Guided Imagery Meditations for Individual Healing and Global Transformation Webinar

Welcome. This is Dr. Emmett Miller. We're going to have guided imagery meditations for individual healing and global transformation and how to move into the new paradigm thinking. Change your mind. Change your life. I might mention, if you haven't checked it out yet, go to drmiller.com/LiveLife and take a look at this movie that we made 15 years ago. It's finally been published. It'll be there as long as people keep writing reviews. You don't have to say anything other than "good movie" or "I liked it" or put a couple of X's in there. It's called Live Life. You can find it by going to drmiller.com/livelife, and you can watch one episode, or you can watch the whole movie. It's— Amazon is the ones who are putting it out there, and we really appreciate that. There's a story once about a certain jewel thief who was in the bazaar, and he stole a lovely necklace. He went across to the other side of the bazaar, and he was in the process of selling it to someone, when quite by chance, a certain jeweler happened to be passing by at that moment. And he saw this fellow who he figured was a jewel merchant, because he was selling a necklace for $100. And he came over to the jewel thief and says, "Man, that's a beautiful necklace." The jewel thief says, "Yeah, $100." The guy says, "How can you possibly be selling that for $100?" The jewel thief's eyes got very large. He said, "Is there a number bigger than 100?" A human being is part of the whole. That we refer to as the universe, a part limited in time and space. Human being experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires, and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion, to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in all its beauty. Perhaps nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such an achievement is in itself A part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security. It was a quote by Albert Einstein. And again, this is Dr. Emmett Miller. Welcome to New Paradigm Part 3, guided imagery meditations for individual healing and global transformation. Stories are very interesting. We're always telling a story. One story that I recall was about a group of computer scientists who had created an artificial intelligence program that could think far beyond what human intelligence was capable of. The problem they then had was, what question should they ask this incredibly brilliant computer? Eventually, they decided upon a question that so many of us asked. "Does God exist?" Well, they fed the question into the computer that mulled over it for a few nanoseconds, and then shot back its answer. That reminds me of a story. Another way that that story goes is the computer answers when they ask, "Is there a God?" And it says, "There is now." But we live our lives according to stories. We call that the narrative of our lives. And we're continually constructing those narratives. And the narratives are very personal. I am a winner. I'm a loser. I am beautiful. I'm too fat. I'm the only one that can save the world from a disastrous future. And on and on and on, we have these stories that we tell ourselves about who we are. Some of the stories we tell ourselves are beneficial, and they enable us to be very successful and happy. Some stories, however, work against us as individuals, and against creating peace and success in our collective lives. Both individually and collectively, they either support or inhibit us. As a case in point, consider the hyper-polarized political situation in our country. Our democracy is about to fall apart primarily because of two groups of people who are deeply dedicated to two very different stories that they deeply believe. And the stories are mutually exclusive, and they're tearing up the world. Oh, while we are at enormous, an enormous danger of being attacked by some pretty mean actors out there in the world, and we're about trying to set up a civil war. I mean, what's with this story? What's with this narrative? If it's baffled you as much as it had baffled me, I want you to check out Ezra Klein's book. It's called "Why We're Polarized." Really thoughtful book, fascinating in terms of his perspective. This is a guy who's been doing this for decades. Check him out. But the story of our national politics is just an extreme example of an even more familiar pattern: how you grow up believing things that were forced upon you by your families, your teachers, or your community. And it's true for all of us. Because of how our brains work, much of what we learn about the world is the result of stressful situations we've been in and we've reacted to. Often these reactions like anger, anxiety, depression, insecurity are unwise and harmful. Yet they create algorithms, the patterns that our monkey mind then uses to recreate the same patterns of feeling and action into the rest of our lives, even though they're harmful. It's what we call learned helplessness. We've learned to be helpless. The person who's learned to have fear of speaking in front of a group, a group that will not kill him or stone him or attack him in any way, then that person has learned to feel helpless. The person who becomes really angry and does things that injure themselves and people that they love has learned helplessness, and anger is the thing that keeps him helpless. So these are habitual ways that we can continue to perceive the world and the way we react to current-day stresses. Look at the ones in your life that are not the way you'd like for them to be. Because we see the world through certain filters, but we don't even realize that we're looking at it through filters. In a lot of our previous presentations, I've shown you through the optical illusions and through the incredible work of Daniel Kahneman, how filtered our experiences, and that most of what we believe happens to be wrong. It turns out that a lot of it sort of serves its purpose. You know, it was kind of like when I was in Bali, I found that the children in Bali are taught that there are monsters in the ocean. Stay out of the ocean because monsters will get you. And it's a culture that believes in monsters. And so kids, guess what? They stay out of the ocean. And as a result, very few children die of drowning in the ocean, even though Bali's a little island surrounded by ocean. That doesn't mean there are monsters in the ocean. It just works. And in that way, many of the things we believe in, the ways that we act, work. But they don't work that well. And they're not very useful for building higher-order plans. Like, you know, someone who believes there's monsters in the ocean is not going to be a very good shipbuilder, right? Okay. So people, our teachers, the media, all the sources around us in our dense misinformation environment are continually telling us things about ourselves, things that represent their opinions and their intentions. And of course, they tell us as if it's absolutely true. You know, this pill is actually going to save your life. Vote for this guy and everything's going to go fine. Right. And when we're not old enough, or not sufficiently self-confident, or we haven't matured enough, then we accept what we're being told as the truth. And that's true for all of us in our early years. Remember how the old Catholic priests used to say, you give me a child before the age of 7 "Give me a 10-year-old and I'll give you a Catholic." That's pretty honest. Because that's how vulnerable we are. If at that point, in those early years, we're told that it's possible for virgins to give birth and for oceans to part and for dead individuals to come back to life, we believe it. If we haven't been taught that, we go, "Ah, wait a minute." And so it is in every religion. Oh, but this just shows how much we tend to believe what we're fed during that time. And then we don't remember how we learned it. And we learn things through traumatic experiences. I'd like to share with you just one little story about my life that could have led to a very different outcome. It happened when my mother enrolled me into one of those preschools that they, that had just come along, and they're designed to give very bright and very gifted children an enriched program that can both interest them as well as let them advance at their own rapid speed. So the head of the school called my mother in one day after they had given some tests in the school, and she says, "Mrs. Miller, I have some very unfortunate news." And she whispered in a kind of a confidential voice, "The results show that Emmett's IQ is substantially substantially below normal. In fact, it indicates this IQ falls within the moronic range. And as you know, our program is designed specifically for children who are significantly above average. My mother takes me out to school and says, "That woman's crazy." And says, "What am I supposed to do?" And the woman says, "Well, here's a list of some of the institutions for the retarded children in the area, and you can get him enrolled there now while he's nice and young, and he can I'll grow up there and be taken care of. And my mother said, no way. My mother was a schoolteacher. She says, sounds retarded. So she took me to New York City from Baltimore where I got to see Dr. Kenneth Clark, who was a famous psychologist. And they ran me through 3 days of tests. And at the end of the tests, Dr. Clark called my mother in. He said, This is Mulliger's son's not retarded. Far from it. He is, to the contrary, extremely intelligent, testing in the genius range. The original tests that he took in that school, however, were designed only to detect intelligence levels below maybe 140 or 150. Their inability to recognize the level of thinking that where he is operating resulted in the erroneous conclusion that he was retarded, since his answers were different from the ones that they had expected. How different would have been the story of my life? And how difficult are the lives of many, many people who fell into situations like this? And God bless my mother for being sufficiently wise and courageous. Now, on the other hand, I think I did experience some trauma at that time, because Later in my life, I've often had anxiety and fear that people would underestimate my intelligence, which often led to my spending too much time trying to prove myself, and show people how smart I was, and come up with arcane definitions for things and words that people haven't heard before, and being able to spell things and speak many different languages. And do complex mathematical equations. Okay, do you believe me? Do you believe I'm not retarded? Hopefully I don't do that anymore. But all of us have taken on damages of different kinds throughout their lives, microtraumas, if you will, that have primed us to have certain useless and dysfunctional emotions. Those emotions, those events have led to our feeling self-conscious, anxious about things, anxious about the world, insecure, envious, having the imposter syndrome. Maybe people will catch and discover that I'm not as good as they think. And in return, when you have those kinds of emotions, they bring about certain kinds of behavior. So today what we're going to do is to try to work on shedding some of those toxic emotions and bad habits. And they're all associated with what we've talked about before called the old paradigm. And you know, even when we're aware of feeling these dysfunctional emotions, we're not always aware of feeling them. Sometimes we say, oh no, I'm calm all the time. But that's because we've suppressed those feelings. And what that does is it means that we're behaving in ways that are harmful to ourselves and in the business of creating disease within the body, because that's what happens when emotions are suppressed. They don't go away, they just go into a deeper part of the nervous system. I mentioned, mentioned the old and the new paradigm. So let me just mention for a second what, you know, what we're meaning when we talk about the old paradigm and the new paradigm. Here we have System 1. It's the lower part of the brain, what I call the monkey brain, the limbic system. How it works: it's fast. Its defining characteristics are that it's not conscious. We can't be conscious of those things that that part of the brain does. It's effortless, doesn't take us energy to do it. And they're automatic. It doesn't involve self-awareness. And it doesn't involve our being in control of, of those behaviors. Now, System 2, on the other hand, is deliberate and conscious, this higher part of the mind, effortful, a controlled mental process. And there's self-awareness, There's control, and it's a logical and skeptical way of looking at things. We don't just go by the reflex that comes along. Now we go at a different level. If you reach a stoplight when you're driving along, you don't need to stop and figure out anything. Your foot automatically goes to the brake. That's System 1. But if you want to park in a tight parking space, well, then you need to call on System 2, because you need to think and you need to plan and you need to be conscious. So, our first step in what we do anytime that we want to use higher levels of awareness, when we want to strategize, when we want to contact higher consciousness, is to relax. So, begin. This is our first step. First step is centering, coming into the present moment. So, take a moment and give yourself permission to become present and to relax deeply. Allow your body to be in a comfortable place and in a comfortable position, perhaps sitting or lying down, and give yourself permission to to have just a few moments of time dedicated to you to relax. Take a deep breath in, and as you let it out, let it be a feeling of letting go. Allow your eyelids to close and become consciously aware that right now your life is not in any immediate immediate danger, and that right now there's no need for any kind of fight or flight or stress. Therefore, you may feel free to instruct your System 1, your limbic system, the monkey mind, that primitive reactive part of your brain, that it can turn off the stress response completely by simply opening your mind to become consciously aware that you are completely safe and secure in the place where you are at this moment in time. And as you lightly allow your eyelids to close, gently permit your eyes to roll gently upward behind your closed eyelids and allow yourself to be clearly aware of the fact that at this moment right now And now there's no other place that you need to go, nothing that you have to do. There's no problem you have to solve. And therefore you can give yourself permission to relax, to let go, and focus your awareness on this moment right now, letting any sounds that you hear just serve to relax you. Even more. Good. Permission to focus on this moment, on the feeling of your body resting on the surface beneath you, on the sound of my voice and the rising and falling of your chest and abdomen with each breath. And as you allow yourself to become fully aware of this moment right now, Allow yourself to become aware of the fact that this is the only moment that actually exists. That every other moment that has happened in the past is gone forever. Moments in the future have never happened at all, and none of them may. And so you can let go of any thoughts of the past or the future. With each breath out, Allow yourself to sink deeply into this moment now. Good. And imagine that you're standing beneath a gentle waterfall of soothing relaxation that's flowing over your body, washing away all heaviness, all stress, all tension is dissolving and draining away, relaxing the muscles of your eyelids all the way down to the point they just don't want to open at all. And when you have that relaxed feeling in your eyelids, gently test them. And as you do, let that feeling flow outward from your eyelids throughout all the rest of your body, all the way down through the tips of your fingers, all the way out through the tips of your toes. Take another deep breath in, and as you let it out, let it be a feeling of letting go completely, and think to yourself the words, "It breathes me," and sink down into that little pause after each breath out, sinking down into that little pause before the next breath begins itself. Breathing in peace and relaxation and serenity. Ah, it breathes me. Letting that relaxation flow from your eyelids through the muscles of your face and through your scalp, down through your neck and shoulders, through your arms and your chest and your belly, relaxing your pelvis your thighs and your knees and your ankles and your feet, all the way down to the very soles of your feet. And just as each breath empties your body of any unnecessary stress or tension or heaviness, each breath out empties your mind of any unnecessary thoughts, allowing you to float more and more into this this present moment, feeling lighter and lighter, so light you can imagine yourself floating on a magic carpet through space and time, floating away to a place of great beauty and peace, maybe somewhere you visited before or have dreamed of visiting in the future. Go there now and picture the colors and shapes and movements as you arrive, looking around and allowing yourself to relax into this most peaceful place, enjoying the soothing sounds in the air, the pleasant fragrances in this atmosphere around you, and allow yourself to absorb this feeling of peace and calm into every atom of your being here in this, your own special island of peace. Letting yourself see or imagine— you can see all the colors and movements around you, hear the sounds— and let the serenity enter through every pore of your body. And know that you can return to this centered, grounded place of freedom at will. And that from this centered place, you may now allow yourself to focus on the interesting challenges and opportunities that lie before you, and allow your deepest wisdom and highest spiritual guidance to guide your thoughts and images and words words and your actions, and allow them to create the future that you most desire. That's it. Now gently allow your awareness to gradually expand to include this place where your body is resting comfortably. And as you take another deep breath in and then let it out, Allowing your eyelids to very slowly open and enjoy the colors and shapes and movements that are here around you. Right here in this present moment. Feeling the peace that remains within you. Okay. And I believe I can never emphasize too much how extremely important is this process of relaxing, centering, and being in the present moment. It's as if you're able to set yourself free to heal at every level, physically, mentally, emotionally, behaviorally, and spiritually. If you can bring yourself back to this place again and again, you can learn it. This is because whenever you do come back to this place, you're able to reach those higher levels of your mind. This is because one of the prime functions of your prefrontal cortex is an inhibitory one. It inhibits patterns of thoughts, images, and feelings that are not in support of your true purpose. This allows you to eliminate unnecessary thoughts, feelings, memories, and so forth, because they're not about the present moment. Now, your entire brain becomes available to you, instead of like most people where 80 or 90% of the brain is off being resentful of the past, or guilty of something that they've done, or feeling ashamed of who they are, or fearful of what might happen in the future, or what someone else might think. Hmm? No, you're here and now, in the moment. The take-home message is: never develop strategies about important issues. Never make significant decisions And especially avoid taking any significant actions while negative emotions predominate in you. You spent decades practicing doing things in the incorrect way and having these harmful emotions. Now it's time for you to take the time to practice relaxing deeply, daily, meditating, coming into the present moment, and then you'll be able to turn to higher levels for guidance. Long ago, the son of a king was kidnapped by a gang of highwaymen. Only 3 years old at the time, he grew up among the thieves thinking he was one. He forgot about the luxury of the palace, the culture he had been exposed to, even forgot about his mother and father. Instead of learning the royal arts and scientists and sciences, he learned the art of being abandoned, a bandit, using the bow and arrow, the science of hiding among the trees and bushes, and techniques for jumping upon travelers, stealing their money, and disappearing without a trace. By the age of 21, he had his own gang of robbers, and still he lived a rather isolated life. Secretly, in his heart of hearts, he suspects that the forest may not be his true home. That he's aware of no other place to go. By and by, a group of men and women from the palace pass by on their way to carry out some task for the king. A young robber and his band takes the party by surprise and begins to plunder their riches. But one of the wise men from the palace who was traveling with the band, in looking at the leader of the gang of roughnecks, saw something that attracted his attention. Though his face was snarling and rough, through the expression he could see the king's high forehead and the delicately shaped nose and the soft eyes of the queen. When he moved, the way he carried himself spoke of the royal breeding that the thieves instinctively obeyed. Looking at the prince in the eye, he said, "You are not a thief, Your Highness. I know who you are." "Outrage," the prince replied. "Indeed, I am not Your Highness or anybody else's. I'm a thief and the most feared and respected one in the kingdom at that." But the wise man's faith was unshaken. Instead of being repelled by the crudeness of the young man's reply, placing his arms around his shoulders, he began to relate to him stories about his early years in the palace, how his father used to carry him about on his shoulders, how his mother used to sing him to sleep, the pets he played with, and the games he enjoyed while living in the palace. Gradually, the prince began to remember. Ha! He stood up, his eyes calm and steady. He began to awaken. He had been transformed into an entirely different man. "I understand," he said slowly. "I'm not really a bandit. I'm not really violent. I simply forgot who I was." And fully a prince, he returned to the palace and to his father, the king. Well, of course, I'm talking about all of us. Many of us have forgotten How majestic we are. How wonderful we are as human beings. We've become thieves. We've become fearful. We've become slaves. However, once you become relaxed and come into the moment, you're ready to take the next step, which is to gain access to your deeper Self. And that's Self with a capital S. Somehow, what you do in your life is always going to be the result of the choices and decisions that you make on a moment-to-moment basis. The question is, who is really going to be responsible for those decisions in your life? I've shared with you numerous studies that demonstrate how frequently people go along with what others have said, or are pressuring them to do, or seducing them into and how few people make wise decisions from the deeper level of themselves. For most of us, in certain ways, we've been influenced by our environment to behave in such ways as to live up to their desires and standards, rather than to be aware of our own true values and purposes. And often we've just gotten into the habit of not being in touch with our values and purposes. In other words, not really knowing who we ourselves are. I'd like to share with you a way of getting to know your true self better. I want to be the wise man that puts his arm around you, not that you're a thief, but who knows. Have you ever been to Disneyland? There's a kind of a train that you ride all around Disneyland, and you go through a tunnel that passes through each of the different sectors: Adventureland, Frontierland, and so forth. A lot of the time you just sit looking at this boring wall of the inside of this canal you're riding through, this tunnel. But every once in a while, the train slows down and pauses, and there's a huge opening in the side, like a window that you look out, and there's Fantasyland, and there's princes and princesses, and unicorns, and all kinds of wonderful, colorful things. It's Great. But then the train starts to move again. And it's another boring wall until you get to another opening, another window to Tomorrowland, rocket ships, and people on other planets, and people wearing outer space garb. That's fantastic until the train starts to move again, and it gets boring, and so forth, through each of the theme parks they go through in that way. Well, it occurs to me that in many ways, life is like that. There's a lot of boring moments separated by a few really wonderful moments that are bright colors and beautiful scenery, lovely music, ecstasy, epiphanies. Think about that. Now, that's true in your life too. Think about some of those fantastic moments. Huh? The day you learned to walk. Graduation from high school or college, falling in love for the first time, puppy love, but hey, it was wonderful, or, you know, falling really in love, or getting married, or the birth of your first child and holding them in your arm the first time. Each is a wonderful window to joy, love, and inspiration. Now, I want you to imagine that those windows are not really windows. That they are actually mirrors. Mirrors in which you are looking at yourself. Each time you're in those moments, you're getting a glimpse of who you really are. Hmm? Now, newborn babies who grow up surrounded purely by love, they know that they are love, and they continue to feel wonderful about themselves. They have great security within themselves. But for most of us, we found ourselves confronted by situation after situation of challenge and threat that overcame our ability to comprehend and find logical solutions. We learned to tense up, to not feel, to avoid, to go into denial, to feel helpless, to cry or strike out at the world. And we gradually forgot who we would have remembered had we had that love around us the whole time. The result is that we go through life carrying these unfortunate feelings with us and making ourselves sick, making ourselves fail. These behaviors that don't help us. And this is what these emotions are, these negative emotions. They're not helpful. They hold us back. So why do we do it? Because we don't know how to choose to not do it. And we don't know that until we're able to communicate with that deeper mind, with the monkey mind. And we can't do that until we've learned how to relax ourselves, to go into that place of presence. I remember the story that they used to tell about a fellow who goes into a psychiatrist and he's flapping his hands and arms around, and the shrink says to him, "Hey, what are you doing?" He says, "I'm keeping the African lions away." And the psychiatrist says, "Well, there's no African lions for 10,000 miles. Why are you doing that?" He says, "Yeah, it really works, doesn't it?" Right? That's what we're doing. There's that monkey mind, continues to behave in those ways, and it thinks that it's saving our lives. It's not. So, as the Buddha said, the source of all suffering is wanting things to be different from how they are. But things can't be different from how they are, period. You might want them to be, but that's illogical. They can't be at this moment. They can't be any different from what they are at this moment. They can be different next week or next year. But when you're making yourself angry and upset and resentful and fearful and anxious and depressed, You are not in the moment. Mm-hmm. You are trying to make the moment into something else instead of, "I accept myself in the world exactly as I am and as the world is." So, let's once again take another ride within. Let your body be in a comfortable position. And we're going to take a little ride, ride on the magic carpet of imagination to reflect on some of those times in your life when you were aware of the beauty and the wonderful things that there are. Allowing your eyelids to close, take a deep breath in. As you let it out, let yourself sink down into that little pause after you breathe out and before that spark of life starts the next breath in. Let every breath continue to breathe relaxation on you, through you, and all around you, floating back to that special place that you visited just a short while ago. Floating back there on your magic carpet. That's it. Feel yourself present in this place. —and think of a word that best describes this feeling that you have in this special place. And then give yourself a little physical cue that you can bring yourself back here with. Squeeze two fingers together, put your hand over your heart, whatever it might be. Good. And anytime any unnecessary thoughts or doubts or concerns, criticism, judgments, or anything to do with any other situation in the past or possible future or anywhere else in the world, imagine those thoughts are like words written on a blackboard in your mind's eye. Erase them. Or imagine they're like dead leaves being blown away by the wind, as if each breath out empties your mind of that which is no longer needed. And you are becoming more and more in touch with your deeper self. Good. And as you float on your magic carpet, just as if you were in a way on something similar to that Disneyland train, let yourself drift back to certain points in your life in which you were at your most creative or productive. When you felt an inner sense of unbridled freedom, when you could write whatever you wanted to, when you could sing it or play it or dance it or act it out, when you were aware that you had real value intrinsically, when you felt important. That's it. Maybe in someone else's eyes who love you, maybe in your own eyes in the mirror, A time when you felt lovable and loved and loving. Go back to that moment, even if it was just 5 seconds. Even if it was a month or several years, go back to the beauty of it and feel the experience, open to it. Feel the physical sensations within your body, feel the emotional, and if you can, the spiritual impact of it? How do you see the world? How do you feel about the world? And how do you feel about yourself? Okay, now your magic carpet's going to start up again, but keep the good feelings with you. We're going to go to another scene, another one of those special moments, one of those holy moments. A moment of joy, of love, freedom, success, self-confidence. That's it. Maybe a sacred moment, a spiritual moment. Recall and revivify the scene that comes into you as clearly as you can. Be there. It's so important to feel the emotion, feel the qualities by exposing yourself to this beauty. Maybe you'll feel one of those spiritual moments, one of those oceanic moments of being in touch with a power and an intelligence greater than yourself. One of those holy moments when you felt really inspired in some very special way. Be there. Feel the reality of it, the truth of it. The permanence of it. It's an immortal moment, and it lives always within you, and you can re-access this feeling at will. And imagine that this is your true self, and that these are moments in life in which an inner light switch was switched on, and you were in touch with the essence of who you are, the beauty, the power, the love, the inspiration, the creativity, the confidence. And realize that in many cases you may have lost touch with this deeper and ever so important truth. But now you're aware of it. And especially allow yourself to be aware that now you have the power to prevent your beautiful mind from being distracted by all the manipulative attempts by the greedy world around you to create learned helplessness and to manipulate you. You are free within. And instead, imagine that you are right now inside of an invisible cocoon, like an energy shield, like a bubble around you that keeps out any thoughts or images or feelings that don't belong to this growing awareness of the truth of who you really are. Feel a beautiful spaciousness around you and the sense of infinite clarity and potential. And imagine there's a word that can describe or represent this very special feeling or sense of yourself. And think that word and give yourself a physical signal that can bring you back to this moment. Squeeze two fingers together, place your hand on your heart, and be fully aware that within you have the ability to recall this sense of self-love, self-awareness, self-appreciation. Self-confidence and self-empowerment that you have discovered through these very real moments the images have guided you back to. This is the person you truly are. And now, still aware of those feelings within, expand your awareness once again to include the space around you. And as you grow more and more awake to this particular moment in space and time, Enjoying the feeling of being who you are. I'm going to suggest that you make it a goal to be so emotionally open to these kinds of experiences that you can tap into their chemistry whenever they occur. When you're having one of those special moments, you stop and immerse yourself into it. As much as you enjoy what it is, be aware that this is putting you in touch with the person that you really are. And you begin to spot more and more moments of divine contact in your life, to pause and savor them, and then go back and relive them whenever you need to reawaken your inspiration. Good. And finally, we're going to go to step 3. Accessing the level of wisdom and spiritual guidance. It's an old story from the Old West of this cowboy that's riding into this little town. He'd never been there before. But as he's riding in, everybody seems to be leaving. People are in their buckboard with all their possessions. People riding donkeys, even people who don't have horses or anything, they're running out of town. He says, "You know, where are you guys going?" He says, "We're getting out of here. Big John's coming to town." He goes on into town. As he does, he arrives. Town's almost empty, but the sheriff is coming out of his office. And he says, "Sheriff, what's going on?" Sheriff says, "No time to talk now. Big John's coming to town." He locks the sheriff's office and he takes off on his horse. And Guy looks over and he sees there's a saloon. He says, "Well, I might as well go have a drink." And as he's walking into the saloon, he passes the bartender leaving. He says, "Where are you going?" He said, "I'm getting out of here. Big John's coming to town." Well, the guy said, "Well, I'm just gonna see who this Big John is." So he pours himself a drink, settles himself in a chair, and suddenly there's this big racket outside. He looks out through the window and there's this huge guy who's riding on the back of a grizzly bear, and on a leash he's got a mountain lion. And Lion snarling, and he pulls right up in front of the saloon, gets off of his grizzly bear, ties it to the hitching post, and slaps the mountain lion a couple of times. Cowers on the ground, lies down, walks into the saloon, tears the doors off of it, walks over to the bar, grabs an unopened bottle of whiskey, chomp, bites off the glass neck of it, swallows the glass, and drinks down about half the bottle, kind of sits back. Our friend is looking at this and he goes, "Wow," says, "Will you be staying a long time?" The guy says, "Nah, I gotta move on. Big John's coming to town." Uh-huh. Just a little story about the level beyond. We've all heard the concept of sin. Many of us have suffered a great a big deal as a part of that learning. What I learned is that the concept of sin actually comes from the concept in Greek, it's called amartia in Greek, which means sin. That's what it is in the Old Testament. And that word actually stems from a word that the Greek archers would use. You see, when you shoot at a target that's far away, you don't aim directly at the bullseye, you aim a little bit above the bullseye, because the force of gravity will pull your arrow down a certain amount, before you hit the target. So the error of amartya is simply not aiming high enough. Think about that as a meaning for the concept of sin. You're capable of better. You just didn't aim high enough, that's all. And if you look at your life, I'll bet you can see places where you just didn't aim high enough, and that caused a lot of problem. Right? So, for those who have difficulty with the notion of spirituality, I'll tell you a little story. It's about a little town, a little village on an island in the South Pacific. And there's a small tribe of people living there. And according to the religion of that tribe, the huge banyan tree growing in the middle of the town is is a sacred god. And every day, first thing in the morning, all the people in the town come out to pray to the banyan tree. Now, there are two brothers living in this town, and they're twins. And they're similar in every way, except one of them deeply believes in the tree, and the other one thinks it's ridiculous. How can a banyan tree be God? So, yeah, things are fine. Then one day, it turns out that the twins are off walking on two separate pathways. And at the At the same moment, as fate would have it, each of them is attacked by a mountain lion who jumps out suddenly from the bushes. Now the twin who believes in the banyan tree sees the lion coming at him and he immediately says, "Oh, great banyan tree, give me the courage to fight this lion!" And he grabs the lion, wrestles the lion to the ground, snaps his neck. Meanwhile, the other brother's walking along and a lion jumps out of the bushes and he sees the lion, he goes, "Whoa, a lion, ah!" So that's what happens when you have belief in a higher power. You can draw power from it. When you don't have that belief, Mm. So what we want to do is to take a look within and go up to that higher level. Let's see what happens if we do that. Again, allow your body to rest in a comfortable position. Give yourself permission once again to let go of distractions. Permit yourself to contact the highest level of consciousness that's available to you in this moment as you take a deep breath in and let it go and sink into that pause after you've breathed out and before the next breath enters, bringing in peace, calm, and serenity, becoming more and more aware of what it is to really let go, to really relax. To sink into that space that's in the middle of each moment, that pause in the center of each breath, a place that has always been and always will be there for you to sink into and to allow yourself to be surrounded by peace and calm as each breath guides you effortlessly toward that part of you that cares the part of you that truly knows, the part that you may know as your center, the essence of yourself. Give yourself that physical signal. Put your hand on your heart or squeeze those fingers together. Think of the word that you chose. Be in touch with the deepest aspect of yourself that you can become aware of at this moment. The wisest, most honest, and perhaps the most deeply spiritual, if you have a sense of the spiritual in your life, or willing to allow yourself to imagine that there's a deep knowing, a deep clarity, a place of wholeness, of love, of healing, and of wisdom. Good. And again, becoming aware that this moment is the only moment that exists. Letting go of the past and fully entering this moment. And imagine yourself suspended at this moment in time, and yet connected by golden fibers of light to those things that make your life meaningful, those that you love, the natural world, people. Sense within yourself a profound connection with life, a deep connection with beauty, whether it's the beauty of art or music or science or simply a deep connection with Mother Nature herself. The glowing, scintillating vitality of new life in springtime, or perhaps a sense of deep connection with people you love or have loved, the beloved beings in your life. However you feel it, let yourself feel that deep connection with all those things that are truly meaningful to you. In your life. And speak to yourself that special word that anchors you to that special feeling. Allow yourself to be at your special place of love, your island of peace. And allow yourself to become aware of a time in your experience when you felt a kind of spiritual opening or awakening, that oceanic feeling, a sense of real connection to something greater than yourself, a holy moment, an experience of love or beauty, reverence, or the sense of a spiritual presence. And feel it deep within. Sense the source, however you experience it, the spiritual source of that spirit that moves through all that gives birth, that gives life. That's it. And aware of the many gifts in your life, in the past and in the present, allow yourself to silently express the gratitude that you feel within, a sense of giving thanks to that Source, honoring it, respecting it, and if you wish, making a commitment to open yourself regularly particularly in the way you are giving yourself permission to experience now. To open to your deeper self for guidance. To open to that vast reservoir of wisdom within you. To open to the spiritual guidance that you feel from the higher levels of your conscious— consciousness. To the teachings that come from your spirit guides, wherever they may be in this universe. And imagine yourself moving into the future, listening to those wise guides. Visualize yourself happy, courageous, and confident, and be that person now. Each time you envision yourself the way you really want to be, you become more and more this person. Good. And as you return back to this place where your body is resting comfortably, imagine you can continue to feel that inner glow, that inner connection to this special place within you. And you can continue to make ever wiser choices to bring healing, wholeness, happiness, success, and love to your life. And allow yourself to stay in touch with this inner wisdom as you gradually begin to stretch and move and connect with the beautiful world around you. Great. Great. Now I'd like to just share with you some of the products you might want to be aware of that you can find by going to drmiller.com. There's a place for you to choose products. The love meditation, that was step 1 we did today. That'll help you review it. Step 2, I Am Awakening Self-Acceptance, is what our second one, our second imagery was about. That you can also get Rainbow Butterfly for a different way to make contact with that part within. Third imagery we did, might want to listen to Awakening the Leader Within, 4 different experiences to open to that spiritual leader that's inside. You can also go to watch the video, which is called "Achieve Peak Performance and True Leadership," which is very relevant. The book "Our Culture on the Couch," the one that I wrote back in the first part of the century, when I pointed out the kind of polarity that we were going to be in trouble with in 10 years, and that's where we are now. And I also talked about what you can do to help us all go beyond that. So it's all at drmiller.com. I'm here usually every, every 2 weeks on Thursday. If you haven't Explore drmiller.com. Let yourself go there. Let me just take that moment and thank you so much, those of you, those of you who have been willing to help support my work and what I'm doing. I hope that you continue to do it because I sure like being here with you. So, Um, till I see you again, take care of yourself. Namaste.