Butterworth's Theology of Non-Resistance - (Re)Continued

It has been suggested by some in Unity that although many Unity truth students learn five main principles that there really is only one. This one is the first Unity principle: "There is One Presence and One Power in the Universe {and some add, "in my life"}, God the Good," to which I also add Omniscience, Omnipotence and Omnipresence. As Reverend Dr. Gary Simmons and Rima Bonario, president and founder of Your Wisdom Works, LLC, note in their work, The Art & Practice of Living with Nothing and No One Against You, "there cannot be two opposites at work -- one which we like, and one which we don't. To think in this way immediately creates an 'other' to be avoided, or an 'enemy' to be vanquished rather than the experience of oneness or wholeness. . . . When you find yourself in situations where people, things and circumstances feel as though they are against you, your life can become very uncomfortable. . . . You have been taught to believe that when life is difficult, or when circumstances trigger pain, the problem is in the situation or person who is in your way. But how can that be if there is only One Presence and One Power and it is Good?" (p. 9).

This is the same point that Eric Butterworth made repeatedly in various works. How can anything be against us if the One Presence and One Power that we affirm in our lives is Good, with a capital G? While Simmons and Bonario published this text in 2009 and are reaching a whole new audience of Unity and other New Thought students, consider what EB was saying to the generations living and learning in 1969 in his book, Unity of All Life. In his chapter, "From Horizontal to Vertical Thinking," EB gives readers techniques and ideas to use as they learn new ways of thinking. He suggests that "life can become to us only what we permit it to be through us, and that the becoming is the passing of the wholeness of Spirit into expression in our lives through the form of thought that we give it" (p. 60). In other words, people have ideas and perceptions. Those ideas and perceptions become experiences of wholeness and acceptance, or as Simmons and Bonario note, conflicts and arguments.

As noted in previous entries on this blog, EB wants his readers to understand that they are responsible for their thoughts and how they choose to view what happens to them. It is not what happens to a person, but how the person responds to a situation or other person that makes the difference. EB says, "Man's pattern of thought is the mold through which the stuff of Universal Mind flows into manifestation in his experience. Thus, the creativity of the universe may flow into a mold of twisted, distorted thought, and by the same law that would manifest perfection in accord with a perfect mental mold, it will manifest distortion in accord with this distorted mental state" (p. 60). In simpler terms, if one operates with the idea that someone or something is against her, this is the distorted experience she will have. However, if the same person believes in her own wholeness and connection to Universal Mind, the One Presence and One Power, then she will move through the experience with ease because s/he will know in accord with her perfect mental mold that nothing and no one is against her.

While this certainly sounds simple in theory, EB also is emphatic when he says, "Experiences do not cause thoughts" (EB's italics, p. 63). He explains that whatever happened to a person is "history" and "completely external." The experience or incident "may happen around you or even to you, but of itself it does not happen in you. Your mind is your domain. Here you are the master. You think what you want to think, or what you have habitually thought. Your thoughts about the incident, positive or negative as they may be, are your reaction to it. But the incident did not make the thought. . . . There is no possible way in which an outside condition or person or experience can form your thought. You make the thought, for it is your mind. The thoughts and feelings that arise in you are by your choice" (pp. 63-64). Now to some, particularly a person who is suffering, this statement can be a big slap in the face. One can imagine the response: "I didn't do this. I didn't make this happen!" The tone might be one of upset and anger, and this person might be gearing up for a fight. But EB would remind this person that she has a choice. And this is where the title of the chapter is explained.

EB defines horizontal thinking as "thought that deals with conditions, experiences and persons as they are. It works with available information and insight into past performance, which leads to a logical judgment of their meaning and character. It deals with facts. It is thinking about the problems . . . and thus having a problem-oriented state of mind" (pp. 64-65). With horizontal thinking then, a person is focused on what has happened. For instance, consider yesterday's (May 6, 2010) rapid plunge of nearly 1,000 points in the stock market. A horizontal thinker might have obsessed about the losses in her portfolio. If she was not a day-trader, able to be at the computer every second moving her money around, she might have worried continually about how to pay for her child's college education, her mortgage, her retirement or the car she had just purchased. And even if she was a day-trader, she might have moved money quickly, without careful consideration, because she was focused on the problem of losses and which stocks would fall the least before the market closed.

But what if this same person used EB's method of vertical thinking? Vertical thinking, he says, is "thought that deals with experiences and facts in a dynamic rather than static way. The facts are not denied, but neither are they worshiped. They represent the degree to which we have demonstrated the whole. The vertical thinker knows there is always 'more' in the man and in the knowledge accumulated by the man. He is open to the influence of the intuitive. He deals with conditions, experiences and persons not as they are but as he is, and he uses them as the challenge to a greater discovery of that isness. . . . He thinks through problems to the whole Spirit that is only being partially expressed. Thus he develops a solution-oriented state of mind" (p. 65).

If the same person mentioned before is a vertical thinker, her experience of yesterday's stock market plunge would have been different. While she certainly may have acknowledged in the moment that the value of her portfolio was declining, she likely also affirmed the power of the One Presence, as well as her belief in a never-ending supply of abundance. As a vertical thinker, she may not even have been watching her portfolio because her trust in that supply would mean that she had faith in the market's ability to correct itself (which it always does, in its own way), as well as in her ability to make adjustments after the initial plunge. As a vertical thinker, she also might have stepped back with some curiosity about what such a rapid plunge would mean and thought about what else was going on. This is what EB means about the whole Spirit being only partially expressed. If our vertical thinker believes in the power of One Presence, she knows that she does not have all the information, but that she has the wisdom within herself through her intuition, as well as her knowledge of finance, to act at the right time.

Thus, the difference between the horizontal thinker and the vertical thinker is not the fact of the stock market's plunge, but how they reacted to its occurrence. They did not cause the plunge; they may not even have bought or sold stock that day. But since they were invested in the market and they likely understood that the market, by its very nature, can go up and down, they each had a choice about how they would experience what occurred. The horizontal thinker focused on the problem of losing money and may have felt that the market was against her. The vertical thinker focused on the truth that there is infinite supply in the Universe, despite appearances to the contrary. She would have known that the market was being erratic, because sometimes that is just the nature of the market. As EB is so fond of saying in many of his books, all kinds of things will happen, but each person decides what s/he will do about them and whether s/he will remember that there is only One Presence and One Power.
{To Be Continued}