The Middle Pillar Meditation is a simple key to magical creation. I started doing the meditation fairly regularly, perhaps a few times a week on average. It took years, because I was young and a complete idiot about many things, including how to make any money doing what I loved. Eventually, though, by doing the Middle Pillar Meditation, I began to clearly imagine the life I wanted to live, and then I started to see that the next steps to take toward creating that life were obvious, and doable, usually quite simple.
One of the little exercises we’ll do in the first chapter tricked me into daring to dream of the life I wanted to live ideally. Once I got a clear picture of what my ideal life looked like, the next steps I needed to take toward it became obvious. I took one little step at a time, and eventually my dreams were fulfilled, in full-color three-dimensional reality. It all came to be in some mysterious way, in its own perfect time, all by itself.
Over the years, I added a few more things to my magician’s toolkit. They were all quite simple, and I can teach them to a ten-year-old — to anyone who is old enough to dream, imagine, read, and write. You don’t have to believe me — just try a few of these things, and see what happens.
We were all born with the tools of magical creation in abundance. There is nothing else we need that we don’t already have.
The tools of magical creation are simply
our dreams and our imagination.
Dare to dream of the life you want to live ideally. Then ask your powerful subconscious mind to show you how to create that life in reality.
Ask and you shall receive.
Most of us simply don’t ask ourselves the right questions often enough — questions like this: How can I possibly create the life of my dreams? What steps can I take? What plans can I make? When you ask those questions, you start to get answers — and they’re the best answers, perfectly tailored to you, because they come from within you.
Ask and you shall receive; seek and you shall find. Jesus wasn’t exaggerating when he said that. And he didn’t say, “Ask and you shall receive if you deserve it.” Or if you work hard enough, or have the right education, or if you’re lucky, or were born under the right stars. No — he said it simply and clearly, and it is a great key to manifestation: Ask and you shall receive.
What are you asking for?
There is a lot of repetition in this course. It is intentional. Repetition is essential. Look at how many times we said and sang the alphabet before we got that down without mistakes — hundreds of times.
Most of us need to read or hear the same material repeatedly before we remember it deeply — deeply enough that it comes to mind, uncalled, when it’s most necessary. Deeply enough that it affects our daily lives.
Whenever something is repeated, take it in again and review it. See if it has any new meaning for you. Pay close attention to the physical experience you have while reading or hearing the words over again. Some of these words are meant to be absorbed deeply into your mind and body, reflected on and taken in so that your subconscious mind begins to accept these new instructions and begins to work magic.
Some of the words are printed in bold type and given their own page. I recommend copying some of these and putting them up on your wall. Change any words you wish, and make them your own.
One of the most powerful tools in this course is taking a phrase or prayer that has particular meaning for you and repeating it often, until you’ve memorized it. When it comes to mind unbidden at just the right moment, then you know that your subconscious is absorbing those words, and you’re creating new synaptic pathways, and life-changing miracles are beginning to happen.
You are on your way to creating the life of your dreams.
And miracles will follow miracles,
and wonders will never cease,
for all our expectations
are for good.
I try to get to the essence of what I know on every page of this book. Maybe, as you read or hear these words, all you’ll need is just one phrase, and that knowledge — that wisdom — will be enough to launch you into a new world, where you realize your vision, your highest dreams.
Maybe some of you will have an experience like Hui Neng had. He was an uneducated woodcutter who became a great teacher in China over a thousand years ago. He was hauling a wheelbarrow past an open window, and he heard a phrase from a Buddhist sutra being chanted inside the room. He understood that phrase, and was immediately enlightened.
That’s all it took — one phrase. That’s all it might take for you, just one phrase in all these words. Maybe it’s this phrase:
The truth is within you.
It is the intention of this course
to help develop a peaceful army of visionaries,
artists, entrepreneurs, businesspeople,
teachers, and leaders
who are transforming not only their own lives
but the whole world as well,
creating a world that works for all,
in an easy and relaxed, healthy and positive way,
in its own perfect time,
for the highest good of all.
DREAM, IMAGINE, CREATE — THE POWER OF THE WORLDS WITHIN US
Be at least as interested in what goes on
inside you as what happens outside.
If you get the inside right,
the outside will fall into place.
Primary reality is within, secondary reality without.
— ECKHART TOLLE, The Power of Now
It all begins with a dream. It all begins with a little, ephemeral, vulnerable wish that flits through your mind. Of course — where else can it begin? Everything anyone has ever created first began with a dream.
It begins with an act of courage. Most people lead unsatisfactory lives because they don’t dare to dream of an expansive, fulfilled, creative life. Why don’t we dare to dream, and why don’t we dare to do whatever we can to fulfill those dreams?
The answer is simple: Most of us are filled with fears, and our fears and anxieties overwhelm our vulnerable little dreams. Most of us fear failure so much that it keeps us from doing the things that we really want to do, the things that make us happy, excited, filled with life.
Every successful person in every field will tell you this: Don’t fear failure! Don’t let your fears overwhelm your dreams. Go for it. You’ll never regret it. Yes, you may fail along the way — in fact you probably will. Yet life goes on. Once you fail a few times, you naturally come to realize there’s nothing to fear in failure. So you failed — so what? What are you up to now? That’s the important thing. This moment is all we have, and we can, in this moment, create some seriously effective magic, if we wish — if we dare to dream.