by Becky Hays, Producer

Today marks the one year anniversary of the DVD release of the documentary Beyond Belief, and I am grateful.

I am grateful for the journey.   In the process of creating this film, Jim and I applied the tools presented within the documentary, and the experience has enriched my life.

Making the documentary Beyond Belief has kept me ‘in the conversation’ of ‘walking the talk’. You cannot preach about gratitude and not be grateful.  You cannot expect others to practice present moment awareness, if you dwell in the past with regret or worry about the future.  You cannot teach about ‘negative thoughts’ without becoming aware of your own negative self-talk.

Living these tools has transformed my life.

Thanksgiving is behind us, and now the Winter Holidays are fast approaching.   But this is still a time for thanks-giving, for giving-thanks.  Gratitude is one of the most powerful tools presented in the documentary Beyond Belief.  When you express gratitude, when you find something each and every day to be grateful for, when you can truly  ‘feel’ gratitude, then you attract even more to be grateful for.

This holiday season stirs up a time of mixed emotions. Some people fall into depression and sadness while others leap up with happiness and joy.

You can choose how you want to be, this holiday season.  Choose to be grateful.  Choose to find something, each and every day, that you appreciate in your life.  Choose to see the good in the people around you (even as their bothersome habits annoy you)

If you feel alone, abandoned, or are missing someone who is now absent in your life, turn your attention to a person in need, and discover what you can do to help them.  What ‘true gifts’ can you offer this holiday season?

You may be surprised, when you offer your true gifts to others, at the benefits you will receive in return.

I co-produced Beyond Belief with Jim, with the intention of helping others discover these wonderful gifts presented in the movie: some of the most powerful tools to transform lives.   The amazing result of offering my time, money, energy, and focus toward this project, was the unexpected gift that came back to me, multiplied a thousand fold.  The process of creating this film has transformed my own life Beyond Words.

So I encourage you this holiday season, to find that heartfelt gratitude, and to share the true gifts you carry inside of you, now.  You may be pleasantly surprised at the results.

Gratitude is one of the most powerful tools presented in the documentary Beyond Belief. When you express gratitude, when you find something each and every day to be grateful for, when you can truly  ‘feel’ gratitude, then you attract even more to be grateful for.

This holiday season stirs up a time of mixed emotions. Some people fall into depression and sadness while others leap up with happiness and joy.

You can choose how you want to be, this holiday season.  Choose to be grateful.  Choose to find something, each and every day, that you appreciate in your life.  Choose to see the good in the people around you (even as their bothersome habits annoy you)

If you feel alone, abandoned, or are missing someone who is now absent in your life, turn your attention to a person in need, and discover what you can do to help them.  What ‘true gifts’ can you offer this holiday season?

You may be surprised, when you offer your true gifts to others, at the benefits you will receive in return.

I co-produced Beyond Belief with Jim, with the intention of helping others discover these wonderful gifts presented in the movie: some of the most powerful tools to transform lives.   The amazing result of offering my time, money, energy, and focus toward this project, was the unexpected gift that came back to me, multiplied a thousand fold.  The process of creating this film has transformed my own life Beyond Words.

So I encourage you this holiday season, to find that heartfelt gratitude, and to share the true gifts you carry inside of you, now.  You may be pleasantly surprised at the results.

For more info on Beyond Belief:  www.beyondbeliefthemovie.com

Excerpts from interview with Julia Cameron:

Well I think that people are often ungrounded and at a loss as to exactly what their position is in life.  I find that if people work with morning pages, where they get up every morning and write 3 pages of long hand writing, telling the universe or, whatever you care to call it, exactly where they are and how they feel, they begin to become more centered.

I think it’s an interesting thing, morning pages work for lawyers and judges and housewives and people who have not previously declared themselves to be artists, and they also work for artists.   They are very powerful centering technique.

I just had someone say to me, “Julia I’m blocked on writing a new book”, and I said to her, start morning pages, those are the grease slide to creativity and I believe that’s true.

What happens is that as we become more in touch with ourselves, we become more deeply in touch with our intuitive guidance, and we find that there is a pathway, and that as we proceed a step at a time, we are led.  So I think that what I’m teaching people is essentially a spiritual radio kit.  With the morning pages they are sending.  They are saying, this is what I like, this is what I don’t like, this is what I wish I had more of.  And something, whatever you care to call that something, is definitely listening.

I probably should explain to you a little bit about what morning pages are and what they aren’t.  They are not high art.  You do not need to be a writer to do morning pages, and in fact sometimes it’s a little bit harder for writers because they feel morning pages should be quite real writing.  But what they are, are 3 pages of long hand early morning, stream of consciousness about absolutely anything.  So it might be I forgot to buy kitty litter yesterday, I didn’t call my sister back, I didn’t like the way Jeff spoke to me at the staff meeting,  I wonder if I should paint my kitchen yellow.  So they jump around.  I often tell people when you do morning pages its as if you have ADD because you go from topic to topic to topic to topic.

Another way to think of these, it’s a meditation technique for westerners.   We sometimes have a hard time sitting and doing nothing for 20 min, so I say why don’t you sit there and do something.  What happens is, in meditation we have what we all cloud thoughts which are thoughts that sort of just drift across your consciousness.  In morning pages, you write your cloud thoughts down.

So often morning pages  may feel petty.  You feel like you are being bugged by little teeny things.  They may feel like you’re griping.  I have an ex-husband who says that I always make them sound so negative, and that actually sometimes they are sometimes delightful.  So I should say, and yes, sometimes they are delightful.  You don’t necessarily very often get a direct line between morning pages and creativity.  It’s a little bit more zen.  You do morning pages and behind your back you start to be more creative.

One of the things that happens when you do morning pages is you identify who your naysayers are and you begin to say that’s not the truth, that’s just their belief system.  I have a tool called crazy makers where you look at your circle of acquaintances and you say which people get in the way of my creativity.  Often a crazymaker is very dramatic, and the creative person in his midst finds himself rescuing and being overly concerned about the crazy makers crazy agendas.

As we start to unplug from our crazy makers,  we learn to be much more self loving and self forgiving.  We learn to be more tenacious and we learn to say who does make me feel more good about myself.   I think I’ll spend a little more time there.

by Brad Morris

“You must assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled until your assumption has all the sensory vividness of reality. You must imagine that you are already experiencing what you desire. That is, you must assume the feeling of the fulfillment of your desire until you are possessed by it and this feeling crowds all other ideas out of your consciousness.

Decide what you want and ask yourself what it would be like and how you would feel if it were true. Then dare to assume you have it. Let the people who know you now see you after your assumption. Don’t make them see you; let them see the change! Then you will know who the cause of the phenomena of life really is.  When I say you are all imagination, I mean it.” -Neville Goddard

I was out walking by the Ocean and I had a REALLY powerful thought – or realization if you will.  I have known this to be True for quite some time, however in this particular moment with the simplicity of the thought it hit me on a cellular level. . . Do you know the feeling?? I have met many nay-sayers who do not believe that we have the power to create our reality.  I am going to argue that statement with this article and I invite people to agree or disagree…

EVERYTHING that has and will be created has all started from the same place.  The IMAGINATION.  If we look around at our world, the entire thing has started from that Cosmic space of ether, energy, and imagination – and from that imaginative space, came the physical creation of the desire.  Look at the house you live in, the car you drive, the garden you walk past, the stores you shop in.  Each of those things that we often walk past or overlook began as an image in somebody’s MindsEye.  From that moment of conception within the eye of the beholder came a ripple of events that aligned the desired creation with all the steps necessary to create it.

When we set out to create; whether it be a house, a social business, or our Dream-Life, we never have to know HOW it is going to unfold.  But when we’ve committed WHOLE-HEARTEDLY to that vision- the magic of the Universe takes over, and the seemingly serendipitus events begin to unfold to manifest that vision.  The vision is always created in divine timing, never human timing (as nice as that’d be).

As human beings I don’t think we give ourselves enough credit.  Or we are always looking outside of ourselves giving credit to those who have created a vision for their lives.  TODAY, I am asking you; What does YOUR IMAGINATION wish to express out into the world.  What are the details of the reality you wish to construct from the Internal Consciousness of your Being? I am not asking what society is telling you to create – WHAT does your heart strongly desire to turn into a reality in THIS lifetime!??

Meditate on this vision. Write EVERY detail on paper.  Meditate some more.  Write more.   Feel the feelings of having already created that which you want; or as Neville says “Live in the wish fulfilled!“  You have the power to create such Awesomeness in the world.  You have the ability and power to recreate a world that feels more beautiful to you.  Let nobody stop you from dreaming the big dream.  Let nobody tell you you can’t do it.  I am affirming from the power within me that is creating my DreamLife and helping others to build theirs’ that YES YOU CAN & YES YOU ARE!  As I mentioned in my previous article…BE PERSISTENT!

If you desire to align your Consciousness with a more beautiful reality because the one you’re living in right now just isn’t doing it.  Start by practicing meditation regularly.  Through your practice of meditation, you will become an observer of your limited thoughts and beliefs.  When you observe those patterns that hold you back, you have the ability & power to choose new belief systems that better serve the reality you wish to create.  A daily practice of sitting, Being, Breathing and Chanting will align you to those higher states of Consciousness and eventually with practice, patience & persistence….voila, YOUR DREAMS WILL UNFOLD – YOUR LIFE WILL CHANGE!

Brad Morris is one of the experts featured in the documentary Beyond Belief:  www.beyondbeliefthemovie.com

by Robert Dilts, Co-Developer of NLP

Excerpt from interview for the film Beyond Belief

The other thing about NLP it says there are different levels, lets call it programming.  That is, to have a behavior, there is an inner mental map, a cognitive program that sort of guides that behavior.  Behind that cognitive map are beliefs and values which are different than, let’s say, our idea about what we want.  They are more the motivation, the permission, and then behind that is our sense of identity.

So if I say I want something, there is an “I” who wants it, and behind that “I” that’s where you get to that sense of a purpose, of belonging to something that is beyond yourself, that is bigger than yourself.  This is where you get a sense of some kind of deeper vision of purpose.

People who are able to achieve things they want in their life most effectively are people who are aligned in that way:  their identity is aligned with their higher purpose, then their beliefs fit with that identity and that is connected with their capabilities which lead to their behavior.

When you are aligned, when your identity and your beliefs and your capability are aligned, we called that being in the zone.  A lot of NLP is about coaching what you might call the inner game.  Every athlete, every performer knows that you have an outer game, which is what you are doing, what the physical activity is.

And there’s the mental game, which has to do with your mental attitude and your emotional attitude.  So when those things are aligned, the athlete would say you are in the zone and a performer you would say you have presence. So when you have that sense of confidence, the zone is what we call being in a state of effortless excellence, of flow.

The idea of neuro-linguistics is you’ve got language and the nervous system.  A positive affirmation is the linguistic part of the belief, but it is not the “neuro” part.  To actually bring in an empowering belief, you are going to be doing more than just saying it in the mind.  That’s the verbal part, the idea of the belief.

In NLP we say you’ve got to get beyond the idea. to get it in the muscle.  The way you are going to do that is by adding in information from the other senses and also using the body, your physical attitude, you are aligning again the words with your inner images, your memories and your physiology.

In NLP coaching we do a number of things.  The first is to help people get IN the zone and the second is to find out what gets in the way of being in the zone and how to transform that.  One of the ways that we’re going to coach people to get into the zone, it starts by coming present in the body, to come into the body.  In fact, we say the body is always in the present, to bring the mind and the body into the same place.

Robert Dilts is one of 24 experts featured in the film Beyond Belief.  To see the trailer or get the DVD go to: www.beyondbeliefthemovie.com

Exerpt from interview with Elaine Hendrix:

For me, when I know when I’m living my life’s purpose because I feel very solid in my body.  It’s a very visceral experience, where my senses are alive! I hear clearly and crisply, I see vibrant colors, I feel my feet on the ground. For me it’s far more of a body and kinesthetic experience than it is intellectual or philosophical.

in finding commitment to your purpose, for me, I dealt a lot with anxiety, and learning to recognize anxiety, and the obstacles that brought.  Rather than running after something because I thought it was going to bring me a certain result I want, bring me money, because it was going to pay my rent, or whatever, those are anxious moments.  The more that I can trust, have faith, be in the here and now, I don’t move so anxiously, clamoring after something I think is going to get a result.  I start focusing more in on what do I truly want in my life, and then set forth actions towards that.

Along the path there are going to be setbacks, and if one just accepts that, when storms come, you’ll be prepared.  Every single day as an actor I work on my craft, my tool, my passion.  I do things to build my self up everyway possible, so that emotionally I’m strong, physically I’m strong, so when these setbacks come up I’m ready for them as much as I possibly can be.  I’ve learned to navigate through them, versus ever thinking that I’m going to be stopped by them.

One thing that I learned that was actually pretty shocking to me (during her role in the film What The Bleep Do We Know) was how our emotions are chemical reactions, and how we can become addicted to them.  I found that particularly interesting because I am in a career that deals all about emotions and re-created emotions, and making them very real for a scene in a movie.  A lot of my work is about mastering emotions, learning they are chemical, they are tied to my thoughts, and they don’t have to run the show.

To see the trailer, or get the DVD with Elaine Hendrix in the film Beyond Belief go to: www.beyondbeliefthemovie.com

by Julia Cameron

The following is an excerpt from the interview with Julia Cameron for the documentary Beyond Belief.

I think that people have a lot of mythology around artists, they think that real artists are born knowing they are artists, and they are fearless and they pursue their craft w/out any thought of criticism.  In fact, the truth is, quote real artists are people who have learned to live with their fears and make their art anyway.

So if people come to me hoping to be taught to be fearless, I say I can’t really teach you that, but I can teach you to live with your fears, and when they start living with their fears, and becoming more intimate with themselves they begin to get just the smallest glimmering of, “Hey it might be fun to try this, or I’d like to try that”  and that’s the little tell tale whisp of creativity that people learn to listen for more and more clearly.

I think we come from a culture which demonizes creativity.  We have a belief system that says artists are broke, artists are crazy/  We have a lot of confusion with alcoholism and creativity, because many of our finest artists were also alcoholic, and so we think in order to be an artist I have to be a down and out alcoholic, and we hold these beliefs as a sort of club over our head, and we say if you try creativity you’re going to really rock the boat.  What I tell people is, well maybe you’re going to rock the cradle and not the boat.  Maybe it’s a much more gentle process than you believe it is.

As people start working, I have them do a tool called shadow artists.  I have them take a look and see in what ways they have been batteries for someone else’s creativity, someone who is officially creative, and very often we find that people surround themselves with other people, or a significant other, who they say their dreams are more important and they are more talented.  So what we start to do with morning pages is say your dreams matter, you are talented, try gently to do just a little bit today.  As people do this they begin to experience an alternative to their negative belief system

That inner voice isn’t the truth, and I have people do an exercise where I ask them to write out the reason I can’t be a brilliant and prolific creative artist is…??  ..and they will find that they have lots of irrational thoughts related to being an artist.

Many times people have either or thinking:  either I can be an artist, or I can be in a loving relationship, either I can be an artist, or I can be solvent.  Usually they put something that they hold precious high up on the list of what they will lose, and then they scare themselves, they terrify themselves out of trying art.  Because, you know, who wants to be an artist if it means you’re going to be crazy, who wants to be an artist if it means you’re going to lose your house, who wants to be an artist if it means you’re going to be a bad parent.  So when we get people to look at these subconscious beliefs, people begin to say, oh, that’s sort  of silly, that’s not true.  I have them do an exercise where they replace their negatives with positives.

Artists are crazy might translate into artists are free-spirited.  Artists are broke might translate into artists are solvent.  So we just sort of peak under the rug of people’s consciousness and see what the lumps are.

When people start to connect to themselves they can be lead in many different directions.  One of the things I find kind of sad, is how thorough our brainwashing is around money, and how deeply we tend to believe if we work our creativity we’ll be broke.

People are often very surprised to move into their creativity and find that their earning power in fact goes up.  I can’t promise you, work The Artists Way and you’ll be solvent and self-supporting through your art, but I can say work The Artist’s Way and you’ll be led to more sense of support.

I believe that when people pursue their creativity they are in effect pursuing a spiritual path, they begin to have more intution, they begin to have more coincidence, they begin to experience guidance.

NOTE:  Extra interview clips that were not featured in the documentary may be found on the Audio CD Set at:  www.beyondbeliefthemovie.com/store

By Bob Doyle

Passion – and knowing what yours is – is a big topic of conversation these days.

Since the Law of Attraction has come to more of a forefront in the past few years, and people are learning  that they can create whatever kind of life they want, they are asking themselves, “Ok, what DO I want?”

The Law of Attraction truly works “automatically” in your favor when you are clear on your passions and are living them!

But what if you’re NOT clear?

What if you’re one of the many people I meet who feels completely disconnected from their sense of Passion?  What if when asked to describe your “ideal life” or “vision”, you don’t even know where to begin?

First, you need to know that this “disconnect” from your sense of passion  is simply another form of resistance.

Many times, we stop putting attention on our passions early in life when our more traditional system of education and upbringing tends to put a child down a path on which the child has no real input.

If what you have learned about your passions are that they are “okay for a hobby but not a way to make a real living” or something similar, then it is no wonder that you have disconnected yourself from your feelings of passion.  It would be too painful to live with a sense of yearning to do something you believe you cannot do, so you create a story that you “don’t know what your passions are.”

I’m not saying that you do this intentionally, because I don’t believe you do. It’s simply a kind of emotional defense mechanism. If you believe that you don’t know your passions, then you don’t have to take responsibility for not living them. “If only I knew my passions”, you might say, “I could put this Law of Attraction stuff to work in my life and things could change.” But in saying that, you affirm to yourself that you DON’T know your passions, and that story becomes more and more real to you until you truly believe that you don’t have anything in your life that you’re passionate about.

Instead of feeling “bad”, you have chosen to feel “numb.”

Clearly, there is no real power in feeling numb. You can’t attract anything with numb, except more numb. And too many people are going through life numb to their sense of passion,  robbing themselves and others of the gift that they are to the world.

This idea that you don’t know your passion, while it feels real right now, is an idea that you need to be willing to give up if you want to move into a fully satisfying life. We’re here to live our passions, so let’s not waste another minute not doing that!

Here are a few things to think about to help you tap into a lost sense of passion:

1. What do you daydream about? When your mind “goes off”, there’s a reason it goes where it goes. Many times our daydreams are our subconscious giving us a taste of what could be.

2. What would you do all day if you could do ANYTHING and money were not an issue for you at all? This is a very common question used to help people tap into their passions, because if you can truly generate the feeling of being freed up financially, you clear the way for yourself to think about what you’d TRULY like to do. But if you think about all this in terms of “will it make me money”, you are cheating yourself.

You must not judge your passions on your beliefs regarding their money-making potential. Walking The Path takes care of that as we’ll discuss more in Part 2, “The Journey.”

I’ll note that the answer to this question for many people is “Nothing! I would just do nothing all day.” And that is a totally fair answer, and I invite anyone with that response to do a lot of visualization around a day filled with doing nothing, and see how those visions naturally evolve. They’ll lead you to your passion…

3. What or who inspires you? If you can’t immediately access your own sense of Passion,  or put a label on it, I invite you to think about what or who in the world inspires you…and why.

You can learn a lot about yourself by looking at how you interpret people and situations. If someone inspires you because of what they’re up to in the world, could that tell you more than a little something about what YOU might want to be up to in the world?

If you’re inspired by some kind of creative expression like art, music, film, or theater, what exactly about the experience is inspiring you? Just because you’re inspired by art, for example, doesn’t mean that you have a destiny as an artist, however.

Things that inspire us aren’t always the thing we’re supposed to be or do. However, anything that evokes inspiration in us, opens a portal to the essence of who we are.

Next time you feel inspired by anything or anyone, it may be an interesting exercise to ask yourself why you’re inspired. What part of yourself is being activated in this moment? What action – however large or small – do you feel called to take?

There are entire courses available to help you discover your sense of passion, but I believe that these few questions – if honestly answered – will give you very deep insight into what you’re about.

Author’s Bio

Bob Doyle is the CEO of Boundless Living, Inc. and is the creator and facilitator of the “Wealth Beyond Reason” program and a featured teacher in the film “The Secret”. He also created “The Path”, a simple toolkit designed to help you identify your passions, create a vision, and then bring that vision into reality. Check out all of Boundless Living’s offerings at http://www.BoundlessLiving.com

Bob Doyle is one of twenty four experts featured in the documentary Beyond Belief: www.beyondbeliefthemovie.com