Belief is a critical element of your ability to create success
for yourself. As James Allen, the author of “As a Man
Thinketh” reminds us, "The outer conditions of a person's life will always be found to reflect their inner beliefs."
You must learn to believe that your firmly held ideal is at
least as real as (or even more real than) the current events
and circumstances of your life (the evidence of your
senses); and more fully true than any apparent limitation,
impediment or obstacle that may stand between you and
the fulfillment of your ideal.
Because we live in a temporal world and there is a delay
between cause and effect, the things that you have in
your life right now are a result of how you used to be and
what you have done in the past. So, if you today
transform the way you are (alter your predominant
thought patterns and habitual way of feeling) and change
the way you behave (the things you habitually do), your
results will, over time, change. That is an almost
inevitable conclusion.
It is almost inevitable, but not necessarily so. The caveat
is that if you continue to expect things to remain the
same, they most likely will, despite any personal changes
you decide to make.
Your expectations are determined by your beliefs. If you
believe that the evidence of your senses comprises the
whole of your reality, then you will expect that things
will continue to evolve as they have. You will expect that
the future will be a continuation of the past. In other
68
words, if you choose to believe that the world you
perceive is real and your ideal is still only an imaginal
concept, then you will have created an expectation that
things will unfold as they historically have done.
I'll let you in on a little secret... life delivers pretty
much what you expect it will. If you want to have
success in life, you must train yourself to expect
success.
The English word “expect” is actually a contraction of 2
Latin roots "ex" and "spect" and its literal meaning is "to
out-picture". When you look at the world, you do not
perceive what is actually there, you see what your mind
expects to see. What does your mind expect to see? What
it has been trained to see.
The world, as you see and experience it, is just your
personal internal reality picture out-pictured or expected.
Your reality is first pre-conceived or visualized inside
your mind. Your mind then projects that internal image
onto the world and that internal picture thus becomes
your external reality.
69
What you have in life is based on your expectations. Your
expectations are governed by your paradigms. And, a
paradigm is a set of experiences, beliefs, values and
assumptions that affect the way an individual perceives
reality and responds to that perception.
Your expectations are built upon your beliefs... what you
believe you could have, or what you believe you should
have, or what you believe you deserve to have. Where
did you get those beliefs about your possibilities,
potentials, limitations and deservingness?
Mostly, you inherit them. You just take them on, assume
them, without examining them for veracity or usefulness.
If you ask most people "Why do you believe such and
such?" Most will answer, "Because it is true." And since
‘being right’ is one of the ways we validate who we are,
we will stubbornly argue that our beliefs are real and
true even when we have not examined them ourselves to
see if there is, in fact, any validity or value in a particular
belief.
No matter what rationalizations or intellectual
convolutions are brought to bear in an attempt to prove
how or why something is true, in the end it is really no
different than the childish refrain, "Why?" — " Because."
Only when you are able to honestly answer, "I believe in
such and such because it serves me to believe in such and
such," will you be in control of your destiny and success.
Take a moment and check in with your Self to ask these
simple questions:
70
Do you believe it is possible for you to achieve a
large degree of success?
Do you believe that you deserve to have a large
degree of success?
Do you believe that the world is set up to support
your success?
Do you believe that your success will come easily
and naturally?
Do you believe that success is your birthright or
something to be earned?
Now ask yourself:
Why do I hold those beliefs? How did I come by
them?
Do those beliefs serve me in any way? How?
What personal expectations have come out of
those beliefs?
From the moment we arrive in this world, we are trained
to expect certain things or trained to expect for things to
be a certain way. Our culture, our personal experiences,
our parents, our education, our peers all serve to train us
to have certain expectations in life. And, for the most
part, these expectations are self-fulfilling prophecies.
We expect something; it shows up; we then say, "see, it
was true." We forget the fact that it is only true because
we first believed it to be true and then expected it to be
true. We ignore the fact that if we held different beliefs
and expectations in the first place, then the truth would
be different.
Now you might say in response to the above, "I did not
expect my life to turn out this way or I did not expect for
the world to be this way, it just is."
71
To which I will reply, "What exactly were you
expecting?" I am willing to bet that you have pretty much
the results that you were expecting to have; and that if
you critically and honestly examine your core beliefs, you
will understand why you were expecting exactly what
you have.
If you desire to have a meaningful and measurable
amount of success in life, you are going to have to train
your mind to expect success; not hope for; not wish for;
but fully expect success.
To do that training, you are going to need to provide new
information to your mind so that it can be convinced to
take on different beliefs. You will need to undertake a
program to consciously brainwash yourself. Opt out of
the culture of mediocrity and opt into the culture of
success. Read success literature. Hang around successful
people. Affirm your right to success.
Do the things that have been proven to work. Stop doing
the things that have been proven, by your own
experience, to not work. Break your addiction to
mediocrity or failure. Get addicted to success.
72
Recently, while hiking up an escarpment with an old
karma mate, he asked me, “If you could only say one
thing, what would be the most important understanding
you’d like to impart?”
My answer was immediate, “Everything exists entirely in
your imagination.”
I have already introduced you to this idea in Chapter
One, but since you, like me, were probably told several
times in your childhood, “it’s only in your imagination”,
you are probably stuck into thinking that the things of
the imagination are not really real; so, allow to me to
explain how even the so-called real world exists entirely
in your imagination.
One of my teachers, who was attempting to teach me
discernment, told me, “do not believe anything unless
you see it with your own eyes”. At a certain level, there
may be some value in that, but it is, overall, a poor piece
of advice that ignores the true nature of reality.
Your eyes do not, in fact, see anything.
Just like a camera lens does not actually see, but only
focuses light waves, your eyes only focus light waves
onto your optic nerve. This stimulation of your optic
nerve by electromagnetic energy creates a virtual
lightening storm of neural activity in your brain. Your
mind then interprets this sparking pattern of neural
activity as the image perceived. The image is created in
your imagination. It is your mind that sees, not your
eyes. What you actually see is the image that exists in and
is created by your imagination.
73
Modern physics has shown us that everything in the
universe, at its most fundamental or true level, is simply
and elegantly comprised of various frequencies of
vibrating energy. A myriad of vibrations are constantly
interacting with each other to create interference patterns
that constitute the sub-atomic particles. Sub-atomic
particles congregate to form atoms, then molecules, then
complex structures like a rock or a tree or a human body.
When light (electromagnetic energy) bounces off these
complex interference patterns and gets focused through
your eye lens onto your optic nerve, which in turn
stimulates that electrochemical storm of neural activity in
your brain, your mind creates the image of the rock.
The rock you see exists in your imagination. Your
experience of rock is entirely subjective and internal. The
external reality is, in truth, the interference pattern
created by the interacting vibrations. It is that wondrous
aspect of mind called imagination that creates your
image of, your perception of and your experience of that
thing called rock.
At the deepest and most fundamental level of reality,
there is no boundary between you and your world. You
are not separate from universe and universe is not
separate from you. There is only yoUniverse.
You are constantly creating your experience by the
choices you make. In fact, the choices you make
determine who you are as well as what you have as an
experience.
74
There is no objective reality. The observer and the
observed are one and the same essence. It is impossible
for the observer to have anything except a subjective
experience because he cannot step outside of the system
he exists within. And, since the very act of existing within
and observing the system itself has an effect on what is
observed, you are constantly in the process of creating
your reality.
The words on this page have no meaning until you give
them meaning. The events and circumstances of your life
have no value until you impart a value to them.
The ideals you construct in your imagination are as real
as anything else that exists.
When you allow that so called objective and external
world of event and circumstance to determine your
reality picture, you are allowing the illusionary and
transitory to distract you from the greater truth that all
things exist only in your imagination.
75
Moreover, everything you perceive is in the past. That is
correct. Nothing you observe in the external world exists
in this present moment. It is all something that happened
in the past. Stand outside on a cloudless night and
observe the star filled sky. Pick out any star; say the
middle star in Orion’s belt, Alnilam.
Is it really there? There is no way you can be sure of that.
It is more than 1300 light years away. It could have
ceased to exist a thousand years ago and yet, you still
perceive it to be there.
Closer to home, our own star, Sol, the sun that lights your
life, could have ceased to exist 5 minutes ago and you
would not be aware of that yet because the radiation
emitted by the sun takes almost nine minutes to reach
your eyes. It looks like it is still there (and I sure hope it
is), but can you say for sure that it is? Nope. The only
thing you can say for sure is that the image of it still
exists in your imagination.
76
And that is true of everything you perceive. It is all in the
past and it is all the result of past causes. None of it exists
in your actual present moment.
The only things that really exist in this present moment
are the images you hold in your imagination. So how
could you possibly allow yourself to believe that current
events and circumstances are more real than the ideal
you create in your imagination?
Believe in your Self. You are real. Believe in your dreams,
your ideals, your goals. They are real. Believe in what
inspires you. That is real.
Everything else is just a passing illusion.
77
Quick Review:
You are constantly creating your reality picture by your
choices. Freedom and power comes from asking yourself
what do you believe and why do you believe it?
Life delivers what you expect it to produce.
Everything you perceive has already happened. It is in
the past. Only that which you imagine exists in this
present moment.
Direct Action Steps:
Ask yourself what you would like to believe about
yourself.
Then ask what you can do today to make that belief be
more true.
Then do it.
78
“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we
have into enough, and more. It turns denial into
acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can
turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger
into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings
peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow."
~ Melody Beattie
"The most fortunate are those who have a
wonderful capacity to appreciate again and again,
freshly and naively, the basic goods of life, with
awe, pleasure, wonder, and even ecstasy."
~ Abraham Maslow
79