As You Believe....

Good Morning My Confidants!

I hope this finds you happy and well, if not freezing your √€¥∆§ off. LOL!

It was a stunningly gorgeous 80° day yesterday. Absolute beautiful paradise. This morning? This morning it's 19° and there's a little dusting of snow outside. Thank goodness the conservatives are correct and there's no such thing as global warming, right?

**wink*wink*nudge*nudge**

I'm going to make the best of this day. Who knows what's in store? It could be something really great.

And as a matter of fact, the homework that I've been doing in my Mental Equivalents class has some interesting things to say about this.

In my homework I've been doing, it talks about the fact that we have a lifetime of thinking certain ways, liking certain things. It's so deeply embedded that we don't even know it.

Consider a meme I posted the other day poking fun at porridge. My comment on the post was something to the effect of let's see how fast it takes my British friends to defend porridge.

And KABAM! They sure did—LOL—with lots of Vim and Vigor (a common saying in the Victorian Era). I replied to someone that I would not like beans on toast or be willing to try blood sausage either. But you see it's what we're used to. Most of my African American friends absolutely love chitlins, covered in hot sauce. The very smell of them is too much for me, and I'll eat almost anything. How else do you think I got so "fluffy?"

But it goes beyond food.

It reminds me of certain things that I've read in the book The Four Agreements. From birth we're told so many things and we just accepted because these godlike parents or parental figures told us so. I mean, how many of us chose the religion that we became a part of? Or, chose to be atheist at a very early age?

We believed what we were told to believe without any choice in the matter. I cannot count the people who have said to me, "Well, Ben! You have to understand, that was the way that I was raised" (which comes with the implication that they were raised better than I was).

Some of us were lucky enough to be able to break away and choose our own spiritual path, whether that means Spirit or not. But it "ain't" easy.

At 63 years old, when there's been a recent rash of tornadoes and earthquakes and tsunamis and plagues, I sometimes still have those moments where I panic and think to myself, "Oh, no! What if my mom's religion is correct and suddenly there's going to be a trumpet blowing and all her people are going to be drawn up into heaven and leave me behind with the Beast?" (queue music from The Omen) That teaching is wedged in there tight.

But back to mental equivalents.

According to Ernest Holmes, the founder of Science of Mind (and don't worry, it has absolutely nothing to do with Scientology), mental equivalents is having "a subjective idea of our desired experience." Or....

Ernest Holmes believed that "prayer" has nothing to do with convincing "God" to do what we want "him" to do. He believed that "prayer" was tied into the very laws of the Universe. That our ability to manifest what we need is there for anyone, whatever your belief system, just like the law of gravity. You don't have to believe in the Law of Gravity, but it's still going to work on you regardless.

Jesus said, "As you believe, it shall be done unto you." Holmes teaches that doesn't mean if you're a Christian. He taught that "God," whatever that is, responses to everyone all the time in every way no matter what you believe. And that what we have in our mind, and what we focus on, is what comes to us.

The picture that we put in our mind, the mental equivalent, becomes our reality. Stick with me for just a minute, okay? THEN accept or reject this. Either way won't bother me.

When I was a kid, I was taught that the Baptist religion was the only way into heaven. That everybody else had it wrong, especially those "idolatrous" Catholics. But here's what I was noticing. Almost everyone we knew seemed to be doing some type of praying, whether it was our fellow Baptists, whether it was Catholics, whether it was Jewish people, whether it was those people who said, "I'm sending out good thoughts," whether it was that weird and wonderful woman that lived upstairs from us that I'm convinced was a witch, that Asian family we knew that I now realized were probably Buddhists...

They all had their way of dealing with something that they needed in their lives, especially in a situation where someone they loved was ill or dying, or they needed a job, that type of thing.

And what I was noticing, and was very curious about, and was asking at church about (which they did not like), was there didn't seem to be one group getting their prayers answered any more than another group. So, I wanted to know, if only the Baptists were right, then why did that weird lady upstairs seem to be having her wishes answered?

According to Ernest Holmes, whatever is the "mental equivalent" in our mind, is what happens to us.

If we are one of those people who believes that whatever can go wrong will go wrong, and we absolutely BELIEVE IT, then that's what happens. Everything that can go wrong, goes wrong (I have a number of friends on Facebook that I've had to unfollow because their posts are ALWAYS about something terrible happening). Because whether they knew it or not, they were "praying." They were forming something in their minds, and the Universe was responding to it. It didn't matter one wit if they believed it or not.

What I was noticing was somebody who was not Baptist, not even Christian, had just as much chance of a good result or a bad result as I did. I wanted to know what that was about.

And then I stumbled on Science of Mind, and the New Thought movement. This philosophy, or spiritual path, teaches that whatever we form in our mind strongly (we have to replace our old way of thinking, or old "agreements"), comes to us.

This was the part that I thought was extremely exciting.... "If prayer has been answered, it is not because God has been moved to answer one man and not another, but because one man more than another has moved himself into the right relationship with (whatever they strongly believe in)."

Suddenly I was thinking, Oh my gosh, that's it!

It answered something (near everything) for me. Why in the world did Jane heal from cancer, but Clark didn't? It wasn't because of the person or persons had the correct religion, it had nothing to do with that at all. It was how much they believed in what they were praying. And that's why a Muslim person, or a Hindu person, or a Shaman, or a Buddhist, or a Jewish person, or yes, a Christian, believed with all their heart and mind that what they were asking for could (and would!) happen.

I refused to see the movie Breakthrough (Blurb: When her 14-year-old son drowns in a lake, a faithful mother prays for him to come back from the brink of death and be healed) because I knew the real message of the movie was going to be that if you were a Christian your prayers will be answered if you prayed strongly enough.

But here is the irony. The "strongly enough." Mr. Holmes believed that was the crux of the matter. "Strongly enough." You had to absolutely believe that what you wanted was not only going to happen, but that it was happening, RIGHT NOW. It already was. It wasn't coming, it was happening, RIGHT NOW.

And since the woman in the movie believed it was happening, no matter what other people believed or advised her, then her son was healed. But it wasn't because she was a Christian. It was because she activated a Law of the Universe "that" God set into effect.

That's interesting to think of, if you "believe it" or not. Talk about witchy wo wo! I mean, it's no less "crazy" than if you believe that dancing naked under the full moon while holding rose petals in one hand and a crystal in the other is going to make the desired effect come true.

It's the same thing.

And if my witch friends who dance naked under the full moon have their mental equivalents come true, and my Baptist friends on their knees weeping and praying have their mental equivalents come true, maybe there could be something to this "wackadoodle" idea?

Personally, that is exactly what I believe. I've seen it with my own eyes.

Now I can't come to much of a conclusion yet cuz I'm doing my homework for my class this Thursday. I'm just scratching the surface to all this.

But rest assured; I'm going to be talking about this.

It's up to you whether you want to read about it, or think that Facebook thought, "TLDNR." I won't be offended either way. It's what I'm coming to believe. That's all that really matters. And if it intrigues you, keep reading as I keep reporting. I'm not telling you what to believe, I'm telling you what I believe. Because for me, it answers a whole lot of questions.

With that thought, my mental equivalent is that you have a wonderful and blessed day, that your fears float away on the breeze. That if you or someone you love is ill, that they receive healing. That your anxieties be soothed, your fears be replaced with hope, that you see the love all around you, and that you find happiness.

AND that when someone sends you a blessing, or says they are praying for you, that you are able to divorce yourself from whatever toxic memory is attached to that, and simply absorb the good energy they are sending your way. Because it's all the same. They are activating a Law of the Universe. A Law that doesn't "care" which religion that person follows. It works just the same.

With much love,

Namasté,

BG "Gentle Ben" Thomas