Eric Butterworth Unity Podcast #62
At 19 minutes and 40 seconds into this podcast Eric Butterworth says “In the work of public health and maybe talk about a particular disease which has reached epidemic proportions. There are medical researchers who were talking about ‘contagion through consciousness.’ I can remember a writing in the proceedings of a Medical Journal about ‘psychic infection’, that the real contagion is mostly in the mind.”
“How to Recession-Proof Your Life—4—Tighten Your Ship” is a classic lesson about “tightening our ship” through the words we use. He opens by recalling the World War II slogan “loose lips sink ships.” The same slogan applies to use today, according to Eric Butterworth in this part 4 of a four part series on How to Recession-Proof our life.
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One of the things that may distinguish you from the typical churchgoer is you have come here, not out of a churchgoing habit, out of the conditioned fear not to attend services. I suspect that you’re not satisfied with the engaging in ritualistic worship of God up there in the sky somewhere, the theology that says that you’re a miserable sinner.
Perhaps you’re no longer interested in hearing how bad you are. You want to know how good you are. How to grow and unfold that which is even better. The experience of creative worthship. That you are here, indicates that you’re vitally interested in self-improvement, and overcoming, and correcting habits of self-limitation.
Of all the habits that limit and enslave us, habits of thought, are the most persistent and tenacious. It could be said that we put on an attitude in the morning, as we put on our shoes, left foot first, unconsciously without ever varying the procedure by a fraction.
It’s by habit, that you start the day harping on the same old tune. So you look at the newspaper, watch the news and say, “Same old negative world.” You proceed into the day, as Emerson uniquely puts it, “Hanging dismal pictures on the walls and daubing with sables in gloom in our conversations.” He calls for us to nerve ourselves about with incessant affirmatives.
Of course, one does not change the thought patterns of a lifetime overnight. But you can change. First of all you must get into your consciousness that you can. You can become a positive thinker. It’s not something that you talk about. Any cliché that we use so often, think positively. It’s a vitally important aspect of consciousness and expression.
You may justify your fears and worries because of all the negative things that are happening out there. After all, look what’s happening in the economy. What about the fear of losing a job? Or the threat of war in certain parts of the world?
Today we want to explore the possibility that the things are happening, as far as you’re concerned in your life, is because of all the negative energy and fear and worry in your own consciousness. This is what the new insight and truth is all about. Not looking out there for causes, and for the things to put the blame on. Looking in yourself, why is it happening in you? What is it doing to you and through you?
In this four weeks of lectures, we’ve been addressing the fiscal phenomenon. It’s called ‘recession.’ It’s a word coined by the economists. There’s no real meaning for the word. In the rich economies we talk about, it describes and defines recession. It relates to a business slow down leading to shortages, higher prices, job layoffs during a period of economic confusion, it’s a word that strikes fear into the hearts of many persons.
The unfortunate thing is that this is a condition that has a whole package of negative experiences that inevitably flow. The extremely limited effects in our lives. There’s a tendency to bow down before the gods of the economy, stepping to the beat of financial gloom, which we slavishly buy into, as expect for ourselves.
I mean, you hear the word, and let it resound in your own consciousness, think of it as a thought and enfolds all sorts of, confusion and negatives in your consciousness. Come along just like...like a...trend of conscious that is all laid out. This is one of those times when we need to harness our faith, which last week we referred to as a perceiving part of the mind; and to see through the clouds of unknowing. Your appearance is black and doing stringency. To behold and see the limitlessness of the universe all around us. You call it forth with our faith, power by which to mold and shape it into prosperous conditions in our world.
You see, we can say no to recession. We can say yes to affluence. You can commit ourselves to a communication that is constructive and creative. Through no to recession. You’ll be hearing the word a lot in the weeks to come. We’ll be saying, are we in it? Are we going to have it? What’s it going to do to us? Would it be layoffs of jobs, would it touch me?
Now you may recall a slogan, it was printed on posters, billboards, and newspaper ads during World War II. ‘Idle gossip sinks ships.’ ‘A slip of the lip can sink the ship.’ These slogans were to discourage people to talk about things that might reveal information about troop movements to the enemy, whose U-boats lurked about ready to wreak havoc.
And is there a unique parallel to our relationship to the economy? Negative and limiting thoughts and words about economic conditions can have a bad profound influence on business fluctuations. I don’t know how they affect you, but the economy as a whole...
It’s a very important point in recession-proofing your life to avoid falling into the abattoirs jargon or recession. Firstly, avoid using the word ‘recession’ at all. Don’t buy into the negative implications of the word. Some folks would say, ‘well, one thing is to keep from having a repeat recession.’ But suddenly we come up with the World all around is that we are in the midst of the great recession. Don’t you just have to get caught into the whirlpool and the that kind of negative consciousness? Stand up for yourself. Own your own mind. Take charge of your consciousness. Say ‘no’ to the recession in my thoughts. Negative thoughts of poverty and lack...confusion. Say ‘yes’ to prosperity for yourself, which always flows forth from within.
There’s no action that is so false as the saying, ‘talk is cheap.’ Actually words are tremendously expensive investments. It’s become profitable and unprofitable according to the degree of positive energy involved.
Isaiah had this thought that is extremely important. He says “Woe unto him that decrees unrighteous decrees.” Why do you suppose this is? The fact is if you look very carefully in your life, you find that your woes can be traced back to some kind of unrighteous decree. We’re talking to someone just the other day, she was saying that she discovered that her words were very important, and she looked back in retrospect. For a long time when people asked her about her health, she would always say, “I’m so healthy it would take a truck to knock me down to make me take me off my feet. I had to be hit by a truck before I’d be under the weather.” Eventually she, her car was hit by a truck. She was laid out for awhile. She’s still suffering the consequences.
Woe under them, that decree of unrighteous decrees. That’s an unrighteous decree. Sometimes we say, you don’t of course but some people do, “My aching back.” You’re only a kidding, of course, you don’t mean it. But you say it. The interesting thing is, the subconscious mind doesn’t take a joke. You may be only kidding, but you said it and the words have gone forth to the for ethers. The subconscious mind takes it as a command and proceeds to do everything that would bring it into pass.
In the financial times, people love to say, ‘this is going to break me, or I’m stony broke.’ ‘Or when the layoffs begin, I’ll probably be the first.’ ‘I can’t win for losing.’ ‘I’m poor as a church mouse.’ ‘These things always happen to me.’ You never say those things of course, but some people do. Woe onto them then the unrighteous decrees.
If you’re having money, money or work problems, it’s important not to follow the common practice of talking about the bad state of the economy, and the problems you’re having at it. Instead follow the cue of the prophet Joel, who says, “Let the weak say I am strong.”
When you first ran into something like that out of that consciousness that you had before you discovered the truth. You probably say ‘that’s pollyanna poppycock.’ Let the weak say I am strong. How can a weak person say he’s strong? That’s ridiculous but it’s important.
You tie into the transcendental awareness of life in relationship to the Universe. Let the doubtful say I’m confident. Let the poor say I’m rich. Actually, this is an aspect of positive prayer, which we call affirmation, and it works. Because as I said in the last few weeks, the substance of God is limited it’s all around you. Your prosperity is the fact that you are an integral part of the Universe. The Universe seeks constantly to flow forth through you as fulfillment and abundance.
This the way the universe works. Our prosperity is always secure. It’s always available if we keep in tune. And we reject the tendencies of letting the World around us and people in it, to tell us how we are going to think and say and act. Take charge of your own mind. Behold then the realization, you’re involved in a Universe of abundance.
Then what happens in the world around you? What happens to people in the economy in general? It shall not come nigh thee. As the 91st Psalm said Though thousands shall fall on the right hand and thousand of the night you done the secret place of the most high. Keep your consciousness in tune with the divine flow. The ‘I Am’ of you is the focus of God on you. Instead of reacting to things as they are. you might as well face it, that’s the way things are. Times are bad. Jobs are scarce. Money is tight. That’s the way it is. But the ‘I Am’ can link up with what you can be, and what you to desire to be, not the way things are. You had faith as a perceiving power of the mind last week, he says perceiving power of the mind, the ability to look beyond things, see things not as they seem to be, as they can be.
Seeing the potential, and going out into the garden in the spring. You have nothing but little buds that are perhaps nothing coming through the ground yet. The gardener who has a real green thumb, a consciousness of growing things, sees beyond the buds, beyond the shoots, young little bits of evidence of growth, the very flowers and lilies and bugs and everything going for it in the spring.
“I am confident, capable, rich, and creative.” This is what you can be. No matter what your parents’ condition is, today, you can be successful. So you refer, I’m confident, capable, rich, and creative. And where Jesus said, “you’re accountable for every idle word, no matter what your might say.” You’re only joking of course, but the subconscious mind can’t take a joke. It accepts you’re idle words as directives, and proceeds to turn them into the very things you’re afraid of. Remember Job said, “that which has fear has come upon me.”
It’s hard to control your attitudes. Don’t let fear hold sway in your consciousness. When the immediate reactions to a person who’s not in control of himself. Who hears and reads things about possible recession, fear rears its ugly head. You don’t want to be afraid. You don’t want to hold fearful thoughts. Unless you’re holding to a positive thought. Unless you’re taking control of yourself and you react to these things, you find fear coming forth and worry and anxiety.
Many persons involved in the deep study of metaphysics, completely overlook this manner of speech, and it’s what I call the cutting edge of truth. The most important thing to take hold of in the beginning, are dealing with great truism and missing power. Some people sense a steady stream of misconceptions and fall from their depths. It’s like driving with your brakes on.
You don’t recall Job reasoning with God and why he is a good man should experience so many difficulties. The whole book of Job is involved in his humbling probe of the Universe. Discovering that what we know, what we know about, are quite different. So if we know about the truth we were able to repeat it, to affirm affirmations, treatments, give definitions of this, that and the other. You know a lot about truth. We’ve been telling the truth for 30 years. What do you know? What do you know of truth? That what you know is deeply registered in your consciousness.
You don’t even have to voice it. It’s part of your awareness, the energy that flows forth from you all the time unconsciously. You know about it. Keep seeking to know about it until eventually you know it. It means letting go. Realization of oneness, letting divine flow unfold.
This was Job’s dilemma. He knew about religion, about his relationship with God. He didn’t know it. His problem was not in his manner of living, but in his manner of speaking. Probably he was a man that was very religious in his practices. He probably had doubts about his relationship with people. About his worth in the World. Wondered whether God was on his side or doing something else.
The problem with that is his manner of living but in his manner of speaking. One of the great realization came to him through a search of the World is the statement, “thou shall also decree a thing and shall be established unto thee and light to shine and I raise.” I told you also decree a thing. The power to decree is one of the most important talents that we all have, rarely used enough. Decree something as being true. Speak the word. That’s what positive prayer is. Decreeing the good, “hallow God help me in this problem.”
Accept that God is all always present and always seeking to help you. So you to have to speak the word. I am free from this problem. Free from the difficulty and confusion and with the power of strength, life and peace. Decree it. Create it, claim it. It is the father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom Jesus said. A desire of the universe to fulfill itself in you is always present. There seems to be a problem. It’s not because God is withholding, it’s because we’re not listening. We’re not centered.
Like Job many of us have developed, the habit of slovenly speech. The habit of giving unrighteous decrees. There’s always a price to pay. Here they say they were not strict enough with ourselves. There’s talk of the age of ‘permissiveness.’ Even referring to the way we treat our children. The much greater concern should be verbal permissiveness. Putting into words, unfortunately mainly of the four letter variety, You’re a free person I can say, what I want to say. You can. But you pay the piper.
You engage a negative conversation just to keep the conversation going sometimes, cocktail talk. All of the terrible things that are going on. ‘You know what he’s doing?’ ‘What’s going on here?’ ‘What’s going on in the streets?’ ‘What’s going on in heaven and Washington?’ All of the negatives that are going around, and making the negative rounds. You buy into them. You get on the merry go round and go round, round and round with these things. It’s lovely speech.
Small boy was out walking with his baby sister. Family man stopped to admire the cute little girl and she’s a beautiful child. “Can she talk yet?” The boy replied. Her words haven’t come in yet, but she has teeth. One thing is certain when her words do come she’ll face a crisis in her life. You need to know when to speak, what to speak, when to keep silent, how to reject the creative logos. The ‘I Am’ power. Unfortunately, our words come in and ply up all the negatives around us. Become part of our favorite way of speaking. They never learned the importance of settling out, screening out of our reads words, unrighteous decrees. The negative statements. It lead you the positive grant.
It may seem strange to some of us but the power of speech has been overlooked for the most part in traditional religion. Even though it was in the past to over indulge themselves in things other than worship, you words of pessimism, negativism and fear, is additionally strange since the power of words is extolled through the Bible, and some of the most beautiful language ever written. Word ‘fittly’ spoken is like apples of gold and still keeping his mouth and his tongue. Keeping his soul from troubles. Beautiful words. But religion has that paid little attention to them. There’s been very little, if any stress on the idea of speaking positive words.
Our lives are constantly dealing with spiritual law, which there’s no caprice, no special treatment, and a combination or condemnation. In divine law there’s no favorites. Spiritual law operates through consciousness, and when conscious protects itself in the words, the spiritual law becomes a specific law which you set in motion. All the other law that relentlessly carries out the car we’ve invested with him.
Strangely, if you’re all caught up with negative talk about your financial affairs, the Law of Prosperity for you at that moment, becomes the law of recession and lack. Get that point in consciousness. When you’re caught up in negative talk about your financial affairs there’s a constant stream of unrighteous decrees, and the Law of Prosperity for you right at that time, becomes a law of recession or lack. It’s the same law. It works to reproduce prosperity and success in your life, or failure and difficulty. A few confusions that come in the world. It’s the same Law.
In the work of public health and maybe talk about a particular disease which has reached epidemic proportions. There are medical researchers who were talking about “contagion through consciousness.” I can remember a writing in the proceedings of a Medical Journal about “psychic infection”, that the real contagion is mostly in the mind. And increasing awareness of this more metaphysical concepts throughout the medical World.
In the same sense what is called ‘recession,’ they come to call a kind of psychic infection. It spreads in epidemic proportions, from mind to mind throughout the land. Anytime the stock market has an upward or downward trend, as a result of thought, lots of investors, thoughts of business people, thoughts who sit in the high places in Washington, thoughts in every single on the street. If we knew this, you’d start a trend. Start a rumor if you will. Everything’s going well. Ran a business turn. The stock market is going up. The problems that our economy, we’re straightening out, and we’re ready for it.
You’re getting forwardings in the business section in the papers. Often turn out to be a self fulfilling prophecy. Writers of economics, are constantly telling, telling me people and businesses how I think should act. They don’t know that they’re saying it. They’re setting into operation an unrighteous decree which becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
I admit frankly, I know very little about business cycles. Apparently I’m in good company because neither do most of our leading economists (laughs). I do know that by the law of sequence and consequence, someone that’s with a limited belief, it spreads like fire through the country, and the sudden downturn in the economy is the sequence and consequence. Business conditions usually, infect the thought of people. What really counts for you, is that your own prosperity or lack reflects your thoughts. No matter what’s going on in the world. “Thou will keep him in perfect peace who’s mind is stayed on Thee.”
So what are your attitudes toward business, toward money, toward work, towards financial crises. As hard as they affect and influence you. They begin with you. You may not have totally caused them. You didn’t cause the financial difficult guys that are around you. If you’re fearful of them. If you give them reality by your constant talk about them, then you’re responding to what the psalmist calls the counsel of the ungodly. They have a profound effect and influence on your life.
You have a fantastic means of communication. Every day the world is telling us many things. Some of it is hearsay, some of it is ‘they say.’ On good authority, or from high official Government. There are pronouncements from leading economists. You can have a communication out of Washington. The word most heard today as recession. Are we in a recession? Will there be one? Will there be a direct slow down in business? From all high sides you’re hearing what they’re saying.
The most important thing, what are you saying to yourself? Of all the stuff that is communicated to you, take the best and leave the rest. Don’t tie into or take on as baggage, the obvious negative evaluations. There’s a lot of them out there. You may want to be informed if you read all the magazines and the business pages. You write that right up on what’s happening in business. You’re looking at...something that has very little effect and influence upon the economy, except by the power of the spoken word.
Take the best, leave the rest. Take the bullish attitudes, which is another way of saying, the optimism. Rejected the opposite which is pessimism. You keep yourself consciously in tune creative flow of substance. You become impervious to the recession syndrome. Become consciousness in your affairs. You become truly recession proof.
Course in business and social context, your face is enough to put into words. Classic example, you can all identify with this...you find yourself in an elevator with one other person. Here you have to say something when you really have nothing to say. You don’t know the person you have no, nothing in common with them. It’s kind of unfortunate so you say, “terrible day isn’t it?” You might say, “I’ve talked with three people today who got laid off, I guess we might be next?”
If we had a recording of all of the things that we say I’m thinking at such times, you’d be amazed. The statement that I have used for years in all communication. Let something good be said. You want to been short LSGBS. Like the cigarette LSGBS. In a certain situation where there appears to be a need, just to keep the conversation going. It doesn’t have to reflect the pessimism and the negativity of the world. You don’t have to talk about crime and drugs and war and recession. LET SOMETHIGN GOOD BE SAID.
Find something good to be said. If you’re going to talk about war and recession, what good can be said about it? Remember, idle gossip sinks ships. Your journey in the marketplace and experience of your financial wellbeing and since you’re sailing your ship of life, through the storms and the turbulence of the World out there...the ship may not always have calm waters, and great troubled seas. A good ship has a good captain. And a good crew. Cuts right through the storms. You can’t afford to let idle words and negative thoughts seep through the timbers of your ship.
Keep a tight ship. Put into words, only those things that you want to see manifest in your life. Put it into words, only those things that you want to see manifesting your LIFE. Check up on one another. You find yourself voicing something, and it’s negative, you’ve forgotten. You just, you wrote it out, you’re only kidding, or you weren’t thinking. A person may say, it’s a good affirmation, let’s just say it together. When you say “my aching back, let’s affirm that together” and make it true. You can shock a friend everyday when you have this consciousness.
We need to be shocked. We need to recognize that these things are not just some thinking. How many times does it go on in your life? You’re vitally important energy activities, the conflicts that we’re doing to some exten sense of fear and inadequacy, so simply to affirm you’re good and strong. The world is filled with countless of courage who refused to remain down. They’ve said to themselves, I am strong, I can overcome. I’m a winner. I remember Mohammed Ali, how he kept his name ship leak proof and his attitude toward life recession proof. The word that became his personal logo, “I’m the greatest.”
He said this thousands of times. Eventually surrounded him almost with an aura, and many persons came to think of him as the greatest fighter who ever lived. He set that tone. He thought he was going to sit, lay some thought. Some thought he was egocentric and thought he didn’t know what he was talking about. He was establishing a positive consciousness, praising himself. He was out of him and began to refer to him, even know if mystically as the greatest, but they were saying he was the greatest they wanted everybody to think, ‘here’s the person who thinks he’s the greatest.’ Then time left consciousness, and an energy force, fell into his life. Here’s a successful life, and he’s [inaudible 00:28:21] to experience this thing of disappointment.
Boy, he achieved success [inaudible 00:28:27] you’re potentially the greatest writer in all the world. You’d have to add to your own life. You’re a psychologist, school teacher. A business man. A salesman. Your state of mind should always be the greatest salesman, the greatest doctor, the greatest homemaker in the world. That should be your attitude. Obviously taken not out of a ego centric point of view, but the realization that this is the truth about you. It’s the positive, the Kingdom of God, potentially this is in you. Only waiting to be expressed and unfolded.
History, of course, many Lincolns, many Einsteins, many Schweitzer’s, many Edisons...not one of them was born with any special dispensation in power and potential. Nobody has it all made for them. Nobody comes as a successful person, overtly. Every person has to discover the potential within him. Release it. Give expression to it. In conversation and positive words about himself to constantly voice that positive truth. All the persons achieved is there because they control their inner conversation with themselves. They take charge of their minds. They work hard to transcend the greatest fears that we all experience. Their performance proves that they work hard at becoming their own cheerleader.
You’re trying to keep on. Tell yourself that, ‘I can make it. I know I can.’ I’m God’s living enterprise and God cannot fail. When, you’re talking recession, it’s inevitably has destructive potential. Commonly say to yourself, ‘not in my life, I’m free from lack of success in all my ways. I’m a childhood God. I free from limiting things. I flow of substance, my life is affluent.’ ‘I’m free.’
Emma Wheeler Wilcox said some interesting words. Very understanding he says, ‘peace, power plenty. Where’s that a heaven born? Tender to your hearts that are weary to help in your souls is born. For words are things that will lift on wings that one believes are true. Whatever you’re willing when the mind is still, we call it the soul of you.
Let’s take a moment to be still. I had to recall an incident in the gospels when women came to Jesus in his passing, the throng, they had a very limiting physical experience. He came close and she said, “if I could just get close to Jesus, touch him and his garment, where’s the scripture, where” She said to herself, “if I can touch the hem of his garment I’m healed. Jesus stopped felt some energy going around, he saw the woman, thy faith has made thee whole. The key is she said to herself, she said to herself.
What are you saying to yourself? What can you say to yourself? You realize always that you’re living in a sea of substance. You give no lack in your life. No poverty. No unemployment, because you’re always one with the divine flow. There’s no time when you, you don’t have potential to be employed, to employ yourself. Tap into the dynamics of the economy. There’s no way that you can be put out of the universe, maybe put out of a job. You can’t lose your relationship to the divine flow, and you say to yourself, ‘I know that no matter what happens around me, and what happens to me, and I either let what happens in me be, filled with faith and confidence, only good will happen in my life.’
Get the thought of sailing your ship. Your whole life experience. The waters of everyday experience. Give thanks that the God self itself within you, the captain of your ship. Directs the ship through waters that are rough and unstable, keeps the ship secure and balanced. You’re going through in the right direction. Determined that you will keep your ship watertight. You keep a tight ship. Keep yourself free from negations and negative comments. And everything from confusion in recess of your awareness.
Bless the economy as a whole. Protect the thought in faith, as you said, it was a perceiving power of the mind, to perceive the dynamic potential in the economy, all the businesses and all the businessman, the stock market, the salesman, the people on the jobs. High places and low places. See it all as established in the limited substance of God, substance of the universe.
There can be no lack, no confusion, no recession, no depression, no business downturns. They made it upturn. Let there be prosperity in the world. Let there be a consciousness of abundance in the world. As we sing, let it begin with me. Let my consciousness be a symbol and a chamber of positive power, flows forth into the world, as a radiant energy. Keep yourself on the side of peace and the side of plenty and the side of prosperity.
This day we give thanks. We’re centered into divine flow. We keep ourself focused on the idea. That something good to be said. And you’ll know the truth. And the truth shall make you free. So be it.
