Beyond the Chaos Finding Serenity and Power in Spiritual Awareness - Part 1 HD 720p

And welcome to Beyond Chaos: Finding Strength and Power in Spiritual Awareness. In an age clouded by digital distractions, political chaos, superficial exchanges, and existential traps. Your spiritual core may feel drowned out in distance, but today's goal is to ignite a revolution of the soul, to empower you to awaken, revive, and embrace your spiritual awareness and energy like never before. Picture a world where you transcend mundane struggles, where corrupt politicians endless disinformation, violence, and soulless encounters no longer steal your serenity. Imagine harnessing the magic within you, empowering you to rise above the noise. Join me on an extraordinary journey beyond the ordinary, beyond intellectual confines. Whether you're a seasoned spiritual traveler a confirmed agnostic, or a curious explorer. Today, I'd like to offer you an opportunity to open to this hidden potential of your higher being and tap into its boundless power and wisdom through the art and science of selective awareness, deep meditation, and transformative imagery. Prepare to embrace, revive, and awaken your spiritual awareness like never before. The power is yours. The time is now. This is Dr. Emmett Miller, and today is an opportunity to explore something called spirituality. To me, spirituality is the process of separating the superficial from the essential to discover a spirit is to discover the relatedness of all things that exist. To accomplish this, it's perhaps best to clear your mind of distractions and allow yourself to come into this present moment, the only moment that actually exists. Every other moment of your life that you think about does not exist. Maybe it existed once in the past, although you can't always trust your memory. And those in the future have never happened at all, so clearly they don't exist. Come into this present moment and be aware of where you are at this present moment. Notice that you're in a safe place where you can allow yourself to become aware of the gentle rising and falling of your chest and abdomen with each breath. As each breath enters, feel the breathing in, and as each breath is exhaled, feel the breathing out. It's nice and easy. Good. Allowing yourself to be aware that at this moment there's nowhere you have to go, there's nothing that you have to do, there's no problem that has to be solved at this instant. And therefore, at this instant right now You can permit yourself to let go of all unnecessary tension and allow each breath out to empty your body of stress and tension. And each breath in breathes in peace and serenity. Each breath out empties your mind of unnecessary thoughts. Let the air do the breathing for you, and with each breath allowing you to open inward and to open your imagination. Good. Imagine a nighttime sky with a full moon above, and down below there are some bushes and a field of grass. And there's movement in the bushes, a shepherd searching for a lost sheep, hearing its cries. From down in the ravine where it has fallen and making his way carefully through the thicket ever closer to that sound. Many other sounds reach his ears from the sky and from the land around—dogs barking, other sheep braying, the cry of a night owl, even thunder. Yet he does not fail to continually refocus his ears on that wailing sound. Or imagine yourself passing through an underground catacomb, a cave, a maze of tunnels, following a rope that has been laid down for you. No matter what walls you may bump into, no matter if you go uphill or downhill, or even if you fall into a hole, even the ceiling gets very low, You continue to follow that rope because you know it leads out to the sunshine. Or imagine someone who's gone hiking and is lost in the woods at night, in a dangerous part of the woods. He sees the far-off light of a cabin and sets out toward it, and no matter how many times he loses sight of it behind a bush or wherever. Even when he's in the valley, he continues to have faith that that cabin is still there, and he does everything he can to keep it in sight. As a human being, he has yet another sense, that of knowing— the ability to know that you know. Similarly, for you in your life, you've probably been aware of a kind of inner voice or a light or a felt sense. You probably know about this part of yourself. When you're just about to do something that ultimately could turn out to harm you, there's a little voice inside that says, "Eh, maybe you shouldn't do that." Well, sometimes you're able to override this voice and get yourself in major trouble. And sometimes you hear a voice and you're able to respond to that voice when it tells you to do something that's actually contrary to what you would ordinarily do. You find yourself making a left turn instead of a right turn, and the most amazing and wonderful things take place in what you discover on that day. This is a place of inner guidance, and closely associated with this place of inner guidance is a sense of where you're going, a vision, a compelling image of the future, an image of the future that's so good and so attractive that you're willing to walk through forests, to climb steep hills, to travel with the focus and commitment of a shepherd, a loving parent. Imagine that you know deep within this vision of the future exists, and imagine that you are willing to allow yourself to take the time to open the doors and let yourself gradually, or all at once, to become more aware of this vision and the wisdom that can guide you to it. Good. And allowing yourself to relax and remain relaxed as you gradually allow your eyelids to open if they've been closed, and yet still allowing yourself to be relaxed, breathing effortlessly. One of the things I wanted to share with you about that level of, of chaos that's around you, and there in the title, uh, it's something that baffles me every time I become aware of it. It's the stark contrasts and polarities that we see in the world around us. We become accustomed to it. I mean, you can just go to the internet as I did, and there it is— a picture of a lovely mansion with a lovely pool out back. Not easy to find, not difficult to find. And yet another mansion. Oh, lovely. But on the other hand, there are people suffering that it's easy to see right there in the channel, right next to the next multi-million, million dollar mansion. And then just over the hill, people picking through burn piles and garbage dumps looking for lunch or breakfast or maybe something they can sell. Ah, and then there is the yachts. Yeah, multimillion-dollar yachts. This one has 1, 2, 3, 4— 4 floors and a lot of lovely things, I'm sure, that are inside and And there's somebody who's not going to be able to sleep in that yacht tonight. Another yacht takes off, and down on the border, immigrants are being rounded up. Yeah, horse and rope makes it much easier. And then not far away, there are our billionaires And one of their latest hobbies, which is to climb aboard a rocket ship that they've built and take off for a couple of hours at the cost of, you know, only a few tens of billions, millions of dollars, um, just spend a little while up there. And meanwhile, down there on the border, we're still rounding up the immigrants, you know, amazing things happening. How can such contrasts exist? And yet they do. And it's important to see them. And maybe there's a message, you know, not to get angry or upset or frustrated or sad or be overtaken by emotions that are coming from your monkey mind And they're coming up because your monkey mind thinks that you're dealing with a life or death tragedy at this moment. You know, a safe falling out of the 5th floor window on top of your head, or, you know, maybe a flood coming down the main street because of a big rain or forest fire. No, you don't have to have that kind of reaction. But something happens when you can look at it in a relaxed way, then it gives you an opportunity to tap into a higher level of your mind. And again, with all these amazing inventions and strange polarities of our world, I think that we're losing touch with something even more valuable. I think It has to do with what we call spirituality. Well, let me share just a little bit about my background so that you can put my remarks in context. I've not been brought up believing deeply in some religious, uh, you know, principles. In fact, I started out as a militant agnostic. By the time I was in college, I reveled in my ability to tear apart the simplistic reasoning of people who argued for the existence of God. Oh boy. Yeah.

Can he make a rock so heavy he can't lift it?

Uh, I, I, I was be— I was bewildered. I was wondering, particularly when I experienced things like all the story of Adolf Hitler because the Second World War had just recently passed. And so the messages were out there. And here is a story of hundreds of people on the St. Louis. Ah, they're waving at us there. But actually, that's a ship that had maybe 900 people or so that over from Europe to get away from Hitler and the concentration camps and the death camps. And we said, no, uh, we've already reached our immigrant quota for the year. Too bad. And Cuba said no, and Canada said no. And so the ship took them back, whereupon immediately 300 of them were sent into the gas chambers. Many others were sent to concentration camp, and many of the remaining ones died in those concentration camps. Well, you know, what's going on here? How can one madman come along and convince a whole nation of people? That includes the spiritual leaders. In many cases, there's priests saluting Hitler, Heil Hitler, with the Hitler— famous Hitler salute. How could that happen? I went around talking to people about it, saying, this is terrible, we've got to do something. Oh, they said, you know, that, that was Hitler, and we've, we've killed Hitler. It's, it's all over. We don't have to worry about him anymore. But I had a feeling inside, no, I thought, that's something that's loose on in this world. And these killing machines that were so efficient, machines to do a genocide. And, you know, by then it was 10 years later. I said, look at the weapons and the tools that we have now. If it comes along again, they'll just be better able to, you know, to do that genocide. And nobody was interested in talking about it. And I figured, okay, if nobody wants to do something about it, maybe one day I can do something about it. But I figured that was going to have to be by doing something scientifically since I had a great deal of trouble with that whole notion of religion. I looked up into the sky and I didn't see a, a God sitting on a throne in the sky, which which they told me as a child, that's how the world was. You know, God was sitting up there. Uh, I had trouble with the notion of Moses parting the Red Sea and the virgin birth. Pshh. I don't know where to go with that one, but that didn't make any sense. And then at the same time, our loving religion of Christianity, and the Pope sends out armies to kill Arabs. Catholics and Protestants are fighting each other over and over. There's the Ten Years' War and the Thirty Years' War and on and on. And then there's this unbelievable tragedy of hundreds of pedophile Catholic priests abusing thousands of children worldwide and covering up the stories until at last some of the kids start to sue them in, in, in court. But then I had some experiences that started to change my mind as I started developing this field of mind-body medicine. Because I've discovered that those people who had a spiritual path or a religion that they really believed in, they were much more successful in making changes in their lives and then healing their bodies when they were ill. and they had much more of an ability to become happy and successful. Even like to stop smoking, um, people who believed in something could stop it. Even if I used the most powerful hypnotic techniques that I knew of, it was always better if they had that belief, even if I didn't talk about it, interestingly enough. And so I saw this happen enough times And then I heard a story, and I guess it's sort of a made-up story, but it gives you the idea because we've all seen something like this. A story of twins, and these twins live on a tropical island. And on this island, this tribe that lives on the island, that each morning they worship the sacred banyan tree. Oh, great banyan tree, protect us and guide us and give us food. And every day. And one of the twins went out and faithfully prayed to the banyan tree every day. The other twin says, "Banyan tree is just a tree. I'm getting an extra half hour's sleep." So he does that. Well, one day the two boys are out walking on different paths through the trees, and at the same moment two panthers attack the boys at the same time. Now that twin who prayed to the great banyan tree, as he sees this panther coming towards him, he says, "Oh, great banyan tree, give me strength!" And he feels the power of the banyan tree, and he grabs the panther and he wrestles it to the ground. Panther goes, "Whoa!" and gets up and runs away. Meanwhile, the other twin, as a panther attacks him, goes, "Oh no, a panther! Aargh!" Yeah, because I have something to believe in. You know, stories of guys going through the war and like being incredible heroes, and they get back and they say, "How were you able to do it?" And one of them said, "It's my lucky, you know, rabbit's foot." And the You know, the, the news— newspaperman says, oh, show us the rabbit. He puts his hand in his pocket. It's not in there, but it's worked for him, you see. So I— for that— well, the other thing I, I noticed that there are many things that I was learning from the wise teachers from the past, and one was St. Augustine, who said, to have faith is to believe in what you do not see, and the reward of faith is to see that in which you have believed. Hmm, isn't that interesting? Let's just take a little journey back through time, not too far, but just back to the days of Pasteur. And Pasteur discovered the role of bacteria and that only wounds that had bacteria in them were infected. And so he created the germ theory of disease, that the enemy is on the outside and what we can do is put up a barrier, wash our hands and so forth, uh, or learn to poison them. But at the same time, what most of us aren't aware of is Louis Pasteur who developed the, the notion of homeostasis, even though he didn't call it that. And he said that host factors were primary in disease and homeostasis or milieu intérieur, the inner balance. When that inner balance is maintained, we stay healthy. And when the inner balance is disrupted, then we are open to feel and experience disease. But that was a little too complex of thought for the mid-1800s. And so we stuck with, um, the notion that the enemy was outside. And then unfortunately, with the Flexner report and the work of, of Rockefeller, the only kinds of medicine that who were acknowledged were basically those that did surgery or that prescribed medication, and we lost the notion. But this is exactly the notion that came upon me as I was doing my practice. And as we all know now, this is, I'd say, 50 years since I introduced the idea, all of us realize that the majority of our afflictions are definitely affected by how we think and how we feel, or in our emotions. And a huge number are ultimately birthed from our mind-body interactions, the decisions we make, the lifestyles that we lead. Think of obesity, diabetes, the toxins of alcohol and drugs. They're not merely diseases, they're manifestations of the chaotic monkey mind. Guided by algorithms that we learned to deal with stress and reaction in an inappropriate way. And the roots of these maladaptive patterns that ultimately give rise to illness, and I, you know, I say definitely the majority of the problems. Yeah, you can say, well, what about, you know, liver failure? Well, most liver failure is due to alcoholism, and alcoholism comes from people who don't know how to calm themselves, and they turn to alcohol to escape the pain inside. The same thing with people who drink too much or who drive too fast and give us the automobile accidents. You know, it's actually mind-body is the source of that. Even the 100,000 people per year that are overdosing on drugs, fentanyl and so forth, and many hundreds of thousands more who are using it regularly. Why? So all of their illness and that death is because they simply haven't learned how to balance themselves inside. So for the first two decades of, of my work and my research, I delved into the human mind using the power of hypnosis to guide people back to the origin of their pain. I sought the genesis of their anxiety, anger, helplessness, and destructive behaviors, whatever it might be. And I realized that within each of us lies a battlefield of social challenges that we faced in childhood. If luck didn't favor us with a nurturing family, if guidance was lost during some of those times of stress, then we had to build our understanding of the world with faulty bricks. Now we all know about PTSD, okay? Someone is in the army and 3 or 4 of their favorite friends get shot and killed and, you know, they're in the war and finally they come home and they're very uptight. And that's called post-traumatic stress disorder because there's so much anxiety inside A car backfires and the guy takes cover under the desk, that sort of thing. He gets angry and yells at his children, kicks the dog, kills his wife, things like that. So wait, no, that's extreme PTSD. What I discovered is that most of the problems we have in our lives— think of some of the problems you have, think of the discomforts that are in your body. Think of the poor eating habits that you had. Think of your failure to exercise. Think about the emotions, the anger and the fear and the sadness that plague you, you know, the anxiety, the stage fright, the lack of self-confidence, on and on and on. And all of those things lead to physical disease after a while. And that's a story for another, for another session. But I think those of you who have been listening, you really, really understand that. And what I'm saying is that a huge number, maybe all of those things that are problems in our lives, are a form of PTSD. I call it complex PTSD, CPTSD, right? That something happens in your childhood One interesting case was sort of odd, but it's a woman who had a lot of anxiety, a lot of tension. Uh, it's a kind of a middle-aged woman. Um, she got hold of some of my— well, in those days there were audio cassettes. Now, now it would be getting hold of a, you know, a, a, a CD or a download. And she relaxed and she found she could relax You know, more than she ever had, and it was wonderful. And so she would get very relaxed, and then she would feel herself getting even more relaxed and thinking, this is wonderful, because with a little practice, you're able to relax more deeply every time. So, and suddenly she would wake up like that. That's strange. She tried it again. When she got to a certain level of relaxation, Yeah, she'd wake up like that. She came to see me to see if I could help her get past this block. So I guided her back, and using selective awareness exploration, to the first time in her life that she ever had this kind of reaction. Oh, she's 6 months old, she's lying in the bassinet, and she's late in the day, and she can There's a lace curtain, and she's watching the sunlight come through the lace curtain and project shadows on the wall. And as the breezes blow, the shadows move, and she is feeling wonderful. And then silently, her jealous 6-year-old brother sneaks into the room, pushes over the bassinet, and tosses the baby on the floor. Ah! That was it. So my work was to desensitize her, in other words, to take her through that memory in a state of deep relaxation. So therefore, her system was no longer programmed to react in that way. Sent her home with a tape to practice. Rescripting that over and over for her, and the problem went away. So that was dealing with the PTSD in the same way I work with soldiers who have PTSD. So in each of us— well, I don't know if it, you know, what happened. The mother came in, oh, the baby fell on the floor. Here, I'll pick you up and put you back in the bassinet, and they leave. Nobody knows what happened. So we have these little traumas in our lives. And again, all I'm going to say is that we escape from this terrible pain by developing a belief about the world, like don't trust little boys. Or maybe we have an angry drunken father and we decide, you know, you can't trust men, they'll they'll come after you and they probably all drink. Or that maybe there's an overprotective mother who smothers you, and your belief is that women are smothering. I mean, all kinds of things that have built up situations and beliefs in you. And then when you're challenged in certain ways in your life, these fears and anxieties come up within you. And if you don't do something therapeutic about it, or if you run away into some behavior pattern to get away from the pain— because in our culture we want to not feel anything bad, you know, all our medications, symptomatic treatment, uh, you know, and if these symptomatic treatments don't work, then consult your doctor. Oh, you know, pain is appropriate in many cases and is the place where we get the most learning in our lives. But these microtraumas we have are hidden, concealed memories that sculpt our personality and lead us to the very behaviors and the diseases that we like to escape. Well, what can we do? We can rewrite these ancient algorithms in a way similar to what I just described, although Again, it's something for another session to say exactly how I go about it when I'm doing it, but you can do it for yourself. And what that has to do with is creating the peace and the comfort and the love and the trust that an infant would have in the arms of a loving mother, except you're sitting there in the chair in your office or lying on your sofa. And you're realizing there's nowhere I have to go, nothing I have to do. And you give that monkey mind the love that it would have had with that, with that adoring and loving mother. Because as we're children, we're born as spirits who seek love. And if we don't get enough love, then we can't grow to our full magnificence. And in a world where mother only gets to stay home for 2 weeks after a baby's born, well, that baby's— who knows what's going to happen? Who knows what the babysitter is going to do, or if they'll just let the child cry forever or shake them to make them stop. But you just don't know. And those little things hold the keys to the problems in our lives. But, and so what, what we have working for us is that complex biological marvel that I call the human biocomputer, a machine that's so intricate, intricate, yet so responsive to the simple choices we make every day. Operated skillfully, it produces and sustains life and health and energy and happiness and love. Your human biocomputer is programmed by your genetics. Some people are born with a lot of extra tension, etc. So by your genetics by the experiences that you go through in your life, put together with your perception of the current moment. So I want to show you this pattern that's within us, a hierarchy that is in our mind and in our body, how it works. And we've talked about how we have the— this conscious mind and where we have our, um, System 2 thoughts, the prefrontal cortex, for instance. And then we have the lower levels, the emotions. And on the other side of that is the behaviors. You think something, you feel fear, and then your body tenses up. And there's a hierarchy that's set up here. And then as you go higher in the hierarchy, up toward higher levels of the brain, abilities emerge that were not present at the lower level, and we're designed so that information comes up from the lower levels up toward the mind, and guidance and control need to be sent from the mind down through the system into the body. When it does that, we can stay healthy and everything works fine. Now we take a look at thoughts, the experience, and the medium, and the organ. Thoughts are like electrons, patterns, little chemical patterns, and they're in the prefrontal cortex. Images are represented by neuropeptides at the synaptic junctions. That goes on also in the neocortex to some degree. And emotions are hormones, which are again a lot bigger mass than just a neural peptides, which are in turn much larger than pure electrons. And those hormones are what's generated by that monkey mind, by the old brain. Those emotions then produce movement and change in the body. This movement and change takes place in muscles and glands. And here you've got— now you're moving much larger bits of matter down in your body. So this is, it's what I call mind over matter. This is how what goes on in your mind causes matter to change. And so that if you're thinking negative thoughts, painful thoughts, you're thinking about, uh, about bad things, harmful things, then you will, uh, create images in your mind, and those images are seen by your monkey mind which then responds with the emotions, which then go ahead and produce the changes in your body, like fear and anger and frustration and sadness and jealousy and embarrassment and on and on and on. Whereas if you're thinking positive and beautiful thoughts, then those turn into beautiful images, which the monkey can respond to by generating positive hormones that make you feel good. So the patterns of our thoughts and the things that we're thinking create our images. And so what determines what's the flow of thoughts through our mind? Well, there's another higher level. That is your beliefs. A fellow I know who became very wealthy, he started out making cold calls to sell people insurance. Hello, would you like to buy some insurance? Um, And, you know, you get a lot of nos, you get a lot of hang-ups, and it's very frustrating. You know, what kind of job? You all day long you're getting turned down. And I said to him, how did you manage to stay in there and keep working with all of those nos? He said, well, I looked at the statistics, and the statistics were out of every 400 nos that I got I got one yes. So every time I heard a no, I said, yes, I'm one step closer to that yes. He had a different way of thinking about it. So our beliefs are like the, like the twins and the leopard that's jumping on them. Your beliefs give rise to your thoughts. And if you have that thought that there's a tree that's going to help you, okay, then you feel powerful emotions that quickly get generated out of your monkey mind, as opposed to you not knowing how to call on emotions of strength. And you might just see a panther and call on emotions of fear because you don't have a tree in there to say, no, there's a great power somewhere. The tree, we may think of it as a metaphor. For that power. Maybe that's what— if you need to, you can think of it that that's what religions are, and the stories of religions, depending upon how God is described. Because I found that no matter what religion a person believed in, their belief in that religion helped them to make positive change. And that belief is in that level of the spirit. And so that we all have some kind of spiritual system, even those who don't believe in any spirit, but you have values. You feel it's wrong to kick your dog. You feel it's wrong to lie to someone that you love. You feel that It's wrong to look down on someone because they happen to be poorer than you. You feel it's the right thing to feed your cat when it's crying and crying, or your baby, whatever. You have things that you believe in. And what does that mean? Where are those beliefs? Why are they there? You, you could imagine something different, but something in you says no. This is what I want to imagine. It's like the man who found the little boy on the beach throwing starfish into the water. And, you know, after it was one of those big ugly tides and there were millions of starfish up on the shore. And as he's throwing in, the man walks over to him, he says, "What are you doing?" Little boy says, "I'm saving the lives of starfish." The man says, "Look, there's millions of starfish. What good can you do?" You know, how can you help? Little boy picked up one and he threw it in the water. He says, help that one. Yeah. Yeah. So sometimes it's how we look at, and that is what I would then call your spiritual, or if you like, let's call it your philosophical level. Now, what we tend to do is to look toward our spiritual teachers for wisdom. And let me just say a little bit about what wisdom is. Um, to be wise, uh, the, the, the definition of being wise is having the presence of mind to create a mental representation of your desired future. And from that perspective, evaluate and compare it to your present future. In other words, to be wise is to make a choice today that you're going to look back at next week or next month and go, yeah, that was a wise choice. To look back and say, I'm glad I made that choice. And so sometimes there are things we have to do, you know, like cleaning out a really dirty bathroom or something like that, Well, yeah, that's not inspiring. But if you see a really beautiful bathroom and how wonderful it's going to be when your mother or your wife or your kid or whoever sees it, whatever, then you can feel inspired to do that. And as Errol Ozan said, Intelligence without wisdom brings destruction. And we live in a world where there's a lot of intelligence without wisdom. Now traditionally we turned to our spiritual teachers to provide that guidance, and when they live by those principles um, that things work better. I discovered that when I was a Boy Scout, they made me memorize Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. It's right there in my mind. Okay, so I did that, so I was able to get my Tenderfoot badge. But you know, each one of those, if you're behaving in those ways, you're very likely to be able to create a successful life. So I, when I discovered that religions were helping people and I didn't have any religion, uh, I was fortunate enough to have begun my teaching down at Esalen Institute in Big Sur in 1970, where the teachings of the, of the East were making the shoreline in America, I was right there to welcome them and to learn what I could from them, being exposed to Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and, and other such teachings. One that was especially interesting to me was from the field of Taoism, and in the Tao Te Ching it says, 30 spokes Share the wheel's hub. It is the center hole that makes it useful. Shape clay into a vessel. It's the space within it that makes it useful. Cut doors and windows for a room. It is the holes which make it useful. Therefore, you benefit, or profit comes from what is there. Usefulness from what is not there. And that— it's a celebration of emptiness. That's just one of the many readings from the Tao Te Ching that's really— it's just remarkable how they look at the world. And yet when people look at the world in that way, they can be very successful. But here was this whole difference about emptiness. And then Buddhism was to have less. It's like the Zen Buddhist priest gets a birthday present and he opens it. It's a box and it's empty. And he looks into it and he says, ah, nothing, just what I wanted. There's a huge mass of people who are believing this and living well with it. So I begin to come up with the idea— I don't know if there is beyond everything that I can experience, but I can imagine it. And it's almost as though there's another level of the brain that if we had it, it would be the wise level. It wouldn't let us do such stupid things. As smart as we are, we can do some incredibly stupid things. Imagine like another level of brain that would always be there and be like that little angel on your shoulder, but there wouldn't be any devil around. Because it would be so strong. Well, we can imagine it, so we can emulate the spiritual level. Just imagine that there's another level, to picture that it's there. You can begin with that. It doesn't have to be something there, but you can act as if there were such a, such a level. Then I had the good fortune to run into Ram Dass and to teach with him for, um, for quite a while. And his first book was Be Here Now, and that's sort of the message that is underlying it all. And so our steps now in accessing our spirituality— we'll continue this, we'll continue this next time, and I'll go into a few more, maybe a little bit more esoteric but, but also a, a deeper, a deeper training. There was just, uh, one, one more story I wanted to share with, with, with, from a, a young, a young girl. I guess she must have been in 3rd or 4th, maybe 5th grade, maybe 5th grade or something like that. And she had had a bad accident and had a huge scar on her face. Not a great thing for a little girl, as you can imagine. And She was due to have some surgery, plastic surgery, to repair that area of her face, but she was very, very frightened of the whole situation. So she was brought to me, and I asked her where she went to school, and she said she went to St. Elizabeth's School. Good, little Catholic school. And I says, do they have, uh, uh, Yeah, because I'm— there's a little girl and I'm there, I'm a big guy, I'm a little bit imposing, and she was a little scared of me. So wait, now I'm gonna have to put her into a deeply relaxed state so that I can retrain her mind, reprogram her, so to speak. So what am I going to do? Okay, so this is my plan. And there are these statues there that they have. She says, oh yes. I said, do you like the statues? And she says, yes, I do. I said, "What's your favorite statue?" She says, "It's a statue of Mary that's out by the fountain behind the church." I said, "Oh," I say, "do you sometimes visit the fountain?" She said, "Oh yes, I go and I sit there and I look at the statue." I said, "Let's do that now. Close your eyes and I want you to picture the fountain in your mind. Can you see it?" And she said, "Mm-hmm." I say, "Okay, now sit in your favorite place near the fountain." and look up at the statue. Relax as you look at it and notice how good you feel. And all the time while I'm here talking to you, you're gonna look at that statue and you're gonna feel this really good feeling. And as you're doing that, I'm going to talk to your body because your body's going to be going in to have that unsightly blemish removed And in order to do that, you're going to go into a room and become very, very— then I describe her surgery to her, and then I bring her out of it, and then that's it. And then her, her, it's gone. So I'm already accessing the spiritual resources in this way. So I want you to access a spiritual resource, okay? Let your body relax. Allow yourself to be in a comfortable position, being aware there's nowhere that you need to go, nothing that you need to do, there's no problem that you have to solve. And those words, those thoughts begin to put your monkey mind at ease. Allow your eyelids to close. And behind your closed eyelids, let your eyelids roll upward to the back of your forehead. Imagine that you can see the word relax there. And as you see the word relax, relax your eyelid muscles down to the point they don't want to open them, and you feel that relaxation in your eyelids. Simply test them and let that relaxation from your eyelids flow throughout all the rest of your body, from the top of your head all the way down to the tips of your toes, relaxing deeply. Take a deep breath in, and as you let it out, let it be a feeling of of letting go completely. Let the air do the breathing for you, and let yourself sink down into that space after each breath out. And before the next breath comes in, feel the air breathing you and think to yourself, with each breath out, it breathes me, it breathes me. And anytime any unnecessary thought comes along, breathe it out with your next breath out, or erase it from your mental black board as you test your gentle eyelids and let yourself float through time and space to your special place, place far, far away from anything that could ever disturb you, a place of peace and calm and comfort. See the images around you in this place. Smell the fragrances in the air. Feel the surface beneath you. And as you're in this special place I'm going to ask you to begin to open your awareness to that special place within you, a place of power, of wisdom, of love. I want you to go back to an experience of love that you can recreate in your mind's eye. Think of a loved one and then of a special place that you were with them. Or maybe you've never been there. You don't have to have an actual memory, but if you have an actual person you love, be there with that person. Feel their touch, smell their fragrance, hear the sound of their voice. Or if your loved one is an animal, maybe you can feel yourself petting that animal and hear the soft, comfortable sounds it makes. And focus on the feeling of love. Notice where you feel it most strongly in your body and breathe into it. And if another experience of love comes along, let yourself tune into it. Again, it could be a person, an animal, a beautiful piece of music, piece of art that inspired you, or one of those special moments in your life, like a special victory, the moment of giving birth, maybe an epiphany that you came to one day. Aha! A special holy moment, a breakthrough for you, a spiritual moment when you were in touch with what felt like a higher power. Whatever that means to you, allow yourself to be in touch with that level, continuing to erase all unnecessary thoughts. Be in the scene, feel it physically, feel the joy, happiness, and think of the wisdom that exists in this special place. And maybe there are certain moments when you are in touch with wisdom. And you made a very, very wise choice. It was like magic that that message came through to you. And now think of where you might be in touch with that spiritual source, the special place of wisdom and guidance Maybe it's in your heart. Where do you feel it? Maybe you feel it in your mind, or maybe for you it's like a guardian angel or a spirit that comes from above, or a sense of great wisdom, the spirit that moves through all things, that universal wisdom that travels through the universe. Or you can think of it as another level of your brain. You figure out what it is and give it a name, this place of spirit. Give it a name, this feeling that you have as you're in touch with it. And be aware of that place that seems to be where that spirit emanates from. Now imagine this is a place that you can come to anytime you wish simply by guiding yourself to your special relaxed place in a way that you learn to do so well. And then reaching there, get in touch with love or spirit as best you can. Feel it in that image and then locate it in your body or wherever. Think of that word that would describe it to you. And whatever you would call that feeling that comes forth from it, and you're in touch with it wherever you are. And now, from this point, look at the decision that lies in front of you. There are several different possibilities. You know those possibilities because you've examined the situation. If you aren't aware of them, then that's what you do. Simply examine the situation as it is and see what the possibilities are for you. And be aware of that goal. What is it that you're moving towards? What's the goal here? Is it to find that lost sheep? Is it to speak with comfort and confidence in yourself? Run faster than you ever run before? Be a kind and loving person in a certain situation? Be able to apologize? To be strong and express yourself? Whatever it is, you look forward into that situation the future. Maybe you look a week ahead or a month ahead, and you imagine yourself there, and you're feeling really, really happy that you made that decision back there. What decision can you make now, today, that's most likely to make you happy at that point in the future? Go into the future. Picture the outcome of— the most likely outcome of each of those choices available to you. And now imagine yourself making that choice. Come back to the present. Make that choice. Say, that's what I'm going to do. Hold in mind The image of you being successful at the end, a couple of weeks or months, years, whatever it is in the future. Plant that my image firmly in your mind. That's your outcome image. That's the image your deeper mind is going to work toward. Erase all unnecessary thoughts. Come back to the present. What's the next step in making the choice? What's the next action you need to take? Because any choice you make, there's several things. First of all, you got to get up and go someplace, or pick up the phone, or pick up your computer, whatever it is. What's the first step? Picture yourself doing it without— without outcome image in your mind. What's your next step? Your next step— take your steps through this. Making this decision, making this choice. Visualize yourself making it all the way to the end and celebrating your victory. Good. When you picture the image of where you're going, you're using outcome imagery. Simply picturing that will empower you greatly, but it will be even more powerful and more healing as you can— if you visualize the steps to get there. If it's going inside, talk to the white cells of your body, convey to them what you want to do, and visualize them doing it. That's what I call process imagery, and that tends to make it even more powerful. And remember, what you're doing is reprogramming a human nervous system. You're rewriting the connections It takes time for nerves to grow and make the connection. That's what you're doing. So you have to practice this imagery, and each time you do it, the nerves are growing out and they're making bigger and stronger connections until it becomes like a habit, whatever that change is that you want. Great. So for now, take a deep breath in, and as you let it out, let yourself return to being wide awake, feeling comfortable and alert, present and clear. Good.

Well, that's about all for now. It's been wonderful to be with you here, and by all means, keep your eye out for part 2. Of Beyond the Chaos: Finding Serenity and Power in Spiritual Awareness. And now a word from our sponsor, shop.drmiller.com, place on the web you can go to and find some fine products to follow up on our work today. First of all, there's The Power of Your Mind to Nurture Your Spirit. And that's a DVD, and it's a wonderful program for following up on these ideas. A more complete program is the Personal Excellence set of imagery and heart-to-heart talk programs. Um, goes through many things to build right up to your spirituality. Also look up 'Serenity Prayer,' where I take a deep dive into the real concepts of serenity, courage, and especially wisdom. It's very spiritual. And finally, just for the beauty of it, there's 'Rainbow Butterfly.' Two wonderful guided imageries that I did with the spectacular harp music of Georgia Kelly. Go to shop. Drmiller.com and you'll find them there right away. And if you want to learn more about my work, go to drmiller.com. There's a ton of material about relaxation, deep relaxation, stress management, guided imagery, and so many more things about self-healing. So until next time, I wish you goodbye and Namaste.