Dr Wayne Dyer: Why Pain and Loss Are the Gateways to True Transformation!

Wayne Dyer's radio show, The Power of Intention, taps into a profound truth that a lot of people overlook: that loss, death, and pain aren't just obstacles. They're opportunities to transform our lives. And it's not about avoiding these experiences. They're inevitable, but about embracing them as gateways to a more elevated way of being. When Wayne talks about transition, whether it's death of a loved one or losing something important in life, he's really asking you to see the spiritual meaning in it. We spend most of our time thinking of ourselves as humans with some spiritual moments, when in reality we are spiritual beings navigating a human experience. That's the core message. You're here temporarily, and so is everything else. So why cling so hard to what changes? What he wants you to get is that what never changes—your spirit, your connection to God, to love—is where the true value lies. That perspective doesn't take away from the hurt that we feel when life takes a turn, but it shifts the weight. Instead of fixating on what you've lost, he's calling on you to recognize that everything lost in the physical is still complete in the spiritual. Nothing ever really disappears. If you're struggling, stuck in pain, it's time to see the lesson, the deeper experience behind it. It's not about drowning in the sorrow, but evolving with it. Your pain is part of your growth, your awakening. You don't just get over it, you go through it, and in doing so, you expand your consciousness. Wayne Dyer wanted us to understand that life is about finding peace in the storm, knowing that the storm is temporary, but the peace you cultivate is eternal. It's in those dark nights of the soul that you glimpse your true power. Not as someone who just gets through the pain, but as someone who transforms because of it. You let go of what wasn't real, the attachments to people, places, things, and align with what's always been there, the divine within you. Special thanks to our partners at Hay House for this exclusive video. And if you want even more great Hay House content, we've linked their YouTube channel down in the description below. Enjoy the video and Believe.

Dr. Dyer, hello again.

Good morning or good afternoon, wherever you are. Good afternoon.

How's the start of summertime treating you in Hawaii?

Well, I gotta wait till tomorrow. I know I'm jumping the gun, but by 24 hours we're still in spring. Now all is well. I'm, uh, having a glorious morning as usual.

Yeah, well, um, let's go from that glorious morning to talking about loss and transition in our lives. What are your thoughts on this?

Well, there are two areas there. One you mentioned is the whole idea of death and the other is loss. I'll talk a little bit about each one of them. I think what happens as you move in your life, as you begin to make a shift into becoming more of a spiritual being having a human experience rather than the other way around— most of us think of ourselves as human beings having an occasional spiritual experience, maybe on Sunday mornings or something. By and large, if you begin to understand that everything that composes, as Jesus said, everything that composes decomposes. Everything that shows up into the physical world, everything, there are no exceptions, everything that has boundaries, that has form, that has whatever, is, Lao Tzu said, that is real which never changes. So that anything that is in the world of the changing is something that is temporary. Transitory. It is something that in a sense isn't real because there's no lastingness to it. So the only thing that is real, the only thing that really is something that we can rely upon, is that which never changes, and that's the world of spirit. And that's where we all emanated from, and that's where we're all headed to, whether we like it or not. We can look at these bodies of ours and we can get them nipped and tucked, and we can get things set to keep them from drooping, and we can do all of that. But ultimately we know that that which shows up in the world of form is headed out and you can see it. Many times I've held a hair up on the pillow in the morning and I've had this experience several million times. I'll look at that hair that's on the pillow and I'll say, "What held it in yesterday?" We know that there's some invisible dynamic source. The way that I look at death, because I don't want to look at it, it's sort of a depressing subject for most people and I don't want to make it depressing at all. I received something in the mail, oh, several years ago, and I wrote about it in a book called Your Sacred Self. And it goes like this. It's called There Is No Death. I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength, and I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and the sky come to mingle with each other. Then someone at my side says, "There, she's gone." Gone from my sight, that's all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side, and she is just as able to bear her load of living weight to her destined port. Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the moment when someone at my side says, "There, she's gone," there are other eyes watching her coming and other voices ready to take up the glad shout, "There she comes!" And that is dying. So that it really is truly just a transition and there truly is no such thing as death. Once you get at that and you get very comfortable with that and very at peace with that, death isn't something any longer that, you know, it's like taking off an old tight shoe or something. It's not anything to fear whatsoever. And it's every single person's destiny out there who's living in the world of form. So the other thing we talked a little bit about is this thing called loss. And many of you who go on my website, which is just waynedyer.com, it's created by Hay House and all of the lectures and things that I do and a lot of the work that I'm about in my life is on that website. And I've put a letter out on there. Promoting people to help, a man named Ram Dass who wrote Be Here Now and Grist for the Mill and so many great books, who's had a stroke and is struggling in his own life and has had some loss. He received a letter, this man I love so much, received a letter from Steve and Anita who are the parents of a young woman, a young teenage girl. Her name was Rachel. In the film Fierce Grace, Anita, who was Rachel's mother, read this letter. Now it turns out that Rachel was murdered and was raped, and it was a very devastating experience on her. But this letter that Ram Dass wrote to them is one of the most beautiful letters I've ever heard or ever experienced when it talks about loss. And so I'm going to read it here, and then we'll go to a break, and then we'll come back and we'll take some calls, not necessarily about this subject, but about any subject. And here's what the letter goes. Dear Steve and Anita, Rachel finished her work on earth and left the stage in a manner that leaves those of us behind with a cry of agony in our hearts as the fragile thread of our faith is dealt with so violently. Is anyone strong enough to stay conscious through such teachings as you are receiving? Probably very few. And even they would only have a whisper of equanimity and peace amidst the screaming trumpets of their rage, grief, horror, and desolation. I can't assuage you, your pain, with any words, nor should I. For your pain is Rachel's legacy to you. Not that she or I would inflict such pain by choice, but there it is, and it must burn its purifying way to completion. For something in you dies when you bear the unbearable, and it is only in that dark night of the soul that you are prepared to see as God sees and to love as God loves. Now is the time to let your grief find expression. No false strength. Now is the time to sit quietly and speak to Rachel and thank her for being with you these few years and encourage her to go on with whatever her work is, knowing that you will grow in compassion and wisdom from this experience. In my heart, I know that you and she will meet again and again and recognize the many ways in which you have known each other. And when you meet, you will know in a flash What now it is not given to you to know—why this had to be the way it was. Our rational minds can never understand what has happened, but our hearts, if we can keep them open to God, will find their own intuitive way. Rachel came through you to do her work on Earth, which includes her manner of death. Now her soul is free, and the love that you can share with her is invulnerable to the winds of change, time, and death. And space. In that deep love, include me. In love, Ram Dass. And I think that's as beautiful an expression of how you have to deal with some of the things that show up in our life that we just can't explain whatsoever. The losses, the struggles, the things that come and go, and particularly when people close to us are taken from us, whether it's violently or just accidentally or as a surprise. And that's my take on loss and death here today. Dr.

Dyer, that was a beautiful letter. Did you say that that is in a book someplace?

It's in a DVD film called Fierce Grace, which is Ram Dass in his wheelchair, having had a stroke, talking to people about how to deal with the loss of his own mobility and his own ability to express himself the way he used to be able to and so on. Mother read that letter in there, but I'm going to put it in my new book on inspiration.

Dr. Dyer, let's go right to a caller. I think we have Michelle on the line. Michelle? Yes. Welcome to the program. Hi. What's your question for Dr. Dyer today? Well, my question is, we recently, me and my two girls, have went through a move from Illinois to Colorado, and I have a young girl who's 14, and she just finished her first year in high school, and she's having a hard time And I guess we all are because we miss it so much back there and everything is so new. I think we feel such a loss. Go ahead. It just seemed like such a good idea at the time, but now I'm just wondering if we shouldn't go back.

Well, I can't give you the answer to that, but I can tell you to listen to your heart. Why did you decide to leave there?

Um, well, I'm divorced and their father lives in Colorado. He's lived here for the past 3 years, so partly so they could be closer to here, partly because— this sounds so silly, but I got to thinking that it seems like time's gone so fast and they're growing, and I don't— we lived in a very small town back there and I just didn't think they would stay back there. So I kind of did it more for me. I had a good job offer. My family is out here because I'm from here. But yet it's so familiar back there. We lived there for 10 years and that's really most of their life.

Right. Sometimes the thing that you have to really look at within your heart is whatever it was that motivated you to leave that familiarity. And to move into this sort of unknown thing out there, if that is still operating for you in your life. I mean, the closeness to their father, the new environment, getting away from whatever it was that wasn't so appealing from a hindsight sort of viewpoint that you're taking. My suggestion is that you live in joy wherever you are. Right. Commiserating about what it used to be when you were back in Illinois and thinking about all of that and just keeping that on your mind, is instead to begin to go into practice with living in the present moment. Being where you are, finding a sense of joy in everything, being in a state of gratitude, knowing that you always have the option. The option is always there. Fortunately, you live in a country where you are free to just move about and go wherever you want to go. And that the option to go back is always there. So I mean, you can just do that in your mind and say, okay, but since we haven't done that, and certainly if we're not doing it today, and you know you're not leaving today, then I'm going to take today and I'm going to look for as many things as I possibly can to find joy and peace and happiness and so on in the moment that I am. That's how you deal with homesickness, I think, more than anything else. And then ultimately, if you get to a point where you just say it's just too unbearable, and I want to be back there. It sounds to me, though, that you would have done that already. There's got to be something holding you there other than just wanting your girls to be close to their father. There's something going on that you're not saying, it seems to me.

Well, I just have a feeling that it's the place to be, but I don't know why. I think if I feel that way, then why do I miss what I knew, you know, there? I think what's making it hard is that she misses it so much. The children? Right, right. And she had just finished her first year of high school, and so she talks to her friends back there, and she just really misses it.

Supposing you said to her that we're going back, do you think she would be happy then?

Yeah, I think she would go. I don't know if she would be happy because being back there when we were back there, she wasn't completely happy.

Sure. So happiness isn't about— They always say there is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way. It's like if you don't have happiness inside of you and you don't bring it to— you have to be able to bring it to Colorado or bring it to gardening or bring it to the new school that you're in or whatever. And if she doesn't have that within her, then disrupting everything again and going back is just another prescription for letting forces outside of you determine where your happiness is going to be.

It is. And Dr. Dyer, you have children, teenagers. I certainly do. How do you put that in them though? Do you know what I mean? Not put that in them, but at that age it's just so hard to—

I just, I don't honestly, Michelle, I don't think like that. I don't think it's that hard at all. And I think at the age, for me, I have 8 children and I have teenagers now, 15 and 17 and 19 years old. And for some of them leaving one school and going to another, and we've had to do that on several occasions. Reasons it's very traumatic and then they get used to it and then we just move on. For others of them, they have a tendency to be very dramatic and to try to manipulate you with, "You're ruining my life and I'll never speak to you again and everything is just upside down because of you and the decisions you're making." I always tell them that you go to school because of the choices that you make and you have the right to either be happy or not to be happy at any moment. You have the opportunity to make your life joyful and so on. You want or not. It's up to you. So don't impose that on me. Don't lay that on me. This is where we live. This is where I make a living. And they've understood that, right? Yeah. Okay. I don't let those teenage emotional years and all of those changes be the things that control and dominate what I know to be the right thing for them or for my family or whatever, right? Right.

I know. I think I've just been confused as if it's really the right thing, but Well, there's no answer to that.

There is no answer to that. And the real thing, what this call is really about, because it's interesting, we're talking about loss and so on, is how you deal with the present moments of your life. I had someone on the show a few weeks ago who was in Rwanda when she was a teenager and was a hunted woman. People were trying to kill her and she had to go within, find peace within herself by hiding in a bathroom for 91 days. Uh, and I always tell my children, you know, you've got to— and I try to expose them to the kinds of things that are going on in the world that make their, quote, problems really seem, you know, not nearly as dramatic. And not— and it really does work, by the way. I mean, I, I have them watch, uh, you know, shows on, uh, you know, I often say just as we sit down to eat, we've just got to remember as we're sitting down to eat this wonderful meal that we have, that we have prepared for us, that there are people, our brothers and sisters, someplace on the planet who are digging for worms and roots to try to stay alive today. So let's keep them in our prayers and in our consciousness and remind ourselves of how fortunate we are and how lucky we are, right? Because, you know, as, you know, the biggest choice that your children have to make is whether they're going to live— whether they live in a friendly universe or a hostile universe. And if they believe that they live in a friendly universe, then they're going to be looking for opportunities to extend that friendliness and that goodness and that love outward. If they believe that they live in a hostile universe, they're going to be looking for occasions to be offended, and there's no amount of your moving about and changing things that's going to get them to see that. They have to come to that awareness themselves. Okay. Yeah, I remember Marianne Williamson talking about her father taking her to China and to Vietnam when they were young kids just so that they could see what was going on over there. So that she said, when we came back our whole perspective changed. It might be really good to take your children over to a place where there are drug addicts and things, or old people in a home, and let them just spend the day there. Anyway, we have to take a break. Okay, thanks, Michelle.

Great call.

God bless you. Yeah, namaste.

Thank you, Michelle. I really enjoyed how that call migrated from her move to the difficulty of raising her daughter and how to try and— yes, if you're raising 3 teenagers at once right now, you, you have a few things to say.

A great book about how to raise teenagers, it's called Get Out of My Life. But first, drive me and Cheryl to the mall. It really describes exactly what it's like to raise a teenage daughter.

That's a real book?

Yes, it's a real book. It's a very good one, by the way. Get Out of My Life, But First Drive Me and Cheryl to the Mall.

I like that. We are going to go to Valerie now in New Jersey. Valerie, welcome to the program. Hi, thank you very much. Hello, Dr. Dyer. Hi, Valerie, how are you? It's an absolute pleasure. I'm sending light your way. Thank you very much for taking my call. My call is actually a call about relationships. Relationship. I'm actually in a relationship with a wonderful gentleman that I, I've known since I met, was my soulmate and the person that I'd one day marry. Ironically, or interestingly, I was introduced to him on the same day that my father passed away, and so there's an interesting connection between us, a very deep connection that we both acknowledged. But in the last month or so, we'd hit an impasse, and there was a real disconnect between us and not communicating and really reassessing the relationship, and at one point we decided to bring closure to it and then not, and we've kind of been in this back and forth. Interestingly, at the time, this season of silence that I called it, is when I got introduced— it was a time when I was praying and meditating and gotten introduced to your book, The Power of Intention, which I read, and then read Ask and It Shall Be Given, and one thing kind of flowed into another, and I'm in such a wonderful, wonderful place spiritually, and I thank you for that. My question is actually regarding meditation, however. It's, uh, when you have a sense of knowing, an absolute knowing about a relationship connection with someone, and you are meditating to manifest destiny, can you meditate with a specific name and person in mind, or is it better to leave yourself more open to allow— to not put so many limits on how the Creator, uh, will send it? That's the first portion of my question, and I think I may have I have been meditating with him in mind and sure enough, in a matter of days, we have begun communicating again. I just wanted to know if I was going in the right direction with regard to that.

Well, I think you can meditate on attracting virtually anything you want into your life and be as specific as you want to be and you can have it show up. But I think it is much more important in your desires to put your attention on the feeling behind what it is that you are asking for. Always keep that in mind no matter what it is. I mean, to ask to win the lottery, for example, or to ask to have something happen at 4:15 in the afternoon on your timetable, but the universe doesn't work on your timetable. Your timetable comes from your ego and the universe's timetable comes from something comes from God. There's a line in one of Jackson Browne's songs that says, "Creation reveals its secrets by and by." You live in New Jersey. Well, about this time of year you start planting tomato plants, don't you? Right. Those beautiful New Jersey tomatoes that are so wonderful. But you start seeing the shoots come up around about another month or so from now. You'll see them just shooting up from the ground. I mean, you can't get down on your knees and start tugging at them and say, "Look, I want some tomatoes today." The tomatoes will show up exactly on schedule when they are supposed to show up. I think the same thing is true of our relationships and all the people that are in it and so on. The key to manifesting, in my opinion, is not so much in whether you put your attention on a specific thing and a specific person, but in becoming a vibrational match to what it is that you desire. If you have read "Ask and It Is Given," the wonderful book by Jerry and Esther Hicks, It absolutely is wonderful. Yeah, it is. I wrote the foreword to it and I don't write forewords. It's a book that I really recommend and you can get that through Hay House. At any rate, one of the things that you learn is that let's say your desire— I always go back to if you could put a number on your desire and the highest number, say, is 100. So on a scale of 1 to 100, your desire is to be what in this relationship with this person? What would it be? In a numerical sense? Yeah, like what is the highest desire that you have for this relationship with this particular person? What is your highest desire?

My highest desire is actually to have such a spiritual connection and loving relationship that it—

Okay, that's enough. You don't need any more. That's perfect. So that's what you want. You want a loving, divine, spiritual, God-realized relationship, right? Yes. That is at the top. That is number 100. Now let's look at what you have been offering up to that to match up to that. That is like a God-realized ambition and desire. But most of the things that we offer up to that are, "I don't know if it is going to work out. I am looking at some of the things that I am seeing that I don't like about this person. He isn't quite measuring up. We don't agree on this." You know what I am saying? Before you know it, what you offer up to that number 100, that highest number that's possible in terms of your desire, are numbers around 15, 20, 25. So now you try to slide them over and you try to match up. How can you match a desire that is 100 with thoughts and energy and behaviors and feelings and worries and so on that aren't in harmony with that? That's why things don't manifest because the universe responds. To what it is that you were putting out there. It's just called the law of attraction. So what you want to do is offer up to that consciousness that you desire thoughts and, and particularly feelings and, uh, and behaviors that match that. So what is a matching thought to that? This person is divine. He's a creation of God. Um, I give, you know, in a book I wrote a few years ago called There's a Spiritual Solution to Every Problem, I just jotted this down while I was listening to you, Tom. Yeah, Valerie, right? Yes. Here's two tests for, uh, turning, uh, a relationship into something that's divine. It was written by Anthony DeMello. Number one, he says, try these two affirmations out: I am not really attached to you at all. I am merely deluding myself into the belief that without you I will not be happy. That's number one. And number two, and this is the hard one, I leave you free to be yourself, to think your thoughts, indulge your tastes, follow your inclinations, behave in ways that you decide are to your liking, and I will still love you unconditionally. That's beautiful. Yeah, and it's tough, isn't it?

It is. And it's interesting that you said that because recently he had communicated with me that he was not sure where he was with the relationship, and that's exactly what I did give to him. I said, I love you enough to let you be yourself. Go and find your way. Sure enough, he came back and we are just progressing a day at a time. That is where I am taking it. One thing that I did want to add, I know that you said before that the music is often made in the silence between the notes. Right. All the music, by the way. That's right.

Not often. All the music. It is the silence between the notes that makes the music. It is out of the silence that all things are created. That is how God creates and that is how we create.

I'm finding that in love relationships it's nice to have the warm fuzzies and the together time, but a lot of times your love is developed in those quiet times and those seasons of what may appear to be discord and in seasons where you're stretched. I'm finding that, and it's an awesome journey, and I am very excited about what the future holds.

I just finished a book just the other day. It's a little book that will be out next year. Being in balance. One of the chapters, there are 9 of these chapters, and one of these chapters is called "Love is What's Left Over When Falling in Love Fades Away." Oh, that's wonderful. Yeah, so it's like falling in love is like gaga, can't keep your hands off each other, can't get enough sex, can't get enough of holding the person's hand, snuggling up to them, bringing flowers, all of those wonderful things. But that fades. That fades in everything. You just can't keep bringing flowers. It costs too much, smells too much, whatever it might be. But love is what's left over. I saw a little boy give a comment about when he was asked what love was. He was only 4 years old. He said, "Love is what's in the room when you're opening your Christmas presents if you stop and look around and see what's in the room." Oh, how about that?

That's wonderful.

Yeah, if you stop thinking about yourself and just say this. Lovers come. And lovers go, but love remains. And that's what you have to be. Be the love, because that's what God is, the love. And he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in me, and I in him. That's what God realization is.

Wonderful. Great call. Thank you very much.

Yeah, thank you. And great. Have a joy in New Jersey and watch for those tomatoes, but wait till August till they get them.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, God bless you. Bye-bye.

All right, let's go to Rod now in New York City. Rod, welcome to the program. Hello. Hello. Hey, Dr.

Dyer, how are you? I'm great, thanks. How are you, my friend? Very good. Bless you. Thank you, likewise. I had a comment. I actually met you in New York when you— I had a chance to see you meet Immaculate at the Omega Conference, and I came up and gave you some hugs and got a chance to tell you about my experience using your material to get through double neurosurgery on my spinal cord. I remember now, yes. Yeah, I, I gradually lost my ability to walk, and after having been a very vibrant and personal trainer and all-around sporting guy, I ended up with this extensive healing process which began with intense pain that would basically cause me to pass out. And I mean, it just, it went beyond words, right? I was fortunate enough to get a gift from some friends called "101 Ways to Transform Your Life." Yes, indeed. It was a goodie. That kind of introduced me to you. I had Louise Hay's version as well and I would play you guys back to back over and over. I just used it often enough to try and get over what was tremendous loss of mobility because I had to go into a wheelchair for a period of time. But you're not in a wheelchair now, are you? No, thank heaven. But it was hard to see my way out of such an experience between the pain and the despair. Depression took over. It was very frightening. It was a terrorizing time for me. As I lay in my bed healing, watching the seasons change, I'd have the material on and I charged on it. I just wanted to share that with the viewers that you can plug in and take yourself to another level just by riding that wave, you might say, and allowing yourself to transform. Thank you. I want to thank you again for that 101 ways. Right now I'm living in the power of intention as I take my train to see my clients nowadays because I'm fortunate enough to have gone through the healing process. Right. What work are you doing now, Rod? Right now I'm able to train clients again, but what I've done is I've kind of begun to take some of the material I actually used some of your material to inspire my clients now and incorporate health and wellness in terms of a physical aspect with the spiritual. I believe that's going to be like the new way— well, not the new way, but a way to allow us to take ourselves to a higher level physically and spiritually in the same life. I think so, too. Not only is it going to happen for individuals like that, but I really think that we're on a bigger wave than that. With being able to do that all over the world, all over the planet, where we're going to create the kind of planet, the kind of relationships, the kind of peaceful, loving, God-realized place that we all came from. And it's only by going within. It's only through a change in consciousness that we're going to transform the world. That's how you transformed your life. I'd love to take the credit for it, but it was all you and your relationship to God. And as you went there and found that and discovered that, you realized that you don't have to offer up to a desire to be healthy again any energy that says, "I can't do it," or, "It won't happen," or, "Poor me," or, "I've been a victim," or whatever. And instead, what you offered up to it was a match to what it is that you intended to create. So you did it, Rod. I'm really, really proud of you.

To watch another amazing Wayne Dyer video, check it out right there next to me. I think you'll love it. Continue to believe, and I'll see you there.

Well, I've talked about this on many occasions, this whole idea of stress being an illusion. Because it's just not something that exists in the world. And that's, uh, and it's one of the things that people are always constantly blaming