God Beyond Religion: Faith, Mental Alchemy, Positive Thinking and Prayer

"What ever the mind can conceive, and believe it can achieve" ~ Napoleon Hill.

There are many different groups who dogmatically teach that one can change circumstances by thinking. The word of faith movement, the secular motivation movement, the law of attraction advocates, mental alchemy groups, and metaphysical groups immediately come to mind. Further, there is a lot of anecdotal evidence that it works. However, one also needs to consider the many that have been strewn along the way that have not experienced the axiom of Napoleon Hill. This is true of each of the movements mentioned above and many more that I have not mentioned. In the word of faith movement, people are told that they just don't have enough faith, in the law of attraction movement they are told that they are not properly believing and that they have just not cleared away the mental roadblocks and on and on. Sometimes they are told they have not done enough shadow work or self work. In all of these cases, those who do not achieve the desired results are blamed. Is that legitimate? I do not believe it is!

Two different examples from the bible:

Acts 3:6-7  "But Peter said, "I have no silver or gold, but what I have I give you; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk."  (7)  And he took him by the right hand and raised him up; and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong."

And...

Luke 8:48  "He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace."

In the two verses posted above there is a difference. In the Acts passage, it was Peter's faith that healed the man, and in the passage from Luke it was the woman's faith. In the Acts passage it is not mentioned that the man even had heard of Jesus. Further, he was not asking to be healed; he was asking for money. One thing that needs to be highlighted is that all of the above methods of positive mentalism can cause psychological trauma for people and quite often it does. In this way all of the above can be toxic and abusive. So often it ends with blaming the victim.

So, what is missing? Does positive mentalism work? To answer the second question first, yes indeed positive mentalism works. New findings and studies in cognitive science points toward the fact that the universe is as the Kybalion says, mental. This is also being substantiated by quantum theory. Science is moving closer and closer to the understanding that the material world is a virtual reality construction. Back to the first question, what is missing?

My answer is as follows: The possible answer can be found in many if not all of the religious traditions of the world. For example, in Christianity it is taught that the word of God, is the creative source. This means that God’s consciousness, spoken is the creative force and is the source of word of faith teaching and believing. This is based on the fact that Jesus claimed to be the word or God consciousness incarnate. It did not stop there however, he went on to teach that we too are the word incarnate, and that the works that he did we too would be able to do. By works he meant the miraculous. This concept is backed up by the teachings of Hermetica, Taoism, Buddhism, and Hinduism. All of those beliefs make room for our individual soul and consciousness to be instrumental in creation of the world circumstances.

In recent cognitive studies conducted by Dr. Donald Hoffman and his students, he has hypothesized that we are all conscious agents that act together to create the reality around us. This would certainly seem to back up Napoleon Hills axiom. Yet and still, so many are unsuccessful in creating the reality they desire. So, what could cause that?

Perhaps it is not distinguishing between the temporal and the eternal. Our material existence is temporal and finite. Our eternal existence is infinite and not temporal at all. But, if we are each conscious points within the universal consciousness, then each of us are divine. If we are divine, then it seems logical that we have divine free will. What if it is our divinity that chooses our life path, experiences, lessons etc.? What if we indeed choose our goals in incarnating? What if we sometimes limit our mental alchemy abilities for reasons that we cannot comprehend on the temporal plane but are none the less very important in our eternal goals and process? This would eliminate the self-blame as we are completely in charge of our entire eternal destiny. It puts it outside of the realm of God choosing something for our good and puts it directly in the realm of us choosing something for our good.

In this way it all comes down to our free will and free choices within the framework of an eternal mental reality that periodically experiences the temporal material world for specific pre-determined purposes? This is the idea that I have settled on and makes the most sense to me.