Lipton shares a personal insight: that resisting the universe's alternative routes to one's goals creates suffering, and that learning to recognize when a "better way" arrives is itself the core spiritual skill of conscious creation.
Transcript
one of the things that really upset me for a long time was the fact that I had great ideas and intentions and I wanted to manifest them and I thought this is how it's going to manifest and so I had all these visions of how things were going to unfold and then I'd started processing it wouldn't unfold and then it would irritate me because like I've got to make it work I gotta make it work uh ultimately I started to recognize when things didn't work it was possibly because there were better ways to do it and I wasn't conscious of it and so what I started to learn over a period of time was simply this there's an old saying there's a means to an end and the idea well the end is your destination and of course the means are how you're going to get to that destination well of course all of us sit down and say yeah this is what I want and then we start to figure out well this is what I'll do to get to those ends I'll get to this and I'll get to this to get to the end what I started to realize at some point was maybe my awareness of how to get to the end wasn't exactly accurate and it turns out many of the times when things didn't work and I was like so upset it didn't work but it turned out oh there was a better way to get there and I didn't even know it so the universe was really facilitating me and I wasn't paying attention I was getting angry at the universe because like it's not working in a way I wanted to work and then I started to realize some point was my God maybe the universe has a better solution than the one I was even thinking of myself so I really learned over a period of time it's very critical insight to help me get to where I am is to focus on them on the end what is it I really want put that Focus together and it's very critical it's very interesting because a lot of people have well I would like this and it's a broad General category and then at some point it's like well it's not specific enough you have to actually say what it is you want I'll always remember I was uh looking for a special shirt to go to a Pink Floyd concert and and I just all of a sudden visualize oh it'd be neat to have a Russian shirt you know with a collar that goes across here and a couple of buttons down and I thought oh yeah that would be really great that would be cool shirt and then I stopped and I was thinking where the heck do you get a shirt like that I have no idea in the world but I thought that would be pretty good so I figure well I still got to get something so I drive off to a mall up near San Francisco and I walk into the mall and there's a first men's store over there and I go let's start looking I have no idea and I walked in and of course there's this big circular rack of sale clothes and I thought hell it's only a Pink Floyd concert one night let's see what's in there and I started going through the rack and lo and behold oh my God a Russian shirt right in the middle of everything and it was like the shock of oh my God this is a Russian shirt right here the enforce the unfortunate part of it was I had the picture of a Russian shirt I said cool I never said what the color was or anything else I just had Russian shirt and there was a Russian shirt color gray no color at all why I didn't put in the concept of color and universe said well just give it to him in Gray and it was one of those things like oh be conscious of what you're asking for because the the more detail you put in the more the universe can manifest a resolution if you leave a lot of blanks in what you want then all of a sudden it's like well it's random whatever fills in the blank because you never said what you wanted you can have an idea what you want and that's important but the most important part of that just having an idea is not just have a broad idea I want X and I go no no what exactly do you want why go back to the principles of Science and the principles of science reveal something very important that principle of science is this Consciousness is creating our life experiences I go well that sounds new AG I go no this is not new AG this is the primary principle of quantum physics we are creators this is a fact in fact quantum physics has that but now let me add one other fact epigenetics says the same thing because epigenetics says your Consciousness is controlling your behavior and your genes and so it's time to stop for a second and recognize where is your Consciousness what are you thinking about and the idea is start thinking all those very positive thoughts but don't try and tell the universe how it's going to manifest okay you think of the picture let the universe get you there and that's the most important lesson I've learned I'm not telling the universe how I'm going to get there I'm just saying universe is where I want to go and then the universe will take care of it it's so powerful it's so wonderful and I never believed in it for the first 40 50 years of my life but I can tell you now the life that I'm manifesting today is a consequence of just what I said focus on the end don't tell the universe the means to get there