 Having imagined these vivid e xperiences in all the ﬁve
senses, open your eyes. Y ou will be startled at what you see. The or dinary world is vividly alive. Colors ar e brighter. A
vibrancy hangs in the air. This startling change is r eported
by everyone, and it demonstrates that even slightly
heightening your inner world causes the outer world to
automatically follow suit. What we have her e is a clue to one
of the deepest of spiritual secr ets, the power to alter r eality
all at once. Such power isn’t available on the surface of life,
which is why people feel tossed about by their e xternal
circumstances. Y ou must ﬁnd the level of the soul, wher e
the holographic impulse can cr eate anything. Jung called it the collective unconscious  rather than the
collective conscious  for this very r eason. Human beings
have collectively cr eated the world without knowing that it
was happening. Her e are the main ingr edients we used. Notice how they spiral deeper and deeper fr om the ﬁrst,which seems rather har mless, to the last, which is highly
self-destructive:
Secrecy: We lear ned not to r eveal our basic drives and
desir es. Guilt and shame:  Once the basic drives and desir es
were hidden, they felt bad. Judgment:  Anything that felt bad became wr ong. Blame:  We wanted to know who was r esponsible for
the pain we felt. Projection:  A convenient scapegoat was
manufactur ed, either a hated enemy or an invisible
demonic for ce. Separation:  We did everything we could to push this
demonic for ce outside ourselves. Enemies wer e “the
other,” who had to be guar ded against and fought
with. Struggle:  Projection couldn’t mak e the pain go away
permanently, so a constant state of inner -versus- outer
warfar e ensued. As you can see, the shadow is still being fueled, because
we ar e masters at manipulating these ingr edients. W e are
addicted to them, in fact, even though the r esult is war,
violence, crime, and endless struggle, not to mention the
stiﬂing eﬀect of believing in cosmic evil as a pr esence in the
world. The solution is to uncr eate the shadow. It’s not
Frankenstein’s monster, a hor ror that has gr own mor e
powerful than its cr eator. The shadow is a r egion of the
psyche. Nothing e xists in it that is beyond our power to
dissolve. Instead of allowing the shadow to victimize us, we
must seize the contr ol switch and r eclaim our true function
as cr eators. THE W AY OUT
Let me summarize the ar gument up to now in thr ee
sentences. Duality is wher e you ar e. The shadow has
surrounded you with a fog of illusion. Y our split self is the
ﬁrst and most damaging illusion. Now let’s engage the
problem personally, by seeing if the diagnosis actually ﬁts. The shadow may be har d for you to see when you look
around on this or any other day. For most of us, everyday
life isn’t pathological. Even though e xperts tell us that
domestic and se xual abuse is far mor e widespr ead than we
want to admit, even though depr ession and anxiety
disor ders continue to rise at an alar ming rate, or dinary
people ﬁnd it easy to deny the dark er side of human natur e. So it’s important to know that the shadow isn’t a bogeyman. Anything that k eeps you unconscious is the r esult of the
shadow, because the shadow is the hiding place of pain and
stress. Mass outbr eaks of violence occur when social str ess
cannot be suppr essed any longer. Domestic violence occurs
when personal str ess cannot be contained. The price of
remaining unconscious is very high. Let’s mak e this mor e personal. The for ces that have been
employed over the ages to cr eate the collective shadow ar e
being used by you today. The unconscious may seem lik e an
amorphous sea, a dark chaos of impulses, drives, secr ets,
and taboos all jumbled together. But we can separate out
the various strands and mak e sense of them. Consider the
following chart:
“Me and My Shadow”
Like everything in life, cr eating the shadow is a pr ocess. No
one sets out to incr ease the power of the shadow, yet we all
do. The shadow incr eases whenever you r esort to the
following:Keeping secr ets fr om yourself and others. A
secretive life gives the shadow material to build
upon. F orms of secr ecy ar e denial, deliberate
deception, fear of e xposing who you ar e, and
conditioning by a dysfunctional family. Harboring guilt and shame. Everyone is fallible; no
one is perfect. But if you feel ashamed of your
mistak es and guilty about your imperfections, the
shadow gains power. Making yourself and others wr ong. If you can’t ﬁnd
a way to r elease your guilt and shame, it’s all too
easy to decide that you—or others—deserve them. Judgment is guilt wearing a moral mask to disguise
its pain. Needing someone to blame. Once you decide that
your inner pain is a moral issue, you will have no
trouble blaming someone else you feel is inferior to
you in some way. Ignoring your own weaknesses while criticizing
those ar ound you. This is the pr ocess of pr ojection,
which many don’t see or understand very well. But
whenever you try to e xplain a situation as the act of
God or the Devil, you ar e projecting. The same goes
for identif ying “them,” the bad people who cause
all the pr oblems. If you believe the pr oblem is with
“them,” you have pr ojected your own fear instead
of taking r esponsibility for it. Separating yourself fr om others. If you r each the
point wher e you feel that the world is divided into
“them” and “us,” you will naturally identif y your
side as the good one and choose it. This isolation
increases a sense of fear and suspicion, which the
shadow thrives on. Struggling to k eep evil at bay. At the bottom of the
cycle, people ar e convinced that evil lurks
everywher e. What has r eally happened is that the
creators of illusion ar e being fooled by their own
creation. Everything has come together to give the
shadow enor mous power. We’ve tak en the ﬁrst step in r emoving the shadow’s power
by exposing the pr ocess that fuels it. Ther e’s a downwar d
spiral. It begins by thinking you have to k eep secr ets, and
then those secr ets, instead of r emaining quietly hidden,
become the sour ce of shame and guilt. Self -judgment
enters. This is too painful to live with, so you sear ch for
someone outside yourself to blame. The spiral leads
eventually to isolation and denial. By the time you ﬁnd
yourself struggling with sin and evil, you have long ago lost
sight of the basic fact that would save you, which isn’t
redemption fr om the Devil. The basic fact is that you
enter ed this whole pr ocess willingly by making simple
choices. Ther efore to escape you only need to mak e the
opposite choices. I’ve divided those choices into four categories with steps
to tak e towar d making them:
1. Stop pr ojecting. 2. Detach and let go. 3. Give up self -judgment. 4. Rebuild your emotional body. The basic life choices ar e available to anyone. W e mak e
the opposite choices all the time. The shadow has
persuaded us to blame others rather than tak e
responsibility. It tells us that we ar e unworthy of love and
respect. It pr omotes anger and fear as natural r eactions tolife. All of us ar e entangled in these disastr ous choices. They
stiﬂe our lives and r emove all joy. So nothing is mor e urgent
than to tur n the pr ocess ar ound, and the sooner the better. Step 1: Stop Projecting
The shadow, accor ding to Jung, tells us to ignor e our own
weaknesses and pr oject them on others. T o avoid feeling
that we’r e not good enough, we see others ar ound us as not
good enough. Countless e xamples come to mind. Some ar e
trivial, while others ar e a matter of life and death. The latest
movie starlet is criticized for losing too much weight while a
whole nation becomes mor e obese. Antiwar movements ar e
denounced as unpatriotic, while everyone is paying tax es to
kill citizens of a country that has never done America any
harm. Everyone uses pr ojection as a defense to avoid


  to all your sense
perceptions, all your thinking. Becoming aware of a wareness is the arising of inner
stillness. ***

Any disturbing noise can be as helpful as silence. How? By dropping your inner
resistance to the noise, by allowing it to be as it  is, this acceptance also takes you
into that realm of inner peace that is stillness. Whenever you deeply accept this moment as it is — n o matter what form it takes
— you are still, you are at peace. ***

Pay attention to the gap — the gap between two thou ghts, the brief, silent space
between words in a conversation, between the notes of a piano or flute, or the gap
between the in-breath and out-breath. When you pay attention to those gaps, awareness of “something” becomes — just
awareness. The formless dimension of pure conscious ness arises from within you
and replaces identification with form. ***

True intelligence operates silently. Stillness is w here creativity and solutions to
problems are found. ***

Is stillness just the absence of noise and content? No, it is intelligence itself — the
underlying consciousness out of which every form is  born. And how could that be
separate from who you are? The form that you think you are came out of that and is
being sustained by it. It is the essence of all galaxies and blades of gra ss; of all flowers, trees, birds, and
all other forms. ***

Stillness is the only thing in this world that has no form. But then, it is not really a
thing, and it is not of this world. ***

When you look at a tree or a human being in stillne ss, who is looking? Something
deeper than the person. Consciousness is looking at  its creation. In the Bible, it says that God created the world an d saw that it was good. That is
what you see when you look from stillness without t hought. ***

Do you need more knowledge? Is more information goi ng to save the world, or
faster computers, more scientific or intellectual a nalysis? Is it not wisdom that
humanity needs most at this time? But what is wisdom and where is it to be found? Wis dom comes with the ability to
be still. Just look and just listen. No more is nee ded. Being still, looking, and
listening activates the non-conceptual intelligence  within you. Let stillness direct
your words and actions. Chapter 2
Beyond the Thinking Mind

The human condition: Lost in thought. ***

Most people spend their entire life imprisoned with in the confines of their own
thoughts. They never go beyond a narrow, mind-made,  personalized sense of self
that is conditioned by the past. In you, as in each human being, there is a dimensio n of consciousness far deeper
than thought. It is the very essence of who you are. We may call it presence,
awareness, the unconditioned consciousness. In the ancient teachings, it is the
Christ within, or your Buddha nature. Finding that dimension frees you and the world from  the suffering you inflict on
yourself and others when the mind-made “little me” is all you know and runs your
life. Love, joy, creative expansion, and lasting in ner peace cannot come into your
life except through that unconditioned dimension of  consciousness. If you can recognize, even occasionally, the though ts that go through your mind as
just thoughts, if you can witness your own mental-e motional reactive patterns as
they happen, then that dimension is already emergin g in you as the awareness in
which thoughts and emotions happen — the timeless i nner space in which the
content of your life unfolds. ***

The stream of thinking has enormous momentum that c an easily drag you along
with it. Every thought pretends that it matters so much. It wants to draw your
attention in completely. Here is a new spiritual practice for you: don’t tak e your thoughts too seriously. ***

How easy it is for people to become trapped in thei r conceptual prisons. The human mind, in its desire to know, understand, and control, mistakes its opinions and viewpoints for the truth. It says: thi s is how it is. You have to be
larger than thought to realize that however you int erpret “your life” or someone
else’s life or behavior, however you judge any situ ation, it is no more than a
viewpoint, one of many possible perspectives. It is  no more than a bundle of
thoughts. But reality is one unified whole, in whic h all things are interwoven,
where nothing exists in and by itself. Thinking fra gments reality — it cuts it up into
conceptual bits and pieces. The thinking mind is a useful and powerful tool, bu t it is also very limiting when it
takes over your life completely, when you don’t rea lize that it is only a small aspect
of the consciousness that you are

***

Wisdom is not a product of thought. The deep knowin g that is wisdom arises
through the simple act of giving someone or somethi ng your full attention. Attention is primordial intelligence, consciousness  itself. It dissolves the barriers
created by conceptual thought, and with this comes the recognition that nothing
exists in and by itself. It joins the perceiver and  the perceived in a unifying ﬁeld of
awareness. It is the healer of separation. ***

Whenever you are immersed in compulsive thinking, y ou are avoiding what is. You
don’t want to be where you are. Here, Now. ***

Dogmas — religious, political, scientific— arise ou t of the erroneous belief that
thought can encapsulate reality or the truth. Dogma s are collective conceptual
prisons. And the strange thing is that people love their prison cells because they
give them a sense of security and a false sense of “I know.”

Nothing has inflicted more suffering on humanity th an its dogmas. It is true that
every dogma crumbles sooner or later, because reali ty will eventually disclose its
falseness; however, unless the basic delusion of it  is seen for what it is, it will be
replaced by others. What is this basic delusion? Identification with th ought. ***
Spiritual awakening is awakening from the dream of thought. ***

The realm of consciousness is much vaster than thou ght can grasp. When you no
longer believe everything you think, you step out o f thought and see clearly that the
thinker is not who you are. ***

The mind exists in a state of “not enough” and so i s always greedy for more. When
you are identified with mind, you get bored and res tless very easily. Boredom
means the mind is hungry for more stimulus, more fo od for thought, and its hunger
is not being satisﬁed. When you feel bored, you can satisfy the mind’s hun ger by picking up a magazine,
making a phone call, switching on the TV, surfing t he web, going shopping, or —
and this is not uncommon — transferring the mental sense of lack and its need for
more to the body and satisfy it briefly by ingestin g more food. Or you can stay bored and restless and observe what  it feels like to be bored and
restless. As you bring awareness to the feeling, th ere is suddenly some space and
stillness around it, as it were. A little at first,  but as the sense of inner space grows,
the feeling of boredom will begin to diminish in in tensity and significance. So even
boredom can teach you who you are and who you are n ot. You discover that a “bored person” is not who you a re. Boredom is simply a
conditioned energy movement within you. Neither are  you an angry, sad, or fearful
person. Boredom, anger, sadness, or fear are not “y ours,” not personal. They are
conditions of the human mind. They come and go. Nothing that comes and goes is you. “I am bored.” Who knows this? “I am angry, sad, afraid.” Who knows this? You are the knowing, not the condition that is know n.

***
Prejudice of any kind implies that you are identifi ed with the thinking mind. It
means you don’t see the other human being anymore, but only your own concept of
that human being. To reduce the aliveness of anothe r human being to a concept is
already a form of violence. ***

Thinking that is not rooted in awareness becomes se lf-serving and dysfunctional. Cleverness devoid of wisdom is extremely dangerous and destructive. That is the
current state of most of humanity. The amplificatio n of thought as science and
technology, although intrinsically neither good nor  bad, has also become
destructive because so often the thinking out of wh ich it comes has no roots in
awareness. The next step in human evolution is to transcend th ought. This is now our urgent
task. It doesn’t mean not to think anymore, but sim ply not to be completely
identified with thought, possessed by thought. ***

Feel the energy of your inner body. Immediately men tal noise slows down or
ceases. Feel it in your hands, your feet, your abdo men, your chest. Feel the life that
you are, the life that animates the body. The body then becomes a doorway, so to speak, into a deeper sense of al


er ge. Wayne:  I think … I don’t think I’ve had family for a long time. I
think my family was killed by invaders of some kind. I ran away and
escaped. Mira:  Let’s go a little forward to another moment in the lifetime
and see what happens. Wayne:  I’m … I can’t get anyone to notice me. I’m looking for
clothes, for something to keep me warm. So I steal them and no one
notices. Mira:  Do you still have the ruby on your finger? Wayne:  It’s green. Mira:  How did you get it? Wayne:  I found it. Mira:  You found it? That’ s a good treasure to find. What do you do
with it? Wayne:  It’s meaningless. It doesn’ t mean anything to me. I feel like
I’m lost and I can’t get anyone to realize what has happened. I ran
away for a long time. I have sores on me and cuts. Mira:  Tell me about these sores and these cuts. How did they come
to be? Wayne:  I think from scratches from the trees, thorns, and bushes. Wandering through that kind of brush. I haven’ t eaten in a while.Mira:  What do you do next? Wayne:  I’m going up to people and asking. I’m just invisible to
them. They don’t know I’m there. I could take anything I wanted. I’m
like a ghost. Pale. Just wearing a little loincloth. I’m not afraid  at all. Just can’ t figure out why nobody is paying attention. Mira:  Let’s go a little forward and see what happens next. Wayne:  I just gather up fruits and figs and dried fruit, oranges,
apricots. And I have no pockets to stuff them in, so I just take this tray
of treasu res and go back. That doesn’ t make any sense. I just go back
into the brush. Mira:  And that’ s where you eat them? Wayne:  Yeah, but I’m … I think I had a sister, and I think she’s still
alive. I want to take this stuf f back to her and find her. Mira:  Is she there when you go back? Or are you looking for her
now? Wayne:  Yeah, I’m wandering. Looking back … there’ s a fireplace,
and the fire is out. There are bodies around. People have been killed. My father ’s been killed. He’ s old. There’ s women weeping. Mira:  Has your mom been killed as well? Wayne:  I don’ t have a mom. Mira:  How about any other family? Y our sister? Wayne:  She’s hiding by an older woman. I guess it’s her
grandmother. I think her moth er has been gone. She’s been taken
away. She’ s little. She’ s younger than me. She’ s got blonde hair. Mira:  How do you feel seeing all this? Wayne:  Sick. Angry. Sad. And I bring  her food—the apricots, the
dried apricot, oranges, and she’ s only three, four.Mira:  What do you call her? Wayne:  Samantha. Sam. Sammy. Mira:  And how does she call you when she wants to speak with
you? Wayne:  She just smiles. She doesn’ t talk. Mira:  Let’s go a little forward and see what happens to her and to
you. Wayne:  She’s too afraid  to move, and I feel we have to get out of
there. I try to persuade her that we have to leave, but she doesn’ t want
to leave. The old people are still unharmed, grieving. I can see dead
bodies around me in this enclave that is there. Mira:  Has it been more than your father who has been killed? Wayne:  That’s my father. He’s lying there helpless. He’s dead. Blood coming out of his mouth. He makes no sound. It’s so weird. His
grandmother is dressed like an Arab woman. My father had a pair of
brown pants on, a belt, no shoes, and the pants only come to his
calves. They’re tight. He had no shirt on. And he’s been ambushed. And the grandmother is just dressed in all black clothes. Mira:  What are the old people saying to each other? What do they
think has happened? Wayne:  The women are just crying. They have obviously been
attacked, and I’m just bewildere d by how I am going to take care of
this mess. Mira:  What do you do next? Wayne:  I try to find something to dig with to bury my father
because there are flies flying around his body now. Mira:  Do you find anything?Wayne:  Just some pieces of wood. And I try to find a place to put
him in. Mira:  Is anybody helping you? Wayne:  No, there’ s nobody to help me. I’m alone here except for
my little sister with these pigtails. Mira:  And now let’s go forward in time to another important day
and see what happens in this lifetime. Wayne:  I actually just leave, I just leave and take care of that. Mira:  Do you leave your sister behind? Wayne:  Yeah, I think I do. I can’ t believe it, but I do. Mira:  And where do you go? Wayne:  I go to the sea. I go to a place where there’ s a lot of boats. It’s before modern boats. It’ s like tall masted boats. Mira:  What do you do? Wayne:  I’m older now. I get passage to someplace, but I don’ t know
where. And I agree to work. I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t
know where the ship is going. I don’t know these people. I don’t
speak their language. Mira:  What kind of work do you do on the ship? Wayne:  I’m working in the galley. I think it’ s going to Greece. Mira:  See the ship arriving and you getting off, and see where you
are. Wayne:  I’m much older. I’m 22. Strong. No shirt. Like a knapsack
with all my possessions, which is almost nothing, and boots … same
kind of pants my father had on. Mira:  Where do you go next? What do you do next?Wayne:  I’m just looki ng for a place to stay. And these people
befriend me who live in a hut. Greek. Mira:  What does the hut look like? Wayne:  It looks like an igloo without ice, just sort of round. Trying
to figure out when this is. Mira:  Who lives in the hut? Wayne:  A husband and a wife and … that’s it. A man and a wife. Older people. And they love me very much. They work the land. Agricultural. Olives. Olive trees. Grapes. Very poor. Lot of dust. I stay
there. I don’t like working the land. I go into the village, and I don’t
want to work the land. I don’ t want to do that. I meet a woman who works at … serving wine, I think it’s wine. And I don’t drink it. These casks, these containers of liquid … she
pours it into the cups. I’m attrac ted to her. She has the face of … it’s
clearly her. And we fall in love. This little Greek … she’s got long
black hair, very narrow face. And a little mouth. And big eyes. And
she’s young: 16, 17, 18. She just flirts and wants to know why I’m
dressed the way I am, why I look the way I do and how I look so
different from her. Because I’m fair, and she’s not. She holds my
hand. And I fall in love with her. Almost instantly. And I take a job on
a ship, and leave. W e’re married. And the ship is going all the way to the New World. It’s explorers. There’ s talk of islands and people who live on them all across the sea. And that excites  me. And I go, and I leave her. She’s pregnant. But I
leave anyway. That just sounds so enticing to find something that no
one’s ever seen before. It’s like a great adventure. And I’m gone for a
long time. Like years. We go to … we discover natives and new
things, new people. A lot of people dying at sea, bodies are being
thrown out at sea. A lot of scurvy, a lot sickness, a lot of vomiting, a
lot of people dying. And we find a place. Española? I don’t know
what that means. Dark people. Mira:  Do you find that in the middle of the ocean?Wayne:  Yeah. After months, six, seven, eight months of sea. Just
eating few berries and things that are left. We finally hit land. I have a
beard. But I’m strong. A lot of people dying. But


. What’s strange is that we
didn’t lear n discipline fr om that perspective, so much as a
weird displacement of our sense of power away fr om
ourselves and onto e xternal sour ces. What we lost was a
sense of our own power. And what we lear ned was fear, fear
that we wer en’t good enough, just the way we ar e.
Fear does not pr omote lear ning. It warps us. It stunts us. It mak es us neur otic. And by the time we wer e teenagers,
most of us wer e sever ely crack ed. Our love, our hearts, our
real “self” wer e constantly invalidated by people who didn’t
love us and by people who did. In the absence of love, we
began slowly but sur ely to fall apart. Years ago, I told myself not to wor ry about a devil. I
remember thinking that ther e’s no for ce of evil out stalking
the planet. That, I told myself, is all in my mind. Then Irealized this is not good news. Since every thought cr eates
experience, ther e’s no worse place it could possibly be. While it’s true ther e isn’t an actual devil out ther e grabbing
for our souls, ther e is a tendency in our minds, which can be
amazingly str ong, to per ceive without love. Having been taught since we wer e childr en that we ar e
separate, ﬁnite beings, we have a very har d time when it
comes to love. L ove feels lik e a void that thr eatens to
overwhelm us, and that’s because, in a certain sense, it is
and it does. It overwhelms our small self, our lonely sense of
separateness. Since that sense of separateness is who we
think we ar e, we feel lik e we’ll die without it. What’s dying is
the frightened mind, so the love inside us can get a chance
to breathe. In Course ter minology, our entir e network of fearful
perceptions, all stemming fr om that ﬁrst false belief in our
separation fr om God and one another, is called the ego. The
word ego is used diﬀer ently her e than the way in which it is
often used in moder n psychology. It is being used as the
ancient Gr eeks used it—as the notion of a small, separated
self. It is a false belief about ourselves, a lie about who and
what we r eally ar e. Even though that lie is our neur osis, and
living that lie is a ter rible anxiety, it’s amazing how r esistant
we ar e to healing the split. Thought separated fr om love is a pr ofound miscr eation. It’s our own power tur ned against ourselves. The moment
the mind ﬁrst deviated fr om love—when ‘the Son of God
forgot to laugh’—an entir e illusionary world came into being. A Course in Miracles  calls this moment our “detour into
fear,” or “separation fr om God.”
The ego has a pseudo -life of its own, and lik e all life
forms, ﬁghts har d for its survival. As uncomfortable as ourlife might be, as painful or even desperate at times, the life
we’re living is the life we know, and we cling to the old
rather than try something new. Most of us ar e so sick of
ourselves, in one way or another. It’s unbelievable how
tenaciously we cling to what we’ve prayed to be r eleased
from. The ego is lik e a virus in the computer that attacks the
core system. It seems to show us a dark parallel universe, a
realm of fear and pain that doesn’t actually e xist but
certainly seems to. Lucifer was the most beautiful angel in
Heaven befor e he fell. The ego is our self -love tur ned into
self-hatr ed. The ego is lik e a gravitational for ce ﬁeld, built up over
eons of fearful thinking, which draws us away fr om the love
in our hearts. The ego is our mental power tur ned against
ourselves. It is clever, lik e we ar e, and smooth-talking, lik e
we ar e, and manipulative, lik e we ar e. Remember all the talk
about a silver -tongued devil? The ego doesn’t come up to us
and say, “ Hi, I’m your self -loathing.” It’s not stupid, because
we’re not. R ather, it says things lik e, “Hi, I’m your adult,
matur e, rational self. I’ll help you look out for number one.”
Then it pr oceeds to counsel us to look out for ourselves, at
the e xpense of others. It teaches us selﬁshness, gr eed,
judgment, and small-mindedness. But r emember, ther e’s
only one of us her e: What we give to others, we give to
ourselves. What we withhold fr om others, we withhold fr om
ourselves. In any moment when we choose fear instead of
love, we deny ourselves the e xperience of P aradise. T o the
extent that we abandon love, to that e xtent we will feel it
has abandoned us. 4. HOL Y SPIRIT“The Holy Spirit is the call to awak en and be
glad.”
The power of the mind is itself neutral. It is the power given
to us fr eely by God. ‘W e have the fr ee will to think whatever
we want to think, but no thoughts ar e neutral. Ther e is no
such thing as an idle thought. All thought cr eates for m on
some level.’ Nothing can deprive us of our own cr eativity. We are personally r esponsible for what dir ection we apply it
in. Taking r esponsibility for our lives, then, means taking
responsibility for our thoughts. And praying to God to “save”
our lives, means praying for Him to save us fr om our own
negative thoughts. Since only God e xists, and everything else is an illusion,
then the eﬀects of lovelessness ar e only happening within
the ego’s hallucination. The wor d sin means loveless
perception. It is an ar chery ter m. It means “ you missed the
mark.” So God isn’t angry at our sins because they’r e not
really happening. He doesn’t see sins, but only er rors in
perception. He doesn’t want to punish us, but to heal us. The way He heals us is thr ough a for ce of conciousness
called the Holy Spirit. The Course teaches that the Holy Spirit was cr eated in
the moment when the ﬁrst fearful thought was thought. As
perfect love, God cor rects all mistak es the moment they
occur. He couldn’t for ce us back to love, because love
doesn’t for ce. It does, however, cr eate alter natives. The
Holy Spirit is God’s alter native to fear. The Holy Spirit was God’s answer to the ego. He is God’s
“eter nal communication link with His separated Sons,” a
bridge back to gentle thoughts, “the gr eat T ransfor mer ofPerception.” Of ten the Holy Spirit is r eferred to as the
“Comforter.” God can’t for ce His way back into our thinking,
because that would be violating our fr ee will. But the Holy
Spirit is a for ce of consciousness within us that “delivers us
from Hell,” or fear, whenever we consciously ask Him to,
working with us on the Causal level, transfor ming our
thoughts fr om fear to love. W e cannot call on him in vain. Having been cr eated by God, He’s built into the computer. He comes to us in many for ms, fr om a conversation with a
friend to a serious spiritual path; fr om a lyric in a song to an
excellent therapist. He is the ine xorable drive towar d
wholeness that e xists within, no matter how disoriented or
crazy we get. Something within us always longs to go home,
and He is that something. The Holy Spirit guides us to a diﬀer ent per ception of
reality : one that is based on love. His cor rection of our
perception is called the A tonement. He r eminds us that, in
every situation, the love you’ve given is r eal, and the love
you have r eceived is r eal. Nothing else e xists. Anything
other than love is an illusion. In or der to escape the illusion
and ﬁnd inner peace, r emember that only love in a situation
is real. Everything else is a mistak e and does not e xist. It
must be for gotten. W e must consciously be willing to let it
go. The only thing lacking in any situation is our own
awar eness of love. In asking the Holy Spirit to help us, we
are expressing our willingness to per ceive a situation
diﬀer ently. We give up our own interpr etations and opinions,
and ask that they be r eplaced by His. When in pain, we


 where true
change can occur and where the past can be dissolved is the Now. All negativity is caused by an accumulation of psychological time and
denial of the present. Unease, an xiety, tension, stress, worry — all forms
of f ear — are caused by too much future, and not enough presence. Guilt, re gret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all  forms of
nonfor giveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence. Most people find it dif ficult to believe that a state of consciousness
totally free of al l negativity is po ssible. And yet this is the liberated state
to which  all spiritual teachings p oint. It is the promise of salvation, not in
an illusory future but right here and now. Y ou may  find it hard to recogniz e that time is the cause of your suf fering
or your problem s. Y ou believe t hat they are caused by specific situations
in your life, and seen from a conventional viewpoint, this is true. But
until you have d ealt with the basic problem-making dysfunctio n of the
mind — its attachment to past and future and denial of the Now —
problems are actually interchangeable. If all your problems or p erceived
causes o f suf fering or unhappiness were miraculously removed  for you
today, but you h ad not become m ore present, more conscious, you wouldsoon fin d yourse lf with a simila r set of problems or causes of s uf fering,
like a shadow that follows you wherever you go. Ultimately, there is only
one problem: the time-bound mind itself. I cannot believe that I could ever r each a point wher e I am completely
fr ee of my pr oblems. Y ou are  right. Y ou can never r each  that point because you ar e  at that
point now. There is  no salvation in time. Y ou cannot be free in the future. Presence
is the key to freedom, so you can only be free now. FINDING THE LIFE UNDERNEA TH YOUR LIFE SITUA TION
I don ’ t s ee how I can be fr ee now. As it happens, I am extr emely  unhappy
with my life at the moment. This is a fact, and I would be deluding myself
if I tried  to convince myself that all is well when it definitely isn’ t. T o me,
the pr esent moment is very unhappy; it is not liberating at all. What
keeps m e going  is the hope or possibility of some impr oveme nt in the
futur e. Y ou think that your attention is in the present moment when it’ s actually
taken up completely by time. Y ou cannot be both unhappy and  fully
present in the Now. What yo u refer to as your “life ” should more accurately be ca lled your
“life situation. ” It is psychological time: past and future. Certain things
in the past didn’ t go the way you wanted them to go. Y ou  are still
resisting what happened in the past, and now you are resisting what is. Hope is what ke eps you going, b ut hope keeps you focused on the future,
and this  continued focus perpetuates your denial of the Now and
therefore your unhappiness. It is true that my pr esent life situation is the r esult of things that
happened in the past, but it is s till my pr esent situation, and be ing stuck
in it is what makes me unhappy. For get about your life situation for a while and pay attention to your life. What is the differ ence. Y our life situation exists in time. Y our life is now. Y our life situation is mind-stuf f. Y our life is real. Find the  “narrow gate that leads to life. ” It is called the Now. Narrow
your life down to this moment. Y our life situation may be full of
problems — most life situation s are — but find out if you have any
problem at this moment. Not tomorrow or in ten minutes, but now. Do
you have a problem now. When y ou are full of problems, there is no room for anything new to
enter, no  room for a solution. S o whenever you can, make som e room,
create some space, so that you find the life underneath your life situation. Use you r senses  fully. Be where  you are. Look around. Just look, don’ t
interpret. See the light, shapes,  colors, textures. Be aware of the silent
presence of each thing. Be aware of the space that allows ever ything to
be. Listen to t he sounds; don’ t judge them. Listen to the  silence
underneath the sounds. T ouch something — anything — and feel and
acknowledge its Being. Observ e the rhythm of your breathing; feel the
air f lowing in a nd out, feel th e life ener gy inside your bod y. Alloweverything to be, within and w ithout. Allow the “isness” of all things. Move deeply into the Now. Y ou are  leaving behind the dea dening world of mental abstraction, of
time. Y ou are getting out of the insane mind that is draining yo u of life
ener gy, just as it is slowly poisoning and destroying the Earth. Y ou are
awakening out of the dream of time into the present. ALL PROBLEMS ARE ILLUSIONS OF THE MIND
It fe els as if a heavy bur den has been lifted. A sense of lightne ss. I feel
clear. but my pr oblems ar e still ther e waiting for me, ar en’ t they. They
haven’ t been solved. Am I not just temporarily evading them. If you found yourself in paradise, it wouldn’ t be long before your mind
would say “yes, but. ” Ultimately, this is not about solv ing your
problems. It’ s about realizing that there ar e  no problems. Only situations
— to be dealt with now, or to be left alone and accepted as part of the
“isness” of the present moment until they change or can  b e dealt with. Problems are mind-made and ne ed time to survive. They canno t survive
in the actuality of the Now. Focus y our attention on the Now and tell me what problem yo u have at
this moment. I am  no t getting any answer because it is impossible to have a problem
when your attention is fully in the Now. A situation that needs to be
either dealt with or accepted — yes. Why ma ke it into a problem. W hy
make anything into a problem. Isn’ t life challenging enough as it is. What do you need problems for. The mind unconsciously loves
problems because they give you an identity of sorts. This is normal, and
it is insane. “P roblem” means that you are dwelling on a situation
mentally withou t there being a true intention or possibility o f taking
action n ow and that you are unc onsciously making it part of yo ur sense
of se lf. Y ou bec ome so overwhelmed by your life situation that you lose
your sen se of life, of Being. Or you are carrying in your mind the insane
burden of a hundred things that you will or may have to do in the future
instead of focusing your attention on the one thing that you can  do now. When you create a problem, you create pain. All it takes is a simple
choice, a simple decision: no matter what happens, I will create no more
pain for myself. I will create no more problems. Although it is  a simple
choice, i t is also very radical. Y ou won’ t make that choice unles s you are
truly fed  up with suf fering, unless you have truly had enough. And you
won’ t be able to go through with it unless you access the power of the
Now. If you create no more pain for yourself, then you create no more
pain for others. Y ou also no long er contaminate the beautiful Earth, your
inner space, and the collective  human psyche with the nega tivity of
problem-making. If you have ever been in a life-or -death emer gency situation, you will
know that it was n’ t a problem. The mind didn’ t have time  t o fool around
and mak e it into a problem. In a true emer gency, the mind stops; you
become totally present in the Now, and something infinitely more
powerful takes over. This is why there are many reports of ordinary
people suddenly becoming capable of incredibly courageous deeds. Inany emer gency, either you survive or you don’ t. Either way, it is not a
problem. Some people get angry when they hear me say that problems are
illusions. I am threatening to tak e away their sense of who they a re. They
have invested much time in a f alse sense of self. For many years, they
have unconscio usly defined their whole identity in terms of their
problems or their suf fering. Who would they be without it. A great deal of what people sa y, think, or do is actually motivated by
fear, wh ich of course is always linked with having your focus on the
future and being out of touch w ith the Now. As there are no problems in
the Now, there is no fear either.


 of Reno, Nevada. “Nor do I find it to be a cure or panacea for
cancer. The expe rience of my clinic, like that of many clinics worldwide, is
that amygdalin has the ability to improve the patient’ s sense of wellbeing,
relieve the pain of cancer, and reduce the requirement for pain
medication.”12
Cancer specialist Etienne Callebout, M.D., of London, England, says:
“Amygdalin deserves to have a regular place in cancer therapy. It is
nontoxic and water -soluble, and there is considerable evidence that it works
against cancer.”13Laetrile has strong cancer -fighting potential with regard to secondary
cancers, including a 60 percent reduction in lung metastases; other research
indicates it can extend the lives of both breast and bone cancer patients.14,15
The legitimacy of supplementing with laetrile is assured by the success of
its ongoing use for cancer these  past forty years. Although pain reduction
success takes a minimum of ten days to two weeks of daily administration,
laetrile is indica ted for bone metastases. Dr. Brodie prefers a dosage of 9
grams per intravenous (IV) application. Those not taking IV laetrile who
want it may supplement with 500 mg of oral amygdalin three times a day,
continuing with this dosage even after the physical evidence of cancer has
disappeared. TAKING  WOBE-MUGOS® OR MEGAZYME  FORTE®
The two imported German enzymes Wobe-Mugos® and Megazyme
Forte® are derived from both vegetable and animal sources. Both of them
are protein-digesting (proteolytic) enzymes used defensively against
tumors. They contain the enzymatic substances pancreatin, papain,
bromelain, trypsin, chymotrypsin, lipase, amylase, and rutin (a
bioflavonoid), which are indica ted primarily when the sick person suffers
from severe, excessive gas. Some reports advise that these two enzymes are helpful in shrinking
malignant masse s. Their administration is in the form of injecti ons, tablets,
or suppositories. These supplements offer the degenerative diseased patient
an enhancement of whole-body metabolism. CAUTION IN  TAKING  BREWER’S  YEAST
Originally Dr. Max Gerson had made brewer ’s yeast a part of his
therapeutic program, but that was long before the advent of Candida
albicans  infection, which brings about the yeast syndrome. And it had been
introduced by him as treatment for cancer patients prior to his use of liver
juice. Under most circumstances today, brewer ’s yeast is seldom recommended
any longer for cancer therap y owing to an ever-increasing risk ofcandidiasis, which brings on extreme abdominal distension and gas. Little
clinical benefit has been observed from taking brewer ’s yeast. In cance r patients, negative responses have been noted after ingestion of
brewer ’s yeast, and it is speculated that the substance is no longer as
effective as in Dr. Gerson’ s day. That’ s because cancer patients have
under gone an increase in their acidity; thus, brewer ’s yeast is not for them. They seem to have a much greater presence of the pathologi cal candida
organisms in their bodies because of dietary changes and other
environmental factors. COFFEE  ENEMAS  ARE HIGHL Y RECOMMENDED
As advised in chapters 12 and 13, five 32-ounce enemas made with
coffee beverage are highly recommended for patients suffering from
degenerative diseases. They should be taken each day in slowly diminishing
numbers for a variable period of up to two years. Each coffee enema helps
to purge the colon and liver of accumulated toxins, dead cells, and waste
products. The coffee enema is prepared by brewing organic caffeinated beans and
letting the brew  cool to body temperature, then delivering it via an enema
bag. Coffee contains choleretics, substances that increase the flow of toxin-
rich bile from the gallbladder. The coffee enema is probab ly the only
pharmaceutically effective choleretic noted in the medical literat ure that can
be safely used many times daily without toxic ef fects.16
Dr. Gerson recognized early in his therapeutic approach that the coffee
enema is effective in stimulati ng a complex enzyme system involved in
liver detoxification, which we described in some of our prior chapters as the
glutathione S-transferase enzym e system. The increased activity of these
enzymes ensures  that free radical activity is greatly diminished and that the
pathology-producing actions of carcinogens are blocked.17
Caffeine additionally stimulates dilation of blood vessels and relaxation
of smooth muscles, which furth er increases bile flow; this effect does not
happen when the coffee is consu med daily. In fact, the only beneficial way
to ingest cof fee is through the rectum. ROUTINE  CAST OR OIL TREA TMENTIn follow ing the Gerson Therapy, the application of castor oil treatment is
routine. Dr. Gerson recommended its use by mouth and by enema for the
elimination of toxic diarrhea, vomiting of bile, and other stron g reactions. He wrote, “These strong reactio ns are actually indications of the beginning
of improvement, with increased bile production, greater activity  of the liver
and elimination of toxins and poisons. After a period of one or two days,
patients feel greatly relieved, show better circulation, complexio n and color,
and have more appetite.”18
Tumors and cysts of all sizes may also be reduced in volume or
eliminated altogether with the application of castor oil packs. In an
examination of the immune-stimulating properties of castor oil packs
conducted on thirty-six people, those receiving the packs showed
significant improvement in the total production of lymphocytes and other
immune cells.19
CHANGING  MEDICA TIONS WITHIN THE  FIRST YEAR OF  TREA TMENT
Approximately one month after dischar ge from inpatient treatment (about
six to nine week s after admission to a Gerson hospital and start of therapy),
thyroid, potassium, and Lugol medications arc reduced. Other supplements
are generally kept at initial levels. Potassium is typically dropp ed from 40
tsp per day to 20 tsp per day. Thyroid is lowered to between 2 and 3 grains
per day. Lugol is reduced to six drops per day. Often these medication levels are maintained for nine to fourteen  months,
and other supplemental adjustm ents will be based on diagnostic  blood work
and other means of diagnosis. This is a change in protocol from Dr.
Gerson’ s original presentation in his book as produced more than forty
years ago. Instead, patients must  now be kept on higher dosages of the three
main medicatio ns for longer periods than in Dr. Gerson’ s day. When
medications are reduced too rapidly, sick people often experience
difficulties and a slowing of recovery or a recurrence of disease. The standard Gerson Therapy is strictly for uncomplicated cancer or
other degenerative disease patients. Modifications from the program occur
when chemothe rapy is used before this natural and nontoxic protocol is
instituted. Unfor tunately, it becomes more difficult to treat the patient, as is
explained in chapter 15.References for Chapter Fourteen
1
Nordwall, S.P “Salt poisoning.” USA T oday. July 28, 1999, p. 6A. 2
Cousins, G. “Health today.” New Fr ontier. May 1994. 3
Valerian, V “On the toxic nature of fluorides, part 2: fluorides and
cancer.” Perceptions. September/October 1995, pp. 30–37. 4
Glasser, G. “Dental fluorosis: a legal time bomb.” Health Freedom News. July 1995, pp. 40–45. 5
Yiamouyiannis, J. Fluoride: The Aging Factor. Delawa re, Ohio : Health
Action Press, 1993, p. 61. 6
Gerson, M. A Cance r Therapy: Results of Fifty Cases and The Cure of
Advanced Canc er by Diet Therapy: A Summary of Thirty Years of
Clinical Experimentation,  5th ed. Bonita, Calif.: The Gerson Institute,
1990, p. 242. 7
The Gerson Therapy Physician ’s Training Manual. Bonita,  Calif.: The
Gerson Institute, 1996, p. 1 14. 8
Op. cit.,  Gerson, M., pp. 21 1, 212. 9
Diamond, WJ. ; Cowden, WL. ; Goldber g, B. An Alternative Medicine
Definitive Guid e to Cancer. Tiburon, California: Future Medicine
Publishing, Inc., 1997, p. 375. 10
Ibid.,  pp. 35, 36. 11
Leibovitz, B., et al. “Dietary supplements of vitamin E, beta carotene,
coenzyme Q10, and selenium protect tissues against lipid peroxidation in
rat tissue slices.” Journal of Applied Nutrition. 120:97–104, 1990.


ified World
Chapter Five: Resurrection
The Alchemy of Easter
The Remembrance
If God Is in the Cockpit
He Did Not Ignore
The MountainAwakening from the Dream
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Praise
Also by Marianne W illiamson
Copyright
About the Publisher
OceanofPDF.comPreface
I AM NOT  A Christian scholar, nor am I a Christian. I would not be qualified,
therefore, to write about the Jesus espoused by the ecclesiastic traditions of
the Christian church. Rather, this book  is based on my more than four decades as a student of
A Cours e in Miracles. The Course  is a self-study program of spiritual
psychotherapy based on universal spiritual themes, employing traditional
Christian concepts expressed in nondogmatic, psychotherapeutic ways. It is
a psycho logical training in the relinquishment of a thought system based on
fear in favor of a thought system based on love. I was a young woman in my twenties when I first picked up A Cours e in
Miracles, searchi ng for meaning and purpose in my life, no different from
anyone at that age then or now. I was intrigued by these words in its
introduction:
The Course can ther efore be summed up very simply in this way:
Nothing r eal can be thr eatened. Nothing unr eal exists. Herein lies the peace of God. Though I found those words compelling, I saw the pages of the book
were filled with traditional Christian language. I didn’ t relate to the
Course ’s terminology and simply thought it wasn’ t for me. A year later I was in such emotional turmoil that the terminol ogy in a
book didn’t matter to me, and I picked it up again. I was looking for content
that would soothe my soul and I didn’ t care what the words were. This
wasn’ t about theology, it was about my life.It quickly became clear that the Course  is not a religion but only
psychological guidance in the ways of forgiveness and love. I had always
been interested in universal spiritual concepts, sensing there is one Truth
spoken in many different ways. Many of the universal themes contained in
the Course  I had encountered elsewhere, including in my own religion,
Judaism. But what the Course  had offered me that I hadn’ t found before
were practical ways to apply these concepts to my daily life. From the beginning I was bemused by the fact that no author was
named on the cover of A Course in Miracles. The more I read it, however,
the more I saw an interesting number of statements written in the first
person. “‘No man cometh unto the Father but by me’ does not mean that I am in
any way separate or different from you except in time”* (T-2). * I remember
reading that and thinking, Wait, what? Once I read “I am the Atoneme nt”*
(T-7), I was like, Okay, I get it. As a child I never heard much about Jesus one way or the other. I was
just told we read “the other Bible.” For Jews, there is a distinc t difference
between a reaction to Jesus and a reaction to Christian ity, whic h should
come as a surprise to no one. Jesus was a Jew; he was one of us. Institutional forces within the Christian religion, on the other hand, have
often been a source of violen t antisemitism and murderous oppression
through millennia. None of that has anything to do with Jesus, however. Christia nity and
Jesus are two distinctly different things. At times, the Christian religion has
been known to uphold the highe st ideals of Jesus, while at other times and
places it decidedly has not. At times, as it says in the Course, “some bitter
idols have been  made of him who came only to be brother to the world”*
(MT-88). My interest in Jesus has never included a desire to convert to the Christian
religion, a fact natural enough to me but that had required an explanation to
my parents. When I first became a student of the Course, they were
understandably perplexed. I remember my mother saying to me haltingly,
“So, help me understand. You’re going to stay in California... and give
talks... about Jesus... to Gentiles!?” I slowly nodded. After a few
seconds she simply shook her head, raised an eyebrow, and asked me what I
was going to wear.My father seeme d more concerned. One day he took me aside and said
very intently, “It’s the same God, isn’ t it?”
I said, “Y es, Daddy! Of course it is!”
I remember his looking at me sternly and saying pointedly, “Okay, I just
don’t want to hear anything about a dif ferent God.”
No, it’ s decidedly not a dif ferent God! Permission granted. As I read the Course, I found  the concepts so fascinating that I naively
assumed my Christian friends must sit around and talk about things like
Christ, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus all the time. I figured I just didn’ t know
that because they didn’ t do it when I was in the room! Silly me. What I
came to realize was something quite different. Many Christians  I knew had
even more aversion to all that Chris tian terminology  than I had had. I was
simply ignorant of certain concepts; they were ambivalent about them. The Course  frees Jesus from  the grip of an institutional authority that
seeks to monopolize and ultimately constrict his identity. For some the
Course  deviates from Christian principles, while for others it explains them
in a way that makes sense for the first time. As it says in the Course, its
practitioners come from “all religions and no religion.” They are simply
those who have heard the call for a higher, transformative love. I learned that many Christians as well as non-Christians are filled with a
lot of questions about Jesus. Reading the Course, I was learning some new
ideas, while some of my friends were unlearning old ones. I have seen
thousands of people over the years, both Christian and non-Christian, find
profound psych ological and spiritual value in A Course in Miracles. The
mystic Jesus is reflective of themes at the heart of all the great religions of
the world. He is not a divider into religious silos but rather a connector of
human hearts. A Course in Miracles  does not ask us to believe in God, or in Jesus. It
asks us to believe in each other. It argues that belief itself is meaningless,
but that experie nce is everything. Some believe A Course in Miracles  is a
work of genius created by a clinical psychology professor named Helen
Schucman at Columbia University in the 1960s and 1970s, while others
believe it was written by the Holy Spirit speaking through her. The power of
the Course  is expressed not through the identification of its author but in the
practice of its principles. I feel grateful that I came to the Course  with no previou s understanding
of who Jesus was or is. My mind was devoid of preconceived notions, andat no point during my more than four decades of studying it have I felt
called away from my own religion. What the Course  is askin g us to convert
is our hearts, and that is all. If anything, my study of A Course in Miracles
has connected me more deeply to the mystical roots of Judaism. This book is about the Jesus I know as a student of A Cours e in
Miracles. All the concepts you will read here are based on my
understanding of his teachings. Everyone has their own experience of A
Course in Miracles  and of its author. This is simply mine. OceanofPDF.comIntroduction
MANY  YEARS AGO, I went through a painful ordeal. It was a very rough
period of my life. During that time I had an odd experience. As I lay awake night after
night unable to sleep, I began to sense a strange energy—a shadowy
presence like that of a very thin, tall man, sitting upright at the end of my
bed perpendicul ar to how I was lying. He was simply there. Not doing
anything. Not looking at me. Just there. I had been a student of A Course in Miracles  for a while at that point,
and I was familiar with feeling God’ s presence. But I hadn’ t had any
specific sense of relationship to Jesus. Now, seeing this figure at the end of
my bed, I began to wonder... During that period I knew I was in trouble psychologically; I could see
it on the faces of my family  and friends when they looke d at me. I
experienced what today would be called a nervous breakdown. I didn’ t realize it at the time, but what I was going throu gh was
something that most people feel to some extent, but which many have
grown adept at covering over. The gap between the world we’re living in
and the world our hearts are calling for is growing into an increasingly
unsustainable stress point. Today, almost forty years later, we are living a
life so at odds with who we are. Cracking under the strain of it all feels
more like the rule than the exception. Our society calls


 t he
hidden power of your subconscious mind. 14  You need not acquire this power; you already possess it. But, you
want to learn how to use it; you want to understand it so that you can
apply it in all departments of your life. As you follow the simple techniques and processes set forth in t his
book, you can gain the necessary knowledge and under-standing. A
new light can inspire you, and you can generate a new force enabli ng
you to realize your hopes and make all your dreams come true. Dec ide
now to make your life grander, greater, richer, and nobler tha n ever
before. Within your subconscious depths lie infinite wisdom, in-finite
power, and infinite supply of all that is necessary, which is w aiting for
development and expression. Begin now to recog-nize these
potentialities of your deeper mind, and they will take form in the
world without. The infinite intelligence within your subconscious mind can reve al
to you everything you need to know at every moment of time and
point of space provided you are open-minded and receptive. You can
receive new thoughts and ideas enabling you to bring forth new
inventions, make new discoveries, or write books and plays. Moreover, the infinite intelligence in your sub-conscious can impar t to
you wonderful kinds of knowledge of an original nature. It can revea l
to you and open the way for perfect expression and true plac e in your
life. Through the wisdom of your subconscious mind you can attract the
ideal companion, as well as the right business asso-ciate or  partner. It
can find the right buyer for your home, and provide you with all t he
money you need, and the financial free-dom to be, to do, and to go, as
your heart desires. It is your right to discover this inner world of thought, feel ing, and
power, of light, love, and beauty. Though invisible, its forces are
mighty. Within your subconscious mind you will find the solution for
every problem, and the cause for every effect. Because you can draw
out the hidden powers, you come into actual possession of the power
 15  and wisdom necessary to move forward in abundance, security, joy,
and dominion. I have seen the power of the subconscious lift people up out  of
crippled states, making them whole, vital, and strong once more, a nd
free to go out into the world to experience happiness, health, an d
joyous expression. There is a miraculous healing power in your
subconscious that can heal the troubled mind and the broken hear t. It
can open the prison door of the mind and liberate you. It can fre e you
from all kinds of material and physi-cal bondage. • Necessity of a working basis
Substantial progress in any field of endeavor is impossib le in the
absence of a working basis, which is universal in its appli-cation. You
can become skilled in the operation of your sub-conscious mind. You
can practice its powers with a certainty of results in e xact proportion
to your knowledge of its principles and to your application of them  for
definite specific purposes and goals you wish to achieve. Being a former chemist, I would like to point out that if y ou
combine hydrogen and oxygen in the proportions of two atoms of the
former to one of the latter, water would be the result. You ar e very
familiar with the fact that one atom of oxygen and one atom of car bon
will produce carbon monoxide, a poisonous gas. But, if you add
another atom of oxygen, you will get carbon dioxide, a harmless ga s,
and so on throughout the vast realm of chemical compounds. You must not think that the principles of chemistry, phys-ics, a nd
mathematics differ from the principles of your subcon-scious mind. Let us consider a generally accepted principle: “Water seeks its own
level.” This is a universal principle, which is applicable  to water
everywhere. Consider another principle: “Matter expands when heated.”
This is true anywhere, at any time, and under all circumstances. You
can heat a piece of steel, and it will expand regardless  whether the
steel is found in China, England, or India. It is a universal truth that
 16  matter expands when heated. It is also a universal truth t hat whatever
you impress on your subconscious mind is expressed on the screen o f
space as condition, experience, and event. Your prayer is answered because your subconscious mind is
principle, and by principle I mean the way a thing works. For
example, the principle of electricity is that it works fr om a higher to a
lower potential. You do not change the principle of electricity  when
you use it, but by co-operating with nature, you can bring fort h
marvelous inventions and discoveries, which bless humanity in
countless ways. Your subconscious mind is principle and works according to the law
of belief. You must know what belief is, why it works, and how it
works. Your Bible says in a simple, clear, and beau-tiful wa y:
Whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou re-moved, and be
thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall
believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he s hall
have whatsoever he saith. MARK 11:23. The law of your mind is the law of belief. This means to beli eve in
the way your mind works, to believe in belief itself. The belie f of your
mind is the thought of your mind—that is simple—just that and
nothing else. All your experiences, events, conditions, and acts are the react ions
of your subconscious mind to your thoughts. Remem-ber, it is not the
thing believed in, but the belief in your own mind, which brings abou t
the result. Cease believing in the false beliefs, opinions, superstiti ons, and
fears of mankind. Begin to believe in the eternal verities and truths of
life, which never change. Then, you will move onward, upward, and
Godward. Whoever reads this book and applies the principles of the
subconscious mind herein set forth; will be able to pray sc ien-tifically
and effectively for himself and for others. Your prayer is  answered
according to the universal law of action and reac-tion. Thought is
 17  incipient action. The reaction is the response from your subcons cious
mind which corresponds with the na-ture of your thought. Busy your
mind with the concepts of har-mony, health, peace, and good will, and
wonders will happen in your life. • The duality of mind
You have only one mind, but your mind possesses two dis-tinctive
characteristics. The line of demarcation between the two is w ell
known to all thinking men and women today. The two functions of
your mind are essentially unlike. Each is endowed with separate and
distinct attributes and powers. The nomen-clature generally used to
distinguish the two functions of your mind is as follows: The objective
and subjective mind, the conscious and subconscious mind, the
waking and sleeping mind, the surface self and the deep self, the
voluntary mind and the involuntary mind, the male and the female,
and many other terms. You will find the terms “conscious” and
“subconscious” used to represent the dual nature of your mind
throughout this book. • The conscious and subconscious minds
An excellent way to get acquainted with the two functions of your
mind is to look upon your own mind as a garden. You are a gardener,
and you are planting seeds (thoughts) in your subconscious mind all
day long, based on your habitual think-ing. As you sow in your
subconscious mind, so shall you reap in your body and environment. Begin now to sow thoughts of peace, happiness, right ac-tion, good
will, and prosperity. Think quietly and with interest on these qualities
and accept them fully in your conscious reason-ing mind. Continue to
plant these wonderful seeds (thoughts) in the garden of your mind, and
you will reap a glorious harvest. Your subconscious mind may be
likened to the soil, which will grow all kinds of seeds, good or ba d.
Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Every thought is,
therefore, a cause, and every condition is an effect. For this reason, it
is essential  that you take charge of your thoughts so as to bring  forth
only desirable conditions. 18  When your mind thinks correctly, when you understand the truth,
when the thoughts deposited in your subconscious mind are
constructive, harmonious, and peaceful, the magic working power of
your subconscious will respond and bring about harmonious
conditions, agreeable surroundings, and the best of everything. When
you begin to control your thought proc-esses, you can apply the
powers of your subconscious to any problem or difficulty. In othe r
words, you will actually be con-sciously cooperating with the in finite
power and omnipotent law, which governs all things. Look around you wherever you live and you will notice that the vast
majority of mankind lives in the world without; the more enlighte ned
men are intensely interested in the world within. Remember, i t is the
world within, namely, your thoughts, feelings, and imagery that makes


 all
of humanity, have only just begun to spread my wings. I w illing ly detach myself from the prejudices and judgments of the
world, that I might be lifted above the downward pull of fear -based
thought. I dedicate my life to th e evolutionary lure of a highe r state of
awareness, not only in what I think but also in what I do. Thu s shall I
grow more fully today into the manifestation of my God-given potential. I wil l not succumb to limited thoughts about myself today. I know
that thr ough God, who lives with me, I am always on my way to
something gr eater than I have known befor e. The universe is a
universe of constant incr ease, and I am a child of the universe.DA Y 279
I  c o n s c i o u s l y  p a r t i c i p a t e  i n  t h e  w o r l d ’ s
t r a n s f o r m a t i o n. I nertia means the tendency of th e object to move in whatever d irection
it’ s been  moving, until there is the introduction of a counterforce. T oday
I c onscio usly and proactively participate in a counterforce to the world’ s
despair: a field of peace and love. When en ough o f us love, fear will dissolve. When enough of us find
peace in  our hearts, war will cea se. When enough of us stand on what we
know to  be true, falsehoods will no longer hold sway. May my  thoughts
and actions today help get us t o “enough of us.” May my entire being
read, “I’m in.”
I cho ose to be awake, though many slumber. I choose to stand on
the t ruth of love, though many ar e lost in fear. I choose to be pa rt
of the solution, though many ar e at the effect of the pr oblem. I
choose t o be a vessel of courage, though accommodation be th e
or der of the day.DA Y 280
FOR REFLECTION
O n  H o w  B l e s s e d  Y o u  A r e
N othing a bout your material circumstances has the power to stop the
engine of cosmic intention that you be blessed. And you are blessed
“eternally,” whi ch means moment after moment after moment. In any
instant, regardless of what has happened in the past, the universe has
arranged and is continuing to arrange infinite possibilities for you to
prosper. It m ight of fend your sense of “realism” to believe this. Surely, things
can’ t be that good. And yet, they are. The universe is programmed to
manifest, throug h you, the highest possibilities for your creativity and
joy. And  that will never, ever ch ange. God is intent on your deliverance
from all forms of bondage to the freedom of unlimited love.DA Y 281
I  w i l l  n o t  a c c o m m o d a t e  m y s e l f  t o  t h e  d i c t a t e s  o f
f e a r. I  c o m m i t  m y s e l f  t o  t h e  w a y s  o f  l o v e. S ometimes it seems easier to accommodate ourselves to the ways of an
insane world than to stand up and say, “No.” Sometimes it seems easier
to just go along, to abide medi ocrity, to not have to take the heat of a
fearful w orld’ s approbation when we insist on doing what w e feel is
right. T oday I refuse to accommodate myself to the dictates of fear. I am
part of the revolution of love n ow sweeping the world, saying “No” to
fear and “Y es” to love. In whatever way I can, I contribute consciously to
the emer gence of a better world. Though the world is weary and tir ed of the fight, I r efuse to
succumb to the slumber of fear. This is not the time to be numb, to
acquiesce, to just go along. I wi ll not accommodate myself to the
ways of fear. I commit myself to the ways of love.DA Y 282
I  i n c l u d e  e v e r y o n e  t o d a y  i n  t h e  c i r c l e  o f  m y  l o v e. M y ego will always tell me that other people ar e the pr oblem. It tempts
me to blame, to judge, and to withhold for giveness. Y et I realize that its
main tar get is me. It would encase me in a shroud of fear. T oday I refuse t o blame anyone. No matter what judgment arises in
my mind, I ask s pirit to reveal to me another interpretation of ev ents. For
what is not love is a call for love, and today I choose to see that in
everyone. Thus shall I for ge the  miracle-worker ’ s insight, and a miracle-
worker ’ s power. Amen. My attack thoughts about anyone ar e attacks upon myself. My
for giveness of anyone is for giveness of myself. T oday I choose to
see innocence beyond guilt, and calls for love behind all shrieks
of fear. May I include everyone today in the cir cle of my love.DA Y 283
I  s u r r e n d e r  t o  a  p o w e r  g r e a t e r  t h a n  m y  o w n. I n s urren dering to God, I surrend er to something bigger than myself—to
a univer se that knows what it’ s doing. When I stop trying to  control
events, they fall into a natural order, an order that works. I’m at rest
while a power much greater than  my own takes over, and it doe s a much
better job than I could have done. I c an learn to tr ust that the pow er that holds galaxies together can
handle the circumstances of my relatively little life. I choose to
remember in any moment that a surrendered life is a more s uccessful
life, because it is under the control of a power much greater than my
own. Dear God,
I surr ender to Y ou
All I am and all I have. Every thought, every feeling, every yearning,
I surr ender to Y ou. I take my hands off the steering wheel. Dear God, please drive. Amen.DA Y 284
L o v e  i s  t h e  o n l y  u n a l t e r a b l e  t r u t h. T he morta l realm can be a place f ull of wonder and excitement, b ut it is
not—even in its most intense manifestations—the world of ultimate
truth. Only the reality of a radi cal, fundamental love is unalterable and
eternal. In th e en d, there  is only love. This is the truth I will remember at the
end of my life, or perhaps at the end of the life of a loved one. It’ s the
truth I see whe n the superficial preoccupations that compete for my
attention and rob me of my life force begin, at last, to melt awa y. T oday,
I accept the fundamental truth of my existence: that only love is real. Love is the only ultimate; all els e is a hallucination of the mortal
mind. As I see this, I penetrate the veil of illusion that blinds m e
to my power and my good.DA Y 285
FOR REFLECTION
O n  L o v e  a s  S t r e n g t h  a n d  N o t  W e a k n e s s
M aking love the bottom line doe sn’ t make you a doormat. It do esn’ t
mean you’re compelled to do a nything anyone ever asks of y ou. Love
always gives the loving response—but sometimes the loving response is
“no.”
Love is not wea kness, but strength. It gives us clarity, wisdom, and
astuteness about people. It gives us intuitive gifts that help us discern
situations we might not otherwise understand. W e never need fe ar that in
seeking God’ s guidance in something, we will be led to sacrifice our own
good. Sa crifice is the life we live befor e  we dedicate ourselves to God. God is not the way to sacrifice; He is the end to sacrifice. That is how
loved we are.DA Y 286
I  s u r r e n d e r  m y  c r i t i c a l  n a t u r e. E verything we do is infused with the ener gy with which we do it. Even if I think I’m giving constructive criticism, if I say some thing
in an ef fort to change someone, then they will feel repelled. What I
might th ink is a sharing will co me across as an attack. I pray today for


, nor talk too wise:
 If you can dream-and not make dreams your master:
If you can think-and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same. If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss. If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings-nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And-which is more-you'll be a Man, my son! -Rudyard Kipling

Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be 174 For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance, I have not winced nor cried aloud: Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul. -William Ernest Henley
   Carey A. Reams loves the Bible most of an. He cherishes it, feasts
upon it and lives it to the best of his knowledge and ability. This man will help you if you are sick regardless of an the threats
that are made against him. He is a man who is at peace with his God and one of his favorite expressions is: "Perfect love casteth out all fear." There are three things necessary to share God's love and His glory, says Reams, namely:
 "1. Give yourself and put an your possessions at His feet. "2. Completely empty yourself of yourself, ding not to worldly goods, turn loose of an your pride and self-esteem, be-
come as a little child that is abso lutely obedient to his parents, be
thankful for His tender mercies and praise Him for an problems He as-signs you to strengthen your faith. Rejoice in an tribulation for His name's sake. "3. Keep His commandments and teach others so that your reward
will be great in His kingdom. Then ask whatsoever you will in His 175 name and He will answer your prayer, if you will take your prayer re-
quest the way He sends it." Reams' message to drug pushers and drug salesmen is: “USE
DRUGS AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE. USE THE WORD OF GOD AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. GOD IS READY TO DELIVER YOU FROM POOR HEALTH INTO GOOD HEALTH WITHOUT DRUGS OR WITH A LOT LESS DRUGS.”
Since he made these statements his nickname among the students
of the seminars that he teaches is “Moses”. 176 Despite our awesome technology and expenditures we are plagued
by cancer, heart disease, diabetes and a veritable hoard of ailments. WHAT WOULD HAPPEN... if someone uncovered the cause of all these afflictions and a
way to keep the body free of them? That person would become an instant hero, he'd be awarded the
Nobel Peace Prize, his face would appear on the cover of every maga-zine in the country, they'd build monuments in his honor. they'd name cities after him. Right? Evidently not! There is a man who discovered the key to health – a way to correct
the cause of these disease and maintain a high level of health free from such aliments. But there are no cities named after him. Instead he was. thrown into pris on - not once but several times. He
was called “quack,” ridiculed, and harassed. But despite the accusations, despite the legal tribulations, despite
the condemnation of the established authoritative sciences, he was NEVER BEEN PROVEN WRONG! With the determination of one bur dened by the truth he fought his
antagonists and is slowly gaining acceptance among his one-time op-pressors. Who is he? Carey A. Reams. Remember his name; you’ll be hearing a lot more of it. He’s already fired a national controversy and his book is going to
rock the world of health science like it’s never been rocked before! Here in his book are the nuts and bolts of the Carey A. Reams sto-
ry without the one-sided assessments. The hows and whys of his lifetime work. Read it. Then you decide...
for yourself.<|eot_id|><|begin_of_text|>Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        Or, you can say, 'Just because he is different please do not berate him. Some very great men were considered to be morons. God loves all His creatures, even morons. May the Lord bless him.'You might also say, 'I admire his spunk even though his dreams seldom come true. It is better to die trying than never try at all. "So if you want better health, lift up your fellow man. " Another of Reams' favorite sayings is: "There's no money in gos-
sip. One of the reasons that so many people are so broke all the time is that they are so busy attending to other people's business until they don't have time enough to work at the job that pays well for their time
and their effort. " He also says that "Dreams are only profitable when made into a
blueprint and the blueprint into building the ideal of your dream, and this is better done when fertilized with faith, cultivated with patience and with sweat and elbow grease to bring the blueprints into reality. " 173 Two of his favorite poems are:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tied by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
 If you can dream-and not make dreams your master:
If you can think-and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same. If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss. If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings-nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And-which is more-you'll be a Man, my son. -Rudyard Kipling

Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be 174 For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance, I have not winced nor cried aloud: Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul. -William Ernest Henley
   Carey A. Reams loves the Bible most of an. He cherishes it, feasts
upon it and lives it to the best of his knowledge and ability. This man will help you if you are sick regardless of an the threats
that are made against him. He is a man who is at peace with his God and one of his favorite expressions is: "Perfect love casteth out all fear. " There are three things necessary to share God's love and His glory, says Reams, namely:
 "1. Give yourself and put an your possessions at His feet. "2. Completely empty yourself of yourself, ding not to worldly goods, turn loose of an your pride and self-esteem, be-
come as a little child that is abso lutely obedient to his parents, be
thankful for His tender mercies and praise Him for an problems He as-signs you to strengthen your faith. Rejoice in an tribulation for His name's sake. "3. Keep His commandments and teach others so that your reward
will be great in His kingdom. Then ask whatsoever you will in His 175 name and He will answer your prayer, if you will take your prayer re-
quest the way He sends it. " Reams' message to drug pushers and drug salesmen is: “USE
DRUGS AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE. USE THE WORD OF GOD AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. GOD IS READY TO DELIVER YOU FROM POOR HEALTH INTO GOOD HEALTH WITHOUT DRUGS OR WITH A LOT LESS DRUGS. ”
Since he made these statements his nickname among the students
of the seminars that he teaches is “Moses”. 176 Despite our awesome technology and expenditures we are plagued
by cancer, heart disease, diabetes and a veritable hoard of ailments. WHAT WOULD HAPPEN. if someone uncovered the cause of all these afflictions and a
way to keep the body free of them. That person would become an instant hero, he'd be awarded the


 days later, my
mind was at ease. However, as soon as they ﬂashed on the
sign, No Smoking/F asten Your Seatbelt, accompanied by
that ding sound, my heart started to pound. At ﬁrst I
couldn’t put two and two together; then I realized that I
had created a small conditioned reﬂex in myself. Pavlov’s
dogs salivated at the sound of a bell, and I sped up my
heart at almo st the same thing. I then notice d that as soon
as this explanation dawned on me, my heartbeat went back
to normal. For a few seconds I was present at the birth of one
impulse that shaped my reality. It is plausible that I have
unwittingly created myself by piling up millions of impulses
just like it. These come too fast and furious for me to
analyze them—as well ask a waterfall to analyze its drops—
but the real sticking point is that they are so abstract. To
the rishis, the whole world has been built up, layer  by layer,
out of sheer abstraction. Because you willingly giveyourself over to it, a John Wayne western seems real, even
though you know it is just beams of light bouncing oﬀ a ﬂat
white surface. A dream consists entire ly of neurological
impulses ﬁring in your brain, but as long as you are in it,
you are convinced by its reality. (Everyone is familiar with
that faint, disappointing  moment that comes when the
dream stops being convincing. Instead of ﬂying through the
air, you begin to sense that “it is only a dream,” and after a
brief struggle, the waking world comes back.) In the same way, the reality you accept in the waking
state is known to you only from impulses ﬁring  in your
brain. When you touch a ﬂower, the act of touching brings
together the force and matter ﬁelds in your hand with the
force and matter ﬁelds in the ﬂower. All of these ﬁelds are
highly abstra ct, yet touch does not seem abstract to you. You are convinced by it. The rishis placed a huge emphasis
on how much we all convince ourselves. A famous parable
for this was given by Shankara, the greatest philosophical
mind in the V edic tradition:
A man is walking down the road in the evening and sees a
large snake coiled in the dust. He runs away terriﬁed and
stirs up everyone with his cries of “Snake, snake!” The
people of his village are also terriﬁed; the women and
children don’t want to go outside because of the snake, and
normal life begins to be overshadowed by everyone’s
apprehension. Then a brave person resolves to look at this
snake. He asks the ﬁrst man to take him to it, and when
they get there, what they ﬁnd is not a snake but a rope
coiled in the middle of the road. All our fears, Shankara
said, have been built up from just such a delusion. In fact,
nothing real can be separated from what we tell ourselves
is real. —This line of reasoning is not speciﬁcally Indian— it can be
easily adapted to a modern frame of reference. Think of
what happens when two bar magnets come together with
their north poles facing each other. The magnetic ﬁeld
repels them apart. If these were thinking magnets, they
would “feel” something solid in between themsel ves. They
would create touch out of an abstraction, just as we all do. The reason why, when you touch it, an object feels soft,
hard, ragged, smooth, et cetera, is that such an
interpretation is made in your brain. Essentially, the ﬁve
senses are just tools. Touch is really the brain reaching out
into the world, using specialized nerve cells to register
certain information—a very narrow band, we must
remember, which is entirely diﬀerent from what a snake
“touches” when its tongue ﬂicks the air. Similarly, the nerve endings coating the retina of your
eye are also extensions of the brain. Structurally, the retina
is just a pool of nerve endings fanning out like the frayed
end of a rope, the rope being the optic nerve, which
gathers a million separate nerve ﬁbers into one bundled
cord. Even though they are located deeper inside you than
the nerve endings under  your skin, the eye’s sensory cells
are also “touching” the outside world. There is no intrinsic
diﬀerence between the ﬁeld of light contacted by your eye
and the energy ﬁeld you touch with your ﬁngers—the real
distinction between seeing and touching is made in the
brain. And so it goes for every other sense: hearing,
smelling, and tasting involve specialized cells that send
impulses directly to the brain for interpretation, and
without that interpretation nothing could exist. All things in existence are tied to our senses, and our
senses are tied to our brains. The commonsense notion that
“this chair is hard to the touch” is not true, until you
restate it as “this chair is hard because my brain  made it
that way.” (The chair is not hard at all to a cosmic ray,which zips through it like air.<|eot_id|><|begin_of_text|>Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        Hard research was just uncovering the receptor sites on
the cell membrane, the “plug-ins” for messages from the
brain. One found exactly the same receptor sites
everywhere. The immune  system therefore became known
as a ﬂoating brain, and science had an explanation for gut
instincts—tissues remote from the brain were thinking, too,
in a chemical language. Yet the lifestyle advice that looks so promising for healing
the mind-bod y connection  doesn’t really penetrate into the
quantum domain. It remains in the domain of active
intelligence. We have to be a bit careful here. If you change
your diet, new messages will be sent to the cells of the
digestive tract, and from  there the messaging throughout
the body is altered (which is why, for example, you fall
asleep after eating too much at Thanksgiving). Because all
messages are produced in the gap, there is a quantum
dimension to every process in the body. What’s lacking is a direct telephone line, so that you can
speak to your own silent intelligence and hear what it says
in return. A direct line is opened through “second
attention. ” With ﬁrst attention you live your life in the
world—working, eating, sleeping, relating. With second
attention you peer into the invisible domain that creates,
governs, and regulates the ﬂow of life. Let’s call silent
intelligence X, because it cannot be labeled or named. Labels belong to things, not to processes. What is X doingfrom its invisible station  behind the scene. Its range of
activity is quite astonishing:
It takes each  tiny event and weaves it into the tapestry of
life. It gives meaning and purpose to everything you
experience. It guides every action to its highest and best use. It breathes love into being. It favors evolution and progress. It promotes those outcomes that are the most life
supporting. If this sounds like a mystical laundry list, consider the
beating of a single heart cell. It meshes with every other
heart cell in perfect sync. It regis ters love, pain, hope, fear,
and every other emotion. It tells you without a doubt that
you are in love. It settles into wise contentment as you
mature. It looks out for the healt h of the entire body. I’ve
used slightly metaphorical language, but a cell biologist
could identify the receptor sites and messaging paths that
connect brain and heart so completely that every function
I’ve mentioned has a physiological basis. The deeper point, howe ver, is that every cell, all ﬁve
trillion or so, depends upon silent intelligence to keep itself
—and you—together. Intelligence is what prevents the
living structu res in the body from ﬂying apart into a cloud
of atoms. Such intelligence is far from incidental. As in the
piano metap hor I ﬁnd myself returning to, a piano doesn’t
make the music that comes out of it; a mind does. When a
cell commun icates with other cells, there is no message in
the chemicals that carry  the message until the mind puts
one inside. Second attention opens the lines of communication so
that any impulse—love, compassion, empathy, appreciation,
insight, intuition, imagination—is evolutionary and life
supporting. Here we must look beyond science, because to
a cell biologist, chemicals are chemicals. They are value
neutral. An impulse of hatred can be encoded as easily as
an impulse of love. But if you stand back and examine your
life from the perspective of second attention, you can see
value everywhere in the body. Cells cooper ate with one
another. They understand that the good of the whole body
is paramount. They live in the present moment and base
their lives on trusting that nourishment will always  come to
them. They know how to self -heal. Second attention promotes these values, not by analyzing
the


 eat
foods that are b oth very healthy and very delicious. A success ful program
must als o be flexible, for any diet that is dif ficult to follow will not be
practical and you will not stick w ith it for long. The nutritional program we
present here has these essential components: it is nutritionally balanced, it is
sumptuous, and it is easy to follow whether you are cooking for  yourself or
regularly eating at restaurants. Y our body is a field of ener gy, transformation, and intelligence made out
of t he food you eat. A sugar molecule in the apple you a te at lunchyesterday may be a part of your stomach lining today. An amino acid from
the side order of cottage cheese you ate may now be in a fiber in your bicep
muscle. An iron molecule from your spinach salad may already be part of
the hemoglobin in one of your red blood cells. Y ou become what you eat. One of four th ings happens to every molecule you ingest: (1) it is
transformed into a structural part of your body; (2) it is used for ener gy; (3)
it is stor ed for possible future use; or (4) it is eliminated. If you are building
a ne w ho use, yo u want the best lumber. If you are building a new body, you
want the  best food. Eating to reverse aging is not dif ficult. It j ust requires
enough attention  and intention t o ensure that you are receiving the highest
quality sources of ener gy and intelligence to create a healthy body. Y ou become what you eat. Making Sense of T aste
W e encourage you to follow a nutritional program that is exp ansive, not
restrictive. W e are aware of the many dietary plans that tell you to avoid
certain t ypes of food. The most common restriction diets we hear about at
the Chop ra Center include avoiding dairy, avoiding wheat, and avoiding all
sugars. Other programs recommend the elimination of nightshade
vegetables or any food that is acidic. If you know for certain that y ou have problems with a spec ific food,
listen to your body. If, howeve r, you have eliminated certain foods only
because you were told or read t hey were harmful, you may want to gently
reintroduce them as part of a balanced diet and see for yourself if they are
good or bad for you. Listening to your body is the best way to assess the
suitability of any food. According to A yurveda, all food s can be categorized into one or more of
six basic tastes. These six flavors are:Sweet
Sour
Salty
Pungent
Bitter
Astringent

The first basic principle of an age-reversing diet is to en sure that
throughout the day you consum e foods from all six taste groups. These are
the taste s that nature has created to provide the basic building blocks you
need to nourish your body. The ener gy and intelligence of the natural world
is packaged for your consumption in these six tastes. Let’ s look at each taste
group in more detail. SWEET
Foods that provide the sweet taste are rich in carbohydrates, proteins, and
fats. Gra ins, cereals, breads, pastas, nuts, milk, dairy, fish, fow l, red meat,
and oils are all  classified as sweet foods. Sweet fruits inclu de bananas,
cherries, papayas, mangoes, peaches, pears, and raisins. Examples of sweet
vegetables, which contain a predominance of complex carbohydrates, are
artichokes, asp aragus, carrots, cauliflower, okra, squash, and sweet
potatoes. All food from animal s ources is considered sweet. If y ou examine
your gr ocery cart at the chec kout counter, you’ll recognize that you
consume a greater volume of foods in this category of flavors than any
other. Since th e sweet category covers a wide range of potentially edible
substances from candy to quinoa, it is important to consume sweet foods
that are balancing and nutritious. In general this means:Favor foods rich in complex carbohydrates, particularly whole grains,
breads, cereals, rice, and pasta. Aim for eight helpings a day. A piece
of rye toast, half a cup of pasta, one whole wheat tortilla, half a bagel,
half a cup of rice, and a small potato are examples of one complex
carbohydrate serving. Consume at least three to five servings of fresh fruit each day. One
peach, one pear, one banana, half a cup of cherries, and half a
cantaloupe are examples of one fruit serving. Consume at least five servings of vegetables each day. A half-cup of
most cooked vegetables and a cup of most greens constitute one
vegetable serving. Choose from a wide variety of green and yellow
vegetables. Choose more vegetable sources of protein, including beans, legumes,
seeds, and nuts. Although nuts are high in fat, most of it is
polyunsaturated or monosaturated, which is better for you. Nuts
contain many beneficial phytochemicals and have been shown to lower
cholesterol levels. Favor nonfat and low-fat milk and dairy products. If you eat meat, minimize your intake of red meat, substituting cold-
water fishes and lean fowl. There is considerable controver sy these days regarding the ideal balance
of carbo hydrates, proteins, and fats. Advocates of very low-fat diets refer to
studies s howing that coronary heart disease can be reversed and  cancer can
be p revented by lowering the intake of saturated fat. Low-carbohydrate
advocates sugge st that there is an unprecedented abundance of sugars in the
modern W estern diet, resulting in abnormally high insulin levels,
contributing to obesity and diab etes. Although there is validity to the basic
premise of both extremes, we t ake the position that a balanced diet is the
most healthful, most likely to result in sustained ideal body weight, and the
only on e that can be followe d for a lifetime. W ith this in mind, our
recommendation is to have a go od mix of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats.Although the reversal of aging program does not require or encourage
calorie counting, following our recommendations will result in a diet that is
approximately 6 0 to 68 percent carbohydrates, 15 to 20 perce nt proteins,
and 20 to 25 percent fats. (If you want to calculate your tar geted intake of
sweet food sources, see the box on page 68.) Favor complex carbohydrates, vegetable and marine sources of protein,
and vege table an d fish sources of fat and oils. Y our cooking oils should be
either m onounsaturated, such as olive oil, or polyunsaturate d, such as
canola, saf flower, or sunflower. A small amount of clarified butter (under
one tablespoon per day) adds fla vor with an acceptable dose of cholesterol. In addit ion to reducing your intake of saturated fats, this plan naturally
increases your consumption o f fiber -rich foods, which are helpful in
normalizing elimination, lowering cholesterol levels, and reducing the risk
of digestive tract cancers. Ther e ar e foods that accelerate aging and entr opy,
and others that r enew and r evitalize the body. Eating to Grow Y ounger
Use a calculator to compute your tar gets. Calculate your daily calories by multiplying your weight in pounds by
16.Example: If you weigh 150 pounds, your numbers would look as follows:
This plan r esults in the following calorie br eakdown:SOUR
The sou r taste results from the chemical action of or ganic acids on the taste
buds. All acids are perceived a s sour including citric acid, as corbic acid
(vitamin C), and acetic acid (vinegar). A regular dose of sour awakens your
appetite and enhances your dig estion. It also slows the emptying of your
stomach, reducing the insulin-st imulating ef fect of carbohydrate s. Although
foods ranging from cheddar cheese to vinegar carry the sour taste, the best
sources are fresh fruits including apples, apricots, berries, cherries,
grapefruit, grapes, lemons, oranges, pineapples, and tomatoes. Low- and
nonfat yogurt is also a good source of the sour taste. Fresh yogurt provides
acidophilus bacteria, which are helpful in balancing your digestive tract. Sour foods are usually excellen t sources of vitamin C and flavonoids,
which protect against heart dise ase and cancer. They also prov ide soluble
fiber, which may reduce the ch ances of both coronary heart disease and
diabetes. Many fermented cond iments, such as pickles, green olives, and
chutneys also carry the sour taste. Although they are helpful in stimulating
digestion, they are best taken in small amounts. Get the bulk of your
servings of sour through abundant helpings of tart fruits with less from
salad dressings and pickled and fermented foods. SAL TY
Mineral salts are an essential c omponent of health, but a typical W estern
diet is much more likely to have too much rather than too little salt. Thesalty tas te promotes digestion, is mildly laxative, and has a mildly relaxing
ef fect. T oo muc h salt is associa ted with an increased risk for  high blood
pressure and may