As our case is new, we must think and act anew.
—ABRAHAM LINCOLN
The final task on the journey to real magic is to set your mind, your invisible self, on the path of miraculous living. In the previous chapter you examined the idea of a purposeful universe and of you as a purposeful entity within that universe. You examined how to align your thoughts and actions with the divine purpose that brought you from a formless state in eternity into this world of form. Your awareness should now also acknowledge the existence of an available loving guidance that you need only learn how to use wisely. You may feel what Hazrat Inayat Khan meant when he said: “The mystic does more than quote scriptures, he not only says ‘seek ye first the kingdom of God,’ his whole life is absorbed in that seeking.”
It is a whole life absorption, which does not, however, demand withdrawing from the world nor changing your living or working situation. What you will change is the invisible reality that is uniquely yours.
What follows in this chapter is a guide for shifting your mind-set to experiencing a world where real magic is not only possible, but your birthright. With this shift, miracle making will become something that you not only believe in, but that you manifest in your everyday life. I have studied and spent time with those whom I consider miracle workers, and I know from their experiences and my own that this is the paradigm of the mind that consistently succeeds in creating that miracle mind-set.
FOURTEEN KEYS FOR CREATING A MIRACLE MIND-SET
Here are fourteen keys for creating an environment in which miracle making and real magic can flourish. Although these are all intentions for your mind, that invisible part of your humanity, there are specific, real-world things you can practice as well. After each key, I’ve listed suggestions for implementing this miracle mind-set in the physical, visible world.
1. Reserve your judgment and disbelief. Like most of us, you have very likely been taught to be skeptical about anything other than what you can see and touch. You need to suspend that disbelief, just like you do while watching a movie or reading a novel.
When you are watching a movie or reading a novel you willingly suspend disbelief. In this way you allow yourself to enjoy the story without constantly reminding yourself that you are the reader or observer. And so it is with the world of real magic. You willingly suspend your disbelief and temporarily enter a world of ultimate possibilities. If you do not like it, at any point you can discontinue the activity and rejoin the world of skepticism and disbelief. Let me share with you an experience I had recently.
In Shirley MacLaine’s book Going Within there is a description of a gentleman from Brazil named Mauricio Panisset. She describes him as possessing miraculous powers, unlike anything I had ever witnessed in my life at the time of reading her book. All of my training had, in fact, led me to consider such claims with doubt and skepticism. Here is an excerpt:
Mauricio Panisset was born March 6, 1930, in Minas Gerais, Brazil. He was the third child born into a family in which the father, a Methodist minister, was also interested in metaphysics. But shortly Mauricio’s mother claimed she couldn’t handle her son’s uncontrollable rebelliousness. Out of desperation, when he was nine years old, his parents sent him to live with his grandmother on a farm…. He often walked to the forest where he (later) claimed that “lights” followed him. The lights appeared as shimmering balls and “talked” to him whenever they appeared…. When he reached puberty the lights disappeared. In 1949, at age nineteen, he joined the army and one night while he was on watch the lights reappeared…. In 1969 the lights became so strong that they again began to “speak.” On April 19, 1969, one of the lights spoke so strongly that Mauricio could not ignore it. It said, “You must use your own light to heal the sick. You must go to the hospital and begin.”
I was intrigued with Mauricio but I also have to admit I wondered whether Shirley had been tricked in some clever way, or even perhaps had “gone over the edge.” After all, we all know that lights do not speak and act in the way she describes in her book. My opportunity to suspend my disbelief was to arrive the following summer.
Toward the end of our annual summer stay on Maui I was the guest speaker at the Unity Church of Maui in Hawaii. This is something that I do each year before departing, as my way of returning something to that beautiful, spiritual, Pacific Ocean paradise where I have received so much inspiration and divine guidance.
After my talk, a woman came up to me and invited my wife, Marcie, and me to join her and her husband and a small group of friends at their home in the city of Lahaina. The woman, Gail Longhi, and her husband, Bob, own one of the most famous and successful restaurants in Hawaii. Gail explained that she had a very special guest, named Mauricio, whom Shirley MacLaine had written about in Going Within. Based upon what she heard me speaking about at the church, she thought we would enjoy a private meeting with this remarkable man. I immediately recalled the reaction I had had while reading about Mauricio’s talents and I happily accepted the invitation. Marcie and I agreed that this was an opportunity to experience firsthand the magic of this master and, equally important, to willingly suspend our disbeliefs and judgments.
When we arrived we were told that Mauricio would see us in about forty-five minutes. He was having a session with Gail’s mother in a bedroom that had a window overlooking the patio. Suddenly, while we were outside on the patio, we saw what appeared to be lightning bolts in that bedroom—it seemed to be exploding with enormous blasts of white light—a literal light show! Gail’s mother descended the stairs soon after. She walked past us with a vacant, peaceful look and disappeared into another part of the house. Mauricio followed down the stairs a few minutes later in a sleeveless T-shirt that was drenched with perspiration. We met him in the kitchen where he was consuming large amounts of water. He appeared to be in his late fifties, was short, with magnificent white hair and a stocky build, and was gloriously serene and humble. Apologetic, he explained he would need another fifteen or twenty minutes before seeing us. We thanked him and he replied in broken English, “No, no, no thank me. God’s work, not mine.”
About twenty minutes passed, during which Bob assured everyone that there was no possibility of fraud. He explained that the light show had taken place in his own bedroom and that he had escorted Mauricio personally into the room and had had the first session with him. He even discussed how he had searched the room. I was simply waiting with my open mind, my willing suspension of disbelief.
Mauricio asked us to follow him upstairs. Marcie and I had decided to do this together so we could corroborate each other’s experience and share what we had witnessed together.
We lay on the bed diagonally with our heads side by side and held hands the entire time. Mauricio started a cassette player and the room was filled with low-volume meditation music from a flute. He came up behind our heads and placed his fingers on Marcie’s forehead. He then spoke loudly the words “energia, energia, energia” and some words in Portuguese that we could not understand. He removed his fingers from Marcie’s forehead and snapped his fingers loudly, repeating “energia, energia,” again and again. Suddenly, miraculously, the room was literally lit up. Light emanated from his hands and it was as if lightning had struck right in the room. Marcie had her eyes closed but could still see the light through her eyelids. I never once closed my eyes and I was transfixed.
Then Mauricio touched my forehead with his fingers. His hand was actually very hot. Again, “energia, energia, energia,” followed by some Portuguese words. I felt as if I’d temporarily gone to another dimension. The light and energy were electrical. My entire body convulsed with enormous shock. The room was aglow. From total darkness to a bright light from this man’s hands!
We stayed in the bedroom for over twenty minutes. During this time he put his hands on the knee and the ankle of my leg, which I had injured in a bad fall on some slippery rocks the previous week. I felt enormous heat, and the light again emanated from Mauricio and lit up the room. He did this twelve to fifteen times during our session. Then he left the room and walked downstairs drenched with perspiration. Before he left he asked us to stay on the bed for a few moments and let the experience sink in, explaining that we might experience some dizziness.
We remained on the bed holding hands in silence for several minutes, feeling as close as we’d ever felt in our lives together. We didn’t need to speak. Slowly we walked down the stairs together, looking past the other seven or eight people gathered in the room.
My wife is extremely close to our children. She totally devotes herself to her babies, and seems to become more and more intensely bonded with each of the seven she has given birth to. On the night of our meeting with Mauricio, our teenage daughter Stephanie was babysitting our daughter Saje Eykis, who was nine months old and nursing full-time. Marcie came downstairs after our session almost trancelike, with a totally different, peaceful look on her face. A few moments later the phone rang and it was Stephanie, telling us that she was having difficulty with the baby, who wouldn’t stop crying and fussing. At all other times, a phone call like this would have caused us to leave immediately so that Marcie could nurse the baby and give her the comfort that only she could provide. But Marcie was in another world after the experience with the lights. Her response to Stephanie shocked me out of my own trancelike state.
“I’m sorry, Stephanie,” she said, “you will just have to take care of it. We’ll be home shortly, but in the meantime you do whatever you have to do to make her stop crying.” This was a different Marcie than I had ever experienced before or since. As we drove home we both agreed that we had just had an experience that was very special and beyond description.
The next day I noticed that a bothersome growth on the skin of my collarbone, which had been there for several years, was completely gone, and the leg I had injured was no longer sore. In fact, the scabs were almost totally healed over and there was hardly any evidence of the injury.
I had been meditating on writing this book for several weeks before this event took place. I kept hearing reassurances in my meditation that I would receive all of the proof that I required in order to write a book about manifesting miracles. I repeatedly was assured that the doubt would be gone and I would know. The presence of Mauricio and the actual experience of seeing the lights felt like convincing evidence that real magic is indeed real.
I believe that I experienced real magic because I had willingly suspended my disbelief. I am convinced that suspending disbelief is the first step in setting one’s mind for miracle making. I encourage you to cultivate a new, self-declared openness to anything and everything being a possibility for you.
The following riddle from the mathematician Douglas Hofstadter is a quick test of how open your mind is:
A father and his son are driving to a football game. They begin to cross a railroad crossing and, when they are halfway across, the car stalls. Hearing a train coming in the distance the father desperately tries to get the engine started again. He is unsuccessful and the train hits the car. The father is killed instantly, but the son survives and is rushed to the hospital for brain surgery. The surgeon, on entering the operating theater, turns white and says, “I cannot operate on this boy. He is my son.” The question is, what is the relation between the boy and the surgeon? Take a few minutes to ponder this one before looking at the answer, which I will write in reverse: eht noegrus saw eht s’yob rehtom.
Having an open mind and suspending our disbelief allows us to experience new vistas, while our closed mind and unwillingness to shed our disbeliefs keeps us trapped in our old ways of thinking and seeing. Real magic is available only to those who can imagine any and all possibilities, while letting the how-it-will-happen take care of itself. What I am asking of you here is simply to do that. Nothing more. Just open your mind and suspend your disbelief. This is the beginning of miracle making.
Suggestions for Implementing This Mind-set:
• Practice inner affirmations giving yourself permission to adopt new ideas. Say to yourself, “I will keep an open mind.” “I refuse to judge anyone or any idea.” “I am open to an infinite number of possibilities that are presently available to me.” “Just because I can’t see it, or don’t fully understand it, does not mean it is nonexistent.” “Today, for this one day, I will suspend my disbelief and be open to anything being possible for me.” “I will act on my new openness, rather than my old skepticism.”
• Keep one little corner of your mind open to miracle making. Investigate the lives of others who have experienced miracles. Know this is possible for you too. Talk to your friends and new acquaintances and ask them if they have ever experienced that which you would consider a miracle. Read books and articles about people who have had these kinds of experiences. By allowing yourself to be receptive to these stories and genuine experiences, you will open up your mind to these very possibilities for yourself.
2. Create a real-magic zone in your mind. Once you begin to suspend your disbelief and skepticism, you can begin setting your mind on miracle working. Make this a very private part of your life. Reserve a small piece of your consciousness exclusively for the purpose of testing yourself in this area. I have been able to manifest what constitute miracles for myself by having this very private zone.
It was while taking a shower and quietly meditating that I considered being completely alcohol-free. Drinking wasn’t a major problem, but it was something I did each day—only a few beers after running, but still something I intuitively felt was not in my best interest. I asked myself (or my guide, Eykis), “Can I give up alcohol beginning January first of next year?” A simple pondering question in my mind. The answer was crystal clear: “Just don’t drink today, and ask again tomorrow. Just today. Now! You don’t have to look any further.”
My private magic zone is reserved for questions like this alcohol-free query about what direction to take in my life. It never fails me. I recommend that you reserve your own invisible and formless zone in your mind. Treat it as your corner of freedom. Retreat there often to ask for the loving assistance and guidance that is there for you.
Suggestion for Implementing This Mind-set:
• Affirm to yourself out loud each day that you are a spiritual being having a human experience, and that in this spiritual realm there are no limitations. Affirm aloud that the universal intelligence that flows through all form in the universe flows through you, and that the universal law that has permitted any miracle to occur at any time in the history of this planet has not been rescinded. It is still operating and working today and is available to you. This affirmation will help you open yourself up to tapping into the universal forces, rather than continue being a skeptic and never allowing them to work in your life. Affirm it first, and then begin to act on that affirmation.
3. Affirm yourself as a no-limit person. When you have developed this real-magic zone in your mind and trust that you can go there at will, begin to affirm to yourself privately that there are literally no limits to the powers that you possess. A great rule of thumb is this: If you can conceive it in your mind, then it can be brought into the physical world.
At one time I believed I could not hit a backhand shot in tennis, and as long as I believed it, I saw that result. Today it is my steadiest shot. I changed my belief and my form followed that belief. Believe me, when I hit a winning backhand shot in a tennis match, for me that is a miracle. For you, the belief in any limitation, and I emphasize any, is a strike against you in your desire to experience real magic.
The point is that you and only you have the ability to create magic in your mind. The choice is always with you. It has nothing to do with luck, but with believing in yourself as a part of the divine force that suffuses all form in the universe.
As a child you most likely were on friendly terms with the invisible magic within you. You created what amounted to fantasies that you would crawl, you would walk, you would climb a tree. You would swim, no matter how difficult that may have seemed. You knew you would do it, and it started in your mind. Invisible thoughts followed by whatever was necessary in the material world. You would learn to ride that bike, even if you did wobble all over the place and fall down repeatedly. In your mind there were no limitations. All of your accomplishments began with a belief. You weren’t physically different the moment you let go of the side of the dock and swam by yourself. Your physical self was precisely the same as a “swimmer” as it was as a “nonswimmer.” The difference was a belief. The same was true for you as a walker and a nonwalker. A climber and a nonclimber. You didn’t stop to say, “Nope, I’ll never be able to stand up, I’ll just sit here forever. I guess I failed to inherit the necessary standing genes.” There was no room in your mind for doubt about your own greatness in those areas. You conceived the impossible idea first in your mind and then you acted upon it.
Somewhere along the way you began to doubt your ability to create magic for yourself. Never doubt that being able to walk from the perspective of a crawler is truly a miracle. You lost the ability to extend that belief to new and more “impossible” miracles. You began to buy into the misbeliefs of those around you who were “many limits” people, who said, “You must learn your limitations.” Or, “You can’t do that.” Or, “You are just like your father, and he couldn’t do those things either.” The list was endless, and so too became the limitations.
To recapture that childhood magic and become your own miracle worker, you will have to change the thoughts that created your world of limits and boundaries. That takes place in your mind first, and since thoughts originate with you, you have the ability to re-create your own image of what your life is going to be from now on. Why not include the presence of real magic in your life as well?
Suggestion for Implementing This Mind-set
• Make a list of those self-perceived limits that you have convinced yourself are true for you. Then examine each one in light of how others have transcended them. Once you realize you have the inner power to go beyond those self-definitions, you will be on your way to creating the real magic I write about throughout this book.
4. Develop a new mind-set toward the concept of intuition. You must become comfortable with the idea that strong “inner pleadings” and “sudden hunches” are truly inner voices offering you guidance. As I said in chapter 2, think of your intuitive self as God talking privately to you, just as you talk privately to God and call it prayer. A return call is not that farfetched, particularly if you believe that there is some universal intelligence out there that you are addressing. Remember, it is not what you call this universal intelligence that matters. I’ll use God here, but if you want to use something else, do. It is not the label that matters. What’s important is knowing that the intelligence is there and that it is a part of you and all life.
Become comfortable with your intuitive voices and hear them as loving guides from the nonphysical, spiritual world. My own personal formula is this: If I feel it, it is real; because it is real I refuse to ignore it. Here are two examples.
On a vacation trip to Panama City, Florida, my wife was driving the car while my daughter Tracy and her cousin were asleep in the back seat. I was napping after six hours of driving. Suddenly an overwhelming insistence made me sit up and I could see that the car in front of us was about to have a head-on collision with the car in front of it. My wife could not see over the car ahead of us and was unaware of what we were heading for when the car in front of ours swerved toward the gravel alongside the road to avoid the collision. At the same instant that that car swerved, I grabbed the wheel of our car and moved us onto the gravel and the errant driver suddenly became alert. Another horrible head-on crash was avoided.
What was that intuitive feeling that righted me at that instant? You call it what you want; I know it as God speaking to me. I am convinced that God, in some incomprehensible way, nudged me awake that summer day in the 1970s. Why? I am inclined to believe that I still had much to accomplish here—my yet-to-be-born children, my writing, and all of my life activities since that time were my reason for continuing. How can we argue with the perfection of the universe? Close calls are just that. And when it is our turn, nothing will stop that either.
Our friend Larry, who helped decorate our home several years back, told us how he was once approaching a green light at forty-five miles per hour when suddenly a strong inner voice implored him to slam on his brakes for no apparent reason. As he obeyed his intuition, his car stopped inches short of a car speeding through a red light.
I am absolutely certain that you too have numerous stories of times that an inner voice prompted you to behave in what seemed an irrational way and turned out instead to be life-saving. It happens to everyone. Anything that happens to everyone cannot be attributed only to coincidence or simple luck. There must be more to it than that. Most of us get these intuitive signals on a regular basis.
Know in your invisible mind that hunches are not accidents. Respond in ways that allow you to benefit from the guidance. You are being guided. As you learn to trust these guides you will begin to recognize the lessons offered, even if they are not immediately discernible.
Miracle making and real magic are unavailable to many of us in the Western world largely because we are taught by those who have no faith in their own intuition. We are presented a life curriculum that places almost all of the emphasis on logical, rational thinking and problem solving. Our schools focus on the acquisition of knowledge, while virtually ignoring the feeling aspects of students’ lives. Intuition, the how-I-feel part of life, is treated as infantile and inferior and unworthy of attention. In fact, your intuition, that fuzzy inner voice that you hear so often, is really as much a part of your life as is your ability to solve quadratic equations, read a poem or eliminate your bodily wastes. It is there, it is real. Pay attention! For only when you transcend the belief that cognitive knowledge is superior to intuition and feelings will real magic become a way of life for you.
Suggestion for Implementing This Mind-set:
• Practice listening to and following your intuition once a day. Have conversations with yourself affirming the power of your invisible hunches. Try following one of those hunches in a new way just once today. Forget about the outcome and remind yourself that by listening to those intuitive proddings, you overcome an inner mental inclination to ignore them. Beginning to be attentive is a big step toward understanding the vocabulary of those intuitive thoughts. All of your thoughts originate in that loving intuitive guidance that you are always receiving. Begin to fine-tune your intuitive antennae so that you know when to pay attention. You can only get good at receiving those intuitive signals when you tune in consciously.
5. Discover the secret that sits in the center and knows. Become familiar and comfortable with the notion that nothingness has something to offer you on your path to real magic. Ponder Robert Frost’s tantalizing words that inspired this idea: “We dance round in a ring and suppose,/But the secret sits in the middle, and knows.”
What does Robert Frost mean by this secret in the center? When you have the answer to this question you will have unlatched the most difficult door blocking your entrance to real magic.
Consider that it’s the space between the notes that makes the music. Music (sound in form) is not a note or even a series of notes. What is required in order to have music is silent empty space between the notes. A note without space is one long sound. Music comes from the silence between the notes. Nothingness? Yes, but also absolutely necessary in order to create sound in the world of form. No nothingness, no music.
Consider that it’s the space within the vase that allows a vase to be a vase. The vase is not simply clay or crystal, or whatever material is used. What you must have in order to have a vase is silent empty invisible space surrounded by material. Take a hammer to the vase and you still have all of the material, but no vase. You absolutely must have the nothingness of silent empty invisible space in order to have a vase. No nothingness, no vase.
Consider that a room is not a room without silent empty space within, surrounded by the shape of material form. The room is not the mortar, wood, or beams that make up the material part of the room. Put it all in a heap and you have no room. You must have the silent empty invisible space surrounded by all that form in order to have a room. No nothingness, no room.
This silent empty invisible space that is within all form is called the Tao. It is written that the Tao that can be described is not the Tao. It is beyond description, beyond language, beyond symbols. Paradoxically, it is a part of everything. Shen-hsui said it this way: “Seeing into nothingness—that is the true seeing, the eternal seeing.” The vase, the room, the music, all make sense to us as we attempt to understand nothingness with our rational mind. Without the empty space they simply cannot exist. And so is this true for all things made of matter. They must have the silent nothingness in order to exist. “Therefore just as we take advantage of what is, we should recognize the usefulness of what is not,” said Lao-tzu.
You too are material form (skin, bones, blood, gristle) surrounding the invisible silent emptiness that is also you. Without that nothingness inside, there can be no you. No nothingness, no you. Every cell of your body is composed of particles circling a void of nothingness. Every molecule is similarly fashioned of particles circling nothingness. It is the very story of life. When life leaves your body it will not weigh any less. Therefore your very life, your very existence, is weightless and invisible. Nothingness!
The secret that sits in the center and knows, is the emptiness that is externally silent yet always there. And it is also out of that secret in the center that you will be able to create miracles for yourself.
As so often is true, the poets are in touch with these nonmaterial concepts. Here is Wordsworth on this subject.
And I have felt … a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.
Suggestion for Implementing This Mind-set:
• Remind yourself that the world of form surrounds invisible emptiness. Remind yourself you are form surrounding the invisible life energy. Keep this in mind and make every effort to discover “the secret that sits in the center and knows.” Since it is invisible, you need to go there mentally. Ask yourself, “Why am I here? Who am I?” Your deeply sought answers will astound you.
Spend time in that inner space befriending the invisible director that guides your life. Trust it today. Allow it to function in the loving way that it wants to. Go with what it directs you to do, trusting and surrendering, and you will discover you can rely on the secret that sits in the center and knows. Make contact with that inner director often, and don’t be embarrassed about it. The more you trust that your life is on purpose and that you will not be misguided, the more you will commune in the peaceful, harmonious world of real magic.
6. Learn to learn through knowing and trusting rather than doubting and fearing. There are two primary ways of acquiring new understanding. You can choose either the path of fear and doubt or the path of trusting and knowing. When you choose the latter path, you truly open yourself to your magical potential. Much of your learning has likely involved questioning your ability to gain a particular skill. At one time you were full of doubt about most of the things that you know to be true today.
For me, at one time in my life I was doubtful about my ability to speak to an audience extemporaneously for several minutes, let alone several hours. My doubt led to fear and all sorts of behaviors dedicated to overcoming the fear. Learning through the process of fear and doubt was a long, painful experience. Whether it was for a school group or business meeting, I would literally make myself sick whenever I had to get up in front of an audience.
Learning to speak to an audience through the path of knowing and trusting was a much more rewarding experience. I began to see myself as capable of delivering a speech, knowing within that I could do it, and trusting that I would be taken care of if I abandoned my doubts. I learned that an audience would not mind if I made a few errors or got temporarily lost, provided I was speaking from my heart and conveyed a sense of excitement about my topic. The day I received the Golden Gavel Award from Toastmasters International for outstanding speaker of the year, I knew that the shift from fear and doubt to knowing and trusting had led to a true miracle for me.
You can look at much of your own experiences in a similar way. You have been taught to doubt in a culture that stresses: you can’t, it’s wrong, you’re too little, too big, too young, too old, a girl, a boy, you don’t have the right background, credentials, training, experience. Out of doubt came a fear of your greatness, a fear of disapproval, failure, intimacy, and even success.
Doubt and fear do provide you with learning experiences, but the negative payoffs are obvious. It is easy to see that this is not the path to becoming a happy, fulfilled, fully functioning person. If you want to become acquainted with real magic, fear and doubt as your primary method for learning must be replaced with trust and a strong reliance on internal knowing.
In order to shift from fear and doubt to trust and knowing, you must develop a different mind-set. Your new thinking might go something like this:
I am going to learn what I have to learn regardless. So instead of taking the limiting path of fear and doubt, I am going to work at learning my life lessons by trusting and knowing. I’ll trust in my own unique ability to create in my mind anything that I choose. It is my mind and these are my thoughts and I can choose doubt or I can choose trust. I am selecting trust. I can either doubt that I am capable of performing miracles or I can trust in my ability to do so. I will act upon whichever I choose. I believe that the saying, “As you think, so shall you be,” is an accurate description of the human condition.
When my daughter Serena was five years old we encouraged her to utilize this type of thinking when she wanted to learn how to ride a two-wheeler bicycle. For eight months she had avoided having the training wheels removed, saying that she just wasn’t ready. Now she was ready, and she practiced trusting and knowing for three days before she even got on the two-wheeler. She practiced out loud her personal affirmations: “I see myself riding a bicycle. I can ride a two-wheeler. I have the ability to balance myself. I trust myself as a person who can learn anything, including how to ride a bike.”
When it was time to get on the bike, she was so pumped up to do it that fear was impossible. I’ve rarely seen such confidence and determination in anyone undertaking a new task. Her mind-set created her miracle. She was literally riding by herself within a matter of minutes. A few falls, some shaky beginnings, but off she went down the sidewalk all by herself proudly exclaiming aloud, “I can ride a two-wheeler, I can ride a two-wheeler!”
After hitting a sprinkler head and tumbling onto the grass, she changed her mind for a split second, lying on the ground muttering, “I can’t ride a two-wheeler.” But her positive affirmations and her inner trust and knowing immediately won over her temporary doubt, and she jumped up, balanced herself, asked me for another fast push, and was soon shouting, “I can do it!”
Serena’s mind-set created her miracle. And don’t doubt for a second that this wasn’t a miracle for her. When her time came and she felt ready, it was what she worked out in her mind in the way of trust and inner knowing that allowed her to go out into the material world and bring about her miracle. The miracle started in her formless, dimensionless mind, and was played out in the physical world as a result of her inner trust and knowing.
Whatever it is that constitutes your miracles, a shift to an attitude of trusting and knowing is mandatory. Keep in mind as you shift to this new consciousness that behind fear is powerlessness. That which you fear, you are fighting, and fighting always weakens you. Fear makes you impotent and makes higher levels inaccessible. But behind trust is empowerment and love. No judgment, no anger, no hatred, no fear and no need to fight. Love empowers you to higher levels. It is your choice always, and the choice begins in that amorphous inner world of the mind.
Suggestions for Implementing This Mind-set:
• For a few moments, in your encounters with strangers today, shift to knowing and trusting as your way of interacting. Let go of doubt and treat that clerk or telephone contact with trust and confidence. Just try it. Say to yourself, “I trust this person. I will not doubt him, and I know that things will work out in a positive way.” This business of learning through knowing and trusting serves you in millions of ways! Suspend your doubt and fear and trust that things will work out.
7. Affirm that your intention creates your reality. Memorize and continually remind yourself, “My intention creates my reality.” Experience with intention as a way of creating miracles is probably an unfamiliar concept to you. Most of us have been raised to think of our desires, wishes, hopes and fantasies as the seeds to our personal fulfillment. However, desires are stagnant, they do not set energy into motion, they do not create for you. Intention is the energy of your soul coming into contact with your physical reality. What you see around you, whom you associate with, how you function daily, what your relationships are like, how much money you make, how you get along with others, the shape of your physical body, and virtually everything about the physical you, is a result of your intention, or how your thoughts become energized into action.
Becoming aware of your intentions will lead you to an awareness of your spiritual nature. Your intention may be synchronized with what you know to be your purpose, or it may be otherwise aligned. If you know your purpose is about giving, loving and serving, whether in the field of education, parenting, law or cab driving, then your intention will indeed follow. You very likely often find yourself surrounded by others with similar values. Your values and higher spiritual self reflect your intentions. You view the world as a giving place; you are probably optimistic about man’s abilities to become less militant; you probably see the goodness in others; and you likely see a lot of people who want to be giving back to you. You experience much gratitude and are teaching others to be loving.
The reverse is also true. If your intention is to get all that you can, you most likely encounter lots of greedy, power-hungry people. Your associates have a similar mind-set, and you repeatedly convince yourself of the greed and shallowness of the world. Can you see how your own invisible intentions can create your reality?
The secret to changing your life is in your intentions. Wishing, hoping and goal setting cannot accomplish change without intention. What is needed is a shift from the inert energy of wanting to the active energy of doing and intention. Realize that all of your accomplishments, even those of which you are not so proud, have come about as a result of your intentions. Your relationships are a reflection of what you have created with your intentions. Your financial picture is the result of your intentions. When you know that you are in charge of your intentions, that they originate with you, then you will also come to know that you are in charge of your entire world and always have been.
As you work toward a mind-set of real magic, please keep this notion uppermost in your mind. Creating miracles in your life comes from your intention to do so, not from your wish or desire or goal. You must move from an inert to an active mode within your mind to establish an inner environment of real magic potential. Then, and only then, you will turn that same potential into your reality in the material world.
Suggestion for Implementing This Mind-set:
• Rather than simply laying out goals or wishes for how you want your life to go, try shifting to the active language of intention. If you are ill, for example, try saying to yourself, “I intend to heal myself of this illness” rather than, “I wish it would go away” or, “I have set a goal to be free of this disease.” The concept of intention, of applying action to your inner pleadings, will allow you to activate what needs to be done in order to complete the thought and make it a physical reality. Make a sharp distinction between what constitutes for you mere wishes and hoping, and what you are now in the process of intending to make happen. When I intend to be healthier, and I know this is the case in my mind, I usually get right up and do some exercise, even if it means simply walking around the block. The intention can literally put the thought into action. That is the very stuff which constitutes miracles.
8. Experience surrender and satori. Surrendering is an act of the heart, an acceptance of what you have always vaguely sensed:
• This is an intelligent system I am a part of.
• This intelligence is invisible.
• This intelligence is also a part of me.
• I decide to trust in this intelligence.
Surrendering is the equivalent of putting inspiration into your life. When you are inspired you feel purposeful. When you trust in the invisible intelligence of the universe, you feel guided. This process is not something that involves a difficult mastery of an esoteric curriculum. It can happen in a moment and it often occurs just that quickly. In Zen, this process is called satori, which translates roughly to instant awakening. Alan Watts describes it this way:
Essentially Satori is a sudden experience, and it is often described as a “turning over” of the mind, just as a pair of scales will suddenly turn over when a sufficient amount of material has been poured into one pan to overbalance the weight in the other.
I call this process of satori “going through the gate.” You may spend decades of your life wondering, struggling, worrying, slipping and falling in a slow process of approaching the gate that seems so far away. Then inexplicably, the instant arrives when you go through the gate. You may then look back at those times when you were approaching the gate, and wonder, really wonder, “How could I have been so blind for so many years?” What seemed so difficult and so impossible for you at one time is now your way of being. It is so effortless that you realize that the “big lie” involves the notion that it is only through struggle and effort that you achieve anything. This feeling of satori, or going through the gate, is a result of an inner decision to be at harmony with yourself and your physical world. It is a decision of surrender.
I’ve had many satori experiences in different areas of my life. One had to do with my growing up with a poverty consciousness. As a child I learned that everything had to be purchased on sale or at a bargain price and I believed there was never enough of anything. I deduced that I would never have enough money, should never overspend and the best I could hope for in life was a middle-class designation on the national census. I acted on this inner picture of my mind-set for the first thirty or so years of my life. I thought about scarcity a great deal, and not having enough of anything was the way I looked at my life. I was extremely cautious about any money that was spent and monitored expenditures very carefully. In short, while not starving, I was a victim of a scarcity consciousness, and inner invisible beliefs ruled my actions and pretty much dictated what my world was like.
Then I went through the gate in this area. Boom! Satori! It happened in a meditation when I heard, “You are it all already.” Five simple words that kicked me in the rear end and gave me a whole new perspective on wealth. At that time I was waging an inner battle about whether I should leave my safe teaching position, with a guaranteed income, or go to work for myself and know that it would work out. When the words “You are it all already” came to me, I knew in that instant, while meditating, that I didn’t need anymore. I already was what I needed. I could stop chasing, stop struggling, and know that I was here, I had arrived. I had to get on purpose and stop worrying about what I didn’t have. I surrendered right then and there. I had a new knowing. A shift occurred from knowing that I would never have enough to one that said, “You will be taken care of. You don’t need to spend your life energy on worrying about it anymore.” And I haven’t!
The result is I have been taken care of in ways that are too spectacular to even describe. I have become a much more focused person. I have given away more than I could have imagined having. It was the act of surrender that took place in a moment of awakening. That is satori.
You too can very likely look back to some significant positive shifts in your own life and realize you experienced a moment of awakening. A woman who lost 160 pounds in a five-month period told me that she could recall the instant in which she looked in the mirror and an overwhelming thought infused her: “Now is the time. I will help you. You don’t have to poison yourself any longer with overeating.”
A certain client told me how he changed from one occupation to another:
After years of knowing that I was doing the wrong thing and that I was off of my purpose, one morning on the way to work my mind suddenly knew that I could no longer continue to deceive myself. In that overpowering instant I surrendered. I knew I would be taken care of. That was it. I quit that same day and I have never looked back. I used to sell insurance and made a good living. Now I work as a camp counselor with underprivileged children. I feel fulfilled and I have never been concerned about my income. The moment I quit was so intense, all I can say is that I felt totally confident for the first time that all would be fine, and that I could make this shift without any anxiety or stress. I had an inner knowing, and all I can say is that I surrendered.
Satori is available to you at any moment of your life. But it can only come if you have an openness to it and if you are willing to surrender. All the spiritual masters tell us that the reality of life speaks to us in silence. Your noisy waking consciousness may not let you hear that silent pleading. What you must do to move yourself into the mental framework for living miracles is to just let go. Just know. Just simply trust. Become still and then listen to your own mind. Be guided by an awakened attitude of surrender. Being free from a perpetual inner quarrel with life is a pleasant preliminary to satori.
Surely you have experienced quiet, contemplative moments when you’ve had a sudden insight and an internal knowing that you can and should do something. You can attract such moments to you through the practice of surrender. Surrender to the knowing that you are powerful and capable of being purposeful in your life. The rest will happen as you “see the light” or experience the glorious feeling of satori.
Suggestion for Implementing This Mind-set:
• Think of the habits that have long plagued you. They can be addictions, laziness, short-temperedness, phobias, fatigue, relationship-sabotaging or anything that does not produce the results you seek. Determine to go through the gate and change unwanted habits one day at a time. Recall the wisdom of satori. Surrender to this radical notion that is required for you to awaken to the awareness that all habits begin with thoughts. Surrender to a new consciousness, a thought that whispers, “I can do this thing in this moment. I will receive all the help that I need as long as I stay with this intention and go within for assistance.” Now announce to yourself that you are no longer that old habitual person, for just this moment. Satori is your experience. You have awakened for a moment. Now go to the next moment with this same surrender, not thinking about tomorrow or anything in the future. Simply be in the now; in this moment you have the answer. This is how you go about making those seemingly difficult changes—one step at a time with an inner grace that allows you to surrender and stop fighting.
9. Learn to act as if the life you visualize were already here. Act as if that which you perceive in your mind were already here in the physical world. Begin treating your thoughts and visions as much more than simple amorphous meanderings of your mind. You create your thoughts, your thoughts create your intentions, your intentions create your reality. Consequently, you must begin the practice of ignoring your own doubt about the importance of your inner world and start the practice of acting as if the images you desire were already your reality. This may sound like self-deception, but it is the only way I know for you to get past the limitations you believe you have.
If you want to be energetic and you act fatigued, you are sabotaging your own vision. Even if you look into the mirror and see wrinkles and other evidence for your fatigue, you must begin to act as if your vision of being energetic were already here. Don’t let a tired person move into your body under any circumstances. Affirm that the energetic person you want to be, the vision you have in your mind, is already here and put it into practice by pursuing some activity of your choice. It is no longer just a wish or a desire, that person has arrived. This may start out as a self-deception, but in one instant of acting as if your miracle were here, you have created it for yourself. If you think it is foolish to act abundantly when the evidence for scarcity is all around you, do it anyway. Act as if you were in possession of all that you need just for a moment and then the next moment, which is all that any of us truly have.
This same principle applies to how you can treat others and assist them in entering the realm of real magic. Treat them as if all that they wish they could be or have, you see them as being or having. A child that hears you say, “You already are brilliant and talented; you already know how to do it, and I know how great you are; regardless of anything you say to the contrary, in my heart I know you are capable of anything you decide to achieve,” is way ahead of the game. When my children express self-doubt, I acknowledge their feelings, but I always act toward them as if they were capable of everything. “I know you don’t believe it yet, but I know differently. To me, you are already ready and able but have decided to mask it by doubting yourself. You might fool others, and you might even fool yourself once in a while, but you’ll never fool me. I know better.”
When you begin to get the hang of this, you soon start treating everyone as if they were already experiencing their own miracles. Your aging parents who want to complain are seen by you as able to overcome their self-imposed limits. You treat them as capable. The person who is sick is treated by you with actions of wellness. “You are too strong and healthy to even think sick thoughts, you are already healing yourself.” Similarly, you take the same approach to your own health, treating yourself as a well person and not allowing your mind to sabotage your body with the expectation of illness and incapacitation. Although a broken leg is a broken leg, it is a liability in your life only if that is how you choose to see it. If you decide that you are not going to be immobilized by the break, that you are not going to think about how unfortunate you are and that you will do all that you possibly could do if your leg were not broken, then that will be your reality.
I have watched my wife, Marcie, through many pregnancies, acting each day as if there were absolutely no impediment to her doing all that she does, pregnant or not. She thinks thoughts of being active, healthy, fully alive and in awe of the human life growing within her body. She then experiences this reality, and she has given birth to seven children all with the same approach to the miracle she is creating. I have also seen many of our friends go through pregnancies constantly complaining and predicting how terrible it all is going to be, and they too create their own reality. Learning to act as if the miracle you seek in your mind is already here gives you a big head start on this phenomenal world of real magic.
In 1965 I was teaching at a public high school in Detroit, Michigan, and going to graduate school in the evenings. While standing in the school office one day after classes were completed, I heard the principal ask a secretary if there were any staff members who knew anything about federal grants. He was looking for someone to head up a special program that would require federal funding, but he knew of no one who had the qualifications for such a ponderous undertaking. At that time I was not making much money, and the idea of additional income plus heading up a special tutoring program for underprivileged students sounded great. I immediately told the principal that I was an expert on federal funding programs and that I could write up a proposal and get it funded. I could hardly believe what I was hearing myself say. I was announcing my expertise in something with which I had only a slight familiarity.
He gave me the OK and that evening I spent six hours in the university library becoming an expert on federal funding on tutoring programs for disadvantaged youth. The very next day I wrote out the proposal using the guidelines I had discovered in the library. I appointed myself the director of the program, detailed the funding required, including my own salary, and, using a prototype that was in a federal publication, I sent it off to Washington.
Within three weeks we had a federal grant, and I was the resident expert on federal funding for special projects. Two additional schools sought my consulting services and offered to pay me to conduct federal funding workshops with their staffs. I had a well-paying second job, I was helping young underachievers and my principal was thanking his lucky stars that he had been fortunate enough to have a resident “expert” on his staff when he needed one.
When you have a vision and you act as if that vision were already here, you create not only the necessary expertise, but you literally become your own miracle worker. If you believe that you could never head up such an undertaking because you “don’t have the necessary training, credentials, experience,” or whatever, then that is what you will act upon. Begin to act as if you were that expert, even if you have to fool yourself in the beginning. If you have enough belief in yourself, and you are ready, the teacher will appear and you will plunge right in and create the credential that you need to get the job completed.
This process begins with your mind. It allows you to see beyond the physical evidence and into another dimension, a dimension where all things are possible and all learning is available. When I announced my expertise to my principal, I wasn’t deceiving him or myself. I saw beyond the physical to the invisible region, where I know I can do anything that I make up my mind to do. In my mind I was an expert, and all I had to do was convert my expertise from the realm of thought to the material world. As it turned out, and as it almost always turns out, an expert is someone who believes in his own expertise and isn’t afraid to act on those beliefs. While I would not perform brain surgery, I have no doubt that if I visualized myself to be a surgeon, I could get the necessary training. Obviously, it would take much longer than one evening in the library.
For most of the things that you want to accomplish, all the expertise you need you can gain quite readily, but you must begin with a belief and then act as if that which you believe or visualize were already your reality. I have never visualized myself as a brain surgeon, but I can visualize myself as capable of performing many different jobs. In fact, there are very few jobs that I cannot see myself being able to accomplish, including all political, administrative, managerial and even technical areas, with only a minimum of actual physical training. The fact is, for myself, I know that if I believe it strongly enough, and have enough confidence in myself to learn what I need, then there are very few things that I could not accomplish in a rather short period of time. Once you know you can do it, and act that way, the means will be obvious. Acting as if you were what you want to become and know you can become is the way to remove self-doubt and enter your real-magic kingdom.
Suggestion for Implementing This Mind-set:
• If you want to achieve something that has always eluded you, for this day act as if it were already here. For example, if you have always wanted to be in excellent physical shape, but have never achieved it, act as if today you are a perfect physical specimen. Ask yourself, “What would I do if I were in perfect condition?” Then be that person today. Walk instead of driving to the store. Swim fifty laps. Eat properly. Exercise. Read a book on nutrition. In other words, live in the physical world as if that which you want in your mind were here already. This is the avenue of miracle making. If you want to be confident but don’t normally act that way, today, just this once, act in the physical world the way that you believe a confident person would.
10. Live according to your spiritual self first and your physical self second. In developing your mind-set for real magic, you must begin the process of living primarily according to your spiritual self. This is an alignment that I presented in depth in chapter 2. Within the grand scope of your higher consciousness is your ability to create miracles for yourself and your world. Those miracles will occur only if the choices you are making are in concert with your spiritual self. This means making daily choices that are based upon the qualities of the spiritual dozen (see summary on pages 56 and 57). The entry point for the world of miracle making is the ability to make choices based exclusively on the part of you that is spiritual and knows how to guide you in the physical world.
For instance, deceiving another person is clearly not in alignment with your spiritual self. However, for some reason, you may have chosen to make your deception personally valid. This is an example of alignment with your physical self first. Your soul, or your invisible self, is aligned with love, harmony, giving, truth, sharing, peace and forgiveness. Any choices you make that are inconsistent or in opposition to those qualities shield you from access to real magic.
Within your mind you can begin to realign yourself and practice new choices that will lead you away from being a splintered person, and into the experience of wholeness and oneness with yourself and the world. You will experience authentic power for miracle making when you are aligned with your spiritual side first and your physical side second.
If you are deceiving others and know it is inconsistent with your spiritual self or your life purpose, then in your own mind, for this one day, start to choose an authentic, truthful way to relate to the people you are deceiving. This does not require a noble statement or confession, it just gives you an opportunity to get realigned. Once you begin to experience nondeception it will become habitual, just as deception did. The benefit to you will be that you will be able to create miracles, which eluded you while you practiced deception. You cannot escape from your soul. Like your shadow, it is there even when it seems not to be! When you are aligned primarily with your physical self and are seemingly benefiting from some sort of lie, your invisible self is patiently there and aware. Your invisible self, your soul, will simply not permit the physical you to go beyond the limitations inherent in being a self-deceptive person.
This realignment to the spiritual part of you first, and the physical part second, is necessary in all areas of your life. Your thoughts are much more important than you may have realized. Love is a virtue of the soul. It is an alignment with your spiritual self first. When you are so aligned, you act on that principle of love. If you are aligned with your physical side first, you probably find yourself behaving toward others in nonloving ways, and regretting it in your thoughts. The person who is physically or verbally abusive to others and knows inner remorse is misaligned, just as is, more obviously, the remorseless person.
Your first responsibility is to your spiritual side. Consult your mind before acting, and therefore become authentic to yourself. Create an inner harmony where your loving soul guides your physical behavior, rather than having your soul always coming in second place, following physical outbursts.
True joy and the exhilarating feeling of being at peace with yourself and your world come to the person who lets his or her physical world flow from the pleadings of the soul. This is the atmosphere of miracles and real magic. This is when you are inspired, when you know that all that you desire, all that you do, comes from what you think in that quiet empty space within that can be called your soul. It is nothing more than an internal shift. There is no need to rid yourself of physical habits, nor pretend that your physical longings do not exist. Instead, you rearrange your priorities, making contact first with that inner invisible world called your soul, paying attention to it first, and allowing your behaviors in the physical world to flow from those thoughts. Instead of making your physical urgings the paramount focus of your life, the engine that is pulling the entire train, so to speak, you make a shift. Those physical behaviors become the cabin cars and the caboose, being pulled by the engine that is your invisible soul. Both are forever omnipresent. It is just a matter of which is in charge and which is following. When you understand this, you will know what is meant by the statement “As you think so shall you be,” and you will realize how dramatically different that is than “As you be so shall you think.”
Paramahansa Yogananda described this realignment in these poignantly beautiful words in Metaphysical Meditations. I recommend that you reread them often.
The joyous rays of the soul may be perceived if you interiorize your attention. These perceptions may be had by training your mind to enjoy the beautiful scenery of thoughts in the invisible, intangible kingdom within you. Do not search for happiness only in beautiful clothes, clean houses, delicious dinners, soft cushions and luxuries. These will imprison your happiness behind the bars of externality, of outwardness. Rather, in the airplane of your visualization, glide over the limitless empire of thoughts. There, behold the mountain ranges of unbroken, lofty, spiritual aspirations for improving yourself and others.
When you behold these spiritual aspirations not only will you improve yourself and others, you will be in a position to know the meaning of real magic. It is accomplished with the inner click of your mind that connects you to the source of your soul in the same way a wall switch connects to an electrical source. The right way to guide your physical life becomes clearly illuminated, rather than your physical life determining how you are feeling and thinking. Your soul, that inner quiet empty space, is yours to consult. It will always guide you in your right direction. It will provide all the tools that you need to produce magical results in your life, but only if you let it take priority and truly guide your material life. The choice is yours to make. Realignment is an act of the heart that connects you to your soul. Look within and listen, and your priorities will be clearly seen and heard by your physical self.
Suggestion for Implementing This Mind-set
• Rearrange your priorities for a day. Make your mental images the most important part of your life and live according to them for this day. See yourself having a pleasant, loving evening with your spouse or loved one. Get the picture in your mind and see it working out exactly in the way that would be most pleasant for both of you. Don’t let this picture go. This is an alignment with your spiritual self first. It is all still an invisible thought. Now act that thought out exactly in the manner you first created in your mind. This is how you shift your alignment to consider first your spiritual side, and then allow your physical world to flow from that new alignment.
You can do this with a business encounter, a vacation or anything that occupies your daily life. First align yourself with the loving presence that is there with you in your mind, get the picture firmly and intend that you are going to act on that picture. Spiritual beings do not allow their thoughts and feelings to flow from their actions, they understand that their thoughts create their physical world. By aligning yourself here first and keeping that priority uppermost in your mind, you will soon see how easy it is to keep that alignment operating throughout your daily life.
11. Study the paradox, “You can never get enough of what you don’t want.” Keep this paradoxical statement uppermost in your mind as you prepare yourself to experience the miracles of real magic. Consider all of the things that people do not want. The alcoholic despises the alcohol that consumes his life, yet he can never seem to get enough of it. So too the drug addict. The person who is argumentative and full of rage despises the anger in him, yet never seems able to resist the invitation to argue. The overweight person hates the food that he craves and yet never has enough. So many of us disdain the money that seems to run our lives and the need to chase it, yet we never seem to get enough of it.
The answer to the riddle of getting to the point of not craving what is poison to us is to understand what we mean by a want. There is an ancient Zen saying that goes like this: “When you seek it, you cannot find it.” That which you crave sends an unwritten, unspoken, but nevertheless real message to you, something like: “I am incomplete without that which I crave. If I get it, I will be more whole, more complete.” But this incompleteness is an illusion. Since you already are it all, you truly do not need anything else to complete yourself. When you truly know this, your wants disappear and you are able to do nicely without that which you don’t want but mysteriously keep craving. This is not to say that you will simply be like a mindless feather blowing haphazardly in the wind without any direction. However, you will be free from the insanity of vigorously pursuing that which you don’t want and which is, in some way, damaging you.
When I gave up the pursuit of money, more of it flowed into my life than I had ever known before. Why? Because I was living my purpose and surrendering to the universe to provide for my needs. When I gave up the pursuit of feeling high or relaxed or euphoric from alcohol, I became more of what I had been seeking with external substances. Why? Because I aligned myself first with my spiritual side. When I knew that my mind was capable of creating the level of euphoria, giddiness or relaxation that I wanted—and when I wanted—and my purpose was to give, love and serve others from this “high” state, I no longer needed the poisons that till then I had been unable to get enough of. I hated the hostile environment I often created, and yet I seemed hellbent on creating more of what I disdained. When I gave up needing to be right, I gave up the anger and grief that accompanied that need. I truly believe that one cannot enter the realm of real magic by diligently pursuing undesirable inner thoughts.
St. John of the Cross told us that if a man wishes to be sure of the road he treads on, he must close his eyes and walk in the dark. I interpret that as a direction for us to trust in the guidance we receive from our invisible self. The following poem, also by St. John of the Cross, elaborates on this theme.
If you would come to taste all things,
then do not seek to taste anything.
If you would come to possess all things,
then do not seek to possess anything.
If you would come to be everything,
then do not seek to be anything.
To reach that which you do not know, you have
to go by the way where you know nothing.
To come to possess what you do not possess, you have
to go by the way in which you have no possessions.
To reach what you are not, you have
to go by the way in which you are nothing.
As paradoxical as it sounds, it is the mind-set for the miracle worker. Surrender, trust, turn away from outer accumulation and achievement and allow yourself to be purposeful and guided. You will find a peaceful place in your mind when you achieve this blissful state, and you will find yourself more active, more fulfilled, and the riches you used to crave will arrive in your life in amounts more than sufficient to meet your wants and needs. The essence is knowing that you are already complete, already whole, and that nothing external to yourself in the physical world can make you any more complete.
Knowing this, the pursuit of things that you truly do not need or want diminishes, and your life takes on a new flavor, the delicious flavor of purpose. Then the irony comes full circle. The things that you used to crave and desire arrive in your life without you chasing them, and you, from this glorious new position of feeling whole and complete without them, pass them along and keep them circulating. Give up the want, know in your heart that you do not need one more thing to make yourself complete, and then watch as those external things become less and less significant in your life.
Suggestion for Implementing This Mind-set:
• Create an inventory of those things that you continue to pursue but truly do not want in your life. Then create an inventory of what you would like. You might substitute truth for deception in your relationships. For booze, you might substitute eight glasses of water a day. For anger, you might substitute love and harmony.
By becoming aware of the poisons in your life, and using your invisible miracle-making mind to create what you truly want and know you deserve, you will find yourself living in harmony. You will experience in your physical world precisely what it is that you think you are entitled to create. Inventory your life and get it on purpose.
12. Ask nothing of anyone and practice unconditional acceptance. Your miracle mind-set requires what may seem like an alien stance at first reading: “Ask nothing of anyone.” All your demands of others create an environment where miracles are impossible to manifest. The place you are attempting to reach within your mind is one of complete unconditional acceptance of others. That is, you must be empty of judgment and demand in order to experience real magic in your life.
At first this might appear to be an impossible task, but before rejecting it, remember at this stage you are only working on a mind-set. So, since your mind is your own private territory, you can simply give this unconditional acceptance a private audition for a few days and see if you don’t soon begin to experience a new kind of serenity.
Asking nothing of anyone gives you a true sense of freedom. Whenever you are about to be upset or angry at someone, stop yourself with the statement, “They owe me nothing. I expect nothing of them. I’ll just accept them where they are right now.” You will find that two days of practicing this attitude will convert you quite nicely, particularly if you practice this with the person to whom you are the closest.
For me, this person is my wife. When I remind myself that she owes me nothing, that she is a loving presence in my life with no obligations to me, I then have to be accepting of her unconditionally. Notice I did not say that I had to agree with her 100 percent of the time. I simply remind myself to demand nothing. Her presence is a gift to me, and her beautiful soul and body are wondrous gifts offered to share with me. But they are not obligations or debts. She is not mine to own in any way, nor likewise am I owned by her or anyone else. We are totally responsible exclusively for our own souls. When I remember that, my wife and I have a beautiful, spiritual, joyous partnership. When I forget that, as I do occasionally, we have stress and unpleasantness, and real magic is impossible.
This principle frees you up immensely in all areas of your life. You look upon others as gifts of which you ask nothing, while simultaneously you are engaged in your worldly roles. Even those who are paid to serve you, such as waitresses, clerks, salespeople, attendants, employees and the like, need to have this kind of attention from you. I have expectations and am grateful for whatever they bring into my life in exchange for the salary or fees I pay, but I am not better than they are in any way simply because I have chosen to be the payer and they have chosen to be the payee. These are chosen roles. Nothing more, nothing less. The amazing thing about developing such an attitude is that the less you expect or demand, the more that seems to come your way, and the better the service as well.
Seeing the fullness of God in service people, and treating them with respect rather than demanding their attention, creates a magical response most of the time. But you do not treat people that way because of what you will get, you do so because that is how you are aligned in the world. Love and harmony are your purpose. Send that out everywhere and you will discover amazing results.
This business of not demanding anything of anyone is also appropriate in your relationship to God, or the universe, or spirit, or whatever you choose to call the invisible intelligence that suffuses all form. That invisible intelligence is a part of you as well. “The kingdom of heaven is within you” is not an empty cliché, it is a reality. God will work with you, not for you. Know that your life is a gift and that the universe owes you nothing and is not beholden to you in any way.
To get to a position of being able to create miracles, you must understand the difference between willing something extraordinary to happen, and being willing for it to happen. Demanding a miracle in order to prove God’s existence is an exercise in futility. Miracles do not, and will not, occur in your life or anyone’s life because of some demand. You must be willing to allow miracles to transpire.
This point was clearly brought home to me as I was doing some research for this book. I spent every morning meditating for about an hour under a particular Hawaiian flowering tree. Each morning I would look up at the same branch of this tree and think: “If there is anything to this spiritual stuff that I am experiencing now, and if I truly do have the power in my mind to affect the world around me, and if miracles truly are within our grasp, then just let that flower above me drop onto the ground next to my outstretched hand. Let me be able to will it just with my mind and then I will be convinced.” So went the internal dialogue between my mind and the physical world. But the flower never wavered. Each morning I’d think, this is the morning. I will make it fall today, just with the power of my mind.
Then one day I was invited to give a talk for a local church. At 5:30 the morning of the talk I was meditating under “my tree” asking the internal loving guidance I have written so much about, “How may I serve? Who am I to be giving spiritual messages to people who have come near and far just to hear me? Is there really any substance to this growing knowing within me that miracles are a possibility for all of us? Am I to write and speak about this subject in greater depth than I have ever before considered?”
It was as still and windless a morning as I had ever experienced. The branch above me was stationary as I contemplated what I would say to the people who would be gathering in a few hours. I had only a twinge of doubt, but nevertheless it was there. At the very moment in which I was asking about the authenticity of all of this, and asking whether I was really to play a role in talking about miracles, that flower dropped from the branch and landed in my outstretched hand—at the very moment when I was not concentrating on my wish. Out of a windless morning that branch was the only thing moving. It was shaking above my head so noticeably that it was as if an invisible force were present in it and only it.
The strangest calm came over me at that moment. It was crystal clear, and all doubt was removed and has remained absent from my consciousness since that morning. “You cannot will miracles, Wayne, instead, be willing to allow them to come to and through you.” I stopped meditating that instant, took the flower with me, and went to the church knowing what I would be talking about that morning. It was at that service that I met Gail Longhi and our meeting with Mauricio came about.
I knew I had been sent a very special message that morning. Nothing could ever persuade me that that flower—which dislodged itself on a windless morning and landed in my hand when I was asking nothing of it, and yet had been attempting to will it down magically just with my thoughts—was all a gigantic coincidence. When I let go of my demand, I was given the answer I needed. The teacher, so to speak, appeared at just the right moment, and I began to see miracles showing up in my life in new and exciting ways. When that flower fell into my hand, I also knew that I had the ability and would be given the tools that I needed to speak and write about the world of real magic. That simple little event that morning on Maui just before I gave my first speech on this subject was to transform my life in ways I had not even considered, and this was just a few short years ago.
Life is what it is. No more, no less. Ask nothing of it, as Emerson reminds us: “These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God today.” As do you and I. Come alive in your mind to the point of demanding nothing of anyone or even of life itself. See the divineness in all of the people you encounter. Accept that and you will be in the inner frame of mind for creating real magic.
Rather than asking something of others, try giving instead. Become the giver, even if what you give is simply the radiance of love and unconditional acceptance that you are feeling within. It is the giver, not the taker, who is the true miracle worker and, ironically, it is the one who is focused on giving as his or her purpose in life who seems to receive so much more than those who are always looking for more. It is all in your mind-set!
Suggestion for Implementing This Mind-set:
• Give yourself a day to ask nothing of anyone. For your spouse, your children, your co-workers, everyone that you encounter today, decide to give to instead of taking from. What a pleasant surprise awaits you as you simply extend yourself to others and expect nothing in return. As you will see, the less you expect from others and the less demanding you are that they serve you, the more will come your way.
Just give love and unconditional acceptance to those you encounter and notice what happens. How can you be angry or hurt when you have no expectations? This is a wonderful exercise to implement when you find yourself feeling victimized or underappreciated. Expect no appreciation and allow those you meet to be what they need to be. Then you will see that the appreciation that you think you need is unnecessary. In fact, being upset because it is lacking is just another way of allowing someone else to control you with their actions or lack of actions. When you relinquish that and simply give to others because that is your purpose, and for no other reasons, then you will find yourself receiving the very appreciation that you coveted so desperately. Now you will not need it. You’ll acknowledge it, and then get back on purpose.
13. Begin to develop authentic power for yourself. As you proceed in developing your miracle mind-set, think about what it is that will make you an authentically powerful human being. This concept of personal power is often tossed around without stopping to consider what it takes to be personally powerful.
By authentically powerful I do not mean the ability to dominate or control others. If power is measured in such terms, then where is your power when those people, whom you control, leave? To be authentically powerful, your power must not reside in how others react to you, nor exclusively in your physical strength or appearance. If power is dependent on your physical beauty, where is your power when it is gone? Authentic power is not located in the physical body—inevitable changes transpire in the material world. Exclusive alignment with the physical side of your humanity is a movement away from true empowerment because it is transitory and dependent on how others react. And anything that is dependent upon the physical, material world to be authentic always slips away as that material world changes and becomes less of what has been called attractive or strong.
Authentic empowerment is a different kind of journey. It is found on the path of alignment with your soul’s purpose. With each step that you take to align yourself with your soul’s purpose, you further empower yourself. You must remember, however, that you are in a culture that places primary emphasis on the physical side and minimal emphasis on the spiritual, or invisible, side. You are constantly encouraged to align yourself exclusively on the physical side of your humanity. So, as you read these pages, remind yourself that your objective is personal empowerment—to literally become your own miracle maker.
Transforming your body into as healthy a specimen as possible will probably require a complete about-face in your nutritional and exercise habits. These habits have developed in a culture that has daily tempted you to align yourself with your physical self exclusively. Your spiritual side, as you become realigned, will implore you to eliminate poisonous items. Yet your physical side will tempt you with toxic allure. Your physical alignment can literally disempower you and make the transformative miracle you imagine for yourself an impossibility. Yet the light that is within you, invisible though it may be to your five senses, knows precisely what you require in the way of nutrition and active exercise.
When you become realigned you will follow your inner signals almost effortlessly. You will see and feel yourself changing. That shift will signal a movement away from inauthentic power, to personal empowerment. The physical temptations will remain, and occasionally you will allow them to win, but your new spiritual alignment will dominate your life, and a periodic slip will not dislodge your authentic self. This realignment will show up in virtually all areas of your life.
Alignment with the physical realm will cause you to be tempted to cheat, steal, cut corners, deceive, bully, angrily lash out, or give in to an addiction. If you stay with this alignment, you will witness the disintegration of your power. You will have made the irresponsible choice to disempower yourself. The immediate rewards may make you look more powerful, especially to others, but you will know inside yourself that you are weaker. You will know that you once again succumbed to the weakness of temptation and ignored your inner urgings.
Authentic power, the ability to create what seems impossible when totally aligned with your five senses, is accomplished step by magic step. These steps are inner thoughts that guide you to pay attention to something you already know but have ignored in favor of the immediate gratification of your physical-world sensations. Just one little victory at a time is the way to experiencing authentic empowerment, perhaps for the very first time in your life.
Authentic empowerment is the knowing within that you are on purpose, doing God’s work, peacefully and harmoniously. It is knowing that you can create whatever you need to further that work, without resorting to manipulating or harming another. It is a new way of being, and it can show up in thousands of tiny ways.
For example, in the seventeen miles I drive between my office and my home there are numerous traffic lights, often heavy traffic, and a multitude of construction delays. When I was more physically aligned I was always in a hurry, and angry over every little delay or slow driver, rushing through yellow caution lights and generally in a state of upset for about ninety minutes each day. I was allowing myself to become inwardly upset as a result of the physical-world realities that were a part of the life I had chosen for myself.
When I realigned myself, I began to experience authentic power in that same situation. Now, before leaving on that seventeen-mile excursion through those real-world conditions, I play it all out in my mind first, before even getting into my automobile. I see it going the way I would like it to go. I picture myself peaceful throughout the trip, stopping at caution lights, staying in one lane, and even blessing those who drive at a pace that requires me to slow down. This is my mental picture as I enter my automobile for the trip to the office. I am calm, relaxed, and ready to enjoy the next forty-five minutes of my life.
I am empowered authentically! I am no longer victimized emotionally by how others choose to drive, or how the traffic lights perform. I do not need any specific external conditions for me to feel loving and purposeful and to enjoy the present moments of my life in traffic. I have shifted my alignment primarily to the spiritual, invisible domain, and only secondarily to the physical.
Whereas previously my thoughts and feelings in the invisible domain of my life flowed from whatever was happening in the physical world, now it is reversed. My thoughts and feelings—my invisible, spiritual self—dictate how my physical world is going to be experienced. This is authentic empowerment—to have control over one’s environment—and it is possible in virtually all areas of your life, if you choose to be empowered with the miracle that is your spiritual, invisible soul first and foremost in all of your physical-world undertakings.
Being personally powerful in any life situation becomes easy and natural when you realign yourself in this fashion. This is empowerment, and it works in everything you do and with everyone you meet. Align yourself to your soul, listen to those inner pleadings to be at ease and on purpose, and you will shift your life over to being an authentically powerful person. It is with this mind-set that real magic will become available to you as a life choice.
Suggestion for Implementing This Mind-set:
• Detach yourself for a brief period from the behavior of controlling others through your size, authority position, physical prowess, physical appearance, age, wealth or anything external to yourself. Imagine yourself as just a soul interacting with other souls. Truly treat others as if the fullness of God resided within them. Imagine that all manner of physical-world attributes are nonexistent. Give this a try for a day or two. See how much authentic power you truly possess.
I often do this with my little children. I imagine myself without my adult-size body and all of the power that goes with being grown up. I try to relate to them for a period of time, say, on the way to school, as if we were all without bodies and only our thoughts and souls were present in the car. I see how empowering this is to them and to me. I listen to them, rather than giving them orders. I send them love rather than directions. They see me as a loving guide, rather than a big-person father who can make them do what I want them to do.
Give up your need to control, and substitute a kind of unconditional acceptance of those you meet as soul mates, all equal in the eyes of God. Convert your marriage or primary relationship into a spiritual partnership. No authority. No one in charge. Simply two mates connected by an invisible bond, without one needing to dominate the other. You will be surprised at how you will empower others as well as yourself when you shift your inner world away from domination and control, to one of unconditional respect and loving harmony. While this world is of course invisible, it nevertheless is much more powerful and authentic than that which resides exclusively in the visible, material world.
14. Practice daily meditation. Learn how to meditate, and make meditation an integral part of your daily life. This final step in creating your miracle mind-set is, for me, the most significant.
Five years ago, I could not imagine myself meditating on a regular basis. Today, I cannot imagine my life without it. It is the vehicle I use to create the state of mind I have been writing about in this chapter. I cannot imagine myself going on stage to speak, without first meditating. Similarly, every single writing session is preceded by a meditation. My life is primarily about meditation, or quietly going within to discover the invisible intelligence and loving guidance that is always available to me.
The process of meditation is nothing more than quietly going within and discovering that higher component of yourself. After a while, you come into direct contact with what has always been a mystery in your life. You will discover God, that infinite invisible intelligence that is always a part of you and your daily life. Here is how Richard D. Mann describes it in The Light of Consciousness:
The body seems to be moved, purified; the imagery has an unfamiliar and awesome clarity; the spontaneous registry of what one’s life and current experiences all imply at their core may take the form of searing insights. Even the stillness comes as a blessing and a discovery. Whatever happens, it continues to suggest a shift in the inner structure of one’s consciousness….
Learning to meditate begins, like all learning, with a belief, a thought that must originate with you. The thought is simple: “I believe there is something to this experience of meditation and I am willing to invest the energy to discover it.” That’s it! A simple acknowledgment that meditation, though you may know nothing about it, has some inherent value, and a decision to approach it with an open mind.
In order to create that open mind, contemplate for a moment on the greatest thinkers you have admired. Consider the lives and the advice of these spiritual masters who have been more influential than the billions of other people who have lived on this planet. They all encourage us to meditate, to go within, to seek guidance in the silent invisible empty space that resides in all of us. Meditation gives you an opportunity to come to know your invisible self. It allows you to empty yourself of the endless hyperactivity of your mind, and to attain a calmness. It teaches you to be peaceful, to remove stress, to receive answers where confusion previously reigned, to slow yourself down and, ultimately, when you adopt meditation as a way of life, to be able to go to that peaceful place anytime. I do mean anytime. In the middle of a business meeting, in the midst of a tragedy, during an athletic competition—anytime! Meditation can and will help you become your own miracle worker and come to know the meaning of real magic.
I want to remind you again what the brilliant French philosopher and scientist Blaise Pascal said about the benefits of meditation: “All man’s miseries derive from not being able to sit quietly in a room alone.” I find this fascinating, and wonder why we don’t include meditation in our education programs at all levels. In my experience with meditation, I have never felt anything but more peaceful, loving and confident after meditating. Here is something so simple, available to all of us whenever we choose to use it, that contributes enormously to our well-being.
And how do you do it? It’s simple! You just make up your mind to do it. Listen to the literary genius Franz Kafka:
You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
There is no right or wrong way to meditate. There is no specific strategy to follow. It truly is just allowing yourself to go into another dimension that is free of the limitations you experience in your physical world. In your meditative state, you can play out a difficulty or problem, in your mind. See it, experience it first within your invisible self and then play out how you want it to go in your physical world. You can also ask for divine guidance by silently asking questions like, “How may I act lovingly and serve you while participating in this upcoming event?” “What can I think to replace the self-destructive thoughts that are now in my mind and destroying my happiness?” Remember the key: “As you think so shall you be.”
Meditation is your opportunity to create what you will be, by entering the invisible world of thought and playing it out there first, almost like a divine rehearsal for your life. Yes, you will receive the answers you seek. Yes, you will be able to manifest miracles that were all but impossible previously. Yes, you will be able to leave your physical body and enter the kingdom of heaven that is within you and come back to truly experience real magic.
In The Three Pillars of Zen, Philip Kapleau summarized what you can receive from the commitment to the exercise of meditation.
For the ordinary man, whose mind is a checkerboard of crisscrossing reflections, opinions, and prejudices, bare attention is virtually impossible; his life is thus centered not in reality itself but in his ideas of it. By focusing the mind wholly on each object and every action, zazen [meditation] strips it of extraneous thoughts and allows us to enter into a full rapport with life.
Yes, you will truly move from ideas about your life to experiencing your purpose here, your heroic life mission. Another way of saying this was offered by Taisen Deshimaru: “If you have a glass full of liquid you can discourse forever on its qualities, discuss whether it is cold, warm, whether it is really and truly composed of H-2-O, or even mineral water, or saki. Meditation is Drinking it!”
Beautiful! Learning to meditate is learning how to live rather than talking about it. It is a true alignment with your purpose as a spiritual being having a human experience.
There are many wonderful books and guides on the subject of meditation, by people far more qualified than I may ever be. I will describe how meditation works, but I want to emphasize that this is what works for me. I would be most pleased if my description encourages you to begin the practice of meditation; however, you will only know what it is, and what benefits it offers you, when you experience it directly.
I have found that my most valuable meditation time is early in the morning. You might want to take that last hour in the morning before you normally would have awakened and devote it to meditation. Don’t worry about being fatigued—it seems that one hour of meditation can be equivalent to a night’s sleep. When I finish meditation I feel more rested than after awakening from a full night’s rest. I take a long, hot shower or bath, then sit on the floor, legs crossed and eyes closed.
My first objective in meditating is to get myself to an alpha state. It is the equivalent, for me, of how I’d feel if hypnotized. The brain waves are altered. They are actually slowed down. I know when I’m there because I begin to feel light and euphoric. My arms feel lighter, almost like feathers, and will rise with a minimum of effort, seemingly assisted by an invisible force that is part of me. It is like a tipsy, light-headed, overall good feeling without chemicals or alcohol. After several years of meditation, I can get to this alpha state in a matter of seconds.
Burt Goldman, writing in How to Better Your Life with Mind Control, has a superb chapter called “Getting to Alpha,” which describes in specific detail how to get there. What works for me is taking deep breaths and concentrating totally on the longest intake and outtake I can manage without having any intervening thoughts. I avoid the temptation of endless thoughts bombarding my consciousness by repeating “Ey-Kiss” as an inner mantra, very slowly to match my breathing pattern. I can actually feel the chemistry of my brain altering as I sit concentrating on my breathing and repeating “Ey-Kiss” slowly over and over.
I have also used what I call the twenty-four-second-clock approach to getting to alpha. I visualize a clock made of numerous lights outlining the number 24. Then I shift it down to “23.” My own personal rule at the beginning is to get the clock in my mind to go from “24” down to “0,” seeing each number light up. If at anytime in that interval I become distracted, or a thought pops into my mind for even a fleeting microsecond, I start the clock over again at “24” and work it back to “0” without any intervening thoughts or mental distractions. This is a way of learning to discipline yourself to concentrate on one thing and to empty your mind of all other thoughts. Getting all the way to “0” from “24” is a monumental accomplishment! I am at alpha when I succeed.
The alpha state is an incredible lightness of being. I feel lighter, and a wonderful, joyous feeling of inner goose bumps overwhelms me. As I stated earlier, at this stage for me my arms are like feathers and my head feels weightless. I then concentrate more fully on my inner vision and may elect to create a pastel-colored or pure-white screen. I feel alone, peaceful, blissful and ready to use this meditation time in any way I desire.
WHAT TO DO WHILE MEDITATING
Each session offers numerous opportunities to use the time in valuable ways. Your options are unlimited. You are entering the spiritual world as you elect to go within your self and discover God. This is the avenue through which miracles will begin to manifest in your physical world. I welcome this time and suggest it be treated as divine and special. Don’t let anyone degrade it or impinge upon it.
The practice of active meditation includes presenting problems or questions for consideration. About a current life problem I often ask, “What is the lesson here?” or “How can I benefit from this situation?” For example, at one time I was experiencing some difficulties with my fourteen-year-old daughter. At issue was a boy she wanted to date, and it felt impossible to talk to her without our communication becoming mired in upset and obstinate behavior. In a meditation I asked, “What is the lesson here? How can I be of service to my daughter?” Suddenly I saw her on my inner screen. She was crying and I asked her, “What’s the matter? Let’s talk about it.”
She responded, “I can’t talk to you about it, you’re my father, you’re from a different generation. You really don’t understand.”
I visualized what I call my circle of truth, which is my meditation technique wherein whoever goes into the circle can speak only the truth. I placed my daughter in the circle and she told me that it was impossible for her to share with me, her father, what she was feeling. I joined her in the circle, held her hand and said, “I agree with you. You are troubled and you can’t share it with me because I am prejudiced and overly protective as your father. I am so preoccupied with you not getting hurt and getting in above your head, that I can’t truly hear what you are saying or feeling. But I do know someone you can talk to.”
Then, in my mind, I transformed myself back closer to her age. There I was, fifteen years old, holding my daughter’s hands. I could experience in my mind everything I wore then, including the cheap after-shave lotion, the moccasins, and the Brylcreem in my hair. As a teenager I asked her to tell me what was bothering her.
Standing in the circle of truth, she opened up, telling me, teenager to teenager, all that bothered her about her father. She related, among other things, how I couldn’t be objective and didn’t trust her to have good judgment.
When I came out of the meditation I was crying, but felt as if I had made a breakthrough. While it was “merely” a ritual of the mind, it was truly a miracle in the making.
Later that morning I had perhaps the most meaningful conversation with my daughter of our entire lives. I related what had taken place in my meditation. We sat holding hands, explaining to each other how we felt and vowing to share more openly what was troubling us. The situation was resolved. We hugged each other and both said the magic words, “I love you. I will try harder to hear your concerns.” I’ve included this story as an example of one of the many things you can do while meditating.
The vehicle of meditation offers innumerable opportunities to resolve conflicts. The guidance is there within yourself. While meditating you can ask questions and receive answers. You also can go backward in your life and relive experiences and be able to see the lesson that each of those life experiences provided. You can commune with those who were once in your life and now are either in a different part of the physical world or have left this physical world. You can make contact with the divine intelligence within you and use it in dramatic new ways. You can learn to get to the heart of any illness that may be a part of your life, blessing the discomfort or disease and seeking the meaning of the illness. You also may come into contact with your healing capacity. You can discover that your mind is capable of creating chemicals that will reduce your discomfort and aid your healing. You can learn to ask for and receive the courage to make significant changes away from addictive poisons and unhealthy life-styles.
Ultimately you will get to the point of going beyond thoughts and the activity of the mind. You will “transcend” to that unified field of consciousness where you have no mantra and no thought—this is bliss. And the glimpses of this state simply cannot be explained. They will be experienced and treasured—I promise.
After meditating I enjoy a continuation of the experience of that incredible lightness of being. I feel centered and focused and relate to others seeing that fullness of God in them. It seems that I automatically eat better, make healthier choices, drink more water, exercise more, and feel more generous, more forgiving, less stressful and less fatigued. I really cannot emphasize enough how valuable the practice of meditation is for me.
Recently I was asked to contribute, along with the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa and almost thirty others, a personal experience of God for a book titled For the Love of God. Because meditation presently feels like my most meaningful experience of God, that is what I wrote about. Here’s a portion of what I said:
I find God by giving myself time every day—through prayer, or meditation, or whatever you want to call it—to go into another level of consciousness. I close my eyes and breathe. I center myself and empty my mind and begin to feel the love that is there when I quiet down enough to feel. As I do this I transcend time and space, and I am in the very presence of God, and it puts me into a state of harmony and bliss that transcends anything I’ve ever known….
How you do it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t come about in some linear fashion or by studying somebody else’s ways. The secret is in giving yourself permission to experience it first-hand, and then living whatever messages you’re getting. When you experience this, you connect in a loving way to everything in the universe.
My technique is my own. It is not a part of any formal meditation training. It works for me and it has evolved, as will yours, from having the intention to make contact with this higher part of yourself. When you believe it is there, you will discover how. It will not match mine nor anyone else’s. It will be your very own, very personal, very effective means of going within. There are many wonderful books and guides available to assist you in the how. But at this point, you need the intention to discover it yourself.
A SUMMARY OF THE FOURTEEN KEYS TO A MIRACLE MIND-SET
When you have committed yourself to achieving your miracle mind-set you may find the following checklist helpful. These fourteen suggestions, which have no preferential order, are only a beginning. All of them originate with your invisible mind. They are the keys that can unlock the door to real-magic thinking in your daily life.
1. Reserve your judgment and disbelief.
2. Create a real-magic zone in your mind.
3. Affirm yourself as a no-limit person.
4. Develop a new mind-set toward the concept of intuition.
5. Discover the secret that sits in the center and knows.
6. Learn to learn through knowing and trusting rather than doubting and fearing.
7. Affirm that your intention creates your reality.
8. Experience surrender and satori.
9. Learn to act as if the life you visualize were already here.
10. Live according to your spiritual self first and your physical self second.
11. Study the paradox, “You can never get enough of what you don’t want.”
12. Ask nothing of anyone and practice unconditional acceptance.
13. Begin to develop authentic power for yourself.
14. Practice daily meditation.
Once you have the inner way, the outer way will follow. The next chapters are devoted to helping you with that outer way. As you move on to the implementation of this miracle mind-set in all areas of your physical world, let the words of Lao-tzu in the Tao-te Ching echo in your mind:
When you find the way
others will find you.
Passing by on the road
they will be drawn to your door.
The way that cannot be heard
will be echoed in your voice.
The way that cannot be seen
will be reflected in your eyes.