There Is a Spiritual Solution to Every Problem
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DEDICATION
For Sommer Wayne Dyer You are loved unconditionally By your father here, And your Father in Heaven
You have no problems, though you think you have.…
—A Course in Miracles
I wish to acknowledge
Francesco di Pietro di Bernardone (1181–1226),
aka Saint Francis of Assisi.
Your spirit is always with me,
and was particularly evident
in the creation of this book.
—WAYNE W. DYER
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Foreword
Introduction
PART I ESSENTIAL FOUNDATIONS FOR SPIRITUAL PROBLEM SOLVING
1. • Spiritual Problem Solving
2. • Ancient “Radical” Ideas
3. • It’s All Energy
4. • Stop Giving Energy to the Things You Don’t Believe In
5. • Keeping Your Energy Field Uncontaminated
6. • Raising and Maintaining Your Spiritual Energy
PART II PUTTING SPIRITUAL PROBLEM SOLVING INTO ACTION
7. • Lord, Make Me an Instrument of Thy Peace
8. • Where There Is Hatred, Let Me Sow Love
9. • Where There Is Injury, Pardon
10. • Where There Is Doubt, Faith
11. • Where There Is Despair, Hope
12. • Where There Is Darkness, Light
13. • Where There Is Sadness, Joy
Index
Other Works
Copyright
About the Publisher
FOREWORD
I completed the initial writing of this book on the fifteenth of June, 2000, at our home on Maui, with a wonderful sense of accomplishment. I enjoyed the summer with my family, swimming, hiking, and playing tennis. We had dinners and movies with close friends and I had precious free time to read and share intimate moments especially with my wife, Marcelene, who was so instrumental in helping me find a spiritual solution to the “problem” I was about to experience. Little did I realize that in a few short months I would be called upon to apply all that I had written, and to test those principles for a spiritual solution to every problem firsthand in my own life.
In the autumn of 2000, I was literally brought to my knees while alone in a hotel room. I could barely breathe. My chest felt like it was in a vise. I was sweating profusely and soon found out that I had had a heart attack. But something was dreadfully wrong with this picture. I do not smoke or drink; I am not overweight; I exercise every day and have done so for twenty-five years. I watch what I eat; I meditate; I do what I love, and I love what I do. I have a great marriage and wonderful children. I don’t do heart attacks! That is for other people who live their lives in such a way as to invite heart attacks. Not me. Not Dr. Wayne Dyer. Yet there I was, in the hospital with monitor wires attached all over my upper body and with an IV in my arm. In three days I would have an angiogram procedure.
For the first twenty-four hours, I lay there in a state of shock and disbelief. It is called denial. I felt sorry for myself. I refused to acknowledge that such a thing could happen to me. I was weepy around my family and I was, to be honest, scared. After that first day I began to reexamine what I had written in this book you are about to read. I reminded myself over and over of the title: There Is a Spiritual Solution to Every Problem—and this surely was a problem. I remembered that I could bring the energy of spirit right there to that hospital room. By doing so I could turn this thing around and no longer wallow in the low energy of self-pity, injury, sadness, fear, and doubt.
The facts were the facts, my heart had been injured. Now it was up to me. I am not this body; I am a spiritual being, eternal, always connected to God. I could shift my awareness to being the observer rather than the victim, which is what I have been writing about over the past twenty years. It was as if the light came on in a dark room. I felt the presence of a higher, faster healing energy almost immediately. I began to be cheerful rather than morose. I circulated around the cardiac ward attempting to cheer up those who were much worse off than myself. I began to view the hospital and the many healing professionals with awe, love, and respect rather than with thoughts of fear and anxiety. I looked for what was right about that place and experienced gratitude for everything my senses witnessed. I brought to the cardiac ward the awareness that I have elaborated on here, in this book that I love so much. “Surely the presence of God is in this place.” Certainly the reality of the heart damage did not magically disappear, but in my mind, where the “problem” existed, I had introduced the higher/faster energy of spirit and the “problem” disappeared permanently.
On Monday morning, December 4, 2000, the angiogram revealed a blockage in one artery that may have been a part of my physical anatomy since birth. My heart was strong and the damage was minimal. A stent was inserted in the blocked artery after a balloon poked out the offending plaque. I am now back to my normal exercise and work routine.
As I was being wheeled into the cath-lab and having the catheter inserted in my leg and dye into my arteries, my heart was literally at peace. I joked with the nurses and cardiologists and squeezed my wife’s hand, telling her I loved her. All fear, worry, anxiety, doubt, and darkness left me. I knew that regardless of the outcome, I was at peace, connected to spirit and in God’s hands.
I decided to share this information with you here at the beginning of this book to illustrate how a seemingly insurmountable “problem” has a spiritual solution readily accessible, when one stops focusing on the “problem” and shifts to spiritual energy. I was able to bring in the higher/faster energy of spirit which means that: 1) I literally surrendered and turned the “problem” over to a higher power; 2) I saw love everywhere rather than fear; 3) I reminded myself that I am an infinite soul in a temporary body; 4) I quieted my mind and emptied it of all negativity; 5) I became grateful for all of those who worked on bringing healing energy to me; 6) I stayed connected to God in my mind; 7) I began to bring joy to those around me as a means of eradicating my own self-indulgence. It worked!
And as if to illustrate a final point, I received a beautiful letter from Peggy Bartzokis, the wife of my cardiologist, Thomas Bartzokis, MD, pointing out how everything and everyone benefits when spirit is allowed to be fully present. She writes:
I feel as though you appeared in our lives (Tom and mine), for a reason. The fact that you went to Tom and not another cardiologist at a time when I needed to read your writings and Tom needed to learn more about how to help his patients still astounds me.
Your tapes started me on a new path. I’m working hard to heal myself. My health was on a downward spiral and I never considered that my thinking could be my problem. Thank you for opening my eyes to the importance of the mind/body connection.
Also through me, Tom gets to hear all about what I’m reading (whether he wants to or not) and luckily he finds these ideas fascinating. I’m excited because he treats over ten thousand patients and if he can share these ideas he may really be able to prevent further cardiac damage or other illnesses.
I’m also thankful that you are fully recovered and running again. Maybe we were all meant to learn something from this experience. As you once said, “Every meeting in our lives is in some way orchestrated by a divine force … and the strangers to whom we are drawn have something to teach us.”
I can’t tell you how much I appreciate meeting you both. I will always have you and Marcelene in my prayers. God bless you and all the good works that you do.
There you have it all. I put it right here for everyone to see. It’s all in order and a spiritual solution awaits you for any and all things that you perceive to be “problems.” Trust me. I, Wayne Dyer, know from firsthand experience.
INTRODUCTION
The title of this book makes a very large claim. Yes, you can literally rid yourself of any and all problems by seeking and implementing spiritual solutions. I have explained what I mean by spiritual, problems, and solutions in the very first chapter, so there is no need to do so in this brief introduction. The essential message of this book is in the following ten points.
1. Everything in our universe is nothing more than energy. That is, at the very core of its being, everything is vibrating to a certain frequency.
2. Slower frequencies appear more solid and this is where our problems show up.
3. Faster frequencies such as light and thought are less visible.
4. The fastest frequencies are what I am calling spirit.
5. When the highest/fastest frequencies of spirit are brought to the presence of lower/slower frequencies, they nullify and dissipate those things we call problems.
6. You have the ability and the power to increase your energy and access the highest/fastest energies for the purpose of eradicating any problems in your life.
7. There are some basic foundations and principles that you will need to understand and practice in order to access spiritual solutions to any “problems” that you may be experiencing.
8. Your ultimate choice, once you understand these principles, is whether to align yourself with a high energy field or a low energy field.
9. In essence, when you finally come to know and understand the world of spirit on an intimate basis, you will see clearly that all problems are illusions in that they are concocted by our minds because we have come to believe that we are separate from our source, which I call God, but you can label it any way that you prefer.
10. These illusions are nothing more than mistakes in our thinking and like every error they dissolve when put face to face with the truth.
I have organized this book into two sections. The first section contains six chapters which elaborate the basic fundamental foundations for understanding that a spiritual solution for any and all problems is readily available. I have researched Holy Scriptures in many spiritual traditions as well as those areas we have come to call scientific or pragmatic. I make no claim that any one tradition or practice is superior to any other. I have pursued my own awareness of these concepts with a mind that is open to everything and attached to nothing. I have searched ancient and modern spiritual tomes from east, west, and anywhere in between, and presented them as I know them to be truthful and useful.
The second section of this book contains chapters seven to thirteen, each of which is titled from one of the most well-known and accepted prayers ever written. This prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi embodies the fundamental message of this book. By bringing the higher frequencies of spirit to the presence of the lower frequencies of “problems,” the problems will vanish. I have made every effort to offer very specific suggestions on how to implement these higher energies in practical, useful ways, beginning today.
In rereading this book I am conscious of occasional repetition in making my case for a spiritual solution to every problem. In some cases I have edited it out, but in other instances I have deliberately used this repetition to reinforce the point at the moment you are reading. I have found that this provides instantaneous reinforcement and makes it much more likely that the concept will stick.
Writing this book has been an exercise in self-awareness for me. I find that I am now much more able to shift out of those lower/slower energy patterns and access spiritual guidance, and I can do so in just a matter of moments. For me I feel lighter, more loving, compassionate, and literally problem-free as I practice accessing my highest energies in moments when I previously thought I had a “problem” that I needed to solve. I now simply unplug myself from that world of problems in my mind and plug into spirit. Writing this book has brought me closer to God, and an awareness that not only am I never alone, but that it would be an impossibility. May you find the same peace that I have as you read these words. And may all of your problems dissolve as you shift out of those lower energies and come to know that a spiritual solution to any and all problems is simply a thought away.
God bless you,
Wayne Dyer
PART I
ESSENTIAL FOUNDATIONSFOR SPIRITUAL PROBLEM SOLVING
“There is nothing wrong with God’s creation.
Mystery and Suffering only exist in the mind.…”
—Ramana Mabarshi
1 SPIRITUAL PROBLEM SOLVING
The solution to the problem of the day is the awakening of the consciousness of humanity to the divinity within.
—HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN
Can you make a flower grow? Probably your first response is, “Such a simple thing to do. Plant a seed in some dirt, provide sunlight and water and in time a flower will emerge. The proof is that there are millions upon millions of flowers sprouting all over the world at this moment!”
That is certainly true. However, I am inviting you to reread the question and consider who or what generates the life that makes a flower grow, because the who or what is the source of solutions to all our problems.
Who or what causes the flower seed to blossom, and the tiny embryo to become a human being? Who or what grows our fingernails and beats our heart even as we sleep? Who or what is behind the movement of the winds, which we feel but never see? What is this force that keeps the planets in place and hurls our world through the galaxy at a breathtaking speed? These questions have been asked for as long as humans have had the ability to contemplate their existence.
Spirit is what I have chosen to call the formless, invisible energy which is the source and sustenance of life on this planet. This force, no matter the name we give it, can solve every problem that we encounter. There is a spiritual solution to every problem, we only need to learn how to access it. In this book I will explain ways that I have found to access this force. I will begin by explaining the three basic steps to finding your spiritual solutions to problems.
I first read about these steps when I immersed myself in How to Know God: The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali, written sometime between the fourth century B.C. and the fourth century A.D. These spiritual disciplines and techniques were written to enable a person to achieve the ultimate unitive knowledge of God. I will refer to this powerful collection of writings frequently, and share with you how this knowledge can be applied in your life.
I trust you will discover for yourself that these things you have come to label as problems have a ready solution available to you right now, in this moment, in that world we are calling spirit.
THE FIRST OF THREE STEPS FOR
ACCESSING SPIRITUAL DIRECTION
Recognition: It may appear obvious that one must first recognize something before applying it, but this is actually the most troublesome step in moving toward spiritual illumination.
Recognizing the availability of an invisible force that can be put to use in solving a problem, requires overcoming a great deal of our early training and conditioning. Have you ever thought about the limitations we experience when we identify ourselves as only a physical body in material existence?
For instance, do you believe there is only one kind of power or knowledge, which relies on your sensory or intellectual faculties to solve problems? Most of us have been taught this is true and that all of the information that has been acquired is the total inventory of options available to us. This is a conditioned attitude of nonrecognition of our divine connection to spiritual problem solving.
In this state of nonrecognition we believe that medicines, herbs, surgery, and doctors are responsible for all healing, or that improving one’s financial picture involves the exclusive application of working hard, studying, interviewing, and sending our résumés. In essence, nonrecognition leads us to believe that our knowledge is limited to those kinds of phenomena, which are explainable through our sensory functions.
Patanjali described a kind of knowledge or power that is not accessed solely through the material or sensory world. Recognition that this power exists and is always available is the first step in activating it. However, it is not accessed solely through the teachings of others, or through ancient writings, just as we do not dream because someone teaches or writes about dreaming. Recognizing, like dreaming, is something we access by making an inner and outer commitment to our ability to recognize.
For example, in this first step when you are faced with a problem, I suggest you create a personal affirmation such as: “I may not know exactly how to access the spiritual solution here, but I fully recognize that a spiritual solution exists.” By recognition of its existence, we invite the power to be known by us.
As physical beings we can make a flower grow in the sense of the response to the question in the opening sentence of this book. But if we are thoughtful we realize that we cannot even begin to unravel the mystery of the invisible force that initiates life. Yet it is in this omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent spiritual world that we find the solutions to all our problems. This spiritual force is everywhere and in every thing and every one. When we incorporate the first step, recognition, we begin the process of accessing this all-knowing power.
THE SECOND OF THREE STEPS FOR
ACCESSING SPIRITUAL DIRECTION
Realization: We discover that knowledge achieved by realization is of a much higher order than intellectual reasoning.
This is not an exercise in intellectual reasoning. In this step we go beyond recognition of a spiritual presence into the phase of realization where nothing but our own personal experience is trusted. We become an explorer in virgin territory where no one but ourselves can be. Here, only you can validate your experience.
Our desire to realize the presence is an integral part of the unexplainable dynamic that creates life. When we actively meditate on a chosen spiritual ideal or even a given personality we are expressing our desire by inviting the presence to be accessible.
I suggest that you begin this process of realization by visualizing the presence you seek. Create an inner picture of yourself receiving divine guidance and banish all doubts about its validity. Realize that there is no need to explain or defend as you go within yourself. In silent desire to realize your spirit, know that your invitation will be accepted. You will find that your picture dissolves into the reality of a presence that is accessible within yourself. This is realization. It is a personal experience beyond anything related to an intellectual exercise. With practice and desire, in quiet meditation, you will experience the presence.
There are times the intellect will persist, trying to make your experience fit the reality of the material world. One way to think about this process of moving toward realization is to envision a magnet. See yourself as the magnet, which is attracting to you all that you have recognized and acknowledged as true. Then gradually become aware of a greater magnetic force, which pulls you toward higher truths. The effort is not exclusively your own any longer. You are in a kind of metaphysical magnetic field, which draws you in the direction of your realization.
I have had this experience of realization in my own life for the past several years. When I enter into a state of deep meditation I am abundantly aware of a magneticlike force, which pulls me in the direction of God. The revelations that I experience in those moments of God-realization represent a renewal of my mind. I reconnect to a kind of energy that propels me in the direction of a solution to anything that might be troublesome.
For example, something as mundane as purchasing a piece of property for my wife and myself to move to when our children leave the nest, was causing me a great deal of inner turmoil. I reminded myself to move into that invisible magneticlike field of energy and I was guided toward a solution. At precisely the right moment a friend called and said one sentence that put me at ease about the dilemma. Done! This is what I call realization in action.
We can all use this realization of the availability of spirit in the resolution of problems. As you learn to employ the first step, recognition of spiritual solutions, you will move to a state of realization in which you experience the power. You will realize that every kind of disharmony, discord, or disease is amenable to the spiritual energy that is in you.
THE THIRD OF THREE STEPS FOR ACCESSING SPIRITUAL DIRECTION
Reverence: Communing quietly with the spiritual force is our way of becoming one with it.
This third step, reverence, is acquired quickly by some people, while for others it can take a long time to achieve. Communing quietly with the spiritual force and becoming one with it means there is no sense of separation. We know our divinity and commune with that part of ourselves. In other words, we see ourselves as a part of God; we are in a state of reverence for all that we are. There is no doubt of our divinity. In this state we fully experience this quote from the Bible: “On that day, you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you” (John 14:20).
Quietly communing with God, when we are searching for guidance, is a way of temporarily turning off our ego-mind. Instead of our ego-self thinking, “I can fix this,” we are willing to immerse it into our higher self. Like a drop of water separated from its source the little mind is unable to create and sustain life. When the drop of water rejoins the ocean it has all the powers of its source. The drop of water separate from its source symbolizes our ego-self when we are separated from our source of omnipotent power.
Communing quietly allows us the direct experience of knowing a spiritual solution to every problem. With our divine connection we are always in touch with the solution. Problems persist when we fail to recognize, realize, and finally, quietly commune with our own source, power, spirit, God.
I often think of Abraham Lincoln watching his beloved Union crumbling under the energy of hatred that engulfed this country. He wrote, “I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had no where else to go.” “To my knees,” is a way of saying, “I surrender to my source and turn this huge problem over to that same power that moves the stars.” You can do the same thing in times of strife. “Let go and let God,” as they say in the recovery movement.
When you practice communing quietly with spirit, you will sense the presence of a sacred partner. You can turn your problems over to this “senior” partner and move to a place of peace. The Indian saint Sri Ramakrishna used the following parable to teach his devotees how to reach the state of direct union with God.