Yes! (or, What the hell am I doing?)

BY HARV BISHOP

I have been of two minds about a future project that has me simultaneously saying Yes! And What the hell am I doing?

So I welcomed a chance to talk about my dilemma with Eugene Holden, the author of the monthly affirmations column for Science of Mind: A Guide for Spiritual Living magazine. Talking to
Eugene I got up a good head of steam. Then I started in on the “what ifs.” What if it doesn’t work out? What if this happens? What if that happens?

A word of advice. You never want to get into “what ifs” in front of Eugene.

“What if?” he exploded. “What if it works out? What if it goes right? What if it doesn’t and comes through in another form? What if a mistake is just another opportunity?”

I have always dreaded uncertainty. Dreaded is truthfully a big understatement.

But what is uncertainty? On its flip side it is pure potential and possibility and the opportunity
for creativity. The opportunity for what David Spangler calls the creative future as opposed to a future driven by past habit or dire apocalyptic predictions.

In truth, uncertainty or better stated —  possibility — has been my greatest ally.

I could not have predicted the best things that have happened in my life. I became a teacher at a university because I took a chance on filling out an application to be a graduate student teaching assistant in my first semester of  studying for my master’s degree in spite of feeling I wasn’t good enough.

I met my beloved wife four months after a painful break up and found a love so great that the break-up now seems insignificant. If I had stayed stuck in that break up, I would not have been open to the new and unexpected.

I’ve often said to my wife if I had known the amazing good that was coming I could have relaxed a lot more. So why not live from that field of possibility now?

What’s true in the micro is also true in the macro. Last week I interviewed Agape International Spiritual Center’s Michael Bernard Beckwith (who trained Eugene as a  prayer counselor).

Living in possibility is the key to creating a world based on environmental and social justice Beckwith tells me.

“Nothing happens without a vision, a possibility,” says Beckwith. “Once the possibility is described then the manifestation and the right movement towards that possibility can occur.

“Many people resign themselves to business as usual and say ‘It’s human nature to be greedy, it’s human nature to be hateful, its human nature to be spiteful or to create levels of separation.’

“We, as individuals in the New Thought movement, know that within every human being there is a spark of divinity just waiting to be activated. When that is activated then we can begin to talk about the possibility of what our world can look like.  Unless someone can articulate it and see it, we aren’t going to walk in that direction.

“The law that I teach is that you don’t describe what you see. You see what you describe. Of course I speak to the issues [of injustice and the environment] from the pulpit, but I am also keenly aware that the world only changes as people change. It is a both/and conversation.”

You can see Holden’s affirmations in his monthly “Personal Affirmations” column in Science of Mind: Guide for Spiritual Living magazine and in this short video on Facebook.

My interview with Beckwith will be in a forthcoming issue of the magazine. He is the author of the book Spiritual Liberation and a founder of the Association for Global New Thought (AGNT) that harnesses the resources of the New Thought movement in an interfaith effort to create a world that works for everyone.