Personal Growth and Science?
One of the questions that a lot of people have is - how can you use "science" in the same sentence with personal growth, manifesting your dreams or spirituality? It would seem that "hard" science has nothing to do with "soft and squishy" human issues.
For those of you who know me only as a newsletter writer, you should know that I have an engineering degree and spent many years in high technology and science. I have a real need, myself, for scientific grounding in everything I do. So let's look at this question.
First, let's agree that science has nothing to say about beliefs and other subjective experience, whether they are true or not. They cannot be measured. However, science can measure the effects of those beliefs in your life. And that's what I want to talk about - the effects in your life.
What is science? Well, the essence of science, for our purposes, consists of measurement and repeatability. Every new scientific discovery is tested by other scientists who conduct the same experiment and see if they get the same results. If not, the results and theory are not accepted.
Can we apply this idea to success and personal growth? Yes, not only can we, but we absolutely must do that is we want predictable results. In his book, "Science of Getting Rich", Wallace Wattles says, "It is a natural law that the same causes always produce the same effects." So if it's not repeatable, it's not science.
So how would we put this to work in our lives? Let me use a simple analogy - baking an apple pie. Any cook will tell you that there are three things you need to be successful - the right recipe, the right ingredients, and the right process. Every cook tinkers with this formula a little bit to make it their own, but you have to stick reasonably close to the formula or you don't get a decent apple pie. You can see that this is a "scientific process" because it has a repeatable formula.
So let's apply this to our own lives and ask how we can "bake" the life we want. It seems that we will need a recipe, the right ingredients, and a process. There's a lot of people running around with recipes and most leave out what I think are vital ingredients so it's no surprise that people are confused.
Here's what I've found, after 10 years of study. There are six ingredients - a powerful, exciting life purpose, a clear and distinct vision of what living that purpose looks like, strong and complete belief that you can and will have it, continuous gratitude for every part of your life, expelling the limiting beliefs and attitudes that do not support you, and courageous, effective action.
Notice that money, talent, location, connections, being old enough, being young enough, being smart enough, etc, etc are not on the list. If you think those are necessary, that's a limiting belief that you need to clear. If you think you need to know how to do it all to get started, that's a BIG limiting belief that you need to discard. It's not on the list of ingredients!
Discarding limiting beliefs is like purifying the ingredients in the apple pie. You wash the apples and cut out any spoiled spots so you have clean crisp apples to work with. Limiting beliefs contaminate the success recipe, and the number one limiting belief is that there's not enough. Not enough time, talent, money, customers, good employees, etc. There is always enough, and more.
Here's the process that goes with the recipe. You must start with the purpose, then create the vision that expresses it. Many people start with goals,and the pie is a failure. Start with purpose.
You must get so excited and confident about what you're doing that you totally expect it. When you put the pie in the oven, do you wish and hope and pray that a pie will come out? Heck, no! You KNOW it will. And that's the kind of expectation that you need.
Season with gratitude. Gratitude for everything, even the challenges and setbacks. Be grateful for the learning experiences, the people, the events, for all of it. As Wattles says, "Gratitude keeps you connected to the Source of all your good." Gratitude makes your heart sing, and attracts more good things.
When you have these 5 things in operation, then apply effective action. That means putting your purpose, vision and faith into everything you do. You supercharge your activities with purpose. You'll also need to act with courage because you'll be changing and growing. You'll be outside your comfort zone, but you'll realize that everything you really want is always just outside your comfort zone. You become comfortable with being uncomfortable.
An important part of effective action is trusting your inner knowing, your intuition, to guide you in what to do. You don't have to know how, when you start, because your purpose, vision and faith program your mind and the Universe to guide you a step at a time.
But you may need to train yourself to immediately follow your intuitive leadings. Joe Vitale likes to say, "The Universe loves speed." The more sensitive you are and the faster you act, the better your results.
I'm writing this article because I was thinking about science and spirituality while I was cooking breakfast about an hour ago and the article started to form in my mind. I really felt inside that this was important so I put my other projects on hold and sat down to write. Follow your intuition to develop effective action.
Now here's the science conclusion. Follow this recipe with these ingredients and process, and your success will come out of the oven like a delicious apple pie. It's repeatable. As Wattles says, "There IS a science to getting rich." Rich in body, mind and spirit.
Can I guarantee your results for you? No, because I don't know how good a cook you are or how pure your ingredients are. But just like the people who publish cookbooks, I know the recipe works.
Need any cooking lessons? Got the ingredients? You can get the help you need to bake the pie you want here.
The Certain Way To Success
The Number #1 Question
Do you ever find yourself wondering "Why hasn't anything changed?"
That was the #1 question for the preview calls for the Science of Getting Rich program last month. "I'm doing all this stuff that's supposed to create the life of my dreams and nothing's happening. Why?"
If you've ever felt that way, you're not alone. So what's the answer? I spent a lot of time on the call with this issue, and the answer is simple, but not easy. There are four elements you need - strong purpose, clear vision, positive faith or expectation, and constant gratitude. There are two thing you need to do - clear out old limiting beliefs, and take effective action.
I get really ticked off at the large number of people running around teaching only a few of the six points and misleading people into believing that they can get what they want with only half the recipe. I was listening to a CD this week from a self-styled "Law of Attraction" teacher who claimed that all you needed were 3 things - vision, faith, and being clear. No action? Gimme a break!
Many of the questions I was asked revealed that the writers were reading, studying and visualizing, but not apparently taking any action. Well, things don't just fall into your lap. As Wallace Wattles says in Science of Getting Rich, "By thought the thing you want is brought to you; by action you receive it."
Some people said they don't know what to do. That reveals more problems - lack of a clear vision so that you don't know where you're going, and/or failure to trust your intuition which will always guide you to the next step, and/or fear about stepping out.
The third big stumbling block was self sabotage. They would try something and it would be a disaster. This is old beliefs, limiting stories about ourselves, working against us. Joe Vitale is right: if we don't get clear, we won't manifest what we want.
Like I said - simple, but not easy. That's why we take 16 weeks in Science of Getting Rich to work on them.Does anyone else teach all six in one course? Not that I know of. A lot of the important material isn't even in the original book by Wallace Wattles, but it's in the extra material I provide in this course. And I coach each person personally, too.
Are you wondering why things aren't working for you as well as you'd like? Do you have counter intentions that are sabotaging you? Do you have a powerful purpose and a clear vision, or not? Would you like to be part of an elite group of people that are really serious about making their lives work? Do you want someone you can call if you're stuck? You can get more info at the SGR web site -
The Certain Way To Success.If you're looking for the full formula for success, you'll find it in the six items I mentioned above. You can do your own inventory of how well you have each of them handled. Actually you can just look at the results in your life and get a good idea. Then figure out which of the six requirements you think you are weakest in, and get started building it up. It takes all six to get the life you want.
Time Misses The Mark
The cover story for the Jan 28 Time magazine was titled "The Science of Romance" and featured some cutting edge neuroscience about attraction. While much of the science was quite interesting, Time managed to say almost nothing about the real reason we're attracted to the people we are.
I've become somewhat of an expert on the subject, mostly because I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why my relationship history was so dysfunctional. It had nothing to do with neuroscience or the smell of DNA, I found. It wasn't nature, but nurture.
Let me give you an example we're all sadly familiar with. Why do abused women go from one abuser husband to another? It's all in the family background. And it's all in the family background for all of us. In the simplest view, men marry Mom and girls marry Dad. We've all got an image in our mind of the perfect mate, and we are attracted to others who match that image. What makes it hard to spot sometimes is that is often not physical resemblance, but behavioral. And the behavioral can be quite subtle.
Psychologist Harville Hendrix describes the process like this - we all have "issues" with our parents which leave us with unresolved psychological wounds which our minds want to heal. Our search for a mate, then, becomes a search for someone who will recreate the childhood environment in which we were wounded, so that we can heal that wound. For the woman who was abused by her father, that means finding an abusing man and being "good enough" so that he will approve of her.
I didn't say this was logical, I just said this is the way our mind works.
You can see the problem with this. We find someone with a characteristic that was similar to what injured us, and then we try to change them! What are the odds of that? Now for many people who had reasonably normal families, the wounds are shallow enough so that the marriage can be functional. However, even good marriages like that will often have a particular conflict that occurs repeatedly, a squabble or fight over the same issue, throughout the marriage. This is that wound pattern showing up. And you see, it's on both sides. Both the husband and wife have this process going on.
How does this show up when you're dating? Well, if you meet someone and it's love at first sight and you want to get married and settle down even though you've only known each other for 2 weeks, watch out! If you feel like you've known them your whole life, you probably have. They're a good match for that image in your mind.
What about someone you date for a while and really like? You enjoy them, you get along fine, you can't find anything wrong with them, but you have this feeling that "something's missing." Like the spark is not there. That means that they're probably perfect for you, but they don't match that internal image. This could be good, depending on what your image is like.
So this whole process is the major driver in relationships, and Time managed to spend 50 pages not mentioning it. What a shame! A lot of people will go away from the magazine thinking that an instant strong attraction just means compatible immune systems. What it means is strong image match.
Did you ever hear someone (or yourself) complaining "why are all men (or women) like that?" It's the mental image at work. All men or women aren't like that, it's just all the men or women that you are attracted to are like that. And that's something to think about.
The God Squad is Back
You know, I've been writing for a long time now about important and serious subjects related to finding purpose and creating a fulfilled life. But I really haven't had an outlet for all the other stuff that I think is important and/or fun. So I've decided to dedicate my blog to the kind of stuff that will never make it into my newsletters.
Let's start with a little history. One of the advantages of being an old fart is that I've lived through a lot of interesting times - the 60's for example. I was thinking about that while I was reading about Mitt Romney's troubles with the fundamentalist Christians - the God Squad. Self appointed guardians of morality and righteousness, they question whether Mitt is religiously qualified to be President. The funny thing is, these people who would call themselves defenders of the Constitution don't seem to remember that the Constitution prohibits a religious test for office!
I remember that these same groups were very active in the 60's. They opposed Jack Kennedy because he was Catholic, ignoring the same Constitution that I mentioned above. Kennedy got elected and the Pope didn't take over the White House, but that doesn't seem to make any difference. Somehow they think that if Romney is elected he'll move the White House to Salt Lake City.
Also in the 60's these God Squads were active in the Civil Rights movement. Waving their Bibles they proclaimed that God ordered the separation of the races in schools, restaurants and buses. ML King was a communist agitator and interracial marriage was a sin, too. They don't talk about that much anymore (in public) but I was there and I remember. This whole episode would just be an embarrassing blot on our history if is wasn't for the fact that they're doing it again.
They even have famous independent thinker John McCain pandering to them with his public baptism, and his astounding statement that "the US was founded as a Christian nation." I hate to tell you this, but it's not true. Most of the founding fathers were Deists, not Christians, and the Constitution created a secular nation. They had seen the states that were "Christian" and didn't like it. Like Massachusetts, where they burned innocent women as witches.
So far NONE of the presidential candidates of any party have stood up to this bigotry and divisive behavior. I think that's too bad. It just encourages it.
Now, if you don't know me too well you might be thinking that I'm just a ticked off atheistic Democrat. Actually, I'm just sad for my country. If you read my newsletters you know that there's a strong spiritual content. My wife is a Christian minister. But we believe in unity, not division, for both our country and the world.
There are fundamentalists in every major religion, including Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism. Religion is not the problem, but fundamentalism is, because it leads to division and conflict. If you're familiar with Ken Wilbur's
Integral Model and Don Beck's
Spiral Dynamics you know that fundamentalism is a characteristic of a particular level (red) of consciousness and is not representative of the core values in any religion in which it is found.
Jesus is recorded as violating social custom by treating both sinning Samaritan women and occupying Roman centurions with respect. He had strong words for only one group, and that was the fundamentalists and literalists of his time.
So I invite you to join me in supporting unity, not conflict, no matter what your political persuasion. That's what the world needs. Look for agreements, not disagreements, because what we focus on, grows. I agree with fundamentalists that a strong spiritual path is important and that we should live what we say we believe. I honor them for that. It's the "I'm right, so you must be wrong" that I don't agree with. So join me in this affirmation - "Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me."
