Surrendering the Little Mind to the Big Mind: an interview with Wayne Dyer by Jane Lister Reis Could I surrender fully my little mind to the larger, creative mind of the universe? This was the question I found myself asking as I spoke on the telephone with Dr. Wayne Dyer at his home in Hawaii. As we talked about his most recent book, Manifest Your Destiny: The Nine Spiritual Principles for Getting Everything You Want, and his newest (to be released this fall), I was struck by the clarity and openness of this man whose work I have read and studied for many years. It was though he had become the surrender about which he spoke. With every question I asked him, I sensed him taking me into deeper and more open spaces about how to think and perceive this life that we live. His responses to my questions were like expansive mirrors reflecting my thoughts, encouraging me to let go of the limitations of my past perceptions and, most importantly, the painful memories my mind held on to. I was free, absolutely free, if I chose to be, free to live in and experience joy at every moment and, by doing so, to participate in the unlimited and abundant flow of life. After our conversation, my being said, "Yes!" Jane: What are you presently involved in? Wayne: I just recently completed two specials for public television, one on Manifesting Your Destiny and the other on The Wisdom of the Ages, the title of my next book. This book contains sixty essays that are based upon the contributions of sixty teachers going back as far as Buddha, Pythagoras, and Jesus, and all the way up to the more contemporary people like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Frost. For each of them, I included a poem or a speech, some small piece of their contribution to humanity. The idea is that these people walked on the planet before we did and literally shared the same air that we breathe. Their bodies were warmed by the same sun as ours. They walked in the very same places that we walk; they drank the very same water that we drink. That’s because everything in the material world is constantly being reformed and reshaped. When I was writing the book, what I did was to take a picture of each of these people; I would just look at it and ask them, "What is it that you would like me to share?" Then I would just listen. It sounds strange, but it was almost if they were speaking through me and their words came automatically once I would meditate, listen, ask, and surrender. I wrote sixty essays in sixty days. Jane: I heard you speak at a recent conference in Portland. As you spoke about manifesting, my thought was that you were "preaching to the already converted." As you speak all over the country on the subject of manifesting, how do you reach out to the people who do not yet understand this concept? Wayne: Well, the people who are not "converted" if you will — if you can put them into some category — are really connected to us the same as the people who are. They have just as much to offer. They are us and we are them. If you understand a little bit about quantum mechanics or quantum physics, it’s about reaching a critical mass. An analogy would be like cancer cells in the body. Just because there are cells in our body that are working inconsistently with the health of the whole, it doesn’t mean that we can’t reach those cells. Once we get those cells so that they have ease within them more than dis-ease, then they will cooperate with the cells adjacent to them. Jane: In the introduction to your book Manifest Your Destiny, you spoke about how you were literally drawn to the subject of manifesting. Do you believe that there is a divine timeline for everyone, where we are drawn to those things that we are ready to learn and to the teachers who can teach us — in other words, that we don’t need to worry about others? Wayne: Absolutely. I think it’s all in order, even the starvation that’s on the planet. Ram Dass used to say to me, "Don’t be angry at the hunger. Then you’re a part of the problem." What he was saying to me was that those who are starving are part of the perfection of the universe, as hard as that is for us to understand that; but so, too, is your desire to end it a part of the perfection of the universe. We need to go with our desire, go with what we feel inside, rather than fighting what is out there. Let go and relax. This is the same process of surrendering that happens when you begin automatic writing or automatic creating where you allow your body to create a great symphony or soufflé or whatever it wants in the moment. Each one of us has an overriding spiritual objective, and when we allow that spiritual objective to take over rather than be consumed with how others are behaving or not behaving, then we’re in the flow. Once you know that, you can stop giving energy to the things you don’t believe in. A story I always use to demonstrate this principle that we are each a part of one field of energy and that we can impact this field through our thoughts of love is this: I saw a woman in a grocery store about to slap her child. The energy field around her was just horrible. I just remember moving into that energy field. I wasn’t going over to chastise her or tell her she shouldn’t treat her child that way. I just really wanted to bring my energy of love into her field. When I did that, the woman looked up at me like she couldn’t believe what was happening to her and the energy just absolutely shifted. I believe that every one of us can do this individually and on a collective basis as well. It’s important to remember that for every act of evil in the world, there are a million acts of kindness. We have to be careful not to assess what is happening in our world or universe on the basis of propaganda or what the media tells us or even the fears we hear. The problem in our society isn’t crime. It’s the fear of crime that’s the problem. Once we get rid of our fears, we can shift things. We can take our neighborhoods back. Our children can be safe because we have learned to hold that energy of love and radiate it out; we’ve learned to radiate the same energy that Jesus or Buddha had when they went into a village. Jane: If this ability to affect change by radiating our fields is so powerful, one wonders why we don’t gather to mediate together as a group more often. Wayne: Exactly. It’s as simple as meditating. Recently, I spoke in Phoenix to a group of two thousand people. At the end of my talk, I told them about my CD on meditating and manifesting using the sound principles given to me by Sri Guruji. At the end of the talk, five hundred people bought that CD, so there’s an incredible hunger our there by people who want to learn how to meditate. Jane: What would you say to people who feel that their life is already so intense, so stressful that they don’t have the time or energy to meditate? Wayne: People choose to make work intense. Work itself is not intense. I’d like to help people realize that it’s stressful thinking that creates stress. You can bring this kind of loving consciousness to the workplace if you don’t believe that the workplace is something that is affecting you, but the other way around. You have to see that your workplace and the people in your workplace are just waiting to have the same kind of consciousness that you have, that having this kind of loving consciousness is better for your workplace or your company. Loving energy attracts more people, makes your company a better place to work, etc. You need to begin to see yourself as a messenger of something that is better. When you see evidence to the contrary of divine consciousness, you say to yourself, "Okay, that energy field has been contaminated, but not by me any longer." You get into your own private world. In The Wisdom of the Ages, none of these people was interested in the way things had always been or were. They knew that if your attention is on the way things are, then the way things are is what you’re going to manifest. They knew that you needed to shift your attention off the way things are to the way you want things to be and maintain that field or belief. The highest-functioning people act as if what they want is already here, so that becomes their reality. When you do hold that vision, others are affected by that new paradigm that you hold and the field you radiate. In no time at all, you — just one person — have altered the whole consciousness. We are all connected, and whether we believe it or not is not even the point; the fact is that we are. Our connection with each other and all that is has been proven at the quantum level, the sub-subatomic level. Ancient wisdom tells us to be a nonconformist. Instead, our culture begs us to conform; yet we honor our dead troublemakers. George Bernard Shaw said something like, "Reasonable people do things the way they’ve always been doing them. They respect the rules. Unreasonable people manifest change in society. Therefore all society is dependent on unreasonable people." In other words, if we’re going to make it, we have to become unreasonable. We can’t all go along with the usual thinking. Jane: So this interview is really an invitation to people to honor their own unreasonableness. Wayne: Yes! What I tell people is that there is a richer, deeper experience of life, and it’s available to all of us. Those of us who are insisting on having that deeper, richer experience are no longer willing to accept the idea that life has to be painful, shallow, filled with depression, sorrow, fear or anxiety. It doesn’t have to be that way. At least it’s not the experience of life I’m going to create! If you would like to hear Wayne Dyer in person and help create this level of joy not only for yourself but the whole planet, you may want to attend the 19th annual Western Unity Region Vacation Celebration, August 13-16 at Crystal Mountain, Washington, where he is the featured speaker. For more information, call (206) 622-8475 ext. 257 or contact your local Unity Church. To register, call (541) 336-1513.