of nature, popular as it is, is absolutely incompatible with the second principle of manifestation. You cannot tune into the power and energy of the universe to create and attract an abundant life if that energy and power is outside you.
Second Theory: Nature as Spontaneous and Nonjudging
In this spontaneous view, God is universal intelligence flowing through everything, inspiring the natural process to unfold. The emphasis is on awareness of the divine nature in everything rather than managing and controlling the natural world. The life force is nonjudgmental and is responsible for all creation.
In this theory, nature is an unforced unfolding of life forms and there is no “boss.” Rather than learning to manage and control the natural world, the impulse is to trust it. God, in this theory, loves all things.
Human beings are an aspect of this God and are, therefore, carriers of divinity. Generally, in this theory, human beings are considered the highest level of life form. Trusting this most evolved natural human includes trusting the paradox of behavior described as good and bad, selfish and unselfish, greedy and generous in the same manner as we respect other life forms by trusting their processes.
There is no need to invent an ego that is separate from the divine if our basic human nature is trusted. If we trust ourselves, we know how to avoid interfering with nature and how to live in harmony. When we know God as an unseen, loving and accepting power at the heart of everything, allowing us to make our own choices, then God is a trusted part of our nature.
I believe that our nature is much more reliable than our thoughts. This second principle directs us to develop an inner knowing so that the natural process of what we desire also desires us. Consider how our biological system attracts what is needed for hair to grow, food to digest, fingernails to be hard or breasts to be soft without our thoughts directing the process. Thinking can often lead us astray, while our nature unfolds in the form of amazingly well-functioning bodies and minds. When you trust this natural process, you begin to trust the nature of all things. The God within all informs your trusting response to life.
The order of nature itself is sometimes crooked and sometimes straight. It is wiggly and unorthodox, as seen in the shapes of clouds or mountains. They are not in any pattern that we can perceive, and they are perfect. When we insist on controlling nature, we are interfering with nature.
The need to straighten out nature shows distrust. But when we relax and embrace the infinite variations of the universe, we are allowing the divinity of nature to flow and unfold through our life. We have tuned in to the divine.
Think of yourself as a consciousness being played out by God just as a wave is a part of the ocean that is being played out by the ocean. This theory of nature will promote the kind of trust that you need to attract to yourself all that belongs to you in the universe. This unseen, divine energy is the ocean that your wave form is a part of. You can call it God, ocean or, for that matter, anything else.
This is a profoundly exquisite realization because with it you bring to your consciousness the inner awareness that you are actually in all things. This leads to miraculous manifestations, in that you are actually connected to all that you desire to manifest, and finally you know this to be your truth.
BEING IN ALL THINGS AT ONCE
Authentic trust is only available through the knowing heart. When you enter this trusting space, everything will come to you that belongs to you because you have created the inner capacity to receive it. The irony is that what you wish to receive is a part of you. This can be a troublesome concept to grasp because of the ego’s attachment to being separate and special.
Nothing in your rational mind could ever convince you that water is made of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. It appears to be a fluid that flows and has nothing to do with gases. But when we subject water to scrutiny, its constituent elements become manifest. And so it is with the idea of being in all things at once.
Nothing in our everyday experience gives us much reason to believe that our mind has as one of its constituents something invisible that is in all living things. Yet when we examine our life force, using quantum mechanics, we find that this energy is, indeed, not a particle but a wave that is the same in all life.
You trust in the universal energy when you accept this “irrational” fact: At your basic core you are not only worthy of trust, but you are the life force that exists everywhere. If you truly trust in this notion, you realize that everything that you perceive as missing in your life is a part of the same energy that you are. Manifesting becomes the art of bringing to yourself that which is already you.
In a sense it is like thinking of the things you want as being on a string that is infinitely long, but is nevertheless attached to you in some invisible way. It is only a matter of trusting that you can bring that string to you and that whatever is supposed to come to your life will be there when you have developed the capacity to receive it. But the trick is, you cannot receive it or even come close to manifesting it if you have an absence of trust in yourself as an extension of God.
I like to think of God as the ocean and myself as a glass. If I dip the glass into the ocean, I will have a glass full of God. No matter how I analyze this, it will still contain God. Now, the glass of God is not as big as the ocean, nor is it omniscient or omnipotent, but it is still God. This metaphor allows me to trust both in myself and simultaneously in the wisdom that created me, and to see the oneness.
I have deliberately chosen not to use many quotations in this book. But I want to emphasize that every spiritual master and all of the saints, teachers, gurus or priests throughout history have espoused similar advice. This perennial philosophy connects all humanity, from tribal and ancient to civilized and present times. It is the message that God is within and outside every living thing. Also, there is a world we are a part of that is not subject to the changing world of time and space. Moreover, we are presently a part of that invisible spiritual world.
Since it is everywhere, it is not only within you, it is you. The meaning of this is that God is not to be found so much as discovered within yourself. The statement “You and the Father are one” is more than an ecclesiastical admonition. It is a statement of your reality.
With practice, you can learn to know this reality. You can learn to see the aura around all living things. You can learn to assist others by projecting your energy and giving them strength and sustenance. Actually, it is not a skill to learn so much as it is trusting the energy to be part of you.
It may be that the most effective way to trust your reality is through the power of prayer. Prayer and trust offer us seemingly magical methods for manifesting the divine desire. But, first you may have to shift old perceptions concerning prayer and discover a whole new inner vision about praying and prayer.
PRAYER AND TRUST
In the matter of prayer it seems that we often view God as a gigantic vending machine in the sky who will grant us our wishes when we put in the proper tokens in the form of prayers. We expect to insert prayers, then pull on the knob and hope that God will dispense the goodies. The God vending machine becomes the object of our veneration. We tell the machine how good it is and how much we worship it and expect it to be good to us in return.
The basic premise here is that God is outside us and therefore what we need and want is also outside us. This form of prayer is like practicing the absence rather than the presence of God. If we believe that we are separate from God, the vending machine approach to prayer reinforces and deepens that belief.
I prefer to promote the idea of prayer in its essence as a communion with God. Praying at the spiritual level then becomes communing with and knowing that God is as close as our breath. What we seek in prayer is the experience of co-existing with God. Prayer is our communication of readiness for the desires of this sacred energy to manifest through our human form. No separation, no absence of God within, simply the presence of this force within ourselves.
Therefore, the true experience of God does not change or alter God, but it changes us. It heals our sense of separation.