Collected by William Cooper
- Intentionally Foster a Strong Spiritual Inner Life. Focus your efforts on attending to your spiritual inner life. Your inner life is where your values and meanings in life reside. It is also where you have the most control over your life. Your inner life interacts with the Spirit Within which can be relied upon always to favor what is truly in your best interests. Your outer life interacts with people, things and institutions that frequently are not in your favor and may even unfairly oppose you. Your outer life is subject to bad judgment, accidents, betrayal, disloyalty, selfishness, envy, affairs and many other disturbing and destructive events and emotions.
- Use Relaxation and Meditation. Relaxation and meditation help you access your inner life where you can choose to affirm what you personally believe to be important and meaningful. Relaxation and meditation will help you reconcile your outer life to your inner life. Do not compromise the values and meanings of your inner life to fit your outer life. That leads to dissatisfaction and unhappiness even in the presence of apparent material success.
- Go to Your Heart Place. Your heart place is a place of calm refuge and beauty where you are safe and comforted. Remember the process: Relax; drift gently into the special place of calm you have mentally prepared; Experience the presence of the persons, pets, plants and things you have chosen to be there; enjoy; return when you are refreshed.
- Consult with Your Inner Spirit. You have within your heart a reliable spirit counselor. If you will consult this spirit especially regarding meanings and values and morals and ethics you will receive high quality advice on attitudes and behaviors that will benefit you with a happier and more productive life. The process is simple. In calm circumstances if possible, ask for help as specifically as possible. Wait in silent receptivity for a few minutes to see if any impressions present themselves immediately. Remain receptive and expectant for relevant impressions and insights, as you go about your life.
- Optimism, Expectation and Cooperative Attitude. These are your allies in achieving anything. Believing you can achieve something is the starting place of success. What you believe is possible, you may attempt. What you attempt, you might achieve. What you do not try, has no chance.
- See with New Eyes. Seeing a situation with new eyes is a useful process in many circumstances, especially as preparation for forgiveness. This process applies imagination to explain an offense as understandable and forgivable behavior. You do this because bearing a grudge, resentment or fear is so damaging to you spiritually that you should risk forgiving even in the absence of apology or expressions of regret. The forgiver benefits even if the forgiven does not. Seeing with new eyes intentionally seeks an alternative understanding of events from a higher spiritual perspective of compassion, empathy, generosity of spirit, etc.
- Cool Down and Open to Spirit. Your capacities are measurably improved when your interactions with others (and self ) are as free of anger, fear and suspicion as possible. That is the cool-down benefit of this process. Opening to the spirit intends to access the rich inner source of caring for the other person’s needs as much as your own. When you do this, compromises to everyone’s satisfaction are often possible and peaceful interaction is to be expected. The spirit will always lead you to treat the other person as you would like to be treated.
- Focus on what is ideal and Right. Your inner life is where you are free to define what is ideal and right. What is ideal and right is what you want to support and advocate in your outer life. Life may force compromises but betrayals or intentional hypocrisy are to be avoided. They will certainly lead to unhappiness.
- Respect your feelings. Your feelings mean something. They are not necessarily answers or even indications of truth but they should be considered. They certainly affect your behavior. If you understand them, they can have a rational and appropriate effect. If you do not, they will have an effect that is haphazard and often not beneficial. Ignore your feelings or surrender to them at your risk.
- Forgive. Forgiving frees the forgiving person from the burden of spiteful thinking and scheming. Most of the benefits of forgiving flow to the forgiving person. So it is to the forgiver’s benefit to be generous, even lavish in letting go of hurt feelings from all causes. Forgive as much as you can as quick as you can even when the offender is unworthy of forgiveness and unrepentant. Forgiveness is that important to your spiritual growth.
- Imagine. You have the gift of imagination. Use it to imagine a good and rewarding path through life. It is better to be optimistic without fantastic or miraculous events. It is OK to strive to dream / imagine realistically but avoid applying your imagination cynically. Imagining can be like mentally preparing yourself to succeed in future opportunities. It has been proved repeatedly to work in sports and other skilled activities.
- Communicate Calmly. Expressing anger, fear, violence or agitation motivates others to get away from you. Calmly confide and trust in others and observe how this builds relationships. Relationships are real, eternal and worth the effort.
- Be Thankful. Counting your blessings elevates your mood, relieves depression and helps you define what is important to you and what you should do to foster your own happiness.
- Stacked in Your Favor. The universe is stacked in your favor. No, really it is, when you are pursuing what you believe is right. If you will presume that and act accordingly many wonderful consequences will follow. You will undoubtedly suffer a lot of failure. You will grow a lot in character. You will also succeed a lot too, if you define success broadly.
- Lavish Gift Giving. There are more than these three valuable gifts you can afford to give lavishly to everyone. In fact, You will profit by giving them. You can count on an endless supply and widespread appreciation.
- Forgiveness
- Respect
- Caring about all people
- Positive Self Talk. Tell yourself good things. What you tell yourself, good or bad, confident or doubting will influence your behavior and your friends. What you tell yourself, and believe, is more likely to manifest in your experience.
- Use the Peacemaker’s Checklist.
- Try to calm down before you react.
- Do your best to avoid physical fighting.
- Avoid arousing anger or fear in your adversary.
- Avoid using put-downs, cursing, calling names or using profanity.
- Say what is on your mind but do it respectfully.
- Really listen (with an open heart) to what your adversary has to say.
- Try to see how you are responsible. Don’t just blame the other person.
- Try to put yourself in the other person’s place to understand where they are coming from.
- Look for ways to solve the problem, not just win the argument.
- Be willing to compromise.
- Golden Rule. You have heard it all your life but it really is the most reliable spiritual rule. Treat others as you would like to be treated if your roles were reversed.
- Practice Nonviolent Communication. Be gentle and respectful with others.
- Don’t fear failure. Take reasonable risks. Failure is an especially good learning opportunity leading eventually to success.
- Live your values. Live your life as loyally as you are able to the truth you have discovered.