If we stop for a moment, it is possible to perceive a pattern in our lives; the motivators that have influenced us become more obvious. We are able to see life unfolding from both ends at once, coming into the present moment. But until we have got to a certain point of realization, this is not possible, because everything is still seen as a series of apparent causes and effects.
-Reshad Feild
If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
-Henry David Thoreau
To be nobody-but-yourself - in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting."
-E. E. Cummings
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
-Robert Frost, "The Road Not Taken"
"Sell your cleverness, and purchase bewilderment."
- Rumi
Like many approaching the year 2020, I had a 2020 vision in mind regarding goals and where I wanted to be. Then came a surreal world-wide shift. I ended up reading more books than ever before including more non-fiction than usual. Dr. Wayne Dyer's I Can See Clearly Now, became one of the most meaningful books I read in 2020. A recounting of impactful events in his life and lessons learned. Dyer teaches us that often we don't realize the value of an experience until later reflection.
Read for the second time in February 2023. Dyer was quite the example of nonconformity.
I Can See Clearly Now is inspirational and autobiographical. Dyer mentions his early books and what was going on in his life as he was writing them. Reading I Can See Clearly Now made me interested in other books by Dr. Waye W. Dyer. The exploration has begun.
This Hay House Hardcover is well-constructed and features many beautiful photographs.
Favorite Passages:
We all have a mission of some kind to fulfill at the moment we make the shift from nowhere to now here, from Spirit to form.
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I am ten years old and have already become aware that I don't see the world the way the other children around me do. I have discovered that people will listen to me if I speak with conviction. I have also learned that I enjoy spending most of my time in my own inner world, exploring ideas that my contemporaries never even seem to consider.
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At the time, of course, I wasn't aware of all of the future implications that these early experiences were to offer me. Now, from a position of being able to see much more clearly, I know that every single encounter, every challenge, and every situation are all spectacular threads in the tapestry that represents and defines my life, and I am deeply grateful for all of it.
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I have already formed an opinion that the so-called religious teachings that I've been exposed to simply make no sense. So, I've just ignored the Sunday-school message of fear and judgement and paid no attention to any of it. I see no need for all of this craziness in my life, and long ago decided not to participate in it because every time I was required to go to church I ended up feeling worse for the experience - and I want, more than anything, to feel good.
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In my imagination I merge myself with the entire show. Somehow I can see myself not only in the present, as a boy sitting in my living room watching electronic transmissions, but I see myself in the future as well. I have such an incredible feeling of being connected to what I will be doing in the future . . . .
I cannot shake this image - ever. I speak about it to very few people, but somehow I am able to merge the present with the future, and these inner pictures become my own private world. Probably this seems crazy to most others, but it's very real to me. I see myself using this little television screen as a means for reaching and teaching people, not just in my city or my country, but also in the entire world.
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. . . I had an immediate and almost overpowering sensation within me that I had actually created my own future by having such a strong knowing back when I was 14 years of age. In fact, I am quite certain that time itself is much more of an illusion than we are capable of understanding with our body-mind.
Perhaps my knowing back in 1954 was one possibility of a future event being present at what I now think of as the past. But if time is an illusion and oneness is what truly defines our experience, then the idea of past and future must also be an illusion. And if this seems wacky and undecipherable to you, as it does to me, then just consider your dream state. Here you can fly; your long-dead grandparents are alive; and you are able to be a young child, an older person, or any age you desire if you place your attention on it. Consider that for one-third of your life, you are in a nontime dimension and everything is possible, and the only way you know for certain that you were dreaming is to awaken and look back at it.
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From my perspective here today, I can see quite clearly that Emerson and Thoreau have been angelic lookouts for me through most of my adult life - their words like beacons of light in a cloudy world.
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My intense dislike for all things authoritarian propelled me to be just as fervent in living and teaching what I love and believe in.
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. . . it's just one of those bizarre coincidences that show up and defy a rational explanation.
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I feel it is so important to trust in your own individuality and live from a perspective being extraordinary rather than ordinary.
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I feel encouraged about my choice to listen to that still voice within me that says, You don't have to be just like everybody else . . . there is another way.
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I'm not going to let these knife-happy young doctors go to work on my ass.
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. . . everything that shows up in our lives does so for a reason, though it sometimes takes 20/20 hindsight to view it this way.
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For me, this fascinating field of inquiry began back there in Guam where I had a Divinely inspired epiphany while staring at the bloodied rear end of a postoperative young sailor, and made a decision that there had to be another way.
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I am living in the vision I have for myself.
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I particularly enjoy reading about people who have gone way beyond just being ordinary. Great writers, poets, philosophers, scientists, inventors, musicians, athletes - nothing is off-limits. The idea of living at extraordinary levels and transcending "normal" is most appealing to me.
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I have come to know, from a much clearer perspective, that there are no wrong roads to anywhere. I continue to look back with awe and astonishment at the perfection of it all.
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I finally got the message that has been a central theme in my life's work: When you have a choice to be right or to be kind, always pick kind. Living from your highest spiritual sense is the essence of what it means to be a self-actualized person.
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If the Waye Dyer in his 70s were to talk to the Wayne Dyer in his 20s, he would remind him of hte great truth that he had been teaching throughout his professional career: Live so as to be detached from outcome. Do it all because it resonates with your highest self and responds to your beseeching inner voice - not because of rewards that might come your way. That D grade on a transcript is totally irrelevant to a highly functioning person. I'd advise that 22-year-old version of myself to be content with knowing that he'd written a great paper and take pleasure in the feeling that comes with the joy of writing and expressing yourself. This is a lesson that I have had to learn the hard way.
We live in a world that places an inordinate amount of pressure on defining success in external terms. I've spent many years in a profession where so many chase after success in these ego-defined terms: How much money do I make? What position is my book on the bestseller list, and how many weeks has it been there? Did I receive a promotion? Did I get the job I sought? What did the reviewers think of my book, and how many copies did I sell? These and hundreds more ego-driven thoughts are typical of authors who fixate on external indices of success. Over the 50 years I've been immersed in this business, I've learned to let go of them.
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I've read Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill, and Norman Vincent Peale and feel that I can offer a book that goes beyond their inspiration and advice. I love and admire all of these men and what they have offered - I see them as pioneers in a fascinating club that I intend to join.
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Once again I had been exposed to the idea that was to become a motto for me in my writing, and in my life: "There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come."
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I have written about these quantum moments as being the kinds of peak experiences that have the potential to shift awareness into a higher state, where conscious contact is made with our highest self and we are propelled into a new direction instantaneously. These epiphanies and sudden insights have been the topic of much of my writing because I have come to see them as visitation from a higher realm.
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This is what is clear to me today: follow your heart, stay aligned with your Source of being - love - and let the universe take care of the details.
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I know today that everything that ever manifests into physical reality begins with a thought, and that a thought laced with intent is a virtual guarantee that it will come to pass. This was a personal challenge for me - I wanted to know that I could pull this thing off.
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. . . sometimes our most profound teachers show up for us wearing unexpected disguises.
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. . . I felt as if I were listening to a higher version of myself because his words echoed something deep within me. I always wanted to get beyond what appeared to me to be the petty concerns and rules created by our culture - trying to fit in and be just like everyone else.
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I love this idea of shifting.
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When I'm following my excitement with integrity, I know I truly am on the path I'm meant to be on in this lifetime.
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"You must do this. Your highest self is demanding it. It cannot be ignored." I see clearly that my excitement is the signpost - it is me.
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What I know for certain is that there are teachers and teachings everywhere. Every moment of our lives offers us the opportunity to pay close attention to see the person who approaches us not as a stranger, but as someone who showed up in the right place, at the right moment.
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It is not about getting what you want through practicing specific principles. The theme of Wishes Fulfilled is that spirituality is not about manifesting what you want, it is about manifesting what you are.
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As my own personal readiness shifted to accepting what I previously considered a radical concept, the teachers I was ready for began to show up with astonishing alacrity. What was once obscure and dismissed by me at an earlier stage of my life became sensible and intensely exciting.