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 w
hat 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.
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