PNTV: The Power of Decision by Raymond Charles Barker (#78)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we're doing a great book called the Power of Decision. If I had it, it would be right here. I would hold it up and show you the Power of Decision by Raymond Charles Barker. As always, great book, six page PDF Philosopher's Note, one of a hundred that we've done. Now Raymond Charles Barker is an old school new thought guy, so he's in the same category as Ernest Holmes who founded the Science of Mind churches, the religious science churches. Raymond Charles Barker created the first religious science church in New York City in 1946 to put it in perspective, was one of the leaders in the new thought movement of that era. And other people who fall into that category include modern teachers like Louise Hay, Michael Beckwith. We've also got some other old school new thought people like Walter Russell Seal. We've got notes on all of them in the 100 and we've also got the PNTVs on them as well. So the hallmark of religious scientists or. Well, yeah, religious science thinking is this idea that there's this pure intelligence, we are pure intelligence, there's this divine intelligence and our job is to connect to that and to express it. These teachers are incredibly optimistic. They, they don't believe in negativity. They want to see what we can create by aligning with that universal force that's always expanding and always present that we can choose to align with or not. And our destiny is shaped by whether or not and how consistently we connect to and express that divinity. So powerful stuff. The first big idea I want to look at right now is what is your estimate of yourself? Raymond Charles Barker says that if you have a low self image, a low estimate of yourself and you're never going to go beyond it, it's just not going to happen. You might have dreams once in a while that are super inspired, but if you really don't believe that you're that great or that extraordinary or whatever, then these dreams are going to wilt pretty quickly. You're not going to take the action, you're not going to have the decisiveness to actually move forward in pursuit of that divinely inspired vision that you have. So we've got to upgrade our image of ourselves. And I've got some quotes here about the way to do that. And if we look at these old school new thought teachers like Barker, Irvin Seale, we're going to do an episode on him next. Walter Russell, we've got a great episode on him and a note on him and who else do we have here? Ernest Holmes, of course. These guys say that if you want to really step up your self image, you've got to realize that you're pure intelligence, that you are the divine manifest in this little kind of microcosmic bag of skin and bones that's really a channel and a vessel for that pure intelligence, that universal mind, divine intelligence, whatever you call it. And our challenge is these guys say, Walter Russell says there's only like a tiny gap, an inch that separates mediocrity and average from great. It's a tiny little gap, but the only way you can make that jump from mediocre to, to great is to realize that it's the divine that will allow you to do that. You've got to align with God. It's the only way we can upgrade our image significantly is to realize that we're simply a vehicle for that energy. Really powerful idea. We've got some great quotes in that note on it that I think you dig. Another big idea here is to embrace the present, becoming the future. Don't worry about all the mistakes and all the failures and all the things that you wish you didn't do. We've all got those and we're all learning from them. But we don't want to be mired in guilt on that. We want to look forward and see what's possible. A couple of things here. One, guilt. Another big idea we have later in here, but I'll go to it right now. He says we need to lower our guilt load. It's not serving us. Wayne Dyer says guilt is the most useless emotion you can possibly have because you simply can't do anything about what you already did. You can apologize to someone, you can make amends to take better action, more constructive action in the future. But to have guilt is a useless emotion. So it's pretty funny in Tibetan. They don't even have a word for guilt. No word in Tibetan for guilt. The closest they have is intelligent regret with a decision to do things better in the future or something to that effect. Intelligent regret that decides to do things differently in the future. So we learn from the past and we do things differently. But miring ourselves in guilt isn't very effective. Another idea we have in the note is Louise Hay's idea of turning shoulds into coulds. Don't should all over yourself. I should have done this. I should have done that. Or future shoulds. I should do this. It's putting yourself into a victim place where you're really powerless. If you need to move a Should from to could. I could have done that better or differently. I could do this in the future. Really powerful idea we talk about in her great book, you Can Heal youl Life. We're gonna do that one soon anyway. We want to get rid of guilt. We don't want to be mired in the past, thinking only about our mistakes. We want to be in the present, opening into the future. We've got some great ideas here about how to do that. Some great quotes from Osho and Sonia Liebermersky, who wrote the great book the how of Happiness, one of my absolute favorites. And she says, if you look at happy people, what you're going to find is they have projects, they're geared up in doing something that's inspiring them. So happy people have projects. Happy people are moving forward. Ralph Lotto Emerson says genius appeals to the future. We're always here to create something more extraordinary. Really powerful idea. So moving on with a deep breath, next big idea is this idea of thought seeds. We talk about this often as well. Obviously, rule number one, we've got to get in control of the thoughts we have and be able to shape them more and more consciously. He says you cannot think and feel negatively over any period of time and expect positive things to come into your life. Just doesn't work that way. Jesus says you can't gather figs from thistles. Paul said, as Barker points out, you reap what you sow. If you're planting negative seeds, there's no way you're going to have a positive harvest. This is not the way it works. So we want to pay attention to the thought seeds that we're planting. Pay attention. Pay attention. Pay attention and see if you want those seeds to come to fruition. If that's really the garden and you want to create. And every thought is literally planting a new seed. So pay attention and see if you have the seeds you want to be planting in your consciousness. They're going to come to fruition whether you like it or not. So plant beautiful seeds. Plant seeds of joy, appreciation, love, empowerment, courage, wisdom, kindness and generosity. Not gossip and criticism and complaining and blaming and comparing and all of that. Disempowerment, depression, anxiety, overwhelm. Plant the good stuff and watch that stuff come to fruition in your life. Make it a game, too. It doesn't need to be serious, doesn't need to be hard. Just have fun with it. As you can tell, I have fun with it. All right, what else we got? So he's got this idea that, you know, he says look, you know, deep within you, you know, and in this context, you have a decision. You know what decision to make in your life. You pretend that you don't because it's easier to kind of just kind of float through life. But you really know, and you need to get clarity on that and have the courage to make the decision and move forward. Powerful idea. We talk about the 110-year-old U exercise from tall Ben Shahar reasonably often. And to repeat it, imagine you're 110 years old. NASA invents a time machine. You come back to today. What do you tell yourself? If you had a minute, if you had 30 minutes, what would you tell yourself? And the idea here is you have the wisdom you need. It's within you. The question is, are you going to live it? Carlos Castaneda, who I refer to here, says, anything is one of a million paths, but you want to take the path with heart, the path that feels right for you. Now, most people, a lot of people say, yeah, but how will I know if the path is a path with heart? And Castaneda is really intense about it. He says, look, you know, the problem is you don't want to actually do it. You don't want to ask the question, but you actually know. And if you took the time to really look within and then have the courage to follow it, life would be much, much more pleasant in the process. So that whole idea of following our bliss, the path with heart, etcetera, trusting yourself, knowing that you have the intelligence within. Final idea. A grand utopia is the idea. From the note, Barker says, look, we live in a grand utopia. If everyone who ever had an inspired idea followed it, rather than allowing their fears and doubts to creep in, we'd have a Grand Utopia. In 1900, what was it? In 1900, automobiles were just implausible. 1910 radios were implausible. Transatlantic planes were implausible in 1920. But we made those things happen. So what dream do you have you think is implausible? Go out, soak your mind in good thoughts and good action and go make it happen. That's what he would say. We will wrap up on that one. He says, I dare you to live an extraordinary life. So I'll echo that. I dare you. Go out and have fun. And start by having an awesome day. Look forward to sharing more with you soon. See you.