We are born into the world of nature; our second birth is into the world of spirit.
—BHAGAVAD GITA
Few of us have been trained to tap into the power of our minds. We have been raised on a steady diet of logic, rationality and a “believe it when you see it” mentality. In short, we have been brought up to believe only in those things that we can understand and verify. Miracles cannot be understood by the rational mind. They defy logic. They cannot be “understood” in the ways we have been conditioned to think. Therefore, in order to enter the world of real magic you will need to learn how to go way beyond your rational mind and enter the dimension of spirituality.
MOVING PAST SKEPTICISM
Any minimal spiritual training you have received has likely come through the medium of some religious organization. The wonderful gift of religion is the teaching that we are spiritual in nature, and that we all have a soul as part of our humanity. The major drawback of religion is that it teaches that the soul must conform to rules and regulations, and that these restrictions of the soul come directly from the dogma of a particular religion and its representatives, But the soul does not conform to any of the boundaries or laws that have been assigned to it. It is dimensionless, formless and invisible. Even writing about it is very difficult because sentences must come to an end, while the soul is endless.
Because of your formal training you have very likely adopted a skeptical attitude toward spirituality. In order to participate in the high drama of miracle making and real magic, you must believe in your spiritual self, which has absolutely nothing to do with your religious affiliation. Whatever you choose to call that higher intelligence that suffuses your form, whatever the name of your spiritual teacher, it is inconsequential to your miracle-making potential. I am simply encouraging you to develop an authentic knowing about this part of your humanity. Maurice Nicoll wrote in Living Time these words, which I find most appropriate on this matter:
We do not grasp that we are invisible…. We do not understand that life, before all definitions of it, is a drama of the visible and invisible. We think that only the visible world has reality and structure and do not conceive the possibility that the inner world we know as thought, feeling and imagination, may have a real structure and exist in its own space, although not the space that we are in touch with through our sense organs.
To develop the knowing within you of the truth in Nicoll’s words, you have much to overcome. You will be asked to believe in the unknowable, something that you’ve been taught not to do. But it is always there, as H. L. Mencken put it so deliciously: “Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits nevertheless, calmly licking its chops.” Indeed, it is right there and yet you cannot put your fingers on it for even an instant. Becoming a spiritual being involves forgetting about your five senses, including that finger that you cannot place, and developing a calm sense of trust in that which you know suffuses you but which you can never prove with logic or our current measuring devices.
Once you have the experience of this invisible dimension—and you know this higher place you can go to within your mind, and receive guidance and, yes, even the help in creating real magic for yourself—you will have shifted from being an exclusively physical person, a human being having a spiritual experience, to a spiritual being having a human experience. Certainly you will not deny your physical self in any way. In fact, your shift to becoming a spiritual being will magnify and enhance your physical life in a multitude of ways. The place for creating real magic will be in your spiritual awakening, yet it will be manifested here and now in this physical world where you find yourself every day.
You want your enhanced miracle-making ability to appear in the reality that you call your physical life. When this special knowing becomes real for you and is something that you can turn to and trust within yourself, it is like being so wealthy that, regardless of what you do, you’ll always have money. You will be comforted in knowing that you can never lose your spiritual contact once you have it, and know that it is always a part of you.
While I am asking you to accept this invisible world that you know exists but, as Nicoll stated, you cannot point to with your senses, there are many respected people in our scientific community hard at work attempting to prove scientifically the existence of the soul. Though it is not my purpose here to prove or disprove anything in the scientific sense, a few words about these studies will help you to get moving in the direction of becoming first a spiritual being and then a physical being that is a result of your spirituality.
In the fascinating book Recovering the Soul, Larry Dossey, M.D., presents a comprehensive picture of the evidence supporting a nonlocal theory of the human mind. The theory states that the human mind is not restricted to a body or a brain, but somehow exists in time and space in concert with the physical body. This nonlocal view of the mind opens up enormous possibilities. As Dr. Dossey puts it:
Suppose for the moment that we could show that the human mind is nonlocal; that it is ultimately independent of the physical brain and body, and that as a correlate it transcends time and space. This I believe would rank in importance far beyond anything ever discovered, past or present, about the human organism. This discovery would strike a chord of hope about our inner nature that has been silenced in an age of science; it would stir a new vision of the human as triumphant over flesh and blood. It would anchor the human spirit once again on the side of God instead of randomness, chance and decay. It would spur the human will to greatness instead of expediency and self service…. And once again we might recover something that has been notably absent in our experience of late: the human soul.
This idea that the soul is timeless and nonlocal is indeed fascinating. It is being investigated by scientists in various specialties, and I am certain we will soon have incontrovertible evidence of this nonlocal position. Imagine the difference such a piece of evidence would provide for us as human beings. Knowing that the soul survives death of the physical body will help us to rearrange our ways of dealing with each other while we are here on earth. It will drastically affect our medical practices. As Dr. Dossey points out:
No longer would it be the ultimate goal of the modern healer to forestall death and decay, for these would lose their absolute status if the mind were ultimately transcendent over the physical body…. And if humanity really believed that nonlocal mind were real, an entirely new foundation for ethical and moral behavior would enter, which would hold at least the possibility of a radical departure from the insane ways human beings and nation-states have chronically behaved toward each other, and further, the entire existential premise of human life might shift toward the moral and the ethical, toward the spiritual and the holy.
It is within this context that I ask you to look carefully at becoming your own spiritual being, for it is within this context that all miracle making and real magic will be experienced. And once you have developed the inner knowing of your spiritual, nonlocal self, all of the external scientific data becomes meaningless. But, to help you suspending your disbelief, here are a few opinions from contemporary scientific thinkers on this subject.
Robert Herrman—scientist, executive director of American Scientific Affiliation and author of The God Who Would Be Known—puts it this way: “Everywhere you look in science, the harder it becomes to understand the universe without God.”
When pressed to define God, theologians and scientists find themselves in rare agreement. They know that in a physical world of cause and effect, somehow the whole thing had to get rolling. They also know that some kind of invisible force holds the whole thing together, including all matter. Rather than viewing God as a deity off in the sky somewhere, they see God as a presence pervading the universe. Hence the biblical notion of “in him we live and move and have our being.”
For the scientific community, who live and feast on hard evidence, there is much disagreement on this entire business of the soul and God as a presence in all life. Yet scientists know that something exists in all life that defies logic. A heart begins beating within a mother’s womb six or seven weeks after conception and the entire process is one gigantic mystery to even our most sophisticated scientific minds. Forty years ago the answer to the question “Do you believe in God?” was most commonly answered with, “Of course not, I’m a scientist.” Today, more and more, the scientist’s answer to the same question is, “Of course, I’m a scientist.”
Those in the new physics of quantum mechanics are only beginning to prove what metaphysics (beyond physics) has indicated for centuries. We are all connected, there is an invisible force in the universe that pervades all life. Even more astonishing, as reported by John Gliedman in Scientific Digest a decade ago (July 1982), is that “several leading theorists have arrived at the same startling conclusions: their work suggests a hidden spiritual world, within all of us.” Gliedman sardonically called it “the ghost in the machine.” It is this apparition within all of us—this dimension of our humanity that defies measurement, rules and cause and effect—that continues to baffle scientists. Yet even many of their own are now concluding that the “soul”—that “ghost in the machine”—exists. Gliedman’s article, titled “Scientists in Search of the Soul,” quotes many of the most respected and distinguished scientists from all over the globe. Some conclude that our nonmaterial (invisible) self is what constitutes our human traits of conscious self-awareness, free will, personal identity, creativity and emotions. They contend that the invisible presence exerts a physical influence on us and, even more astounding, that this nonmaterial self survives the death of the physical brain.
Another intriguing notion comes from John von Neumann, a mathematician and scientist described by Nobel laureate Hans Bethe as perhaps “the smartest man who ever lived.” Bethe once remarked, “I have sometimes wondered whether a brain like John von Neumann’s does not indicate a species superior to that of man.” And what were von Neumann’s conclusions? “That physical reality was a figment of the human imagination and that the only true reality was thought.” Eugene Wigner, winner of the 1963 Nobel Prize in physics who studied von Neumann’s formulations, stated publicly, “Man may have a nonmaterial consciousness capable of influencing matter.”
To put it in my own non-Nobel-laureate language: You have the capacity to create miracles and live a life of real magic, by using your invisible self to influence your physical reality. When you truly become a spiritual being first and a physical being second, and know how to live and breathe in this new alignment, you will become your own miracle worker.
In all fairness, Gliedman also writes at length about the many distinguished scientists who take the contrary position that we have no proof of the existence of the soul. We can recognize these people as members of the same fraternity who throughout recorded history have declared that we have no proof—and thus microscopic life does not exist, flying machines are impossible and the earth is not round. For me, the existence of the soul does not need any scientific validation. I know what I know about myself and my proof is in my own experience. The metaphysicians and the poets have expressed truth for me that is particularly relevant on this matter of the existence of the soul. Listen to William Blake’s Auguries of Innocence:
To see a World in a grain of sand,
And a Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour….
We are led to believe a lie
When we see with, not thro’ the eye,
Which was born in a night, to perish in a night,
When the Soul slept in beams of light.
How magnificent a vision! Holding infinity in the palm of your hand. Indeed we are led to the big lie—that we are just these aging bodies. Instead, Blake reminds us that our soul, our spiritual being, does not die nor is it born, but is eternal and formless as a beam of light.
Keep uppermost in your mind that becoming a spiritual being involves being able to touch your invisible self and know that it is the secret to your ultimate ability to become a miracle maker. That inner formless self is your imagination. Albert Einstein, who combined the qualities of both poet and scientist, summed it all up nicely: “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” When you examine the lives of the most influential people who have ever walked among us, you discover one thread that winds through them all. They have been aligned first with their spiritual nature and only then with their physical selves.
OUR GREATEST TEACHERS
Without exception all of our greatest teachers, and those who have made the greatest impact on humanity, have been spiritual beings. They did not limit themselves to the five senses in any way. All of the great teachers and doctrines, including Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, Sufism and Confucianism, have left us with a similar message. Go within, discover your invisible higher self, know God as the love that is within you.
These spiritual masters were all miracle makers. They were here to teach us about the incredible power that resides within each of us. It seems ironic that as a people we have been obsessed with what divides us, with war and the building of more and more powerful delivery systems of hatred and killing, yet the most influential and revered of the world’s teachings all have a message of love. For example:
Christianity: God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
Buddhism: He that loveth not, knoweth not God. For God is love.
Judaism: Love is the beginning and end of the Torah.
Confucianism: Love belongs to the high nobility of Heaven, and is the quiet home where man should dwell.
Sufism: Sane and insane, all are searching lovelorn For Him, in mosque, temple, church alike. For only God is the One God of Love, And Love calls from all these, each one His home.
Becoming a spiritual being is synonymous with becoming a miracle worker and knowing the bliss of real magic. The differences between people who are nonspiritual, or “physical only,” beings and those whom I call spiritual beings are dramatic. Examine the following delineation of how both of these beings live with their invisible selves, their minds. Getting yourself aligned with the thinking of spiritual beings is your task, if you truly want to know this illusive thing that I keep referring to as real magic.
SPIRITUAL VERSUS NONSPIRITUAL BEINGS: THE SPIRITUAL DOZEN
I use the terms spiritual and nonspiritual in the sense that a spiritual being has a conscious awareness of both the physical and the invisible dimension, while the nonspiritual being is only aware of the physical domain. Neither category, as I use them, implies atheism or religious orientation in any way. The nonspiritual person is not incorrect or bad because he or she experiences the world only in a physical manner.
Below are listed the “spiritual dozen,” twelve beliefs and practices for you to cultivate as you develop your abilities to manifest miracles in your life. Becoming a spiritual being as outlined here is an all-out necessity if real magic is your objective in this lifetime.
1. The nonspiritual being lives exclusively within the five senses, believing that if you cannot see, touch, smell, hear or taste something, then that something simply doesn’t exist. The spiritual being knows that, beyond the five physical senses, there are other senses we use to experience the world of form.
As you work toward becoming a spiritual being as well as a physical being, you begin to live more and more consciously within the invisible realm that I have discussed in this chapter. You begin to know that there are senses beyond this physical world. Even though you cannot perceive it through one of the five senses, you know that you are a soul with a body, and that your soul is beyond limits and defies birth and death. It is not governed by any of the rules and regulations that govern the physical universe. To be a spiritual being means that you allow yourself the option of being multisensory. Hence a whole new world opens up. As Gary Zukav writes in The Seat of the Soul, “The experiences of the multi-sensory human are less limited than the experiences of the five-sensory human. They provide more opportunities for growth and development and more opportunities to avoid unnecessary difficulties.”
2. The nonspiritual being believes we are alone in the universe. The spiritual being knows he or she is never alone.
A spiritual being is comfortable with the idea of having teachers, observers and divine guidance available at any time. If we believe we are souls with bodies rather than bodies with souls, then the invisible, eternal part of ourselves is always available to us for assistance. Once this belief is firm and unshakable it can never be doubted, regardless of the rational arguments of those who live exclusively in the physical world. For some this is called intense prayer, for others it is God, that universal, omnipresent intelligence or force, and for others it is spiritual guidance. It matters not what you call this higher self or how you spell it, since it is beyond definitions, labels and language itself.
For the nonspiritual being this is all hogwash. We show up on Earth, we have one life to live and no one has any ghosts around or within to help out. This is a physical-only universe to the nonspiritual being and the goal is to manipulate and control the physical world. The spiritual being sees the physical world as an arena for growth and learning with the specific purpose of serving and evolving into higher levels of love.
Nonspiritual beings accept the existence of a supreme being or God, not as a universal force that is within us but as a separate power that will someday hold us accountable. They do not see themselves as having assistance or a higher self, unless they have the kind of direct experience of divine presence recorded by St. Paul or St. Francis of Assisi.
Spiritual beings simply know, through their personal experience of having been in contact with their own divine guidance, that they are not alone, and that they can use that guidance to become miracle makers in their lives.
3. The nonspiritual being is focused on external power. The spiritual being is focused on personal empowerment.
External power is located in the dominance of and control over the physical world. This is the power of war and military might, the power of laws and organization, the power of business and stock market games. This is the power of controlling all that is external to the self. The nonspiritual being is focused on this external power.
By contrast, the spiritual being is focused on empowering himself and others to higher and higher levels of consciousness and achievement. The use of force over another is not a possibility for the spiritual being. He or she is not interested in collecting power, but rather in helping others to live in harmony and to experience real magic. This is a power of love that does not judge others. There is no hostility or anger in this kind of power. It is true empowerment to know that one can live in the world with others who have differing points of view and have no need to control or vanquish them as victims. A spiritual being knows the enormous power that comes with the ability to manipulate the physical world with one’s mind. A mind at peace, a mind centered and not focused on harming others, is stronger than any physical force in the universe. The entire philosophy of aikido and the Oriental martial arts is based not on external power over the opponent, but on becoming at one with that external energy to remove the threat. Empowerment is the inner joy of knowing that external force is not necessary to be at harmony with oneself.
To the nonspiritual being, no other way is known. One must constantly be ready for war. Even though the spiritual masters to whom they often pledge allegiance speak against such use of power, the nonspiritual being simply cannot see any other alternative.
Authentic empowerment is surrendering to that which is loving, harmonious and good in ourselves, and not allowing for enemies in our consciousness. It is an alignment with the soul that is our very purpose for being here.
Once you no longer need to dominate others, to acquire more possessions or to control the environment around you, you will have shifted your focus from external power to personal empowerment. You will find that being personally empowered does not reduce you to wimphood and being the victim of others in any way. Quite the opposite is true. You will find that you do not even perceive others to be potential victimizers. You will be a defuser of such threats, and in fact will not even encounter such proddings. Moreover, the absence of a need on your part to prove how powerful you are will give you the opportunity to empower others.
When you get to the giving stage, you will be aligned with your purpose and then you will be at the place where you can be a miracle maker. You will ask nothing of others, not because you are proud or omnipotent, but because you are a light unto yourself. This is the way of the spiritual being, and only when you abandon the need for external power and align yourself with your soul’s purpose, will you be ready for real magic.
4. The nonspiritual being feels separated and distinct from all others, a being unto himself. The spiritual being knows that he is connected to all others and lives his life as if each person he meets shares being human with him.
When a person feels separate from all others he becomes more self-centered and much less concerned about the problems of others. He may feel some sympathy for people starving in another part of the world, but that person’s daily approach is, “It’s not my problem.” The splintered personality, the nonspiritual being, is focused more on his own problems, and often feels that other human beings are either in his way or trying to get what he wants and so he must “do in” the other guy, before he gets done in himself.
The spiritual being knows that we are all connected, and he is able to see the fullness of God in each person with whom he makes contact. This sense of connection eliminates much of the inner conflict that the nonspiritual being experiences as he constantly judges others, categorizes them according to physical appearances and behaviors and then proceeds to find ways to either ignore or take advantage of them for his own benefit. Being connected means that the need for conflict and confrontation is eliminated. Knowing that the same invisible force that flows through himself flows through all others allows the spiritual being to truly live the golden rule. The spiritual being thinks, “How I am treating others is essentially how I am treating myself, and vice versa.” The meaning of “love thy neighbor as thyself is clear to the spiritual being, while it is considered nonsense by the nonspiritual being. Negative judgment is not possible when one feels connected to all others. The spiritual being knows that he cannot define another by his judgments, that he only defines himself as a judgmental person.
Research at the subatomic quantum level reveals an invisible connection between all particles and all members of a given species. This oneness is being demonstrated in remarkable scientific discoveries. The findings show that physical distance, what we think of as empty space, does not preclude a connection by invisible forces. Obviously there exist invisible connections between our thoughts and our actions. We do not deny this, even though the connection is impervious to our senses. The nonspiritual being cannot make such a leap, but the spiritual being knows that this invisible force connects him to all others, and therefore treats all others as if they were a part of himself. It is all a question of knowing. The nonspiritual being knows and acts as if he were an island, separate and distinct from others, unconnected. The spiritual being knows the truth of John Donne’s famous lines:
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
There can be no finer description of the spiritual being. He is indeed involved in mankind and lives his life each day in this fashion. Plainly stated, miracles and real magic are simply unavailable to those who believe themselves to be islands in the sea of humanity.
5. The nonspiritual being believes exclusively in a cause/effect interpretation of life. The spiritual being knows that there is a higher power working in the universe beyond mere cause and effect.
The nonspiritual being lives exclusively in the physical world, where cause and effect rule. If one plants a seed (cause) he will see the result (effect). If one is hungry, he will seek food. If one is angry he will vent that anger. This is indeed a rational and logical way to think and behave, since the third law of motion—for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction—is always operating in the physical universe.
The spiritual being goes beyond Newton’s physics and lives in an entirely different realm. The spiritual being knows that thoughts come out of nothingness, and that in our dream state (one-third of our entire physical lives), where we are in pure thought, cause and effect play no role whatsoever. In the dream state you can be age forty in one moment and age twelve in the next, you can climb into a car and fly over your childhood home. Thoreau summed all of this up nicely with his provocative observation, “I do not know how to distinguish between our waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?”
Thus the spiritual being knows that thoughts are not subject to the laws of classical physics, and that it is with our thoughts that we create our reality. When one lives purely by the laws of cause and effect, one can never expect to create miracles, because miracles and real magic are beyond the logic of physics. It is with the power of our minds that miracles originate, and therefore cause and effect are replaced by a belief in the effects that come out of what we call nothingness or emptiness.
Our thoughts and beliefs are miracles unto themselves, and they are our only tools for processing this physical world. They defy cause/effect logic, since our thoughts come from seemingly nowhere; therefore our miracle-making ability also stems from that divine place of no thing. If you need a cause/effect explanation, then you are unable to enter the world of real magic. Just as all sounds that we make stem from silent emptiness, so too do our thoughts, and our capacity for miracles is thus also a power that comes from within the silent empty space of our true being.
6. The nonspiritual being is motivated by achievement, performance and acquisitions. The spiritual being is motivated by ethics, serenity and quality of life.
For the nonspiritual person, the focus is on learning for the purpose of high grades, getting ahead and acquiring possessions. The purpose of athletics is competition. Success is measured in external labels such as position, rank, bank accounts and awards. While these are all very much a part of our culture, and certainly not objects to be scorned, they simply are not the focus of the spiritual being’s life.
For the spiritual being, success is achieved by aligning oneself with one’s purpose, which is not measured by performance or acquisitions. The spiritual being knows that these external things flow into one’s life in sufficient amounts and that they arrive as a result of living purposefully. The spiritual being knows that living purposefully involves serving in a loving fashion. Mother Teresa, who has spent many years of her life caring for the most downtrodden among us in the slums of Calcutta, defined purpose this way in For the Love of God:
The fruit of love is service, which is compassion in action. Religion has nothing to do with compassion, it is our love for God that is the main thing because we have all been created for the sole purpose to love and be loved.
It is in ways such as this that the spiritual being’s inner and outer reality is experienced. It is not necessary to become a saint ministering to the impoverished to become a spiritual being. One simply must know that there is much more to life than achievement, performance and acquisitions and that the measure of a life is not in what is accumulated, but rather in what is given to others. The spiritual being knows that he showed up here with nothing material and leaves the same way. All he can do therefore is give of what he has in this metaphysical instant called his life, his parenthesis in eternity. While the spiritual being will achieve and perform at high levels and even acquire many possessions, the motivation to do so is not the organizational principle that guides his life. Living ethically, morally and serenely while being aligned with a spiritual purpose is at the core of his being. Real magic cannot be experienced when your focus is on getting more for yourself, particularly if it is at the expense of others. When you experience a sense of serenity and quality about your life, knowing your mind is what creates such a state, you will also know that from such a state of mind flows miracle-making magic.
7. The nonspiritual being has no place within his awareness for the practice of meditation. The spiritual being cannot imagine life without it.
For the nonspiritual being the idea of looking quietly within oneself and sitting alone for any period of time—repeating a mantra, emptying one’s mind and seeking answers by aligning oneself with one’s higher self—borders on lunacy. For this person, answers are sought by working hard, struggling, persevering, setting goals, reaching those goals and setting new ones and competing in a dog-eat-dog world.
The spiritual being knows about the enormous power of the practice of meditation. He knows meditation makes him more alert and able to think more clearly. He knows the very special effect meditation has in relieving stress and tension. Spiritual people know, by virtue of having been there and experienced it firsthand, that one can get divine guidance by becoming peaceful and quiet and asking for answers. They know they are multidimensional and that the invisible mind can be tapped at higher and higher levels through meditation, or whatever you want to call the practice of being alone and emptying your mind of the frenetic thoughts that occupy so much of daily life. They know that in deep meditation one can leave the body and enter a sphere of magic that is as blissful a state as any drug could temporarily provide.
The great French scientist Blaise Pascal provided us with this insight: “All man’s miseries derive from not being able to sit quietly in a room alone.” One of the greatest joys of becoming a spiritual being is learning about this whole new phenomenal world. You will actually feel lighter, more blissful and, ironically, more productive than you ever felt before. For the nonspiritual being this is perceived as an escape from reality, but for the spiritual being it is an introduction to a whole new reality, a reality that includes an opening in life that will lead to miracle making. (More on how to meditate and some useful techniques will be found in chapter 3.)
8. For the nonspiritual being, the concept of intuition can be reduced to a hunch or a haphazard thought that accidentally pops into one’s head on occasion. For the spiritual being, intuition is far more than a hunch. It is viewed as guidance or as God talking, and this inner insight is never taken lightly or ignored.
You know from your own experience that when you ignore your intuitive proddings you end up regretting it or having to learn the hard way. To the nonspiritual person, intuition is completely unpredictable and occurs in random happenstances. It is often ignored or shunned in favor of behaving in habitual ways. The spiritual being strives to increase consciousness concerning his intuition. He pays attention to invisible messages and knows deep within that there is something working that is much more than a coincidence.
Spiritual beings have an awareness of the nonphysical world and are not stuck exclusively in a universe restricted to the functioning of their five senses. Hence all thoughts, invisible though they may be, are something to pay attention to. But intuition is much more than a thought about something, it is almost as if one is receiving a gentle prod to behave in a certain way or to avoid something that might be dangerous or unhealthy. Although inexplicable, our intuition is truly a factor of our lives.
For the nonspiritual person, this seems to be merely a hunch and nothing to study or become more attuned to. The nonspiritual person thinks, “It will pass. It is just my mind at work in its disorderly way.” For the spiritual person, these inner intuitive expressions are almost like having a dialogue with God.
I view my intuition about everything and anything as God talking to me. I pay attention when I “feel something” strongly and I always go with that inner inclination. At one time in my life I ignored it, but now I know better and these intuitive feelings always—and I mean always—guide me in a direction of growth and purposefulness. Sometimes my intuition tells me where to go to write, and I follow, and the writing is always smooth and flowing. When I have ignored this intuition, I have struggled tremendously and blamed “writer’s block.” I have come to not only trust that guidance in my writing, but to rely on it in virtually all areas of my life. I have developed a private relationship with my intuition—from what to eat and what to write about to how to relate to my wife and other family members. I meditate on it, trust it, study it and seek to become more aware of it. When I do ignore it, I pay a price, and then remind myself of the lesson to trust that inner voice the next time.
I figure if I can talk to God and call it prayer, believing in such a universal divine presence, then there is nothing loony about having God talk to me. All the spiritual people I’ve read about share a similar feeling. Intuition is loving guidance and they know enough not to ignore it.
9. The nonspiritual being hates evil, and is determined to eradicate that which he believes to be evil. The spiritual being knows that everything that he hates and fights weakens him, and all that he is for, all that he supports, empowers him.
The nonspiritual being is involved in a lot of fighting; he is aligned with the tools of power in a war against that which he believes to be evil. This person knows what he hates, and experiences a great deal of inner turmoil over perceived wrongs. Much of his energy, both mental and physical, is devoted to what he perceives to be bad or evil.
Spiritual beings do not order their lives to be against anything. They are not against starvation, they are for feeding people and seeing that everyone in the world is nutritionally satisfied. They work on what they are for, rather than fighting what they are against. Fighting starvation only weakens the fighter and makes him angry and frustrated, while working for a well-fed populace is empowering. Spiritual beings are not against war, they are for peace and spend their energy on working for peace. They do not join a war on drugs or poverty, because wars need warriors and fighters, and this will not make the problems go away. Spiritual beings are for a well-educated youth, who can be euphoric, giddy and high without the need for external substances. They work toward this end, helping young people to know the power of their own minds and bodies. They fight nothing.
When you fight evil by employing the methods of hatred and violence, you are part of the hatred and violence of evil itself, despite the rightness of your position in your own mind. If all the people in the world who are against terrorism and war were to shift their perspective to supporting and working for peace, terrorism and war would be eliminated. For every dollar we spend on peace, we spend two thousand on war. On the entire planet we spend approximately $25 million every minute on the business of war and upgrading our capacity for killing each other, while in the same minute (and every minute of every day) approximately forty children die of starvation. It is as if every ten minutes a Boeing 747 loaded with children were to crash, killing all of the passengers. How much does it cost to feed forty children? Who is going to reverse these telling statistics? The spiritual residents of our planet? Or the nonspiritual? No matter how much you may think these things are irreversible, you are part of the problem as long as you opt to be a fighter, rather than a person who knows what you are for, understands your purpose here on earth for this short period of time and works toward empowerment in spite of what you may see so many others doing.
Somehow our priorities are turned inside out. Spiritual beings do not get tied up with hatred. They are focused thoughtfully on what they are for and they translate that into action. Spiritual beings keep their thoughts on love and harmony, in the face of things they would love to see changed. All that you fight weakens you. All that you are for empowers you. In order to manifest miracles you must be totally focused on what you are for. Real magic occurs in your life when you have eliminated the hatred that is in your life, even the hatred that you have against hatred.
10. The nonspiritual person feels no sense of responsibility to the universe, therefore he has not developed a reverence for life. The spiritual being has a reverence for life that goes to the essence of all beings.
The nonspiritual being believes, as Zukav has said, “that we are conscious and that the universe is not.” He thinks that his existence will end with this lifetime and that he is not responsible to the universe. The nonspiritual being has become arrogant.
The spiritual being behaves as if the God in all life matters, and he feels a sense of responsibility to the universe. He is in awe of this life, and that he has a mind with which to process the physical universe. That awe leads him to look outward at all life and the environment with a sense of appreciation and reverence, to engage with life itself at a deeper level than merely the material world. To the spiritual being the cycles of life are approached as representatives of infinity, with reverence that is truly an honoring of life. It is a gentle and kind approach toward all that is in our world, a recognition that the earth itself and the universe beyond has a consciousness and that our life is connected in some unseen way to all life now and in the past. The invisible intelligence that suffuses all form is a part of ourselves, thus a reverence for all life is knowing that there is a soul in everything. That soul is worthy of being honored.
The spiritual person is conscious of the need not to take more from the earth than is needed and to give back to the universe in some fashion for those who will habitate the planet after himself. Miracle-making capability comes out of a strong reverence for all life, including your own, and therefore in order to know real magic you must learn to think and act in ways consistent with being a reverent spiritual being.
11. The nonspiritual being is laden with grudges, hostility and the need for revenge. The spiritual being has no room in his heart for these impediments to miracle making and real magic.
The spiritual being knows that all spiritual masters have talked about the importance of forgiveness. Here are a few examples from our major religious teachings:
Judaism: The most beautiful thing a man can do is to forgive wrong.
Christianity: Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.”
Islam: Forgive thy servant seventy times a day.
Sikhism: Where there is forgiveness there is God himself.
Taoism: Recompense injury with kindness.
Buddhism: Never is hate diminished by hatred: It is only diminished by love—This is an eternal law.
For the spiritual being it is crucial to be able to “walk the talk.” One cannot profess to be a practicing member of a given faith, and then behave in ways inconsistent with the teachings. Forgiveness is an act of the heart. (An entire chapter of You’ll See It When You Believe It is devoted to this matter.)
If you fill your inner invisible self with bitterness and revenge toward others, you will leave no room for the harmony and love that are necessary to experience real magic in your life. From a position of hatred toward others will come more hatred and disharmony for yourself. It should be obvious that you simply cannot manifest miracles in any area of your life when you are tangled up with such negativity as hatred and vengeance toward anyone or anything. Forgiving others is the essential component of one of the most oft-quoted prayers in Christianity: “Forgive them their trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” The spiritual being knows that these are not simply empty words to recite in a ritual before bedtime. They are in fact a necessary ingredient for becoming a spiritual being.
12. The nonspiritual being believes that there are real-world limitations and that although there may be some evidence for the existence of miracles, they are viewed as random happenings for a few fortunate others. The spiritual being believes in miracles and his own unique ability to receive loving guidance and to experience a world of real magic.
The spiritual being knows that miracles are very real. He believes the forces that have created miracles for others are still present in the universe and can be tapped into. The nonspiritual being sees miracles in a totally different light. He knows them to be accidents, and therefore has no faith in his own ability to participate in the miracle-making process.
The spiritual dozen require very little of you. They are not difficult to understand nor do they require any long training or indoctrination on your part. They can be accomplished in this very instant in which you are reading.
Becoming a spiritual being takes place within that invisible self I have been writing about. Regardless of how you have chosen to be up until now, working toward becoming a spiritual being can be your choice today. You do not have to adopt any specific religious tenets or undergo a religious transformation, you simply have to decide that this is the way you would like to live out the remainder of your life. With this kind of inner commitment you are on your way.
It is important to recognize that real magic is unavailable to those who choose the nonspiritual life. Being able to make miracles happen is fundamentally a result of how you choose to align yourself, how you choose to use your mind and how much faith you have in being able to use it to affect your physical world.
A SUMMARY OF THE SPIRITUAL DOZEN
Following is a brief summary of the spiritual dozen. Refer to it often and know that the difference between being spiritual and being nonspiritual is not located in your physical form or in the physical circumstances of your life. It is located within the invisible dimension of your being.
SPIRITUAL BEING: 1. Utilizes multidimensional thinking.
NONSPIRITUAL BEING: Limited to five senses in beliefs and thoughts.
SPIRITUAL BEING: 2. Believes loving guidance is available.
NONSPIRITUAL BEING: Believes we are always alone.
SPIRITUAL BEING: 3. Focuses on authentic personal empowerment.
NONSPIRITUAL BEING: Focuses on demanding external power.
SPIRITUAL BEING: 4. Feels connected to all of humanity.
NONSPIRITUAL BEING: Feels separate from all others.
SPIRITUAL BEING: 5. Knows a dimension beyond cause and effect.
NONSPIRITUAL BEING: Believes excessively in cause and effect.
SPIRITUAL BEING: 6. Motivated by ethics, serenity and quality of life.
NONSPIRITUAL BEING: Motivated by achievement, performance and acquisitions.
SPIRITUAL BEING: 7. Practices meditation.
NONSPIRITUAL BEING: Rejects meditation.
SPIRITUAL BEING: 8. Understands intuition as God talking.
NONSPIRITUAL BEING: Views intuition as unpredictable hunches.
SPIRITUAL BEING: 9. Knows a violent response to evil as participating in evil. Focuses on what he is for.
NONSPIRITUAL BEING: Hates evil and fights against it. Focuses on what he is against.
SPIRITUAL BEING: 10. Feels a sense of responsibility and belonging to the universe. In awe of being here.
NONSPIRITUAL BEING: Feels no sense of responsibility or belonging to the universe.
SPIRITUAL BEING: 11. Lives a life of forgiveness.
NONSPIRITUAL BEING: Holds grudges and seeks revenge for perceived wrongdoing.
SPIRITUAL BEING: 12. Believes in being able to manifest miracles.
NONSPIRITUAL BEING: Believes in limitations. Miracles are unpredictable, lucky occurrences.
SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR BECOMING A SPIRITUAL BEING
Remember, the ancestor to every action is a thought! Here are some practical suggestions for getting in touch with yourself as a spiritual being.
• To prove to yourself that you are more than a five-sensory being, write down all of the things that you experience within yourself that are beyond your sense of taste, sight, hearing, smell and touch. Keep a thought journal for one day and record the insights of your inner world. Note any intuitive hunches and record them for your own satisfaction. By keeping track of your actions in the physical world you learn that you are a physical being, but by keeping track of what created that action, you gain the insight that your actions are coming from something that isn’t physical at all.
• To help you experience yourself as a multisensory being, test the power of your mind on something that you perceive to be difficult. Visualize yourself doing something such as improving a golf swing, not having a drink at a cocktail party, jogging one mile, baking a cake for the first time or spending a Saturday afternoon at a movie theater with your five-year-old. Picture anything that seems tough or unusual for you to accomplish. Create a mental image of yourself performing this difficult task. Describe it in detail in writing or record it on tape. Do this several times and see if you can then manifest the vision in your physical world. When you do you will have broken through the limit of your five senses. Since the image is beyond your senses and is invisible to them, then the action came from that invisible part of you. Get to know this higher part of yourself that truly wants to transcend the many limits that you believe in by functioning exclusively as a five-sensory being.
• To get acquainted with the reality of your invisible world, question the pure physical evidence reported by your five senses. Your senses tell you that the world is flat, which is a delusion. Your senses tell you that the world is standing still and you are moving upon it. But you know that the world is traveling at dizzying speeds, spinning on its axis and hurtling thousands of miles through space each hour. Your senses tell you that objects are solid, but one look through a powerful microscope and you see that those objects are empty space, and a dance of activity. Trusting the limitations of your senses is to be living a delusion. Get acquainted with the reality of your invisible world by beginning to question the pure physical evidence reported by your five senses. Assess how much your five senses delude you about your own reality, and then ask yourself why you put so much faith in those senses.
• To make contact with divine or spiritual guidance, just for a day suspend your skepticism. Give yourself a gift of a quiet place and a quiet hour all to yourself. Start this experiment with an absence of skepticism and doubt. Ask for assistance in an area that is troubling you, and make every attempt to empty your mind of any and all distracting thoughts. See if you can create an image of receiving help from a guide that cares about you and wants to extend love toward you. In this state of quietness, with your mind empty of distractions, know within that the answer you seek is forthcoming and that you are not alone. Just know it, and feel yourself receiving that help. I am not asking you to listen for voices or to see apparitions, but rather to feel exquisitely peaceful. Keep a record of what you feel at the end of this hour, and what hunches or assistance you have received. I guarantee if you make this a regular habit, you will begin to go to this magical inner place regularly, and you will receive the guidance that has previously been so elusive. Go ahead, give it a try. You don’t have to tell anyone else what you are attempting. You will be making direct contact with your higher self, with the divine intelligence that is always with you, no matter how much it is resisted.
• To connect with the invisible dimension we call death, keep track of your dreams for a short time, particularly those dreams in which you were in the presence of someone who was in your life but has now passed on. As you go to sleep and enter the invisible world of thought, wherein you create with your mind all of your characters for your dream, remind yourself that no one dies, only form changes. Then be aware of the guidance that apparition in your dream provides for you. Be prepared to talk with that soul in your formless dream state. Ask questions of him or her and verify for yourself that you have the ability to do this. If in fact we are souls with bodies, rather than bodies with souls, then all souls live on after what we call death, in an invisible dimension. Those souls will appear as very real and very much alive while you are in your own formless invisible dimension of pure thought.
When you are able to make contact with those souls in your dream, and experience how real they still are, you will see that aging and death are only realities for the five-sensory world. Once you know this, and have made that contact, you will have an awareness of your own immortality, and you will have a completely new vision of death. You will know in your heart that those whom you’ve loved and who have passed on are not truly gone from your life. They are there and available for you. Open yourself up to making this contact, and you will experience it and all the guidance that it can bring you.
• To extend the sense of loving guidance in your life, begin to know that you do not have to sleep to make contact with a soul. If you can connect with the invisible dimension in your sleep, work at believing that the same connection, the same loving guidance, is available to you whenever you choose to recognize it. You will begin to look for this guidance more frequently and less dubiously. Prayer will take on new meaning. It will not be a ritual of silent, one-way communication. It will become a virtual transformation in which you put your brain into a higher state and literally participate with God in the ebb and flow of your life. Silently listen and be willing to hear communications that will come to you in the form of overwhelming feelings. Be thankful and appreciative for whatever assistance you may receive. Always ask the question, “How may I serve you and others in resolving this issue that I am facing?” When you keep your inner communications focused on assisting others and staying purposeful, you truly will receive the answers you seek.
• To find models and companions for your journey, read about the personal experiences of people you admire. As you do, look for the spiritual dimension in their personal journeys. You will invariably find that the people you most admire often go within in times of difficulty, and have received the guidance and assistance they sought at the time. Great scientists often report that they feel a special spiritual connection to inner guides as they proceed through their careers. Most autobiographies show that those who are highly successful attribute their success to establishing a connection to a higher part of themselves, and to feeling the presence of divine assistance at highly charged moments in their lives. Whether your heroes be athletes, writers, clergymen, astronauts, musicians, artists, businessmen or anyone else, virtually all of the truly inspired leaders in their fields reached a point in their lives where they felt they were being guided. They knew that they were not alone, and they began to trust divine guidance in reaching levels they believed could not have been achieved otherwise.
Once you know that most people who reach the higher levels of achievement in their areas of expertise have felt the same way, you will not be so squeamish about admitting it to yourself, and even seeking it out. Soon you, like me, will be “going public.” For those who think this is absurd and “off the deep end,” send them love and stay focused on your purpose. Their skepticism is their current path, as it once was mine and yours. Be at peace with it.
• To learn new ways of relating to others, examine your behavior toward those people in your life whom you feel a need to dominate or control. Be it a spouse, children, coworkers, employees, clerks, service people, whoever, take some time to relate to them differently by seeing beyond their physical form to the fullness of God in them. This is a great exercise for shifting to a spiritual consciousness, because you will not be coming from the need to control, judge or dominate. Instead you will be attempting to empower those whom you may have previously viewed as subservient to you. Once you begin to see past the physical bodies of those around you, you will begin to relate to the very same invisible force that flows through you and them.
I started doing this with my children many years ago. I try to look at the loving thoughts that are behind their actions, to see past their faces, and their tiny selves, to the souls they house within their little bodies. When I lose the need to be powerful and controlling, I empower my children to be in control of their own lives, and I see them for what they genuinely are—little souls with bodies, who also have a purpose for being here. When I lose my need to dominate anyone, I help that person get on with his or her purposeful life, and I stay locked on my purpose as well.
• To practice a life without a focus on control, attempt to help someone do something for themselves where previously you would have instructed them how to do it. Rather than giving an order, try asking the question, “What would it take for you to prove that you can do this yourself?” Then say, “Let’s work together to make it happen.” A simple offer of assistance rather than taking over or giving an order will infuse you with authentic power instead of provoking you to rely on external power methods. This is particularly useful if you can help empower someone with whom you are in conflict.
Most conflicts arise from a need to control someone or to prove that you are right and the other person is wrong. If you can give up the need to control as well as the need to be right just once in your own private practice session, then you will be able to empower another person in a unique way. Giving up the need to dominate is at the core of being a spiritual person. Replace the search for external power with genuine authentic power, which is the ability to empower others to take control in their own lives.
• To demonstrate to yourself that you are not alone, picture yourself connected by invisible strings to everyone that you encounter. In this vision, as you move to the right, those to whom you are connected also move to the right. As you push, they go tumbling. Now when you encounter another person, imagine that connection. In this way you will begin to treat others as if they were truly a part of you. You will have a tendency to extend love and help rather than feel enmity and competition.
I have always loved the story of the man who was given a tour of heaven and hell. In hell he saw a large kettle of soup. The only utensils were a series of very large spoons. However, the handles were all longer than the arms of people, making it impossible to feed themselves. Everyone was in various stages of starvation, since they could not bend their arms. In heaven the man saw the identical scene. However, the people were all healthy and smiling and obviously well fed. When the man inquired about this he was told by his guide, “Oh, in heaven the people have learned to feed each other.” Your purpose is always found in giving to others. This is heaven on earth.
• To recognize how you’ve been taught to hate, begin to rethink the concept of enemies and hatred. Make a mental note of all the people you regard as enemies. Realize that you have been taught whom to hate and that these lessons are only a result of the geographic accident of your birth.
In recent years, Westerners were told to hate the Iranians; then they became our official friends. Then the Iraqis, who were previously our friends, became our enemies.
This goes on and on, with few people ever understanding the simple message: The enemy is hate itself. Rid yourself of this hatred and the list of people whom you are told to hate, and fill yourself with harmony. Once you know yourself and feel love within, you will extend harmony outward to all people, regardless of whom you have been taught to hate. In fact, you will never be a part of that large mass of people who are so willing to hate and kill based upon what they are told is appropriate by their government leaders.
Try to imagine that everyone—yes, all people on all sides of an issue—knows that one cannot choose up sides when living on a round planet. Imagine all people refusing to hate or have so-called enemies. You can help the world get to a peaceful place by refusing to have your own hate list, and by seeing all members of all conflicts as victims. This does not imply that you should be victimized by the ugly actions of others. It means you do not have to have hatred and killing in your heart. Reflect your understanding that we are all connected. When you reach outward in anger and hatred, you are in fact hurting not only your supposed enemy, but yourself and all humanity as well. If this message troubles you, remind yourself that it is at the core of all religions and has been encouraged by all spiritual masters since the beginning of recorded history.
• To put yourself in touch with the nonphysical universe, become comfortable with the concept of nothingness. Your thoughts come out of the silent empty space of your mind. From nothingness to a thought. From silence, you suddenly make a noise. Effect without cause, in the purely physical sense. Give yourself time to be in touch with this phenomenon of nothingness. Try emptying your mind of thought and then observe as thoughts emerge. Once you know that there is a dimension beyond the world of form that does not obey the laws of motion, you can accept the nonphysical world. You must somehow demonstrate to yourself that anything can be created out of nothing, and in fact it is happening all the time. Miracles do not need a physical cause, but you must get comfortable with the notion by allowing yourself to experience the “something out of nothing” phenomenon. You can accomplish this by realizing that you are almost totally empty space yourself. An examination of your body with a high-powered microscope shows that the physical you is nothing more than particles separated by empty space. With even stronger microscopes, you discover that those particles are also subdivided into more dancing particles separated by space. Most of what you think of as your physical body, when viewed from a different perspective, is empty space. So too is your mind a large lesson in what we have come to call nothingness.
Become familiar with this concept of nothingness and you will be in a place where you can create miracles. Keep track of your thoughts for a portion of a day, and remind yourself that they have nothing to do with what you call cause and effect. Where do they come from? Once you are comfortable with this, you will be able to see miracles coming from that same “place.”
• To put yourself in touch with your nonphysical self, remove yourself from the physical world for a brief period of time. If you can, immerse yourself in a sensory-deprivation tank, in which you lose all contact with your senses and experience only the nothingness of your mind. If you do not have access to such a setup, then quietly, within your mind, let go of each of your senses in this exercise. No touch, no taste, no hearing, no sight, no smell. As you let these senses go (as you do every night while sleeping), observe what is happening to your body. The more you are able to let go of your attachment to your body through your all-knowing, all-powerful mind, the less you will use your physical state as a way of assessing your life. This is called getting in touch with your true self, your invisible self, and it is the key to becoming a spiritual being.
• To keep your focus on purpose rather than outcome, keep your mind, body and soul totally in the moment of your activity. Six million people play tennis every single day in America; three million of these people do not win. Does this mean there are three million losers every day? In all of your activities, stop and ask yourself, “Truly, why am I doing this?” You will find that the outcome (the win, the reward) is just as fleeting as the moments you participate in the activity. Stay on purpose in your activities, rather than focusing on the ultimate reward. The wins and losses will still arrive, yet you will find yourself on automatic pilot. Though you may plateau for a while, ultimately you will automatically move to a higher level. Become detached from the outcome of your actions and paradoxically your level of performance will climb.
• To rid yourself of a preoccupation with valueless things, rethink your attitude about your possessions. Make an inventory of everything you own. Is there anything in that inventory that you would die for? Now think about your values, your ideals, your loved ones, and ask yourself the very same question. You know what your priorities are, and they all have to do with what you think and believe, not with what you own. Detach yourself from those possessions, and get your life on purpose, which is to say, make the daily thoughts and actions of your life work toward that which matters to you in the truest sense. You are here for a reason, and it is not to hoard a lot of physical stuff. You came here without that stuff and you will leave without any of it. What will linger is how you served your ideals and those with whom you came in contact. Stay on purpose and you will find yourself automatically shifting to a spiritual focus in your life.
• To conduct yourself on a spiritual plane, begin living one day at a time emphasizing ethics rather than rules. Inventory all the rules that you follow so emphatically. Rather than conducting your life according to someone else’s rules, try having an “ethics day” for yourself. Base all of your behavior—including your eating, dressing, working, home life, everything that you do on that day—on ethics rather than rules. Ask yourself what is the moral, purposeful, loving thing to do, not what the rules are. In this way you will shift your consciousness away from outcome and toward purpose. Keep in mind that some of the most despicable human behavior has been conducted in the name of “I’m only following the laws.” The laws told black people to sit in the back of the bus, the laws said women could not vote, the laws said owning a submachine gun was fine. People who live by ethics have moved away from arcane victimizing rules. Be that kind of person. For a day. Get yourself away from the rules and live ethically, regardless of what the rules have to say.
• To become more peaceful with yourself and the world, give yourself a quiet time alone daily for one week. This is extremely important and something that you will quite likely resist. I encourage you to give yourself this wonderful present and a ticket to real magic at the same time. The best time is early in the morning after a brisk shower and before anyone else arises. Set aside thirty minutes to be alone and peacefully go within and quiet your mind. Sit in a comfortable position, close your eyes and simply focus on emptying your mind and becoming intensely aware of your breathing. You will soon note that you are becoming more peaceful, and even if you get nothing more out of it, you will find that this is an enormous aid in reducing stress and tension in your life. If you stay with it and follow some of the tips I write about in the next chapter, I absolutely, emphatically guarantee that you will discover a part of yourself that will provide you with all of the loving guidance you need in every single area of your life. More than anything else, meditation will shatter the illusion of your separateness.
• To befriend and cultivate your intuition, treat those inner proddings that crop up in your mind as welcome guests instead of labeling them nothing but random hunches. Try stopping yourself during your next intuitive episode, whatever it is about, and make a mental note of what is taking place. Now, instead of ignoring it, or pushing it out, ask that intuitive part of yourself, “Why am I being pushed by my mind in this direction?” Develop a dialogue with that intuitive voice and simply note what you learn or what happens in the next few days as a result. By learning to have internal dialogues you will begin trusting your intuition and ultimately discover its loving presence and valuable contribution to your mind. Consider this ancient story:
Two monks were arguing about the temple flag. One said the flag moved, the other said the wind moved. Master Eno … overheard them and said, “It is neither the wind nor the flag, but your mind that moves.” The monks were speechless.
The next time you have an intuitive notion that you are tempted to ignore, choose to follow its lead. You must learn to cultivate the habit of trusting your intuition. Notice the outcome of that intuitive action. Begin to notice all the beneficial results that flow into your life when you follow your intuitive voice. Those inner conversations that you have, those debates about what to do and which course to take, can best be resolved by simply asking, “What is the choice that will keep me on purpose?” Then go in that direction one step at a time. Before long, your intuition will become your most trusted companion, one that you will value and celebrate as it surfaces within your mind.
• To stay focused on what you are for in life rather than what you are against, inventory everything in your life that you are opposed to and then reword your list to reflect what you are for. Rather than being against evil, be for love. Replace being against your child’s bad study habits with being for a self-disciplined young person. As you shift your thoughts away from what you oppose, you will shift your inclination away from fighting those things and to supporting that which is on your “for” list. This is an excellent method for eliminating much of the inner turmoil and stress that surfaces from your fight list. Remember, all that you fight weakens you, all that you support empowers you.
• To develop a loving, empowering attitude toward yourself, restate everything that you dislike about who you are in positive, affirmative ways. Instead of being against your laziness, be for having more energy. By being for your energy, you will take actions correcting your laziness. By being against your laziness, you will stay angry and upset with yourself and thus weaken your resolve to change. This is true of your weight, your addictions, your entire physiology and all of your “bad habits.” Restate them in terms of what you are for and what you are capable of, and you will automatically empower yourself to correct them.
• To enter a state of enlightenment, spend some time every day in awe. Yes—in total, complete awe. Be thankful for your liver, your hands, your brain and your invisible, incomprehensively awesome mind. Be in awe of the very fact that you showed up here, particularly when you consider the mathematical odds. Observe the functions of your body and the trillions of cells that all work together to make you function. This sense of awe is something to practice daily. The air you breathe, the water you take for granted, the food that grows from infinitesimal seeds to nourish you. The atmosphere, the ozone, all of it. Be thankful and appreciative and also feel a sense of responsibility to your universe. Treat all life with reverence and awe, and know that it is all working purposefully. A few minutes a day in total awe will contribute to your spiritual awakening faster than any metaphysics course. Enlightenment is simply the silent acceptance and appreciation for what is. In this very moment you can get into that state of mind, by being thankful for the mind and the tools to read these words, and realizing how magnificently they are working. Be in awe and be enlightened. Be enlightened and miracles will be your way of life.
• To move past anger and bitterness, in your mind isolate one person such as you feel has wronged you at some time in your life, someone who has not repaid a long overdue debt. Perhaps an ex-spouse who left or abused you in some way, a parent or a long-lost love who jilted you. Isolate this one person in your thoughts. Now, just for a few moments, instead of feeling hate and bitterness, try to imagine yourself sending them love. Try to grasp the idea that they came into your life to help you learn a lesson, and no matter how painful the lesson, they showed up in your life for a purpose. When you are able to send them love instead of hate, you will not only be healing yourself, you will be on your way to becoming a spiritual person.
Think of a wrong that was done to you as being like a snake bite. When you are bitten by a snake there are two sources of pain. One is the bite itself, which cannot be unbitten. It happened, it hurt and you have the mark to prove it. You then go on from there and learn how to avoid snakes in your life. The second source of pain is the venom that is now circulating through you. This is the killer. No one has ever died from a snake bite—it is the aftershock of the venom circulating in the body that is fatal. So it is with hatred and forgiveness. The event happened. It cannot unhappen in your physical world. But the killer is the hatred and anger that continue to circulate in your system like venom, long after the bite wound has healed and disappeared. You, and only you, have the power to send that killer venom out of you; that it is still present within you is your choice. Remember the sage words of Buddha, “You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger.” Miracle making is impossible to experience when your insides are poisoned by bitterness toward others.
Begin today affirming, “I know I have the power within me to create a life of fulfillment and joy. I am a miracle and therefore I am a creator of miracles.” One primary message in this chapter explains how to become a spiritual being having a human experience, rather than a human being having a spiritual experience. This chapter can also be summarized in the words of a simple man, who traveled the country in the early twentieth century speaking folk wisdom. Will Rogers reminded us all: “So live that you wouldn’t be ashamed to sell the family parrot to the town gossip.” Good spiritual advice indeed!