Joe Vitale

Joe Vitale’s books are generally simply written and easily comprehensible but this one was not completely – not easily comprehensible, at least.

He tells us about the four stages of awakening and how to move from the law of attraction to the law of creation.

We’re told that a paradigm is a collection of beliefs, our way of looking at the world.

The first state of awakening is victimhood, though it’s not really a stage of awakening but the stage into which most of us are born. When you’re a victim you blame everybody for the state of your life.

The second stage is empowerment. This is where you take control of your life and start to manifest more of what you want. We learn about the power of visualization and the power of intention.

He calls the third stage of awakening surrender. You realize you don’t have complete power. You’re not in control of the planet, you’re not God. (Though in fact we are a part of God, and God is within us – my comment.)

“At this point, you surrender to a higher power, and you end up with more power than you ever thought you had.”

I’m afraid I’m only at the second stage as yet – it's hard to surrender. However, the other day I heard the gifted walk-in William Linville admit on a radio show that he himself could not surrender, so I’m not alone.

For the first time, Vitale tells us about the fourth stage of awakening. This is when you become the Divine. “Your ego dissolves and the Divine, or God, lives and breathes through you.”

You realize that the world itself is abundant and you are part of the abundance: there is no scarcity, lack or limitation. (Though of course many do experience these things,)

“”You can have, do, or be anything you want, because you are the very thing you want to attract”

I have to say I found this hard to comprehend.

In this fourth stage of awakening you are now living the abundance paradigm.

He informs us that the theme of the whole book is moving from the law of attraction to the law of creation.

We all know about the law of attraction, of course.

Vitale defines it as the law saying that everything we have coming into our life is there because of our thoughts, feelings and beliefs.

Everything in our life is there because we have on some level attracted it.

He says we don’t necessarily get what we consciously want: we get what we unconsciously expect or believe.

If we have unconscious intentions that run counter to what we say we want to attract, we will attract the counterintentions.

When we get clear of the counterintentions, we can get what we want. It’s all about clearing, he says.

He will give us new, advanced, clearing processes never before offered.

We have to take action for the law of attraction to work. The law of creation is all about taking action. As long as we do this, we will get results.

When we get an idea we should write it down and take action on it.

When we get clear of all our negative thoughts and programmes, we are free to be here now. When we are in this moment, all is well. (Sadly, that is not my experience.) When we are in this moment, the law of attraction and the law of creation happen naturally. When we are in this moment, we live the abundance paradigm. (Again, that can’t be right. Has Joe Vitale never had pain?)

He refers to David Hawkins and his map of consciousness with the various emotions we can feel.

In the abundance paradigm we want to come from love, bliss and serenity.

He advises us to feel gratitude since it is the number one way to change our life. We should also smile, raise our vibration and laugh.

The first clearing exercise is called “The whiteboard meditation”.

He claims this is a powerful cleansing tool which takes us to the essence of the abundance paradigm – to Source, where abundance actually comes into being”.

Firstly, I have no idea what a whiteboard is, though I assume it’s a blackboard that is white, (But then, you will need to have black chalk,)

He tells us we should note that we are separate from our thoughts and feelings. A part of us is observing all these; some traditions call it the witness.

This is what Joe calls the whiteboard. Unfortunately, I feel this is highly inappropriate; every time he mentions the word “whiteboard” I think of a white blackboard and lose track of what he’s talking about.

I won’t even try to explain this so-called clearing process because I don’t understand it.

It has something to do with writing all sorts of things/words on a blackboard/whiteboard and then erasing them.

If you want to learn this process, you will have to get hold of the book and read what Joe writes.

He states that this whiteboard meditation is probably far more powerful, dramatic and advanced than any other technique you’ve ever come across.

There are further instructions in the chapter but I don’t know if they are part of the same meditation or something else.

The next chapter deals with Ho’oponopono which is a different matter altogether and easy to understand.

It is a Hawaiian healing technique which Joe has written a whole book about (Zero limits). I already use this technique and have found it useful.

We’re told about Dr Hew Len who used this technique to heal a whole ward of patients in a hospital for the criminally insane, As far as I recall, Joe has recounted this story several times in his various books.

The basics of the technique are simply to repeat the phrases Please forgive me, I’m sorry, Thank you, I love you many times while focusing on what is to be healed.

The purpose of the technique is to clean and clear yourself.

In one of Joe’s books I learnt that we no longer need to repeat all four phrases but can make do with saying Thank you and I love you, and that is what I do. Actually, all we need to say is I love you.

We are 100% responsible for everything that shows up in our lives, so if we want to clear anything we can use this technique and heal whatever the problem is by clearing ourselves.

We say the phrases to the Divine.

In order to shift into the abundance paradigm we need to take 100% responsibility for our lives.

In this book Joe gives us for the first time an advanced Ho’oponopono clearing technique.

Think of a problem you want to solve and imagine a ball of energy in front of you. Say the phrases and take a business card and slice the ball of energy in half. You can slice it again several times while you keep saying the phrases.

The ball of energy disappears and the problem is gone.

What remains is a sense of peace, well-being, happiness and love. This place where there are no problems is the abundance paradigm.

He says the whiteboard is not only clean and clear and represents love but it is God or Spirit or the Divine, and it is you.

“From that place, you can live as Divinity, which is the fourth stage of awakening, where the abundance paradigm is now your new way of being.”

We attract everything into our lives because of our unconscious beliefs. We need to do clearing and cleansing work to change our unconscious mind, so we get more of the results we want.

That’s from the law of attraction standpoint.

From the standpoint of the law of creation, everything that we have happening in our life right now we have not only attracted but co-created on an unconscious level.

The two laws work hand in hand. To experience the abundance paradigm you need to work with both of them.

Joe says that all we need to do is read the book and follow the directions and the transformation will take place in us. Ha, ha, I'm not sure about that, but then I haven’t been able to do the whiteboard meditation.

He then gives us what he calls the Vitale Clearing Method; he says it is the most powerful cleaning and clearing technique he has ever come up with.

It will clear up how we are attracting people we’re not getting along with.

The clearer we get in relationships with other people, in our relationship with ourselves and with the Divine, the closer we will get to the Abundance Paradigm.

I did this clearing method and found it satisfying though rather strange.

Then he gives us an ancient Indian mantra to clear us of negativity and strengthen our energy system. It works on both the law of attraction and the law of creation.

We can find recordings of it on You Tube showing its pronunciation.

OM MANUMATE NAMAHA

It will help you cleanse and protect yourself and, again, lead you to the abundance paradigm.

You may need to read the book a couple of times to make sure you can do the clearing exercises properly.

I didn’t feel I could integrate everything in the book or shift into the abundance paradigm. But it is certainly worth reading as are the author’s other books.… (more)

When I read Zero Limits, I didn’t get the part where people didn’t want to say “I’m sorry”, because I was more conventional/churchy then, and I felt like it’s normal to be at fault. Now, I’ve felt that way myself; I also have this Aquarius thing now where I don’t like saying the exact same affirmations all the time, like it’s a sameness thing. But specifically I’ve felt like I’d rather just take one of the two, as I think of it, Enneagram Nine phrases, I love you/thank you—for me, thank you—and just use that, because it’s like, being at home, or something. The Six (I’m sorry) and Three (please forgive me) feel more like an away from home, journey thing, where first I fall, and then I make a deal, and I just don’t want to feel like I’m in the habit of being at fault anymore, like a kid in school, head down in front of a scowling schoolmaster (or scowling little boy, right).

But Joe kinda repeated what he said before and this time it clicked. It’s not that I’m bad or even that I did bad. It’s like I wasn’t here. I was absent. It’s like you step into someone, bump into them. For a moment, you didn’t know where you were. You didn’t do bad. You just weren’t here. So you say sorry, and it’s part of coming home.

…. And also that EVERYTHING—all my problems, are in me: not just mom and dad, but scowling professors and aggressive boys, all of it. It’s all memories, and it’s all what I’ve chosen to see.

…. There are a lot of other things written in it, but I don’t think it would make sense if I tried to jam it up about them for another paragraph, you know.

…. Although, I guess I know that when I perfect my gratitude skills, I’ll be able to ask and let go, and know that I’m already perfect.

~ Riches of I,
goosecap… (more)

Joe touches on this a bit in Zero Limits, but in my opinion ‘Zero’ is a better, simpler & less self-conscious/diffident about being different, than Spiritual Marketing/The Attractor Factor, you know. Although it is true that ‘Attractor’ is a more practical, more narrowly focused book and that’s different, I think that the main difference is the confidence-to-be-simple/additional maturity in ‘Zero’, the later book. And it’s not like say Wayne Dyer, who matured and perhaps got better but certainly changed a lot and went on to very different-stage-of-the-life-cycle topics (eg giving away most of your possessions, lol), I think that the main thing about ‘Attractor’ and ‘Zero’ is simply a good-to-great kind of a thing. That said, maybe more step by step is easier for some people, you know. Although I do think that the testimonials—lots of people grew, and not just one guy named Joe—in ‘Attractor’ is excellent, and that chapter just by itself makes the book unique. Although I will say that it’s at most optional to decide first what you don’t want. It can be a step towards knowing what you do want, but that’s all that’s necessary. Today, even if I were to read a book about fascism, or something, I’d only do it for the goodness hidden somewhere—perhaps bravery, especially of an anti-fascist or whatever, or some kind of a resilience story, or I guess possibly just unusual events and the fascination in that, right. But I mean, if it’s like Picture yourself somewhere, and you can picture yourself in the Azores and it’s great; you’ve got it. There’s no need to say, Start with what you don’t want: and it’s like, Okay, I’m in a rat-infested tenement and my landlord is a dishonest crook/grifter, and he likes to…. —You know, just don’t go there. Although I will say, not getting attached to the outcome—‘let go’, I think he says, is a classic but easily overlooked point…. I used to get almost exclusive with non-attachment, so I would actually get attached to non-attachment, and then, as I described to my therapist, “and then something sticks to you and you freak out”: and obviously freaking out is Not non-attachment, and it’s not helpful. I mean, it’s not like there’s a certain amount of “time on off” you need, although I don’t always think in an actively happy way, and I certainly don’t always read about prosperity, and you can “pray continually”, as long as you don’t get attached.

Anyway, obviously there are other books but overall this is a fine book by a very decent and fun fellow.

…. There are a lot of things here, a lot of which I haven’t demonstrated in my life or experienced enough to really understand. One thing I do kinda get is that when guck comes up—I mean, I don’t know if I feel comfortable doing the thing where you write the guck down and then destroy the paper, although I’ll think about it, (and write good things down and keep it), but certainly, if guck comes up, it’s not a mistake. Guck comes up for everyone sometimes. You have to really feel things deeply to release them sometimes; you shouldn’t imagine that you feel differently than you do. And you can get help from more experienced people, too. But basically, just trust life even when you guck it up, you know.

(shrugs) If you read the book, you might need some other point he mentions.

…. I mean, it’s not the BEST EVER book, you know. I feel like five (‘five steps’) is the wrong number, or maybe his chapter titles just aren’t good, you know. Maybe I’d go with four: Release negativity/limiting beliefs; set an intention; ‘feel’ your success; take action but let go when necessary. Or maybe that would be better as five, or even six. It doesn’t really matter, you know; I just felt like he could have made the summaries more memorable, although the content is good. Incidentally maybe half of the work or so—release negativity/limiting beliefs, and let go/non-attachment to outcome, could be considered spiritual philosophy as well as manifestation of wealth, although thinking that we have no reason to want wealth could be a limiting belief, right. Anyway, it’s an easy book to dismiss, a lot of people trashed it on goodreads—I was looking around for one of those overly-informative-but-marginally-useful-5%-of-the-time reviews that summarize each chapter for the five steps, since I couldn’t read the contents well on my kindle and was afraid of jumping around and forgetting my place, (which I had to do anyway, but it wasn’t a big deal lol)—but it’s like, whatever. It’s an easy book to hate because people hate their lives, so now they can dismiss the help or whatever, and feel more comfy being filled with negativity again, right. It’s not a bad book, though. I need to work more on ~feeling~ the success, not letting non-attachment to outcome paralyze me, more practice on setting intentions and doing actions, more practice letting go of the limiting belief that relationships & money aren’t worth having, and I guess also the rejection of the idea that it doesn’t have to be hard—but basically just, ~feeling the success~ and not seeing life as a duty (another limiting belief/negative thing), which can kinda mess up my affirmations. Like, it’s easy to do affirmations as like a “good boy routine”, you know, and not like, ~I care about myself enough to feel good, and I feel good now~. If you can really do that, then you can learn/practice whatever technical skills you might need that are pretty widely available quite often, but which 95% of the people exposed to them self-sabotage into oblivion because they don’t think success is good, or that they’re good—or both.

But of course, ultimately to use the practice is the best review, right; that’s the most important thing.

…. Incidentally, that ‘Manifesting Made Easy’ book by that ‘Queen of Manifestation’ chick has much better chapter titles. You can look at the contents pages and be reminded of what the book is about, which isn’t really true of this book.

(shrugs)

…. And he does say good things—‘turn it into something good’. Look for the happiness, not the problem. Because even in the worst case, if you’re made fun of sometimes in this age, by the online fact-checkers’ opinions and the people afraid of them, it only serves to solidify your eternal fame in an age that comes to understand that the schools weren’t turning out happy people in our days, you know.

(smiles) And, yes—think of something more practical about it that’s good, than that. (laughs)

…. I guess you have to trust yourself enough to trust the Divine. If you can do that, you’ll prosper.

…. And again, there’s a lot that doesn’t translate well to the written page or words in general, so I don’t know that Joe ever will write a book explaining to people that they should follow their intuition. Stories are great, but that’s all you can ever really say, and at the end of the day, you either have the trust or you don’t. Either you trust the love, in whatever form, or you don’t trust the real thing, possibly because you’re credulous or whatever. But you can’t, like, put it in 250 pages, like, “This is what God means when….” you know. I mean, you can use oracles and you can learn to see the world as an oracle, and I guess you can an oracle, but…. You know, not by explaining it. You just decide to do it, or you decide not to.

…. And learning by doing is a process. That’s the other thing about letting go, is it’s a process, and it implies patience. Letting go sounds a little Hindu, while patience sounds like tired and Victorian, but in the end, I guess, it can be the same reality, and reality, you know, is good.

…. And sometimes we do manifest good things when we don’t know, only not quite. When I was working at HomeGoods last Christmas—which seems longer ago now than maybe it really was—I literally found fifty dollars, $53 or whatever, that some frantic mother figure lost, you know: (I reported it and turned it in, but eventually nobody claimed it and I got it back)~ and I do feel like that was God or whoever winking at me and giving me a thumbs up for being loyal, conscientious, and as positive as I could manage, dutiful, you know, even though I wasn’t a great culture fit for that store~ but I used the money—it could have been worse—but I used the money to buy an expensive (and actually only 200 page or so) history of medieval Germany, you know…. I was not a culture fit, although I thought it didn’t matter. And sometimes, yeah, people are too narrow about culture, like theoretically Wikipedia is Facts For Everyone, but it helps if you’re an unhappy white man who’s bookish and doesn’t like money, right…. At least I cared enough about money to hold down a job and actually buy some of those weird books with my own money, right…. But it’s sat on my shelf for months and though I think I will read it eventually, it won’t be soon; ~and it won’t ever make me happy~, you know…. (shrugs) But we always manifest, good or bad, and it’s not really ever pure rottenness even when we’re a touch neurotic and clueless, and sometimes it’s even, almost good, you know….

…. And as they said in that puzzle (video) game I played as a kid, “The ending has not yet been written.”

…. And I suppose that, if you do it the right way, the business end of life is also a way of understanding the mysteries of the universe….… (more)

“I love you. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you.”
—statement made to God/Divinity in ho’oponopono

“It’s not your fault, but it is your responsibility.”
—Joe Vitale, commentary on the 100% responsibility principle in ho’oponopono

I once read a book by a 20th century Greek monk who’s rather famous in that particular part of the world. I gave it away after reading part of it because he was like, pained, and stiff, you know, tight—People don’t read the Fathers of the Church! They believe in evolution! And the way they drive on the freeway! Oh, my God! And the late-night TV! The stand-up comics! Ah, I think I ate something that didn’t agree with me, oh, the comics, oh, my stomach….

He did say something interesting, though. He said he didn’t believe in blame, in blaming others. (I know, but just go with it. For one second.) He said, If we were truly great saints, whatever evil people are out there, would be converted by our presence, so if we are in the presence of evil people and they are not converted, /we should blame ourselves/.

Dr. Hew Len is kinda the handsome cousin of that, with 100% responsibility. (He doesn’t complain about late night comics.) Now, not everybody will buy that, right. I’m not going to address the scientism people and the making-money-should-be-against-the-law people (although I myself have a great job, or whatever! Or at least, I get paid! I’m normal, dammit! Normie power! /normie power/!!!!!). (I’m sorry, please forgive me. I love you.) But even a lot of new age people will find that to be a no-go area, you know: I’m being blamed; I’m being judged; I’m not responsible for any of this; I shouldn’t have to be sorry; I don’t need to ask forgiveness; I had to read Shakespeare in school, you know—I never recovered from that!

But the thing—in my opinion—that the Hawaiian dude got that the Greek monk didn’t, is power. Of course, in a sense, all power comes from God. Source. Divinity. We just receive—or not. But the thing is, if you do receive it, then you’ve got it. Because you took responsibility. This is how I interpret it. If whatever happens, it’s my responsibility to “clean” it, then I have unlimited power to face whatever happens to me in my life. I just put out my hand, and God slaps some money down in it, however much he thinks I need.

Obviously that’s a metaphor—although even dollar bills are kinda abstract, in a way—and maybe you just think I should be committed, so let me tell it like this. I have an alcoholic mother. At first, I didn’t know that she was alcoholic. (She wasn’t always drunk, and most alcoholics don’t fit the stereotype of a male homeless person who eats rats, and is a “bad person”. My mom is a MOM, even when we don’t want her to be!…. And as the study of alcoholism can tell you, even though she doesn’t treat her alcoholism with drink anymore, she still has the disease.) I didn’t know my mother was an alcoholic—but I knew that sometimes I didn’t like her. I blamed her. She wasn’t acting like my mother. She was bad.

I had a problem. I developed mental illness. I wound up in the psych ward—couple of times.

I discovered spiritual teachings, and I learned to stop blaming people. I even discovered Adult Children of Alcoholics, and I learned that I had a disease. My mother had a disease, alcoholism, and I had one I had inherited from her—para-alcoholism, a form of codependence.

So then I could meet with my mom, and I could realize: my mother had a disease. This is what life is like for her. This is her life. My own prayers might help me deal with the fact that I am over sensitive to her energy. Is my mom an alcoholic? Well…. That’s how it is. And I’m upset maybe a little; I’m not really fully in my healing, my recovery. I got to take responsibility for myself.

But now, I read “Zero Limits”—why don’t I take responsibility for the whole thing? What’s going on in my life, what is my energy pattern like, or what was it like, what was my karma, my “memory”, my lesson, what was all that, that I showed up with an alcoholic mother?

That thought actually felt good. There’s a Course In Miracles affirmation that’s like, My holiness is a blessing to (Johnnie, Susie, etc). That’s what it felt like.

And then, what sort of mother would show up, if I were really on my game with these God thoughts, right?

Maybe a loving mother would show up, or at least…. Just, mom, right. No disease, no undiagnosed pattern. Eventually.

Just mom.

So….

There’s nothing I can do, and yet, everything is the result of my actions. Through no fault of my own, I have chosen this particular situation, and I have the responsibility. I have the power.

It’s the best of the Native or pre-industrial or Enneagram Nine person pattern.

There are a lot of mysteries and paradoxes, you know. Perfect words…. Or divine silence?

But, hey.

The greatest mystery: I love you.… (more)