Joe Vitale – The Magnificence of Your Life

There's two kinds of miracles, in my opinion. The one miracle is where something suddenly appears that you've been longing for and you're surprised. It's almost like a Harry Potter universe. It's like, oh, my God, it just took place. And that can take any form. It can be a sudden, unexpected check. It could be some unexpected news, something that you're going to joyously celebrate. But it's a surprise for part. And I do believe in magic and miracles. I do expect those kind of miracles. But the other miracle is so much juicier. The other miracle is right now. The other miracle is this moment.

Welcome to the mindtrax podcast with breakthrough ideas to live your best life possible and how to make it happen. I'm Paul Shealy, and today we'll be joined by Dr. Joe Vitale. Joe Vitale is the author of many books, from Zero Limits to the Miracle. He's also a singer songwriter with 15 albums recorded and has been in 17 movies, including the Secret. Joe is known as a spiritual teacher and hypnotic writer and creator of Miracles Coaching.

Hello, Dr. Joe. So good to be with you. It's such a pleasure to be able to share this podcast with you. Thank you so much for being here.

Are you kidding? I always look forward to talking to you. I'll talk to you about anything, anytime, anywhere. Let's exchange jokes, recipes, weather reports, you name it. There.

All right. Well, over your head is a sign that I can see says expect miracles. So I'm. Yeah, and be happy. So I love that. Let's talk about what you refer to as the stages of awakening, or what I've heard referred to as stages of spiritual development.

The place that we always start is this idea that we are victims of the world. We're victims of circumstance. And you and I have shared plenty of situations that seem to be happening to us. So talk to me about this idea of victimhood, what it is, and how do we get past that?

Well, that seems to be the first stage of spirituality, and it seems that we're all born into it. There's probably an exception somewhere on the planet, but with the 8 billion people here, I'd say most of them have felt and still feel like victims. It seems to be the game that we're born into. We're born into this where everybody around us already feels like a victim. And then we download all this information from the culture, from the government, from the media, from religion, from society at large, and it's pretty much saying that we are alone against this giant energy field called the Universe. And they don't refer to it as a benevolent universe at that point. It's the universe that's out to stamp you, stomp you, stomp the life out of you. So it seems like we're born into that. And if we're real lucky along the way, you hear a podcast like this or you see a movie like the Secret Creator, or you read one of the great books of the success literature that's out there, and maybe you start to awaken to another level.

Well, and let's face it, I mean, when we're born into this world, it's set up that we are born utterly helpless. We can't feed ourselves, we can't walk, we can't speak. So we are trained in the idea that we rely on the outside world to take care of us. And if we don't behave, we get punished.

It's an interesting observation. You know, I hear a lot of people say that being codependent is kind of a negative thing. And when I look at it, it's like we have to be codependent. This is the way the whole world works. We're born into it in the way you just described it. And if we weren't dependent on parents or uncles or whoever's taking care of us and changing the diapers and feeding us and all that, we'd be dead.

That's right. For sure. And there's another piece to it. You know, I heard in the leadership literature that we move from dependency to independence and from independence to interdependence. And so, you know, a more enlightened codependency is that, hey, we're interdependent on each other. It's just in the early stages, we really are dependent. The problem is we then start buying into, as you're referring to, the inherited programming of our culture, our religion, our schools, our family system. And we hear a lot of messages, too. Like, I can't believe this happened to me. What bad luck, right? So it's all reinforced.

It's reinforced over and over again. And we do it very innocently and we do it very unconsciously. And it's supported by everybody around us. Again, with very rare exceptions, everybody else feels like a victim, too. They're all into a word that they probably don't say, but it's there in the. In their unconscious mind. And that word is survival. They're not into awakening or spirituality or thriving or prosperity or any sort of benevolent universe outcome. They're into, how do we get through this hell storm? And we know we're not going to make it alive, but let's make the best of it while we're here. So to me, the one word that's on the tattooed on the victim's arm is something like, this is all about survival. We got to get through it.

And I love that you've had a story of being in desperate situation, homelessness and all of that. And there is this idea that the step out, one of the early steps out, are messages like these that were unlimited, that we aren't victims of the world we see that the world out there isn't out there, and we're just living into our own projection. But there is this idea of taking 100% responsibility. And I've noticed that that's kind of hard to do, especially when we recognize we really screwed up and we made a mess and the world seems to be reinforcing that.

I'll tell you, I could mentally go back in time to the late 1970s when I was homeless in Dallas, Texas, and try to imagine that Paul flies back in time to visit me there. And you bring your awareness and your knowledge about spirituality and responsibility, and you try to talk to me about it. I think you'd be on your back on the streets. I would knock you unconscious going, I want fed. I need a car. I need a place. I need a job. I need a hamburger. I need something that's survival oriented. Because, as you say, I was reading a lot of the right material. I was homeless in the Dallas Public Library. And one level, it was fantastic. There's books everywhere. On another level, it wasn't my home. There was no food. There's a bathroom and air conditioning and a water fountain. So I'm reading the right books and I'm downloading this information about, hey, you create your own reality and the magic of believing. If you can believe it, you can create it. Or Napoleon Hill. If you can conceive it and believe it, you can achieve it. And I almost threw all those books against the wall.

Really?

Yes.

Oh, so you were reading them, but you're still rejecting them.

That's interesting, not integrating them. I remember reading I still have my copy of Think and grow rich from 1971. It's a paperback that I probably paid a quarter for back then. And I remembered the reading the book because I was into this. I was reading Hypnosis and Self Improvement. So I'm reading, thinking, Grow Rich, thinking, wow, I read this book and I'll know how to think and grow rich. I was broke and hungry when I started page One broke and hungry when I edited the page. And I literally threw that book against the wall thinking, ma', am, that was a sales pitch from a con artist.

Yeah. And it took for. And it got worse because I went into poverty for 10 years. And you got to remember, we didn't have the Internet, we didn't have podcasts, we didn't know what those words were. And the only coaching around back then was little league coaching and football coaching. And even if there was self development coaching, I couldn't have afforded it as a homeless and in poverty person. So I'm trying to absorb this and trying to integrate it. And I think this is the real key, Paul, that when people hear this good news, they have to filter it into an existing belief system. That doesn't make sense of it.

Yeah, that's right. You know, we have an existing neural network and we hear messages and just pass us through because there's no experience to hold it. Now, you refer to the idea that emotion is key, and also letting go is key. So how did these steps actually help us to get to that place where now it's starting to land?

Yeah. Well, the second stage of spirituality for me is the phase of empowerment, when you start to take on the idea that beliefs do make a difference. And maybe I was believing I was a victim, maybe I can change that and start to believe I have some influence in my life. I'm moving into empowerment. And if you read enough books like Psycho Cybernetics and he talks about the reticular activating system, and you realize that emotion is the fire, it's the fuel that actually accelerates a lot of the things you want. And most of us, while we were victims, we're only coming from emotions of fear and hate. But one of the most creative emotions is love. And so when you move into this second stage of spirituality, you start to rely more on what do I love to do, what would I love to experience, and how can I move my consciousness to start to accept that as a new reality? This is the beginning of putting on your Superman or Superwoman outfit and starting to leave victimhood. Maybe slowly, maybe reluctantly, but there's a little bit of playful excitement going, what if this is real? What if I could actually end homelessness? What if I could actually get out of poverty? What if I can actually start to live a life that I'm excited about, I'm emotional about, that I'm loving, longing for and making a difference? That's when it gets really exciting.

I love that it's the idea of Playing what if. And so many great ideas start with being able to hold a container of possibility. Because very often all of the other beliefs we have, if a good idea tries to come into the container of our life, it's just Teflon bounced right out. But to hold a container of possibilities says, all right, now what beliefs are not lined up with this? So now I can start actually purposefully identifying and beginning the clearing of those self limiting, self defeating, self disempowering beliefs. And.

I don't know if there's a sequence to all of it in your model of the world, but it seems to me that when we have a sense of possibility, we're also envisioning something that we hope for as well. There's this idea that I can actually see it now. Oh, I just got a glimpse of it. Oh, I think I could do this.

Yes, yes, yes. It's a sense of possibility. Let's go back to the idea that the existing framework, the paradigm, the neural network there is keeping us where we're at. It's a very difficult.

Challenge. That's where the work begins to change that while you're still in that.

Right.

This is why I read so many books and I still read books today. Part of it is I was brainwashing myself with the success literature. This was my way of overriding the victim mentality. A part of me wanted to be an author. I wanted to make a difference. I remember telling my father as a kid, I wanted to write books that made people happy because I looked around and thought everybody was unhappy. In truth, I was the one that was unhappy. But this is my way of starting this process. And then as I start to enter the world and go into homelessness and in poverty, I'm wondering what beliefs are in me that is actually creating this. And the first time I heard it, of course I pushed it away. Didn't want to accept it, didn't believe that could actually even be possible. But slowly doing it by myself, I was able to make that shift. I'm pointing it out, Paul, because I think what people need to do is they have to listen to the right material, they have to read the right material. They got to pay attention to what they're watching on TV or on Netflix or on Amazon with the movies. They got to pay attention to what music they're listening to. They got to pay attention to the people that they are around. These are all influences on our consciousness.

And it's easy and it's easy to spot it when we listen to the stories we Tell the things that we're repeating over and over again in company. And we know misery loves company.

There you go.

So. So if we're sharing it, if we're sharing our hard times and everybody's agreeing with it, it may be that we're hanging around with the right crowd or the wrong crowd.

The wrong crowd. The crowd that's going to keep you in the same place. And that's part of why I'm bringing this up. This is all in that second stage of spirituality. You're awakening to your own power, but you're also awakening to all the influences in your environment around you. The environment will influence you until you are awake enough to choose the environment you would prefer to be with. So if you're listening to the naysayers around the water cooler, so to speak, and the gossipers all around the water cooler, you might wake up one day and go, you know what? Maybe I should be in a mastermind. Maybe I should be in the Optimist Club or the Rotary Club. Maybe I should join or create some organization where they're like minded people that are in what Napoleon and Hill called a mastermind that'll support me in my elevation and my pursuit of the things that I want to attract and achieve. Then we're consciously creating our circumstances, we're consciously creating our environment. But until we awaken to that, everything we're, we're watching, we're listening to the music. You know, I'm a musician and I point out that I wanted to be a self help musician because the Rolling Stones, as much as I like them and love them, ever since 1967, they've been telling us we can't always get what we want. And then we walk around going, hey, I can't always get what I want. Not knowing that it's an affirmation stung right into our head. It's a background tape because of some of the music. So again, all of this is paying attention to what are we allowing into our life experience? Reading, watching.

I remember one of my teachers saying, you know, if you give a positive affirmation to somebody, it's like an ink blotter. You know, the paper we used to have on our desk. You drop a blot of ink on the blotter, it doesn't show through the other side for a while and you have to keep putting more and more until eventually it permeates and gets through. So, so it's easy to say, well, I tried meditation. Oh, I sat down for, oh man, it was almost 10 whole minutes. And it didn't work for me. My mind was all over the place. This stuff doesn't work.

Nothing happened. Right. I had lunch with a friend who was talking about affirmations. She said, I tried affirmations. Affirmations don't work for me. And I thought for a minute and then I realized, wait a minute. And I told her, I said, you know, you just said an affirmation. You said, affirmations don't work for me. And because of that, they don't seem to work for you, which proves that that affirmation is working for you. And affirmations do work. So you have to pay attention, which is why coaching's so useful, because we don't always hear our own limiting beliefs. They seem like reality when we speak them.

It's very difficult because the mind studying itself.

Yeah.

Is always going to influence its own experiment. So we're going to see what we are biased towards, seeing what we're planning is going to happen. We will tend to see it. So if we're thinking, well, I'll give it a try and see if it does anything. I can't imagine this is going to do anything good. You know, our friend Chinny Lin says, if you believe it, it works. If you don't believe, still works. You know, it's not necessarily that we believe it or don't believe it that makes a difference. It's the energy that we're reinforcing on an ongoing basis. And if we keep doing our practice, and I guess that's really the key, especially as we're lifting ourselves up by our own bootstraps, as we move through stage one of victimhood and we move into impairment, we need a practice that's going to be ongoing and it's going to be relentless. So what are some of the key practices that you have seen have been most effective for people in these kinds of transitional states?

I'm going to tell you, the one that comes to mind may not seem like a practice, but I think it is, and that's having support. When you're in stage one and it's victimhood, you're actually kept there by the support. And it's the wrong word, but you can understand what I'm using the word for by the support of the people around you who are also feeling like victims. So the victims help keep you in victimhood. So you have support for that. When you move into this second stage of empowerment and you're reading the success literature and you're starting to feel your superpowers and you're dabbling a little bit, and you're a little childlike, and you're going to step out there and see if you can fly. It helps if you have support from the people who are either wanting to do the same thing or already doing the same thing. I have found support to be the easiest, fastest way to accelerate your process through this spiritual evolution, to go up the ladder of awakening, so to speak. So there's certain practices, like always choosing your intention. I'm a big believer in intention. I like to have intentions for everything. Before you and I started talking, I took a deep breath, set an intention for this time, for us together. I wanted to be present. I want to be articulate. I want to be helpful. I want to be inspired. I want to be a channel. All of these things are part of the intention I set. I think people should set intentions all day long, every single day. You can have intentions for your life, intentions for the week, for the month, for the year, whatever. But I also think breaking up the day gives you a sense of empowerment, because now you're not just kind of bouncing from life's softballs that are thrown at you. You're actually choosing where you want to go and how you want to be in the world.

So it's kind of punctuating your life on a daily basis by pausing to become conscious, to become present means that we get to reestablish that sense of, okay, wait, hold on. Just what am I doing here right now? And it's okay that if I've gotten off track as long as now, I've got an opportunity to get back on track.

I totally agree with that. I think what we want to do is take a deep breath, pause, as you had just said, and then reflect, what am I doing in the next few minutes? Or on the next phone call or the next book I'm reading, whatever. What's the intention for that? Also by pausing and taking a deep breath, if there was some sort of surprise, because life does like to throw curveballs and there's some little surprise that takes place, and you feel like, oh, I just got knocked off center a little bit. I'm a little dizzy, I'm a little wobbly. Again, you take a pause and you ask yourself, how do I want to be? How do I want to feel? How do I want to act? And you redirect that moment with a sense of empowerment.

Well, I'd like to add a little acronym for pause. A colleague of mine in the chemical dependency field said pause stands for practice awareness until spirit emerges Practice awareness until spirit emerges. And that spirit we could think about, that spirit of what's on our heart to do, what's on our heart to be. And if the curveball just gave us a whack on the side of the head, it happened for us, right? It happened for us to say, hey, where are you right now? What's going on? Come on, come on. Back to center.

Yeah. All of it becomes a tool for awakening. At some point, you start to realize that life isn't out there to destroy you, which is what it feels like in victimhood. I remember feeling like it was all set up to just kill me. It was all set up to defeat me. You want to be a writer? Okay, take this. And there were no breaks. There were no opportunities. That's what it feels like in victimhood. You move into empowerment and you start to see opportunities because your paradigm, your neural network, your vision is different. You're starting to look for them. You mentioned the sign I have behind me about expect miracles. There's research, and new science is pointing out that we get what we expect. We get what we unconsciously believe and expect. And most people, of course, they have bumper stickers that say expect crap or some more vulgar version of it. So I have expect miracles because I'm coming from more of an empowered place and saying, let's go in this direction. The other thing I want to say, and I have never said this anywhere at any time to anybody, anywhere on the planet. Yes. Big drum roll, hold the phone.

Here we go.

I actually made a coin that I carry. I don't have it on me right now, ironically. So this is going to be from the moment itself that says, witness, look behind C. Divine, look behind, see Divine. This is the reminder to me.

Not for anybody else, but I'm using it as a tool, and people can make their own. And what it is, is take a deep breath and look for the Witness. The Witness is that part of me, part of you, that is behind thoughts, feelings, body. It is the one observing everything. It observed me when I was five years old. It's observing me now in my 70s. It's the same Witness that's there. But we get caught up in the human experience, and we don't think of the Witness. We don't even know what that actually even means. But if I can stop and look for the Witness, and my little phrase about look behind see the divine means look behind what I'm looking at. When I'm looking at you, I can look deeper than what I see as the person Who I would recognize in a photograph as Paul. But inside, inside him is this witness. Inside me is this witness. Everybody that is listening or watching. Inside them is this witness. When we pause, take a breath and make an attempt to see that witness. Now we're going with your friend's little definition. And we're looking for the spirit to come through.

Yes. Okay, so a couple of things about this. My wife, as an artist is taught see more deeply and oftentimes the world of appearances is what gets us stuck. Or the words someone said is what gets us stuck. But there's so much more behind it. And there's also an important distinction that you're making, Joe. It's witness, not judge. And fair. Witness is someone who is a non judgmental, fair observation of what's occurring. And if we can sense and if we can observe and if we could live into what's happening in this moment without a bunch of history coming forward, but to just be present, I think what we do see is that true self that's here to live into the fullness of who we are.

Oh, I love it. I love it. I'm in a movie that just came out and it's not about the movie, but there is a scene in that movie where I talk about when I was five years old. I remember sitting on a chair and my feet wouldn't hit the ground. And I remember sitting there going, man, I can't wait till I'm older and taller and my feet hit the ground. And now I'm in my 70s and I look down and my feet are obviously hitting the ground. But the person who was that five year old, there was this little witness behind the scenes who was not judging yet. It was just like. It was kind of a curiosity. It was just kind of like filming the moment. That witness is the same one sitting here in this chair who notices, oh, his feet touches the floor right now. But it's not a good or bad thing. It's just like I'm running the movie of my life. And during the times when there was some sense of consciousness about the spiritual human experience, I could see the witness behind what I was going through.

How gorgeous. Yeah, yeah.

The witness was there during the struggle. I didn't know it. During the struggle. It was like, where the hell are you? But the witness was there watching the whole thing. And the witness was there when I was doing successful things or winning an award or something. But it never judged. It never said right or wrong. It wasn't really even documented it. It was just aware.

Isn't that cool? So this idea, we have a body, but we're not the body. We have feelings and emotions, but we're not that. We have thoughts, we have a mind, but we're not the mind. Who we are truly is that presence, that power for whom the eyes see, the ears hear, the body moves. And it is that consciousness that we're attempting to merge with as we move through these stages of spiritual awakening. So the third stage that we get to now that we're, let's say now that we have arrived at being able to be a fair witness of our lives, is this place called surrender. Could you say a bit more about that?

What's interesting is that we leave victimhood and now we're excited because we're in empowerment. But then we're in empowerment, but along the way, something happens to remind us we're not in control. And that could be a death. You know, I lost my father, I lost my mother. If I was totally empowered, they'd still be walking around, they'd be alive. We went through a pandemic. If I was in charge of everything and I was truly God or a type of God, I would have stopped the pandemic or eliminated it entirely. At some point we get a reminder that you're not. Not fully in charge. Yes, you have more power than you ever thought before, more influence than you ever thought before. You can create a reality that you couldn't even imagine before, but you're not in control. And at that point, you can have an awakening. And that awakening is a type of surrender. I don't have a better word for it yet. Maybe you do, Paul, because when I say surrender, a lot of people think, oh, you just roll over and play dead. I don't mean give up, I mean give in. You don't give up in the sense of, I'm defeated, I'm back to being a victim again. No, you give in to your witness, to your connection to all that is, which you can call God or the divine or the great something or Gaia. There's, you know, a thousand different names for this higher power nature. And at this point you join forces with it. This makes you even more powerful than you ever were before. It's not you against the universe. It's not you manipulating the universe now, it's you and the universe. Or better said, you are the universe.

So we're truly in a co creative act at that point. And that's where all of your ideas about gratitude being such an important part of our spiritual development is. Say thank you even for this, especially for this, so that I could now be aware of it. Now, this brings up something else that comes back to that sign, expect miracles. One of the distinctions I like to make is the difference between having a positive expectancy versus an expectation about how it's supposed to show up. So expecting miracle isn't the expectation that the miracle is going to look like this. It's really a positive way of knowing that your good is coming. The fuller expression of who you are is ripe. It's ready for that expression. So have a positive expectancy that the miracle will occur. What will it look like? What will it sound like? What will it feel like?

And I know you know this, but I have to say it as a reminder for everybody watching or listening, because people will ask me, what do I mean by a miracle? And there's two kinds of miracles, in my opinion. The one miracle is where something. Something suddenly appears that you've been longing for and you're surprised. It's almost like a Harry Potter universe. It's like, oh, my God, it just took place. And that can take any form. It can be a sudden, unexpected check. It could be some unexpected news, something that you're going to joyously celebrate. But it's a surprise for the most part. And I do believe in magic and miracles. I do expect those kind of miracles. But the other miracle is so much juicier. The other miracle is right now. The other miracle is this moment. All the past stuff, it's faulty memory. I mean, the recent science is pointing out we don't remember anything accurately. And some science points out every time you remember something, you're actually making it a little more vague than the first time you remembered it. And the story gets adjusted as you bring the memory. Memory to this moment. So the memories are gone. They're not even accurate in the future is completely uncertain, depending on what science you believe in or what philosophy you believe in. For the most part, we can't predict the future. We can't see the future, and the future doesn't exist yet. All we really have is this moment. And the more we can be in this moment with present conscious awareness coming from the Witness, the more we realize, oh, my God, this is actually the miracle.

Yay.

This is it.

And this heartbeat and this breath. I mean, if we could just recognize that no thought's more important than this breath I'm now breathing. It really helps get us through some of the most challenging moments that we can face. Yeah, so. So there's this idea that if we're in the now moment. In the past, the history is just a memory which is deleted, distorted and generalized in some ways. And the future hasn't occurred yet. This now moment is the threshold of what is yet to be in my life. And as co creator in this life of this universe that I'm experiencing, that's a joyous recognition that I really can decide now how it can become.

Yes, and you can actually decide how the past was out of this moment as well. You can go both ways out of this moment, but it is in this moment. And I love that you use co creation. You know, we talked earlier about intentions and now I'm just going to make the big leap because in that second stage of empowerment, intentions are really cool and really powerful. But in the surrender stage, intentions are for wimps. Intentions end up being limitations. Intentions end up being framed from what the past brought to you and what you think is possible based on the past. So intentions can really inhibit you. And what's better during the co creation surrender stage are inspirations.

Inspirations come from again, that great something, the divine, the God, the higher power, whatever you want to call Gaia or the tap dancing universe of the cosmos. I don't know know, but whatever you want to call it, that's where inspiration comes from. And I live for inspiration.

Well, isn't that the breath itself? The word inspire means to be breathed into. So yes, we want to let life breathe into us. What is it for us? And I, I can't really use the word surrender without having its counterpart, which is trust. So I'm trusting and surrendering. You know those exercises we used to do in workshops where people would do a trust fall right into the waiting arms of others? There's a risk to that sort of thing. There's a risk to walking across the street. There's a risk for living full out. And the only way that I can truly surrender to what all the good is that's trying to get into my life is to be able to trust that the universe is benevolent, it has my back and it wants me to participate as a part of the evolutionary impulse that brought us here. We're here for a reason. You and I know that. Everybody needs to know you're here.

Yeah, you are here. And you hear, you are here on purpose. And you have been given this gift of life. And I also feel, believe whatever you want to call it, that each one of us has been given a assignment. We're given some sort of life assignment. It probably has fragments to it and little changes here and there. But for the most part, when I look at my life and I've done a lot of different things, we can talk about all these different rabbit holes and avenues and passions and interests, but primarily it's been an author and it is to write books. And I really feel like I didn't choose that. I accepted that it felt like some other power gave me a marching order, gave me my task, gave me my homework, so to speak, and then sent me home here. And it's like, okay, go do it. And I think that's where free will comes in. Because we all get that kind of inclination. But we could say no. We can say no. That's free will. I could have said, I don't want to be an author. I want to be a baseball player. Or, you know, I don't know what. But I think that kind of awareness is also important because when you say yes rather than saying no, the yes leads you to an easier, more exciting, more fulfilling life. At least it has for me.

I get it.

Totally.

So let's. Let's talk about two things right now. One is. You mentioned about letting go of the past stories that may be getting projected forward if we recognize that this now moment is a miracle we're really living into. When a past story comes in the Hooponopono model of forgiveness, forgiving that whole scene, all the participants in it, my holding of an image that's anything less than divine love expressing through us as us. There is a powerful in the now moment thing that we could do. Could you just say a bit about that first step? I can see it in the other sign behind you. I love you. Thank you. Forgive me. I'm sorry.

I got. In case people get bored looking at me, I got signs all around me and a guitar or two, you know, it's like, well, he's not interesting. So let's look at the signs. But. But Ho' oponopono is one of the most powerful techniques I've ever been fortunate enough to discover and then bring to a large majority of the world's.

Amen. Amen. And I'll tell you that the way you represent it is super powerful. And someday I'll tell you a choice story about it. But go ahead.

You have me leaning forward and wanting to know more. Ho' oponopono is a modern spirituality technique that helps clean up our perceptions. And in fact, the word ho' oponopono means to make right. And what we are making right is our perceptions of what we're calling wrong.

In the ancient Huna in the Hawaiian language, the original Hawaiian language.

Absolutely correct. And in its shortest form, there are four key phrases that people say inside themselves as a kind of prayer or petition to whatever they think their great something is. Their higher power, God divine. And these four phrases are designed to ask for help in cleaning up our belief system, our perceptions. The four phrases are. I love you. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. That's it. I love you. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. You can say them in any order. In essence. That's a very shorthand version of saying something along the lines of. I got this problem. I don't know where it came from. Please forgive me, my ancestors, anybody along my, my line of family history that may have contributed to this. I'm sorry for any unconscious or conscious implications or participations or co creations I might have had in creating this experience that I don't like. Thank you for resolving it, for cleaning it, for clearing it, deleting it, rearranging it. Whatever is needed to make me whole. I love you for the process. I love you for my life. I love you for this cleaning and for this clearing. Very, very simple. I love you. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. And as you know, Paul, I've written several books on this. I have a new one coming out, Zero Limits Living. And I have heard over the last 15 years the most astonishing stories that people have applied this to virtually anything you would name or anybody that called in would name that they've ever experienced in their life. Everything from the family to the health, to the relationships to their puppies, to their next door neighbors, to the boss to the sales, to anything as you can name. Because in short, you're taking full responsibility for what's going on in your life. You realize there's something you don't like could be in you could be in somebody else. And you're pointing at them and saying they're the problem. But you have to realize you're experiencing that problem in you. So it's the in you that you're cleaning up. And as you do, Ho'. Oponopono. I love you. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. Over and over and over again inside yourself, all of that shifts and changes. And as it deletes in you, lo and behold, if you're looking for a miracle, it's reflected on the outside where everything gets changed magically, surprisingly.

See? And I love the elegance of it, the simplicity and the power of it. It's really elegant. I mean, I'VE studied Sedona method, I've studied the work of Byron, Katie, I've studied NLP and reframing, hypnosis, all kinds of different things. And as a spiritual practice or as if you think about the 12 step model, very similar. What we have to be able to do is whatever is in this moment representing in my mind is some sense of lack or limitation or untoward behavior or thought. Right then, clean, clean, clean. I love the way that you represent it in your books and people are going to have access to how to get a hold of all of your work. I really do want to say thank you so much for doing the hard work of digging out this amazing story of Dr. Len and being able to really pull this forward to the modern mind to say, hey, this works. So way to go. Keep it up.

Thank you. Thank you. I am very fortunate.

I knew that the process needed to be brought to the masses and I was glad I took the assignment and said yes and did it it.

Well, let's talk now as the last couple of moments that we have here, the fourth stage is awakening. And you talk about meditation, gratitude, and be happy now as key ideas to keep us in this awakened aware state. Could you say something about the importance of these practices or how we might be able to quickly and easily do these each day?

Well, I would love to. I would say the very first thing is you can quickly and easily do these practices, but enlightenment itself, awakening, satori, whatever you want to call this experience of merging with the Divine and becoming the Witness, that only comes by grace. It's not something you can manipulate. It's not something you can egotistically pull some button or say some magic word and suddenly you wake up enlightened.

But wait, I have a cash card. Can I it in the divine ATM and pull out my enlightenment?

What? You know, Divine doesn't accept cash.

It does accept gratitude. So gratitude is one of the most powerful things any of us can do. And I really believe this is my practice these days. And this is why I have that coin I was referring to is as much as I can take a breath and pause and see the Witness, if not become the Witness, at least become aware of the Witness. In my life, behind everything I'm looking at, behind the illusion, looking for that eye that is behind it all, watching it all. The more I can merge with that, the more I have set myself up to receive an awakening or enlightenment, whatever you want to call it. So I think pausing for meditation, pausing for gratitude, pausing for the silence, are very powerful tools to take us to the door of awakening. We can knock on that door. But Paul, unless you've got some secret remedy of some sort, I don't know of a way to make it happen. I really feel it comes from grace.

I love that. And you remember in the olden days of positive thinking and all that we said that luck is when preparedness meets opportunity. I think that the opportunities for grace are always there. It's up to us to keep preparing the soil. And it is through our daily practices that we are preparing the soil of our mind, our heart, our will, to be present, to receive.

To receive. I really do think, I love that there are stories throughout mystical literature, people who had a lightning strike of awareness and enlightenment. And you're wondering why that person that was a drunk farmer in the field, why did he or she become enlightened? It's like ask the divine when you get a chance. But for the rest of us, I think it is what you just said. We prepare.

Yeah, chop wood, carry water. I remember Father Anthony Demello saying, before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop would carry water. But what does it matter right after there, after that, you don't put any energy into it.

You're enjoying the game at that point because now you are the divine experiencing the human experience where before you were the human not experiencing any divine at all because you were blaming the world and you were unconscious to the participation. You go through all the stages, you get on the other side and you awaken. It's like, well, you're still here, you still put your pants on, you still do whatever it is for you to do, but you have a different awareness and a detachment. Not a not caring, but more of a living witness to your everyday reality.

I love the word witness. I mean, you're going to really take that for a good ride here going forward. So thank you for being a witness to this and also for standing in witness to the divine nature in each person to really let them know, yes, expect miracles. You can have the life you choose to live.

Absolutely. Absolutely correct.

Well, much love to you, Joe. I really appreciate this time together. Thank you so much. I hope we get to play again really soon.

Me too. I love you. I miss you. And these conversations are enlightening all by themselves. I benefit and I hope everybody else has who's watched or listened. Thank you, Paul.

Peace and blessings.

Bye bye.

I hope you enjoyed our conversation with Joe Vitale. You can learn more about joe@www.mister fire.com. that's www.m r f. I r e.com and now in the second part of the podcast, it's just you and me. I'll tell you how to use the paralyminal sessions in the MindTrax app to easily handle obstacles and move toward the success you want, especially as it relates to Joe's message. If you're new to the relaxing paraliminal audio sessions, they use breakthrough technologies to activate your whole mind in only 20 minutes to help improve any area of your life. Let's get going.

Hi and welcome to this Follow on to my conversation with Dr. Joe Vital. So much fun being with him. He's such a powerful force in the world and what an engaging individual and speaker is. So great being with him. Our dialogue together was really about inspired living and finding miracles that are available to us in every single day of our lives. So as I was playing with what it is we were talking about, there were several areas that I thought made a lot of sense to follow up with using paralliminal technology. So the four areas that I feel might be helpful to explore would be this idea that he described as Witness, this Witness perspective. I was surprised when he brought it up because I hadn't really anticipated it, but it makes so much sense to me and it's such a big part of my work throughout the years. It was lovely to actually be able to focus some attention on this important principle. The second area is the idea of miracles. I love the simple way in which he defined miracle. And wouldn't it be wonderful if we could see miracles happening for ourselves in every area of our life whenever we want or need them?

Them.

The third area is a concept of practice, like what are our disciplines or our practices on a daily basis to keep us open and moving along the path of spiritual development to living into the fullest expression of our lives. So let's get into it. This first area, the idea of witness. There's a wonderful paralympical that I did with Bill Harris called Fresh Start. And this is the idea that at any moment in time, this now moment is the threshold to a new life that we can choose to live. And being able to witness ourselves in this now moment, as Dr. Vitale said, it, is in fact the great miracle of our lives. It's also this notion that whatever the past may have been doesn't need to determine or dictate how the future is going to be. So super cool. Fresh start. Great para liminal. The second area is what I would call finding treasure. This paralyminal is about noticing the acres of diamonds that are all around you. And the treasures that life has delivered to us are here for us. We simply need to open our awareness to recognize them happening all around at any moment in time. So finding treasure allows us to really open up our sensory systems and be able to more effectively receive the great treasures of life that are being delivered. The third parallel in this concept of witness is called self actualization. It's based on Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And self actualization is the fifth in his five levels. And this paralympical also describes the sixth area that opens up that Abraham Maslow was actually working on at the time of his passing. And that was this idea of self transcendence. And I think if you review the dialogue that Dr. Vitale and I had, this is the area of surrendering to what else really is trying to come to us, trying to come through us. I talked about his trust and surrender, but this really is a self transcendent moment when we have recognition of all the great gifts that are given us and all that we have now. Where can we go from there? All right, the second area is, in addition to witness is the area of miracles. And miracles can be thought of as unexpected wonderful events occurring or the manifestation of a wonderful event that we can't really describe how it happened, it just did.

And the third is this idea that the now moment is a miracle. Well, I created a para liminal with JJ Virgin called Miracle mindset.

And this is a wonderful description of seven stages of a mindset that opens us to the.

Receiving of miracles. Back to that poster, that sign that Joe Vitale had on his bookshelf. Expect miracles have a positive expectancy no matter how wrong things may be going at the moment. Powerful paralyminal. And it's a powerful story behind JJ Virgin's experience of having a miracle occur when her son was in a traumatic head injury. Hit and run experience. So very powerful parallel. Another one is prosperity. And the prosperity paralyminal is recognizing that we have an abundance in this universe and we have access to that abundance in any area, whether it's financial, relational.

Being able to have an abundance of energy, of time, of insight, inspiration, whatever you need to be able to take that next step. The prosperity parallel can help you get it. The third area I want to talk about is this concept of practice, like what is our daily practice? And whatever it is for you, whether it's you want to meditate or do affirmations or read or whatever it is.

Self discipline is a great parallel to help you install and embody that Practice so that it becomes an ongoing part of your daily behavioral repertoire. It's just what you do. It's like flossing your teeth. Nobody's really interested in doing it when they first start, but if it becomes a habit, it becomes something. It's because you disciplined yourself in order for it to become your inclination to do it. You're going to brush your teeth when you wake up and start the day because you're inclined to do it and get born wanting to hold a toothbrush and brush your teeth every morning, you had to take a discipline and install that within you. So powerful way to get these practices, whatever it is that you're choosing as a daily practice or weekly practice, as a part of your ongoing routine. And a practice that Joe suggested is essential for all of us, is a practice of gratitude. And certainly his books are really a part of that. The hooponopono process that we spoke about also includes that gratefulness. Thank you. You know, it's this idea in a para liminal that I did with Ken Honda called Happy Money. It's called arigato in Japanese. It's this gratitude, thankfulness for whatever it is that's coming to you. Lynn Twist and Paralympical I did with her talked about gratitude or gratefulness as recognizing the great fullness of your life that's here for you, supporting you in creating the life that you're choosing to live now. The final of the four areas that I felt could be supported with Paralympical technology is this idea of learning from what life brings us. And if you could think about.

Situations and circumstances are going to occur, you can't really control them.

And when they arrive, there's plenty you can do with them. So rather than being in a victim mentality, see it not only as something that's here to empower you, but it's a miracle that's unfolding as you witness it. So this idea of self love is a parallel being, a way to receive whatever life brings you into this now moment. We have our past self, we have our future self, and we have our now self. And we get together and really recognize the arc of our life. Remember in my conversation with Dr. Vitale, he was talking about this witness that was him at age 5, is still him in his 70s. And if we look at the arc of our lives.

The size and shape of the body, the size and shape of our bank account, our career, our relationships, all of those are impermanent. But what is that one thing that is permanent and that is your self aware witness, self and self love really helps to embody and recognize. In this now moment, all of you is here and you can gather those resources together to create what's next for you. And the final parallel I would recommend is called Personal Genius because as we are on this threshold of the life that we're choosing to create and we can see that vision, we've received an inspired recognition of what our lives are becoming. Sometimes it's easy to move into this Am I really ready for it? Am I worthy of it? And Personal Genius as a parallel really puts you in this place of not only self esteem for yourself, but also in the genius mind within you that is developing to create and live into the life that you choose. So Personal Genius Self Love will really help you learn from whatever life brings. And my wish for you is that you recognize that life is bringing you all that you need to create the life you choose to live. Thanks for now. See you again soon soon.

Thank you for joining me today. I applaud your willingness to maximize your potential. You can easily use the paralyminal audio sessions in the Mind Tracks app to stimulate your non conscious mind, that is your inner mind, to reduce any resistance in your life and to propel you toward the success you want. Go to www.mindtracks.com go. These amazing audio tools have helped millions and I encourage you to bring them into your world today. Be sure to be back for more episodes of the mindtrax podcast. You'll find insightful conversations with authors, experts and thought leaders all devoted to improving your life's experience. Thank you again for being here on our MindTrax podcast.

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