Excerpt From "Ignite the Genius Within: Discover Your Full Potential"

Introduction: You’re Already There

We always get exactly what we want.

However, we are not aware of most of what we want. To make matters even more challenging, most of us are not even aware that we want all kinds of things we aren’t conscious of. That is why there is so much disparity between what we think we want and what we actually get – why, for instance, we say we want more money but don’t make it; why we say we want wonderful relationships but don’t have them, why we claim we want to be happy but aren’t.

There are a lot of reasons for this convoluted and universal condition.

To begin with, we have trained ourselves since childhood to believe that much of what happens in our lives happens to us. We then learn to attribute the disparity between what we want and what we actually get to the interference of some external force that is greater than us—an unfair world, an unfeeling universe, luck, God, biology, karma, the one that got away—and all we can do is react to it. Thus we unknowingly “project” our own power and our own hidden desires onto what we perceive as external forces that feel beyond our ability to control them. The fact that so many of our life experiences feel completely out of our control only reinforces our chronic sense of powerlessness.

Even though we are always masterminding our lives (we cannot help but do so), we do it in large part unconsciously, unaware that everything that seems to be happening to us is actually the direct result of our own hidden desires. Not realizing that we are totally in the director’s seat, we unwittingly use our power to create obstacles between ourselves and what would make us happy and fulfilled. Thus we remain convinced that we are helpless to overcome these mystifying barriers.

Though our will is always at work determining what we experience, our lack of conscious connection to our hidden power renders us incapable of making our will work for us rather than against us.

That is where this book comes in.

This book is an instrument to help you learn that there is no power in your life other than your own. The book will help you discover for yourself the source of your experiences—both good and bad—within your own mind. As you discover this, the possibility opens up that you contain potentially limitless power over your own life.

It accomplishes this through three mediums:

• Images of people, places, and things
• A soundtrack (please go to www.ChristineRanck.com to download the free soundtrack) that is known to help bring thoughts and feelings to the surface, calm the nervous system, and evoke dreamlike imagery. Instead of hearing stereo sound in both ears, you will notice that the sound undulates back and forth from one side to the other. This “bilateral” stimulation of the brain will help to put you in a sort of waking dream state that, as in sleeping dreams, frees you up to travel through space and time without having to physically move: and
• Short, simple instructions that ask you to describe what is there in the image.

If you can describe what is there on the page, then you can see for yourself that the source of your experiences is in your own mind. After all, no picture in the universe has feelings and thoughts, and no image ever has had a meaning or a story without a person to give it one. So if you experience anything at all by looking at an image, you are experiencing a reflection of yourself.

As you discover yourself in the images, you will start to recognize yourself in the world and even the universe. This revolutionary realization will help you see that your obstacles are not the result of an external world keeping you down, but are actually an expression of your own hidden desires. And if you make your obstacles, then you can also unmake them. This discovery makes it conceivable that nothing is fixed, but rather that everything, including you, exists in a state of possibility and therefore can change.

The transition from a state of passivity into taking full responsibility for and power over your life is an “ah-ha!” moment that means living in one world one minute and living in a totally different one the next. And that is moving without traveling. In science, moving to a different plane of existence without physically moving is called a “quantum leap,” and it is something that you have the power to do because quantum leaps can be entirely internal. All it takes to make a quantum leap is the application of your full awareness on what you desire, and then watching it unfold…as it always has.

Recognizing your will at work in everything that happens in your life isn’t easy. But the sense of disconnection between what you want and what happens does not change the truth about yourself. It does however keep you from knowing yourself. And the consequences of not knowing ourselves have made life difficult indeed. With so many of our desires hidden from view, the result is endless conflict in our lives. Uncovering your hidden desires helps you get out of conflict with yourself about what you want, helping you access the power to only want what will make you happy.

With this quantum leap of clarity, you might get exactly what you want right away, or simply an opportunity that will lead you there. But the real discovery is in seeing for yourself that the opportunity or result did not come to you from an external source, but came to you because you wanted it.

The other way this book will enable you to make a quantum leap will be through helping you connect to the dimensions of your mind that are already experiencing your heart’s desires. This book is an instrument that will help you use your own awareness to see that everything you want to have, you already do; everywhere you want to go, you’re already there; everything you want to be, you already are. You will see that there is no distance in time or space between you and what will make you happy…the only distance is in your ability to see it.

This quantum-leap approach to getting what you want out of life is the opposite of what we think of as “work.”

It is much more akin to play, for it is a process of allowing rather than forcing; revealing rather than making. Once you get good at turning your attention inward to what you are making in your mind, changing your life in a substantial way can be as easy as getting up and moving into a different room. You realize you don’t ever have to try to change anyone or anything else—all you have to do is change yourself, and everything else will follow.

Effortlessness as a means to experiencing the joy that comes from fulfilling your heart’s desires is not a breakthrough concept. The Renaissance sculptor Michelangelo famously spoke about how he did not create David out of stone, but rather revealed David in the stone.

Creating something out of nothing is stressful and requires a lot of “work.” Revealing something that is already there requires considerably less effort because it already exists. It’s more like excavating than building. That is what we mean by effortlessness. The reason Michelangelo was able to see David already in the stone is that David was inside of him.

This premise is backed up by science, and this philosophy is a part of many belief systems. But to take it on faith in science or “spirituality” is to miss the point that it is knowable. After all, you do not have to believe in the ocean once you’ve seen on for yourself and jumped in. When that happens, belief is replaced with something much more precious: direct knowledge of your own power.

This power is the true source of creativity, and it is not something exclusive to artists or geniuses. When we say “Ignite the genius within,” we are talking about discovering that you are already an artistic genius…you have been all along…for your whole life, both the good and the bad, is your own creation. When you understand this, you will see that creativity is rather an expression of your own power to turn every moment of your life into a beautiful piece of art.

From there, your experience of the world transmutes from one that keeps you from doing what you want to do, to one that is helping you out at every turn…because that is what you want it to do.

Dr. Christine Ranck is a trauma therapist in NYC, specializing in working with survivors of profound trauma, as well as in creativity and performance enhancement for artists and performers. She is host of a popular weekly, on-camera internet talk show, called Get Ignited! A nationally known motivational speaker on the topic of freeing creativity, Christine has appeared on many talk shows, including The Today Show. She is also a professional singer, and her pop vocal trio, Jukebox Jane, performs all over the world. www.ChristineRanck.com. Christopher Lee Nutter is also author of “The Way Out,” and has written for the New York Times, the Village Voice, and many other publications. He lives in New York City. www.ChristopherLeeNutter.com

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