The Age of New Thought 101

Spreading the Word.

When someone says, "I'm not religious, I'm spiritual", they're what I call a newie.

New Age and New Thought cover many religious branches, but neither is a religion.  Regardless of one's religious orientation, they teach individuals the tools necessary to tap into Spirit for themselves, thus the term.

Though New Thought and New Age are decidedly different, they hail from the same tree, the Tree of Life.

Ancient seeds of life wisdom stretch far beyond the roots of this world, our experimental playground for the Real game of life, into the realm of the metaphysical where the soul resides.

It is the scientific investigation of spirituality that has led sincere seekers on an audacious quest for knowledge about the true source and boundaries of our existence.

While New Age may be likened to the newest leaves on the Tree of Life, New Thought has been a seasonal blooming fruit throughout the ages.  It's just that as soon we begin to partake of the forbidden fruit, someone chops it down, and by the time it grows again, we have forgotten what kind of fruit it bears.  Thus, we call it 'New Thought' even though it's the oldest thing known to man.

New Thought

Prophets perennially discover and rediscover seeds of New Thought, the idea that man is indeed a hologram of All That Is, or most notably as the Christ said, "Sons of God".

This ancient seed was pollinated a century prior to the New Age movement during the 19th century Transcendentalist movement, a cultural protest against the general state of society by people like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, William Henry Channing, James Freeman Clarke, Elizabeth Peabody, and George Ripley.

The movement's core belief was an ideal spiritual state that 'transcends' the physical and empirical and is only realized through the individual, rather than through the doctrines of established religions.  (Read Moral intelligence and Civil Disobedience article).

New Thought, more than anything, brings to light the highest teachings of ancient wisdom by which to live in the realization of self-healing, personal power, self-love, and loving service.

Today, New Thought has flowered into many theologies.  The most prominent are those doctrines which encourage self-studied responsibility in one's own spiritual, personal, and social development.  They are: Unity Churches, Church of Divine Science; Church of Religious Science, and Unitarian Universalists.

Application of the teachings in one's life is the benchmark of New Thought.  As Reverend Temple Hayes of First Unity Church in St. Petersburg, Florida always says, "Here, you'll get a great tool box for life, what you do with them is up to you".

More than ever, the fruit of such spirituality is gaining ground because we are once again in a season of truth.  This time, unlike in times past of prophesy, we live in an age in which spiritual alchemy is at hand.  

Ridiculed in the Middle Ages, today biologic and mineral alchemy exists.  

Plant seeds can be chemically modified to produce according to the whim of man, and we are sensing it is again time we reconnect to the why and how this is so.

Each round of evolution goes higher and higher.  Today, these "new" concepts invite humanity to expand its consciousness into the world of holographic Reality, a quantum leap into recognizing the reflection of all in One.  

Up to now, it has been a 99th monkey process, with primate in full swing.

New Age

Divinity of the individual is the conceptual framework of New Age practices which include all branches of human culture and religion upon the universal Tree of Life.

New Age is a fluid collection of ancient wisdom teachings which in a past time were reserved for only priests, seers and medicine men and women who remembered the Tree of Life and worked to cultivate its fruit. 

Established in the United Kingdom in and among small groups such as Findhorn in Inverness and the Wrekin Trust in the 1970s, religious traditions were sifted for contemporary relevance and the guidance they offered in the post-modern era.

Widely a reaction to perceived weaknesses of "old religions" to provide spiritual and ethical guidance relating to the science of the day, New Age popularized the notion of horizontal spiritualism, that there is not one spiritual belief system or practice better than any other only best methods for one's individual path.

New Age practices are based on the belief in the interconnectedness of all life.

All is God is believed to be a very real part of humanity's consciousness.  This conscious awareness is to man what photosynthesis is to leaves.   Man's quality of life is just as dependent upon his consciousness as photosynthesis is dependent upon leaves' reaction to the sun.  

Using the energy from sunlight, leaves on a tree use photosynthesis to convert carbon dioxide into nourishing organic compounds.  Likewise, New Age practitioners process the smut accumulated from daily life through the use and personal development of paranormal and psychic abilities such as the "clairs" (eg clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience, claircognizance, etc.).

In short, New Age challenges us to directly engage in our lives and take responsibility for our own leanings toward the sun.

Cross-Pollination

New Age and New Thought are often confused for the same reason we often confuse the forest for the trees, or in this analogy: the leaf for the fruit of the tree. 

What is most important to realize is that both teach us to take full responsibility for our spiritual, emotional, physical, and mental lives. 

The difference between the two, is best illustrated by the world's been known carpenter, Jesus Christ, who through New Thought gave us the tools and a new language for understanding our relationship to one another and to God; and, as a New Ager showed us how to use them.