THERE’S A
SPIRITUAL
SOLUTION TO
EVERY PROBLEM
WAYNE W. DYER
OceanofPDF .comC ONTENTS
Epigraph
Foreword
Introduction
PART I
ESSENTIAL FOUNDA TIONS FOR SPIRITUAL  
PROBLEM SOL VING
 
1. • Spiritual Problem Solving
2. • Ancient “Radical” Ideas
3. • It’ s All Ener gy
4. • Stop Giving Ener gy to the Things Y ou Don’ t Believe In
5. • Keeping Y our Ener gy Field Uncontaminated
6. • Raising and Maintaining Y our Spiritual Ener gy
PART II
PUTTING SPIRITUAL PROBLEM  
SOLVING INT O ACTION
7. • Lord, Make Me an Instrument of Thy Peace
8. • Where There Is Hatred, Let Me Sow Love
9. • Where There Is Injury , Pardon
10. • Where There Is Doubt, Faith
11. • Where There Is Despair , Hope
12. • Where There Is Darkness, Light
13. • Where There Is Sadness, Joy
 
AcknowledgmentsAbout the Author
Books by W ayne W . Dyer
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
OceanofPDF .comFor Sommer W ayne Dyer
You are loved unconditionally
By your father here,
And your Father in Heaven
OceanofPDF .comYou have no problems, though you think you have. . . . —A Course in Miracles
OceanofPDF .comF OREWORD
I completed the initial writing of this book on the fifteenth of June, 2000, at
our home on Maui, with a wonderful sense of accomplishment. I enjoyed
the summer with my family , swimming, hiking, and playing tennis. W e had
dinners and movies with close friends and I had precious free time to read
and share intimate moments especially with my wife, Marcelene, who was
so instrumental in helping me find a spiritual solution to the “problem” I
was about to experience. Little did I realize that in a few short months I
would be called upon to apply all that I had written, and to test those
principles for a spiritual solution to every problem firsthand in my own life. In the autumn of 2000, I was literally brought to my knees while alone in a
hotel room. I could barely breathe. My chest felt like it was in a vise. I was
sweating profusely and soon found out that I had had a heart attack. But
something was dreadfully wrong with this picture. I do not smoke or drink;
I am not overweight; I exercise every day and have done so for twenty-five
years. I watch what I eat; I meditate; I do what I love, and I love what I do. I have a great marriage and wonderful children. I don’ t do heart attacks! That is for other people who live their lives in such a way as to invite heart
attacks. Not me. Not Dr . Wayne Dyer . Yet there I was, in the hospital with
monitor wires attached all over my upper body and with an IV in my arm. In three days I would have an angiogram procedure. For the first twenty-four hours, I lay there in a state of shock and disbelief. It is called denial. I felt sorry for myself. I refused to acknowledge that such
a thing could happen to me. I was weepy around my family and I was, to be
honest, scared. After that first day I began to reexamine what I had written
in this book you are about to read. I reminded myself over and over of the
title: There Is a Spiritual Solution to Every Pr oblem —and this surely was a
problem. I remembered that I could bring the ener gy of spirit right there to
that hospital room. By doing so I could turn this thing around and no longer
wallow in the low ener gy of self-pity , injury , sadness, fear , and doubt. The facts were the facts, my heart had been injured. Now it was up to me. I
am not this body; I am a spiritual being, eternal, always connected to God. Icould shift my awareness to being the observer rather than the victim,
which is what I have been writing about over the past twenty years. It was
as if the light came on in a dark room. I felt the presence of a higher , faster
healing ener gy almost immediately . I began to be cheerful rather than
morose. I circulated around the cardiac ward attempting to cheer up those
who were much worse of f than myself. I began to view the hospital and the
many healing professionals with awe, love, and respect rather than with
thoughts of fear and anxiety . I looked for what was right about that place
and experienced gratitude for everything my senses witnessed. I brought to
the cardiac ward the awareness that I have elaborated on here, in this book
that I love so much. “Surely the presence of God is in this place.” Certainly
the reality of the heart damage did not magically disappear , but in my mind,
where the “problem” existed, I had introduced the higher/faster ener gy of
spirit and the “problem” disappeared permanently . On Monday morning, December 4, 2000, the angiogram re-vealed a
blockage in one artery that may have been a part of my physical anatomy
since birth. My heart was strong and the damage was minimal. A stent was
inserted in the blocked artery after a balloon poked out the of fending
plaque. I am now back to my normal exercise and work routine. As I was being wheeled into the cath-lab and having the catheter inserted in
my leg and dye into my arteries, my heart was literally at peace. I joked
with the nurses and cardiologists and squeezed my wife’ s hand, telling her I
loved her . All fear , worry , anxiety , doubt, and darkness left me. I knew that
regardless of the outcome, I was at peace, connected to spirit and in God’ s
hands. I decided to share this information with you here at the beginning of this
book to illustrate how a seemingly insurmountable “problem” has a
spiritual solution readily accessible, when one stops focusing on the
“problem” and shifts to spiritual ener gy. I was able to bring in the
higher/faster ener gy of spirit which means that: 1) I literally surrendered
and turned the “problem” over to a higher power; 2) I saw love everywhere
rather than fear; 3) I reminded myself that I am an infinite soul in a
temporary body; 4) I quieted my mind and emptied it of all negativity; 5) I
became grateful for all of those who worked on bringing healing ener gy tome; 6) I stayed connected to God in my mind; 7) I began to bring joy to
those around me as a means of eradicating my own self-indulgence. It
worked! And as if to illustrate a final point, I received a beautiful letter from Peggy
Bartzokis, the wife of my cardiologist, Thomas Bartzokis, MD, pointing out
how everything and everyone benefits when spirit is allowed to be fully
present. She writes:
I feel as though you appeared in our lives (Tom and mine), for a reason. The fact that you went to Tom and not another
cardiologist at a time when I needed to read your writings and Tom needed to learn more about how to help his patients still
astounds me. Your tapes started me on a new path. I’m working hard to heal myself. My health was on a downward spiral and I never
considered that my thinking could be my problem. Thank you for opening my eyes to the importance of the mind/body
connection. Also through me, Tom gets to hear all about what I’m reading (whether he wants to or not) and luckily he finds these ideas
fascinating. I’m excited because he treats over ten thousand patients and if he can share these ideas he may really be able to
prevent further cardiac damage or other illnesses. I’m also thankful that you are fully recovered and running again. Maybe we were all meant to learn something from this
experience. As you once said, “Every meeting in our lives is in some way orchestrated by a divine force . . . and the strangers
to whom we are drawn have something to teach us.” 
    I can’t tell you how much I appreciate meeting you both. I will always have you and Marcelene in my prayers. God bless
you and all the good works that you do. There you have it all. I put it right here for everyone to see. It’ s all in order
and a spiritual solution awaits you for any and all things that you perceive
to be “problems.” T rust me. I, W ayne Dyer , know from firsthand
experience. OceanofPDF .comI NTRODUCTION
The title of this book makes a very lar ge claim. Y es, you can literally rid
yourself of any and all problems by seeking and implementing spiritual
solutions. I have explained what I mean by spiritual, pr oblems,  and
solutions  in the very first chapter , so there is no need to do so in this brief
introduction. The essential message of this book is in the following ten
points. 1. Everything in our universe is nothing more than ener gy. That is, at the
very core of its being, everything is vibrating to a certain frequency . 2. Slower frequencies appear more solid and this is where our problems
show up. 3. Faster frequencies such as light and thought are less visible. 4. The fastest frequencies are what I am calling spirit. 5. When the highest/fastest frequencies of spirit are brought to the
presence of lower/slower frequencies, they nullify and dissipate those
things we call problems. 6. You have the ability and the power to increase your ener gy and access
the highest/fastest ener gies for the purpose of eradicating any problems
in your life. 7. There are some basic foundations and principles that you will need to
understand and practice in order to access spiritual solutions to any
“problems” that you may be experiencing. 8. Your ultimate choice, once you understand these principles, is whether
to align yourself with a high ener gy field or a low ener gy field. 9. In essence, when you finally come to know and understand the world
of spirit on an intimate basis, you will see clearly that all problems are
illusions in that they are concocted by our minds because we have
come to believe that we are separate from our source, which I call
God, but you can label it any way that you prefer .10. These illusions are nothing more than mistakes in our thinking and like
every error they dissolve when put face to face with the truth. I have or ganized this book into two sections. The first section contains six
chapters which elaborate the basic fundamental foundations for
understanding that a spiritual solution for any and all problems is readily
available. I have researched Holy Scriptures in many spiritual traditions as
well as those areas we have come to call scientific or pragmatic. I make no
claim that any one tradition or practice is superior to any other . I have
pursued my own awareness of these concepts with a mind that is open to
everything and attached to nothing. I have searched ancient and modern
spiritual tomes from east, west, and anywhere in between, and presented
them as I know them to be truthful and useful. The second section of this book contains chapters seven to thirteen, each of
which is titled from one of the most well-known and accepted prayers ever
written. This prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi embodies the fundamental
message of this book. By bringing the higher frequencies of spirit to the
presence of the lower frequencies of “problems,” the problems will vanish. I have made every ef fort to of fer very specific suggestions on how to
implement these higher ener gies in practical, useful ways, beginning today . In rereading this book I am conscious of occasional repetition in making my
case for a spiritual solution to every problem. In some cases I have edited it
out, but in other instances I have deliberately used this repetition to
reinforce the point at the moment you are reading. I have found that this
provides instantaneous reinforcement and makes it much more likely that
the concept will stick. Writing this book has been an exercise in self-awareness for me. I find that I
am now much more able to shift out of those lower/slower ener gy patterns
and access spiritual guidance, and I can do so in just a matter of moments. For me I feel lighter , more loving, compassionate, and literally problem-free
as I practice accessing my highest ener gies in moments when I previously
thought I had a “problem” that I needed to solve. I now simply unplug
myself from that world of problems in my mind and plug into spirit. Writing this book has brought me closer to God, and an awareness that not
only am I never alone, but that it would be an impossibility . May you findthe same peace that I have as you read these words. And may all of your
problems dissolve as you shift out of those lower ener gies and come to
know that a spiritual solution to any and all problems is simply a thought
away . God bless you,  
Wayne Dyer
OceanofPDF .comPART I
ESSENTIAL 
FOUNDATIONS 
FOR SPIRITUAL 
PROBLEM SOLVING
“There is nothing wrong with God’ s creation. Mystery and Suf fering only exist in the mind. . . .”
—Ramana Maharshi
OceanofPDF .com1
SPIRITUAL  
PROBLEM SOL VING
The solution to the problem of the day is the awakening of the consciousness of humanity to the
divinity within. —HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN
Can you make a flower grow? Probably your first response is, “Such a
simple thing to do. Plant a seed in some dirt, provide sunlight and water and
in time a flower will emer ge. The proof is that there are millions upon
millions of flowers sprouting all over the world at this moment!”
That is certainly true. However , I am inviting you to reread the question and
consider who or what generates the life that makes a flower grow , because
the who or what is the source of solutions to all our problems. Who or what causes the flower seed to blossom, and the tiny embryo to
become a human being? Who or what grows our fingernails and beats our
heart even as we sleep? Who or what is behind the movement of the winds,
which we feel but never see? What is this force that keeps the planets in
place and hurls our world through the galaxy at a breathtaking speed? These
questions have been asked for as long as humans have had the ability to
contemplate their existence.Spirit  is what I have chosen to call the formless, invisible ener gy which is
the source and sustenance of life on this planet. This force, no matter the
name we give it, can solve every problem that we encounter . There is a
spiritual solution to every problem, we only need to learn how to access it. In this book I will explain ways that I have found to access this force. I will
begin by explaining the three basic steps to finding your spiritual solutions
to problems. I first read about these steps when I immersed myself in How to Know God:
The Y oga Aphorisms of Patanjali,  written sometime between the fourth
century b.c. and the fourth century a.d. These spiritual disciplines and
techniques were written to enable a person to achieve the ultimate unitive
knowledge of God. I will refer to this powerful collection of writings
frequently , and share with you how this knowledge can be applied in your
life. I trust you will discover for yourself that these things you have come to
label as problems have a ready solution available to you right now , in this
moment, in that world we are calling spirit . THE FIRST OF THREE STEPS FOR ACCESSING SPIRITUAL
DIRECTION
Recognition: It may appear obvious that one must first
recognize something before applying it, but this is actually the
most troublesome step in moving toward spiritual illumination. Recognizing the availability of an invisible force that can be put to use in
solving a problem, requires overcoming a great deal of our early training
and conditioning. Have you ever thought about the limitations we
experience when we identify ourselves as only a physical body in material
existence? For instance, do you believe there is only one kind of power or knowledge,
which relies on your sensory or intellectual faculties to solve problems? Most of us have been taught this is true and that all of the information that
has been acquired is the total inventory of options available to us. This is aconditioned attitude of nonrecognition of our divine connection to spiritual
problem solving. In this state of nonrecognition we believe that medicines, herbs, sur gery,
and doctors are responsible for all healing, or that improving one’ s financial
picture involves the exclusive application of working hard, studying,
interviewing, and sending out résumés. In essence, nonrecognition leads us
to believe that our knowledge is limited to those kinds of phenomena,
which are explainable through our sensory functions. Patanjali described a kind of knowledge or power that is not accessed solely
through the material or sensory world. Recognition that this power exists
and is always available is the first step in activating it. However , it is not
accessed solely through the teachings of others, or through ancient writings,
just as we do not dream because someone teaches or writes about dreaming. Recognizing, like dreaming, is something we access by making an inner
and outer commitment to our ability to recognize. For example, in this first step when you are faced with a problem, I suggest
you create a personal af firmation such as: “I may not know exactly how to
access the spiritual solution here, but I fully recognize that a spiritual
solution exists.” By recognition of its existence, we invite the power to be
known by us. As physical beings we can make a flower grow in the sense of the response
to the question in the opening sentence of this book. But if we are
thoughtful we realize that we cannot even begin to unravel the mystery of
the invisible force that initiates life. Y et it is in this omnipresent,
omniscient, omnipotent spiritual world that we find the solutions to all our
problems. This spiritual force is everywhere and in every thing and every
one. When we incorporate the first step, recognition, we begin the process
of accessing this all-knowing power . THE SECOND OF THREE STEPS FOR ACCESSING SPIRITUAL
DIRECTIONRealization: W e discover that knowledge achieved by
realization is of a much higher order than intellectual reasoning. This is not an exercise in intellectual reasoning. In this step we go beyond
recognition  of a spiritual presence into the phase of realization where
nothing but our own personal experience is trusted. W e become an explorer
in vir gin territory where no one but ourselves can be. Here, only you can
validate your experience. Our desire to realize the presence is an integral part of the unexplainable
dynamic that creates life. When we actively meditate on a chosen spiritual
ideal or even a given personality we are expressing our desire by inviting
the presence to be accessible. I suggest that you begin this process of realization by visualizing the
presence you seek. Create an inner picture of yourself receiving divine
guidance and banish all doubts about its validity . Realize that there is no
need to explain or defend as you go within yourself. In silent desire to
realize your spirit, know that your invitation will be accepted. Y ou will find
that your picture dissolves into the reality of a presence that is accessible
within yourself. This is realization. It is a personal experience beyond
anything related to an intellectual exercise. W ith practice and desire, in
quiet meditation, you will experience the presence. There are times the intellect will persist, trying to make your experience fit
the reality of the material world. One way to think about this process of
moving toward realization is to envision a magnet. See yourself as the
magnet, which is attracting to you all that you have recognized and
acknowledged as true. Then gradually become aware of a greater magnetic
force, which pulls you toward higher truths. The ef fort is not exclusively
your own any longer . You are in a kind of metaphysical magnetic field,
which draws you in the direction of your realization. I have had this experience of realization in my own life for the past several
years. When I enter into a state of deep meditation I am abundantly aware
of a magneticlike force, which pulls me in the direction of God. The
revelations that I experience in those moments of God-realization representa renewal of my mind. I reconnect to a kind of ener gy that propels me in the
direction of a solution to anything that might be troublesome. For example, something as mundane as purchasing a piece of property for
my wife and myself to move to when our children leave the nest, was
causing me a great deal of inner turmoil. I reminded myself to move into
that invisible magneticlike field of ener gy and I was guided toward a
solution. At precisely the right moment a friend called and said one
sentence that put me at ease about the dilemma. Done! This is what I call
realization in action. We can all use this realization of the availability of spirit in the resolution of
problems. As you learn to employ the first step, recognition  of spiritual
solutions, you will move to a state of realization  in which you experience
the power . You will realize that every kind of disharmony , discord, or
disease is amenable to the spiritual ener gy that is in you. THE THIRD OF THREE STEPS FOR ACCESSING SPIRITUAL
DIRECTION
Reverence: Communing quietly with the spiritual force is our
way of becoming one with it. This third step, reverence,  is acquired quickly by some people, while for
others it can take a long time to achieve. Communing quietly with the
spiritual force and becoming one with it means there is no sense of
separation. W e know our divinity and commune with that part of ourselves. In other words, we see ourselves as a part of God; we are in a state of
reverence for all that we are. There is no doubt of our divinity . In this state
we fully experience this quote from the Bible: “On that day , you will know
that I am in my Father , and you in me, and I in you” (John 14:20). Quietly communing with God, when we are searching for guidance, is a
way of temporarily turning of f our ego-mind. Instead of our ego-self
thinking, “I can fix this,” we are willing to immerse it into our higher self. Like a drop of water separated from its source the little mind is unable to
create and sustain life. When the drop of water rejoins the ocean it has allthe powers of its source. The drop of water separate from its source
symbolizes our ego-self when we are separated from our source of
omnipotent power . Communing quietly allows us the direct experience of knowing a spiritual
solution to every problem. W ith our divine connection we are always in
touch with the solution. Problems persist when we fail to recognize, realize,
and finally , quietly commune with our own source, power , spirit, God. I often think of Abraham Lincoln watching his beloved Union crumbling
under the ener gy of hatred that engulfed this country . He wrote, “I have
been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I
had no where else to go.” “T o my knees,” is a way of saying, “I surrender to
my source and turn this huge problem over to that same power that moves
the stars.” Y ou can do the same thing in times of strife. “Let go and let
God,” as they say in the recovery movement. When you practice communing quietly with spirit, you will sense the
presence of a sacred partner . You can turn your problems over to this
“senior” partner and move to a place of peace. The Indian saint Sri
Ramakrishna used the following parable to teach his devotees how to reach
the state of direct union with God. A disciple once came to a teacher to learn how to meditate on God. The
teacher gave him instructions, but the disciple soon returned and said that
he could not carry them out. Every time he tried to meditate he found
himself thinking about his pet buf falo. “Well, then,” said the teacher , “you meditate on that buf falo you’re so fond
of.”
The disciple shut himself up in a room and began to concentrate on the
buffalo. After some days, the teacher knocked at his door and the disciple
answered: “Sir , I am sorry I can’ t come out to greet you. This door is too
small. My horns will be in the way .”
Then the teacher smiled and said: “Splendid! Y ou have become identified
with the object of your concentration. Now fix that concentration upon Godand you will easily succeed.”
The message is so clear . Become one with spirit and do not doubt or fear
your divinity . Move beyond your ego-mind into your higher self. (I will not
detail here the path to transcending the ego. I have devoted an entire book
to this subject— Your Sacr ed Self .) There is a spiritual solution to every problem. The three basic steps to
access your connection to spiritual solutions to problems in your life are:
recognition, realization, and reverence. The balance of this first chapter discusses my meaning of the key words of
the title of this book. I believe the definitions I use for spiritual, pr oblem,
and solution  can form the basis for a unique way of bringing peace and
fulfillment into your daily life. It is further my contention that once you
internalize these three concepts you will rarely revert to the belief that you
face insurmountable problems. Eventually , you will learn that all those so-
called “problems” are dissolvable by saturating them with the higher ener gy
of spirit. What I Mean by Spiritual
It is written in the Bhagavad-Gita , the ancient Eastern holy book, “W e are
born into a world of nature; our second birth is into a world of spirit.” This
world of spirit is often depicted as separate or distinct from our physical
world. I think it is important to see spiritual as a part of  physical, rather than
to separate these two dimensions of our reality . It is all one. Spirit
represents that which we cannot validate with our senses. Like the wind that
we feel but cannot see. Two great saints from dif ferent corners of the world as well as dif ferent
religious persuasions have described spirit this way: “Spirit is the life of
God within us” (Saint T eresa of A vila) and “Whatever draws the mind
outward is unspiritual and whatever draws the mind inward is spiritual”
(Ramana Maharshi). The key to understanding spirituality is this idea of our
inner world and our outer world—one world, yet two unique aspects of
being human. I have a friend who compares the physical to a lightbulb and
the spiritual to electricity . He insists that electricity has been around as longas spirituality but that we did not make a religion of it when it was
discovered. Likewise, when I refer to spiritual I do not intend it to be synonymous with
religious. Religion is orthodoxy , rules, and historical scriptures maintained
by people over long periods of time. Generally , people are born into
religions and raised to obey the customs and practices of that religion
without question. These are customs and expectations from outside of the
person and do not fit my definition of spiritual. I prefer a definition of spirituality as described in Saint T eresa’ s and
Maharshi’ s observations. Spirituality is from within, the result of
recognition, realization, and reverence. My personal understanding of
spiritual practice is that it is a way of making my life work at a higher level
and of receiving guidance for handling problems. The ways in which I
personally do this involve a few simple, but basic practices. I have
enumerated them here in my own order of significance. 1. Surr ender This is first because it is the most crucial and often the most
difficult. For those of us who have grown up believing life is a “do-it-
yourself” project it is hard to admit that we need the help of many others
just to survive for a day . In order to surrender you must be able to admit to
being helpless. That’ s right, helpless. In surrender , my thoughts are something like this: “I simply do not know
how to resolve this situation and I am turning it over to the same force that I
turn my physical body over to every night when I go to sleep. I trust in this
force to keep digesting my food, circulating my blood, and so on. The force
is there, it is available, and I am going to treat this force that I will call God,
as a senior partner in my life. I will take the words ‘All that I have is thine’
in the scriptures at face value. I am willing to turn any problem over to this
invisible force which is my source, while always keeping in mind that I am
connected at all times to that sour ce!”
In other words, the spiritual life is a way of walking with God instead of
walking alone.2. Love Activating spiritual solutions means converting inner thoughts and
feelings from discord and disharmony to love. In the spirit of both surrender
and love I find it helpful to silently chant to myself, “I invite the highest
good for all concerned to be here now .” I try to see anger , hatred, and
disharmony as invitations to surren- der and love. They can be doorways to
taking responsibility for thoughts and feelings. They are the entryway to the
inner world where spirituality is. W ith this understanding I have the option
to allow spirit to manifest and work for me. I use a metaphor of a long cord that is hanging from my hip and I have the
option of plugging that cord into one of two sockets. When I plug into the
material world socket, I receive the illusions of disharmony and actually
have the results inside of me. I feel out of sorts, hurt, upset, anguished, and
hopeless in terms of being able to solve or correct my problem. When I am
plugged in this way I struggle to attain false powers. This struggle inhibits
me from receiving mystical or spiritual power . Defining empowerment only
in material world terms is a reflection of being spiritually disconnected. When I imagine this cord being yanked from the material world socket, and
replugged into the spiritual socket, I immediately experience a sense of
peace and relief from the angst. This spiritual plugging-in metaphor is an
instant reminder to me to substitute love for anguish or frustration. I can
relax and remember that the spirit is God, which is synonymous with love. Emanuel Swedenbor g said it well when he reminded his students, “The
divine essence itself is love.” This feeling of love is the substance of what
holds every cell together in our universe. It is cooperation with, rather than
fighting against. It is trusting rather than doubting. Simple? Y es. But even
more so, profoundly ef fective in resolving problems. Love and love alone
dissolves all negativity , not by attacking it, but by bathing it in higher
frequencies, much as light dissolves darkness by its mere presence. 3. Infinite Carl Jung reminds us that “The telling question of a person’ s life
is their relationship to the infinite.” My concept of the infinite includes
accepting, without doubt, that life is indestructible. Life can change form
but it cannot be destroyed. I believe our spirit is inseparable from the
infinite.This awareness of our infinite nature is terrific for putting everything into
perspective. Relying upon the part of ourselves that has always been and
always will be alleviates stress in any given situation. “The spirit gives life,
the flesh counts for nothing,” the scriptures advise us. All of these things
that we perceive as ourselves are of the flesh. In terms of infinity , they
“count for nothing.”
When I unplug myself from the material and replug myself into the spiritual
I immediately let go of fear , judgment, and negativity . I know that I must
bring the ener gy of the spiritual socket to my immediate life circumstance. Infinite love is what I receive from that new ener gy source. It has always
been there, but now I recognize this infinite power and see myself as having
all my circuits flowing with this one source. 4. Empty Mind My spiritual approach to problem solving involves being
quiet and letting go of my ideas about exactly how something should be
resolved. In this space I listen and allow myself to have complete faith that I
will be guided in the direction of resolution. Call this meditation (or prayer
if you like); I feel strongly about the need for meditation to nourish the soul
and access divine assistance. Beyond the actual act of meditation is a willingness to empty my mind of
my agenda and be open to what will inevitably come to me. I send a
message to my ego, which says, “I am going to trust in the same power that
moves the galaxies and creates a baby rather than in my own self-indulgent
assessments for how I would like things to be going right now .” I relinquish
my thoughts to the power that spirit has to make things work and let go of
any agenda that interferes with the perfect expression of God within me. Completely emptying the mind of our agenda leads to forgiveness , which is
a vital component of this practice. Getting to a state of emptiness means
ridding ourselves of all blame and angry thoughts about what has transpired
in the past. Empty means just that, empty . There is no room for hanging on
to who did what and when, and how wrong they were. W e let it go simply
because it is a component of our agenda, and what we want is God’ s plan
which works, and to toss out our own, which obviously doesn’ t. Thus when
we empty our mind of our ego-driven thoughts we invite for giveness intoour hearts, and by letting go of the lower ener gies of hatred, shame, and
revenge we create a mind-set of problem resolution. 5. Gener osity and Gratefulness Sometimes I feel the necessity to remind
myself that we come into this world with nothing and we will exit the same
way. So, finding a spiritual solution to every problem involves doing the
only thing I can do with my life. That is, giving it away and being
simultaneously grateful for the opportunity to do so. Here is a formula that
works for me:
I get back from the world precisely what I put out to the world. Which
is another way of stating the proverb “As you sow , so shall you reap.”
If “Gimmee! Gimmee! Gimmee!” is my message to the universe then
the universe will send the very same message back to me: “Gimmee! Gimmee! Gimmee!” The result is I will never feel peaceful and I will
be condemned to a life of trying to fulfill all the demands being made
on me. If my message to the universe is “What can I give?” or “How may I
serve?,” the message I receive from the universe will be “How may I
serve you?” or “What can I give you?” Then I experience the magic of
sending generous thoughts and ener gy out wherever I go. I recommend your spiritual practice involve being generous and grateful
with your thoughts. The more you send out thoughts of “How may I serve,”
rather than “What’ s in it for me?,” the more you will hear back “How may I
serve you?”
6. Connectedness The Sufi poet Rumi once explained that the terms I, you,
me, he, she, and they are distinctions that cannot be made in the garden of
the mystics. In spiritual consciousness you view yourself as a flower in this
garden and everyone else in the garden connected to you in an invisible
way. Then you will feel the assistance that is available to you. At the level of spiritual consciousness we know we are connected to
everyone. Our concerns and dif ficulties are something we realize that we
share with everyone else. Problems do not af fect our body/mind/personality ,because we have suspended total identification with our body , our
personality , and all of its achievements. Instead we begin to see ourselves as
the beloved. Nurture your sense of connection to everyone and God as well. This allows
you to remove your ego from conflicts. Do not see anyone as an enemy , or
view anyone as an obstacle to fulfillment. This awareness of being a part of
everyone allows you to suspend anger and frustration toward others and see
them as partners in the resolution of problems. Know that there are people to whom you are connected who are available to
help you find the right job, to solve a puzzling issue that seems
irreconcilable, to help you back on your feet, and to resolve financial
difficulties. Everyone becomes a compatriot rather than a competitor . This
is spiritual awareness as I practice it. We are not alone. W e are not what we have, what we do, what others think
of us. W e are divinely connected to God and to all of God’ s creations, and
consequently each of us has an unlimited inventory of resources available
for the purpose of helping us to a state of peace and problem resolution. Being connected means literally that at any given moment of your life, you
can ask that the love that surrounds you and connects you to everyone and
everything else please guide you right now . Then you relinquish your
negative self-talk images and observe everyone and everything that you see
as your loving assistant. It is in these moments that the right person or event
will materialize and assist you. I try to remind myself in moments of despair of the beautiful af firmation
from A Course in Miracles:  “I can choose peace, rather than this.” It works. Or I use this af firmation often: “I see nothing, I hear nothing, I know
nothing that is separate from me.”
7. Cheerfulness In terms of outward appearances there is something
noticeable about people who have reached a high level of spiritual
awareness. They seem to be in a constant state of bliss. In my own life I
know that my state of cheerfulness is a reliable gauge of my level ofspiritual enlightenment at that moment. The more cheerful, happy ,
contented, and satisfied I am feeling, the more aware I am of my deep
connection to spirit. Ask yourself this key question, “How do I feel most of the time?” If your
answer is that you feel anxious, anguished, hurt, depressed, frustrated, and
so on, then you have a spiritual disconnect. This could mean you have
allowed your personal ener gy field to become contaminated by the
debilitating forces of those in your immediate life space. (Y ou will read
more about this, and how to keep your ener gy field uncontaminated, in
chapter five.) When you are spiritually connected you are not looking for occasions to be
offended and you are not judging and labeling others. Y ou are in a state of
grace in which you know you are connected to God and thus free from the
effects of anyone or anything external to yourself. I often ask myself, “How am I truly feeling inside myself these days?” If
my answer is “Not so hot” or “Upset,” I meditate and go to the quiet place
where I can plug my cord into the spiritual outlet. The state of cheerfulness
returns quickly . Every teacher who has been truly significant in my life has
demonstrated this wondrous quality of being able to laugh, to take life
lightly , to be silly and giddy . Use this measure to test your own level of spiritual awareness, and if you
are not of good cheer remind yourself that you will never be fully satisfied
but in God. I love Erich Fromm’ s insight, “Man is the only animal that can
be bored, who can be discontented, that can feel evicted from Paradise.”
Only you can evict yourself from the garden of paradise. These then are the seven ways I define spiritual: Surrender , Love, Infinite,
Empty , Generous, Connectedness, Cheerful. Y ou can see that spiritual is not
restricted to any religion in my interpretation. Keep this list handy as you
read on. What I Mean by ProblemIn one sense, in my heart, I feel that there is really only one problem for any
of us. That is when we allow ourselves to be separate from God. But in a
very real sense, we can never be separate from God, since there is no place
that God is not. Thus the paradox. When we are connected to God we have
no problems. W e are always connected to God. Y et we still believe that we
have problems. The answer to this conundrum will be the focus of the major portion of this
book. The problems of disease, disharmony , discord, fear , anxiety , scarcity ,
displeasure, disappointments in others, and so on are in our minds. When
we have these problems we find ourselves feeling alone, alienated, isolated,
angry , hurt, depressed, afraid, and more and more anguished. Y et when we
truly reconnect to our source these feelings disappear . This is why I use the word problem  as if it truly exists; yet I know every
time I use it that it is an illusion. So every time you see the word throughout
this book, know that I perceive it as an illusion created by ourselves
because we have separated ourselves, in that moment, from God. There is a powerful line in A Course in Miracles  which reminds me of this
lesson: “It takes great learning to understand that all things, events,
encounters, and circumstances are helpful.” Great learning is an
understatement! It takes great faith and courage to begin to view our lives in
this way . How strongly do you desire to truly know , beyond a doubt, that every
problem you experience including the very worst thing in your life, actually
contains the seeds of the best thing? W e can learn to view every crisis as an
opportunity , which wouldn’ t necessarily make life easier , but would make it
more satisfying. W e would never be able to view anything as a negative
occurrence, because we’d see everything as useful information. This may sound oversimplified if you face seemingly unsolvable problems
every day . I implore you to have an open mind and also some logic rooted
in your past religious conditioning as illustrated in “Problems Are Illusions”
below . The logic will create a space where you can call on your spiritual
connection for the resolution of your problems. It will also give you a basefor the problem-solving tools I am of fering you in the last seven chapters of
this book. Problems Are Illusions
Give some thought to the following three quotes from the scriptures. “God is too pure to behold iniquity .”
“God made all that was made and all that God made was good.”
“Your eyes are too pure to look on evil, you cannot tolerate wrong.”
Almost identical observations have been made in all religions. The Holy
Koran puts it this way , “Whatever good you have is all from God, whatever
evil, all is from yourself.”
If God is good and God made everything, then everything is good. God
cannot behold iniquity . So where does all of this stuf f that we lump into the
category of problems  come from? The answer is obvious. When we come to
believe that we are separate from God we experience this feeling of
separation in our mind, and our mind tells us that we have a problem. The
problem, created by our beliefs and existing in our mind, causes us to feel
an absence of peace or love. Those beliefs can manifest as disease in our
bodies. W e begin searching for a solution. But in reality , since God is only about good, and God is everywhere, what
we have done is separate ourselves in our mind from God. Though we find
ourselves suf fering with these problems, everything that we label a problem
is an illusion. You can see why it is so important to see any and all problems as things that
we create in our mind. If we can create non-good or non-God in our mind,
then we can also not create them in our mind even though we may have no
idea how to do that. Our conditioning is so strong that we often have far
greater faith in our problems than we do in our ability to no longer have
them.We often display a much greater faith in the power of cancer , heart disease,
or AIDS than we do in the power to heal them. W e do this in a multitude of
ways. W e become enamored of the problem and its damaging ef fect. W e
live out the illusion while ignoring the fact that nothing iniquitous can be of
God, and God made everything. The evil, the pain, the anguish are of our
own creation and they represent opportunities to gain that greater learning
that A Course in Miracles  describes. I know that some of these ideas sound strangely impossible to implement. I
ask you to keep an open mind as we travel this path of healing to bring
peace back into your life on a permanent basis. The Eastern gurus use the term maya  (illusion) to describe the existence of
problems that really do not exist. The universe is good. God is good. God is
everywhere. God is invisible spirit. Anything that is not good cannot exist. But we feel it does, so we have to come up with a solution, and this is the
very reason why I have felt so compelled to write this book. There is a
solution. It sits there right in front of you. The last seven chapters of this book provide you with a series of easy-to-
apply solutions to this puzzle. For now , however , let’s take a brief look at
the word solution  as it applies in the title of this book. What I Mean by Solution
I once sat in on a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous in which ten people
who had been drinking most of their lives were gathered in a rehabilitation
center where they had to live away from their families and loved ones. The
words of a sign on the wall kept gnawing at me throughout that meeting. It
read, “Y our best thinking got you here.” I thought how true that is and how
it applies to all the circumstances of our lives. Our best thinking got us here. Our best thinking is exactly where all our so-called problems exist. If we
couldn’ t think about them, they would not exist. W e can change our very
best thinking and begin to see the error of that thinking. What we need is a
change in thinking to realize that a connection to the divine good, or spirit,
or God, is what heals or eradicates our problems.The power that we call God, which grows the flowers and moves the
planets in perfect orbits, counts us as one of its creations. I encourage you
to learn to rely on that power in times of crisis. Correcting Errors
In mathematics when you add two plus two you will always come up with
four. This little addition example of two plus two equals four is said to have
substance because it is true. Now if you state that two plus two equals
seven, you have an error , and two plus two equals seven no longer is said to
have substance or reliability . Try balancing your checkbook using two plus
two equals seven. So how do we end that error? V ery simple, we correct it,
and it goes away . That is, we bring truth to the presence of the error , and the
error disappears. You cannot send problems out of your life by attacking them or
understanding them in more depth. Instead, you correct the err or in your
thinking  that produces the problem in the first place. Once you bring a
correction to the problem it no longer has any substance or validity , and it
disappears completely from your life. The solution, stated generally here and more specifically later in this book,
is to bring a spiritual essence to the “problem” of disease, disharmony , or
discord. Then the error or the illusion will vanish. Problems represent a
deficit of spirit in some sense. The error is corrected permanently when you
apply the seven components of spirituality . The error is that these problems,
which we are experiencing in our minds, in reality do not exist. Correcting these errors is tantamount to dissolving our fears. And when you
turn and look directly at your fears, what you face dissolves in the light of
consciousness. It is in this context that we have within us the ability to
eliminate those illusions that we call problems. W e correct these errors with
the creation of a new spiritual delivery system. This is the key to
understanding the healing of the body as well as our relationships. This is the basic introduction to this somewhat radical idea of having a
spiritual solution available for every single problem. I’ve always loved
Shakespeare’ s line, “Go to your bosom; knock there, and ask your heartwhat it doth know .” The heart symbolizes the part of us that does not rely
exclusively on thoughts. Thinking is the source of problems. When I ask an
audience to point to themselves, ninety-nine percent will point directly to
their hearts, not their heads. Y our heart holds the answer to resolving any
and all problems in your life. I close this chapter with an invitation written in the thirteenth century by the
Sufi poet Rumi:
 
Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer , worshipper ,
Lover of leaving—it doesn’ t matter . Ours is not a caravan of despair . Come, even if you have broken your vows
A hundred times, a thousand times. Come, come again, come. You are welcome on this caravan leading you out of the world of illusion
which you will love leaving, and into a place where spiritual solutions await
you in every encounter , in every moment of your life. OceanofPDF .com2
ANCIENT  
“RADICAL” IDEAS
The average man who does not know what to do with this life, wants another one which shall last
forever. —ANATOLE FRANCE
WE ARE CAP ABLE OF REACHING A ST ATE OF A WARENESS IN
WHICH WE CAN PERFORM MIRACLES
As I mentioned in chapter one, in preparation for writing this book I
became blissfully involved in the teachings of a saint called Patanjali, who
reportedly lived here on earth several thousand years ago. No source that I
have reviewed has been able to precisely identify who Patanjali was, if he
was indeed more than one person, and even when he lived. Like
Shakespeare, or Jesus, and many other major figures, Patanjali’ s ideas and
teachings have retained their influence, in spite of the lack of details we
have about his existence. In the previous chapter I refer to his translated works How to Know God:
The Y oga Aphorisms of Patanjali . There are very few books which have
caused me to feel the sense of excited anticipation I felt while reading The
Yoga Aphorisms . Patanjali teaches that we are capable of reaching a state of
awareness in which we can perform miracles. He explains that we aretranscendent beings to begin with and counsels us to be unafraid of
transcending the limitations imposed upon us by the material world. Patanjali’ s words caused me to truly think of myself as capable of living at
a much higher level than I had ever considered before. He presents ideas
that are life changing. I felt ur ged to go beyond traditional ideas that acted
as obstacles to my union with God. I ur ge you to suspend disbelief as you
read this chapter . I am fully aware that some of this material may clash
dramatically with your inherited religious teachings. The title of this book makes a powerful claim: that there is a spiritual
solution to every problem you will ever face. In order to apply this idea you
need to be aware of these so-called “radical” ideas, because they can open
you to your ability to implement spiritual solutions to your problems. It may
help if you keep in mind that there is a distinction between spiritual
development and formal religious teachings. Patanjali of fered hundreds of specific suggestions and practices to reach the
oneness or union with God, which he called yoga. Some of Patanjali’ s
aphorisms will undoubtedly sound far too removed from our twenty-first-
century life to apply to the problems we have in today’ s world. I have
selected five of the aphorisms that helped me recognize that spiritual
solutions are only a thought or two away . I introduce each of them along
with my commentary on their value to spiritual problem solving in the
world we presently live in. In our materially oriented world we are often confronted with problems that
seem insoluble. A shift in thinking is required in order to discover that we
have something at our disposal that we can put into practice. W e need to see
ourselves as containing a force that can be called upon for spiritual
solutions. W e don’ t have to consult an expert in theology , or thumb through
ancient manuscripts to find our answers. W e need to realize that spiritual
solutions are readily accessible. A while back during an intermission of a half-day seminar that I was
conducting, someone left this note on the table onstage.Question to God:  “Why did you let all of those people in that Denver
school die?”  
Response fr om God:  “I’m not allowed in school anymore.”
In the twenty-first century many Americans seem to equate God with
religion and religious training which they insist be separated from teaching
and learning in our schools. But nowhere in our Constitution is it specified
that we must separate God and state . It says quite clearly that a separation
of church and state  shall be the way of our land. T o separate God and state
we would have to recall every coin and piece of currency issued by the state
and strike out “In God W e Trust.” W e would have to amend our Pledge of
Allegiance and all references to God in our government documents! T rying
to legislate God out of our daily lives contributes to the growing spiritual
deficit that our world is experiencing. The ideas that Patanjali wrote about several thousand years ago are of
immense value today . These ideas are not part and parcel of a religion or a
church. They are a prescription for coming into union (yoga) with God and
consequently regaining all the power and majesty of one’ s source. Enough of my disclaimers and warnings. Here are five aphorisms from
approximately twenty centuries ago that can help you gain access to your
spiritual answers. I have arranged these five major themes in a way that I
found useful for myself and I trust will be helpful to you. THE FIRST APHORISM
The central act of ignorance is false identification. Patanjali describes ignorance as a basic misunderstanding of one’ s real
nature. According to this ancient master when we identify ourselves as our
name or title, our body , our possessions, achievements, or reputation, we
are denying our true identity . This he maintains is ignorance. This act of ignorance forces us to misread nature and consequently to dwell
on the outwardness of things. When the world is viewed as a collection of
separate things and beings, awareness of wholeness is impossible. This
ancient master made it quite clear that when we deny God within us, wedeny God everywhere. Finding a spiritual solution to every problem begins
with a commitment to end this kind of ignorance. In order to eliminate ignorance as defined by Patanjali, you do not have to
go back to school. Ignorance is not the absence of knowledge. He is not
saying you are ignorant if you can’ t spell, or solve quadratic equations, or
list the capitals of countries from memory . Each person has a vast
storehouse of facts and knowledge at his disposal. For some it involves
reading blueprints, and for others it is repairing bicycles. For some it is
preparing a sumptuous meal, and for others it is driving an eighteen-
wheeler across the country . Who is to say that any one set of facts and skills
is any more important than any other? If one set of skills allows you to make more money and that is important to
you, then by all means learn and apply those skills to your money-making
efforts. But the person who elects a dif ferent set of facts and skills, which
produce less income, is not ignorant, even though our culture often tends to
equate low income with ignorance. What we are exploring here is ignorance defined as falsely identifying
oneself as only of the material ego-based world. To eliminate ignorance from your life using this definition, you will need to
reprioritize your basic definition of both yourself and God. For yourself, try
to let go of the false identification of God with the five senses and the
intellect. Replace that false identification with imagining yourself eternally
connected to a divine source. W ith this new identification comes an inner
resolve to reorient yourself when faced with a problem. Rather than asking
an external God to solve your problem for you, identify yourself as a part of
the beloved divine creation that you are. Dedicate your actions to God and
you will gradually see the error of false identification disappear . For example, if you want to stop a compulsive habit of overeating, begin by
no longer identifying yourself as a body full of cravings (ignorance). Instead imagine yourself as pure eternal peace and joy always unified with
God. Ignorance keeps you from genuinely experiencing pleasure or
fulfillment via the senses because you clutch at what appears to provide itrather than seek purity or true happiness. A false identification will always
betray you. The senses will keep tempting you with objects of desire. Unlearn the false identification of your thoughts with your ego-senses and
instead see yourself as a part of the infinite. As you do, you will still act on
your thoughts but you will be acting as a divine perfectly balanced eternal
being. I love the idea of eternal soul presented in this excerpt from the
Bhagavad-Gita:
 
The illumined soul . . . Thinks always: “I am doing nothing.”
No matter what he sees,
hears, touches, smells, eats . . . This he knows always:
“I am not seeing, I am not hearing:
It is the senses that see and hear
and touch the things of the senses.”
 
To become an illumined soul we must not conceptualize ourselves as our
senses and all that they lust after . That is ignorance. W e are not the objects
of experience, but the silent observer within the experience itself. Seeing
ourselves in this way provides us with a new tool for problem solving. T ry
it the next time you feel the impulse to overeat or consume a toxic
substance or even to spend time in painful grief over a loss. A dramatic example of this presented itself in the following letter and poem
I received from Mary Lou V an Atta of Newark, Ohio. She is speaking
directly to this idea of false identification as she writes of her ordeal andhow she ultimately found a spiritual solution by remembering who she is,
rather than who she had falsely believed she was. Dear Dr . Dyer , 
    My son was murdered in a robbery attempt two years ago. Frankly , I
thought I would never recover from my grief and loss. Amid all the
clouds in my life and mind, I was somehow led, once more, to your
books and tapes. I had read and listened to many in previous years and
while I had enjoyed them, I was too busy to truly listen. Upon going
over them again, I realized one underlying truth in all. W e are spirit in
body—not a body with a spirit. I am once more a happy , healthy woman with a full steam ahead
system. I will always feel my loss of Ross, but I know it is not the end
of the story . I can wait. It’ s O.K. I have enclosed a small poem that I hope you will enjoy . I wrote it
but you taught it. Again, thank you. Sincerely , Mary Lou V an Atta
Indeed, as Patanjali reminds us, we are spirit in body . Believing otherwise is
ignorance through false identification. In that state of ignorance we become
solutionless in form. When we experience what Saint Paul called a
“renewal of the mind” we are able to see ourselves as we truly are. With Mary Lou’ s permission I include the poem she wrote. It summarizes
this first ancient “radical” idea. The central act of ignorance is not being ill-
informed, but in falsely identifying yourself as your form. I A M
 
The “I” that is me—you cannot see
You see only the form that you think is me.This form that you see, will not always be;
but the “I” that is me—lives eternally . The next time that you face a problem that you have been unable to resolve,
try redefining yourself as Mary Lou suggests in “I Am,” and put into
practice your true identification as the eternal experiencer rather than the
object of that experiencer . Ask yourself these key questions from the
ancient Upanishads: “At whose behest does the mind think? Who bids the
body to live? Who makes the ear hear and the tongue speak?”
Your true identity is the mind of mind, the eye of the eye, and the breath of
the breath. Go there and you will find the beginning of a spiritual solution
to any problems you believe you have. Here is how Meher Baba described
this process of overcoming one’ s ignorance  as we are defining the term
here. “Thus, though he begins by seeking something utterly new , he really arrives
at a new understanding of something ancient. The spiritual journey does not
consist in arriving at a new destination where a person gains what he did
not have or becomes what he was not. It consists in the dissipation of his
ignorance  concerning himself and life, and the gradual growth of that
understanding which begins with spiritual awakening. The finding of God is
a coming to one’ s own self.” Y our objective in applying this ancient
wisdom is to dissipate your ignorance concerning yourself and life. THE SECOND APHORISM
The mind of the truly illumined is calm because the peace of
God within all things is known, even within the appearance of
misery and disease. This second aphorism brings to mind the adage that the three truly dif ficult
things to do in life are: returning love for hate; including the excluded; and
saying, “I was wrong.” It is the first and most dif ficult item, returning love
for hate, that I want to explore here.As I was studying the ancient words of Patanjali I came across a reference
that implied the following: God cannot expr ess God’ s self in you when you
are not at peace. As I thought about those words I had a deep realization
that God is love. I recognized that it was in a state of stillness that the
realization occurred. If it requires stillness to know God, then we need to be
in a place of loving calmness in order to be able to have God’ s assistance in
problem solving. Thus, the most dif ficult thing to do, to return love for hate,
becomes much simpler when we are able to be peaceful because that is
actually God expressing God’ s self within us. When we return love for hate we express the peace of God that is within us. Our response has a calm and loving quality . This calmness is a vital aspect
of the consciousness that makes it possible to tap into spiritual solutions. I’ve selected two passages from the Bible to reinforce the relationship
between stillness or calmness and God. By taking the scriptural statement
and reversing it, we can clearly recognize what happens when we are
unable or unwilling to choose stillness. So, “Be anxious, or fearful and you
will not know God” is what we have in place of “Be still, and know that I
am God” (Psalm 46:10). Instead of “God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and
God in him” (I John 4:16), we would have “God is fear and he that dwelleth
in fear cannot dwell in God, nor God in him.”
Probably you are thinking that this makes sense. God is still. God is love. When I am neither , I have no chance of allowing a spiritual solution to
present itself. But how do I get to that place of calmness? I believe you can
move into that state of knowing God within through stillness by
intentionally choosing calmness in moments of anxiety or fear . Yes, you can
choose to be calm at any moment by reminding yourself that you are no
longer choosing to live by your conditioned past. It is lar gely because of our
conditioning that we leave God behind when we leave calmness. We have trained ourselves to be fearful and anxious when presented with
problems. If we choose, we can retrain ourselves to be calm and to allow
God to express God’ s self in us once again. As I discussed in chapter one,
problems begin, unequivocally , in our minds. W e may have to remindourselves that our mind is where the problem exists, nowhere else. Thus the
“illusion” which I mentioned earlier . Correct the error , and the illusion
disappears. Our conditioning has led us to the error of thinking of ourselves
in terms of finite beings. James Carse, in his book Finite and Infinite Games,  describes a world of
finite games in which winners and losers, rules, boundaries, and time are all
extremely important. In the world of finite games, titles, acquisitions, and
prestige are of paramount significance. Planning, strategy , and secrecy are
all crucial. T o become a master player in the world of finite games you have
an audience who knows the rules and who will grant you a reputation. Being identified with losers in the finite game is frightening and dangerous. The finite game values bodies, things, and reputations. The ultimate loss is
death. In his book, Carse explains that the final result of the finite game is self-
annihilation because the machines that we invent to assist us in this finite
game of winners and losers will destroy those who rely upon them. Technology , marketing, productivity are all terms to encourage players to
buy more machines and one’ s worth is dependent on how many machines
players have and how well they operate them. There is also the infinite game, which you can begin to play if you so
choose. In this game there are no boundaries; the forces are infinite that
allow the flowers to grow and those forces cannot be tamed or controlled. The purpose of the infinite game is to get more people to play , to laugh,
love, dance and sing. Life itself is infinitely non-understandable. These
forces were here before we were and will continue beyond the boundaries
of death and time. While the finite player must debate and learn the language/rules to operate
all the machines, the infinite player speaks from the heart and knows that
answers are beyond words and explanations. This is not to imply that
players of the infinite game cannot also play finite games, it’ s just that they
don’t know how to take the finite games seriously . This is a choice. W e are in a world where secrecy , competition, fear , and
weapons are part of the equipment used to play the finite game of life. W eknow that the categories of “winner” and “loser” are highly valued. Players
who prefer to spend more of their time playing the infinite game also play
the finite game. I think the following excerpt from the workbook for A
Course in Miracles  says it delightfully . “There is a way of living in the world that is not here, although it
seems to be. Y ou do not change appearance, though you smile more
frequently . Your forehead is serene; your eyes are quiet. And the ones
who walk the world as you do recognize their own. Y et those who
have not yet perceived the way will recognize you also, and believe
that you are like them, as you were before.”
This is a prescription for knowing the peace of God even when there is the
appearance of misery and disease.
_OceanofPDF.com_Theres_a_Spiritual_Solution_to_Every_Problem_-_Wayne_W_Dyer.txt
Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        THERE’S A
SPIRITUAL
SOLUTION TO
EVERY PROBLEM
WAYNE W. DYER
OceanofPDF. comC ONTENTS
Epigraph
Foreword
Introduction
PART I
ESSENTIAL FOUNDA TIONS FOR SPIRITUAL  
PROBLEM SOL VING
 
1. • Spiritual Problem Solving
2. • Ancient “Radical” Ideas
3. • It’ s All Ener gy
4. • Stop Giving Ener gy to the Things Y ou Don’ t Believe In
5. • Keeping Y our Ener gy Field Uncontaminated
6. • Raising and Maintaining Y our Spiritual Ener gy
PART II
PUTTING SPIRITUAL PROBLEM  
SOLVING INT O ACTION
7. • Lord, Make Me an Instrument of Thy Peace
8. • Where There Is Hatred, Let Me Sow Love
9. • Where There Is Injury, Pardon
10. • Where There Is Doubt, Faith
11. • Where There Is Despair, Hope
12. • Where There Is Darkness, Light
13. • Where There Is Sadness, Joy
 
AcknowledgmentsAbout the Author
Books by W ayne W. Dyer
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
OceanofPDF. comFor Sommer W ayne Dyer
You are loved unconditionally
By your father here,
And your Father in Heaven
OceanofPDF. comYou have no problems, though you think you have. —A Course in Miracles
OceanofPDF. comF OREWORD
I completed the initial writing of this book on the fifteenth of June, 2000, at
our home on Maui, with a wonderful sense of accomplishment. I enjoyed
the summer with my family, swimming, hiking, and playing tennis. W e had
dinners and movies with close friends and I had precious free time to read
and share intimate moments especially with my wife, Marcelene, who was
so instrumental in helping me find a spiritual solution to the “problem” I
was about to experience. Little did I realize that in a few short months I
would be called upon to apply all that I had written, and to test those
principles for a spiritual solution to every problem firsthand in my own life. In the autumn of 2000, I was literally brought to my knees while alone in a
hotel room. I could barely breathe. My chest felt like it was in a vise. I was
sweating profusely and soon found out that I had had a heart attack. But
something was dreadfully wrong with this picture. I do not smoke or drink;
I am not overweight; I exercise every day and have done so for twenty-five
years. I watch what I eat; I meditate; I do what I love, and I love what I do. I have a great marriage and wonderful children. I don’ t do heart attacks. That is for other people who live their lives in such a way as to invite heart
attacks. Not me. Not Dr. Wayne Dyer. Yet there I was, in the hospital with
monitor wires attached all over my upper body and with an IV in my arm. In three days I would have an angiogram procedure. For the first twenty-four hours, I lay there in a state of shock and disbelief. It is called denial. I felt sorry for myself. I refused to acknowledge that such
a thing could happen to me. I was weepy around my family and I was, to be
honest, scared. After that first day I began to reexamine what I had written
in this book you are about to read. I reminded myself over and over of the
title: There Is a Spiritual Solution to Every Pr oblem —and this surely was a
problem. I remembered that I could bring the ener gy of spirit right there to
that hospital room. By doing so I could turn this thing around and no longer
wallow in the low ener gy of self-pity, injury, sadness, fear, and doubt. The facts were the facts, my heart had been injured. Now it was up to me. I
am not this body; I am a spiritual being, eternal, always connected to God. Icould shift my awareness to being the observer rather than the victim,
which is what I have been writing about over the past twenty years. It was
as if the light came on in a dark room. I felt the presence of a higher, faster
healing ener gy almost immediately. I began to be cheerful rather than
morose. I circulated around the cardiac ward attempting to cheer up those
who were much worse of f than myself. I began to view the hospital and the
many healing professionals with awe, love, and respect rather than with
thoughts of fear and anxiety. I looked for what was right about that place
and experienced gratitude for everything my senses witnessed. I brought to
the cardiac ward the awareness that I have elaborated on here, in this book
that I love so much. “Surely the presence of God is in this place. ” Certainly
the reality of the heart damage did not magically disappear, but in my mind,
where the “problem” existed, I had introduced the higher/faster ener gy of
spirit and the “problem” disappeared permanently. On Monday morning, December 4, 2000, the angiogram re-vealed a
blockage in one artery that may have been a part of my physical anatomy
since birth. My heart was strong and the damage was minimal. A stent was
inserted in the blocked artery after a balloon poked out the of fending
plaque. I am now back to my normal exercise and work routine. As I was being wheeled into the cath-lab and having the catheter inserted in
my leg and dye into my arteries, my heart was literally at peace. I joked
with the nurses and cardiologists and squeezed my wife’ s hand, telling her I
loved her. All fear, worry, anxiety, doubt, and darkness left me. I knew that
regardless of the outcome, I was at peace, connected to spirit and in God’ s
hands. I decided to share this information with you here at the beginning of this
book to illustrate how a seemingly insurmountable “problem” has a
spiritual solution readily accessible, when one stops focusing on the
“problem” and shifts to spiritual ener gy. I was able to bring in the
higher/faster ener gy of spirit which means that: 1) I literally surrendered
and turned the “problem” over to a higher power; 2) I saw love everywhere
rather than fear; 3) I reminded myself that I am an infinite soul in a
temporary body; 4) I quieted my mind and emptied it of all negativity; 5) I
became grateful for all of those who worked on bringing healing ener gy tome; 6) I stayed connected to God in my mind; 7) I began to bring joy to
those around me as a means of eradicating my own self-indulgence. It
worked. And as if to illustrate a final point, I received a beautiful letter from Peggy
Bartzokis, the wife of my cardiologist, Thomas Bartzokis, MD, pointing out
how everything and everyone benefits when spirit is allowed to be fully
present. She writes:
I feel as though you appeared in our lives (Tom and mine), for a reason. The fact that you went to Tom and not another
cardiologist at a time when I needed to read your writings and Tom needed to learn more about how to help his patients still
astounds me. Your tapes started me on a new path. I’m working hard to heal myself. My health was on a downward spiral and I never
considered that my thinking could be my problem. Thank you for opening my eyes to the importance of the mind/body
connection. Also through me, Tom gets to hear all about what I’m reading (whether he wants to or not) and luckily he finds these ideas
fascinating. I’m excited because he treats over ten thousand patients and if he can share these ideas he may really be able to
prevent further cardiac damage or other illnesses. I’m also thankful that you are fully recovered and running again. Maybe we were all meant to learn something from this
experience. As you once said, “Every meeting in our lives is in some way orchestrated by a divine force. and the strangers
to whom we are drawn have something to teach us. ” 
    I can’t tell you how much I appreciate meeting you both. I will always have you and Marcelene in my prayers. God bless
you and all the good works that you do. There you have it all. I put it right here for everyone to see. It’ s all in order
and a spiritual solution awaits you for any and all things that you perceive
to be “problems. ” T rust me. I, W ayne Dyer, know from firsthand
experience. OceanofPDF. comI NTRODUCTION
The title of this book makes a very lar ge claim. Y es, you can literally rid
yourself of any and all problems by seeking and implementing spiritual
solutions. I have explained what I mean by spiritual, pr oblems,  and
solutions  in the very first chapter, so there is no need to do so in this brief
introduction. The essential message of this book is in the following ten
points. 1. Everything in our universe is nothing more than ener gy. That is, at the
very core of its being, everything is vibrating to a certain frequency. 2. Slower frequencies appear more solid and this is where our problems
show up. 3. Faster frequencies such as light and thought are less visible. 4. The fastest frequencies are what I am calling spirit. 5. When the highest/fastest frequencies of spirit are brought to the
presence of lower/slower frequencies, they nullify and dissipate those
things we call problems. 6. You have the ability and the power to increase your ener gy and access
the highest/fastest ener gies for the purpose of eradicating any problems
in your life. 7. There are some basic foundations and principles that you will need to
understand and practice in order to access spiritual solutions to any
“problems” that you may be experiencing. 8. Your ultimate choice, once you understand these principles, is whether
to align yourself with a high ener gy field or a low ener gy field. 9. In essence, when you finally come to know and understand the world
of spirit on an intimate basis, you will see clearly that all problems are
illusions in that they are concocted by our minds because we have
come to believe that we are separate from our source, which I call
God, but you can label it any way that you prefer. 10. These illusions are nothing more than mistakes in our thinking and like
every error they dissolve when put face to face with the truth. I have or ganized this book into two sections. The first section contains six
chapters which elaborate the basic fundamental foundations for
understanding that a spiritual solution for any and all problems is readily
available. I have researched Holy Scriptures in many spiritual traditions as
well as those areas we have come to call scientific or pragmatic. I make no
claim that any one tradition or practice is superior to any other. I have
pursued my own awareness of these concepts with a mind that is open to
everything and attached to nothing. I have searched ancient and modern
spiritual tomes from east, west, and anywhere in between, and presented
them as I know them to be truthful and useful. The second section of this book contains chapters seven to thirteen, each of
which is titled from one of the most well-known and accepted prayers ever
written. This prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi embodies the fundamental
message of this book. By bringing the higher frequencies of spirit to the
presence of the lower frequencies of “problems,” the problems will vanish. I have made every ef fort to of fer very specific suggestions on how to
implement these higher ener gies in practical, useful ways, beginning today. In rereading this book I am conscious of occasional repetition in making my
case for a spiritual solution to every problem. In some cases I have edited it
out, but in other instances I have deliberately used this repetition to
reinforce the point at the moment you are reading. I have found that this
provides instantaneous reinforcement and makes it much more likely that
the concept will stick. Writing this book has been an exercise in self-awareness for me. I find that I
am now much more able to shift out of those lower/slower ener gy patterns
and access spiritual guidance, and I can do so in just a matter of moments. For me I feel lighter, more loving, compassionate, and literally problem-free
as I practice accessing my highest ener gies in moments when I previously
thought I had a “problem” that I needed to solve. I now simply unplug
myself from that world of problems in my mind and plug into spirit. Writing this book has brought me closer to God, and an awareness that not
only am I never alone, but that it would be an impossibility. May you findthe same peace that I have as you read these words. And may all of your
problems dissolve as you shift out of those lower ener gies and come to
know that a spiritual solution to any and all problems is simply a thought
away. God bless you,  
Wayne Dyer
OceanofPDF. comPART I
ESSENTIAL 
FOUNDATIONS 
FOR SPIRITUAL 
PROBLEM SOLVING
“There is nothing wrong with God’ s creation. Mystery and Suf fering only exist in the mind. ”
—Ramana Maharshi
OceanofPDF. com1
SPIRITUAL  
PROBLEM SOL VING
The solution to the problem of the day is the awakening of the consciousness of humanity to the
divinity within. —HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN
Can you make a flower grow. Probably your first response is, “Such a
simple thing to do. Plant a seed in some dirt, provide sunlight and water and
in time a flower will emer ge. The proof is that there are millions upon
millions of flowers sprouting all over the world at this moment. ”
That is certainly true. However, I am inviting you to reread the question and
consider who or what generates the life that makes a flower grow, because
the who or what is the source of solutions to all our problems. Who or what causes the flower seed to blossom, and the tiny embryo to
become a human being. Who or what grows our fingernails and beats our
heart even as we sleep. Who or what is behind the movement of the winds,
which we feel but never see. What is this force that keeps the planets in
place and hurls our world through the galaxy at a breathtaking speed. These
questions have been asked for as long as humans have had the ability to
contemplate their existence. Spirit  is what I have chosen to call the formless, invisible ener gy which is
the source and sustenance of life on this planet. This force, no matter the
name we give it, can solve every problem that we encounter. There is a
spiritual solution to every problem, we only need to learn how to access it. In this book I will explain ways that I have found to access this force. I will
begin by explaining the three basic steps to finding your spiritual solutions
to problems. I first read about these steps when I immersed myself in How to Know God:
The Y oga Aphorisms of Patanjali,  written sometime between the fourth
century b. c. and the fourth century a. d. These spiritual disciplines and
techniques were written to enable a person to achieve the ultimate unitive
knowledge of God. I will refer to this powerful collection of writings
frequently, and share with you how this knowledge can be applied in your
life. I trust you will discover for yourself that these things you have come to
label as problems have a ready solution available to you right now, in this
moment, in that world we are calling spirit. THE FIRST OF THREE STEPS FOR ACCESSING SPIRITUAL
DIRECTION
Recognition: It may appear obvious that one must first
recognize something before applying it, but this is actually the
most troublesome step in moving toward spiritual illumination. Recognizing the availability of an invisible force that can be put to use in
solving a problem, requires overcoming a great deal of our early training
and conditioning. Have you ever thought about the limitations we
experience when we identify ourselves as only a physical body in material
existence. For instance, do you believe there is only one kind of power or knowledge,
which relies on your sensory or intellectual faculties to solve problems. Most of us have been taught this is true and that all of the information that
has been acquired is the total inventory of options available to us. This is aconditioned attitude of nonrecognition of our divine connection to spiritual
problem solving. In this state of nonrecognition we believe that medicines, herbs, sur gery,
and doctors are responsible for all healing, or that improving one’ s financial
picture involves the exclusive application of working hard, studying,
interviewing, and sending out résumés. In essence, nonrecognition leads us
to believe that our knowledge is limited to those kinds of phenomena,
which are explainable through our sensory functions. Patanjali described a kind of knowledge or power that is not accessed solely
through the material or sensory world. Recognition that this power exists
and is always available is the first step in activating it. However, it is not
accessed solely through the teachings of others, or through ancient writings,
just as we do not dream because someone teaches or writes about dreaming. Recognizing, like dreaming, is something we access by making an inner
and outer commitment to our ability to recognize. For example, in this first step when you are faced with a problem, I suggest
you create a personal af firmation such as: “I may not know exactly how to
access the spiritual solution here, but I fully recognize that a spiritual
solution exists. ” By recognition of its existence, we invite the power to be
known by us. As physical beings we can make a flower grow in the sense of the response
to the question in the opening sentence of this book. But if we are
thoughtful we realize that we cannot even begin to unravel the mystery of
the invisible force that initiates life. Y et it is in this omnipresent,
omniscient, omnipotent spiritual world that we find the solutions to all our
problems. This spiritual force is everywhere and in every thing and every
one. When we incorporate the first step, recognition, we begin the process
of accessing this all-knowing power. THE SECOND OF THREE STEPS FOR ACCESSING SPIRITUAL
DIRECTIONRealization: W e discover that knowledge achieved by
realization is of a much higher order than intellectual reasoning. This is not an exercise in intellectual reasoning. In this step we go beyond
recognition  of a spiritual presence into the phase of realization where
nothing but our own personal experience is trusted. W e become an explorer
in vir gin territory where no one but ourselves can be. Here, only you can
validate your experience. Our desire to realize the presence is an integral part of the unexplainable
dynamic that creates life. When we actively meditate on a chosen spiritual
ideal or even a given personality we are expressing our desire by inviting
the presence to be accessible. I suggest that you begin this process of realization by visualizing the
presence you seek. Create an inner picture of yourself receiving divine
guidance and banish all doubts about its validity. Realize that there is no
need to explain or defend as you go within yourself. In silent desire to
realize your spirit, know that your invitation will be accepted. Y ou will find
that your picture dissolves into the reality of a presence that is accessible
within yourself. This is realization. It is a personal experience beyond
anything related to an intellectual exercise. W ith practice and desire, in
quiet meditation, you will experience the presence. There are times the intellect will persist, trying to make your experience fit
the reality of the material world. One way to think about this process of
moving toward realization is to envision a magnet. See yourself as the
magnet, which is attracting to you all that you have recognized and
acknowledged as true. Then gradually become aware of a greater magnetic
force, which pulls you toward higher truths. The ef fort is not exclusively
your own any longer. You are in a kind of metaphysical magnetic field,
which draws you in the direction of your realization. I have had this experience of realization in my own life for the past several
years. When I enter into a state of deep meditation I am abundantly aware
of a magneticlike force, which pulls me in the direction of God. The
revelations that I experience in those moments of God-realization representa renewal of my mind. I reconnect to a kind of ener gy that propels me in the
direction of a solution to anything that might be troublesome. For example, something as mundane as purchasing a piece of property for
my wife and myself to move to when our children leave the nest, was
causing me a great deal of inner turmoil. I reminded myself to move into
that invisible magneticlike field of ener gy and I was guided toward a
solution. At precisely the right moment a friend called and said one
sentence that put me at ease about the dilemma. Done. This is what I call
realization in action. We can all use this realization of the availability of spirit in the resolution of
problems. As you learn to employ the first step, recognition  of spiritual
solutions, you will move to a state of realization  in which you experience
the power. You will realize that every kind of disharmony, discord, or
disease is amenable to the spiritual ener gy that is in you. THE THIRD OF THREE STEPS FOR ACCESSING SPIRITUAL
DIRECTION
Reverence: Communing quietly with the spiritual force is our
way of becoming one with it. This third step, reverence,  is acquired quickly by some people, while for
others it can take a long time to achieve. Communing quietly with the
spiritual force and becoming one with it means there is no sense of
separation. W e know our divinity and commune with that part of ourselves. In other words, we see ourselves as a part of God; we are in a state of
reverence for all that we are. There is no doubt of our divinity. In this state
we fully experience this quote from the Bible: “On that day, you will know
that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you” (John 14:20). Quietly communing with God, when we are searching for guidance, is a
way of temporarily turning of f our ego-mind. Instead of our ego-self
thinking, “I can fix this,” we are willing to immerse it into our higher self. Like a drop of water separated from its source the little mind is unable to
create and sustain life. When the drop of water rejoins the ocean it has allthe powers of its source. The drop of water separate from its source
symbolizes our ego-self when we are separated from our source of
omnipotent power. Communing quietly allows us the direct experience of knowing a spiritual
solution to every problem. W ith our divine connection we are always in
touch with the solution. Problems persist when we fail to recognize, realize,
and finally, quietly commune with our own source, power, spirit, God. I often think of Abraham Lincoln watching his beloved Union crumbling
under the ener gy of hatred that engulfed this country. He wrote, “I have
been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I
had no where else to go. ” “T o my knees,” is a way of saying, “I surrender to
my source and turn this huge problem over to that same power that moves
the stars. ” Y ou can do the same thing in times of strife. “Let go and let
God,” as they say in the recovery movement. When you practice communing quietly with spirit, you will sense the
presence of a sacred partner. You can turn your problems over to this
“senior” partner and move to a place of peace. The Indian saint Sri
Ramakrishna used the following parable to teach his devotees how to reach
the state of direct union with God. A disciple once came to a teacher to learn how to meditate on God. The
teacher gave him instructions, but the disciple soon returned and said that
he could not carry them out. Every time he tried to meditate he found
himself thinking about his pet buf falo. “Well, then,” said the teacher, “you meditate on that buf falo you’re so fond
of. ”
The disciple shut himself up in a room and began to concentrate on the
buffalo. After some days, the teacher knocked at his door and the disciple
answered: “Sir, I am sorry I can’ t come out to greet you. This door is too
small. My horns will be in the way. ”
Then the teacher smiled and said: “Splendid. Y ou have become identified
with the object of your concentration. Now fix that concentration upon Godand you will easily succeed. ”
The message is so clear. Become one with spirit and do not doubt or fear
your divinity. Move beyond your ego-mind into your higher self. (I will not
detail here the path to transcending the ego. I have devoted an entire book
to this subject— Your Sacr ed Self. ) There is a spiritual solution to every problem. The three basic steps to
access your connection to spiritual solutions to problems in your life are:
recognition, realization, and reverence. The balance of this first chapter discusses my meaning of the key words of
the title of this book. I believe the definitions I use for spiritual, pr oblem,
and solution  can form the basis for a unique way of bringing peace and
fulfillment into your daily life. It is further my contention that once you
internalize these three concepts you will rarely revert to the belief that you
face insurmountable problems. Eventually, you will learn that all those so-
called “problems” are dissolvable by saturating them with the higher ener gy
of spirit. What I Mean by Spiritual
It is written in the Bhagavad-Gita, the ancient Eastern holy book, “W e are
born into a world of nature; our second birth is into a world of spirit. ” This
world of spirit is often depicted as separate or distinct from our physical
world. I think it is important to see spiritual as a part of  physical, rather than
to separate these two dimensions of our reality. It is all one. Spirit
represents that which we cannot validate with our senses. Like the wind that
we feel but cannot see. Two great saints from dif ferent corners of the world as well as dif ferent
religious persuasions have described spirit this way: “Spirit is the life of
God within us” (Saint T eresa of A vila) and “Whatever draws the mind
outward is unspiritual and whatever draws the mind inward is spiritual”
(Ramana Maharshi). The key to understanding spirituality is this idea of our
inner world and our outer world—one world, yet two unique aspects of
being human. I have a friend who compares the physical to a lightbulb and
the spiritual to electricity. He insists that electricity has been around as longas spirituality but that we did not make a religion of it when it was
discovered. Likewise, when I refer to spiritual I do not intend it to be synonymous with
religious. Religion is orthodoxy, rules, and historical scriptures maintained
by people over long periods of time. Generally, people are born into
religions and raised to obey the customs and practices of that religion
without question. These are customs and expectations from outside of the
person and do not fit my definition of spiritual. I prefer a definition of spirituality as described in Saint T eresa’ s and
Maharshi’ s observations. Spirituality is from within, the result of
recognition, realization, and reverence. My personal understanding of
spiritual practice is that it is a way of making my life work at a higher level
and of receiving guidance for handling problems. The ways in which I
personally do this involve a few simple, but basic practices. I have
enumerated them here in my own order of significance.
Wayne Dyer
Who is the author of the book "There Is a Spiritual Solution to Every Problem"?
The book claims that there is a spiritual solution to every problem, and the author has personal experience with this.
What is the main claim of the book "There Is a Spiritual Solution to Every Problem"?
The author defines spirituality as a connection to the divine, and emphasizes that it is not the same as traditional religion.
What is the author's definition of spirituality?
The author suggests a three-step process of recognition, realization, and reverence, which involves acknowledging the existence of a higher power, accessing it, and trusting in its guidance.
What is the author's approach to solving problems?
The author's message is that there is a spiritual solution to every problem, and that by recognizing and connecting with the divine, one can find peace and resolution.
What is the author's message in the book?