The subtitle of the talk is Freeing Yourself from Beliefs That No Longer Serve You.

Now, the beauty of this topic is that it gives you the key in which an individual can allow themselves to not hold on, but let go of those beliefs that are not serving them. We have many, many beliefs that take us to a certain place, and that's exciting. Like we have, uh, you know, I never believed in Santa Claus. My older brother told me many, many years ago that it was not for real, that it was fake, and, uh, I couldn't wait to, to, to go tell that to the old man's face. So I insisted my mom take me to go see Santa Claus. I suppose she was a little shocked by this, and when I sat on the man's lap, I said, "You know, you're a fake." And, uh, I don't remember much happened, but I know that my mom was really, really embarrassed by it.

So anyway, beliefs. Um, that was my reaction: how dare, how dare they tell me something that is not true? And I was privy because my little, uh, my older brother leaked it to me and said, "Hey, it's fake." So we, we have many beliefs, uh, mainly in the medical field. Uh, that's, that's sort of like my, uh, uh, that's what I do in this world. I've been involved in holistic IC health. I owned a—I started a health food store in 1980. I started a distributing business in 1980 selling to health food stores and health professionals. Before that, uh, from 1973, I started selling herbal vitamins. In '76, I did it full-time, and then I diversified and started selling massage tools and rebounders and inversion machines and all sorts of anything that was weird and strange.

Uh, but there's a, there's a few, uh, foundations that I have found in my life that have, uh, been very, very helpful to me. And so I want to, I want to get into those. I want to give a foundation. I studied the history and philosophy of mathematics, which means I also studied the foundations of mathematics. And I was in the middle of writing a term paper with a very strange and long title called The Implications of Nidian Geometry: An Examination of the Concept of Number. But that's, that's mental, and I like speaking from the heart. And that's what this, this book that I am in the process of writing and should be finished with soon, um, will be. It's, it's again, Pictures of the Mind—very, very interesting kind of, uh, topic that many would question, "What the hell is this book about?" with the topic Pictures of the Mind. Of course, that's why I needed to create a subtitle.

However, just the name itself, Pictures of the Mind, will give different imagery or pictures in your minds, uh, of what in the world that means and how it's going to—how it's related to you becoming more free. Now, ever since I had my first, uh, out-of-body experience in February 1970—and I was, I was lit, I was literally lit unconsciously, did not know it. Uh, these beings took me out of my body. At the time, I thought I had a realization, but it was when I looked back a couple years ago and they, they showed me basically women doing art, women doing music, and women doing dance in three sections of a huge, huge area about the size of six or nine or twelve or fifteen indoor handball courts.

So, uh, basically, I was lit. I drank from the—you know, once you drink from this water, you never thirst again. And that happened to me. It was embarrassing, uh, a year later when, uh, I had an experience where they pushed this table up with 13 people for dinner. And this queen is asking me whether I believe as I'm being baptized, you know, feeling like I'm Jesus. Just a little embarrassing for a Jewish boy. Uh, this is when I was in my early twenties. So they asked me whether I believed, and I said yes. But I thought in the back of my mind, there's truth in all the religions. There has to be. There couldn't be any other way. And then, and then I was sort of shown that that was true by going to some kind of heaven, uh, where there are like, you know, seven major religions. Each had plantations, you could say, or communities, um, on this particular, uh, space or land or plane.

At any rate, um, I've, I've had wonderful experiences in the inner world. I spend all my time centering. I have a few things to say that I, I, I want to get out in this first chapter. And that's, um, the fact that when you listen to your heart—some call that inner guidance, your God—then you can call that God listening. If you take the, if you abbreviate it, you can say it's G-listening. Then if you take the hyphen out, it becomes glistening. So when you listen to your inner guidance, your God, then that's called glistening. That's how the, the term glistening came about. You don't have to believe me. It doesn't matter whether it's true or not, but it can be your truth. And when you listen inwardly, you start to glisten. And that's a spiritual principle—that we shine, we shine when we're connected to who and what we are.

Okay. We are, we are atoms in the body of God. We are pieces of shattered mirror. We just are. And it's a beautiful experience.

You know, you, you can't have what you want. That—you know why that's true? Because when you're wanting something, you're picturing yourself not having as what you picture. And Paul Twitchell said it this way: that feeling impregnates thought into action. So the, the secret in Paul Twitchell also said something very profound, which is one of my favorite, uh, two all-time quotes: thinking without feeling brings about woe, and feeling without thinking brings grief. Isn't that beautiful?

So it leaves you with the quandary where you have only one choice, and that is, you have to be them both. You have to feel and think at the same time. You're trapped. It's like the yin and yang. It's the animus and the anima. The book talks all about this. It's Narcissus and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse. It's a classic. It's a great book. It's a wonderful book. In this case, in the book, the animus and the anima are two different people, but really, the book is about one individual having to deal with this duality. It's very, very thought-provoking if you're a thinker, and if you're a feeler—God knows what it does for you. But it’s maybe inspiring, maybe it gives you structure. Because the antidote for a person who feels too much is to have more structure. And the antidote for a person who thinks too much is to get feeling, to impregnate life into that thought. Then you can decide when you feel something, whether it's worth pursuing or whether to just drop it like a lead balloon.

At any rate, you know, a lot of people don’t know that business schools have it backwards. The purpose of starting a business is not to make profit. That's the byproduct. The purpose of starting a business is to serve. To serve is what gives freedom. Because when you're serving, it's because you are already full. And if you act like you're full and you've been achieved, you've been loved, you've acknowledged that you're coming from the heart of whatever you're basking in—divine love, whatever—and you serve, it's because you are assuming that you are already filled. And yes, indeed you are.

So service is very, very interesting. One of the worst things we can do to ourselves is judgment. When we judge ourselves, that's even worse. That’s called guilt. And it’s funny—when we feel guilty about something, again, what we do is we picture that something, and we say, "Bad. Oh my God." And we let it go, and we drop it like a lead balloon, and there we are. It has to happen because we gave it a lot of thought, we gave it a lot of emotional feeling, and then we were totally detached. We weren't trying to pull it toward us.

The irony is, when we feel guilty about doing something, we sentence ourselves to do it again until we do it with joy. That means you get totally involved in the moment and enjoy it. If you're going to overeat, do it with joy. Enjoy it. Enjoy every moment. Savor it. But if you want to do things halfway, half-hearted, you won’t accomplish anything. I think even Jesus said, "A double-minded soul can't get anything done." It's what all the teachings of the world have focused on: the ability to be present in the moment.

In contemplation, one of the things I’ve really appreciated is the idea that true contemplation on the secrets of the moon reveals everything to you. That’s in the third book of the Yoga Sutras of Patañjali. It basically talks about meditation, or acts of concentration—the ability to focus. Meditation is the ability to get into the moment, and then contemplation is when you seal the deal. The purpose is, number one, to get in the moment, but not to stay there. It’s to let being in the moment inspire you to act, to get things done, to inquire. To say to the moon, "All right, give me your secrets. How do you work? Why do you work? Why do the currents in the sea exist? What’s the whole majesty of life? Please reveal it to me. I’m intrigued. I would love to understand every moment."

Of course, everything you ever want to understand is revealed to you in the present moment, because that’s when there is no time and space. When there’s no time, there’s no pain. My new definition of pain is the awareness of time. Have you ever hurried? Have you ever worried? Have you ever grieved? Have you ever waited? All of those are very, very painful activities.

Paul Twitchell wrote a book called The Talons of Time in the 1970s. It’s a novel, or I don’t know what you’d call it—fiction, but probably more true than most nonfiction. In it, he has a name for the "evil ones" in the book: just the Tallons of Time", this is a very interesting picture. But the evil ones in the book they’re called "The Time Makers" and I think that’s funny because, that's what I was talking about, the definition of pain is the awareness of time. So when time is made, then you fall out of the present moment. It has its place, but Paul Twitchell calls what we think of as "time" something else: he calls it "duration." Duration is all about being in the present moment and enduring it. It’s about just being in the present moment and letting it take you wherever it takes you.

The antidote to judgment is a switch—it’s like a light switch. You either judge, or you do the antidote, which is to observe. Interestingly enough, the word "observe" comes from the word "serve." So when you’re observing, then you’re serving all life. You’re serving yourself. You’re serving all life. And that’s the beauty of observing. It’s also the antithesis of judging, because what did Jesus say? He said, "Judge not, lest ye be judged."

When we look at the pictures, when we judge someone, it’s like my friend Clarence Hensley gave a talk, and he called it the spirit ladder. He said wherever you see someone on that ladder, wherever you see someone, there you are—one step below them. Because they are doing something, they are being brave and bold and doing something which society says they should not do, perhaps. And you’re judging them, saying, "Oh, you’re not supposed to do that." Well, they’re doing it. They know nothing is bad or good. That’s duality. You get locked in duality when you’re for or against anything. You get locked into duality, and you basically exile yourself from the God-consciousness state.

So it’s really exciting when you learn from experiences to not do certain things that basically frame yourself. You put a cage upon yourself. Whatever you say to another person, "Oh, you can’t do that," guess what? You can’t do that. Or unless you’re really, that's assuming you're ethical, you're' just a bully or whatever else, and you can do it, but they can’t. That’s setting yourself up for some pretty heavy karma. But basically, what you put your attention on, what you give all your feeling and love toward, will come to pass. And so, if you’re creating havoc for another person, then, since there is no time and space and everything is just a mockup—and I think somewhere it says, "God is not mocked," but all life is mocked. It’s like this is the play. The cast party is really a lot of fun. But life is simply a play, as Shakespeare points out. "All the world’s a stage, and men and women come and do their part, and then they go off."

So we’re on this stage having experiences in life. When you look at your past lives, generally, each life—just like if you look at all the, uh, some of your best friends throughout childhood, throughout high school, college, whatever, through your work-a-day life—the friends you’ve gathered up in different areas of your life. And you look at them, you’ll see maybe 5, 10, 15, 20 different pictures of the experiences you’ve had with them. And you could also create a movie or relive the movie, or maybe you don’t remember part of the movie, so you can change it. You can make it more perfect.

Again, these are what you can do, uh, inside your head, in your inner world. See, we live in two worlds at least: you have the inner world, and you have the outer world. The outer physical world we share with other people. And I don't know how in the world it all sort of works, but it works in harmony because, uh, God is gentle, and God is loving, and, and, and it—we are a part of it, and it is a part of us. And we get that knowingness to experience. It's not something we, uh, mentalize about. It's like reason comes after the fact. And that means, uh, when you're nudged to do something, you just—you know, to be callous about it—you just do it, you know? Common sense.

But it's sometimes scary because, uh, it's like the crabs just crawling out of the crab bin, and its fellow crabs bring it back in. Uh, sort of like misery kind of likes company kind of thing. But, oh, there's so much about life that, um, we, we can learn to experience, and digest, and enjoy. And living in the present moment is secret. And actually, "scared" and "sacred" have the same letters, interestingly enough. So anything that is sacred when we travel inwardly is sort of scary. It's, it's part of the process. It's because, uh, I, I like to joke that, uh, there's a band called Wilson Phillips, and I'm Philip Wilson. And one of their famous songs is called "Hold On." And, and I'm saying—and they're Wilson Phillips—and I say, "Well, I'm Philip Wilson." And, and, uh, I believe it's really important to have a mix between holding on and letting go. So they say, "Hold on." I say, "Let go."

And, uh, that's—of course, I remember, uh, an experience in the early '70s when I was, uh, I, I was clinging onto the walls. It was scary, really scary, when I was traveling inwardly. I was, like, being pulled into the inner worlds, and you have no choice but to let go. You have a choice. The choice is obvious. And so you let go, and finally, you go through the vortex, and you're in another world. And, oh my God, life is incredible ever since. So it's the same principle as, as I had when I experienced, uh, once you drink of this water, you never thirst again. That happened to me.

I was a devout atheist. I, I was—I was Jewish by heritage. I had a reform Jewish upbringing, which was very minor. Um, went to Sunday school every Sunday, um, up until seventh, eighth, ninth grade. Uh, then we went on Saturdays. I had a bar mitzvah. Uh, I thought anyone who believed in God was crazy. Um, and then I had this experience. Uh, I didn't even know it was an out-of-body experience. And then later on, uh, I'm reading the book—I'm in Washington, D.C., visiting a friend—and the book is called The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts. And, oh my God, so that thing that he is talking about, that I've touched—that's what they call God? You’ve got to be kidding me. I mean, this is the most real thing in the world. It has nothing to do with any particular religion. It's just the essence of God. And somehow I've touched that. And they're not all crazy. I thought they were all crazy—anyone who believed in God.

So, at any rate, that was a wide awakening. And wide awakenings are great because you can become forever changed and transformed and more free. So every moment of my life, once I learned to experience the present moment, every moment of my life is dedicated to being more in tune with who I am, in tune with the Divine, centered in my beingness. And that's where all the great insights come from, because I'm—I'm refusing to, to believe. It's like believing never got me anywhere. I just don't like to believe. But at the same time, there's nothing I'm not willing to believe. So when you get to that point where all your whole belief systems shatter through the wall, there you are. You don't believe a damn thing.

Now that's the beginning of freedom. Now you can reconstruct your world based on what you choose to believe—not what you, as a three-year-old instant sponge, whatever is told to you, you believe. You know, we need to wipe the slate clean and have no beliefs. And then, sort of, like, decide what beliefs make you feel good right now. And if you're in harmony, believe them.

Socrates was questioned by, um, uh, a number of his, uh, students as he gave his talks in ancient Greece that they eventually put him in prison for. And they—not just that—they gave him poison hemlock and killed him for, um, what is that word? For influencing the youth in a negative way, which was actually enlightening them. But if you influence them in a way that's going to make them think more freely, that's, uh, not something the state likes if they want to control people.

So it’s mathematical inductive logic: if the government has our best interests at heart, you assume it. And then you keep on assuming all these things based on the government having our best interests at heart, and you get all these contradictions. Well, that means that your assumption had to be incorrect or not true. And that's how you learn very easily the government does not have our best interests at heart. Otherwise, there would not be so many contradictions in life.

At any rate, the name of the book is Pictures of the Mind. The subtitle is Freeing Yourself from Beliefs That No Longer Serve You. Now, when I was looking for a new name for my company, Momentum—previous to that, it was Awareness and Health Unlimited—it had its problems. Pythagoras says that the unlimited is the negative, and the limit is the positive. What the heck? Well, if you have no boundaries, oh my God. So I said, "Okay, I'm stuck. I've got to change the name of the Awareness and Health Unlimited, because it's boundless, and there can be no structure within it that can hold the unlimited." So that's why a lot of the English companies end with "Limited."

If you—you know, you’ve got to give yourself some space to have some boundaries. Everyone cannot be a prospect. If you're a company, you, you have to have some kind of freedom, uh, some kind of structure, so that you can shine within that structure.

So, in creating a business—like I said—the business school has it backwards. The purpose of creating a business is to serve. And when you do that, the byproduct is profit. And now, that means you can serve more, which means you can make more profits. So it becomes a vital circle rather than a vicious circle.

I, I am really upset when I saw the, uh, the movie The Corporation. And I was shocked. I mean, I saw The Secret—it was wonderful. What the Bleep Do We Know? was wonderful. All that stuff, in essence, I already knew, but it was just nice to hear them say things in a different way, different poetry. But The Corporation was information that I had not been aware of. And, frankly, I’m appalled. I was told about the book—uh, Harold Klemp mentioned the book, Whatever Happened to Justice? by Richard Maybury. And, you know, in the book, Richard points out two essential laws. He says, "I've looked at all the laws, and it seems like there are only two laws that are legitimate."

Number one: don’t encroach upon another person's property or person. That means don’t rape, don’t steal, uh, don’t murder—you know, basically don’t assault. You honor another person’s beingness and their property.

And the second law was simply: do everything you've agreed to do. And that's beautiful. A lot of times we're not conscious of the subtle agreements we have, or sometimes we're not conscious of an agenda we have when we make agreements. And, you know, I’m a firm believer in transparency. And when I'm not transparent, I get myself into trouble.

And so, you know, I like to say that the greatest sinners of the past are the greatest saints of today. In other words, like, here we are, we, we, we came into existence. Now, when I was, um, in the early '70s, I had a wonderful experience, and I realized that all life is a daydream completing itself into an organic, orgasmic moment. And then you rest. You fall asleep, and you wake up, and you daydream again. And you have a whole incredible daydream that climaxes with an orgasmic moment, an achievement. And you fall asleep, and then you wake up, and you have the daydream all over again—a different daydream, a totally different daydream.

But what stops the daydream is fear. Poof. It’s just like—you can sort of, like, see it going, completing itself, and all of a sudden, the fear just stops and distracts. And it’s our task to get that fear thought, thought, to—you know, like talking to a little kid—get it to realize everything is okay, and get it to go back into the heart of your beingness. And the daydream can—or collage—can continue.

Now, when I saw this, this—all life was—I had no idea that it was true that all life is. Yes, but I didn’t realize it’s also true because even in the Hindu cosmology, they talk about a day and a night of God. And it says it takes 4,320,000 years—okay, whatever. And, and I’m not laughing at it, but it’s, it takes a long time for all these worlds to be created. And then, and then everything comes back into the heart of where you've come, and you dissolve into nothingness. And then you stay there for 4,320,000 years, and the worlds are created all over again.

So there's a poem by Rumi—I don’t know the name of the poem—but it goes like: "I died as a mineral, and I became a plant. I rose to animal, and then I became a human. And then, from that, what makes me think I’ve ever not become greater by dying? Let me soar like an angel until I not exist."

So the essence of that is that we—every time we die, we become greater. That’s refreshing because a lot of us are afraid to die. As a kid, I didn’t want to go to bed. I didn’t want to go to bed. I’d be up till 10, 11, 12, or whatever, until I fell asleep. But falling asleep is a form of dying. And we die every night, and we wake up, and, oh my gosh, it’s like Dick Gregory says, "Whether you believe in the sun or not, it’s going to rise tomorrow morning."

So, at any rate, momentum—taking advantage of the moment, propelling yourself into greatness—that's a secret. Okay? It’s, it’s—there's an 80-page book called Practicing the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence. And you can read those 80 pages, and that'll be good, or you can take into your heart the principle and the poem: momentum—taking advantage of the moment, propelling yourself into greatness.

Taking advantage of the moment means to some people—or it can mean—you’re living in the moment, and you are listening. Of course, when you listen to your inner heart, then you start to glisten. But by taking advantage of the moment, you're listening as well as living the moment fully. And therefore, when there’s another rule change or a different wave comes by, you step into that wave, in front of that wave, and the wave will propel you into greatness.

So, that's a sort of practical definition of learning to be in the present moment. Uh, chanting the holy names of God on your lips is a great thing to do. Uh, you, you want to start chanting if you wish—if you wish to unfold, if you wish to experiment. I've been doing this since 1972. I’m chanting the word "HU" to myself inwardly, unconsciously. And every so—and I find it's very, very interesting. Uh, sometimes I can do the word "NU"—N-U. Not New York University, but "new," like, uh, yeah, like "new." Or "HU"—it's that U sound that Paul Twitchell talks about.

There’s a group of Sufis who use the word "HU." They say it's, it’s a lot more uplifting than the word "OM," which is the word for the mental plane. There’s another yoga group, a Sikh group, that uses the word "HU." Paul Twitchell started ECKANKAR, and it uses the word "HU." Um, Dwayne Hepner uses the word "NU," or "NU U." And he wrote the book The Real Far Country. I learned a lot of things from him. And Paul Twitchell of my most favorite hundred quotes that I’ve ever heard, that have ever inspired me—about 50 of them are by Paul Twitchell. So he is definitely, uh, the man who I revere the most, uh, although I honor all souls who have helped me have realizations which give me more freedom.

It’s the freedom that, that I crave. It’s the freedom that I embrace. It’s the freedom that I live for. Okay? Um, every moment, once I started to have this awakening, is dedicated to centering. Like a potter centers—centering, centering, centering, centering. What else is there to do? Because that’s—no matter whether I’m awake, whether I’m meditating, it doesn’t matter. It’s like you're, you're, you're basically—and here’s a technique I have. I was talking to a breath-control person, and he himself was a little bit impressed.

But I stick my tummy out whenever I can’t get into the moment, whenever there’s any kind of anxiety. I just stick my tummy out and refuse to breathe. And eventually, I start breathing. But now, I’ve reset it, and I flow with that new, that rhythm of breath. The getting rid of, uh, thought patterns—freeing yourself from thought patterns—that's one of my goals. It always has been. Uh, I, I, I love to be free. It’s, it’s, it’s what I enjoy doing the most.

So there’s a few things in here that I said in these, these last 40 minutes. Again, momentum—taking advantage of the moment, propelling yourself into greatness. Uh, the business schools have it backwards: the reason you start a business is to serve. When you observe—it’s an antidote to judgment—you serve. You are—it comes from the word "serve." So you, in reality, are serving. And that, that’s getting yourself to become more free.

And when you listen to your heart, or God, or your inner guidance, you start to glisten. So those are some of the principles that I’ve, I’ve brought out in this, in this short 40-, 45-minute talk about life itself. There's—I could go on and on and on. And, uh, all these principles that I talked about right now are in my book. The name of the book again is Pictures of the Mind: Freeing Yourself from Beliefs That No Longer Serve You.

So, anyway, um, I look forward to hearing from you. If anything that I said hits home, please let me know. Uh, it’s always heartwarming when people are appreciative of things that I’ve taken a long time to finally realize. You know, I remember when I realized that haste makes waste. Oh my gosh. I remember when I realized there’s no beginning and there is no ending. And that’s awfully scary to realize—there is no beginning, there is no ending. That means if you're goal-oriented, it’s only temporary. It’s not the final. It never ends.

So if it never ends, you don’t want to be like the myth of Sisyphus, always climbing up the mountain and then falling. No, you just have to enjoy yourself. It’s so simple. You simply enjoy every moment. And when you do that, you have found the, uh, the keys to freedom.

Thank you for listening. I look forward to, uh, hearing feedback. Um, my website is philipawilson.com. Another website of mine is picturesofthemind.com. Um, check it out. Uh, when my book is finished, you can order it. Um, it’s exciting because, you know, I’ve been doing this for 50 years. And, uh, I used to—like I said—I used to be a mathematician. And once I had the out-of-body experience, I—I remember once, a couple of years later, my, my advisor in the math department says, “Phil, you have to have discipline.”

And, aha! Then a lightbulb hit. I said—but I don’t—to myself—I don’t want to do the math anymore because the love of my life has been replaced by the greatest discovery that we can enter upon: following our own heart into the heart of creation.

So, so basically, to force myself to do math is not discipline, because you have to love what you want. And if you don’t love what you want, then it’s self-force. It’s not discipline. Discipline is applying pressure to do what you really, really, really, really, really want to do. And self-force is applying pressure to something that you think you want to do or that others want you to do, but you really, really don’t want to do yourself. And that’s a form of slavery as well.

So, when you are a slave to your beliefs—yes, you are—you are a slave to your beliefs. If you believe something, or if you want something, you’re a slave to those desires. But that could be a good thing because that’s how we create our reality. Saint Jiminy Cricket said it very well: “When you wish upon a star, your dreams come true.”

And so you, you, you see the picture. You see the picture. Isn’t that what they—the word they use? The word—you see the picture. And then you dream. You fantasize. You dream. You, “Oh my God. Wow.” And then you let it be. And now it’s a part of you.

So, it’s like the Biology of Belief that Bruce Lipton talks about. When you believe something to be true, you’re giving marching orders to every cell of your body. And they are your loyal servants. They work for you because you’ve agreed, and they have agreed. It’s not like you’re the master and they’re the slaves. That’s part of the process. That’s part of it. Uh, any cell in your body has agreed to work for the betterment of "you." And when they don’t, something ain’t right and needs to be fixed.

So, thank you. philipawilson.com. picturesofthemind.com. Bye for now.