E-Squared: Nine Do-It-Yourself Energy Experiments That Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality (12 page)

Yes, this is the chapter you’ve all been waiting for: The chapter on how to manifest material things. It’s the spiritual principle that attracts would-be believers like 15-year-old males to Megan Fox.

Let me guess. At some point in your life, you’ve read
Think and Grow Rich, The Magic of Believing, The Power of Positive Thinking,
or some combination thereof. As old and crotchety as these books might be, there’s a reason they’re still in print. They speak of a universal truth.
If you know what you want, you can have it
.

My friend Chris—okay, most of my friends—think this principle employs magic, some mysterious juju that might work for some people but not others. But it’s not any more complicated than walking from Biloxi, Mississippi, to New Orleans once you have the right map. Let’s say Biloxi is what you have now—a beat-up ‘94 Escort, a job you can’t stand, and a lot of weekends watching DVDs by yourself. New Orleans, where you really want to be, is a shiny new Jaguar, a high-paying job that utilizes and appreciates your greatest strengths, and weekends watching movies with an astoundingly hot specimen of the opposite sex.

So, how do you get there? You start focusing on New Orleans. You forget that Biloxi and your beat-up ‘94 Escort even exist. And you remember that at every moment, you’re either heading toward New Orleans or you’re doubling back toward Biloxi. Every thought is a step in one direction or the other. Thoughts that take you back to Biloxi are
Good jobs and hot dates are not that available,
or the even more popular
Good jobs and hot dates are available, but not for the likes of me
.

Thoughts that move you toward New Orleans go something like this:
That new job is going to be so amazing,
and
Man, is this person sitting next to me on my couch ever so fine.
The more energy and excitement you invest, the quicker you’ll get there.

Some people get stirred up, take a few steps toward their desires, panic, and turn right back around toward Biloxi. Others leave the Biloxi city limits, walk for a while, take a rest to look around, and then get pissed because it doesn’t look like New Orleans.

Of course
it doesn’t look like New Orleans. You’re not there yet. You’re still seeing countryside that’s just outside Biloxi, stuff you’re going to have to pass through to get to New Orleans. But you’ve left Biloxi. Say a cheer and keep focusing. Whatever you do, don’t stop walking. The only way to reach the sweet, champagne-drenched finish line of where you want to be is to keep your nose pointed in that direction. Do not turn around and look back. Biloxi is history. Stay focused on … did I mention New Orleans?

At first, you’ll feel glorious about this new heroic endeavor. You’ll be astonished by how easy it is for you to stay focused on the beautiful city of New Orleans. You’ll be laughing and skipping and enjoying the vistas. But, inevitably, the menacing distractions will crop up. Your thoughts will get sore, they’ll get bored with the new routine, and they’ll want to head back toward Biloxi—you know, just for a quick visit, just for one cup of tea. You start spending less and less time on New Orleans and more and more time on why the whole endeavor is futile. Maybe you should put it out of its misery before it’s old enough to remember where you live.

But don’t do that. Just keep walking, keep focusing on New Orleans.

At the risk of appearing anal, I want to make it clear that the Biloxi-New Orleans example is only a metaphor. And the last thing I’d ever want to do is offend Biloxi, which happens to be a really cool town with the nearly new Frank Gehry-designed Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art. The big thing to remember is there’s no real physical work involved. It’s all about training your mind, that incorrigible slacker.

It sounds like pie in the sky, I know. But I’ve seen it happen time and time again. Getting to New Orleans doesn’t take any particular gift. It just takes a willingness to keep walking. And focusing your attention, energy, and awareness.

I always think of a magician pulling a scarf through a hole. If you can just grab ahold of one tiny end, you can pull it all the way through. That’s all it takes—one itty-bitty end. Decide you want it and keep focusing until you’ve pulled it all the way through.

What can you manifest? Pretty much anything you’ve ever seen, heard, or experienced. The world is basically your own mail-order catalog. If you’ve seen it, or even if you can imagine it, just grab an end of that scarf and start walking.

Maybe I should be more specific. My friend Don’s “New Orleans” was a Martin guitar. Martin guitars start at $1,100, and while he didn’t have the ready cash, Don made the intention to own a Martin guitar. He didn’t do a damned thing, just kept believing (focusing on that guitar) that someday, somehow he’d get one.

Nearly a year later, he got a message from his mom: “Your dad just picked up an old guitar at a garage sale for $5. It can be a toy for Daisy.”

Well, that old toy for Don’s daughter Daisy was a rare 1943 Martin 000-28, one of only 100 made—the same guitar Eric Clapton plays—worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $20,000. It seems that Daisy will have to wait and inherit the guitar in Don’s will.

I like to call this the Statue of Liberty principle. Even though this principle is the beacon that represents everything people think they want—vacations to Jamaica, a big home in Malibu—it’s actually way down on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It’s only on the first, maybe second rung. You need to get this principle down, of course, so you can take your mind off material worries, and so that you can know the truth about who you are, but none of this “stuff” is what you
really
want. Not really.

Jesus could never have brought Lazarus back to life and multiplied all those fishes and loaves if he’d been preoccupied by the desire for a beachside residence. That said, I do not want to make you feel guilty for wanting a big home in Malibu. There is not one thing wrong with a big home in Malibu. Or anything else you want. Do not feel guilty. Want it. Walk toward it with all your heart and might. Just know there are higher rungs. And that most people hoard material things out of fear. And fear, after all, is what we’re attempting to move away from.

Lining Up Your Ducks (or What Coherence Is)

“Great spirit is everywhere. It is not necessary to speak to him in a loud voice. He hears whatever is in our minds and hearts.”

—B
LACK
E
LK
, L
AKOTA MEDICINE MAN

Most people think they can incite change only by addressing God with some screech for “
HELP
!” But since we now know God is the force field that runs the universe, we also know
every
thought incites change. Every time we think anything—be it a silent
That skirt makes her look like John Travolta in
Hairspray
or
I’ll commit hari-kari if I don’t get that raise
—we influence the field of infinite potentiality. I think I should probably repeat that
every single thought affects the FP
.

The only reason we don’t change water into wine or heal cancer with one touch is because our thoughts are scattered all over the place. Instead of being one, constant, well-aimed tuning fork, our thoughts are more like a junior high band of beginning trumpet players.

On one hand, we pray for things to work out, but on the other, we worry they won’t. At the same time we imagine a positive outcome, we secretly think optimism is a bunch of baloney. We want to be committed to a relationship with so-and-so, but what if he leaves? We want to make money, but didn’t the Bible say something about camels and rich people and the eye of a needle?

The force is literally bouncing off walls.
Go this way. No, wait; go that way.
It’s knocking around like a lightning bug in a Mason jar. It’s being dissipated because we have no clear bead on what we really want. It’s not that the field of potentiality isn’t answering our prayers. It’s just that we’re “praying” for too many things.

When you figure the average person has something like 60,000 thoughts a day, you come to realize that your life is being “prayed” about by a heck of a lot more than the “Please, God, let me get out of this speeding ticket” you uttered when you first noticed the flashing red lights.

Sure, you begged for peace of mind today, but you also spent 1,200 thoughts obsessing about that damned co-worker who stole your website idea. Yes, you made the intention to “think and grow rich,” but you also devoted 500 thoughts to worrying about your overdue car payment. When you understand prayer for what it really is, it’s easier to understand why that one-time plea to God doesn’t always pan out.

The only reason Jesus could walk on water was because 100 percent of his thoughts (prayers) believed he could. He had overcome the world’s thought system that says
Only an idiot would be stupid enough to step out of the boat.
There was not one doubt—not a single thought (prayer) in his consciousness that didn’t fully believe it.

Your mind is very powerful, no matter how badly you disrespect the privilege, no matter how ineffectual you feel. Every single thought produces form at some level. Just because those thoughts are screwed up (and believe me, if you’re a human, at least some of your thoughts are screwed up) doesn’t make them weak or ineffective. Weak and ineffective at getting what you want, maybe, but never weak and ineffective.

Newton’s First Law of Prayer

“By choosing your thoughts, and by selecting which emotional currents you will release and which you will reinforce, you determine the … effects that you will have upon others, and the nature of the experiences of your life.

—G
ARY
Z
UKAV, AUTHOR OF
S
EAT OF THE
S
OUL

When you throw a tennis ball in the air, you can count on it coming down. Granted, it might fall in the neighbor’s petunias or on the roof of the 7-Eleven, where you’ll need a ladder to retrieve it, but it’s guaranteed to come back down.

Intention is just like that tennis ball. It comes back just the way you send it out. Like Newton said in his famous third law of motion, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. What you give out, what you “pray” about … you get back in equal measure. If you send out thoughts of fear, you get back things to be scared of. If you lie, you’ll be lied to. If you criticize, you get criticized. But if you send out love, you get big, bounteous love back. If you send out blessings, you get blessed in turn.

If you want to know what you’re really “praying” for, take a look around your life. You’ll see your innermost thoughts, the real desires of your heart, the prayers no one knows about but you.

A friend of mine was fearful of spiders. She used to worry that she’d reach into her makeup drawer some morning and instead of grabbing a lipstick, she’d find her hands wrapped around a giant spider. This unfounded thought passed through her brain every morning for months until … guess what? She reached into her makeup drawer and grabbed a big, fat, hairy wolf spider.

To put it another way, thought is creative. The thoughts you hold in your mind, both conscious and unconscious, create what you see in your life. Every thought has a certain vibration. It boomerangs back to you according to its pitch, intensity, and depth of feeling. Your thoughts show up in your life in proportion with their constancy, intensity, and power.

Shoot-out at the I’m O.K., You’re O.K. Corral (or How Your Mind Works)

“I am crowded inside.”

—P
RADEEP
V
ENUGOPAL
, I
NDIAN BLOGGER

Your mind is engaged in an ongoing showdown between different, conflicting parts of yourself. These splintered intentions, if you will, set all sorts of dynamics into motion. Let’s say you have a conscious intention to buy a new house. At the same time you set that intention into motion, you simultaneously send out an unconscious but equally potent fear of a higher mortgage payment. You start fretting about interest rates, and worrying about the termite contract you inadvertently let expire on your current house—both of which send out even more unconscious intentions. If these unconscious fear intentions are stronger than the conscious desire intentions … well, guess which one wins?

The dynamic of opposing intentions can produce confusion and doubt. As you become open to new perceptions and desires and simultaneously experience fear and anguish, you set up a struggle.

If it keeps up, you start to doubt that setting intentions even works. Or at least you conclude it doesn’t work for
you.
You become discouraged and start believing that life and circumstances are more powerful than you are.

Believe me, they’re not. Not even close. Your conflicting intentions are simply creating turbulence in the field of potentiality.

Your thoughts are extremely powerful. But the FP doesn’t respond only to your pleas. Let me repeat: it responds to
every
thought—conscious and unconscious—with opposing sides battling it out. Here are four of the most common battlefields:

1.
The rut.
We humans have this annoying tendency to fall into habitual patterns. Remember those 60,000 daily thoughts I mentioned earlier? Well, all but 1,000 of those thoughts are the exact same thoughts you had yesterday. Scientists tell us that 98 percent of our 60,000 thoughts are repeats from the day before.

My neighbor has an invisible dog fence. You can’t see it, but if her little Jack Russell terrier dares set foot outside that fence, he gets a painful shock. All of us are like that little Jack Russell—stuck in our invisible fences.

Instead of using our thoughts to think up new ideas, to ask for the answers to life’s great mysteries, we waste them on trivial, insignificant, thoroughly meaningless things. Look at the cover of a typical women’s magazine:

L
OSE INCHES FAST

L
AST-MINUTE STRATEGIES FOR HOLIDAY GLAM

Q
UIZ:
D
OES YOUR MATE REALLY LOVE YOU
?