Jim Luciano
Next in the video series will be up in a few days. Start with THIS VideoThis is the Third in a series. I recommend you begin with #1
"Happiness & Prosperity – It’s No Secret - Introduction"
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Chapter Two
Your journey begins with the first step
Step by step, we will peel back
what you already “know” and reveal the simple idea that can change our lives.
My promise to you is that you will understand the Tao, Dyer, The Secret,
Chopra, and others. You will have the ability to achieve what they offer. You
will have more peace in your life and be more effective at all that you do.
When I speak about having peace, some people imagine a “couch potato” type of
peace. Inner peace is more like being calm within, regardless of the turmoil
around you. A useful analogy is to imagine a sculptor carving a huge piece of
marble, working long hours while he sweats with hammer and chisel in hand, yet
totally content and at peace because he is doing what he loves.
My promise is conditional. You
have a part to do. You have to read, follow the steps, take notes, and even do
some thinking. The instructions are not mystical or whimsical. They are all
things you know how to do such as: Make a list with paper and pen. Write a
page, etc. It may happen that you won’t
like to do some of the steps, but you will be able to. A shift in reference is
effortless in hindsight, but a high wall to climb when you are blinded by what
you already know. The earth was never the center of the universe. Our eyes and
common sense pointed to everything revolving around us; we just couldn’t see
the truth. Learning from history is the first step in making a new fundamental
shift in the way we see the world. You’re already moving toward creating a new
view of the universe.
Is Paradise Lost?
A familiar story from the
Bible, Genesis, tells us about paradise, Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden, and
The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Adam and Eve lived naked in the
Garden of Eden, a paradise. They lived without cares or worry, in a state of
pure joy. Then one day they lost the privilege of living in the Garden of Eden.
They lost it because they ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil. They were thrown out of the Garden of Eden. They left paradise with
their knowledge of good and evil. They have passed this knowledge on to all of
humanity. Now today, outside of paradise, we all know about good and evil. No
matter the person, no matter the thing; we see everything with some shade of
good or bad. Our friends, our homes; cars, clothing, jobs, food, cities, pets,
spiders, politicians, sports ... everything is something we like or don't like,
care about or don't care, enjoy or detest, want or don't want. This is the
world where we try to get the good stuff and avoid the bad stuff. This is our
world - paradise lost. Or is it?
Maybe we can’t live in
Paradise, but it does appear we can visit. A visit to paradise can make your
whole day, maybe even your life. In
most religions or beliefs, we find descriptions of a type of experience
reaching beyond the ability of words to describe. The great masters, the sages,
and spiritual leaders tell of letting go and becoming part of a bigger power.
Religious experience is said to be an experience of transcendental realities.
In Zen, Enlightenment is the state of being with no mind. Buddha and thousands
of others are said to have been enlightened masters. Enlightenment is said to
be an experience like nothing we have in our normal lives. With no normal
reference point, sharing this experience has been difficult. For example The
Tao says:
The Tao that can
be told of is not the eternal Tao; The name that can be named is not the
eternal name. The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth;
We’ll review more of the Tao later, but here you can see
we’re back to the “instructions” problem. This twenty-five hundred year old
document is considered one of the best ways to reach enlightenment (Tao has a
literal translation of “The Way”). Many find the way to paradise can be a twisted
path of riddles.
I had the good fortune to have
been down that path. It was a twisted path, but well worth the journey. It’s a
place of absolute peace and wonder. I’ve seen the world, the universe and life
itself as an endless opportunity. It’s great, but as the Bible said, it’s not a
place where we’re allowed to live. Eventually, as you wander around paradise
something will happen like; you get hungry. You have to stop and grab a bite to
eat. Leaving isn’t bad. When you leave, you remember the experience. What you
can do is bring some of what you experience in paradise back into your life. I
don’t think we as humans, can live in paradise. What I do know is, you can learn to bring
some of paradise to where you live.
The search for the path to
paradise, happiness, and prosperity has been going on for thousand's of years.
Teachers and writers have been telling us how we can get there. Probably the
best-known writing is the Tao Te Ching, an ancient Chinese writing of 81 verses
that is widely used to help people on the path to enlightenment. This is the
document Dr. Dyer writes about. He uses it as the basis of his new book to help
us change our lives. In the book and DVD "The Secret" we are
shown examples of many who have found the way to happiness and prosperity.
Deepak Chopra has also had great success in guiding us "... to fulfilling
our dreams". If you could spend time with Chopra, I believe you would be
successful in achieving much of what he teaches. Olivia-Newton John did this
and credits Deepak with helping her through difficult times and bringing
happiness back to her life. Meditation and years of study of the Tao has also
met with a lot of success. Many masters of the Dao say, "Only living by
the Tao can you be truly yourself."
In the real world, most of us
don't have the time or the thousands of dollars to attend Chopra's workshops,
nor do we wish to dedicate our lives to meditation. Wayne Dyer spent more than
a year on the beach at his Maui home thinking and meditating to come to his
understanding of the Tao. If you don't have a home on the beach in Hawaii or
the resources to spend a few years just thinking, that’s probably not the
answer for you. From our existing viewpoint it appears that the Tao is
difficult, enlightenment, joy and paradise are still a secret, and happiness
and prosperity are expensive and time consuming. Surprisingly, it's really not
difficult to find happiness and prosperity. It's not even easy. It's something
else.
