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 t
reating 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 drivi
ng 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.
Real Magic Page 10