Happiness and Prosperity – It’s No Secret
Jim Luciano
Next in the video series is posted: http://youtu.be/05nLghEeId8
This is the second in a series. I recommend you begin with #1
"Happiness
and Prosperity – It’s No Secret - Introduction"
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Chapter One
The difficulty with instructions
Two excellent authors and
teachers, and a groundbreaking book.
Dr. Wayne Dyer’s latest book, “Change Your Thoughts -
Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao” interprets the ancient
Chinese Tao Te Ching, and offers to teach us how we'll "... live in a new
world aligned with nature ... Accomplish more by trying less". Deepak
Chopra tells us how to have "... well being, good health, fulfilling
relationships, and material abundance."
The best selling book, The Secret tells us "...
you can have, be, or do anything you want." Achieving the results by
following their instructions is problematic. Dyer’s coaching for example;
to “bring happiness to all that you do”
is an instruction few people know how to do. Learning HOW to do it is the
reason you buy these books.
Manifest is another example of a futile
instruction. In “The Secret” one of the things they tell you to do is; manifest
things. This is always a concern if you're not an experienced manifester. Don't
worry; the book tells us it’s "... as easy to manifest one dollar as it
is to manifest one million dollars." One problem I see with this
instruction is most people have yet to learn how to manifest one dollar. You
can understand earning a dollar, finding a dollar, stealing a dollar, getting a
gift of a dollar, but the universe hearing your vibrations and giving you the
dollar may not be something you’ve learned yet. If you've read The Secret,
re-read it, watched the DVD, talked about it and still haven't manifested your
million dollars, maybe you're not doing it right. The book lacks detailed
directions, so where do you get better “manifesting” instructions? I thought
I’d see if the secret to manifesting might be found on Google! A Google search
for "how to manifest" offered twelve million websites. If it's just
money you wish to manifest, there are over two million websites on "how to
manifest money". If you've already visited the 1.8 million sites on “how
to manifest wealth” and no longer need money, perhaps you’re looking for help
manifesting other things. There are millions of sites on “how to manifest
desires”, “how to manifest dreams”, “how to manifest what you want”, and even a
few million “how to manifest love” sites.
When you go online, you should visit more than one of these
sites. The first item on Google’s search results may not be the right one for
you. The first site on my Google search "how to manifest love" was
this page: "Educational movement and army of lovers working to build a
new vision of gay male world." This probably won't help if for
example, you're female. The first listing for "how to manifest
dreams" appeared to be more helpful. There was a list of 10 ways to get
started manifesting your dreams. Even better, for those with difficulties
manifesting, there was a link to another site where there were many
"essential oils" and other products to help you manifest. They have a
large assortment of helpful items such as a small bottle of "Believe"
for only $21.71. With this you can "... move to a higher level of
awareness." Hopefully you were successful at wealth manifesting"
because going beyond believing to lotions such as "Dream Catcher",
"Inspiration", "Joy" and others was quite a bit more
expensive!
Well I've had a little fun with the idea of manifesting to make a point.
Instructions such as manifesting leave you without a practical understanding of
what needs to be done. In the end you really don’t know what manifesting is.
There are some people who have had success with manifesting, but it's such a
small percentage it should be obvious few people understand the phenomenon. If
they did, I’d expect to see a whole lot more manifesting going on. I
think we can agree the universe has mysteries we can’t explain (manifesting
being one of them). Inspirations and happiness come to us, seemingly from
nowhere. Some people really do seem to have manifested successfully and surely
each of the authors has had an extraordinary experience, and been inspired to
share it with us. They are attempting to connect us to this mysterious power
and source of the universe. Did they leave something out? Did they miss
something? After all, each of these authors and teachers has great credentials.
They worked hard, and they want you to have success and the happiness they have
found. What else can they do? What can you do? What is missing?
I said that changing the way
you look at things could have dramatic effects. Imagine if you were able to
look at the whole universe in a fundamentally different way. Rethinking one
basic fact can change the universe. It’s happened many times. There are moments
in history where a simple idea (simple when viewed from hindsight) changed our view
of the world and ourselves. Not an invention, but a different way to view what
we already know. If even one little piece of what we take for granted is wrong,
we may not be able to produce effective results. Hard work, dedication and
intelligence are not always enough.
One example is ancient
astronomers, plotting the path of the stars. Many dedicated, intelligent and
hard-working astronomers spent years, maybe their whole lives plotting the path
of the stars through the heavens. Yet, the results they produced were totally
wrong and ineffective. They knew something was missing and made many attempts
to explain and patch the problems they encountered. They couldn’t see what was
wrong because what they already knew blinded them. The story of the Garden of
Eden was a part of life in medieval times. The place where God created all
life, animals, and man was obviously the beginning of everything. So it was
just common sense the Garden of Eden was the center of the universe.
The earth was the center of the
universe. The sun, the moon, and the stars revolved around us. This was the
reference point used for plotting the movement of the stars. Nicolaus
Copernicus challenged this idea. Although it appeared so obvious the celestial
bodies revolved around us, he was willing to look beyond what everyone knew. He
rethought the universe literally from the ground up. In hindsight, it seems so
obvious. All he did was shift a basic reference point.
Armed with this new way of
observing the world, astronomers could now use all the same skills and
knowledge to produce effective, useful work. All the tools, and practices for
studying the movement of the stars remained the same. Yet with this new
reference point, they created a whole new universe. This simple idea went on to
change much more than astronomy. This basic fact changed the thinking of the
western world. What was our place in the universe? If we weren’t the center,
was someone else? What did it all mean? The religious and personal upheaval was
long lived. Science was affected, and many credit Copernicus’ ideas as being
the chief motivating force of the scientific revolution that began in the
sixteen hundreds.
Thought expanded to new levels,
a scientific revolution began; all from the simple idea the earth was not the
center of the universe. A shift in understanding ourselves and our
possibilities can bring an equally historic change in how happiness,
relationships, abundance, inspiration, and success are created. Historically we
have used many analogies and ideas to talk about how we humans exist and live.
But, you are not a computer. You’re not a smarter ape or monkey. When you are
able to see who you are, you gain a whole new perspective. You can change your
entire universe.
Modern philosophers have
uncovered one of these simple changes in reference. Perhaps I could just write
it out in a few words and we’d be done. You could go get enlightened, and live
happily ever after! It’s really that simple. A single sentence could describe
it, a sentence as simple as “The earth is not the center of the universe”. You
probably noticed there are quite a few more pages in this book, so you may have
guessed I’m not going to write the “answer” here. The reason? Fundamental
shifts are not easily digested. Copernicus waited many years before allowing
his book to be published. Then the book was suspended in 1616. The church
wanted to “revise” a few facts. Galileo was placed under lifetime house arrest
in 1633 for following Copernicus’ ideas. The question of our place in the
universe was also an understanding of life and who we are. Imagine living in
sixteen hundred and telling a friend over lunch, “By the way have you heard the
earth isn’t the center of the universe?” “Oh really, that’s nice. I wouldn’t
let anyone hear your fantasy, they hang people for crazy stuff like that.” The
whole western world lived their lives knowing we were the center of everything.
The universe, the sun, the moon, and the stars revolved around us.
People needed more than a simple statement to rethink our place in the grand
scheme of things, to understand our place in the universe. Can you manifest? Can you follow the
instructions of Chopra, Dyer, and the Tao? Yes of course, you just need a
little shift in your universe.
See you at chapter Two... Jim