When you get the
broccoli home you are still so attracted to the picture that you empty the
contents into the garbage and proceed to prepare the wrapper for dinner . As
you put the picture of the broccoli on your plate, you suddenly  realize that
you are going to be very hungry if all you have is the packaging.Your life may be just like that. You may be paying so much attention to
the pack age that contains the real you that you toss away the most vital
ingredients. Your form is the package, and while its beauty and appearance
may seem all-im portant, it primarily serves to contain all the rest of your
magnificent humanity . The container cannot give you the pleasure and
satisfaction and nourishment that the contents do. Even though you cannot
see what is inside that beautiful package, you know that whatever it is
provides you with important and irreplacable nourishment. A lifetime of
focusing exclusively on the package will result in a spiritually
undernourished and quite unhappy you. OceanofPDF .comTHOUGHT
 
You are not a human being having a spiritual experience. You are
a spiritual being having a human experience. Thought is much more than something that you do. It is in fact what you,
and all the rest of us, are as well. Thought constitutes our entire being
except for the portion of us that is form, or the packaging that carries
around our mind s. Try thinking of thought as something that exists not only
within you, but outside of you as well. This may be difficult, because you
are accustomed to believing that your thoughts are an internal  mechanism
that guides the part of you that is form. Try instead to consider thought as a
universal that you were born into. It is something that you do, as well as
something that you are! Once you get used to this new idea, it will become
easier and easier for you to view all thought as something that is very much
a part of you. Here is a mini-le sson in what thought is. Your desir e to impr ove your life
is really your thought to improve your life. Your will to live is really your
thought to live. Your attitudes  about your entire life are really your thoughts
on these  matter s. Your entire past up until this moment is really nothing
more than thought. Your entire futur e from this moment onward is nothing
but thought. Your relationships  to everyone in your life are nothing more
than thought. Your determination  to succeed is nothing more than your
thought to do so. The idea of success is really the thought  of success. Since you can never get behind the eyeballs of another human being and
feel as that person does, you are actually one step removed from that
person’ s process and experience  him or her also through thought. You relate
to every thing and everyone on this planet through the mechanism of
thought. It is not what is in the world that determines the quality of your
life, it is how you choose to process your world in your thoughts. So many highly respected thinkers in disparate disciplines have
concluded that thought, the mind, is the total determiner of how our lives
will go. The Dutch philosopher Spinoza said, “I saw that all things I feared,
and which feared me, had nothing good or bad in them save insofar as the
mind was affected by them.” Albert Ellis, the founder of Rational EmotiveTherapy , stated , “People and things do not upset us, rather we upset
ourselves by believing that they can upset us.” “We become what we think
about all day long,” according to Ralph Waldo Emerson. “There is nothing
either good or bad, but think ing makes it so,” Shakespeare tells us. Abraham Linco ln said, “People are about as happy as they make up their
mind to be.” “Change your thoughts and you change your world” was how
Norman Vincent Peale put it. Jesus tells us, “As you think, so shall ye be.”
Our futures are formed by the thoughts we hold most often. We literally
become what we think about, and we are all given the gift of being able to
write our own story . For me this is as close to an absolute truth as anything I
know . In my parable Gifts from Eykis , Eykis says, “There is no way to
happiness, happiness is the way .”
 
 
 
My thoughts have always created my world. After my mother successfully reunited her family , we lived on the east
side of Detroit. I spent many nights watching The Tonight Show , starring
Steve Allen, on a tiny black -and-white Admiral television set, while
everyone else slept. I loved Allen’ s zaniness. Sitting in that small living
room on Moross  Road, I would picture myself on The Tonight Show and in
my mind  I would practice talking with Steve Allen. I would actually work
on routines, editing this and that out of my conversation, as I imagined
myself being a guest on the show . But my mind’ s picture was not me at thirteen; it was me as an adult who
was making an appearance and discussing things I knew to be true. Most of
these guest appearances centered around my beliefs, held even then, that we
are able to choose our own destiny , able to make others laugh. These
thoughts were so real to me that I would tell my brothers and friends what I
was going to say on The Tonight Show  when I appeared. They considered
me a kid with a wild imagination who was always in another world anyway ,
and so they would humor me and move on to something more realistic. But my internal pictures were never damaged by the attitudes of others. For as long as I can remember , I have been able to enter this world of “pure
thought,” and it is as real for me as the world of form is to all of us. Many
times as a young boy I would know what was going to happen to me before
it actual ly occur red, because I had experienced it in my mind so often. As ayoungster , I never did anything with this ability , and eventually I ceased
telling others about it. As I mentioned in the Introducti on, when I returned to New York City in
1974 after my transformational experience at my father ’s grave, I knew that
I had to make some big changes in my life. Though I loved teaching at the
university , some thing inside of me said that I needed to go off on my own,
needed to shift gears and go in an entirely new direction. I struggl ed for almost a year with the idea that I had to go out on my own
and leave the security of a bimonthly pay check. I had wonderful pictures in
my mind ’s eye. I saw myself talking to everyone in America about the ideas
I had just finished writing about in Your Erroneous Zones . I could see in my
mind that the book was going to be very successful. And so one day I
announced to my advanced doctoral seminar that I would be leaving the
university very shortly and going out on my own. After I made the
announcement, I was in shock. Here I was only in the talking  stages with
my family, and yet I was making a public announcement. Apparently my
form was following the invisible force of my inner world. The morning came when the picture was very clear in my mind. I saw
myself all alone in my venture, without any guarantees, and yet as peaceful
as I had ever been in my lifetim e. I knew that this was the day, that within a
few hours I would officially be out on my own, no longer able to rely on a
paycheck. When I arrived on campus, I went immediately to the dean’ s office. I had
not told my wife or family members that this was the day. It was the vision I
had had that morning that made it clear for me. The entire process of my
entering the dean’ s office was a mental one. All thoughts. All visions that
were private to me. All images  of myself that I could no longer erase. I
could hardly believe it myself. Here I was waiting to announce to the dean
that I was resigning, effective within a few weeks at the end of the current
semester . Our conversation was brief. I said I wanted to go out and do something
that I genuinely believed in. She asked me to reconsider and discuss it with
my family and some of my colleagues, but I told her that it was already
accomplished in my mind—my thoughts—and that I was now simply going
through the formality of making it real in the physical world as well. She
pointed out all of the risks, how unlikely it was that I would be able to make
a living writing and speaking, and that jobs such as the one I held wereexceedingly difficult to come by in the 1970s because of a glut of
professors and very few openin gs in the academic world. I told her that I
was aware of the risk, and that was one of the big reasons why I was taking
this turn in my life. I was head ed down the path that Robert Frost called
“The Road Less Traveled.”
Two roads diver ged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by ,
And that has made all the dif ference. When I left the dean’ s office, I walked to my own with an inner glow . I was
free, free to advance confidently in the direction of my dreams. I cleane d out my desk, made some announcements to my students and
doctoral advisees, and drove home along the expressway knowing that I
was taking the biggest step of my lifetime. Here I was, complete ly unknown
to the media, leaving my secure position to go out and tell the world about
the ideas  in my new book. Yet, I was ecstatic, for I had seen all of it in my
mind before experiencing it in the world of form. I discussed my new adventure with my wife and daughter , and they gave
me their full support and encouragement. Since I had always been a
responsible person, had always met my financial obligations, I relied on this
history , rather than creating in my mind some kind of impending disaster
concerning my family obligation s. We would use our accumulated savings;
I would borrow money if need be; and we would scale down some of our
expenditures if that became a necessity . My family was in complete
agreement with me: money was not going to be the reason to avoid
following my bliss. They seeme d to know that this was something that I had
to pursu e, and, as is almost alwa ys the case when people love you, they not
only encouraged me, but also seemed to have the same intuitive  feeling that
everything was going to work out just fine. They too were willing to take
the risks, in the knowledge that we would all be happier for the ef fort. Every obstacle that came my way became an opportunity . I was told that
there were a minimal number of copies of my book in print, and that even if
I did go out and talk to people in the media, it would do no good because
most bookstores  would not have my book in stock. So I decided  to buy up a
large quantity of books and take them out to the people myself. I literally
became my own distributor initially .I left my books  on consignment with store owners across America in
1976, and I had the great fortune to have some wonderful peopl e come into
my life at just the right time. One such person, Donna Gould, became such
an ardent believer after reading my book that she worked on her own time
to help me get bookings all across the country . Donna knew I was paying
most of my own expenses, and she contributed many many hours of her
time and tons of her energy to help me. My publisher became more of a
believer as he saw the results of my excitement about this project. Before
long I was out in my own car, traveling from small city to smaller city
appearing on talk shows and doing local newspaper interviews. First I went up and down the East Coast, then to the Midw est, and
ultimately on a long cross-country tour with my wife and daughter , paying
my own expenses, staying in cheap motels, and, most important, enjoying
every single minute of this new adventure. I seldom thought about making
money . I had published three successful textbooks and many professional
articles without financial profit; consequently , I was not motivated now by a
desire to make a fortune. I was simply doing something that I loved to do
and answ ering to no one along the way. Since I was using my own savings
to finance this trip and to purchase the books, I had total contro l over every
aspect of this promotion. As the months rolled by, my interview schedule increased to as many as
fifteen a day. Bookstores in cities that I had visited began to reorder from
the publisher . At the start, I had been able to get bookings only in the
smaller cities, but now the medi a in larger cities were beginning  to book me
on their shows. I had been told by an “expert” in publicity and publishing that the only
way to talk to everyone in America in the 1970s was on networ k television,
but that this option was pretty much closed to me because I did not have a
national reputati on. He suggested I should be happy if I sold a few thousand
books in the local New York area, had a couple of printings, and got a
publication credit toward a promotion at the university . This was the view
of many  others who knew the publishing industry inside out. They seemed
to me to be unaware of the great truth of Victor Hugo: “Nothing is more
powerful than an idea whose time has come.”
What is an idea but a thought? The experts had their own ideas, and they
acted on them. I too had my idea. I agreed that the easiest way to talk with
everyone in America was throug h the network media, but I believed it wasnot the only way. I could reach everyone in America if I was willing to take
the time, spend the energy, and absorb the risks that go with such an
approach. I was willing and very eager as well. I would use every barrier as
an opportunity to see if I could get past it. And it worked every single time. As much as I was making things happen through my thoughts, I was also
letting things happen by not fighting anyone or anything, by doing it all
with good cheer and love. It was great fun, every single day, every
interview , every new city , every new friend. All very exciting. The months became a year, and my family and I were still on the road. Somehow the financial stuff took care of itself, and then one day, while I
was appearing on radio station KMOX in St. Louis, I received a call from
Arthur Pine, my friend and agent, who informed me that my book would
appear on the New York Times nationa l best-se ller list the following week,
debuting at position number eight. I had accomplished what almost
everyone said was impossible. Without one national television or radio
appearance, I had been able to go to the people of this country and have
enough of those people buy my book to put it on the national best-seller list. I was in awe and in shock. But this was only the beginning of how my internal images, my thoughts,
began manifesting. I was becoming in form what I had been thinking about
each day, and most important, I was opening myself to allowing my
purpose to find me. I had begun clearing myself of the negativity and
judgment that had previously interfered with the flow of my process. Other changes started then. I began exercising each day. Slowly at first,
but very much an everyday thing. In August of 1976 I ran my first mile
without stopping. At the end I was huffing and puffing and in a state of
exhaustion, but nevertheless I finished with a wonderful sense of inner
satisfaction. The next day I made the effort to accomplish this task again. Then again on the following day, and within one week I was running a mile
comfortably . Two months later, I ran eight miles without stopping, and thus
began my running streak, whic h continues today , of eight miles per day,
every day witho ut fail, since October 7, 1976. I became more attentive to
my eatin g habits and gradually discontinued many foods which we now
recognize as nutritionally unsound. The clearer I became, the less negative and judgmental, the more I began
to treat my phys ical self in healt hier ways. As I allowed my purpose to find
me, I began to feel happier and more in harmony with myself. Ultimately itwas as if I forgot about myself and tuned in automatically to my strong
sense of mission and purpose. This is how the enlightenment process seems to work. One proceeds
through a series of phases of first focusing on oneself and consciously
working at improving oneself until the inner tumult disappears. As that
inner turmoil fades, you find yourself feeling much more purposeful in
sharing yourself  with others. When you have an inner authen tic sense of
love and harmony , that is precisely what you have to give away . As my book began to appear regularly on best-seller lists across  America,
the demand for me to make personal and media appearance s increased
dramatically . Shows that previou sly had turned Donna down cold were now
calling to check on my availabil ity. One by one I started making the circuit
stops. And within a few months, the book had catapulted to the top of the
list, where it was to stay for almost two years. Then one day I received the magic phone call that was to lead to the
fulfillment of that image I had had as a young boy watching television back
on the east side of Detroit. Howard Papush of The Tonight Show  staff had been handed a copy of my
book by someone at a party on Long Island. He took the book with him on
his fligh t back to Los Angeles. The next week I received a call from a staff
person for The Tonight Show , asking me if, when I was next in Los Angeles,
I would be willing to come into the Burbank studios for a pre-interview for
the show! Within ten days I was sitting in Howard’ s office talking to him about all
of the ideas that I believed in so strongly . By this time I had done hundreds
of interviews, and I had learned that the best strategy was simply to be
myself. Just me, talking to whoever was interviewing me as if we were in
my living room. Howard and I hit it off beautifully , and to this day remain
very close friends. Within a week I was to make my very first appearance
on The Tonight Show . The guest host that Monday evening was Shecky
Greene, well-kn own Las Vegas comedian. As I stood in the hallway next to
the green room before the start of the show , I noticed a bank of pay phones. I decided to call my wife and share the excitement I was feeling. As I
talked, I noticed  someone using the telephone adjacent to me. It was the
first guest of the evening, the man I had talked to so many times in my own
mind almost nightly nearly a quarter of a century before, Mr . Steve Allen.The evening’ s taping was sensational from my point of view . I had
almost fifteen minutes on natio nal television to tell about the ideas that
were so importa nt to me. It was a dream come true. When I went to the
airport to catch an all-night flight back to the East Coast, I was filled with
elation. Then over a loudspeak er, I heard a page for my name. It was
Howard on the phone to give me the bad news that the show had been
preempted for the first time in many years, because of an overrun at the
Republican National Convention. It would not be show n until an
unspecified future free date. I flew back home wondering if the show would ever be aired, but the
following day I received another  call from Howard, asking me to fly out the
next day to make an appearance with Johnny Carson which would be aired
that week. So I made a third cross-country flight, arrived in Los Angeles,
and did the show  with Johnny on a Wednesday evening. But we had only
six or seven minutes at the end of the show , and because of the shortness of
the interview , Johnny asked me on the air if I could stay over two days and
reappear on Friday evening! I stayed over two days and did the show that Friday evening, and it went
beautifully . A week from the next Monday , the preempted show  aired. So I
had gone from an unknown person who was able to get himself booked
only on local shows to one with three Tonight Show  appearances on national
television, all airing within an eleven-day period. It seemed clear to me that
Thoreau was absolutely right when he wrote, “If one advances  confidently
in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has
imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
Your Erroneous Zones  was eventually published in twenty-six languages
around the world. Other books have followed, as have tapes, articles,
international travel for professional speaking engagement s, and an
opportunity for me to make a difference in the lives of millions and millions
of peopl e. I received more money in the first year I was out on my own
without the security of a regular  paycheck than I had in the entire thirty-six
years of my life before then. THE HOW  AND WHY  OF VISUALIZA TION
 
I am firmly convinced that thoughts are things. Thoughts, when properly
nourished and internalized, will become a reality in the world of form. Yousee, we think in pictures, and these pictures become our inner reality. When
we learn the how and why of this imaging process, then we are on our way
to “success unexpected in common hours.”
 
Four  Principles of Effective Visualization
Consider the process of producing thoughts as an inner visualization
without any of the limitations of the physical realm. You can go forward or
backward in thought, and you do not need the five senses to enter the world
of thought; you do it in dreams while you are sleeping. Cause and effect is
not a prerequisite. You can create with thought any pictures that you choose,
and these pictures are the very stuf f of your life. Four basic princ iples will enable you to make this formless realm work
for you in your physical as well as your mental arena. 1. Your actions come from your images . All of our behavior
results from the thoughts that preceded it. If you visuali ze
yourself as incompetent in a given area, and you continuously
reinforce this with a mental picture, eventually you will act out
this scenario. Suppose you are about to load up your car and you
discover you have six suitcases to put into a trunk that was
designed to hold only five. The picture you form in your mind
will determine how much luggage you take on this trip! If you
think, “I’m going to have to cut down to five suitcases—this car
will not hold all six,” then that is what you will do. But if you
picture yourself going on your trip with all six suitcases, and hold
that image in your mind, you will then act upon the thought “I
know I can get them all in. I’ll just shift things around and work
at it until they fit.” I refer to thoughts as things , becaus e they have
just as much to do with how you drive off on your vacation as do
the other things, such as your car, your suitcases, your maps, your
supply of gasoline, your money , and everything else in the world
of form . Understanding that a thought is the first step in this
process of living contributes to your seeing the value of
visualization in a positive framework. Apply the notion of thoughts as things to the acquisition of
wealth. If you picture yourself acquiring abundance, if you keep
this vision in your mind regardless of the obstacles you encounte r,and if you absol utely see it for yourself, then you will act on this
image. You will allow this picture to be the dominant image in
your mental world. You will make fifteen calls a day instead of
three or four. You will find yourself saving a part of your income
and thereby paying yourself first, a crucial step in the acquisition
of wealth. You will think wealth y thoughts and surround yourself
with people who encourage your visions. You will find yourself
attending classes on the important subjects which make up your
life mission. You will be in a continual state of self-improvemen t.
You will seek out the knowledge and expertise of those who have
achieved succes s in your field. You will spend time reading about
people who have succeeded in spite of humble origins. Your
entire life experience will revolve around the image of you with
abundance in your life, all based upon one single thing, a thought. The reverse of this picture is also important to examine. If you
picture yourself poor, you will act out your daily life based upon
this image. You will surround yourself with people who lack
abundance, you will read about the failures, you will avoid tryin g
new things or believing in self-improvement because the idea in
your head is that you are poor. Your behavior will constantly flow
from this visualization. You will consider successful people as
lucky or born into the right circu mstances. You will go into every
encounter that might help you to gain abundance with the thought
that it won’ t work out for you anyway . Virtually everyt hing that you do is a result of the picture that
you place in your mind before you make the attempt. See yourse lf
as unabl e to stand in front of an audience, and you will not. You
will simply stay away from that experience and justify it by
labeling yourself a shy person. Shy persons make shy pictures
over and over in their minds, and until they can see themselves as
unafraid, they will always act on the picture they create. Regardless of the circumstances  of your life, you are the writer ,
director , and producer of your mental images. You will always act
out those pictures. Your circumstances do not determine what
your life will be; they reveal what kinds of images you have
chosen up until now. From the quality of your physical
appearance, to your level of nutritional health, to the state of yourfinancial holdings, to the quality of your relationships and
everything else that requires an action by you, you are acting on
images. Your mind stores away all of the images that you elect,
and you daily carry out the assignments of those thoughts. You cannot have a feeling witho ut first having a thought. Your
behavior is based upon your feelings, which are based upon your
thoughts. So the thing to work on is not to change your behavior ,
but those things  inside of your consciousnes s that we call
thoughts. Once your thoughts reflect what you genuinely want to
be, the appropriate emotions and the consequent behavior will
flow automatically . Believe it, and you will see it! 2. Tell yourself  that everything you visualize is already here. Remember what Einstein taught us about time! Time does not
exist in the linear world—it is man’ s invention because of his
limited vision and his need to compartmentalize everything. There really is no such thing as time. Just let these words sink in
and be open to the possibility that they are truthful. Now , in a
universe in which time does not exist, everything that you are
capable of thinking of is alread y here. Where else could it be? That thing in your head that we call a thought is really already
here in the physical world. It is not in another solar system or
another univers e. It is here. But you cannot simply visualize
something and then sit around and wait for it to materialize in
your life. You must understand that the opportunity for bringing
the thought to a physical reality is up to you, and that the physic al
reality is already  here, on this plane and available for you to make
the connection. Your job as a visualizer is to learn to bring it from
the astral world of thought to the physical world of form. Suppose that you visualize yourself selling five million widgets
you have invented. You might say to yourself, “How can this
image already be here if they haven’ t even been manufactured
yet?” Because everything you visualize is already here. But who
is going to buy one widget apiece? Where are those five millio n
people? On another planet? In another solar system? Of course
not. They are here already . Of course, there are many steps inbringing that to form. You must know how to manufacture,
distribute, and advertise your product. The rest of the steps are
already in thought. All you have to do is connect your though ts
with their thoughts to purchase a widget, and what you visualize d
begins to materialize in the world of form. Suppose you visualize yoursel f as someone who can run a
twenty-six-mile marathon. Where are you going to do that? Right
here! Not in another reality system, but right here, now. When the
Wright brothers visualized a plane flying, that reality was alread y
here. We did not need to invent a new reality system in order to
produce flying possibilities for humans. We needed to connect our
thoughts to the reality that was already here. Once those thoughts
were tuned in to the frequency of flying as a possibility , that
became our reality . The healthy person that you visualize yourse lf
to be is already  here, albeit surrounded by the unhealthy earlier
thoughts. Understanding that everything that you are capable of
seeing within your mind is already here will help you to take
responsibility for the entirety of your life. Every thing  is energy. Noth ing is solid. Everything vibrates at
its own level of reality , and while form appears to be solid,  a
simple examination under a microscope reveals that that solid
object is actually alive with danc ing molecules vibrating at a little
less than the speed of light and thus appearing to us to be solid. Energy is the very stuff of the universe, and thoughts are a part of
that “stuff.” So when you are having a thought about somethin g
that you would like to see happen for yourself, remember it is
nothing more than connecting the two frequencies together to
make the reality  happen for you. Keep in mind that if you are
capable of conceiving the idea in your head as an image of
something that you would like, then it is already here. And when
you begin to doubt it, remember to ask yourself, “Where else
could it be if it’s not here in our reality system?” The thought that
I had in my head  as a child of appearing on The Tonight Show, as
difficult as it is for us to grasp, was already here. If time does not
exist, then 1953 and 1976 are essentially the very same thing. If
you know in your heart that your images are already here just by
virtue of the fact that you can think them, then you will stopwaiting around and start working on those images to make them
your physical as well as your inner reality . “Where else could
they be?” is a wonderful questio n to ask yourself when you start
doubting that your images are going to work out for you. 3. Be willing . Forget about the word “determination”! Forget
about perseverance! Forget about personal drive! These are not
the concepts that will help you to understand the visualization
process and bring it into your life. Over and over I hear, “I gave  it
my best shot.” “I really tried hard, and it still didn’ t work out.” “I
persevered for months, and still I didn’ t get what I wanted.” The
key word that is missing from these statements is willing . In order
to make a visualization a reality in the world of form, you must be
willing to do whatever it takes to make it happen. This is the
single most important aspect of visualization and imagery . Everything that you can picture in your mind is already here
waiting for you to connect to it. What needs to be added is your
state of willingness. When I left the university to pursue my dreams I was willing to
do anything. If it meant moving to another part of the country , I
was willing. If it meant borrow ing money , I was willing. If it
meant leaving my family behind  for a time, I was willing, because
I knew my family supported my dreams. If it meant working
eighteen-hour days for years and years, I was willing. When I give lectures on the subject of positive imagery and
creative visualization, someone in the audience will usually say,
“I worke d and worked at my dream and it still didn’ t work out. Why?” My answer to that person is a question: “What is it you
were unwilling to do?” The response is usually something like “I
simply can’t uproot my family and move to a new area just to
pursue my own dreams.” “Perhaps,” I say, “you need to examine
how willing you are to do what it takes to make your dream  a
reality .” I believe that being willing to do whatever  is neces sary to
achieve your dream is a key factor in the accomplishment. Willingness is really a state of mind. It is an internal statement
that says, “I will be happiness and bring it to my undertakings. Iwill take the next step toward making my dream a reality .” This is
not a principle that presuppose s a long list of goals. Quite the
opposite. It is an internal statement of I will do whatever it takes
because that is what feels right to me. I believe  that willingness is proportionate to the rightness of
your path. If you consistently find yourself unwilling, I sugge st
you examine your dream closely . You may be receiving an inner
signal that this is not what you want. Otherwise, you will advan ce
confidently and not stop regardless of what others say, what
obstacles come along, or what evidence suggests that you will not
fulfill your visualization. In my office I have two framed posters. One is a picture of
Albert Einstein,  beneath which are the words “Great spirits have
always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”
The other poster is made up solely of words: “I am grateful to all
those people who said no. It is because of them I did it myself.”
Great thoughts! Inherent within this third princip le of visualization is the notion
of openness . When you are willing to do whatever is necessary to
form alize your images, your thought s, you open your heart to all
of the possibilities available to you as a human being. Nothing
will be too absurd for you to undertake. No obstruction or
discouragement will enter into your consciousness. You are open
to it all. Further more, when you open yourself up to abundanc e,
you begin acting in abundant ways. So many times along the way
I had been told by “experts” how futile were my efforts to tell the
world about Your Erroneous Zones , but within my heart was the
understanding that though their advice might in fact be true for
them, it just made me more willing to do what I had to do. And I
loved every step along the way, instead of viewing my efforts as
some kind of torture path that I had to traverse in order to get to
the picnic grounds. I would have my own internal celebration
each time I overtook another obstacle. And I came to know that
that future picnic ground was just an illusion, since the future
does not exist at all, only the working unit of our lives, which is
now.Once you are truly willing to do what is necessary regardless of
obstacles, your openness will lead to an internal harmony that will
not let you give up. Being willing does not mean having  to suffer,
or having  to do everything. The willingne ss itself is often enough,
and willingness is a thought. 4. Realiz e there is no such thing as failur e. Keep this in mind and
you will achieve all that you conceive in your mind. You never
fail, you simply produce results . Always results. If you make an
attempt to hit a golf ball one hundred yards and it dribbles off to
the right , you have not failed. You have produced a result. Your
concept of failure comes from believing someone else’s opinion
about how you could have hit the golf ball. But in our reality , you
could not have hit the golf ball any other way than how you hit it. You have produced a result. Then you either berate yourself or
you place the ball back up on the tee and proceed from the result
that you produced. If you do this two hundred times, you still
have not failed, you simply have produced two hundred results. Thus, following  the principles of visualization, if you want to be
able to hit a golf ball down the fairway one hundred yards or
more in the air, you must be willing to do what it takes to make it
happen. Very very simple. You do not do what it takes for your
spouse, or for Arnold Palmer , you do what it takes for you. One
hundred swings, two hundred, six thousand. If you want to make
your vision a reality in the world of form, you must be willing to
do what it takes,  and remind yourself that you cannot fail at being
yourself. You can only produce results. Supposing you weigh 250 pounds and would like to weigh 125
pounds. You have not failed, you have produced massive resul ts. Now apply the four principles of thoughts as things. See yourse lf
as the 125-poun d person. Get an image of this person in your
mind and never , never let that image out. You will then begin
acting on that image, and find your eating and exercising habits
shifting to fit the image. Second ly, remind yourself that the 125-
pound person that you visualize yourself to be is already here,
even though he or she is surroun ded by 125 extra pounds. Thirdl y,be willing to do whatever it takes to bring about your
visualization, to reach your objective. Not what worked for your
sister . For your visualization. Finally , remind yourself that you
cannot fail at this process; you will only produce results. If the results continually are that you do not lose weight, get to
work to discover the belief system that is keeping you fat,
because it is your thoughts that are creating the unwanted resul ts. The most effective methods for doing this, in my opinion, are in
the programs which emphasize that you have your own answers. Find the approach that suits you, an approach involving self-
responsibility and understanding that what you believe is what
you see. You might try dreamwork, whereby you pursue knowin g
yourself better by inviting solutions, answers, and clarifications to
come to you from your inner consciousness through your dream s
and meditation. YOU ARE THE DREAMER OF DREAMS
 
The you that is beyond form is eternal and alive in a formless world . A
brazen statement, perhaps, but would you be convinced of that if you could
leave your body , exist in a formless world, and then reenter your body and
exist in the state that we call form? I suggest that you do exactl y that every
single night, and that you spend approximately a third of your entire time
here on this planet doing precisely that. We call it dreaming, and much can
be learned about ourselves as part of pure thought by seeing what happens
when we leave our bodies and enter the world of dreaming. Every time we go to sleep and begin dreaming, I believe we actually
leave our body , and enter a new dreaming body . We convince ourselves that
our dreaming body is real while  we are dreaming; otherwise we would not
be able to have the dream. Where would it take place? Let’s take a look at the rules that apply while we are dreaming , and see
how different they are from the rules that apply while we are in waking
consciousness. First of all, in dreams, time does not exist. We can go backward and
forward at will. We can be with someone who died many years ago and that
person will seem very real. We can be a teenager again, and that too seemsquite real while we are in the dreaming body . We can live an entire lifetime
in a fourteen-minute dream sequence and it is all real to our dreaming body . Secondly , there is no cause and effect  while dreaming . We can at one
moment be talking to someone we know very well, and in the next moment
be on a bus talking to a stranger . We can engage in an activity that produces
the opposite result from that which would occur in waking life. Thirdly , dreams can be without beginni ngs or endings . We can shift in
the middle of a sequence to another place, and then come right back again,
years younger than we were a moment ago. Fourthly , in the dream every single obstacle turns into some kind of
opportunity . If in the dream we are driving along a road that suddenly ends
at a cliff, we can turn that into an opportunity to fly over the terrain rather
than crash into an abyss. In a chase scene we somehow develop the
amazing ability to catch bullets in midair . Fifthly , we create every thing that we need for our dream. This is very
important to my hypothesis. If we need a person to yell and scream in the
dream we create  that person as well as an episode of screaming. Everyone
and everything that we need for the dream, we create. If we don’t, who
does? Sixthly , our reactions within the dream are manifested in our physical
body , but the things that create the reactions are all illusions or thoughts . For instance, if you create someone threatening you with a knife, your heart
will start beating faster , and that is real. But the knife and the person
wielding it are illusions. And lastly , the only way we know we are dreaming is to awaken . If we
dreamed twenty-four hours a day , that would be our reality . We are convinced that the body is real, yet everything that we experience
in the dream is entirely in the realm of thought. There is no physical reality ,
it is an illusion, we realize when we awaken. We spend approximately a
third of our lives  sleeping, and a large percentage of our sleep time in dream
activity that is pure formless thought which seems very real before we
awaken. In fact, we are capable  of some pretty fantastic feats while in our
dreaming body . We can fly, transcend time, create anything we choose; and
male dreamers can even create the entire dance of life in this state of pure
thought. What is a nocturnal emission or a wet dream but the ejaculation of
the proto plasm of life? Pure thought creating the opportunity for the dance
of life. No physical contact. Pure thought creating life. Quite an amazingprocess in this fabulously mysterious world of pure formlessness, of
thought. I am not addressing here the interpretation of the content of dreams. I am
writing about the process of dreaming in order to encourage you to become
a waking dreamer . That is, to help you understand that the rules that seem
to apply only to your dreaming body can become applicable to your waking
body as well. This lesson was advanced by Thoreau, who put it this way:
“Our truest life is when we are in our dreams awake.”
For purposes of comparison, think of three levels of consciousness. The
level at the bottom we will call our dreaming consciousness; the next level
up we will call our waking consciousness; and the third level we will call a
higher level of consciousness. Now let’s see what these various levels are
like, and what they mean in our lives. I will use a personal example. As a youngster I would often dream of shoveling snow , and sometimes I
would mumble out loud about my shovel and wake up one of my brothers. He disco vered that if he disguise d himself as part of my dream, by speaking
gently he could get me to hand him my dream shovel, which of course he
thought very funny , and he would wake me up with his laughter . But as
long as he masq ueraded as part of my dream, I would coopera te from my
dreaming level with him in his waking level. This I believe illustrates our
ability to communicate between our dreaming and waking consciousness. What if someon e from a dimension higher than waking consciousness
wanted to walk and talk with us? That person would also have to be
disguised, and pretend to be one of us, though he or she woul d know that
there was a much greater consc iousness beyond the waking consciousness
level. If that being was charismatic and convincing, many might listen and
achieve a sense of the potential of the higher consciousness beyond waking
consciousness. Such is, I believe, the process of highly spiritual masters
who have come  here to teach us about the dimensions that are there for us
in the world beyond our form. What would be a good disguise? How about
that of a carpenter who gives us an inkling of what is available  for us, and
who tells us while performing miracle after miracle, “He that believeth in
me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall
he do”? How about a teacher , or a writer , or a gas station attendant? Yes,
there are miracle workers out there who can lead us to the edge of our
waking consciousness, to glimpse something more. The great spiritualmasters who have lived amon g us and who continue to do so have
transcended the rules of form that we believe are the only set of rules. While we are in our dreaming bodies experiencing the part of our lives
we spend in this world of pure thought, we can have transcendent
experiences when we choose. We do not need any of our senses in this
formless state. We need not touch or feel or smell anything using our senses
to know that it is real. Thought is real. By beco ming a waking dreamer , you will enter that higher level of
consciousness beyond waking consciousness, the level that spiritual masters
have let us glimpse through their teaching and their example s as human
beings. But to do so you must challenge your reality-thinking belief system. To become a waking dreamer you must learn to “die while you are alive.”
Let’s start by looking briefly at the process of dying. It is my belief that (1)
we cannot kill thought, and (2) all form is in transition. It follo ws then that
death will be very much like the dream consciousness I descr ibed above. We, our thoughts, leave our body when we enter our dream, and then we
(the thoughts we are) reenter the body for waking consciousness. Similarly ,
when we die our thoughts leave  the body and can look back at this dream
we are living now which we call waking consciousness, with the same kind
of vision that we look back at our dreams. This is a powerful idea. It could
free us from fearing death if we learn to internalize it. The reason we have
difficulty accepting that this waking consciousness is a dream is that
everything seems just too real. But go back to our dream consciousness. The same ration ale applies here. While we are in the dreaming body we are
convinced that it is real, but it is real only for the dream and becomes an
illusion when we awaken. Everything that we experience in our waking
consciousness is also real to us. To die while we are alive gives us the only opportunity we will ever have
to get outside of this package that houses us temporarily . An ancient parable
repeated generation after generation by the spiritual maste rs of India
illustrates this point:
A traveler from India went to Africa to acquire some local products and
animals, and while in the jungle  he saw thousands of beautiful multicolored
talking parrots. He decided to capture a talking parrot and take it back as a
pet. At home he kept his parrot in a cage and fed him wonderful seeds and
honey , played music for his pet, and generally treated him well. When itwas time for the man to return to Africa two years later, he asked his parrot
if there was any message he could deliver to the parrot’ s friends back in the
jungle. The parrot told his master to say that he was very happy in his cage
and that he was enjoying each day and to convey his love. When the travel er arrived back in Africa he delivered the message to the
parrots in the jungle. Just as he finished his story , a parrot with tears welling
up in his eyes fell over dead. The man was alarmed and decided that the
parrot must have  been very close to the parrot in the cage and that was the
reason for his sadness and demise. When the travel er returned to India, he told his pet what had happened. As he finished his story , the pet parrot’ s eyes welled up with tears and he
keeled over dead in his cage. The man was astounded, but figured that his
pet died from the despair of hearing of the death of his close friend back in
the jungle. The trader opened up the cage and tossed the dead bird outside onto the
trash heap. Imm ediately his pet parrot flew up to a branch on the tree
outside. The trader said to him, “So, you are not dead after all. Why did you do
that?”
The parrot answered, “Because that bird back in Africa sent me a very
important message.”
“What was the message?” the trader inquired impatiently . “He told me that if you want to escape from your cage, you must die
while you are alive.”
We must indeed die while we are alive in order to be able to look back at
our waking consciousness and see ourselves trapped in our cage, which in
our case is our body . And then we will see how unnecessary it is to remain
caged. Let’s take a closer look at those seven rules that apply to our dreaming
body and see how much more enchanting our waking consciousness will
become if we learn to die while we are alive—to become an awake
dreamer . 1. Time does not exist. Einstein’ s life study was devoted to the
simple message  that we exist in a completed universe. If time
does not exist, except as a convenience for man, then eight hours
and eighty years are the same thing. A dream of eight hours and adream of eighty years are identical, and the only way we know we
are dreaming is to wake up. In a dream, we can be a tiny baby or
a toddle r or an adolescent. We can get married, have children,
pursue a career , go bankrupt, have grandchildren, move to a
retirement community , and become old—all in a period of
minutes. In the dream it is very real and we are able to reduce it
all into a tiny segment of what we call time. While we are awake,
in the waking-consciousness level, it is possible also to recognize
that time is an illusion and redefine ourselves to include our
formless and ageless natures. 2. There is no cause and effect . In the dreaming body we come
and go freely without being restricted to the laws of cause and
effect. In though t we are exactly  the same. We can have a thoug ht
that is totally unrelated to the previous thought within a greater
thought process . We can have a dream within a dream within a
dream. In wakin g consciousnes s too we can choose to recognize
that we need not be confined to the rules that determine form. The
physical law of gravity does not apply in thought. In fact, just
beyond our atmosphere even  our form is not confined to
gravitational restrictions. A waking dreamer can dream any
thought without  reference to the previous thought. We can flit
from one thought to another and use only those thoughts which
are useful. In waking consciou sness we can understand that we
are capable of shifting gears anytime in our life. If you traine d
yourself to be a physician and it no longer applies in your life,
you simply choose new thought s and begin to apply the concepts
of making your visualizations your waking-consciousness reality . 3. There is no beginning and no end. In our dreaming body we do
not disappear or terminate, because it is only in form that there
are beginnings and endings. We never die in our dream in the
sense that we simply discontinue being. Nor do we in waking
consciousness, and we must understand this if we are going to get
over our fear of death. We cannot kill thought, and we prove thisover and over every night. Your dead grandmother can be right
there in your dream, at age fifty-three and eighty-three,
unrestricted to the rules of form . When we go into our dreamin g
body we do not have to have a beginning for each dream
sequence, we are simply there, pure and simple; there is no need
to start out. We can be right here now in waking consciousness as well,
disregarding beginnings and endings, imagining forever instead. Within the concept of eternity , the notion of a beginning and an
ending is an absurdity . Try imagining where the universe starts
and ends, and you will see how foolish all of that is. Try
imagining a thought having a beginning and end and you know
that thought does not conform to such rules. The universe, and
everything in it, including mankind, is thought, and the wakin g
dreamer strives  to comprehend rather than being preoccupie d
with where it ends and how it begins. Truly enlightened souls
knew that they cannot die. They know that death is just a
transition of form, and that the astral thought dimension
experiences no such phenomenon as an ending or a beginning. 4. Obsta cles are opportunities . Our dreaming body knows how to
turn obstacles into opportunitie s, and when dreaming we all do
this all the time. We are frequently transcending difficulties and
shifting to new realities within our dreaming body . This is one of
the lesso ns to learn about our awake state as well. Everything that
we enco unter in life has somet hing to teach us. Every sickness
has within it the seeds for overcoming the illness. Every
relationship, regardless of how noxious it may appear , has
something to teach us. Every addiction has within it the power to
overcome it, and every former addict I have worked with alwa ys
says the same thing: “I bless my addiction for what it taught me
about myself and my own ability to transcend the trap that I
created for myself.” The waking dreamer knows while it is
happening that there is a blessin g disguised in every problem he
confronts, and gets better and better at seeing that blessing in the
moment.We can develop this waking-dre amer attitude by discontinuing
our need  to curse problems and instead pausing to see what we
are about to gain from them. We must keep uppermost in our
waking consciou sness that everything that we fight or curse will
only weaken us and hinder our ability to see the opportunity in
the obstacle. We know all of this in our dreaming body . In fact,
while in our dreaming body we may rage at someone and wake
up still angry and tense. The lesson here is important. The anger is
real and we experience it both in our dreaming and in our waking
body , but the people or things that we were angry at are all
illusions. What a great lesson to have. All of our anger will be
experienced by us, but the source of that anger is not real at all, it
is in a character that we created for the purpose of our dream. 5. You create everything that you need for the dream. In our
dreaming body we create everything that happens. We create all
of the people, the events, every body’ s reactions, the time frame,
everything. We also create everything that we need for our
waking consciou sness. Let it sink in for a moment! That is one of
the lessons that spiritual maste rs have been trying to teach us
since the beginning of recorded  history . Take responsibility for it
all! Imagine yourself dying and looking back at this level of
consciousness from that dimension of formlessness so similar to
dream consciousness. As you transcend your cage, your body , you
will see that you created everything you needed for the dream that
we measure in years, rather than hours, but that is exactly the
same if we understand that time does not exist. Now try to recapture that notion while you are here in this
body . Keep reminding yourself that you are a multidimensional
being. From this perspective of being in the dimension of pure
thought, creating all of your experiences, it will not seem like
such an absurd notion. Look at everything in your life from the
perspective of knowing that it is impossible to retain form when
you transcend it, just as you cannot hold on to the things and
people that you create for your dream when you awaken.A bit weird? Yes! A bit scary? Yes! But imagine what a
powerful and transcendent idea this could be in your life. You
begin to stand away from your form, and view everything that
you have and do not have, all of your possessions and all of your
relationships, all of your business enterprises, all of it, as
something that you have created for this dream. Now you can
learn to have your creations work to make this the best dream
anyone ever had, or you can become upset, immobilized,
depressed, worried, and over-stressed by things you have created
for this dream. All over illusi ons! So why not begin to take
responsibility for it all, and enjoy your eighty-plus-year dream? 6. The reactions  are real, the characters are all illusions . While
dreaming we have many emotional reactions. We feel ecstatic as a
result of some thoughts, and our body reacts with changes in
blood pressure, increased heart rate, blushing, erections, smilin g,
and the like. We feel hurt as a result of other thoughts that are our
dreams, and our body reacts with frowns, tears, and other physical
manifestations. Anger is produced by dream thoughts, and our
body responds with clenched fists, fast breathing, gnashed teeth,
even tears. But remember , we have created all of the characters
and events and are acting them out in thought only, yet we are
still having physical reactions. The characters are indeed illusions,
but the reactions are real. And so it goes in waking consciousne ss
as well, though it may be difficult for you to accept the waking-
dreamer concept in your life right now . I have no desire  to debate about  what exists or does not exist in
whatever realit y is or is not. To me, the reactions, the
manifestations of our feelings , are real. If those feelings are
interfering with our enjoymen t of this life, then we need to
examine what we are allowing  to interfere with our happiness. Whether the people or events are real or not is just a question of
perspective. The value lies in examining what is happening to
you, rather than whether what is happening is caused by
something real or an illusion. Examine your anger , hatreds, or
stresses in this new light. No one can create anger or stress withinyou, only you can do that by virtue of how you process your
world, or , in other words, how you think. So rathe r than debate who or what is real, focus on what you
are doing to process your thoughts, your feelings. And just as in
your dream, when you really awaken, you will see as you look
back that only your reactions, the residue of feelings in your body,
remain. Are you able to let those feelings and thoughts flow
through without censorship as you do in dreaming consciousness? In waking life can you think what you think without judging it or
repressing it or stopping it? In dreaming consciousness you feel
and encounter the array of human experience without judgment. Try doing that in waking consciousness too, and you will becom e
what I mean by an awake dreamer . Consider the realm of love. Your reactions of love are real and
you experience them in your wakeful body , but only you can
create those reactions by your thoughts. The more you choose to
have loving, positive, beautiful thoughts toward yourself and
others in your life, the more you will have salubrious reactions in
your body. We create it all, including the persons who are in our
life. More important, though, is how we allow or disallow our
inner reactions. This is the true essence of being a waking
dreamer , to be nonjudgmental of how we react emotionally to all
of the characters and events that are part of our lives. Focus on
what you do with what you think and feel. If you learn how to die
while you are alive, you will be able to look back at all of those
externals and see that they are illusory , but that your reactio ns
within you are very very real. In fact, those reactions are what
you are, your thoughts pure and simple. 7. The only way you know you are dreaming is to awaken . If we
dreamed twenty -four hours each day, that would be our entire
reality . We know that we are dreaming only when we awaken. The same thing applies to this level of consciousness that we call
wakefulness. Once we awaken, that is, examine the principles of
the dimension of formlessness and thought, we are able to look
upon all of our activities in the same way we look at our dreamconsciousness. From the perspective of awakening, it is pretty
silly to be attac hed to things which we have to be asleep to
experience. No doubt that is why my neighbor has a sign in her
laundry room that says, “After Enlightenment, the Laundry .”
It is unnecessary to allow the actions of others to control our
thoughts when we have the capacity to process our world and the
people in it as we choose. Awakened persons know deep within
their souls that they are much more than a body , that they create
everything that they need for their dream. By looking back at our
dreams when we are awake we see how futile it is to be upset
about the dream content which we created, and we can also see
the folly of being upset about anything that we create in a wakeful
state. The key to grasping that we are thought and thought is us is
to wake  up now, and use our new perspective to make this
lifetime as glorious and harmonious and loving an experience as
is possible. This does not exclude examining our dream contents
and waking-life circumstances for greater self-awareness and
understanding, though that is not the subject of this book. Now I suggest that you reexamine the seven principles of being
a waking dreamer and think of how you can apply them in your
life. Use this new awareness to make this waking consciousne ss
all that it can be, and also to free yourself of a fear of death. Use
the potential of your own death  as an awakening experience, and
begin living the greatest life anyone ever dared to dream. WHY  WE RESIST
 
 
We have become accustomed to thinking of ourselves as our physical
body rather than as an inner energy. We look into the mirror and
believe that what we see is who we are. We live in a culture that
reinforces this belief. We are bombarded with messages every  day to
remind us to perfume, shave, cleanse, feed, rest, and decorate our
bodies so that we can be happy , healthy , and successful. Many of us
have been subje cted to this philosophy since childhood and thereforetreat ourselves as primarily a package whose contents are irrelevant. It
is under standable that we would resist the idea that we also have a
significant self which is invisibl e and impervious to the demands of an
external world. The story of the man searching for his lost key outside his home,
under the streetlight, illustrates my point. When a stranger inquired if
she could help him look for the lost key, he was most grateful. After
thirty minutes of fruitless searching, the stranger asked, “Where did
you drop your key?” “Oh,” he replied, “I dropped it inside the house.”
“But why are you looking outside under the streetlamp if you dropped
it inside the house?” she asked. “I have no light inside the house, so I
came out here to look where there is light.”
   This is precise ly what we do every time we look outside of ourselves
for the solutions to problems. We live inside, we think inside, our
humanity resides within, yet we spend time ceaselessly looking outside
of ourse lves for the answers because we fail to illuminate the inside
with our thoughts. We resist the principle that thought is everything we
are, because it seems easier to look outside. It seems easier to define ourselves by the packaging rather than by the
inner qualities we cannot touch, see, smell, taste, or hear. Taking the
easier -appearing path is one of the predominant reasons for resisting
the princ iple of thought as the basis for our humanity . Besides, when
everyone else is perceived as defining himself or herself this way, it
seems easier to go along than to be different. I notice this with the
young people in my neighborhood. When I suggest the possibility of
thinking of themselves as separate from the crowd, they tell me, “Then
I would be seen as an oddball or weird.” They are concerned with how
others perceive them, unaware that their thoughts are a crucial
component of who they are. They do not realize that they can process
their world in any way they choose, and they often opt for the easier -
seeming choice of simply fitting  in. Many of us choose to act as others
do without examining our nonform reality . We may be unwil ling to
take the criticism  that goes with thinking independently . We may resist
seeing ourselve s as something beyond that form, because we have
totally identified with this kind of approach to life. To change, we have
to redefi ne our self and our priorities, to give ourselves permission toobserve where we are without being defensive or judgmental about our
point of view . We facilitate the next step on our path when we note our
present position uncritically . By identifying with form we are able to function exclusively in the
realm of things, excluding what may appear to us to be irksome
thoughts. Acquisitions become a way to demonstrate our competence
in life, while our nonform nature is relegated to a closed cupboa rd. We
behave as if we did not have a responsibility to the feelings and
thoughts of others by insisting that they find happiness in the material
things we provid e. We justify ourselves by saying, “I work hard, I pay
the bills, I give them all that they want—what else can I do?” The what
else we can do is to be receptive  to what they are thinking, to talk with
them about their aspirations, to touch them in that godlike  space
behind their form and encourage them to experience their life their
way. We work at accumulating, achieving, goal-setting, and acquiring
wealth and possessions. We identify success with the measurement of
things, never knowing happiness within. We are continually striving,
never arriving. I believe we are more, that we are intelligence within
our form , just as the rose is an intelligence that delivers the fragrance
and appearance of the flower . We can never create a rose by ourselves. We need the life force in the form that we call rose. Similarly , we need
to touch  the intelligence or god force behind the form that is us as well
as that of those with whom we come in contact. We may resist simply
because we are unfamiliar with this aspect of humanity and because
the unfamiliar is frightening. Ask yourself if that is a worthwhile
reason for you to remain exclusively in form. In the world of form, blame is a convenient excuse for why our life is
not exactly what we would like it to be. We blame the world for
illness, the stock market for financial conditions, the bakery for
causing overweight, and parents for our personalities.
_OceanofPDF.com_Youll_See_it_When_You_Believe_It_-_Wayne_Dyer.txt
Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        When you get the
broccoli home you are still so attracted to the picture that you empty the
contents into the garbage and proceed to prepare the wrapper for dinner. As
you put the picture of the broccoli on your plate, you suddenly  realize that
you are going to be very hungry if all you have is the packaging. Your life may be just like that. You may be paying so much attention to
the pack age that contains the real you that you toss away the most vital
ingredients. Your form is the package, and while its beauty and appearance
may seem all-im portant, it primarily serves to contain all the rest of your
magnificent humanity. The container cannot give you the pleasure and
satisfaction and nourishment that the contents do. Even though you cannot
see what is inside that beautiful package, you know that whatever it is
provides you with important and irreplacable nourishment. A lifetime of
focusing exclusively on the package will result in a spiritually
undernourished and quite unhappy you. OceanofPDF. comTHOUGHT
 
You are not a human being having a spiritual experience. You are
a spiritual being having a human experience. Thought is much more than something that you do. It is in fact what you,
and all the rest of us, are as well. Thought constitutes our entire being
except for the portion of us that is form, or the packaging that carries
around our mind s. Try thinking of thought as something that exists not only
within you, but outside of you as well. This may be difficult, because you
are accustomed to believing that your thoughts are an internal  mechanism
that guides the part of you that is form. Try instead to consider thought as a
universal that you were born into. It is something that you do, as well as
something that you are. Once you get used to this new idea, it will become
easier and easier for you to view all thought as something that is very much
a part of you. Here is a mini-le sson in what thought is. Your desir e to impr ove your life
is really your thought to improve your life. Your will to live is really your
thought to live. Your attitudes  about your entire life are really your thoughts
on these  matter s. Your entire past up until this moment is really nothing
more than thought. Your entire futur e from this moment onward is nothing
but thought. Your relationships  to everyone in your life are nothing more
than thought. Your determination  to succeed is nothing more than your
thought to do so. The idea of success is really the thought  of success. Since you can never get behind the eyeballs of another human being and
feel as that person does, you are actually one step removed from that
person’ s process and experience  him or her also through thought. You relate
to every thing and everyone on this planet through the mechanism of
thought. It is not what is in the world that determines the quality of your
life, it is how you choose to process your world in your thoughts. So many highly respected thinkers in disparate disciplines have
concluded that thought, the mind, is the total determiner of how our lives
will go. The Dutch philosopher Spinoza said, “I saw that all things I feared,
and which feared me, had nothing good or bad in them save insofar as the
mind was affected by them. ” Albert Ellis, the founder of Rational EmotiveTherapy, stated, “People and things do not upset us, rather we upset
ourselves by believing that they can upset us. ” “We become what we think
about all day long,” according to Ralph Waldo Emerson. “There is nothing
either good or bad, but think ing makes it so,” Shakespeare tells us. Abraham Linco ln said, “People are about as happy as they make up their
mind to be. ” “Change your thoughts and you change your world” was how
Norman Vincent Peale put it. Jesus tells us, “As you think, so shall ye be. ”
Our futures are formed by the thoughts we hold most often. We literally
become what we think about, and we are all given the gift of being able to
write our own story. For me this is as close to an absolute truth as anything I
know. In my parable Gifts from Eykis, Eykis says, “There is no way to
happiness, happiness is the way. ”
 
 
 
My thoughts have always created my world. After my mother successfully reunited her family, we lived on the east
side of Detroit. I spent many nights watching The Tonight Show, starring
Steve Allen, on a tiny black -and-white Admiral television set, while
everyone else slept. I loved Allen’ s zaniness. Sitting in that small living
room on Moross  Road, I would picture myself on The Tonight Show and in
my mind  I would practice talking with Steve Allen. I would actually work
on routines, editing this and that out of my conversation, as I imagined
myself being a guest on the show. But my mind’ s picture was not me at thirteen; it was me as an adult who
was making an appearance and discussing things I knew to be true. Most of
these guest appearances centered around my beliefs, held even then, that we
are able to choose our own destiny, able to make others laugh. These
thoughts were so real to me that I would tell my brothers and friends what I
was going to say on The Tonight Show  when I appeared. They considered
me a kid with a wild imagination who was always in another world anyway,
and so they would humor me and move on to something more realistic. But my internal pictures were never damaged by the attitudes of others. For as long as I can remember, I have been able to enter this world of “pure
thought,” and it is as real for me as the world of form is to all of us. Many
times as a young boy I would know what was going to happen to me before
it actual ly occur red, because I had experienced it in my mind so often. As ayoungster, I never did anything with this ability, and eventually I ceased
telling others about it. As I mentioned in the Introducti on, when I returned to New York City in
1974 after my transformational experience at my father ’s grave, I knew that
I had to make some big changes in my life. Though I loved teaching at the
university, some thing inside of me said that I needed to go off on my own,
needed to shift gears and go in an entirely new direction. I struggl ed for almost a year with the idea that I had to go out on my own
and leave the security of a bimonthly pay check. I had wonderful pictures in
my mind ’s eye. I saw myself talking to everyone in America about the ideas
I had just finished writing about in Your Erroneous Zones. I could see in my
mind that the book was going to be very successful. And so one day I
announced to my advanced doctoral seminar that I would be leaving the
university very shortly and going out on my own. After I made the
announcement, I was in shock. Here I was only in the talking  stages with
my family, and yet I was making a public announcement. Apparently my
form was following the invisible force of my inner world. The morning came when the picture was very clear in my mind. I saw
myself all alone in my venture, without any guarantees, and yet as peaceful
as I had ever been in my lifetim e. I knew that this was the day, that within a
few hours I would officially be out on my own, no longer able to rely on a
paycheck. When I arrived on campus, I went immediately to the dean’ s office. I had
not told my wife or family members that this was the day. It was the vision I
had had that morning that made it clear for me. The entire process of my
entering the dean’ s office was a mental one. All thoughts. All visions that
were private to me. All images  of myself that I could no longer erase. I
could hardly believe it myself. Here I was waiting to announce to the dean
that I was resigning, effective within a few weeks at the end of the current
semester. Our conversation was brief. I said I wanted to go out and do something
that I genuinely believed in. She asked me to reconsider and discuss it with
my family and some of my colleagues, but I told her that it was already
accomplished in my mind—my thoughts—and that I was now simply going
through the formality of making it real in the physical world as well. She
pointed out all of the risks, how unlikely it was that I would be able to make
a living writing and speaking, and that jobs such as the one I held wereexceedingly difficult to come by in the 1970s because of a glut of
professors and very few openin gs in the academic world. I told her that I
was aware of the risk, and that was one of the big reasons why I was taking
this turn in my life. I was head ed down the path that Robert Frost called
“The Road Less Traveled. ”
Two roads diver ged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the dif ference. When I left the dean’ s office, I walked to my own with an inner glow. I was
free, free to advance confidently in the direction of my dreams. I cleane d out my desk, made some announcements to my students and
doctoral advisees, and drove home along the expressway knowing that I
was taking the biggest step of my lifetime. Here I was, complete ly unknown
to the media, leaving my secure position to go out and tell the world about
the ideas  in my new book. Yet, I was ecstatic, for I had seen all of it in my
mind before experiencing it in the world of form. I discussed my new adventure with my wife and daughter, and they gave
me their full support and encouragement. Since I had always been a
responsible person, had always met my financial obligations, I relied on this
history, rather than creating in my mind some kind of impending disaster
concerning my family obligation s. We would use our accumulated savings;
I would borrow money if need be; and we would scale down some of our
expenditures if that became a necessity. My family was in complete
agreement with me: money was not going to be the reason to avoid
following my bliss. They seeme d to know that this was something that I had
to pursu e, and, as is almost alwa ys the case when people love you, they not
only encouraged me, but also seemed to have the same intuitive  feeling that
everything was going to work out just fine. They too were willing to take
the risks, in the knowledge that we would all be happier for the ef fort. Every obstacle that came my way became an opportunity. I was told that
there were a minimal number of copies of my book in print, and that even if
I did go out and talk to people in the media, it would do no good because
most bookstores  would not have my book in stock. So I decided  to buy up a
large quantity of books and take them out to the people myself. I literally
became my own distributor initially. I left my books  on consignment with store owners across America in
1976, and I had the great fortune to have some wonderful peopl e come into
my life at just the right time. One such person, Donna Gould, became such
an ardent believer after reading my book that she worked on her own time
to help me get bookings all across the country. Donna knew I was paying
most of my own expenses, and she contributed many many hours of her
time and tons of her energy to help me. My publisher became more of a
believer as he saw the results of my excitement about this project. Before
long I was out in my own car, traveling from small city to smaller city
appearing on talk shows and doing local newspaper interviews. First I went up and down the East Coast, then to the Midw est, and
ultimately on a long cross-country tour with my wife and daughter, paying
my own expenses, staying in cheap motels, and, most important, enjoying
every single minute of this new adventure. I seldom thought about making
money. I had published three successful textbooks and many professional
articles without financial profit; consequently, I was not motivated now by a
desire to make a fortune. I was simply doing something that I loved to do
and answ ering to no one along the way. Since I was using my own savings
to finance this trip and to purchase the books, I had total contro l over every
aspect of this promotion. As the months rolled by, my interview schedule increased to as many as
fifteen a day. Bookstores in cities that I had visited began to reorder from
the publisher. At the start, I had been able to get bookings only in the
smaller cities, but now the medi a in larger cities were beginning  to book me
on their shows. I had been told by an “expert” in publicity and publishing that the only
way to talk to everyone in America in the 1970s was on networ k television,
but that this option was pretty much closed to me because I did not have a
national reputati on. He suggested I should be happy if I sold a few thousand
books in the local New York area, had a couple of printings, and got a
publication credit toward a promotion at the university. This was the view
of many  others who knew the publishing industry inside out. They seemed
to me to be unaware of the great truth of Victor Hugo: “Nothing is more
powerful than an idea whose time has come. ”
What is an idea but a thought. The experts had their own ideas, and they
acted on them. I too had my idea. I agreed that the easiest way to talk with
everyone in America was throug h the network media, but I believed it wasnot the only way. I could reach everyone in America if I was willing to take
the time, spend the energy, and absorb the risks that go with such an
approach. I was willing and very eager as well. I would use every barrier as
an opportunity to see if I could get past it. And it worked every single time. As much as I was making things happen through my thoughts, I was also
letting things happen by not fighting anyone or anything, by doing it all
with good cheer and love. It was great fun, every single day, every
interview, every new city, every new friend. All very exciting. The months became a year, and my family and I were still on the road. Somehow the financial stuff took care of itself, and then one day, while I
was appearing on radio station KMOX in St. Louis, I received a call from
Arthur Pine, my friend and agent, who informed me that my book would
appear on the New York Times nationa l best-se ller list the following week,
debuting at position number eight. I had accomplished what almost
everyone said was impossible. Without one national television or radio
appearance, I had been able to go to the people of this country and have
enough of those people buy my book to put it on the national best-seller list. I was in awe and in shock. But this was only the beginning of how my internal images, my thoughts,
began manifesting. I was becoming in form what I had been thinking about
each day, and most important, I was opening myself to allowing my
purpose to find me. I had begun clearing myself of the negativity and
judgment that had previously interfered with the flow of my process. Other changes started then. I began exercising each day. Slowly at first,
but very much an everyday thing. In August of 1976 I ran my first mile
without stopping. At the end I was huffing and puffing and in a state of
exhaustion, but nevertheless I finished with a wonderful sense of inner
satisfaction. The next day I made the effort to accomplish this task again. Then again on the following day, and within one week I was running a mile
comfortably. Two months later, I ran eight miles without stopping, and thus
began my running streak, whic h continues today, of eight miles per day,
every day witho ut fail, since October 7, 1976. I became more attentive to
my eatin g habits and gradually discontinued many foods which we now
recognize as nutritionally unsound. The clearer I became, the less negative and judgmental, the more I began
to treat my phys ical self in healt hier ways. As I allowed my purpose to find
me, I began to feel happier and more in harmony with myself. Ultimately itwas as if I forgot about myself and tuned in automatically to my strong
sense of mission and purpose. This is how the enlightenment process seems to work. One proceeds
through a series of phases of first focusing on oneself and consciously
working at improving oneself until the inner tumult disappears. As that
inner turmoil fades, you find yourself feeling much more purposeful in
sharing yourself  with others. When you have an inner authen tic sense of
love and harmony, that is precisely what you have to give away. As my book began to appear regularly on best-seller lists across  America,
the demand for me to make personal and media appearance s increased
dramatically. Shows that previou sly had turned Donna down cold were now
calling to check on my availabil ity. One by one I started making the circuit
stops. And within a few months, the book had catapulted to the top of the
list, where it was to stay for almost two years. Then one day I received the magic phone call that was to lead to the
fulfillment of that image I had had as a young boy watching television back
on the east side of Detroit. Howard Papush of The Tonight Show  staff had been handed a copy of my
book by someone at a party on Long Island. He took the book with him on
his fligh t back to Los Angeles. The next week I received a call from a staff
person for The Tonight Show, asking me if, when I was next in Los Angeles,
I would be willing to come into the Burbank studios for a pre-interview for
the show. Within ten days I was sitting in Howard’ s office talking to him about all
of the ideas that I believed in so strongly. By this time I had done hundreds
of interviews, and I had learned that the best strategy was simply to be
myself. Just me, talking to whoever was interviewing me as if we were in
my living room. Howard and I hit it off beautifully, and to this day remain
very close friends. Within a week I was to make my very first appearance
on The Tonight Show. The guest host that Monday evening was Shecky
Greene, well-kn own Las Vegas comedian. As I stood in the hallway next to
the green room before the start of the show, I noticed a bank of pay phones. I decided to call my wife and share the excitement I was feeling. As I
talked, I noticed  someone using the telephone adjacent to me. It was the
first guest of the evening, the man I had talked to so many times in my own
mind almost nightly nearly a quarter of a century before, Mr. Steve Allen. The evening’ s taping was sensational from my point of view. I had
almost fifteen minutes on natio nal television to tell about the ideas that
were so importa nt to me. It was a dream come true. When I went to the
airport to catch an all-night flight back to the East Coast, I was filled with
elation. Then over a loudspeak er, I heard a page for my name. It was
Howard on the phone to give me the bad news that the show had been
preempted for the first time in many years, because of an overrun at the
Republican National Convention. It would not be show n until an
unspecified future free date. I flew back home wondering if the show would ever be aired, but the
following day I received another  call from Howard, asking me to fly out the
next day to make an appearance with Johnny Carson which would be aired
that week. So I made a third cross-country flight, arrived in Los Angeles,
and did the show  with Johnny on a Wednesday evening. But we had only
six or seven minutes at the end of the show, and because of the shortness of
the interview, Johnny asked me on the air if I could stay over two days and
reappear on Friday evening. I stayed over two days and did the show that Friday evening, and it went
beautifully. A week from the next Monday, the preempted show  aired. So I
had gone from an unknown person who was able to get himself booked
only on local shows to one with three Tonight Show  appearances on national
television, all airing within an eleven-day period. It seemed clear to me that
Thoreau was absolutely right when he wrote, “If one advances  confidently
in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has
imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. ”
Your Erroneous Zones  was eventually published in twenty-six languages
around the world. Other books have followed, as have tapes, articles,
international travel for professional speaking engagement s, and an
opportunity for me to make a difference in the lives of millions and millions
of peopl e. I received more money in the first year I was out on my own
without the security of a regular  paycheck than I had in the entire thirty-six
years of my life before then. THE HOW  AND WHY  OF VISUALIZA TION
 
I am firmly convinced that thoughts are things. Thoughts, when properly
nourished and internalized, will become a reality in the world of form. Yousee, we think in pictures, and these pictures become our inner reality. When
we learn the how and why of this imaging process, then we are on our way
to “success unexpected in common hours. ”
 
Four  Principles of Effective Visualization
Consider the process of producing thoughts as an inner visualization
without any of the limitations of the physical realm. You can go forward or
backward in thought, and you do not need the five senses to enter the world
of thought; you do it in dreams while you are sleeping. Cause and effect is
not a prerequisite. You can create with thought any pictures that you choose,
and these pictures are the very stuf f of your life. Four basic princ iples will enable you to make this formless realm work
for you in your physical as well as your mental arena. 1. Your actions come from your images. All of our behavior
results from the thoughts that preceded it. If you visuali ze
yourself as incompetent in a given area, and you continuously
reinforce this with a mental picture, eventually you will act out
this scenario. Suppose you are about to load up your car and you
discover you have six suitcases to put into a trunk that was
designed to hold only five. The picture you form in your mind
will determine how much luggage you take on this trip. If you
think, “I’m going to have to cut down to five suitcases—this car
will not hold all six,” then that is what you will do. But if you
picture yourself going on your trip with all six suitcases, and hold
that image in your mind, you will then act upon the thought “I
know I can get them all in. I’ll just shift things around and work
at it until they fit. ” I refer to thoughts as things, becaus e they have
just as much to do with how you drive off on your vacation as do
the other things, such as your car, your suitcases, your maps, your
supply of gasoline, your money, and everything else in the world
of form. Understanding that a thought is the first step in this
process of living contributes to your seeing the value of
visualization in a positive framework. Apply the notion of thoughts as things to the acquisition of
wealth. If you picture yourself acquiring abundance, if you keep
this vision in your mind regardless of the obstacles you encounte r,and if you absol utely see it for yourself, then you will act on this
image. You will allow this picture to be the dominant image in
your mental world. You will make fifteen calls a day instead of
three or four. You will find yourself saving a part of your income
and thereby paying yourself first, a crucial step in the acquisition
of wealth. You will think wealth y thoughts and surround yourself
with people who encourage your visions. You will find yourself
attending classes on the important subjects which make up your
life mission. You will be in a continual state of self-improvemen t. You will seek out the knowledge and expertise of those who have
achieved succes s in your field. You will spend time reading about
people who have succeeded in spite of humble origins. Your
entire life experience will revolve around the image of you with
abundance in your life, all based upon one single thing, a thought. The reverse of this picture is also important to examine. If you
picture yourself poor, you will act out your daily life based upon
this image. You will surround yourself with people who lack
abundance, you will read about the failures, you will avoid tryin g
new things or believing in self-improvement because the idea in
your head is that you are poor. Your behavior will constantly flow
from this visualization. You will consider successful people as
lucky or born into the right circu mstances. You will go into every
encounter that might help you to gain abundance with the thought
that it won’ t work out for you anyway. Virtually everyt hing that you do is a result of the picture that
you place in your mind before you make the attempt. See yourse lf
as unabl e to stand in front of an audience, and you will not. You
will simply stay away from that experience and justify it by
labeling yourself a shy person. Shy persons make shy pictures
over and over in their minds, and until they can see themselves as
unafraid, they will always act on the picture they create. Regardless of the circumstances  of your life, you are the writer,
director, and producer of your mental images. You will always act
out those pictures. Your circumstances do not determine what
your life will be; they reveal what kinds of images you have
chosen up until now. From the quality of your physical
appearance, to your level of nutritional health, to the state of yourfinancial holdings, to the quality of your relationships and
everything else that requires an action by you, you are acting on
images. Your mind stores away all of the images that you elect,
and you daily carry out the assignments of those thoughts. You cannot have a feeling witho ut first having a thought. Your
behavior is based upon your feelings, which are based upon your
thoughts. So the thing to work on is not to change your behavior,
but those things  inside of your consciousnes s that we call
thoughts. Once your thoughts reflect what you genuinely want to
be, the appropriate emotions and the consequent behavior will
flow automatically. Believe it, and you will see it. 2. Tell yourself  that everything you visualize is already here. Remember what Einstein taught us about time. Time does not
exist in the linear world—it is man’ s invention because of his
limited vision and his need to compartmentalize everything. There really is no such thing as time. Just let these words sink in
and be open to the possibility that they are truthful. Now, in a
universe in which time does not exist, everything that you are
capable of thinking of is alread y here. Where else could it be. That thing in your head that we call a thought is really already
here in the physical world. It is not in another solar system or
another univers e. It is here. But you cannot simply visualize
something and then sit around and wait for it to materialize in
your life. You must understand that the opportunity for bringing
the thought to a physical reality is up to you, and that the physic al
reality is already  here, on this plane and available for you to make
the connection. Your job as a visualizer is to learn to bring it from
the astral world of thought to the physical world of form. Suppose that you visualize yourself selling five million widgets
you have invented. You might say to yourself, “How can this
image already be here if they haven’ t even been manufactured
yet. ” Because everything you visualize is already here. But who
is going to buy one widget apiece. Where are those five millio n
people. On another planet. In another solar system. Of course
not. They are here already. Of course, there are many steps inbringing that to form. You must know how to manufacture,
distribute, and advertise your product. The rest of the steps are
already in thought. All you have to do is connect your though ts
with their thoughts to purchase a widget, and what you visualize d
begins to materialize in the world of form. Suppose you visualize yoursel f as someone who can run a
twenty-six-mile marathon. Where are you going to do that. Right
here. Not in another reality system, but right here, now. When the
Wright brothers visualized a plane flying, that reality was alread y
here. We did not need to invent a new reality system in order to
produce flying possibilities for humans. We needed to connect our
thoughts to the reality that was already here. Once those thoughts
were tuned in to the frequency of flying as a possibility, that
became our reality. The healthy person that you visualize yourse lf
to be is already  here, albeit surrounded by the unhealthy earlier
thoughts. Understanding that everything that you are capable of
seeing within your mind is already here will help you to take
responsibility for the entirety of your life. Every thing  is energy. Noth ing is solid. Everything vibrates at
its own level of reality, and while form appears to be solid,  a
simple examination under a microscope reveals that that solid
object is actually alive with danc ing molecules vibrating at a little
less than the speed of light and thus appearing to us to be solid. Energy is the very stuff of the universe, and thoughts are a part of
that “stuff. ” So when you are having a thought about somethin g
that you would like to see happen for yourself, remember it is
nothing more than connecting the two frequencies together to
make the reality  happen for you. Keep in mind that if you are
capable of conceiving the idea in your head as an image of
something that you would like, then it is already here. And when
you begin to doubt it, remember to ask yourself, “Where else
could it be if it’s not here in our reality system. ” The thought that
I had in my head  as a child of appearing on The Tonight Show, as
difficult as it is for us to grasp, was already here. If time does not
exist, then 1953 and 1976 are essentially the very same thing. If
you know in your heart that your images are already here just by
virtue of the fact that you can think them, then you will stopwaiting around and start working on those images to make them
your physical as well as your inner reality. “Where else could
they be. ” is a wonderful questio n to ask yourself when you start
doubting that your images are going to work out for you. 3. Be willing. Forget about the word “determination”. Forget
about perseverance. Forget about personal drive. These are not
the concepts that will help you to understand the visualization
process and bring it into your life. Over and over I hear, “I gave  it
my best shot. ” “I really tried hard, and it still didn’ t work out. ” “I
persevered for months, and still I didn’ t get what I wanted. ” The
key word that is missing from these statements is willing. In order
to make a visualization a reality in the world of form, you must be
willing to do whatever it takes to make it happen. This is the
single most important aspect of visualization and imagery. Everything that you can picture in your mind is already here
waiting for you to connect to it. What needs to be added is your
state of willingness. When I left the university to pursue my dreams I was willing to
do anything. If it meant moving to another part of the country, I
was willing. If it meant borrow ing money, I was willing. If it
meant leaving my family behind  for a time, I was willing, because
I knew my family supported my dreams. If it meant working
eighteen-hour days for years and years, I was willing. When I give lectures on the subject of positive imagery and
creative visualization, someone in the audience will usually say,
“I worke d and worked at my dream and it still didn’ t work out. Why. ” My answer to that person is a question: “What is it you
were unwilling to do. ” The response is usually something like “I
simply can’t uproot my family and move to a new area just to
pursue my own dreams. ” “Perhaps,” I say, “you need to examine
how willing you are to do what it takes to make your dream  a
reality. ” I believe that being willing to do whatever  is neces sary to
achieve your dream is a key factor in the accomplishment. Willingness is really a state of mind. It is an internal statement
that says, “I will be happiness and bring it to my undertakings. Iwill take the next step toward making my dream a reality. ” This is
not a principle that presuppose s a long list of goals. Quite the
opposite. It is an internal statement of I will do whatever it takes
because that is what feels right to me. I believe  that willingness is proportionate to the rightness of
your path. If you consistently find yourself unwilling, I sugge st
you examine your dream closely. You may be receiving an inner
signal that this is not what you want. Otherwise, you will advan ce
confidently and not stop regardless of what others say, what
obstacles come along, or what evidence suggests that you will not
fulfill your visualization. In my office I have two framed posters. One is a picture of
Albert Einstein,  beneath which are the words “Great spirits have
always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. ”
The other poster is made up solely of words: “I am grateful to all
those people who said no. It is because of them I did it myself. ”
Great thoughts. Inherent within this third princip le of visualization is the notion
of openness. When you are willing to do whatever is necessary to
form alize your images, your thought s, you open your heart to all
of the possibilities available to you as a human being. Nothing
will be too absurd for you to undertake. No obstruction or
discouragement will enter into your consciousness. You are open
to it all. Further more, when you open yourself up to abundanc e,
you begin acting in abundant ways. So many times along the way
I had been told by “experts” how futile were my efforts to tell the
world about Your Erroneous Zones, but within my heart was the
understanding that though their advice might in fact be true for
them, it just made me more willing to do what I had to do. And I
loved every step along the way, instead of viewing my efforts as
some kind of torture path that I had to traverse in order to get to
the picnic grounds. I would have my own internal celebration
each time I overtook another obstacle. And I came to know that
that future picnic ground was just an illusion, since the future
does not exist at all, only the working unit of our lives, which is
now. Once you are truly willing to do what is necessary regardless of
obstacles, your openness will lead to an internal harmony that will
not let you give up. Being willing does not mean having  to suffer,
or having  to do everything. The willingne ss itself is often enough,
and willingness is a thought. 4. Realiz e there is no such thing as failur e. Keep this in mind and
you will achieve all that you conceive in your mind. You never
fail, you simply produce results. Always results. If you make an
attempt to hit a golf ball one hundred yards and it dribbles off to
the right, you have not failed. You have produced a result. Your
concept of failure comes from believing someone else’s opinion
about how you could have hit the golf ball. But in our reality, you
could not have hit the golf ball any other way than how you hit it.
The author emphasizes the significance of thoughts in creating one's reality and the need to focus on inner thoughts rather than external appearances.
What is the author's message about the importance of thoughts in shaping one's life?
The author believes that the key to manifesting one's desires is to focus on the thought, visualize it, and be willing to take action to make it a reality.
According to the author, what is the key to manifesting one's desires?
The author does not believe in the concept of failure, stating that "you simply produce results" and that we should focus on what we can learn from our experiences rather than being upset by them.
What is the author's perspective on the concept of failure?
The author believes that success is a thought and that it is not determined by external circumstances, but rather by one's own thoughts and willingness to take action.
What is the author's stance on the idea of success?
The author states that thoughts and feelings are not determined by external events, but rather by one's own thoughts and reactions to those events.
What is the author's view on the relationship between thoughts and reality?