WHAT IS YOUR MENTAL EQUIVALENT?

Have you ever wondered what your mental equivalent is?

Yesterday as I was cleaning around my bookcase(s) a small booklet fell out. I picked it up, looked at it and I thought “Hmmm. There are no accidents.” The title of this small booklet is The Mental Equivalent by Emmet Fox. Not too many people have heard of Emmet Fox. In the first half of the last century, he was very well known. Born in Ireland, he made his way to the
U. S. and in 1931 he was ordained a Divine Science minister by founder Nona Brooks.

Fox has been labeled an author, teacher, minister, healer and mystic. From my perspective, he was all of these things. He is best known for his book Sermon on the Mount. He has also been called a New Thought minister/teacher; however he labels himself as a metaphysician in this small booklet.

He has crammed into this booklet a powerhouse of information in a concise form. He was saying the same thing that The Secret and other books have said. Fox at one time held services in the Manhattan Opera House in New York City with 4,000 to 5,000 attending each service. His message was simple.

My understanding is that what we experience in our outer world has a mental equivalent in our inner world. Our thoughts, beliefs and attitudes create our outer world. If one has a health challenge and the desire for wellness is there, then the inner thought and belief must be changed to the mental equivalent of wellness. It is simple to say, however it take practice to change an entrenched attitude or belief. In other words, what are you giving attention to with your common thoughts? Is it lack? Is it resentment? Is it anger? Is it unforgiveness? Is it pain and suffering?

If there is a belief in lack, then the mental equivalent is revealed in your everyday thoughts and conversation. Most people enjoy talking about their woes and play the ‘ain’t it awful game.’ Worry and fear brings forth the mental equivalent in the outer world. I have heard people complain about their debts, never having enough money and they keep repeating this to other people. This only reinforces a mental equivalent of lack.

Fox gives the example of the trinity – or triad. There have been trinities in ancient Egypt, Chaldea and Babylonia long before the creation of Christianity. The Christian trinity of Father, Son and Holy Ghost was a plagiarism of ancient knowledge. The true trinity is father, mother and child – meaning that father represents the idea or the thought. Mother represents the activity. The mother carries the thought in her womb while nurturing it. The child is the demonstration or the manifestation.

To bring forth change, one must have clarity of what is wanted. Clarity is the handmaiden to intent. What change is wanted? To bring forth a dream or a desire, there must be attention. There must be an overlay of a new thought over the old thought. This is nourished with interest. How interested are you in having a change in your life? What interest are you showing? How much attention are you giving it? A lukewarm response won’t do it. There must be enthusiasm or feeling. Enthusiasm and feeling are not accompanied with emotion. Have you ever noticed that people who are doing what they love to do sparkle? Sparkle is the result of interest or giving attention to what they loved to do.

According to Fox, The law of mind is that you can only get rid of one thought by substituting another…For everything in life there has to be a mental equivalent. He goes on to say to change an attitude about mistakes is to look at them as learning experiences. Get the thought of what you want as clear as you can. Be definite but not too specific. Fox also wrote that there can be no sickness without fear. Fear and doubt are the blocks that one must overlay with what one wants to be or to accomplish.

In The Mental Equivalent, Fox reiterated over and over, Change your thought and keep it changed. As the piano teacher said, practice, practice, and practice. If a new mental equivalent is wanted, then the price is to give up the old and lousy. It is similar to turning in a used car for a newer model.

Check out http://www.emmetfox.net/

WHY DO YOU BELIEVE?

Have you ever wondered why you believe what you do? Recently I listened to an interview with Alvin Toffler, author of Revolutionary Wealth and other books. In this interview he referred to beliefs and gave some very interesting points that I want to share. Most people have no idea of why they believe or how they decide to believe. The following are two points are what I have thought about and I am now sharing.

*Authority. We have authority figures and too many people blindly accept what they profess to be true as their belief. I am an avid researcher and no longer do I accept anyone’s word. When I read a book and it has a bibliography, I often read or have read the same books listed and by doing so broaden my knowledge base so that I can decide for myself. I have learned that there are really no authorities on any subject and this leads into another reason of why people believe.

*Acceptance. We (collectively) assume that because someone has a power position that this person(s) is an authority. Therefore accepting someone’s power position empowers the power holder(s) and creates a belief that a person, institution, or group knows what they are talking about. As a child I accepted what I was told by my parents, my church, what I was taught in school and other sources. I am reminded of a song we were taught in Sunday school: Jesus loves me. This I know. For the Bible tells me so. This is blind acceptance. I also know that I accepted a belief that I could not talk to God because if I did, God would strike me dead. This was very confusing, but I accepted these two beliefs until I grew up and left home. My breakaway point came when I entered the Foreign Service of the U.S. State Department. I grew up in segregated Texas and many of my beliefs were uprooted when I was assigned to the embassy in Paris. This has led to an uncommon non-academic education.

Too often we accept a belief because there is a consensus – meaning we accept a collective opinion or a general agreement. We accept our beliefs for various reasons such as everyone say so, there is a consistency in information, the media promotion, the durability of a belief, and scientific research or someone has had a revelation. There is also the belief in superstition. Superstitions were instilled in me as a child such as don’t walk under a leaning ladder, don’t step on a crack or it will break your mother’s back, carry a rabbit’s foot for good luck and Friday the 13^th was a bad luck day. It was years before I learned why Friday the 13^th was a bad luck day. It was the day in 1314 when Jacques DeMolay, a Knights Templar was burned at the stake. Thus a myth was born.

Over the years my beliefs have changed drastically and I can attribute this to seeking knowledge and wanting to know. Because a doctor has gone through medical school, the majority of people assume he/she is an authority and believe what the doctor tells them. Doctors are not infallible. Too often they rely on what pharmaceutical literature and salespeople tell them. The doctors become overloaded in their practices and have no time to research for themselves, so they may prescribe drugs that have adverse effects on the patient. People misplace their trust in the infallibility of their doctor without doing some research for themselves. They do not seek a second or a third opinion. I have often wondered how many people have died needlessly due to a doctor’s mis-diagnosis or prescribed medications.

The scientific community is an interesting aspect. Rarely do scientists agree. Each has their own point of view or their belief. I remember reading an article some years ago that peanut butter caused cancer. Then another researcher said that it was healthy some years later. Another example is eggs. It came out from the scientific community that eggs were supposedly bad for people due to the cholesterol and some years later another study said they were healthy because they contained the good cholesterol. From my research, eggs are one of the healthiest foods one can eat. Even science is not infallible regardless of the number of blind studies.

Too many people place their belief in the infallibility of their religious authorities. As the one statement in the song I just quoted above states, “because the bible tells me so,” is an example. This is a major belief and it is a challenge to shake people’s beliefs because they have been taught to accept in blind faith thus creating closed minds. There is one thing that cannot be changed and that is a closed mind. It must be opened from the inside.

I can only come from my own experiences and research knowledge. When I left Texas, I opened my mind to receive new information. This was the greatest turning point in my life. I put my beliefs I had been taught by my church on hold and became for a period of time an agnostic. An agnostic is not an atheist. I use this word in the sense that I was noncommittal. After I married and had children, I attempted to become involved in going to church again because I had a belief that my children should be exposed to religion.

My husband was a career military man and we moved often. Wherever we lived, I learned that my answers were not to be found in any church and I dropped away until in my late forties. When I reached my fortieth birthday, a thought would come to me that by the time I was fifty my life would be changed. This thought flitted through my mind off and on through the next ten years. At fifty my life had changed. In looking back, I can see Vietnam and the Watergate scandal contributed to my changes. I began to question. I also began a search for the spiritual aspect of myself. This led to a divorce and a year later I entered my ministry by being ordained as a Divine Science minister. This was another great turning point in my life.

My belief in my ministry was only a stepping-stone and I chose to retire from it. I had discovered that if I was going to stand up and give a message that I had to learn to live what I said. I knew I did not want to be a hypocrite. My late husband and I moved to Washington State after he retired over twenty years ago. I have been a student of an academy of the mind, the Ramtha School of Enlightenment for twenty years. Ramtha’s teachings have resonated within my being. He has taught me not to accept what he teaches us, but to research and to experience so that we know it ourselves. The following is a quote from Ramtha’s White Book.

“Never believe in anything. Never! That is convincing yourself of something you have yet to know and understand through experience. And belief is very dangerous, because in belief, you are placing your life, your attitudes and your trust in something which is not founded itself as a truth within your being—which causes you to become very vulnerable. And in that state of vulnerability, you can be manipulated, accursed, damned, and can lose your life—all because of belief.

“Know whatever it is you wish to know. And you can do that simply by asking for the understanding and then listening to the feelings within your being. Always trust the wisdom of your feelings. Never go against them and try to force a belief upon yourself that doesn’t feel good inside.”