Eric Butterworth Unity Podcast #19
We’re going to talk about Countdown For Success, but perhaps we should entitle our message, Preparation For Launching. Many times we say of a project, “It didn’t work out. We just didn’t get it of the ground.” But the question is, were we really ready for the launching?
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We’re going to talk about Countdown For Success, but perhaps we should entitle our message, Preparation For Launching. Many times we say of a project, “It didn’t work out. We just didn’t get it of the ground.” But the question is, were we really ready for the launching?
I was musing recently on some of the dramatic flights into space. You may recall as I do very vividly, the flight to the moon, the landing and the return to earth. We witnessed it in our living room by means of television. We’re all familiar with the meticulous countdown preceding to the launching of a rocket, but the question is how carefully do we launch ourselves into each new day or into some important project?
In a launching, quite often we hear the words X minus 10 minutes, which designates the terminal minutes of countdown, before a rocket goes soaring into space, and as a final testing of thousands of separate items and a malfunction in any one of them can set off a chain reaction, dooming the entire effort to failure.
I’ve been thinking about a countdown process that could be applied in our lives. Some checks that could be necessary in consciousness for all systems to be go, so that we can lift off and do the day’s experience in the marketplace, or some special creative or financial project. So I’m suggesting today some self realization points in a countdown process. They could be checked off in a morning meditation time, or they could become the basis of a series of reflective prayers in preparation for some important project or some career change.
And the format we’re using today is somewhat whimsical. We suggest that you simply go along with it. Let the flow of the ideas become a part of your consciousness.
X minus 10 and counting. Let’s think about the universe. The whole of things. The tendency is to begin with ourselves out of the context of the whole. We do this too often. Perhaps identifying ourselves as inadequate, helpless, even poor. So, we’re boxed in even before we begin our quest for success. We may go through the motions of preparation, but things just don’t click, because psychologically and spiritually, we’re tightly ensconced in a box of our own creation.
So, let your mind for a moment reach out beyond the earth’s horizon, to the moon, the planets, the sun, the stars of the galaxy which we call the Milky Way. On out to the vast array of galaxies, out to the farthest reaches of the universe and beyond, perhaps without end. Then realize, there’s another microcosmic universe within. Beyond the molecules, the atoms, the subatomic particles within particles. To feel the basic universe of substance, of which all things are formed. Intelligence for which all things are directed.
And then realize that through all the macrocosm and the microcosm, there’s no lack. No absence of intelligence. Only an everywhere present mind substance is the natural state of affairs in all the universe. And whatever this basic substance is, it’s not only omnipresent, it is present in it’s entirety at every point in space at the same time. It is present in you, as you.
And the exciting thing, you’ve held this image of the vast cosmos in your head. Even as you think about it, you’re in the universe, and the universe is in you. You’re never outside the universe looking in. You’re a dynamic center within it. You’re an individualized expression of it. Your life is directed by its intelligence and supported by its substance. And you’re a creature of consciousness. For your thoughts, you lay hold of this mind substance in the form of ideas and images. And by your faith in creativity, you form and shape it into a process that eventuates in things. Creative ideas, jobs and money. You may experience less, but you can never be less than a dynamic center in an optimum universe. As Emerson says, “You are an inlet, and may become an outlet to all there is in God.”
X minus nine and counting. There’s a matter of entitlement. Jesus says, “Come ye blessed, inherit the kingdom, prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” See the thing is, you’re entitled to abundance and success. You have actually inherited it. The foundation of the world as he uses the term, means the laws of the universe. The kingdom is that within you that is your very own fountain for divine flow. You are entitled to the support of the universe in everything to which you give your mind and hands. You’re entitled to it.
First of all, you must let go of the old belief in grace, in grace of poverty, along with the feelings of unworthiness. Attitudes that form an internal resistance in the divine flow. And affirm for yourself, “I am a child of the universe, richly endowed with the fullness of all good. I’m a child of the universe richly endowed with the fullness of all good.”
You’re an expression of the infinite creative flow. You are as entitled to its conscious support as the lilies of the field. Now the basis for entitlement is the startling assertion that the universe owes you a living. Now I didn’t say the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. You owe the world a life. But in the many ways in which you apply yourself, the universe owes you complete support, because it is the that which stands under your very existence. Your center of universal supply.
The problems of our welfare system come from a misunderstanding of this idea, and the idea that the world owes everyone a secure living. Now a compassionate society may want to ensure that every person has a subsistency and that’s good. But in the world, no one should be entitled to be supported. Every person is an individualized expression of the creative process. No matter how circumstances have obscured the reality. The great need is to help people and all people to know this for themselves. To claim their own entitlement from within. When the person in poverty begins to know, really know that he’s a dynamic center within an affluent universe, and in ways of personal motivation, ingenuity, guidance, and the unfoldenment of opportunities, the whole universe will soon be rushing, streaming, pouring in to him from all sides. This is the truth.
X minus eight and counting. Take charge of your life, by assuming responsibility for your thoughts. Your prosperity and success always begin with you. Don’t indulge yourself in the fantasies of magic demonstrations. Don’t delude yourself that your money problems will be solved by simplistic solutions. Don’t pin your hopes on winning the lottery, or finding a bag of money falling out of a Brinks truck. Your prosperity and success are never a matter of luck. Life is consciousness.
So if there is a condition of lack in your life in some way, you’ve been projecting the focus of a lack mentality. So take charge of your life by assuming responsibility for your thoughts. Become centered in the limitlessness of the universe. This will lead you to a new level of relating to life. Things will begin to happen. Investments will show greater profit. Salaries will increase. Pregnant ideas will pop into your mind. Doors of ideas will open to you. But remember, your mind is your responsibility. You may not be able to control the conditions of your life, but it is your responsibility to determine how you think about things. Don’t reflect the negativity of the world and talk about how bad things are. Take charge.
X minus seven and counting. Elbert Hubbard once said, “Success is the most natural thing in the world.” The person who does not succeed has placed himself in opposition to the laws of the universe. The successful person is fulfilling his uniqueness and for very special reason. The condition of his consciousness, the character of his self image, and the quality of his will. As Matthew Arnold observes, “The seeds of God like power are in us still. Gods are we, bards, saints, heroes, if we will.”
The father of one of the most distinguished men of France tried to discourage his son from the pursuit of literature as a career. Pierre Balzac said, “You know that in literature you must be either a king or a beggar?” “Very well, replied Honoré de Balzac, “I will be a king.” His words were truly prophetic, because in the world of letters, he did indeed become a king.
A teacher of mine once autographed a picture for me with the statement, “Success as you will it.” Success as you will it. It is true that you can achieve as much as you can believe. You can be what you will to become. The potential may be within you to do the things you desire to do, but the question is, do you have the will to keep on, and to keep on keeping on? The universe is saying to you, “Always success as you will it.”
X minus six and counting. Sharpen your power to cope. It is the determination to find the good in everything that comes to you. Experiences in life become to you what you see them as being. The successful person is not one who has never had a defeat, but one who has never been defeated. A defeat can be a blessing if you see it as a learning experience. Handicap or reversal is a good excuse to give up, if you ever fail your consciousness, but is a marvelous spirit of achievement if you have a mentality that vibrates to the good, the prosperous, and the successful.
You can always choose the way you deal with the reverses or failures of life. Aldous Huxley says, “Experience is not what happens to you. It is what you do about what happens to you.” If you brood over a letdown, or a setback, or a disappointment, you simply magnify it out of all proportion. There’s a simple illustration that I’ve used often. Pick up a stone, even small as a penny, and hold it in front of your eye with the other eye closed. The stone obscures everything from view. All you can see is the stone. Now hold the stone out at arms length. Now you can look at it, study it. Decide what you’re gonna do about it. Drop the stone on the ground. It becomes a part of the path on which you’re walking. Obviously the Psalmist had this in mind when he said, “I have set all things under your feet.”
All things. In other words, no matter what has occurred, if you insist on being on top of it, the stones become as a path on which you walk. This is not to minimize the fact that there are stones along the way, but it is to maximize your ability to cope with things by using them in a constructive way. Things you may have been disturbed by or disappointed over, consider the pebble before your eyes. You discover, and the discovery may be one of the great moments of your life, but the problem is not the reverse, not the challenge, not the heartache, the blow, the tragedy. But what you’re doing about it. Actually what you’re doing to yourself.
Of course if you love your misery, you want to nourish your discouragement, your feelings of failure. That’s your privilege. Anyone has a perfect right to stew in his own juices, if that’s what he wants to do. Just remember, you’re in your dark prison because you wanna be. When you’re sick of being so negative, you can open the window and turn on the light. In life there will be trying times, but you always have the ability to cope. No one can take that from you.
X minus five and counting. Face the day, every day with a healthy, secure self image. You can tell what your self image is, by the way you see yourself acting. You always act like the kind of person you see yourself as being, but you can change this self image. That’s the key to our whole spiritual approach. You can change it. It doesn’t mean changing the image you see in the mirror. Even suggesting the image you would like to have there, because this can lead to the futile attempt to be like someone else, or to covetously try to have the achievement some other person has had.
Success motivation techniques quite often involve the attempt to condition the subconscious mind with images and goals. Dealing with the mind of a computer. But you see, success cannot be put into you, for as a child of God, you have the built in potential for success. Instead of trying to get a new image for yourself, it’s so much better to realize your true image. God created you in your own image. Affirm this for yourself. God created you in his own image. Affirm this often, and soon the poor self image will begin to disappear.
Needless to say yes to more of life. With the image of success, you will expect more and you will accept more in your work, in your opportunities, in your finances. And if you see something you like, instead of putting it down, indulging in envy, or telling yourself it is futile to dream over your head, begin to say yes to it. Say yes to that better job that you would like to have. Say yes to the friendly relationship that you’re anxious for. Say yes to success in any project to which you give your hands. Visualize yourself unfolding it and experiencing it in your life.
Now successful people have the habit of expecting things to turn out well, but you see they’re not optimistic because of their success. This is to misunderstand it. Their successful because they’re invariably optimistic. So determine each day that you will believe in yourself with a little more intensity than ever before. You will increase your image of success. You will unfold a more successful experience.
X minus four and counting. Speaking of believing, it is important to set out everyday to get your faith lifted. Get your faith lifted. What this means is to get your faith centered in the positive and the possible. There’s no such thing as lack of faith, ever. Only scattered, unfocused faith. Faith in confusion and limitation. Your faith needs to be focused on what you desire with inner focus on God.
The difference between success and failure is not as marked as you might suppose. Does the successful salesman make every sale? And the failure none? The difference may be little more than 15 or 20%. A good example. The major league baseball player, the 300 hitter is a superstar. The 200 hitter is probably on his way back to the minors. Just one extra hit in ten makes the difference. Startling isn’t it?
The point is, do you believe that you can take one more step? Give just 10% or 20% more energy, more persistence, more enthusiasm to your project? Faith is not a vague process of believing in something. It is a positive act of turning on something, already within you. The power within you is always present. Friend, potential, you are the power being projected into visibility, according to your consciousness. There’s never a limitation to the power within you. Only a limited self realization. Faith is really your consent to let the idea become real in the manifest experience.
So when you say yes through faith to a greater power, you begin to experience the I AM positive I can attitudes, which turns on the power, the will, and the energy you need to accomplish. so whenever you believe that you can do it, the how to do it always develops.
X minus three and counting. Use your good connections. It is often said of a bright young person, “He’ll do well because he has good connections.” Of course it is referring to relationships with important key people who can provide the proper introductions and open all the right doors. Unfortunately this can and often does make the ladder of success a matter of political maneuvering or what are called career strategies.
Success is never a matter of finding the right person. It is being the right person. It’s not just making the right contacts out there, it is establishing the right connection, with the divine flow within. A more important connection than achieving success in the business world are in achieving harmony and relationships. We’ve been sustaining a flow of health in the body as suggested in Isaiah 26. “Thou would keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee.” So we need to take time to be still, get our mind centered in the divine flow.
X minus two and counting. In Job it says, “When they cast thee down, thou shalt say there’s lifting up.” Keep yourself in a lifting up consciousness. Milton says, “The mind is its own place. In itself, with you make heaven of hell and hell of heaven. The word hell is a perfectly good English word, which means to discircumscibe or to limit. You may be surprised to note that when an English farmer puts his stock within an enclosure, he talks about helling it. People are not put in hell by some superior intelligence. A person puts himself in that state, by belief in things that are not of the spirit. I’m sure there’ve been times in your life, when you felt yourself to be in hell. But actually, you were helling yourself, which means you think you were limited. You think that you’re in bondage.
A woman had a beautiful career as a social worker. She had a classic byword with which she was remembered by her family, and she left each morning for her work in deprived areas of the city. She would joyously proclaim, “Well, I’m going out into the city to raise all kinds of hell.” In the evening she would often respond to the question, “How was your day?” “I’ve raised a good deal of hell today.” There are different ways of raising hell you see.
You might use a note pad with a minus and plus sign, above and below a horizontal line across the center of the pad. A person I know had this pad printed up and he uses it all the time. It’s a very effective tool. Anything that occurs of note, make a note about it. You must make a judgment about it. Put it above or below the line. For instance, as you leave the office, you have a note from the boss that he wants to see you at nine o’clock tomorrow morning. You’re quaking in your boots. So you write the note below the line. Not is it, not that it is a bad experience, but that you’re thinking of it as a bad experience. You’re afraid of it.
So, at the end of the day, when you see how many notes you have in the minus, the hell region below the line, you need to spend a little time raising hell—in the positive sense. In other words, the need is to go through the notes, rewrite them in a positive tone. This thing about the boss, seeing him tomorrow morning at nine o’clock, “I look forward to this as a joyous experience because I know that my good is waiting for me.” Anything that gets you into a positive consciousness. Whatever the notes are, lift them up into a higher region above the line.
There was an advertising slogan a few years ago, you may remember it. “Out of the shadows and into the light of new loveliness.” It was probably about some woman’s perfume or face cream or whatever. “Out of the shadows and into the light of new loveliness.” out of the shadows of consciousness, into the light of peace, power, and plenty. Step out of the shadows, get into a lifting up consciousness, into a higher region of your own awareness of life.
X minus one and counting. Begin your day with an air of enthusiasm. Emerson says, “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” It’s a wonderful quality. And Disraeli said, “Every production of genius must be the product of enthusiasm.” The enthusiastic salesman turns in signed orders. The enthusiastic inventor builds a new engine of helpfulness. The enthusiastic lover of flowers produces a new and beautiful specimen. Enthusiastic person builds a successful life.
The word enthusiasm is derived from the words en and theos meaning from or in God. Or in another sense, full of God. Consciously full of the dynamics of God. See the great truth is, we were born with enthusiasm. It’s the celestial spark of divinity which a person may desecrate but never quite lose. It is veritably built into our very nature. The apathetic life simply has the flame turned down. It can be turned up whenever we care to do so. The great tragedy of life is that so few people ever get themselves fully turned on. Oliver Wendell Holmes talks about this. He says, “A few can touch the magic string and noisy fame is proud to win them. Alas for those that never sing, but die with all their music in them.”
You may say, “All right, this talk about enthusiasm is fine, but with my problems, how can I be enthusiastic about life?” This is one of the fallacies of human thinking. We think that such things as love, and joy, and zest for life are simply effects or results of a happy life. This is to misunderstand the way life works. Sure, it’s easy to be enthusiastic about things after they work out successfully. This is not really enthusiasm. It’s simply an emotional response to life. Enthusiasm is not a response. It is a cause. The enthusiastic person does not act in that way because things are going well for him. Things tend to go well for him because he’s an enthusiastic person.
So we’re considering enthusiasm as the final step in the countdown for success. Click in this vital feeling, you’ll begin to experience the all systems go signal, balancing you into a good day and a successful venture. There’s an affirmation that I love that I’ve used through years. Can be a tremendous catalyst to a successful launching of any venture.
I’m alive, awake, alert, joyous, and enthusiastic about life.
I’m alive, awake, alert, joyous, and enthusiastic about life. Ive often said, a person could not possibly utter that statement without getting a sense of enthusiasm. And don’t try to remember all these sufferinization points. Just flow with the process.
Next week in the program, we’ll give you the outline of the whole 10 points. Let’s just experience the flow now. I’d like you to get still for a moment. We’ll go through this process and we’re gonna do it as a treatment for your consciousness. Get the feeling of this dynamic idea moving through you, motivating you, filling you and thrilling you in the new awareness of life.
You are a dynamic center in a limitless universe, directed by its intelligence and supported by its substance. You are as entitled to the constant support of the creative flow as the lilies of the field. Claim your birthright of prosperity and success. Take charge of your life, by assuming responsibility for your thoughts, your feelings, your emotions, your attitudes. Condition of lack in your life simply means that you’ve been projecting a lack mentality, and you can change, and get into a consciousness of success and project that awareness.
You can achieve as much as you believe. You can be whatever you will to become. The universe is saying to you constantly, “Success as you will it, and you will to succeed.” Look for the good in everything that comes to you. You experience defeat, but you will never be defeated. You may be having trying times, but you know that you can cope. Each day, you increase your image of success, and you expect more and accept more in your work and in your finances. As you keep your faith centered in the positive and the possible, you say yes to a greater power which turns on the wisdom and the will, and the energy to accomplish.
You will do well this day and every day, because you have good connections. Not just the right contacts in business but also the right connections with the divine flow within. When they cast thee down, thall shall say there’s lifting up. With Job, keep yourself in a lifting up consciousness. At the close of every day when you see how many mental reactions have been below the line, you take the time to lift them into a positive tone above the line. You will step out of the shadows into the light of peace, and power, and plenty.
You are established in the spirit of enthusiasm. Apathy is a flame turned down. Enthusiasm is not a response. It is a cause. Turn up the flame by affirming, I’m alive, awake, alert, joyous, and enthusiastic about life. All systems are go. You have lift off. You’re on your way to the experience of great success. For just a moment, even as quite often witnessing space vehicle going off, you see the white vapor trail leading off into the sky. Just for a moment, visualize yourself going forward into great success. All things working together for good. Doors opening to you. Wonderful things happening to you. Success and fulfillment for you. You’re on your way. And you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. So be it.
