Elevated Existence presented Dr. Wayne Dyer with our 3rd Annual Elevated Existence Spiritual Service Award, and interviewed him for our December 2011 cover story. In the interview, Dyer spoke about his past, how it set him up for his life today, following inner guidance, his newest book “Wishes Fulfilled,” his illness and so much more!
Below is part of the interview not featured in the new issue. For the full 10-page cover story, check out our current issue!
Elevated Existence: When did you first become interested in self-improvement or self-help topics?
Dr. Wayne Dyer: What always intrigued me, even as a young boy, was people with super powers, like Captain Marvel, Superman, Batman and other comic characters that had extraordinary powers. I always felt we all had extraordinary powers. Magicians always interested me and people who could perform magic. I even wrote a book called, “Real Magic,” because I think there is real magic in the world.
I was also always intrigued by what I read from Abraham Maslow when he talked about self-actualizing people and how they are different from ordinary people. I think my conclusion at this time in my life, and for most of my life, is that most of us are born and raised to be ordinary, which isn’t bad, but it just wasn’t for me. To be ordinary meant to fit in, to be good at and do well in school, to have a family, to pay your bills, to stay out of trouble, to be an average person and just to fit in. I think we are conditioned and trained from the time we were very young to be ordinary, and I’ve always been intrigued by extraordinary.
Great spiritual masters were always very intriguing to me as well. The stories of Jesus, and the healings, raising the dead and converting stone into bread and water into wine. Also, having him say, “Even the least among you can do all that I have done and even greater things,” – I took that literally. I just really believed we are all internally in possession of divine guidance and divine intelligence. That inside each and every one of us is God. And it’s just a spark in most people. For me, it’s always trying to raise it from a spark to maybe a piece and then to a chunk, and a larger piece, and ultimately beginning to realize that our total essence is really God. That is what has always intrigued me.
It wasn’t so much about self-improvement, but about getting people to see they are magnificent, that they have so much ability, talent and guidance available to them, and that they can do extraordinary things. The idea of being able to levitate, and to have miraculous things happen in meditation and have miraculous healings take place – all of that stuff really resonated with me. It still does.
EE: So many people get caught up in what they have to do to manifest what they desire. Is this something we have to sit down and do on a daily basis?
Dyer: It’s something that you have to be, and you have to be it all the time. We are not human doings, we are human beings, and this is not about something to do. This is about a new awareness. In order to attract something into your life, or in order to change something in your life, you must first be willing to change your concept of yourself, and your concept of yourself is everything you’ve come to believe as true. And everything you’ve come to believe as true is mostly based upon what you’ve been taught, which is that you are ordinary, and there are limited things that you can do.
In order to change, in order to elevate your consciousness, which your magazine talks about, you have to change things that you’ve come to believe are true, and really understand that the highest place within yourself is God. That’s who you are. And that’s not blasphemy. That’s not God in the sense of the God that we created with our egos – the one that is angry at people, and the God who is better than everybody else, and is floating above and making all the decisions. The God that Jesus spoke about when he said, “God is love, pure love, and he that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in me.”
You have to be pure love, and you have to live your magnificence and recognize that’s all you have to give away. Then that is how you treat everyone and everything in the universe, and you begin to see what Carlos Castaneda talked about. Trees don’t look like trees anymore, and the ocean doesn’t look like the ocean anymore. Everything looks like a miracle. You have to go through life and be astonished and be blissful. Rumi said, “Sell your cleverness and purchase bewilderment.” You have to be bewildered and just in awe of it all, and know that whatever you place into your imagination and live from and feel within your body will harden into a fact because that’s how creation takes place.
People get tripped up in the belief that if they get a new Rolex or a new BMW or a new house or something like that, then that’s going to bring them fulfillment and happiness, and I’ve always believed you don’t attract what you want, you attract what you are.
If you are pure love, then you are aligned with the universal subconscious mind in such a way that it will offer you up experiences that match up to how you are thinking and how you are processing your world. If you’re coming from love, love will show up in your heart. If you’re coming from frustration, anger, worry, hatred, bitterness, tension, stress – if you’re coming from those places, which most people are, then you will attract more of that because your subconscious mind cannot make a distinction between what it is you are experiencing every day in your reality and what you are thinking.
So if you change the way you think, if you literally change the way you process the world to be love, your subconscious mind will begin to align with the one subconscious mind that we are all connected to, and you’ll start seeing those things show up for you. It has to work that way.
I think a lot of people get caught up with having money show up, and greed and so on, and it’s not about any of that. It’s about love. Pure love.
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Once again, Wayne, you make perfect sense. You have to be what you want to attract. I presently would love to find a partner that exudes the same properties I value such as kindness, compassion, respect, gratitude and much strength. These things I feel I have acquired through following you so many of my years on earth. Thank you for another thought to dwell on and put in action.
One of the most valuable lessons you have shared with us is that the magic is living in the present. Each moment is precious. This allows for the unfoldment and awareness of the many gifts God has given us. You reminded us that we are an extension of God. We are already Magnificent. With Gpd’s help, through meditation, we can access that Magnificence and use it to become the person God wants us to be. That is to demonstrate what he wants us to teach in our own unique manner.
I have loved Wayne Dyer forever. He has great teachings. I had the opportunity to meet him in Vegas at the I can do it convention. If anyone is humble and a teacher it’s him.