The Art of Living, page 4
Now imagine if your awareness expanded a little bit—just imagine if that happened. My goodness, if that’s all you did, you could multiply your results! It is important that you understand this to expand your level of conscious awareness—and that’s all we’re doing here is expanding your level of awareness in different areas.
You eliminate the darkness when you turn on the light. Let there be light—let there be a higher level of conscious awareness.
Listen, a person doesn’t earn $100,000 a year because they want to earn $100,000 a year. They earn $100,000 a year because they are not aware of how to earn $100,000 a month! When they become aware of how to earn $100,000 a month, they’re not going to go back and settle for $100,000 a year.
Let there be light. Let there be a higher degree of consciousness. We want to expand our level of awareness. It’s like Maya Angelou said: “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”
Why would people struggle? People don’t want to struggle. They’re struggling because they’re not aware of how to eliminate the struggle.
How do you expand your level of awareness? Now that’s a good question. And it’s a question that everybody should get an answer to. You do it through effective education combined with professional coaching over a reasonable period of time. You’ll alter the conditioning and expand your level of awareness.
See, expanding your awareness is simply putting a bigger idea in the place of the smaller idea. Each time you do that you become more aware of how it’s done.
We say it’s a sad thing when a child is afraid of the dark. But I’ll tell you something that’s a lot sadder than that: an adult who’s afraid of the light. Some people are afraid of waking up. They are so comfortable where they are—do you know there are women right around here, probably within walking distance of where you are right now, who are being bounced off the wall by some brute or some drunken beast every night? And they’re afraid to leave!! Why are they afraid to leave? Because they’re more afraid of being on their own than they are of being with this guy. Sometimes when they do leave they go right back into the same thing again. This is not uncommon. What’s doing it? It’s their consciousness that’s doing it. You’ve got to shift the consciousness. If you don’t, you can’t make a permanent change. You can’t attract what you really want.
Everything we are seeking is seeking us.
When I first read that, I know I didn’t understand it. Everything we are seeking is seeking us. Awareness is the name of the game. So we’re going to become aware of certain things about ourselves.
[Bob chose a person at random and described her personality in detail.]
BOB: Tina, how long have you studied the human personality? How many years?
TINA: Twenty-six years.
BOB: How often do you run into somebody who can just walk by and tell you what you’re like, the way I did earlier? It’s unusual, isn’t it?
TINA: It is rare.
BOB: This is the first time you’ve ever run into anybody like that. Yet I was very accurate. I could go further just to validate the accurateness, but I am very accurate in reading your personality, aren’t I?
TINA: You’re very accurate.
BOB: How would I know how to do that? Well listen, what you see sitting here is not Tina. This is Tina’s body. This is a molecular structure. It’s a mass of molecules in a very high speed of vibration. Her mind is movement. This is not her mind, this is the expression of her mind. The mind is movement. Body is the manifestation of that movement. Now, the vibration she’s in—I pick it up. I can read that vibration. If I can read it, you can read it. If I had my eyes closed, I’d know what she’s like, all right? The energy coming from the body is so potent and powerful, it will penetrate a camera, penetrate a film, and you can actually photograph the energy. As Tina changes the images in her mind, the density in the color of the energy will change.
The year I was born—a long time ago—Semyon Kirlian, a Russian photographer, perfected a form of photography where you can photograph a mass and you can photograph the energy coming from it. So as Tina changes the images in her mind, the density and the color of the images will change.
Now as I come in contact with her energy, I can cause her energy to change. In fact, I will cause her energy to change—and she would cause mine to change. Neither one of us knows anything about this, we’re just, let’s say, a couple of office workers, but our energy is causing the other person’s energy to change.
Take any office in any company where people are sitting at their desks. I could walk into such an office and I could say, “Move that woman back there,” “Move that man over here,” “Take this lady and put her over here”—I could rearrange the office and productivity would go up in the office. I’d get energy flowing freely. It’s called “circulation.”
When the blood in the body stops circulating you’re done. It’s all over. You’ll move on to the next phase of your eternal journey. Circulation is the law of the universe. Well, when you get the energy in an office flowing freely, productivity is going to go up. We’ve got to be aware that our environment has a whole lot to do with our mental state.
Karl Menninger from the Menninger Foundation in Topeka, Kansas, said environment is more important than heredity. You have to be very careful about the people you spend time with. I am very, very careful with the people I spend a lot of time with. There are some people I just don’t want to spend a lot of time around. I don’t think I’m any better than them, I just don’t want to be like them. I don’t think I’m better than anybody, and I don’t think anybody is better than me. But I’ll tell you something—I don’t want to live the life that some people are living and if you don’t want to live the way they are living, get away from them. You would be wise not to spend a lot of time with somebody who is in a bad vibration all the time.
BOB: Now, Tina, you have been studying the mind for twenty-some years and yet you say it’s very unusual how I can walk by a person and tell you all about them. Here’s the point I want to get across—this ability is not unique—it’s just unusual relative to most people. If I can do something, you can do it. I don’t have anything going for me that you haven’t got going for you! You can learn how to do what you witness others doing if you really want to and you are prepared to pay the price.
When I walk into a boardroom in a corporate office, I know exactly what the people in the boardroom are like and exactly how to work with everyone at the table. I know the ones who are very left-brained and those who are very right-brained, and those who bounce between left- and right-brained. I pay attention to their energy, and I know just how to structure the conversation so that I make the sale. In my mind, it’s not a matter of whether I’m going to make the sale, it’s do I want to make the sale? And if I don’t want to make the sale, I’m not going to make it. Why? Well, there are some people you just don’t want to work with. I’m not going to work with somebody where I have to keep selling them every day. Why would you want to coach somebody where you have to keep selling them every day? If they don’t do what I say, then we are both toast. So I am selective about who I work with. Most people want you to coach them their way and their way is not working.
As long as a client does what I say, I’ll keep going. They’ll earn multi-millions of dollars if that’s what they really want and they remain a great student. But often they will learn only so much and then they don’t want to learn any more from you, so they shut down.
Great students gather information very quickly. Great students always want more. They are eager to learn. They soak it up. Avi is a great student of mine. He is forever asking me questions—about this, about that. Little things. He’s not embarrassed to ask any kind of question.
There are no dumb questions. If you’ve got a question, you should ask it. The objective is to develop awareness. It’s all about awareness. That’s all there is.
CLASS EIGHT
YOU’VE ALREADY GOT IT
Understanding Your Spiritual Perfection
In his book Working with the Law, Raymond Holliwell wrote, “There is a marvelous inner world that exists within us, and the revelation of such a world enables us to do, to attain and to achieve anything we desire within the bounds or limits of Nature.”
There’s a world operating within you. A wonderful world. We want to try and understand that. Your spiritual DNA is perfect. It’s absolutely perfect. It requires no modification, no improvement. There is absolute perfection within you. It is really important that we get this. There is perfection within you. It doesn’t have to be modified. It doesn’t have to be changed. It’s there. All you have to do is let it come to the surface. When you stretch and go for something you really love that is beyond what you think you can do, you will find that you can perform a whole lot better than you used to think you could. You became aware that there is the ability within that you previously failed to recognize.
You see, we operate on the idea that you have to get “it,” whatever “it” is . . . to become whatever you want to be. You don’t have to “get” anything. You’ve got it. I didn’t get anything to go from being broke and struggling to earning millions. I just became aware of what I already had.
Science and theology teach us that all the power that ever was is always present in all places at the same time. That it is within me! It’s ever present—all the power—all the knowledge. Let’s try to understand that. All the knowledge there ever was or ever will be is 100 percent evenly present in all places at the same time. That’s a big idea. Nothing is created or destroyed. Everything is made from the same thing: spirit/energy. Ask yourself, “Where do ideas come from?” “Where did the idea for the smart phone come from?”
The simple truth is that a person activated their imagination and originated the idea from the power that is continually flowing to and through us. That person was aware that if they could see it in their mind, they could hold it in their hand.
This is not difficult. This is really pretty easy to understand. I taught this to kids.
I was showing a friend a picture hanging on my wall in my home. It’s a set of five sports cards in a frame. Each card has a picture of one of the five living gold medal decathlon winners at that time and each of them was signed by the gold medal winner. A good friend of mine, Milt Campbell, was one of them. He was the one who gave me these cards. The others are Bob Mathias, Jim Thorpe, Rafer Johnson, and Bruce Jenner (now known as Caitlyn Jenner).
Milt was working with me at the time. We had a group of twelve kids. I worked with them for one hour a week on the phone. I was teaching them about their mind and about their life. They were on the stage in Kansas City in front of approximately ten thousand people after just twelve weeks—twelve one-hour lessons on the phone—and the adults were taking notes. It was absolutely mind-blowing what those kids learned about their mind in such a short time.
Adults—we think we know so much—so we reject all this as “woo-woo.” These truths have always been here and understood by a few.
Just understand that you’re a spiritual being. There is a power flowing to and through you and you can do whatever you want with it. And as it flows in, you choose thoughts. As you internalize those thoughts you alter the vibratory rate of the body. On a conscious level, as we become aware of the vibration we are in, we refer to that conscious awareness as feeling . . . “feeling” is a word we have invented to describe conscious awareness of vibration.
Let’s take a look at this another way—it’s a matter of choice. Look at what Holliwell says about this: “All failures in life are due to taking sides with the finite around us. All success in life is due to taking sides with the law within.”
If we can’t see it, smell it, taste it or touch it, if we can’t get involved with the physical, we say it’s not there. You know, often you hear people say, “What you don’t know won’t hurt you.” Well, what you don’t know can kill you. Stop and think about this. There’s air in this room. If we sealed it all up airtight and then started to pump air in, what would happen? We’d blow the room up. We would literally blow all the walls out of the place.
There is a power in what you cannot see. We’ve got to start to understand this. All failures in life are due to us taking sides with the finite—with what’s going on outside. We see a limitation on the outside and so we think we can’t have something different. We want more money, but we see the dwindling bank account. So we stop pursuing what we really want. You see, if we put our focus on the finite around us, such as the dwindling bank account, and believe it is the truth for us, that is what we will get more of.
However, we can shift our focus to the inside and the success we want and believe that is possible for us. It doesn’t matter what you want to learn . . . the way to do it is already here. If you are stuck, it’s only because you’re not aware of what’s already here. Keep thinking . . . imagine whatever it is. See it completed. The way will come either through ideas you think or through another person. By seeing it completed you have flipped your mind onto the frequency that contains the way and it will be attracted to you.
I often stand in a seminar, point at myself, and say, “This is me.” But the truth is this isn’t me at all. This is my body. If you ask, “Who are you?” I say, “I’m Bob.” I’m not Bob. Bob is my name. You’ve never heard anyone say, “Am hand. Am head. Am foot.” You say, “My hand, my head, my foot. My name. My body.” This isn’t me. You will never see the real me with your physical eyes. I am all knowing. I am all powerful. Part of me is everywhere because I am a soul. I don’t have a soul, I am a soul. I am spirit. I am God’s highest form of creation.
Think about it. You can feel another person’s presence even if they are on the other side of the world. If they are thinking of you and you are thinking of them and you are emotionally involved with their energy—you’re in harmony with them, on the same frequency—then you will feel their presence. This is because there is no time or space in spirit. It’s an illusion that there is. When it comes to the mind, there isn’t any time or space. We’ve got to try and understand this.
We’ve got to understand that all the knowledge that ever was or ever will be is always here. The way to fly airplanes has always been here. The way to build microphones and computers has always been here. Why do people struggle? Why do they always resist this type of information? When Henry Ford built cars it was not uncommon to hear a person say, “I am not buying one of those dumb things.” “You’d be much better off getting a good horse and a fine buggy!” “People will never buy those things!!” “You would have to build roads and have gas for the cars on every corner.” “Cars will never catch on.”
Today, we think cars are the best way to travel. But the truth is the best way to travel hasn’t even been thought of yet. The best way to do what you’re doing has never been thought of yet. Why don’t you think of it? Why don’t you think of a better way to communicate this information? The information is here. All you need to do is tap into it.
Recently, I went to Tel Aviv, from Tel Aviv to Cyprus, from Cyprus to Dubai, from Dubai to Melbourne, from Melbourne to Auckland, from Auckland to Los Angeles and from Los Angeles back to Toronto. This was all in about seven to eight days. Everywhere I went there were big crowds asking me, “Could I just spend an hour with you?” “Could I just spend fifteen minutes with you?” “Could I just ask you a question?” And I couldn’t. I had to say “I can’t” because I had to catch a plane; I had to go to the next city. But all the time I was thinking, I should be able to spend time with those people. If I could just answer their questions, I could change their whole life. I probably know what they want to find out. I thought, There has got to be a way with the communication systems we’ve got today.
So I’m flying from Los Angeles back to Toronto and I thought, Streaming! Well, I didn’t know anything about streaming, so I called Joshua Carr, our IT guy, and said, “What do you know about streaming?”
He said, “Well, what do you want to know?”
I said, “Can I stream?”
He said, “Sure you can. I’ll set it up.”
About an hour or two later he phoned me back and said, “There’s an icon on your computer, just click it.” And just like that, I’m streaming. Within two hours of thinking of the idea, I had over three hundred people registered from sixty different countries who joined Bob Proctor’s Streaming Club.
There is no end to what you can do!! But you’ve got to step out and do it! I didn’t know how to do that. I didn’t have to know how to set that up. Somebody else knew how to do it. I got them to do it for me. What you’ve got to understand is that the way to do it is already here. All you need is some help.
Get help! Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Humble yourself. Don’t try to be the smartest person in town. You’re not the smartest. There’s always someone smarter. There are people who know how to do things that you don’t know how to do. You can learn or get someone who knows how, as I did. But understand this too: we don’t put ourselves down just because we don’t know.
Andrew Carnegie put it perfectly when he said:
The accumulation of great fortunes calls for power, and power is acquired through highly organized and intelligently directed specialized knowledge, but that knowledge does not, necessarily, have to be in the possession of the [person] who accumulates the fortune.
Andrew Carnegie stated that he personally knew nothing about the steel business, and he did not necessarily care to know anything about it. He found the specialized knowledge that he required for the manufacturing and marketing of steel through his mastermind group. It’s worth mentioning that in 1908 Andrew Carnegie was the wealthiest man in the world, presumably the first billionaire.
