10min Theta Meditation

Soon after that time I got a job painting animation at a local studio in Vancouver. I took the tape with me to work and listened to it all day long in the background as I worked. The job was so repetitive that I could divide my attention easily between the two things. The constant stream of positive affirmations elevated my state of mind. I felt really good about myself for the first time in a long time.

A few months later, I happened upon a contest that was being held by the Vancouver Art Gallery. There were two prizes being awarded. The one was a $500 shopping spree at a local art store, and the grand prize was a $10,000 trip for two to France. The winner would get the chance to spend 3 weeks painting and drawing in the French countryside. It was literally my dream. I couldn’t think of anything on earth I would rather do at the time. I made it clear that I was going to win that contest. Robbins had affected something in me. I was on fire.

Before work the next day I rushed to the information desk where applications were being given for the contest. I took one and read it carefully. The conditions for entry were that you needed to submit one drawing with the application. It was a random draw, not based on the quality of the artwork submitted. Plus, you could enter as many times as you wanted.

I sat down that night to work on a drawing to enter. It took me about 8 hours to complete, and when I was done I took it back to where I got the application. As I was leaving I saw a bunch of the other drawing entries hanging on a wall near the information desk. It was disheartening. There were so many. I didn’t stand a chance of winning with just one entry.

I knew that listening to Tony Robbins had affected me in some way, but at that moment it became clear just how. A voice popped into my mind saying, “You’ve got to make it a must”. I turned around and went back to the information desk. I took 5 more applications with me, and went home to complete them. The next day I brought them in, and that voice popped back up. “You’ve got to make it a must to win”. Then it hit me. If I could enter as many times as I wanted, and the only thing I needed to enter was a drawing, I could take all my old drawings and use them to enter the contest with. I turned around and went back to the desk. This time I walked away with 50 applications. I was full of energy.

I went through old sketchbooks and cut out 50 drawings and filled out the 50 applications. I took them in and went to work. As I was sitting there at my desk, I realized that this was my chance. This was an amazing opportunity sitting right in my lap. 50 entries were not nearly enough. I had to win!

The next day I walked up to the information desk. “I’d like 500 applications please”, I said. The woman behind the desk looked at me with a stern look. “I can’t do that”.
“Why not?”, I asked.
“I just can’t”, she replied.
There was a small stack of application forms sitting right on the desk in front of her. I turned the top one to face me and read the line about entering as many times as I like.
She begrudgingly reached under the desk, unlocked it and pulled out a stack of applications. As I was walking away with my stack of 400 applications, the most she would give me at a time, I heard the guy that had been behind me say, “I’d like one, please”.

Over the course of the next four days I was filling out applications every second that I wasn’t doing something else. I even encouraged my girlfriend, Inha, to help me with it. I had a couple life drawing pads from film school that were filled with sketches that I used to accompany the applications. The drawings were something I had been holding onto because I used them for my portfolio for looking for work. In the end, I had no art to use for my portfolio. ‘God, I had better win this thing’, I thought.

I had put so much in it, that by the day the draw date came, I was burning with anticipation. About an hour after the draw, I called in to ask for the results. They weren’t in yet. But what they could tell me was that there were about 800 entries. I had over half the entries. I had effectively made my odds about 50/50. I put down the phone and waited.

About 2 hours later I got a call. I looked at the screen of my cell. It was a number I didn’t recognize. My heart exploded in my chest. I picked up the phone. “Hello”.
“Is this Michael Mueller?”
“Yes.”
I can’t quite remember what was said after that, but I had won the grand prize. I hung up the phone a few minutes later and ran around my room screaming with delight. I won. I had actually done it. I won.

I ran to Inha’s place. We both screamed with delight for a bit and then went out for lunch to talk about our upcoming trip to France.

Winning this contest was a massive lesson for me. The only reason I entered as many times as I did is because I was literally programmed by Tony Robbins to believe I could do anything. I know my old programming. I would have entered once, maybe. But the way I handled this was a radically new way of thinking that would change everything for me from then on. Winning this contest solidified the idea that I could do anything. I had proven it.

It’s interesting that up until the draw date I told everyone I worked with about the contest. They all knew what I was up to, and not one of them entered. They were artists. They could have done what I did. Anyone could have. But most people believe that incredible things don’t happen. Even when the opportunity is right there, people ignore it. We are programmed by popular culture to believe life is boring and nothing amazing happens. But if we can step out of that way of thinking, amazing opportunities are all around us.

A few months later, Inha and I went to France for 3 weeks for free. It was incredible.

Live out of your imagination, not your history.

- Stephen R. Covey

By loosening our identification with our limiting habits and replacing them with more empowering ones, we can manifest the life we want. In this article, I’ll share a powerful way to effortlessly change your habits.

Who am I? If you go into this question deeply, you realize that the you that you have been identifying with for most of your life is nothing but a collection of habitual thoughts and actions. Take them away and you are left with nothing. The self is just a mental construct. This is good news because if the self that we have been attaching to doesn’t exist beyond a self created thought structure, there is nothing about the self that is important to defend and maintain. Why not create a new self that has the potential to achieve way more?

The process of creating a more evolved self is somewhat like reverse engineering a piece of technology. When a company creates an invention, other companies will take it apart and figure out how it works. When they have an intimate knowledge of the function of all the parts, they can then construct their version of the invention. The point here is that the technology already exists. We just have to figure out how it works and apply that knowledge. In our case, the advanced technology we will model is ourselves in a more evolved state, and we will do this through the practice of visualization.

By experiencing life through the eyes of your more evolved self, you will get an understanding of the things that self does. Remember, the self is nothing more than a collection of habits, so pay particular attention to the habits that your more evolved self has.

Sit with your eyes closed and when you feel comfortable visualize yourself living your dream life. Make the vision as clear and emotionally rich as possible, using all five of your senses. Imagine doing the things that you would do in that life. What kind of house would you live in? What kind of vacations would you take? What kind of attitude would you have? Get as detailed as you can, and play the vision like a movie in your mind. The difference here is that you will want to experience this movie in first person perspective. It is very important to feel like this is really happening, like if you opened your eyes this vision would be the reality you see.

Do this exercise for about 10 minutes or so every day and you will start to imprint your visual memory with these images. The burned-in images from these visualizations will form the framework to build our new habits.

Once you begin to get familiar with this evolved self in detail, sit down and write out the habits that the more evolved self has. Make a list of the kinds of things you would do daily if you lived that dream life now. This list will become an action plan for you to follow to achieve that life you want. If you notice that your wealthy self exercises every morning, start exercising every morning. If your wealthy self follows their intuition more often, start doing that, too. The more you can match the habits of your wealthy self, the more you will start attracting the wealth you want into your life.

Our habits are the programming mechanism for our unconscious beliefs about what we can and cannot do. Because it is repeated over and over, a habit conditions our mind into believing things are so. This can have unfortunate consequences if it is unconscious. However, by consciously taking advantage of this process, we can program our mind to achieve anything and everything we dream of.

The first step in making this shift is to learn to tell the difference between the energetic nature of love and fear.

We all know what fear feels like. It starts in the gut as a tightening or knotting, and is followed by agitation and a desire to push back from whatever we think is causing the emotion. This “pushing away” from the perceived cause of fear is what we should be watching for. If we become conscious of this reaction as it happens, we can start to recognize the energetic nature of fear. Fear is always a resistance, a pushing away.

Love by nature attracts, and fear by nature repels. If you are constantly in a state where you repel things, it is very hard energetically to attract anything you value. You might accidentally bump into something you want while pushing away from something you don’t like, but the thing you want won’t stick around if you continue to repel through fear. Attracting (moving towards) and repelling (pushing away) are opposite forces.

The important point here is that since each of these states has different vibrations, you can’t be in both states at the same time. Making the conscious shift to a life centered in love is the quickest shortcut to taking full advantage of the law of attraction in your life.

So, how do you initiate the shift to a more loving state?

Experiencing certain emotions increases the brain’s circuits for those emotions. The more you allow yourself to feel love, the more you cultivate it, the easier and more often you will experience that emotion in the future. Therefore, it is extremely important to train your brain for love.

There are many practices for cultivating love. The one I use most often I call “being love”. To practice this technique, simply sit in a comfortable position and close your eyes. When you begin to feel relaxed, notice your identification with your body and mind. Then, think of someone or something that you love. As this emotion comes into your awareness, begin to identify with it in the same way you identify with your body and mind. Bring your sense of self into the center of the emotion and feel it all around you. Imagine that love is all that is in your awareness, as if every other object is actually wrapped in and suffused with love. When you hear a sound or feel something, extend your love to that thing. Feel love wrap around it like an embrace. Continue to do this for at least ten minutes. Open your eyes and pay attention to any changes that may have taken place, then go about your day.

The act of loving is an act of embracing or attracting. If we are predominantly moving away from things through fear, it makes it impossible to attract all the things we want into our life. As we’ve seen, they are opposite forces. By focusing on love, we shift our flow of energy to one of acceptance and attraction. Then anything and everything we want in life is effortlessly attracted to us by law.

Most people approach life without a clear goal in mind. They have many desires, but most of the time don’t consciously move towards any one of them. When a decision is formed, it’s usually weak, and most often leads to self-sabotage. When you do what you don’t want to do in the first place, you can’t possibly achieve what you want.

Earlier in life I heard a quote from Woody Allen. He said, “Eighty percent of success is showing up”. I thought it was pretty accurate, because I knew that a lot of my success up till that point was from being in the right place at the right time. Now I think there is much more to it, though. Showing up is not just about being somewhere physically. Showing up means being there with every part of yourself. To really show up is to be conscious and clear, to have intention.

In any situation, ask the question, what do I want? Then go deeper. What do I really want? Get clear about why you are doing what you are doing. Then form the intent as a phrase. For example, “My intent is to be fully conscious in this moment”. Speak your intent out loud with as much awareness as you can bring. The more you can engage your mind and body, the more you will align yourself with your intent.

A lot of us feel as if we have been thrown into this world without a choice in the matter. We do our best to deal with events as they arise, but deep down we mostly feel lost. It takes courage to face reality as it is and consciously decide to be here now. That is the choice everyone is faced with at all times. Every time we choose to be conscious, we move from a life of reaction to a life of intention. Then we move towards what we want, and what we want moves towards us.

A lot of us have the false impression that we need to do something in order to enjoy happiness. Because of this reason, we hold off happiness until we meet the criteria that we have set up for ourselves.

About 5 years ago, I thought that if I could optimize my schedule I would complete my goals faster and as a result experience more happiness. However, the more I put in my day-timer, the more that new tasks seemed to pop up. I was always just a bit away from reaching all my goals. One day I had a realization. I was never going to arrive at the end, because the end kept getting pushed farther into my future. I was denying myself joy by putting it off with ever bigger goals.

There was no way i could continue to delude myself. I needed a new strategy for feeling joy. Soon after my search began I realized the obvious answer. I didn’t need to do something to be happy. I could be happy regardless of where I was in relation to my goals. It was a major breakthrough. In the book Happy for No Reason, Marci Shimoff says of this idea, “When you’re Happy for No Reason, you bring happiness to your outer experiences rather than trying to extract happiness from them. You don’t need to manipulate the world around you to try to make yourself happy. You live happiness, rather than for happiness”.

This is echoed in Eckhart Tolle’s book A New Earth. He says, “Being at peace and being who you are, that is, being yourself, are one. The ego says: Maybe at some point in the future, I can be at peace–if this, that, or the other happens, or I obtain this or become that…The ego doesn’t know that your only opportunity for being at peace is now”.

Where does happiness arise in your awareness? It always comes from within. This means that happiness is not something to get, but something that is a part of your inner landscape. It is a part of you. This can be felt very intensely by closing your eyes and identifying with happiness directly, as if it is your essence. The same way that you feel like your body is you, you can feel like happiness is you.

To experience this, sit in a comfortable position and close your eyes. Remember a time when you last felt really happy. As the feeling of happiness comes back, begin to focus on it. Now, while feeling happiness, imagine becoming happiness. There is a vast difference between experiencing an emotion and being that same emotion. The purpose of this practice is to be happiness. Let the emotion fully suffuse your body. Sit with this awareness for at least five minutes.

By sitting as happiness, soon a sense of relief begins to wash over you. It is the relief that you can be happiness at any time. Even in the most depressed state, when the body is in pain, and the mind is lost, happiness is there. To a mind starved of deep happiness, this experience is truly refreshing.

Happiness is the experience of accepting and embracing what is. By becoming open and accepting of whatever is in your awareness you can begin to feel a profound and natural joy. True happiness is the emotion that naturally arises when we let everything be as it is. True happiness is you.

There is a popular story of five blind men in a room, all feeling different parts of an elephant and disagreeing about what kind of animal it is. The one feeling the head of course has a radically different experience than the one feeling the tail, yet both are valid in their description of what they feel. The important step is integrating all the parts of their stories into a coherent whole story. Only then will it be clear what the animal really is.

We are in a privileged position. For the first time in history we have access to all the world’s religions, philosophies, and spiritual paths. This gives us the unique ability to view the subject of God under the light of this vast wealth of knowledge. This knowledge helps reveal a far more accurate picture of reality than any one before it, and from that comes a surprising answer to our question.

We all have the ability to take multiple perspectives at any given time. The big three are “I”, “we”, and “it”. “I” refers to the subjective perspective, “we” refers to the inter-subjective perspective, and “it” refers to the objective perspective. The fact is that certain cultures at certain times lean heavily on usually one of these basic three perspectives. When you look at a path, you can easily see which perspective shaped it.

An example of a tradition that is centered on the “I” perspective is Buddhism. The approach with Buddhism is to look within, to study the mind. Buddhism and the other “I” traditions are focused on the subjective experience and therefore give us incredible insights into this dimension of our own being.

Christianity, on the other hand, is primarily focused on the “we” perspective. This is why God in Christianity takes the form of a great thou, a separate and all knowing entity. We all have the ability to relate to the universe in this way at any given time. The common misconception is that the religions that arise from this perspective give us morality. In fact, it is the perspective itself that allows morality to develop, for this second person perspective allows us to see the world through the eyes of another, something the “I” and “it” perspectives don’t provide.

The “it” perspective is an objective lens. The scientific or rational view comes from this perspective. It provides us with the eyes to view the universe as a complex web of life. The technological advancements and scientific discoveries we enjoy on a daily basis would not be possible if it weren’t for this amazing perspective.

We have to remember that in describing reality from a specific perspective we are only seeing part of the whole picture. Therefore, any tradition, religion, or philosophy that describes reality is a partial view and should not be taken as the whole truth. There is always more to reality than any one perspective can describe.

Does God exist? It all depends on the perspective you take in order to answer the question, and remember that every perspective is limited. Therefore, no one perspective can give a full view of reality. The true nature of reality is a bit of every perspective, and yet beyond any perspective. If the universe is an elephant, let’s not confuse the trunk with the whole animal.

1. Learning Strategies

In school, I was taught one learning strategy. I sat in my seat, shut my mouth and listened to subjects I had little or no interest in. It is a great way to learn if you want to be a slave or a burger flipper. Little did I know at the time, there are actually tons of other ways to absorb and engage with information.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming, for one is a series of learning strategies that blow that traditional style of learning out of the water. If you want to learn how to learn better, check out NLP.

Learning should be fun, and when you have the right strategy, it definitely is.

2. Meditation

Discovering meditation as a tool for studying my mind was a major breakthrough when I was young. Up till then my perspective had been largely shaped by unconscious patterning from culture. With meditation, I took charge of my mind. The simple practice has been the most significant tool I have ever found for learning about myself.

If you want to learn how, check out my article called How to Meditate. I even included a ten minute audio file to serve as a timer.

3. Healthy diet

If people had access to the information and tools to help them improve their diets, they would do it. The problem is that as a society we aren’t educated on how to make that happen. No one wants to suffer from things like heartburn, fatigue, high blood pressure and obesity. With a proper education in diet and health, those problems and many more would virtually disappear. I learned about diet from personal experimentation and trips to the public library. But now there is so much more information out there within easy grasp. We just have to know where to look.

One book that helped me develop a healthier diet is The Food Revolution, by John Robbins. When I first read it and applied a bit of what I learned, I noticed a massive positive impact on my health. It’s a really great book.

4. Time Management

I remember getting a day-planner when I was young. I never used it. In fact, I don’t remember anyone who used theirs. I kind of knew what it was supposed to be for, but I wasn’t shown the reason why planning would make my life better. Lately, I have begun to get clear and plan my life. I’ve realized that by optimizing my schedule, I can get more time to do the things I love. That gave me the leverage I needed to learn this important skill.

Tony Robbins’ RPM (Rapid Planning Method) is a fantastic system for making the most out of your time. It is based on the simple idea that instead of making a to-do list and going through it one by one, you chunk or group tasks based on similar intent. This works well because a lot of the inefficiency of a to-do list comes from the fact that everything is organized in a linear fashion. Our brains are not linear. We need a system that is more like how we think, and RPM is pretty darn close.

5. Self-Promotion

Because we are almost constantly looking for work, self-promotion is one of the most important skills a person can learn to succeed in the world today.

The job of the 20th century was simple. You got into a secure company, had occasional performance assessments and moved up the ladder one year at a time. Our present day world is nothing like that, though. The average person has multiple jobs and even careers in their life. Training for the present work environment is absent from the education system. You really have to look for it, but information is out there.

The best place to learn about self-promotion is from books, employment courses and good ole fashioned failure. Here are some books that have been really helpful for me:

Rich Dad Poor Dad – Robert Kiyosaki
The E-Myth Revisited – Michael E. Gerber
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People – Stephen R. Covey

If you want to experience real success in life, you need the right tools. That’s why it’s so important to find someone who’s successful, and find out what they do. All the tools that I’ve talked about here came from people who were masters in their fields. Don’t re-invent the wheel. Build your success on top of the successes of others.

When I got the list of words, I started the exercise of repeating them every morning to myself. That was great. I kept coming up with new words, and the list kept growing. Then one day I found a game to use the words. It works best with someone else, but you can do it alone as well.

So here’s what you do. If you have someone else to play the game with, one of you start with the phrase, “This is amazing”. Put as much emotion and energy into it. Then it’s the other person’s turn. They have to come up with another word. For instance, they could say, “This is brilliant”. If they aren’t brimming with emotion, kindly remind them to do it again with more energy. Back and forth you go, until you can’t possibly think of another positive word.

Here is my initial list. Start here and see how big you can make your list.

• Amazing
• Spectacular
• Phenomenal
• Fabulous
• Terrific
• Sweet
• Invigorating
• Mouth-watering
• Refreshing
• Splendid
• Superb
• Luscious
• Heavenly
• Exceptional
• Divine
• Fantastic
• Extraordinary
• Astounding
• Fun
• Blissful
• Bountiful
• Overwhelming
• Gorgeous
• Beautiful
• Enlightening
• Jaw-dropping
• Blessed
• Orgasmic
• Delicious
• Exquisite
• Genius
• Juicy
• Dynamic
• Sensational
• Stunning
• Thrilling
• Dazzling
• Wonderful
• Mind-blowing
• Magnificent

You are never more essentially, more deeply, yourself than when you are still.

- Eckhart Tolle, from A New Earth

Meditation is easy to learn. In this article, I will introduce you to a method that has been around for thousands of years and has been used by millions of people all over the world.

There may be a lot of different types of meditation, but they all have essentially the same purpose: to facilitate the realization of oneness with the universe. This oneness is enlightenment. Enlightenment isn’t only for Zen masters, though. It’s for everyone.

If your reason for learning meditation is not to experience enlightenment, that’s okay, too. Meditation has a lot of other positive benefits and they are all valid reasons to practice.

It is important to be open-minded when starting a meditation practice. As spiritual teacher Adyashanti put it in his book True Meditation, “The most important thing is that we come to meditation with an open attitude that’s not colored by the past, by what we’ve heard about meditation through culture, through the media, or through our various spiritual and religious traditions. We need to approach the notion of meditation in a way that is fresh and innocent”.

So, if you are ready, let’s get started.

Step 1

Sit in a comfortable position. You can either sit on the floor or in a chair. The important thing is that your posture is straight. You don’t want to fall asleep, so a pose that keeps you alert is best.

Step 2

Put your hands on your knees or lap. You can have them facing down or up; whatever you like.

Step 3

Close your eyes, and relax into the pose. Aim for a balance between resting your body and keeping your spine straight; not tense, but not loose, either.

Step 4

Breathe in and out through your nose. Begin to slow the pace until you achieve a very relaxed and comfortable pattern to your breathing.

Step 5

Pay attention to your body. Notice any areas of tension and let the tension go, let it relax. Listen to the sound of your breath coming in and out. Start to listen to the sounds around you. As you listen, just let everything be as it is. Listen to your internal dialogue in the same way. Take the role of a passive listener, not involved in your thoughts, not identified with them, but just observing them as if from a distance.

Step 6

Continue this practice of listening deeply for as long as you like. The audio file at the bottom of this article has one bell ring at the beginning and one at the 10 minute mark. You can use it if you want to do a 10 minute meditation. Start with the first ring, and when the bell rings the second time, slowly open your eyes. It is sometimes a good idea to sit for a bit and notice any new sensations, emotions, or thoughts that have come up as a result of your practice.

If your mind is busy with thoughts the whole time, this is entirely normal. In fact, one of the things you can learn from meditation is the degree to which you have almost no control over your thoughts. They come and go whether we try to stop them or not.

You also might wonder if you are “doing it right”. Don’t worry about this too much. Just keep meditating and you will start to know for yourself. One thing that might put your mind at ease is reading books or listening to audio from spiritual teachers. I have found that just listening to them helps my meditation a lot.

The most important thing in meditation is to let things be as they are. As Indian sage Ramana Maharshi said, “Let what comes come; let what goes go. Find out what remains”.

10 Minute Meditation