Earlier, in Part 1, I discussed how everything seems to work perfectly in our lives when we are inspired. Flow is that kind of an inspiration, one so powerful that all obstacles seem to be removed and we are in love with what we are doing so much that it seems to just flow without any effort from us at all. You can experience flow in virtually anything.
I experience this effortless perfection when I am so involved in my presentation on stage that time seems to stand still, and hours go by in what seems to me to be minutes. Also, when I am totally involved and inspired in my writing, the typewriter seems to almost smoke as I fill page after page without any effort. Sometimes I feel as if I (the invisible me) am actually watching someone else writing, it is all flowing so perfectly. You have very likely known this feeling during an ecstatically divine lovemaking experience, in which time literally stood still and you knew complete joy. You can also get to flow in your work and in your daily activities, without waiting for those magic moments to appear as if they were directed by someone other than yourself.
Getting to flow in your life means achieving a state of concentration so total that everything else becomes nonexistent. People who experience prosperity in their lives know how to achieve this magnificent state, wherein their activities, instead of being a tedious set of chores to finish, become more like a meditation, only they are active and involved rather than sitting quietly. Flow has a great deal to do with purpose in your activities. When you are able to suspend your physical body as well as your ego, and allow your invisible self to emerge totally into what you are doing, your higher self is directing and producing and your body is merely going through the motions without any judgment from you. When you are in this state, you experience in your body a kind of unattached bliss that is saying to you, “This is why you are here, this is what you are supposed to be doing right now. You are fulfilling your grand mission and nothing else will be in your way.” You are literally watching your body do things that are incredible, you are experiencing magnificent joy or bliss, and nothing can get in your way. You are on purpose, and you are having the kind of peak experience that others can only dream about.
There is a way to get to this state of flow. While Csikszentmihalyi describes this process in detail, Professor Rao of Long Island University summed up the process in the Success article I’ve already referred to. His summary points reflect what I have been writing about in this book. They are not only the secrets to becoming a superachiever in the workplace, they are the secrets for producing genuine miracles in your life. Following is a discussion of the five points involved in getting to the state of flow.
1. Have an overriding spiritual goal that gives meaning to your work. This means forgetting about yourself and shifting your total energy to how you can best serve others. Make your work a meditative experience, and instead of seeing yourself as doing a particular task, you actually, in your mind, become the task. You shift from a human doing to a human being. You literally become the ball in a tennis match, you become the report that you are working on, you become the book that you are writing, you become the meal that you are preparing. There is no separation, you and the task are unified, all in the name of that overriding spiritual objective to give of yourself in a purposeful way.
2. Focus, and close your mind to all distractions. Your mind is so powerful that it does not need to be continuously distracted by extraneous activities. You can train your mind to focus, and this is why I have been encouraging you to learn to meditate. Give your mind the same mental training that you give your body when you want your body to be in maximum physical condition. You need not be a slave to your senses. You can create an atmosphere in which your mind is clear and free of distractions, where you tolerate no interruptions.
I am writing in this very present moment while on Maui with my wife and seven children and their constant flow of playmates. However, I have chosen to create an environment for myself within this beautiful chaos that I also treasure. I have rented a tiny apartment for the summer. I have the only key. The phone is disconnected. I awake at 5:00 each morning, and after meditating I immerse myself in my writing and research. There can be no interruptions, no one knows where to interrupt me other than my wife (who also uses this space in the afternoons to concentrate on her writing projects). I can totally focus my mind and subsequently my physical output.
You can create this kind of atmosphere for yourself. You can train yourself to eliminate the endless mind chatter that fills your consciousness. You can reach that higher place within yourself and let all other distractions stay away. When you do, you will begin to know about flow, and you will also begin to see real magic appear in your activities. This can be done on the job, in your home or in a quiet place somewhere else. Focusing is your natural knowing within. You can either ignore it, or go there often.
3. Surrender to the process. You must resist your impulse to strive for what you want. (Does this sound familiar? I have been saying this from part 1!) In the system described in Flow, the world works with you, so you must be with the actual process and let go of your learned instinct to strive and struggle. Surrender to God, or your higher power, the invisible force that is always with you, that is beyond your five senses. You must let go and surrender to the actual process. Forget about the result, the reward, the money, the trophy, the accolades, and put your mind and your physical body totally into the experience at hand. It is not that difficult to achieve. Read what Robert Coram wrote in Political Inquiries back in 1791:
At every quarterly examination a gold medal was given to the best writer. When the first medal was offered, it produced rather a general contention than an emulation and diffused a spirit of envy, jealousy, and discord through the whole school; boys who were bosom friends before became fierce contentious rivals, and when the prize was adjudged became implacable enemies. Those who were advanced decried the weaker performances; each wished his opponent’s abilities less than his own, and they used all their little arts to misrepresent and abuse each other’s performances.
So, if you choose to stay with results rather than process, you can produce for yourself envy, jealousy and discord. If you make the shift, you can create flow, which leads to prosperity and the awareness of personal miracles in your performances. How do you surrender? Just let go! Don’t strain to achieve; instead, enjoy the process of the work that you are doing. The results will come independent of your striving for them. When your mind is on the result rather than what you are doing, you create inner discord that blocks any and all possibilities for miracles to show up. Prosperity is about process, not outcome. Process is about purpose. Purpose is about loving and giving.
4. Experience the ecstasy. This is the automatic result that will flow to you from following the above guidelines. You will know a kind of inner beatitude and bliss that will be unmistakable. It will sneak up on you and hit you over the head, so to speak, but nevertheless, you will know that glorious emotional peak experience if you get yourself to flow in your life.
It is the exact same feeling I described in the section on meditation in chapter 3. The reason it is the same feeling is because you are actually meditating your way through your work, and the automatic reward that comes without striving is that magical feeling akin to a warm shower running inside of you. It will lift you up and put you in touch with the inner knowing that you are finally on the right path. The ecstasy is its own miracle.
5. Watch as you see yourself reaching peak productivity without striving. Your state of ecstasy opens up new vistas of creativity and energy. This natural state of bliss is the key to improving your performance. This is the state that superachievers are able to create for themselves. The irony here is that this increased productivity is the result of having reached the state of ecstasy. The processes of surrendering, focusing and living at purpose lead to ecstasy. When you feel that inner bliss, you simply want more and more of it. The more of it that you are able to create for yourself, the more productive you become.
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nbsp; This is how it goes for me. When I am feeling that inner glow from being purposeful, and not focusing on the outcome, I want to write and write all day. Or I want to stay on stage and give and give, and when a talk is completed, I still want to stay with the people for hours and hours. Long after most speakers are back in their hotel beds, I am still talking to those who want to stick around and continue the process. The more ecstasy I am able to create through this method of flow, the more productive I become, and the paradox is that I am not the least bit focused on being productive and producing results.
I have used the following Thoreau quote in each of my last three books and I offered it as one of the secrets of the universe in my novel, Gifts from Eykis. It seems most appropriate to conclude this section with it once more. I cannot hear it enough, and I am trusting that you too want to be reminded of the real magical wisdom that is inherent in these words:
If one advances confidently in the direction of his own dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
This happens in that invisible place. The emphasis is on “dreams” and “imagined,” both of which are thoughts. Your thoughts create all of this ecstasy and ultimately all of the miracles that are going to come into your life in the form of increased prosperity. Your mind is very powerful in terms of what it can produce in your physical reality, as well as in the physical reality beyond your own borders.
USING YOUR MIND TO MANIFEST PROSPERITY
You are now on a path of working toward reversing scarcity consciousness to one of prosperity. This is largely a mental game. You must convince yourself that you and only you are responsible for the pictures in your mind. You must know how very powerful your picturing process is in creating the material world that you experience.
In sports, those who excel beyond their peers picture in advance how they want to hit, place and kick the ball. The mental part, the invisible part literally, and I truly mean literally, shapes the way the physical results are manifested. Rickert Fillmore, the son of one of the founders of the Unity Christian Church, was asked if this principle applies to the selling of real estate, and he responded, “If it works at all, it works everywhere.”
This is a universal principle. It does not work only on Sunday mornings or only for some people. This is a vital, alive factor of the universe that you are a part of and that is a part of you. Any area of inquiry by any human being is a part of this process. What you can conceive of as a picture in your mind, you can create in the physical world, provided you do not let go of the picture. The more you know this, the more you will see it manifesting in your life. Aristotle said it this way—“The soul never thinks without a picture”—ancient wisdom that applies today in your life.
In sales, the individuals who have their minds made up that they cannot consummate the deal will act on this invisible picture, and proceed to sabotage the closing. Sentences such as, “I’ve never been able to do this,” “I know I am wasting my time,” “They are not really going to buy this from me,” are all road maps etched within the consciousness leading to fulfillment of that very prophecy. If you shifted those sentences around to reflect your purpose of giving and serving that prospect, your mind would be repeating these kinds of inner sentences: “It is impossible for me to waste my time in helping another person” and “They will receive the fruits of my loving intention.” “If anyone can do this thing well, then I too have that capacity.” “The intelligence that runs through others runs through me as well.” The picturing process is the way to create a prosperity consciousness within your mind. No one can ever take that away from you.
My wife and I are currently having our children take lessons from acknowledged masters in the art of meditating and learning to trust one’s inner vision. We do this not to give them an advantage over others, but for the purpose of their knowing that they have something within them that no one can ever take from them, regardless of the material circumstances of their lives. They are learning very early that their peace and tranquillity as human beings is dependent upon themselves, and that they have a special retreat within that is always available to them, once they have learned how to enter that special kingdom. They will learn what the title of a favorite poem of mine means, as they practice it in their daily lives.
The following five stanzas are from this poem, “My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is,” by the sixteenth-century poet Sir Edward Dyer (a spiritual relative?):
My Mind to me a kingdom is,
Such present joys therein I find,
That it excels all other bliss
That earth affords or grows by kind;
Though much I want which most would have,
Yet still my mind forbids to crave.
No princely pomp, no wealthy store,
No force to win the victory,
No wily wit to salve a sore,
No shape to feed a loving eye;
To none of these I yield as thrall:
For why? My mind doth serve for all.
I see how plenty surfeits oft,
And hasty climbers soon do fall;
I see that those which are aloft
Mishap doth threaten most of all,
They get with toil, they keep with fear;
Such cares my mind could never bear.
Content to live, this is my stay;
I seek no more than may suffice;
I press to bear no haughty sway;
Look, what I lack my mind supplies:
Lo, thus I triumph like a king.
Content with that my mind doth bring.
Some have too much, yet still do crave;
I little have, and seek no more.
They are but poor, though much they have,
And I am rich with little store;
They poor, I rich; they beg, I give;
They lack, I leave; they pine, I live.
While the rhyme scheme may seem a bit outdated to those of you used to more modern poetry, the message is indeed provocative. All the luxuries of life bring with them attendant suffering, unless you know that within you is the kingdom of serenity that can create all of the prosperity that you could ever want. You can translate the message of this poem to every single form of human activity. Your mind is that kingdom, capable of creating any picture that it wants. And once you know that the picture you want is one of prosperity, that is what will be attracted to you, based upon the actions that will flow from those images.
Two cooks in the kitchen follow the exact same recipe, item for item, following each and every detail in precise order and using the same oven. One has a cake that is grand and delicious, the other experiences something quite the opposite—a flop! Why? Their minds picture what they want to create. One has a picture in mind of a positive outcome, knows within that this is going to be a grand cake, and sees the result in advance, even if it is on an unconscious level. The other has a completely different mind-set, one of doubt and fear, and approaches the entire project from a scarcity image. Even though the second cook follows the recipe in exact detail, the cake is exactly what was predicted: “I am not good at this sort of thing, and I know this won’t turn out.” Sound like a fairy tale? It is impossible for different outcomes, you say, if both follow the same directions.
I have witnessed this type of thing in my own life over and over. Somehow I learned as a young boy that cooking and drawing were not my fortes. Even when I followed the instructions exactly, such as in painting by numbers, filling in every number with the exact paint that was indicated, my painting would turn out like a disaster and my brother Jim’s would end up being framed and hung on the wall. Jim knew that he could produce a masterpiece, Wayne knew that his would be a disaster. Same paint, same brushes, same numbers, same everything, except the knowing and hence the result. This was true also of my cake-baking episodes. I could follow the physical directions, but nothing could shake my mental picture, and my mental picture is what turned out to be the rea
lity. Our beliefs are invisible ingredients in all of our activities.
There is a magic in believing that transcends logic. Prosperity in all things, including money, flows from those pictures. Yes, I am saying that we can actually affect the physical world and all of the circumstances of our lives by the way we use our minds. Money and wealth can and will flow into your life when you follow the principles of prosperity consciousness. It works in athletics, selling, cooking, surgery, taxi driving and even your own personal bank account.
Most of us believe that money-making is a game that is played with forces outside of ourselves, forces such as the economy, the stock market, interest rates, the Fed, government policies, employment statistics and the like. But as you move along the spiritual path and begin to get a taste of the power of your invisible self, you discover that money-making is merely a game that you play with yourself. Creating money is just like creating anything else in your life. It involves not being attached to it, and not giving it power over your life in any way. Authentic power does not come to you from the acquisition of money, because without the money you would then be powerless. Authentic power comes from your soul, that magical place that is always within you.
Prosperity in the form of wealth works exactly the same as everything else. You will see it coming into your life when you are unattached to needing it. You will see it flowing into your life when you are in flow and giving of yourself in a purposeful manner. Money—like health, love, happiness and all forms of miraculous happenings that you want to create for yourself—is the result of your living purposefully. It is not a goal unto itself. If you chase after it, it will always elude you. You will never have enough, and you will suffer enormously as a result.
Real Magic Page 19