There is a story told by the ancient Greeks about when the world was young. The gods on Mount Olympus, having created the earth and man, the birds and animals, the creatures of the sea, the plants and flowers, and all living things, had one thing left to do, and that was to hide the secret of life where it would not be found until man had grown and evolved in consciousness to the point where he was ready for it.
The gods argued back and forth over where the secret of life should be hidden. One said, “Let us hide it on the highest mountain. Man will never find it there.” But another god replied, “We have created man with insatiable curiosity and ambition, and he will eventually climb even the highest mountain.”
Then one suggested they should hide the secret of life at the bottom of the deepest ocean. To this, another replied, “We have created man with boundless imagination and a burning desire to explore his world. Sooner or later, man will reach even the greatest ocean depths.”
Finally, one of the gods came up with a solution. “Let us hide the secret of life in the last place that man will ever look, a place that he will only come to when he has exhausted all other possibilities and is finally ready.”
“And where is that?” asked the other gods. To which the first god replied, “We will hide it deep in the human heart.” And so they did.
For five thousand years of recorded history, some of the wisest men and women of each civilization have occupied themselves searching for the secret of the ages, the key that would enable them to unlock the vast treasure trove of potential that lies deep within each person. They have established brotherhoods and sisterhoods, secret societies and private communities dedicated to exploring the last frontier, and the first: the inner powers of the human mind.
Many men and women spent their entire lives in religious communities, monasteries and secret orders proceeding through elaborate rituals and initiations, during which glimpses of this great secret would be revealed to them.
More progress has been made in finding this secret in the last one hundred years than in all the previous centuries that man has been on the earth. The secret of the ages, the key to health, happiness and prosperity for you and me, has been found in what is called the superconsciotis mind.
When you use your superconscious mind correctly, you will be able to solve any problem, overcome any obstacle and achieve any goal you sincerely desire. All personal greatness and individual achievement is based on it. In fact, everything we have discussed up to this point has been preparing you to use the powers of your superconscious mind to transform the quality of your life.
Many of the greatest thinkers who have ever lived have stood in awe before this power and have written about it, calling it many different names. Madame Blavatsky, the Russian theosophist, called it “the secret doctrine.” Poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson called it “the oversoul,” and he said, “We lie in the lap of an immense intelligence that responds to our every need.” Emerson compared this intelligence to an ocean and said that when we receive insights from it, we recognize them as coming from far beyond ourselves and our own limited minds.
Napoleon Hill referred to this power as “infinite intelligence,” calling it the universal storehouse of knowledge and the source of all imagination and creativity. He claimed that the ability to access this intelligence was a central part of the great success enjoyed by the hundreds of wealthy men and women he interviewed over the years.
Carl Jung, the Swiss psychoanalyst, called it the “supra-conscious mind,” and said that it contained within it all the wisdom of the human race, past, present and future. It has also been called the “universal subconscious mind,” the “collective unconscious” and the “universal mind,” and many people refer to it as the “God-mind,” or the “creative subconscious.”
Whatever you choose to call it, there is almost no limit to what you can accomplish when you tap it, use it and let it use you on a regular basis.
It would be very difficult to explain to you how your superconscious mind works if you were not already familiar with it. Throughout your life, you have used it in a random and haphazard fashion many times. In fact, much of what you have already accomplished can be attributed to your accidental use of this power. My purpose in this chapter is to show you how to use it in a systematic way so you can dramatically increase the amount of health, happiness and prosperity that is possible for you.
The superconscious mind is the source of all pure creativity. All truly classical art, music and literature come from the superconscious mind. Emerson confessed that his essays seemed to “write themselves.” He would sit down at his desk and the words would simply pour through him and onto the paper. His essays remain as some of the most beautiful and inspiring writing in the English language.
Mozart was composing music at a young age. He could actually see and hear the music in his mind and was able to write it down, note perfect, the first time he put pen to paper. So clear were his music manuscripts that in the movie Amadeus, the court composer Salieri says of Mozart, “He writes the most beautiful music in the world as though he were taking dictation.”
Beethoven, Bach, Brahms and Stravinsky all accessed this mind when composing their greatest pieces of music. Whenever you hear a piece of music, or see a work of art or read a piece of writing that seems timeless and which somehow touches something deep inside you, you are experiencing a superconscious creation.
The superconscious mind is responsible for new inventions and scientific breakthroughs. Edison regularly tapped his superconscious mind to find the solutions that led to his hundreds of successful inventions. Nikola Tesla, perhaps the greatest electrical genius of his age, was able to construct models of electric motors in his mind, disassemble them mentally, reassemble them, and repair them until they were perfect. He could then go into a workshop and build a totally new machine or motor that would work perfectly the very first time.
The superconscious mind is the source of all inspiration, all motivation, and the excitement that you feel when aroused by a new idea or possibility. It is the source of hunches, of intuition, and of flashes of insight—the “still small voice” within. Whenever you have been wrestling with a problem and have suddenly come up with a great idea that turned out to be the perfect solution, you were tapping your superconscious mind. Every time you experienced a new insight into a challenge you were facing, your superconscious mind was working.
When your superconscious mind computes on a problem or works on a goal, it has access to all the information stored in your subconscious mind. It can draw upon everything you have ever learned or experienced.
It also has the ability to discriminate between what is true and what is false. Each person has stored in his or her memory an enormous amount of information that is simply not true. Some of it is unimportant, like the actual height of Mount Everest, or the number of pecks in a bushel. Some of it is very important, such as critical facts that affect your personal fortunes. But in all cases, the superconscious mind uses only stored information that is true. It thus brings you answers and solutions that are correct and appropriate to your situation.
Sometimes you will get an idea that seems inconsistent with what you know to be true. It will then turn out that your knowledge was incomplete or based on erroneous information. Your seemingly contradictory idea or solution turns out to be the correct one. It is exactly the answer you need.
The superconscious mind also has access to knowledge and information from outside and beyond your personal knowledge and experience. It actually lies outside your brain, outside your conscious and subconscious minds.
The Englishman Michael Faraday, who was not trained as a scientist, awoke once in the middle of the night with his mind teeming with scientific formulations. He sat down and wrote several pages of mathematical formulas and scientific calculations that seemed to flow through him like a river of energy. Once he had finished writing, he fell back asleep, exhausted.
When he later took his notes to one of the most learned scientists in England, it was determined that he had produced knowledge that had never before existed. That work of Michael Faraday laid the foundation for the development of the vacuum tube by Lee De Forest, and for the entire electronic age in which we now live.
You are surrounded by a universal mind that contains all the intelligence, ideas and knowledge that has ever existed, or that will ever exist. Because of this, different people in different parts of the world will often tap this energy and come up with the same ideas at the same time.
One of our seminar graduates had worked with a team at the Atomic Energy Research Council of Canada to develop what he called a Gamma Ray Backflash Measuring Device. It took them two years to perfect the device, but the key was an insight that he had while working on the project.
Some months later, at an international symposium that included scientists from the Soviet Union, they found that a Soviet scientist had had exactly the same insight at almost exactly the same time, which led to the Soviets’ developing almost exactly the same device. Since both of these projects were top secret before being shared publicly, there was no way that the creative insights could have been exchanged through any medium except the superconscious mind.
Once you begin using your superconscious capabilities in a systematic way, you will get ideas from out of the blue. Almost everyone has had the experience of thinking of a good idea for a new product or service, dismissing it because it was in a field in which they had no experience, and then seeing some other company come out with the same product or service a couple of years later and make a fortune. This is an example of superconscious functioning.
The difference between the person who had the idea and ignored it, and the person who came up with the idea and ran with it, was that the person who did something with the idea had a higher level of trust and confidence in himself and his ability to turn the idea into reality. Because of childhood conditioning, we tend to ignore our own ideas, assuming that they could not be worth very much, when, in fact, they could change our whole lives. When you begin accepting the value of your superconscious insights, you will be amazed at the kind of ideas that come to you, and the next time you have an idea, you’ll do something with it.
Your superconscious mind functions on a nonconscious level twenty-four hours per day, 365 days per year. Once you have programmed a goal or problem into your subconscious mind, and then released it, it is transferred to your superconscious mind and your superconscious goes to work on it. You can then go about your daily life, with your conscious and subconscious energies focused on the work at hand, while your superconscious mind is busily working to bring you whatever you need to achieve your goal.
Remember, the functions of the conscious mind are to identify, compare, analyze and decide. The subconscious mind stores and retrieves information and obeys the commands of the conscious mind. The superconscious mind functions outside and beyond both of them, but is accessed through them.
Your superconscious mind is capable of goal-oriented motivation. It is the source of the enthusiasm and the excitement you feel when you begin setting goals and moving progressively toward their accomplishment. However, to generate this motivation, your superconscious mind requires clear, specific goals to which you are completely committed. It then releases ideas and energy for goal attainment.
The superconscious mind is a source of “free energy.” This is a phenomenon you’ve experienced many times before. It is the mental and physical energy that surges through you during periods of great excitement, intense desire or even extreme danger. When you are working toward something that is important to you, you often experience a boundless flow of energy that enables you to work day and night with very little sleep. Usually this is called “nervous energy,” but of course, we know that nerves have no energy of their own.
Have you ever had the experience of having to get up in the middle of the night because of an emergency? In no time, you find yourself wide awake, alert and functioning effectively, whereas a short while before you were tired and sound asleep. This is an example of tapping the “free energy” of your superconscious mind.
Another example of this “free energy” is the phenomenon of men and women performing superhuman feats in life-threatening situations. In Florida a few years ago, a frail, sixty-eight-year-old grandmother, Mrs. Laura Schulz, was working in her kitchen while her forty-year-old son was working under a car in the driveway. Suddenly, the jack slipped and the car fell on his chest, crushing him and threatening to kill him.
When he cried out in pain, his elderly mother rushed out of the house, saw what had happened and immediately acted. She rushed forward, grabbed the bumper, and lifted the two-thousand-pound automobile off her son’s chest, saving his life.
Two neighbors saw her do it. But afterward, when she was interviewed by reporters, she denied that it had ever taken place. She completely blotted the experience out of her mind because it was so far beyond what she “knew” to be true about her own strength.
When you become fully attuned to your superconscious mind, you will experience a continuous stream of health, energy, and strength that will enable you to produce more in a few hours than the average person produces in a week. You will enter into the state of “flow,” where the world seems to slow down while your mind speeds up. During this time you seem to have an easy ability to produce large quantities of high-quality work. You have a wonderful sense of well-being. Your mind sparkles with a stream of ideas that flow to you exactly as you need them.
Your superconscious mind responds best to clear, authoritative commands, or what are called “positive affirmations.” Every time that you affirm a goal or a desire from your conscious mind to your subconscious mind, you activate your superconscious mind to release the ideas and energy that you need to bring your desire into reality.
This is why decisiveness is such an important trait of successful men and women. Because they know exactly what they want, their superconscious powers are working for them continuously. You will also find that when you stop vacillating and make a firm, clear decision that you are going to do something, no matter what the cost, everything suddenly starts to work in your favor.
When you affirm “I like myself,” or “I can do it,” or “I earn $XXX per year,” you are throwing the master switch on all your mental powers. You are “turning on” in the most powerful way possible.
I mentioned earlier that the primary reason that people do not achieve their potential is that they are simply not serious. By “not serious,” I mean that they simply refuse to make the decisions that they must make if their lives are going to change for the better.
You will be amazed at how much more effective you become when you make firm decisions and burn your mental bridges behind you. Cut off all thought of quitting or retreating, or doing something else. Make the decision that you are going to do whatever it takes to achieve your goal, and that nothing is going to stop you. At that point, even a person with average abilities becomes an extraordinary agent of accomplishment.
Your superconscious mind automatically and continuously solves every problem on the way to your goal, as long as your goal is clear. If your goal is to make a lot of money and you are absolutely clear about the amount that you want to earn and keep, you must, you will eventually achieve it.
The history of the human race is written in the stories of men and women who have set big exciting goals for themselves, and who have then persisted indomitably, sometimes for many years, before finally reaching them. Peter Drucker, the well-known management expert and author of The Effective Executive, says, “Whenever you find something getting done, anywhere, you will find a monomaniac with a mission.” Whenever you find great achievement, you find an individual who is absolutely clear about what he or she wants to do, and who is willing to do whatever it takes, for however long it takes, to achieve it.
Your main job is to keep your thoughts on your goal. Your superconscious mind will automatically and continuously solve each problem on the way to your goal as and when the problem arises. You can trust absolutely in this superconscious power to function for you as long as your goal is clear.
Your superconscious mind operates best in a mental climate of faith and acceptance. The attitude of confidently expecting that your problems will be solved, obstacles removed, and your goals achieved is the mental state that intensifies the rate of the vibration of thought and causes your superconscious mind to function at its best.
Although it is difficult initially, it is only when you are completely relaxed about the outcome of any situation that the situation seems to resolve itself, sometimes in the most unexpected way. The outcome, however, will always be everything that you could ask, and sometimes much more. It seems that the harder you “don’t try,” the better your superconscious mind works in bringing you the things you want.
All great men and women have been people of faith. They have been able to “take no thought.” They developed the almost childlike ability to entrust themselves to the goodness of the universe, with the simple faith that everything was unfolding as it should, in its own time. They have had an attitude of calmness and confidence and a belief that there was a power greater than themselves that was helping them.
Any kind of negativity, anger, worry or impatience shuts down your superconscious mind. It diminishes your powers. It clouds your thinking. It confuses the messages you are sending from your conscious to your subconscious mind. Destructive emotions of any kind interfere with the calm, positive attitude your superconscious requires for optimal functioning.
Your superconscious mind brings you the experiences you need to be successful. Because you can never permanently achieve anything on the outside that you are not fully prepared for on the inside, whenever you set a goal of any kind, you will have to grow and develop to the point that you are ready to achieve it. Your super-conscious mind will guide you through the experiences you need to teach you the lessons you have to learn, in order, so that when you finally arrive at your destination, it will almost seem like an anticlimax. You will by then have developed the mental equivalent of the corresponding outer reality that you desire.
This is a very important point: If you achieve anything without having prepared yourself for it in your thinking, you will not be able to hold on to it. If you make a lot of money unexpectedly, and your self-concept is not equal to it, you will be subconsciously driven to engage in behavior to get rid of the money. That is why it is said, “easy come, easy go.”
However, if you achieve your successes gradually, growing as a person on the inside as you increase in your productive capacity on the outside, when you finally reach the position in life that you desire, you will be ready to hold on to it indefinitely.
If you look back over your life, you will find that almost everything worthwhile that you have accomplished was preceded by what appeared to be difficulties, disappointments and temporary failures. Often, you had to ride an emotional roller coaster of fear, anxiety and worry. However, in retrospect, you can see that every one of those difficult experiences was essential to your becoming the kind of person you are today, and to achieving your ultimate goal.
This is a very important point. Your superconscious mind sets up a series of hurdles, or learning experiences, to train you in exactly what you need to learn. Your superconscious mind is also very patient. If you do not learn the lesson, whether it’s in relationships, in business, with money or with your health, your superconscious mind will send you back through the learning experiences over and over until you finally get it, until you learn what you are meant to learn. Then and only then will you be allowed to proceed to the next step in your development.
Napoleon Hill found that almost every one of the wealthy men he interviewed had achieved their great successes one step beyond what appeared to be their greatest failure. It was when every outward indication suggested that it was time to quit and to give up that they were the very closest to breaking through to their goals.
It is almost as if your superconscious mind gives you a final test just before you arrive at your destination. It is when you are going through your most difficult learning experiences that you must draw on your ability to control your mind and have faith that the difficulty you face is simply part of the process that will inevitably bring you through to your goal.
A characteristic of successful men and women is that they never use the word “failure.” They look upon temporary defeats and setbacks as simply another way of learning how to succeed. They seek within every obstacle or disappointment the seed of an equal or greater benefit or opportunity. They learn from every experience. They refuse to get upset. They keep their minds calm, positive and focused on their goals. As a result, they keep their superconscious capabilities switched on.
Your superconscious mind grows in capability as you use it and trust it. Men and women begin to achieve great things only when they begin trusting completely in this mysterious power or force surrounding them. The “Law of Use” states, “If you don’t use it, you lose it.” It also states that whatever mental or physical capabilities you do use become stronger and more responsive to your demands. When you develop the habit of continually turning to your superconscious mind to guide and direct you, to inspire and illuminate you and to solve every problem on your path, it will work faster and more efficiently every day.
Your superconscious mind makes all of your words and actions, and their effects, fit a pattern consistent with your self-concept and your dominant goals. You will always be inspired to say and do exactly the right thing, in every situation, when you are tuned in to your superconscious.
Sometimes words will seem to fall out of your mouth that will turn out later to have been exactly the right thing to say at the time. Sometimes, you will get an urge to buy a book or a tape, to telephone or visit someone, to write a letter or make a decision that later turns out to be exactly the thing for you to do at that moment. You will pick up a book or magazine or open it to the exact page that has the answer you need. And this will start happening repeatedly, the more you trust yourself to this great power.
Synchronicity is a common phenomenon that occurs when two seemingly unrelated events happen at the same time and, somehow, both these events help you to move toward one of your goals. For example, you could think about taking a vacation to Hawaii in the morning before you go to work, and later on that day, receive a special offer for a week in Hawaii at a cut-rate price. You might decide over the weekend that you need to be earning more money, and Monday your boss could offer you a promotion with greater responsibilities and higher pay. The only connecting link between these synchronous events is the meaning imposed upon the events by your thoughts and your goal. This is another example of super-conscious activity.
Another word that is often used to describe this kind of coincidence is “serendipity.” Serendipity is the facility of making happy discoveries. People who experience serendipity all seem to have one thing in common: They are actively seeking something. They all seem to have very clear goals and the remarkable things they find are all associated with something they want to accomplish.
People are always telling me, after they have started using their superconscious minds, “You won’t believe what happened to me!” I have heard this exclamation a thousand times: “You won’t believe what happened to me!” Other people, even when remarkably coincidental things happen to them, will tend to dismiss these seemingly inexplicable events by calling them “luck,” or by saying that they just happened by accident. But now you will know better.
We live in a universe that is governed by law. Nothing happens by chance. Everything happens as the result of definite laws and principles, even if you don’t know what they are.
In England during the darkest days of World War II, in the fall of 1941, Prime Minister Winston Churchill was urged by members of his cabinet to make peace, to seek some kind of accommodation with Hitler. Churchill refused. He said that something would happen to bring America into the war, and that would change the entire equation. When he was pressed on this point, and asked how he could be so confident, he replied, “Because I study history and history shows that if you hold on long enough, something always happens.”
On December 7, 1941, only a few weeks after this conversation took place, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. When Hitler heard of this, he immediately declared war on the United States. Overnight, everything changed, and the industrial might of America was thrown onto the scales on the side of Britain. The unilateral action of Japan on the other side of the world triggered the chain of events that enabled Churchill to achieve his goal of saving England from being overrun by Nazi Germany.
The more you can hold this mental state of calm, confident expectation, even when buffeted by the storms of life, the more likely it is that you will experience synchronicity and serendipity. They are delightful experiences that always fill you with a feeling of happiness and excitement.
Your superconscious mind operates best under two conditions. The first is when your conscious mind is concentrating 100 percent on a specific problem or goal. The second is when your conscious mind is busy with something else altogether. You should try both methods on anything you want to accomplish.
Here is a simple, five-step process you can use to bring all the powers of your superconscious mind to bear on a single issue.
Step one: Define the problem or goal clearly, preferably in writing. What is it exactly that you want to achieve, or exactly what is the problem you wish to solve?
Step two: Gather as much information as you can. Read, research, ask questions and actively seek the answer that you need.
Step three: Consciously try to solve the problem by reviewing all the information you have gathered.
Step four: If you still have not been able to solve the problem consciously, turn it over to your superconscious mind. Release it confidently, the way you would release a balloon, and let it float away.
Step five: Get your conscious mind busy elsewhere. Turn your attention away and let your superconscious mind take care of it for you!
Take any problem you are wrestling with right now and try this method on it. You will be amazed at the results.
Your superconscious mind will bring you exactly the right answer at exactly the right time. When the answer comes, you must act on it immediately. It is “time-dated” material. If you get the urge to telephone someone, or to say something or do something, and it feels exactly right, act in faith and follow your instincts. It will always turn out to be the right thing to do.
If you are having a problem with another person and you get a clear idea of what you should do or say, even if it involves some confrontation or unpleasantness, follow your hunch and carry through with it. The outcome will always be equal to or better than what you could have expected.
As a professional speaker, I will sometimes be unsure about exactly how to structure and begin a talk or a seminar. When I turn it over to my superconscious mind, at a certain point, often as I am walking to the podium, the entire talk will crystallize in my mind and it will turn out to be exactly the right thing to say.
Recently, I was asked to address a corporate audience on the challenges of professional selling in the 1990s. I had prepared for this talk and I was ready to speak on the subject. But as I was introduced, I had this irresistible urge to talk instead about the importance of long-term goals and strategies and having the courage to give up the old and embark in new directions. At the end of the talk, I got a standing ovation.
Later, the president of the company told me that, before my talk, they had had two full days of meetings at which they discussed and debated the future direction of the company. My talk had clarified the issues they were wrestling with and had given them the keys to solving some of their most pressing problems. It turned out that my superconscious mind was guiding me to say the things that their superconscious minds were directing them to learn.
Your superconscious mind enables you to program yourself so you remember to do things at certain times in the future. For example, you can program your mind to wake you up at any hour, day or night. There are many people, including myself, who never use alarm clocks, and who never oversleep. All you need to do is to decide at what time you want to wake up tomorrow morning. Then forget it. At exactly that time, or a few minutes before, you will come wide awake.
I travel back and forth over several time zones, going to bed and getting up at all hours. And my superconscious mind always wakes me up at exactly the right time. I never oversleep. It’s better than an alarm clock.
You can remind yourself to call someone at a certain time, or to stop off and pick up something on the way home. At exactly the right time or place, the thought you programmed will leap into your mind. And you can use this power by simply deciding to do so.
You can eventually reach the point where you won’t need to carry a watch. You will always know within a few minutes exactly what time it is.
Among other things, you can use your superconscious mind to find parking spaces. If you can clearly visualize a parking space, even on a crowded street or a parking lot, when you arrive, the parking space will be waiting for you. If it is especially busy, someone will be holding the space until you arrive. Just as you drive up, no sooner and no later, the other car will pull out to make way for you. My wife, Barbara, has developed this capability to the point where she can plan a whole series of errands and get a parking spot right next to the door of every store or office that she is going to.
Technical people, like engineers and accountants, find this very hard to believe. But I run into people all over the country who tell me they’ve never had a problem finding a parking space since they went through the seminar.
In a recent seminar that we conducted in San Diego, we gave the participants Saturday afternoon off. Two groups of people decided to visit the San Diego Zoo for the afternoon. The first group was made up of four young entrepreneurs. They were positive, optimistic, and fully confident that this method of finding parking spaces would work. The other group was made up of three engineers. They were quite clear that there was no way that you could find parking spaces using visualization and their superconscious minds.
Both groups went separately to the San Diego Zoo. The car full of young entrepreneurs drove straight up to the parking spaces by the front entrance, even though the parking lot was jammed as far as the eye could see. Just as they arrived at the front entrance, the very first parking stall opened up. The car that was in it backed out. They drove right in, laughing, and went on into the zoo.
The engineers, on the other hand, did not believe that it would work. They drove around for a while and then parked on the far side of the parking lot and walked about two blocks to the entrance.
Although this is a simple way to use a powerful force, try it for yourself and see. Remember, the key is your attitude. If you confidently believe that you will find a parking space, you most certainly will. But any trace of doubt or skepticism will short-circuit the process and cause it to fail.
This is the most important of all the laws in this book. It is the summary law that binds them all together. The Law of Superconscious Activity states, “Any thought, plan, goal or idea held continuously in your conscious mind must be brought into reality by your superconscious mind, whether positive or negative.”
Any thought, plan, goal or idea that you can hold continuously and confidently in your conscious mind, whether positive or negative, will eventually be brought into your reality by your superconscious mind. This law explains how you create your world by the thoughts that you allow to dominate your thinking. If you keep your mind on the things that you want, and keep them off the things that you fear, your goals, whatever they are, will eventually materialize and become your realities.
Like all laws, this law is neutral. It is no respecter of persons. It is the highest manifestation of the principle of cause and effect. If you use this power for good, then only good will come into your life. If you use this power negatively, it will bring you illness, unhappiness and financial frustration. The choice is always yours. You are always free to choose the kind of world that you wish to live in. And you choose it every day by the thoughts you think.
A successful life is merely a series of successful days, hours and minutes, minutes during which you think about your goals and your desires, about health and happiness and prosperity, and refuse to dwell on anything that you do not want to see manifested around you.
There are several ways to stimulate superconscious activity. The first and most dependable is simply to think about your goals all the time. This alone will keep you happy and focused. It will cause superconscious energies to flow through you in the form of ideas and motivation toward goal attainment.
The second way to stimulate your superconscious mind is through the practice of solitude, “going into the silence.” Men and women begin to become great when they start taking time to be alone with themselves. Solitude is a wonderful tonic that gives balance and clarity to thought. It provides an opportunity for you to reflect on who you are and what is important to you. Most of all, solitude provides the mental medium of calmness and serenity that causes superconscious solutions to spring into your mind full-blown and complete in every detail.
If you have never tried it, the simplest way to practice solitude is to go and sit somewhere, perfectly silently, without moving, for an entire hour. Do not drink coffee, take notes, smoke cigarettes, listen to music or do anything else. Just sit perfectly still for an entire hour.
Most people have never deliberately sat down alone with themselves for any period of time. If this is your first experience with solitude, you will find it excruciatingly difficult. For the first twenty-five to thirty minutes you will have an almost irresistible urge to get up and move around. You will find it almost impossible to sit still. But if you have the self-control to sit without moving for thirty minutes, something remarkable will happen. You will start to feel calm, relaxed and at peace with yourself. You will feel happy and at one with the world.
Then, at a certain point, you will feel a river of creative energy flowing through you. You will start to have ideas and insights you can apply immediately to be happier and more effective. At exactly the right moment for you, the answer that you need to your most pressing problem will emerge in your mind. You will recognize it immediately. When you get up from your period of solitude and go out and implement the solution that came to you, you will find that it was exactly the right thing to do. It is almost as if this ideal answer had been brought to you by a force from far beyond, which, of course, it has.
The third way to trigger superconscious activity is to visualize your goal as realized. Create a clear mental picture of exactly the goal or outcome you want. Dwell on this picture repeatedly until it is accepted as a command by your subconscious mind and is passed on to your superconscious mind for realization.
Superconscious activity usually happens when you are making as little effort as possible. Releasing your problem or goal completely often stimulates ideas of tremendous value. Letting it go with complete confidence and getting your mind busy elsewhere is often the trigger that unlocks your hidden powers.
Many people find that daydreaming or relaxing on a park bench triggers superconscious activity. Listening to classical music, alone or in the company of people you enjoy, will often cause wonderful ideas to spring into your mind.
Perhaps one of the most enjoyable ways to turn on your super-conscious powers is to go for a walk or to commune with nature in some way. The sounds of the ocean on the seashore seem to have a powerful impact on the superconscious, as do those of any running water or natural environment. Any form of deep relaxation or meditation also stimulates your superconscious mind.
One good superconscious insight or idea can save you months, even years, of hard work. You must resist the temptation to procrastinate on trying one or more of these methods on the most pressing issues facing you. It is exactly when you are too busy that you most urgently need to listen to your inner voice.
A superconscious solution will come to you from one of three sources. The first and most frequent source is from intuition. Sometimes this inner voice will be so loud you will be unable to think of anything else. The answer will be so clear and obvious that you will know this is exactly the right thing for you to do. It will not only be right, it will feel right as well.
Always trust your intuition; never go against it. Your intuition is your direct pipeline to your superconscious mind and to infinite intelligence. All successful and happy men and women listen closely to their intuitions and to the feel of a situation. Most of the problems you’ve had and mistakes you’ve made in life have been the result of ignoring your “gut feelings.”
The second source of superconscious solutions is chance encounters with other people or information. Once you have a clear goal, or a problem to solve on the way to your goal, you will unexpectedly run into people who can help you. Often they will be strangers you meet traveling or in social situations. You will come across books, magazines and articles that contain exactly the information you need. You will hear the solution you’re looking for on an audiotape. The information will seem to be drawn to you in exactly the form you require it at the time.
A friend of mine, a famous photographer, was wrestling with a personal problem one evening at home when he had the urge to walk across his living room and get a book from the shelf. As he moved toward the book, it fell off the shelf onto the floor, face down and open. When he bent over and picked up the book, the first paragraph contained exactly the answer he was looking for. He had just been through our seminar, and he recognized immediately that he had experienced a superconscious solution. He implemented it the next morning and it turned out to be exactly the right thing to do.
Earlier I encouraged you to start off each morning by saying, “I believe something wonderful is going to happen to me today.” If you go through your day believing that something wonderful is about to happen to you, you will meet people and come across information that will make your expectation a reality. You will get super-conscious solutions to your problems in the most surprising ways.
The third source of superconscious solutions is unpredictable events. Peter Drucker writes in his book Innovation and Entrepreneurship that the primary source of innovation in business is the unexpected success or the unexpected failure. It is often the completely unanticipated event that contains the superconscious solution that you are seeking. And the unexpected event that contains the answer you need can often appear to be a major setback or failure.
Sir Alexander Fleming was conducting experiments on bacteria in his laboratory in London when some mold flew onto his culture dishes and killed the bacteria, thereby ruining the experiment. As he was about to throw away the culture medium and begin again, he noticed the mold that had killed the bacteria. He began to study the mold very carefully, and the result was the discovery of penicillin, which won him a Nobel prize in medicine and saved the lives of millions during World War II.
Norman Vincent Peale says that whenever God wants to send you a gift, he wraps it up in a problem. The bigger the problem, the bigger the gift. Is the glass half empty or is the glass half full? Successful, happy people make a habit of looking into even the most difficult situation for something positive, something they can learn or some way they can benefit. And this very attitude often triggers a superconscious insight or solution to their problem.
A superconscious solution has three characteristics. First of all, when it comes, it is 100 percent complete, and deals with every aspect of the problem. It is always within your resources and capabilities at the time. It is always simple and fairly easy to implement.
Second, it appears to be a blinding flash of the obvious. It seems to be so simple and so evident that you often have the “Aha!” experience. You wonder why you hadn’t thought of it before. Of course, the reason you hadn’t thought of it before was either that you weren’t ready or that the timing was not right.
The third way that you can tell a superconscious solution is that it always comes accompanied by a burst of joy and energy, a feeling of elation that makes you want to take action immediately.
If you get a superconscious solution in the middle of the night, you will be unable to sleep until you get up and write it down or do something about it.
There is the famous story of Archimedes taking a bath and suddenly having the superconscious solution that enabled him to determine the proportions of gold and silver in a wreath made for the king. He became so excited that he ran through the streets of Syracuse naked, shouting, “Eureka! Eureka!” (“I have found it, I have found it!”)
When a superconscious solution comes to you, even after a long period of mental and physical effort, you will get a feeling of excitement, joy and enthusiasm. You will have a burst of “free energy.” You will want to implement the solution immediately. You will feel happy and confident and sure that it will work.
When you have clearly defined goals and detailed plans, backed by a positive mental attitude and a calm, confident expectation of success, you activate your superconscious mind into bringing you virtually anything you could ever want in life. When you affirm positively, visualize clearly and believe absolutely, you will be led irresistibly to do and say the right thing at the right time in every situation. You unlock your full potential for health, happiness and prosperity. You bring yourself into complete alignment with the greatest power of the universe.
Schedule one solid hour of solitude during which you sit perfectly still for the entire sixty minutes. Discipline yourself to do this as soon as possible. During this period of silence, shut everything else out of your mind. Just push your problems aside for the moment. Let your mind wander. Daydream. Don’t try to think of anything specific. Temporarily step outside of your work and personal life. Turn everything over to your superconscious mind and release all your cares and worries.
Sometime during this hour, your mind will go calm and clear. You will feel relaxed and happy. And with no effort at all on your part, exactly the answer you need at that moment will come to you.
At the end of the hour get up and follow your intuition. Do what your superconscious has guided you to do. Don’t worry about whether someone else will approve or agree. The answer will be exactly right, and you’ll probably never make another mistake.