Hello and welcome to decide on Joy Podcast coming to you from Harmony Spiritual Center in Fort Worth, Texas. I'm Jim Kovault. I am Reverend Dr. P.J Stanley, and we are talking about various aspects of new thought and. How to put those into practice in life. And perhaps we need to start first with just a brief thing about what is new thought anyway. Exactly. So new thought is just a tradition, a spiritual tradition in which we believe that. Our thoughts create our lives. And if we don't care for the life we're having, we can just have a new thought about it, just change our minds and go in a different direction. It sounds simple. Of course it's not because, you know, there's a lot of emotion involved and changing our minds. We we like to hold onto our loving thoughts, but that is the solution. Change your mind. Okay. And today our, we're talking about the Thor. Powerful universal laws in new thought, which are cause and effect law of focus and concentration. The law of attraction, which everybody's on that one now. Yes. And law of expectation. So why do we need to know these? Yeah, so this. There, there are so many. And as you, you pointed out, we had a discussion the other day, we're talking about these different laws and they actually end up kind of relating to one another. And once you kind of know one thing, you know another, so you don't really need to know all of them. But I think these top four, if you understand and understand what they do and incorporate'em in your life on a regular basis you're going to have a better life. So what we know is that there are two types of universal laws. There's physical laws. And there are mental laws, physical laws being like the laws, the of gravity. It's a physical law. And then the mental laws are how we understand them are through understanding these universal laws that we're talking about right now. And so the laws we're talking about, of course, are mental laws. And, and these mental laws can only be proven. It's not like, you know, the, the apple fell on Newton's head and so hit the ground. So that's kind of a, You can see that that's happening. When it comes to mental loss, you can only be proven by experience. And intuition. You simply have to experience them and you have to see them work in your own life, which is why we talk about them all the time and invite you to not take our word for it, which you probably won't anyway, which is fine. Don't take my word for it. Try what we're talking about. Just try it and see if it works for you. That's, that's what it's about. And so the, the first one, the law of cause and effect. Yeah. What is that exactly? So cause and effect is. It means that things happen because something prompted them to happen. Something happened because something prompted it to happen. So for every effect, an effect is like a manifestation, a condition, an occurrence, a result for every effect in your life. There is a specific cause and a cause is a reason. It's a, it's a catalyst, it's an action that was taken. But we're, we're not here talking about just the, the sort of thing. Like, like if I reach over and pinch you, you're going and I reach over and slap you. That is a cause and effect. Yes, but that's not the, what we're talking about here, right? No. Okay. No, it's not. What we're talking about are mental laws of cause and effect and about take, getting a hold of what you think about. And, and it's just so powerful because we have thoughts going on our heads. All the time, those random thoughts about what am I cooking for dinner and what should I buy at the grocery store and oh my God, what is she wearing? Those, those, those don't really matter. What matters are the thoughts that you think about all day long? The things that are, that you're, and we'll talk about the law of concentration and focus later, but to get a hold of your thoughts and to. Begin to say, you know what? When I think this thing, this thing happens, and I don't care for this thing that's happening. And to have the power to change that thing from happening, because you recognize every time that happens, I've had this kind of thought about it. If I change my mind, which is new thought, if I change my mind about it, what is the. What, how would it change the effect? How would it change the result? And it does, it definitely does change the result. So it's important that you understand. A cause is a cause is why something happens. It's the reason and an effect is exactly what happens. It's the, it's the occurrence or the, the what? The manifestation, what shows up in your life. Does that make sense to you? Mm-Hmm. Okay. Yeah. Mm-Hmm. So, it's important that you understand if you, if you, if you want to live a life on purpose, you can live an accidental life, and it's fine. It's your life. So, I'm not here trying to tell you how to live your life. What we're trying to do here is to say there are choices in your life, and if you're not completely satisfied with how your life is turning out. Or what's coming into your life. These are some ideas that can help you get control of your life. And I'll talk about the Law of Control. Well, I'll talk about the Law of Control right now. That's not one of the four, but, but the Law of Control says that we are happiest in our lives to the degree that we feel in control. Of our lives. Like things aren't happening to us because of something outside ourselves. And the more we can get a hold, of course things happen. I mean, you could reach over and slap me and that's not something I would've, you wouldn't, because we, I wouldn't be around you if, and that's another thing. If that happened, I probably wouldn't be around you. Mm-Hmm. So so we're not talking about that, but. But the, the things that you think about all the time, you can decide what you want to think about and what you wanna draw. And so it's really powerful in biblical terms. And we don't use the Bible very much, but I do wanna say this cause and effect is the same as what you reap. You reap what you sow. Mm-Hmm. It's the same thing as reap what you sow. So if you want to raise corn, you don't plant watermelons seeds, right? And so if you want to have a great life, you don't, you don't plant seeds in your life that don't allow you to have one. And we'll talk about what those, what that looks like a little bit later. Yeah. Yeah. Perhaps not always as easy as that sounds I got, because sometimes you have to kind of wrestle with that. You really do. You really do. And this is about, and we can talk about these a little bit later, and we, we, I think we'll probably have an episode on values and beliefs. So it has to do with wrestling with what you value and what you really believe and why. Yeah. So we'll talk about that later. But yes, it's not as easy as you as we're talking, but it is simple as we're saying. Yes. Mm-Hmm. And, and maybe that leads to the next one, this law of focus and concentration. Yeah. So, yeah, so the law of focus and concentration it says that what you focus on grows. It's what you focus on grows, and it meaning it means that we, we, we become better at something or become more of whatever it is we focus on. And this works in both the positive and the negative. So, you know, back to having a great life or, or back to having a, not a, a negative things that are happening in your life. What would be an example of that would be everyday law. Examples of the law of cause and effects, or I'm sorry, law focus and concentration. We say this all the time, we know what the law of concentration is. I gotta buckle down and focus. We say this all the time. We know the power of focusing on something so we won't be distracted and stay on course and get done what we want to get done. But a negative view would be if you have consistently saying negative things about your life. Like I, I'm just not smart enough. I can't go to college, I can't finish it. I don't, I'm not, I don't have enough fortitude to stay with it. I'm not smart enough to get what they're talking about. These are the negative things that you say in your life. And if you can change, if you can catch that and say, why do I believe that? And change your thinking about it and stick with the new thought. It will change what you receive, right? Yeah. Yeah. Is is that shift that can sometimes be, it's very difficult and my history with that and particularly, particularly specifically, I had that issue with not thinking I was smart enough. People in your life, and I think this law of attraction who you, and we will talk about that in a minute, but who you hang around with helps you to. Be, stay in whatever you're in or get into another situation that you wanna be in. So hanging around with people who, that they're, they're, they get their identity by not being smart, by saying, who cares about, you know, nerds and talking crap about nerds. Well, nerds are the ones who go to class and listen and understand. And if you start hanging with them, if you change your mind about them. Wanting to go to school and learning some stuff started hanging around with people who know how to study. You'll understand how to do it as well, so, right, or, or, or if you've been spent most of your life with people who, who think that it's wrong to have lots of money, for instance, ex for that is a huge one. Yeah. That, that you should be, you know, the meek shall inherit the earth. It it, Mm-Hmm. Yeah. That, Mm-Hmm. So how does knowing that help? So, to me, this is the the law of focus and concentration. To me, there's this, there's so much that you can do. In, in a life, in a lifetime and in a day. There's all kinds of information coming at you people with all sorts of opinions, influencers, and telling you about what you should buy and what you should wear and what should look like. And there's just so much going on that I think that it gets harder and harder to decide for yourself. What's actually important and what you wanna spend your time and your monies and your energies on. So I think understanding that what the law of focus and concentration does, you can begin to say, well, do I want to be like this person? If I'm constantly following this person, am I actually, is this something that I'm passionate about? I want to be an influence about what kind of shoes people wear. Or is it that I, whatever, you know, whatever it is that they're influencing you about. Or do I really wanna spend my time for. For instance, I wanna write a book about how to help someone that I love get through a difficult time because I've gone through one. And so I wanna spend my time writing that book. That's what I wanna give back to the, to the universe, or to the world, or to the people that I love, whatever that may be. Or maybe I just wanna spend time around my family and let them know that I love them by spending time with them rather than listening to other people and other things that are going on. So I think understanding. What the law of focus and concentration does, you'll shift your focus to things that matter to you and stop wasting time on things that matter to other people, but not necessarily to you. Right. And, and, and there's a, a thing that's I think, involved with, with that too, with it, that we're constantly bombarded with terrible news and, oh, my stars, you know, all that thing and, and none of that. It doesn't exist. It does, but you, you have to find a way to, and it's not like you have to be ignorant of it, you know, to not have any idea what's going on with. Then you have to find a way to focus on your own path, you know? Absolutely. I completely agree. I, I don't actually, I don't have the news. I don't watch the news and I don't read the paper, and yet I know everything that's going on because people will tell you, you know, you hang on with friends and whatever it is, I mean. There's some locally lately, and I don't know if I wanna date this podcast, but it'll be dated anyway. There was some woman who claimed that she got kidnapped and it turns out that she didn't, I didn't know anything about that. I have never heard of it. And, and there was something else that came out and said, well, I bet you know who she is now. I don't know who she is. Someone was talking about it and I said, who are you talking about? What's going on? Because I don't wanna spend my time. How does that help my life? How does knowing about what she did help my life? It doesn't. It doesn't, I'm not gonna do that. That's not who I am. So it doesn't matter what, live your life, girlfriend. That's what you wanna do. Live your life. It's okay. It doesn't affect me at all. So yeah, you're right. You're exactly right about that. And so the next one. Here on this list of, of, of universal laws is the law of Attraction. Yeah. Which certainly has a lot of coverage in the world in general at the moment. It does. It does. And I think, you know, people think it's hoo-ha and they misunderstand it. It's just like anything else you can, you can misunderstand or, you know, make jokes or whatever it is or whatever you want to do, but it's a real thing, the law of Attraction, and it states that we draw into our lives. The people, the places, the circumstances that are aligned with our dominant thinking and all that I'm talking about here. All of the laws are about what we think about all day long. They're not about random thoughts, they're about our dominant thinking that takes up all the space in our head. And so, so what it looks like is if, and, and the thing is, is we all know this law of attraction. We've, we've said this and heard this our whole lives, birds of a feather. Stick together. That is what law of Attraction is. It's people who are alike who have like minds or like thoughts. We are here in Harmony Spiritual Center because this is a tribe of people who, who see God in a different way. And, and we don't necessarily even need to call it God. We can call it the, that's which is greater than yourself. Divine Law, George or Rose, whatever you want to call it. But we are actually attracted to one another because we. Think the same way about certain things. And if that's working for you, then that's great, but if you're attracting something that's not working for you, then it doesn't work and you, well, it's still, it's working'cause it's always worked, but it's not working for your life. And you get to change that because you can ask yourself, well why do I keep getting terrible people in my life? Or why do I get people in my life that are abusive to me? Or why do I have people in my life that don't encourage me? Or whatever the things are that are attracting your, that's in your life that aren't helping your life. And again, that's back to the law of control. These are the things we have control over. What am I thinking about that makes it okay for these people to be in my life that aren't actually helping my life? That's why it's powerful to know it. And it's not only people, right? I mean, it's it's also other circumstances in your mind. Oh yeah. No, it's not. You're drawing. Well, Kate, you, you, you said something about money just, just a minute ago. And so if your, if your thought is. That the meek shall near the earth and it's not okay to have a lot of money that the rich are horrible people. Then how much money's gonna come into your life? So you're, you are repelling any, any opportunity, any money that comes into your life, believe me, you're repelling it and as quickly as you possibly can, you will lose it. You'll send it away. You'll let it go. You'll buy something foolish. You, you won't, you won't, you won't build that because that's not, that's'cause that's what your thoughts are. That money is bad. But if you think that actually, and this is what I think, I think that money is God in action. How do you, if I wanted to support something, a church or a hospital or whatever, it would take money to do that, and that money is helping other people live a better life. So if you look at money as God in action, love in action, how would that change what you think about money? So again, change your mind about what you think about that. If you're getting negative results or not the results that you want, you can change your mind about what you're thinking and. The last one, the law of expectation. How is that different from the others? So the law of expectation is that you, whatever you expect to get is with confidence. It's not ai. You know, you actually expect to get in your confident that that's how it's gonna turn out. That's what you're gonna get in your life. Mm. And it's kind of like the law of focus, but it's different in that it's a, it's an inward thing that you expect. Terrible things are gonna happen to you. That's the way my life has always been. Nothing ever works out for me. The shoe, the other shoe always drops. So even if you were to get something wonderful in your life, a good relationship or you, the, the raise that you were expecting, what's happening in your, in your heart or the, that you know for a fact is going to happen is, something bad's gonna happen. Something's gonna come along to take it away. You expect that to happen and it will. But if you expect that, hey, I talked with God and I said I need to have more money because my car is starting to get, starting to run down and to get, have money to, I don't wanna fix it up anymore. It won't. It won't do it. It's too old. So I need money for another car and I expect that to happen. I see a car in a new car. It doesn't be new for me, but new to me car in my garage. That's gonna work well and I confidently expect. To get that because that is how it works. I constantly expect it and it's gonna show up and I don't care how, because the, how, this is part of the thing that I think people concern themselves with when you say, okay, I want something wonderful and I'm expecting it to happen, and then you get caught up in, well, how is that going to happen? Because you're limited. Mortal Vision can't see it, but it's not for you to wonder about the how that is for the universe to bring to you. What is yours to do is to decide what you want and then be confident that the universe will bring it to you because that's how it works. That's how it works. And, and that kind of ties into the title of this podcast. Decide on Joy, decide on Joy. Oh, we'll be discussing that at more length on another episode because we, we realized, yeah, we should talk about what this title is about anyway. Exactly, exactly. But yeah, there again, I mean with the law of expectation, it's another thing where you may be dragging a bunch of baggage with you from, from what you were told as a child from heard all that. Stuff, you know, all my stars and, and absolutely I think about my, and this is one of the things that I continually do. This is not about me, but I'm, I only speak about what I know, what I have experience with. And so one of the things that I know I consistently do is to review. And I even talk about it here annually, minimally, annually. Just review what you believe and what you value because those things change over time. Can you imagine believing the same thing at 30 that you believed at when you were 16? But if you don't reevaluate, if you don't look to see what you believe, you'll still be believing at 30 what you believe that a 16. You know, so, so it's, it's something that we, I I, we encourage that you take a look at what is it, not only what is it that you believe. So one of the things that I believe was that, you know, a woman gets married that I'm revealing my age, but a woman gets married and she supports her husband. That is what a wife's job is now, who told me that? No one, no one, no one spoke those words to me, but it's what I saw. It's what I saw in all the women that I knew, the married women that I knew, my mom, my grandmother. It's what I saw. But as I got older and I got into relationships, I had to start questioning it. Well, so does that mean I have to give up What's important to me to support him? Or why can't we support each other? Where does that idea come from? Well, it comes from me. It comes from true. It comes from love because if I can love someone and support them. Then why can't they love me and support me back? Why can't we do both? And so you begin just to ask questions. I don't have all the answers, but there's a bunch of questions that you could be asking and asking for the truth that your heart knows. I. Right. And you know, sometimes things like that that can just come from, this is an acting term, but, but from the subtext, just in the culture in general. Yes, exactly. It doesn't have to be an explicit thing that says this is, this is the way it is. Exactly. But. It's, you pick it up from, oh my God. I was just watching because I'm gonna go do a I'm gonna do a workshop at a convention I'm going to in September. And I just saw an a thing on YouTube. It was so amazing. This, it was an experiment. And there was a group of actors in a hospital. They were in a hospital waiting room. It was all made up, hospital waiting room, and one woman who was not the actor. And so this bell would ring buzzes and everybody would stand up and then sit back down. The thing would ring and she'd look around. She's like, what's going on? Buzz ring. Everybody stand up. She's looking around and sit back down. Third time it did it, she stood up with them. Okay, so they did the whole thing. Now, some of the actors are starting to leave and actual patients are coming in, they're looking around. It's everybody's still doing it, and the new people are looking around wondering what's going on. But they're, they finally end up just standing up and sitting down. No one has said a word at the end of this. There are no actors left. New people are coming in, and everyone is still standing up and sitting down with the buzzer and nobody knows why. Mm-Hmm. Nobody knows why. This is how we do stuff. This is how things happen. We just look around and say, oh, well, they're everybody's dope. Conformity is what they call it, right? Conformity. It's, well, that's how you do it. Why? Why is it why we do that? So these are questions we get to ask ourselves in a free world and, and, and find. M tools, mental tools, I suppose to That is exactly correct. Snip those chords, you know, to, oh, oh my gosh. To say, no, I'm not attached to that idea anymore. And I get to ask the question why. And the, that, that is something that asking the question why why is that true or why is that, that is not something that a lot of people are comfortable with. Not only just asking the question, but even in a room full of people and someone saying something and you say, why is that true? It feels like a challenge. It feels like you're saying, do you know what you're talking about? For me, that's not what it is. What I'm asking is how do you know that's true? Like, what are you, where did you find that? I'm, I'm curious. I'm not, I'm not challenging you. I'm curious, but it can feel like a challenge, and so people get mad when you ask. What do you mean? What are you asking? Do you think? I don't know. No, calm down. It's not about you. I really just don't understand why. Why is that working this way? That's all. Yeah. So yeah, I think it comes up in our own, in our own skin to be able to answer questions like that. Yeah. So that's maybe a good place to end for today and we can all go forth and be curious and ask and be curious. Ask, don't be offended. Yes. Ask why. Why, and we'll see you for the next episode. We will indeed. Thanks for coming.