What this book is going to cover –
and what you CAN get out of this book.
The world around you is exactly what you think it is. Another way to put this: you have thought everything around you into its current existence. And hello to you, too!
The first step to improving your lot in life is to confront it and take responsibility for creating it.
That's quite a slap in the face, isn't it.
But that is just the way it is.
Hopefully, you've covered my earlier two books in this series, Go Thunk Yourself!, and Go Thunk Yourself, Again. In these books, I outlined the exact ways and operations of this universe which surrounds us. The first gave you 14 rules which could improve your life. The second gave you a four-way “thunk” which told you any increase in personal ability required confront, responsibility, understanding, and purpose. Clarity on all four was required, but improving any of these would improve the whole.
I've given you in those books all you need to work out what I am going to tell you in this one. But I'm saving you the trouble of working it out for yourself.
Why I'm doing this is part of my own purpose. I started down this road some 35 years ago or more. I've studied various religions, psychologies, counseling techniques and ancient texts of different cultures. What came to me was a single underlying system which kept being talked about over and over, in different phrases and different languages and grammars. Merely working this all out for my own use would have been a horrible end for me. Imagine having keys to solving any or all of man's problems and then sitting on it. That would put a damper on things, to be sure.
Essentially, this is a self-analysis book and a self-counseling book all rolled into one. I don't think that it will be easy, but it's not impossible to achieve.
In this book, I'm going to help you figure out how to change your world view and essentially reprogram yourself at the deepest levels you want to confront. You can change all of it or very little. But by reading this book (or even part of it) you are changing something in your life. As you change your thoughts, the world around you will change. That's just the way it is. You've seen some of this and heard others who have experienced this.
At this point, you can simply say that I'm off my rocker and send for a refund.
But on the other hand, there is a reason this book has come into your hands. There is some lesson you want to learn, something you've been searching for. As the ancient Hindu's and others have said: “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.” Another ancient philosophy holds that there are no accidents, that everything happens for a purpose.
So if you do set this book down, it might be preferable that you put it somewhere you can “happen upon” it again. Otherwise – read this through to the end and then start over. You may want to pick up some of the books in the bibliography – or my earlier books in this series, or books in those bibliographies.
The point of this book is to enable you to live a simpler, more purposeful life. I've done all this work to distill these volumes of data down to the essential laws and rules for you, plus give you some simple exercises to help you on your way. Hopefully, it will be speedier and simpler for you than myself or those who have gone before us.
As in the other books, I'll simply write what you need to know to get this stuff applied. There are tons of books out there which have covered these principles in far more detail. My job is to get all this to you in some simple form you can understand readily and immediately apply. Then I give you some tools at the end to build on my short descriptions
The goal we share is improving our personal lives, living at a better pace, and evolving to a higher state of operation. In this book, I hope to give you the basic tools to enable us both to achieve that goal.
To all of us, I then wish:
Good Hunting!
Friday, September 22, 2006
Part I – Commitment and “Burning Desire” to Improve
There is nothing stronger than a single-minded approach to any subject. A group or individual having a single goal to accomplish and devoting all their resources to achieve it is unstoppable.
This is the secret to Hill's approach. You have to name what you are going to do and then align everything you can to achieve it. That's the simplicity of it all. But getting from where you are currently to that single-minded approach is why this book is written.
I'm assuming that you have read Hill's Think and Grow Rich. (If not, I've supplied an edited version from the public domain version in the appendix). Hill is a classic, because he wrote it to bring people out of the Depression by helping them eliminate their fears of poverty and concentrate on becoming rich. He gave them the tools to do so and as such became one of the first (following Haanel, his mentor) to enable people to reprogram themselves.
Let's dissect Hill's second chapter, quoting liberally as we analyze why this is so:
DESIRE
The starting point of all achievement
“Every person who wins in any undertaking must be willing to burn his ships and cut all sources of retreat. Only by so doing can one be sure of maintaining that state of mind known as a BURNING DESIRE TO WIN, essential to success.”
Hill starts out by telling you to put everything on the line. You must dedicate yourself completely to accomplishing this one goal. You must change your life to follow this one, single light in front of you, your own personal “BURNING DESIRE”.
“Every human being who reaches the age of understanding of the purpose of money, wishes for it. Wishing will not bring riches. But desiring riches with a state of mind that becomes an obsession, then planning definite ways and means to acquire riches, and backing those plans with persistence which does not recognize failure, will bring riches.”
Key points here:
“The method by which DESIRE for riches can be transmuted into its financial equivalent, consists of six definite, practical steps, viz:
“First. Fix in your mind the exact amount of money you desire. It is not sufficient merely to say “I want plenty of money.” Be definite as to the amount.
“Second. Determine exactly what you intend to give in return for the money you desire. (There is no such reality as “something for nothing.)
“Third. Establish a definite date when you intend to possess the money you desire.
“Fourth. Create a definite plan for carrying out your desire, and begin at once, whether you are ready or not, to put this plan into action.
“Fifth. Write out a clear, concise statement of the amount of money you intend to acquire, name the time limit for its acquisition, state what you intend to give in return for the money, and describe clearly the plan through which you intend to accumulate it.
“Sixth. Read your written statement aloud, twice daily, once just before retiring at night, and once after arising in the morning. AS YOU READ—SEE AND FEEL AND BELIEVE YOURSELF ALREADY IN POSSESSION OF THE MONEY.“
Here you have the whole book in six steps. Plan your work, work your plan. The trick is in the last step – always “thunk” your ideas in the past tense and add in plenty of emotive content to ensure it works. This is where the BURNING DESIRE comes in -
“Only those who become “money conscious” ever accumulate great riches. “Money consciousness” means that the mind has become so thoroughly saturated with the DESIRE for money, that one can see one’s self already in possession of it.”
Let's now look into how you “plan your work”:
“The steps call for no “hard labor.” They call for no sacrifice. They do not require one to become ridiculous, or credulous. To apply them calls for no great amount of education. But the successful application of these six steps does call for sufficient imagination to enable one to see, and to understand, that accumulation of money cannot be left to chance, good fortune, and luck. One must realize that all who have accumulated great fortunes, first did a certain amount of dreaming, hoping, wishing, DESIRING, and PLANNING before they acquired money.
“You may as well know, right here, that you can never have riches in great quantities, UNLESS you can work yourself into a white heat of DESIRE for money, and actually BELIEVE you will possess it.”
There you have it: “cannot be left to chance, good fortune, and luck”. Most of the habits we have gotten into revolve around building our worlds are based on accepted norms. We have accepted behavioral patterns, customs, and social responses as “automatic”, never reviewed or adjusted. Below I explain how these have created a “zero-sum” society where no-one truly wins.
“If you do not see great riches in your imagination, you will never see them in your bank balance.
“Never, in the history of America has there been so great an opportunity for practical dreamers as now exists. The six year economic collapse has reduced all men, substantially, to the same level. A new race is about to be run. The stakes represent huge fortunes which will be accumulated within the next ten years. The rules of the race have changed, because we now live in a CHANGED WORLD that definitely favors the masses, those who had but little or no opportunity to win under the conditions existing during the Depression, when fear paralyzed growth and development.”
Here we have the purpose for this book. Hill had already written a voluminous work called the Law of Success. Here he laid out in extensive detail the 16 steps to achieve any amount of riches or success. Think and Grow Rich was specifically written to address this particular situation where the playing field was truly leveled. Almost the entire country was in the same situation – nearly flat broke, because the economic (banking) system had been collapsed. People could work, people could invent, people still had their ability to create. What people didn't have was readily available money – but did have their fear of dying poor.
In today's world, the Internet has again leveled the playing field. Many, many thousands of people have gotten rich through simply arranging the sales of their items internationally over this medium. Millionaires have been created in months simply because they applied themselves. What they applied is still within these same principles Hill outlined – which he learned from the hundreds of successes he studied, as well as other authors such as Judge Thomas Troward and Charles F. Haanel.
“We who are in this race for riches, should be encouraged to know that this changed world in which we live is demanding new ideas, new ways of doing things, new leaders, new inventions, new methods of teaching, new methods of marketing, new books, new literature, new features for the radio, new ideas for moving pictures. Back of all this demand for new and better things, there is one quality which one must possess to win, and that is DEFINITENESS OF PURPOSE, the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning DESIRE to possess it.”
Here's the rise of Bill Gates, Sam Walton, Michael Dell, Ray Kroc, and numerous others. The principles these successful people used are basic to this world and our operation in it. Anyone who finds and applies these data as Hill lays it out will undoubtedly become a success. Any success you read about or witness has used these principles, wittingly or unwittingly. If they continue as a success (not the flash-in-the-pan lottery winners), they are continuing to apply these principles.
“Tolerance, and an open mind are practical necessities of the dreamer of today. Those who are afraid of new ideas are doomed before they start. ...
“In planning to acquire your share of the riches, let no one influence you to scorn the dreamer. ...
“If the thing you wish to do is right, and you believe in it, go ahead and do it! Put your dream across, and never mind what “they” say if you meet with temporary defeat, for “they,” perhaps, do not know that EVERY FAILURE BRINGS WITH IT THE SEED OF AN EQUIVALENT SUCCESS.”
Two key points here:
Live your dreams, live them large. Never mind if people don't believe in you. Just go ahead and get it done anyhow. Be very independent in your thinking, doing, and achieving. Be willing to examine things about you with a clear and open mind. Use what can be used to improve your solutions and operations. But don't worry about what people think or say about you.
“A BURNING DESIRE TO BE, AND TO DO is the starting point from which the dreamer must take off. Dreams are not born of indifference, laziness, or lack of ambition.”
Again – live your dreams.
“Remember, too, that all who succeed in life get off to a bad start, and pass through many heartbreaking struggles before they 'arrive.' The turning point in the lives of those who succeed, usually comes at the moment of some crisis, through which they are introduced to their 'other selves.'"
Here you can see your earlier patterns holding you back – all the failures you may encounter are laid in through other belief-systems and habits you've accepted through your life to this point. A point here is to treat every “failure” for the lesson within it. There is some non-optimal solution at the base, which needs re-examination and sort-out.
“There is a difference between WISHING for a thing and being READY to receive it. No one is ready for a thing, until he believes he can acquire it. The state of mind must be BELIEF, not mere hope or wish. Open-mindedness is essential for belief. Closed minds do not inspire faith, courage, and belief.”
Another key point is belief – also known as faith. You have to have confidence in yourself, which comes back to your own personal BURNING DESIRE. Get ready, 'cause here it comes, ready or not...
“I believe in the power of DESIRE backed by FAITH, because I have seen this power lift men from lowly beginnings to places of power and wealth; I have seen it rob the grave of its victims; I have seen it serve as the medium by which men staged a comeback after having been defeated in a hundred different ways... I wish to convey the thought that all achievement, no matter what may be its nature, or its purpose, must begin with an intense, BURNING DESIRE for something definite. "
Here, in the wrap-up of this chapter, he concludes that your desire, backed up by faith, brings anything to fruition. You must first have an “intense, BURNING DESIRE for something definite.
Key Points to Desire
To recap the key points here:
Your desire, backed up by faith, brings anything to fruition. You must first have an “intense, BURNING DESIRE for something definite.
Now let's see how you get your mind to cooperate with your dreams...
This is the secret to Hill's approach. You have to name what you are going to do and then align everything you can to achieve it. That's the simplicity of it all. But getting from where you are currently to that single-minded approach is why this book is written.
I'm assuming that you have read Hill's Think and Grow Rich. (If not, I've supplied an edited version from the public domain version in the appendix). Hill is a classic, because he wrote it to bring people out of the Depression by helping them eliminate their fears of poverty and concentrate on becoming rich. He gave them the tools to do so and as such became one of the first (following Haanel, his mentor) to enable people to reprogram themselves.
Let's dissect Hill's second chapter, quoting liberally as we analyze why this is so:
DESIRE
The starting point of all achievement
“Every person who wins in any undertaking must be willing to burn his ships and cut all sources of retreat. Only by so doing can one be sure of maintaining that state of mind known as a BURNING DESIRE TO WIN, essential to success.”
Hill starts out by telling you to put everything on the line. You must dedicate yourself completely to accomplishing this one goal. You must change your life to follow this one, single light in front of you, your own personal “BURNING DESIRE”.
“Every human being who reaches the age of understanding of the purpose of money, wishes for it. Wishing will not bring riches. But desiring riches with a state of mind that becomes an obsession, then planning definite ways and means to acquire riches, and backing those plans with persistence which does not recognize failure, will bring riches.”
Key points here:
- State of mind = obsession.
- Planning
- Persistence
- Non-recognition of Failure
“The method by which DESIRE for riches can be transmuted into its financial equivalent, consists of six definite, practical steps, viz:
“First. Fix in your mind the exact amount of money you desire. It is not sufficient merely to say “I want plenty of money.” Be definite as to the amount.
“Second. Determine exactly what you intend to give in return for the money you desire. (There is no such reality as “something for nothing.)
“Third. Establish a definite date when you intend to possess the money you desire.
“Fourth. Create a definite plan for carrying out your desire, and begin at once, whether you are ready or not, to put this plan into action.
“Fifth. Write out a clear, concise statement of the amount of money you intend to acquire, name the time limit for its acquisition, state what you intend to give in return for the money, and describe clearly the plan through which you intend to accumulate it.
“Sixth. Read your written statement aloud, twice daily, once just before retiring at night, and once after arising in the morning. AS YOU READ—SEE AND FEEL AND BELIEVE YOURSELF ALREADY IN POSSESSION OF THE MONEY.“
Here you have the whole book in six steps. Plan your work, work your plan. The trick is in the last step – always “thunk” your ideas in the past tense and add in plenty of emotive content to ensure it works. This is where the BURNING DESIRE comes in -
“Only those who become “money conscious” ever accumulate great riches. “Money consciousness” means that the mind has become so thoroughly saturated with the DESIRE for money, that one can see one’s self already in possession of it.”
Let's now look into how you “plan your work”:
“The steps call for no “hard labor.” They call for no sacrifice. They do not require one to become ridiculous, or credulous. To apply them calls for no great amount of education. But the successful application of these six steps does call for sufficient imagination to enable one to see, and to understand, that accumulation of money cannot be left to chance, good fortune, and luck. One must realize that all who have accumulated great fortunes, first did a certain amount of dreaming, hoping, wishing, DESIRING, and PLANNING before they acquired money.
“You may as well know, right here, that you can never have riches in great quantities, UNLESS you can work yourself into a white heat of DESIRE for money, and actually BELIEVE you will possess it.”
There you have it: “cannot be left to chance, good fortune, and luck”. Most of the habits we have gotten into revolve around building our worlds are based on accepted norms. We have accepted behavioral patterns, customs, and social responses as “automatic”, never reviewed or adjusted. Below I explain how these have created a “zero-sum” society where no-one truly wins.
“If you do not see great riches in your imagination, you will never see them in your bank balance.
“Never, in the history of America has there been so great an opportunity for practical dreamers as now exists. The six year economic collapse has reduced all men, substantially, to the same level. A new race is about to be run. The stakes represent huge fortunes which will be accumulated within the next ten years. The rules of the race have changed, because we now live in a CHANGED WORLD that definitely favors the masses, those who had but little or no opportunity to win under the conditions existing during the Depression, when fear paralyzed growth and development.”
Here we have the purpose for this book. Hill had already written a voluminous work called the Law of Success. Here he laid out in extensive detail the 16 steps to achieve any amount of riches or success. Think and Grow Rich was specifically written to address this particular situation where the playing field was truly leveled. Almost the entire country was in the same situation – nearly flat broke, because the economic (banking) system had been collapsed. People could work, people could invent, people still had their ability to create. What people didn't have was readily available money – but did have their fear of dying poor.
In today's world, the Internet has again leveled the playing field. Many, many thousands of people have gotten rich through simply arranging the sales of their items internationally over this medium. Millionaires have been created in months simply because they applied themselves. What they applied is still within these same principles Hill outlined – which he learned from the hundreds of successes he studied, as well as other authors such as Judge Thomas Troward and Charles F. Haanel.
“We who are in this race for riches, should be encouraged to know that this changed world in which we live is demanding new ideas, new ways of doing things, new leaders, new inventions, new methods of teaching, new methods of marketing, new books, new literature, new features for the radio, new ideas for moving pictures. Back of all this demand for new and better things, there is one quality which one must possess to win, and that is DEFINITENESS OF PURPOSE, the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning DESIRE to possess it.”
Here's the rise of Bill Gates, Sam Walton, Michael Dell, Ray Kroc, and numerous others. The principles these successful people used are basic to this world and our operation in it. Anyone who finds and applies these data as Hill lays it out will undoubtedly become a success. Any success you read about or witness has used these principles, wittingly or unwittingly. If they continue as a success (not the flash-in-the-pan lottery winners), they are continuing to apply these principles.
“Tolerance, and an open mind are practical necessities of the dreamer of today. Those who are afraid of new ideas are doomed before they start. ...
“In planning to acquire your share of the riches, let no one influence you to scorn the dreamer. ...
“If the thing you wish to do is right, and you believe in it, go ahead and do it! Put your dream across, and never mind what “they” say if you meet with temporary defeat, for “they,” perhaps, do not know that EVERY FAILURE BRINGS WITH IT THE SEED OF AN EQUIVALENT SUCCESS.”
Two key points here:
- Suspend disbelief
- Disregard those who don't.
Live your dreams, live them large. Never mind if people don't believe in you. Just go ahead and get it done anyhow. Be very independent in your thinking, doing, and achieving. Be willing to examine things about you with a clear and open mind. Use what can be used to improve your solutions and operations. But don't worry about what people think or say about you.
“A BURNING DESIRE TO BE, AND TO DO is the starting point from which the dreamer must take off. Dreams are not born of indifference, laziness, or lack of ambition.”
Again – live your dreams.
“Remember, too, that all who succeed in life get off to a bad start, and pass through many heartbreaking struggles before they 'arrive.' The turning point in the lives of those who succeed, usually comes at the moment of some crisis, through which they are introduced to their 'other selves.'"
Here you can see your earlier patterns holding you back – all the failures you may encounter are laid in through other belief-systems and habits you've accepted through your life to this point. A point here is to treat every “failure” for the lesson within it. There is some non-optimal solution at the base, which needs re-examination and sort-out.
“There is a difference between WISHING for a thing and being READY to receive it. No one is ready for a thing, until he believes he can acquire it. The state of mind must be BELIEF, not mere hope or wish. Open-mindedness is essential for belief. Closed minds do not inspire faith, courage, and belief.”
Another key point is belief – also known as faith. You have to have confidence in yourself, which comes back to your own personal BURNING DESIRE. Get ready, 'cause here it comes, ready or not...
“I believe in the power of DESIRE backed by FAITH, because I have seen this power lift men from lowly beginnings to places of power and wealth; I have seen it rob the grave of its victims; I have seen it serve as the medium by which men staged a comeback after having been defeated in a hundred different ways... I wish to convey the thought that all achievement, no matter what may be its nature, or its purpose, must begin with an intense, BURNING DESIRE for something definite. "
Here, in the wrap-up of this chapter, he concludes that your desire, backed up by faith, brings anything to fruition. You must first have an “intense, BURNING DESIRE for something definite.
Key Points to Desire
To recap the key points here:
- State of mind = obsession.
- Planning – plan your work, work your plan.
- Persistence
- Non-recognition of Failure
- Live your dreams
- Suspend disbelief
- Disregard those who don't.
Your desire, backed up by faith, brings anything to fruition. You must first have an “intense, BURNING DESIRE for something definite.
Now let's see how you get your mind to cooperate with your dreams...
Part II – How the Mind Works
It's an “always on” world and world-view
Your thinking is hard-wired and is always on. Sleeping or waking, on drugs or sober – you are always thinking, always comparing data, always analyzing the results. The bottom line is that your subconscious is always on and functioning, keeping your heart, breathing, and other vital functions continuing regardless.
Below this, all the atoms in the elements which make up your body continue to spin and gyrate regardless of your own life. I've covered this quite summarily in Go Thunk Yourself, Again. We are all linked directly through the quantum field, which continues in operation even where no member of humankind is present.
This is the state of humankind and has apparently always been that way. While you and I live in a very interesting modern world, the view ancients had was of a very primitive world with no modern cushions to fall back on. There was no welfare, no workman's comp, no crop insurance – if the crops failed, if you got hurt, if you lost your job... the world view these people had was of a very cut-and-dried world. If you failed, you died. In rare moments, certain people wound up in very singular instances and were able to logically investigate their world and reflect on it. Up until this century, these rare circumstances usually required someone making their fortune early in life – as Benjamin Franklin did, retiring when only 40 – leaving them free to use the remainder of that life to sort out what they were thinking and how.
In these days, we have more buffers against life's ravages to review our lives. We modernly have the Internet and high-speed connections to download any number of ancient and modern texts, recordings and video, enough to fill several hard drives.
Along with the free time and Internet, we also have intense competition from TV, cable, satellites, video games, DVD's, and videos to keep our spare time filled. Countless hobbies tax our higher disposable income as well.
People might not have time or money to investigate how they think, or to add to the vast stores of philosophy already present. Much less, they have little time to figure out how they got the way they are. Problems, confusions, chronic upsets – all these have no solution or some pat solution which doesn't work perfectly. But, hey, that the way Uncle George handled it.
Which leads us to our problem. We think in odd ways at times. Where did all this come from? Good solutions and bad, how come I had to say that to her then? You'd really like to take that foot out of your mouth, but how did it get there to begin with?
Part of it, not as most psychology students learn it, came from genetics. Some, like our pets, is hard-wired. They can walk and scratch and find their mother's milk in hours. Humans take days to learn all this stuff, if not years. But to say that all comes from genetics is also faulty. Why do humans take days and years to learn survival patterns? The key is in the term learn. Humans learn.
Learning is not just robotically following hard-wired patterns like breathing, blood-circulation, digestion and other autonomic responses. Everything a person says and does isn't autonomic. Animals, particularly pets, learn – and they also teach. They teach each other and also their human handlers. There are volumes written about animal behavior and how they adapt to their environment, as well as evolve. Those are the reasons for learning, to adapt and to evolve.
Learning is based on earlier patterns, both hard-wired and adopted by example, or through trial-and-error. The key part here is to take this word pattern and examine the concept behind it.
Patterns are survival mechanisms. Patterns are based on optimal solutions, not perfect solutions, but more optimal solutions than had gone before. Someone learns a pattern like drinking directly from a stream. When another person teases him by coming up from behind quietly and then quickly pushing his head under, he might change that pattern by cupping his hand to drink from it. In this way, he is able to keep his eyes and ears more alert to pranksters – or real dangers. That same person might have learned this from getting tired of rushing water going up his nose, or falling in to many times when the water level is far below the stream-bank.
While he could also learn this pattern by watching someone else who had figured this out (which is how teaching is done), it still his his ability or willingness to change his pattern when he sees a better way of doing things.
Learning involves comparing a given pattern against another pattern and then taking the best result as your own. Not stated in this is that a person is striving constantly to improve his quality of life and is interested in more optimal solutions. Also not stated here is that we have developed at this point into being “always on” ourselves. We are always learning, always thinking, always comparing our efforts against other possible solutions, or against earlier times we did the same thing. If anything of our makeup is hard-wired it is learning.
This is where “conditioning” comes in. When you have had some 20 years of learning, with those around you doing the teaching – added into by TV, movies, radio and other popular media – you can say you've been “conditioned”.
What you are actually saying is that for better or worse, you've learned by your own practice, your own trial-and-error fumbling, and the mannerisms and practices of those around you. You've adopted the ethnic traits of your family, the socio-economic patterns of your social class (family + neighborhood + job culture), and the larger patterns which outside information sources (books, as well as “news” media, and the Internet) have brought your way.
These larger patterns have to “make sense”. They have to fall in line with each other and support each other. The reason you go to church is partially because your family always went to church, but also because there is a use for spirituality in your life. Going to church regularly aligns with and supports an optimal solution you use to make the progress that you do. Here we have Life Goals. How you are going to accomplish what you have set out to do is very much set up in the patterns you have learned, tested, and adopted as your own. And you constantly test these patterns and refine them against whether they are currently and effectively forwarding you toward your adopted life goals.
Patterns that routinely test out become habits. Patterns that aren't working (or habits which are getting you in trouble, such as addictions) cause stress. Stress is the collision of two patterns, or a pattern you have to refine in order to achieve one or more of your goals. Either way, it is a learning situation, it is a thinking situation. Emotion can be regarded as indicating that two or more of your patterns are in conflict and you simply need time to “get the lesson” of that situation – or just finish thinking through / refining your patterns.
You may be running into a habit. Habits, like IQ, are not fixed and immovable. They both change constantly, depending on the environment around you and your reaction to it (as well as whether you're tired, hungry, or ill). Habits can be changed by practicing a new and/or revised habit in place of the original one for about two to three weeks. (I'll cover a bit more on how to do this later in this book.)
The point is that any “limits” you have only reside within yourself. Nothing in this universe is static and set in stone. Everything is in constant motion and change. Even the chair you are sitting in, or floor you are standing on – at a sub-molecular level, that substance is whirling around in a mad, frenzied dance. And the solidity of that substance is actually in question, since there is more space than particles at that level. What is holding that stuff together are several forces which themselves are not particles, are not solid, and can only be measured by their effect. These forces cannot be sensed with our normal sight, taste, smell, hearing, feeling senses. But we don't have to know that they are there or how they work to sit in a chair or stand on a platform reading a book. Everything is in motion, but for our practical use, we call the book, chair and platform all “solid”. Just as we accept that a plane can fly through the air or a boat can sail while pushed by the pressure of air – a substance we can only feel when it is moving or see when it becomes too heavy with moisture to hold the water up any longer (also known as rain).
Out of this constant change, we adopt certain ideas (also things which cannot be sensed) to align our work toward. These are “goals”. Goals are simply decisions to attain something, to have something, to create a result or product. Your choice in this decision may have been influenced by your culture / environment. As well, you may have had intuitive or spiritual input in that choice. Goals also are constantly modified and/or reinforced, due to this regular thinking process which is ongoing.
The firmness with which one holds a goal (a characteristic of faith) determines how easily it will be attained. Big goals and small, it depends on the individual to hold these truths to be self-evident. No one else is going to dissuade you from your goal without your personal agreement and co-action.
This brings up another interesting point. All your thinking is your own. While others can attempt to persuade you, your Free Will can never be trumped. There is no slavery without the cooperation of the slave. One can kill another, true. And one might decide to go along with certain actions to forestall that finality. Because of the above fact, anything one agrees with can be later disagreed with. Years of someone groveling in a cult can be reversed. Some studies have this at 12 years before one returns to “normal” after leaving a cult. Practically, one is normal at all times, since a person creates their own norm. Cults only give some varying datums which tend to “blinder” the person to other points of view. Once one starts to decide for oneself, he / she can drop any particular set of blinders. Most cults are more sociological than religious. Cults can hide behind a religious facade, but their work is to shelter the individual from receiving or accepting data which is contrary to that of the cult's basic tenets. Those in charge of the cults have their own reason for continuing this facade. Usually, it is economic in basis – keeping people working for you for minimal pay and donating their life earnings to the cult keeps that organization operating. If that cult ran out of money, the cult leader would be out of a very cushy job and probably pursued. When people find out what they have been missing, they can get a bit irritated for a time. And the lawsuits can start flying at that point.
Let's review at this point:
- People are always thinking.
- Their patterns are the result of lessons learned.
- No one can persuade you to change your mind except with your permission.
This leads to some very interesting results. The world around you is determined a great deal – in fact, completely – by your attitude toward it. Your attitude is built on your patterns. Your reactions are influenced heavily through your pre-built patterns, learned from your environment and education.
And what of the person who lives at effect of this “always on” environment we live in? He / she is “sold” constantly through the massive barrage of advertising. The personal will is submerged with various “jingles” and slogans which give that person the patterns to operate with in life. On top of this, cultural norms are put in place which continue to require the person not do any thinking. If you get sick, go see a professional and pay for this with insurance. The government is supposed to pay for your education and everything else. Taxes to pay for the government are taken out so you don't have to worry about covering it at the end of the year. You are supposed to simply work at a factory job or in a cubicle as a faceless number, 40 hours a week. Your house is being paid for your entire life, and your car is always traded in on the latest new model, meaning you are paying for this your entire life as well. Since you are always in debt, having to have a “steady job” is a constant requirement of life.
And those who try to break out of this mold – you are probably labeled crazy (aren't all artists “crazy”) and constantly pressured into this other mold. After all, this is all you see on TV, so it must be “right”. This is modern Western conditioning.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, those who are actually running things and forwarding our culture economically have already kicked over these traces. Three of the top five wealthiest individuals are college dropouts. These each run corporations who are multi-national in scope and each generate more income than most of the “sovereign nations” on this planet. Their companies were created from scratch – all within this generation. And take both McDonald's and Wal-Mart – each truly revolutionary in operation and scope, having international impact. Neither of their founders graduated from some “Ivy League” university. There are many more examples. Google is one. Amazon is another. Totally revolutionary in scope and effect. Not your typical sitcom scenario. Crazy? They are probably laughing all the way to the bank.
The Western culture is typically zero-sum. Meaning no one really wins. How can you, when your highest goal is to pay off your house by the time you retire and hope that the government keeps paying for your medical and those increasingly more expensive prescriptions. Your retirement is now based, usually, on the stock market and not a retirement fund – if the latter is the case, you are probably dependent on the government supporting this through some interesting financial arrangements. But you have to pay taxes to support this your entire life and make sure your kids do to. One of the biggest arguments behind making all these illegal immigrants legal is so they will start paying to support our government so they can support our retired and retiring Baby-boom generations.
You aren't supposed to get upset. You are supposed to drink beer and watch sports on the weekend, when you're not at the lake in your new SUV. You are supposed to have several marriages and several jobs. You are supposed to live in suburbia in an over-priced home. You are supposed to have the biggest TV you can't afford and your kids having all the latest video games. Women are supposed to be shopping all the time. You are supposed to be constantly keeping your doctor pestered with these requests for various drugs, regardless of whether you have the illness. And if anything goes wrong, call the 1-800 number on the screen and an over-friendly lawyer will sue their pants off, take over half the settlement and let you ruin your life with the rest. Oh, yes – you are also supposed to be eating out, particularly at fast food joints all the time – and then of course, sue these restaurants for making you fat.
Zero-sum. No one really wins.
What is missing is responsibility for your own actions and results. If you don't like your life, you can change it. But then, you know this, since you are reading this book.
Now, part of this conditioning is not according to the Golden Rule. You know, the one which says something about treating people the way you would like to be treated – the one which is in every major religion and philosophy in the world? What isn't stated, but Wayne Dyer mentions, is that how you treat people is your way of training people how to treat you. If you are constantly demanding, you'll get this back at you. Lose your temper consistently and you'll be surrounded by people who lose their temper – you'll think they are completely justified. Of course this is contrary to these major philosophies and religions above – which say that tolerance and internal peace are the routes to personal evolution. Not to mention ending familial strife and workplace stress.
But applying the Golden Rule means confronting your environment and taking responsibility for your own actions. Sorry, not in our current culture. Take two aspirin and get an appointment for another exam with overpriced tests – hey, we have to pay for this exorbitant lawsuit insurance someway...
I'm going to cover this later, but let's take up habits briefly. Your smoking, your drug habits, your under and over eating – all of these are due to habits. All habits are learned through a series of personal choices. On top of this, the body conforms to your dietary commands. If you routinely take a certain substance, the body will adjust so that its metabolism expects this substance constantly. So trying to quit one of your habits then has immediate backlash and personal consequences.
But that habit was something you created. Now you have to sleep in the bed you made. Tough love. But anything you create, you can un-create – or better: re-create.
We'll see more of how to handle this scene below. It's not all that impossible to fix. But it's still tough love.
Three parts of the mind
While I've covered this in earlier books, it bears repeating here, particularly in light of what we have already reviewed.
There is a recurring system which finds its way through self-help, psychology, and also the ancient socio-religious Huna belief-system, which predates (and may have influenced or even founded) Eastern religions. These share the idea (though not synchronous definitions) of a super-conscious mind (God, or Universal Mind, or Amakua in Huna), a conscious mind (Lana in Huna), and a subconscious mind (Ku in Huna). Haanel covers this, as well as Wayne Dyer, King, Tolle, Talbot, and many others who didn't make this Bibliography. Such commonalities are made possible through the use of this engine so far. Below is a summation of what has been derived from many different sources I've examined to date.
People build their belief-system patterns on a genetic level, a subconscious level, and a conscious level, with spiritual or superconscious influence(s). The DNA gives some patterns on a genetic level (while some evidence exists that this is being re-written constantly and isn't just what your parent's gave you). The subconscious is a continually operating, rational part of the mind which is constantly recording and learning from all inputs. As the subconscious is responsible for all autonomic responses as well as recording all memories, this particular part of the mind is both shock-proof and eidetic in all senses and emotions. The subconscious is constantly learning and protecting the conscious from all the overloading and overwhelming content the physical universe is constantly generating. The conscious is the higher-reasoning part of the mind. The conscious gets its data via the subconscious, which controls the senses and filters data from them. While the subconscious can only do “straight-ahead” reasoning, the conscious is capable of true rational thought, being able to compare and contrast and imagine. Where the conscious depends on the emotive content of the subconscious, the results can be erratic and even insane. Where the conscious shuts down the input from the subconscious, that individual can appear stupid or insensible, dull. The superconscious, or Higher Intelligence/Amakua, gives inspiration, intuition and the occasional visionary glimpse. These powers are pretty far above the average (and most better-than-average) abilities. There is a very good discussion of the four pattern sources from the above paragraph in King's Mastering Your Hidden Self.
People are constantly reviewing and evolving their personal thought patterns. Just as the cells in the body are being constantly replaced with slightly different versions, so are both the subconscious and conscious working to update their patterns and so evolve with their ever-changing world. The subconscious is constantly recording the environment around it. The conscious is always evaluating data and working to make sense of it. The conscious is knowingly or unknowingly assisted by the subconscious as the latter brings up suitable patterns for the conscious to use as a solution. (Ever wonder why certain actions consistently “tick you off”?) These patterns have emotional content and are deemed survival by the subconscious as they are always acted on and used to ensure survival. The conscious can review these patterns and adjust them to make them more accurate or eliminate them entirely. Prayer and/or Meditation can bring further insights into these patterns from the Universal Mind/Allah/God. Such insights enable the person to change these patterns or reinforce them.
Fail-safe Protections to Mental Access
Mind's protection
We were created (or evolved) with certain protections against screwing ourselves up beyond repair. Not that suicide is impossible. But for the average Joe without such tendencies, we can rule this out of the equation. I mentioned destruction vs. creation above, that those who are creating improved lives for themselves cannot effectively harm themselves. It's like trying to suffocate yourself by holding your breath – the body takes over at the last minute and pulls you out of it. Yes, you might lose consciousness, but practically you are still alive and the same person as you started out.
Essentially, this traces back to the subconscious, which is running all your autonomic systems and making sure everything works. Only a multitude of compound failures can result in death as long as the subconscious is around. And since you can't get rid of your subconscious in any simple manner while alive, you're stuck with your little buddy.
As far as affecting others, it is similarly impossible. One of the key fail-safes is discussed by Silva and King is that one cannot directly or indirectly influence the life or decisions of someone else. You can offer your choice to them, make your sales pitch, and that's it. The person can accept your offer or not. Free Will, meaning the freedom of personal choice and decision, can't be altered.
Cults may be able to have influence on their devotees as they have walked them up a narrow gradient path of choices. They are called cults because they limit the information flow to their clients/devotees. Once a person is able to reason with additional data, the whole facade cracks and the person departs the cult and gets a new life. While some say that it can take as long as twelve years for a person to recover from such as cult involvement, application of simple analysis in conjunction with any therapy may give that person additional tools to sort out his/her beliefs more quickly. The reason is that now the person has a set of comparatives which is independent of the earlier accepted, emotionally-limiting cult data as well as those of society. (Certain cultures, by definition, are sociological cults both historically and modernly.) One can see that our Information Age, with its access to the Internet, has the inherent means of weakening cult influences and power – as well as those dictocrats who operate them.
“Cosmic habitforce”
The cosmic habitforce is the universe's law of equilibrium, the one natural law into which all other natural laws resolve themselves.
Hill added the principle of the Cosmic Habitforce much later than Think and Grow Rich. As a principle, it simply builds on the above laws, as well as his Law of Success.
When we create a habit, we consign it to the Quantum Hologram / Higher Intelligence as well. All the data of our lives is recorded there. As well, we draw energy from this source for those habits. Hill names this the Law of Cosmic Habitforce. Essentially, this is covered in part in Go Thunk Yourself, Again. Reading Braden's and Bohm's books will give you a broader base. But the principles they now explain get substantial support in other texts, both ancient and modern. Dyer covers this, but also Wattles, Haanel, Troward, quite in addition to Hill in his books.
When you create a pattern, it's recorded and strengthened through your connection to the universe. According to one interpretation of Hill, compared to other reverences above, all our patterns and habits are stored there. Hill says they are reinforced through this. As well, in theory, any habit stored there could be accessed by anyone. This would make revising your personal habits even easier – given a strong personal connection to that field.
I'll cover this a bit more below, in the section on Prayer / Meditation.
Ability formula
As I covered in Go Thunk Yourself Again (and I repeat somewhat below), Ability can be simply broken down to a four-way relationship between Responsibility, Confront, Understanding, and Purpose. The relationship works integrally – increasing any one of the four increases the other three. It is related to Be-Do-Have, which has some mentions in very ancient literature. (Confront as Be, Understanding as Do, and Responsibility as Have.)
Be-Do-Have doesn't just have a current use of requiring the individual to sort out his attitudes (beingness) and adjusting his actions (doingness) in order to achieve the desired results (havingness). I saw that when you aligned this to personal ability, it didn’t necessarily require this sequence of manifestation. For a person manifested ability through all these three points at once. One only needed a purpose to show any ability, since any individual could have any amount of ability; his only limits were his own internal ones. Even in the case of personal physical handicap, there are no real limits to being, doing, or having anything you want in life.
The personal version of this involved observation (be) as a person had to confront the environment around one for what it was, his on abilities were what he currently was manifesting, but he had to look to see where he was and what he was at that moment. The person also had to understand the world around and within him (do). He has to work out conceptually what the patterns are and how he can best align himself to those patterns or those patterns to him. In this that person has to take responsibility for what he is/has been/will be creating or re-creating (have). He has to be responsible for creating the operating patterns which he had and what effects these might work on others. Were a person to suddenly start exhibiting extreme musical talents – this would affect those around him in different manners. The person has to take responsibility for his creations.
All of this is according to the person's own purpose. Why a person does what he does and manifests any particular ability is dependent on his own reasons for doing or not doing, being or not being, creating or not creating. A person has various purposes in life, and probably an overall purpose for that life. Confronting this, Understanding it fully and taking Responsibility for it would enable that Purpose to manifest.
This acts as an interacting four-way inter-relationship. Increasing one's confront and observation of the scene would enable taking more responsibility, more understanding and enhance the original or underlying purpose. Seeing a broader purpose, would enable a higher confront, increased responsibility due to an enriched understanding, and so on. By enabling be-do-have under the Ability heading, we then break free of that above “necessary” sequence which is used in mechanical manifesting.
One's purpose and ability is very much tied to others. What one decides to become, to do, or to achieve affects more than himself or even his immediate relatives or friends. The decision is a point of ability, since no one else can make these decisions for him. However, one can improve the quality of his decisions through application of the four points to his life.
We see also here, as a subset of the Responsibility element, that a person is very much un-limited by others' concerns and established patterns, except as that person accepts others' limits. A person is free to create, at least in his mind, any amount or magnitude of new patterns to operate from. Really, that person's limits are entirely his concepts of his own confront, understanding, and purpose. The ability to bring his imagined creations to fruition is measured not by the muses or any external source, but only his willingness to manifest. Again, this is a limit of his own concept and internal action of confronting, being responsible for the effects of that creation, understanding all the details and ensuing results, plus aligning with or altering his own basic purpose to encompass that creation.
In various studies, Huna and Silva Ultramind among them, many advanced skills are possible to the individual. Remote Viewing, Distance Healing, and Sleep Therapy – all these things are now the subject of scientific study and proved observation (if not scientific understanding). Further, mystic and shaman abilities can now be acquired by practically any individual, given that person's willingness to suspend disbelief and compares his own belief-system against other core studies for commonalities. Some of these commonalities have been outlined here. If we can achieve a common base, then we can extract the truly workable data in order to cross-compare and condense into an effective system.
Through use of this four-way interrelationship as a formula, one's ability to improve the surrounding environment is completely under one's own control. We can break down any desired ability into four parts in order to see what is holding back the manifestation. We can see that if one wants to become a top-flight musician, artist, construction worker, craftsman or parent – one only has to increase his/her observation and confront, or align his purpose(s), or gain more understanding, or take on more responsibility in the area where improvement is wanted. (And one must practice quite a lot – very, very few advances are instantaneous in this universe, although this might be examined through the subject of “miracles”.)
In this formula, we see that since a person can improve his ability, we also then foray into the fields of the arts. The bulk of an artist's skill is in his/her training and practice, one's perseverance in the physical training to apply the internal spark, much as Thomas Edison said, “Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.” This formula does, then, build the ladder and road map for the artist, step by step under his/her feet. By continuing to confront/observe and to be responsibly honest about what level of skill has been achieved compared to what is wanted, the artist can improve skill levels and see what is needed to get to the next level in any given art format or genre. Intuition plays a key point in that 1 percent inspiration.
Ability is key to solve in any approach to counseling, metaphysics or simple living. By breaking it down into four elements, we can more easily analyze any individual's ability-level and then program improvement for that skill or talent, even where little ability in a given area is originally present. In theory, this would outline a method for handling dis-ability as well – but that would be another study.
Part III - How to Re-program Yourself.
It's your world to create... or re-create.
How habits become so
Habits are another name for mental patterns. People adopt and reject patterns constantly in their long lives. Training, family background, television and other media influences – all these give us patterns which we can use to forward our own purpose or goals in life. Once a pattern is adopted, it is practiced over a period of time and then becomes “chronic”.
Addictions are simply habits. The body, through the cooperative work of the subconscious, learns along with you and expects certain chemical substances or emotional states and works up endocrinal responses to any given situation. These glands can create an imbalance which then results in a physical “craving” for whatever substance is being “abused”. For some people, a day without coffee will result in headaches. In other extreme cases, one can induce physical shaking, fevers and various other ills when a drug is withdrawn suddenly. In all cases, the body has been trained into requiring that substance, along with the subconscious. In all cases, its the conscious mind which provides the cure.
How to replace a habit
Any habit can be replaced in about three weeks of consistent effort. Severe drug problems will require substantial nutritional supplements to offset withdrawal symptoms. But for the rest of us, the odd tic or gesture can be overcome by simply creating another pattern which replaces the earlier one.
One author suggests going for a drink of water every time the craving for a cigarette shows up. After between two and three weeks of daily reinforcing this pattern, the other pattern is replaced. (Now you just have to worry about getting waterlogged – joke.) The situation to watch for is that within the first three days or so, more or less, that habit you are trying to change will kick in much harder than you usually experience. Your cravings will peak and subside, usually in about a week, and then taper off as the new habit takes over.
That's the simplicity of it. Any pattern can be replaced – any pattern. But as noted above, only the person himself can change his pattern. People can be duped (brainwashed) temporarily into acting a certain way. Hypnosis can install certain patterns which can be activated with certain external stimuli. However, anything done can be un-done. Once some pattern comes into your awareness, you can make the decision to improve it, retain it, or replace it. Comfortable familial surroundings will usually help war-weary veterans to put old survival patterns behind them.
The reason I say patterns are replaced is due to the factor that the mind is constantly thinking, constantly reviewing and comparing data. There was a reason for the original pattern. Simplest handling for changing any habit is to create a new replacement rather than simply trying to block or ignore the earlier one.
Ethical habits
The interesting point about doing anything in this universe is that it comes back to you, often more than what you asked for. I've often repeated, “You can't give without giving; you get out what you put in.” This point of Reciprocity (some metaphysical authors have elevated this to a Law) is a provable truth. Most religions have stated this somewhere in their scriptures – commonly called the “Golden Rule”, among other things.
Whatever you do, whatever you work at – this will come back to you on the terms you dish it out. Simply that. So if you take these “seduction” books seriously, you had better be prepared for someone “seducing” you in the same way. If you don't account for their Free Will, then you may be “coerced” into doing something you don't want to do. But practically, you really can't be forced into doing anything. So this “coercion” is simply your making the agreement that you can be. In this case, what is good for the Gander to do to the Goose is also exactly what the Gander will be receiving from the Goose, or a similar source.
So what you decide to re-program yourself to do must be ethical. One can act in a destructive manner, but will then attract destructive input. Ultimately, the course of destruction is death – there are far too many examples of this.
The one escape from this is Creative Imagination. This works as creation is built on improving the good that is already present. (Also known as Love.) So when one works to make something better, that person will then pull good works toward themselves. The universe will deliver good works to those who create such for others around them. This is a short explanation of why the Golden Rule works. That the Golden Rule works isn't in question – a person can test both sides of this equation and empirically prove it on a personal basis. Why it works is in the Laws outlined next.
How this universe apparently works
Distilling various and varied texts comes up with a few central points which line up in a logical sequence. I list them here in order to provide a base for discussion and logical thought:
0. Love exists as a primal force. Some have relegated this as a law to explain it more easily. Love is a part of creation and all construction and growth. Lack of love, or its denial, sponsors hate, fear, and anger in their various forms. Each of these attitudes are dissolved once love is supplied in sufficient quantity to overcome its lack.
1.Thought creates Form. Higher intelligence and individual intelligence require each other to produce form from matter. Higher intelligence pervades all forms and is available to all thought.
2. Through the Law of Growth, once a thought is committed, the universe goes into action along the lines of that thought. There are three laws which illuminate this concept further.
2a. By the Law of Attraction, thought attracts similar thought and so form is manifested.
2b. Similarly, the Law of Correspondence says that the exactly as the internal thought exists, so will the external universe correspond.
2c. .By the Law of Cause and Effect, every cause creates an effect; each effect is traceable to a cause. This also means that each effect in turn becomes cause of a new effect.
Through these 5 laws and one primal force, all of humankind's ethics can be derived. All of our natural sciences can be evolved and explained through these as well. There are undoubtedly senior datums to this and many subsequent laws and corollaries which have other relevance and other applications. For our use, the above explains everything we need to start or continue re-programming ourselves.
Prayerize, Picturize, Actualize
Norman Vincent Peale, from The Power of Positive Thinking, recounts the theory and many practical examples of using “ Prayerize, Picturize, Actualize” in order to manifest (or re-manifest) a product in this universe. His example was one where a wife, when confronted by a divorce by her husband, asked for three months and meanwhile used this technique to re-create their earlier bliss.
The technique is a simple one. One prays simply to God, making one's wishes known and asking for guidance in achieving it. The person releases the request over to God to fulfill. The next step is to hold a picture of the accomplished action in one's mind. The person makes this a part of his life, holding a picture of the accomplished action as being present. The concept is entrusted to God, following the intuitive suggestions which come from that Source. Then, the request is granted – the state desired actualizes in fact. Prayerize, Picturize, and then Actualize.
The theory behind this is covered in some detail in Go Thunk Yourself, Again. Essentially, you and I are connected through a universal substance which used to be called the Aether and is now more scientifically labeled the Quantum Field. Some call it the Universal Mind, Quantum Hologram, Higher Intelligence, and other various names. By connecting to this substance and communicating one's wishes into it, anything can be accomplished. I go into the methods for this later.
What we are interested here is in how to change habitual patterns that you have in order to create a better life for yourself and those around you.
Part IV – Prayer / Meditation
How prayer and meditation are metaphysical metaphors
Now for the nitty-gritty of how to get this actually applied.
Prayer and Meditation have an extremely long tradition in their various cultures. There is no denying that each of them has results and are able to improve conditions around them. Dr. Peale's bestseller has many examples of how this works. Deepak Chopra and Wayne Dyer recount others in meditation. Others, such as Silva, take a secular approach to this. They also have a long history of success.
What I say here is that they share the same underlying principles.
Prayer/Meditation connects the person with Higher Intelligence directly and enables various natural laws to become effective for him personally. Make no mistake, the person is manifesting anyway, but the average person believes that it is all Fate or Karma or Luck which rules his life. Once one starts to discipline his own thought and attitudes/emotions, he/she will start to gain control over manifesting as that person sheds self-limiting doubts. That is the core to the success of any self-help system. They are all based on the same underlying concepts, which are universal and found in so many religions, psychotherapies, and esoteric literature to almost defy counting.
The trick is simple, per many authors, but Deepak Chopra (in his Seven Spiritual Laws of Success) seemed to outline it best where he lays out the sequence of doing this as:
1. Slip into the gap, the silent space between the thoughts. In Silva, this is getting into the alpha state or “Going to Level”. (Note here that the deep breathing exercises of Huna are used to attain this relaxed state; Silva also uses several deep breaths to accomplish this.)
2. Release your intentions and desires into this gap. (Silva has several techniques for this, as does Huna.)
3. Maintain your own counsel. (Keep your desires to yourself – this seemed initially unique to Chopra and Dyer, but later showed up in other self-help studies, Hill and Allen. It has some relevancy, in that one tends to agree with those around you and so accept their own limits and cross-survival patterns.)
4. Drop your expectations for exact result. The Universe will present it to you in its own time and in its own way. Having to have it a specific way and time actually hampers the manifestation. You have to trust the Universe with the details. (This is common to nearly all the above sources.)
Joe Vitale, in Spiritual Marketing, echoes these same sentiments through his book, with many illustrations throughout.
“In short, the secret to increasing your business or manifesting whatever you want is:
“1. Know what you don’t want.
"2. Select what you do want.
"3. Clear all negative or limiting beliefs.
"4. Feel what it would be like to have, do, or be what you want.
"5. Let go. Act on your intuitive impulses and allow the results to manifest.”
The more one looks through self-help books, the more one finds these same points over and over.
Dr. Peale covers what he terms “Prayer Power” as a whole chapter in his Power of Positive Thinking. He mentions that prayer is a manifestation of energy and follows exact laws in this regard. While he says that prayer is successful when informal, treating God as a business partner and present in the room or car, this isn't different with other beliefs along this line.
While all these have differing approaches, they share commonalities:
1.Contacting the Higher Intelligence / Universal Mind.
2.Expressing a wish or desire.
3.Leaving it over to God to deal as He sees fit.
Now, the differences is where we can see how to make this most effective. Silva, in his research into what became Silva Ultramind System, found that the common factor in genius and creative inspiration was the alpha brainwave state. Silva's technique for entering this state is quite simple and is very similar to Peale's techniques from his chapter. While there are other brainwave activities of note, Silva's techniques stayed with alpha's. Some other research has stated that Theta and Delta waves have even greater ability to contact and communicate with Higher Intelligence. Unfortunately, their methods are not substantiated.
What is interesting is the approach of possibly the oldest religio-social philosophy known – Huna. There is an approach which uses a garden metaphor to access this Power. Early steps are deep breathing and relaxation, common to Silva. Then the person considers himself being transported to his own personal garden, either by boat, walking, opening a door, or some other approach. Once in the garden, one simply asks to see what needs correction or handling – any problem one has in life. A symbol appears which you can use various resources within the garden to handle. Both King and James cover this in great detail, as do other Huna authors.
The interesting breakthrough this brings up is the possibility of using a metaphorical approach to accessing the tremendous amount of data stored in the Quantum Hologram/Universal Mind. Here is where more research is needed. I've discussed so far how this is already done within existing practices. Theta and Delta waves are usually associated with deep sleep and dreams which aren't usually recalled on waking. One researcher gives a radical use of Chakras in order to utilize this field. King, however, mentions that dreams are a common occurrence in our lives. Actually, he says that we are dreaming even during waking hours. King's chapter on dreaming is very specific and helpful in utilizing this as a tool to solve problems in life as well as deeper complexes. He also makes the statement:
“Every human being dreams every night. There is much evidence to indicate that animals do, too, but we are concerned now with humans. Even if you cannot recall a single dream that you have ever had, this does not mean that you do not dream. It only means you do not remember dreaming. ...
“The most common word for dream is moe 'uhane, which literally means "spirit sleep." A code meaning is "the spirit breaks away and goes elsewhere." Specifically, it refers to the dreams you have during a deep, sound sleep.”
In other words, through training yourself to recall dreams, you can access the deep connection through the subconscious into the Universal Mind.
Tie these together. The better connection with this Source, the more improvement one could make in one's own life. Access to that huge body of data would make one's own analytic process more exact, given that one were able to process that bulk of data. Given the idea of the Huna garden, as well as the Silva method of asking to be woken up when ideal conditions appeared – one could train oneself to be able to recall and process the data relevant to the answers one is seeking.
Another method, which King addresses simply, is recounting Edison's habit of napping as many as seventeen brief naps a day and so only required three hours of sleep each night. This light sleep enabled him to access the Higher Mind / Universal Intelligence through and recall these simply, speeding his work through such inspiration.
Hill recounts the story of a Dr. E. R. Gates who was able to contact this Field directly:
“In his laboratory, he had what he called his “personal communication room.” It was practically sound proof, and so arranged that all light could be shut out. It was equipped with a small table, on which he kept a pad of writing paper. In front of the table, on the wall, was an electric pushbutton, which controlled the lights. When Dr. Gates desired to draw upon the forces available to him through his Creative Imagination, he would go into this room, seat himself at the table, shut off the lights, and CONCENTRATE upon the KNOWN factors of the invention on which he was working, remaining in that position until ideas began to “flash” into his mind in connection with the UNKNOWN factors of the invention.
“On one occasion, ideas came through so fast that he was forced to write for almost three hours. When the thoughts stopped flowing, and he examined his notes, he found they contained a minute description of principles which had not a parallel among the known data of the scientific world.
“Moreover, the answer to his problem was intelligently presented in those notes. In this manner Dr. Gates completed over 200 patents, which had been begun, but not completed, by “half-baked” brains.”
Such methods above, using metaphor, or short naps, or shutting out external stimuli – all seem to enable the individual to develop the ability to access the Universal Mind. An objective, scientific view would say that all these enable a person to recall communication which occurred during theta or delta brainwave activities. What we cover here is something which medicine men and shaman have developed into a bit of an art – slipping off into another world and communicating with the “spirits” one finds there to resolve the problems of the present. At any rate, however one wants to describe it, there are methods which enable a person to directly receive inspiration from a Higher Power and so improve ones live markedly.
This book in no way describes any polished system of accessing this Field. It is tentative results in the search for underlying system(s) on which this universe is built. If you have a system of meditation or prayer which works for you, then I'm not one to ask you to change it. Nor is this section any critique of existing methods. I simply would point out the commonalities of these differing methods, which point to highly effective underlying principles, however they are applied.
Another interesting approach was used by Hill and described in his chapter on the “Sixth Sense”. He used an “imaginary” board composed of key individuals he wished initially to improve his personal habits and attitudes. As he continued this board, he found that these tended to take on a “life of their own”, meaning they started to interact with him during this meetings in ways which were not predicted. These individuals would, on occasion come early or stay late in order to give a personal message to Hill. Once, one initiated a toast for Hill, in celebration of one of his accomplishments.
Our interest in this is that it another approach to accessing the Universal Mind. The metaphor here is a meeting. The odd point is that, much as the Huna Garden, the environment of the meeting responded to the needs and unstated requests of the individual who called the meeting. What is common between the two is the suspension of disbelief and the action of the individual to initiate and participate in building the environment. After that, the interaction increases in tune with the efforts of the individual to resolve his problems / situations.
Another approach might be to access the Universal Mind as a large video library. One would relax and then request the librarian for a video which contained instructions or helpful data needed to resolve a problem. This would work as an interface through the subconscious into the superconscious. Continued work would speed the process, and mights, as in Hill's board meeting, prompt originations from the librarian or others in that library.
Many other possible metaphorical constructions could be invented / discovered. Your imagination should be able to create many scenarios which are comfortable for you. I'd suggest you get King's book and do research on the Garden, as well as reviewing Hill's book chapter before creating your own scenario.
Active and Passive
While Positive Thinking and Western prayer utilizes a very direct approach in working for specific manifestations, Eastern approaches include an indirect, or passive approach.
Passive meditation (and examples of this also exist in prayer) entails
1.Contacting the Higher Intelligence / Universal Mind,
2.Envisioning the ideal you would like to achieve. (If you want more wealth, you concentrate on Prosperity; if you want improved familial relations, concentrate on Love; etc.)
3.Give gratitude and trust that Source with the result.
While active prayer/meditation hinges on both emotive content and requesting in the past tense, the passive form concentrates on the ideal being present – again, experience the full emotive content of having the state in present time. Trust is imperative. Meditation of this type will bring up the doubts and fears, which are simply turning your attention away from there and focusing on the concept until you are filled completely with that concept.
Common to both passive and active is the high emotive content and realization that the result is already present. Gregg Braden (Speaking the Lost Language of God) talks about “praying rain” in one of his examples. He went with a friend to a specific spot, where the friend prayed by simply recalling the positive feelings of reactions to rain – and then experienced torrents within that week.
Others, such as Eckhart Tolle (The Power of Now) agree somewhat, saying that one must attain a joyful bliss in the Now. Braden says that such prayer needs to be accompanied by heart-based feeling. Peale has a somewhat different approach, but similar, who tells his readers to have only positive thoughts, derived from God's love. All of these hit around the same mark: one tunes into the Higher Mind/Universal Intelligence, achieving a mental calm, even a particular bliss and peace. Praying/Meditating with thanksgiving that the idea you want to achieve is already manifest – along with giving the whole concept over to that Higher Intelligence to sort out – will then bring it into your life to the degree you have faith and trust in yourself and God simultaneously. An optimistic and heart-based feeling is achieved as part of the prayer. All of these agree that you must request in the past tense for anything you desire to manifest.
This then brings it full circle to show that there need be a positive emotive content to prayer, which aligns to the Universal Mind and assists in co-creating manifestations.
Emotive content is the point. So often in our culture, one puts emotional content on hold, often habitually. However, Hill points out in Law of Success and later writings that an essential point of success is controlling one's own enthusiasm. Not that you would dampen it, but would be able to produce it when appropriate and develop it as a habit. Backing this with faith is another step to develop a “burning desire”.
I covered in Go Thunk Yourself how one can change his outlook by simply assuming the emotional attitude one wants. I found this as early as Aristotle:
“Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting a particular way. . . you become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions,
brave by performing brave actions.”
This idea Aristotle refers to shows up preeminently in Dale Carnegie's book, How to Develop Self-Confidence and Influence People by Public Speaking. He mentions here that confidence as a speaker can be achieved by simply changing the actions one does and the emotion will follow. He quotes William James (from his work The Gospel of Relaxation):
“Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.
“Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our spontaneous cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. If such conduct does not make you feel cheerful, nothing else on that occasion can.
“So, to feel brave, act as if we were brave, use all of our will to that end, and a courage fit will very likely replace the fit of fear ”.
James himself refers to contemporary scientists who had studied this phenomenon. More recently many studies have been reported which have verified this to be correct in clinical studies and applied uses. People who before were not even able to experience many emotions were able to start relaxing once they practiced smiling.
Our work in this line not only achieves greater success in our manifesting, but also enables us to eliminate our worse habits of uncontrolled outrage or critical comments at inappropriate moments.
Being able to generate appropriate enthusiasm and confidence during prayer assists markedly in the resultant manifestations. Pray / meditate with heartfelt emotion, that is the lesson here.
Now for the nitty-gritty of how to get this actually applied.
Prayer and Meditation have an extremely long tradition in their various cultures. There is no denying that each of them has results and are able to improve conditions around them. Dr. Peale's bestseller has many examples of how this works. Deepak Chopra and Wayne Dyer recount others in meditation. Others, such as Silva, take a secular approach to this. They also have a long history of success.
What I say here is that they share the same underlying principles.
Prayer/Meditation connects the person with Higher Intelligence directly and enables various natural laws to become effective for him personally. Make no mistake, the person is manifesting anyway, but the average person believes that it is all Fate or Karma or Luck which rules his life. Once one starts to discipline his own thought and attitudes/emotions, he/she will start to gain control over manifesting as that person sheds self-limiting doubts. That is the core to the success of any self-help system. They are all based on the same underlying concepts, which are universal and found in so many religions, psychotherapies, and esoteric literature to almost defy counting.
The trick is simple, per many authors, but Deepak Chopra (in his Seven Spiritual Laws of Success) seemed to outline it best where he lays out the sequence of doing this as:
1. Slip into the gap, the silent space between the thoughts. In Silva, this is getting into the alpha state or “Going to Level”. (Note here that the deep breathing exercises of Huna are used to attain this relaxed state; Silva also uses several deep breaths to accomplish this.)
2. Release your intentions and desires into this gap. (Silva has several techniques for this, as does Huna.)
3. Maintain your own counsel. (Keep your desires to yourself – this seemed initially unique to Chopra and Dyer, but later showed up in other self-help studies, Hill and Allen. It has some relevancy, in that one tends to agree with those around you and so accept their own limits and cross-survival patterns.)
4. Drop your expectations for exact result. The Universe will present it to you in its own time and in its own way. Having to have it a specific way and time actually hampers the manifestation. You have to trust the Universe with the details. (This is common to nearly all the above sources.)
Joe Vitale, in Spiritual Marketing, echoes these same sentiments through his book, with many illustrations throughout.
“In short, the secret to increasing your business or manifesting whatever you want is:
“1. Know what you don’t want.
"2. Select what you do want.
"3. Clear all negative or limiting beliefs.
"4. Feel what it would be like to have, do, or be what you want.
"5. Let go. Act on your intuitive impulses and allow the results to manifest.”
The more one looks through self-help books, the more one finds these same points over and over.
Dr. Peale covers what he terms “Prayer Power” as a whole chapter in his Power of Positive Thinking. He mentions that prayer is a manifestation of energy and follows exact laws in this regard. While he says that prayer is successful when informal, treating God as a business partner and present in the room or car, this isn't different with other beliefs along this line.
While all these have differing approaches, they share commonalities:
1.Contacting the Higher Intelligence / Universal Mind.
2.Expressing a wish or desire.
3.Leaving it over to God to deal as He sees fit.
Now, the differences is where we can see how to make this most effective. Silva, in his research into what became Silva Ultramind System, found that the common factor in genius and creative inspiration was the alpha brainwave state. Silva's technique for entering this state is quite simple and is very similar to Peale's techniques from his chapter. While there are other brainwave activities of note, Silva's techniques stayed with alpha's. Some other research has stated that Theta and Delta waves have even greater ability to contact and communicate with Higher Intelligence. Unfortunately, their methods are not substantiated.
What is interesting is the approach of possibly the oldest religio-social philosophy known – Huna. There is an approach which uses a garden metaphor to access this Power. Early steps are deep breathing and relaxation, common to Silva. Then the person considers himself being transported to his own personal garden, either by boat, walking, opening a door, or some other approach. Once in the garden, one simply asks to see what needs correction or handling – any problem one has in life. A symbol appears which you can use various resources within the garden to handle. Both King and James cover this in great detail, as do other Huna authors.
The interesting breakthrough this brings up is the possibility of using a metaphorical approach to accessing the tremendous amount of data stored in the Quantum Hologram/Universal Mind. Here is where more research is needed. I've discussed so far how this is already done within existing practices. Theta and Delta waves are usually associated with deep sleep and dreams which aren't usually recalled on waking. One researcher gives a radical use of Chakras in order to utilize this field. King, however, mentions that dreams are a common occurrence in our lives. Actually, he says that we are dreaming even during waking hours. King's chapter on dreaming is very specific and helpful in utilizing this as a tool to solve problems in life as well as deeper complexes. He also makes the statement:
“Every human being dreams every night. There is much evidence to indicate that animals do, too, but we are concerned now with humans. Even if you cannot recall a single dream that you have ever had, this does not mean that you do not dream. It only means you do not remember dreaming. ...
“The most common word for dream is moe 'uhane, which literally means "spirit sleep." A code meaning is "the spirit breaks away and goes elsewhere." Specifically, it refers to the dreams you have during a deep, sound sleep.”
In other words, through training yourself to recall dreams, you can access the deep connection through the subconscious into the Universal Mind.
Tie these together. The better connection with this Source, the more improvement one could make in one's own life. Access to that huge body of data would make one's own analytic process more exact, given that one were able to process that bulk of data. Given the idea of the Huna garden, as well as the Silva method of asking to be woken up when ideal conditions appeared – one could train oneself to be able to recall and process the data relevant to the answers one is seeking.
Another method, which King addresses simply, is recounting Edison's habit of napping as many as seventeen brief naps a day and so only required three hours of sleep each night. This light sleep enabled him to access the Higher Mind / Universal Intelligence through and recall these simply, speeding his work through such inspiration.
Hill recounts the story of a Dr. E. R. Gates who was able to contact this Field directly:
“In his laboratory, he had what he called his “personal communication room.” It was practically sound proof, and so arranged that all light could be shut out. It was equipped with a small table, on which he kept a pad of writing paper. In front of the table, on the wall, was an electric pushbutton, which controlled the lights. When Dr. Gates desired to draw upon the forces available to him through his Creative Imagination, he would go into this room, seat himself at the table, shut off the lights, and CONCENTRATE upon the KNOWN factors of the invention on which he was working, remaining in that position until ideas began to “flash” into his mind in connection with the UNKNOWN factors of the invention.
“On one occasion, ideas came through so fast that he was forced to write for almost three hours. When the thoughts stopped flowing, and he examined his notes, he found they contained a minute description of principles which had not a parallel among the known data of the scientific world.
“Moreover, the answer to his problem was intelligently presented in those notes. In this manner Dr. Gates completed over 200 patents, which had been begun, but not completed, by “half-baked” brains.”
Such methods above, using metaphor, or short naps, or shutting out external stimuli – all seem to enable the individual to develop the ability to access the Universal Mind. An objective, scientific view would say that all these enable a person to recall communication which occurred during theta or delta brainwave activities. What we cover here is something which medicine men and shaman have developed into a bit of an art – slipping off into another world and communicating with the “spirits” one finds there to resolve the problems of the present. At any rate, however one wants to describe it, there are methods which enable a person to directly receive inspiration from a Higher Power and so improve ones live markedly.
This book in no way describes any polished system of accessing this Field. It is tentative results in the search for underlying system(s) on which this universe is built. If you have a system of meditation or prayer which works for you, then I'm not one to ask you to change it. Nor is this section any critique of existing methods. I simply would point out the commonalities of these differing methods, which point to highly effective underlying principles, however they are applied.
Another interesting approach was used by Hill and described in his chapter on the “Sixth Sense”. He used an “imaginary” board composed of key individuals he wished initially to improve his personal habits and attitudes. As he continued this board, he found that these tended to take on a “life of their own”, meaning they started to interact with him during this meetings in ways which were not predicted. These individuals would, on occasion come early or stay late in order to give a personal message to Hill. Once, one initiated a toast for Hill, in celebration of one of his accomplishments.
Our interest in this is that it another approach to accessing the Universal Mind. The metaphor here is a meeting. The odd point is that, much as the Huna Garden, the environment of the meeting responded to the needs and unstated requests of the individual who called the meeting. What is common between the two is the suspension of disbelief and the action of the individual to initiate and participate in building the environment. After that, the interaction increases in tune with the efforts of the individual to resolve his problems / situations.
Another approach might be to access the Universal Mind as a large video library. One would relax and then request the librarian for a video which contained instructions or helpful data needed to resolve a problem. This would work as an interface through the subconscious into the superconscious. Continued work would speed the process, and mights, as in Hill's board meeting, prompt originations from the librarian or others in that library.
Many other possible metaphorical constructions could be invented / discovered. Your imagination should be able to create many scenarios which are comfortable for you. I'd suggest you get King's book and do research on the Garden, as well as reviewing Hill's book chapter before creating your own scenario.
Active and Passive
While Positive Thinking and Western prayer utilizes a very direct approach in working for specific manifestations, Eastern approaches include an indirect, or passive approach.
Passive meditation (and examples of this also exist in prayer) entails
1.Contacting the Higher Intelligence / Universal Mind,
2.Envisioning the ideal you would like to achieve. (If you want more wealth, you concentrate on Prosperity; if you want improved familial relations, concentrate on Love; etc.)
3.Give gratitude and trust that Source with the result.
While active prayer/meditation hinges on both emotive content and requesting in the past tense, the passive form concentrates on the ideal being present – again, experience the full emotive content of having the state in present time. Trust is imperative. Meditation of this type will bring up the doubts and fears, which are simply turning your attention away from there and focusing on the concept until you are filled completely with that concept.
Common to both passive and active is the high emotive content and realization that the result is already present. Gregg Braden (Speaking the Lost Language of God) talks about “praying rain” in one of his examples. He went with a friend to a specific spot, where the friend prayed by simply recalling the positive feelings of reactions to rain – and then experienced torrents within that week.
Others, such as Eckhart Tolle (The Power of Now) agree somewhat, saying that one must attain a joyful bliss in the Now. Braden says that such prayer needs to be accompanied by heart-based feeling. Peale has a somewhat different approach, but similar, who tells his readers to have only positive thoughts, derived from God's love. All of these hit around the same mark: one tunes into the Higher Mind/Universal Intelligence, achieving a mental calm, even a particular bliss and peace. Praying/Meditating with thanksgiving that the idea you want to achieve is already manifest – along with giving the whole concept over to that Higher Intelligence to sort out – will then bring it into your life to the degree you have faith and trust in yourself and God simultaneously. An optimistic and heart-based feeling is achieved as part of the prayer. All of these agree that you must request in the past tense for anything you desire to manifest.
This then brings it full circle to show that there need be a positive emotive content to prayer, which aligns to the Universal Mind and assists in co-creating manifestations.
Emotive content is the point. So often in our culture, one puts emotional content on hold, often habitually. However, Hill points out in Law of Success and later writings that an essential point of success is controlling one's own enthusiasm. Not that you would dampen it, but would be able to produce it when appropriate and develop it as a habit. Backing this with faith is another step to develop a “burning desire”.
I covered in Go Thunk Yourself how one can change his outlook by simply assuming the emotional attitude one wants. I found this as early as Aristotle:
“Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting a particular way. . . you become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions,
brave by performing brave actions.”
This idea Aristotle refers to shows up preeminently in Dale Carnegie's book, How to Develop Self-Confidence and Influence People by Public Speaking. He mentions here that confidence as a speaker can be achieved by simply changing the actions one does and the emotion will follow. He quotes William James (from his work The Gospel of Relaxation):
“Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.
“Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our spontaneous cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. If such conduct does not make you feel cheerful, nothing else on that occasion can.
“So, to feel brave, act as if we were brave, use all of our will to that end, and a courage fit will very likely replace the fit of fear ”.
James himself refers to contemporary scientists who had studied this phenomenon. More recently many studies have been reported which have verified this to be correct in clinical studies and applied uses. People who before were not even able to experience many emotions were able to start relaxing once they practiced smiling.
Our work in this line not only achieves greater success in our manifesting, but also enables us to eliminate our worse habits of uncontrolled outrage or critical comments at inappropriate moments.
Being able to generate appropriate enthusiasm and confidence during prayer assists markedly in the resultant manifestations. Pray / meditate with heartfelt emotion, that is the lesson here.
Part V – To Make your Dreams into Reality
Purpose
Now you've reached the point, perhaps, where you see that anything is possible, that you can create your world exactly the way you want it to be. Anything you want to achieve or own is possible. How you act and why are completely up to you. So: what are you going to do with your life?
This is where your own purpose for living comes in. Purpose is Why you are here, What you have come here to accomplish in this life, The Reason for existence. Many people have never worked out their own purpose.
Wayne Dyer has done some incredible research down this line. He boils it down to a simple question: Does what your doing bring you peace? If you are on that line of thought, action and accomplishment which makes you consistently happy, consistently challenged and thrilled with your every action in life, then you are on your purpose line. As Dr. Dyer points out, anything you are doing or required to do should pass the little test of bringing peace to your internal world.
While some can get into some intense personal soul-searching for the BIG Purpose they were sent here to achieve in this life, the system for finding your purpose in life is very simple:
Let it find you.
All you have to do is to start to weed out of your life all the things which are irritating. If you don't feel peaceful after reading the newspaper, then find a simpler source of data – or skip the front page and read the comics or sports first. Most TV network and cable news is designed around the idea that controversy keeps people tuning in, and so sells the advertising they need to keep afloat. So, limit your time watching. Take up a hobby or spend more time playing with your children, reading good books, or exercising at the gym, etc.
The trick is to gradually get the things you don't like out of your life and spend more time doing the things you do like. This doesn't mean quitting your job without having another lined up and ready to take up the bills you have. It may mean taking on a second job in order to pay off those irritating credit card bills in a year or two and then start paying by cash or check for everything you need (or using only one card and paying that balance off immediately when that bill comes in – they make record keeping very simple).
Just keep weeding your life garden and you'll find room to plant new activities that you actually love to do and those that bring you peace. Gradually, your life becomes more peaceful. Begin listening to that quiet internal voice which gives you advice from time to time. This is called intuition (among other things). And the more you use your intuition, the more accurate and reliable it becomes. Eventually, you will hear something that makes perfect sense about what you are here for and what you should be doing with your life.
Once you have your purpose, then you can use the tools above to work out how to achieve it. Hill's 6 points (covered in Part I above) are the simple steps necessary to go from having a purpose to achieving it.
Goals
Goals are smaller steps which can be achieved enroute to your life's purpose. A purpose might be so large that it is bigger than any one life and might be a continuing effort involving not just your life, but able to be expanded to involve hundreds, thousands or even hundred-thousands of others. By setting large and small goals, one can make progress toward any purpose.
While there are many good books on organizing and project management, the simple procedure is to:
1.Have a worthy purpose.
2.Find a way this could be accomplished in a large or small way.
3.Work backwards from that end and figure out what you would have to do to achieve that – in big and smaller steps.
For example – taking a trip:
While getting something done by taking a trip would be a major goal, all the others are minor goals – sometimes called targets or steps. Writing the whole thing down could be called a project. Getting this list done would be project management. Each step could be alloted a specific time or amount of time to get that goal or step done.
Anything in your life can be accomplished by breaking the goal down into sub-goals or steps and then executing each step. The old phrase goes: A journey of a thousand miles is completed by taking single steps.
Peace of mind
Peace of mind is a self-generated state. It doesn't depend on the external world for you to have it. You find your peace of mind first, then create your world to align with it. Simple statement, but most people have never achieved the first step, so can't get to the next.
My own encounter with this datum was in a vacation I took from work back to the family farm. I liked taking long walks in the woods, accompanied only by one of the family dogs, or both of them. That day, I stopped to rest in a shady grove of some truly huge, old, magnificent oak trees. Gnarled and massive, these creatures towered several stories in the air and were older than all the man-made objects around me. As I simply stood quietly and started listening to the sounds of the wind and the birds and simple sounds from these woods, I became impressed with a very different force than I had been used to. I became peaceful, a sort of internal quietude overcame me. My body relaxed and I began to smile.
This is what I had been looking for in my 20 some years of working in counseling and personal work across the U.S. My hard and frantic work at achieving various production targets and sorting out peoples' problems, tragedies, and messes – all this had been very involving, but never brought me personal peace.
A simple walk in the woods had brought me to realize a goal I had been seeking my entire life. For all that time in learning, training and counseling, I had been seeking my own personal peace of mind and hadn't found it – until now.
I found I could walk in the woods to get peace. An experiment in my room determined that I could achieve that peace anywhere on the farm. On returning to L.A., again I was besieged by the mundane and hectic pace of my chosen profession and living in an uncaring megalopolis. By choice, I then sought out this peace and found it again. This showed that it wasn't location which determined internal peace, but a personal choice or decision. In other words, I could have peace of mind where ever I went. I only had to decide to have it.
Needless to say, this threw all the data I had been training, studying and working with into a cocked hat. This is truly where I started re-evaluating all I had learned to that point. This also forced a wider research into the actual sources of what I had trained in. The result is this series of books to date.
Peace of mind seems to be a generated quality. One simply seeks peace and it arrives. Others have also given some gradient steps to this, such as:
1.sitting in a quiet room,
2.relaxing completely,
3.imagining your mind a basin with a stopper covering the drain. Empty this basin by pulling the stopper. Do this three times or more, until you have “drained off” all your turbulent and noisome thoughts.
4.Then fill your mind with peaceful thoughts, as through repeating soothing, positive phrases or words – such as “tranquility”.
Repeated use of this method on retiring nightly, or when alone in your office over lunch, develops the mental habit of keeping a peaceful mind at all times.
The only limits are those you set for yourself.
As you review all that's covered above, you'll see that as the world is literally what you think it is, there are no limits to what you can manifest (“thunk”) for yourself.
What you “thunk” into existence is up to you. I've covered your habits which have limited you before this. Also covered is tapping into universal “habits” which exist in the “cosmic habitforce” Hill describes.
I've stated that the same universal laws which enable you to thunk something into existence also reciprocate, so what you thunk must be ethical. If you create a harmful environment for someone else, you will also in-flow a similar effect. There are also no limits as to how destructive you can be. But all that you create you will similarly receive. Best is to work out the optimal solution for all involved in a given situation and then create this outcome. You can always come back, on a review, and create a better solution. The point is that your intention should not be destructive.
There are emotions which are negative. Hate, Anger, Jealousy, Fear – all these can motivate action. However, they also then require “payment in kind”. As you think and act from a negative emotional state, you will continue the existence of that state in your own life. “As you sow, you shall reap”. All of these negative (or mis-) emotions are generated because of the lack of Love.
Love can be defined as “finding the good within”. Huna holds this as one of seven key principles - “To love is to be happy with”. Hate cannot continue in the presence of love. Perhaps this is an explanation for Jesus' saying, “Love your neighbor as yourself”. Defined in this way, in light of what has been covered above, we see that this is a powerful action statement, not some idle philosophy. Essentially, were everyone to continually work on improving their co-existence with those around them and in their sphere of influence through continually finding and reinforcing the good within those around them, we would in short order find a world at peace and in good living conditions.
Many authors cover this concept of working in cooperation with those around us and not in competition. One can see how this works in alignment with the Golden Rule. As well, if everyone can create anything in their world, there is no reason how one should receive less than another, or be unable to purchase some good. Practically, anyone can have any amount of anything they want in life.
They just have to “thunk” it.
Now you've reached the point, perhaps, where you see that anything is possible, that you can create your world exactly the way you want it to be. Anything you want to achieve or own is possible. How you act and why are completely up to you. So: what are you going to do with your life?
This is where your own purpose for living comes in. Purpose is Why you are here, What you have come here to accomplish in this life, The Reason for existence. Many people have never worked out their own purpose.
Wayne Dyer has done some incredible research down this line. He boils it down to a simple question: Does what your doing bring you peace? If you are on that line of thought, action and accomplishment which makes you consistently happy, consistently challenged and thrilled with your every action in life, then you are on your purpose line. As Dr. Dyer points out, anything you are doing or required to do should pass the little test of bringing peace to your internal world.
While some can get into some intense personal soul-searching for the BIG Purpose they were sent here to achieve in this life, the system for finding your purpose in life is very simple:
Let it find you.
All you have to do is to start to weed out of your life all the things which are irritating. If you don't feel peaceful after reading the newspaper, then find a simpler source of data – or skip the front page and read the comics or sports first. Most TV network and cable news is designed around the idea that controversy keeps people tuning in, and so sells the advertising they need to keep afloat. So, limit your time watching. Take up a hobby or spend more time playing with your children, reading good books, or exercising at the gym, etc.
The trick is to gradually get the things you don't like out of your life and spend more time doing the things you do like. This doesn't mean quitting your job without having another lined up and ready to take up the bills you have. It may mean taking on a second job in order to pay off those irritating credit card bills in a year or two and then start paying by cash or check for everything you need (or using only one card and paying that balance off immediately when that bill comes in – they make record keeping very simple).
Just keep weeding your life garden and you'll find room to plant new activities that you actually love to do and those that bring you peace. Gradually, your life becomes more peaceful. Begin listening to that quiet internal voice which gives you advice from time to time. This is called intuition (among other things). And the more you use your intuition, the more accurate and reliable it becomes. Eventually, you will hear something that makes perfect sense about what you are here for and what you should be doing with your life.
Once your purpose has found you.
Once you have your purpose, then you can use the tools above to work out how to achieve it. Hill's 6 points (covered in Part I above) are the simple steps necessary to go from having a purpose to achieving it.
Goals
Goals are smaller steps which can be achieved enroute to your life's purpose. A purpose might be so large that it is bigger than any one life and might be a continuing effort involving not just your life, but able to be expanded to involve hundreds, thousands or even hundred-thousands of others. By setting large and small goals, one can make progress toward any purpose.
While there are many good books on organizing and project management, the simple procedure is to:
1.Have a worthy purpose.
2.Find a way this could be accomplished in a large or small way.
3.Work backwards from that end and figure out what you would have to do to achieve that – in big and smaller steps.
For example – taking a trip:
- There is a destination and what you want to do there.
- You will need to decide on where to stay while there.
- You have to have transportation there and back.
- You will need to eat enroute there and back and also while you are there.
- You will need finances to pay for your trip.
- You will need time to take the trip. If this isn't done as part of your job, you will need to arrange this.
- You will need clothes appropriate for the trip and suitcases to carry them in – or finances to buy these.
- You will have to decide to take the trip, which includes being responsible for all the decisions above.
While getting something done by taking a trip would be a major goal, all the others are minor goals – sometimes called targets or steps. Writing the whole thing down could be called a project. Getting this list done would be project management. Each step could be alloted a specific time or amount of time to get that goal or step done.
Anything in your life can be accomplished by breaking the goal down into sub-goals or steps and then executing each step. The old phrase goes: A journey of a thousand miles is completed by taking single steps.
Peace of mind
Peace of mind is a self-generated state. It doesn't depend on the external world for you to have it. You find your peace of mind first, then create your world to align with it. Simple statement, but most people have never achieved the first step, so can't get to the next.
My own encounter with this datum was in a vacation I took from work back to the family farm. I liked taking long walks in the woods, accompanied only by one of the family dogs, or both of them. That day, I stopped to rest in a shady grove of some truly huge, old, magnificent oak trees. Gnarled and massive, these creatures towered several stories in the air and were older than all the man-made objects around me. As I simply stood quietly and started listening to the sounds of the wind and the birds and simple sounds from these woods, I became impressed with a very different force than I had been used to. I became peaceful, a sort of internal quietude overcame me. My body relaxed and I began to smile.
This is what I had been looking for in my 20 some years of working in counseling and personal work across the U.S. My hard and frantic work at achieving various production targets and sorting out peoples' problems, tragedies, and messes – all this had been very involving, but never brought me personal peace.
A simple walk in the woods had brought me to realize a goal I had been seeking my entire life. For all that time in learning, training and counseling, I had been seeking my own personal peace of mind and hadn't found it – until now.
I found I could walk in the woods to get peace. An experiment in my room determined that I could achieve that peace anywhere on the farm. On returning to L.A., again I was besieged by the mundane and hectic pace of my chosen profession and living in an uncaring megalopolis. By choice, I then sought out this peace and found it again. This showed that it wasn't location which determined internal peace, but a personal choice or decision. In other words, I could have peace of mind where ever I went. I only had to decide to have it.
Needless to say, this threw all the data I had been training, studying and working with into a cocked hat. This is truly where I started re-evaluating all I had learned to that point. This also forced a wider research into the actual sources of what I had trained in. The result is this series of books to date.
Peace of mind seems to be a generated quality. One simply seeks peace and it arrives. Others have also given some gradient steps to this, such as:
1.sitting in a quiet room,
2.relaxing completely,
3.imagining your mind a basin with a stopper covering the drain. Empty this basin by pulling the stopper. Do this three times or more, until you have “drained off” all your turbulent and noisome thoughts.
4.Then fill your mind with peaceful thoughts, as through repeating soothing, positive phrases or words – such as “tranquility”.
Repeated use of this method on retiring nightly, or when alone in your office over lunch, develops the mental habit of keeping a peaceful mind at all times.
The only limits are those you set for yourself.
As you review all that's covered above, you'll see that as the world is literally what you think it is, there are no limits to what you can manifest (“thunk”) for yourself.
What you “thunk” into existence is up to you. I've covered your habits which have limited you before this. Also covered is tapping into universal “habits” which exist in the “cosmic habitforce” Hill describes.
I've stated that the same universal laws which enable you to thunk something into existence also reciprocate, so what you thunk must be ethical. If you create a harmful environment for someone else, you will also in-flow a similar effect. There are also no limits as to how destructive you can be. But all that you create you will similarly receive. Best is to work out the optimal solution for all involved in a given situation and then create this outcome. You can always come back, on a review, and create a better solution. The point is that your intention should not be destructive.
There are emotions which are negative. Hate, Anger, Jealousy, Fear – all these can motivate action. However, they also then require “payment in kind”. As you think and act from a negative emotional state, you will continue the existence of that state in your own life. “As you sow, you shall reap”. All of these negative (or mis-) emotions are generated because of the lack of Love.
Love can be defined as “finding the good within”. Huna holds this as one of seven key principles - “To love is to be happy with”. Hate cannot continue in the presence of love. Perhaps this is an explanation for Jesus' saying, “Love your neighbor as yourself”. Defined in this way, in light of what has been covered above, we see that this is a powerful action statement, not some idle philosophy. Essentially, were everyone to continually work on improving their co-existence with those around them and in their sphere of influence through continually finding and reinforcing the good within those around them, we would in short order find a world at peace and in good living conditions.
Many authors cover this concept of working in cooperation with those around us and not in competition. One can see how this works in alignment with the Golden Rule. As well, if everyone can create anything in their world, there is no reason how one should receive less than another, or be unable to purchase some good. Practically, anyone can have any amount of anything they want in life.
They just have to “thunk” it.
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Part VI - Putting it All Together
Now you can reprogram yourself simply and safely you have all the tools to do so, if only a skimming of the potential data out there.
Let me put it all into a simple form.
You are already reprogramming yourself daily, by reading this book you have the tools to start taking control over the process:
The universe has certain laws, which you can use or abuse:
Your mind has three parts the conscious, subconscious, and superconscious.
Accessing the superconscious enables you to change your habits more rapidly and achieve a more optimal operating basis.
To improve any ability to find those things you would wish to improve, there are four interlocked principles. Increasing the value or power of any one increases the other four.
Clarify your world-view: work constantly to achieve your purpose.
A final note: be your own best supporter. Take Hill's six steps and do them. Daily just like he says. Do not scrimp on these. But around you, fill your life with agreeable and supportive material. Just as you can get rid of habits in your life which don't forward your own purpose, you should also take some time to ensure the world around you your personal space is filled with items that forward this purpose as well.
Don't listen to disruptive news programs more than you have to. Replace the time you were spending on these with recorded lectures on self-help and self-improvement. Spend all your spare time with great ideas such as in travel and commuting, while exercising, etc. Collect, read and re-read great authors who inspire you. Constantly research and review methods to improve yourself and the world around you.
Get into a line of work, eventually, which aligns to your own purpose. Many of us have debt which locks us into our jobs. Figure out how to get out from under this debt. Many authors, such as Clason (The Richest Man in Babylon) have written on this topic. Get your spending habits under your own control. Meanwhile, go ahead in manifesting the dream job. You will eventually surround yourself with similar workers who are also in their dream job. This is one aspect of Hill's Master Mind, and will multiply the effectiveness of your efforts beyond your dreams.
Trust yourself implicitly. This is a key point. Any self-doubt is a bad habit. Start looking at all the things you do that are right and correct. See where you have gotten good intuition and followed it the more your trust your intuition, the more effective it gets. Develop an unshakable self-confidence. Control your own emotions and mis-emotions. Think and act positively at all times. Your world is what you create through your thoughts. Positive thinking positive world.
Remember also to pray / meditate for universal peace. Greg Braden related several examples of national and international projects where groups of organized people simply prayed peace in a certain location and the crime rate went down. Careful records were kept of the location and times of this to verify the results. These results were repeated in different locations, always improving the situation where such meditation was concentrated. Where people worked in positive, peaceful ways at all times, where people work to manifest their world, peace is inevitable. The more who work at this, the faster it will arrive. Those who are hell-bent on destruction will either change their world-view, or find themselves quickly isolated.
It is your choice and your choice alone to improve your life.
Good luck to us all!
Let me put it all into a simple form.
You are already reprogramming yourself daily, by reading this book you have the tools to start taking control over the process:
- Your thinking is always on.
- People are learning constantly.
- People store this learning in patterns, aka habits.
- These habits, while perhaps chronic, are not permanent.
- Habits replace other habits. Repeat a new habit for about three weeks and it will replace the earlier version.
The universe has certain laws, which you can use or abuse:
- Love is part of creation. Destruction is an absence of love.
- Your thoughts create your world.
- What you think is what you will attract and manifest.
- You attract exactly what you think.
- You can choose ethical, creative thought and improve your life.
- You can choose to destroy your world with negative thoughts.
Your mind has three parts the conscious, subconscious, and superconscious.
- The conscious is responsible for creative thought and coordinations.
- The subconscious filters data and runs your autonomic systems. It also controls your access to the superconscious.
- The superconscious is part of the Universal Mind, which stores all data patterns.
Accessing the superconscious enables you to change your habits more rapidly and achieve a more optimal operating basis.
- Clarify what you really want, what you don't want, and clear any discord or counter-beliefs in the way of getting this.
- To access Higher Intelligence, first go to a quiet place, then relax completely, breath deeply, and slip into the gap between thoughts.
- Release your request, stated in the past tense, into that gap, along with honest emotive content of complete gratitude as well as your enthusiasm for the result as if that result is present right now.
- Turn the whole thing over to Higher Intelligence, trusting the Universe with the details.
To improve any ability to find those things you would wish to improve, there are four interlocked principles. Increasing the value or power of any one increases the other four.
- Confront actually look at the world around you and your part in it.
- Understand really comprehend how and why you are here, what you are doing, why you have achieved or possess what you do.
- Responsibility - be responsible for all your thoughts, actions, and deeds.
- Purpose know why you are here, what you are here to do, what brings you peace.
Clarify your world-view: work constantly to achieve your purpose.
- Distill your purpose into a burning desire.
- Plan your work to achieve this, work this plan.
- Back this plan up with indomitable persistence.
- Make your dreams come alive.
- Suspend disbelief. Believe in yourself and your thoughts.
- Disregard those who don't believe in you.
A final note: be your own best supporter. Take Hill's six steps and do them. Daily just like he says. Do not scrimp on these. But around you, fill your life with agreeable and supportive material. Just as you can get rid of habits in your life which don't forward your own purpose, you should also take some time to ensure the world around you your personal space is filled with items that forward this purpose as well.
Don't listen to disruptive news programs more than you have to. Replace the time you were spending on these with recorded lectures on self-help and self-improvement. Spend all your spare time with great ideas such as in travel and commuting, while exercising, etc. Collect, read and re-read great authors who inspire you. Constantly research and review methods to improve yourself and the world around you.
Get into a line of work, eventually, which aligns to your own purpose. Many of us have debt which locks us into our jobs. Figure out how to get out from under this debt. Many authors, such as Clason (The Richest Man in Babylon) have written on this topic. Get your spending habits under your own control. Meanwhile, go ahead in manifesting the dream job. You will eventually surround yourself with similar workers who are also in their dream job. This is one aspect of Hill's Master Mind, and will multiply the effectiveness of your efforts beyond your dreams.
Trust yourself implicitly. This is a key point. Any self-doubt is a bad habit. Start looking at all the things you do that are right and correct. See where you have gotten good intuition and followed it the more your trust your intuition, the more effective it gets. Develop an unshakable self-confidence. Control your own emotions and mis-emotions. Think and act positively at all times. Your world is what you create through your thoughts. Positive thinking positive world.
Remember also to pray / meditate for universal peace. Greg Braden related several examples of national and international projects where groups of organized people simply prayed peace in a certain location and the crime rate went down. Careful records were kept of the location and times of this to verify the results. These results were repeated in different locations, always improving the situation where such meditation was concentrated. Where people worked in positive, peaceful ways at all times, where people work to manifest their world, peace is inevitable. The more who work at this, the faster it will arrive. Those who are hell-bent on destruction will either change their world-view, or find themselves quickly isolated.
It is your choice and your choice alone to improve your life.
Good luck to us all!
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