attract to yourself that which you
desire what you desire desires you or
what you want wants you and it’s really
coming to understand that there is an
energy that will bring things to you
that will have things begin to show up
and this is not to say that you just put
out your manifestation desire and then
just sit around and wait for some huge
magnet in the sky just turn on and be
facing towards you and have everything
just go there it is there’s an element
of working with this divine universal
force that is everywhere and a part of
this divine essence it is a divine
creation as you become more tuned into
this divine consciousness you begin to
see that that there’s really a spiritual
solution to every problem in your life
that the things that don’t seem to be
working the problems that you may have
whatever they are in relationships and
finances and healing and so on that
there is yes there is a solution in the
physical plane that requires you to get
up and do certain kinds of things and
act in certain ways but in back of that
action is a thought and the same force
or the same power that moves waves to
particles which is the act of creation
also moves your pictures or your
thoughts into the world of form the same
intelligence the same energy that moves
a star across the sky moves the thought
across your mind this energy this
attractiveness this attraction
this pull towards you and realignment of
your intention with divine purpose is
something that we can’t measure in the
physical world the way we would like to
be able to measure the way we can
measure homes and watts and so on when
we’re talking about electricity
nevertheless it is exactly the very same
power and the power that allows for
anything to go from wave to particle
also is behind your ability to think and
therefore your ability to picture and
your ability to decide what it is that
you do desire there is something inside
of you that allows you to desire
something it isn’t the desire I’m
talking about I’m talking about that
which gives birth to it that which
allows it to be you the analogy here is
when you begin to take care of your body
in a certain way and to treat it well to
give it plenty of water to avoid toxins
to give it the rest that it needs to to
nourish it with the proper vitamins and
minerals to give it the proper amount of
exercise to do the things that show that
you are respectful of this garage that
is housing your soul it becomes
automatic it isn’t any longer something
that you have to struggle with that you
have to work on and that you have to
think about all the time you go to
automatic it’s a lot like writing also
and creating and painting and music you
know when when Picasso would was
interviewed about his painting and they
asked him how do you paint he said when
I go into the studio I leave my body and
my mind at the door the way the Muslims
leave their shoes before they enter the
mosque and I just allow my spirit in
to that world the spirit this soul this
force that I have talked so much about
in this whole entire program is really a
power of love that you feel in your
heart it isn’t something that you
process with your mind but when you
understand it and know that it is an
energy that is working that brings
things into the world into your world
realigns you if you will with what it is
you’d like to create or have for
yourself you begin to cooperate see this
divine intelligence will cooperate with
you but again only if you feel that
you’re worthy and only if you know that
you and it are connected the minute you
sense any sense of separation it shuts
off and then it you place an obstacle
there it will shut up I’ll give an
example of how this energy works in
overcoming some of the things that are
struggles for most people in our lives
most of us have addictions of one kind
or another
almost everyone suffers from some form
of addiction and when I say addiction
I’m talking about something that has
seems to have more power or control over
us than we would like if things were to
be perfect so for some it’s sugar for
some it’s alcohol for some it’s drugs
for some it’s food for some it’s
approval you know needing to be a part
of the tribe what will they think
remember the mantra of the tribe in
terms of understanding this as a power
and as an energy I would like you to
think of back to the room that I talked
about earlier and your back is against
the wall and everything to the right
even though we know that it’s all one
spirit God is in everything okay but for
purposes of seeing it here listening to
it here we go back to the room and
everything on the right represents the
physical world now let’s look at an
addiction
something that owned us there are three
aspects to an addiction it can be an
addiction to money this can be a nation
to power also anything at all for many
in our culture it is to drugs and
alcohol
a problem that we are going to have to
resolve not with legislation but with a
spirit a new spiritual awareness the
only thing that ever has seemed to work
for getting people off of addictions is
a a Alcoholics Anonymous which has as
its base spirituality God finding the
solution to that which controls you in
something other than that which is
external to you finding it within
yourself and I speak from experience
today I am a camel a camel is an animal
that starts his day out on his knees and
it ends its day on its knees
and it can go 24 hours without a drink
and there was a time when I didn’t and I
couldn’t and I played around with
substances and I played around with
alcohol and I drank it every day not
enormous amounts never in serious
serious trouble like duis and things
like that but just so that it was just a
part of my daily life and then I found
by my as my life and my work moved more
into a spiritual dimension that it
became less and less important to me and
I found that I was able to sort of
notice it and observe it and no longer
be attached to it so that if you look at
an addiction from everything to the
right-hand side of your room in the
physical plane there are three aspects
of it all of which are in the physical
domain there is the craving there is the
craver and there is that which is craved
and all of those are on the right-hand
side of the room the craver is the
person the body the craving
is the thought the image I want that I
need that I must have that it’s
different from the craver
and that which is craved which is
external to me the cocaine the marijuana
the drugs the sugar the hot fudge sundae
but whatever it is and it’s all in the
physical domain and as long as you stay
here in the physical domain and try to
deal with it and get rid of it in your
life you are still trapped because you
haven’t gone to your source the source
is the way you transcend the duality of
the physical plane and so when you go to
your source and go to the left-hand side
of the room and become your source and
now become the witness and observe that
and just notice it and just put your
attention on and just watch it with love
so I’ll be talking about in the next
principle and just observe it from a
perspective of I am connected to that it
is me I have become it and I can also
transcend it and go beyond it by just
putting my attention on a new aspect of
myself which is pure and so from the
position of the source or the sorcerer
you just watch it and it’s not you
you’re free from it you are just
noticing oh there goes Wayne again it’s
gonna have another beer
and he thinks he really must have this
and on but from the perspective of the
witness of the observer over here you
are pure love because that’s what God is
that’s what the higher part of you is
just pure unconditional love and you
direct that energy to that aspect of you
which has allowed itself to be addicted
and it disappeared when I left those
things behind many many years ago in my
life it was as the result of saying and
hearing a voice
and the voice said you’ve tried
everything else
now try me and when I went there when I
went there and truly went there and then
began my manifestation meditation on
that it was gone and now today I can
look at those things that I used to
crave those cravings I can look at the
craver and all that is craved and I
could laugh at it
Jing your result with gratitude and
generosity and the affirmation for this
principle is I am deeply thankful for
all that I’ve received and I enjoy
giving to others in the spirit of love
and service this is a very important
part not only of being able to have show
up in your life what it is that is the
fulfillment of your heart’s desire but
it is also a beautiful way to begin
living your life every day there’s an
old saying that says if you’re not
generous when it’s hard you will not be
generous when it’s easy and generosity
isn’t necessarily the giving away of
what you have but it’s more of a
attitude of spirit as is gratitude so
there are really three components to
this eighth principle the first is
gratitude
the second is generosity and the third
is service let me take them one at a
time here the first is gratitude and I
remember reading a book a few years back
by a friend of mine his name is Dan
Millman
I believe Dan has a program with nine
guck owners a wonderful speaker and he
wrote a book called a way of the
Peaceful Warrior and in the way of the
Peaceful Warrior he had this character
who was an enlightened kind of being and
in Dan’s book the way of the Peaceful
Warrior this character’s name was
Socrates
and Socrates was the fella who worked in
a gas station but he could do all of
these bizarre kinds of things he could
jump up onto a roof 14 feet in the air
by just transporting himself and he had
this ability to make himself disappear
and to change his shape and do many of
the things that most of us because most
of us are cookie thieves believed
somehow that we can’t do these things
and we know a truth and we are attached
to that truth that this is the only
dimension there is and there are no
other dimensions that I can get involved
in or peer into because my senses have
told me this and we’ve come to put an
extraordinary amount of faith in these
senses which mislead us all the time
about reality so Socrates was one of
these people who was living in a
different dimension or a different level
of consciousness so Socrates tells his
student to go out onto a rock and sit
until he can think of something
important and come back and tell him
something important or something
significant I believe it was and he goes
out there the student goes out there dan
is telling his own story and he sits
there on a rock and he sits there and
every time he thinks he’s got something
that’s really important then he thinks
about telling Socrates this he realizes
how unimportant this is so after sitting
there for a long period of time and
finally after going to Socrates and
telling him things and Socrates says no
that’s not important back he would go to
his rock and he did this two or three
times now that’s not that’s not
significant they go back to Italy so
finally he came and he said something in
Socrates said to him you’ve got it you
have discovered something significant
and that something significant was he
said to him there are no ordinary
moments
there are no ordinary moments as
Socrates said yes that’s significant
that is a great teaching a great
learning and that’s really the essence
of gratitude the essence of gratitude is
understanding that every moment of your
life
is something to be grateful for and that
everything that shows up in your life is
something that you will want to be
expressing a sense of gratitude about I
speak often about how we take things for
granted and taking things for granted is
one of the obstacles to having an
attitude of gratitude taking things for
granted very often I mean I’ve often
said that I think we should have special
days every year in which we appreciate
all the different aspects of our being
you know like we give thanks for our
liver on Mondays you know on the 3rd of
January liver Appreciation Day you know
or just try to imagine what it would be
like if you didn’t have that liver there
would be nothing for you to imagine and
then you know for the air that we
breathe and for the ground that we walk
upon and for gravity and for the food
that we have and for the sky and for you
know our eyelids which we just take for
granted without them how difficult it
would be for us to get through even an
hour of our day and our toenails and and
everything about ourselves to begin to
experience a sense of gratitude now when
we’re talking about affirmations and
we’re talking about manifestation here
we want to look at what it is we are
asking to have manifested for ourselves
and remember we are not creating
anything we’re just redistributing if
you will everything that needs to be
created is already in the universe
there’s no place to go I remember when
the story was told of Swami Muktananda
great spiritual teacher who was dying
and all of his devotees and students but
gathered around and he was leaving and
he had announced that his students were
praying with them and they were pleading
with him please don’t go please don’t go
swami flee we’re not ready for you to
leave and he opened his eye and looked
at them and said don’t be silly where
could I go where is there to go
everything is already here and so when
you are manifesting and you are asking
for things to show up in your life and
they begin to show up in your life
learning to be grateful for this now
that’s not so difficult most of us say
thank you I have a little ritual that I
do every day and that is almost every
day God sends money to me in some form
particularly when I’m running happens
virtually every day of my life and it’s
a little game I have mental game that I
have played with myself I’ll be out
running and I’ll be thinking about all
of the abundance that has shown up in my
life and how grateful I am and how
grateful I am to have my children one of
the things that my wife and I practice
regularly is telling our children how
fortunate we feel to beat their parents
how lucky we are not how lucky they are
to have us as parents but how blessed
and how grateful we are and I’ll often
pick up my little boy or one of my
little girls and just put my arms around
say you know I am really lucky to have
you and I’m really blessed to have you
show up in my life I feel that way about
all my children and having that kind of
attitude is something that I do with
everything that has shown up in my life
because I lived a big hunk of my life
without a lot of abundance with a great
deal of scarcity but even while I was
living in scarcity there was never a
sense of poor me or I wish I had more or
even looking at other people and saying
they’ve got it and I don’t that attitude
keeps you from being grateful for what
you have even as a child I didn’t learn
to say oh they’ve got a cattle
and I have to we have to drive around in
an old Chevy or something there was a
sort of an internal knowing that you
haven’t earned a Cadillac now that isn’t
something that you even think about as
being yours they used to talk about
being able to buy a Cadillac when I was
a young man you know buying my first car
and they said the Cadillac cost almost
$4,000 I couldn’t comprehend a Cadillac
costing $4,000 and having $4,000 to buy
a car I mean it wasn’t like something I
would even give a moment’s notice to if
other people had that that that was just
their karma or there was their benefits
or somehow they had done something to
earn that you know today when I go to
buy a car $4,000 is an option you want
this stereo system instead of this one
that would cost 4000 extra all right
throw it in what do I want to get what’s
got extra speakers I mean I mean my
first car was an old 1950 Plymouth that
had you know rusted outsides on it and
and I washed that thing every day and I
was so proud it I was so excited about
this and the idea of looking at somebody
else’s new car and thinking that there
was something wrong here that they had
it and I didn’t couldn’t have occurred
to me and I believe it’s that attitude
of being grateful for whatever shows up
in your life that allows additional
things to show up in your life and my
little ritual that I play every day when
I’m out running is a little coins that I
find in the street I found one this
morning when I was running before I made
this presentation right out in front of
the of the hotel a penny a shiny penny
and you know I have a never admitted
this in public before but I have a large
jar of coins that is hidden behind in a
bookcase behind a hole nobody knows
where this is except myself and this
contains all of the money that I have
found in the last 20 years
and it’s a huge amount of money some of
it is wrinkled up bill a lot of it is
foreign money because I’ve run in
foreign countries and most of the coins
are dirty and they’ve been out on the
street for a long time and there’s a
couple of $20 bills there’s a hundred
dollar bill in there and every time I
look at that that little symbol that
just keeps growing it reminds me to be
grateful and when I pick up one of those
coins I always say thank you God for
this symbol of abundance that has shown
up in my life thank you and I put it in
my pocket and I put it away in a special
then when I get back to my office I go
to that little place and I put it in
there and I look at that and that’s my
reminder what gratitude does is it keeps
you connected to that source which
brings things into your life it keeps
that connection open and when you go to
that place when you do the meditation
and when you make what we call conscious
contact with your Higher Self and with
God when you make that conscious contact
you shift from a belief in God or a
knowing about God to knowing God there’s
a very big difference between knowing
about God and knowing God knowing about
God is a belief knowing God is conscious
contact it’s direct inner knowing and so
you make this inner contact and you have
a certainty about what it is that you
want to manifest and that that desire
that you have is consistent with all
nine of these principles that it is
based on unconditional love and it’s
based on the power of attraction and
it’s based on your higher awareness and
it’s based on generosity and service and
kindness and then you are absolutely
certain and then you’re able to detach
because you’re not really concerned
about how it’s going to show
you see your job in the whole business
of manifesting your job is not to say
how and when your job is to say yes just
yes and then you let the hull and the
wind take over now when I say this I
know immediately what the ego part of us
starts to think I want it now but I have
to have it this way but if I don’t get
it pretty soon then I’m going to go
broke and then if this doesn’t show up
over here then I’m gonna have to go on
welfare and if I have to go on welfare
than me and your mind starts playing all
of these games about how terrible things
are going to be if the person that you
want to manifest doesn’t show up the way
you want him to show up or if the child
that you expect to have isn’t showing up
on time or if the finances or if the job
or whatever and there’s this this push
and this anxiety and this stress which
is based on fear and based on distrust
but you know when you have this knowing
as it says in the court when you have
this certainty great things have no fear
of time you see the universal
intelligence doesn’t operate in the
parameters of time time is just our way
of carving up the oneness I was reading
a story of Einstein as a young boy and
one of the things that’s said about
young Einstein is that when he was a
little boy he picked up a compass and
when he picked up this compass he
noticed that there was something that
would move the needle but he couldn’t
find anything in the compass that was
moving the needle and he was intrigued
by what it was that would move the
needle and he would go and turn in a
certain way he’s making a 90-degree turn
and the needle would turn and face
whatever direction it was that he was
facing and yet he hadn’t done anything
and he was intrigued by what this force
was inside or outside or what it was
that allowed this at what would make
this needle move that force that
universal intelligence that thing that
is nameless that thing that we can’t
identify in the physical world is the
provider of all of the things that will
manifest to you in the physical world
and it is also the source of your life
so that when you have an alignment with
that force what happens is you get very
very peaceful and when you get peaceful
you stopped insisting you just know you
just know that it’s going to show up and
you’re not demanding you’re not looking
under the leaves for it you’re not
asking any for any favors
in fact you understand that this
universal force cannot provide special
favors because it is everywhere and if
it were just for you and not for someone
else that would immediately make it not
a universal force it would be now
someplace that it isn’t there’s no
favoritism in this there’s just this
positive absolute unconditionally loving
knowing force in the universe that holds
everything together that you come to
honor to respect to know and you know
it’s really like it’s like changing
around your perspective in life it’s
like walking a new path I’ve always
loved this I’ve read it many many times
in my talks it’s a little story by a
woman named Portia Nelson and she was
asked as a group of people were asked in
a seminar to write down her
autobiography
but they said you only have one page and
you have to write your autobiography in
five short chapters on one page the
autobiography of your life that was the
assignment so Portia Nelson wrote her
autobiography of her life in five short
chapters and this is what she said
chapter one I walk down the street
there’s a deep hole in the sidewalk I
fall in I am lost I’m helpless it isn’t
my fault it takes forever to find a way
out chapter two I walk down the same
street there’s a deep hole in the
sidewalk I pretend I don’t see it I fall
in again I can’t believe I’m in the same
place but it isn’t my fault it still
takes a long time to get out chapter 3 I
walk down the same street there’s a deep
hole in the sidewalk I see it there I
still fall in it’s a habit my eyes are
open I know where I am it is my fault
I get out immediately chapter 4 I walk
down the same street there’s a deep hole
in the sidewalk I walk around it chapter
5 I walk down another Street the story
of her life and it’s really the story of
higher consciousness and it’s the story
of manifesting being able to manifest
your heart’s desire to align yourself
and your intentions with this divine
organizing intelligence that is
limitless that is inexhaustible
that is ever-expanding that is abundant
that is all providing and all-knowing
and everywhere at the same
is like walking down another Street to
align yourself with that and to know
that that alignment in itself is enough
to bring whatever it is that has
particular eyes that is individualized
into the world that you would like to
have show up in your life and align with
the particular ization of that divine
intelligence that is you that it’s just
bringing it all together it’s just a
realignment and it will cooperate with
you
the thing that will keep it from working
for you is any obstacle to that flow as
I talked about when I was speaking about
unconditional love the minute that you
put hatred anger bitterness tension
anxiety stress in the way of that
intelligence between you and that
intelligence you block that flow it is a
flowing that’s why we use water as a
symbol of it because it flows at all one
of the most powerful lessons that you
can ever learn I had to learn as a young
man my own father was a man who walked
away he left he left home when I was
just a baby left my mother was sitting
right here 107 years old does that you
know you’re not 82 years old darling
and with three little boys and all I had
ever heard when he walked out about this
person that my older brothers told me
about and that my mother got her family
back together again when I was 9 years
old
and did all that she could to to make a
family again all the hardships this is a
man who never made a phone call we never
sent a penny who spent some time in
prison who was an alcoholic who died of
cirrhosis of the liver the age of 49 and
was buried in a pauper’s grave in Biloxi
Mississippi and it wasn’t until I went
to his grave
and it was able to stand there and I
used to dream about this man and have
this enormous hatred for this person
whom I had never seen just based upon
what he had done to my own mother and to
my brothers and so on and all of the
stories that I had heard and all the
research that I had done and I ended up
at his grave ten years after he had died
when I finally found out that he was
dead it was on the 27th of August it was
1974 and what I did
transformed my life what I did is I
believe I was sent there by God or
whatever you want to call that divine
spirit the divine presence and my life
at that time wasn’t working I was
overweight my relationships weren’t
working my writing wasn’t working there
were a lot of things that weren’t going
well for me in my life at that time not
badly but they weren’t going at the
level that I knew I was capable of
getting to because I was filled with his
hatred his anger was bitterness so what
I did is I stood there on his grave and
this little marker in the ground and I
said from now on I send you love I
forgive you Mark Twain said that
forgiveness is the fragrance that the
violet sheds on the heel that has
crushed it and once I let go of that
anger in that hatred and all of my
attachment to the bonding that I had
done with these wounds and let go of
that and cleared that out of my life my
writing began to take place at a much
higher level fact I wrote erroneous
zones in very very short time after that
I began to get myself back in shape I
began to eat better
I began exercising keeping my got my
weight down and the people that were
supposed to come into my life like my
beautiful wife who sits here with me
this evening and all of our children
some of whom are here this evening all
of it was allowed to flow when I
released that that energy of negativity
and blame and hatred they say that you
never die from a snakebite it isn’t the
bite and you can’t be unbidden it’s in
the wake what kills you is the venom
that continues to pour through you long
after the bite has taken place and
that’s something we have control over
and we can’t change and I’d like to
suggest that what happens is that many
of us bond ourselves to these wounds of
our past if I were to cut my hand just
cut it and watch it my nature says close
up the wound and I just have to watch it
and there’s no doctor out there there’s
no medicine out there that’s gonna heal
that wound there’s something there’s a
healing stream that I am connected to
that will allow that wound to heal so my
nature says closed up the wounds don’t
bonds of them don’t hang on to them
close them up but supposing I say to
myself oh no you don’t there’s no way
I’m gonna let you close up you see if I
can keep you open and I can go to you
and say look at this see what happened
Wow look at this cut up got all you poor
thing
look at that it seems to be getting
worse that’s getting infected isn’t that
terrible
and if you practice this kind of a
mentality when your nature says close up
the wound but you keep it open before
long you lose your hand
and after that you’ll lose your arm and
the whole organism will be destroyed if
you don’t let your nature take over and
your nature also says close up the
wounds of your past close them up and
oftentimes we ignore our nature I had a
great teacher that came into my life
through his writing his name was nice
our guru maharaj lived in India up until
the mid 1980s and he wrote something
called I am bat which was very powerful
and influential in my life and one of
the things that he talked about when he
was asked a question what’s the
difference between say a saint or a
highly functioning human being a
spiritual master a spiritual teacher and
the rest of us is that they have
unconditional love in them
and you don’t or we don’t and he said no
he said Saints have unconditional love
in them and so do you he said the
difference between ordinary human
awareness and higher awareness people is
that they have nothing else inside of
them that’s all they have and it’s
almost like we have to learn how to get
that in ourselves to be able to well I
always like to use a metaphor of an
orange I love the orange perhaps living
in Florida is why but an orange is a
simple metaphor if you take this orange
and you squeeze it as hard as you can
squeeze it and you ask yourself what
will come out and what comes out when
you squeeze an orange orange juice never
no matter how many times you squeeze it
well apple juice come out there’s no
mistakes
you’ll never get grapefruit juice out of
this thing ever the only thing you’ll
ever get out of it is orange juice and
the next question is why why wouldn’t
you squeeze an orange as hard as you can
squeeze it does orange juice come out
and I asked that question up in Toronto
one time this little girl sitting right
in the front row she said that’s dumb
it’s a she said that’s what’s inside it
has to come out I said well that’s the
answer you are really smart and she’s
smile if you thought that was great but
that’s the truth
the reason that orange juice comes out
when you squeeze is because that’s
what’s inside now you extend the
metaphor and someone squeezes you that
is someone says something about you that
you don’t like someone behaves towards
you in a way that you find offensive
somebody does something or says
something to you that you feel hurt by
and out of you comes anger hatred
bitterness tension fear anxiety stress
an immediate you say the reason that
comes out of me is because of how he
said etre the way that she said that or
because they did that but the truth is
the reality is that what comes out is
what’s inside
and if you don’t like what’s inside you
can change it now if you ask me how does
orange juice get inside of an orange I
would say I don’t know I can’t figure it
out
that’s a mystery to me I just enjoy the
oranges of my life and give God the
credit for that
a lot of people think that other things
make them the way they are they will
blame their past they’ll blame their
parents they’ll blame the economy
they’ll blame the ayatollah they’ll
blame somebody for things that are going
wrong in their life and one of the
favorite things that we have to blame
for why i’m upset at a particular moment
is something called traffic traffic made
me upset and i’ve always reminded myself
when i’m in a jam or when i’m on the
freeway and i’m trying to get someplace
the traffic doesn’t care that you have
within you the opportunity in this
moment to really work on these things
that are perhaps debilitating or
creating anxiety or stress in your life
that these are tests these are
opportunities for you traffic doesn’t
care your anger is your choice and you
can always choose to be to be at happy
angry depressed miserable upset or you
can choose to be fulfilled and do
something positive in this moment it’s
always up to you I’d like to give you
what I think of as the great spiritual
teachings of many various persuasions
there’s a story that summarizes it it’s
the story of what I call the four
philanthropists in a village the
conquerors had come through and they had
taken all of the men or many of the men
who were warriors at the time and they
had placed them into this prisoner of
war camp right in the village and many
of the villagers knew that their
compatriots were imprisoned and the
first philanthropist was a person who
had great wealth and he went to the
people who had the prison and were in
charge of it and he said to them I
understand the men are not able to have
fresh water and cold water I would like
to donate all of my earning
and everything that I have to purifying
the water for them and making sure that
all of them will not be sick and he was
granted that and he felt like he had
fulfilled his destiny that he had done
what he was here for the second
philanthropist discovered that the men
were sleeping on rocks and that they
were cold at night they didn’t have
blankets and he took all of his funds
and he said to them I would like to
provide bedding and blankets for the
people so that they will be comfortable
when they sleep at night and he was
granted that right and he donated his
money for this purpose and again he felt
that he was fulfilling his destiny
the third philanthropist discovered that
the food that they were eating was
inadequate that they were just given
beans and and and water and some bread
and so he said I own a farm and I’d like
to grow all of my food and I’d like to
take this food to all of these prisoners
and he was granted that right and all
three of these great philanthropists in
the village felt that they had really
completed their mission for why they
were here but the fourth philanthropist
was a saint he was living not at
ordinary human awareness but at higher
consciousness levels and he went and he
found out where the keys were and he
went to the prison at night and he
released all of the prisoners and this
little metaphorical story really tells
us that when we are living at ordinary
human awareness there’s nothing wrong
with those who are out there who can
help us to suffer in comfort all right
and many of us have learned to do that
and accept that and say all right as
long as I’m comfortable even if I’m
suffering it’s okay
but there are those who have keys and
those keys can open the prisons one of
the great teachers in my life was Carlos
Castaneda and custon aid had talked
about his teacher who was what they call
a nog Yule a and a Native American term
that refers to all that is knowable
and he his teacher told him that your
life is like being born into a room a
mansion if you will that has a thousand
rooms but you’re born into one room and
this one room is called daily human
awareness and the only way you can get
in is through conception and birth
you’re in and the only way you can get
out we are taught is to die so we spend
our lives in this mansion in one room
even those that there’s 999 other rooms
we don’t know how to get out into those
rooms unless we die so we wait to die
and what his teacher told him is I can
teach you how to get out of the room of
daily awareness and into the other 999
rooms and if you stay with me and learn
all that I have to give you I can teach
you how to get out of the house all
together without having to die and what
we have to do in order to get to that
place where we can take the keys and
unlock the self-imposed prisons or the
prisons that we have given ourselves on
the basis of what we have come to
believe is our limitations what we can
and can’t do we have to let go of that
and I call it rewriting our agreement
with reality we literally have to make a
whole new contract with what it is that
I perceive to be what is possible for me
and in order to do that we have to shift
out of the things that we have come to
believe in and everything that you came
to this program watching tonight that
you believe in was handed to you by
someone else outside of you was handed
to you by the experiences or testimony
of someone in the past and because it
comes from outside of you
there is still an element of doubt and
this element of doubt isn’t bad but it
keeps you from reaching higher levels
because what you think about is what
expands and if you’re thinking doubt
then doubt is what expands William Blake
said if the Sun and Moon should ever
doubt they would immediately go out so
how do we get past what we believe in or
what has been handed to us and still
honor it and be grateful for all of the
teachers and all of the people who have
come before us so what we have to learn
to do is let go of that tribal
consciousness and shift to what I call
unknowing now there’s a big difference
between what you believe and what you
know everything that you know is
something that you have made conscious
contact with conscious contact so
there’s nobody out there watching
there’s nobody in this world who knows
how to swim who learned it by somebody
else telling them that you can swim or
by watching Mark Spitz
go through the water or by observing
other people doing it you may remove
some of the doubt but you will never
know how to swim until you get in the
water and blub around a few times and
then do it and then you’ll have a
knowing and that knowing is something
that you’ll never lose just like riding
a bicycle or dancing the Macarena or
making a lemon meringue pie or anything
that you know how to do it’s because
you’ve made conscious contact and I’d
like to suggest that there’s a big
difference between knowing about a
divine presence knowing about a sacred
awareness knowing about God and knowing
God there’s a big difference just like
there’s a big difference between knowing
about the possibility of being able to
heal myself of something that is
bothering me perhaps a disease process I
perhaps may believe that it’s possible
because I’ve read other people and I’ve
heard others say it and I’ve read the
testimony and I’ve listened to the tapes
and I’ve gone to the seminars
but until you have made conscious
contact with it
you’ll never know it and I’d like to
suggest there are there’s a wonderful
poem I’d like to share this poem with
you it’s written by a wonderful woman
her name is Valerie Cox and she lives up
in Seattle and she’s written quite a bit
of poetry this particular poem really
speaks to me to the difference between
what you know and what you believe in
immerse yourself in this in these words
a woman was waiting at an airport one
night with several long hours before her
flight she hunted for a book in the
airport shop bought a bag of cookies and
found a place to drop she was engrossed
in her book but happened to see that the
man beside her as bold as could be
grabbed a cookie or two from the bag
between which she tried to ignore to
avoid a scene she munched cookies and
watched the clock as this gutsy cookie
thief diminished her stock she was
getting more irritated as the minutes
ticked by thinking if I wasn’t so nice
I’d blacken his eye with each cookie she
took he took one too and when only one
was left she wondered what he’d do with
a smile on his face and a nervous laugh
he took the last cookie and broke it in
half he offered her half as he ate the
other she snatched it from him and
thought oh brother this guy has some
nerve and he’s also rude why he didn’t
even show any gratitude she had never
known when she had been so called and
sighed with relief when her flight was
called she gathered her belongings and
headed to the gate refusing to look back
at the thieving ingrate she boarded the
plane and sank in her seat then sought
her book which was almost complete as
she reached in her baggage she gasped
with surprise there was her bag of
cookies in front of her eyes
I love that I love that if mine are here
she moaned with despair then the others
were his and he tried to share too late
to apologize she realized with grief
that she was the rude one
the ingrate the thief the cookie thief
and all of us in some ways our cookie
thieves I have now finished 67 verses of
the Dow and I’ve written 67 essays on
when you change the way you look at
things the things you look at change and
this isn’t just a clever play on words
here this is a quantum truth it’s my
friend Deepak Chopra has often said to
me quantum physics is not only stranger
than you think it is it’s stranger than
you can think so that if you look at
your origination the place that you came
from this things that allow to called
the DAO this great source that is
everywhere there is no place that it is
not and yet it is doing nothing and yet
it leaves nothing undone if you go out
and just go for a walk this afternoon
when you get home just look at the
perfection of all that is just look at
the clouds and look at the sky and look
at the ocean and look at the trees and
look at the leaves and even more
important look at the space between the
leaves and look at the invisible nough
sand the perfection of how everything is
there’s a constancy if you will and this
constancy is always there and your goal
my goal in the time that I have with you
here today is to convince you to go to a
place within yourself where you can
emulate
that divine perfection which requires
you to do nothing which never uses force
which never pushes itself which
recognizes something I’m gonna read to
you just one of the verses of the Dow
and a little bit of what I wrote about
it and I seldom read to an audience
because I don’t like being read to
myself but I’m just gonna share a little
bit of this here’s what Lao Tzu said in
verse 29 do you think you can take over
the universe and improve it I do not
believe it can be done everything under
heaven is a sacred vessel and cannot be
controlled trying to control leads to
ruin trying to grasp we lose allow your
life to unfold naturally know that it
too is a vessel of perfection just as
you breathe in breathe out there is a
time for being ahead a time for being
behind a time for being in motion a time
for being at rest a time for being
vigorous a time for being exhausted a
time for being safe a time for being in
danger to the sage all of life is a
movement toward perfection so what need
has he for the excessive the extravagant
or the extreme there’s a time for
everything
imagine if you knew this if you really
knew that what you were experiencing
emotionally in your life was a part of
what there is a time for and that you’re
not really doing anything Lao 2 says it
over and over again you’re not doing
anything you’re being done
you’re being done right now you’re one
of the 10,000
things and it is all being done all of
it
like I do yoga every morning or almost
everywhere five six days a week do this
90-minute Bikram yoga this hot yoga and
this has helped me so much with just
that simple little thing just
remembering what it says in verse 29 of
the DAO that there are times when you’re
in the midst of yoga when you have a
position where you have to put this foot
out and you have to turn this one down
and you have to get down here like this
and you have to take this arm and I’m
gonna do it and you have to do that for
60 seconds in a hundred and ten degree
room that’s after doing many other
postures as well there was a time when I
would do that and I’d be so exhausted
and all I could think about was when is
this 60 seconds gonna be up oh my god
when are we gonna do this through with
this posture when are we gonna get on –
I could lie down on the floor and
finally and they begin to realize as
this thing this doing the dowel thing
has really changed me dramatically so
that now when I’m in that position with
one arm bound and one iron up and it is
exhausting and you’re stretching and
you’ve got your arm right next to your
ear and you’re holding up that you say
to yourself there’s a time for being
exhausted and there’s a time for rest
there’s a time for things not to work
out imagine if you knew that in the
midst of my working with my daughter for
example when I see the struggle that
she’s going to and I can stand back and
say there’s a time there’s a time for
her to experience this and there’s a
time for her not to experience it if you
read Katie’s life you’ll see that there
was a time for deep depression there was
a time for fear it was a time for anger
and worry and despair deep despair
and when you’re in those things if you
could step outside of yourself and look
at it and say there’s also a time for
its opposite
as long as I’m incarnated into a
physical world there’s a time for all of
it and as you do you get to a new place
in your life where you begin to look at
all the things that are happening to you
because you remember one of the most
verse 40 of the DAO says it’s all about
returning it’s all about returning
returning to what returning to the place
from which you originated the first nine
months of your life you lived inside of
your mother’s womb in water and doing
this whole nine months nobody could get
in there and mess around with you nobody
could get in there and get you to worry
about anything
you didn’t have sonograms that you’d
look at and say my god I don’t have a
nose yet what the hell is going on I
hope I sure hope I get a nose and you
got into nose therapy and you worry
about it over what if it doesn’t happen
what you don’t do that then all of a
sudden perfectly it all unfolds in
exactly the way it’s going to unfold
independent of your opinion about it
you’re not doing anything nothing is
left undone you’re being done you’re
being completed and you were totally
completely at peace with it you were
surrendered to it you allowed it it
wasn’t a struggle it wasn’t the day and
then you popped out of there and then
you said thank you God thank you Dow
thank you source we’ll take over from
here and that was the biggest mistake
all of a sudden you took over and you
edged God out e.g oh you edged God out
and you took on an ego didn’t you and
what is an ego it’s just an idea just an
idea about who you are instead of being
a piece of God a piece of the source you
decided and those around you decided
that you were something different and if
you studied quantum physics and you took
the tiny little particle that began you
and you looked at try to find out where
it came from and reduced it down to its
tiniest sub sub sub atomic properties
ultimately you would discover what
laoshu knew but it’s the spirit that
gives life that you didn’t come from a
particle the particles do not create
particles particles do not come from
particles originally all particles come
from an energy a field of energy that
has no beginnings and no ends and no
boundaries and that’s who you are and
returning back to that and letting go of
the idea that who you are is what you
have and who you are is who you control
I don’t think there’s any more all
pervasive theme in the daodejing
than the idea of being a non interferer
you Steven I mean isn’t it it’s about
not interfering isn’t it it’s about
letting go it’s about allowing it’s
about detaching it’s about disconnecting
yourself from this belief that you are
in charge of other people I’m the father
of eight children and the father of
motivation that’s what they tell me so
I’ve got and as this father of eight
children one of the things that I’ve
recognized and what has made me I think
a better parent particularly even since
I’ve been doing this is
my willingness to I call it the bite
your tongue verse of the doubt
just hang back just for a second just as
you’re about to interfere just as you’re
about to lay it on and tell somebody
else how they should be and what they
should do and how they should do it you
step back and realize that what Khalil
Gibran the Great Lebanese poet and
writing in the Prophet said was just a
basic truth your children are not your
children they are the products of life’s
longing for itself they come through you
but not for you and you step back and I
can’t even begin to tell you how freeing
it is to realize that you don’t have
anything to do you don’t have anyone to
control you can be at peace and I watch
and I’ve become much more of an observer
even even on airplanes I was in London
five days ago and I don’t know if you’ve
flown in and out of Heathrow lately but
things have really changed you know we
couldn’t take anything on the plane the
terrorists whoever they are are selling
fear and we respond with more fear every
time you use force you create a counter
force and then another counter force and
before you know and the dow teaches us
all I mean one of the great lessons in
the Dow is that any country that has its
primary resources and its energy placed
on building weapons is not of the doubt
and those countries that have their
consciousness located in the dow put
their energy into tractors and building
homes and growing food not building
weapons I saw a movie not too long ago
with the Nicolas Cage about warlords or
something the Lords of war I think it
was something like them one of those
alarming things about how much energy we
are in the world creating energy to
destroy ourselves that we have literally
created from our consciousness enough
weaponry on this planet to eliminate all
life within just a few moments it’s all
there it’s all there for us we’ve
allowed ourselves to move so far away
from the great teachings of the great
spiritual masters and we believe that
we’re a Christian nation or that we’re a
spiritual nation when we find ourselves
having moved away from these simple
principles and then getting upset with
other people because we can have these
kind of weapons but they can’t and we
don’t look hard enough at ourselves in
all the ways that we have deflected
ourselves from the greatest teachings of
all of the great spiritual masters our
self wants you to be your higher self
wants you to be at peace your ego wants
to keep you in a state of turmoil in
order to maintain its mastery and
control over your life you’ve probably
listened to your ego most of your life
the result of listening to ego is that
most of us allow ego to talk us into
choosing dominance rather than tolerance
as our style of interacting with life
making the change from dominance to
Tolerance requires disciplining ego and
listening to your sacred self I’m
speaking from personal experience in
this matter and it is one of the
toughest assignments my Higher Self has
presented me with I have spent many
years being dominated by my ego and I
have unwittingly made dominance and
judgment rather than tolerance a
cornerstone of my relating my
suggestions are often my personal
experience of transcending my ego driven
instincts making the transition from
dominance to tolerance is especially
difficult because the desire for ego
satisfaction is so strong to move toward
the tolerance that your higher self
encourages and away from your ego driven
need to control and judge you will want
to examine the qualities that sustain a
tolerant approach to life to become more
tolerant and less controlled by your
false self start practicing being
satisfied with what is if someone you
love acts meekly towards you your ego
wants that person to be more assertive
if that person is assertive your
then decides to dislike assertiveness if
you eat too much you start thinking
about how nice it would be to be thinner
if you go on a diet and all of your
thoughts then will be about food if you
stay at home for a long period your ego
starts telling you how nice it is to
travel go on the road and you start
thinking about how nice it would be to
stay home you’re in a relationship and
begin to imagine it would be nicer to be
uninvolved you’re not in a relationship
and you start wanting to be in one your
children are running around the house
and you start thinking about escaping
you’re aren’t at home and your ego
starts having you think about nothing
but your children if you identify with
this kind of inner dialog rest assured
that ego has temporarily separated you
from your sacred self in its ongoing
program to convince you of your
separateness it needs to separate you
from oneness with the center of your
being then it can keep you in that state
of trying to dominate and control others
as a way of trying to achieve your inner
balance and bliss trouble is you cannot
get there if you are separated from the
awareness of your higher self as you
begin listening to your higher self and
quiet and contemplative moments she
began relaxing and taking the pressure
off you stop the false thinking that
everyone in your life needs to be
dominated or controlled by you or that
others must live up to your expectations
for you to be happy
people are the way they are and your
need to dominate or change them in any
way is the Edict of your false self your
ego is as usual trying to convince you
of your separateness
it also doesn’t want you to catch on to
how it is controlling your life so it
convinces you that if you don’t dominate
others but they will get the best of you
your higher self has absolutely no need
to dominate anyone or anything this is
the ticket to freedom
right now though in this very moment
your ego is working to convince you that
the higher self and tolerance are
ridiculous ideas ego will argue that
tolerance means permitting criminal
behavior and health and social problems
its favorite example is that it would
mean permitting the hitlers of the world
to commit atrocities while we tolerantly
look on
your higher-self can see beyond this
logic so of course you can too if you
are willing when Mother Teresa was asked
if she would march against the war in
Vietnam she replied no but if you have a
March for peace I’ll be there when you
become peaceful within that is what you
will have to give away when you are
dominated by your ego you dominate
others if there is no inner harmony
there is no outer harmony ego needs the
illusion of enemies in order to control
you when you are controlling others it
is because you were permitted ego to be
in control the paradox here is that you
will affect the world in the ways that
you wish when you ceased trying to
improve conditions within tolerance and
judgment it is only when you are not
controlled by ego that you can choose to
not control others what you believed was
power when you dominated others was
actually the external activity of ego
controlling you your impact on the world
at large begins with the smaller world
of yourself you will foster freedom and
peace when you are freed of egos control
and know the peace of your higher self
traveling the path of the sacred quest
one of the first steps along your path
is learning tolerance by practicing
seeing the world as it is rather than as
you demand it to be these then are some
of the ways that the ego attempts to
rule our lives our goal and knowing our
sacred self is to have the higher
identities triumph over our lower
identities essentially your higher self
wants you to be a piece that wants you
to know truth it no longer needs you to
dominate others it is a very peaceful
loving place to be at this point I would
like to have you stop looking at how you
can get your own sacred self in order
and begin to look at how the world can
do this as well when we have a world of
people who are radiating outward the
kinds of things I’ve been talking about
throughout this tape you’ll begin to see
a whole new world order one that is not
dominated by a world
go and so my conclusion here will not be
an odyssey into all the evils of our
society I do not intend to end estate
cataloging all the problems that we have
created as a result of allowing our egos
to be the dominant force in our world
this is not to say that I fail to
recognize that we have plenty of
problems that have grown out of our
preoccupation with satisfying our egos
nor am i blind to the fact that our
individual egos have interacted in ways
that have produced war crime addictions
poverty social inequities and government
tyrannies we have created a world ego
that reflects on the global level the
same lack of depth and richness that
exists in our individual lives
throughout this tape I have presented
reasons for taming the personal ego and
suggestions for how to do that the very
same can be said for doing this on a
global level I hope it is as obvious to
you as it is to me that the collective
ego will benefit when we transcend our
individual egos you as a single
individual have a sacred quest that
quest involves coming to your higher
spiritual nature and inviting it to show
you the way of the sacred self in your
daily life this means denying the
demands of your ego
if those demands contradict the guidance
of your higher self our world is a
collection of individuals urged on by
the loving presence within all of us to
achieve the sacred quest personally and
collectively the world will become a
peaceful fulfilled cooperative loving
truthful tolerant and pure environment
as the individual parts that make up the
collective consciousness restrain their
egos as is the microcosm so is the
macrocosm the whole behaves precisely as
does its individual parts many people I
speak to tell me that they feel
powerless to affect the global community
they believe that given the scope of the
world’s problems their efforts are so
infinitesimal as to be insignificant
they simply are not seeing that it is
precisely through a change in individual
consciousness that the world will be
transformed all of the problems that we
face as a group reflect those we have
individually the world is encountering a
spiritual deficit that reflects our need
to consciously get on the path of our
sacred quest
the solution to individual and global
problems is to overcome the spiritual
deficit when you make the shift in
consciousness allowing yourself to be an
agent of heightened awareness you are
contributing to the transformation of
our world you are not separate from the
other souls on this planet you share the
identical energy that embodies the souls
of Rwanda and Pakistan for example you
are the lamp and God as the electricity
it flows through you as surely as it
flows through all living things when you
make the decision to choose the guidance
of your higher self over your false self
you have plugged into the divine inner
energy when you run your life based on
the principles of the higher self you
are contributing to the transformation
of the entire world you must strengthen
your will to choose the sacred path when
your ego calls you a fool for believing
that could ever be a world without war
if your ego can convince you you will
become part of a collective egos
falseness individuals who choose eco
propaganda our individuals who will
build more bombs and manufacture more
weapons currently there are some six
billion people on the planet about three
million are at war or in skirmishes that
cause them to kill and torture each
other but that means that there are five
billion 997 million who are not at war
this is a hopeful statistic which our
egos do not want us to consider
by contrast the collective ego strives
to keep the populace nervously on the
edge with reminders to view the world in
terms of us versus them this ego
viewpoint not only reinforces the insane
escalation of ways to kill each other
but is also responsible for most of our
social problems the world ego is our
false self and this is the primary
characteristic that we need to recognize
we want to believe that we are our
physical bodies and that the territories
we occupy are so important that we are
willing to kill each other in order to
maintain those boundary lines we have
become convinced that our true
identities are located in tribal
ancestors traditions histories
genealogies and the color and shape of
our bodies we have lost sight of our
authentic identities because of the
labels that our egos have assigned to us
our egos have coalesced into a worldwide
false perception of ourselves based on
an unwillingness to know our true
spiritual nature
although all of our spiritual leaders
have reminded us of our divinity and
implored and even commanded us to love
one another the world eagle has won this
battle and produced ancient enmities and
uncountable Horrors in the long history
of humanity the spiritual solution to
the major problems that face the world
is to bring into positions of power
those who are not motivated and driven
by their egos but see the collective
good as their primary objective we need
leaders who do not manifest primitive
tendencies of consciousness such as hate
Envy greed bloodthirstiness and
intolerance but are grounded in love
tolerance truth and purity as you travel
the path of your sacred quest you will
help to dispel the absurdity of
specialness that the ego so assiduously
promotes you will see an end to this
kind of thinking in your life and on a
worldwide scale as well as a higher part
of ourselves that I have talked about on
this tape reacts to a vision that is
infinite
this is assuredly not the vision of the
ego the ego is just as cowardly on a
collective scale as it is on an
individual basis the world ego is
frightened of a mass appeal to overcome
our spiritual deficit when people face
inward and embrace a more loving
perspective the power of the sacred self
will create change not only in the
community but in the entire world as
well the world eagle will do all that it
can to prevent this kind of inner
approach it will ridicule those who
promote meditation peaceful
demonstrations and the love of God as a
way out of the morass of social evils
the collective ego convinces itself that
money makes it special and thus it will
throw dollars at any problem and pride
itself on the undertaking consume
consume consume more is better the more
you accumulate the fancier your toys the
bigger your shopping malls the more
petrol that you use in your automobiles
the more successful you are it is a push
away from peace toward a style of
consumerism and capitalism that is
defended as the way of civilization get
your higher-self knows there is no peace
in the more is better it is just as true
on the collective level as it is on the
individual plane the higher self urges
you to simplify and to avoid
contributing to anything that hurts
others or
creases the separation from your
spiritual source as you listen more
closely to your sacred self and
transcend your ego so too will the world
ego be shifted away from power control
and money back to the basic virtues of
higher awareness back to peace beauty
love purity tolerance patience and
compassion this does not mean that the
benefits of Technology cannot be enjoyed
it means that the ego will not be the
motivating force in our lives what we
truly are as a people is a force that
craves peace and simplicity we want that
deeper awareness that comes with the
sanity of the higher self it is insane
to continue believing that we are a
collection of tribes each with a
separate identity and a special mission
it is insane to believe that anyone who
does not fit into our particular tribal
mentality is a potential enemy we know
that there is not a separate God for
each of us or even for each of our
tribes we know that there is a universal
divine intelligence that flows through
all of us and in that sacred space
within us we are all one in the same we
know that the best within us is love
kindness and compassion to get our egos
both individually and collectively have
campaigned long and hard to promote a
false idea how sane is it for people to
be killing each other over disputes that
ancient egos created long before we
arrived how sane is it for us to believe
that some of us deserve to eat the food
that God provides and that others do not
deserve it by virtue of their geographic
location how sane is it for us to pump
up our youth with the philosophy of the
free ride by leading them to believe
that if they want something they deserve
it how sane is it to show our children
pictures of violence as entertainment
and allow them to adopt the Eagle belief
that it is human nature to hurt others
as a way to defend a right to be special
and separate as our higher selves begin
to triumph over ego in the daily
decision-making of our lives we will
truly be making progress on the path of
the sacred quest for all of humanity
you must banish all doubt about your
ability to facilitate such a quest and
begin to know that you are both the
microcosm and the macrocosm there is a
universe within you a unified field of
all possibilities
that you can reach as you become the
compassionate witness be silent shut
down the inner dialogue most important
transcend the false self that we call
the ego that is when the healing will
begin to occur the world ego is destined
to be restrained as more individuals
look within and consult the higher part
of themselves the doubts are vanishing
and the spiritual revolution is well
underway moving toward an egoless world
is not some far-fetched idea any more
than the disintegration of the Iron
Curtain was a far-fetched idea to those
who heard such talk a few years before
it happened it did indeed seem absurd
but ideas thoughts and inner knowings
are powerful instruments for the
disintegration of the false self one of
the simplest and most powerful ways of
doing this is taught by Aetna s4 on
writing in his book meditation he
advises us to spend 30 minutes every
morning in meditation repeating the
prayer of Saint Francis in saying this
prayer we both transcend the ego and
invite the sacred self to guide us
through the day I invite you to join me
in this daily prayer as we share the
path of the sacred quest the prayer of
st. Francis goes like this Lord make me
an instrument of thy peace where there
is hatred let me sow love where there is
injury pardon where there is doubt faith
where there is despair hope where there
is darkness light where there is sadness
joy o divine master grant that I may not
so much seek to be consoled as to
console to be understood as to
understand to be loved as to love for it
is in giving that we received it is in
pardoning that we are pardoned it is in
dying to self that we are born to
eternal life if you have the same
knowing about your world dramatic
changes will take place as we
collectively put to use the greatest
force in the universe the force of love
it seems only fitting to quote my
spiritual teacher nisargadatta maharaj
as I close this tape
he reminds us of the simplicity of
creating a society that is based on
spiritual principles he puts it this way
my stand is clear produced to distribute
feed before you eat give before you take
think of others before you think of
yourself only a selfless society based
on sharing can be stable and happy this
is the only practical solution if you do
not want it then fight I want it I
encourage you to do the same god bless
you and thank you for listening and if
if we my goal in my life has been to get
to a place where I live from a place of
of God realization that is that I there
are different kinds of love and I aspire
at this time in my life at the age of 72
to to live from this place and this
place only so that no matter what kind
of pressure is put on me no matter what
I hear the only thing I want to come out
of me is the kind of thing that came out
of your beloved founder this is a this
is not just a prescription for building
a wonderful country but it’s a
prescription for creating a world in
which we can finally once and for all
rid ourselves of the violence and the
hatred and the bitterness and the
tension and the fears and the wars and
the kinds of things that so dominate the
media and the kinds of things that we
are hearing every day in our lives so
it seems to me that there are really two
selves that we have within us one of
these cells is called I call it the ego
e G Oh to me it is a synonym and a
acronym for edging God out and my
teacher in India nisargadatta maharaj
called this thing the this ego he called
it the false self and the false self is
a belief system that we have that tells
us that who we are is defined by certain
kinds of qualities and characteristics
we are told that our identity is in not
so much who we are because we can’t
answer this question so many people have
difficulty if I were to ask the question
and I’ve done this many many times with
patience when I had a practice many
years ago can you just answer the
question
Who am I as we contemplate that simple
little question with three words Who am
I what comes out very often is all of
the things that identify us with this
false self and the false self is really
the part of us that believes that Who I
am is what I own what I have so if we
begin to believe that who we are is
identified with what it is that we own
then we have a tendency to say the more
of it that I have the more important I
am and the better than I am and so we’ll
also spend a big hunk of our life going
after and trying to accumulate as much
stuff as we possibly can the ego is also
defined by something called what I what
I do or what I accomplish
so that my identity is all tied in with
what it is that I can call my my
accomplishments who I am I am a writer I
have written this many books I have I
have this business I do these kinds of
things and and we sort of identify
ourselves this way but I think back to
what quantum physics teaches us that
nothing in this physical universe
arrives here from they say that probably
the essence of quantum physics is that
particles themselves do not originate
from particles that every single
particle that is makes up the physical
form of the world is originates
someplace else
it already it originates in what we call
non form or non-existence or spirit or
the the invisible and this invisible
miss is inside each and every one of us
we originate there we come from nowhere
a know wher e from nowhere and in one
split second we go from nowhere to now
here n Oh W H e re
bit different in spacing while we’re
here in now here we recognize if we’re
really honest that where we’re going and
where we’re headed is back to a no wher
e the poet TS Eliot once said that we
shall not cease from exploration
but at the end of all of our exploring
will be to return to the place from
which we originated and to know it for
the first time I think the poet was
speaking about death
my feeling is and my writing and all of
the work that I have done in my lifetime
is based upon the idea that we can come
to know the place from which we
originated without having to leave our
bodies without having to die that there
is something within each and every one
of us one of the great messages of the
New Testament in the Christian faith and
Jesus was even the least among you can
do all that I have done and even greater
things that it is within each and every
one of us to be able to create miracles
for ourselves to be able to heal
ourselves of any infirmity to be able to
attract whatever it is that we place our
attention on but the problem with this
is with the development of the ego is
that we have come to believe that being
ordinary is our Dharma it’s what it is
that defines us and when I use my hand
up here like this I use this part right
here at my waist approximately to
represent what I call ordinary levels of
consciousness that we come into this
world we are told that you will be
identified by and defined by what it is
that you accomplish what it is that you
own what other people think of you it’s
another component of the ego and that
you are separate from everyone else and
that these are your limitations these
are the things that you’re capable of
creating this is exactly how far you can
go you can’t get to a higher place than
this so accept your lot in life
but for me I have never done that I was
very lucky as a young boy I lived in an
orphanage until I was 10 years of age
and while I was moved around from place
to place and didn’t have the advantages
of having parents that were mine until
my mother got us all back together again
when I was 10 my father just walked away
and abandoned his family he was by all
definitions a bad man a man who was an
alcoholic a man who was very abusive a
man who had no sense of his
responsibilities and left my mother with
three little boys under the age of four
– raised by herself he just disappeared
and just went away and I find it very
fascinating because one of the things
that I learned in those earliest years
of my life is that self-reliance is
probably what my Dharma was that came
into this world I believe to teach this
whole idea of self-reliance
and self-reliance means that you go
within and you rely upon the self when
you ask the question Who am I and you
define it on the basis of what you have
what you do what your reputation is what
other people think of you how much you
own then you keep yourself from reaching
this what I call up here when I move my
arm across here at this elevated level
reaching this higher level what I call
extraordinary consciousness that it’s
something that each and every one of us
have the same the same vision that the
founder of your country had is something
that is possible for each and every one
of us to have
even the least among us have within us
the capacity to raise our awareness the
problem is that we are so fixed in our
subconscious minds on what is what our
limitations are and what we can’t
accomplish and what is impossible for us
to do and we get so fixed in on this
that we literally begin to act as if
this were a reality so if you are
interested in moving to this place where
you can indeed perform miracles where
you can create the kind of world for
yourself and for others around you from
this higher place if you can get
yourself to that place the only way that
you can do it is by changing your
concept of yourself
desire what you desire desires you or
what you want wants you and it’s really
coming to understand that there is an
energy that will bring things to you
that will have things begin to show up
and this is not to say that you just put
out your manifestation desire and then
just sit around and wait for some huge
magnet in the sky just turn on and be
facing towards you and have everything
just go there it is there’s an element
of working with this divine universal
force that is everywhere and a part of
this divine essence it is a divine
creation as you become more tuned into
this divine consciousness you begin to
see that that there’s really a spiritual
solution to every problem in your life
that the things that don’t seem to be
working the problems that you may have
whatever they are in relationships and
finances and healing and so on that
there is yes there is a solution in the
physical plane that requires you to get
up and do certain kinds of things and
act in certain ways but in back of that
action is a thought and the same force
or the same power that moves waves to
particles which is the act of creation
also moves your pictures or your
thoughts into the world of form the same
intelligence the same energy that moves
a star across the sky moves the thought
across your mind this energy this
attractiveness this attraction
this pull towards you and realignment of
your intention with divine purpose is
something that we can’t measure in the
physical world the way we would like to
be able to measure the way we can
measure homes and watts and so on when
we’re talking about electricity
nevertheless it is exactly the very same
power and the power that allows for
anything to go from wave to particle
also is behind your ability to think and
therefore your ability to picture and
your ability to decide what it is that
you do desire there is something inside
of you that allows you to desire
something it isn’t the desire I’m
talking about I’m talking about that
which gives birth to it that which
allows it to be you the analogy here is
when you begin to take care of your body
in a certain way and to treat it well to
give it plenty of water to avoid toxins
to give it the rest that it needs to to
nourish it with the proper vitamins and
minerals to give it the proper amount of
exercise to do the things that show that
you are respectful of this garage that
is housing your soul it becomes
automatic it isn’t any longer something
that you have to struggle with that you
have to work on and that you have to
think about all the time you go to
automatic it’s a lot like writing also
and creating and painting and music you
know when when Picasso would was
interviewed about his painting and they
asked him how do you paint he said when
I go into the studio I leave my body and
my mind at the door the way the Muslims
leave their shoes before they enter the
mosque and I just allow my spirit in
to that world the spirit this soul this
force that I have talked so much about
in this whole entire program is really a
power of love that you feel in your
heart it isn’t something that you
process with your mind but when you
understand it and know that it is an
energy that is working that brings
things into the world into your world
realigns you if you will with what it is
you’d like to create or have for
yourself you begin to cooperate see this
divine intelligence will cooperate with
you but again only if you feel that
you’re worthy and only if you know that
you and it are connected the minute you
sense any sense of separation it shuts
off and then it you place an obstacle
there it will shut up I’ll give an
example of how this energy works in
overcoming some of the things that are
struggles for most people in our lives
most of us have addictions of one kind
or another
almost everyone suffers from some form
of addiction and when I say addiction
I’m talking about something that has
seems to have more power or control over
us than we would like if things were to
be perfect so for some it’s sugar for
some it’s alcohol for some it’s drugs
for some it’s food for some it’s
approval you know needing to be a part
of the tribe what will they think
remember the mantra of the tribe in
terms of understanding this as a power
and as an energy I would like you to
think of back to the room that I talked
about earlier and your back is against
the wall and everything to the right
even though we know that it’s all one
spirit God is in everything okay but for
purposes of seeing it here listening to
it here we go back to the room and
everything on the right represents the
physical world now let’s look at an
addiction
something that owned us there are three
aspects to an addiction it can be an
addiction to money this can be a nation
to power also anything at all for many
in our culture it is to drugs and
alcohol
a problem that we are going to have to
resolve not with legislation but with a
spirit a new spiritual awareness the
only thing that ever has seemed to work
for getting people off of addictions is
a a Alcoholics Anonymous which has as
its base spirituality God finding the
solution to that which controls you in
something other than that which is
external to you finding it within
yourself and I speak from experience
today I am a camel a camel is an animal
that starts his day out on his knees and
it ends its day on its knees
and it can go 24 hours without a drink
and there was a time when I didn’t and I
couldn’t and I played around with
substances and I played around with
alcohol and I drank it every day not
enormous amounts never in serious
serious trouble like duis and things
like that but just so that it was just a
part of my daily life and then I found
by my as my life and my work moved more
into a spiritual dimension that it
became less and less important to me and
I found that I was able to sort of
notice it and observe it and no longer
be attached to it so that if you look at
an addiction from everything to the
right-hand side of your room in the
physical plane there are three aspects
of it all of which are in the physical
domain there is the craving there is the
craver and there is that which is craved
and all of those are on the right-hand
side of the room the craver is the
person the body the craving
is the thought the image I want that I
need that I must have that it’s
different from the craver
and that which is craved which is
external to me the cocaine the marijuana
the drugs the sugar the hot fudge sundae
but whatever it is and it’s all in the
physical domain and as long as you stay
here in the physical domain and try to
deal with it and get rid of it in your
life you are still trapped because you
haven’t gone to your source the source
is the way you transcend the duality of
the physical plane and so when you go to
your source and go to the left-hand side
of the room and become your source and
now become the witness and observe that
and just notice it and just put your
attention on and just watch it with love
so I’ll be talking about in the next
principle and just observe it from a
perspective of I am connected to that it
is me I have become it and I can also
transcend it and go beyond it by just
putting my attention on a new aspect of
myself which is pure and so from the
position of the source or the sorcerer
you just watch it and it’s not you
you’re free from it you are just
noticing oh there goes Wayne again it’s
gonna have another beer
and he thinks he really must have this
and on but from the perspective of the
witness of the observer over here you
are pure love because that’s what God is
that’s what the higher part of you is
just pure unconditional love and you
direct that energy to that aspect of you
which has allowed itself to be addicted
and it disappeared when I left those
things behind many many years ago in my
life it was as the result of saying and
hearing a voice
and the voice said you’ve tried
everything else
now try me and when I went there when I
went there and truly went there and then
began my manifestation meditation on
that it was gone and now today I can
look at those things that I used to
crave those cravings I can look at the
craver and all that is craved and I
could laugh at it
Jing your result with gratitude and
generosity and the affirmation for this
principle is I am deeply thankful for
all that I’ve received and I enjoy
giving to others in the spirit of love
and service this is a very important
part not only of being able to have show
up in your life what it is that is the
fulfillment of your heart’s desire but
it is also a beautiful way to begin
living your life every day there’s an
old saying that says if you’re not
generous when it’s hard you will not be
generous when it’s easy and generosity
isn’t necessarily the giving away of
what you have but it’s more of a
attitude of spirit as is gratitude so
there are really three components to
this eighth principle the first is
gratitude
the second is generosity and the third
is service let me take them one at a
time here the first is gratitude and I
remember reading a book a few years back
by a friend of mine his name is Dan
Millman
I believe Dan has a program with nine
guck owners a wonderful speaker and he
wrote a book called a way of the
Peaceful Warrior and in the way of the
Peaceful Warrior he had this character
who was an enlightened kind of being and
in Dan’s book the way of the Peaceful
Warrior this character’s name was
Socrates
and Socrates was the fella who worked in
a gas station but he could do all of
these bizarre kinds of things he could
jump up onto a roof 14 feet in the air
by just transporting himself and he had
this ability to make himself disappear
and to change his shape and do many of
the things that most of us because most
of us are cookie thieves believed
somehow that we can’t do these things
and we know a truth and we are attached
to that truth that this is the only
dimension there is and there are no
other dimensions that I can get involved
in or peer into because my senses have
told me this and we’ve come to put an
extraordinary amount of faith in these
senses which mislead us all the time
about reality so Socrates was one of
these people who was living in a
different dimension or a different level
of consciousness so Socrates tells his
student to go out onto a rock and sit
until he can think of something
important and come back and tell him
something important or something
significant I believe it was and he goes
out there the student goes out there dan
is telling his own story and he sits
there on a rock and he sits there and
every time he thinks he’s got something
that’s really important then he thinks
about telling Socrates this he realizes
how unimportant this is so after sitting
there for a long period of time and
finally after going to Socrates and
telling him things and Socrates says no
that’s not important back he would go to
his rock and he did this two or three
times now that’s not that’s not
significant they go back to Italy so
finally he came and he said something in
Socrates said to him you’ve got it you
have discovered something significant
and that something significant was he
said to him there are no ordinary
moments
there are no ordinary moments as
Socrates said yes that’s significant
that is a great teaching a great
learning and that’s really the essence
of gratitude the essence of gratitude is
understanding that every moment of your
life
is something to be grateful for and that
everything that shows up in your life is
something that you will want to be
expressing a sense of gratitude about I
speak often about how we take things for
granted and taking things for granted is
one of the obstacles to having an
attitude of gratitude taking things for
granted very often I mean I’ve often
said that I think we should have special
days every year in which we appreciate
all the different aspects of our being
you know like we give thanks for our
liver on Mondays you know on the 3rd of
January liver Appreciation Day you know
or just try to imagine what it would be
like if you didn’t have that liver there
would be nothing for you to imagine and
then you know for the air that we
breathe and for the ground that we walk
upon and for gravity and for the food
that we have and for the sky and for you
know our eyelids which we just take for
granted without them how difficult it
would be for us to get through even an
hour of our day and our toenails and and
everything about ourselves to begin to
experience a sense of gratitude now when
we’re talking about affirmations and
we’re talking about manifestation here
we want to look at what it is we are
asking to have manifested for ourselves
and remember we are not creating
anything we’re just redistributing if
you will everything that needs to be
created is already in the universe
there’s no place to go I remember when
the story was told of Swami Muktananda
great spiritual teacher who was dying
and all of his devotees and students but
gathered around and he was leaving and
he had announced that his students were
praying with them and they were pleading
with him please don’t go please don’t go
swami flee we’re not ready for you to
leave and he opened his eye and looked
at them and said don’t be silly where
could I go where is there to go
everything is already here and so when
you are manifesting and you are asking
for things to show up in your life and
they begin to show up in your life
learning to be grateful for this now
that’s not so difficult most of us say
thank you I have a little ritual that I
do every day and that is almost every
day God sends money to me in some form
particularly when I’m running happens
virtually every day of my life and it’s
a little game I have mental game that I
have played with myself I’ll be out
running and I’ll be thinking about all
of the abundance that has shown up in my
life and how grateful I am and how
grateful I am to have my children one of
the things that my wife and I practice
regularly is telling our children how
fortunate we feel to beat their parents
how lucky we are not how lucky they are
to have us as parents but how blessed
and how grateful we are and I’ll often
pick up my little boy or one of my
little girls and just put my arms around
say you know I am really lucky to have
you and I’m really blessed to have you
show up in my life I feel that way about
all my children and having that kind of
attitude is something that I do with
everything that has shown up in my life
because I lived a big hunk of my life
without a lot of abundance with a great
deal of scarcity but even while I was
living in scarcity there was never a
sense of poor me or I wish I had more or
even looking at other people and saying
they’ve got it and I don’t that attitude
keeps you from being grateful for what
you have even as a child I didn’t learn
to say oh they’ve got a cattle
and I have to we have to drive around in
an old Chevy or something there was a
sort of an internal knowing that you
haven’t earned a Cadillac now that isn’t
something that you even think about as
being yours they used to talk about
being able to buy a Cadillac when I was
a young man you know buying my first car
and they said the Cadillac cost almost
$4,000 I couldn’t comprehend a Cadillac
costing $4,000 and having $4,000 to buy
a car I mean it wasn’t like something I
would even give a moment’s notice to if
other people had that that that was just
their karma or there was their benefits
or somehow they had done something to
earn that you know today when I go to
buy a car $4,000 is an option you want
this stereo system instead of this one
that would cost 4000 extra all right
throw it in what do I want to get what’s
got extra speakers I mean I mean my
first car was an old 1950 Plymouth that
had you know rusted outsides on it and
and I washed that thing every day and I
was so proud it I was so excited about
this and the idea of looking at somebody
else’s new car and thinking that there
was something wrong here that they had
it and I didn’t couldn’t have occurred
to me and I believe it’s that attitude
of being grateful for whatever shows up
in your life that allows additional
things to show up in your life and my
little ritual that I play every day when
I’m out running is a little coins that I
find in the street I found one this
morning when I was running before I made
this presentation right out in front of
the of the hotel a penny a shiny penny
and you know I have a never admitted
this in public before but I have a large
jar of coins that is hidden behind in a
bookcase behind a hole nobody knows
where this is except myself and this
contains all of the money that I have
found in the last 20 years
and it’s a huge amount of money some of
it is wrinkled up bill a lot of it is
foreign money because I’ve run in
foreign countries and most of the coins
are dirty and they’ve been out on the
street for a long time and there’s a
couple of $20 bills there’s a hundred
dollar bill in there and every time I
look at that that little symbol that
just keeps growing it reminds me to be
grateful and when I pick up one of those
coins I always say thank you God for
this symbol of abundance that has shown
up in my life thank you and I put it in
my pocket and I put it away in a special
then when I get back to my office I go
to that little place and I put it in
there and I look at that and that’s my
reminder what gratitude does is it keeps
you connected to that source which
brings things into your life it keeps
that connection open and when you go to
that place when you do the meditation
and when you make what we call conscious
contact with your Higher Self and with
God when you make that conscious contact
you shift from a belief in God or a
knowing about God to knowing God there’s
a very big difference between knowing
about God and knowing God knowing about
God is a belief knowing God is conscious
contact it’s direct inner knowing and so
you make this inner contact and you have
a certainty about what it is that you
want to manifest and that that desire
that you have is consistent with all
nine of these principles that it is
based on unconditional love and it’s
based on the power of attraction and
it’s based on your higher awareness and
it’s based on generosity and service and
kindness and then you are absolutely
certain and then you’re able to detach
because you’re not really concerned
about how it’s going to show
you see your job in the whole business
of manifesting your job is not to say
how and when your job is to say yes just
yes and then you let the hull and the
wind take over now when I say this I
know immediately what the ego part of us
starts to think I want it now but I have
to have it this way but if I don’t get
it pretty soon then I’m going to go
broke and then if this doesn’t show up
over here then I’m gonna have to go on
welfare and if I have to go on welfare
than me and your mind starts playing all
of these games about how terrible things
are going to be if the person that you
want to manifest doesn’t show up the way
you want him to show up or if the child
that you expect to have isn’t showing up
on time or if the finances or if the job
or whatever and there’s this this push
and this anxiety and this stress which
is based on fear and based on distrust
but you know when you have this knowing
as it says in the court when you have
this certainty great things have no fear
of time you see the universal
intelligence doesn’t operate in the
parameters of time time is just our way
of carving up the oneness I was reading
a story of Einstein as a young boy and
one of the things that’s said about
young Einstein is that when he was a
little boy he picked up a compass and
when he picked up this compass he
noticed that there was something that
would move the needle but he couldn’t
find anything in the compass that was
moving the needle and he was intrigued
by what it was that would move the
needle and he would go and turn in a
certain way he’s making a 90-degree turn
and the needle would turn and face
whatever direction it was that he was
facing and yet he hadn’t done anything
and he was intrigued by what this force
was inside or outside or what it was
that allowed this at what would make
this needle move that force that
universal intelligence that thing that
is nameless that thing that we can’t
identify in the physical world is the
provider of all of the things that will
manifest to you in the physical world
and it is also the source of your life
so that when you have an alignment with
that force what happens is you get very
very peaceful and when you get peaceful
you stopped insisting you just know you
just know that it’s going to show up and
you’re not demanding you’re not looking
under the leaves for it you’re not
asking any for any favors
in fact you understand that this
universal force cannot provide special
favors because it is everywhere and if
it were just for you and not for someone
else that would immediately make it not
a universal force it would be now
someplace that it isn’t there’s no
favoritism in this there’s just this
positive absolute unconditionally loving
knowing force in the universe that holds
everything together that you come to
honor to respect to know and you know
it’s really like it’s like changing
around your perspective in life it’s
like walking a new path I’ve always
loved this I’ve read it many many times
in my talks it’s a little story by a
woman named Portia Nelson and she was
asked as a group of people were asked in
a seminar to write down her
autobiography
but they said you only have one page and
you have to write your autobiography in
five short chapters on one page the
autobiography of your life that was the
assignment so Portia Nelson wrote her
autobiography of her life in five short
chapters and this is what she said
chapter one I walk down the street
there’s a deep hole in the sidewalk I
fall in I am lost I’m helpless it isn’t
my fault it takes forever to find a way
out chapter two I walk down the same
street there’s a deep hole in the
sidewalk I pretend I don’t see it I fall
in again I can’t believe I’m in the same
place but it isn’t my fault it still
takes a long time to get out chapter 3 I
walk down the same street there’s a deep
hole in the sidewalk I see it there I
still fall in it’s a habit my eyes are
open I know where I am it is my fault
I get out immediately chapter 4 I walk
down the same street there’s a deep hole
in the sidewalk I walk around it chapter
5 I walk down another Street the story
of her life and it’s really the story of
higher consciousness and it’s the story
of manifesting being able to manifest
your heart’s desire to align yourself
and your intentions with this divine
organizing intelligence that is
limitless that is inexhaustible
that is ever-expanding that is abundant
that is all providing and all-knowing
and everywhere at the same
is like walking down another Street to
align yourself with that and to know
that that alignment in itself is enough
to bring whatever it is that has
particular eyes that is individualized
into the world that you would like to
have show up in your life and align with
the particular ization of that divine
intelligence that is you that it’s just
bringing it all together it’s just a
realignment and it will cooperate with
you
the thing that will keep it from working
for you is any obstacle to that flow as
I talked about when I was speaking about
unconditional love the minute that you
put hatred anger bitterness tension
anxiety stress in the way of that
intelligence between you and that
intelligence you block that flow it is a
flowing that’s why we use water as a
symbol of it because it flows at all one
of the most powerful lessons that you
can ever learn I had to learn as a young
man my own father was a man who walked
away he left he left home when I was
just a baby left my mother was sitting
right here 107 years old does that you
know you’re not 82 years old darling
and with three little boys and all I had
ever heard when he walked out about this
person that my older brothers told me
about and that my mother got her family
back together again when I was 9 years
old
and did all that she could to to make a
family again all the hardships this is a
man who never made a phone call we never
sent a penny who spent some time in
prison who was an alcoholic who died of
cirrhosis of the liver the age of 49 and
was buried in a pauper’s grave in Biloxi
Mississippi and it wasn’t until I went
to his grave
and it was able to stand there and I
used to dream about this man and have
this enormous hatred for this person
whom I had never seen just based upon
what he had done to my own mother and to
my brothers and so on and all of the
stories that I had heard and all the
research that I had done and I ended up
at his grave ten years after he had died
when I finally found out that he was
dead it was on the 27th of August it was
1974 and what I did
transformed my life what I did is I
believe I was sent there by God or
whatever you want to call that divine
spirit the divine presence and my life
at that time wasn’t working I was
overweight my relationships weren’t
working my writing wasn’t working there
were a lot of things that weren’t going
well for me in my life at that time not
badly but they weren’t going at the
level that I knew I was capable of
getting to because I was filled with his
hatred his anger was bitterness so what
I did is I stood there on his grave and
this little marker in the ground and I
said from now on I send you love I
forgive you Mark Twain said that
forgiveness is the fragrance that the
violet sheds on the heel that has
crushed it and once I let go of that
anger in that hatred and all of my
attachment to the bonding that I had
done with these wounds and let go of
that and cleared that out of my life my
writing began to take place at a much
higher level fact I wrote erroneous
zones in very very short time after that
I began to get myself back in shape I
began to eat better
I began exercising keeping my got my
weight down and the people that were
supposed to come into my life like my
beautiful wife who sits here with me
this evening and all of our children
some of whom are here this evening all
of it was allowed to flow when I
released that that energy of negativity
and blame and hatred they say that you
never die from a snakebite it isn’t the
bite and you can’t be unbidden it’s in
the wake what kills you is the venom
that continues to pour through you long
after the bite has taken place and
that’s something we have control over
and we can’t change and I’d like to
suggest that what happens is that many
of us bond ourselves to these wounds of
our past if I were to cut my hand just
cut it and watch it my nature says close
up the wound and I just have to watch it
and there’s no doctor out there there’s
no medicine out there that’s gonna heal
that wound there’s something there’s a
healing stream that I am connected to
that will allow that wound to heal so my
nature says closed up the wounds don’t
bonds of them don’t hang on to them
close them up but supposing I say to
myself oh no you don’t there’s no way
I’m gonna let you close up you see if I
can keep you open and I can go to you
and say look at this see what happened
Wow look at this cut up got all you poor
thing
look at that it seems to be getting
worse that’s getting infected isn’t that
terrible
and if you practice this kind of a
mentality when your nature says close up
the wound but you keep it open before
long you lose your hand
and after that you’ll lose your arm and
the whole organism will be destroyed if
you don’t let your nature take over and
your nature also says close up the
wounds of your past close them up and
oftentimes we ignore our nature I had a
great teacher that came into my life
through his writing his name was nice
our guru maharaj lived in India up until
the mid 1980s and he wrote something
called I am bat which was very powerful
and influential in my life and one of
the things that he talked about when he
was asked a question what’s the
difference between say a saint or a
highly functioning human being a
spiritual master a spiritual teacher and
the rest of us is that they have
unconditional love in them
and you don’t or we don’t and he said no
he said Saints have unconditional love
in them and so do you he said the
difference between ordinary human
awareness and higher awareness people is
that they have nothing else inside of
them that’s all they have and it’s
almost like we have to learn how to get
that in ourselves to be able to well I
always like to use a metaphor of an
orange I love the orange perhaps living
in Florida is why but an orange is a
simple metaphor if you take this orange
and you squeeze it as hard as you can
squeeze it and you ask yourself what
will come out and what comes out when
you squeeze an orange orange juice never
no matter how many times you squeeze it
well apple juice come out there’s no
mistakes
you’ll never get grapefruit juice out of
this thing ever the only thing you’ll
ever get out of it is orange juice and
the next question is why why wouldn’t
you squeeze an orange as hard as you can
squeeze it does orange juice come out
and I asked that question up in Toronto
one time this little girl sitting right
in the front row she said that’s dumb
it’s a she said that’s what’s inside it
has to come out I said well that’s the
answer you are really smart and she’s
smile if you thought that was great but
that’s the truth
the reason that orange juice comes out
when you squeeze is because that’s
what’s inside now you extend the
metaphor and someone squeezes you that
is someone says something about you that
you don’t like someone behaves towards
you in a way that you find offensive
somebody does something or says
something to you that you feel hurt by
and out of you comes anger hatred
bitterness tension fear anxiety stress
an immediate you say the reason that
comes out of me is because of how he
said etre the way that she said that or
because they did that but the truth is
the reality is that what comes out is
what’s inside
and if you don’t like what’s inside you
can change it now if you ask me how does
orange juice get inside of an orange I
would say I don’t know I can’t figure it
out
that’s a mystery to me I just enjoy the
oranges of my life and give God the
credit for that
a lot of people think that other things
make them the way they are they will
blame their past they’ll blame their
parents they’ll blame the economy
they’ll blame the ayatollah they’ll
blame somebody for things that are going
wrong in their life and one of the
favorite things that we have to blame
for why i’m upset at a particular moment
is something called traffic traffic made
me upset and i’ve always reminded myself
when i’m in a jam or when i’m on the
freeway and i’m trying to get someplace
the traffic doesn’t care that you have
within you the opportunity in this
moment to really work on these things
that are perhaps debilitating or
creating anxiety or stress in your life
that these are tests these are
opportunities for you traffic doesn’t
care your anger is your choice and you
can always choose to be to be at happy
angry depressed miserable upset or you
can choose to be fulfilled and do
something positive in this moment it’s
always up to you I’d like to give you
what I think of as the great spiritual
teachings of many various persuasions
there’s a story that summarizes it it’s
the story of what I call the four
philanthropists in a village the
conquerors had come through and they had
taken all of the men or many of the men
who were warriors at the time and they
had placed them into this prisoner of
war camp right in the village and many
of the villagers knew that their
compatriots were imprisoned and the
first philanthropist was a person who
had great wealth and he went to the
people who had the prison and were in
charge of it and he said to them I
understand the men are not able to have
fresh water and cold water I would like
to donate all of my earning
and everything that I have to purifying
the water for them and making sure that
all of them will not be sick and he was
granted that and he felt like he had
fulfilled his destiny that he had done
what he was here for the second
philanthropist discovered that the men
were sleeping on rocks and that they
were cold at night they didn’t have
blankets and he took all of his funds
and he said to them I would like to
provide bedding and blankets for the
people so that they will be comfortable
when they sleep at night and he was
granted that right and he donated his
money for this purpose and again he felt
that he was fulfilling his destiny
the third philanthropist discovered that
the food that they were eating was
inadequate that they were just given
beans and and and water and some bread
and so he said I own a farm and I’d like
to grow all of my food and I’d like to
take this food to all of these prisoners
and he was granted that right and all
three of these great philanthropists in
the village felt that they had really
completed their mission for why they
were here but the fourth philanthropist
was a saint he was living not at
ordinary human awareness but at higher
consciousness levels and he went and he
found out where the keys were and he
went to the prison at night and he
released all of the prisoners and this
little metaphorical story really tells
us that when we are living at ordinary
human awareness there’s nothing wrong
with those who are out there who can
help us to suffer in comfort all right
and many of us have learned to do that
and accept that and say all right as
long as I’m comfortable even if I’m
suffering it’s okay
but there are those who have keys and
those keys can open the prisons one of
the great teachers in my life was Carlos
Castaneda and custon aid had talked
about his teacher who was what they call
a nog Yule a and a Native American term
that refers to all that is knowable
and he his teacher told him that your
life is like being born into a room a
mansion if you will that has a thousand
rooms but you’re born into one room and
this one room is called daily human
awareness and the only way you can get
in is through conception and birth
you’re in and the only way you can get
out we are taught is to die so we spend
our lives in this mansion in one room
even those that there’s 999 other rooms
we don’t know how to get out into those
rooms unless we die so we wait to die
and what his teacher told him is I can
teach you how to get out of the room of
daily awareness and into the other 999
rooms and if you stay with me and learn
all that I have to give you I can teach
you how to get out of the house all
together without having to die and what
we have to do in order to get to that
place where we can take the keys and
unlock the self-imposed prisons or the
prisons that we have given ourselves on
the basis of what we have come to
believe is our limitations what we can
and can’t do we have to let go of that
and I call it rewriting our agreement
with reality we literally have to make a
whole new contract with what it is that
I perceive to be what is possible for me
and in order to do that we have to shift
out of the things that we have come to
believe in and everything that you came
to this program watching tonight that
you believe in was handed to you by
someone else outside of you was handed
to you by the experiences or testimony
of someone in the past and because it
comes from outside of you
there is still an element of doubt and
this element of doubt isn’t bad but it
keeps you from reaching higher levels
because what you think about is what
expands and if you’re thinking doubt
then doubt is what expands William Blake
said if the Sun and Moon should ever
doubt they would immediately go out so
how do we get past what we believe in or
what has been handed to us and still
honor it and be grateful for all of the
teachers and all of the people who have
come before us so what we have to learn
to do is let go of that tribal
consciousness and shift to what I call
unknowing now there’s a big difference
between what you believe and what you
know everything that you know is
something that you have made conscious
contact with conscious contact so
there’s nobody out there watching
there’s nobody in this world who knows
how to swim who learned it by somebody
else telling them that you can swim or
by watching Mark Spitz
go through the water or by observing
other people doing it you may remove
some of the doubt but you will never
know how to swim until you get in the
water and blub around a few times and
then do it and then you’ll have a
knowing and that knowing is something
that you’ll never lose just like riding
a bicycle or dancing the Macarena or
making a lemon meringue pie or anything
that you know how to do it’s because
you’ve made conscious contact and I’d
like to suggest that there’s a big
difference between knowing about a
divine presence knowing about a sacred
awareness knowing about God and knowing
God there’s a big difference just like
there’s a big difference between knowing
about the possibility of being able to
heal myself of something that is
bothering me perhaps a disease process I
perhaps may believe that it’s possible
because I’ve read other people and I’ve
heard others say it and I’ve read the
testimony and I’ve listened to the tapes
and I’ve gone to the seminars
but until you have made conscious
contact with it
you’ll never know it and I’d like to
suggest there are there’s a wonderful
poem I’d like to share this poem with
you it’s written by a wonderful woman
her name is Valerie Cox and she lives up
in Seattle and she’s written quite a bit
of poetry this particular poem really
speaks to me to the difference between
what you know and what you believe in
immerse yourself in this in these words
a woman was waiting at an airport one
night with several long hours before her
flight she hunted for a book in the
airport shop bought a bag of cookies and
found a place to drop she was engrossed
in her book but happened to see that the
man beside her as bold as could be
grabbed a cookie or two from the bag
between which she tried to ignore to
avoid a scene she munched cookies and
watched the clock as this gutsy cookie
thief diminished her stock she was
getting more irritated as the minutes
ticked by thinking if I wasn’t so nice
I’d blacken his eye with each cookie she
took he took one too and when only one
was left she wondered what he’d do with
a smile on his face and a nervous laugh
he took the last cookie and broke it in
half he offered her half as he ate the
other she snatched it from him and
thought oh brother this guy has some
nerve and he’s also rude why he didn’t
even show any gratitude she had never
known when she had been so called and
sighed with relief when her flight was
called she gathered her belongings and
headed to the gate refusing to look back
at the thieving ingrate she boarded the
plane and sank in her seat then sought
her book which was almost complete as
she reached in her baggage she gasped
with surprise there was her bag of
cookies in front of her eyes
I love that I love that if mine are here
she moaned with despair then the others
were his and he tried to share too late
to apologize she realized with grief
that she was the rude one
the ingrate the thief the cookie thief
and all of us in some ways our cookie
thieves I have now finished 67 verses of
the Dow and I’ve written 67 essays on
when you change the way you look at
things the things you look at change and
this isn’t just a clever play on words
here this is a quantum truth it’s my
friend Deepak Chopra has often said to
me quantum physics is not only stranger
than you think it is it’s stranger than
you can think so that if you look at
your origination the place that you came
from this things that allow to called
the DAO this great source that is
everywhere there is no place that it is
not and yet it is doing nothing and yet
it leaves nothing undone if you go out
and just go for a walk this afternoon
when you get home just look at the
perfection of all that is just look at
the clouds and look at the sky and look
at the ocean and look at the trees and
look at the leaves and even more
important look at the space between the
leaves and look at the invisible nough
sand the perfection of how everything is
there’s a constancy if you will and this
constancy is always there and your goal
my goal in the time that I have with you
here today is to convince you to go to a
place within yourself where you can
emulate
that divine perfection which requires
you to do nothing which never uses force
which never pushes itself which
recognizes something I’m gonna read to
you just one of the verses of the Dow
and a little bit of what I wrote about
it and I seldom read to an audience
because I don’t like being read to
myself but I’m just gonna share a little
bit of this here’s what Lao Tzu said in
verse 29 do you think you can take over
the universe and improve it I do not
believe it can be done everything under
heaven is a sacred vessel and cannot be
controlled trying to control leads to
ruin trying to grasp we lose allow your
life to unfold naturally know that it
too is a vessel of perfection just as
you breathe in breathe out there is a
time for being ahead a time for being
behind a time for being in motion a time
for being at rest a time for being
vigorous a time for being exhausted a
time for being safe a time for being in
danger to the sage all of life is a
movement toward perfection so what need
has he for the excessive the extravagant
or the extreme there’s a time for
everything
imagine if you knew this if you really
knew that what you were experiencing
emotionally in your life was a part of
what there is a time for and that you’re
not really doing anything Lao 2 says it
over and over again you’re not doing
anything you’re being done
you’re being done right now you’re one
of the 10,000
things and it is all being done all of
it
like I do yoga every morning or almost
everywhere five six days a week do this
90-minute Bikram yoga this hot yoga and
this has helped me so much with just
that simple little thing just
remembering what it says in verse 29 of
the DAO that there are times when you’re
in the midst of yoga when you have a
position where you have to put this foot
out and you have to turn this one down
and you have to get down here like this
and you have to take this arm and I’m
gonna do it and you have to do that for
60 seconds in a hundred and ten degree
room that’s after doing many other
postures as well there was a time when I
would do that and I’d be so exhausted
and all I could think about was when is
this 60 seconds gonna be up oh my god
when are we gonna do this through with
this posture when are we gonna get on –
I could lie down on the floor and
finally and they begin to realize as
this thing this doing the dowel thing
has really changed me dramatically so
that now when I’m in that position with
one arm bound and one iron up and it is
exhausting and you’re stretching and
you’ve got your arm right next to your
ear and you’re holding up that you say
to yourself there’s a time for being
exhausted and there’s a time for rest
there’s a time for things not to work
out imagine if you knew that in the
midst of my working with my daughter for
example when I see the struggle that
she’s going to and I can stand back and
say there’s a time there’s a time for
her to experience this and there’s a
time for her not to experience it if you
read Katie’s life you’ll see that there
was a time for deep depression there was
a time for fear it was a time for anger
and worry and despair deep despair
and when you’re in those things if you
could step outside of yourself and look
at it and say there’s also a time for
its opposite
as long as I’m incarnated into a
physical world there’s a time for all of
it and as you do you get to a new place
in your life where you begin to look at
all the things that are happening to you
because you remember one of the most
verse 40 of the DAO says it’s all about
returning it’s all about returning
returning to what returning to the place
from which you originated the first nine
months of your life you lived inside of
your mother’s womb in water and doing
this whole nine months nobody could get
in there and mess around with you nobody
could get in there and get you to worry
about anything
you didn’t have sonograms that you’d
look at and say my god I don’t have a
nose yet what the hell is going on I
hope I sure hope I get a nose and you
got into nose therapy and you worry
about it over what if it doesn’t happen
what you don’t do that then all of a
sudden perfectly it all unfolds in
exactly the way it’s going to unfold
independent of your opinion about it
you’re not doing anything nothing is
left undone you’re being done you’re
being completed and you were totally
completely at peace with it you were
surrendered to it you allowed it it
wasn’t a struggle it wasn’t the day and
then you popped out of there and then
you said thank you God thank you Dow
thank you source we’ll take over from
here and that was the biggest mistake
all of a sudden you took over and you
edged God out e.g oh you edged God out
and you took on an ego didn’t you and
what is an ego it’s just an idea just an
idea about who you are instead of being
a piece of God a piece of the source you
decided and those around you decided
that you were something different and if
you studied quantum physics and you took
the tiny little particle that began you
and you looked at try to find out where
it came from and reduced it down to its
tiniest sub sub sub atomic properties
ultimately you would discover what
laoshu knew but it’s the spirit that
gives life that you didn’t come from a
particle the particles do not create
particles particles do not come from
particles originally all particles come
from an energy a field of energy that
has no beginnings and no ends and no
boundaries and that’s who you are and
returning back to that and letting go of
the idea that who you are is what you
have and who you are is who you control
I don’t think there’s any more all
pervasive theme in the daodejing
than the idea of being a non interferer
you Steven I mean isn’t it it’s about
not interfering isn’t it it’s about
letting go it’s about allowing it’s
about detaching it’s about disconnecting
yourself from this belief that you are
in charge of other people I’m the father
of eight children and the father of
motivation that’s what they tell me so
I’ve got and as this father of eight
children one of the things that I’ve
recognized and what has made me I think
a better parent particularly even since
I’ve been doing this is
my willingness to I call it the bite
your tongue verse of the doubt
just hang back just for a second just as
you’re about to interfere just as you’re
about to lay it on and tell somebody
else how they should be and what they
should do and how they should do it you
step back and realize that what Khalil
Gibran the Great Lebanese poet and
writing in the Prophet said was just a
basic truth your children are not your
children they are the products of life’s
longing for itself they come through you
but not for you and you step back and I
can’t even begin to tell you how freeing
it is to realize that you don’t have
anything to do you don’t have anyone to
control you can be at peace and I watch
and I’ve become much more of an observer
even even on airplanes I was in London
five days ago and I don’t know if you’ve
flown in and out of Heathrow lately but
things have really changed you know we
couldn’t take anything on the plane the
terrorists whoever they are are selling
fear and we respond with more fear every
time you use force you create a counter
force and then another counter force and
before you know and the dow teaches us
all I mean one of the great lessons in
the Dow is that any country that has its
primary resources and its energy placed
on building weapons is not of the doubt
and those countries that have their
consciousness located in the dow put
their energy into tractors and building
homes and growing food not building
weapons I saw a movie not too long ago
with the Nicolas Cage about warlords or
something the Lords of war I think it
was something like them one of those
alarming things about how much energy we
are in the world creating energy to
destroy ourselves that we have literally
created from our consciousness enough
weaponry on this planet to eliminate all
life within just a few moments it’s all
there it’s all there for us we’ve
allowed ourselves to move so far away
from the great teachings of the great
spiritual masters and we believe that
we’re a Christian nation or that we’re a
spiritual nation when we find ourselves
having moved away from these simple
principles and then getting upset with
other people because we can have these
kind of weapons but they can’t and we
don’t look hard enough at ourselves in
all the ways that we have deflected
ourselves from the greatest teachings of
all of the great spiritual masters our
self wants you to be your higher self
wants you to be at peace your ego wants
to keep you in a state of turmoil in
order to maintain its mastery and
control over your life you’ve probably
listened to your ego most of your life
the result of listening to ego is that
most of us allow ego to talk us into
choosing dominance rather than tolerance
as our style of interacting with life
making the change from dominance to
Tolerance requires disciplining ego and
listening to your sacred self I’m
speaking from personal experience in
this matter and it is one of the
toughest assignments my Higher Self has
presented me with I have spent many
years being dominated by my ego and I
have unwittingly made dominance and
judgment rather than tolerance a
cornerstone of my relating my
suggestions are often my personal
experience of transcending my ego driven
instincts making the transition from
dominance to tolerance is especially
difficult because the desire for ego
satisfaction is so strong to move toward
the tolerance that your higher self
encourages and away from your ego driven
need to control and judge you will want
to examine the qualities that sustain a
tolerant approach to life to become more
tolerant and less controlled by your
false self start practicing being
satisfied with what is if someone you
love acts meekly towards you your ego
wants that person to be more assertive
if that person is assertive your
then decides to dislike assertiveness if
you eat too much you start thinking
about how nice it would be to be thinner
if you go on a diet and all of your
thoughts then will be about food if you
stay at home for a long period your ego
starts telling you how nice it is to
travel go on the road and you start
thinking about how nice it would be to
stay home you’re in a relationship and
begin to imagine it would be nicer to be
uninvolved you’re not in a relationship
and you start wanting to be in one your
children are running around the house
and you start thinking about escaping
you’re aren’t at home and your ego
starts having you think about nothing
but your children if you identify with
this kind of inner dialog rest assured
that ego has temporarily separated you
from your sacred self in its ongoing
program to convince you of your
separateness it needs to separate you
from oneness with the center of your
being then it can keep you in that state
of trying to dominate and control others
as a way of trying to achieve your inner
balance and bliss trouble is you cannot
get there if you are separated from the
awareness of your higher self as you
begin listening to your higher self and
quiet and contemplative moments she
began relaxing and taking the pressure
off you stop the false thinking that
everyone in your life needs to be
dominated or controlled by you or that
others must live up to your expectations
for you to be happy
people are the way they are and your
need to dominate or change them in any
way is the Edict of your false self your
ego is as usual trying to convince you
of your separateness
it also doesn’t want you to catch on to
how it is controlling your life so it
convinces you that if you don’t dominate
others but they will get the best of you
your higher self has absolutely no need
to dominate anyone or anything this is
the ticket to freedom
right now though in this very moment
your ego is working to convince you that
the higher self and tolerance are
ridiculous ideas ego will argue that
tolerance means permitting criminal
behavior and health and social problems
its favorite example is that it would
mean permitting the hitlers of the world
to commit atrocities while we tolerantly
look on
your higher-self can see beyond this
logic so of course you can too if you
are willing when Mother Teresa was asked
if she would march against the war in
Vietnam she replied no but if you have a
March for peace I’ll be there when you
become peaceful within that is what you
will have to give away when you are
dominated by your ego you dominate
others if there is no inner harmony
there is no outer harmony ego needs the
illusion of enemies in order to control
you when you are controlling others it
is because you were permitted ego to be
in control the paradox here is that you
will affect the world in the ways that
you wish when you ceased trying to
improve conditions within tolerance and
judgment it is only when you are not
controlled by ego that you can choose to
not control others what you believed was
power when you dominated others was
actually the external activity of ego
controlling you your impact on the world
at large begins with the smaller world
of yourself you will foster freedom and
peace when you are freed of egos control
and know the peace of your higher self
traveling the path of the sacred quest
one of the first steps along your path
is learning tolerance by practicing
seeing the world as it is rather than as
you demand it to be these then are some
of the ways that the ego attempts to
rule our lives our goal and knowing our
sacred self is to have the higher
identities triumph over our lower
identities essentially your higher self
wants you to be a piece that wants you
to know truth it no longer needs you to
dominate others it is a very peaceful
loving place to be at this point I would
like to have you stop looking at how you
can get your own sacred self in order
and begin to look at how the world can
do this as well when we have a world of
people who are radiating outward the
kinds of things I’ve been talking about
throughout this tape you’ll begin to see
a whole new world order one that is not
dominated by a world
go and so my conclusion here will not be
an odyssey into all the evils of our
society I do not intend to end estate
cataloging all the problems that we have
created as a result of allowing our egos
to be the dominant force in our world
this is not to say that I fail to
recognize that we have plenty of
problems that have grown out of our
preoccupation with satisfying our egos
nor am i blind to the fact that our
individual egos have interacted in ways
that have produced war crime addictions
poverty social inequities and government
tyrannies we have created a world ego
that reflects on the global level the
same lack of depth and richness that
exists in our individual lives
throughout this tape I have presented
reasons for taming the personal ego and
suggestions for how to do that the very
same can be said for doing this on a
global level I hope it is as obvious to
you as it is to me that the collective
ego will benefit when we transcend our
individual egos you as a single
individual have a sacred quest that
quest involves coming to your higher
spiritual nature and inviting it to show
you the way of the sacred self in your
daily life this means denying the
demands of your ego
if those demands contradict the guidance
of your higher self our world is a
collection of individuals urged on by
the loving presence within all of us to
achieve the sacred quest personally and
collectively the world will become a
peaceful fulfilled cooperative loving
truthful tolerant and pure environment
as the individual parts that make up the
collective consciousness restrain their
egos as is the microcosm so is the
macrocosm the whole behaves precisely as
does its individual parts many people I
speak to tell me that they feel
powerless to affect the global community
they believe that given the scope of the
world’s problems their efforts are so
infinitesimal as to be insignificant
they simply are not seeing that it is
precisely through a change in individual
consciousness that the world will be
transformed all of the problems that we
face as a group reflect those we have
individually the world is encountering a
spiritual deficit that reflects our need
to consciously get on the path of our
sacred quest
the solution to individual and global
problems is to overcome the spiritual
deficit when you make the shift in
consciousness allowing yourself to be an
agent of heightened awareness you are
contributing to the transformation of
our world you are not separate from the
other souls on this planet you share the
identical energy that embodies the souls
of Rwanda and Pakistan for example you
are the lamp and God as the electricity
it flows through you as surely as it
flows through all living things when you
make the decision to choose the guidance
of your higher self over your false self
you have plugged into the divine inner
energy when you run your life based on
the principles of the higher self you
are contributing to the transformation
of the entire world you must strengthen
your will to choose the sacred path when
your ego calls you a fool for believing
that could ever be a world without war
if your ego can convince you you will
become part of a collective egos
falseness individuals who choose eco
propaganda our individuals who will
build more bombs and manufacture more
weapons currently there are some six
billion people on the planet about three
million are at war or in skirmishes that
cause them to kill and torture each
other but that means that there are five
billion 997 million who are not at war
this is a hopeful statistic which our
egos do not want us to consider
by contrast the collective ego strives
to keep the populace nervously on the
edge with reminders to view the world in
terms of us versus them this ego
viewpoint not only reinforces the insane
escalation of ways to kill each other
but is also responsible for most of our
social problems the world ego is our
false self and this is the primary
characteristic that we need to recognize
we want to believe that we are our
physical bodies and that the territories
we occupy are so important that we are
willing to kill each other in order to
maintain those boundary lines we have
become convinced that our true
identities are located in tribal
ancestors traditions histories
genealogies and the color and shape of
our bodies we have lost sight of our
authentic identities because of the
labels that our egos have assigned to us
our egos have coalesced into a worldwide
false perception of ourselves based on
an unwillingness to know our true
spiritual nature
although all of our spiritual leaders
have reminded us of our divinity and
implored and even commanded us to love
one another the world eagle has won this
battle and produced ancient enmities and
uncountable Horrors in the long history
of humanity the spiritual solution to
the major problems that face the world
is to bring into positions of power
those who are not motivated and driven
by their egos but see the collective
good as their primary objective we need
leaders who do not manifest primitive
tendencies of consciousness such as hate
Envy greed bloodthirstiness and
intolerance but are grounded in love
tolerance truth and purity as you travel
the path of your sacred quest you will
help to dispel the absurdity of
specialness that the ego so assiduously
promotes you will see an end to this
kind of thinking in your life and on a
worldwide scale as well as a higher part
of ourselves that I have talked about on
this tape reacts to a vision that is
infinite
this is assuredly not the vision of the
ego the ego is just as cowardly on a
collective scale as it is on an
individual basis the world ego is
frightened of a mass appeal to overcome
our spiritual deficit when people face
inward and embrace a more loving
perspective the power of the sacred self
will create change not only in the
community but in the entire world as
well the world eagle will do all that it
can to prevent this kind of inner
approach it will ridicule those who
promote meditation peaceful
demonstrations and the love of God as a
way out of the morass of social evils
the collective ego convinces itself that
money makes it special and thus it will
throw dollars at any problem and pride
itself on the undertaking consume
consume consume more is better the more
you accumulate the fancier your toys the
bigger your shopping malls the more
petrol that you use in your automobiles
the more successful you are it is a push
away from peace toward a style of
consumerism and capitalism that is
defended as the way of civilization get
your higher-self knows there is no peace
in the more is better it is just as true
on the collective level as it is on the
individual plane the higher self urges
you to simplify and to avoid
contributing to anything that hurts
others or
creases the separation from your
spiritual source as you listen more
closely to your sacred self and
transcend your ego so too will the world
ego be shifted away from power control
and money back to the basic virtues of
higher awareness back to peace beauty
love purity tolerance patience and
compassion this does not mean that the
benefits of Technology cannot be enjoyed
it means that the ego will not be the
motivating force in our lives what we
truly are as a people is a force that
craves peace and simplicity we want that
deeper awareness that comes with the
sanity of the higher self it is insane
to continue believing that we are a
collection of tribes each with a
separate identity and a special mission
it is insane to believe that anyone who
does not fit into our particular tribal
mentality is a potential enemy we know
that there is not a separate God for
each of us or even for each of our
tribes we know that there is a universal
divine intelligence that flows through
all of us and in that sacred space
within us we are all one in the same we
know that the best within us is love
kindness and compassion to get our egos
both individually and collectively have
campaigned long and hard to promote a
false idea how sane is it for people to
be killing each other over disputes that
ancient egos created long before we
arrived how sane is it for us to believe
that some of us deserve to eat the food
that God provides and that others do not
deserve it by virtue of their geographic
location how sane is it for us to pump
up our youth with the philosophy of the
free ride by leading them to believe
that if they want something they deserve
it how sane is it to show our children
pictures of violence as entertainment
and allow them to adopt the Eagle belief
that it is human nature to hurt others
as a way to defend a right to be special
and separate as our higher selves begin
to triumph over ego in the daily
decision-making of our lives we will
truly be making progress on the path of
the sacred quest for all of humanity
you must banish all doubt about your
ability to facilitate such a quest and
begin to know that you are both the
microcosm and the macrocosm there is a
universe within you a unified field of
all possibilities
that you can reach as you become the
compassionate witness be silent shut
down the inner dialogue most important
transcend the false self that we call
the ego that is when the healing will
begin to occur the world ego is destined
to be restrained as more individuals
look within and consult the higher part
of themselves the doubts are vanishing
and the spiritual revolution is well
underway moving toward an egoless world
is not some far-fetched idea any more
than the disintegration of the Iron
Curtain was a far-fetched idea to those
who heard such talk a few years before
it happened it did indeed seem absurd
but ideas thoughts and inner knowings
are powerful instruments for the
disintegration of the false self one of
the simplest and most powerful ways of
doing this is taught by Aetna s4 on
writing in his book meditation he
advises us to spend 30 minutes every
morning in meditation repeating the
prayer of Saint Francis in saying this
prayer we both transcend the ego and
invite the sacred self to guide us
through the day I invite you to join me
in this daily prayer as we share the
path of the sacred quest the prayer of
st. Francis goes like this Lord make me
an instrument of thy peace where there
is hatred let me sow love where there is
injury pardon where there is doubt faith
where there is despair hope where there
is darkness light where there is sadness
joy o divine master grant that I may not
so much seek to be consoled as to
console to be understood as to
understand to be loved as to love for it
is in giving that we received it is in
pardoning that we are pardoned it is in
dying to self that we are born to
eternal life if you have the same
knowing about your world dramatic
changes will take place as we
collectively put to use the greatest
force in the universe the force of love
it seems only fitting to quote my
spiritual teacher nisargadatta maharaj
as I close this tape
he reminds us of the simplicity of
creating a society that is based on
spiritual principles he puts it this way
my stand is clear produced to distribute
feed before you eat give before you take
think of others before you think of
yourself only a selfless society based
on sharing can be stable and happy this
is the only practical solution if you do
not want it then fight I want it I
encourage you to do the same god bless
you and thank you for listening and if
if we my goal in my life has been to get
to a place where I live from a place of
of God realization that is that I there
are different kinds of love and I aspire
at this time in my life at the age of 72
to to live from this place and this
place only so that no matter what kind
of pressure is put on me no matter what
I hear the only thing I want to come out
of me is the kind of thing that came out
of your beloved founder this is a this
is not just a prescription for building
a wonderful country but it’s a
prescription for creating a world in
which we can finally once and for all
rid ourselves of the violence and the
hatred and the bitterness and the
tension and the fears and the wars and
the kinds of things that so dominate the
media and the kinds of things that we
are hearing every day in our lives so
it seems to me that there are really two
selves that we have within us one of
these cells is called I call it the ego
e G Oh to me it is a synonym and a
acronym for edging God out and my
teacher in India nisargadatta maharaj
called this thing the this ego he called
it the false self and the false self is
a belief system that we have that tells
us that who we are is defined by certain
kinds of qualities and characteristics
we are told that our identity is in not
so much who we are because we can’t
answer this question so many people have
difficulty if I were to ask the question
and I’ve done this many many times with
patience when I had a practice many
years ago can you just answer the
question
Who am I as we contemplate that simple
little question with three words Who am
I what comes out very often is all of
the things that identify us with this
false self and the false self is really
the part of us that believes that Who I
am is what I own what I have so if we
begin to believe that who we are is
identified with what it is that we own
then we have a tendency to say the more
of it that I have the more important I
am and the better than I am and so we’ll
also spend a big hunk of our life going
after and trying to accumulate as much
stuff as we possibly can the ego is also
defined by something called what I what
I do or what I accomplish
so that my identity is all tied in with
what it is that I can call my my
accomplishments who I am I am a writer I
have written this many books I have I
have this business I do these kinds of
things and and we sort of identify
ourselves this way but I think back to
what quantum physics teaches us that
nothing in this physical universe
arrives here from they say that probably
the essence of quantum physics is that
particles themselves do not originate
from particles that every single
particle that is makes up the physical
form of the world is originates
someplace else
it already it originates in what we call
non form or non-existence or spirit or
the the invisible and this invisible
miss is inside each and every one of us
we originate there we come from nowhere
a know wher e from nowhere and in one
split second we go from nowhere to now
here n Oh W H e re
bit different in spacing while we’re
here in now here we recognize if we’re
really honest that where we’re going and
where we’re headed is back to a no wher
e the poet TS Eliot once said that we
shall not cease from exploration
but at the end of all of our exploring
will be to return to the place from
which we originated and to know it for
the first time I think the poet was
speaking about death
my feeling is and my writing and all of
the work that I have done in my lifetime
is based upon the idea that we can come
to know the place from which we
originated without having to leave our
bodies without having to die that there
is something within each and every one
of us one of the great messages of the
New Testament in the Christian faith and
Jesus was even the least among you can
do all that I have done and even greater
things that it is within each and every
one of us to be able to create miracles
for ourselves to be able to heal
ourselves of any infirmity to be able to
attract whatever it is that we place our
attention on but the problem with this
is with the development of the ego is
that we have come to believe that being
ordinary is our Dharma it’s what it is
that defines us and when I use my hand
up here like this I use this part right
here at my waist approximately to
represent what I call ordinary levels of
consciousness that we come into this
world we are told that you will be
identified by and defined by what it is
that you accomplish what it is that you
own what other people think of you it’s
another component of the ego and that
you are separate from everyone else and
that these are your limitations these
are the things that you’re capable of
creating this is exactly how far you can
go you can’t get to a higher place than
this so accept your lot in life
but for me I have never done that I was
very lucky as a young boy I lived in an
orphanage until I was 10 years of age
and while I was moved around from place
to place and didn’t have the advantages
of having parents that were mine until
my mother got us all back together again
when I was 10 my father just walked away
and abandoned his family he was by all
definitions a bad man a man who was an
alcoholic a man who was very abusive a
man who had no sense of his
responsibilities and left my mother with
three little boys under the age of four
– raised by herself he just disappeared
and just went away and I find it very
fascinating because one of the things
that I learned in those earliest years
of my life is that self-reliance is
probably what my Dharma was that came
into this world I believe to teach this
whole idea of self-reliance
and self-reliance means that you go
within and you rely upon the self when
you ask the question Who am I and you
define it on the basis of what you have
what you do what your reputation is what
other people think of you how much you
own then you keep yourself from reaching
this what I call up here when I move my
arm across here at this elevated level
reaching this higher level what I call
extraordinary consciousness that it’s
something that each and every one of us
have the same the same vision that the
founder of your country had is something
that is possible for each and every one
of us to have
even the least among us have within us
the capacity to raise our awareness the
problem is that we are so fixed in our
subconscious minds on what is what our
limitations are and what we can’t
accomplish and what is impossible for us
to do and we get so fixed in on this
that we literally begin to act as if
this were a reality so if you are
interested in moving to this place where
you can indeed perform miracles where
you can create the kind of world for
yourself and for others around you from
this higher place if you can get
yourself to that place the only way that
you can do it is by changing your
concept of yourself
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