How do you define success? In Wayne Dyer’s book, 10 Secrets for Success and Inner Peace, he talks about “The peace of God that truly defines success.” Oh, but doesn’t that sound blissful?
Secret 1
Have a mind that is open to everything and attached to nothing.
There are so many ways that we learn to attach the idea of success to different expectations. Expectations of our parents, our teachers, our religion, society and our culture. How is it that some people have the ability at a young age to ignore those expectations and go forth in the world with the freedom to be who they were created to be, while the rest of us struggle with the need to please in such a way that it exceeds our ability to be true to ourselves?
Having a mind that is open to everything and attached to nothing seems to me to be one of the most basic principles that you can adopt to contribute to individual and world peace.
Individual and world peace. Isn’t that what we all dream of? Can it really be as simple as Wayne Dyer makes it sound? So where do we begin? Wayne instructs us to first release our attachments by changing how we view ourselves. To be attached to nothing means no longer identifying yourself through your body’s appearance and your possessions. Being attached to these things allows the ego to be the dominating force in your life. By letting go of these attachments and taming the ego, your spirit can become the guiding force in your life instead.
Sounds so easy, doesn’t it? However, like any lifelong habit, this can be a hard one to break. It doesn’t happen overnight, and some days are better than others. Meditation and prayer can help get us there and keep us on the right path. The ego will always try to regain control, so a daily ritual of being still and letting God’s guiding light into your day is an important practice in making and maintaining this transition.
The Scriptures say, “With God all things are possible.”
A mind that’s open to everything means being peaceful, radiating love, practicing forgiveness, being generous, respecting all life, and most important, visualizing yourself as capable of doing anything that you can conceive of in your mind and heart.
If all things are truly possible, then we have nothing to worry about, right? And yet worry we do. We worry about everything. If we can learn to let go of that worry and be patient in knowing that everything will happen at exactly the right time, would that not make it so much easier to be open to everything and attached to nothing? In the knowing that whatever God has planned for us will happen in exactly His perfect timing, we have no reason to worry about potential lack or loss. This knowing will truly result in inner peace.
A Course in Miracles states, “Infinite patience produces immediate results.” It implies that in your patience you know with certainty that what you would like to manifest will show up in perfect order, right on time.
Wayne’s first secret has two parts: (1) a mind that is open to everything, and (2) a mind that is attached to nothing. Again, he says that our attachments are the source of all of our problems. “The need to be right, to possess someone or something, to win at all costs, to be viewed by others as superior – these are all attachments.” Imagine what the world would be like if we could all learn to let go of these attachments!
In all of your relationships, if you can love someone enough to allow them to be exactly what they choose to be – without any expectations or attachments from you – you’ll know true peace in your lifetime.
Now that’s a life I want to be a part of! Shalom!
As so often happens with me, a recent interview I saw on Oprah’s SuperSoul Sunday led me to my next soul-journey book. This wasn’t the first time I had seen Oprah’s interview with Elizabeth Lesser, but it was the first time that the interview led me to buy and read this book.
