Manifest Your Destiny: The Nine Spiritual Principles for Getting Everything You Want. Wayne Dyer W.

that you (the whole you) cannot enter the world to the left of the imaginary line. If you were to cross that line every now and then, you would be entering the world of the creator. Have you been taught that the creator is something outside yourself? (I will deal with this more thoroughly in the second principle.) If so, your inner world (the world of the unseen) is full of notions that prohibit you from participating in the creative process.

      There are dogmas that represent participating in the creative process as blasphemy, or foolishness, or thinking too highly of yourself. But go back to the opening sentence of this first principle and reread it until it resonates within you: Within you is a divine capacity to manifest and attract all that you need or desire.

      It is more than within you. It is you, and you must overcome your conditioning and give yourself permission to enter this world. Cross the line that separates the physical you from the you that is just as real, but unseen. When you overcome the obstacles of your mind that prevent you from crossing the line, your unseen self will be your ticket to creation in your life.

      TRANSCENDING YOUR CONDITIONING

      Like it or not, all of us have been conditioned to think and act in ways that have become automatic. We need to figure out how to get past this conditioning if we want to gain access to our highest self. You can be sure the ego will not take well to this kind of effort.

      Asking the ego to help diminish its own significance so that you might have access to your higher self is akin to attempting to stand on your own shoulders. Ego is as unable to move aside in deference to spirit as your eye is able to see itself or the tip of your tongue able to touch the tip of your tongue!

      Your task thus becomes a quagmire of paradoxes. If you rely upon your ego to get past the influences of the ego, it will only strengthen its hold on you. You must figure out how to emancipate consciousness from the limitations of your mind and your body.

      In the ego state you generally experience yourself as a separate entity. To move past this conditioning you want to begin to see yourself as humanity itself rather than as a separate form in a body. Very simply put, if you feel that you are disconnected from the rest of humanity and truly a separate entity needing to prove yourself and compete with others, you will be unable to manifest your heart’s desire.

      Manifesting is not about getting things that are not here. It is about attracting what is already here and is a part of you on a spiritual level. If you remain separate, that which you wish to manifest will forever be unavailable to you. If you shift that awareness around and are able to see yourself as a part of what you desire, you will have transcended the conditioning of your ego, and of all the other egos who have contributed to this process in your life.

      With the realization of God within yourself, you not only dissolve your ego’s identification as separate from God, but you leave behind the old ways of seeing yourself. As you awaken to your highest self, your conditioning as a separate being will be overcome with practice.

      Below are a few of the conditioned thoughts that will keep your ego in charge of your life and prevent you from materializing what you desire and what desires you.

      1: I am not in charge of my life. That force is outside me. This kind of conditioned response to the circumstances of your life puts the responsibility on something outside you and becomes a handy excuse when your life is not going as you would like it to.

       You can change this perception in any given moment, and begin to trust that the vital force of the universe is exactly what you are. Entertain this notion every day by noticing the life force flowing through you. Turn your attention away from the ego-dominated thoughts about the circumstances of your life to the present moment by consciously noticing your breath, the sounds, textures, smells and scenes that the life force is experiencing through you. Practice stepping away from the thoughts about your life in any given moment, and step into the experience of the life energy flowing through your senses.

      2: People cannot manifest, it is all a function of the cosmic throw of the dice. This is a very popular idea, particularly for those who are in less than propitious circumstances. Blaming luck or some external, invisible force that controls the universe is a habit of conditioning that leads to disempowerment and, ultimately, defeat. You will have to rid yourself of this hallucination that you are powerless to attract what you desire. Keep in mind that you are not playing magic when you learn to manifest, you are simply manifesting a new aspect of yourself that has been hidden.

       You are the universe. It is not something outside you. You are that force which is in everything, even the things that have previously failed to show up in your life. Remember, as you think, so shall you be. If you think you can’t, you are right, and that is precisely what you will see showing up in your life. The results of “I can’t” lead to the next conditioned response.

      3: I have tried before and it has never worked for me. Here, the conditioned response is believing that once having tried and failed, further efforts will yield the same results. A key word in this thought is “try.” Trying means struggling, working at it, giving it a lot of effort, setting goals and so forth.

       Just for a moment, stop and try to pick up a pencil from the table. Just try to pick it up. You will find that there is no such thing as trying. You either pick it up or you don’t. Period. What you call trying to pick it up is simply not picking up the pencil.

       Let go of your obsession with the past and with trying, and instead remain relaxed and casual and in the moment, noticing your life force minus your judgments and explanations. You will see good multiply as needed, when you come to know that you are not powerless to make it happen. The universe is rich with abundance that will be provided to you when you let go of reasoning that says your past must be your present.

       The reason that you have been unsuccessful in manifesting what you want is because you are attached to an idea that is erroneous. Your past is an illusion. It is the trail left behind you, and a trail behind you cannot drive you today, regardless of what you choose to believe. All you have is now, and you have never tried anything. You have simply not done it yet. You can now shift that reasoning right out of your inner world.

      4: Only highly evolved beings can manifest. This is the ego saying that you are separate and distinct from your spiritual teachers and others who live at the highest levels. Even though every spiritual practice encourages you to see the divine within yourself, to know you have in you the same mind as your master, and to discover the kingdom of heaven within yourself, your ego cannot buy it. It is sold on separateness, and convinces you that you are less than those highly evolved beings you’ve heard about.

       Relinquish those thoughts and replace them with seeing yourself as connected to everyone by that unseen life force that is your divine essence. Refuse to put others either above or below you, but instead see them as you. It is necessary to grasp this idea firmly before you can experience true manifestation.

      These are a few of the thoughts that swirl around in your head whenever you contemplate the idea of having what you want and need want and need you.

      This first spiritual principle directs you to overcome your conditioning. It requires you to adopt a new attitude about yourself, and then to put this attitude into daily practice. I am encouraging you to know the highest self rather than read about it. To know it in the deepest reaches of your being, and then to never again doubt it.

      Having a philosophy is useless if it is simply an awareness of rituals and the teachings of experts. To make your philosophy work for you it must become an energy pattern that you use in your daily life. It must have both an eternal truth to it as well as a utilitarian quality that makes you feel, yes, I know this to be true because I apply it and it works.

      You do have a highest self. You can know this highest self in both the seen and the unseen dimensions of your life. Once you are convinced of this, the belief that the ego is the dominant motivating force in your life will lose its power.

      I encourage you to follow these suggestions for developing this first principle as a permanent part of your total awareness. This plan of action worked for me. If I encounter doubt, I return to this four-point plan. It always reacquaints me