Dr. Wayne Dyer: Attitude is everything, so pick a good one!

my very special guest today is dr. Wayne Dyer dr. Dyer began his career as an author in the early 1970s traveling the country and selling his first book your erroneous zones from the trunk of his car that book went on to sell more than 30 million copies and became the best-selling book of the 1970s despite a childhood spent in orphanages and foster homes he has overcome many obstacles to make his dreams come true today he spends much of his time showing others how to do the same as an internationally renowned author and speaker in the field of self-development dr. Dyer has written more than 30 books 18 of which have been national bestsellers several of his books have been featured as PBS specials raising over a hundred and fifty million dollars for National Public Television so you say that if we change our thinking we can change our lives and I'd like to know when and where you learned this oh boy this goes way back I grew up in a series of foster homes and orphanages when I was a little boy and I learned I learned right then and there I used to call myself the richest kid in the orphanage because most of the people in there all of the kids that were in there thought of thought of themselves as poor right now that you can't you can't have money because they would complain about things I can remember in the home that we lived in in Mount Clemens Michigan there was a lady brought her her daughter there I wasn't there because I had been abandoned or anything I was there because my father had walked out on his family and my mother had to place us in there I reunite it with my mother ten years later and I'm still United with her she's almost 94 years old and I love her very dearly but in those days there was no welfare and there was a you know nobody you know to help other than the churches or people who just volunteered so we were placed in a series of homes but I remember whenever a new kid would come in and they were usually there for the same reasons you know my mother had no money she works she was making $17 a candy girl at kreskis on the east side of Detroit so that's it with three children and my father had just walked out he was an alcoholic and just a bad dude so um I can remember this lady bringing in a little girl her name was Martha and I remember they would always say when there was a new thing she was crying she was upset because her mother held her there and she had to leave her there and so on and and I can remember saying to her this is a great place you're gonna love this place there's no parents here I'm so sorry you're going to have a wonderful time here and so it was always I was always the one that someone would would would call and say just see Wayne because he always has a positive attitude and my attitude always was you know this is what we've got this is what we have and when I would look around and see all of the other people not having any money I was the one who said you know I found out that soda pop bottles were worth two cents you know and for me two cents I mean that was just amazing so I would just follow people around who were drinking a soda but you almost through with that and I'll take it off your hands and so you always saw the opportunity head-on I always knew that it was it was just the way you think I can remember our teacher at that year her name was mrs. Poole and I can remember her yelling at the class and saying this is the worst class that I've ever had I can't you know this class and I remember being out on the playground and the little kids all upset especially many of the girls were crying we were in her worst class and I just said if this is her worst class so this is like this is she's got an easy life you know it was like you know just change it you don't have to believe what she says you can change the way you think and you continue you can decide to be hanging around at the side I was seven seven years old yeah it's like it's something that I've always known that we become what we think about and if you change the way you think about things you change the world that you live in so how can we use affirmations to get unstuck and become more positive how do we use them well affirmations are if you were to walk into my home over on Maui you hello and while I - you're very welcome and you walked and looked around at all the different that I have affirmations everywhere I have them over my bed I have them where I shave I have I have one at my door that as I walk out it says attitude is everything so pick a good one you know I have one on my on my in the car right on right as I look at it every single day right on the dashboard and it says practice Aloha so that if somebody's honking their horn or whatever it is and it's like I look at that every time I'm in the car and it's a reminder to me be kind you know don't be so frustrated Aloha is kind of a welcoming lovely sort of it it's an all-consuming I didn't return yeah did you live there no I didn't live there but I've it every time I visited and I have friends that live there and they always say Aloha and it's a deeper meaning than just a greeting and it's also a hello it's a goodbye but it really just means you know practice practice being in the spirit the Spirit of God yeah being here being you know allowing and and so you and you'll see them all over all you'll see them on the you know in the cupboards and my kids do you say there was one affirmation that we that we could all use to change you know to move towards our dreams right now um I don't know that there's one I mean the one that I use is that you know I can attract anything I want into my life you know I am in charge of my life I you know I can create health and happiness and being positive I just remind myself of that over and over and over again until it just becomes a way of being because an affirmation is just sort of a beginning step it's a way of allowing yourself to to retrain your mind to create the habit the habit that we have that things aren't going to work out and things are terrible and again and I can't like old probably yes it's always just habitual thinking you know and you know one of the great poets Wordsworth said that a habits rule the unreflecting heard you know it's like you become part of the herd that doesn't reflect and you want to change those habits yeah what would you say is the key to living an inspired life since you seem to be living mmm I think probably the the most important the most important thing about being inspired to understand what the word inspired means its if you break it down it's in spirit and it's like a recognition I think the most significant thing about it is that you begin to realize that that Who I am is not a human being here having a spiritual experience but it's really the reverse that Who I am as a spiritual being an infinite spiritual invisible being having a temporary human experience and the key to living an inspired life is to always come from that place in excuses begun in the recent book of mine I talked about living from a place of awareness and awareness is thinking thinking like God thinks like we all come from a source every single one of us and we all return to that source you know TS Eliot said 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 and he was speaking about death you know it's like ultimately you're going to return to the place from which you originated I take that to mean that if you return to the place from which you originated you don't have to die to to experience there you can live in spirit and when you see yourself as a spiritual being having a temporary human experience then everything is on God everything shifts everything changes for you you begin to recognize that there's there's absolutely nothing that you can't do I mean in the New Testament there's a wonderful lineup of Jesus he says with God with source with spirit however you want to call it all things are possible and I always ask an audience what does that leave out you know that's that all things are possible literally means all things are possible so whatever whatever it is you'd like to attract into your life whatever you'd like to accomplish whatever you'd like to do in your life if you start from a spiritual place a place of all things are possible if I return you know and get to that place and then I begin to visualize it and I begin to use my imagination because everything that we see around us everything in this world was once imagined everything you know that camera that is there that the clothes that you're wearing the chairs that were sitting on everything once had to be imagined if you get that I mean Einstein's famous observation was that you know imagination is more important than knowledge if you can learn how important your imagination is and that's where your spirit is in that place and then once you go to that place in what it is you'd like to attract into your life you're coming from a spiritual place absolutely nothing is impossible yeah how would you define spirituality I think it's again Einstein was one of my heroes and you know he said they asked him about quantum physics and all of these technical questions and I remember him saying he said they're just details he said I'd like to really learn to think like bad things I think I was out in Australia a couple of years ago and I was on a show there The Tonight Show down in Australia the equivalent of The Tonight Show here and the woman asked me what is your mission and I just blurted out to live a god realize life and she asked me what that meant and I said I think that means to to learn to think like God things like how does how does the source of all things if you could put it into a context of how does it think how does God think the only thing that God thinks it seems to me it's like if these were the hands of God you'd say well what does God do with his hands well the only thing he does with his hands is is that he gives and spirituality is that it's taking your attention off of yourself like the first nine months that you were alive you know inside your mother's womb there was absolutely nothing for you to do you know you just let go and you let God which is what we say in the recovery movement you just let go and you just allow and you can't interfere with the process there's there's nothing you know there's an invisible intelligence that is allowing this growing fetus to have its nose show up it's heart starts beating in one second and and after nine months it comes out and we look at this beautiful little creature and we say great workout we'll take over from here and in the taking over process we we create what we call a false self and the false self is the easy separate occurs absolutely separate from source right right and then with that separation we would call it edging God out eg Oh ego that's the ego and we take on this false self and and we start to believe that Who I am is not this divine perfection from which I originated but Who I am is what I do and and what I have and what I accomplished and what other people think of me and who I am is separate from everybody else and even most egregiously Who I am is separate from God yeah we begin to believe all these things and we take and that's the that's the opposite of a us-made spirituality it's to go back to the place from which you originated it and to live from that which means it's about serving it's about offering allow to spoke about this in the in the daodejing he said there your original nature is based on four cardinal virtues and the cardinal virtues if you can live them this is what you who you are as a being reverence for all of life just finding finding love in all things the planet the plants the human beings the animals everything you find you reverence have reverence for all over you kill nothing you know a natural kind of sincerity which means it's a sense of honesty about not just not stealing but about who you are as a human being and a sense of kindness you know just being kind to each other and to everyone and everything and also service those are the four cardinal virtues reverence for all of life honesty kindness service that's a spiritual life and that's what a God realized life is it's how I try to live my life that's why I'm getting rid of his ego yeah it's a it's a tough mess tough very tough matter I mean the ultimate even in relationship to Mary oh I mean one of the hardest things we have to do in relationships is to try to love like God loves and I quote in the in the film I quote Hafiz the great Persian poet he said even after all this time the son never says to the earth you owe me he said just think what a love like that can do it lights up the whole world that NEX that spirituality it's like just you know living your life from a place of giving not an imitation just and in our relationships particularly our love relationships with each other you know to be able to love someone who doesn't love you back you know to be able to love someone who's who abandons you someone who walks out on you to be able to love a person who criticizes you or who just doesn't want anything to do with you but that you love you know that's the ultimate test and it's it's one of the tests that you know the ultimate love I don't know if you have any children or no D to show the ultimate love it's generally a mother's love for her child because that's that's the kind that's a God kind of love that is you don't look at that child who's crying and screaming in the middle of the night and say you know what do you think you're doing and you're bothering me and all that you just offer them you just even you take that child you put it to your breast you you you feed them you hold them you comfort them and if they cry 24 straight hours you still do that it's like and they don't have to love your back they don't have to do anything try to take that kind of love and apply it in our relationships that's when we push the ego out because the ego the ego always wants to own something mm-hmm it always thinks in Altera's must be right right and once the wants to be right and it wants to own things I'll tell you a great story my friend David Simon told me the story you know who Deepak Chopra is a dear friend of mine and his son Gotham was in New Delhi and he went into a and he was given an example of this and at the at the Chopra Center when I was sitting in on the audience and Gotham went into the movie theater in Delhi put his hat on a chair and went in to get some popcorn he went got his popcorn came back and somebody was sitting in his chair and he said to the gentleman who was sitting in a chair II say excuse me but that's my chair and a gentleman said to him he said well how do you know it's your chair he said well I put my hat on it he said that's how I know it's my chair and the man said so according to your logic and way of thinking if I put my hat on your car it's mine that's what the ego does isn't it's what the ego wants to own everything including each other you know it's like if you if I'm in a relationship with you and I love you that means you know we place conditions on it yeah you're responsible you and if you decide to love someone else then I can't love you anymore thank you if you walk out on me or if you criticize me or if you if you leave me being able to love someone even if they do that you know Anthony de Mello used to talk about that and like loving without attachment you know the ego is such a hard master it just it has all of these demands and - I mean he used to say that the great test to be able to love someone is to say I leave you free to be yourself to think your thoughts to indulge your tastes to do exactly as you please and I will still love you hardly anyone can pass that test but God can see you've overcome Eureka no I would I wouldn't say that at all if I said yes I would be lying um I think that it's a journey every day you do better you take me over yes it's really the taming of it it is it isn't nearly allens yeah I think that true nobility really isn't about being better than anyone else yeah it's about being better than you used to be right and you know I mean I've been through divorce twice I've I've been through addictions I've been through a lot of heartaches a lot of struggles in my life living in orphanages and foster homes and so on all of those things have been just you know great teachers for me but the toughest one for me is still the ability to love those who don't respond to me the way I think that they should respond to me not so much in an audience and not so much with the people that I'm at you're in - yeah no I know it's very different even with my own children and I have eight beautiful wonderful children but that's what awareness is that's what being present is about it's about staying and you're just like okay I'm you know I'm not perfect but I can try in this moment to accept but I don't get things the way that I want them and terrific recognize that it's your ego talking yeah because it's not yet really your pure use about the child yeah yeah and there was a great teacher from India his name was Vivekananda do you know yeah and he came over he came in early part of the last century in 1905 1910 he traveled all over the brilliant speaker when you hear his stuff I'm in hizmet and his devotees used to ask him how do we do this how do we tame this ego how do we you know we push it out till we destroy it and his answer was so beautiful she said he said in the springtime go out and observe the blossoms on the fruit trees he said the blossoms vanish of themselves as the fruit grows so too will the lower self the ego the false self so too will the lower self vanish as the divine grows within you and that's what it is for me I'm 69 years old and it's like every day I try to let the divine grow within me just a little more just you know practicing aloha whatever you want to whatever you want to call it I was staying in a hotel in in Los Angeles the other day I was up taping this with a body honcho and was on the fifth floor and I there was a woman who comes into the rooms she's been on the fifth floor for 12 years she's a maid and she cleans our toilets and she keeps our you know our living room nice and she's you know she cleans up dirty sheets that have stains on them she's I mean this is this is like this is an angel who comes into your hub and I was there with my daughter Serena we had just done the show and and I I started talking to her and I just reached into my pocket and I I took a hundred dollar bill and I put it in her hand my god you would have thought that I had you know given her you know the keys to the kingdom of God I mean she was so great and we were there for two more days she left gifts in my daughter's room and in my room and she you know brought me a picture of her daughter and she she's from El Salvador she had just lost somebody and some flooding it that had just taken place there and it was like that's been yeah that's letting the divine grow within your finding and it isn't the hundred dollars a lot of you watching can't afford a hundred dollars but you can afford you you can think a nice thought it's just like somebody say a kind word say you know and so many people forget to say thank you sample baby sir or the pepper better begging at the you know with their set with their brown signs up on the side of the road you don't have to give everybody who's standing there asking you for money but you also don't have to criticize them you don't have to find fault with them and you don't know what the story is yeah we only think we know yeah you can give a silent blessing I can remember I used to do that I used to think I remember one time thinking who is this guy he's healthy he's strong what is he doing standing up there way I work why isn't he working and then when I got up a little closer I saw that he only had one leg one leg yeah you know yeah and I can and I pulled the car over and I got him in and I took him got him some of the ease and gave him a little money and all but there was a time you see it's like not that instant judgment that's letting it's like letting that's what Vivekananda meant let the divine grow within you and the it's like you're a vessel you're a container and the more divinity that you allow into you the more of those four cardinal virtues that I spoke about that you begin to practice so it pushes out the rest of the stuff cuz there's no room in there for the ego and for all the false self and look at me and look how wonderful I am and look at all my stuff look at all my accomplishments look how wonderful I am in this those virtues it it it pushes it out yeah and you become you become christ-like you become Buddha like you you you begin to live a life of a higher spiritual consciousness you know you live at city consciousness where you're constantly giving and offering and serving and the irony of all of this is that when you begin to do this and do it more and more and more in your life the stuff that you used to chase after and used to try to get into it means nothing to you anymore but more if it comes into your life it just kept showing up you don't care yeah and then you and what's it and then you just circulate then you just give it away beautiful yeah what would you say to somebody who didn't consider themselves spiritual I would say that you know try to wiggle your finger just take your finger and ask yourself how do I wiggle this finger and then you do this Wow what is that and you say well I can go inside your brain and I can find the command center inside of your brain if I look in there they can do that and that that allows you to do this but no one can find the commander in the command center that says I think I'm going to wiggle my finger and that's that's your spirit that's your thought that's invisible that's an invisible message to your finger to say wiggle for me you can't find the connection no one can find it there's nothing there like what is this stuff you can look inside of you that invisible list that allows you to do those kinds of things is what you is best your spirit that's the that's the invisible part of you and that's what organizes everything in your life yeah so in your film the shift do you explore the journey of making the shift from being motivated by ambition to seeking an abundant life of meaning and purpose so what is the best way to begin this process I think we've been talking about it all along I think the best way to begin it is to recognize who you truly are your true essence I am writing a companion book to this movie calling it it's called the shift but it's called from there's four chapters from is the first chapter ambition is the second to is the third and ambition is the pista fourth and so it's like it's the journey that all of us take Muriel it's the journey from where did we come from and you begin to look at you know not like not my parents and all of that but people now from a quantum perspective from a spiritual perspective that the particles quantum physics teaches us that particles do not come from particles that it's this you know Jesus said it it's the spirit that gives life find your spirit quantumly yeah and then ambition becomes the part of our life when we take on all of these things I am what I have and I have to accomplish more in it and then two is when you begin to see if you start here and you start heading this way away from your original source away from your source then you have to someday make a u-turn which I've had to do and as you make a u-turn you start coming home you start but you don't have to die you come back to your spirit and then meaning is when you're living here and I think that if everything everything that's in that invisible drop of human protoplasm that tiny little speck of human protoplasm that began you you know where you can see a trillion of them on the head of a pin but everything you needed for this journey that you have the color of your eyes the aging process all the things that are happening to us if everything that we needed for the physical journey is in that speck then so was everything that we needed for the rest of the journey as well relax let go lighten up practice non-interference see God in nature find you find your true self in in the joy of of the miraculous so Simon Rumi said sell sell your cleverness and purchase bewilderment yeah get into a standard just awe and bewilderment that's childlike mmm exactly that connection to nature I totally that's yeah that's where God that's what Lao Tzu taught not to taught in the daodejing that God is really in nature nature's not some religious thing that because the God that most people think about is a God of the ego yeah it's a it's just a gut race it's all you know precinct and it's a God of revenge it's a guy that gets even it's a God that knows how to heal you but withdraw and withhold it from you and only yes yeah only if and if you pay and buy indulgences these are this is just a God that we've all created out of our own egos yeah the God that I'm speaking about is that which allows everything to beat it just does nothing but offer and ask nothing in return well it's like you're talking about the BLA so much said yeah i'ma do when did you first fall in love with movies on the east side of Detroit at the vogue theater and Kaju and Harper there was a there was a little Club in there that you could go there for 12 cents on Saturday afternoon and see two movies and cartoons and be a member of the I don't know if you remember this but the Roy Rogers writers clan and I was a member of the Roy Rogers writers Club and I used to go in there and and I had a little I had a friend I say little I mean he was he was much smaller than me in the eighth grades name was Joe Fiore and he used to take me down to the Fox Theater and in downtown Detroit and and and we would you know he got so excited about movies and watching them and so on yeah and I started watching them on our little Admiral television our little black-and-white television set when I was just a young boy I love movies it's great what a spiritual film mean to you and and what are your most favorite films about transformation well I aside from your oh yeah yes I love the you know one of my very favorite movies was just recently a spiritual cinema monthly selection ribbon was it was called deja vu yes with Vanessa Redgrave that film just blew me away yeah I mean you know any film that has chase scenes in it or has violence and it our guns in it and so on I'm just I don't really check off I just I don't even go to them but like that film got me really thinking about the possibilities if any of you have it I haven't be a wonderment of a great film like that is that you begin to think oh there's this possibility which yeah that all you know that all things are possible and you can make anything happen do you think that films can be used for social social change oh absolutely see one of the reasons I did it did this film the the shift yeah was because I've heard that 10% of the people in this guy in our country by almost a hundred percent of the book something like 97 98 percent of the book which means that approximately 85 to 90 percent of the people never buy never buy a book and I've written lots and lots of books but those go but those same 94 right those those same 90% of the people they go to 90s they go they go to the movie so I thought well I and I remember it because it was brilliantly done because I remember seeing the promotion on the internet for months and maybe maybe a year prior to it coming out it was always it was very intriguing and well there's just great people in it Michael Moore John is a great director and Portia de Rossi I mean and Michael DeLuise Dom DeLuise is so yeah all of the people in this film er when I was asked to do the film I did the film at the age of 68 and which meant taking on a whole new career because I don't take direction well and I speak like I'm speaking now in front of an audience I don't use notes but that when you do a film as you know do it be having rented films you do the same thing over and over and over and over again and I just decided that this was something that I could do I just one of the excuses I didn't want to use is I'm too old to learn this you can't teach an old dog new tricks you can teach an old dog anything you know and so I'm sure you were still spontaneous or come you know anyway well I insisted that it be professionally done and I didn't work because I've seen a lot of this a lot of the movies that are called spiritual movies but at the quality the quality is just not there and there's people trying to be actors and they're not and so on I wanted it to be a polished professional film for you and my goal was to have 10 million people watch it and I and I know that that will happen and once once you see 10 million in America is PI how do you remember PI when you a geometry 3.1416 if you can get 3.1416 percent of a population to align all the ways all the rest fall in place under 20 they all begin to align so for me if 10 million people watch the shift we can make a shift not only in our country but on our planet as well and that's why I'm happy to have the film as part of spiritual cinema because it's another whole bunch of thousands of people who are you tell us the whole spiritual cinemas circle you know fan base they've they're totally turned on by the films and that's wonderful that's great what films do you think have made a positive impact on society well I remember what was the the who was a guy that ran all the way across the country was Oh first Gump Forrest Gump Forrest Forrest come from one of those kind of films that made people look at at people who we call special needs and and see the beauty and see the the joy in them I think the film about that what Tom Hanks was in about the d-day oh yes Saving Private Ryan yes I think that that film transformed my brother's life my brother Dave was in Vietnam was a Bronze Star winner and saw sausage horrible horrible violence he was a medic there and he saw hundreds and hundreds of people and he had never talked about it for for 30 40 years never talked about it he was just so bogged up inside you couldn't get a word out of him he know his Parkinson's disease and so many those people of that generation weren't allowed to really speak about you know he said yeah that's what it's like yeah that's what it's like I think the film ghost was one of those films that really you know deeply and profoundly touched me in in terms of looking at when it opened that window yeah guidance from the others yeah those kinds of things yes you know lots more lots more yeah so what kind of films do you think young people should see and why well I think young people should see films that I don't like to use the word should but I but I think young people can can benefit greatly by by films that that give them sort of an expanded view of what is possible in the world instead of so much of what we think young people want to see which is you know a lot of silliness and a lot of violence yeah and and a lot of obscenity and so on - and also empty you know these empty films it's like there's so much big something having but there's not you know you cut you look under the surface and there's nothing going on I get letters from people who've seen the shift and they said they just had it on in their home and the you know their teenagers will come in and they'll say what are you watching no no this is not and then before you know it they're they're hooked yeah they're hooked and they're watching and they're telling other people about it as well so I think I think if it can just expand your consciousness and just and I think film can make a huge difference in transforming the world yeah we've kind of asses answered this question then you've sort of made this film put up a basket anyway if time money or talent or an obstacle what kind of movie would you like to make if you've got got to do it again got every everything at your disposal now having made a film I know the opportunity that possibly there was there were no obstacles the money wasn't an obstacle and time wasn't and I just did we just did what we wanted to do and and I think this film and maybe perhaps a follow-up to it may be following the characters or something is I would just like to make a film that can can make make the shift because we've got to we've got to make this shift well this has been just delightful I could speak to you forever but I think we've run out of time thank you so I was that's a admirer of your grandfather Oh such a great Butler why say thank you cuz I'm responsible I remember reading islands in the stream yeah a lot of people you know one of the lines that he had in there is a a man had just been he just found out that his son had been killed in the in the war in Spain and he that night was out dancing and someone said to him how can you be dancing when you've just found out that news and I've never forgotten this he said he said I decided that sooner or later I would have to get over this or it would kill me and he said I just pick sooner when I learned that from your grandfather yeah pick sooner Pig sooner yeah pick sooner yeah thank you I bless you yeah

Channel: cinemacircle

Views: 1,104,096

Rating: 4.8094392 out of 5

Keywords: spiritual cinema circle, mariel hemingway, author, book, The Shift, pbs specials, foster home, life, Your Erroneous Zones, bestseller, inspiration

Id: SCdZWvB_5dM

Length: 34min 4sec (2044 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 01 2013