How many business people are like that! They keep thinking, “If I can make just a little more money, I’ll find happiness at last.” Somehow, their “sausage of happiness” keeps receding from their grasp. As they strain to reach it, however, just see what a cart-load of troubles and worries they drag along behind them!
• Avoid the trap of expecting your prosperity to arrive in your life through the efforts of others. You create your own life of prosperity. No one has to change in order for you to experience your own prosperity. This is an inner game, and you must leave behind your expectations of others. Even if you do manage to get others to provide you with the symbols of prosperity, it will all disappear quickly and you will be stuck with that infernal sausage ahead of you, always suffering from the disease called more. And then it will be a new cast of “others” that you will seek out, always striving and looking outward. Take responsibility for your own feelings about prosperity and you will eliminate any and all suffering that you experience in this context.
• Finally, meditate on your prosperity. Get pictures on your internal screen that reflect you as a prosperous individual. Refuse to let those pictures fade, despite whatever circumstances you may have created in your life. Your meditations will give you an inner script to follow. Use this valuable practice to manifest what you truly want to experience in the physical world.
Prosperity is something that I know can be achieved by anyone. If I can experience it, having come from my scarce beginnings, then it is hard for me to imagine that anyone cannot make it happen. Looking back on those early days, I realize that even then I embodied a prosperity consciousness. For prosperity is located within.
I have watched my children grow and flourish. They were all once in little baby bodies. Each of them would cry for a toy or some object of their immediate attention. Something as simple as a rattle that had caught their eye, or a toy that someone else had. They would cry until they received the toy, then they would throw it away and cry for something else.
We leave those baby bodies behind us, but many of us fail to leave that infantile thinking. We want something else to satisfy us. But we do not know how to be satisfied. We continue the relentless pursuit of more, chasing after prosperity as if it were something that resided in objects external to us. To know the secret of prosperity, know that you can never find it. Or to paraphrase Eykis, there is no way to prosperity, prosperity is the way.
6
REAL MAGIC AND YOUR PERSONAL IDENTITY
There’s only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving and that’s your own self.
—ALDOUS HUXLEY
You can choose to have the personality that would most please you, beginning today. Yes that’s right, you, can choose your own personality. Why not? You have already established through a lifetime of choices precisely what kind of a human being you have wanted to become. In that invisible realm where you make all of the decisions about your physical circumstances, you have been making choices to have a certain kind of personality, along with specific fears, habits, customs, levels of confidence, intellectual abilities and the like.
If you close your eyes and visualize for a moment precisely what kind of person you would like to be, what picture emerges? Try to get an accurate picture in your mind, even if you consider its fulfillment in reality an impossibility. Is this your miracle: to reduce your fears? to have a genius IQ? to be able to stand up for what you believe? to overcome your shyness? to be rid of your phobias? to have a positive, loving self-portrait?
Forget for a moment that you have been taught that you cannot help having the personality that you have, that you inherited it from your parents, or that people cannot truly change. Forget the notion that some people have higher intelligence than others, or that talent is inherited and you were shortchanged. Let all of that go in your inner vision, and simply see yourself living and performing at the level of real magic. You must develop within you a new knowing that you have the capacity, through your invisible spiritual self, to create any change that you can conceive of for yourself. That is, if you can authentically believe in it, you can create it.
This is the message of this chapter. You have created your own personality, and thus you have the ability to change any part of it. You can manifest real magic in your own inner life, and become the person you once thought was possible only for others to become. You already have everything you need to make this happen, you do not need anything else.
THE BIG LIE
We grow up believing in so many limitations that after a while our lives actually manifest those limitations. We hear ourselves saying things that we accept as truth, when in fact they are misbeliefs that have turned into our truths. As long as you hang onto the big lie, the “truth” of these misbeliefs, you cannot become a person who experiences miracles. Here are five of those misbeliefs that permeate our culture. Keep in mind that each and every one of these is nothing more than a belief, an inner thought about our own physical world. The more you hang onto these thoughts, and convince yourself and others that they represent the “truth,” the more you ensure that this “truth” will inhibit the flow of real magic into your life.
1. I can’t help the way I am; I’ve always been this way. I hear these sentiments from people almost every day, and these same people always wonder why miracles never happen in their lives. If you find yourself believing that you must always be the way you have always been, you are arguing against growth. Whatever the state of your personality—be it shy, aggressive, fearful, introverted or extroverted—you must shed the illusion that you cannot help the way you are. You may even read studies that indicate that your personality is outside of your control, it is just what was given to you and you have no choice in the matter. You may tell others that you wish you could change, but this is “just the way I am” and “I’ve always been this way.” This inner picture is a guarantee against creating miracles. In fact, such a change in your personality to become more outspoken, confident, loving, gentle or anything else might be the very miracle that you seek. You must toss this excuse into the garbage and out of your life completely. In the past, you may have always chosen to be a certain way, but you must create a knowing within that you have the power to create whatever kind of person you want to become, in all aspects of your humanity.
2. It’s my nature; I inherited who I am and it can’t be changed. “You are just like your father, he was uncoordinated and so are you.” “You got that tone deafness from your grandfather on your mother’s side, he couldn’t carry a tune either.” “Your brothers and sisters were all poor in mathematics, it runs in the family.” “She is shy just like her mother and her grandmother’s mother.” These are the sentiments that help to perpetuate the big lie. Miracles are impossible because you have come to believe you inherited your limitations and it is impossible to overcome genetics. The scientists will tell you that that code has been passed on to you through your DNA and you have to take what you get and make the best of it.
To enter the realm of real magic you will have to suspend such thoughts, and become a spiritual being first, a being who has no limitations in the inner domain where boundaries are nonexistent. In this place, you can imagine for yourself anything that you desire without anyone being able to take it away from you. In this realm, your corner of freedom, you can be multitalented, brilliantly intellectual, confident, devoid of fears and gorgeous to boot. It is here that you create your limits and it is here that the beginnings of real magic take place.
Your miracle might involve something that you are blocking because of your insidious belief in inheritance. The world is full of people who have gone beyond what their genes might have indicated were their limits. It is up to you to commit yourself to this new intention.
3. My personality is controlled by my chemistry and metabolism. This is a lie that we hear over and over again, and it is repeated in some of the most prestigious circles, making it even more difficult to overcome. “How can I change a
nd become what I consider miraculous, when my body chemistry controls who I am?” Articles are regularly published describing how certain enzymes are present in certain kinds of people and therefore they are presumably prisoners to those enzymes. Shy people have shy enzymes, which are a part of their chemistry. Overweight people have fat enzymes, aggressive people have military peptides, musical people have singing endorphins—and you are led to believe that that explains why some people are a certain way and others are not. Scientists explain away miraculous achievements or lack of achievements by the presence or absence of certain chemicals.
While scientists may in fact have a point about body chemistry and the presence of invisible creatures in our systems, what they too often fail to address is what kind of control we have over our own bodies. Obviously our body chemistry controls a great deal of how we conduct our lives, but you must come to an understanding that is fundamental to our humanity: If we are to have magical bodies, we must have magical minds. Our body chemistry is always being affected by how we choose to think. Ulcers in a body show up in altered body chemistry, there is no doubt about it, but you must go to the source of the problem to understand how to create miracles. I do not dispute that those little invisible creatures are in our bodies, I simply want you to take a look at the enormous power that you have in your mind for containing those creatures, or retraining them to work for you rather than against you.
4. My family is responsible for my personality. “I could never escape from the clutches of my family.” “My mother was overbearing and my father abandoned us when I was a child.” “All of the girls in our family are this way, we can’t help it.” These, and thousands of similar excuses, are part of a big lie. These kinds of pronouncements are the very sort of inner thoughts that will keep you from ever allowing miraculous changes to take place in your own personality. As long as you are convinced, even in a small way, that your family is responsible for the kind of person that you are today, you are trapped in that cycle. You must know within that you not only have a choice today, but you have always had a choice concerning how you react to the influences of your family. They cannot create the you that you experience, only you can do that. The choice is always yours.
You have the power to reject behaviors, attitudes and beliefs coming at you that you find objectionable. Although you cannot eliminate the influences that were very much a part of your childhood, you and you alone decide whether they will persist. Cultivate the inner knowing that your family and your role within your family influence you today to the extent that you believe that they do. If you do not accept total responsibility for how they fit into your life, then you will not allow any miraculous personality changes to occur. If someone else is at the controls, then you are their victim, even if they seem to be directing you on a positive course. You must become the producer, director and actor in the unfolding story of your life.
5. I can’t escape my culture and times. This is the lie that encourages you to believe that your habits and customs are the result of that mysterious “culture” that is always shading and shaping your life. The influence of society is a part of the illusion that you are formed by this bigger and better social force. “Society lays down the rules, and we are all the victims of those practices.” “We live in a culture that teaches obedience, and I am just one more of those obedient souls who thinks and acts like the herd.” “How can anyone get ahead when the government and Big Brother are always telling you what you can and cannot do?” These are statements that reflect an inner vision of helplessness.
If you believe that the culture determines who you are and what kind of person you will turn out to be, then that will be your reality. On the other hand, everyone who has ever made a difference in the world has been an innovator. An innovator does not look at the cultural norms and say to himself, “This is all that I can do.” Instead he looks within, and allows his conscience and commitment to a purpose decide who he will become. Society or the culture is not even a part of his personal consideration as he pursues his purpose of serving. If you are going to follow your bliss and make a difference in the world, you will soon learn that you cannot follow the herd. The old maxim “If you follow the herd, you’ll end up stepping in shit” applies here. Using culture or society as excuses will only hold you back from making miraculous changes in your personality. You cannot depend upon the conduct and approval of some amorphous they to determine what you can become. You cannot blame them for what you have failed to become.
Once again, it boils down to personal responsibility and a willingness to consult your own spiritual awareness, that higher invisible self that flows through you. Nothing out there can control what is in there, it is the other way around. As you think, so shall you be. Your thinking is yours, originating with you. The society in which you find yourself is simply the stage upon which you are acting out your own miracles.
These are the five misbeliefs that make up the big lie that was thrust upon you from your earliest moments of consciousness. If you find any of them familiar, and if you are continuing to use them as justification for your lack of self-growth, then you must begin a program to overcome these illusions. This all takes place in that invisible place within you, where you have the choice to rid yourself of these toxic beliefs permanently by cultivating new and transforming thoughts to replace those old beliefs.
OVERCOMING THE BIG LIE
“I am a miracle!” Repeat this over and over to yourself until it is firmly planted in your mind. Be in awe of yourself. Producing miracles for yourself is about knowing within that you are already miraculous. When you know and feel the miracle that you are, you begin to also know and feel that nothing is impossible for you. You begin to sense that you no longer need to hang onto those five excuses outlined above, and in their place you substitute your new awareness. To overcome the big lie that your misbeliefs are the truth, you will need to equip yourself with new, empowering beliefs. You must come to know that you can choose the life you want to live. You can choose to make your life into a grand, ever-evolving work of art. The key is in your thoughts, the wondrous invisible part of you that is your spiritual soul.
You have come into this world housed for a while in a limited body. But you also have an unlimited mind. This mind of yours is unbounded, formless, and infinitely capable of creating any kind of miracle that it chooses, when it is fully honored and celebrated. It can occupy an ill form, grow up in a dysfunctional family, be in a shy depressed personality, have stuttering behavior, an average or genius IQ, and a host of phobias and fears if it wants, and it can even choose to believe that it has no choice in the matter and convince others of the same.
Or, it can choose something else. It can use this infinite invisible force to create a miraculous purposeful person. With real-magic thinking you can leave behind the old conditioned hypnosis and see that there are those who have surpassed seemingly insurmountable conditions. Then you can use your thoughts to know that if one person can leave schizophrenia behind, and one can overcome manic-depression, and another can become a physician in spite of being told he was dyslexic or even retarded, then whatever force is flowing through them to allow those miracles, you can tap into it and use it to become the personality that you want to be. Real-magic thinking says, “I believe it, I know it, and I will access my spiritual powers to do it. It is my intention!”
If you align yourself with the belief in limitations, then I am sure that you think this is all simply unrealistic optimism. You look at all the suffering in the world and what seems like “God’s mysterious anger toward us” and choose thoughts like, “Look at all those people who are trapped by their circumstances, who have terrible mental afflictions, who live in abominable family situations. There is no hope for them and there is no hope for me. People can’t change who they are. We have no choice.”
So be it! You can learn to be optimistic or you can learn to be pessimistic. My philosophy about this is succinctly stated: “No one knows enough to be a pes
simist!” No one!
We have only begun to tap our awareness of the power of the invisible world that we are immersed in. Our minds, our thoughts, our souls, are only beginning to be recognized by those left-brained scientists that I have already mentioned. A heart starts beating in a mother’s womb six or seven weeks after conception and life as we observe it is under way. And it is a complete mystery to all of the “greatest” minds on the planet. Where was that life before, what mysterious invisible force was present in the joining of those two blobs of human protoplasm that determines every wrinkle, every hair, every cell until that body dies? And where was that invisible force before that life began, and what happens to it after we close parentheses? All mysterious. All unknown. So how can anyone elect to be a pessimist in the face of what we don’t know?
For me, I know the power of that force, and I am positive that it can be channeled to create miracles in your own personality. You can choose the way of real magic and experience the kind of person you have dreamed of becoming, or you can choose to harbor the doubt, and create your life based upon those doubts. Martin Seligman, a friend and colleague, puts it this way in his powerful book Learned Optimism:
A pessimistic; attitude may seem so deeply rooted as to be permanent. I have found, however, that pessimism is escapable. Pessimists can in fact learn to be optimists, and not through mindless devices like whistling a happy tune or mouthing platitudes, but by learning a new set of cognitive skills.
Real Magic Page 21
