THE HEART OF THE SECRET: Happiness & The Law of Attraction

"What we all want most deeply is to be what I have come to call 'happy for no reason' - a lasting neurophysiological state of peace and well-being that is not dependent on circumstances. When we are happy for no reason our desires manifest more quickly and effortlessly than ever." - Marci Shimoff


THE HEART OF THE SECRET: HAPPINESS AND THE LAW OF ATTRACTION
by Marci Shimoff

Imagine your fairy godmother is standing before you, ready to wave her wand and make your wishes come true. Suddenly, the world appears a different place, full of possibilities and magic!

Well, it turns out that this imaginary scenario is actually how the process of manifestation works—and is based, not in magic, but in science. The film The Secret vividly explains this powerful universal principle called the Law of Attraction, which simply stated is: like attracts like. Whatever we think, feel and put our energy into, whether positive or negative, we magnetize to us. The universe, like a good fairy godmother, simply responds.

Sounds easy enough. So, why don’t we all have everything we want?

The answer lies in my favorite formula for applying the Law of Attraction that was given to me by my good friend and advisor Bill Levacy. It has three simple, easy-to-remember steps:

1. INTENTION – Be clear about what you want

2. ATTENTION – Experience the thoughts and feelings of already having what you want, AND take the action steps to manifest your intention.

3. NO TENSION – Let go. Relax. Shift from being tightly focused on your specific desired outcome to being wide open to all possibilities. Trust that your highest good will come to you, and feel the happiness of that.

A lot has been written and spoken about the first two steps. Many of us have mastered them, but have stopped there. We end up holding on to our desire like a terrier chewing on a bone. We have to take action towards our goals, but when we push and struggle and hold on too tight, we get in our own way.

The problem is we haven’t taken the last step. We haven’t let go. Surrendered. Said, “Okay, this or something better.” The third step, “no tension,” frees our minds, opens our hearts, and, most importantly, lets us be happy in this moment. If we skip this step, it’s like having a closed fist; how can we receive anything when our hand isn’t open? In our “gotta-get” culture, this is the step most people miss or dismiss.

When we let go and trust that all is ultimately working out for the best, we feel happier. And happiness attracts more happiness.

When I first heard Bill’s formula, I had an “a-ha moment.” I realized that every time I had succeeded in manifesting my desires, it had happened only after I’d done step #3, let go, relaxed and felt happy. In fact, one of my greatest successes is a perfect example of this.

In 1994, I had been working for ten years as a corporate trainer and a professional speaker focusing on self-esteem for women. My career intention was clear (step #1): to inspire and empower millions of people around the world to live their lives to their highest and best potential.

My attention was focused on thinking, feeling and visualizing BIG success (step #2). I was the queen of persistence and had taken all the “right actions” to further my career. Although I had achieved a good degree of success by then, I knew I wanted to take my work to a higher level, and it just wasn’t happening. I had done everything I knew to do and was burned out.

Needing to take a break, I decided to go on a seven-day silent meditation retreat. After a few days of silence - no easy feat for a Chatty Cathy like me - the most amazing thing happened. I began to tap into something deeper in myself, and started to feel peaceful, relaxed and fulfilled. I moved into that state of no tension, where my grip on achieving my goal melted away, leaving me with a feeling of deep contentment.

Then, on the fourth day of silence, while I was sitting quietly in meditation, a light bulb went off in my head, and I clearly saw the words Chicken Soup for the Woman’s Soul in my mind. This was back in 1994 when only the first Chicken Soup for the Soul book had been published, so the idea of spin-off books for different niche markets was a breakthrough. As soon as the idea came, I knew it was a winner. I was so excited that it was all I could do to sit silently for three more days without shouting the idea to anyone in earshot!

The minute the retreat ended, I ran to the closest payphone and called Jack Canfield, who had been my mentor for the past six years and was the co-creator of Chicken Soup for the Soul. I told him my idea and he loved it. Before long I had a book contract to create what would be one of the first in the now legendary series of over 150 titles. Within a few years, I had co-authored six New York Times bestsellers in the Chicken Soup series, with over 13 million books sold. I had finally, and thrillingly, fulfilled my original intention of touching millions of people’s lives.

I am absolutely certain that it was by using all three steps of this powerful formula - intention, attention, and no tension - that I was able to realize my dream. Any two of the steps would not have done it.

So, did I live happily ever after? Not right away. After using this formula for many years to attract extraordinary situations, people and things that I wanted, I eventually realized, like many people before me, that having the things and circumstances you want in your life is wonderful AND it’s not enough. It was then that I discovered another essential key: there is more...

Having things and circumstances - money, success, relationships, health - brings a certain happiness, what I call being “happy for good reason.” Unfortunately, this temporary experience of satisfaction or joy soon fades and we have to hurry up and fulfill the next desire to get a new high. To experience true and lasting happiness, we must be free of the need for any external reason to be happy. As Deepak Chopra has said, “happiness for a reason is just another form of misery.”

What we all want most deeply is to be what I have come to call “happy for no reason” - a lasting neurophysiological state of peace and well-being that is not dependent on circumstances. I’ve spent the last few years researching the latest findings on happiness and interviewing truly happy people for my upcoming book, Happy for No Reason. The good news is this is an achievable state.

Ironically, we seem to have things backwards. True happiness isn’t a result of getting what we want; getting what we want is a side effect of happiness. Why? Because, when we are happy for no reason, we have mastered that tricky step #3, no tension, and then our desires manifest more quickly and effortlessly than ever.

Perhaps we need to focus a little less on getting what we want to make us happy and a little more on creating a deep inner state of happiness. When we are happy for no reason, all else is just icing on the cake.

That is the ultimate secret!


Marci Shimoff, one of the nation's leading motivational experts, has shared her illuminating message about the infinite possibilities that life holds with audiences across the world. Marci is the New York Times #1 Bestselling Author of Chicken Soup for the Woman's Soul and Chicken Soup for the Mother's Soul.

Now she shares her message as part of the life-changing film, The Secret and at The Law Of Attraction Prophets Conference at UCLA July 20-22 along with eight other outstanding presenters from The Secret, and at The Heart Of The Secret Conference in Santa Cruz, California, where Marci will be joined by Howard Martin and Dr. Joe Dispenza on August 3-4. These will be exceptional events that you’ll want to experience.

THE LAW OF ATTRACTION SECRET CONFERENCE UCLA -
July 20-22, 2007

HEART OF THE SECRET SANTA CRUZ CONFERENCE -
August 3-4, 2007

MARCI SHIMOFF earned her MBA from UCLA and holds an advanced certificate as a stress management consultant. She is a founding member and on the board of directors of the Transformational Leadership Council, a group of 100 top leaders serving over ten million people in the self-development market.

A celebrated transformational leader and one of the nation's leading motivational experts, Marci has inspired millions of people around the world sharing her breakthrough methods for personal fulfillment and professional success. President and co-founder of the Esteem Group, she delivers keynote addresses and seminars on self-esteem, self-empowerment and peak performance to corporations, professional and non-profit organizations, and women's associations. Highly sought after, she is a powerful keynoter who consistently receives rave reviews and standing ovations. She has been a top-rated trainer for numerous Fortune 500 companies, including AT&T, General Motors, Sears, Amoco, Western Union, and Bristol-Myers Squibb.

Go Gratitude ~ The Master Key To Infinity

[Courtesy of the Go Gratitude Experiment]


GRATITUDE QUOTES

"Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn't learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn't learn a little, at least we didn't get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn't die; so, let us all be thankful." - The Buddha

"Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others." - Cicero

"The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings." -
Eric Hoffer

"Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul." - Henry Ward Beecher

"As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them." - John F. Kennedy

"If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, "thank you," that would suffice." - Meister Eckhart

"Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity.... It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow." - Melodie Beattie

"The deepest craving of human nature is the need to be appreciated." - William James



When you accept changes in your sovereign reality
as the shifting persona of the Universal Soul,
you live in greater harmony with life itself.

Life becomes an exchange of energy between you
and the Universal Soul that is allowed to play out;
without judgment, and is experienced without fear.
This is the underlying meaning of unconditional love:
to experience life in all its manifestations as a single,
unified intelligence that responds perfectly
to the projected image of each soul.

It is for this reason that when you project Gratitude
to the Universal Soul, regardless of circumstance or condition,
life becomes increasingly supportive in opening you
to activate your divine imprints.
This feeling of Gratitude coupled with the mental concept of appreciation
is expressed like an invisible message
in all directions and at all times.

In this particular context, gratitude to the Universal Soul
is the overarching motive behind all forms of expression t
o which humanity aspires.

Every breath, every word, every touch, every thought,
every thing is centered on expressing this sense of Gratitude;
a Gratitude that you are sovereign
and supported by a Universal Soul
that expresses itself through all forms and manifestations
of intelligence with the sole objective of creating the ideal reality
to activate your divine imprints and transform your entire being
into Divine Essence.

It is this specific form of Gratitude that accelerates
the activation of your divine imprints
and their peculiar ability to integrate
the disparate components of your body, mind, heart, and soul,
and to transform them to the state of perception and expression
of Divine Essence....

Establishing a relationship with the universe
through the outflow of Gratitude
also attracts life experience that is transformative -
experience that is richly devoted to uncovering life's
deepest meaning and most formative purpose.

(WingMakers)

The Dark Side of "The Secret" ~ by T. Sebastian

You’ve met “The Secret” teachers on Oprah. Now take a look at the “dark side” of The Secret.

Really? A Secret?

Not really a big issue, but this understanding has been around for a while - like a few thousand years. The Secret is a basic part of the mystical teachings of Gautama Buddha and Yeshua the Nazarene (Jesus the Christ). It’s simple to find if you really study.

More recently, this teaching has been popularized by Lynn Grabhorn in her Excuse Me, Your Life Is Waiting books. Published about 7 years ago. Lynn Grabhorn attributes most of her insights to a channeled being called Abraham. This is not meant to demean this information in any way. Wisdom finds its way into our consciousness in various and mysterious ways. But how do we use this wisdom properly?

The Dark Side!

Check your motivation. When the sages taught this type of practice, their intention was that you understand how the universe works and that you use this knowledge for spiritual maturation and in other wholesome ways. If you look at what most of the present day teachers talked about on Oprah, you will see them emphasizing that “You can have what you want”... or “You can create the life of your dreams.” There was a lot of talk about wealth and prosperity, getting good jobs, finding a mate etc.

In contrast to that, Yeshua (Jesus) said: “You must die to yourself daily to enter the kingdom.” So, what’s wrong with this picture? Basically two things: Balance and emotional maturity. Think about it this way. Would you give your 6-year-old child 20 bucks and send him into a candy store? Too much power and too little maturity can lead to disaster. Take a look at some of Hollywood’s celebrity train wrecks, or how bout rock & roll stars?

This is the main problem with The Secret. People are emotionally immature. People have desires and needs. These desires and needs are almost always driven by the undeveloped parts of us. In other words, our “needs” arise out of the wounds we contracted during our early development. Should we try to use an advanced spiritual technology and apply it to manifesting these desires and meeting these needs? Isn’t this just a way to satisfy our addictions? Without the balancing aspects of these spiritual technologies, we could be in for trouble.

The Balance

How to balance the teachings of The Secret. The first step is to look at your needs and desires. They are windows into your unhealed parts or wounded child. Before you jump into automatically trying to fulfill your needs and desires, use the power of focus to observe the “needy you” behind them. This needy you needs to be re-parented, not to have a lollipop stuck in its mouth. Sorry if that’s a little harsh. But judging by what I’ve seen, this is a sorely needed “tap on the butt.”

Next, process the pain inside. By focusing on the origin of your “needs” and processing the pain, you begin to heal the needy parts of your soul. This leads to emotional maturity. Continued inner work in this arena leads to Wholeness. A Whole person acts from a place I call “energetic responsibility.” After becoming more mature and responsible, we will have a much better clue as to how to manifest that which is really good for us and for mankind.

Learning the details of how to process your inner pain instead of being driven by it is beyond the scope of this article. You can find excellent information here.

Ultimately, traveling down this path, you will find that Wholeness is a state beyond pain based need. It’s a state where all your neediness has been healed and you become the Source for your own peace, power and joy. You become continuously and permanently connected to all things and the Source of all things. This includes the ability to create or generate inner states like Love anytime you want. When you can directly generate inner states, there is no need to go outside yourself for any type of fulfillment. Only then are you really free or mature enough to manifest in a truly energetically responsible way.

T. Sebastian is an author and integral life coach.
Check out his blog!

Highlights from "The Secret" on Oprah Winfrey

[Courtesy of Sparkbugg.com]



APPLY "THE SECRET" TODAY!

Conscious Capitalism? Huh?

What is Conscious Capitalism anyway? Isn't this an oxymoron since Capitalism is evil? Good question. I'll leave it to rockstar entrepreneur John Mackey, Chairman and CEO of Whole Foods, to answer this question.

In his very passionate and insightful essay entitled, "Conscious Capitalism: Creating a New Paradigm for Business," John Mackey laid out his vision. Here are some key quotes from the essay:

“Have you ever asked yourself what is the purpose of a business? It is an interesting question that most business people never ask themselves. If you think about it, what is the purpose of a doctor or hospital? Is their purpose to maximize profits? Well, this is certainly not the purpose that they teach in medical schools or most doctors advocate. The doctor's purpose is to help heal sick people. What about the purpose of the teacher or the school? Do they exist to maximize profits? No, of course not. Their primary purpose is to educate the young and prepare them to live successful lives in society. What about the purpose of lawyers or law courts? All lawyer jokes aside, the purpose of a lawyer would be to pursue justice and our law courts exist to settle disputes in our society and to bring wrongdoers to justice. All of the other professions put an emphasis on the public good and have purposes beyond self-interest. Why doesn't business?”

“I've known many entrepreneurs in my life, and with only a few exceptions most did not create their business primarily to maximize profits. Of course they wanted to make money, but profit was just one of the reasons they started their business. It may be that they were unable to work for anybody else, have strong authority issues, and therefore need to be their own boss. Or they need to be in charge of their own enterprise because that is how they get their sense of self-worth, value, and self-esteem.

It could be that they have something to prove to their parents, siblings, or their friends and creating a successful business will exorcise unconscious childhood demons. It could be that they are very creative individuals who have ideas that they want to see tested in reality to see whether or not they work. It could be that they are idealists and want to make the world a better place, and their primary motivation for creating their business is to improve the world. It could be that the entrepreneurs create their business for the sheer fun of it. There are many, many reasons why people create businesses, and while I cannot deny that there are certain entrepreneurs who create their business primarily to maximize profits, I would say that in my life experience they are definitely a minority.”

“If most entrepreneurs don't create their businesses for the primary purpose of maximizing profits, then what are their primary goals? The answer to this question varies tremendously from business to business - there are potentially as many different purposes for businesses as there are businesses. Entrepreneurs create their businesses for a diversity of reasons. However, I believe that most of the greatest companies in the world also have great purposes which were discovered and/or created by their original founders and which still remain at the core of their business models.

Having a deeper, more transcendent purpose is highly energizing for all of the various interdependent stakeholders, including the customers, employees, investors, suppliers, and the larger communities in which the business participates. While these deeper, more transcendent purposes have unique expressions at each business they also can be grouped into certain well known and timeless categories. Philosophy dates back to Plato the timeless ideals of “The Good”, “The True”, and “The Beautiful” that humanity has been seeking to create, discover, and express for thousands of years. If we add the ideal of “The Heroic” to the above three we have the framework of higher ideals which most great businesses seek to express in some form or fashion.”


So there. Conscious Capitalism is the expression of The Good, The True, and The Beautiful through business.

Read the whole essay here.

How to Get Better Results with the Law of Attraction

(by Using Jose Silva's Rules of Programming)

Everyone's talking about the Law of Attraction ever since the movie The Secret was released to the world. Even Oprah did two shows on the subject in February 2007.

But according to Jose Silva, the famous mind researcher and founder of the Silva Method, there are specific "Rules" that help you get better results.

The Most Important Rule is:

What You Seek to Manifest, Will Come Faster if You Seek it to Benefit Humanity, instead of for purely self-satisfaction. Ed Bernd Jr, one of Jose Silva's Friends and Instructors shares this piece with us.

Rather than thinking about what you want and how you will feel when you get something or achieve something, it is far better to think about how the success will correct problems, will relieve suffering, will help someone to achieve their purpose in life and correct more problems and make the world a better place to live.

If you need a new car (not want, but need) then don't think about how you will feel when you get it, how proud you will be, etc. Instead, think about the problem you will solve by having the new car:

Your family will be safer, you will get places on time, you will be able to help other people, etc.

The more people who will benefit, the easier it will be to achieve your goal.

We were not sent here on a 70 year vacation, Mr. Silva told us. We were sent here with a job to do, and that job is to correct problems and to make the world a better place to live. to finish the creation and convert the world into a paradise.

It is not about us and what we want and how we feel. We can have everything we need to do our job, plus more, provided that we are doing our job - provided that we are doing what higher intelligence sent us here to do, and that is to correct problems, relieve suffering, and make the world a better place to live.

So focus on doing that, not on yourself, and you will get much better results.

He included a line at the very end of the conditioning cycles, (read to students while they were in meditation) the most powerful place in the conditioning cycle, that we should:

Strive to take part in constructive and creative activities to make this world a better place to live, so that when we move on we shall have left behind a better world for those who follow.

When I saw Mr. Silva in the office on Monday, I mentioned it to him. "That's a statement of unselfishness, isn't it?" I asked. He didn't answer directly. His eyes lit up and he looked at me and said, "If it weren't for that attitude, we wouldn't have the Silva Method today."

Not everyone wants to accept these ideas, and they certainly have the right to accept or reject anything they choose. But if you look around you can sure find plenty of evidence to support this.

Look at the man they say is the wealthiest man in the world, Bill Gates. I complain a lot about his heavy handed tactics - I don't use Internet Explorer and I don't like the fact that I am still forced to have it on my computer anyway. But I sure can't argue with what Bill Gates is doing with all that money that he made off of all of us. He is not just handing it out to make himself feel good either, he is working very hard to make sure that the money does as much good for as many people as possible.

And the wealthiest investor in the world, Warren Buffet, is joining him, giving his money to help people in desperate need rather than giving it to his own children.

I don't think it is any accident that a couple of people who have that kind of attitude have been so successful in their lives.

Jose Silva wrote:

"The other side will only help me when I am asking for something that is needed to improve conditions on planet earth."

"Like we said, they are not going to help me if I want another million dollars when I already have a million dollars, when I want a Rolls Royce when I have a Rolls Royce already. That I want a girlfriend when I already have a wife. Some people ask for something like this.

"They are not going to help you. You are on your own. If you make a mistake, you are going to suffer for it, you are on your own. You don't get help from the other side.

"You only get help from the other side when your intentions are that whatever you are doing is to help improve conditions on the planet for more than yourself, not just yourself.

"If you only consider Me, me, you have to do it on your own. If it is for Us, then you get help, if whatever you do is going to help more than you.

"The more you are going to help, the more help you get for it.

"We always say, 'Don't ever ask for more than what you need, but do ask for no less than what you need.'

"So what your needs will be, depends on how big your plans are. That's what your needs will be."

He went on to explain that "how big your plans are" means "how many people will benefit." The more people who benefit, the better.


My Big Question (from the Editor)

When I first read this, my immediate question was: well, If I'm trying to heal a bad back - can I do that? Surely that's not benefiting anyone else? But my Silva instructor at the time, answered like this. Of course it is! Remember, with a better back, you could take your kids for walks more often. Spend more time playing sports with your teenage son. Carry stuff for your wife. Of course you can help others more. So when you visualize for a better back - see your wife, teenage kid and son all benefiting too. This accelerates the Law of Attraction!

[Courtesy of Avlis Publishing]

The Secret Shortcut ~ by Bill Harris (Part Six)

Now, would you like to know a huge shortcut to this process? I thought so. It's easy. Find other people who are already successfully doing what you want to do, or getting what you want to get. Then, find out what they're doing, and copy them. Also, while you're at it, find out how they're focusing their mind. So far I've spoken about focusing your mind as if it was a pretty simple "one-size-fits-all" thing to do, but there are actually a number of important things to learn about how to focus your mind, and I'll tell you a little bit more about that in a moment. For now, just know that it's very beneficial to find out what the person you're modeling believes about what they're doing, what they think is important about it, how they decide what to pay attention to and what to delete from their attention, and many other nuances about how they focus their attention. And, then, of course, you want to find out what actions they've taken to create what you want to create. All of this you can copy, which gives you a uge head start. Then, as you gain wisdom through your own actions, you can add your own twist to what you learned from them.

How do you find these people? First, just asking yourself that question - "How do I find people who are successfully doing what I want to do?" causes you to think of ways to find them. But just off the top of my head, I can think of a few ways. Again, you can use Google. You can find books they've written. Ask other people if they know someone. You can look in the Yellow Pages. You can spot them in the newspaper. Many people are selling information on doing many of the typical things someone might want to know how to do, in the same way Harv Eker is teaching people how to make money.


How to get what you don't want

Now, let's talk about the other side of the coin. What happens when you focus on what you don't want? Actually, the process works the same way, except you end up getting what you don't want instead of what you do want. Whatever you focus on, you mind takes it as an instruction to create or attract it. And, as I said earlier, your mind is very good at creating or attracting whatever you focus on. If you focus on not being poor, for instance, your mind will get busy figuring out how you can be poor. If you focus on not being anxious, you're mind will figure out how to make you feel anxious. If you focus on not making a mistake, you'll make mistakes.

As if it wasn't bad enough that you create it, the other big penalty for focusing on what you don't want is that you get to feel bad. All bad feelings - anger, anxiety, fear, confusion, panic, depression, annoyance, shame, guilt, hopelessness, or anything else - come from focusing on what you don't want. This is the flip side of feeling good when you focus on what you want, especially if you're taking action, and that action has value.

When you focus on what you don't want, or what you're worried about, or what you're afraid of, or what you want to avoid, you put your mind to work creating it, and you feel bad. Both of these penalties obviously make focusing on what you don't want a bad idea. In fact, focusing on what you don't want is poison to your life.

But how does focusing on what you don't want affect the second principle, taking action? When you focus on what you don't want, one of two things happens. You might, as a result, not take any action, which is a kind of action, with its own results (or lack of results). If you're afraid of making a mistake, you might avoid acting, and the very failure to act is, in and of itself, a type of mistake. When you don't act, you always know what will happen. Nothing.

Or, you might, ironically, take an action, driven by your fear, that creates the very thing you don't want. Not wanting to make a mistake, you act in a way that creates mistakes. Not wanting to make a bad investment, you figure out a way to become attracted to bad or risky investments, or you fail to learn what you need to know to make an good decision. Not wanting your business to fail, you are led to take the very actions that do make it fail. I see this all the time among my students. They focus on avoiding something they're afraid of or worried about, and (almost) as if by magic, they create it.

The mind is ingenious in creating what you focus on, and it doesn't care whether it's what you want or what you don't want. For this reason, it's crucial that you focus your mind consciously and intentionally. Your mind is always focusing on something. As I said earlier, it isn't that you can't manifest what you focus on, it's that you're very likely choosing what to focus on automatically, unconsciously. What you focus on is very often driven by past events, childhood decisions and traumas, that cause you to focus on what you don't want at least some of the time.

Attracting danger


Here's how it works. When you are traumatized during childhood (and the trauma can be quite unintentional), you develop a belief that the world is a dangerous place, or at least a potentially dangerous place. In order to avoid this danger, you have to watch out for it. To do that you have to focus your attention on it, and there you are, giving your mind an instruction to create or attract the very thing you don't want.

So "The Secret" is a wonderful thing. It works - especially if you add the second and third principles I've shared with you. But it's like electricity. You can light up a city with it, or electrocute yourself. You can only use The Secret to get what you want to the extent that you can consciously and intentionally direct your attention. As long what you focus on is chosen without conscious intention, you're going to find yourself attracting and creating, at least some of the time, some things you don't want.

And some people are unfortunately attracting a lot of what they don't want, a lot of the time. But it doesn't have to be this way. You can develop the awareness and the ability to use it to intentionally direct your focus. You can turn off the autopilot. This is why Holosync is so powerful, because it increases your ability to be aware, to live consciously rather than automatically. As your awareness grows, you clearly see how your focus creates what happens in your life, and as you watch this happen it becomes more and more difficult to focus on what you don't want, and much easier to focus on what you do want. It's not an accident that so few people are truly successful. Success, in whatever way you define it, flows directly from focusing on what you want, and then, as a result, taking action that is of value to the world. If you can't focus intentionally, though, this process becomes very difficult.

You can't focus on what you've deleted

It also becomes easier to implement The Secret in your life if you better understand the focusing process. In this discussion I've treated focusing as a simple process, but it's actually a complex cognitive process. There are many steps, and they whiz by very quickly, mostly outside your awareness. For instance, you have dozens of mental filters that delete much of what comes in through your senses, then distorts (sometimes in a positive way, and sometimes in a negative way) what is left. Why does this matter?

[Look at the frog sideways. What do you see?]

Well, you can't focus on what has been deleted from your awareness. What if, for instance, you delete some - or even all - of the possibilities? Many people do this. When they look around, there are no possibilities! I correspond with people everyday who tell me that they see no possibilities, yet the same possibilities are actually available to them, as to anyone else. But because they've filtered them out, they aren't there. And this is just one of twenty-some filters people unconsciously use before they ever get to the part of the process where they focus on something.

People filter out possibilities, solutions, ideas, resources, ideas, kindnesses, love, what they could be grateful for, and all kinds of things. Many people filter things in such a way that all they see are problems and what is wrong. They have nothing left to focus on but what they don't want! Can you see how it would be valuable if you could consciously choose how to use these filters? We unfortunately don't have room here to go through the entire process by which you focus your mind. However, even if you know nothing about this, other than to focus as much as possible on what you want - and you're willing to take action and to do whatever you can to make sure your actions are of value to others - you'll get results that are head and shoulders above those achieved by other people.

However, I invite you to consider the possibility that you could master this internal focusing process, by taking my online course, The Internal Map of Reality Expander. Those who master this process tap into a power that allows them to do or achieve anything they put their mind to. There's no reason why you couldn't be one of them. You can find out more, and listen to a free preview lesson, by going to www.centerpointe.com/life/preview. I also invite you, if you aren't already doing so, to use Holosync audio technology to increase your conscious awareness (and to get all the other mental, emotional, and spiritual benefits it brings). You can get a free Holosync demo CD and a free Special Report at www.centerpointe.com.

The Secret isn't a secret, and the Wish Fairy is a fraud

. It's been around for thousands of years, and many people have taught it in many different forms. The only reason it can be referred to as a "secret" is that very few people actually use it. It's been estimated that about 2% of people actually embrace the three principles I've described and commit themselves to using them consistently. Or, if they try to use the first principle, they skip the second two and insist on wishing and hoping and believing in magic, eternally waiting for the Wish Fairy to give them what they want. I'm hoping that you'll be one of those who embrace these principles and actually use them. And I am here, along with my staff, to help you use the tools we've created to become happy, peaceful, and successful, and to create whatever you want in life.

[Text courtesy of Bill Harris]