I figure if I can talk to God and call it prayer, believing in such a universal divine presence, then there is nothing loony about having God talk to me. All the spiritual people I’ve read about share a similar feeling. Intuition is loving guidance and they know enough not to ignore it.
9. The nonspiritual being hates evil, and is determined to eradicate that which he believes to be evil. The spiritual being knows that everything that he hates and fights weakens him, and all that he is for, all that he supports, empowers him.
The nonspiritual being is involved in a lot of fighting; he is aligned with the tools of power in a war against that which he believes to be evil. This person knows what he hates, and experiences a great deal of inner turmoil over perceived wrongs. Much of his energy, both mental and physical, is devoted to what he perceives to be bad or evil.
Spiritual beings do not order their lives to be against anything. They are not against starvation, they are for feeding people and seeing that everyone in the world is nutritionally satisfied. They work on what they are for, rather than fighting what they are against. Fighting starvation only weakens the fighter and makes him angry and frustrated, while working for a well-fed populace is empowering. Spiritual beings are not against war, they are for peace and spend their energy on working for peace. They do not join a war on drugs or poverty, because wars need warriors and fighters, and this will not make the problems go away. Spiritual beings are for a well-educated youth, who can be euphoric, giddy and high without the need for external substances. They work toward this end, helping young people to know the power of their own minds and bodies. They fight nothing.
When you fight evil by employing the methods of hatred and violence, you are part of the hatred and violence of evil itself, despite the rightness of your position in your own mind. If all the people in the world who are against terrorism and war were to shift their perspective to supporting and working for peace, terrorism and war would be eliminated. For every dollar we spend on peace, we spend two thousand on war. On the entire planet we spend approximately $25 million every minute on the business of war and upgrading our capacity for killing each other, while in the same minute (and every minute of every day) approximately forty children die of starvation. It is as if every ten minutes a Boeing 747 loaded with children were to crash, killing all of the passengers. How much does it cost to feed forty children? Who is going to reverse these telling statistics? The spiritual residents of our planet? Or the nonspiritual? No matter how much you may think these things are irreversible, you are part of the problem as long as you opt to be a fighter, rather than a person who knows what you are for, understands your purpose here on earth for this short period of time and works toward empowerment in spite of what you may see so many others doing.
Somehow our priorities are turned inside out. Spiritual beings do not get tied up with hatred. They are focused thoughtfully on what they are for and they translate that into action. Spiritual beings keep their thoughts on love and harmony, in the face of things they would love to see changed. All that you fight weakens you. All that you are for empowers you. In order to manifest miracles you must be totally focused on what you are for. Real magic occurs in your life when you have eliminated the hatred that is in your life, even the hatred that you have against hatred.
10. The nonspiritual person feels no sense of responsibility to the universe, therefore he has not developed a reverence for life. The spiritual being has a reverence for life that goes to the essence of all beings.
The nonspiritual being believes, as Zukav has said, “that we are conscious and that the universe is not.” He thinks that his existence will end with this lifetime and that he is not responsible to the universe. The nonspiritual being has become arrogant.
The spiritual being behaves as if the God in all life matters, and he feels a sense of responsibility to the universe. He is in awe of this life, and that he has a mind with which to process the physical universe. That awe leads him to look outward at all life and the environment with a sense of appreciation and reverence, to engage with life itself at a deeper level than merely the material world. To the spiritual being the cycles of life are approached as representatives of infinity, with reverence that is truly an honoring of life. It is a gentle and kind approach toward all that is in our world, a recognition that the earth itself and the universe beyond has a consciousness and that our life is connected in some unseen way to all life now and in the past. The invisible intelligence that suffuses all form is a part of ourselves, thus a reverence for all life is knowing that there is a soul in everything. That soul is worthy of being honored.
The spiritual person is conscious of the need not to take more from the earth than is needed and to give back to the universe in some fashion for those who will habitate the planet after himself. Miracle-making capability comes out of a strong reverence for all life, including your own, and therefore in order to know real magic you must learn to think and act in ways consistent with being a reverent spiritual being.
11. The nonspiritual being is laden with grudges, hostility and the need for revenge. The spiritual being has no room in his heart for these impediments to miracle making and real magic.
The spiritual being knows that all spiritual masters have talked about the importance of forgiveness. Here are a few examples from our major religious teachings:
Judaism: The most beautiful thing a man can do is to forgive wrong.
Christianity: Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.”
Islam: Forgive thy servant seventy times a day.
Sikhism: Where there is forgiveness there is God himself.
Taoism: Recompense injury with kindness.
Buddhism: Never is hate diminished by hatred: It is only diminished by love—This is an eternal law.
For the spiritual being it is crucial to be able to “walk the talk.” One cannot profess to be a practicing member of a given faith, and then behave in ways inconsistent with the teachings. Forgiveness is an act of the heart. (An entire chapter of You’ll See It When You Believe It is devoted to this matter.)
If you fill your inner invisible self with bitterness and revenge toward others, you will leave no room for the harmony and love that are necessary to experience real magic in your life. From a position of hatred toward others will come more hatred and disharmony for yourself. It should be obvious that you simply cannot manifest miracles in any area of your life when you are tangled up with such negativity as hatred and vengeance toward anyone or anything. Forgiving others is the essential component of one of the most oft-quoted prayers in Christianity: “Forgive them their trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” The spiritual being knows that these are not simply empty words to recite in a ritual before bedtime. They are in fact a necessary ingredient for becoming a spiritual being.
12. The nonspiritual being believes that there are real-world limitations and that although there may be some evidence for the existence of miracles, they are viewed as random happenings for a few fortunate others. The spiritual being believes in miracles and his own unique ability to receive loving guidance and to experience a world of real magic.
The spiritual being knows that miracles are very real. He believes the forces that have created miracles for others are still present in the universe and can be tapped into. The nonspiritual being sees miracles in a totally different light. He knows them to be accidents, and therefore has no faith in his own ability to participate in the miracle-making process.
The spiritual dozen require very little of you. They are not difficult to understand nor do they require any long training or indoctrination on your part. They can be accomplished in this very instant in which you are reading.
Becoming a spiritual being takes place within that invisible self I have been writing about. Regardless of how you have chose
n to be up until now, working toward becoming a spiritual being can be your choice today. You do not have to adopt any specific religious tenets or undergo a religious transformation, you simply have to decide that this is the way you would like to live out the remainder of your life. With this kind of inner commitment you are on your way.
It is important to recognize that real magic is unavailable to those who choose the nonspiritual life. Being able to make miracles happen is fundamentally a result of how you choose to align yourself, how you choose to use your mind and how much faith you have in being able to use it to affect your physical world.
A SUMMARY OF THE SPIRITUAL DOZEN
Following is a brief summary of the spiritual dozen. Refer to it often and know that the difference between being spiritual and being nonspiritual is not located in your physical form or in the physical circumstances of your life. It is located within the invisible dimension of your being.
SPIRITUAL BEING: 1. Utilizes multidimensional thinking.
NONSPIRITUAL BEING: Limited to five senses in beliefs and thoughts.
SPIRITUAL BEING: 2. Believes loving guidance is available.
NONSPIRITUAL BEING: Believes we are always alone.
SPIRITUAL BEING: 3. Focuses on authentic personal empowerment.
NONSPIRITUAL BEING: Focuses on demanding external power.
SPIRITUAL BEING: 4. Feels connected to all of humanity.
NONSPIRITUAL BEING: Feels separate from all others.
SPIRITUAL BEING: 5. Knows a dimension beyond cause and effect.
NONSPIRITUAL BEING: Believes excessively in cause and effect.
SPIRITUAL BEING: 6. Motivated by ethics, serenity and quality of life.
NONSPIRITUAL BEING: Motivated by achievement, performance and acquisitions.
SPIRITUAL BEING: 7. Practices meditation.
NONSPIRITUAL BEING: Rejects meditation.
SPIRITUAL BEING: 8. Understands intuition as God talking.
NONSPIRITUAL BEING: Views intuition as unpredictable hunches.
SPIRITUAL BEING: 9. Knows a violent response to evil as participating in evil. Focuses on what he is for.
NONSPIRITUAL BEING: Hates evil and fights against it. Focuses on what he is against.
SPIRITUAL BEING: 10. Feels a sense of responsibility and belonging to the universe. In awe of being here.
NONSPIRITUAL BEING: Feels no sense of responsibility or belonging to the universe.
SPIRITUAL BEING: 11. Lives a life of forgiveness.
NONSPIRITUAL BEING: Holds grudges and seeks revenge for perceived wrongdoing.
SPIRITUAL BEING: 12. Believes in being able to manifest miracles.
NONSPIRITUAL BEING: Believes in limitations. Miracles are unpredictable, lucky occurrences.
SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR BECOMING A SPIRITUAL BEING
Remember, the ancestor to every action is a thought! Here are some practical suggestions for getting in touch with yourself as a spiritual being.
• To prove to yourself that you are more than a five-sensory being, write down all of the things that you experience within yourself that are beyond your sense of taste, sight, hearing, smell and touch. Keep a thought journal for one day and record the insights of your inner world. Note any intuitive hunches and record them for your own satisfaction. By keeping track of your actions in the physical world you learn that you are a physical being, but by keeping track of what created that action, you gain the insight that your actions are coming from something that isn’t physical at all.
• To help you experience yourself as a multisensory being, test the power of your mind on something that you perceive to be difficult. Visualize yourself doing something such as improving a golf swing, not having a drink at a cocktail party, jogging one mile, baking a cake for the first time or spending a Saturday afternoon at a movie theater with your five-year-old. Picture anything that seems tough or unusual for you to accomplish. Create a mental image of yourself performing this difficult task. Describe it in detail in writing or record it on tape. Do this several times and see if you can then manifest the vision in your physical world. When you do you will have broken through the limit of your five senses. Since the image is beyond your senses and is invisible to them, then the action came from that invisible part of you. Get to know this higher part of yourself that truly wants to transcend the many limits that you believe in by functioning exclusively as a five-sensory being.
• To get acquainted with the reality of your invisible world, question the pure physical evidence reported by your five senses. Your senses tell you that the world is flat, which is a delusion. Your senses tell you that the world is standing still and you are moving upon it. But you know that the world is traveling at dizzying speeds, spinning on its axis and hurtling thousands of miles through space each hour. Your senses tell you that objects are solid, but one look through a powerful microscope and you see that those objects are empty space, and a dance of activity. Trusting the limitations of your senses is to be living a delusion. Get acquainted with the reality of your invisible world by beginning to question the pure physical evidence reported by your five senses. Assess how much your five senses delude you about your own reality, and then ask yourself why you put so much faith in those senses.
• To make contact with divine or spiritual guidance, just for a day suspend your skepticism. Give yourself a gift of a quiet place and a quiet hour all to yourself. Start this experiment with an absence of skepticism and doubt. Ask for assistance in an area that is troubling you, and make every attempt to empty your mind of any and all distracting thoughts. See if you can create an image of receiving help from a guide that cares about you and wants to extend love toward you. In this state of quietness, with your mind empty of distractions, know within that the answer you seek is forthcoming and that you are not alone. Just know it, and feel yourself receiving that help. I am not asking you to listen for voices or to see apparitions, but rather to feel exquisitely peaceful. Keep a record of what you feel at the end of this hour, and what hunches or assistance you have received. I guarantee if you make this a regular habit, you will begin to go to this magical inner place regularly, and you will receive the guidance that has previously been so elusive. Go ahead, give it a try. You don’t have to tell anyone else what you are attempting. You will be making direct contact with your higher self, with the divine intelligence that is always with you, no matter how much it is resisted.
• To connect with the invisible dimension we call death, keep track of your dreams for a short time, particularly those dreams in which you were in the presence of someone who was in your life but has now passed on. As you go to sleep and enter the invisible world of thought, wherein you create with your mind all of your characters for your dream, remind yourself that no one dies, only form changes. Then be aware of the guidance that apparition in your dream provides for you. Be prepared to talk with that soul in your formless dream state. Ask questions of him or her and verify for yourself that you have the ability to do this. If in fact we are souls with bodies, rather than bodies with souls, then all souls live on after what we call death, in an invisible dimension. Those souls will appear as very real and very much alive while you are in your own formless invisible dimension of pure thought.
When you are able to make contact with those souls in your dream, and experience how real they still are, you will see that aging and death are only realities for the five-sensory world. Once you know this, and have made that contact, you will have an awareness of your own immortality, and you will have a completely new vision of death. You will know in your heart that those whom you’ve loved and who have passed on are not truly gone from your life. They are there and available for you. Open yourself up to making this contact, and you will experience it and all the guidance that it can bring you.
• To extend the sense of loving guidance in your life, begin to know that you do not have to sleep to make contact with a soul. If you can connect with the invisible dimension in your sleep, work at believ
ing that the same connection, the same loving guidance, is available to you whenever you choose to recognize it. You will begin to look for this guidance more frequently and less dubiously. Prayer will take on new meaning. It will not be a ritual of silent, one-way communication. It will become a virtual transformation in which you put your brain into a higher state and literally participate with God in the ebb and flow of your life. Silently listen and be willing to hear communications that will come to you in the form of overwhelming feelings. Be thankful and appreciative for whatever assistance you may receive. Always ask the question, “How may I serve you and others in resolving this issue that I am facing?” When you keep your inner communications focused on assisting others and staying purposeful, you truly will receive the answers you seek.
• To find models and companions for your journey, read about the personal experiences of people you admire. As you do, look for the spiritual dimension in their personal journeys. You will invariably find that the people you most admire often go within in times of difficulty, and have received the guidance and assistance they sought at the time. Great scientists often report that they feel a special spiritual connection to inner guides as they proceed through their careers. Most autobiographies show that those who are highly successful attribute their success to establishing a connection to a higher part of themselves, and to feeling the presence of divine assistance at highly charged moments in their lives. Whether your heroes be athletes, writers, clergymen, astronauts, musicians, artists, businessmen or anyone else, virtually all of the truly inspired leaders in their fields reached a point in their lives where they felt they were being guided. They knew that they were not alone, and they began to trust divine guidance in reaching levels they believed could not have been achieved otherwise.
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