Your Success Principles Float in the Ether Merely Waiting for You to Take Note

Napoleon Hill in Think and Grow Rich and the book upon which it is based, The Law of Success in Sixteen Lessons, speaks of thoughts floating in the ether.

What Hill was getting at in a non-religious or more scientific way (for those not religious, for he was aware of his audience) is that if you fill the air with thoughts, (electromagnetic energy that vibrates so much you can't see it) a "universal power" will help you manifest or make those thoughts a reality. Before the turn of the 20^th century-around the time Hill wrote-classic science believed that ether filled the void and was the medium by which electromagnetic radiation or waves moved (radio waves and light are types). Hill believed that this ether was an "energy moving at an inconceivably high rate of vibration" that it was "filled with a form of universal power which adapts itself to the nature of the thoughts."

And what he also mentions is that thoughts of success or knowledge lie in waiting, a lion for its prey, only to be uncovered or discovered by the person looking. Hill believed that this "secret" to success lie in this information and that it "seems to work more successfully when it is merely uncovered and left in sight, where those who are ready, and searching for it, may pick it up."

What I would like to convey to you is the utter, total, unequivocal truth of this statement.

But before I get into this, let me set the table by telling you that I am not one to look for the truth in touchy-feely, fly-by-night, unsound, new agey, mumbo jumbo. Or self-help or self-improvement systems with names that sound like they just came from the latest sci-fi novel. I have a very finely tuned b.s. detector. So as I have read Hill's books, I'm amazed how dead-on he was and is. Why? Because he is speaking of universal or divine principles that this universe works on. Case in point.

I teach at several colleges and universities in the Los Angeles area, and I was talking to my students last night about universal principles or truths. I was asking why the majority of people who walk the face of this earth are generally kind and will more likely than not say "Excuse me," "I'm sorry," and "Hello, how are you?" than they are to say "Move!" "Who let you live?" or "Get out of my way, Dirtbagamongus!" One universal law or principle is that most people want respect and desire to give it. For example, most want to see the rights of women and children and the underprivileged protected. It's just damn mean folk who don't. And we don't like them. Universal law.

But to give a more case-specific example showing how you "attract" what you seek, as Hill says, I'll state a personal example. This law of attraction is the secret Hill talks about in his books. In his Law of Success books, he talks about how important it is to focus every day on your ultimate desire-along with the help of others in your master mind group-day in and day out, month after month, year after year if need be. Now this is the part of The Secret (the currently popular book / movie based on Hill's work) that is left out. You may be able to attract what you desire but sometimes the universe, and Hill agrees, is not an easy task mater and requires you to work at it over a period of time. For example, Lincoln didn't become successful until his late forties after numerous failed attempts at business and politics. On to the example.

I've been walking along this path that Hill speaks of for some time now, and while doing so I have discovered a thread of common knowledge-some I've known of, some I've picked up through books, CD's, DVD's, seminars, podcasts, or conversations. It's similar to theoretical physicists looking for a common thread. There are two theories that explain space: quantum and relativity. Unfortunately, because the math only works separately and not when the theories are combined, physicists are trying to come up with a string to tie them together: yes, the string theory. Stephen Hawking tells us that once we find that theory we will know the answer to the universe and everything. He believes that we have a 50/50 chance of finding that answer within ten years.

Now, what you and I are dealing with here is already at hand. The truths to success are not hidden in some mysterious yet-to-be-discovered equation. But like scientists who are looking for the thread that is an attempt at tieing together quantum with relativity, you too must be like an abstract physicist and do your attracting by looking for clues or that common thread. You are, as I tell my students, to be a Smolder (FBI agents Scully and Molder combined) and look for those clues.

They are there. They lie all about you.

To continue my personal example.

My classes have been studying the following works in which I have found numerous common threads: The Secret, The Secret Life of Water, The Hidden Messages in Water, The Universe is a Green Dragon, What the *bleep* Do We Know? as well as my comments and suggestions from Hill's works. But let me relate to you a part of the story of how this attraction works.

Recently I was teaching from The Universe is a Green Dragon, written by mathematical cosmologist Brian Swimme. This is a book that I had read some five years ago and had to a great degree forgotten its contents. I didn't have the time to go over the notes I had placed in the book until it was time to teach. And what's interesting is that most of what I have learned regarding the secrets to success (and I don't know why they call them secrets; they're there for everyone to find) has come in the last three years or so. So since I've been more focused on Hill's secret or the law of attraction, I have been attracting sources with common threads. I had almost entirely forgotten the contents of Swimme's book, but as I read through it I and my class began to realize that what I had been saying in previous classes, some based on Hill's work, some based on just plain, old common thread knowledge (that which is sitting, waiting for us all) began to materialize in the underlined passages that I had highlighted before I read Hill and just before I had set out on my path to find the secrets of success.

Swimme states in the chapter titled Allurement, "We understand details concerning the consequences of this attraction. We do not understand the attracting activity itself."

How true. We know what results we obtain as we work the allurement, as we seek that which we must to find our passion, that which enlivens our head, heart, and soul, that which Hill says is our DUTY to find; but we don't understand the "attracting activity." We may know it works; we just don't know where it came from or its underpinnings. But we do know it works. We do know it works.

I'll leave you with a final word from Swimme.

"You don't find reasons for this attraction until after the fact; then you come up with reasons."

Hill tells us that in finding the truth, what it is that we were specifically put here to do, that it will enliven us-head, hear, and soul.

The passion, the burning, enflamed, overwhelming wowishness of desire I feel in seeking what I have found and then landing on it has taken away years, added joules and joules of smoking, burning energy to my life. My stride has lengthened, and my heart is overfilled. And this, dear reader, is where we all need to be.

If you don't find your passion, you are not only selling yourself short but the hundreds, thousands, millions you can reach down to and lift to your heightened state of joy and purpose.

God bless.