Hi Friends —
There are many study guides for Discover the Power Within You, Eric Butterworth's classic book that was endorsed by Oprah Winfrey, Norman Vincent Peale and Ira Progoff and has sold over 250,000 copies.
But did you know that Eric Butterworth himself prepared a study guide? I don't know if it was ever published, but folder 34 in box 29 of the Eric Butterworth collection in the Unity Archives has a 36-page document entitled "Discover the Power Within You—A 12 Week Course for Unity Centers."
Each of the twelve lessons covers one or more chapters; each lesson reveals supplemental reading from which Eric formulated his ideas; and each lesson lists significant concepts that Eric believed should be covered when reading the text. That is a study guide.
But what makes this document far more than a study guide is the additional commentary that Eric provides for each lesson. The additional commentary reveals new insights into Eric's sources and thinking when he wrote Discover the Power Within You. This is fresh, heretofore unknown material from Unity's most successful author, directly illuminating Unity's most successful book.
So here it is: Eric Butterworth's own Discover the Power Within You—A 12-Week Course for Unity Centers. You may download the PDF in the link below and you may read the study guide online by clicking on the links to the right (desktop) or below (mobile).
March 17, 2019
Paula Schneider has developed an editable and printable version of this study guide. Paula writes:
Editor’s Introduction – April 20, 2019 The following study guide, with very few corrections (mostly typographical errors or omitted letters or numbers), is the guide as Rev. Butterworth wrote it. I made every attempt to maintain consistency and accuracy. Some citations appear to be incomplete; some sentences are somewhat strange to our current use of English. However, the essence of his work is in this guide.
My purposes in working with the original document were threefold: (1) to convert it from a typewritten piece with a fair number of unreadable words into a Word document, (2) format the material into a more modern, user-friendly, easy-to-read document, and (3) (This one is personal) – to become more intimate with the essence of the Butterworth teachings. Each lesson contains the following four sections:
- Text References (Discover the Power Within You)
- Supplementary Reading
- Significant Concepts to be Covered
- Additional Material That May Be Helpful
Important Note: Eric Butterworth used texts that were current at the time Discover the Power Within You was written, and he did not provide the specific editions (or dates of publication) in his notations; therefore, the page numbers in this guide may not match up to current editions a teacher may use to clarify or expand Butterworth’s writings.
After reading every sentence of the twelve guides into a computerized voice recognition program, I then had my secretarial assistant read back to me from the original typewritten pages. The necessary corrections were made. It has been an honor to do this work--I feel I have traveled inside the mind and heart of Eric Butterworth and that his philosophies and personal understandings are now truly in my possession.
Download DPWY a 12 Week Study Guide for Unity Centers Edited and Formatted by Paula Schneider
Download PDF of Discover the Power Within You—A 12 Week Course for Unity Centers
