Speaker 1: This is a program about changing your life, not in
Speaker 1: the traditional way that we think of when we think
Speaker 1: about changing our lives. Usually that means changing your behaviors,
Speaker 1: retraining yourself, getting new habits, going out and trying them out,
Speaker 1: and changing your life. This is about changing your thoughts,
Speaker 1: and then your life will change. Change your thoughts, change
Speaker 1: your life. It's the name of this program, it's the
Speaker 1: name of the book. It is something that I very
Speaker 1: very strongly endorse that we have within us the ability
Speaker 1: and the capacity, through the way that we use our
Speaker 1: minds and the way that we process things and events
Speaker 1: to make our lives totally shift and change around. And
Speaker 1: I can tell you that it doesn't make any difference
Speaker 1: what age you are, whether you're a teenager watching this,
Speaker 1: or whether you're someone in your sixties, seventies, eighties, or
Speaker 1: anywhere along the way. You can make change. And I'll
Speaker 1: tell you it happened for me two years ago. On
Speaker 1: the tenth of May, I turned sixty five, and the
Speaker 1: next day, on the eleventh of May, I had a
Speaker 1: life changing thing take place for me. I changed the
Speaker 1: way that I was thinking about who I am, about
Speaker 1: what kind of a man I am, about what kind
Speaker 1: of a person I intend to be for the rest
Speaker 1: of my life and where I'm going, And something began
Speaker 1: to resonate with me that I had to make a
Speaker 1: shift and make a change. At the age of sixty five,
Speaker 1: I had a wonderful office which was really a townhouse.
Speaker 1: It was filled with over twenty thousand books. It was
Speaker 1: filled with clothing, It was filled with records of all kinds.
Speaker 1: It had pictures on the wall. I had awards that
Speaker 1: I had received over the years, and everything that I
Speaker 1: had accumulated, literally in this physical world, had accumulated in
Speaker 1: that office. I turned the key and handed it to
Speaker 1: my manager, Maya, who's been with me for almost thirty years,
Speaker 1: and I said, I would like you to sell everything
Speaker 1: or distribute everything that's in there. Sell the townhouse, get
Speaker 1: rid of it, take all the records, all the books,
Speaker 1: got rid of my shoes, and I left it all
Speaker 1: behind and turned it over to her to get to
Speaker 1: get rid of everything. I detached myself from a lifetime
Speaker 1: of accumulations, and I moved full time to a place
Speaker 1: over in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, on one
Speaker 1: of our great islands called Maui, And in the next
Speaker 1: months I began to get a lot of things coming
Speaker 1: to me about what my life was, to what was
Speaker 1: to unfold things that I wasn't even expecting. And I
Speaker 1: think about this idea about what age you are and
Speaker 1: whether or not changes and shifts can be made, and
Speaker 1: how difficult So many people attribute this to They say,
Speaker 1: it's just that's an impossibility. I couldn't possibly do that.
Speaker 1: I'm so attached to all of these things, or I'm
Speaker 1: too old, I've been living in the same place too long,
Speaker 1: whatever it might be. Right here in this audience is
Speaker 1: one of the women that I revere, I think more
Speaker 1: more than any other woman I can think of in
Speaker 1: the professional world. At the age of sixty, she changed
Speaker 1: her thoughts and her life changed dramatically. She started a
Speaker 1: publishing company called hay House, which is one of the
Speaker 1: world's largest publishers of spiritual and higher consciousness materials. She
Speaker 1: wrote a book called You Can Heal Your Life. She's
Speaker 1: here today. Her name is Louise. Hey, Louise, would you
Speaker 1: stand up being thank you for that? Louise, with a
Speaker 1: great number of people from all over the world, just
Speaker 1: celebrated her eightieth birthday. So I should look so good
Speaker 1: even at sixty, all right, and I'm just so deeply
Speaker 1: honored that you're here, dear, thank you. What happened for
Speaker 1: me in the next few months was absolutely life changing.
Speaker 1: I had a friend tell me who was severely addicted
Speaker 1: to all kinds of drugs and alcohol, who was basically
Speaker 1: very close to death. He refused all kinds of treatment,
Speaker 1: he wouldn't go through the programs and so on. But
Speaker 1: he read a book, and the book was called The
Speaker 1: Doo to Ching, the Doo to Ching t Ao te
Speaker 1: h i n g to Ching. Dao in ancient Chinese
Speaker 1: means the way, the great way. Te is the term
Speaker 1: that means the application of or the virtue of, and
Speaker 1: Ching in ancient Chinese means book, So it's the book
Speaker 1: for applying the virtue of living the way. That's what
Speaker 1: this book means. And he told me that, and I thought,
Speaker 1: I've heard of the Dao to Chang. I've heard of Taoism.
Speaker 1: I've I'm familiar with that. I had read about it
Speaker 1: when I was in college. I'd even lectured a little
Speaker 1: bit about it when I was teaching at a university
Speaker 1: in New York City, at Saint John's University. It was
Speaker 1: something that I had sort of a cursory awareness of,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't something that I was really profoundly interested in.
Speaker 1: I was watching a TV show one night and someone
Speaker 1: talked about the Doo on there. I walk into a
Speaker 1: bookstore and there's a copy of The Doo. This is
Speaker 1: all happening in the six months or so that between
Speaker 1: when I had left and knowing that it was time
Speaker 1: for me to detach myself from all of the things
Speaker 1: that had been so much a part of my life
Speaker 1: and move on into a new area of my life.
Speaker 1: So I couldn't resist it any longer, and I said,
Speaker 1: I'd really want to. I really want to read the
Speaker 1: dow And I'm going to take the next year a
Speaker 1: full year, and in that year, what I would like
Speaker 1: to do is I would like to read each verse.
Speaker 1: There are eighty one verses in the dow To to Chain.
Speaker 1: You can read it in an afternoon, but you can
Speaker 1: study it for a lifetime. And in the studying of this,
Speaker 1: I said, I would like to just take those three
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty five days for the next year, and
Speaker 1: in every four days, I am going to read one verse.
Speaker 1: Some of them are only four lines long, some of
Speaker 1: them are twelve sixteen lines long. I'm going to create
Speaker 1: for myself a way of seeing if I can live
Speaker 1: this dow. And what I did was I would read it.
Speaker 1: Then I would meditate on it. I would walk on it,
Speaker 1: I would go swim on it. When I would do yoga,
Speaker 1: I would practice it, and then I would sit down
Speaker 1: after the fourth day, and I had a picture of
Speaker 1: the man who was considered to be the author of this,
Speaker 1: although there's no historical actual record of his name, is
Speaker 1: Lao Su. This is the visiage that I looked at.
Speaker 1: This is the image of an artist drawing of Lao Tsu.
Speaker 1: In ancient Chinese means old man, old man. He was
Speaker 1: the old man who was living in China in the
Speaker 1: time of the Warring States. And he decided he didn't
Speaker 1: want any more to do with war and violence and
Speaker 1: hatred and killing and all of the things that were
Speaker 1: so much a part of his world. And he got
Speaker 1: on his oxen and he left. And before he left
Speaker 1: to go off and be by himself, he dictated some
Speaker 1: five thousand Chinese characters, these eighty one verses that became
Speaker 1: the Dao du Ching. There are some people who call
Speaker 1: the daoud to Ching the wisest book ever written. If
Speaker 1: you google this thing called the Dooda Ching, you'll come
Speaker 1: up with over one million, three hundred thousand hits on
Speaker 1: the daota Ching. Not only that, there are fourteen thousand
Speaker 1: translations of the Dao du Ching that I have come across.
Speaker 1: So what I did is I took ten of those translations,
Speaker 1: the ones that seem to be the most relevant, the
Speaker 1: ones that seem to have the most meaning to those
Speaker 1: people who lived in this part of the Western world,
Speaker 1: and I combine them into what I consider to be
Speaker 1: the most useful translation of the daod Ching. And each
Speaker 1: morning I would get up and I would look at
Speaker 1: this picture, and I would ask, what is it that
Speaker 1: you would say to the people who are living now
Speaker 1: at this time, given the conditions that we have in
Speaker 1: our life right here, what is it that you would do?
Speaker 1: Many people call this a manual for achieving a way
Speaker 1: of life that literally guarantees integrity, joy, peace and balance
Speaker 1: our life. Now, there was a man who was a
Speaker 1: contemporary of Laotsu. His name was Confucius. He was many
Speaker 1: years younger than Laoutsu, but he kept hearing about this
Speaker 1: old man who had all of this great wisdom and
Speaker 1: one day he decided that he was going to go,
Speaker 1: legend says and visit Laoutsu, and he spent a full
Speaker 1: day listening to this man. Because Confucius was someone in
Speaker 1: China who was trying to lay down all the rules
Speaker 1: of etiquette and how to conduct yourself and trying to
Speaker 1: dictate to the people what they should be. Laoutsu had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with any of that. And when he
Speaker 1: went to see Laotsu, he came back and he talked
Speaker 1: to all of his people, and this is what he said.
Speaker 1: He said, of birds, I know they have wings to
Speaker 1: fly with, a fish, that they have fins to swim with,
Speaker 1: a wild beasts, that they have feet to run with.
Speaker 1: For feet, there are traps for finns, there are nets
Speaker 1: for wings arrows. But who knows how dragons surmount wind
Speaker 1: and cloud into heaven. This day I have seen Laotsu,
Speaker 1: and he is a dragon. And there he is a dragon,
Speaker 1: and a dragon in ancient Chinese was a picture of
Speaker 1: someone or something that was so mysterious and so difficult
Speaker 1: to comprehend because it could always be something else. There
Speaker 1: was a great teacher who came many years after that.
Speaker 1: His name was Rumi, who was a Jelluluton Rumi who
Speaker 1: was a great poet, a Persian poet in the fourteenth century,
Speaker 1: and he had a line he said, the day that
Speaker 1: you were born, a ladder was set up to help
Speaker 1: you to escape from this world. I believe that the
Speaker 1: doubt of chang and this thing that I have done,
Speaker 1: this change your thoughts, change your life. Effort that I've
Speaker 1: spent one full year on every single day doing exactly
Speaker 1: what I just said, is a ladder that will help
Speaker 1: you to return. In the Dow, there's a very famous
Speaker 1: line the fortieth verse of the Doo says, returning is
Speaker 1: the motion of the Dow. Returning is the motion of
Speaker 1: the Doo. So that all of us came from a
Speaker 1: divine spiritual essence invisible. Everything in the world of form
Speaker 1: emanated from something that is formless. There was a split
Speaker 1: second when you went from non being to being. And
Speaker 1: what L'aotsu was trying to teach was to be able
Speaker 1: to return to that place from which you came and
Speaker 1: live your life from the spiritual perspective and become a
Speaker 1: god realized being. Another great poet, T. S. Eliot once said,
Speaker 1: we shall not cease from exploration and at the end
Speaker 1: of all of our exploring will be to arrive where
Speaker 1: we started and to know the place for the first time,
Speaker 1: for the first time. What I'm asking you to do,
Speaker 1: and what Laotsu seemed to be saying, was learn to
Speaker 1: die while you're alive, because you will ultimately return. All
Speaker 1: of us have a return trip, a round trip ticket
Speaker 1: when we came in, didn't we But if you could
Speaker 1: learn to die while you're alive. And there's a great
Speaker 1: story I have to tell you this story. I want
Speaker 1: to read this story to you. It's a way to
Speaker 1: look at this idea of dying while you're alive. It
Speaker 1: goes like this, to die while we are alive gives
Speaker 1: us the only opportunity we will ever have to get
Speaker 1: outside of this package that houses us temporarily. There's an
Speaker 1: ancient parable that repeated generation after generation by the spiritual
Speaker 1: masters of India which illustrates this point. Listen to this
Speaker 1: wonderful story. A traveler from India went to Africa to
Speaker 1: acquire some local products and animals, and while in the jungle,
Speaker 1: he saw thousands of beautiful, multicolored talking parrots. He decided
Speaker 1: to capture a talking parrot and take it back as
Speaker 1: his pet. At home, he kept his parrot in a cage,
Speaker 1: and he fed him, and he gave him wonderful seeds
Speaker 1: and honey, and played music for his pet, and generally
Speaker 1: he treated him very well. When it was time for
Speaker 1: the man to return to Africa two years later, he
Speaker 1: asked his parrot if there was any message that he
Speaker 1: could deliver to the parrot's friends who were back in
Speaker 1: the jungle. Well. The parrot told his master to say
Speaker 1: that he was very happy in his cage and that
Speaker 1: he was enjoying each day, and to convey his love well.
Speaker 1: When the traveler arrived back in Africa, he delivered the
Speaker 1: message to the parrots back in the jungle. Just as
Speaker 1: he finished his story, a parrot with tears welling up
Speaker 1: in his eyes, fell over dead. The man was alarmed,
Speaker 1: and he decided that the parrot must have been very
Speaker 1: close to the parrot in the cage, and that this
Speaker 1: was probably the reason for the sadness and for his demise.
Speaker 1: When the traveler returned to India, he told his pet
Speaker 1: what had happened. As he finished his story, the pet
Speaker 1: parrot's eyes welled up with tears and he kneeled over dead.
Speaker 1: In his cage. The man was astounded, but he figured
Speaker 1: that his pet died from the despair of hearing of
Speaker 1: the death of his close friend back in the jungle.
Speaker 1: The trader opened up the cage and tossed the dead
Speaker 1: bird outside onto the trash heap. Immediately, the pet parrot
Speaker 1: flew up to a branch on the tree outside. The
Speaker 1: trader said to him, so, you're not dead after all.
Speaker 1: Why did you do that? You tricked me when the
Speaker 1: parrot responded, because that bird back in Africa sent me
Speaker 1: a very important message. What was the message, the trader
Speaker 1: wanted to know. He told me that if you want
Speaker 1: to escape from your cage, you must die while you're alive.
Speaker 1: We must indeed die while we are alive, in order
Speaker 1: to be able to look back at our waking consciousness
Speaker 1: and see ourselves trapped in our cage, which in our
Speaker 1: case is our body, and then we will see how
Speaker 1: unnecessary it is to remain caged. Not a great story.
Speaker 1: I love that story. Yeah, you can applaud. What I
Speaker 1: encourage you to do is to create for yourself a
Speaker 1: sacred space. And in this sacred space, I'd like you
Speaker 1: to place everything that has energy value to you photographs.
Speaker 1: I have this photograph that I looked at every day
Speaker 1: for one year and began to talk to after a while.
Speaker 1: It's a little weird, but you begin to get this idea.
Speaker 1: And those of you who wonder why I am wearing
Speaker 1: no shoes, I'd like you to know that where I live,
Speaker 1: you never walk into a sacred space with your shoes on.
Speaker 1: It would be considered dishonorable to do so. And to me,
Speaker 1: this stage, this setting, this beautiful place, and this beautiful
Speaker 1: symbol is a sacred sacred space. I live without shoes.
Speaker 1: I heard it said once that if you wear shoes
Speaker 1: everywhere you go, the whole earth will feel like leather.
Speaker 1: And it's nice to feel what the earth feels like
Speaker 1: and to feel that naturalness. So in that sacred space,
Speaker 1: you will feel the energy of the photographs, of any
Speaker 1: mementos that you have, of pictures of your children, of drawings,
Speaker 1: of statues, of anything at all that you can think of.
Speaker 1: I have a beautiful sacred space and it calls me.
Speaker 1: And as it calls me, when I go into that
Speaker 1: place that is so profoundly sacred to me, the most
Speaker 1: beautiful things begin to happen for me, particularly in the
Speaker 1: middle of the night when no one else is up,
Speaker 1: and I feel closest to God, and I feel closest
Speaker 1: to this beautiful old man who sent so many important
Speaker 1: messages to me through his dow to Chin and in
Speaker 1: my meditations to help me to create this program. Change
Speaker 1: your thoughts, change your life, living the wisdom of the dow.
Speaker 1: What I would like to do now is to look
Speaker 1: at the some of the key thoughts that I would
Speaker 1: like you to think about and consider changing as you
Speaker 1: become a person who becomes more God realized. That is
Speaker 1: someone who has died but stayed alive and returned and
Speaker 1: went back on that return trip. The first of these
Speaker 1: thoughts to change is to change the idea that I
Speaker 1: can't trust in my own nature too, I trust in
Speaker 1: my own nature. Did it ever occur to you that
Speaker 1: you have a nature? That that nature is so profound
Speaker 1: and is always calling you. You know it. No one
Speaker 1: else can know it, No one else can impose it
Speaker 1: on you. No one else can tell you what it
Speaker 1: is that you feel in here that you know is
Speaker 1: why you're here and what you're doing here? Does no
Speaker 1: one else can explain that or explore that with you.
Speaker 1: You can't share it. Everything in the universe has a nature.
Speaker 1: Your dog has a nature, A crocodile has a nature,
Speaker 1: a duck has a nature, a crow has a nature.
Speaker 1: Everything has its nature, Everything has a dharma, including you.
Speaker 1: But what we've learned, and we've grown up to believe,
Speaker 1: is that I can't trust in that nature, my nature.
Speaker 1: To trust in your nature, to know that you came
Speaker 1: from a divine place of well being, and to trust
Speaker 1: in it. Listen to this verse thirty eight of the
Speaker 1: doll a few lines. The great Master follows his own
Speaker 1: nature and not the trappings of life. A truly good
Speaker 1: man is not aware of his goodness, and is therefore good.
Speaker 1: Think about yourself the first, the first moment of life,
Speaker 1: the very first moment that speck when you went from nowhere?
Speaker 1: WHI to now here? N ow hi, from nowhere to
Speaker 1: now here? Same thing, Just a little question of spacing,
Speaker 1: just a little different spacing. Sow you went from nowhere.
Speaker 1: Now you're in now here. And where do you think
Speaker 1: you're going? Nowhere? Right back to nowhere? Who out there watching,
Speaker 1: who in this audience isn't going back to nowhere? That's
Speaker 1: where we're all headed, back to nowhere. So in that
Speaker 1: split second. Then you lived inside your mother's womb for
Speaker 1: nine months, and in that nine month period of time,
Speaker 1: you trusted your nature. You didn't have a sonogram and say,
Speaker 1: my god, I don't have a nose. This is very scary.
Speaker 1: What if it doesn't show up on time or you
Speaker 1: didn't do any of that. You trusted completely in your
Speaker 1: own nature, right, and so does your mother's very little
Speaker 1: that you can do because what you were to become,
Speaker 1: everything that this physical body needed was all handled in there,
Speaker 1: and also beyond what was needed for your physical world.
Speaker 1: And what Laudsu called the the world of the ten
Speaker 1: thousand Things, the ten thousand things. There's ten zillion things
Speaker 1: obviously in the physical world, but that's how he named it,
Speaker 1: the world of the ten thousand things. And in that
Speaker 1: world of the ten thousand things, everything returns back to
Speaker 1: its source. But while you're in that place, and why
Speaker 1: wouldn't you believe, even maybe for a second, that not
Speaker 1: only was my physiology all handled for me, but everything
Speaker 1: else that I needed. If I could just stop interfering
Speaker 1: with it and stop other people from doing it, that
Speaker 1: everything I needed. And that's a big part of understanding
Speaker 1: change your thoughts change your life. It's a big part
Speaker 1: of that, the idea that I have a nature that
Speaker 1: I can trust, not something that I have to be
Speaker 1: afraid of, and I can stop letting other people interfere
Speaker 1: with it as well. So what happens We go through
Speaker 1: those nine months totally uninterrupted, We have no questions, everything
Speaker 1: works out, and then what we say, the very first
Speaker 1: thing we pop up after nine months, we'll take over
Speaker 1: from here. That was good work, nice work, thank you
Speaker 1: very much. And so what we'll do is just sort
Speaker 1: of edge you out of here, you know. So we
Speaker 1: edge God out, we take on an ego, ego, and
Speaker 1: we edge out, and we say we'll take over. And
Speaker 1: we have an ego and this ego. What this ego
Speaker 1: does is it takes on a set of beliefs. And
Speaker 1: these beliefs are that I am what I have, that
Speaker 1: I am what I do, that I am what other
Speaker 1: people think of me. So we're raised to believe that
Speaker 1: the more stuff I accumulate, the more more things that
Speaker 1: I get, this is who I am. The more that
Speaker 1: people like me, this is what I'll get, And on
Speaker 1: and on it goes. I want to tell you a story.
Speaker 1: It's the story of one of my children. Her name
Speaker 1: is Tracy. We lived in Detroit when she was born.
Speaker 1: She came in as a little rebellious. She came in
Speaker 1: the middle of the Detroit riots when they said nobody
Speaker 1: is allowed to go out. Anybody that goes out is
Speaker 1: going to be arrested. And she said, this would be
Speaker 1: a good time for me to show up. Which is
Speaker 1: this actually what she did? So when she showed up.
Speaker 1: After about the second or third year, Tracy went to
Speaker 1: preschool and she came home from preschool she was about free.
Speaker 1: And in that time she came home and she said,
Speaker 1: she handed me a paper and it had a gold
Speaker 1: star at the top of the paper. And I looked
Speaker 1: at it and I said, She said, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, daddy,
Speaker 1: I got a gold star. I got a gold star.
Speaker 1: I said, I'm not really interested in gold stars. I said,
Speaker 1: but what are you doing? What is this? She said, Well,
Speaker 1: we did something in school called adding, and I got
Speaker 1: them all right, and I know how to I said adding.
Speaker 1: I can't believe you're free. You can't learn to add
Speaker 1: when you're three. And I went to this whole long
Speaker 1: thing about adding and how terrific it was. And she
Speaker 1: could say daddy the gold star. Excuse me, but I
Speaker 1: was the only one in the class. I got a
Speaker 1: gold star. I got him, all right, I said, you know, Tracy,
Speaker 1: I said, honey that, I said, some people just need
Speaker 1: to have gold stars, and teachers sort of like to
Speaker 1: give it out and make that the reason why you're
Speaker 1: doing something, I said, and set you apart from everybody else.
Speaker 1: I said, but your dad doesn't really care much about
Speaker 1: that and how you stack up with others, and they're
Speaker 1: going to be uh. I'm more interested in what you're learning.
Speaker 1: And she said, okay. She was used to that. She
Speaker 1: had a weird daddy and she knew that. So about
Speaker 1: another month or so, she came home with a with
Speaker 1: a paper that had looked like it had had a
Speaker 1: gold star on it, but it had obviously been taking off.
Speaker 1: Her little thumbprints were all over, but there was a
Speaker 1: place that there had been a gold star that was
Speaker 1: taken off. And I said, what's this. Oh, she said,
Speaker 1: we're now doing subtraction. And I said, subtraction. That's amazing.
Speaker 1: And I took over by her dresser. I said, you
Speaker 1: know that money you got in your pigureback put it
Speaker 1: in my pocket. I said, that's called subtraction. Isn't that great?
Speaker 1: She didn't give me that money back. And we talked
Speaker 1: and talked about subtraction, and finally I couldn't. I couldn't
Speaker 1: take it anymore. I said, honey, what happened? What was this?
Speaker 1: What was here at the paper? And she said, oh,
Speaker 1: she said that. She said, the teacher gave me none
Speaker 1: of those gold stars. I said really, I said, well,
Speaker 1: what happened to it? Oh? She said, I took it off.
Speaker 1: I said, well, what'd you do with it? She said,
Speaker 1: I gave it back to her. I said, well, what
Speaker 1: did you tell her? She said, oh, I told her
Speaker 1: to give it to someone who needs that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: True story. Yeah, And there she is. She's standing right here.
Speaker 1: She's going to be forty this year. My daughter Tray said, So,
Speaker 1: what we have to do is learn how to take
Speaker 1: this ego of ours, this part of us that believes
Speaker 1: that who we are is what we have and what
Speaker 1: we do and what other people think of us. But remember,
Speaker 1: if you grow up believing that you are what you do,
Speaker 1: then when you don't, you aren't. And if you believe
Speaker 1: that you are what you have when it's gone, you aren't.
Speaker 1: And if you believe that you are what other people
Speaker 1: think of you, your reputation, which we raise people to believe,
Speaker 1: it's my I have to be concerned with what other
Speaker 1: people think of me. Take this ego and retrain it.
Speaker 1: And one of the ways that you do to retrain
Speaker 1: it is first you take this idea that the ego
Speaker 1: has of fear. What are you afraid of? Anybody out there?
Speaker 1: What are you afraid of? Shift from fear to curiosity.
Speaker 1: Become curious about what you're afraid of. That's what Laotsu
Speaker 1: taught me. Become curious about what you're afraid of. You're
Speaker 1: afraid of flying, Get curious about that, Get interested in that.
Speaker 1: You're afraid of snakes, you're afraid of disapproval, you're afraid.
Speaker 1: Just shift from fear and say, I'm going to become
Speaker 1: more curious about what I'm afraid of. And then take
Speaker 1: all of the things that you're attached to, like all
Speaker 1: of your photographs, like all of your furniture, like all
Speaker 1: of your clothing, like all of the stuff that you
Speaker 1: find so much attachment to, and start letting it go.
Speaker 1: Start letting it go. You know, the day that I
Speaker 1: turned that key on May the eleventh and two thousand
Speaker 1: and six. I didn't even know where it was going.
Speaker 1: I just knew there was a shift taking place. I
Speaker 1: felt freer than I'd ever felt, I think in my
Speaker 1: life in my mid sixties, out there on a whole
Speaker 1: new adventure, and here we are talking about on national
Speaker 1: television on PBS. Take that idea that you have to
Speaker 1: be attached to things, and know that you came in
Speaker 1: with nothing, with no thing, and you're going to leave
Speaker 1: with nothing, with no thing, And understand that your life
Speaker 1: is a parenthesis and eternity. Live there without attachments. And
Speaker 1: then take your need to be in control of yourself
Speaker 1: of others of the situation, and shift from control to trust.
Speaker 1: Begin to have a trust. Lautsu is profound about this,
Speaker 1: and each one of the eighty one verses it comes
Speaker 1: up about sixty times. As you look at letting go
Speaker 1: and letting God, allowing yourself to trust in your nature,
Speaker 1: allowing yourself to no longer believe that everything has to
Speaker 1: be controlled by me, and that other people no longer
Speaker 1: have to be in control of me as well. Begin
Speaker 1: to trust in trust, just like you did for the
Speaker 1: first nine months you trusted. Your nose showed up, your
Speaker 1: height showed up, your eyes showed up, whatever it all
Speaker 1: showed up. It's all perfect, it's all the to Why
Speaker 1: not wander through your life and have this wonderful, peaceful
Speaker 1: knowing that it's all fine, And finally shift from your
Speaker 1: sense of entitlement. What nobody, nobody can treat me that way.
Speaker 1: I'm entitled to have this? Well, I paid for that,
Speaker 1: I let go. I mean that, in one year, I
Speaker 1: let go of all of my entitlements I have. I
Speaker 1: don't feel I'm entitled to anything. I'm just here. Shift
Speaker 1: from entitlement to radical humility. Louts who speaks about it
Speaker 1: so often, stay humble, stay low. The greatest leaders are
Speaker 1: the ones who do the least, the ones who stay
Speaker 1: back and just model and allow and at the end
Speaker 1: of the day. In one of the verses of the Doo,
Speaker 1: it says, the people will say, we did it ourselves.
Speaker 1: We did it ourselves. In verse forty nine of The
Speaker 1: Doubt of Chang, here's an exact quote. The Sage is
Speaker 1: kind to the kind and kind to the unkind, because
Speaker 1: the nature of his being is kindness. And also be
Speaker 1: wise and help all beings, impartially abandoning none. You know
Speaker 1: what I do. Just before I did this program, I
Speaker 1: have to admit I was nervous. I was humbled by it.
Speaker 1: Who are you, Wayne Dyer? Who were you to read
Speaker 1: the dow and believe that you can interpret it on
Speaker 1: television and interpret it in a book and spend a
Speaker 1: year and say, I got real humble with that. And
Speaker 1: you know what I say, Dal, which is just another
Speaker 1: word for God or Source or Krishna or Allah or
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call it. Guide me, Guide me. Now,
Speaker 1: I have that awareness before I come out. If you
Speaker 1: knew it says in the Course in Miracles, if you
Speaker 1: knew who walked beside you at all times on this
Speaker 1: path that you have chosen, you could never experience fear
Speaker 1: or doubt again. I remember Mother Teresa saying to a
Speaker 1: dear friend of mine who was asking what could he do,
Speaker 1: what could he do to to do something for her?
Speaker 1: He was his name was Pat McMahon. He was on
Speaker 1: KTR radio in Phoenix, and he finally Mother Teresa said
Speaker 1: to him, you can do something for me. She said,
Speaker 1: tomorrow morning, get up at four am and go out
Speaker 1: onto the streets of Phoenix and find someone who's living
Speaker 1: there who believes that he's alone, and convince him that
Speaker 1: he's not. That's what you can do. That's how saints talk,
Speaker 1: That's how laud Zeus spoke. Okay, let's go on to
Speaker 1: the next thought to change. So you're changing from not
Speaker 1: trusting in your nature to trusting in your nature. You
Speaker 1: change your thought from I need more to what I
Speaker 1: call living contentment. What is this thing about more? It's
Speaker 1: the mantra of the ego, isn't it. I have to
Speaker 1: have more, I have to collect more stuff, I have
Speaker 1: to have more friends, I have to have more money.
Speaker 1: It's more, more and more, more and more. When where
Speaker 1: you came from, came from nowhere, you don't need anything.
Speaker 1: It's a continuous bombardment that we are all exposed to
Speaker 1: in this whole world of believing that we have to
Speaker 1: have more. That's one of the reasons why I love
Speaker 1: public television so much. You don't see ads on PBS.
Speaker 1: You don't have to be constantly exposed to the idea
Speaker 1: that you have to have more, and you have to
Speaker 1: get more, and if you don't have this, then you're
Speaker 1: not complete and so on. So we get bombarded with
Speaker 1: this idea of attracting more and laud Zeus says, live contentment,
Speaker 1: live in a state of being contented. Here's verse eighty one,
Speaker 1: the last verse of the Data chain, my favorite translation
Speaker 1: of it, and I put it right into the book.
Speaker 1: Sages do not accumulate anything, but give everything to others,
Speaker 1: having more the more they give. It's a great lesson.
Speaker 1: My son, SAMs, who's we're very, very close. We just
Speaker 1: spent a couple of months together over on Maui, just
Speaker 1: being together, just being It was a divine time. And
Speaker 1: he came home with it was last summer. He came
Speaker 1: home with four T shirts that he loved and I said, well,
Speaker 1: I said, which which one do you like the best?
Speaker 1: He said, well that one over there, that blue one.
Speaker 1: It's got the wed and it's got the drawing and
Speaker 1: it's got a surfer inst And I said that's great.
Speaker 1: I said, I'd like to have that one. He said, no, no, Dad,
Speaker 1: that's my favorite. That's the one. That's the one I
Speaker 1: like the best. I said, I know. I said that's
Speaker 1: the one. Would you mind if I had that one?
Speaker 1: He said, I would mind a lot if you had
Speaker 1: that one. He said, maybe you can have one. I'm
Speaker 1: not so crazy about this one over here. I said,
Speaker 1: so you're going to give me something you don't like,
Speaker 1: you know, I said, I want that's the one. I
Speaker 1: love that because we have the same taste. Could I
Speaker 1: have that one? He said, Dad, you're crazy. He said,
Speaker 1: you can't have my favorite T shirt. I said, well,
Speaker 1: I want you to think about that. I want you
Speaker 1: to think about detaching and letting go and not needing
Speaker 1: to have more. And he's heard me talk about this
Speaker 1: stuff his entire life, so finally he just you know.
Speaker 1: I went in and I tried it on and I said, oh,
Speaker 1: this thing looks so great looking in the mirror. And
Speaker 1: he was saying, he said, Dad, that that really is mine.
Speaker 1: I said yeah, I said, but you're going to give
Speaker 1: it to me? He said no no. I said yeah,
Speaker 1: Well just think about it, you know, because I'm your
Speaker 1: dad and I'd really like to have this. And so
Speaker 1: he reluctantly parted with it. And so the next the
Speaker 1: next that evening, I was still wearing the shirt and
Speaker 1: he looked at me and he said, that's my shirt.
Speaker 1: I said, you know, SAMs, I said, you gave me
Speaker 1: the shirt. I said, I'm going to wear this shirt
Speaker 1: until you are happy that I have your favorite shirt.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna just I'm never going to take it off
Speaker 1: until you are happy. He said, well, you'll be wearing
Speaker 1: that shirt a long time. He said, well that's okay.
Speaker 1: So I wore it the next day. I got up,
Speaker 1: I slept in it that night, I got up and
Speaker 1: I did I got up. The next morning, I put
Speaker 1: it on, and that Sands would come in and we'd
Speaker 1: look at me. I said, oh, you're still not happy
Speaker 1: that you gave me something that you really love. Because
Speaker 1: that's this is what it really means to be a sage.
Speaker 1: This is what it means to be a divine being,
Speaker 1: to be someone who's willing to a part with not
Speaker 1: the things they don't like, but what they do like.
Speaker 1: I wore it the next day. I wore it the
Speaker 1: next day. I wor it for two weeks, take it
Speaker 1: off only to wash it, put it right back on
Speaker 1: two solid weeks. Each one of my children will tell you. Finally,
Speaker 1: one day, he said, Dad, I'm so happy. I am
Speaker 1: so thrilled that you have that T shirt. I said, oh,
Speaker 1: that's great. I can finally take this thing off. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm going to just give it away, but it's like,
Speaker 1: what a great lesson in that the idea that you take.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a rule. It's called the eighty twenty rule.
Speaker 1: And in the eighty twenty rule, it says, everything that
Speaker 1: you have, all of your stuff, twenty percent of it
Speaker 1: is what you use. All of your clothes in your closet,
Speaker 1: twenty percent you just keep using the same twenty percent
Speaker 1: of overnall eighty percent of the clothing that you have
Speaker 1: in your in your closet, for so many people, is
Speaker 1: something that you never use, You don't wear, You look
Speaker 1: at it, you store it, you think, well, there might come.
Speaker 1: But I can't part with that, even though you've been
Speaker 1: carting it around every time you move, you move it
Speaker 1: and you put us take the eighty percent that you
Speaker 1: don't use, says loud to, and give it away. Give
Speaker 1: it away. Laudsu said that when your cup is full
Speaker 1: stop pouring. When your cup is full stop pouring, we
Speaker 1: have an obesity crisis in the United States, in the
Speaker 1: Western world. The obesity crisis can be handled if you
Speaker 1: just read the doll if you realize. In verse thirty three,
Speaker 1: it says, if you realize you have enough, you are
Speaker 1: truly rich. If you could just learn something called portion control. Well,
Speaker 1: you just take a bite and you say, is my
Speaker 1: cup full? Stop pouring, Stop pouring. In other words, instead
Speaker 1: of filling yourself with that which is already a surplus,
Speaker 1: and the dial it teaches us to take surpluses and
Speaker 1: to reduce them, and to take defision sees and increase
Speaker 1: them so that we create balance in our lives. To
Speaker 1: be in balance, you can take the jewelry that you
Speaker 1: don't use, you can take the clothing, and then once
Speaker 1: you've given away the eighty percent that you don't use,
Speaker 1: take one of the things that you really like and
Speaker 1: practice giving that away. It's such a wonderful way. Listen
Speaker 1: to this poem. It was written by a great Persian
Speaker 1: poet named Hafiz says, even after all this time, the
Speaker 1: sun never says to the earth you owe me. Just
Speaker 1: look what happens with a love like that. It lights
Speaker 1: up the whole sky. It lights up the whole sky.
Speaker 1: There's no owing, there's no owing. You don't have to
Speaker 1: be You can practice living and state of contentment. This
Speaker 1: was so powerful for me. You just can't imagine how
Speaker 1: good it felt for one entire year to walk through
Speaker 1: every day and say I'm content I'm content. I start
Speaker 1: out every morning of my life the first words. Huffy
Speaker 1: says that if there's only one prayer that you say
Speaker 1: every day, make it thank you. Just say thank you.
Speaker 1: That's how I start wake up. Thank you God, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you Source, thank you, doo, whatever you want to
Speaker 1: call the opening line of the Dow, says, the dow
Speaker 1: that can be named is not the dow. As soon
Speaker 1: as you put a name on it, it dissolves. There's no
Speaker 1: name for it. It's just endlessly, invisibly, constantly in a
Speaker 1: state of creating out of a state of love.