PNTV - The Man Who Tapped the Secrets of the Universe by Glenn Clark

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Hey, this is Brian. Welcome to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we've got a great book called the man who Tapped the Secrets of the Universe. It's by Glenn Clark and it's about a guy named Walter Russell. Very small book. My copy has a special little love note on it which was a pleasant surprise today. I love you from my goddess. Thank you, darling. So the man who tapped the secrets of the universe, Walter Russell, kind of an obscure guy, but he was a genius of the 20th century. An artist, a scientist, a mystic, really cool guy who's really big in the religious science movement. So Ernest Holmes, all that stuff. I got turned on to his work when I was studying the old school new thought stuff from the 20th century. And this book is really fun. It's packed with wisdom and it's all about the idea. Walter Russell says that we all have genius within us. It's not in some of us, it's in all of us. Paul Lo Coelho says the same thing. All the great teachers say the same thing. And he says, Walter Russell, that mediocrity is self inflicted and genius is self bestowed. We basically just need to recognize that divinity, that genius within us and self bestow ourselves as connected to that universal intelligence and expressing it as genius. It's a really cool idea. I love the idea of genius. And quickly on that, did you know where the word comes from? It's kind of cool. Goes back to Roman mythology. So in Roman times it was said that everyone had their own guiding spirit, their own genius. And if they did anything amazing, whether it was artistic or athletic or rhetorical, in a speech or political or whatever it was, it was said their genius had guided them. Right? It was like the highest version of themselves. Like a little mini me, I like to think of it, right, little genius mini me that's guiding us as we're most fully expressing ourselves. Now it's not within some of us, right, as it's become commonly known, it's that person's a genius. Right now we're all a genius. You can check out the TED talk that Elizabeth Gilbert gave for more on that. She's got an awesome story about how she, she connects to that genius. And it's the genius who comes through when she does her great writing, her job. Elizabeth Gilbert wrote Eat Pray Love, by the way, for those who aren't familiar with her, her job, she says, is to show up every morning. She shows up and she writes some mornings. It's going to be great. The genius will come through her. Some mornings it won't be that great. It's not really her responsibility. Her responsibility is to show up, show up, show up, show up. And she says that as she does that, the genius tends to come out, tends to come out and play really cool ideas. So we all have genius within us. Mediocrity is self inflicted. Genius is self bestowed. I hereby bestow you a genius. Hallelujah. Amen. Have fun with that. So imagine your little mini me and go out and rock it. He says when we tap into that genius, we see three things. The most genius among us demonstrate three things. Number one, they create an incredible amount of work. They're incredibly prodigious, right? All kinds of stuff is produced over the course of their lives. Number two, they have incredible energy. Number three, and they're tapped into the divine and they don't leak energy, which we're going to talk about in a second. One, they produce a heck of a lot. Two, they have a lot of energy. And three geniuses really, really start hitting their stride at 40. Whereas the average person's life kind of goes downhill steadily from 40 on. So geniuses lives really begin at 40. Now I particularly love that because I'm 35, I'll be 36 in a few months. And I kind of view what I'm doing right now as just awesome fun and kind of just a fun practice for what's going to come on the other side of 40. So if you're super young, awesome. Just have a great time playing, expressing yourself, playing with different ideas, seeing what works for you. Connect that divine and rock it. And know that at 40 it's going to really start to go off. If you're over 40, awesome. It's time to really let it shine. You've done a lot of work and now's the time to really let it come to fruition. Pretty cool stuff. I love that frame of looking at it as a genius. Genius really comes to life. Post 40 cool idea. So there you go, a couple ideas on genius. He says this as well. What we want to do is have focused intention. Too often the mediocre or average person is dispersing all of their energy. They don't have the ability to hone their attention. We talk about this a lot. I describe it in the first principle of my evolving philosophy as optimism. The ability to shape the contents of our consciousness, to focus our minds in a direction that we want to focus it rather than always being scattered by the little gremlins that dance around up there like fear and regret and anxiety and depression, all this stuff. He says we've got to gain control and be able to focus our attention. Really big idea. He talks about the importance of trusting in the universal intelligence. And he says that everything comes down to the universal intelligence. And why we have, we all have genius within us is we're all part of the same universal intelligence. We're part of the same energy that created the planets, that keeps the planets in line. I love using that image as that force that's within each of us. And our task is to align with that. And as we do that, as we practice these different ideas we're talking about in these episodes and all the other stuff we do, we learn to focus our energy more and more. We learn to connect to the that highest within us more and more often. He says that the difference between mediocrity and genius is like one inch. It's tiny, but we can't move. We can't go from here to here, that tiny one inch unless we're connected to that universal intelligence. So really cool stuff. We talk about this all the time. It's the essence of entheos, of enthusiasm, connecting to the God within us and fully expressing it. How do we do that? How do we connect that divine within us? Well, one way that Walter Russell says is lock yourself up in a room, create some stillness in your life. So many great teachers talk about this as well. Deepak Chopra, on the seven spiritual laws of success, which we just did, he talks about the fact spiritual law number one, pure potentiality. We have the divine universal intelligence within us. We're pure potential. Deepak says the way that we connect to that pure potential is, is through stillness. Basically exactly what Walter Russell is saying. Joseph Campbell says the same thing all the great teachers say. We've got to slow down long enough to find that stillness within, which is where the highest part of ourselves can kind of whisper inspiration to us. So I strongly encourage you to if you're not, and if you are, how can you do it more often? Create more and more stillness, more and more space in your life, whether it's through meditation or hiking or turning off the talk radio or music in the car and just enjoying the silence of your commute. Even turn off the philosopher's notes, whatever it is, take a bath, whatever. Find some more stillness in your life. Connect to that highest self and go out and rock it. Another big idea on this whole idea of genius and one of the secrets that he tapped into in the universe, this Idea of loving what we do. Whatever we do, love it. Walter Russell says to not love it, to be bitter and resentful as we do anything creates these life destroying toxins. He says, well, the way to solve that is to love what we do. As we do that, we again focus our energy and we just vibrate at a higher frequency, a more pure level. That's extraordinary. So whatever you're doing, love it. I have a couple of quotes here that are really cool. The Buddha says, if anything is worth doing, do it with all your heart. The first decision there is, is it worth doing or not? Stop doing the things that aren't worth doing that you don't need to do, those things that you still need to do. Do it with love, do it with joy, do it with masterliness. Walter Russell says, bring your best to it. Seneca says, the wise person does nothing reluctantly. If you're going to do something, do it consciously, do it joyfully, do it again masterly. George Leonard, who wrote the great book Mastery that we profiled, that I highly recommend, he says, what would happen if we use every moment in our lives to do our best to bring conscious mastery to that moment and to make our life a piece of art and see just how beautifully we can go through each day of our lives. The final big idea, there's some other good ones here I'm not going to get to, but defeats, he says defeats are nothing but stepping stones to success. He refuses to recognize failure. Mistakes, failures, defeats, those are just stepping stones to success. It takes control of our consciousness to see the world that way. But whatever is stressing you out right now, see it as a stepping stone to your success as you bestow genius on yourself and get out there and rock it. Alright, that's a quick look at this great book. The man who Tapped the Secrets of the Universe, Walter Russell. Hope you dug it. Talk to you soon. See you.

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