I Had my own story just my own life my own upbringing my own background and you know the divorce Parents and all that type of thing growing up in inner city of Los Angeles Struggling and all of that. I was a teenage parent When I was young my son was born like a month after my 16th birthday Probably I call people there's a time when there is no money and then there's money and then there's no money again It's kind of how life works out but I Remember there was a time early on there was no money and week I think because of that I really wanted to be very successful. I didn't know how to be successful, you know what to do I didn't know how to do it So I continued learning on my own Did tons of trainings attended tons of seminars spent? Thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars and self-help on books and seminars. I mean you name it I did it because I wanted to change my life and It did work, you know over time. It was just like building a muscle. You have to keep working it I was on a huge upswing business was going great. Life was great I remember I was 25 years old at the time and I was making over a quarter of million dollars a year And I remember I did what any normal 25 year old kid would do I bought cars and big-screen TVs and you know went to Vegas probably way too many times More than I had to but that was my life at the time. You know, I 25 years old. I was living it up. I Remember, I bought a yellow Ferrari I guess I wanted people to recognize me here pay attention to me and I never forget this one day I pulled up at a light normally, you know If you're in a yellow Ferrari people tend to notice you and they weren't looking at me And I look over at the car next to me which looked like to be the husband and the wife and there was two kids In the backseat and they had this little dog. The kids are laughing And the parents are just looking over and they just looked like they were having such a good time and I remember I never forget this feeling of looking over and being jealous Here I am this kid I'm at the top of what I thought was my life then and I look over at these people Probably living a totally average life and I was very jealous of that because that was missing my life was nothing Nothing like that. It was definitely not average and that's when I realized that I was Rich financially what I thought at the time the very broke Emotionally and that began my journey my search to look for something more Like many other human beings what prompts the question is often pain The existential crisis of why am I here? Why is the situation the way it is growing up in a tumultuous? Difficult situation caused me to wonder what I could do about it Why am I feeling stuck at my job? Why am I feeling like a rat in a wheel cage or something like that doing the same thing getting the same results? How do I get out of that set of conditions and preconceptions so that I can get a different set of results? It starts by asking that question There's no doubt that some of us grew up in environments are very different but all of us have the ability to take responsibility and even if you've had a Quote-unquote rough life a lot of challenges a lot of blocks on your path. You can meet that challenge There's billboards everywhere you've been in a car accident it's not your fault Call us today And we'll sue the pants off of them like no one wants to take Responsibility for anything that they do for their behavior for their driving for anything When you look at the masses the average person makes tons of excuses in their life But the primary person that they make excuses to is not to others it's to themselves Will have a reason why in this way sure you do. However, where are you at right now? Do you want to make a change at this point or do you just need a hug? So many people will accept part of it and say yes but and then as soon as they say the but it denies what you just said yes to and Presents what you really believe your excuse the reason it's so hard for you. That's your excuse Well that excuse is not valid you may think it's valid but there's plenty of other people that have had Equally as bad and upbringing as you've had in fact a lot worse So I could sit down with any one of you look at your excuse and find a way to present an option our Perception of the world is massively distorted because our perception is only based on our own experiences Our own personal views our own beliefs and it's based on what we were taught of what we learned and whatever we perceive to be true whether it is true or whether it's Complete BS when we get out there We will project that out on to the world Feelings of lack of worthiness don't be proud of what you look like. Don't be so confident that Programming comes in and childhood and continues all the way through adulthood Unless you go and you Rewrite the story you can have a repeat of the same type of story as you get older. It'll just be more Complicated sophisticated version of it. But ultimately, it'll be a sad story Those beliefs that we got in the first place where our subconscious accepting the fact that it isn't easy Life is a struggle Money's hard to make all these beliefs we've heard from other people We accept as being the way the world is The simple truth is that our beliefs are not true in themselves They become true in our experience if we believe them So if we have those types of beliefs that really wire up the brain we must first identify How can I go back and basically? disconnect from that old view All of us have resistance somewhere If you look deep enough, you'll find that place that you don't want to go the place You don't want to look it's too uncomfortable. It's too scary and I would argue that that's where the hot stuff is And then we can go deeper and find out about a person's identity what is it that they believe about themselves that is causing them to behave that way if you're getting Poor results less than desired results from your unconscious mind means that there's some bad programming in there. It means that there's some Outdated software that needs to be updated and upgraded and that's what NLP and hypnosis is all about. It's doing work to Rewrite the software rewrite the story You can ultimately get a different story The important thing isn't our physical environment and all the important thing is our minds I know from experience we can set it in motion Many people don't always understand about how the world works and how energy works and things like that But there are these energy waves everywhere, you know around us a couple hundred years ago Somebody just figured out how to latch on to them like radio waves The energy was always there and you can now talk from anywhere in the world to any other part of the world And what I think people don't give themselves enough credit. We don't realize that We are the most powerful human walking talking Transmission towers on the entire planet and just like your cell phone that little box is constantly sending and receiving Signals, but so we're people so much so that we can walk into a room full of strangers not know anybody See somebody way over in the other side of the room. We don't know the person but something about them Draws us to them why? We all give off this vibe We hear that all the time all their vibe. They have a nice vibe a good vibe They have a weird vibe and vibe is short for vibration and vibration Is the equivalent as frequency and we can have a high frequency or a low frequency? So many of us don't say I'm in a high vibration or low vibration. We just say I feel good. I feel bad It's not just positive thinking because I'm not a positive thinker at all I'm not one of these people that just says be happy all the time and think positive and all that I'm not really one of those people, but I also do understand the power of holding a view or a belief so much so for something you want until fruition until the thing is created and the key there is Dare to dream and keep the end in mind If we envision and imagine a greater better life for ourselves and we keep focusing on that vision doubts and fears arise and It seems to the vision crumbles, but then we get back to it. I heard a Wonderful thing a while ago that a plane is off course over 95% of the time but the pilot keeps correcting over no And it reaches its destination When I first heard of that, I thought that's a story of my life Just doesn't work to pray for something once to ask once The frustration and anxiety and excuses cancel out that wish You've got to come back to the wish to the dream to asking every day. Keep asking show me the next step to take I Do think 99% of the effective work? I've done to transform my life Has been internal as Eckhart says in the power of now get the inside, right and the outside will fall into place. I Am sensible and in control of my finances I'm creating total financial success in an easy and relaxed manner a Healthy and positive one in its own perfect time for the highest good of all When you get back to the Realization the understanding of the one thing that you have control over is your ability to align yourself with the thing that you actually want Energetically it Just depends. How long does it take for you to align yourself with that thing? Because at first there's this like confusion or our doubt and then you get to this point is like, okay I think it's possible Maybe it's like I think it is possible you get to like hope this is the positive thinking part of you it's like I hope this works out and then you get to this other point is like I really believe this is gonna work out and then you Finally get to this place of like I don't care what or how this but this is going to happen This thing is done, it's complete it's complete in my mind it's complete in my body it's complete in my soul I am there before I actually get the thing and You need to hold that alignment and give world and people and thing the circumstances an opportunity To work out for you It's all about creating something out of apparently nothing To me. I look at it as a completely magical process in a way. You don't have to use those words at all you can just say Strategic planning has its results. Whatever words you want to use but for me What it does get down to is the basic deep mystery of all of creation We can channel that force. If you will or we can ask for it. We can bring it into our minds There is a famous occultist from the victorian era in england Anything was Aleister Crowley, and he said magic is the art the science of causing change to happen in accordance with one's will by visualizing that future moment putting in a set of instructions and then when I let go Turn my attention away from it. My unconscious mind will be drawn towards experiencing it effortlessly Easily, it will seem like the right thing to do. It will seem as though I'm compelled to do that It'll be automatically arising from the way I've made sense of that reality moving forward There are a lot of different ways to do this. Is it really magic? Depends on how you define magic, doesn't it? My name is Dean Radin, I'm the chief scientist of the Institute of noetic Sciences one of the things that we do at this institute is study experiences that people report very commonly that challenge the prevailing scientific idea about who and what we are and So these experiences range from simple intuition like gut feelings? to psychic phenomena to mystical experience we're interested in and when somebody has a transformative experience of this type and there's a pretty large range of them and We we also gain some sense that the experiences that they have are real and not just an illusion Then how do we begin to understand them most of what we do in the scientific sense is in the laboratory We use methods like high density EEG to look at brain activity. We use psychophysiological methods to look at how the brain and body are related to each other We use methods and physics in computer science and statistics So the magic I'm talking about first of all is not Harry Potter and it's not Harry Houdini those are both fictional magic I'm talking about the real stuff. So real magic consists of three categories The first category we can call divination What's the idea that your mind can perceive through space and time from an T realistic point of view? We don't know how that can happen very easily or I'm an idealistic point of view. It has to happen It is the way things are The second category I call force of will which from a scientific perspective we might use the terms like mind matter Interaction or psychokinetic effects and that's the notion that your intention your will can manifest it makes things happen The third category is theour G in practice. It's about evoking spirits in ceremonial magic where you try to get spirits to do things on your behalf, so The reason I got interested in magic is because for most of my career I've been studying parapsychological phenomena telepathy and clairvoyance and so on and after studying the esoteric literature even just for a little bit I realized that what we have been studying in the laboratory is exactly what people have called traditional magic divination is clairvoyance and precognition Force of will is psychokinetic effects theor G are phenomena like near-death experiences and mediumship So because I was surprised at having spent almost 40 years studying these phenomena and not Realizing that that is what traditional magic is about I decided to write this book to Express essentially what I discovered Which to other people might seem I will have of course it said is the way it is. How did you not even know that? Part of it is because I went through the academic tradition where we assume that a certain view of the world and in that view of the world ideas of traditional magic are Laughable, it cannot be the case My background in interest in spirituality and science really is a lifelong passion because I started as a young child Being very aware of the fact that there is this deeper level of consciousness connecting all of us. I Wanted to find out more about that and get into the science of it so I chose to go to UC Berkeley where I got my degree in physics and my main focus of interest in the program had to do with quantum physics, which I found tremendously intuitive for me There has been a lot of emphasis on the idea that magical thinking doesn't work. But actually it turns out magical thinking is pretty powerful Because in the quantum realm the realm of imagination is the king that's the foundation for everything consciousness is primary a Lot of people who are attracted to magic in the first place They don't care how it works They don't even care about the debate over whether it exists. They just want to use it So the two simple forms that have been used as far back as we can see in history One is called writing magic and the other is called sigil magic. So these are very elementary practices Both of them have persisted throughout history Probably because they do something so from a psychological perspective. You can say well the act of writing down what you want That will just psychologically Predispose you to seeing that happening, but the question is whether it actually does cause the world to be different So that's kind of what we study in the laboratory Not so far are these magical practices but things like that where you make very strong? Intention and then you see whether it changes something in the world Sigil magic is like writing magic except that instead of writing something down You make a symbol for the stand for the thing that you want Once you have that shape the symbol itself will remind you of the intention you use Whatever method is necessary in order to put all of your intention into that symbol and like push through the symbol To make it happen and then as a scene in the laboratory a lot that there's something called the release of effort effect That while you're pushing like crazy with your intention nothing's gonna happen. It happens when you release So the sigil magic as well, you push really hard Through the symbol and then you might burn it you might put it away in a drawer. You get rid of it somehow So that you allow the intention to go do whatever is going to do some people think this is something weird and what I'd like people to realize is that Basically, every time we make a choice in our mind. We're actually making a quantum jump Quantum jumping is such a big field that there's a lot that falls within it Everything from the placebo effect is I think an excellent example of it to finding lost things To suddenly having the skillsets and abilities where you didn't have those capabilities before? These are all things that are possible. There's really no end in sight that pretty much anything that you would wish for is Attainable because we're looking at the nature of reality itself and the way that you're interacting with it So the steps involved. So how do you get a quantum jump from being in one state of being Maybe being sick to being well, for example, that's a good one the way that you can make that jump is to start by getting into that relaxed energized state of being So things that are conducive to that would be meditation Lucid dreaming you can think of that as being in a theta state of mind. It's like a daydream state of mind And just make that a regular part of your life so that you feel like okay This is how it feels to just not have any worries and feel energized and relaxed Now the more you do it also it gets easier. So that's good Then the next step is to really feel that you're making a selection of where you'd like to go Sometimes we don't know where we want to go I like to then ask how good can it get and let that unfold naturally You're talking to your subconscious when you do that your subconscious knows what's good. You will go to the right place And so that's a natural way to guide yourself But if you have a clear view, I want to get healthy then you can have that picture in mind to the degree or subconscious believes that's possible that Dictates the degree of success you're about to have so I recommend keep an open mind, you know Read lots of stories and accounts of miracles these magical happenings These reality shifts third part is just act as if it already happened and you behave accordingly And it sounds crazy but people experience what they're able to experience based on the energy they bring what their subconscious really needs because your subconscious is in the driver's seat here and What you really believe and what you need is what you're going to end up getting pretty much all the time When you need it to happen, it will happen and when you're open-minded, you've brought that energy. This is basically the science of miracles So in the popular sense this notion is sometimes thought of as you create your own reality That you your ideas will manifest that's where the idea of affirmations comes from and to some extent positive Psychology, you can trace that line of thought all the way back to shamanism. It is part of the esoteric tradition So then somebody could say well then how come if I I want to have world peace tomorrow what I'm thinking about it's not happening So what's what am I doing wrong? Or I want to have a big big pile of gold. I don't see it So that model must be wrong My interpretation of that is that the conscious level mind where this is happening. This is not where the action happens All of the action happens at a much deeper level of mind It's a little bit like looking at an iceberg the tip of the iceberg. You can see it. That's our conscious awareness But the most of it by far is below the surface and that's where the action happens So it's not just a matter of telling yourself once a day I can do this and lots of people like me succeed at this You're going to need to address the issues of your heart and of your subconscious in your gut all of that and the best way To do that is to start listening to yourself. A lot of people don't do that They think I'm just gonna tell myself what to do and it's all gonna work So one of the reasons why I wish for a gold Mercedes and it doesn't show up is because we have lots of unconscious things that are working against us We know that there we have self-defeating behaviors otherwise We wouldn't see levels of obesity that we have and people wouldn't drink and smoke as much as they do So you may consciously say I'm not going to eat this cookie because it's not good for me But you will find your hand going to get the cookie and then it'll pick up the cookie and will bring it to your mouth And you will eat it. It's part of your unconscious that can override your conscious awareness So this is one of the reasons why meditation as a practice is useful not only for mental and physical health But it is essential when it comes to things like magical practice In the magical traditions. What a yogi might call samadhi which is the very deep levels of mystical unity a magician will call gnosis and All of the magical traditions say that for magic to work you have to do it from the level of gnosis well Most people don't go there. It's not easy to get there because the world is constantly pulling our attention away But that's what's necessary It seems simple to do a quantum jump But that doesn't mean it's easy and I do martial arts and they say the same thing there, you know Some of these things are simple. They're not necessarily easy and with Quantum Jumping there's so much involved starting with this whole notion of attaining a relaxed energized state and often when people are suffering when there's true misery when they're actually engaged with survival issues and real difficult challenges then it might be very difficult to get to that place of feeling relaxed and energized and Then the next step of envisioning something Positive can be equally challenging if your entire history has been based on Nothing good really happening If you don't know what love is for example It's hard to picture what that feels like if you don't know unconditional support and compassion it's hard to imagine it There can be all kinds of challenges along the way it's still doable but that needs to be a discipline of working in that direction a Lot of people who do affirmations will just try to harangue their consciousness to death if you waste time saying I'm a millionaire I'm a millionaire. I'm a millionaire. I'm a millionaire. I'm a millionaire, but then you're not Sending your resumes out You're not coming up with a product or a service or talking to entrepreneurs and figuring out what you can do to be a millionaire What are you doing wasting time? Trying to convince yourself of something. You don't really believe I Don't want to work. I just wanted to come to me. Yeah, we probably all want that We all want just a million dollars to come to us Thinking doesn't make things so you still have to take action in the world and you've gotta get results You gotta prove that it's true for you I don't work with my clients and just do a bunch of Magical actions with them and expect that their whole world changes in that moment We are going to shift some things at a feeling level. We're gonna go in we're gonna change how you feel about it So that you take action So that you start to acquire the things that you do want you feel motivated to do it and you take action on it. I Want to do that action now? expand your comfort zone start with what you have the Older I get the clearer, I see it and I think there's just two essential things the first is Dare to imagine doing what you love and then the other essential thing is just deal with the doubts and fears that will inevitably arise When you dare to dream The more expansive the dream the bigger the dozen fears you can deal with those The only real failure is quitting. Just don't quit Within every adversity is an equal or greater benefit You turn your thinking around when you got a major problem Happening shift your thinking by just asking yourself. What opportunities are in this? There is a part of us that means to allow for that magic to happen and we have to know that There is this force there is this thing, you know Whether it's it's God whether it's the universe Whatever you believe in some way at some level your life is trying to communicate with you You can be walking through the living room at your house the kids or your partner Somebody's watching a movie or a commercial something just in passing And there's a slight little phrase a little thing That the person on the other side of the movie said you didn't pay attention to anything else but in those three seconds five seconds, you heard something they said and Every one of those things is intuition. It's planting a seed in the garden of the mind It's our job to be able to quiet the noise because intuition comes like a whisper and it's so Quiet and so light and so soft many people miss it because of all of the noise that they've created in their life So the main thing I recommend is people start by meditating to go on a walk and you're in nature That's a perfect time to just pay attention to your breathing as you're walking It's all about getting back to an observer State of being or you notice that you're not the problems in your life. You're not the role that you play You're not the thoughts that you think you're the observer of that So you're the one who is making the choice? In all these things and you have a lot more choice than you thought you did. I Pick up Expectations and fears and doubts and misgivings about things that have happened And if I let that clog up my entire Cognitive system then pretty soon. All of my decisions are being based on my fears my doubts so meditation Helps me clear out those beliefs that get in the way. They it's just like clogging things up Just like you need to vacuum your house and clean your refrigerator and you need to clean your mind What is meditation can we simplify it? Can the normal person the average person do it without leaving their home without leaving their job? What does it take to meditate how do we do it what happens when the mind settles down and the body settles down and our sense of self disappears I teach a lot of essentials for meditation, but the three ingredients we all have gentle attention a willingness to sit down and do it and then something to pay attention to and you come back again and again and again and again, To the focus of your meditation whether it's your breath or mantra Whether it's a candle flame or an emotion and no matter how many times you go off topic You come back again again again So a lot of people say I can't meditate and I say why and they say I don't have enough time I say well how much time do you stand in line for a cup of coffee? how much time do you spend on social media on the web and I so take 10 minutes of that and turn it back to yourself and Asking that question Who am I Who am I really? Who is it? That's living through me that's looking through my eyes Consciousness is so obvious that for many people. They don't even know what you're talking about Most academics and this is now true everywhere in the world are taught according to principles that have developed within Western science that scientific worldview is based on a philosophical Set of assumptions known as materialism So materialism in a nutshell means that everything is made out of matter and energy Including mind including consciousness including everything we know about subjectivity. That's the prevailing view So if you're challenging that view you have the same problem that you would in any domain where you start challenging the status quo The status quo doesn't like to be challenged. So it will push hard against anything that challenges it and then attempt to squash it This is the problem of materialism materialism doesn't know what to do with consciousness. So it's sort of it sets it aside We'll worry about that later or it comes up with the idea that somehow the brain is complex enough that it gives rise to Experience even though nobody has any idea how that could possibly be And we know that materialism is pretty good because it gives us a Technology to do this sort of an interview with a special machine that captures my image and so on so we don't want to throw Materialism away, it's too good. The question is is it good enough to and count for everything? And here's where we have the problem Clearly is is not accounting for all of the experiences that people talk about so what's missing? When you look at the esoteric traditions you immediately bump up against what might be thought of as proto science so alchemy astrology and herbalism Alchemy was the forerunner of chemistry astrology is a forerunner of astronomy some extent and Herbalism is the forerunner of pharmaceuticals What's interesting is that? Historically that all three of those proto Sciences also had a fourth element in it the element of consciousness Where the practitioner of alchemy or the practitioner of astrology herbalism? Knew that their intention was a very important component of what they were doing This is true in each case and yet science has stripped that out You don't consider when you take a pill that your intention is important except maybe as a placebo But certainly when you're preparing something like metals or in chemistry People don't think about that, but that was part of the original idea and so I think what we're happening now is that science is slowly beginning to mature to the point where it sees that the Intention and consciousness of a scientist is as important and ingredient as it was an alchemy and astrology and so on So I looked in detail at the esoteric traditions all the way back from shamanism to Pythagoras Eastern traditions all the way up to the present time and you find that there's a similar threat of thought and Basically, they're saying that the better model of reality is idealism that everything is made out of mind including matter That solves at one stroke if that method is correct if that Assumption is correct It solves all of the puzzles about psychic phenomena and mysticism and all of that stuff So now consciousness came here first, and so the challenge the scientific challenge is how do we get from pure awareness? To emerge into space and time and matter and energy. How do we do that? Well, there are lots of people working on that very problem. How do you emerge out of something that seems non-physical into physicality When we recognize that every single material thing at its core is energy and Everything is vibrating, then you can get a feeling for this nature of existence. That is not as Materially real as we tend to think And to me that's what it's really about that the nature of reality itself is consciousness looking at itself It's basically a feedback loop So we're looking at the outside world realizing wait a minute Maybe what we're seeing is consciousness itself and it starts to seem that is the case So we're at a time in our history where quantum physics is Challenging all of us to take an only look at the way we see the world Some scientists who strongly resist this are of the opinion that we basically Understand how reality works There's a couple of things left over to mop up, but we kind of got it I think that view is so arrogant and even just from a historical perspective You see about every twenty years some prominent scientist saying well So I'll wrapped up you just have these one or two things left to fix and then we got it all It's just stupid from my perspective That science is young and we have far more things that we don't understand fundamentally at all Than we do understand a little bit And that's one of the fears that arises then say well I've spent my entire career as a professor professing certain ideas about the way things work and you're coming to me and saying Actually, you didn't understand that at all Well, that's frightening. I mean that no one wants to think that they don't know what's going on This is one of the reasons why the Institute of noetic Sciences is a private nonprofit Institution because we're looking at things that do challenge the status quo. You can't do this in the academic world we were the among the first to support research and meditation research the Positive psychological and health consequences of things like gratefulness and forgiveness mind-body connections and health and so on or we were supporting these kinds of ideas at a time when they were considered laughable and extremely risky So if somebody wants to live a comfortable life The easiest thing to do is to go along with the flow Always and if someone has a family and they have children to support and all that It is actually the responsible thing for the sake of the rest of the family to not challenge the status quo We live in a society that is constantly pushing certain ways to be and among other things we are not taught to think for ourselves or to think critically or to Question our own motives and and our unconscious desires It requires taking risk, but so what life is a risk? It's a challenge to face up to a lot of opposition Collectively, there's a driving force that tends to move events in a certain direction And if you've ever gone up against it, it can feel like a fish swimming upstream Like you're going one direction. Everyone else is going somewhere else The more you go into this practice of meditation and the more you recognize that you are consciousness I would not say it becomes easy But it becomes possible to stand up to society to your parents or your Internalization of what you think your parents want for you? And the funny thing about doing this Quantum Jumping is often You'll notice that people seem like they change and where there had been opposition now their support. I know a lot of people have a struggle with their parents because their parents aren't Supporting them and doing what they love their parents have a different idea My father certainly did he was concerned for me going into theater and music Did not seem like a good idea He wanted me to go into business And I realized I got deep somehow that it doesn't do any good to do what your parents want You have to do what you want, but it doesn't do any good to fight him either so I just I ignored my father he complained to my Brother, he said mark is so slippery. You know, he just blows me off. He doesn't he doesn't fight me He doesn't object. He does. He just sort of slides away One of the requisites of change is that you have to deal with objections at home or in whatever environment you go back to so let's say you You want to do a lot of work on your identity all of a sudden your awakening? Your ability to cause changes in accordance with your will you're starting to tap into feelings of worthiness start to feel strong? but then you go home and These people have a picture of you that is not the picture that you're working to become It's the old you and it may not even even been accurate, but it's their image of you And I think you can say hey, look I'm really working on this. This is really really important to me This is who I'm working to become I'd really love to count on your support I know you're just kidding, but I'd appreciate if you just cut it out for now And if you don't respect that, I'm gonna have to ask you to leave or I'm just going to not hang out with you I don't want someone else to sabotage. I know You might mean not responding it might mean hardening yourself Psychologically to be able to handle it. You can't always ask other people to change most of the time they won't Not everybody really wants help one thing I've learned and the hard way in this field is some people just want to complain some people want to complain about the problem and Don't actually want to resolve the problem And we've all had friends or heard of somebody that they always seem to find Themselves in the same type of scenario the same type of issue the same relationship even though with three four different people It's the same story. It's like look, you're always attracting people like this Something is going on with you internally that you need to resolve in order to move on to the next level of life But not everybody really wants to change It's very possible But you also must believe have the faith that it's possible and then just align yourself with the people out there That are also on the same wavelength So to speak and stay away from the people that are going to drag you down, you know And we really need to dictate and decide upfront how much time we are willing to put into those Friendships or those partnerships or those people and you have to think about that in advance. You can't just let it work out however it's gonna work out because it will suck up all of your energy and you have to keep your energy in tact and Focus for what the things that are really most important to you? one of the best things you can do is just set a good example and It's hard to help people unless they ask for help so I don't recommend Pushing your values on someone else unless they ask you like what are you doing? Otherwise, probably they that's not their path right now you need to be you're your own example of Being the change that you wish to see in the world Everything happens exactly as it should and Then it's a very unique place to be able to be grateful for where we are today Grateful for what you have grateful for what we've accomplished grateful for our experiences yet at the same time Be able to want or expect or allow more to continue to come in Life can be very complicated and difficult when people are Grasping all the time and I think when we're constantly achieving as something new instead of celebrating What is we become less and less satisfied? It's like a drug money is a drug sex is a drug shopping is a drug. It's a bottomless pit trying to satisfy ourselves This culture especially in the United States this society really has this like succeed excel It's a consumer mentality and do more buy more be more have more bigger house bigger car fill up a garage full of 10,000 rolls of toilet paper and buy as much as you can and people have garages and storages and more stuff and they have so Much stuff they can't even store this stuff They had to pay for a place to store the stuff that they can't even store at their own house And this is the way people live Just because you have more externally it doesn't always correlate to being internally fulfilled those are two completely different things and External, you know in your environment the house the cars of stuff is never fulfilling its short-term You get the fulfillment you buy it? You have it you play with it and you get the short-term like instant gratification type of thing But just like a child with a new toy, you know, you run out of motivation after little while you're on to the next toy The ultimate insanity of it was the 80s. I remember a guy He actually had a bumper sticker saying whoever dies with the most toys wins And I remember thinking Wrong, that's not true. It's not about amassing more and more toys. True when you're poor there's a lot of stress about paying the bills but going purely for material success will never achieve the satisfaction that we're all looking for You've got to be careful to keep your life simple because the kingdom of heaven is within I Think more and more conscious business owners have to start thinking in terms of there's enough for everyone More often than not there are solutions. There are ways to to be more inclusive You can find that Hey if I'm doing hypnosis and hypnotherapy and all sorts of wonderful stuff, and there's someone else who who doesn't near me Well, why do I have to see them as a competitor? Why not introduce myself? Why not connect and think about how can we benefit each other? There's enough of the resources money People around that if you have a good product if you have a good service, there's enough for everyone John Templeton put it. So simply you said the way to get wealthy is to make others wealthy but I kind of think on this planet there has been progress made and we do take two steps forward and then sometimes a huge step back as The old systems are thrashing out fighting for survival And in the long run I would think the world view based on love and partnership Working it out with everybody realizing we are one global family Or in some ways experiencing a dark time in some ways. We're experiencing a renaissance And so there's some some threats to our existence right now But we also have more and more people who are paying attention and more and more people. Who are Looking for solutions in areas that we didn't look before Get out there and do something nice for somebody and don't expect anything in return Be kind People need it If we remember that the people who we complain about are human that underneath their beliefs and ideologies They're human beings It opens up our ability to hear one another sometimes we buy into the Materialistic world and we think that we have no power. We think that were victims But actually there's a great deal more power in each of us and all of us together collectively then most of us ever realize it's up to all of us to encourage ourselves and one another to Maintain that sense of who we really are because that I'd believe very strongly that this is the time in our world's history where it's more important than ever before that people recognize this I Think for those people who don't settle down their nervous system with meditation or who don't have a spiritual or creative practice Their mind is constantly traveling into the past into the future and into other people's business and when that happens They're not present for themselves and the world that's being revealed to them The Zen master might say show me the future Show me your past and there's no way to do it Those questions, they stop the mind, you know, your mind will gyrate a little bit and then eventually it settles down We dive into the source of everything We started naming some of the qualities of it it's eternal it's ever-present. It's intelligent that's the transcendence is when we lose track of time and space and we transcend the element of Materialism but we can't just go there because we want to we'll doesn't have much to do with it You cannot will your mind to stop thinking you cannot will? desires to be made manifest you cannot will Enlightenment You can't will it it just happens on its own accord spontaneously you have to be present and here it comes That's how I navigate life from with faith patience and grace but We sometimes get a feeling like there's something else going on here that there's something much more Connected that in a very real sense or sharing the same dream It's I recognize that I'm in some ways playing a role, but who I really am is so much bigger so much more mysterious It's eternal is infinite. It's timeless. It's Connected to everything Then there's this collaboration a symphony of all these different harmonious pieces each of us playing a part of the overall song and that this is the so called music of the spheres that it's our consciousness that creates all of this and When we get there, then that is oneness because everything's back together again But in such a way that we don't know what we're looking at And we never actually know we hope we're getting closer to understanding yet But I sometimes suspect that as humans. We don't have the capacity to actually understand what's going on and I See this reflected a little bit when you have a mystic who can go into mystical States They come back with a conviction that I understand it now I got it say well, well tell me what it is it they're responses. It's ineffable I cannot describe it And the reason is that that language at the everyday level is not capable of describing what's actually going on some mystics will say that they come out of the mystical state and then they see the world in a new way and everything is exactly the way it's supposed to be I Think mystics philosophers poets they express the Reality better than maybe your eye Because they allude to it and that's the same with waking up to that which is looking through your eyes You can call it anything you want Some people call it sell for the capital s some people call it spirit. God soul the great spirit Consciousness itself. It's That which animates all of this. It's what's residing at your deepest level The ancient notion of indras net is that is this necklace with lots of glittering Pieces of crystal in it and so each one is the universe But it's all the facets on it are reflecting all of the others. So we have this amazing network of awareness, which is seeing itself Reflected again and again and again in an infinite number of ways. So it's sort of simmering, it's some universal unconscious level trying to wake up from a dream and when finally Whatever we are understands it or it understands itself. It wakes up and the dream is over. I See it as you go along in your daily life You you are a certain way and then one day you wake up and from that moment Everything before that seems like a dream and you can wake up multiple times so in my life, I remember two instances where Just walking to class in college one day in the morning. I woke up I mean there was a very strange experience a little bit like you're sleeping and now you wake up and you become aware There was a step function while walking to class one morning that everything before that I felt as though I was sleeping and that this has happened twice so I'm imagining that there many things that can push that kind of experience the more awake you are and The less dreaming you are I think the closer to enlightenment you get For me enlightenment is to attain that sense of Self that is pure consciousness and to recognize that that that's the real you that who you are is infinite is eternal is connected and that That's the you that's looking out through your eyes who is so much wiser so much more connected so much more involved in everything and That's your true identity We are the creation of the forces of life an eternal blend of ecstasy and strife Living as long as the universe stays which is forever through the galaxy's nights and days From the Big Bang's beginning to the black holes destruction is but a day in the life of our cosmic construction We'll live forever with the stuff of stars ever change ever growing born into this life born into that changing this form for the one that comes next an eternal part of an eternal creation a Quintessential piece of divine revelation. I am this creation You
