in what I share. This is my personal take in this moment. I’m also very clear that I do not know what anything, including this, truly means. So here goes…

    Divine Mind doesn’t have a blind spot. The individualized mind does though. And thus, the title caught my attention.

    I believe that the individualized mind has two aspects. One is utterly focused on separation; I would call that the ego mind. The other is utterly focused on oneness; I would call that the spiritual or subjective mind.

    I believe that the goal of my life is to overcome the conditioning of the original separation experience (my incarnation), and my subsequent experiences of conditioning. Whilst education, media, religion and politics are more evolved today than they were in Wilmans’ time, I am sure even seasoned historians would agree that external conditioning is a factor in every story.

    One reason for this belief forming is explained for me with the following. For many years I used to enjoy violent movies and video games. For example, I counted myself a fan of Star Wars. It has a fabulous mythical foundation about the hero’s journey that really helped me along my journey. And as a seven year old I found Jedi and lightsabers to be very, very cool.

    However, I came to realize something about my habits of consuming violence through entertainment systems. Since making this shift I feel more peace in my life. I can’t recall the last time I personally witnessed violence. And my emotional reaction when seeing violence unexpectedly, through a news report for example, is now one of love, compassion, forgiveness and peace. This greatly empowers me as a New Thought minister.

    Since the spiritual mind is utterly focused on oneness this means that as Dr. David says, “It’s not just Me and My Thoughts – but me, my thoughts and the context in which I live. Further my thought (and actions) contribute to the context of those around me and after me. Thus I am not just responsible for my thoughts and life – I am responsible to the context of collective race-thought that influences everyone.” Dr. David’s statement on this aligns with my awareness; I have literally stopped consuming any form of violence. In this way I am more deeply embracing what oneness actually means.

    I agree with Mitch that we are co-creators of our reality. However, I believe there’s more to this “blind spot” than just that though.

    Something I’ve come to recently contemplate is that I need a better understanding of what time is. If we have “some incorrect time-bound beliefs” then it’s possible that we could be unknowingly counter-creating for our own experience (please excuse the setting of the stage before I return to make my second point).

    When Ernest Holmes wrote, “Of course time is real, but never a thing of itself” he was considering time to be as real as form, but not self-conscious. In other words, time doesn’t make choices, we do. Which brings me back to the ego mind.

    What is the ego mind’s view of time? The ego mind will allow us to look upon the past with equanimity because the past is no more, and doesn’t hold much real value from the perspective of awakening. The ego mind teaches us that the future is hell because death is the end as far as the hope of Heaven goes.

    But even more sinister than this is that the ego mind teaches us that Heaven is here and now because the future is hell. The ego mind strives to seem to keep fear from me to hold my allegiance to it. Yet the ego mind must engender fear in order to maintain itself.

    This is perhaps the clearest example of the ego mind’s paradoxical thought system. The only way in which the ego mind allows the fear of hell to be experienced is to bring hell here, but always as a foretaste of the future. For no one who considers themselves as deserving of hell can believe life will end in peace. I invite you to take a moment contemplating what I just wrote alongside the reported words of Wilmans.

    However, there is no hell. Hell is only what the ego mind has made of the present. And this belief in hell is designed to keep me from understanding the present through my fear of it. There is no escape from fear in the ego mind’s use of time.

    And now I return to the story of Wilmans. When her mailings were banned by the US postmaster I agree that she was amidst a co-created experience. I certainly would never blame anyone for their suffering. Truth without compassion is brutality. However, when I read that she said, “I am not sick, but I am tired of everything on earth…I would give anything jut to lie down and go to sleep and never to awake again,” I am struck by how that sounds a lot like she was living in the ego mind.

    The ego mind must conjure fear in order to maintain itself. What if Wilmans had some unhealed false beliefs which manifested in a form of hell being brought to the present by her ego mind? And what if “New Thought’s Blind Spot” really is a reflection of our evolving understanding of Truth. Thankfully, Ernest Holmes was most wise when he suggested that we “be open at the top.” In other words, the spot that is blind today won’t always be.

    1. Hi Rev. Carmien.
      Thanks so much for your in-depth comments. They have inspired me to some considerable reflection. Like you, I ultimately don’t know the answers.
      The Hebrew word for spouse translates to “helpmate against.” Why would one want to be in a relationship with a helpmate against? The rabbis explain it is a helpmate against the narrow, constricted view we humans are subject to. In others words our fellow humans help us with our blind spots.
      What you posit in Wilmans case is plausible, perhaps the most plausible if we are to look at individual manifestation as the primary mover here.
      My reflections around your response come in two areas.
      First, to me Wilmans’ heartbreaking words are reminiscent of the Jesus story with his anguished prayers in the garden and later on the cross. In other words even the exemplars we hold high have what the Rolling Stones call their “moment of doubt and pain.”
      The historical Buddha died likely as a result of food poisoning from his alms bowl. To me this suggests high consciousness isn’t always a protection against less desirable earthly circumstances or always a result of the manifestation of our thoughts and fears. Again, I don’t know and I’m not saying what you suggest is never the case. With the Buddha the most likely cause was a less advanced understanding of food safety. (A brief detour here- arguably our blind spots help us evolve and grow to greater understanding. The scientific revolution resulted because realized we didn’t know everything so we needed peer review and the scientific method of verifiable results. Science became open at the top.) Likewise Wilmans was clearly depressed, but in that time there were fewer psychological tools to deal with that. More collective blind spots. I do very much agree with you that the spot we are blind to today won’t always be there. Ken Wilber and Don Beck argue that the blind spots push us to a new level of consciousness and then their will be a new blind spot at that level of consciousness and so we continue to grow.
      Second, a person in fear and ego mind, if they were a white male in Wilmans’ time, say one of her competitors, would likely not have their buttons pushed to such an extent. I would argue that those circumstances are much more likely to befall someone in an oppressed out-group.
      Back to her heartbreaking letter. Wilmans was not only ruined financially, but the very foundations of her thought creates your reality mindset must have been shaken to the core. One possible explanation here. Mitch and the mystic David Spangler make somewhat similar arguments regarding LOA teachings. Our great NT teachers do intuit a great spiritual truth that at other levels of being (say the etheric realm) are apparently quite true. In those so-called imaginal realms it is reported that our souls create quite freely and easily from intent. But in this physical realm that ability is watered down to some degree and other forces can hold sway. For me, this view can account for both Wilmans great success and downfall.

      1. Beloved Harv, as always you present thought-provoking reflections. You might not be surprised to read that your reflections inspired more reflections for me.

        The thought about our “moment of doubt and pain” reminds me of the concept of the dark night of the soul. I’ve personally had a few of those. And they can be terrible places to be. I’m acutely aware that I’ve experienced moments of insanity where I felt as though I were drowning with no hope of survival. Despair is when the ego mind’s hold and conditioning is so strong it literally has us ready to give up rather than try to release it. And there’s an awful lot of conditioning going on in the world.

        Not everyone may agree with me, but my personal experience so far has taught me that everything I am going through is preparing me for what I asked for. I’ve come to realize that that voice telling me that I can’t remember asking for it is the ego mind. I also believe I did ask for it, or at least that aspect of me that is spiritual mind did.

        One thing I wrote in my initial reply that I wanted to return to was that, “I certainly would never blame anyone for their suffering. Truth without compassion is brutality.” In re-reading this a thought I hadn’t considered before came to mind.

        The ego mind will rail or complain at the suggestion of blaming the creator of their experience. I’ve heard enough stories to know that one of the biggest complaints with New Thought is the perception of the tendency to blame. However, I can’t help but realize that this is indeed the ego mind speaking. Fortunately, it’s easy to determine that it is the voice of the ego mind complaining about being blamed because of one simple observation. The spiritual mind would never conceive of bringing a word such as “blame” into its logic or reasoning.

        The capacity of the ego mind should not be underestimated. It is brilliant. And why not, it has access to the same creative potential that the spiritual mind does. It really is very good at conjuring distractions to make reality appear to be something that is beyond your control.

        The next thought that jumped up concerned your suggestion about how the Buddha died. Not having heard that particular story before – those of the faith I’ve met, along with my study of the Pali Canon, suggest his awareness and choice to transcend this life due to his enlightened precognition – I got to thinking. I realized that what you shared about the death of the historical Buddha is a “belief”.

        Beliefs are interesting concepts. I believe that feelings are generated from thoughts, that thoughts are generated from beliefs, and that beliefs are implanted in the mind through conditioning. I also suspect (but don’t have the direct experience of All That Is) that the concept of the “watering down” of our ability to create on the physical realm of duality, as opposed to the imaginal or causal realms, is a result of our beliefs.

        I have an idea that beliefs are a product of conditioning and really only possible in a realm of duality, such as the physical earth that is our current playground of the soul. Beliefs are our primary filter of perception, and are why coming to obtain knowledge and direct experience of the imaginal (or even the causal realm beyond) while in the realm of physical-duality is so difficult. In other words, in the imaginal realm there is no duality and thus there is direct “knowledge” of God and creative power. In the physical-duality realm there is conditioning, the existence of the ego mind that is convinced it is alone, and thus only perception and “belief.” If my belief (see what I did there) is correct, then this really does lead me to agree with Mitch and David’s perspective about watered-down creation here on the physical realm of duality.

        I believe I have experienced my moments of doubt and pain as a part of overcoming my past conditioning. I also happen to believe that the scientific revolution occurred because the collective ego mind evolved and really wanted to get extra cunning at providing distractions from the truth, while continuing the evolution of mastery of the physical. What better way to consolidate belief in separation by building a pillar of conditioning called the scientific method to focus on measuring the physical-duality. Descarte’s separation of the mystical from the scientific happened for good reason. The Church really did not need more power at that time. Quantum Physics is a sign that that separation is finally preparing to be dissolved. Our collective consciousness is evolving after all.

        Which brings me to the various pillars of conditioning I previously alluded to. As for the pillar of conditioning related to gender, the patriarchal imbalance that I believe started with the Roman Empire has certainly perpetuated a twisted purpose of helping the human race master the physical, and evolving technology to transcend the reality of scarcity. Yet, there is no doubt to my mind that the collective and individual ego minds of all those men in a staunchly patriarchal environment was triggered by the concept of a woman teaching other women to be self-sufficient. I can only imagine the guffaws that were sounded in smoking lounges and old boys clubs. “Change their lives through changing their thinking? New Thought?!? Preposterous. Who does she think she is? We’ll put her in her place!”

        As an innocent child who grew up amidst poverty, abuse, addiction and the social “care” system, I have no doubts that had I not also had the privilege of being white and male I would likely have died many years ago. I also know though that my particular journey of conditioning prepared me for what I came here to do.

        I suspect that our respective beliefs are very close to, if not at, resonance. There is a collective consciousness at play. I’ve taken to calling it the world ego mind or collective ego mind from time to time. Whatever label it has, there are forces at play that transcend just our individual level of awareness.

        However, I also believe that our awareness and consciousness is paramount. I don’t want to abdicate responsibility for awakening and removing the layers of conditioning in my ego mind because the idea that the collective ego mind “has me beat.”

        I have deep compassion for her heartbreaking story. However, I also have a keen awareness that ultimately I can either buy into the stories and complaints of my individual and the collective ego mind, or I can release its hold through the sweat-equity of spiritual practice whilst crossing the river of storms. I can face the moments of doubt and pain, make personal choices to more thoroughly embrace oneness (such as withdrawing from consuming any form of violence), and do my best to wake up.

  8. As a late-comer to 20th Century NT — I am a Buddhist practitioner of 25 years and a student of the Hindu writings (Upanishads, Vendata, Rig Veda, etc.) as well as a member of the Theosophical Society in America — I find I enjoy my associations with the people at the Center. However, I find it odd that most NT people do not really study the Eastern and Middle Eastern roots of the Ageless Wisdom traditions that birthed the NT tradition. Having just read a book on the Philosophy of Ernest Holmes and learning of his love for Sri Aurobindo’s “The Life Divine” — he said that everyone should read this book — I bought the book and read two chapters in the middle of that book on Consciousness, Knowledge and Ignorance. It was a million light bulbs going off! Every New Thoughter should read this book, study it, contemplate it and meditate on it. It is an amazing book! I see a lot of “blind spots” in the NT tradition having spent so much time studying the Eastern philosophies. But I have wonderful friends at the NT Center (one of who I met in my Theosophical group) and we love discussing, reading, and debating over lunch! Perhaps the “blind spots” will eventually open to the light!

  9. Thank you for writing this. As someone with a Social Justice background who also embraces New Thought, I am *so* glad to find others who share this point of view. THANK YOU!!!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *