CRITICAL ACCLAIM
“Step-by-step procedures for accomplishing significant and enduring personal changes… . Be Who You Want, Have What You Want is a deftly written and superbly presented compendium of insightful advice and practical assistance. It also includes work spaces and exercises that make it truly interactive.”
—Midwest Book Review
“Guaranteed to fast-track your life… . Chris Prentiss’s style is both compelling and entertaining.”
—ReverseSpins.com
“Brilliant, insightful, and a MUST READ.”
—BackFlap.blogspot.com
“If I had 5 thumbs, I would put them all up.”
—MensSelfesteem.com
Library of Congress Control Number: 2008921111
Copyright © 2008 by Chris Prentiss. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
ISBN: 978-0-943015-56-9
ISBN: 9780943015644
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Power Press
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For foreign and translation rights, contact Nigel J. Yorwerth
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Interior design: James Bennett
Note: Some of the names and details in the stories in this book have been changed to protect the privacy of those involved. The information in this book is not intended as a substitute for consulting with a physician or other health-care provider. All matters pertaining to your individual health should be supervised by a health-care professional.
For those who have less than they want
The vision to see, the wisdom to know, the courage to do
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
How to Read This Book
CHAPTER ONE
Reinventing Your World
CHAPTER TWO
Consciousness
CHAPTER THREE
First Light from the Lodestar
CHAPTER FOUR
The Perfect You
CHAPTER FIVE
The World of Perfect
CHAPTER SIX
You Are the Center
CHAPTER SEVEN
Your Personal Universe
CHAPTER EIGHT
Possibilities
CHAPTER NINE
All of You
CHAPTER TEN
Commitment
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Saying It Positive
CHAPTER TWELVE
Giving Up Stress
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Price of Failure, The Price of Success
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Of Maximum Importance
Notes
MAKING IT YOURS
EXERCISES
CHAPTER TWO
Channeling New Ideas
Learning to Be Happy—Pleasure Exercise #1
CHAPTER THREE
Start Seeing Challenges as Workout Situations
Be Aware of Events as Mirrors
Completing a Small Task
Learning to Be Happy—Pleasure Exercise #2
CHAPTER FOUR
Taking the Journey
Imagining Your Perfect Day
Learning to Be Happy—Pleasure Exercise #3
CHAPTER FIVE
Building a New Philosophy
Seeing All Events as Beneficial
Three Minutes of Perfection
Changing Your Reaction to the Past
Learning to Be Happy—Pleasure Exercise #4
CHAPTER SIX
“I Am the Center of My Personal Universe”
Acting with the Knowledge That All Events Are for Your Benefit
Describing Your Hopes
Learning to Be Happy—Pleasure Exercise #5
CHAPTER SEVEN
Switching Past Events to a Positive Track
Changing Your Perception of Missed Opportunities
Learning to Be Happy—Pleasure Exercise #6
CHAPTER EIGHT
All Things Are Possible
Taking the First Step
Mentally Complete Events of the Past
Learning to Be Happy—Pleasure Exercise #7
CHAPTER NINE
Seeing Yourself with the Attributes of an Invincible, Powerful, Whole Person
Up the Ante
Tell the Truth
Learning to Be Happy—Pleasure Exercise #8
CHAPTER TEN
Committing to a Major Goal and Taking the First Step
Learning to Be Happy—Pleasure Exercise #9
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Eliminating Negatives from Your Speech
Learning to Be Happy—Pleasure Exercise #10
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Only Event Possible
Perfecting All That Has Gone Before
Learning to Be Happy—Pleasure Exercise #11
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“I Will Persevere”
Use What You Are Learning to Help Another
Seeing “Faults” as Springboards
Learning to Be Happy—Pleasure Exercise #12
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to thank my mother, Bea Christiansen, for my most unusual upbringing and for her constant message to me: “You can do it!”
I am also supremely grateful to Nigel J. Yorwerth and Patricia Spadaro of PublishingCoaches.com for their support, friendship, expert coaching, and editing; for shepherding this book through all of its phases to completion; and for bringing about the maximum distribution and sales of my works. Thank you for caring for my work as if it were your own. Patricia makes every writer look better than he or she is. I also thank Nigel for representing my work as my literary agent and being solely responsible for negotiating over twenty-six beautiful foreign editions of my books worldwide, and counting.
HOW TO READ THIS BOOK
The concepts, stories, instructions, and exercises in this book form a program that will enable you to discover the flaws in your thinking that have caused you to be less and have less than you could have had. This program will also help you to remove the limits you have accepted for yourself, allowing you to be who you want and to have what you want. I’ve included the stories as examples of the concepts in action so you can see the principles at work. The exercises provide you with a way to put the concepts into action in your own life immediately. The exercises are of greatest importance.
Much of the information in this book will be new to you. If it were not that way, you would already be who you want and have what you want. Therefore, the following suggestions on how to read this book will be of major benefit to you. Pay close attention to this information. To achieve the greatest benefit from this program, carry out these instructions precisely.
Read slowly. Give your mind time to fully absorb the information. Speed-reading will cause you to miss part of what’s here. If you find you have read a paragraph or even a sentence quickly, relax and read that part again. Find some way of reminding yourself at the beginning of each chapter that you are to read slowly. I know you are eager to get the payoff I have promised, but reading quickly will slow that process or cause you to miss it entirely.
Make certain you understand every sentence in this book. Sometimes we read words with our eyes that we fail to understand with our minds. The words in this book call for your full attention and you need to understand them completely. Use a highlighter to highlight important sentences or paragraphs, or use a pen to underline them. That will make it easier for you to go back and scan the parts you felt were important for you. I have put important words and points in italics. If you are highlighting or underlining, highlight or underline all of those words. Taking notes on what you read will also benefit you greatly.
Several hours after reading a chapter, glance through the pages again. Refresh your memory with the information in the chapter. Think about what you have read. Make the information your own.
Review earlier chapters. This will renew and increase your understanding of the concepts. Each time you read a chapter you’ve read before, the concepts will become clearer as you discover different meanings and new information. The clearer the concepts become, the more capable you will become and the sooner you will bring about what you want in your life.
Do the exercises. Reading this book will give you intellectual knowledge, but that is not enough. To put the intellectual knowledge to work and to receive the maximum benefits from this book, you must do the exercises. Do the exercises as well as you are able to. They are part of the heart of this book. Carry out the instructions precisely. You may have reasons that you think justify failing to follow specific instructions. Those reasons are all the same—they are all “reasons for failing to follow instructions.” No one reason is better than another and none of them justify not doing the exercises. You are reading this book to bring about a major change in your life. The key to doing that is in doing the exercises thoroughly and with a good heart.
Come to this book prepared to put forth your full effort. Make yourself so familiar with the concepts that they become part of you. React to life in the new ways described within these chapters. Then you will find what you seek, and you will find it more marvelous and abundant than you have ever imagined. You will be going through a major overhaul and the results will keep you smiling for the rest of your days on the planet.
1
REINVENTING YOUR WORLD
Progress is impossible without change; and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.
—George Bernard Shaw
I PROMISE YOU THAT BY READING THIS BOOK you will learn how to be who you want and have what you want, and you’ll have fun doing it. The big bonus is that you will also learn how to be happy, which is an art in itself.
There is an old saying, “The more you do of what you’ve done, the more you’ll get of what you’ve got.” That saying has merit because doing what you’ve been doing has brought you to this point in your life where you are who you are and have what you have. If who you are and what you have is what you want, that’s perfect. Keep doing what you’ve been doing and you’ll get more of it. However, if who you are and what you have is less than or different than what you want, you’ll have to make some changes to get what you want. You will have to reinvent the way you see your world.
I say “your world” because each of us lives in a different world. Your childhood was different, your parents or lack of them was different, your experiences were different, your relationships were different, your traumas were different, your health history was different, the life lessons you learned were different, and, as a result, your understanding of how the world works is different from everyone else’s. Even if the differences were small, it is those small differences that make all the difference.
Your perception of the world and the way you see yourself in it has created within your mind a concept, a philosophy, of the way you believe things to be. We all have a personal philosophy. Although you may not have ever defined your philosophy, it is fully operative and working in your life every day, all the time. It determines what you believe about the world, about how events and circumstances affect you, and about how you affect them.
Acting on the basis of your philosophy—what you believe to be true about the world and how it works—has primarily created who you are and is responsible for what your life is like today as you read this. You’ll learn more about your personal philosophy in chapter 5. For now, here are a few examples of what makes up a philosophy and how that philosophy creates and maintains your view of the world and governs how you respond to events. Some of these examples are part of your philosophy.
It’s a dog-eat-dog world.
Don’t trust anyone.
Only fools tell the truth all the time.
People are just out for what they can get.
Into every life some rain must fall.
You’ve got to take the bitter with the sweet.
You can’t have it your way all the time.
Bad things happen to good people.
Bad things happen to bad people.
Bad things happen.
I’m not a particularly lucky person.
If it weren’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have any luck at all.
God punishes me.
The devil puts traps in my path.
God is mean.
There is no God
Murphy’s law: “If anything can go wrong, it will.”
or
People are generally good-hearted.
I’m a lucky person.
Things always turn out for the best.
Every cloud has a silver lining.
I expect good things to come my way.
Good things seem to come my way all the time.
I can always see goodness in people.
I can take every situation, no matter how bad it seems, and turn it into good fortune.
Being the best person I can be always brings me benefits.
Every ending contains a new beginning, a new opportunity.
I believe that God exists.
God watches out for me.
God is good.
Everything always turns out for the best.
Take a moment now and see if you can think of a few examples that might define your own philosophy. If you want to, you can borrow from the list above.
You may not be aware of the power of your philosophy to shape your life—how it guides your actions, how it is responsible for the choices you have made in your life, how it has brought you to where you are now—but before you finish this book, you will be fully aware.
HOW YOU SEE
You are not alone in your quest to be who you want and have what you want. Being happy is everyone’s ultimate goal, no exceptions. That so few of us have achieved it is mainly due to what we learned as children, which is when the major portion of our philosophy was shaped, and how we have lived to this point in our lives. If the people from whom you learned—your family, your teachers, and your friends—didn’t know how to achieve that goal for themselves, how could they have taught you to do so? You can relax now; you are about to find out how to change all that.
One of my goals in this book is to help you correct the flaws in your philosophy that are holding you back from being who you want and having what you want. One of the ways to accomplish that begins with changing how you see your world and how you think about what you see.
Here’s a simple example. Suppose you and I decided to see a movie. We have been told it is a great thriller, the best one ever made. We go to the cinema, buy our tickets, find seats, and the film begins. We sit there looking for clues—a murder, a theft, a plot, a crime of some kind—but we don’t see any of that. After twenty minutes of watching, we are confused and baffled. It’s definitely not what we were told to expect. Nothing we are seeing makes sense.
Then the person in the next seat leans over and whispers, “Isn’t this a wonderful love story?” Suddenly, everything makes sense. All the events of the film fall into place because we are seeing it for what it really is rather than what we were told it was. We are seeing it with “new sight.”
That’s the same kind of transformation that will occur as you proceed through this book and start seeing yourself, the world, and its events for what they really are rather than what you were told they were. When you change the way you see and interpret events, suddenly everything will be different for you. Everything will make sense. You will see the past events of your life differently, you will react to new events differently, and you will envision future events differently. You will love that difference; everyone does. At first, it will be hard to imagine that what you are going to read could be true, but as you continue on, absorbing the information, you’ll begin to smile—a lot.
What you’ll learn in these pages is that you do have the power to actually reinvent your world. You are a powerful being, the most powerful being in your life, and you create your future with your thoughts and actions. By changing how you perceive things and how you act upon those perceptions, you will change your life.
Throughout this book, you will see statements that will be contrary to what you believe, contrary to what your experience has taught you, contrary to what others have told you, and contrary to any religion in which you may believe. That is to be expected. Because some of what you are about to read will seem impossible or foolish, even ridiculous, it may offend your sensibilities and outrage your common sense—particularly outrage your common sense—causing you to scoff at it, ridicule it, and finally cause you to want to reject it.
My suggestion is that before rejecting it, you take a deep breath and hold it for a moment. Then slowly exhale, opening your mind to accept the idea that what has seemed impossible could be possible, and explore further, asking yourself if you wouldn’t like it to be just as you have read.
2
CONSCIOUSNESS
You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
—Max Ehrmann, “Desiderata”
IN THE MID-1980s I led workshops in Los Angeles for people whose lives weren’t the way they wanted them to be and who were willing to come and listen to me for thirty days to learn how to achieve their goals. I called them Power Workshops. The description of the workshop was “Power: How to Get It, How to Use It, How to Keep It.” There were only two rules and they were clearly set out at the beginning of each workshop: (1) Participants had to attend every workshop. (2) Participants had to be on time.
To begin attending the workshop, each person had to make a commitment to honor those two rules. When the door closed at the beginning of each workshop, participants had to be in the room or they were expelled from the workshop, no exceptions. As a result of that rule, between 30 and 40 percent of the workshop participants never made it through the whole program because either they did not attend a workshop or they arrived late.
Those who completed the entire program made such extraordinary gains in their lives that near the end of each workshop some of them would leave their homes to come to the workshop with enough extra time so that if their car broke down, they could walk, take a bus or taxi, or do whatever it took to get to the workshop on time. One girl kept roller skates in the back of her car as her safeguard, another person a bicycle. They were completely committed to attaining their goals, which, of course, was the purpose of the two rules—learning about commitment.
The results the workshop participants achieved were so stunning that, after two years, I discontinued the workshops, sold the building in which I was holding the workshops, and retreated to my home to discover the basic underlying principles that were causing the students to achieve their extraordinary gains. I had recorded all the workshops and had the tapes transcribed into ten large volumes. I studied those volumes for two and a half years. The result is the information in this book, which I have refined and polished over the last twenty years while teaching others those principles along with new principles I learned along the way.
THERE ARE NO COINCIDENCES
Just as those workshop participants changed their lives, you now have the opportunity to change your life. Even though we haven’t met, I have total confidence in you. My total confidence stems from the fact that you are reading this book. It’s not a coincidence. I do not believe in coincidences, and by the time you finish this book, if I have done my job, you won’t believe in them either. What we call coincidences, accidental and remarkable events occurring at the same time, are actually circumstances and events that have come into your life to serve a purpose—and that purpose is to benefit you.
We are now starting to touch on a topic that will be of greatest importance to you. How did the seemingly coincidental (“accidental and remarkable”) event of your getting this book come into your life? If it was not a “coincidence” of some sort, what was it?
The Universe created the circumstances that brought this book to your attention or into your possession.
You are most likely thinking, “What’s that you said? The Universe? You’ve got to be kidding me!”
No, I’m not. At the time of this writing, I am seventy-two years of age, and the single most important piece of information I have ever become aware of is
The Universe is alive, conscious, and aware.
The second most important piece of information I have ever become aware of is
The alive, conscious, and totally aware Universe is completely aware of me.
The third most important piece of information I have ever become aware of is
The totally alive, totally conscious, and totally aware Universe takes care of itself completely. It is totally self-reliant and totally self-sufficient. It is perfect.
As a result of the above three pieces of information, I reached the single most important conclusion of my life, which is
The Universe takes care of me perfectly because I am it.
My son Pax tells me that what I just wrote may be “too much too soon.” That may be. Remember, I lost between 30 and 40 percent of my workshop participants because the standards of the workshop were “too much too soon.” But you and I have a long way to go to change your life, and we must get on with it if we are to win through to the goal of getting you to be who you want and have what you want. Remember, I have total confidence in you. Remember why I have total confidence in you: You’re reading this and it is not a coincidence; it’s a meant-to-be.
UNIVERSAL CONSCIOUSNESS
Everything in the Universe is made of the same energy. The world’s most famous equation is Albert Einstein’s E=mc². It basically means that E (energy) equals m (mass) multiplied by the velocity of light squared. That means that energy and the physical matter of the Universe, including you and me, are different forms of the same thing. You are part of the same energy that is the entire Universe. It is critically important that you grasp what that means. It’s what I said above; you are the Universe—a part of it.
The word Universe is made up of two Latin words—uni (meaning “one”) and versus (meaning “turned into”). It literally means “one turned into.” What was the “one” that those who created our language were talking about, and what did the “one” turn into? I believe the “one” was a vast body of conscious energy that turned itself into “The Universe.” This is not so different from the common belief in most religions that in the beginning there was a supreme being (a God) who created the world and the heavens. Don’t you find it amazing that those who created our language knew what you’ve been reading here—that the one (uni) turned itself into (versus) “The Universe”?
Now, here’s the next piece of information, vital information, that will help you understand Universal consciousness and make the changes that are so important to you.
The energy everything is made of is conscious. It’s alive. It’s aware. The difference between conscious and aware is that one can be conscious but not be aware of something, such as the fact that that the Earth is spinning at the rate of one thousand miles per hour. The Universe is totally aware of everything, and that includes everything about you. I realize it’s difficult to believe that stars and stones are conscious, that they are made of the same energy you are made of. You may now be thinking, “That is a ridiculous notion” and “Any book whose assumption is that everything in the Universe is alive, conscious, and aware cannot be of any great value. I have never seen a conscious stone!” I’ll see what I can do within the covers of this book to extend the boundaries of your reason to include this wondrous information so you can enter into this magical world of possibility, leaving behind all that has held you back from being who you want and having what you want.
Just as you and everything in the Universe are part of the same Universal energy, so you also share Universal “consciousness.” Where does your “consciousness” come from? Scientists say that consciousness arises when a complex organism, such as a human being, comes into existence, and that there is no consciousness that exists outside of a complex biological organism. They say, for instance, that a stone has no consciousness, but with a complex organism, suddenly, there it is!
What a magic trick—something from nothing. Of course, given a little thought, the idea is ludicrous. Something from nothing? I don’t think so. You can take the entire world of physics with all of its macrocosm and microcosm, its quantum mechanics and nuclear physics and reduce it to one word: energy. It’s all energy. Scientists say that if you can’t measure it, weigh it, or see it, it doesn’t exist. Well, no one has ever seen energy. We can see its effects, but not “it.” Nevertheless, we know energy exists. Energy is all there is, and everything is made of it, including you and me.
Scientists also say that life only exists within a biological form. They say life doesn’t exist and, suddenly, with a biological form, life comes into existence—another magic trick. How foolish it is when you think about it. Life from no life? It would be like trying to illumine a lightbulb without electricity first existing. Just because we create a lightbulb does not mean it will glow with light. In fact, it will not glow at all unless electricity is first present.
The same thing is true for consciousness that is true for life; neither can come into being within a biological form unless consciousness and life first exist. A biological entity can partake of life and consciousness once they are available, but that entity doesn’t create life or consciousness by coming into existence any more than a lightbulb creates electricity by coming into existence. In other words, we have life and consciousness because it already exists in the Universe. To me, it is evident that consciousness exists in the Universe simply because you and I have consciousness and you and I are part of the Universe.
CHANNELING INFORMATION FROM THE UNIVERSAL CONSCIOUSNESS
You have been chosen to exist, and more than just to exist—you’ve been chosen to share in the Universal consciousness. Do you think you have all of the consciousness that the Universe has? Of course not. I have some, you have some, and others have some.
Your consciousness partakes of the Universal consciousness in much the same way that a lightbulb partakes of the pool of electricity. It draws from it. We like to take credit when we get a new idea, as if we originated the idea in our brain, but what we actually did was no less extraordinary: we channeled the idea. We used our key to unlock the fount of Universal wisdom and information. That you have a key is indisputable; every time you have ever gotten a new idea or thought of something new, you used your key to unlock the fount of Universal information.
You use your brain much as you would use a radio crystal; you tune in different frequencies. When you need an idea about how to accomplish or create something, you think about the subject and soon a flow of information from the Universal bank of information comes in the form of ideas.
It seems as if you are manufacturing those ideas in your brain, but that’s an illusion. Your brain, in some ways, is like a computer, but in one extremely important way it is completely different. You may already know that you can only get out of a computer what you put into it. There’s a common saying with computer buffs: “Garbage in, garbage out.” That means that you can only get out of a computer what you put into it. A computer cannot manufacture new information. That’s the difference between our brain and a computer. We can put into a computer everything there is to know about the physical description of a tree, but the computer will never be able to come up with the unique concept of an apple. We, however, can channel the concept of an apple from the Universal storehouse of information.
In our time, there have been many new and exciting inventions never dreamed of years ago. Suddenly, people conceived of them and then created them. The ideas came into their minds; they channeled them. It is a daily occurrence for people in different parts of the world to conceive of the same ideas at the same time. Scientists are regularly working on the same new concepts in many different parts of the world. They race to see who can come up with the final solution to the same problem to beat out the competitors who are also working on the problem.
Think about the instances of children creating things and doing things far beyond the capability of other children their age. We call them geniuses and child prodigies. It would not be understandable or even conceivable that those children could perform those amazing feats unless we realize that they are channeling the information from the Universe. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was composing music at age five, and he certainly was not able to do that because he had spent years laboriously studying musical composition. He was extremely prolific in his lifetime, composing over six hundred works. Where did all that music come from? He was channeling it.
Thomas Edison patented more than a thousand inventions. When he was stumped for an idea, he would sit in a chair, hold a ball bearing in each hand, and rest his arms over the chair’s arms. He placed metal pie plates on the floor below his hands. He would then allow himself to relax and get to the point of sleep but not go to sleep. If he did begin to fall asleep, his hands would relax and the ball bearings would fall down, hit the plates, and the sound would awaken him. He would then write down the ideas that had come to him. Edison was channeling.
You can also channel, and you do it all the time. Every time you think of something you’ve never thought of before, you are channeling. Now that you know how Edison did it, you can do the same thing. You can even make up your own method. The information that you can do it is what’s important. When you need an idea about how to do anything, get quiet and relaxed and think about what it is you need to know. Then the flow of ideas will come. Be patient and let it happen. Sometimes it takes a little while, but it always works.
THE GREATEST FORCE, THE GREATEST HONOR
Knowing that you are part of the Universe and that the Universe is aware, acutely aware, of you is more empowering than any other single aspect of your life. Suppose it were true. Think what it would mean. It would mean that the most powerful force that exists is aware of you, and it is as concerned for your welfare as it is for its own because you are its own. This knowledge will alter your life in ways that will amaze and delight you once you come into the full realization of what it means. Being part of the Universe is the greatest honor anyone can have. It’s better than king, queen, shah, emperor, supreme ruler, prince, president, or any other title you can conceive of.
In addition to the precious gift of consciousness and the ability to channel new ideas, another gift from the Universe is that you can communicate with it. You may not be aware that this is possible, but before we are finished here, you will do it regularly. In fact, you are doing it now with the thoughts you think, the actions you take, and how you are being at every moment. If you touched one of your shoulders, you would be aware of it because your shoulder is part of you. In the same way, the Universe is aware of your thoughts and actions, of how you are being at every moment because you are part of it.
Not only are you communicating to the Universe, but the Universe is also communicating with you. The Universe communicates with you by bringing events into your life. That is its method of communication. And these events are always for your benefit. This book is an event in your life, stubbing your toe is an event, losing a parent or guardian is an event, having a bicycle accident is an event, getting a raise at work is an event, finding a mate is an event, and, yes, the holocaust, 911, and the tsunami that killed over two hundred thousand people in Thailand were all events, along with a day when you were greatly embarrassed as a child.
Those events almost certainly seemed to you to be without purpose, certainly without conscious purpose on the part of the Universe—although they may have had an impact on your life, particularly if you were part of those events or if someone close to you was part of those events. But all events, all communications from the Universe, have a purpose. Not only that, but all events in your life were and are for your total and complete benefit. In fact, they were the best possible events that could have happened. I know it’s a bit much right now to think that they were, but we are just getting started. As you work with the concepts in this book, you will come to see the Universe in a completely different way. You’ll be living in a Universe where you will understand all these connections and be able to use them to your great advantage.
What has gone before in your life has most probably convinced you that the statement “Everything that happens to me is the best possible thing that can possibly happen to me” is not true and cannot be true, and that a book based in part on that premise is not going to do you much good. It may seem futile to even attempt to put that concept to the test. But this is a new day. We have begun a new century and a new millennium, and you may discover in reading this book that it is your time to take on a new belief that will bless your life from this time onward.
In later chapters, you’ll read more about how the Universe communicates with you through events and how you can use that information to create the life you want. For now, just begin to get used to the idea that every event in your life has been a communication to you from your Universe. It’s been a deliberate, calculated, and personal event with the intention of bringing into your life a circumstance that would be of the greatest possible benefit to you at that moment.
That is going to take some getting used to because of the way you’re accustomed to perceiving events, but the effort is startlingly worth it. Besides that, it’s true.
FROM WONDER INTO WONDER
Everything is a manifestation of the consciousness and energy of the Universe—you, me, the book you’re holding, the air you’re breathing, everything. Lao Tzu, a Chinese sage who lived about twenty-five hundred years ago, when speaking of the consciousness of the Universe, its life force, which he called Tao, said:
The Tao that can be spoken of is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth.
He was saying that by whatever name we call “it,” it’s just a name we made up to be able to talk about it, but it’s not the real name. Nor is it “it” because the real name is unknowable. I call it “the Universe,” and I refer to it as “All-That-Is.” The entire Universe is one huge mass of energy, and it manifests itself as everything that exists. I capitalize Universe for the same reason other people capitalize God, out of respect. I do not think of God or the Universe as an entity bound by form or a body but as All-There-Is—literally, a vast, conscious energy.
Witter Bynner, an author interpreting Lao Tzu’s work in a book entitled The Way of Life According to Lao Tzu, reports the great sage as saying, “Whether a man dispassionately sees to the core of life or passionately sees the surface, the core and the surface are essentially the same, words making them seem different only to express appearance. If name be needed, wonder names them both. From wonder into wonder, existence opens.”1 That sums up the way I feel about life:
“From wonder into wonder, existence opens.”