Beyond Maybe

We Can Never Go Back to Before

There is a song from the musical Ragtime called “Back to Before.” I got asked at the last minute this Sunday to sing something. I went through my song catalogue trying to find something that would fit our new topic this month, “Say Yes to Life,” and also our talk title today, “Beyond Maybe.” This song came to mind because it’s about a change in consciousness. Nothing has changed on the outside — just the perception of the thinker. In the song, she has come to realize that there is a world beyond the limited life she has lived for so long. All of a sudden, her mind is expanded and she cannot go back to before.

I never saw this musical, but I know it is about people coming to a new land, leaving behind the world that they had trusted and believed in for so long. Suddenly, they have a change in consciousness and they realize there is so much more than they ever knew.

I can identify with this in regard to coming to this teaching called the Science of Mind, New Thought. When I first heard the words “Change your thinking, change your life,” I didn’t understand it at first. Just like anyone coming to a strange town or country might not understand the language or the people or the ideas. But something deep within me opened with those words. And then, those words were followed by: God isn’t out there somewhere up on a cloud, but right where you are. No more supplication. No more hell and damnation. Heaven is a state of mind.

I took all this in. I didn’t accept it at first. I needed to learn more. I needed to study. To test these tenets in my life. And I did, over and over. I was never disappointed. There wasn’t a time when the idea that I could change my reality by how I thought about that reality ever let me down. I went through the deaths of friends, parents. I went through physical challenges within myself and my own husband. It never let me down. I could test it against any situation and come up with answers and solutions and healings and expansion.

It wasn’t always easy, and sometimes it was scary. Thinking differently is challenging, and it takes a moment to get from one side of the shore to the other. I remember hearing that when you make an intention to change, sometimes all hell breaks loose. It did for me. Then I discovered something. How would I ever know if I truly believed what I believed if those challenges didn’t present themselves? For example, I didn’t get rich overnight or never experience illness — but what did happen through those challenges was that I came to completely love myself no matter what, and to realize that I deserved everything.

When we travel to a new land, when we say yes to anything, we open ourselves up to criticism. We open ourselves up to everything that tests our new beliefs. I remember my very dear friend, upon losing his daughter tragically, standing on the platform saying, “My heart might be broken into a million pieces, but my faith has not been shaken. I still believe my life is unfolding perfectly no matter what.” It didn’t bring his daughter back, but it eventually brought him back to life.

I remember leaving our classes at night in the middle of North Hollywood, ten or twenty of us piling out onto the street, going back to the world of conditions. There were people lying in the gutter. There were people silently crying as they walked — not outside tears, but you could sense their pain. There were people joking and just having a good time. They were saying yes to life in their own way. And there were my friends and I. Our minds had somehow been changed. I used to call us the “God people.” We thought we were God, and with that thought, we tested it on life. And we were changed.

As the saying goes, “Once the mind is expanded, it cannot go back to its original size.” That was my mind. I could never go back to before the Science of Mind. Did I stumble? Yes. But when I did, I stumbled back onto my own footsteps and the use of a Science and a teaching that is foolproof. “It is done unto you as you believe,” and for me, nothing can ever change that.

So every day I work on those beliefs. I expand. I seek new information. I stay, as Ernest Holmes would say, “open at the top.” But never in almost thirty years have I ever thought I might have been wrong about my conception of a God within. I’ve learned more about that — things like God is evolving within me, as me, as us. That blew my mind. And I keep blowing my mind over and over, but I can never go back to before.

And so, what it might be like to let go of something you’ve believed for so long that isn’t serving you — a limited way of thinking about yourself or the Universe. I invite you to allow yourself to open up to something new. By saying yes to life. I do not know what is next, but I do know that whatever that is, I will be able to handle it and move through it with the knowing that by changing my thinking, I can change my life.

Love and Aloha,

Dr. Rita Andriello-Feren

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