Monday Blogcrawl

I wish I could stick to a schedule, I really do. I am brilliant at planning schedules, writing them down, organising them to the last minute, and then completely disregarding them. So, instead of sticking to my last plan, here are some self-helpish things from the past week:

• Louise Hay shows us her apple tree
• The Science of Mind Creed
• Spirit Voyage Blog explains the Throat Chakra. And here's a kooky Crown Chakra activation meditation on Youtube
• Doreen Virtue continues to take us through our Angel Detox during the month of September. Kevin Hunter gives us a nice roundup of the month-so-far here. And here's her video oracle card reading for the week. And here she is explaining the enigmatic Indigo and Crystal children
• Lakshmi Chaudhry writes in Firstpost about why Indians feel attracted to Western prosperity cults
• Someone is reading subliminal advertising messages in The Secret 
• Dr. Wayne Dyer underlines the basic New Thought message: we are what we think. And here's a review of his most recent book, Wishes Fulfilled. There's also a new movie inspired by him 

Monday Blogcrawl

When I worked at a New Age bookstore, one of the big sellers every year was Louise L. Hay's page-a-day inspirational calendar. Last year, at the Hay House I Can Do It! Conference I bought one for myself and one for my mum. It was the first time I'd ever owned one, and I did enjoy reading a new positive affirmation every day. My mother, too, loved it, and this year the first thing we did when we arrived at the 2012 conference was get our copy of next year's calendar. During the conference, Cheryl Richardson said she buys 100 copies every year to give away to friends, so it seems that plenty of people love this little calendar. Today's says "There is a new spring in my step," so let's spring into the internet to see what's been happening in the world of self-help:

• Self-help powerhouse Dr. Joe Vitale talks about the power of the Mirror Technique, and the influence of Claude Bristol
• Oprah favourite Mark Nepo has a new book (at least, I wasn't aware of it till now) called Seven Thousand Ways to Listen. Here is a video of him talking about it
• Co-inside presents 10 books that will change your life
• A new study says that public affirmations of positivity will help you deal with chronic pain
• Louise Hay becomes an increasingly legendary figure, and A Celebration of Women gives us a very nice overview of her career and work
• Who's the bigger neanderthal - Tim Ferriss or Tucker Max? I don't know if this is serious or not, but it's fun - from Koanic Soul
• This month Doreen Virtue launches her Angel Detox. And Heal Your Life has Doreen advising us how the Archangel Raphael can help us to heal
• Maitri Bhavana is cultivation of the mind, a Buddhist concept, and The Times of India has a nice article on how we can cultivate unconditional love

Louise Hay in Vietnam

While in Vietnam recently I was pleased to see that the self-help sections in bookstores had grown significantly.
Amongst the offerings were these parallel texts of Louise L. Hay in Vietnamese and English. I couldn't resist.



I wonder if they are licensed?
I have actually bought quite a few copies of these to distribute to friends in Vietnam, and the reaction has mostly been very positive - in fact, the ideas are quite radical to them. Some, however, scoffed after reading and said "It's all very well for foreigners to think like this..."

Dr. John Harrison

I have begun my chapter on the intersection between health and self-help, and one of the authors I want to explore is the Australian Dr. John Harrison.
Harrison was something of a medical celebrity in Australia in the late 1980s, and through the advocacy of Louise Hay he became a worldwide influencer in the field of alternative health and the mind-body interaction. His magnum opus is a book called Love Your Disease It's Keeping You Healthy, and I hope to look at this book in some depth in this chapter.



It was an immensely influential book in its time, selling over 100,000 copies and becoming a bestseller in America.
Harrison seemed to have been combining New Thought ideas with fashionable psychology, naturopathy and Eastern-influenced health advice (he speaks glowingly of the concepts of Traditional Chinese Medicine). Indeed, his seeming "blame-the-victim" rhetoric is quite stark in the book, and quite unembarrassed. It is not the sort of thing that would be published now.
Harrison's reputation was later destroyed through some extremely questionable accusations of sexual misconduct, and Australian journalist Sue Williams wrote a fascinating book about this case called Death of a Doctor (2005), in which Harrison is vindicated and posited as something of a victim of the conventional medical establishment.
It's interesting to examine an Austraian book which had a great influence on American self-help writing and publishing - quite a reversal of the usual state of affairs.

You Can Create an Exceptional Life

Though she has established a self-help publishing empire, legendary author Louise Hay has herself written just a few books, and is really only known for one - the paradigm-changing and trend-setting You Can Heal Your Life, originally published over 20 years ago, and in recent years turned into a really very good movie.
I recently saw Ms. Hay live on stage at the I Can Do It! Conference in Sydney, and she was looking sprightly for an 80-something woman. She announced and launched her brand new book that day, a small dialogue with Life Coach and Oprah favourite Cheryl Richardson called You Can Create an Exceptional Life.
Though slight it is a well-edited and quite fascinating book, teaching many of the basic principles of New Thought and filled with autobiographical detail about Louise Hay, much of which real fans have heard before. The fresh re-telling actually works well, however, putting the stories of rising above hardship into a new context, and giving the much younger co-author Cheryl Richardson something to bounce off and react to.
The book is basically created from a series of Skype conversations between the two women, much of the time while both were in pyjamas, apparently. I hope they recorded the sessions - what a vision for future generations!
There is in the book a hint of defiance, a creeping weariness with the cynics and nay-sayers who instinctively dismiss everything the two women represent. Richardson says, "I no longer defend the spiritual principles that have guided and shaped my life. They work and I know it." In an age of radical atheism and hegemonic negativity, I am beginning to notice that advocates of a more feel-good spirituality and world-view are becoming ever-so-slightly radicalised. It would be interesting to chart this new turn.
Both women credit the influence of the great New Thought ideas and thinkers, in particular the work of Emmet Fox and Florence Scovel Shinn. At the heart of those teachings is the idea that most humans are possessed of enormous potential powers to re-shape the world and to create a life of abundance and happiness.

New Books - Self Help

Here are my new acquisitions for August reading. From the top:



From Entrepreneur to Infopreneur by Stephanie Chandler - A book describing the new way of thinking about making money, through selling books and information. Should be quite interesting from a perfectly selfish level, and also will help me when I do my chapter about wealth and business books.



Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh - This book has done really well in America, though largely unheard of here.




Anything You Want by Derek Sivers - From Seth Godin and Amazon's Domino Project, this book has the most fabulous cover.




Space Clearing by Stella Martin - When all of my electronic and mechanical goods began breaking down last month, someone told me I needed to do some space clearing, so I got this book. And of course, it fits in to my occult chapter.



Change Anything by Kerry Patterson et al - Don't really know anything about this one, but it's received pretty prominent placement in Australian bookshops so I thought I'd better read it.



Life's Little Detours by Regina Brett - Gorgeous cover.



Free Your Creative Spirit by Vivianne and Christopher Crowley - I often teach creative writing classes, so am always looking for new ideas. The authors are prominent Wiccans.



You Can Create an Exceptional Life by Louise Hay and Cheryl Richardson - I was at Louise Hay's I Can Do It! Conference on the weekend, and this book was launched early in Australia especially to cash in on it. I managed to buy the very last copy! I'd better read it quickly so I can tell a waiting world what it's about.



I Can Do It 2012 Calendar by Louise L. Hay - A year's worth of tear-off information, this desk calendar is a perennial bestseller.

You Can Heal Your Life

One of the most legendary books in the history of the self-help genre is Louise Hay's You Can Heal Your Life. Originally self-published, it went on to become a mammoth bestseller and the source of Ms. Hay's business and publishing empire. And, in more recent years, it has broken new ground by becoming the first self-help book to be turned into a full-length motion picture.
The book is pretty much run-of-the-mill New Thought. At the time of its writing Louise Hay was a popular Science of Mind minister, and her book and career would probably have faded into obscurity under normal circumstances. But something extraordinary happened. The AIDS crisis began, and Louise Hay, with her slightly raunchy and matter-of-fact manner, her mysterious background and her frank acceptance of gay and lesbian people, became the spiritual inspiration to thousands of men who were dying from that terrible disease. Suddenly, Hay and her little book were an intrinsic part of a social and cultural moment that caught up some of the greatest and most creative minds of a generation. Leading her famous "Hay Ride" healing sessions which were packed to the rafters with gay men, Louise Hay became the first major religious figure who addressed the AIDS problem directly, and treated people with AIDS with dignity and compassion. Hers was a lone voice for some years, and her personal bravery and integrity have been, I feel, forgotten in recent years. In the early 80s very few people were saying it was alright to be gay, and this elderly lady-minister, with her old-fashioned New Thought ideas and quaint little book, was a lonely voice in the wilderness.
You Can Heal Your Life became mainstream, of course, and was for many years - and remains - a bestseller. Hay was one of the first to see the possibility of new forms of media, and released many cassettes of her meditations and other work.
The book is beautifully, if simply, written, and Hay has a great gift for getting her ideas across. She has been criticised and lampooned mercilessly over the years, but she has gone from strength to strength, becoming a powerful publishing industry tycoon with her own company Hay House, which has made the careers of many others in the self-help and metaphysical fields.
Indeed, Hay has never really written another book - her entire philosophy was so succinctly and so prefectly expressed in You Can Heal Your Life. Other books have been printed, but they are really just transcriptions of her talks and workshops, as any avid listener to her audio material can soon discover.
It makes for fun reading, and is frequently outrageous. She uses a male prostitute as an example of how to apply prosperity thinking, for example, and she suggests that people should masturbate when they feel a migraine coming on. The book consciously addresses itself to actors, artist, writers and other creative types, proving that Ms. Hay, writing from LA, knew who her core clientele would be.
But the fact remains that it is one of the most seminal and culturally influential self-help books ever to be written, and new generations of readers are constantly discovering it. Her simple prose and clear thinking make the book much more accessible than other New Thought classics, and her message of love and self-acceptance seems to continue to strike a chord in the public imagination.

Prosperity Spirituality

One of the most popular forms of New Thought thinking, and one of the most controversial, is that of Prosperity Spirituality. The idea that cultivating a spiritual life can lead to material riches has always been a fundamental part of New Thought philosophy, and is what sets New Thought apart from standard Christian theology more than anything else.
The Prosperity Spirituality probably reached its apotheosis in the books of Catherine Ponder. Books like The Millionaire from Nazareth set out a new vision of Christianity that rejects the glorification of poverty and instead urges the reader to "give your attention to the science of acquiring wealth."
As much as the religious mainstream likes to make fun of these ideas, there is no denying that they are enormously attractive to the average reader/churchgoer, as is evidenced by the continued popularity of material espousing a Prosperity Spirituality. Certainly The Secret is a part of this tradition, containing as it does quote after quote from more contemporary writers and speakers advocating the power of thought to create good material circumstances.
True to her training in the New Thought tradition, Louise Hay has also always advocated the cultivation of prosperity, and defines prosperity according to health, happiness and spiritual contentment, along with the possession of objects. This is, of course, always the ultimate answer to those who might challenge the morality of Prosperity Spirituality - the greatest evidence of prosperity is a warmth and generosity of spirit, and who would seek to begrudge these?
The implication of the Prosperity Spirituality books seems to be that if we seek to be more spiritual and cultivate a truly spiritual existence, then prosperity can never be far behind. It is merely the outcome of correct living and positive states of mind. For in being spiritual, we simply release, as Catherine Ponder says, "the Divinity that is within you which is never poor."