Table of Contents
This book is lovingly dedicated to the mystical Presence
that gives rise to all the worlds religions and finds
its flowering in the teachings of New Thought.
This wisdom, practically applied, brings forth life,
and life abundantly.
Acknowledgments
I wish to acknowledge the deep commitment to this project, the just plain hard work of my fellow leaders of the Association for Global New Thought: Dr. Michael Beckwith, Rev. Howard Caesar, Rev. Carol Carnes, Rev. Argentina Glasgow, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Rev. Mary Omwake, Rev. Wendy Craig-Purcell, Rev. Richard Rogers, and Dr. Roger Teel, as well as our dynamic executive director, Barbara Fields Bernstein.
A deep appreciation to Joel Fotinos for your contribution to our world and for believing in this project, and a heartfelt gratitude to Brenda Rosen for your editorial work on the manuscripts. I also thank Rachel Duvack and Chris Adams for your awesome administrative assistance. I especially want to thank my husband, Ed Morrissey, for your vision and drive for this project and for your support of this message.
Most important, this book would not exist without the efforts of our many contributors. I am so grateful for your willingness to put your words on paper so that this transforming, life-giving New Thought message can touch countless lives.
Introduction: New Living Begins with New Thinking
Rev. Mary Manin Morrissey
As a man thinketh so is he, and as a man chooseth so is he and so is his nature.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
I had ruined my life, and now I was paying the price. At eighteen, I yearned for nothing more than the simple rites accorded all my friends by virtue of their coming-of-age: fussing over a prom dress, borrowing Dads car on Saturday nights, giddily anticipating life in a college dorm. But the life I had once assumed awaited me could never happen. Instead, I lay in a hospital bed, waiting to die.
The diagnosis was nephritis, which had destroyed my right kidney and was rapidly attacking my left. The doctor planned to remove the worse kidney and told me that if he could reduce the blood toxin level in the still functioning one, then possibly, I might have another six months.
Only six months to live? I was eighteen years old. I should have raged at the injustice but lacked the passion to object. I passed time at the hospital tucked in a blanket of self-loathing, watching soap operas and avoiding my family. Nothing had turned out the way Id expected. And now it was too late.
Then I had a visitor, courtesy of my mother-in-law. Dr. Mila Warn introduced herself as a New Thought minister and offered to sit with me the night before my surgery. At that time, New Thought meant nothing to me. I did not have room in my mind for new thoughts, when the old ones took up so much space and repeated themselves so insistently: Youre worthless. Youre hopeless. You could have done something wonderful with your life, but youve destroyed everything. What a disappointment youve been to your parents, to everyone.
I was a homecoming princess and honor student in 1960s middle-class suburbia who disgraced herself by becoming pregnant at the end of her junior year in high school. The wedding was conducted hastily at the courthouse. I wore a dress that tugged around my middle. My mothers crying all but drowned out the I dos. When I tried to return to school the following fall, the principal sent me away to a special school for delinquent boys and pregnant girls in a rundown part of town. When my son was bornthe first of four childrenI loved him dearly, but the emotion that gripped my heart and guided my life was shame.
So New Thought meant nothing to me, but a fresh face provided a much-needed break from episodes of the Days of Our Lives on television and the reruns of Marys Ruined Life playing in my mind.
Dr. Warn asked if I wanted to talk, and I wound up telling her everything. When I was through, she said, Mary, your body is replicating whats been going on inside your head.
What do you mean?
I mean that youve been shaming yourself because you feel like you let everybody down. That shame is toxic to every cell in your body.
My thinking was toxic? Yes, I knew that embarrassment turned my face red, that fear made my heart race, but never before had I made the connection that toxic thinking could poison my body.
Dr. Warn told me that we are children of God and, as such, inherently creative. Our Creator bestowed that capacity in all humankind. We can no more stop creating than we can stop breathing. We create, every minute of the day, through our thoughts. The thoughts that our minds cling to long enough will materialize in our bodies, our relationships, our work.
The poisonous thoughts of shame and humiliation that Id been feeding my mind, Dr. Warn continued, may have seeped into my body, but the magnificent thing about creativity was that, at any moment, I could change my pattern of thinking. I was free to choose again. I could believe that there was a presence and a power that were greater than the disease ravaging my body. With God, she told me, nothing is impossible.
Dr. Warn offered me a new thought: Imagine that when the kidney leaves your body, the toxicity that has been poisoning your life will disappear as well. Draw that picture in your mind.
The image took some effort to construct. Until that point, it had not occurred to me that my thoughts held such power. Like most people, Id always been happy when things went well and sad when plans or hopes went awry. I had never considered that I had the power to influence events by how I chose to think about them. Though we cant always choose our circumstances, Dr. Warn explained, we can always create a new way to look at them.
That night, we did what she called a sweeping prayer. We swept through my heart and mind and gathered up every bit of shame, guilt, and disgust we could find and put it into the kidney scheduled to be removed the next morning.
The surgery went well. In fact, the doctor was frankly perplexed. While my right kidney was indeed destroyed and had to be removed, the left one, which should have been only half-functioning, looked perfectly normal. Time will tell, he said. And time certainly has. I have never had a recurrence of kidney disease.
I had thought my life was over that summer of 1967, but in truth, it was just beginning. Somebody walked through the door and gave me the gift of fresh perspective. I came to see that even the most dire situation could become a stepping stone to greater good. Sure, I had made a mistakethe biggest of my life. I had hurt my parents, forced my boyfriend to drop out of college to marry me, and created the circumstances that resulted in my life-threatening illness. Yet without my mistake, I would never have discovered my power to cocreate with God. I would never have discovered a love so deep it would change my life. I might never have become a teacher, counselor, and minister. This tremendous shame, this seemingly unforgivable act, paved the path for a greater life than I could have ever imagined. New Thought theology taught me that our mistakes are called by our souls into experience so that we can learn a lesson designed to bring us to a point of awakening.
You may not be in a hospital bed when you pick up this book, but toxic or self-defeating thoughts may be holding you back from fulfilling what you are meant to become. You may have given up on your dreams. Or, like most of us, you may have touched only a glimmer of the promise that Jesus invited us to experience when He said, I have come that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly.
