Tag: wallace Wattles

“You can blame Star Wars for that.”

I was talking to Guitar Monk Mathew Dixon, explaining that I see far too many people focusing on mind power and not realizing they need body power, too.

When I post pictures on Facebook or on this blog of me bending nails, bolts, steel rods and horseshoes, people often assume I’m doing it with just my mind.

I bent this horseshoe with mind directing body

While the process starts and continues with my mind, I am using my will power and mind power to direct my body to an end result: bending steel.

But why do so many people assume you can accomplish things with mind power alone?

Why do so many “New Age” types want to sit and visualize but not get up and act?

Why do so many people deceive themselves with magical thinking?

“You can blame it on Star Wars,” Mathew said.

Well, I’ve never seen a Star Wars movie.

None of them.

Or read any of the books.

To bring myself current, I watched the first film from 1977.

I nodded off several times during it.

While lines like “May the Force be with you” stood out, they were inaccurate to me.

Since “The Force” is always with you, a more accurate line would be, “May you be with the Force.”

The latter quote would remind you to align yourself with The Force.

But George Lucas didn’t ask my opinion.

“The second movie is the culprit,” Mathew explained.

The second one was the 1980 The Empire Strikes Back.

Apparently that’s the movie where a lot of things are accomplished with “Jedi mind tricks” and thought alone.

And apparently a lot of people assumed they could do the same if their mind were only stronger.

Yoda taught Jedi mind control for 800 years?

Good luck with that.

I don’t want to blame the movies, though.

The theme of “mind over matter” appears everywhere, in metaphysical literature as well as popular culture.

You’ll find it in comic books as well as bestselling books.

You’ll find it in Richard Bach’s Illusions and The Messiah’s Handbook and on television shows such as Flash and Super Girl.

Who doesn’t want to have the ability to create out of thought alone, or make things appear with a few magic words?

Who doesn’t want to have super powers?

Who doesn’t want to be Superman?

Or Superwoman?

The thing is, life doesn’t work like that.

You were given a body and a mind, and the ability to use both.

We are not brains in jars.

We are brains in bodies.

When we use both, then we can attract miracles.

But the miracles “appear” through natural means.

Even Wallace Wattles said those exact words — natural means — in his famous 1915 book, The Science of Getting Rich.

He stated that it’s the combination of mind and action that leads to attracting results.

It’s not just mind.

It’s not just body.

It’s both.

Slides of Einstein's brain. Without the body, it's just a curiosity.

If I pick up a horseshoe and “will” it to bend but not actually try to bend it, I’ll just be holding a horseshoe.

Nothing will happen.

I have to add my mind – mind power, will power, belief – and direct my body to actually bend the shoe.

It’s the same with anything you want.

If you want to attract a new car (or job, or spouse, or you-name-it), you want to begin with your visualization and affirmation. You won’t even try if you don’t kick start the process with your belief.

So, it begins with mind.

But if that’s all you do, you probably won’t attract anything.

You might even become skeptical or critical.

You’ll say “This mind stuff doesn’t work!”

Of course it doesn’t – if you are only using your mind.

But add your literal action, and you begin to co-create what you want into being.

It’s still not likely that what you want will just “appear” like in a Star Wars or Harry Potter movie.

I’m not ruling magic out. I believe in magic and miracles. I also believe that we live in a “no limit” universe, where we can probably do what some would say is impossible with the right mindset and proper action.

I’m just reminding you that you have a body for a reason.

Use it to aid in the attraction of your goal.

Use it for action.

There is real magic in the world: it’s using your mind and your body to achieve a specific end goal.

For example, if I want to write a book, I don’t sit and “think it” into reality.

Instead, I use every “mind trick” I know – from visualizing to Nevillizing to The Remembering Process and more – to get my mind around the idea of what I want.

And then I start writing.

I do something.

And it’s the combination of both mind and action that leads to me being an author.

None of this is a slam against Star Wars. I’m not blaming the movies at all. I’m told the latest installment, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, is spectacular.

Just remember that movies and television shows program you, usually unconsciously and subconsciously.

Focus on solutions you can act on

Recently I watched the movie The Martian and came away from it realizing the focus was always on solutions.

It taught an “Anything can be solved” attitude.

I liked it.

And I recently saw the movie The Walk, the true story of a young man with the “impossible” dream of walking a tightrope across the World Trade towers in New York City.

And he did it.

The movie conveyed the message that virtually “anything is possible.”

I liked it, too.

Star Wars is great entertainment and it’s great fun to imagine having no limits due to mind power alone.

Just don’t think you can pay the bills with a Jedi Mind Trick.

Ao Akua,

Joe

Happy New Year!

PS – Happy New Year!!

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Recently I found a one hundred year old copy of Wallace Wattles’ famous book, Financial Success Through Creative Thought, or, The Science of Getting Rich.

This 1915 leather bound edition of the book first privately published in 1910, is the one that inspired Rhonda Byrne to create her bestselling book and movie, The Secret.

1915 edition

While my computer took an hour to download new operating software, I reread Wattles’ book.

I’ve read it before, of course. But several things surprised me on this fresh reading.

Here are a few facts that jumped out:

• Wattles doesn’t talk about the “Law of Attraction” with that exact phrase, ever, but he certainly spells out that your thoughts will attract what you get. (The phrase “Law of Attraction” was made popular by William Walker Atkinson, in his 1906 book, Thought Vibration or The Law of Attraction in the Thought World. Wattles and Atkinson had the same publisher and probably knew each other.)
• Wattles doesn’t say anywhere that what you want will “magically” appear out of the air, just popping into reality before your eyes like some sort of magic trick. He explains that what you want will be attracted through natural means.
• Wattles actually stresses the need to take action to attract what you want. He has two chapters on the subject. He says “the failure to connect thought with personal action” is the biggest shipwreck in getting results.

I loved reading the book again because I could see clearly that many people who criticize or misunderstand the Law of Attraction have simply not read Wattles’ original text.

Or, if they did read his book, they glossed over all the parts they didn’t want to face, much like the many who watched the move The Secret and somehow fogged out when I appeared on screen and said you had to take action.

That’s the nature of unconscious limiting beliefs.

They filter reality so you only see what is a match to your beliefs.

Science of Getting Rich

Of course you have to take action.

Of course what you attract will come through natural means.

Of course it all begins with thought, which leads to behaviors, which leads to results.

Wattles is down to earth, very practical, and psychological in his approach.

He explains that you have to form an image of what you want to have, do, or be in your mind.

That image, held with faith and focus, will command the invisible elements of the world — the “stuff” that makes up everything, including you and me — to begin to form into your desired image. It will begin to unconsciously nudge yourself and other people to help you attract what you hold in mind.

You then have to work, with gratitude and holding your faith, in the direction of making it materialize, even if, at first, you can see no way to make it happen.

If I had to sum it up, I’d say that Wattles delivered a very simple, logical, and practical formula for attracting wealth. He’s not “woo woo” at all. He’s psychological rather than metaphysical, somehow knowing what psychologist William James declared –

“The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes” and —

“Act the part and you will become the part” and —

“Each of us literally chooses, by his way of attending to things, what sort of universe he shall appear to himself to inhabit.”

And something to think about from Wallace Wattles —

“The only service you can render God is to give expression to what he is trying to give the world, through you. The only service you can render God is to make the very most of yourself in order that God may live in you to the utmost of your possibilities.”

Wattles book is still in print, and copies of the original 1910 edition are available for free online. I urge you to find one and read it.

And then turn what you learn into action.

Wattles wrote – “The very best thing you can do for the whole world is to make the most of yourself.”

Ao Akua,

Joe

PS — This free new e-book can help you, too: http://www.theabundanceproject.com/book1.php?linkid=428743

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