The best way to escape and transcend the limits of ego is to feel genuine, intense good will for others and to practice total self-giving. To feel the joy in the joy of another is Good Will. The ego is highly competitive. It judges its own importance and success relative to the achievements of other people. When others accomplish more, it feels smaller and as if it had less than before. Therefore, to generate intense goodwill that takes joy in the accomplishments of other people is a powerful means for transcending the ego. Those who can ardently aspire for others to succeed and prosper generate the maximum receptivity for success and prosperity in their own lives.
Self-giving is even more powerful than goodwill. To grow by giving is Self-giving. Moving from selfishness to selflessness helps the being expand and increases the energy of the personality. To give oneself in thought, feeling and act without calculation of return is an ultimate spiritual discipline and path to higher accomplishment. That giving may be to a person, an ideal, an organization or to God. It is most powerful when there is no thought or expectation or demand for recognition or return, only the joy of giving oneself.
Not everyone can practice self-giving. But everyone can raise their level of personal efficiency. This is a less powerful method that has a similar result because it gathers and concentrates our available energy so it can be more effectively utilized. Efficiency is a laborious physical method. Self-giving is an enjoyable spiritual method.
Rising above the ego through goodwill and self-giving can invoke the highest powers in the universe to act in our lives. When we do this, the universe invariably responds, bringing what we aspire for. But since in this case our aspiration is not selfish, the benefit comes not only to the one who aspires but to everyone.
For more insights like this see, http://humanscience.wikia.com/wiki/The_Secret_Project
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Monday, June 11, 2007
Expectation postpones results
Consciousness is power. The time taken for accomplishment depends on the strength of our aspiration and the intensity with which we apply it. Sometimes we confuse aspiration with wishful thinking. Wishful thinking is a dream of achieving something without the intense will to achieve it. It is passive and satisfied, a pleasant thought. Aspiration is active and intense, a determined will.
Aspiration is also confused with expectation. Both express a will for accomplishment, one strong and the other weak. When we aspire, we send forth energy to bring a result. When we expect, we wait for something to come. Aspiration is active. Expectation is passive. In aspiration, we feel we can determine the results by the intensity of our will. In expectation, we depend on others or circumstances to accomplish for us. The more intense our aspiration, the faster and greater the result that comes. Whereas expectation can have the opposite result. It has the power to postpone the result until we stop consciously looking for it to appear.
For more insights like this see, www.secretofthesecret.info
Aspiration is also confused with expectation. Both express a will for accomplishment, one strong and the other weak. When we aspire, we send forth energy to bring a result. When we expect, we wait for something to come. Aspiration is active. Expectation is passive. In aspiration, we feel we can determine the results by the intensity of our will. In expectation, we depend on others or circumstances to accomplish for us. The more intense our aspiration, the faster and greater the result that comes. Whereas expectation can have the opposite result. It has the power to postpone the result until we stop consciously looking for it to appear.
For more insights like this see, www.secretofthesecret.info
Monday, June 4, 2007
To plan or to plan
According to The Secret, the capacity to conceive of the ‘how’ is not essential for accomplishment. But it certainly can help. The story of how Fred Smith created Federal Express and grew it to become a Fortune 500 company in record time confirms this view. Smith started out with both a clear idea and a clear plan for how to achieve it. While doing his MBA, he conceived of the idea of establishing a courier business that would deliver packages across the USA overnight in comparison to the three to five day delivery offered by UPS and the US Postal Service. His strategy was to establish a hub system at Memphis so that flights coming from all major cities could reach the hub before 2 am, unload their parcels for resorting, reload with items bound for their return destination and land back home early morning in time for delivery during the day. His objective and his strategy were inseparable aspects of the plan he executed and the results he achieved. Today FedEx is a $32 billion company!
Planning works. The only question is whether the visualization of ‘how’ is always essential and always beneficial. Experience confirms that it is not. Many people have difficulty imagining how to achieve a goal that is very far removed from present realities. There is a proverbial story of a man who got lost while driving in a rural area. He stopped to ask a farmer for directions to his destination. The farmer replied, “There is no way to get there from here!” That is often the understanding of the physical mind. If so, it is better not to listen to it!
A person earning $8000 a year may be able to realistically envision $18,000, but he may find the effort to formulate a means of earning $80,000 is pure fantasy. In such cases, the inability to imagine realistic possibilities or a personal sense of incapacity become a bar to higher accomplishment. Countless stories can be cited of people who fail to take advantage of magnificent opportunities that are offered to them, just because they cannot imagine themselves achieving at a much higher level.
There are also many stories of people who accomplished tremendous results because they were determined to achieve, even though they had no idea how that achievement it would be possible when they started out. Sabeer Bhatia traveled from India to Silicon Valley in the mid 1990s as a young software engineer with an aspiration to earn millions. After a few years working for others and hearing stories of so many people becoming millionaires in the computer industry, he decided that he must achieve that goal himself within a short time. He and a friend came up with the idea of Hotmail and sold it to Microsoft a few years later for $200 million. He knew what he wanted to achieve and willed it powerfully. Only later did he discover the means to achieve it.
In 1961 when President Kennedy announced the goal of the US space program was to land a man on the moon and bring him back again by 1970, the technology had not yet been invented that could accomplish it. Reaching the moon was not an insurmountable object, but bringing him back again from the moon’s surface presented serious challenges. Yet America achieved that goal -- six months ahead of Kennedy’s deadline.
When France, Belgium and Netherlands collapsed under the onslaught of the German army in 1940, Britain was left virtually alone to fight the Axis powers. A month after Winston Churchill became Prime Minister, the Germans commenced the intense day-light bombing of England in what became known as the Battle of Britain. Churchill delivered his stirring proclamation to the enemies of Britain and to the world: “We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender…” Probably no one in Britain or anywhere else on earth could honestly say that they knew how Britain could stand up alone and survive the German bombardment, let along win the war. Yet when Churchill spoke, few could doubt that he was absolutely determined to keep his word. He refused even to consider the possibility of defeat. He may not have known how, but he surely was determined to win at any cost. Churchill knew the essence of The Secret: “You create your own universe as you go along.”
www.secretofthesecret.info
Planning works. The only question is whether the visualization of ‘how’ is always essential and always beneficial. Experience confirms that it is not. Many people have difficulty imagining how to achieve a goal that is very far removed from present realities. There is a proverbial story of a man who got lost while driving in a rural area. He stopped to ask a farmer for directions to his destination. The farmer replied, “There is no way to get there from here!” That is often the understanding of the physical mind. If so, it is better not to listen to it!
A person earning $8000 a year may be able to realistically envision $18,000, but he may find the effort to formulate a means of earning $80,000 is pure fantasy. In such cases, the inability to imagine realistic possibilities or a personal sense of incapacity become a bar to higher accomplishment. Countless stories can be cited of people who fail to take advantage of magnificent opportunities that are offered to them, just because they cannot imagine themselves achieving at a much higher level.
There are also many stories of people who accomplished tremendous results because they were determined to achieve, even though they had no idea how that achievement it would be possible when they started out. Sabeer Bhatia traveled from India to Silicon Valley in the mid 1990s as a young software engineer with an aspiration to earn millions. After a few years working for others and hearing stories of so many people becoming millionaires in the computer industry, he decided that he must achieve that goal himself within a short time. He and a friend came up with the idea of Hotmail and sold it to Microsoft a few years later for $200 million. He knew what he wanted to achieve and willed it powerfully. Only later did he discover the means to achieve it.
In 1961 when President Kennedy announced the goal of the US space program was to land a man on the moon and bring him back again by 1970, the technology had not yet been invented that could accomplish it. Reaching the moon was not an insurmountable object, but bringing him back again from the moon’s surface presented serious challenges. Yet America achieved that goal -- six months ahead of Kennedy’s deadline.
When France, Belgium and Netherlands collapsed under the onslaught of the German army in 1940, Britain was left virtually alone to fight the Axis powers. A month after Winston Churchill became Prime Minister, the Germans commenced the intense day-light bombing of England in what became known as the Battle of Britain. Churchill delivered his stirring proclamation to the enemies of Britain and to the world: “We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender…” Probably no one in Britain or anywhere else on earth could honestly say that they knew how Britain could stand up alone and survive the German bombardment, let along win the war. Yet when Churchill spoke, few could doubt that he was absolutely determined to keep his word. He refused even to consider the possibility of defeat. He may not have known how, but he surely was determined to win at any cost. Churchill knew the essence of The Secret: “You create your own universe as you go along.”
www.secretofthesecret.info
Monday, May 28, 2007
When is thinking a bar to accomplishment?
Mental consciousness has the two attributes – the power to understand and the power to will. In mind, the capacity to know and the will to act are separate and can work in isolation from each other. The Secret emphasizes the importance of mental will. It does not insist that we know how to achieve the goal we set for ourselves. It even suggests that we may be better off not exercising our minds on the question of ‘how can I accomplish it?’ But it does insists that we make a firm unshakeable decision of the will to achieve it.
Some critics object that people who accomplish do not simply wish for things. They argue that understanding how to accomplish is as important as willing to accomplish. Successful people formulate clear plans as to how they can achieve their goals. This is certainly most often the case and is a practice advocated by many self-help programs, such as The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, which urge practitioners to translate their goals into detailed plans of action.
How can we reconcile this view with what is spoken of The Secret? Is understanding a help or a bar to accomplishment? This dilemma can be resolved by the following principle: Wherever we have the capacity to mentally formulate a means of achieving the goal, visualizing the means adds conviction and power to the mental formation.
The experience of Jack Canfield supports this view. Having decided that he wanted to raise his income from $8000 to $100,000, he tried to imagine some conceivable way in which that might be possible and came up with the idea that it could be achieved if his book were written about in National Enquirer. A month later a free-lance reporter who writes for the Enquirer approached him. Canfield used his mental imagination to supplement and reinforce his mental will.
The only question is whether the visualization of ‘how’ is always essential and always beneficial. Experience confirms that it is not. Those in whom the physical mind is prominently developed, usually have difficulty imagining how to achieve a goal that is very far removed from present realities. There is a proverbial story of a man who got lost while driving in rural upstate New York and stopped to ask a farmer for directions to his destination. The farmer replied, “There is no way to get there from here!” That is often the understanding of the physical mind. If so, it is better not to listen to it! A person earning $8000 a year may be able to realistically envision $18,000 but will feel the effort to formulate a means of earning $80,000 is pure fantasy. In such cases the inability to imagine realistic possibilities or the personal sense of smallness become a bar to higher accomplishment. Countless stories can be cited of people who fail to take advantage of magnificent opportunities that are offered to them, just because they cannot imagine themselves achieving at a much higher level.
For further explanation on this and similar topics, see http://humanscience.wikia.com/wiki/The_Secret_Project
Some critics object that people who accomplish do not simply wish for things. They argue that understanding how to accomplish is as important as willing to accomplish. Successful people formulate clear plans as to how they can achieve their goals. This is certainly most often the case and is a practice advocated by many self-help programs, such as The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, which urge practitioners to translate their goals into detailed plans of action.
How can we reconcile this view with what is spoken of The Secret? Is understanding a help or a bar to accomplishment? This dilemma can be resolved by the following principle: Wherever we have the capacity to mentally formulate a means of achieving the goal, visualizing the means adds conviction and power to the mental formation.
The experience of Jack Canfield supports this view. Having decided that he wanted to raise his income from $8000 to $100,000, he tried to imagine some conceivable way in which that might be possible and came up with the idea that it could be achieved if his book were written about in National Enquirer. A month later a free-lance reporter who writes for the Enquirer approached him. Canfield used his mental imagination to supplement and reinforce his mental will.
The only question is whether the visualization of ‘how’ is always essential and always beneficial. Experience confirms that it is not. Those in whom the physical mind is prominently developed, usually have difficulty imagining how to achieve a goal that is very far removed from present realities. There is a proverbial story of a man who got lost while driving in rural upstate New York and stopped to ask a farmer for directions to his destination. The farmer replied, “There is no way to get there from here!” That is often the understanding of the physical mind. If so, it is better not to listen to it! A person earning $8000 a year may be able to realistically envision $18,000 but will feel the effort to formulate a means of earning $80,000 is pure fantasy. In such cases the inability to imagine realistic possibilities or the personal sense of smallness become a bar to higher accomplishment. Countless stories can be cited of people who fail to take advantage of magnificent opportunities that are offered to them, just because they cannot imagine themselves achieving at a much higher level.
For further explanation on this and similar topics, see http://humanscience.wikia.com/wiki/The_Secret_Project
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Acting Inside and Outside
Teachers of The Secret seem a little ambiguous regarding the question of whether we should act to fulfill our aspirations or wait for the universe to respond. I found this useful explanation on http://humanscience.wikia.com/wiki/The_Secret_Project:
The ego is an organization of consciousness that enables the individual to gather personal experience and organize knowledge from it. It creates a center of concentration with sufficient intensity for the universe to evolve through it. That which is greater than the ego sense is referred to by ‘‘The Secret’’ as the universe. In the measure the individual suspends the action of his ego, the universe is able to act. When the individual takes external initiative to accomplish, the response of the universal is minimal. When the individual refuses to take initiative and invokes the universal consciousness to act, the response is maximum.
A Dutch entrepreneur on a spiritual quest realized the value of education and took a degree at the age of 40. Many years later he went on to take an M.B.A. Out of idealism, he offered voluntary service to a distinguished international academic organization. After about ten years of such service, he was made an Associate Fellow, an honor he had never imagined possible. He was devoid of ambition and only wanted to give. His mentor proposed that he take a Ph.D. so that he might eventually qualify to become a full Fellow in the organization. As a person who does not know his own inner potential, he found the proposal intimidating. After hesitating for years, he finally consented to register for Ph.D. and spent over a year preparing his proposal. Before he even submitted the proposal, he was unexpectedly elected as a Fellow of the organization. His emotional willingness brought the result even before he began to act. When the results we seek are far beyond our present capacities and resources, but the intensity of our aspiration is sufficiently great, life waits for us to give up striving for the result and then suddenly presents us with all the necessary conditions for accomplishment. This process is dramatically illustrated by events in Twenty Years After, a sequel to Alexander Dumas’ Three Musketeers. After the execution of the English king Charles I by Cromwell, Charles’ son escaped to Holland where he lived in exile, impoverished and without a following. Ten years later Cromwell died and there was a fight for succession. Young Charles II saw his last hope of regaining the throne. He traveled to France incognito to seek money or troops from young Louis XIV with which he could attempt to regain power. When Louis refused him, he fell into despair and abandoned any hope of restoring the monarchy in England. Within a few hours of his meeting with Louis, he had a chance encounter with a French courtier from whom he learned that the exact sum of money he sought to launch a campaign was hidden by Charles I before his death and is now available for his son. Within a month of these events, Charles II regained the throne of England without even having to expend that money. When the last hope is lost, one exhausts his efforts and forgets it. Forgetting the goal is to withdraw one’s own mental influence, allowing the universe to accomplish in one’s life as it chooses without the limitations of our egoistic understanding
The ego is an organization of consciousness that enables the individual to gather personal experience and organize knowledge from it. It creates a center of concentration with sufficient intensity for the universe to evolve through it. That which is greater than the ego sense is referred to by ‘‘The Secret’’ as the universe. In the measure the individual suspends the action of his ego, the universe is able to act. When the individual takes external initiative to accomplish, the response of the universal is minimal. When the individual refuses to take initiative and invokes the universal consciousness to act, the response is maximum.
A Dutch entrepreneur on a spiritual quest realized the value of education and took a degree at the age of 40. Many years later he went on to take an M.B.A. Out of idealism, he offered voluntary service to a distinguished international academic organization. After about ten years of such service, he was made an Associate Fellow, an honor he had never imagined possible. He was devoid of ambition and only wanted to give. His mentor proposed that he take a Ph.D. so that he might eventually qualify to become a full Fellow in the organization. As a person who does not know his own inner potential, he found the proposal intimidating. After hesitating for years, he finally consented to register for Ph.D. and spent over a year preparing his proposal. Before he even submitted the proposal, he was unexpectedly elected as a Fellow of the organization. His emotional willingness brought the result even before he began to act. When the results we seek are far beyond our present capacities and resources, but the intensity of our aspiration is sufficiently great, life waits for us to give up striving for the result and then suddenly presents us with all the necessary conditions for accomplishment. This process is dramatically illustrated by events in Twenty Years After, a sequel to Alexander Dumas’ Three Musketeers. After the execution of the English king Charles I by Cromwell, Charles’ son escaped to Holland where he lived in exile, impoverished and without a following. Ten years later Cromwell died and there was a fight for succession. Young Charles II saw his last hope of regaining the throne. He traveled to France incognito to seek money or troops from young Louis XIV with which he could attempt to regain power. When Louis refused him, he fell into despair and abandoned any hope of restoring the monarchy in England. Within a few hours of his meeting with Louis, he had a chance encounter with a French courtier from whom he learned that the exact sum of money he sought to launch a campaign was hidden by Charles I before his death and is now available for his son. Within a month of these events, Charles II regained the throne of England without even having to expend that money. When the last hope is lost, one exhausts his efforts and forgets it. Forgetting the goal is to withdraw one’s own mental influence, allowing the universe to accomplish in one’s life as it chooses without the limitations of our egoistic understanding
Monday, May 21, 2007
Power of Silent Will
I have been wondering whether it is good to speak about your aspirations to other people before they are accomplished. Then I came across a very insightful explanation of why it is better not to speak which I thought might be of value to others.
“Silence is one of several important issues that are not mentioned in The Secret. You learn as a child that when you make a wish, it is better not to speak about it to other people. This belief is based on a profound truth of life. Speech is an act that consumes energy in the process of giving expression to a thought. Each time we speak about our goal to others, we are throwing out energy that can be better conserved as fuel for accomplishment. Silence is powerful. Silent will is more powerful than will expressed in words. This is especially true when we speak about our aspirations to others who may feel jealous or threatened by our accomplishment. Furthermore, when we speak about our intention of a great accomplishment, it is very difficult to prevent the ego from deriving from pleasure or sense of importance from the communication. When we take pleasure merely in talking about an accomplishment, that sense of satisfaction saps our energy for accomplishment and we end up only talking about it, never doing it. Pride, satisfaction and contentment with what we have or are is the enemy of higher accomplishment. Of course, there are times and people to whom speaking of our goal is appropriate or even essential. Speaking to those who have intense goodwill for us will magnify the power of aspiration. Speaking to those whose consent or cooperation is essential is necessary to avoid conflicts later on. Most spiritual disciplines advise practitioners not to speak about their experiences to other people, except to the guru whose guidance and support is essential for accomplishment.”
There are more valuable insights like this for successfully applying The Secret at http://humanscience.wikia.com/wiki/The_Secret_Project
“Silence is one of several important issues that are not mentioned in The Secret. You learn as a child that when you make a wish, it is better not to speak about it to other people. This belief is based on a profound truth of life. Speech is an act that consumes energy in the process of giving expression to a thought. Each time we speak about our goal to others, we are throwing out energy that can be better conserved as fuel for accomplishment. Silence is powerful. Silent will is more powerful than will expressed in words. This is especially true when we speak about our aspirations to others who may feel jealous or threatened by our accomplishment. Furthermore, when we speak about our intention of a great accomplishment, it is very difficult to prevent the ego from deriving from pleasure or sense of importance from the communication. When we take pleasure merely in talking about an accomplishment, that sense of satisfaction saps our energy for accomplishment and we end up only talking about it, never doing it. Pride, satisfaction and contentment with what we have or are is the enemy of higher accomplishment. Of course, there are times and people to whom speaking of our goal is appropriate or even essential. Speaking to those who have intense goodwill for us will magnify the power of aspiration. Speaking to those whose consent or cooperation is essential is necessary to avoid conflicts later on. Most spiritual disciplines advise practitioners not to speak about their experiences to other people, except to the guru whose guidance and support is essential for accomplishment.”
There are more valuable insights like this for successfully applying The Secret at http://humanscience.wikia.com/wiki/The_Secret_Project
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
One of the crucial insights presented by The Secret is the importance of avoiding negative thoughts. In the course of pursuing a goal – whether it is getting out of debt, losing weight, curing a disease, getting a job or getting married -- we often spend more time thinking about the condition we want to escape or the possibility of failure than we do envisioning the goal we want to achieve. In the name of working on a solution, we become even more preoccupied worrying and feeling sorry about our problem. The Secret advises us that not dwelling on the negative is as important as focusing on the positive. Consciousness is power. Attention is energy. Whatever gets attention is energized. Whatever you concentrate the power of your attention on tends to increase. Problems such as illness and depression are negative formations of energy that grow and persist because of the attention people give to them. That explains why so many people find their problems increasing the more they try to solve them. For a fuller discussion, see http://humanscience.wikia.com/wiki/Secret_behind_The_Secret_Project
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