Paige Thomas DeHart

“The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” – Matthew 6:22-23

Jesus was full of all sorts of mysterious sayings. Many theorize that he must have somehow studied in India to have teachings that are so like their wisdom traditions. My theory is that he was a fully enlightened being, here for evolutionary purposes, and the reason his teachings sound like the esoteric teachings of India is because they are true and were spoken to him by God. When your eye is good, which means when your eye only perceives truth, your whole body is full of light. Jesus’ whole body was full of light; as ours can be also.

But what does that mean and how can we get there? First, we must be dedicated to Truth. “But I am already a truthful person,” you may say. I’m not talking about surface truth. I’m talking about self-honesty and the things we tell ourselves about ourselves. Emmet Fox said, “God is I AM THAT I AM, and you are I AM; and you make your own destiny and your own fate by the things that that you attach to that I AM, for that is what you really believe about yourself.”

In the textbook for Alcoholics Anonymous, one of the most liberating sentences says, “So our troubles, we think, are basically of our own making.” The writers of the text are referring to the situations in our lives that have made them unmanageable, but Jesus works from the inside out. He’s not so concerned with our actions as he is with the thoughts that got us there. That’s what “But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart” means. Thoughts are things; and every action begins with a simple thought.

The problem is, though, that we start thinking long before we can examine our thoughts. Basically, our belief systems are created by small children. I, for example, convinced myself that my Mommy didn’t love me because she brought home a baby sister. That sounds like an outlandish example, but our belief systems about ourselves, and everything, are created by the influences of our families and culture.

A Course In Miracles says, “Everything that comes from love is a miracle…You are a miracle, capable of creating in the likeness of your creator. Everything else is your own nightmare and does not exist. Only the creations of light are real.”

So, the first step in creating a belief system built on truth is to discover and discard the untruths whose foundations were created in childhood and adolescence. These are our made-up nightmares. The best way to begin this process is to examine every thought we have about ourselves and then to submit the thought to this question, “Was this thought created with love or fear?” “Mommy doesn’t love me” was created by fear.

I was born in 1961 when women were to be seen and not heard; and were expected to be pearl and high-heeled-wearing servants of men. The blatant message to us girls was that you must look pretty and act demure to get a man (which also implied that getting a man was the goal!). Unfortunately, because of being separated from my mother at age 8, I developed a serious weight problem and was considered unacceptable by my parents and peers. I was once told, “You’re so fat and ugly, no one is going to ever look at you.” That sentence became my inner mantra. It informed every thought I had about myself. I discovered that drugs and alcohol could keep the self-loathing at bay, but once I started trying to sober up in the mid-eighties, the thoughts, which had become the voices in my head, became more unbearable than ever.

I entered the spiritual path at age 25. At that time, I was exposed to the writings of Emmet Fox and Louise Hay. Both wrote about affirmations: thoughts to help program new ideas about myself. I decided that my new mantra would be “I love myself and accept myself just the way I am.” Unfortunately, when I began, the affirmation was always rebuked with a resounding “You fat slob!” I did not understand then that saying no to the lie was just as important as saying yes to the truth. This is what Jesus meant when he said to first clean the inside of the cup; before adorning the outside. To affirm positive statements without the preparational denial of the untruth is to put new wine in old wineskins. If you’re not sure how to detect the untruths, try sitting in silence for awhile and pay attention to the clamor that tries to distract you.

Back to the story: I continued to do affirmations for over three years before I made a real turn in my thinking about myself. But finally, one day I walked to the mirror and saw something I had never seen before: a valuable and worthwhile person who was doing the best that she knew how with the information she had at the time. On that day, when I said the affirmation, I meant it; and my life began to change for the better.

Doing the vigilant work of denying negative self-talk and adding positive in return is hard work, but it’s worth it because it is the foundational change that led to a willingness to examine my thoughts about everything. It turns out that I had believed many things in my core that were not true or healthy. Today, I am a completely different person than I was when my journey began; because I learned to change my thinking which changed my worldview; just as A Course In Miracles promises, “Miracles honor you because you are lovable. They dispel illusions about yourself and perceive the light in you. Thus they atone for your errors by freeing you from your nightmares. By releasing your mind from the imprisonment of your illusions, they restore your sanity.”

Jesus said, “You are the light of the world.” So next time you catch yourself thinking, “Nobody likes me, I can’t do anything right, or I’m a failure,” remember that those are thoughts that are made from lies. Use love to create the truth by affirming, “I am a valuable and worthwhile person. I matter and I have a right to be here. Nothing can stop me from accomplishing my goals except my limited beliefs in myself and God;” that your “eye” will be good and your whole body will be full of light.

Namaste and Amen

Paige Thomas DeHart