Vol 2 Issue 9
My friend Martin in New York asked if I’d take a look at a book cover he and his author wife Ruth were thinking of using. And what I read has been bouncing around in my mind ever since in a wonderfully irritating way. I can’t shake it. It’s the most intriguing, thought provoking book title I’ve ever seen.
I haven’t read a single word of the book and don’t know if it’s even finished yet. Oh I’ll read it when it’s done but for right now it doesn’t matter. When’s the last time you looked at the cover of a book and thought the title was worth the price all by itself?
The title was Letting Go of the Need to Believe.
The cover was a picture of someone scuba diving and the subtitle was something along the lines of: A spiritual dive in the third millennium. I haven’t even begun to think about what that means.
A book shopper with an atheistic or pessimistic bias might glance at the title and assume that an author of like mind was saying that people of faith who “believe” in this or that would be much better off forgetting about all that nonsense. What a mistake that interpretation would be. This was not about ‘letting go of belief’, it was about ‘letting go of the need to believe’. And that makes all the difference in the world.
So what’s the difference between believing and needing to believe? Well to cut to the chase, one strategy will lead to the longings of your heart and the other won’t.
And don’t bother getting into the usual ‘need’ VS ‘want’ discussion, it doesn’t fit here. The opposite of ‘need’ isn’t ‘want’ – it’s to ‘not need’; to be need-less in your beliefs about life and the world you were sent here to help create.
Many of us were brought up with a ‘need to’ orientation. Parents said: “You need to clean up your room if you want to play with your friends.” At church we were told what we needed to believe to avoid hell and damnation. School homework was all based on what we needed to do to satisfy various teachers as in “You need to get your report in by Friday!” And now at work we’re given information on a “need-to-know” basis. Those in education and development often plan their work based on a “needs analysis” which, I’m about to show you, is the antitheses of both education and development.
Without making this into a major treatise on energy fields or how reality is created by consciousness, let me share my thinking so far.
You’re dragging your kids through Disneyland and one of them keeps whining “I need something to eat!” It’s not 'time' to eat just yet and you tell your child “If you keep saying that it will make you hungrier.” And you know what? You were absolutely right though you probably didn’t know you were applying quantum energy principles.
When you preface an initiative with a ‘need to’ you make what is missing the outcome rather than your real desire. Our realities are shaped by the focus of our minds; we do indeed create through consciousness. Focus on a need and you’ll strengthen and perpetuate that need. Get information only when you need it, you’ll think of nothing but what isn’t being told you. Create your strategy based on gap and needs analysis and you’ll spend enormous time and money ensuring failure.
Need tries to convince us we’re powerless, inadequate, hopeless and incapable. And none of that is true. You are innately prepared and gifted to fulfill your part of creation. In truth you have no needs! What you and I see as gaps and shortfalls is simply us not acting on what we already have.
I’ve just read Gregg Braden’s new book Secrets of the Lost Mode of Prayer. Gregg is one of the most brilliant minds of our age and I encourage you become familiar with him if you’re not already. In this latest gem he brings up the example of praying for world peace – a phrase you’ve heard a thousand times. His suggestion is that praying for world peace is preventing world peace. Pray for it and you put the focus of our energy on the terrible anger and inhuman destruction we hear about every day. That focus is creating the reality we're experiencing.
What ancient civilizations learned, Gregg explains, is that if we pray world peace, pray health, pray prosperity – pray whatever we desire, that is what becomes reality. No for and no need. We are deeply and unassailably connected to all that is and all that can be. We are not distant or separate from it and indeed we are as it as it’s possible to be, created in the very image of a God who has no needs and who created us perfectly.
Let go of the need to believe and you’ll immediately be transported to a world where all that you seek is within and about you already.
Until next time...be purpose-full!
Ian
PS: After I've had the chance to read Ruth Rimm's new book, I'll tell you all about it.