I was scrolling through personal ad postings on a website the other day when a subject line hit me right between the eyes. It read:

“Control is an Illusion”

Excitedly, I wrote the author of the ad and complimented her.

“That’s one of the coolest subject lines for a personal ad I have ever seen.”

I received an email reply back almost instantly.

“Blah blah blah.go to this site to see more pictures of me. Then later I’ll try to convince you to pay to see me on my webcam.”

Great - now there’s illusion behind the illusion. Or maybe it was always there and I just never really looked closely enough.

On a similar note, I stayed in Las Vegas for a few days recently. At one point, while I was sitting in the audience attending a workshop called ‘Renegades of Persuasion,’ one of the speakers said to us, “pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.”

Good enough - I’ve heard that once before while watching a video about magicians.

But when I got back to New York, I called Bill White to say hello. Partly through the conversation Bill said to me over the phone something that would have made my head fall off it wasn’t attached so well:

“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.”

H-E-L-L-O!

This phrase actually originates from the classic movie ‘The Wizard of Oz’ and is about discovering the truth about how the Wizard really creates this mighty image of himself.

Now, I have a very active inner life. I have a lot of dreams, I travel to places and I meet a lot of people during my many travels - all while my body lies quietly in bed at night.

There’s one particular experience I’ve had a couple of times which I consider to be both profound and intricately woven within the success principle I’m outlining for you here in this article. It goes like this:

I’m driving a car down a street when I suddenly lose control of it. I can’t keep my hands on the steering wheel and the car starts spinning, way out of control.

I try to regain control of the car through the steering wheel but I’m only seconds away from smacking it right into a nearby tree - there isn’t enough time.

Suddenly, as if some other force has taking over the wheel, the car “miraculously” straightens out and avoids the oncoming tree. Now, I know for certain the recovery didn’t come from my own efforts because the arc my car follows to avoid crashing is not any kind I could have made with my own driving skills, nor was there even enough time for me to react and avoid an accident.

It’s as if a hand of God had swooped down and saved me from certain tragedy.

I say it’s “as if” because the truth of the matter is way more sublime than even that.

We seek to have say, to have power over our lives. We seek to be self-determining and to live lives of freedom.

This is good. But where many people err is in their personal definition of power.

The power that invigorates, enlivens and fulfills us is not the power of the man behind the curtain, playing with his toys and controls.

It’s not even the love of a man or a woman (though that’s as good a place to start as any).

It’s certainly not the power of a government that controls the supply and demand of important natural resources or suppresses the liberties of its people.

It’s not even the tremendous impact mother nature has upon the earth when she’s fallen off the wrong side of the bed in the morning.

Control is an illusion and the messengers of truth are many.

Do you want real wealth…real power…real love?

Then start merging your own will, your own limited perspective, with that of the infinite source. I have never gone wrong the times I’ve aligned myself with this very real power that invisibly guides the steering wheel of my life. Not all of my experiences have been fun and pleasant, mind you - but they have all been true and necessary. And for that I’m grateful.

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As you may know, I was at the ‘JVAlertLive’ seminar in Philadelphia recently. What you don’t know is that I saw a success principle in action while standing in the back of the room. JV Alert is a seminar for marketers but here’s the thing: life reveals its hidden meanings wherever it decides to. It’s not saying, “oh, this is a marketing seminar so I won’t express my principles here…not how it works. That said, it then really becomes more a matter of whether you’re paying attention to what’s happening around you or not.

Ok, so I’m standing in the back of the room (I mean the VERY back) and not far from me is Alan Bechtold sitting in a chair. Everyone’s is listening to Yanik Silver speak onstage. After a while, Alan gets up walks away. I didn’t want to jump on the chair so quickly in case he was coming right back. So I waited…and waited. No Alan. Apparently the red haired woman standing right next to the now empty chair was thinking similarly because she didn’t go over and sit in it either. A good 15 to 20 minutes went by and this chair was just sitting there, empty and unused. At that point, I decided the chair was looking pretty good now and I was going to go jump on it.

I’m telling you: not TWO seconds later, the red haired woman (I think her name is Lauren), looks at the chair and then goes and sits in it! Lauren! You hadn’t so much as moved a muscle to sit in the chair for 20 minutes…now I decide I’m going to sit there and you suddenly have an overwhelming urge to do the exact same thing?

I wasn’t upset as much as I was caught off guard. But then again, I should know better because life is teaching it’s secrets regardless of whether or not we’re listening.

Here’s the success principle I’d like to share with you today: Your ideas are NOT yours only. In fact, there are streams of thoughts…there are INNER movements and shifts that occur BEFORE they actually take place in your outer, physical world. Think about this the next time you are looking to manifest what you want in your life. Think about where it manifests from.

We’re not done yet, though. I have one more success principle to share with you here. So Alan actually comes back and now he has nowhere to sit since Lauren is sitting in the chair he left and I’m eyeing the thing too. With only one chair amongst us in the back of the room, it looks pretty much like Alan is going to be standing until Yank is done presenting…right?

WRONG!

Instead, at the prompting of a friend, Alan goes across the room and grabs another empty chair, dragging it back with him. He plops it down right beside Lauren’s and settles in to hear the rest of Yanik’s talk.

Is this example earth-shattering? Nope. Is it directly related to your own successes?

Definitely.

You see, sometimes you don’t yet have the best solution to your present circumstances because you don’t have enough relevant information. So if you’re able to introduce a new element into the mix (ie, another chair to sit in), you can often end up experiencing a new and revised perspective. With this new and revised perspective, you’ll often be able to see solutions you didn’t even know were there before.

Keith Matthew
http://www.selfmasterysecrets.com/success