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Positive Editorial

By Gregon

Our good friend Mitch Horowitz has generously contributed a guest editorial to TDG, on the power of positive thinking. Mitch talks about the roots of positive thinking as a spiritual philosophy, and asks the question as to whether “life merely reflects a person’s point of view.” He finishes with a recommended reading list for anyone interested in digging deeper into the subject. Some good weekend reading to prepare you for Monday!

Greg
Editor
Greg is the owner-editor of The Daily Grail, as well as the author of a number of books including Stop Worrying, There Probably is an Afterlife.
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13 Comments

  1. This is timely for me
    This article has come at a good time for me.I have been wondering a lot lately about how people’s thoughts affect their reality.
    I suppose the saying that you make your own reality fits into this sort of thinking and belief

    Is it Monday today?
    Jesus I thought it was the weekend.

    I will endeavour to read a couple of the books.
    Thank you.

    BTW I have emailed Mr Horowitz a couple of times over the years when he has requested input or experiences from people and have never had a reply.
    So why does he post his email address.

    shadows

    1. No replies???
      No replies to your emails???

      It must be a cunning test of positive thinking – see how many emails someone has to send before they start to get disheartened!

      Don’t dismay! Keep the old pecker up – things could be a lot worse!

      yer ol’ pal,

      Xibalba
      (This “positive” post was brought to you by the upbeat “Realm of the Dead”)

      p.s. I’m not expecting anyone to reply to this post! 😀

      2. eeerrr……….umm……how
        eeerrr……….umm……how do I put this delicatly. In South Aus at least pecker is slang for a mans “ding dong” 🙂 So keeping it up is quite rude . I shall just take a small break while I stop laughing. While it may have been unintentional you have brightened up my night.

        1. LMAO..!!!
          Well, I think the term originally started out meaning the same thing here (hence the expression), but it has now fallen into general usage in the UK as meaning “Keep your chin up” (no witty comments from the Chinese contingent please!) or ‘to keep one’s morale up’.

          So, I shall certainly be trying to keep my pecker up for as long as possible.

          yer ol’ pal,

          Xibalba
          (This very rude post indeed was brought to you by “Realm of the Dead”, and a cultural disparity between language usage)

          1. Control yourself X!
            It wasn’t so rude so stop taking credit for getting away with something you shouldn’t have.
            We know about your particular pecker.You told us what is happening in October.
            Remember?

            What does LMAO mean?

            Oops, I think I just worked it out.
            Now read my mind and tell me if I am right.

            shadows

            And leave my Chinese rellies alone!

        2. ding dong EM?
          I don’t think I have heard that expression before, but I lead a sheltered life.

          You might be aware that I have my own personal little green pecker who is quite feathery and very loud.
          He has a new trick.
          He can fart.
          No I didn’t train him, he learnt it all by himself, this being a house where he heard more than enough of the aforesaid to learn very easily.

          shadows

    2. from the ether
      Hi Shadows, I apologize if I’ve neglected to acknowledge or thank you for an email. I try to respond to each, within reason! best, m PS I’m glad the piece came at a good time.

      1. No problem
        I emailed last when you asked for information from anyone who had tried a ouija board and had experiences to relate.

        The idea of moving molecules as it were with the power of thinking is an exciting idea and I wonder why it has taken so long for the world to catch up with it.
        I am going to try it with my roses from now on and imagine the result I want to achieve.

        shadows

        1. I told you…..
          …it was an experiment. Just when you’ve lost heart, along comes Mr Horowitz and drops you a reply.

          It is a funny old world!

          yer ol’ pal,

          Xibalba
          (This “I told you so” post was brought to you by “Realm of the Dead”)

        2. Growing Roses
          Shadows, you raise a very interesting, and somewhat synchronistic point, re: growing roses and why the world hasn’t embraced this philosophy in greater number. In a profile of a creative-mind mystic named Neville Goddard I pondered something close to that very question. I am pasting a segment below. The full piece is at: http://www.mitchhorowitz.com. It’s a bit lengthy as replies go, but I think it goes to the heart of your question:

          * * *

          If one follows Neville’s line of thought, what emerges seems almost too good to be true: Believe that you already possess your goal, and so you will. “Man moves in a world that is nothing more or less than his consciousness objectified,” he concluded. If so, one might ask, why has this imperative been discovered by so relatively few?

          In a little-known book from 1946, the occult philosopher Israel Regardie took measure of the burgeoning creative-mind movements, including Unity, Christian Science, and Religious Science. Regardie paid special attention to the case of Neville, whose teaching, he felt, reflected both the hopes and limits of New Thought philosophy. Regardie believed that Neville possessed profound and truthful ideas; yet he felt these ideas were proffered without sufficient attention to training or practice. Could the everyday person really control his thoughts and moods in the way Neville prescribed? In The Romance of Metaphysics, Regardie wrote:

          “Neville’s method is sound enough. But the difficulty is that few people are able to muster up this emotional exaltation or this intellectual concentration which are the royal approaches to the citadel of the Unconscious. As a result of this definite lack of training or technique, the mind wanders all over the place, and a thousand and one things totally unrelated to ‘I AM’ are ever before their attention.”

          Neville offered his listeners and readers meditative techniques, such as using the power of visualization before going to sleep. But Regardie reasons that, as a dancer and actor, Neville possessed a unique control over his body that his audience did not share: “Neville knows the art of relaxation instinctively. He is a dancer, and a dancer must, of necessity, relax. Hence I believe he does not fully and consciously realize that the average person in his audience does not know the mechanism of relaxation, does know how to ‘let go.’”

          In experimenting with Neville’s philosophy myself, I placed an empty bud vase on my dining-room table, and – for a period of days – imagined a rose in that vase. I set no parameters on how it would get there, but simply envisioned the texture, smell, and color of that rose. No rose appeared. And yet, when in a completely different feeling state, I envisioned winning a door prize that was offered in an auditorium filled with several hundred people. I won. My feeling state, Neville would argue, was the key. Perhaps I sincerely desired the second item and not the first. It may also be so that my emotions were randomly more open, my body by chance more relaxed in the latter episode. And herein lies one of the potential frustrations of Neville’s philosophy: Few understand – or can manipulate – their emotions or sensations in the face of contrary truths or the vicissitudes of mood. Stick your finger with a pin, and try imagining the taste of an ice cream sundae.

          “Of all the metaphysical systems with which I am acquainted,” Regardie concluded, “Neville’s is the most magical. But being the most magical, it requires for that very reason, a systematized training on the part of those who would approach and enter its portals.” Absent this training, Regardie reasons, “His system is in reality strictly personal.” It may work for him but not others.

          * * *

          1. WOW!
            Thanks Mitch, I enjoyed that very much and also enjoyed your site which I will return to.
            It was quite an exceptional thought process that Goddard went through and I cannot see that it why it wouldn’t work for me.
            My only desire for worldly wealth is in the form of beautiful roses, and plenty of them.

            shadows

          2. Willing things
            Hi Mitch,

            I offer two alternatives to your discussion. First, you may have had a ‘precog’ of winning the door prize. I had exactly the same experience about a month ago (although the odds were closer to 50:1). I sensed that it was going to happen, but wasn’t consciously willing it to happen, although there could have been some deeper influence.

            More importantly, the difference between the rose and the door prize was HUGE! The rose did not exist, but the door prize did. It is much more like a daily occurrence to have many random things happening and being able to influence the nearly invisible toggling of small events until your goal is realized. The rose experiment would have probably worked with a little change in the setup, but it would have probably have made it more ambiguous, as well. For instance, if you left the empty vase there for a year, a friend might have decided to fill it for you and ‘happened’ to choose a single rose to fill it with.

            Cheers,

            X_O

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