There Is a Spiritual Solution to Every Problem
There Is a Spiritual Solution to Every Problem
Wayne W. Dyer
This radical new book from Wayne Dyer proposes that we hold the keys to solving any problems we face within us.He sets out basic principles and foundations we can understand and practice in order to access spiritual solutions to any problems we are experiencing. The book is in two sections. The first sets out the theory, the second enables you to put the wisdom into practice.Part 1. The theory:Everything in the Universe is nothing more than energy. Light and though, spiritual energy, vibrates very quickly. Physical energy, and problem areas, vibrate more slowly. When the highest/fastest frequencies of spirit are brought to the presence of lower/slower frequencies, they nullify and dissipate those things we call problems. We all have the ability to increase our energy and access the highest/fastest energies to eradicate problems in our lives. In carefully structured chapters, Wayne Dyer draws on both ancient wisdom and firsthand accounts, and shows how to:stop giving energy to things you don't believe in• keep your energy field uncontaminated• raise and maintain your spiritual energy.In the second part of the book, "Putting spiritual problem solving into action", Dyer shows how we can transform any negative energy into positive energy:hate into love• hurt into forgiveness• doubt into faith• despair into hope• sadness into joy
THERE’S A SPIRITUAL SOLUTION TO EVERY PROBLEM
WAYNE W.DYER
DEDICATION (#ulink_f4779d38-72d7-53d6-a434-6560aa7fdf12)
For Sommer Wayne Dyer You are loved unconditionally By your father here, And your Father in Heaven
You have no problems, though you think you have.…
—A Course in Miracles
I wish to acknowledge
Francesco di Pietro di Bernardone (1181–1226),
aka Saint Francis of Assisi.
Your spirit is always with me,
and was particularly evident
in the creation of this book.
—WAYNE W. DYER
CONTENTS
Cover (#u8f60ab16-faee-57e0-91b3-53dbea80d281)
Title Page (#u776ae2e0-9c2c-55e4-b96a-a135286bb22f)
Dedication (#ub7810e43-7a36-59d9-8847-f1008afab06b)
Foreword (#u88aae981-dd4e-55b4-9916-7fb10a41b143)
Introduction (#uc230a172-e798-59af-b440-a436732cd4bf)
PART I ESSENTIAL FOUNDATIONS FOR SPIRITUAL PROBLEM SOLVING (#u7ae9a941-8fb1-5d7a-a270-0505fdfc8796)
1. • Spiritual Problem Solving (#udf1362d2-6210-5009-bab3-b15b4cf444b0)
2. • Ancient “Radical” Ideas (#u9a64d2fd-cf84-5ef3-bb73-47b48eef7740)
3. • It’s All Energy (#uf566962a-1587-5458-ac36-1cdd19ba4c75)
4. • Stop Giving Energy to the Things You Don’t Believe In (#litres_trial_promo)
5. • Keeping Your Energy Field Uncontaminated (#litres_trial_promo)
6. • Raising and Maintaining Your Spiritual Energy (#litres_trial_promo)
PART II PUTTING SPIRITUAL PROBLEM SOLVING INTO ACTION (#litres_trial_promo)
7. • Lord, Make Me an Instrument of Thy Peace (#litres_trial_promo)
8. • Where There Is Hatred, Let Me Sow Love (#litres_trial_promo)
9. • Where There Is Injury, Pardon (#litres_trial_promo)
10. • Where There Is Doubt, Faith (#litres_trial_promo)
11. • Where There Is Despair, Hope (#litres_trial_promo)
12. • Where There Is Darkness, Light (#litres_trial_promo)
13. • Where There Is Sadness, Joy (#litres_trial_promo)
Index (#litres_trial_promo)
Other Works (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
FOREWORD (#ulink_57b4cd7d-80e9-5603-8216-d3775446fcd3)
I completed the initial writing of this book on the fifteenth of June, 2000, at our home on Maui, with a wonderful sense of accomplishment. I enjoyed the summer with my family, swimming, hiking, and playing tennis. We had dinners and movies with close friends and I had precious free time to read and share intimate moments especially with my wife, Marcelene, who was so instrumental in helping me find a spiritual solution to the “problem” I was about to experience. Little did I realize that in a few short months I would be called upon to apply all that I had written, and to test those principles for a spiritual solution to every problem firsthand in my own life.
In the autumn of 2000, I was literally brought to my knees while alone in a hotel room. I could barely breathe. My chest felt like it was in a vise. I was sweating profusely and soon found out that I had had a heart attack. But something was dreadfully wrong with this picture. I do not smoke or drink; I am not overweight; I exercise every day and have done so for twenty-five years. I watch what I eat; I meditate; I do what I love, and I love what I do. I have a great marriage and wonderful children. I don’t do heart attacks! That is for other people who live their lives in such a way as to invite heart attacks. Not me. Not Dr. Wayne Dyer. Yet there I was, in the hospital with monitor wires attached all over my upper body and with an IV in my arm. In three days I would have an angiogram procedure.
For the first twenty-four hours, I lay there in a state of shock and disbelief. It is called denial. I felt sorry for myself. I refused to acknowledge that such a thing could happen to me. I was weepy around my family and I was, to be honest, scared. After that first day I began to reexamine what I had written in this book you are about to read. I reminded myself over and over of the title: There Is a Spiritual Solution to Every Problem—and this surely was a problem. I remembered that I could bring the energy of spirit right there to that hospital room. By doing so I could turn this thing around and no longer wallow in the low energy of self-pity, injury, sadness, fear, and doubt.
The facts were the facts, my heart had been injured. Now it was up to me. I am not this body; I am a spiritual being, eternal, always connected to God. I could shift my awareness to being the observer rather than the victim, which is what I have been writing about over the past twenty years. It was as if the light came on in a dark room. I felt the presence of a higher, faster healing energy almost immediately. I began to be cheerful rather than morose. I circulated around the cardiac ward attempting to cheer up those who were much worse off than myself. I began to view the hospital and the many healing professionals with awe, love, and respect rather than with thoughts of fear and anxiety. I looked for what was right about that place and experienced gratitude for everything my senses witnessed. I brought to the cardiac ward the awareness that I have elaborated on here, in this book that I love so much. “Surely the presence of God is in this place.” Certainly the reality of the heart damage did not magically disappear, but in my mind, where the “problem” existed, I had introduced the higher/faster energy of spirit and the “problem” disappeared permanently.
On Monday morning, December 4, 2000, the angiogram revealed a blockage in one artery that may have been a part of my physical anatomy since birth. My heart was strong and the damage was minimal. A stent was inserted in the blocked artery after a balloon poked out the offending plaque. I am now back to my normal exercise and work routine.
As I was being wheeled into the cath-lab and having the catheter inserted in my leg and dye into my arteries, my heart was literally at peace. I joked with the nurses and cardiologists and squeezed my wife’s hand, telling her I loved her. All fear, worry, anxiety, doubt, and darkness left me. I knew that regardless of the outcome, I was at peace, connected to spirit and in God’s hands.
I decided to share this information with you here at the beginning of this book to illustrate how a seemingly insurmountable “problem” has a spiritual solution readily accessible, when one stops focusing on the “problem” and shifts to spiritual energy. I was able to bring in the higher/faster energy of spirit which means that: 1) I literally surrendered and turned the “problem” over to a higher power; 2) I saw love everywhere rather than fear; 3) I reminded myself that I am an infinite soul in a temporary body; 4) I quieted my mind and emptied it of all negativity; 5) I became grateful for all of those who worked on bringing healing energy to me; 6) I stayed connected to God in my mind; 7) I began to bring joy to those around me as a means of eradicating my own self-indulgence. It worked!
And as if to illustrate a final point, I received a beautiful letter from Peggy Bartzokis, the wife of my cardiologist, Thomas Bartzokis, MD, pointing out how everything and everyone benefits when spirit is allowed to be fully present. She writes:
I feel as though you appeared in our lives (Tom and mine), for a reason. The fact that you went to Tom and not another cardiologist at a time when I needed to read your writings and Tom needed to learn more about how to help his patients still astounds me.
Your tapes started me on a new path. I’m working hard to heal myself. My health was on a downward spiral and I never considered that my thinking could be my problem. Thank you for opening my eyes to the importance of the mind/body connection.
Also through me, Tom gets to hear all about what I’m reading (whether he wants to or not) and luckily he finds these ideas fascinating. I’m excited because he treats over ten thousand patients and if he can share these ideas he may really be able to prevent further cardiac damage or other illnesses.
I’m also thankful that you are fully recovered and running again. Maybe we were all meant to learn something from this experience. As you once said, “Every meeting in our lives is in some way orchestrated by a divine force … and the strangers to whom we are drawn have something to teach us.”
I can’t tell you how much I appreciate meeting you both. I will always have you and Marcelene in my prayers. God bless you and all the good works that you do.
There you have it all. I put it right here for everyone to see. It’s all in order and a spiritual solution awaits you for any and all things that you perceive to be “problems.” Trust me. I, Wayne Dyer, know from firsthand experience.
INTRODUCTION (#ulink_a7261b9d-f608-5459-84ec-6095d447c09d)
The title of this book makes a very large claim. Yes, you can literally rid yourself of any and all problems by seeking and implementing spiritual solutions. I have explained what I mean by spiritual, problems, and solutions in the very first chapter, so there is no need to do so in this brief introduction. The essential message of this book is in the following ten points.
1. Everything in our universe is nothing more than energy. That is, at the very core of its being, everything is vibrating to a certain frequency.
2. Slower frequencies appear more solid and this is where our problems show up.
3. Faster frequencies such as light and thought are less visible.
4. The fastest frequencies are what I am calling spirit.
5. When the highest/fastest frequencies of spirit are brought to the presence of lower/slower frequencies, they nullify and dissipate those things we call problems.
6. You have the ability and the power to increase your energy and access the highest/fastest energies for the purpose of eradicating any problems in your life.
7. There are some basic foundations and principles that you will need to understand and practice in order to access spiritual solutions to any “problems” that you may be experiencing.
8. Your ultimate choice, once you understand these principles, is whether to align yourself with a high energy field or a low energy field.
9. In essence, when you finally come to know and understand the world of spirit on an intimate basis, you will see clearly that all problems are illusions in that they are concocted by our minds because we have come to believe that we are separate from our source, which I call God, but you can label it any way that you prefer.
10. These illusions are nothing more than mistakes in our thinking and like every error they dissolve when put face to face with the truth.
I have organized this book into two sections. The first section contains six chapters which elaborate the basic fundamental foundations for understanding that a spiritual solution for any and all problems is readily available. I have researched Holy Scriptures in many spiritual traditions as well as those areas we have come to call scientific or pragmatic. I make no claim that any one tradition or practice is superior to any other. I have pursued my own awareness of these concepts with a mind that is open to everything and attached to nothing. I have searched ancient and modern spiritual tomes from east, west, and anywhere in between, and presented them as I know them to be truthful and useful.
The second section of this book contains chapters seven to thirteen, each of which is titled from one of the most well-known and accepted prayers ever written. This prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi embodies the fundamental message of this book. By bringing the higher frequencies of spirit to the presence of the lower frequencies of “problems,” the problems will vanish. I have made every effort to offer very specific suggestions on how to implement these higher energies in practical, useful ways, beginning today.
In rereading this book I am conscious of occasional repetition in making my case for a spiritual solution to every problem. In some cases I have edited it out, but in other instances I have deliberately used this repetition to reinforce the point at the moment you are reading. I have found that this provides instantaneous reinforcement and makes it much more likely that the concept will stick.
Writing this book has been an exercise in self-awareness for me. I find that I am now much more able to shift out of those lower/slower energy patterns and access spiritual guidance, and I can do so in just a matter of moments. For me I feel lighter, more loving, compassionate, and literally problem-free as I practice accessing my highest energies in moments when I previously thought I had a “problem” that I needed to solve. I now simply unplug myself from that world of problems in my mind and plug into spirit. Writing this book has brought me closer to God, and an awareness that not only am I never alone, but that it would be an impossibility. May you find the same peace that I have as you read these words. And may all of your problems dissolve as you shift out of those lower energies and come to know that a spiritual solution to any and all problems is simply a thought away.
God bless you,
Wayne Dyer
PART I (#ulink_6441bdb2-92ce-5dcd-bb8c-2229de751b22)
ESSENTIAL FOUNDATIONSFOR SPIRITUAL PROBLEM SOLVING (#ulink_6441bdb2-92ce-5dcd-bb8c-2229de751b22)
“There is nothing wrong with God’s creation.
Mystery and Suffering only exist in the mind.…”
—Ramana Mabarshi
1 SPIRITUAL PROBLEM SOLVING (#ulink_ad4e29be-5e59-5a2c-8e36-a9a389fd96ef)
The solution to the problem of the day is the awakening of the consciousness of humanity to the divinity within.
—HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN
Can you make a flower grow? Probably your first response is, “Such a simple thing to do. Plant a seed in some dirt, provide sunlight and water and in time a flower will emerge. The proof is that there are millions upon millions of flowers sprouting all over the world at this moment!”
That is certainly true. However, I am inviting you to reread the question and consider who or what generates the life that makes a flower grow, because the who or what is the source of solutions to all our problems.
Who or what causes the flower seed to blossom, and the tiny embryo to become a human being? Who or what grows our fingernails and beats our heart even as we sleep? Who or what is behind the movement of the winds, which we feel but never see? What is this force that keeps the planets in place and hurls our world through the galaxy at a breathtaking speed? These questions have been asked for as long as humans have had the ability to contemplate their existence.
Spirit is what I have chosen to call the formless, invisible energy which is the source and sustenance of life on this planet. This force, no matter the name we give it, can solve every problem that we encounter. There is a spiritual solution to every problem, we only need to learn how to access it. In this book I will explain ways that I have found to access this force. I will begin by explaining the three basic steps to finding your spiritual solutions to problems.
I first read about these steps when I immersed myself in How to Know God: The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali, written sometime between the fourth century B.C. and the fourth century A.D. These spiritual disciplines and techniques were written to enable a person to achieve the ultimate unitive knowledge of God. I will refer to this powerful collection of writings frequently, and share with you how this knowledge can be applied in your life.
I trust you will discover for yourself that these things you have come to label as problems have a ready solution available to you right now, in this moment, in that world we are calling spirit.
THE FIRST OF THREE STEPS FOR
ACCESSING SPIRITUAL DIRECTION
Recognition: It may appear obvious that one must first recognize something before applying it, but this is actually the most troublesome step in moving toward spiritual illumination.
Recognizing the availability of an invisible force that can be put to use in solving a problem, requires overcoming a great deal of our early training and conditioning. Have you ever thought about the limitations we experience when we identify ourselves as only a physical body in material existence?
For instance, do you believe there is only one kind of power or knowledge, which relies on your sensory or intellectual faculties to solve problems? Most of us have been taught this is true and that all of the information that has been acquired is the total inventory of options available to us. This is a conditioned attitude of nonrecognition of our divine connection to spiritual problem solving.
In this state of nonrecognition we believe that medicines, herbs, surgery, and doctors are responsible for all healing, or that improving one’s financial picture involves the exclusive application of working hard, studying, interviewing, and sending our résumés. In essence, nonrecognition leads us to believe that our knowledge is limited to those kinds of phenomena, which are explainable through our sensory functions.
Patanjali described a kind of knowledge or power that is not accessed solely through the material or sensory world. Recognition that this power exists and is always available is the first step in activating it. However, it is not accessed solely through the teachings of others, or through ancient writings, just as we do not dream because someone teaches or writes about dreaming. Recognizing, like dreaming, is something we access by making an inner and outer commitment to our ability to recognize.
For example, in this first step when you are faced with a problem, I suggest you create a personal affirmation such as: “I may not know exactly how to access the spiritual solution here, but I fully recognize that a spiritual solution exists.” By recognition of its existence, we invite the power to be known by us.
As physical beings we can make a flower grow in the sense of the response to the question in the opening sentence of this book. But if we are thoughtful we realize that we cannot even begin to unravel the mystery of the invisible force that initiates life. Yet it is in this omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent spiritual world that we find the solutions to all our problems. This spiritual force is everywhere and in every thing and every one. When we incorporate the first step, recognition, we begin the process of accessing this all-knowing power.
THE SECOND OF THREE STEPS FOR
ACCESSING SPIRITUAL DIRECTION
Realization: We discover that knowledge achieved by realization is of a much higher order than intellectual reasoning.
This is not an exercise in intellectual reasoning. In this step we go beyond recognition of a spiritual presence into the phase of realization where nothing but our own personal experience is trusted. We become an explorer in virgin territory where no one but ourselves can be. Here, only you can validate your experience.
Our desire to realize the presence is an integral part of the unexplainable dynamic that creates life. When we actively meditate on a chosen spiritual ideal or even a given personality we are expressing our desire by inviting the presence to be accessible.
I suggest that you begin this process of realization by visualizing the presence you seek. Create an inner picture of yourself receiving divine guidance and banish all doubts about its validity. Realize that there is no need to explain or defend as you go within yourself. In silent desire to realize your spirit, know that your invitation will be accepted. You will find that your picture dissolves into the reality of a presence that is accessible within yourself. This is realization. It is a personal experience beyond anything related to an intellectual exercise. With practice and desire, in quiet meditation, you will experience the presence.
There are times the intellect will persist, trying to make your experience fit the reality of the material world. One way to think about this process of moving toward realization is to envision a magnet. See yourself as the magnet, which is attracting to you all that you have recognized and acknowledged as true. Then gradually become aware of a greater magnetic force, which pulls you toward higher truths. The effort is not exclusively your own any longer. You are in a kind of metaphysical magnetic field, which draws you in the direction of your realization.
I have had this experience of realization in my own life for the past several years. When I enter into a state of deep meditation I am abundantly aware of a magneticlike force, which pulls me in the direction of God. The revelations that I experience in those moments of God-realization represent a renewal of my mind. I reconnect to a kind of energy that propels me in the direction of a solution to anything that might be troublesome.
For example, something as mundane as purchasing a piece of property for my wife and myself to move to when our children leave the nest, was causing me a great deal of inner turmoil. I reminded myself to move into that invisible magneticlike field of energy and I was guided toward a solution. At precisely the right moment a friend called and said one sentence that put me at ease about the dilemma. Done! This is what I call realization in action.
We can all use this realization of the availability of spirit in the resolution of problems. As you learn to employ the first step, recognition of spiritual solutions, you will move to a state of realization in which you experience the power. You will realize that every kind of disharmony, discord, or disease is amenable to the spiritual energy that is in you.
THE THIRD OF THREE STEPS FOR ACCESSING SPIRITUAL DIRECTION
Reverence: Communing quietly with the spiritual force is our way of becoming one with it.
This third step, reverence, is acquired quickly by some people, while for others it can take a long time to achieve. Communing quietly with the spiritual force and becoming one with it means there is no sense of separation. We know our divinity and commune with that part of ourselves. In other words, we see ourselves as a part of God; we are in a state of reverence for all that we are. There is no doubt of our divinity. In this state we fully experience this quote from the Bible: “On that day, you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you” (John 14:20).
Quietly communing with God, when we are searching for guidance, is a way of temporarily turning off our ego-mind. Instead of our ego-self thinking, “I can fix this,” we are willing to immerse it into our higher self. Like a drop of water separated from its source the little mind is unable to create and sustain life. When the drop of water rejoins the ocean it has all the powers of its source. The drop of water separate from its source symbolizes our ego-self when we are separated from our source of omnipotent power.
Communing quietly allows us the direct experience of knowing a spiritual solution to every problem. With our divine connection we are always in touch with the solution. Problems persist when we fail to recognize, realize, and finally, quietly commune with our own source, power, spirit, God.
I often think of Abraham Lincoln watching his beloved Union crumbling under the energy of hatred that engulfed this country. He wrote, “I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had no where else to go.” “To my knees,” is a way of saying, “I surrender to my source and turn this huge problem over to that same power that moves the stars.” You can do the same thing in times of strife. “Let go and let God,” as they say in the recovery movement.
When you practice communing quietly with spirit, you will sense the presence of a sacred partner. You can turn your problems over to this “senior” partner and move to a place of peace. The Indian saint Sri Ramakrishna used the following parable to teach his devotees how to reach the state of direct union with God.
A disciple once came to a teacher to learn how to meditate on God. The teacher gave him instructions, but the disciple soon returned and said that he could not carry them out. Every time he tried to meditate he found himself thinking about his pet buffalo.
“Well, then,” said the teacher, “you meditate on that buffalo you’re so fond of.”
The disciple shut himself up in a room and began to concentrate on the buffalo. After some days, the teacher knocked at his door and the disciple answered: “Sir, I am sorry I can’t come out to greet you. This door is too small. My horns will be in the way.”
Then the teacher smiled and said: “Splendid! You have become identified with the object of your concentration. Now fix that concentration upon God and you will easily succeed.”
The message is so clear. Become one with spirit and do not doubt or fear your divinity. Move beyond your ego-mind into your higher self. (I will not detail here the path to transcending the ego. I have devoted an entire book to this subject—Your Sacred Self.)
There is a spiritual solution to every problem. The three basic steps to access your connection to spiritual solutions to problems in your life are: recognition, realization, and reverence.
The balance of this first chapter discusses my meaning of the key words of the title of this book. I believe the definitions I use for spiritual, problem, and solution can form the basis for a unique way of bringing peace and fulfillment into your daily life. It is further my contention that once you internalize these three concepts you will rarely revert to the belief that you face insurmountable problems. Eventually, you will learn that all those so-called “problems” are dissolvable by saturating them with the higher energy of spirit.
What I Mean by Spiritual
It is written in the Bhagavad-Gita, the ancient Eastern holy book, “We are born into a world of nature; our second birth is into a world of spirit.” This world of spirit is often depicted as separate or distinct from our physical world. I think it is important to see spiritual as a part of physical, rather than to separate these two dimensions of our reality. It is all one. Spirit represents that which we cannot validate with our senses. Like the wind that we feel but cannot see.
Two great saints from different corners of the world as well as different religious persuasions have described spirit this way: “Spirit is the life of God within us” (Saint Teresa of Avila) and “Whatever draws the mind outward is unspiritual and whatever draws the mind inward is spiritual” (Ramana Maharshi). The key to understanding spirituality is this idea of our inner world and our outer world—one world, yet two unique aspects of being human. I have a friend who compares the physical to a lightbulb and the spiritual to electricity. He insists that electricity has been around as long as spirituality but that we did not make a religion of it when it was discovered.
Likewise, when I refer to spiritual I do not intend it to be synonymous with religious. Religion is orthodoxy, rules, and historical scriptures maintained by people over long periods of time. Generally, people are born into religions and raised to obey the customs and practices of that religion without question. These are customs and expectations from outside of the person and do not fit my definition of spiritual.
I prefer a definition of spirituality as described in Saint Teresa’s and Maharshi’s observations. Spirituality is from within, the result of recognition, realization, and reverence. My personal understanding of spiritual practice is that it is a way of making my life work at a higher level and of receiving guidance for handling problems. The ways in which I personally do this involve a few simple, but basic practices. I have enumerated them here in my own order of significance.
1. Surrender This is first because it is the most crucial and often the most difficult. For those of us who have grown up believing life is a “do-it-yourself” project it is hard to admit that we need the help of many others just to survive for a day. In order to surrender you must be able to admit to being helpless. That’s right, helpless.
In surrender, my thoughts are something like this: “I simply do not know how to resolve this situation and I am turning it over to the same force that I turn my physical body over to every night when I go to sleep. I trust in this force to keep digesting my food, circulating my blood, and so on. The force is there, it is available, and I am going to treat this force that I will call God, as a senior partner in my life. I will take the words ‘All that I have is thine’ in the scriptures at face value. I am willing to turn any problem over to this invisible force which is my source, while always keeping in mind that I am connected at all times to that source!”
In other words, the spiritual life is a way of walking with God instead of walking alone.
2. Love Activating spiritual solutions means converting inner thoughts and feelings from discord and disharmony to love. In the spirit of both surrender and love I find it helpful to silently chant to myself, “I invite the highest good for all concerned to be here now.” I try to see anger, hatred, and disharmony as invitations to surrender and love. They can be doorways to taking responsibility for thoughts and feelings. They are the entryway to the inner world where spirituality is. With this understanding I have the option to allow spirit to manifest and work for me.
I use a metaphor of a long cord that is hanging from my hip and I have the option of plugging that cord into one of two sockets. When I plug into the material world socket, I receive the illusions of disharmony and actually have the results inside of me. I feel out of sorts, hurt, upset, anguished, and hopeless in terms of being able to solve or correct my problem. When I am plugged in this way I struggle to attain false powers. This struggle inhibits me from receiving mystical or spiritual power. Defining empowerment only in material world terms is a reflection of being spiritually disconnected.
When I imagine this cord being yanked from the material world socket, and replugged into the spiritual socket, I immediately experience a sense of peace and relief from the angst. This spiritual plugging-in metaphor is an instant reminder to me to substitute love for anguish or frustration. I can relax and remember that the spirit is God, which is synonymous with love. Emanuel Swedenborg said it well when he reminded his students, “The divine essence itself is love.” This feeling of love is the substance of what holds every cell together in our universe. It is cooperation with, rather than fighting against. It is trusting rather than doubting. Simple? Yes. But even more so, profoundly effective in resolving problems. Love and love alone dissolves all negativity, not by attacking it, but by bathing it in higher frequencies, much as light dissolves darkness by its mere presence.
3. Infinite Carl Jung reminds us that “The telling question of a person’s life is their relationship to the infinite.” My concept of the infinite includes accepting, without doubt, that life is indestructible. Life can change form but it cannot be destroyed. I believe our spirit is inseparable from the infinite.
This awareness of our infinite nature is terrific for putting everything into perspective. Relying upon the part of ourselves that has always been and always will be alleviates stress in any given situation. “The spirit gives life, the flesh counts for nothing,” the scriptures advise us. All of these things that we perceive as ourselves are of the flesh. In terms of infinity, they “count for nothing.”
When I unplug myself from the material and replug myself into the spiritual I immediately let go of fear, judgment, and negativity. I know that I must bring the energy of the spiritual socket to my immediate life circumstance. Infinite love is what I receive from that new energy source. It has always been there, but now I recognize this infinite power and see myself as having all my circuits flowing with this one source.
4. Empty Mind My spiritual approach to problem solving involves being quiet and letting go of my ideas about exactly how something should be resolved. In this space I listen and allow myself to have complete faith that I will be guided in the direction of resolution. Call this meditation (or prayer if you like); I feel strongly about the need for meditation to nourish the soul and access divine assistance.
Beyond the actual act of meditation is a willingness to empty my mind of my agenda and be open to what will inevitably come to me. I send a message to my ego, which says, “I am going to trust in the same power that moves the galaxies and creates a baby rather than in my own self-indulgent assessments for how I would like things to be going right now.” I relinquish my thoughts to the power that spirit has to make things work and let go of any agenda that interferes with the perfect expression of God within me.
Completely emptying the mind of our agenda leads to forgiveness, which is a vital component of this practice. Getting to a state of emptiness means ridding ourselves of all blame and angry thoughts about what has transpired in the past. Empty means just that, empty. There is no room for hanging on to who did what and when, and how wrong they were. We let it go simply because it is a component of our agenda, and what we want is God’s plan which works, and to toss out our own, which obviously doesn’t. Thus when we empty our mind of our ego-driven thoughts we invite forgiveness into our hearts, and by letting go of the lower energies of hatred, shame, and revenge we create a mind-set of problem resolution.
5. Generosity and Gratefulness Sometimes I feel the necessity to remind myself that we come into this world with nothing and we will exit the same way. So, finding a spiritual solution to every problem involves doing the only thing I can do with my life. That is, giving it away and being simultaneously grateful for the opportunity to do so. Here is a formula that works for me:
• I get back from the world precisely what I put out to the world. Which is another way of stating the proverb “As you sow, so shall you reap.”
• If “Gimmee! Gimmee! Gimmee!” is my message to the universe then the universe will send the very same message back to me: “Gimmee! Gimmee! Gimmee!” The result is I will never feel peaceful and I will be condemned to a life of trying to fulfill all the demands being made on me.
• If my message to the universe is “What can I give?” or “How may I serve?,” the message I receive from the universe will be “How may I serve you?” or “What can I give you?” Then I experience the magic of sending generous thoughts and energy out wherever I go.
I recommend your spiritual practice involve being generous and grateful with your thoughts. The more you send out thoughts of “How may I serve,” rather than “What’s in it for me?,” the more you will heat back “How may I serve you?”
6. Connectedness The Sufi poet Rumi once explained that the terms I, you, me, he, she, and they are distinctions that cannot be made in the garden of the mystics. In spiritual consciousness you view yourself as a flower in this garden and everyone else in the garden connected to you in an invisible way. Then you will feel the assistance that is available to you.
At the level of spiritual consciousness we know we are connected to everyone. Our concerns and difficulties are something we realize that we share with everyone else. Problems do not affect our body/mind/personality, because we have suspended total identification with our body, our personality, and all of its achievements. Instead we begin to see ourselves as the beloved.
Nurture your sense of connection to everyone and God as well. This allows you to remove your ego from conflicts. Do not see anyone as an enemy, or view anyone as an obstacle to fulfillment. This awareness of being a part of everyone allows you to suspend anger and frustration toward others and see them as partners in the resolution of problems.
Know that there are people to whom you are connected who are available to help you find the right job, to solve a puzzling issue that seems irreconcilable, to help you back on your feet, and to resolve financial difficulties. Everyone becomes a compatriot rather than a competitor. This is spiritual awareness as I practice it.
We are not alone. We are not what we have, what we do, what others think of us. We are divinely connected to God and to all of God’s creations, and consequently each of us has an unlimited inventory of resources available for the purpose of helping us to a state of peace and problem resolution.
Being connected means literally that at any given moment of your life, you can ask that the love that surrounds you and connects you to everyone and everything else please guide you right now. Then you relinquish your negative self-talk images and observe everyone and everything that you see as your loving assistant. It is in these moments that the right person or event will materialize and assist you.
I try to remind myself in moments of despair of the beautiful affirmation from A Course in Miracles: “I can choose peace, rather than this.” It works. Or I use this affirmation often: “I see nothing, I hear nothing, I know nothing that is separate from me.”
7. Cheerfulness In terms of outward appearances there is something noticeable about people who have reached a high level of spiritual awareness. They seem to be in a constant state of bliss. In my own life I know that my state of cheerfulness is a reliable gauge of my level of spiritual enlightenment at that moment. The more cheerful, happy, contented, and satisfied I am feeling, the more aware I am of my deep connection to spirit.
Ask yourself this key question, “How do I feel most of the time?” If your answer is that you feel anxious, anguished, hurt, depressed, frustrated, and so on, then you have a spiritual disconnect. This could mean you have allowed your personal energy field to become contaminated by the debilitating forces of those in your immediate life space. (You will read more about this, and how to keep your energy field uncontaminated, in chapter five (#litres_trial_promo).)
When you are spiritually connected you are not looking for occasions to be offended and you are not judging and labeling others. You are in a state of grace in which you know you are connected to God and thus free from the effects of anyone or anything external to yourself.
I often ask myself, “How am I truly feeling inside myself these days?” If my answer is “Not so hot” or “Upset,” I meditate and go to the quiet place where I can plug my cord into the spiritual outlet. The state of cheerfulness returns quickly. Every teacher who has been truly significant in my life has demonstrated this wondrous quality of being able to laugh, to take life lightly, to be silly and giddy.
Use this measure to test your own level of spiritual awareness, and if you are not of good cheer remind yourself that you will never be fully satisfied but in God. I love Erich Fromm’s insight, “Man is the only animal that can be bored, who can be discontented, that can feel evicted from Paradise.” Only you can evict yourself from the garden of paradise.
These then are the seven ways I define spiritual: Surrender, Love, Infinite, Empty, Generous, Connectedness, Cheerful. You can see that spiritual is not restricted to any religion in my interpretation. Keep this list handy as you read on.
What I Mean by Problem
In one sense, in my heart, I feel that there is really only one problem for any of us. That is when we allow ourselves to be separate from God. But in a very real sense, we can never be separate from God, since there is no place that God is not. Thus the paradox. When we are connected to God we have no problems. We are always connected to God. Yet we still believe that we have problems.
The answer to this conundrum will be the focus of the major portion of this book. The problems of disease, disharmony, discord, fear, anxiety, scarcity, displeasure, disappointments in others, and so on are in our minds. When we have these problems we find ourselves feeling alone, alienated, isolated, angry, hurt, depressed, afraid, and more and more anguished. Yet when we truly reconnect to our source these feelings disappear.
This is why I use the word problem as if it truly exists; yet I know every time I use it that it is an illusion. So every time you see the word throughout this book, know that I perceive it as an illusion created by ourselves because we have separated ourselves, in that moment, from God.
There is a powerful line in A Course in Miracles which reminds me of this lesson: “It takes great learning to understand that all things, events, encounters, and circumstances are helpful.” Great learning is an understatement! It takes great faith and courage to begin to view our lives in this way.
How strongly do you desire to truly know, beyond a doubt, that every problem you experience including the very worst thing in your life, actually contains the seeds of the best thing? We can learn to view every crisis as an opportunity, which wouldn’t necessarily make life easier, but would make it more satisfying. We would never be able to view anything as a negative occurrence, because we’d see everything as useful information.
This may sound oversimplified if you face seemingly unsolvable problems every day. I implore you to have an open mind and also some logic rooted in your past religious conditioning as illustrated in “Problems Are Illusions” below. The logic will create a space where you can call on your spiritual connection for the resolution of your problems. It will also give you a base for the problem-solving tools I am offering you in the last seven chapters of this book.
Problems Are Illusions
Give some thought to the following three quotes from the scriptures.
• “God is too pure to behold iniquity.”
• “God made all that was made and all that God made was good.”
• “Your eyes are too pure to look on evil, you cannot tolerate wrong.”
Almost identical observations have been made in all religions. The Holy Koran puts it this way, “Whatever good you have is all from God, whatever evil, all is from yourself.”
If God is good and God made everything, then everything is good. God cannot behold iniquity. So where does all of this stuff that we lump into the category of problems come from? The answer is obvious. When we come to believe that we are separate from God we experience this feeling of separation in our mind, and our mind tells us that we have a problem. The problem, created by our beliefs and existing in our mind, causes us to feel an absence of peace or love. Those beliefs can manifest as disease in our bodies. We begin searching for a solution.
But in reality, since God is only about good, and God is everywhere, what we have done is separate ourselves in our mind from God. Though we find ourselves suffering with these problems, everything that we label a problem is an illusion.
You can see why it is so important to see any and all problems as things that we create in our mind. If we can create non-good or non-God in our mind, then we can also not create them in our mind even though we may have no idea how to do that. Our conditioning is so strong that we often have far greater faith in our problems than we do in our ability to no longer have them.
We often display a much greater faith in the power of cancer, heart disease, or AIDS than we do in the power to heal them. We do this in a multitude of ways. We become enamored of the problem and its damaging effect. We live out the illusion while ignoring the fact that nothing iniquitous can be of God, and God made everything. The evil, the pain, the anguish are of our own creation and they represent opportunities to gain that greater learning that A Course in Miracles describes.
I know that some of these ideas sound strangely impossible to implement. I ask you to keep an open mind as we travel this path of healing to bring peace back into your life on a permanent basis.
The Eastern gurus use the term maya (illusion) to describe the existence of problems that really do not exist. The universe is good. God is good. God is everywhere. God is invisible spirit. Anything that is not good cannot exist. But we feel it does, so we have to come up with a solution, and this is the very reason why I have felt so compelled to write this book. There is a solution. It sits there right in front of you.
The last seven chapters of this book provide you with a series of easy-to-apply solutions to this puzzle. For now, however, let’s take a brief look at the word solution as it applies in the title of this book.
What I Mean by Solution
I once sat in on a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous in which ten people who had been drinking most of their lives were gathered in a rehabilitation center where they had to live away from their families and loved ones. The words of a sign on the wall kept gnawing at me throughout that meeting. It read, “Your best thinking got you here.” I thought how true that is and how it applies to all the circumstances of our lives. Our best thinking got us here.
Our best thinking is exactly where all our so-called problems exist. If we couldn’t think about them, they would not exist. We can change our very best thinking and begin to see the error of that thinking. What we need is a change in thinking to realize that a connection to the divine good, or spirit, or God, is what heals or eradicates our problems.
The power that we call God, which grows the flowers and moves the planets in perfect orbits, counts us as one of its creations. I encourage you to learn to rely on that power in times of crisis.
Correcting Errors
In mathematics when you add two plus two you will always come up with four. This little addition example of two plus two equals four is said to have substance because it is true. Now if you state that two plus two equals seven, you have an error, and two plus two equals seven no longer is said to have substance or reliability. Try balancing your checkbook using two plus two equals seven. So how do we end that error? Very simple, we correct it, and it goes away. That is, we bring truth to the presence of the error, and the error disappears.
You cannot send problems out of your life by attacking them or understanding them in more depth. Instead, you correct the error in your thinking that produces the problem in the first place. Once you bring a correction to the problem it no longer has any substance or validity, and it disappears completely from your life.
The solution, stated generally here and more specifically later in this book, is to bring a spiritual essence to the “problem” of disease, disharmony, or discord. Then the error or the illusion will vanish. Problems represent a deficit of spirit in some sense. The error is corrected permanently when you apply the seven components of spirituality. The error is that these problems, which we are experiencing in our minds, in reality do not exist.
Correcting these errors is tantamount to dissolving our fears. And when you turn and look directly at your fears, what you face dissolves in the light of consciousness. It is in this context that we have within us the ability to eliminate those illusions that we call problems. We correct these errors with the creation of a new spiritual delivery system. This is the key to understanding the healing of the body as well as our relationships.
This is the basic introduction to this somewhat radical idea of having a spiritual solution available for every single problem. I’ve always loved Shakespeare’s line, “Go to your bosom; knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know.” The heart symbolizes the part of us that does not rely exclusively on thoughts. Thinking is the source of problems. When I ask an audience to point to themselves, ninety-nine percent will point directly to their hearts, not their heads. Your heart holds the answer to resolving any and all problems in your life.
I close this chapter with an invitation written in the thirteenth century by the Sufi poet Rumi:
Come, come, whoever you are.
Wanderer, worshipper,
Lover of leaving—it doesn’t matter.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vows
A hundred times, a thousand times.
Come, come again, come.
You are welcome on this caravan leading you out of the world of illusion which you will love leaving, and into a place where spiritual solutions await you in every encounter, in every moment of your life.
2 ANCIENT “RADICAL” IDEAS (#ulink_e7c5c946-9c5c-53bc-81e4-822596a4e7b8)
The average man who does not know what to do with this life, wants another one which shall last forever.
—ANATOLE FRANCE
WE ARE CAPABLE OF REACHING A STATE
OF AWARENESS IN WHICH WE CAN
PERFORM MIRACLES
As I mentioned in chapter one (#udf1362d2-6210-5009-bab3-b15b4cf444b0), in preparation for writing this book I became blissfully involved in the teachings of a saint called Patanjali, who reportedly lived here on earth several thousand years ago. No source that I have reviewed has been able to precisely identify who Patanjali was, if he was indeed more than one person, and even when he lived. Like Shakespeare, or Jesus, and many other major figures, Patanjali’s ideas and teachings have retained their influence, in spite of the lack of details we have about his existence.
In the previous chapter I refer to his translated works How to Know God: The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali. There are very few books which have caused me to feel the sense of excited anticipation I felt while reading The Yoga Aphorisms. Patanjali teaches that we are capable of reaching a state of awareness in which we can perform miracles. He explains that we are transcendent beings to begin with and counsels us to be unafraid of transcending the limitations imposed upon us by the material world.
Patanjali’s words caused me to truly think of myself as capable of living at a much higher level than I had ever considered before. He presents ideas that are life changing. I felt urged to go beyond traditional ideas that acted as obstacles to my union with God. I urge you to suspend disbelief as you read this chapter. I am fully aware that some of this material may clash dramatically with your inherited religious teachings.
The title of this book makes a powerful claim: that there is a spiritual solution to every problem you will ever face. In order to apply this idea you need to be aware of these so-called “radical” ideas, because they can open you to your ability to implement spiritual solutions to your problems. It may help if you keep in mind that there is a distinction between spiritual development and formal religious teachings.
Patanjali offered hundreds of specific suggestions and practices to reach the oneness or union with God, which he called yoga. Some of Patanjali’s aphorisms will undoubtedly sound far too removed from our twenty-first-century life to apply to the problems we have in today’s world. I have selected five of the aphorisms that helped me recognize that spiritual solutions are only a thought or two away. I introduce each of them along with my commentary on their value to spiritual problem solving in the world we presently live in.
In our materially oriented world we are often confronted with problems that seem insoluble. A shift in thinking is required in order to discover that we have something at our disposal that we can put into practice. We need to see ourselves as containing a force that can be called upon for spiritual solutions. We don’t have to consult an expert in theology, or thumb through ancient manuscripts to find our answers. We need to realize that spiritual solutions are readily accessible.
A while back during an intermission of a half-day seminar that I was conducting, someone left this note on the table onstage.
Question to God: “Why did you let all of those people in that Denver school die?”
Response from God: “I’m not allowed in school anymore.”
In the twenty-first century many Americans seem to equate God with religion and religious training which they insist be separated from teaching and learning in our schools. But nowhere in our Constitution is it specified that we must separate God and state. It says quite clearly that a separation of church and state shall be the way of our land. To separate God and state we would have to recall every coin and piece of currency issued by the state and strike out “In God We Trust.” We would have to amend our Pledge of Allegiance and all references to God in our government documents! Trying to legislate God out of our daily lives contributes to the growing spiritual deficit that our world is experiencing.
The ideas that Patanjali wrote about several thousand years ago are of immense value today. These ideas are not part and parcel of a religion or a church. They are a prescription for coming into union (yoga) with God and consequently regaining all the power and majesty of one’s source.
Enough of my disclaimers and warnings. Here are five aphorisms from approximately twenty centuries ago that can help you gain access to your spiritual answers. I have arranged these five major themes in a way that I found useful for myself and I trust will be helpful to you.
THE FIRST APHORISM
The central act of ignorance is false identification.
Patanjali describes ignorance as a basic misunderstanding of one’s real nature. According to this ancient master when we identify ourselves as our name or title, our body, our possessions, achievements, or reputation, we are denying our true identity. This he maintains is ignorance.
This act of ignorance forces us to misread nature and consequently to dwell on the outwardness of things. When the world is viewed as a collection of separate things and beings, awareness of wholeness is impossible. This ancient master made it quite clear that when we deny God within us, we deny God everywhere. Finding a spiritual solution to every problem begins with a commitment to end this kind of ignorance.
In order to eliminate ignorance as defined by Patanjali, you do not have to go back to school. Ignorance is not the absence of knowledge. He is not saying you are ignorant if you can’t spell, or solve quadratic equations, or list the capitals of countries from memory. Each person has a vast storehouse of facts and knowledge at his disposal. For some it involves reading blueprints, and for others it is repairing bicycles. For some it is preparing a sumptuous meal, and for others it is driving an eighteen-wheeler across the country. Who is to say that any one set of facts and skills is any more important than any other?
If one set of skills allows you to make more money and that is important to you, then by all means learn and apply those skills to your money-making efforts. But the person who elects a different set of facts and skills, which produce less income, is not ignorant, even though our culture often tends to equate low income with ignorance.
What we are exploring here is ignorance defined as falsely identifying oneself as only of the material ego-based world.
To eliminate ignorance from your life using this definition, you will need to reprioritize your basic definition of both yourself and God. For yourself, try to let go of the false identification of God with the five senses and the intellect. Replace that false identification with imagining yourself eternally connected to a divine source. With this new identification comes an inner resolve to reorient yourself when faced with a problem. Rather than asking an external God to solve your problem for you, identify yourself as a part of the beloved divine creation that you are. Dedicate your actions to God and you will gradually see the error of false identification disappear.
For example, if you want to stop a compulsive habit of overeating, begin by no longer identifying yourself as a body full of cravings (ignorance). Instead imagine yourself as pure eternal peace and joy always unified with God. Ignorance keeps you from genuinely experiencing pleasure or fulfillment via the senses because you clutch at what appears to provide it rather than seek purity or true happiness. A false identification will always betray you. The senses will keep tempting you with objects of desire.
Unlearn the false identification of your thoughts with your ego-senses and instead see yourself as a part of the infinite. As you do, you will still act on your thoughts but you will be acting as a divine perfectly balanced eternal being. I love the idea of eternal soul presented in this excerpt from the Bhagavad-Gita:
The illumined soul …
Thinks always: “I am doing nothing.”
No matter what he sees,
hears, touches, smells, eats …
This he knows always:
“I am not seeing, I am not hearing:
It is the senses that see and hear
and touch the things of the senses.”
To become an illumined soul we must not conceptualize ourselves as our senses and all that they lust after. That is ignorance. We are not the objects of experience, but the silent observer within the experience itself. Seeing ourselves in this way provides us with a new tool for problem solving. Try it the next time you feel the impulse to overeat or consume a toxic substance or even to spend time in painful grief over a loss.
A dramatic example of this presented itself in the following letter and poem I received from Mary Lou Van Atta of Newark, Ohio. She is speaking directly to this idea of false identification as she writes of her ordeal and how she ultimately found a spiritual solution by remembering who she is, rather than who she had falsely believed she was.
Dear Dr. Dyer,
My son was murdered in a robbery attempt two years ago. Frankly, I thought I would never recover from my grief and loss. Amid all the clouds in my life and mind, I was somehow led, once more, to your books and tapes. I had read and listened to many in previous years and while I had enjoyed them, I was too busy to truly listen. Upon going over them again, I realized one underlying truth in all. We are spirit in body—not a body with a spirit.
I am once more a happy, healthy woman with a full steam ahead system. I will always feel my loss of Ross, but I know it is not the end of the story. I can wait. It’s O.K.
I have enclosed a small poem that I hope you will enjoy. I wrote it but you taught it.
Again, thank you.
Sincerely, Mary Lou Van Atta
Indeed, as Patanjali reminds us, we are spirit in body. Believing otherwise is ignorance through false identification. In that state of ignorance we become solutionless in form. When we experience what Saint Paul called a “renewal of the mind” we are able to see ourselves as we truly are.
With Mary Lou’s permission I include the poem she wrote. It summarizes this first ancient “radical” idea. The central act of ignorance is not being ill-informed, but in falsely identifying yourself as your form.
I AM
The “I” that is me—you cannot see
You see only the form that you think is me.
This form that you see, will not always be;
but the “I” that is me—lives eternally.
The next time that you face a problem that you have been unable to resolve, try redefining yourself as Mary Lou suggests in “I Am,” and put into practice your true identification as the eternal experiencer rather than the object of that experiencer. Ask yourself these key questions from the ancient Upanishads: “At whose behest does the mind think? Who bids the body to live? Who makes the ear hear and the tongue speak?”
Your true identity is the mind of mind, the eye of the eye, and the breath of the breath. Go there and you will find the beginning of a spiritual solution to any problems you believe you have. Here is how Meher Baba described this process of overcoming one’s ignorance as we are defining the term here.
“Thus, though he begins by seeking something utterly new, he really arrives at a new understanding of something ancient. The spiritual journey does not consist in arriving at a new destination where a person gains what he did not have or becomes what he was not. It consists in the dissipation of his ignorance concerning himself and life, and the gradual growth of that understanding which begins with spiritual awakening. The finding of God is a coming to one’s own self.” Your objective in applying this ancient wisdom is to dissipate your ignorance concerning yourself and life.
THE SECOND APHORISM
The mind of the truly illumined is calm because the peace of God within all things is known, even within the appearance of misery and disease.
This second aphorism brings to mind the adage that the three truly difficult things to do in life are: returning love for hate; including the excluded; and saying, “I was wrong.” It is the first and most difficult item, returning love for hate, that I want to explore here.
As I was studying the ancient words of Patanjali I came across a reference that implied the following: God cannot express God’s self in you when you are not at peace. As I thought about those words I had a deep realization that God is love. I recognized that it was in a state of stillness that the realization occurred. If it requires stillness to know God, then we need to be in a place of loving calmness in order to be able to have God’s assistance in problem solving. Thus, the most difficult thing to do, to return love for hate, becomes much simpler when we are able to be peaceful because that is actually God expressing God’s self within us.
When we return love for hate we express the peace of God that is within us. Our response has a calm and loving quality. This calmness is a vital aspect of the consciousness that makes it possible to tap into spiritual solutions.
I’ve selected two passages from the Bible to reinforce the relationship between stillness or calmness and God. By taking the scriptural statement and reversing it, we can clearly recognize what happens when we are unable or unwilling to choose stillness. So, “Be anxious, or fearful and you will not know God” is what we have in place of “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10).
Instead of “God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him” (I John 4:16), we would have “God is fear and he that dwelleth in fear cannot dwell in God, nor God in him.”
Probably you are thinking that this makes sense. God is still. God is love. When I am neither, I have no chance of allowing a spiritual solution to present itself. But how do I get to that place of calmness? I believe you can move into that state of knowing God within through stillness by intentionally choosing calmness in moments of anxiety or fear. Yes, you can choose to be calm at any moment by reminding yourself that you are no longer choosing to live by your conditioned past. It is largely because of our conditioning that we leave God behind when we leave calmness.
We have trained ourselves to be fearful and anxious when presented with problems. If we choose, we can retrain ourselves to be calm and to allow God to express God’s self in us once again. As I discussed in chapter one (#udf1362d2-6210-5009-bab3-b15b4cf444b0), problems begin, unequivocally, in our minds. We may have to remind ourselves that our mind is where the problem exists, nowhere else. Thus the “illusion” which I mentioned earlier. Correct the error, and the illusion disappears. Our conditioning has led us to the error of thinking of ourselves in terms of finite beings.
James Carse, in his book Finite and Infinite Games, describes a world of finite games in which winners and losers, rules, boundaries, and time are all extremely important. In the world of finite games, titles, acquisitions, and prestige are of paramount significance. Planning, strategy, and secrecy are all crucial. To become a master player in the world of finite games you have an audience who knows the rules and who will grant you a reputation. Being identified with losers in the finite game is frightening and dangerous. The finite game values bodies, things, and reputations. The ultimate loss is death.
In his book, Carse explains that the final result of the finite game is self-annihilation because the machines that we invent to assist us in this finite game of winners and losers will destroy those who rely upon them. Technology, marketing, productivity are all terms to encourage players to buy more machines and one’s worth is dependent on how many machines players have and how well they operate them.
There is also the infinite game, which you can begin to play if you so choose. In this game there are no boundaries; the forces are infinite that allow the flowers to grow and those forces cannot be tamed or controlled. The purpose of the infinite game is to get more people to play, to laugh, love, dance and sing. Life itself is infinitely non-understandable. These forces were here before we were and will continue beyond the boundaries of death and time.
While the finite player must debate and learn the language/rules to operate all the machines, the infinite player speaks from the heart and knows that answers are beyond words and explanations. This is not to imply that players of the infinite game cannot also play finite games, it’s just that they don’t know how to take the finite games seriously.
This is a choice. We are in a world where secrecy, competition, fear, and weapons are part of the equipment used to play the finite game of life. We know that the categories of “winner” and “loser” are highly valued. Players who prefer to spend more of their time playing the infinite game also play the finite game. I think the following excerpt from the workbook for A Course in Miracles says it delightfully.
“There is a way of living in the world that is not here, although it seems to be. You do not change appearance, though you smile more frequently. Your forehead is serene; your eyes are quiet. And the ones who walk the world as you do recognize their own. Yet those who have not yet perceived the way will recognize you also, and believe that you are like them, as you were before.”
This is a prescription for knowing the peace of God even when there is the appearance of misery and disease. The choice is to play mostly infinite games, but while playing the finite games, refusing to take them seriously. Others may think you are serious, but you know better. You know you see your world in the terms of an infinite game. You will smile more frequently, you will feel serene, and you will access spiritual solutions.
I will conclude this section with a story told to me by my friend Gary who lives in New York, but was raised and schooled in India. Each year at the completion of the school year in June, Gary’s father sent him to live with a master teacher (guru) in an ashram with many other young boys. Here he would be immersed for a couple of months annually for the purpose of heightening his spiritual awareness. There were two large cabins at this particular ashram, and on the first day of the summer, all the boys were given the following instructions.
“You are to remain in total silence for the first four weeks. No talking at any time. If you break silence even once, you will leave the silent cabin and live in the second cabin where you may talk to your heart’s content for the rest of the summer.”
There was no threat of punishment. Simply leaving the silent cabin was the only consequence of breaking the silence.
Gary told me that he was able to go for about four days without talking the first year. Then off he went to cabin two. In the second year he went approximately ten days, and in the third year he was able to go for two weeks before he finally broke the silence.
About the time of his fifteenth birthday he knew he was going to the ashram and he made an inner commitment that this year he would definitely complete the prescribed time for silence, no matter what. He actually placed tape over his mouth and used other gimmicks to ensure he would not break silence even once. He noted that each year, at the end of the silence month, only two or three boys were still residing in cabin one. And sure enough, finally after years of struggling, Gary completed the month without ever once breaking the silence.
On the last day, the guru came into cabin one and sat down at the kitchen table with Gary and the other two boys who had been able to remain totally silent for the entire designated time period of one month. He tells me that the four of them had the most remarkable experience of communicating that he had ever known. They told each other stories, they laughed, they cried, and they asked each other questions. For several hours they interacted in the most intense conversations Gary had ever experienced. During the entire time of those conversations in which they all communicated intensely and intimately at a deep feeling level, not one single sound was made, not one word was spoken.
You may find it difficult to believe that communication without words or sounds is possible. Yet I know Gary to be truthful, a man of integrity. I leave you to draw your own conclusions. I am convinced that when we become truly illumined, our inner calmness, when taken to an extreme, allows us to transcend reliance on symbols and noise, and to know the peace of God. My conclusion is that we can communicate through our own inner calmness in ways that are infinite rather than finite. Or as Patanjali put it, “the state of perfect yoga can only be entered into when the thought-waves have been stilled.”
Each one of us must find the ways to our own inner stillness. One of my ways is to study a poster that I have on my wall every day. Beneath a beautiful serene blue sky mountain setting are these words from Paramahansa Yogananda: “Calmness is the living breath of God’s immortality in you.” I contemplate this wisdom every day of my life. I would be honored if you write to share with me the ways you have discovered to find your stillness.
THE THIRD APHORISM
Sin is nonexistent. There are only obstacles to one’s ultimate union with God.
Most of us grew up believing that a sin was an act of disobedience or ingratitude toward a God who is both separate and punitive. This aphorism tells us that behaviors and thoughts that violate a commandment that we ideally seek to uphold are offences against our own true nature, which is God. Thus what we perceive to be sinful can be redirected to be viewed as an obstacle to our spiritual development. Patanjali suggests that what we call sin is misdirected energy, which might have been used to find union with God had we not been misled by ignorance.
The word sin has a literal translation of “off the mark.” In this sense, behavior that religion has taught us is sinful is conduct that is off-the-mark or away from God. This, according to Patanjali, is not a reason to immerse ourselves in guilt and use up life energy attempting to somehow make amends. Rather it should be viewed in the context of an obstacle that we have yet to overcome.
When addressing “sinful” behaviors as obstacles we begin to see what it is we must do to access the spiritual solution we seek. When viewed as sin, we place the responsibility for correcting the conduct on a God who is external to us. Thus we hope that this external God will forgive, and we find ourselves laden with guilt and anxiety over whether we deserve to be problem-free. I like these powerful words of Mahatma Gandhi on how to deal with our shortcomings: “My imperfections and failures are as much a blessing from God as my successes and my talents, and I lay them both at his feet.”
Viewing a failure as an invitation to recourse with God is a much more useful way of handling the “problem.” Wallowing in shame, feeling as though we have sinned and are not deserving of forgiveness is not the best way to find solutions! Try this inner dialogue instead: “I have not sinned against God. I have behaved in such a way as to inhibit my complete union with God. These behaviors are obstacles to my finding a spiritual solution. Beginning right now I will work at removing these obstacles from my life.”
The concept of being a sinner is an image of self-contempt and guilt, while the concept of encountering an obstacle is empowering. I love the healing parable of Jesus and the blind man.
As he went along he saw a man blind from birth, his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned? This man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
“Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.”
We have been trained to think in terms of sin and punishment. These ideas disempower us by stressing that we are weak and wrong. The empowering way is to view trials as lessons and opportunities to choose differently. We can transcend the odious notion of being sinners cloaked in guilt, awaiting punishment. To access a spiritual solution to a problem involves focusing on the idea of a solution. The sinner filled with guilt becomes immobilized and remains in passive inertia. When we view the sinful behavior as an obstacle to a higher level of awareness, we can still take responsibility by asking ourselves, “What is the lesson for me? And what can I do to avoid this the next time?”
The disciples in the parable assumed that the man’s blindness must have been caused by a sin somewhere by someone involved in this blind man’s life. But Jesus taught that misfortunes in the physical world are not because humans have sinned. The misfortunes are obstacles on the path to uniting with the infinite within us. He reminds them that no sin has taken place.
We are all blind in many ways. It is through our figurative blindness that God’s work can be displayed in our life. It was Mahatma Gandhi among others who preached the value of the dark side. Our dark side and our dark spots are as Gandhi said, a blessing from God, rather than an encumbrance for which we are to be punished. Our conditioned belief system learned the concept of sin.
This “radical” idea teaches the concept of obstacles to unified awareness of God within. If you have violated any of the commandments that you ideally hold on to as law; if you have stolen, cheated, or lied, or coveted or even physically harmed another, try viewing these actions as obstacles to your spiritual union with all that you truly are and can become. Remind yourself that this is what you would love more than anything. Then you will have empowered yourself to begin the process of removing those obstacles.
This is such a freeing concept. Say to yourself, “I still have obstacles that I have imposed which keep me from a spiritual solution,” rather than, “I am a sinner and there is no hope for me unless God sees it in his heart to forgive me.” One thought empowers, while the other diminishes. One thought leads to a solution, the other keeps you immobile. In short, go and sin no more, because there is no such thing.
Even if you have done irreparable wrong to someone through uncontrolled greed, or anger, you can still view this action in terms of obstacles to your union with God. Certainly you will feel remorse and do all that you can to right the wrongful acts. You can only correct such flaws in the future by viewing yourself as having erected barriers to your highest self and by forgiving yourself. Sincere penance does not consist of perpetuating grief for wrongs but in resolving to avoid in the future those deeds that call for remorse.
THE FOURTH APHORISM
The person who is steadfast in abstaining from falsehood has the power to obtain for himself and others the fruits of good deeds, without having to perform the deeds themselves.
Normally when we use the word truthful we infer that a person’s words correspond to the facts of which he speaks. Yet in this yoga sutra, Patanjali’s phrase, “steadfast in abstaining from falsehood,” means something quite apart from being factual and honest.
What is meant here is the practice of completely and wholly identifying oneself as a spiritual being, united with God at all times and never confusing one’s identity with the ego world of possessions, achievements, and reputation. To reach this state is to be in the company of those rare saints whom we all revere and quote so frequently. In this state we can be moving toward steadfast abstention and find ourselves gaining those fruits of good deeds. They will enable us to not only resolve our own “problems” but those of others.
Look carefully at the words used in this sutra. Obtaining for yourself and others the fruits of good deeds without having to perform the deeds. Just what does this mean to you?
Patanjali suggests that steadfast abstention from falsehood means that saying to someone, “God bless you,” means that the person is truly blessed because we are no longer capable of even dreaming an untruth. Similarly, this steadfast abstainer from falsehood can perform miraculous cures by simply telling a sick person that he is well. Thus Patanjali suggests that when a person becomes perfected in truth he literally gains control of truth. That person’s being, along with their words and actions allows them to obtain the fruits of good deeds without necessarily performing the deeds with their physical bodies.
Now I am not offering you sainthood here in exchange for becoming a one-hundred-percent truth teller. Rather, what I am proposing is that you open yourself to an idea that allows you to gradually and steadily remember your identity as a divine spiritual connected-to-God entity. In moments you previously labeled as stressful or problematic, you will begin to see the fruits of good deeds (another way of saying problem solving) show up without having to labor long and hard to solve your difficulty.
The very fact of your self-reminder that you are united with God in this very instant of strife will allow your thoughts and affirmations to become your reality. As you steadily gain this awareness, you will have the same impact on others. In other words, you will be bringing spirit (which is all you are in your awareness) to everyone and everything you encounter, and the fruits of good deeds will be observed on a regular basis. Whenever you find yourself filled with inner frustration or rage, a gentle private reminder to abstain from this false identity with the material world, will bring you back to your true essence. When you are back, notice how the rage and frustration have dissipated. Now use words to bless yourself and the situation, and you begin to see what Patanjali meant with this “radical” aphorism.
As you become more adept at abstaining from falsehood, as defined here, you will bring this kind of calm, peaceful true identity, a connected-to-God countenance, to those in your immediate surroundings. The more steadfast you are in this regard, the more you will hear others say: “I just feel better when she is around.” “I feel calm when he shows up.” “I actually sensed that my discomfort and pain went away when he talked to me.” You literally raise the consciousness of those around you when you are steadfast in your abstention from falsehood. You become a healer without going to healing school. You become a blessing without a degree in divinity. You are obtaining the results of good deeds without having to sweat and work at doing the right thing.
Spirituality is very similar to health. Everyone has health. For some their health is excellent and for others it is poof, yet you cannot escape having it at some level or another. The same is true for spirituality. Every single human being is a spiritual being. We all have spirit. For some their spirituality is high and therefore life-enhancing, loving, peaceful, kind, and at the top of the ladder as I defined it in chapter one (#udf1362d2-6210-5009-bab3-b15b4cf444b0).
The more steadfastly we abstain from false identity the less attached we become to anything that is associated with false identity. As detachment increases, spirituality moves up the ladder that you can never completely climb off, any more than you can step off the health ladder. We begin to see the fruits of good deeds appearing without having to work at it. Ultimately, we are close to the top and find there are others just wanting to bathe a bit in our aura, so to speak.
I think of the story of Martin Luther who impacted the lives of millions by his steadfast abstention from falsehood. Luther never wanted to begin a Reformation. He merely wanted the Catholic Church officials to address some ninety-five questions.
To raise funds for the church, Pope Leo X, a big spender who needed money to build gold-lined palaces and create extensive works of art for the Vatican, sent representatives on a mission to sell indulgences. These indulgences were written statements from the pope excusing individuals for sins in exchange for money. People believed they could buy their way into Heaven. Many were burned at the stake after confessions gained in torturous inquisitions.
Luther wanted to rediscover the original gospel as it had been before it was corrupted during the Inquisition. He asked for answers to questions that bothered his conscience. For this he was excommunicated and had to go into hiding from the established and corrupt church. When asked to recant, he said, “I am bound by conscience and the word of God. Therefore I can and will recant nothing, because to act against one’s conscience is neither safe nor salutary. Here I stand. I can do no other. So help me God.”
By steadfastly abstaining from falsehood, Martin Luther helped to begin the Protestant Reformation, and to force the established church to abolish such practices as torture, execution, and the selling of indulgences.
You don’t have to become a Martin Luther overnight. But let in the idea that you can access divine spiritual power to alleviate problems first for yourself, and then for others by shifting away from false identification. Little baby steps at first. Remind yourself that all those who had this power that Patanjali spoke of began their journey by reminding themselves, in moments of strife, that they were first and without a doubt divine spiritual beings, connected rather than separated from their source.
THE FIFTH APHORISM
When a person is steadfast in his abstention from harming others, then all living creatures will cease to feel enmity in his presence.
Patanjali’s statement, “abstention from harming others,” includes not only actual acts of harm but also thoughts of jealousy, judgment, and injury in any fashion. Steadfastly renouncing violence in thoughts and in all dealings with others creates an atmosphere wherein all violence and enmity ceases to exist because it is not reciprocated.
This is a powerful awareness that you can begin to incorporate into your life immediately. Any situation where you experience anger or even mild discomfort involves thoughts of enmity toward the other person or people. Patanjali explains that other people will not feel enmity or anguish if you steadfastly abstain from having harmful thoughts toward them in the first place. Amazing! By you working at not having any judgments or harmful thoughts, those around you will be free of anguish also.
Coming to this awareness of being steadfast in abstaining from harmful thoughts is a potent tool for accessing a spiritual solution to problems involving relationships. When a person is talking to you and you are slipping into the mode of feeling angry about how you are being talked to, you can remind yourself in that instant to abstain from thinking harmful or angry thoughts. I find it is quite effective to use the following words, first internally, and then I say them out loud. They are, “You’re right about that!” Not sarcastically. Without rancor, I simply allow the other person to be right, which is all their ego really wants.
This tool does not make the other person right, it merely allows someone to believe that they are, and it allows you to be steadfast in your abstention from harmful thoughts. As you practice allowing others to be right, you are beginning to live from your higher self rather than your ego. Eventually it will be your authentic way of reacting to others, even when they are being insulting.
There is a story concerning the Buddha, who is in the company of a fellow traveler who tests this great teacher with derogatory, insulting, disparaging, and bitter responses to anything the Buddha says. Every day, for three days when the Buddha spoke, the traveler responded by calling him a fool, and ridiculing the Buddha in some arrogant fashion. Finally, at the end of the third day, the traveler could stand it no more. He asked, “How is it that you are able to be so loving and kind when all I’ve done for the past three days is dishonor and offend you? Each time I am disobliging to you, you respond in a loving manner. How is this possible?”
The Buddha responded with a question of his own for the traveler. “If someone offers you a gift, and you do not accept that gift, to whom does the gift belong?” His question provided the traveler with a new insight.
When someone offers you a gift of their insults, and you refuse to accept them, they obviously still belong to the original giver. And why would you ever choose to be upset or angry over something that belonged to someone else?
In this aphorism, Patanjali states, “all living creatures will cease to feel enmity” in the presence of one who does not think or act in a violent manner. This suggests we can affect the animal kingdom when we are steadfast in this attribute. You’ve heard the stories of how Saint Francis of Assisi would tame wild wolves who were decimating the livestock, merely by being in their presence. Moreover, doves would fly to his hands and all manner of wild creatures would feel the love that emanated from him and would cease to feel enmity.
I have experimented with this notion on many occasions myself. Once while jogging in Egypt a pack of dogs came running toward me at 4:30 A.M. barking ferociously. I stopped jogging and also stopped thoughts of fear or violence and they became calm and harmless.
As you contemplate this idea of abstention from harmful thoughts or intentions, keep in mind that those areas of your life, which you have labeled as “problems,” could no longer exist if you were to be this idea each and every day. The reason you are not experiencing bliss at this precise moment is because you are focusing on what is wrong or missing. Begin the process of filling your mind with love, gratitude, and forgiveness. Ernest Holmes wrote, “What a load is dropped from the shoulders of personal responsibility, when we realize that the eternal mind holds naught against anybody.”
Being in the space of the eternal mind is what you need to do as you pursue spiritual solutions in your life. Hold naught against anyone, and while you’re at it, keep in mind Albert Einstein’s helpful hint about why it is important to change around the way you process everything and everyone involved in what you call your problems. Einstein said, “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking which created them.”
Problems are illusions of the material world. Solutions are attributes of your immersion in the world of spirit. Yes, there is a spiritual solution to every problem. But you will have to move to a higher level of thinking to do so. These then are the five basic aphorisms of Patanjali that will guide you to change the mind that created the problem:
1. Identify yourself beyond ignorance.
2. Calmness is the peace of God within you.
3. You create obstacles, you do not sin.
4. Be steadfast in abstaining from falsehood.
5. Be steadfast in abstaining from harmful thoughts and acts.
You can work at applying these whenever you are involved in a “problem.” They are extremely useful in the discovery and application of spiritual solutions.
As you face a problem, remind yourself that you created it with one mind, and you will solve it with another. Hence, the idea that is the title of this book. “Problems” come from a nonspiritual mindset. There is a spiritual solution available, and you can create the energy to access it at will.
As you work at mastering these five aphorisms of Patanjali, know that they represent the highest places you can attain in the world of spirit. They symbolize how those we call masters and saints lived, breathed, and helped others to transcend their problems. You obviously won’t be one hundred percent on the mark with all five at all times, but gradually, you will remind yourself of the need for a spiritual solution in trying times or when confronted with a problem.
One step at a time, you will find grace, and peace supplanting the strife. You will literally be creating a new energy field for yourself, which is the subject of the next chapter in this book and in your life as well.
3 IT’S ALL ENERGY (#ulink_ff860ea2-be0d-5975-980b-51268504df0e)
Nothing happens until something moves.
—ALBERT EINSTEIN
Spiritual problem solving ultimately means examining the entire concept of energy in a new way. Generally we think of people with high energy in terms of stamina and vigor with qualities of enthusiasm and tirelessness. I am suggesting you think of energy in a context of vibration and movement.
In this formulation, energy is the speed of an individual’s energy field. The idea here is that a higher frequency will aid in problem solving, whereas a lower frequency will intensify problems and inhibit solutions. This is a crucial point in the simplified paradigm I present here and in chapter four (#litres_trial_promo). You have within you the absolute ability to increase your frequency and enhance the energy field of your everyday life. By increasing the speed at which you vibrate you move into those frequencies I am calling spirit, and away from those that are grounded in the material world of problems.
Stephen Hawking, who may be the most scientifically enlightened mind on the planet today, has said, “Apparently common sense notions work well when dealing with material things like apples and/or comparatively slow moving things like planets; but they don’t work at all for things moving at the speed of light.” Hence, if you want to access and utilize the energy that vibrates at faster frequencies than ordinary levels of awareness you have to be able to Shift Your Energy At Appropriate times out of good old-fashioned “common sense.” Valerie Hunt, in her well-documented and intriguing book Infinite Mind: Science of the Human Vibrations of Consciousness, concludes, “As a result of my work, I can no longer consider the body as organic systems or tissues. The healthy body is a flowing, interactive electrodynamic energy field. Motion is more natural to life than non-motion—things that keep flowing are inherently good. What interferes with flow will have detrimental effects.”
I do not expect you to become an expert on electrodynamic energy fields or to explore this ever-growing field of quantum energy physics. All I want at this point is to introduce you to the fundamental awareness necessary to activate your higher frequency. Here are five simplified verifiable facts, which it is my hope will introduce you to your innate ability to do that.
1. Everything vibrates, everything moves.
2. Faster vibrations mean getting closer to “spirit.”
3. Slower vibrations keep us in the world of “problems.”
4. You can choose to eliminate whatever interferes with increasing your vibrational field.
5 You can negotiate the presence of factors in your life to increase your frequency of vibrations.
There you have it in a nutshell. A spiritual solution to your every problem includes changing your energy field so that you can access the fastest frequency and choose to implement it at will in your daily life.
Now, let’s take a closer look at these five basics and how they will help you implement your spiritual solutions.
Everything Vibrates, Everything Moves
If you look at a page of this book through an extremely powerful microscope you will see it is a dance, with molecules, atoms, electrons, sub- and sub-subatomic particles moving about in ceaseless energy patterns. The book appears solid because your senses (which also vibrate) perceive solidity at this frequency. Thus, this book is energy slowed way down so that it appears as a solid mass. This is also true of your body, and everything in the material world—all slowed down energy that appears not to vibrate. But one look under the microscope gives us that astonishing view of motion.
Likewise, everything is in a state of motion. We appear to be sitting still, but we know that the our planet is spinning once every twenty-four hours, orbiting the sun once every 365 days, and moving through space at dizzying speeds. Spinning, orbiting, and moving are all verbs describing movement. The same can be said of your body. It is a field of vibration and movement, which appears solid and motionless.
All information that you receive comes to you through your senses. Your eyes for example, perceive light, which is really a very fast vibration of air and electromagnetic particles. Your ears perceive sound, which is a slower frequency of air vibrations. Were you to examine that information perceived by your eyes and ears before your senses “picked them up” so to speak, you would see that those vibrations have no evil or disharmony inherent in them. They are simply problem-free vibrations. But, when you take them in, suddenly you say, “What I hear is a problem for me,” “What I see is evil and terrible,” and so on. In other words, you took in those problem-free faster energies and processed them in such a way as to create problems. Even though the energy that you received was totally devoid of anything even resembling a problem, or evil, or terrible. Keep this important notion uppermost in your mind as you read on.
Now for the big leap. Every problem that you face has a vibrational frequency and a movement to it. When you live exclusively in the slowed down, solid-appearing world, you encounter slowed down solid-appearing circumstances that we define as problems. Everything, including what we call a problem, has an energy field. When problems collide with our slowed down solid world, we feel the conflict as an imbalance in our energy field. We call it a problem that we can’t understand or resolve. Thus, diseases of all kinds represent a frequency and movement just like everything else in the universe. Addictions too have a frequency or movement. Fear, stress, and anxiety are all frequencies. I believe we all have the potential to explore beyond the world of the solid and motionless, and learn to increase the speed of our vibrations. This is the key to successfully approaching the slow vibrating motionless problems in our lives.
Thinking in terms of frequencies and vibrations may be a new idea for you, yet our scientists are doing this all the time. They study matter at the subatomic level and report that the essence of creation is energy. Particles appearing from energy seem to stop and appear solid. My purpose is not to delve into the world of quantum physics and give you elaborate scientific proofs. Others far more qualified than I have already done so. My purpose is to have you consider that the solution you seek to anything you’ve labeled a problem may lie in your willingness to shift your vibrational energy patterns.
Here’s an example I’ve created as a tool to help you conceptualize this different energy field. In the slowest vibrations we have illness and disharmony. In faster, but still slow vibration we have ordinary human awareness. Thought and spirit are found in the fastest vibrations.
Consider your physical health where most of your rime is spent attempting to reach point B where you will feel okay because you have an absence of symptoms. Between point A and point B is where you take medicine, consult medical practitioners, and generally strive to get to a point of ordinary human awareness where you just feel okay. Point C represents superhealth where you feel exquisite. You can do five hundred sit-ups, run a marathon, and are toxin-free. Hypothetically, disease materializes at a very low energy frequency. Ordinary human awareness is what we call a normal frequency, and superhealth represents a balanced fast vibration which has the ability to counteract disease frequencies.
For the purpose of explanation only I have assigned an arbitrary figure representing the frequency speed. A = 10,000 cycles per second; B = 20,000 cycles per second; and C = 100,000 cycles per second and beyond. When you live continuously at or below 20,000 cps you are living in an extremely slowed down energy field, and all the things that you call problems that also vibrate at this frequency are almost always noticeable to you. Your goal seems to be to get to the level where you feel normal.
This example can also be applied to your emotional state. At A we find fear, anxiety, stress, anger, and mental disease. At point B your emotional well-being is stable and you feel all right but any dramatic shift in circumstances or the behavior of others can send you back into that frenzied world of worry, fear, guilt, and depression. But at point B you seem to have your life under control. Point C symbolizes perfect emotional health. Here you know that no one can interfere with or obstruct your bliss. Outside circumstances do not torment you. The actions and opinions of others have no unpleasant effect on your emotional state. Realistically, the movement from A to C is a shift in energy frequencies which you can cultivate and choose. In theory and in practice, you have within you the power to approach the frequency of light and spirit.
When you move out of the 20,000 cps level and speed your energy up, what you consider to be accidents and misfortunes are simply gone. In the faster vibrational frequencies you are able to invoke intuition, insight, and other potentials that are dormant when you are in ordinary human awareness. There is one more element on this A-B-C continuum that plays a significant role in ending problems by accessing spiritual guidance.
We have looked at your physical and emotional states from the perspective of frequencies. The slower the frequency the more you move away from spirit. The higher your energy field vibrates, the more you approach a problem-free life. You can invoke the qualities of spirit to slow moving, average circumstances and remove the erroneous thinking that creates the problems. Consequently, the illusions that are your problems are nullified as you bring spirit to them.
I’ll call the third element in this example consciousness. At point A, the lowest level is ego-consciousness. At this frequency you resonate with an inner view that you are separate from everyone else, and in competition with the rest of the world. You are absorbed in self-importance and validate yourself on the basis of what you have, what you do, and what others think of you. Ego consciousness is a very slow frequency in which you feel distinctly separate from spirit which is the fastest vibration in the universe. In fact, in ego consciousness you are as far removed from the energy of God as is possible, and all seven of the characteristics embodied in the word spiritual as defined in chapter one (#udf1362d2-6210-5009-bab3-b15b4cf444b0) are essentially missing from your life.
As you progress to average or normal human consciousness you reach point B on this continuum. Point B I call group consciousness. Here you identify yourself on the basis of what groups you have either chosen to align yourself with or been assigned to as a result of your birthplace, ethnic identity, or cultural label. In group consciousness you have the frequency of normal human awareness which categorizes life with phrases like: I am male, you female; I am old, you are young; I am Italian, you are Chinese; I am Christian, you are Muslim; I am white, you are black; I am conservative, you are liberal. On and on the groupings go, pigeonholing everyone into a frequency where conflict resolution is accomplished by determining who is right, stronger, more powerful, better, or whatever.
Wars are the outcome of group consciousness. Members of the group think along the lines of: I am born on this side of the river, you on the far bank. So too were our ancient ancestors, therefore we will need to fight to see who has access to the river and who is right. Ancient enmities continue to flourish because of geographic boundary disputes, religious traditions, cultural practices, and so on. These conflicts are justified as preserving the identity and historical traditions of “my people.” Group consciousness is normal. I understand this completely. The 20,000 cps frequency encourages us to join our assigned groups and to feel pride in defeating anyone who is not “of our kind.”
Every time you find yourself labeling others or yourself, you are setting up a potential problem. It becomes you against whoever is in the other group. Relationships cause problems when you see yourself in conflict with the other. Illness becomes a battleground when you must fight that which is invading the territory that you call “my body.” Lack of prosperity is due to others having more of what you want. So, one who is at the group consciousness level must compete with “them” for prosperity.
Point B, group consciousness, is a step up from A, ego consciousness. However, point B still keeps you squarely in the middle of a life that is not peaceful, tranquil, or able to nullify problems. At this frequency having problems is considered a normal function of living.
As you approach point C on the consciousness scale you reach a place that I call unity or God consciousness where separation is unknown. As I have suggested, there is only one problem that we face, and that is our belief that we are separate from God. As you increase the frequency at which you live, you shift your energy field to a level wherein you elicit the qualities of Godliness. You become pure spirit. You see no divisions and you know that you are connected to everyone and all living creatures. You become a piece of God so to speak and this mystical sense of connectedness no longer allows you to feel separate.
You literally see the unfolding of God in every flower, creature, and person. At this level of unity consciousness, judgmental chatter that had set you up as a victim or a foe in the lower frequencies is gone. You bring this fast vibrational frequency to every life situation and you no longer view the world the way you did when you were in ego or group consciousness. Your message to the universe is no longer “Gimme, gimme, gimme,” but “How may I give?” And the universe’s response like a mirror is a resounding, “How may I give to you?”
In this state of unity consciousness you no longer view your life circumstances as problems. You understand the magic in Rumi’s famous poem The Guest House, which illustrates poetically what I am writing about here. Problems cannot exist in our lives when we view life from the faster spiritual vibrations that Rumi posits.
THE GUEST HOUSE
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
Some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
Who violently sweep your house
Empty of its furniture,
Still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
For some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
Meet them at the door laughing,
And invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
Because each has been sent
As a guide from beyond.
(The Essential Rumi; translated by Coleman Barks; HarperCollins, 1995; p. 104)
In unity consciousness you see yourself as connected rather than separate. You know that there are no accidents and you process each event of your life from that perspective. Energy impacts us at all times, and the frequency at which that energy moves determines our physical, mental, and spiritual health.
Take some time now to remind yourself of this first necessary fundamental awareness: Everything vibrates, everything moves.
Faster Vibrations Mean Getting Closer to “Spirit”
Valerie Hunt, writing about spiritual enlightenment in her fascinating book Infinite Mind makes this observation: “In my laboratory, we found that when a person’s energy field reaches the highest, most complex vibrations, from imaging or meditation, that person had spiritual experiences, regardless of their beliefs.” To create spiritual solutions you must at least tentatively accept this idea of energy vibrations which you have some degree of power to raise. The faster and more complex the frequency, the more you approach the world of invisible spirit and can nullify slower vibrational situations.
Dr. Valerie Hunt is a scientist and a physiological researcher of human energy fields. Her conclusions are almost identical to a man who many consider to be a spiritual master. His name is Sathya Sai Baba, a divine master who possesses the gift of fish and loaves and has devotees from all over the world. Born in 1926, Sai Baba has spent his life teaching and disseminating unconditional love and peace from his ashram in southern India. He tells his many followers, “Human energy is low and the divine energy is without limit. You are God. You are the divine energy when you do the divine work. Your energy grows.”
Here we have Hunt’s scientific, and Sai Baba’s spiritual, philosophy, offering us a grand view of invisible energy as a fast-moving frequency that, when embraced, escorts us into the reaches of the divine. Their insights emphasize the value of freeing ourselves from the negative impact of slower, more mundane human vibrations. These abilities of the higher-level mind appear to be beyond the domain of material or physical reality as we are accustomed to measuring it. Mind may indeed have different characteristics than the brain in that its vibration is not measurable by material devices. The higher mind is like a field that transcends the physical reality of the brain. As you explore the presence of spirit in your life as a faster, more complex energy frequency, consider that the highest levels of the mind contain the capacities of insight, imagination, creativity, and spiritual consciousness. The mind is a higher construct and it can be thought of as infinite and omnipresent.
What I want you to do here is imagine that your mind, perhaps separate from the brain, is like a fast vibrating field of invisible energy that is not located any one place, and is capable of being an unlimited experience. “The mind experiences and the brain records,” is how Wilder Penfield describes it in his epic book The Mystery of The Mind. Consequently, when I speak of energy, and vibrational frequencies, I am now speaking about your mind, the infinite experience, not simply your brain. It is your mind, which indeed may be separate from your brain, that you are going to train to move at a faster frequency so as to bring spiritual solutions to your problems. I do not wish to make this into a deeply scientific discussion. I just want to introduce you to the idea that the faster frequencies correspond with moving up the scale from solid, to sound, to light, to spirit, and it is in spirit that you will find your peace.
Think about what it is like to be around people who seem to possess these highest capacities of the mind. When we observe someone who has deep insight we can become easily transfixed. The person of deep insight who touches your soul with his words and ignites feelings of love and appreciation is vibrating at a faster energy frequency.
This quality of insight is an ingredient of the higher (and thus faster) mind. These deep insights do not have to be in esoteric fields such as quantum physics or nuclear science. I recall talking with a professional football player who had great insight in how to construct defenses against passing formations. I knew that he was talking and experiencing life in his realm from a high frequency. People who know how to be peaceful and loving regardless of the outer circumstances appear to have greater insight into how to live their daily life. They can have a profound effect on those whom they encounter.
The higher energy frequencies in your mind contain the seeds of imagination and creativity. The more creative you become the faster the frequency of your energy field and the more you can access the invisible world of spirit to annul the lower energy that produces what we construe as problems. Often we use the word problem only because we have not learned that imagination and creativity can handle the situation.
I received a letter several years ago from a woman in Oregon who was facing what most of us would consider a major problem. I reproduce the letter here so that you can see how this problem was turned into a blessing by bringing creativity and spirit to the painful situation.
Dear Wayne;
I don’t even know how to begin this letter. I wrote to you back in 1996 because my son was missing. He had gotten into the world of drugs and had slipped away. At the time I wrote to you I was distraught and panicked. I also was trying to start an organization to help others find their children turned of age who have fallen prey to drug addiction.
You very kindly wrote me back and your first sentence stated, “You will be directed to Jeff! Know this beyond anything resembling doubt.”
I kept that letter with me at all times. I ran those words over and over in my mind while holding the vision of Jeff and I embracing when I found him. Everyone I spoke with told me Jeff probably wouldn’t want to see me, or he would be mad at me, or he would run from me. I never believed that. I knew that when we saw each other face to face we would talk and come to an understanding if nothing else.
Now for the good news. I did indeed find Jeff. When we saw each other face to face the vision that I had held became a reality. He hugged me, told me he loved me, spoke to me of his pain, his longing to live a different life, then walked with me out of the drug world. We are now starting an agency together, called “Third Option,” to help other parents reconnect with their children.
I wrote an article in the “My Turn” column of Newsweek that ran in the August 18, 1997, edition. From that article we were asked to appear on Primetime Live, Good Morning America, CNBC, and many other shows. From that we have just signed a contract to have our story made into a movie. Also, I have written a book that I hope will be published called, “To Jeff, Love, Mom.” When the proceeds come from those things we will have the money to get our organization up and running in the form that we envision. Already we have helped a couple of parents locate their children and have counseled a dozen more. Jeff just finished up a case in San Francisco.
I am now starting to contact federal legislators to see what can be done to give parents of children turned of age more rights when they become lost to them in the world of addiction.
I just wanted to write to give you some good news and thank you for that simple phrase that you wrote to me in your letter. We are all lights for one another and those few words about being directed to Jeff illuminated my path more than once when the fear and devastation of being without my son would overwhelm me. Thank you so very much.
Well, that’s about it, just a huge hug from me with much gratitude from my heart. Oh, by the way, you may see a dramatic rise in the sale of your book, Real Magic. It is my favorite and I tell every parent I talk to to get the book.
Take care.
Warmest personal regards,
Michale Mohr
Here you can see what a powerful force creativity and imagination are in dispelling the illusion of a problem. A “problem” not only disappeared, but out of that energy of insight and creativity a spiritual solution emerged for Michale and many others as well.
The researchers in the science of energy vibrations remind us that the qualities that we refer to as insight, imagination, and creativity are the components of higher states of mind. Obviously, when we think of the mind of God, we think of the creator who imagined a physical universe from his consciousness. And with profound insight the story of Genesis was played out.
Your mind is both an individualized expression of the mind of God, and at the same time it is the universal mind as well. These words of Dr. Valerie Hunt stir me into a state of excitement when I consider the potential of the creative aspect of the human mind.
On the basis of my experience with deciphering and broadcasting thoughts from a field, I believe that all the great and profound ideas ever expounded, the tenets of advanced cultures, the deep and meaningful spiritual happenings around which religions are organized, all of these are available to us today in their original vibrational forms.… The open mind field concept says that all important thought is ours for the taking.
I kept this quotation at my table as I wrote my previous book, Wisdom of the Ages, based on sixty of the greatest teachers in history. I felt as if I were in conscious contact with them as I wrote.
These “original vibrational forms” are what I am calling energy at the fastest or highest level. When you master the magnificent seven ingredients of spirit that are in the opening chapter of this book you will be in a position to annul all your problems. Then you can increase the speed of your mental frequency and access the higher faculties of insight, imagination and creativity, which form the basis for being in the mind of God. Ultimately, your focused mind field, moving at the fastest frequencies of spirit can impact and tap into everything going on in the world.
As you begin to consider this idea of faster vibrations being synonymous with spirit, remind yourself that we live in a world of invisible energy that we take for granted. Electromagnetic forces all operate on vibrational frequencies that we cannot see, smell, or touch. Think of electricity, radio and television signals, microwaves, fax machines, cellular phones. We know that we can send radio waves out into the atmosphere, bounce them off satellites, scramble and unscramble them, and receive information from the waves. As we increase the frequency of these waves of energy we can send them to distant planets and solar systems, and perhaps, all the way to God and back.
Isn’t that what prayer is when you get right down to it? An invisible energetic signal sent between your mind field, and the universal mind field which you must be connected to. Otherwise, what would be the point of the prayer? Research has shown that people who pray and are prayed for have higher incidences of recovery. Prayer is an invisible energy vibration that approaches the faster frequencies of spirit. And it works, as research has demonstrated.
Ponder this idea of faster vibrations being associated with spirit, and spirit being the source of all problem solving. This insight will give you real-world tools for reaching the ultimate conclusion that you are God’s vibrations made manifest. I encourage you to find your way to rid yourself of the illusion that you could ever be separate from God.
My final observation for this section is from Hunt’s intriguing book:
We discovered that when a person’s field reached higher vibrational states, he no longer experienced material things such as bodies and ego states, or the physical world. He experienced knowing, higher information, transcendental ideas, insight about ultimate sources of reality, and creativity in its pure form. Thoughts were grander, more penetrating and global.
Higher vibrational states will lead you out of the physical ego-bound world where the illusions of problems are. The third and next awareness is that slower vibrations keep you in the world of problems.
Slower Vibrations Keep Us in the World of “Problems”
When you live persistently and permanently in the lower vibrational frequencies of material consciousness you are not able to participate in the realm of higher interpretation, transcendent ideas, insight, knowing, and pure creativity. This is what Valerie Hunt’s research on the science of human vibrations of consciousness reveals.
I have also become very familiar with a fascinating book titled Power Versus Force, written by Dr. David R. Hawkins who has both an M.D. and a Ph.D. He has quantified human actions and emotions by frequencies. The author spent twenty-nine years in an exhaustive study to measure the vibrations of human behavior and thought and to help us see how to move from the lower/slower frequencies of shame, guilt, apathy, fear, and anger into the higher vibrations of willingness, acceptance, reason, love, joy, peace, and enlightenment. I loved every page of this groundbreaking book. I quote from his preface.
The individual human mind is like a computer terminal connected to a giant database. The database is human consciousness itself, of which our own consciousness is merely an individual expression, but with its roots in the common consciousness of all mankind. This database is the realm of genius; because to be human is to participate in the database, everyone by virtue of his birth has access to genius.
You can access this genius energy to remove “problems” from your life completely. But what does this mean specifically to you who would love to shed the burden of material world struggles and problems? The answer lies in understanding Einstein’s quote, “Nothing happens until something moves,” which is the subheading of this chapter. You must become determined to rid yourself of those slower material world vibrational states, because this is where your problems reside.
Think of any disease process, such as cancer. Cancer, like everything else in the physical world, has a vibrational frequency. That frequency is incompatible with the body and will begin to devour the adjoining cells. Disease frequencies can invade your body when you live in a continual state of being angry, fearful, envious, critical, judgmental, and worried. These lower vibrations are inherent in virtually all the life circumstances that we call problems.
How then do you reconcile the message in chapter one (#udf1362d2-6210-5009-bab3-b15b4cf444b0) that God is good, God is the creator, God is omnipresent, and all that is non-God cannot exist, except as we allow it to in our thoughts? Non-good is an illusion that disappears when spirit is present. Conversely, when we don’t stay in spirit, our energy field is slowed down to the material world elements of anger, hate, envy, guilt, and the like. This is when a hole in our energy field occurs, large enough for other slow vibrating frequencies to enter and overwhelm our body.
They are invited in, so to speak, unconsciously to be sure, by permitting our energy fields to leave the spiritual domain. When we do that, there is no high frequency vibration available to curtail the work of these slower moving vibrations. Thus, when we leave our spiritual consciousness, we create an opening for slow moving frequencies to enter. The antidote to these debilitating frequencies in our lives is to remove them from our body altogether. First by identifying the frequency, and then by countering it with the faster vibrations of spiritual energy.
The emotional states of fear, worry, anger, envy, greed, jealousy, guilt, and hatred are the lower frequency reactions that we implement in response to the circumstances and events of our lives. It may be stated that the presence of those states of the lower mind open up holes in our energy field large enough for other incompatible lower frequencies to enter our bodies in the form of hundreds of varying disease frequencies.
But beyond disease, these lower level vibrational reactions also cause us to have large holes in virtually all areas of our lives. These holes allow the lower frequencies of problems to enter, and do just as much damage to our relationships, our families, and our jobs as they do in destroying our bodies. Once we take responsibility for the presence of these lower frequencies without any guilt, we set ourselves up to be in a position to remove them.
The material world appears to be solid. This solid appearing material world is experienced exclusively through the senses, which are the dominant motivating forces of our lives. We seek to please the senses with wealth, adulation, alcohol of drugs, and possessions of all kinds, bigger and better toys and jewelry. When we are not provided with these demands of the senses, we say we have a problem. “I’m not paid enough, my children disobey me, I was overlooked for a promotion, I can’t afford the car I want, I’m addicted, overweight, anxiety-ridden. I got a speeding ticket and I might lose my license.” The list could go on and on for a hundred more pages.
All these problems, plus those of health, are the result of allowing your senses (which are very low and slow vibrations) to be in charge of your life. Yet these are only problems in your mind. Remember, every relationship you have with everyone in the world is in your mind exclusively. That’s where you experience everyone else. If you process others with your senses, you will experience them with the same lowered frequency in your daily life, and you will always have problems to deal with.
It is only when you elect to move beyond the world of the senses and those slower/lower energy vibrations that you will eliminate problems that are associated with the material world of the senses.
In the holy book called the Talmud there is a phrase that says, “Into the well which supplies thee with water, cast no stones.” When you rely upon the material world frequencies as your source it is like casting stones into that well. The water is really the spirit, which is the inexhaustible supply, and those slower vibrating stones contaminate your source and create all manner of problems.
In the old western movies there is often a scene of a little lady from Philadelphia with a wide brim hat in a stagecoach that has gone out of control. The driver is fatally wounded with an arrow in his chest and the four horses are pulling the stagecoach wildly through the brush while the little lady from Philadelphia is pleading uselessly to get this thing under control. Hold this scene in your mind and think of the stagecoach representing your body, and the driver your intellect, which has been silenced. The reins represent your emotions which are futilely connected to the horses that symbolize your senses. The senses are completely out of control, pulling you through the trails and trials of life, and the little lady from Philadelphia who symbolizes your highest self (your conscience) is pleading with you to get this thing under control and to please, please, please stop the madness and straighten it out. But alas, the intellect is dead and the emotions are useless connected as they are to those runaway senses.
This is a picture of why you may have so many problems. Your slow frequency senses are pulling you through your life; your intellect does not respond, and your fast vibrating higher self (spirit) shouts at you from inside your mind to do the right thing.
I have seen a taste bud, which weighs one tenth of an ounce, pull a 275-pound man into a bakery while the little lady from Philadelphia begs him to do what he knows is the right thing to rid him of his obesity. He will say, “I have a weight problem,” and justify his continuance of the problem. But in fact, he has a horse problem and if he could listen to that persistent tiny voice of the little lady from Philadelphia, with the wide brim hat, who is pleading with him to call in spirit to control his horses, they would immediately stop running wild. He would bring a higher vibration to his problem and the illusion of that problem would disappear from his life altogether.
Somehow, some way, you can and must intervene to halt these horses from running wildly and pulling you into the world of problems, which leads us to the fourth awareness.
You Can Choose to Eliminate Whatever Interferes with
Increasing Your Vibrational Field
You will want to take a good look at the slower frequencies that inhibit you from increasing your vibrational state of awareness. These are the obstacles that you want to be on constant alert to change. Remember that the frequencies of soul consciousness, or spirit, as outlined in chapter one (#udf1362d2-6210-5009-bab3-b15b4cf444b0), include the fastest vibrations of surrender, love, relationship to the infinite, quiet emptiness, generosity, and gratitude, feeling connected rather than separate, and finally a sense of cheerfulness. These are my definitions and they could include many subareas such as faith, hope, patience, sympathy, kindness, forgiveness, and noninterference.
It is these faster frequencies that you will be bringing to the front door of your life, and filling every room with until there is no longer any space for those slower vibrations that seemed to fill your house with problems. The slowed down frequencies are the obstacles. They will depart when you bring the vibrational world of spirit into their presence.
In order to eliminate these slow vibrating obstacles you must see them as part of an energy field that you have become accustomed to, and which will initially resist leaving your house. By persistently reminding yourself that you are not fighting these lower frequency energies they will succumb to the awareness of love’s presence. Removing energy obstacles means filling the space where they reside with faster and higher vibrations until those lower energies no longer have any choice but to leave. They will ultimately leave your house because there is no longer any room left for them to reside and do their dirty work.
I’ve always loved the way a great Indian saint of the nineteenth century responded to his devotees when they asked him how they could rid themselves of their lower energies. “In the springtime,” Vivekenanda replied, “observe the blossoms on the fruit trees. The blossoms vanish of themselves as the fruit grows. So too will the lower self vanish as the divine grows within you.”
The apples do not get into a deep conflict with the blossoms that are in their designated space on the branches of the tree. There is no anger, no fear, no battle between the fruit and its blossoms. As the fruit grows the blossoms disappear. This is true also as you fill the rooms of life with the magnificent seven highest vibrating energies of spirit. As the Native Americans would say, “No tree has branches so foolish as to fight among themselves.”
The obstacles of the lower self have no choice but to leave. Anything that vanishes, as spirit is brought in to replace it, is an illusion in the first place. When it can disappear into thin air, then you know it wasn’t real to begin with. So, as Saint Teresa of Avila advises:
Let nothing disturb thee;
Let nothing dismay thee;
All things pass;
God never changes
He who has God
Finds he lacks nothing;
God alone suffices.
The most significant insight in Saint Teresa’s observation is, “All things pass; God never changes.”
Everything in this material world of form is in a constant state of change and ultimately will be gone. But there is also the world of the changeless that we call God, and it is this unchanging spirit that will transform those things that you call problems. They will pass when you bring the infinite of the unchanging to greet them. As Saint Teresa wisely concluded, “God alone suffices.”
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Wayne W. Dyer
This radical new book from Wayne Dyer proposes that we hold the keys to solving any problems we face within us.He sets out basic principles and foundations we can understand and practice in order to access spiritual solutions to any problems we are experiencing. The book is in two sections. The first sets out the theory, the second enables you to put the wisdom into practice.Part 1. The theory:Everything in the Universe is nothing more than energy. Light and though, spiritual energy, vibrates very quickly. Physical energy, and problem areas, vibrate more slowly. When the highest/fastest frequencies of spirit are brought to the presence of lower/slower frequencies, they nullify and dissipate those things we call problems. We all have the ability to increase our energy and access the highest/fastest energies to eradicate problems in our lives. In carefully structured chapters, Wayne Dyer draws on both ancient wisdom and firsthand accounts, and shows how to:stop giving energy to things you don't believe in• keep your energy field uncontaminated• raise and maintain your spiritual energy.In the second part of the book, "Putting spiritual problem solving into action", Dyer shows how we can transform any negative energy into positive energy:hate into love• hurt into forgiveness• doubt into faith• despair into hope• sadness into joy
THERE’S A SPIRITUAL SOLUTION TO EVERY PROBLEM
WAYNE W.DYER
DEDICATION (#ulink_f4779d38-72d7-53d6-a434-6560aa7fdf12)
For Sommer Wayne Dyer You are loved unconditionally By your father here, And your Father in Heaven
You have no problems, though you think you have.…
—A Course in Miracles
I wish to acknowledge
Francesco di Pietro di Bernardone (1181–1226),
aka Saint Francis of Assisi.
Your spirit is always with me,
and was particularly evident
in the creation of this book.
—WAYNE W. DYER
CONTENTS
Cover (#u8f60ab16-faee-57e0-91b3-53dbea80d281)
Title Page (#u776ae2e0-9c2c-55e4-b96a-a135286bb22f)
Dedication (#ub7810e43-7a36-59d9-8847-f1008afab06b)
Foreword (#u88aae981-dd4e-55b4-9916-7fb10a41b143)
Introduction (#uc230a172-e798-59af-b440-a436732cd4bf)
PART I ESSENTIAL FOUNDATIONS FOR SPIRITUAL PROBLEM SOLVING (#u7ae9a941-8fb1-5d7a-a270-0505fdfc8796)
1. • Spiritual Problem Solving (#udf1362d2-6210-5009-bab3-b15b4cf444b0)
2. • Ancient “Radical” Ideas (#u9a64d2fd-cf84-5ef3-bb73-47b48eef7740)
3. • It’s All Energy (#uf566962a-1587-5458-ac36-1cdd19ba4c75)
4. • Stop Giving Energy to the Things You Don’t Believe In (#litres_trial_promo)
5. • Keeping Your Energy Field Uncontaminated (#litres_trial_promo)
6. • Raising and Maintaining Your Spiritual Energy (#litres_trial_promo)
PART II PUTTING SPIRITUAL PROBLEM SOLVING INTO ACTION (#litres_trial_promo)
7. • Lord, Make Me an Instrument of Thy Peace (#litres_trial_promo)
8. • Where There Is Hatred, Let Me Sow Love (#litres_trial_promo)
9. • Where There Is Injury, Pardon (#litres_trial_promo)
10. • Where There Is Doubt, Faith (#litres_trial_promo)
11. • Where There Is Despair, Hope (#litres_trial_promo)
12. • Where There Is Darkness, Light (#litres_trial_promo)
13. • Where There Is Sadness, Joy (#litres_trial_promo)
Index (#litres_trial_promo)
Other Works (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
FOREWORD (#ulink_57b4cd7d-80e9-5603-8216-d3775446fcd3)
I completed the initial writing of this book on the fifteenth of June, 2000, at our home on Maui, with a wonderful sense of accomplishment. I enjoyed the summer with my family, swimming, hiking, and playing tennis. We had dinners and movies with close friends and I had precious free time to read and share intimate moments especially with my wife, Marcelene, who was so instrumental in helping me find a spiritual solution to the “problem” I was about to experience. Little did I realize that in a few short months I would be called upon to apply all that I had written, and to test those principles for a spiritual solution to every problem firsthand in my own life.
In the autumn of 2000, I was literally brought to my knees while alone in a hotel room. I could barely breathe. My chest felt like it was in a vise. I was sweating profusely and soon found out that I had had a heart attack. But something was dreadfully wrong with this picture. I do not smoke or drink; I am not overweight; I exercise every day and have done so for twenty-five years. I watch what I eat; I meditate; I do what I love, and I love what I do. I have a great marriage and wonderful children. I don’t do heart attacks! That is for other people who live their lives in such a way as to invite heart attacks. Not me. Not Dr. Wayne Dyer. Yet there I was, in the hospital with monitor wires attached all over my upper body and with an IV in my arm. In three days I would have an angiogram procedure.
For the first twenty-four hours, I lay there in a state of shock and disbelief. It is called denial. I felt sorry for myself. I refused to acknowledge that such a thing could happen to me. I was weepy around my family and I was, to be honest, scared. After that first day I began to reexamine what I had written in this book you are about to read. I reminded myself over and over of the title: There Is a Spiritual Solution to Every Problem—and this surely was a problem. I remembered that I could bring the energy of spirit right there to that hospital room. By doing so I could turn this thing around and no longer wallow in the low energy of self-pity, injury, sadness, fear, and doubt.
The facts were the facts, my heart had been injured. Now it was up to me. I am not this body; I am a spiritual being, eternal, always connected to God. I could shift my awareness to being the observer rather than the victim, which is what I have been writing about over the past twenty years. It was as if the light came on in a dark room. I felt the presence of a higher, faster healing energy almost immediately. I began to be cheerful rather than morose. I circulated around the cardiac ward attempting to cheer up those who were much worse off than myself. I began to view the hospital and the many healing professionals with awe, love, and respect rather than with thoughts of fear and anxiety. I looked for what was right about that place and experienced gratitude for everything my senses witnessed. I brought to the cardiac ward the awareness that I have elaborated on here, in this book that I love so much. “Surely the presence of God is in this place.” Certainly the reality of the heart damage did not magically disappear, but in my mind, where the “problem” existed, I had introduced the higher/faster energy of spirit and the “problem” disappeared permanently.
On Monday morning, December 4, 2000, the angiogram revealed a blockage in one artery that may have been a part of my physical anatomy since birth. My heart was strong and the damage was minimal. A stent was inserted in the blocked artery after a balloon poked out the offending plaque. I am now back to my normal exercise and work routine.
As I was being wheeled into the cath-lab and having the catheter inserted in my leg and dye into my arteries, my heart was literally at peace. I joked with the nurses and cardiologists and squeezed my wife’s hand, telling her I loved her. All fear, worry, anxiety, doubt, and darkness left me. I knew that regardless of the outcome, I was at peace, connected to spirit and in God’s hands.
I decided to share this information with you here at the beginning of this book to illustrate how a seemingly insurmountable “problem” has a spiritual solution readily accessible, when one stops focusing on the “problem” and shifts to spiritual energy. I was able to bring in the higher/faster energy of spirit which means that: 1) I literally surrendered and turned the “problem” over to a higher power; 2) I saw love everywhere rather than fear; 3) I reminded myself that I am an infinite soul in a temporary body; 4) I quieted my mind and emptied it of all negativity; 5) I became grateful for all of those who worked on bringing healing energy to me; 6) I stayed connected to God in my mind; 7) I began to bring joy to those around me as a means of eradicating my own self-indulgence. It worked!
And as if to illustrate a final point, I received a beautiful letter from Peggy Bartzokis, the wife of my cardiologist, Thomas Bartzokis, MD, pointing out how everything and everyone benefits when spirit is allowed to be fully present. She writes:
I feel as though you appeared in our lives (Tom and mine), for a reason. The fact that you went to Tom and not another cardiologist at a time when I needed to read your writings and Tom needed to learn more about how to help his patients still astounds me.
Your tapes started me on a new path. I’m working hard to heal myself. My health was on a downward spiral and I never considered that my thinking could be my problem. Thank you for opening my eyes to the importance of the mind/body connection.
Also through me, Tom gets to hear all about what I’m reading (whether he wants to or not) and luckily he finds these ideas fascinating. I’m excited because he treats over ten thousand patients and if he can share these ideas he may really be able to prevent further cardiac damage or other illnesses.
I’m also thankful that you are fully recovered and running again. Maybe we were all meant to learn something from this experience. As you once said, “Every meeting in our lives is in some way orchestrated by a divine force … and the strangers to whom we are drawn have something to teach us.”
I can’t tell you how much I appreciate meeting you both. I will always have you and Marcelene in my prayers. God bless you and all the good works that you do.
There you have it all. I put it right here for everyone to see. It’s all in order and a spiritual solution awaits you for any and all things that you perceive to be “problems.” Trust me. I, Wayne Dyer, know from firsthand experience.
INTRODUCTION (#ulink_a7261b9d-f608-5459-84ec-6095d447c09d)
The title of this book makes a very large claim. Yes, you can literally rid yourself of any and all problems by seeking and implementing spiritual solutions. I have explained what I mean by spiritual, problems, and solutions in the very first chapter, so there is no need to do so in this brief introduction. The essential message of this book is in the following ten points.
1. Everything in our universe is nothing more than energy. That is, at the very core of its being, everything is vibrating to a certain frequency.
2. Slower frequencies appear more solid and this is where our problems show up.
3. Faster frequencies such as light and thought are less visible.
4. The fastest frequencies are what I am calling spirit.
5. When the highest/fastest frequencies of spirit are brought to the presence of lower/slower frequencies, they nullify and dissipate those things we call problems.
6. You have the ability and the power to increase your energy and access the highest/fastest energies for the purpose of eradicating any problems in your life.
7. There are some basic foundations and principles that you will need to understand and practice in order to access spiritual solutions to any “problems” that you may be experiencing.
8. Your ultimate choice, once you understand these principles, is whether to align yourself with a high energy field or a low energy field.
9. In essence, when you finally come to know and understand the world of spirit on an intimate basis, you will see clearly that all problems are illusions in that they are concocted by our minds because we have come to believe that we are separate from our source, which I call God, but you can label it any way that you prefer.
10. These illusions are nothing more than mistakes in our thinking and like every error they dissolve when put face to face with the truth.
I have organized this book into two sections. The first section contains six chapters which elaborate the basic fundamental foundations for understanding that a spiritual solution for any and all problems is readily available. I have researched Holy Scriptures in many spiritual traditions as well as those areas we have come to call scientific or pragmatic. I make no claim that any one tradition or practice is superior to any other. I have pursued my own awareness of these concepts with a mind that is open to everything and attached to nothing. I have searched ancient and modern spiritual tomes from east, west, and anywhere in between, and presented them as I know them to be truthful and useful.
The second section of this book contains chapters seven to thirteen, each of which is titled from one of the most well-known and accepted prayers ever written. This prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi embodies the fundamental message of this book. By bringing the higher frequencies of spirit to the presence of the lower frequencies of “problems,” the problems will vanish. I have made every effort to offer very specific suggestions on how to implement these higher energies in practical, useful ways, beginning today.
In rereading this book I am conscious of occasional repetition in making my case for a spiritual solution to every problem. In some cases I have edited it out, but in other instances I have deliberately used this repetition to reinforce the point at the moment you are reading. I have found that this provides instantaneous reinforcement and makes it much more likely that the concept will stick.
Writing this book has been an exercise in self-awareness for me. I find that I am now much more able to shift out of those lower/slower energy patterns and access spiritual guidance, and I can do so in just a matter of moments. For me I feel lighter, more loving, compassionate, and literally problem-free as I practice accessing my highest energies in moments when I previously thought I had a “problem” that I needed to solve. I now simply unplug myself from that world of problems in my mind and plug into spirit. Writing this book has brought me closer to God, and an awareness that not only am I never alone, but that it would be an impossibility. May you find the same peace that I have as you read these words. And may all of your problems dissolve as you shift out of those lower energies and come to know that a spiritual solution to any and all problems is simply a thought away.
God bless you,
Wayne Dyer
PART I (#ulink_6441bdb2-92ce-5dcd-bb8c-2229de751b22)
ESSENTIAL FOUNDATIONSFOR SPIRITUAL PROBLEM SOLVING (#ulink_6441bdb2-92ce-5dcd-bb8c-2229de751b22)
“There is nothing wrong with God’s creation.
Mystery and Suffering only exist in the mind.…”
—Ramana Mabarshi
1 SPIRITUAL PROBLEM SOLVING (#ulink_ad4e29be-5e59-5a2c-8e36-a9a389fd96ef)
The solution to the problem of the day is the awakening of the consciousness of humanity to the divinity within.
—HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN
Can you make a flower grow? Probably your first response is, “Such a simple thing to do. Plant a seed in some dirt, provide sunlight and water and in time a flower will emerge. The proof is that there are millions upon millions of flowers sprouting all over the world at this moment!”
That is certainly true. However, I am inviting you to reread the question and consider who or what generates the life that makes a flower grow, because the who or what is the source of solutions to all our problems.
Who or what causes the flower seed to blossom, and the tiny embryo to become a human being? Who or what grows our fingernails and beats our heart even as we sleep? Who or what is behind the movement of the winds, which we feel but never see? What is this force that keeps the planets in place and hurls our world through the galaxy at a breathtaking speed? These questions have been asked for as long as humans have had the ability to contemplate their existence.
Spirit is what I have chosen to call the formless, invisible energy which is the source and sustenance of life on this planet. This force, no matter the name we give it, can solve every problem that we encounter. There is a spiritual solution to every problem, we only need to learn how to access it. In this book I will explain ways that I have found to access this force. I will begin by explaining the three basic steps to finding your spiritual solutions to problems.
I first read about these steps when I immersed myself in How to Know God: The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali, written sometime between the fourth century B.C. and the fourth century A.D. These spiritual disciplines and techniques were written to enable a person to achieve the ultimate unitive knowledge of God. I will refer to this powerful collection of writings frequently, and share with you how this knowledge can be applied in your life.
I trust you will discover for yourself that these things you have come to label as problems have a ready solution available to you right now, in this moment, in that world we are calling spirit.
THE FIRST OF THREE STEPS FOR
ACCESSING SPIRITUAL DIRECTION
Recognition: It may appear obvious that one must first recognize something before applying it, but this is actually the most troublesome step in moving toward spiritual illumination.
Recognizing the availability of an invisible force that can be put to use in solving a problem, requires overcoming a great deal of our early training and conditioning. Have you ever thought about the limitations we experience when we identify ourselves as only a physical body in material existence?
For instance, do you believe there is only one kind of power or knowledge, which relies on your sensory or intellectual faculties to solve problems? Most of us have been taught this is true and that all of the information that has been acquired is the total inventory of options available to us. This is a conditioned attitude of nonrecognition of our divine connection to spiritual problem solving.
In this state of nonrecognition we believe that medicines, herbs, surgery, and doctors are responsible for all healing, or that improving one’s financial picture involves the exclusive application of working hard, studying, interviewing, and sending our résumés. In essence, nonrecognition leads us to believe that our knowledge is limited to those kinds of phenomena, which are explainable through our sensory functions.
Patanjali described a kind of knowledge or power that is not accessed solely through the material or sensory world. Recognition that this power exists and is always available is the first step in activating it. However, it is not accessed solely through the teachings of others, or through ancient writings, just as we do not dream because someone teaches or writes about dreaming. Recognizing, like dreaming, is something we access by making an inner and outer commitment to our ability to recognize.
For example, in this first step when you are faced with a problem, I suggest you create a personal affirmation such as: “I may not know exactly how to access the spiritual solution here, but I fully recognize that a spiritual solution exists.” By recognition of its existence, we invite the power to be known by us.
As physical beings we can make a flower grow in the sense of the response to the question in the opening sentence of this book. But if we are thoughtful we realize that we cannot even begin to unravel the mystery of the invisible force that initiates life. Yet it is in this omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent spiritual world that we find the solutions to all our problems. This spiritual force is everywhere and in every thing and every one. When we incorporate the first step, recognition, we begin the process of accessing this all-knowing power.
THE SECOND OF THREE STEPS FOR
ACCESSING SPIRITUAL DIRECTION
Realization: We discover that knowledge achieved by realization is of a much higher order than intellectual reasoning.
This is not an exercise in intellectual reasoning. In this step we go beyond recognition of a spiritual presence into the phase of realization where nothing but our own personal experience is trusted. We become an explorer in virgin territory where no one but ourselves can be. Here, only you can validate your experience.
Our desire to realize the presence is an integral part of the unexplainable dynamic that creates life. When we actively meditate on a chosen spiritual ideal or even a given personality we are expressing our desire by inviting the presence to be accessible.
I suggest that you begin this process of realization by visualizing the presence you seek. Create an inner picture of yourself receiving divine guidance and banish all doubts about its validity. Realize that there is no need to explain or defend as you go within yourself. In silent desire to realize your spirit, know that your invitation will be accepted. You will find that your picture dissolves into the reality of a presence that is accessible within yourself. This is realization. It is a personal experience beyond anything related to an intellectual exercise. With practice and desire, in quiet meditation, you will experience the presence.
There are times the intellect will persist, trying to make your experience fit the reality of the material world. One way to think about this process of moving toward realization is to envision a magnet. See yourself as the magnet, which is attracting to you all that you have recognized and acknowledged as true. Then gradually become aware of a greater magnetic force, which pulls you toward higher truths. The effort is not exclusively your own any longer. You are in a kind of metaphysical magnetic field, which draws you in the direction of your realization.
I have had this experience of realization in my own life for the past several years. When I enter into a state of deep meditation I am abundantly aware of a magneticlike force, which pulls me in the direction of God. The revelations that I experience in those moments of God-realization represent a renewal of my mind. I reconnect to a kind of energy that propels me in the direction of a solution to anything that might be troublesome.
For example, something as mundane as purchasing a piece of property for my wife and myself to move to when our children leave the nest, was causing me a great deal of inner turmoil. I reminded myself to move into that invisible magneticlike field of energy and I was guided toward a solution. At precisely the right moment a friend called and said one sentence that put me at ease about the dilemma. Done! This is what I call realization in action.
We can all use this realization of the availability of spirit in the resolution of problems. As you learn to employ the first step, recognition of spiritual solutions, you will move to a state of realization in which you experience the power. You will realize that every kind of disharmony, discord, or disease is amenable to the spiritual energy that is in you.
THE THIRD OF THREE STEPS FOR ACCESSING SPIRITUAL DIRECTION
Reverence: Communing quietly with the spiritual force is our way of becoming one with it.
This third step, reverence, is acquired quickly by some people, while for others it can take a long time to achieve. Communing quietly with the spiritual force and becoming one with it means there is no sense of separation. We know our divinity and commune with that part of ourselves. In other words, we see ourselves as a part of God; we are in a state of reverence for all that we are. There is no doubt of our divinity. In this state we fully experience this quote from the Bible: “On that day, you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you” (John 14:20).
Quietly communing with God, when we are searching for guidance, is a way of temporarily turning off our ego-mind. Instead of our ego-self thinking, “I can fix this,” we are willing to immerse it into our higher self. Like a drop of water separated from its source the little mind is unable to create and sustain life. When the drop of water rejoins the ocean it has all the powers of its source. The drop of water separate from its source symbolizes our ego-self when we are separated from our source of omnipotent power.
Communing quietly allows us the direct experience of knowing a spiritual solution to every problem. With our divine connection we are always in touch with the solution. Problems persist when we fail to recognize, realize, and finally, quietly commune with our own source, power, spirit, God.
I often think of Abraham Lincoln watching his beloved Union crumbling under the energy of hatred that engulfed this country. He wrote, “I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had no where else to go.” “To my knees,” is a way of saying, “I surrender to my source and turn this huge problem over to that same power that moves the stars.” You can do the same thing in times of strife. “Let go and let God,” as they say in the recovery movement.
When you practice communing quietly with spirit, you will sense the presence of a sacred partner. You can turn your problems over to this “senior” partner and move to a place of peace. The Indian saint Sri Ramakrishna used the following parable to teach his devotees how to reach the state of direct union with God.
A disciple once came to a teacher to learn how to meditate on God. The teacher gave him instructions, but the disciple soon returned and said that he could not carry them out. Every time he tried to meditate he found himself thinking about his pet buffalo.
“Well, then,” said the teacher, “you meditate on that buffalo you’re so fond of.”
The disciple shut himself up in a room and began to concentrate on the buffalo. After some days, the teacher knocked at his door and the disciple answered: “Sir, I am sorry I can’t come out to greet you. This door is too small. My horns will be in the way.”
Then the teacher smiled and said: “Splendid! You have become identified with the object of your concentration. Now fix that concentration upon God and you will easily succeed.”
The message is so clear. Become one with spirit and do not doubt or fear your divinity. Move beyond your ego-mind into your higher self. (I will not detail here the path to transcending the ego. I have devoted an entire book to this subject—Your Sacred Self.)
There is a spiritual solution to every problem. The three basic steps to access your connection to spiritual solutions to problems in your life are: recognition, realization, and reverence.
The balance of this first chapter discusses my meaning of the key words of the title of this book. I believe the definitions I use for spiritual, problem, and solution can form the basis for a unique way of bringing peace and fulfillment into your daily life. It is further my contention that once you internalize these three concepts you will rarely revert to the belief that you face insurmountable problems. Eventually, you will learn that all those so-called “problems” are dissolvable by saturating them with the higher energy of spirit.
What I Mean by Spiritual
It is written in the Bhagavad-Gita, the ancient Eastern holy book, “We are born into a world of nature; our second birth is into a world of spirit.” This world of spirit is often depicted as separate or distinct from our physical world. I think it is important to see spiritual as a part of physical, rather than to separate these two dimensions of our reality. It is all one. Spirit represents that which we cannot validate with our senses. Like the wind that we feel but cannot see.
Two great saints from different corners of the world as well as different religious persuasions have described spirit this way: “Spirit is the life of God within us” (Saint Teresa of Avila) and “Whatever draws the mind outward is unspiritual and whatever draws the mind inward is spiritual” (Ramana Maharshi). The key to understanding spirituality is this idea of our inner world and our outer world—one world, yet two unique aspects of being human. I have a friend who compares the physical to a lightbulb and the spiritual to electricity. He insists that electricity has been around as long as spirituality but that we did not make a religion of it when it was discovered.
Likewise, when I refer to spiritual I do not intend it to be synonymous with religious. Religion is orthodoxy, rules, and historical scriptures maintained by people over long periods of time. Generally, people are born into religions and raised to obey the customs and practices of that religion without question. These are customs and expectations from outside of the person and do not fit my definition of spiritual.
I prefer a definition of spirituality as described in Saint Teresa’s and Maharshi’s observations. Spirituality is from within, the result of recognition, realization, and reverence. My personal understanding of spiritual practice is that it is a way of making my life work at a higher level and of receiving guidance for handling problems. The ways in which I personally do this involve a few simple, but basic practices. I have enumerated them here in my own order of significance.
1. Surrender This is first because it is the most crucial and often the most difficult. For those of us who have grown up believing life is a “do-it-yourself” project it is hard to admit that we need the help of many others just to survive for a day. In order to surrender you must be able to admit to being helpless. That’s right, helpless.
In surrender, my thoughts are something like this: “I simply do not know how to resolve this situation and I am turning it over to the same force that I turn my physical body over to every night when I go to sleep. I trust in this force to keep digesting my food, circulating my blood, and so on. The force is there, it is available, and I am going to treat this force that I will call God, as a senior partner in my life. I will take the words ‘All that I have is thine’ in the scriptures at face value. I am willing to turn any problem over to this invisible force which is my source, while always keeping in mind that I am connected at all times to that source!”
In other words, the spiritual life is a way of walking with God instead of walking alone.
2. Love Activating spiritual solutions means converting inner thoughts and feelings from discord and disharmony to love. In the spirit of both surrender and love I find it helpful to silently chant to myself, “I invite the highest good for all concerned to be here now.” I try to see anger, hatred, and disharmony as invitations to surrender and love. They can be doorways to taking responsibility for thoughts and feelings. They are the entryway to the inner world where spirituality is. With this understanding I have the option to allow spirit to manifest and work for me.
I use a metaphor of a long cord that is hanging from my hip and I have the option of plugging that cord into one of two sockets. When I plug into the material world socket, I receive the illusions of disharmony and actually have the results inside of me. I feel out of sorts, hurt, upset, anguished, and hopeless in terms of being able to solve or correct my problem. When I am plugged in this way I struggle to attain false powers. This struggle inhibits me from receiving mystical or spiritual power. Defining empowerment only in material world terms is a reflection of being spiritually disconnected.
When I imagine this cord being yanked from the material world socket, and replugged into the spiritual socket, I immediately experience a sense of peace and relief from the angst. This spiritual plugging-in metaphor is an instant reminder to me to substitute love for anguish or frustration. I can relax and remember that the spirit is God, which is synonymous with love. Emanuel Swedenborg said it well when he reminded his students, “The divine essence itself is love.” This feeling of love is the substance of what holds every cell together in our universe. It is cooperation with, rather than fighting against. It is trusting rather than doubting. Simple? Yes. But even more so, profoundly effective in resolving problems. Love and love alone dissolves all negativity, not by attacking it, but by bathing it in higher frequencies, much as light dissolves darkness by its mere presence.
3. Infinite Carl Jung reminds us that “The telling question of a person’s life is their relationship to the infinite.” My concept of the infinite includes accepting, without doubt, that life is indestructible. Life can change form but it cannot be destroyed. I believe our spirit is inseparable from the infinite.
This awareness of our infinite nature is terrific for putting everything into perspective. Relying upon the part of ourselves that has always been and always will be alleviates stress in any given situation. “The spirit gives life, the flesh counts for nothing,” the scriptures advise us. All of these things that we perceive as ourselves are of the flesh. In terms of infinity, they “count for nothing.”
When I unplug myself from the material and replug myself into the spiritual I immediately let go of fear, judgment, and negativity. I know that I must bring the energy of the spiritual socket to my immediate life circumstance. Infinite love is what I receive from that new energy source. It has always been there, but now I recognize this infinite power and see myself as having all my circuits flowing with this one source.
4. Empty Mind My spiritual approach to problem solving involves being quiet and letting go of my ideas about exactly how something should be resolved. In this space I listen and allow myself to have complete faith that I will be guided in the direction of resolution. Call this meditation (or prayer if you like); I feel strongly about the need for meditation to nourish the soul and access divine assistance.
Beyond the actual act of meditation is a willingness to empty my mind of my agenda and be open to what will inevitably come to me. I send a message to my ego, which says, “I am going to trust in the same power that moves the galaxies and creates a baby rather than in my own self-indulgent assessments for how I would like things to be going right now.” I relinquish my thoughts to the power that spirit has to make things work and let go of any agenda that interferes with the perfect expression of God within me.
Completely emptying the mind of our agenda leads to forgiveness, which is a vital component of this practice. Getting to a state of emptiness means ridding ourselves of all blame and angry thoughts about what has transpired in the past. Empty means just that, empty. There is no room for hanging on to who did what and when, and how wrong they were. We let it go simply because it is a component of our agenda, and what we want is God’s plan which works, and to toss out our own, which obviously doesn’t. Thus when we empty our mind of our ego-driven thoughts we invite forgiveness into our hearts, and by letting go of the lower energies of hatred, shame, and revenge we create a mind-set of problem resolution.
5. Generosity and Gratefulness Sometimes I feel the necessity to remind myself that we come into this world with nothing and we will exit the same way. So, finding a spiritual solution to every problem involves doing the only thing I can do with my life. That is, giving it away and being simultaneously grateful for the opportunity to do so. Here is a formula that works for me:
• I get back from the world precisely what I put out to the world. Which is another way of stating the proverb “As you sow, so shall you reap.”
• If “Gimmee! Gimmee! Gimmee!” is my message to the universe then the universe will send the very same message back to me: “Gimmee! Gimmee! Gimmee!” The result is I will never feel peaceful and I will be condemned to a life of trying to fulfill all the demands being made on me.
• If my message to the universe is “What can I give?” or “How may I serve?,” the message I receive from the universe will be “How may I serve you?” or “What can I give you?” Then I experience the magic of sending generous thoughts and energy out wherever I go.
I recommend your spiritual practice involve being generous and grateful with your thoughts. The more you send out thoughts of “How may I serve,” rather than “What’s in it for me?,” the more you will heat back “How may I serve you?”
6. Connectedness The Sufi poet Rumi once explained that the terms I, you, me, he, she, and they are distinctions that cannot be made in the garden of the mystics. In spiritual consciousness you view yourself as a flower in this garden and everyone else in the garden connected to you in an invisible way. Then you will feel the assistance that is available to you.
At the level of spiritual consciousness we know we are connected to everyone. Our concerns and difficulties are something we realize that we share with everyone else. Problems do not affect our body/mind/personality, because we have suspended total identification with our body, our personality, and all of its achievements. Instead we begin to see ourselves as the beloved.
Nurture your sense of connection to everyone and God as well. This allows you to remove your ego from conflicts. Do not see anyone as an enemy, or view anyone as an obstacle to fulfillment. This awareness of being a part of everyone allows you to suspend anger and frustration toward others and see them as partners in the resolution of problems.
Know that there are people to whom you are connected who are available to help you find the right job, to solve a puzzling issue that seems irreconcilable, to help you back on your feet, and to resolve financial difficulties. Everyone becomes a compatriot rather than a competitor. This is spiritual awareness as I practice it.
We are not alone. We are not what we have, what we do, what others think of us. We are divinely connected to God and to all of God’s creations, and consequently each of us has an unlimited inventory of resources available for the purpose of helping us to a state of peace and problem resolution.
Being connected means literally that at any given moment of your life, you can ask that the love that surrounds you and connects you to everyone and everything else please guide you right now. Then you relinquish your negative self-talk images and observe everyone and everything that you see as your loving assistant. It is in these moments that the right person or event will materialize and assist you.
I try to remind myself in moments of despair of the beautiful affirmation from A Course in Miracles: “I can choose peace, rather than this.” It works. Or I use this affirmation often: “I see nothing, I hear nothing, I know nothing that is separate from me.”
7. Cheerfulness In terms of outward appearances there is something noticeable about people who have reached a high level of spiritual awareness. They seem to be in a constant state of bliss. In my own life I know that my state of cheerfulness is a reliable gauge of my level of spiritual enlightenment at that moment. The more cheerful, happy, contented, and satisfied I am feeling, the more aware I am of my deep connection to spirit.
Ask yourself this key question, “How do I feel most of the time?” If your answer is that you feel anxious, anguished, hurt, depressed, frustrated, and so on, then you have a spiritual disconnect. This could mean you have allowed your personal energy field to become contaminated by the debilitating forces of those in your immediate life space. (You will read more about this, and how to keep your energy field uncontaminated, in chapter five (#litres_trial_promo).)
When you are spiritually connected you are not looking for occasions to be offended and you are not judging and labeling others. You are in a state of grace in which you know you are connected to God and thus free from the effects of anyone or anything external to yourself.
I often ask myself, “How am I truly feeling inside myself these days?” If my answer is “Not so hot” or “Upset,” I meditate and go to the quiet place where I can plug my cord into the spiritual outlet. The state of cheerfulness returns quickly. Every teacher who has been truly significant in my life has demonstrated this wondrous quality of being able to laugh, to take life lightly, to be silly and giddy.
Use this measure to test your own level of spiritual awareness, and if you are not of good cheer remind yourself that you will never be fully satisfied but in God. I love Erich Fromm’s insight, “Man is the only animal that can be bored, who can be discontented, that can feel evicted from Paradise.” Only you can evict yourself from the garden of paradise.
These then are the seven ways I define spiritual: Surrender, Love, Infinite, Empty, Generous, Connectedness, Cheerful. You can see that spiritual is not restricted to any religion in my interpretation. Keep this list handy as you read on.
What I Mean by Problem
In one sense, in my heart, I feel that there is really only one problem for any of us. That is when we allow ourselves to be separate from God. But in a very real sense, we can never be separate from God, since there is no place that God is not. Thus the paradox. When we are connected to God we have no problems. We are always connected to God. Yet we still believe that we have problems.
The answer to this conundrum will be the focus of the major portion of this book. The problems of disease, disharmony, discord, fear, anxiety, scarcity, displeasure, disappointments in others, and so on are in our minds. When we have these problems we find ourselves feeling alone, alienated, isolated, angry, hurt, depressed, afraid, and more and more anguished. Yet when we truly reconnect to our source these feelings disappear.
This is why I use the word problem as if it truly exists; yet I know every time I use it that it is an illusion. So every time you see the word throughout this book, know that I perceive it as an illusion created by ourselves because we have separated ourselves, in that moment, from God.
There is a powerful line in A Course in Miracles which reminds me of this lesson: “It takes great learning to understand that all things, events, encounters, and circumstances are helpful.” Great learning is an understatement! It takes great faith and courage to begin to view our lives in this way.
How strongly do you desire to truly know, beyond a doubt, that every problem you experience including the very worst thing in your life, actually contains the seeds of the best thing? We can learn to view every crisis as an opportunity, which wouldn’t necessarily make life easier, but would make it more satisfying. We would never be able to view anything as a negative occurrence, because we’d see everything as useful information.
This may sound oversimplified if you face seemingly unsolvable problems every day. I implore you to have an open mind and also some logic rooted in your past religious conditioning as illustrated in “Problems Are Illusions” below. The logic will create a space where you can call on your spiritual connection for the resolution of your problems. It will also give you a base for the problem-solving tools I am offering you in the last seven chapters of this book.
Problems Are Illusions
Give some thought to the following three quotes from the scriptures.
• “God is too pure to behold iniquity.”
• “God made all that was made and all that God made was good.”
• “Your eyes are too pure to look on evil, you cannot tolerate wrong.”
Almost identical observations have been made in all religions. The Holy Koran puts it this way, “Whatever good you have is all from God, whatever evil, all is from yourself.”
If God is good and God made everything, then everything is good. God cannot behold iniquity. So where does all of this stuff that we lump into the category of problems come from? The answer is obvious. When we come to believe that we are separate from God we experience this feeling of separation in our mind, and our mind tells us that we have a problem. The problem, created by our beliefs and existing in our mind, causes us to feel an absence of peace or love. Those beliefs can manifest as disease in our bodies. We begin searching for a solution.
But in reality, since God is only about good, and God is everywhere, what we have done is separate ourselves in our mind from God. Though we find ourselves suffering with these problems, everything that we label a problem is an illusion.
You can see why it is so important to see any and all problems as things that we create in our mind. If we can create non-good or non-God in our mind, then we can also not create them in our mind even though we may have no idea how to do that. Our conditioning is so strong that we often have far greater faith in our problems than we do in our ability to no longer have them.
We often display a much greater faith in the power of cancer, heart disease, or AIDS than we do in the power to heal them. We do this in a multitude of ways. We become enamored of the problem and its damaging effect. We live out the illusion while ignoring the fact that nothing iniquitous can be of God, and God made everything. The evil, the pain, the anguish are of our own creation and they represent opportunities to gain that greater learning that A Course in Miracles describes.
I know that some of these ideas sound strangely impossible to implement. I ask you to keep an open mind as we travel this path of healing to bring peace back into your life on a permanent basis.
The Eastern gurus use the term maya (illusion) to describe the existence of problems that really do not exist. The universe is good. God is good. God is everywhere. God is invisible spirit. Anything that is not good cannot exist. But we feel it does, so we have to come up with a solution, and this is the very reason why I have felt so compelled to write this book. There is a solution. It sits there right in front of you.
The last seven chapters of this book provide you with a series of easy-to-apply solutions to this puzzle. For now, however, let’s take a brief look at the word solution as it applies in the title of this book.
What I Mean by Solution
I once sat in on a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous in which ten people who had been drinking most of their lives were gathered in a rehabilitation center where they had to live away from their families and loved ones. The words of a sign on the wall kept gnawing at me throughout that meeting. It read, “Your best thinking got you here.” I thought how true that is and how it applies to all the circumstances of our lives. Our best thinking got us here.
Our best thinking is exactly where all our so-called problems exist. If we couldn’t think about them, they would not exist. We can change our very best thinking and begin to see the error of that thinking. What we need is a change in thinking to realize that a connection to the divine good, or spirit, or God, is what heals or eradicates our problems.
The power that we call God, which grows the flowers and moves the planets in perfect orbits, counts us as one of its creations. I encourage you to learn to rely on that power in times of crisis.
Correcting Errors
In mathematics when you add two plus two you will always come up with four. This little addition example of two plus two equals four is said to have substance because it is true. Now if you state that two plus two equals seven, you have an error, and two plus two equals seven no longer is said to have substance or reliability. Try balancing your checkbook using two plus two equals seven. So how do we end that error? Very simple, we correct it, and it goes away. That is, we bring truth to the presence of the error, and the error disappears.
You cannot send problems out of your life by attacking them or understanding them in more depth. Instead, you correct the error in your thinking that produces the problem in the first place. Once you bring a correction to the problem it no longer has any substance or validity, and it disappears completely from your life.
The solution, stated generally here and more specifically later in this book, is to bring a spiritual essence to the “problem” of disease, disharmony, or discord. Then the error or the illusion will vanish. Problems represent a deficit of spirit in some sense. The error is corrected permanently when you apply the seven components of spirituality. The error is that these problems, which we are experiencing in our minds, in reality do not exist.
Correcting these errors is tantamount to dissolving our fears. And when you turn and look directly at your fears, what you face dissolves in the light of consciousness. It is in this context that we have within us the ability to eliminate those illusions that we call problems. We correct these errors with the creation of a new spiritual delivery system. This is the key to understanding the healing of the body as well as our relationships.
This is the basic introduction to this somewhat radical idea of having a spiritual solution available for every single problem. I’ve always loved Shakespeare’s line, “Go to your bosom; knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know.” The heart symbolizes the part of us that does not rely exclusively on thoughts. Thinking is the source of problems. When I ask an audience to point to themselves, ninety-nine percent will point directly to their hearts, not their heads. Your heart holds the answer to resolving any and all problems in your life.
I close this chapter with an invitation written in the thirteenth century by the Sufi poet Rumi:
Come, come, whoever you are.
Wanderer, worshipper,
Lover of leaving—it doesn’t matter.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vows
A hundred times, a thousand times.
Come, come again, come.
You are welcome on this caravan leading you out of the world of illusion which you will love leaving, and into a place where spiritual solutions await you in every encounter, in every moment of your life.
2 ANCIENT “RADICAL” IDEAS (#ulink_e7c5c946-9c5c-53bc-81e4-822596a4e7b8)
The average man who does not know what to do with this life, wants another one which shall last forever.
—ANATOLE FRANCE
WE ARE CAPABLE OF REACHING A STATE
OF AWARENESS IN WHICH WE CAN
PERFORM MIRACLES
As I mentioned in chapter one (#udf1362d2-6210-5009-bab3-b15b4cf444b0), in preparation for writing this book I became blissfully involved in the teachings of a saint called Patanjali, who reportedly lived here on earth several thousand years ago. No source that I have reviewed has been able to precisely identify who Patanjali was, if he was indeed more than one person, and even when he lived. Like Shakespeare, or Jesus, and many other major figures, Patanjali’s ideas and teachings have retained their influence, in spite of the lack of details we have about his existence.
In the previous chapter I refer to his translated works How to Know God: The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali. There are very few books which have caused me to feel the sense of excited anticipation I felt while reading The Yoga Aphorisms. Patanjali teaches that we are capable of reaching a state of awareness in which we can perform miracles. He explains that we are transcendent beings to begin with and counsels us to be unafraid of transcending the limitations imposed upon us by the material world.
Patanjali’s words caused me to truly think of myself as capable of living at a much higher level than I had ever considered before. He presents ideas that are life changing. I felt urged to go beyond traditional ideas that acted as obstacles to my union with God. I urge you to suspend disbelief as you read this chapter. I am fully aware that some of this material may clash dramatically with your inherited religious teachings.
The title of this book makes a powerful claim: that there is a spiritual solution to every problem you will ever face. In order to apply this idea you need to be aware of these so-called “radical” ideas, because they can open you to your ability to implement spiritual solutions to your problems. It may help if you keep in mind that there is a distinction between spiritual development and formal religious teachings.
Patanjali offered hundreds of specific suggestions and practices to reach the oneness or union with God, which he called yoga. Some of Patanjali’s aphorisms will undoubtedly sound far too removed from our twenty-first-century life to apply to the problems we have in today’s world. I have selected five of the aphorisms that helped me recognize that spiritual solutions are only a thought or two away. I introduce each of them along with my commentary on their value to spiritual problem solving in the world we presently live in.
In our materially oriented world we are often confronted with problems that seem insoluble. A shift in thinking is required in order to discover that we have something at our disposal that we can put into practice. We need to see ourselves as containing a force that can be called upon for spiritual solutions. We don’t have to consult an expert in theology, or thumb through ancient manuscripts to find our answers. We need to realize that spiritual solutions are readily accessible.
A while back during an intermission of a half-day seminar that I was conducting, someone left this note on the table onstage.
Question to God: “Why did you let all of those people in that Denver school die?”
Response from God: “I’m not allowed in school anymore.”
In the twenty-first century many Americans seem to equate God with religion and religious training which they insist be separated from teaching and learning in our schools. But nowhere in our Constitution is it specified that we must separate God and state. It says quite clearly that a separation of church and state shall be the way of our land. To separate God and state we would have to recall every coin and piece of currency issued by the state and strike out “In God We Trust.” We would have to amend our Pledge of Allegiance and all references to God in our government documents! Trying to legislate God out of our daily lives contributes to the growing spiritual deficit that our world is experiencing.
The ideas that Patanjali wrote about several thousand years ago are of immense value today. These ideas are not part and parcel of a religion or a church. They are a prescription for coming into union (yoga) with God and consequently regaining all the power and majesty of one’s source.
Enough of my disclaimers and warnings. Here are five aphorisms from approximately twenty centuries ago that can help you gain access to your spiritual answers. I have arranged these five major themes in a way that I found useful for myself and I trust will be helpful to you.
THE FIRST APHORISM
The central act of ignorance is false identification.
Patanjali describes ignorance as a basic misunderstanding of one’s real nature. According to this ancient master when we identify ourselves as our name or title, our body, our possessions, achievements, or reputation, we are denying our true identity. This he maintains is ignorance.
This act of ignorance forces us to misread nature and consequently to dwell on the outwardness of things. When the world is viewed as a collection of separate things and beings, awareness of wholeness is impossible. This ancient master made it quite clear that when we deny God within us, we deny God everywhere. Finding a spiritual solution to every problem begins with a commitment to end this kind of ignorance.
In order to eliminate ignorance as defined by Patanjali, you do not have to go back to school. Ignorance is not the absence of knowledge. He is not saying you are ignorant if you can’t spell, or solve quadratic equations, or list the capitals of countries from memory. Each person has a vast storehouse of facts and knowledge at his disposal. For some it involves reading blueprints, and for others it is repairing bicycles. For some it is preparing a sumptuous meal, and for others it is driving an eighteen-wheeler across the country. Who is to say that any one set of facts and skills is any more important than any other?
If one set of skills allows you to make more money and that is important to you, then by all means learn and apply those skills to your money-making efforts. But the person who elects a different set of facts and skills, which produce less income, is not ignorant, even though our culture often tends to equate low income with ignorance.
What we are exploring here is ignorance defined as falsely identifying oneself as only of the material ego-based world.
To eliminate ignorance from your life using this definition, you will need to reprioritize your basic definition of both yourself and God. For yourself, try to let go of the false identification of God with the five senses and the intellect. Replace that false identification with imagining yourself eternally connected to a divine source. With this new identification comes an inner resolve to reorient yourself when faced with a problem. Rather than asking an external God to solve your problem for you, identify yourself as a part of the beloved divine creation that you are. Dedicate your actions to God and you will gradually see the error of false identification disappear.
For example, if you want to stop a compulsive habit of overeating, begin by no longer identifying yourself as a body full of cravings (ignorance). Instead imagine yourself as pure eternal peace and joy always unified with God. Ignorance keeps you from genuinely experiencing pleasure or fulfillment via the senses because you clutch at what appears to provide it rather than seek purity or true happiness. A false identification will always betray you. The senses will keep tempting you with objects of desire.
Unlearn the false identification of your thoughts with your ego-senses and instead see yourself as a part of the infinite. As you do, you will still act on your thoughts but you will be acting as a divine perfectly balanced eternal being. I love the idea of eternal soul presented in this excerpt from the Bhagavad-Gita:
The illumined soul …
Thinks always: “I am doing nothing.”
No matter what he sees,
hears, touches, smells, eats …
This he knows always:
“I am not seeing, I am not hearing:
It is the senses that see and hear
and touch the things of the senses.”
To become an illumined soul we must not conceptualize ourselves as our senses and all that they lust after. That is ignorance. We are not the objects of experience, but the silent observer within the experience itself. Seeing ourselves in this way provides us with a new tool for problem solving. Try it the next time you feel the impulse to overeat or consume a toxic substance or even to spend time in painful grief over a loss.
A dramatic example of this presented itself in the following letter and poem I received from Mary Lou Van Atta of Newark, Ohio. She is speaking directly to this idea of false identification as she writes of her ordeal and how she ultimately found a spiritual solution by remembering who she is, rather than who she had falsely believed she was.
Dear Dr. Dyer,
My son was murdered in a robbery attempt two years ago. Frankly, I thought I would never recover from my grief and loss. Amid all the clouds in my life and mind, I was somehow led, once more, to your books and tapes. I had read and listened to many in previous years and while I had enjoyed them, I was too busy to truly listen. Upon going over them again, I realized one underlying truth in all. We are spirit in body—not a body with a spirit.
I am once more a happy, healthy woman with a full steam ahead system. I will always feel my loss of Ross, but I know it is not the end of the story. I can wait. It’s O.K.
I have enclosed a small poem that I hope you will enjoy. I wrote it but you taught it.
Again, thank you.
Sincerely, Mary Lou Van Atta
Indeed, as Patanjali reminds us, we are spirit in body. Believing otherwise is ignorance through false identification. In that state of ignorance we become solutionless in form. When we experience what Saint Paul called a “renewal of the mind” we are able to see ourselves as we truly are.
With Mary Lou’s permission I include the poem she wrote. It summarizes this first ancient “radical” idea. The central act of ignorance is not being ill-informed, but in falsely identifying yourself as your form.
I AM
The “I” that is me—you cannot see
You see only the form that you think is me.
This form that you see, will not always be;
but the “I” that is me—lives eternally.
The next time that you face a problem that you have been unable to resolve, try redefining yourself as Mary Lou suggests in “I Am,” and put into practice your true identification as the eternal experiencer rather than the object of that experiencer. Ask yourself these key questions from the ancient Upanishads: “At whose behest does the mind think? Who bids the body to live? Who makes the ear hear and the tongue speak?”
Your true identity is the mind of mind, the eye of the eye, and the breath of the breath. Go there and you will find the beginning of a spiritual solution to any problems you believe you have. Here is how Meher Baba described this process of overcoming one’s ignorance as we are defining the term here.
“Thus, though he begins by seeking something utterly new, he really arrives at a new understanding of something ancient. The spiritual journey does not consist in arriving at a new destination where a person gains what he did not have or becomes what he was not. It consists in the dissipation of his ignorance concerning himself and life, and the gradual growth of that understanding which begins with spiritual awakening. The finding of God is a coming to one’s own self.” Your objective in applying this ancient wisdom is to dissipate your ignorance concerning yourself and life.
THE SECOND APHORISM
The mind of the truly illumined is calm because the peace of God within all things is known, even within the appearance of misery and disease.
This second aphorism brings to mind the adage that the three truly difficult things to do in life are: returning love for hate; including the excluded; and saying, “I was wrong.” It is the first and most difficult item, returning love for hate, that I want to explore here.
As I was studying the ancient words of Patanjali I came across a reference that implied the following: God cannot express God’s self in you when you are not at peace. As I thought about those words I had a deep realization that God is love. I recognized that it was in a state of stillness that the realization occurred. If it requires stillness to know God, then we need to be in a place of loving calmness in order to be able to have God’s assistance in problem solving. Thus, the most difficult thing to do, to return love for hate, becomes much simpler when we are able to be peaceful because that is actually God expressing God’s self within us.
When we return love for hate we express the peace of God that is within us. Our response has a calm and loving quality. This calmness is a vital aspect of the consciousness that makes it possible to tap into spiritual solutions.
I’ve selected two passages from the Bible to reinforce the relationship between stillness or calmness and God. By taking the scriptural statement and reversing it, we can clearly recognize what happens when we are unable or unwilling to choose stillness. So, “Be anxious, or fearful and you will not know God” is what we have in place of “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10).
Instead of “God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him” (I John 4:16), we would have “God is fear and he that dwelleth in fear cannot dwell in God, nor God in him.”
Probably you are thinking that this makes sense. God is still. God is love. When I am neither, I have no chance of allowing a spiritual solution to present itself. But how do I get to that place of calmness? I believe you can move into that state of knowing God within through stillness by intentionally choosing calmness in moments of anxiety or fear. Yes, you can choose to be calm at any moment by reminding yourself that you are no longer choosing to live by your conditioned past. It is largely because of our conditioning that we leave God behind when we leave calmness.
We have trained ourselves to be fearful and anxious when presented with problems. If we choose, we can retrain ourselves to be calm and to allow God to express God’s self in us once again. As I discussed in chapter one (#udf1362d2-6210-5009-bab3-b15b4cf444b0), problems begin, unequivocally, in our minds. We may have to remind ourselves that our mind is where the problem exists, nowhere else. Thus the “illusion” which I mentioned earlier. Correct the error, and the illusion disappears. Our conditioning has led us to the error of thinking of ourselves in terms of finite beings.
James Carse, in his book Finite and Infinite Games, describes a world of finite games in which winners and losers, rules, boundaries, and time are all extremely important. In the world of finite games, titles, acquisitions, and prestige are of paramount significance. Planning, strategy, and secrecy are all crucial. To become a master player in the world of finite games you have an audience who knows the rules and who will grant you a reputation. Being identified with losers in the finite game is frightening and dangerous. The finite game values bodies, things, and reputations. The ultimate loss is death.
In his book, Carse explains that the final result of the finite game is self-annihilation because the machines that we invent to assist us in this finite game of winners and losers will destroy those who rely upon them. Technology, marketing, productivity are all terms to encourage players to buy more machines and one’s worth is dependent on how many machines players have and how well they operate them.
There is also the infinite game, which you can begin to play if you so choose. In this game there are no boundaries; the forces are infinite that allow the flowers to grow and those forces cannot be tamed or controlled. The purpose of the infinite game is to get more people to play, to laugh, love, dance and sing. Life itself is infinitely non-understandable. These forces were here before we were and will continue beyond the boundaries of death and time.
While the finite player must debate and learn the language/rules to operate all the machines, the infinite player speaks from the heart and knows that answers are beyond words and explanations. This is not to imply that players of the infinite game cannot also play finite games, it’s just that they don’t know how to take the finite games seriously.
This is a choice. We are in a world where secrecy, competition, fear, and weapons are part of the equipment used to play the finite game of life. We know that the categories of “winner” and “loser” are highly valued. Players who prefer to spend more of their time playing the infinite game also play the finite game. I think the following excerpt from the workbook for A Course in Miracles says it delightfully.
“There is a way of living in the world that is not here, although it seems to be. You do not change appearance, though you smile more frequently. Your forehead is serene; your eyes are quiet. And the ones who walk the world as you do recognize their own. Yet those who have not yet perceived the way will recognize you also, and believe that you are like them, as you were before.”
This is a prescription for knowing the peace of God even when there is the appearance of misery and disease. The choice is to play mostly infinite games, but while playing the finite games, refusing to take them seriously. Others may think you are serious, but you know better. You know you see your world in the terms of an infinite game. You will smile more frequently, you will feel serene, and you will access spiritual solutions.
I will conclude this section with a story told to me by my friend Gary who lives in New York, but was raised and schooled in India. Each year at the completion of the school year in June, Gary’s father sent him to live with a master teacher (guru) in an ashram with many other young boys. Here he would be immersed for a couple of months annually for the purpose of heightening his spiritual awareness. There were two large cabins at this particular ashram, and on the first day of the summer, all the boys were given the following instructions.
“You are to remain in total silence for the first four weeks. No talking at any time. If you break silence even once, you will leave the silent cabin and live in the second cabin where you may talk to your heart’s content for the rest of the summer.”
There was no threat of punishment. Simply leaving the silent cabin was the only consequence of breaking the silence.
Gary told me that he was able to go for about four days without talking the first year. Then off he went to cabin two. In the second year he went approximately ten days, and in the third year he was able to go for two weeks before he finally broke the silence.
About the time of his fifteenth birthday he knew he was going to the ashram and he made an inner commitment that this year he would definitely complete the prescribed time for silence, no matter what. He actually placed tape over his mouth and used other gimmicks to ensure he would not break silence even once. He noted that each year, at the end of the silence month, only two or three boys were still residing in cabin one. And sure enough, finally after years of struggling, Gary completed the month without ever once breaking the silence.
On the last day, the guru came into cabin one and sat down at the kitchen table with Gary and the other two boys who had been able to remain totally silent for the entire designated time period of one month. He tells me that the four of them had the most remarkable experience of communicating that he had ever known. They told each other stories, they laughed, they cried, and they asked each other questions. For several hours they interacted in the most intense conversations Gary had ever experienced. During the entire time of those conversations in which they all communicated intensely and intimately at a deep feeling level, not one single sound was made, not one word was spoken.
You may find it difficult to believe that communication without words or sounds is possible. Yet I know Gary to be truthful, a man of integrity. I leave you to draw your own conclusions. I am convinced that when we become truly illumined, our inner calmness, when taken to an extreme, allows us to transcend reliance on symbols and noise, and to know the peace of God. My conclusion is that we can communicate through our own inner calmness in ways that are infinite rather than finite. Or as Patanjali put it, “the state of perfect yoga can only be entered into when the thought-waves have been stilled.”
Each one of us must find the ways to our own inner stillness. One of my ways is to study a poster that I have on my wall every day. Beneath a beautiful serene blue sky mountain setting are these words from Paramahansa Yogananda: “Calmness is the living breath of God’s immortality in you.” I contemplate this wisdom every day of my life. I would be honored if you write to share with me the ways you have discovered to find your stillness.
THE THIRD APHORISM
Sin is nonexistent. There are only obstacles to one’s ultimate union with God.
Most of us grew up believing that a sin was an act of disobedience or ingratitude toward a God who is both separate and punitive. This aphorism tells us that behaviors and thoughts that violate a commandment that we ideally seek to uphold are offences against our own true nature, which is God. Thus what we perceive to be sinful can be redirected to be viewed as an obstacle to our spiritual development. Patanjali suggests that what we call sin is misdirected energy, which might have been used to find union with God had we not been misled by ignorance.
The word sin has a literal translation of “off the mark.” In this sense, behavior that religion has taught us is sinful is conduct that is off-the-mark or away from God. This, according to Patanjali, is not a reason to immerse ourselves in guilt and use up life energy attempting to somehow make amends. Rather it should be viewed in the context of an obstacle that we have yet to overcome.
When addressing “sinful” behaviors as obstacles we begin to see what it is we must do to access the spiritual solution we seek. When viewed as sin, we place the responsibility for correcting the conduct on a God who is external to us. Thus we hope that this external God will forgive, and we find ourselves laden with guilt and anxiety over whether we deserve to be problem-free. I like these powerful words of Mahatma Gandhi on how to deal with our shortcomings: “My imperfections and failures are as much a blessing from God as my successes and my talents, and I lay them both at his feet.”
Viewing a failure as an invitation to recourse with God is a much more useful way of handling the “problem.” Wallowing in shame, feeling as though we have sinned and are not deserving of forgiveness is not the best way to find solutions! Try this inner dialogue instead: “I have not sinned against God. I have behaved in such a way as to inhibit my complete union with God. These behaviors are obstacles to my finding a spiritual solution. Beginning right now I will work at removing these obstacles from my life.”
The concept of being a sinner is an image of self-contempt and guilt, while the concept of encountering an obstacle is empowering. I love the healing parable of Jesus and the blind man.
As he went along he saw a man blind from birth, his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned? This man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
“Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.”
We have been trained to think in terms of sin and punishment. These ideas disempower us by stressing that we are weak and wrong. The empowering way is to view trials as lessons and opportunities to choose differently. We can transcend the odious notion of being sinners cloaked in guilt, awaiting punishment. To access a spiritual solution to a problem involves focusing on the idea of a solution. The sinner filled with guilt becomes immobilized and remains in passive inertia. When we view the sinful behavior as an obstacle to a higher level of awareness, we can still take responsibility by asking ourselves, “What is the lesson for me? And what can I do to avoid this the next time?”
The disciples in the parable assumed that the man’s blindness must have been caused by a sin somewhere by someone involved in this blind man’s life. But Jesus taught that misfortunes in the physical world are not because humans have sinned. The misfortunes are obstacles on the path to uniting with the infinite within us. He reminds them that no sin has taken place.
We are all blind in many ways. It is through our figurative blindness that God’s work can be displayed in our life. It was Mahatma Gandhi among others who preached the value of the dark side. Our dark side and our dark spots are as Gandhi said, a blessing from God, rather than an encumbrance for which we are to be punished. Our conditioned belief system learned the concept of sin.
This “radical” idea teaches the concept of obstacles to unified awareness of God within. If you have violated any of the commandments that you ideally hold on to as law; if you have stolen, cheated, or lied, or coveted or even physically harmed another, try viewing these actions as obstacles to your spiritual union with all that you truly are and can become. Remind yourself that this is what you would love more than anything. Then you will have empowered yourself to begin the process of removing those obstacles.
This is such a freeing concept. Say to yourself, “I still have obstacles that I have imposed which keep me from a spiritual solution,” rather than, “I am a sinner and there is no hope for me unless God sees it in his heart to forgive me.” One thought empowers, while the other diminishes. One thought leads to a solution, the other keeps you immobile. In short, go and sin no more, because there is no such thing.
Even if you have done irreparable wrong to someone through uncontrolled greed, or anger, you can still view this action in terms of obstacles to your union with God. Certainly you will feel remorse and do all that you can to right the wrongful acts. You can only correct such flaws in the future by viewing yourself as having erected barriers to your highest self and by forgiving yourself. Sincere penance does not consist of perpetuating grief for wrongs but in resolving to avoid in the future those deeds that call for remorse.
THE FOURTH APHORISM
The person who is steadfast in abstaining from falsehood has the power to obtain for himself and others the fruits of good deeds, without having to perform the deeds themselves.
Normally when we use the word truthful we infer that a person’s words correspond to the facts of which he speaks. Yet in this yoga sutra, Patanjali’s phrase, “steadfast in abstaining from falsehood,” means something quite apart from being factual and honest.
What is meant here is the practice of completely and wholly identifying oneself as a spiritual being, united with God at all times and never confusing one’s identity with the ego world of possessions, achievements, and reputation. To reach this state is to be in the company of those rare saints whom we all revere and quote so frequently. In this state we can be moving toward steadfast abstention and find ourselves gaining those fruits of good deeds. They will enable us to not only resolve our own “problems” but those of others.
Look carefully at the words used in this sutra. Obtaining for yourself and others the fruits of good deeds without having to perform the deeds. Just what does this mean to you?
Patanjali suggests that steadfast abstention from falsehood means that saying to someone, “God bless you,” means that the person is truly blessed because we are no longer capable of even dreaming an untruth. Similarly, this steadfast abstainer from falsehood can perform miraculous cures by simply telling a sick person that he is well. Thus Patanjali suggests that when a person becomes perfected in truth he literally gains control of truth. That person’s being, along with their words and actions allows them to obtain the fruits of good deeds without necessarily performing the deeds with their physical bodies.
Now I am not offering you sainthood here in exchange for becoming a one-hundred-percent truth teller. Rather, what I am proposing is that you open yourself to an idea that allows you to gradually and steadily remember your identity as a divine spiritual connected-to-God entity. In moments you previously labeled as stressful or problematic, you will begin to see the fruits of good deeds (another way of saying problem solving) show up without having to labor long and hard to solve your difficulty.
The very fact of your self-reminder that you are united with God in this very instant of strife will allow your thoughts and affirmations to become your reality. As you steadily gain this awareness, you will have the same impact on others. In other words, you will be bringing spirit (which is all you are in your awareness) to everyone and everything you encounter, and the fruits of good deeds will be observed on a regular basis. Whenever you find yourself filled with inner frustration or rage, a gentle private reminder to abstain from this false identity with the material world, will bring you back to your true essence. When you are back, notice how the rage and frustration have dissipated. Now use words to bless yourself and the situation, and you begin to see what Patanjali meant with this “radical” aphorism.
As you become more adept at abstaining from falsehood, as defined here, you will bring this kind of calm, peaceful true identity, a connected-to-God countenance, to those in your immediate surroundings. The more steadfast you are in this regard, the more you will hear others say: “I just feel better when she is around.” “I feel calm when he shows up.” “I actually sensed that my discomfort and pain went away when he talked to me.” You literally raise the consciousness of those around you when you are steadfast in your abstention from falsehood. You become a healer without going to healing school. You become a blessing without a degree in divinity. You are obtaining the results of good deeds without having to sweat and work at doing the right thing.
Spirituality is very similar to health. Everyone has health. For some their health is excellent and for others it is poof, yet you cannot escape having it at some level or another. The same is true for spirituality. Every single human being is a spiritual being. We all have spirit. For some their spirituality is high and therefore life-enhancing, loving, peaceful, kind, and at the top of the ladder as I defined it in chapter one (#udf1362d2-6210-5009-bab3-b15b4cf444b0).
The more steadfastly we abstain from false identity the less attached we become to anything that is associated with false identity. As detachment increases, spirituality moves up the ladder that you can never completely climb off, any more than you can step off the health ladder. We begin to see the fruits of good deeds appearing without having to work at it. Ultimately, we are close to the top and find there are others just wanting to bathe a bit in our aura, so to speak.
I think of the story of Martin Luther who impacted the lives of millions by his steadfast abstention from falsehood. Luther never wanted to begin a Reformation. He merely wanted the Catholic Church officials to address some ninety-five questions.
To raise funds for the church, Pope Leo X, a big spender who needed money to build gold-lined palaces and create extensive works of art for the Vatican, sent representatives on a mission to sell indulgences. These indulgences were written statements from the pope excusing individuals for sins in exchange for money. People believed they could buy their way into Heaven. Many were burned at the stake after confessions gained in torturous inquisitions.
Luther wanted to rediscover the original gospel as it had been before it was corrupted during the Inquisition. He asked for answers to questions that bothered his conscience. For this he was excommunicated and had to go into hiding from the established and corrupt church. When asked to recant, he said, “I am bound by conscience and the word of God. Therefore I can and will recant nothing, because to act against one’s conscience is neither safe nor salutary. Here I stand. I can do no other. So help me God.”
By steadfastly abstaining from falsehood, Martin Luther helped to begin the Protestant Reformation, and to force the established church to abolish such practices as torture, execution, and the selling of indulgences.
You don’t have to become a Martin Luther overnight. But let in the idea that you can access divine spiritual power to alleviate problems first for yourself, and then for others by shifting away from false identification. Little baby steps at first. Remind yourself that all those who had this power that Patanjali spoke of began their journey by reminding themselves, in moments of strife, that they were first and without a doubt divine spiritual beings, connected rather than separated from their source.
THE FIFTH APHORISM
When a person is steadfast in his abstention from harming others, then all living creatures will cease to feel enmity in his presence.
Patanjali’s statement, “abstention from harming others,” includes not only actual acts of harm but also thoughts of jealousy, judgment, and injury in any fashion. Steadfastly renouncing violence in thoughts and in all dealings with others creates an atmosphere wherein all violence and enmity ceases to exist because it is not reciprocated.
This is a powerful awareness that you can begin to incorporate into your life immediately. Any situation where you experience anger or even mild discomfort involves thoughts of enmity toward the other person or people. Patanjali explains that other people will not feel enmity or anguish if you steadfastly abstain from having harmful thoughts toward them in the first place. Amazing! By you working at not having any judgments or harmful thoughts, those around you will be free of anguish also.
Coming to this awareness of being steadfast in abstaining from harmful thoughts is a potent tool for accessing a spiritual solution to problems involving relationships. When a person is talking to you and you are slipping into the mode of feeling angry about how you are being talked to, you can remind yourself in that instant to abstain from thinking harmful or angry thoughts. I find it is quite effective to use the following words, first internally, and then I say them out loud. They are, “You’re right about that!” Not sarcastically. Without rancor, I simply allow the other person to be right, which is all their ego really wants.
This tool does not make the other person right, it merely allows someone to believe that they are, and it allows you to be steadfast in your abstention from harmful thoughts. As you practice allowing others to be right, you are beginning to live from your higher self rather than your ego. Eventually it will be your authentic way of reacting to others, even when they are being insulting.
There is a story concerning the Buddha, who is in the company of a fellow traveler who tests this great teacher with derogatory, insulting, disparaging, and bitter responses to anything the Buddha says. Every day, for three days when the Buddha spoke, the traveler responded by calling him a fool, and ridiculing the Buddha in some arrogant fashion. Finally, at the end of the third day, the traveler could stand it no more. He asked, “How is it that you are able to be so loving and kind when all I’ve done for the past three days is dishonor and offend you? Each time I am disobliging to you, you respond in a loving manner. How is this possible?”
The Buddha responded with a question of his own for the traveler. “If someone offers you a gift, and you do not accept that gift, to whom does the gift belong?” His question provided the traveler with a new insight.
When someone offers you a gift of their insults, and you refuse to accept them, they obviously still belong to the original giver. And why would you ever choose to be upset or angry over something that belonged to someone else?
In this aphorism, Patanjali states, “all living creatures will cease to feel enmity” in the presence of one who does not think or act in a violent manner. This suggests we can affect the animal kingdom when we are steadfast in this attribute. You’ve heard the stories of how Saint Francis of Assisi would tame wild wolves who were decimating the livestock, merely by being in their presence. Moreover, doves would fly to his hands and all manner of wild creatures would feel the love that emanated from him and would cease to feel enmity.
I have experimented with this notion on many occasions myself. Once while jogging in Egypt a pack of dogs came running toward me at 4:30 A.M. barking ferociously. I stopped jogging and also stopped thoughts of fear or violence and they became calm and harmless.
As you contemplate this idea of abstention from harmful thoughts or intentions, keep in mind that those areas of your life, which you have labeled as “problems,” could no longer exist if you were to be this idea each and every day. The reason you are not experiencing bliss at this precise moment is because you are focusing on what is wrong or missing. Begin the process of filling your mind with love, gratitude, and forgiveness. Ernest Holmes wrote, “What a load is dropped from the shoulders of personal responsibility, when we realize that the eternal mind holds naught against anybody.”
Being in the space of the eternal mind is what you need to do as you pursue spiritual solutions in your life. Hold naught against anyone, and while you’re at it, keep in mind Albert Einstein’s helpful hint about why it is important to change around the way you process everything and everyone involved in what you call your problems. Einstein said, “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking which created them.”
Problems are illusions of the material world. Solutions are attributes of your immersion in the world of spirit. Yes, there is a spiritual solution to every problem. But you will have to move to a higher level of thinking to do so. These then are the five basic aphorisms of Patanjali that will guide you to change the mind that created the problem:
1. Identify yourself beyond ignorance.
2. Calmness is the peace of God within you.
3. You create obstacles, you do not sin.
4. Be steadfast in abstaining from falsehood.
5. Be steadfast in abstaining from harmful thoughts and acts.
You can work at applying these whenever you are involved in a “problem.” They are extremely useful in the discovery and application of spiritual solutions.
As you face a problem, remind yourself that you created it with one mind, and you will solve it with another. Hence, the idea that is the title of this book. “Problems” come from a nonspiritual mindset. There is a spiritual solution available, and you can create the energy to access it at will.
As you work at mastering these five aphorisms of Patanjali, know that they represent the highest places you can attain in the world of spirit. They symbolize how those we call masters and saints lived, breathed, and helped others to transcend their problems. You obviously won’t be one hundred percent on the mark with all five at all times, but gradually, you will remind yourself of the need for a spiritual solution in trying times or when confronted with a problem.
One step at a time, you will find grace, and peace supplanting the strife. You will literally be creating a new energy field for yourself, which is the subject of the next chapter in this book and in your life as well.
3 IT’S ALL ENERGY (#ulink_ff860ea2-be0d-5975-980b-51268504df0e)
Nothing happens until something moves.
—ALBERT EINSTEIN
Spiritual problem solving ultimately means examining the entire concept of energy in a new way. Generally we think of people with high energy in terms of stamina and vigor with qualities of enthusiasm and tirelessness. I am suggesting you think of energy in a context of vibration and movement.
In this formulation, energy is the speed of an individual’s energy field. The idea here is that a higher frequency will aid in problem solving, whereas a lower frequency will intensify problems and inhibit solutions. This is a crucial point in the simplified paradigm I present here and in chapter four (#litres_trial_promo). You have within you the absolute ability to increase your frequency and enhance the energy field of your everyday life. By increasing the speed at which you vibrate you move into those frequencies I am calling spirit, and away from those that are grounded in the material world of problems.
Stephen Hawking, who may be the most scientifically enlightened mind on the planet today, has said, “Apparently common sense notions work well when dealing with material things like apples and/or comparatively slow moving things like planets; but they don’t work at all for things moving at the speed of light.” Hence, if you want to access and utilize the energy that vibrates at faster frequencies than ordinary levels of awareness you have to be able to Shift Your Energy At Appropriate times out of good old-fashioned “common sense.” Valerie Hunt, in her well-documented and intriguing book Infinite Mind: Science of the Human Vibrations of Consciousness, concludes, “As a result of my work, I can no longer consider the body as organic systems or tissues. The healthy body is a flowing, interactive electrodynamic energy field. Motion is more natural to life than non-motion—things that keep flowing are inherently good. What interferes with flow will have detrimental effects.”
I do not expect you to become an expert on electrodynamic energy fields or to explore this ever-growing field of quantum energy physics. All I want at this point is to introduce you to the fundamental awareness necessary to activate your higher frequency. Here are five simplified verifiable facts, which it is my hope will introduce you to your innate ability to do that.
1. Everything vibrates, everything moves.
2. Faster vibrations mean getting closer to “spirit.”
3. Slower vibrations keep us in the world of “problems.”
4. You can choose to eliminate whatever interferes with increasing your vibrational field.
5 You can negotiate the presence of factors in your life to increase your frequency of vibrations.
There you have it in a nutshell. A spiritual solution to your every problem includes changing your energy field so that you can access the fastest frequency and choose to implement it at will in your daily life.
Now, let’s take a closer look at these five basics and how they will help you implement your spiritual solutions.
Everything Vibrates, Everything Moves
If you look at a page of this book through an extremely powerful microscope you will see it is a dance, with molecules, atoms, electrons, sub- and sub-subatomic particles moving about in ceaseless energy patterns. The book appears solid because your senses (which also vibrate) perceive solidity at this frequency. Thus, this book is energy slowed way down so that it appears as a solid mass. This is also true of your body, and everything in the material world—all slowed down energy that appears not to vibrate. But one look under the microscope gives us that astonishing view of motion.
Likewise, everything is in a state of motion. We appear to be sitting still, but we know that the our planet is spinning once every twenty-four hours, orbiting the sun once every 365 days, and moving through space at dizzying speeds. Spinning, orbiting, and moving are all verbs describing movement. The same can be said of your body. It is a field of vibration and movement, which appears solid and motionless.
All information that you receive comes to you through your senses. Your eyes for example, perceive light, which is really a very fast vibration of air and electromagnetic particles. Your ears perceive sound, which is a slower frequency of air vibrations. Were you to examine that information perceived by your eyes and ears before your senses “picked them up” so to speak, you would see that those vibrations have no evil or disharmony inherent in them. They are simply problem-free vibrations. But, when you take them in, suddenly you say, “What I hear is a problem for me,” “What I see is evil and terrible,” and so on. In other words, you took in those problem-free faster energies and processed them in such a way as to create problems. Even though the energy that you received was totally devoid of anything even resembling a problem, or evil, or terrible. Keep this important notion uppermost in your mind as you read on.
Now for the big leap. Every problem that you face has a vibrational frequency and a movement to it. When you live exclusively in the slowed down, solid-appearing world, you encounter slowed down solid-appearing circumstances that we define as problems. Everything, including what we call a problem, has an energy field. When problems collide with our slowed down solid world, we feel the conflict as an imbalance in our energy field. We call it a problem that we can’t understand or resolve. Thus, diseases of all kinds represent a frequency and movement just like everything else in the universe. Addictions too have a frequency or movement. Fear, stress, and anxiety are all frequencies. I believe we all have the potential to explore beyond the world of the solid and motionless, and learn to increase the speed of our vibrations. This is the key to successfully approaching the slow vibrating motionless problems in our lives.
Thinking in terms of frequencies and vibrations may be a new idea for you, yet our scientists are doing this all the time. They study matter at the subatomic level and report that the essence of creation is energy. Particles appearing from energy seem to stop and appear solid. My purpose is not to delve into the world of quantum physics and give you elaborate scientific proofs. Others far more qualified than I have already done so. My purpose is to have you consider that the solution you seek to anything you’ve labeled a problem may lie in your willingness to shift your vibrational energy patterns.
Here’s an example I’ve created as a tool to help you conceptualize this different energy field. In the slowest vibrations we have illness and disharmony. In faster, but still slow vibration we have ordinary human awareness. Thought and spirit are found in the fastest vibrations.
Consider your physical health where most of your rime is spent attempting to reach point B where you will feel okay because you have an absence of symptoms. Between point A and point B is where you take medicine, consult medical practitioners, and generally strive to get to a point of ordinary human awareness where you just feel okay. Point C represents superhealth where you feel exquisite. You can do five hundred sit-ups, run a marathon, and are toxin-free. Hypothetically, disease materializes at a very low energy frequency. Ordinary human awareness is what we call a normal frequency, and superhealth represents a balanced fast vibration which has the ability to counteract disease frequencies.
For the purpose of explanation only I have assigned an arbitrary figure representing the frequency speed. A = 10,000 cycles per second; B = 20,000 cycles per second; and C = 100,000 cycles per second and beyond. When you live continuously at or below 20,000 cps you are living in an extremely slowed down energy field, and all the things that you call problems that also vibrate at this frequency are almost always noticeable to you. Your goal seems to be to get to the level where you feel normal.
This example can also be applied to your emotional state. At A we find fear, anxiety, stress, anger, and mental disease. At point B your emotional well-being is stable and you feel all right but any dramatic shift in circumstances or the behavior of others can send you back into that frenzied world of worry, fear, guilt, and depression. But at point B you seem to have your life under control. Point C symbolizes perfect emotional health. Here you know that no one can interfere with or obstruct your bliss. Outside circumstances do not torment you. The actions and opinions of others have no unpleasant effect on your emotional state. Realistically, the movement from A to C is a shift in energy frequencies which you can cultivate and choose. In theory and in practice, you have within you the power to approach the frequency of light and spirit.
When you move out of the 20,000 cps level and speed your energy up, what you consider to be accidents and misfortunes are simply gone. In the faster vibrational frequencies you are able to invoke intuition, insight, and other potentials that are dormant when you are in ordinary human awareness. There is one more element on this A-B-C continuum that plays a significant role in ending problems by accessing spiritual guidance.
We have looked at your physical and emotional states from the perspective of frequencies. The slower the frequency the more you move away from spirit. The higher your energy field vibrates, the more you approach a problem-free life. You can invoke the qualities of spirit to slow moving, average circumstances and remove the erroneous thinking that creates the problems. Consequently, the illusions that are your problems are nullified as you bring spirit to them.
I’ll call the third element in this example consciousness. At point A, the lowest level is ego-consciousness. At this frequency you resonate with an inner view that you are separate from everyone else, and in competition with the rest of the world. You are absorbed in self-importance and validate yourself on the basis of what you have, what you do, and what others think of you. Ego consciousness is a very slow frequency in which you feel distinctly separate from spirit which is the fastest vibration in the universe. In fact, in ego consciousness you are as far removed from the energy of God as is possible, and all seven of the characteristics embodied in the word spiritual as defined in chapter one (#udf1362d2-6210-5009-bab3-b15b4cf444b0) are essentially missing from your life.
As you progress to average or normal human consciousness you reach point B on this continuum. Point B I call group consciousness. Here you identify yourself on the basis of what groups you have either chosen to align yourself with or been assigned to as a result of your birthplace, ethnic identity, or cultural label. In group consciousness you have the frequency of normal human awareness which categorizes life with phrases like: I am male, you female; I am old, you are young; I am Italian, you are Chinese; I am Christian, you are Muslim; I am white, you are black; I am conservative, you are liberal. On and on the groupings go, pigeonholing everyone into a frequency where conflict resolution is accomplished by determining who is right, stronger, more powerful, better, or whatever.
Wars are the outcome of group consciousness. Members of the group think along the lines of: I am born on this side of the river, you on the far bank. So too were our ancient ancestors, therefore we will need to fight to see who has access to the river and who is right. Ancient enmities continue to flourish because of geographic boundary disputes, religious traditions, cultural practices, and so on. These conflicts are justified as preserving the identity and historical traditions of “my people.” Group consciousness is normal. I understand this completely. The 20,000 cps frequency encourages us to join our assigned groups and to feel pride in defeating anyone who is not “of our kind.”
Every time you find yourself labeling others or yourself, you are setting up a potential problem. It becomes you against whoever is in the other group. Relationships cause problems when you see yourself in conflict with the other. Illness becomes a battleground when you must fight that which is invading the territory that you call “my body.” Lack of prosperity is due to others having more of what you want. So, one who is at the group consciousness level must compete with “them” for prosperity.
Point B, group consciousness, is a step up from A, ego consciousness. However, point B still keeps you squarely in the middle of a life that is not peaceful, tranquil, or able to nullify problems. At this frequency having problems is considered a normal function of living.
As you approach point C on the consciousness scale you reach a place that I call unity or God consciousness where separation is unknown. As I have suggested, there is only one problem that we face, and that is our belief that we are separate from God. As you increase the frequency at which you live, you shift your energy field to a level wherein you elicit the qualities of Godliness. You become pure spirit. You see no divisions and you know that you are connected to everyone and all living creatures. You become a piece of God so to speak and this mystical sense of connectedness no longer allows you to feel separate.
You literally see the unfolding of God in every flower, creature, and person. At this level of unity consciousness, judgmental chatter that had set you up as a victim or a foe in the lower frequencies is gone. You bring this fast vibrational frequency to every life situation and you no longer view the world the way you did when you were in ego or group consciousness. Your message to the universe is no longer “Gimme, gimme, gimme,” but “How may I give?” And the universe’s response like a mirror is a resounding, “How may I give to you?”
In this state of unity consciousness you no longer view your life circumstances as problems. You understand the magic in Rumi’s famous poem The Guest House, which illustrates poetically what I am writing about here. Problems cannot exist in our lives when we view life from the faster spiritual vibrations that Rumi posits.
THE GUEST HOUSE
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
Some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
Who violently sweep your house
Empty of its furniture,
Still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
For some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
Meet them at the door laughing,
And invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
Because each has been sent
As a guide from beyond.
(The Essential Rumi; translated by Coleman Barks; HarperCollins, 1995; p. 104)
In unity consciousness you see yourself as connected rather than separate. You know that there are no accidents and you process each event of your life from that perspective. Energy impacts us at all times, and the frequency at which that energy moves determines our physical, mental, and spiritual health.
Take some time now to remind yourself of this first necessary fundamental awareness: Everything vibrates, everything moves.
Faster Vibrations Mean Getting Closer to “Spirit”
Valerie Hunt, writing about spiritual enlightenment in her fascinating book Infinite Mind makes this observation: “In my laboratory, we found that when a person’s energy field reaches the highest, most complex vibrations, from imaging or meditation, that person had spiritual experiences, regardless of their beliefs.” To create spiritual solutions you must at least tentatively accept this idea of energy vibrations which you have some degree of power to raise. The faster and more complex the frequency, the more you approach the world of invisible spirit and can nullify slower vibrational situations.
Dr. Valerie Hunt is a scientist and a physiological researcher of human energy fields. Her conclusions are almost identical to a man who many consider to be a spiritual master. His name is Sathya Sai Baba, a divine master who possesses the gift of fish and loaves and has devotees from all over the world. Born in 1926, Sai Baba has spent his life teaching and disseminating unconditional love and peace from his ashram in southern India. He tells his many followers, “Human energy is low and the divine energy is without limit. You are God. You are the divine energy when you do the divine work. Your energy grows.”
Here we have Hunt’s scientific, and Sai Baba’s spiritual, philosophy, offering us a grand view of invisible energy as a fast-moving frequency that, when embraced, escorts us into the reaches of the divine. Their insights emphasize the value of freeing ourselves from the negative impact of slower, more mundane human vibrations. These abilities of the higher-level mind appear to be beyond the domain of material or physical reality as we are accustomed to measuring it. Mind may indeed have different characteristics than the brain in that its vibration is not measurable by material devices. The higher mind is like a field that transcends the physical reality of the brain. As you explore the presence of spirit in your life as a faster, more complex energy frequency, consider that the highest levels of the mind contain the capacities of insight, imagination, creativity, and spiritual consciousness. The mind is a higher construct and it can be thought of as infinite and omnipresent.
What I want you to do here is imagine that your mind, perhaps separate from the brain, is like a fast vibrating field of invisible energy that is not located any one place, and is capable of being an unlimited experience. “The mind experiences and the brain records,” is how Wilder Penfield describes it in his epic book The Mystery of The Mind. Consequently, when I speak of energy, and vibrational frequencies, I am now speaking about your mind, the infinite experience, not simply your brain. It is your mind, which indeed may be separate from your brain, that you are going to train to move at a faster frequency so as to bring spiritual solutions to your problems. I do not wish to make this into a deeply scientific discussion. I just want to introduce you to the idea that the faster frequencies correspond with moving up the scale from solid, to sound, to light, to spirit, and it is in spirit that you will find your peace.
Think about what it is like to be around people who seem to possess these highest capacities of the mind. When we observe someone who has deep insight we can become easily transfixed. The person of deep insight who touches your soul with his words and ignites feelings of love and appreciation is vibrating at a faster energy frequency.
This quality of insight is an ingredient of the higher (and thus faster) mind. These deep insights do not have to be in esoteric fields such as quantum physics or nuclear science. I recall talking with a professional football player who had great insight in how to construct defenses against passing formations. I knew that he was talking and experiencing life in his realm from a high frequency. People who know how to be peaceful and loving regardless of the outer circumstances appear to have greater insight into how to live their daily life. They can have a profound effect on those whom they encounter.
The higher energy frequencies in your mind contain the seeds of imagination and creativity. The more creative you become the faster the frequency of your energy field and the more you can access the invisible world of spirit to annul the lower energy that produces what we construe as problems. Often we use the word problem only because we have not learned that imagination and creativity can handle the situation.
I received a letter several years ago from a woman in Oregon who was facing what most of us would consider a major problem. I reproduce the letter here so that you can see how this problem was turned into a blessing by bringing creativity and spirit to the painful situation.
Dear Wayne;
I don’t even know how to begin this letter. I wrote to you back in 1996 because my son was missing. He had gotten into the world of drugs and had slipped away. At the time I wrote to you I was distraught and panicked. I also was trying to start an organization to help others find their children turned of age who have fallen prey to drug addiction.
You very kindly wrote me back and your first sentence stated, “You will be directed to Jeff! Know this beyond anything resembling doubt.”
I kept that letter with me at all times. I ran those words over and over in my mind while holding the vision of Jeff and I embracing when I found him. Everyone I spoke with told me Jeff probably wouldn’t want to see me, or he would be mad at me, or he would run from me. I never believed that. I knew that when we saw each other face to face we would talk and come to an understanding if nothing else.
Now for the good news. I did indeed find Jeff. When we saw each other face to face the vision that I had held became a reality. He hugged me, told me he loved me, spoke to me of his pain, his longing to live a different life, then walked with me out of the drug world. We are now starting an agency together, called “Third Option,” to help other parents reconnect with their children.
I wrote an article in the “My Turn” column of Newsweek that ran in the August 18, 1997, edition. From that article we were asked to appear on Primetime Live, Good Morning America, CNBC, and many other shows. From that we have just signed a contract to have our story made into a movie. Also, I have written a book that I hope will be published called, “To Jeff, Love, Mom.” When the proceeds come from those things we will have the money to get our organization up and running in the form that we envision. Already we have helped a couple of parents locate their children and have counseled a dozen more. Jeff just finished up a case in San Francisco.
I am now starting to contact federal legislators to see what can be done to give parents of children turned of age more rights when they become lost to them in the world of addiction.
I just wanted to write to give you some good news and thank you for that simple phrase that you wrote to me in your letter. We are all lights for one another and those few words about being directed to Jeff illuminated my path more than once when the fear and devastation of being without my son would overwhelm me. Thank you so very much.
Well, that’s about it, just a huge hug from me with much gratitude from my heart. Oh, by the way, you may see a dramatic rise in the sale of your book, Real Magic. It is my favorite and I tell every parent I talk to to get the book.
Take care.
Warmest personal regards,
Michale Mohr
Here you can see what a powerful force creativity and imagination are in dispelling the illusion of a problem. A “problem” not only disappeared, but out of that energy of insight and creativity a spiritual solution emerged for Michale and many others as well.
The researchers in the science of energy vibrations remind us that the qualities that we refer to as insight, imagination, and creativity are the components of higher states of mind. Obviously, when we think of the mind of God, we think of the creator who imagined a physical universe from his consciousness. And with profound insight the story of Genesis was played out.
Your mind is both an individualized expression of the mind of God, and at the same time it is the universal mind as well. These words of Dr. Valerie Hunt stir me into a state of excitement when I consider the potential of the creative aspect of the human mind.
On the basis of my experience with deciphering and broadcasting thoughts from a field, I believe that all the great and profound ideas ever expounded, the tenets of advanced cultures, the deep and meaningful spiritual happenings around which religions are organized, all of these are available to us today in their original vibrational forms.… The open mind field concept says that all important thought is ours for the taking.
I kept this quotation at my table as I wrote my previous book, Wisdom of the Ages, based on sixty of the greatest teachers in history. I felt as if I were in conscious contact with them as I wrote.
These “original vibrational forms” are what I am calling energy at the fastest or highest level. When you master the magnificent seven ingredients of spirit that are in the opening chapter of this book you will be in a position to annul all your problems. Then you can increase the speed of your mental frequency and access the higher faculties of insight, imagination and creativity, which form the basis for being in the mind of God. Ultimately, your focused mind field, moving at the fastest frequencies of spirit can impact and tap into everything going on in the world.
As you begin to consider this idea of faster vibrations being synonymous with spirit, remind yourself that we live in a world of invisible energy that we take for granted. Electromagnetic forces all operate on vibrational frequencies that we cannot see, smell, or touch. Think of electricity, radio and television signals, microwaves, fax machines, cellular phones. We know that we can send radio waves out into the atmosphere, bounce them off satellites, scramble and unscramble them, and receive information from the waves. As we increase the frequency of these waves of energy we can send them to distant planets and solar systems, and perhaps, all the way to God and back.
Isn’t that what prayer is when you get right down to it? An invisible energetic signal sent between your mind field, and the universal mind field which you must be connected to. Otherwise, what would be the point of the prayer? Research has shown that people who pray and are prayed for have higher incidences of recovery. Prayer is an invisible energy vibration that approaches the faster frequencies of spirit. And it works, as research has demonstrated.
Ponder this idea of faster vibrations being associated with spirit, and spirit being the source of all problem solving. This insight will give you real-world tools for reaching the ultimate conclusion that you are God’s vibrations made manifest. I encourage you to find your way to rid yourself of the illusion that you could ever be separate from God.
My final observation for this section is from Hunt’s intriguing book:
We discovered that when a person’s field reached higher vibrational states, he no longer experienced material things such as bodies and ego states, or the physical world. He experienced knowing, higher information, transcendental ideas, insight about ultimate sources of reality, and creativity in its pure form. Thoughts were grander, more penetrating and global.
Higher vibrational states will lead you out of the physical ego-bound world where the illusions of problems are. The third and next awareness is that slower vibrations keep you in the world of problems.
Slower Vibrations Keep Us in the World of “Problems”
When you live persistently and permanently in the lower vibrational frequencies of material consciousness you are not able to participate in the realm of higher interpretation, transcendent ideas, insight, knowing, and pure creativity. This is what Valerie Hunt’s research on the science of human vibrations of consciousness reveals.
I have also become very familiar with a fascinating book titled Power Versus Force, written by Dr. David R. Hawkins who has both an M.D. and a Ph.D. He has quantified human actions and emotions by frequencies. The author spent twenty-nine years in an exhaustive study to measure the vibrations of human behavior and thought and to help us see how to move from the lower/slower frequencies of shame, guilt, apathy, fear, and anger into the higher vibrations of willingness, acceptance, reason, love, joy, peace, and enlightenment. I loved every page of this groundbreaking book. I quote from his preface.
The individual human mind is like a computer terminal connected to a giant database. The database is human consciousness itself, of which our own consciousness is merely an individual expression, but with its roots in the common consciousness of all mankind. This database is the realm of genius; because to be human is to participate in the database, everyone by virtue of his birth has access to genius.
You can access this genius energy to remove “problems” from your life completely. But what does this mean specifically to you who would love to shed the burden of material world struggles and problems? The answer lies in understanding Einstein’s quote, “Nothing happens until something moves,” which is the subheading of this chapter. You must become determined to rid yourself of those slower material world vibrational states, because this is where your problems reside.
Think of any disease process, such as cancer. Cancer, like everything else in the physical world, has a vibrational frequency. That frequency is incompatible with the body and will begin to devour the adjoining cells. Disease frequencies can invade your body when you live in a continual state of being angry, fearful, envious, critical, judgmental, and worried. These lower vibrations are inherent in virtually all the life circumstances that we call problems.
How then do you reconcile the message in chapter one (#udf1362d2-6210-5009-bab3-b15b4cf444b0) that God is good, God is the creator, God is omnipresent, and all that is non-God cannot exist, except as we allow it to in our thoughts? Non-good is an illusion that disappears when spirit is present. Conversely, when we don’t stay in spirit, our energy field is slowed down to the material world elements of anger, hate, envy, guilt, and the like. This is when a hole in our energy field occurs, large enough for other slow vibrating frequencies to enter and overwhelm our body.
They are invited in, so to speak, unconsciously to be sure, by permitting our energy fields to leave the spiritual domain. When we do that, there is no high frequency vibration available to curtail the work of these slower moving vibrations. Thus, when we leave our spiritual consciousness, we create an opening for slow moving frequencies to enter. The antidote to these debilitating frequencies in our lives is to remove them from our body altogether. First by identifying the frequency, and then by countering it with the faster vibrations of spiritual energy.
The emotional states of fear, worry, anger, envy, greed, jealousy, guilt, and hatred are the lower frequency reactions that we implement in response to the circumstances and events of our lives. It may be stated that the presence of those states of the lower mind open up holes in our energy field large enough for other incompatible lower frequencies to enter our bodies in the form of hundreds of varying disease frequencies.
But beyond disease, these lower level vibrational reactions also cause us to have large holes in virtually all areas of our lives. These holes allow the lower frequencies of problems to enter, and do just as much damage to our relationships, our families, and our jobs as they do in destroying our bodies. Once we take responsibility for the presence of these lower frequencies without any guilt, we set ourselves up to be in a position to remove them.
The material world appears to be solid. This solid appearing material world is experienced exclusively through the senses, which are the dominant motivating forces of our lives. We seek to please the senses with wealth, adulation, alcohol of drugs, and possessions of all kinds, bigger and better toys and jewelry. When we are not provided with these demands of the senses, we say we have a problem. “I’m not paid enough, my children disobey me, I was overlooked for a promotion, I can’t afford the car I want, I’m addicted, overweight, anxiety-ridden. I got a speeding ticket and I might lose my license.” The list could go on and on for a hundred more pages.
All these problems, plus those of health, are the result of allowing your senses (which are very low and slow vibrations) to be in charge of your life. Yet these are only problems in your mind. Remember, every relationship you have with everyone in the world is in your mind exclusively. That’s where you experience everyone else. If you process others with your senses, you will experience them with the same lowered frequency in your daily life, and you will always have problems to deal with.
It is only when you elect to move beyond the world of the senses and those slower/lower energy vibrations that you will eliminate problems that are associated with the material world of the senses.
In the holy book called the Talmud there is a phrase that says, “Into the well which supplies thee with water, cast no stones.” When you rely upon the material world frequencies as your source it is like casting stones into that well. The water is really the spirit, which is the inexhaustible supply, and those slower vibrating stones contaminate your source and create all manner of problems.
In the old western movies there is often a scene of a little lady from Philadelphia with a wide brim hat in a stagecoach that has gone out of control. The driver is fatally wounded with an arrow in his chest and the four horses are pulling the stagecoach wildly through the brush while the little lady from Philadelphia is pleading uselessly to get this thing under control. Hold this scene in your mind and think of the stagecoach representing your body, and the driver your intellect, which has been silenced. The reins represent your emotions which are futilely connected to the horses that symbolize your senses. The senses are completely out of control, pulling you through the trails and trials of life, and the little lady from Philadelphia who symbolizes your highest self (your conscience) is pleading with you to get this thing under control and to please, please, please stop the madness and straighten it out. But alas, the intellect is dead and the emotions are useless connected as they are to those runaway senses.
This is a picture of why you may have so many problems. Your slow frequency senses are pulling you through your life; your intellect does not respond, and your fast vibrating higher self (spirit) shouts at you from inside your mind to do the right thing.
I have seen a taste bud, which weighs one tenth of an ounce, pull a 275-pound man into a bakery while the little lady from Philadelphia begs him to do what he knows is the right thing to rid him of his obesity. He will say, “I have a weight problem,” and justify his continuance of the problem. But in fact, he has a horse problem and if he could listen to that persistent tiny voice of the little lady from Philadelphia, with the wide brim hat, who is pleading with him to call in spirit to control his horses, they would immediately stop running wild. He would bring a higher vibration to his problem and the illusion of that problem would disappear from his life altogether.
Somehow, some way, you can and must intervene to halt these horses from running wildly and pulling you into the world of problems, which leads us to the fourth awareness.
You Can Choose to Eliminate Whatever Interferes with
Increasing Your Vibrational Field
You will want to take a good look at the slower frequencies that inhibit you from increasing your vibrational state of awareness. These are the obstacles that you want to be on constant alert to change. Remember that the frequencies of soul consciousness, or spirit, as outlined in chapter one (#udf1362d2-6210-5009-bab3-b15b4cf444b0), include the fastest vibrations of surrender, love, relationship to the infinite, quiet emptiness, generosity, and gratitude, feeling connected rather than separate, and finally a sense of cheerfulness. These are my definitions and they could include many subareas such as faith, hope, patience, sympathy, kindness, forgiveness, and noninterference.
It is these faster frequencies that you will be bringing to the front door of your life, and filling every room with until there is no longer any space for those slower vibrations that seemed to fill your house with problems. The slowed down frequencies are the obstacles. They will depart when you bring the vibrational world of spirit into their presence.
In order to eliminate these slow vibrating obstacles you must see them as part of an energy field that you have become accustomed to, and which will initially resist leaving your house. By persistently reminding yourself that you are not fighting these lower frequency energies they will succumb to the awareness of love’s presence. Removing energy obstacles means filling the space where they reside with faster and higher vibrations until those lower energies no longer have any choice but to leave. They will ultimately leave your house because there is no longer any room left for them to reside and do their dirty work.
I’ve always loved the way a great Indian saint of the nineteenth century responded to his devotees when they asked him how they could rid themselves of their lower energies. “In the springtime,” Vivekenanda replied, “observe the blossoms on the fruit trees. The blossoms vanish of themselves as the fruit grows. So too will the lower self vanish as the divine grows within you.”
The apples do not get into a deep conflict with the blossoms that are in their designated space on the branches of the tree. There is no anger, no fear, no battle between the fruit and its blossoms. As the fruit grows the blossoms disappear. This is true also as you fill the rooms of life with the magnificent seven highest vibrating energies of spirit. As the Native Americans would say, “No tree has branches so foolish as to fight among themselves.”
The obstacles of the lower self have no choice but to leave. Anything that vanishes, as spirit is brought in to replace it, is an illusion in the first place. When it can disappear into thin air, then you know it wasn’t real to begin with. So, as Saint Teresa of Avila advises:
Let nothing disturb thee;
Let nothing dismay thee;
All things pass;
God never changes
He who has God
Finds he lacks nothing;
God alone suffices.
The most significant insight in Saint Teresa’s observation is, “All things pass; God never changes.”
Everything in this material world of form is in a constant state of change and ultimately will be gone. But there is also the world of the changeless that we call God, and it is this unchanging spirit that will transform those things that you call problems. They will pass when you bring the infinite of the unchanging to greet them. As Saint Teresa wisely concluded, “God alone suffices.”
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Уэйн Дайер
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Саморазвитие, личностный рост
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: This radical new book from Wayne Dyer proposes that we hold the keys to solving any problems we face within us.He sets out basic principles and foundations we can understand and practice in order to access spiritual solutions to any problems we are experiencing. The book is in two sections. The first sets out the theory, the second enables you to put the wisdom into practice.Part 1. The theory:Everything in the Universe is nothing more than energy. Light and though, spiritual energy, vibrates very quickly. Physical energy, and problem areas, vibrate more slowly. When the highest/fastest frequencies of spirit are brought to the presence of lower/slower frequencies, they nullify and dissipate those things we call problems. We all have the ability to increase our energy and access the highest/fastest energies to eradicate problems in our lives. In carefully structured chapters, Wayne Dyer draws on both ancient wisdom and firsthand accounts, and shows how to:stop giving energy to things you don′t believe in• keep your energy field uncontaminated• raise and maintain your spiritual energy.In the second part of the book, «Putting spiritual problem solving into action», Dyer shows how we can transform any negative energy into positive energy:hate into love• hurt into forgiveness• doubt into faith• despair into hope• sadness into joy