Renewing: The Third Spiritual Pillar

 The secret to changing your mindset from accepting the way things are on other people’s terms, to taking full responsibility for your own life on your own terms, requires that you build 7 Spiritual Pillars, the third being the Renewing Pillar.

You build your personal Renewing Pillar by understanding that life moves, and you must move with it. Whatever you thought yesterday may not be relevant, useful, or otherwise appropriate for the issues that confront you today. You must constantly have a fresh, new mindset that refuses to think in stiff, staid, and stupid mind-atrophying stereotypes. Rather, you are to be renewing your mind continually—opening it up to new ideas, new truths that God wants to impart to you, truths and ways of thinking, being, and doing that only a daily, committed, and vibrant walk with God can afford you.

You have to train your mind to think only of the good, the positive, the true, the beautiful, and the beneficial, and refuse to think of the negatives that, like weeds, attempt to surround, subdue, and strangle your positive thought life.

You must add to your Bible study the reading of great literature that reflects your historic struggle to be free, as well as the cultural creations that your people produced as a result of their life struggles.

In other words, you must fill your free time with positive learning and thought material that will help you grow in a well-rounded way so that you can relate to your people by being informed about their positive interests. How better can you make disciples—recruit and train people for Jesus’ counter-hegemonic struggle to bring the kingdom of God to this earth—than by engaging your sisters and brothers in conversation about the issues, concerns, good ideas, and mutual areas of interest that matter to them and you.

The Renewing Pillar is the most difficult of the 7 Spiritual Pillars because it requires constant struggle within your own mind to refuse to think about the negative thoughts that come to you. Your mind is constantly being assaulted by all kinds of thoughts, most of which are negative or otherwise of no use in moving you forward toward the goals you have set for yourself. Seek and accept the Holy Spirit’s help to win the battles raging in your mind.

Remembering: The Second Spiritual Pillar

 Don’t be conformed to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you can figure out what God’s will is—what is good and pleasing and mature.

Romans 12:2 CEB

The secret to changing your mindset from accepting the way things are on other people’s terms, to taking full responsibility for your own life on your own terms, requires that you build 7 Spiritual Pillars, the second being the Remembering Pillar.

You build your Remembering Pillar by continuously calling to mind what God has done for you in the past. It is this kind of remembering that moves you to be thankful to God and express your gratitude to Him for how He has brought you from where you began with Him at birth to where you are now.

You should remember both the bad times and the good times with God. You should remember the bad times because if you remember well, you will recall that it was God who brought you through every single bad time you have ever had. And you should remember the good times, because it was God who blessed you with every really good time you have ever had.

It is through building your Remembering Pillar that you are comforted when all hell seems to have broken loose in your life, and it is this Remembering Pillar that encourages you not to quit, but to keep on going forward. Your Remembering Pillar teaches you that everything that you go through, no matter how burdensome or painful, will work out for your ultimate benefit.

The easiest way to build your Remembering Pillar is to start keeping a journal from day to day. Without a written record of what you have been through, it is easier for the enemy of your soul to lie to you and tell you that following the Golden Rule Way has not been beneficial to you. But when you can open your journal and read your own personal bible of the situations you were in and how God brought you out, you are empowered to encourage yourself in bad times, and enjoy reliving good times.

Relating: The First Spiritual Pillar

 And do not be conformaed to this world [any longer with its superficial values and customs], but be transformed and progressively changed [as you mature spiritually] by the renewing of your mind focusing on godly values and ethical attitudes], so that you may prove [for yourselves] what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect [in His plan and purpose for you].

Romans 12:2 AMP

The secret to changing your mindset from quiescent (accepting the way things are on other people's terms) to self-liberative (taking full responsibility for your own life and growth) requires that you erect 7 Spiritual Pillars, the first of which is the Relating Pillar.

The Relating Pillar is always three-dimensional: it includes how you relate to God, yourself and others. You build your Relating Pillar toward God by focusing on obeying the Golden Rule Way—treat other people the way a mentally healthy and psychologically whole you would want to be treated.

As you practice treating people with respect, listening to them, seeking to understand them from their point of view, and accepting them as they are—despite their differences from you, in thought, word and deed—you will have an opportunity to consider how God relates with and to you.

If you are aware and take that opportunity, you will begin to think of how good God is and has been to you, despite your differences from God in thought, word, and deed. You may be led to think about how God has brought you out of the trouble into which you have behaved yourself, and how gently and lovingly God hangs in there with you despite your rarely getting everything right.

Your contemplation of God, as you focus on living out the Golden Rule Way, may lead you to thank Him for His kindness and mercy toward you. If you persist in thanking God habitually, you will begin to feel an emotional attachment to God. That feeling of attachment will slowly turn to a feeling of love. As that love of God grows in you, you will begin to want to please God, not out of your duty to relate to people according to the Golden Rule Way, but because you simply want to please God.

You build your Relating Pillar toward yourself by focusing on the fact that God loves you, and if God, who is greater than you, thinks enough of you to love you, then you must think enough of yourself to love yourself. In the same way that you relate to God based on the deal He has cut with you—the Golden Rule Way requirement—you must cut a deal with yourself. You must treat yourself with respect, listen to yourself, and seek to understand and accept who you are and why you are the way you are.

In building the third dimension of your Relating Pillar with other people, you must make sure that the same terms and conditions—the Golden Rule Way requirement—apply. You have been chosen by God to go in the Golden Rule Way, so your personal relationships with other people must model how you expect them to relate to others in the same Golden Rule Way as well. You must ask God for wisdom to determine with whom you will share your life as a friend, lover, and close associate. As you are making this determination, rely on Jesus’ words of wisdom: “Many are called, but few are chosen.”

The Revolutionary Content of Jesus' Resurrection

 But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. 1 Corinthians 15: 20-22 NIV

True revolutionaries in the Jesus Movement willingly admit that Jesus died in their place to completely dispense with the issue of their ever having to be held personally liable to be condemned or adjudged guilty by God for any negative being or doing acts or omissions in their past, present, or future.

However, it is God’s raising Jesus from the dead that gives life, purpose, and direction to those elite revolutionaries who willingly lay down their lives for the poor and oppressed by engaging in the counter-hegemonic struggle for liberation of the oppressed and social/economic justice for the poor.

God was in the man Jesus (just as He is in us) when he came to rescue humankind from not only physical and spiritual death, but also social, economic, political, philosophical, psychological, and theological death—all that humans have produced in rebellion against God. That God chose to act through a human being whom He raised from the dead is a sign and signal to the Jesus Movement revolutionary that God will raise her/him up from death in all its earthly manifestations.

Because Jesus conquered death, so will the revolutionary who follows Jesus’ revolutionary path—a path that calls for disruption of the status quo, subversion of the Eurocentric world-system, and merciless assault on the bastions of false Eurocentric-oriented Christian religion.

God’s raising Jesus from the dead also announces the hope that the last, least, and lost can be raised from their spiritual, social, and economic death and given new life that manifests itself in their active engagement in counter-hegemonic revolutionary struggle.

Because God demonstrated his ultimate power in raising a very dead Jesus to life—a life that will never die again—the Jesus Movement revolutionary believes that God will use that same mighty power to raise up the millions of people of color who are dead in trespasses and sins and shrouded in the grave clothes of the myth of white supremacy.

Embrace the Contradiction!

 For God took the sinless Christ and poured into him our sins. Then, in exchange, he poured God’s goodness into us!

2 Corinthians 5:21 TLB

African Americans have always lived a life of duality in the United States. W.E.B. Du Bois first articulated our “double consciousness” in his 1903 book, The Souls of Black Folk: “It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness, an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”

In the 21^st century, I have reformulated and further developed Du Bois’ concept of “double-consciousness” into the Quiescent/Self-Liberative Contradiction.

The quiescent/self-liberative contradiction in African Americans is a form of social/psychological schizophrenia that manifests itself in how we choose to self-actualize. This contradiction forces us to wrestle with choosing between accommodating to the racist world-system (quiescent behavior) and revolting against the world-system to overthrow it (self-liberative behavior.) For us, there is no middle option.

All too often in the past, the calming, accommodationist voice of the Black Church has been enlisted by Eurocentric racists to control the thinking and behavior of the African American masses so that we would not develop our ability through Jesus to be transformed from accommodating, non-critical, incoherent “common sense” people to Afrocentrist-conscious “organic intellectuals” who are willing and able to engage in effective social change struggle.

Jesus understands the quiescent/self-liberative contradiction first-hand because of his two-ness as both God and man. As man, Jesus died in our place so that we could be in right standing with God, the Father. As God, the Son, Jesus chose to become the very embodiment of sin so that we might become the very embodiment of righteousness before God. In sum, Jesus became his opposite (sin) so that we could become our opposite (righteousness). 

It is our embracing the contradiction of Jesus’ two-ness that radicalizes our thinking, speaking and behaving, provides us with critical understanding, and midwifes our self-transformation into Jesus Movement revolutionaries who are committed to living the kingdom of God on this earth, in our time, on our watch--by any means necessary.

A Meditation on Violence

 And from the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.

Matthew 11:12 KJV

Every physical and mental motion or action dislodges, dislocates, and destroys the inertia that it must overcome to act. Inertia is an enemy that only action can destroy. Motion, action, is always violent because only violence is capable of moving or acting against the negative force of inertia in the world. To act is to engage in violence to overcome inertia. To refuse to act is to allow the violence of inertia to overcome the self. Therefore, the issue is never whether one likes, dislikes, chooses, or declines to choose violence, but rather the further investigation of the nature of violence itself.

The violence of childbirth cannot be equated with the violence of cutting off someone’s head. Neither can the violence of building a house for a homeless family be equated with the violence of bombing a village to extract the minerals found therein. In the same manner, the violence of freeing oneself from a kidnapper cannot be equated with the violence of enslaving millions of people for their sale to the highest bidder. Nor is the violence of laying one’s life down for another comparable to taking the lives of innocents to demonstrate one’s power to do so. Thus, the false issue of violence versus “non-violence” must give way to the real issue: positive violence versus negative violence.

Positive violence is that powerful word or act that aims at the liberation of enslaved peoples, while negative violence is that powerful word or act that focuses on keeping enslaved peoples enslaved.

The perfect example of negative violence is hate—hate that selfishly takes, enslaves, kills, destroys, and steals from those who believe themselves to be powerless and vulnerable.

The perfect example of positive violence is love—love that gives itself unselfishly to free the last, least, and lost peoples enslaved by poverty, economic exploitation, and discrimination.

The motive, purpose, use and intent of violence determine whether it will be classified as positive or negative. Every thought, act or behavior that is motivated by hate is negative violence. Contrariwise, every thought, act or behavior that is motivated by love is positive violence.

The Righteous Struggle

 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

Ephesians 6:12 KJV

The counter-hegemonic struggle that revolutionary followers of Jesus are engaged in is not a crass struggle for power over and against people, but always a principled struggle to achieve good for the many by developing honest political, social and economic systems, power structures motivated by love, and encouraging and supporting the global many to live as fully and freely as the few who currently do so.

For revolutionary followers of Jesus, one major battleground for counter-hegemonic struggle is located in the Eurocentric Nationalist church itself and its support of racist policies, politics, and politicians, in general, along with its insistence on portraying Jesus as a European who is the idol set up to be worshiped, in particular. The message that God is European (white) drummed into the heads of Africans and other people of color, as well as Europeans who already have an inordinate sense of entitlement and racial privilege, has no place in any 21st-century body of people who claim to confess Jesus as Lord.

The second major battleground is in the Eurocentric-oriented Neo-Colonialist Churches of color and their refusal to call Eurocentric churches out for their denial of the gospel of Jesus, and their own complicity in the oppression of people of color, in general, along with their refusal to proclaim the revolutionary gospel of Jesus for liberation of the oppressed and economic justice for the poor, in particular.

Only such a revolutionary message, made flesh by radical action, true to the biblical mandate, has the power to set the masses of people of color, poor white people, disenfranchised returning citizens, and abandoned U.S. veterans free from the grip of poverty and alienation that destroys them.

The most relevant radical action that we can take now is to change the way we think. By changing our thinking, we have an opportunity to model what the kingdom of God looks like in very concrete terms, as we walk together, proclaiming every person’s right to enjoy the basic necessities of life: healthy food, state-of-the-art healthcare, decent, affordable housing, and livable wage employment.

Ode to Freedom

 It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Galatians 5:1 NIV

As an African/Edenic person living in a Eurocentric-oriented racist society, I understand that Jesus is the only Revolutionary I can follow because He came to earth to set me, and people of all hues who are similarly situated, completely free from every vestige of slavery and its attendant indicia of bondage. The freedom that Jesus offers us is three-dimensional.

First, it is physical in that it affects how we function in the world. Second, it is philosophical in that it affects our understanding of the world and how we process ideas that counter reactionary and backward-looking Eurocentric assumptions that have previously usurped our independent thought processes. Third, it is psychological in that it affects the way we think about ourselves, others, and God.

True freedom, at its most fundamental level, is that state of being in which a person, without being enslaved, dominated or otherwise held under constraint, restraint, duress or undue influence, can of her or his own volition make decisions, plan courses of action consistent with those decisions, have unlimited access to and control over resources, and exercise the necessary power to concretely actualize those decisions.

Given this definition of freedom, it is manifestly clear that the last, least, and lost of African/Edenic and similarly situated people in America have never experienced true freedom. Despite this, Jesus is offering all of us an unfettered freedom that is firmly rooted in the truth and in reality.

The truth is that, without a revolutionary relationship with and understanding of Jesus, we are slaves in a world-system matrix inimical to our best interests, opposed to our limitless capacity for personal human growth and development, and bent on our total destruction.

The reality is that the only road to freedom is our connecting with Jesus and submitting ourselves to his radical leadership so that we can effectively engage in counter-hegemonic (revolutionary) struggle to develop our critical understanding—our ability to be transformed from non-critical, incoherent “common sense” people (objects) to kingdom-oriented “organic intellectuals” (subjects) who are willing and able to provide principled revolutionary leadership for living out the kingdom of God on this earth.

Why Growing Yourself Matters

 In the very first chapter of his classic book, The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth, John Maxwell stresses the point that personal growth is not natural, nor is it automatic—in fact, personal growth does not happen unless a person becomes intentional about desiring to grow and then makes and follows a plan to grow.

He gives eight specific reasons why people avoid being intentional about growing themselves. The first reason is that they assume that they will automatically grow mentally and spiritually inside as they have grown naturally and physically outside. The second reason is that they don’t know how to grow. The third is that they don’t think that now is the right time to grow. The fourth is that they don’t want to make the mistakes that are part and parcel of growing. The fifth reason is that they want to find the best—the perfect—way to grow. The sixth is that they don’t feel like growing. The seventh is that they believe that other people are better than they are, and the eighth reason is that they discover that it’s harder to grow than they realized.

If you use any of these reasons, or others I haven’t mentioned, that keep you from being intentional about your own growth, then you have built yourself a prison from which you will never escape—you will forever keep yourself from all that God has created you to be, do and have in this life. When you allow any reason to control you, you can never move beyond being stuck where you are, doing what you do now, and having only what you have now—or even less than you have now. Because if you’re not expanding, you’re setting yourself up for contracting.

Being intentional matters because, without it, you will stay stuck, dooming yourself to a life of mediocrity without any hope for living the life you were created to live.

Here are some serious questions that you should ask yourself right now: Where do you want to go in life? What direction do you want to go in? What’s the farthest you can imagine going? How long will it take? If you haven’t spent time with yourself to wrestle with these questions before, I can guarantee you that the experience will give you a headache, but it will be the best headache you've ever had!

This is because asking yourself these questions will help you raise your sights on living a more fulfilled and satisfied life on the one hand, while bringing to the surface the five fears you must face and overcome on the other. These fears include fear of failure; fear of trading security for the unknown; fear of being overextended financially; fear of what people you know will think and say to you about what you’re doing; and fear of rejection by the people you value most—your friends and family.

You alone must decide which emotion is stronger: your desire to change, grow and reach your potential, or your fears that are there to keep you stuck and forever afraid to move forward and become your highest and best self.

On My Mind and In My Thinking

 “My mind is a center of Divine operation. The Divine operation is always for expansion and fuller expression, and this means the production of something beyond what has gone before; something entirely new, not included in past experience, though proceeding out of it by orderly sequence of growth. Therefore, since the Divine cannot change its inherent nature, it must operate in the same manner in me; Consequently, in my own special world, in which I am the center, it must move forward to produce new conditions, always in advance of any that have gone before.” -Thomas Troward

Troward begins by making a spectacular announcement: “My mind is a center of Divine operation.” He speaks for himself and for me here. (You alone must decide whether he speaks for you.) My mind is a center—a deliberately chosen central place—where God has actively chosen to live and operate in me, to be, do, and perform His Divine purposes through me. Troward doesn’t suggest that God’s presence in my mind is there because I asked for it, or because I went through some elaborate set of tests, trials, and examinations to make me worthy of God’s activity there. He states it as an unquestioned fact, inerrant, sure, and as absolute as Eternal Law. I AM worthy because I AM created in the image and likeness of I AM that I AM. My worthiness preceded my birth on this planet. It is an eternally closed issue.

Building on this unalterable truth, Troward goes on to describe the Divine operation as always seeking expansion and fuller expression. Thus, just as scientists have discovered that the universe is constantly expanding, so also the Divine operation or working within and through me is expanding and seeking further expression in me and through me. This expression is manifested in my desire to be, do, and have more—that nagging sense of restlessness I feel that accompanies my settling for the status quo of mediocre sameness and its attendant ennui. Spirit is forever expanding, enlarging, evolving into what is new, different, distinct from what was and what currently is, although it has grown from what was and superseded what is.

In the same way that Spirit works in an ever-expanding universe, it works in me by the Law of the Spirit of Life—Eternal Life; life ever more and more abundant ad infinitum. Consequently, Spirit must move in me to make me grow, expand, increase, and manifest a better me, a fuller me, a more productive, loving me. Thus, if Spirit is in me, I cannot remain the old me: I must become a new creation, an enlarged creation at every level of my being. This means that I reflect the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ—i.e., I look more like Jesus and act more like Him. I think like God thinks because I have the mind of Christ, who has the mind of God. I love like He loves because I AM one with the Father and the Son. My compassion towards people is His compassion towards people. I AM that I AM because I AM that I AM has made me thus.

Because I AM that I AM, I AM creating new external conditions that manifest themselves through the working of God’s Divine operation within me. These conditions are manifested first in Spirit and then are transmuted into material forms—forms that are different from the old, past forms; forms that are new creations from new ideas, new thoughts, new creative musings that are the operating, working, and constructing principles of God at the very center of my being.

All that I AM is in my mind (heart, Spirit). And what is my responsibility in all this? I must work the works of God (operate God’s operations), think God’s thoughts after Him, and manifest the material conditions of those God-thoughts while I AM conscious and aware that today is still today. The night is coming when I will no longer be in this space, on this plane, to function as the Son of God in the center of my mind. I must show forth the praises of Him who has brought me out of darkness into His marvelous light, and I must be who I AM so that others are drawn to the light of Christ within me. Only then will I be able to make disciples, disciplined ones, who will maximize their development and highest and best use of themselves, the resources they receive, and the resources they create for themselves and others. In short, I AM to be an agent of Transformation to manifest God’s creative and redemptive purposes on this earth.

Who are YOU, and what is YOUR purpose?

Know Your WHY and Be clear About it!

 Many people talk about wanting to own their own business one day. Their reasons go from wanting to be their own boss to living the lifestyle to which they want to become accustomed. But most people who talk about owning their own business one day will never do more than talk about it.

People who are serious about owning their own business research different business opportunities, read up on the businesses they have an interest in, and begin the process of deciding which business is most compatible with who they are as people. This work of investigation that they do helps to focus their desire to own a business and to fuel their enthusiasm to find the right business to own.

This is the process that most business owners go through. They use their minds, they get the facts, and then they make a definite decision about which business option they will choose. What many people leave out of the process is an understanding of WHY they go into a specific business in the first place.

It has been estimated that 96% of all businesses started will fail within 10 years. With such an alarming statistic like this around, one wonders why anyone would go into business against such odds. If everyone who started a business believed that she or he had only a 4% chance of success, there would be no new businesses started and the economy would immediately grind to a halt.

However, people are going into business every day, going against the odds that they will probably fail. It would seem that the 4% who succeed in business over the long haul know something that the 96% don’t know—they know their WHY, and it guides them to prosperity.

When you talk to successful business people, you will find that their WHY is greater than just wanting to make money or to become a millionaire. If the reason you are planning to go into business is just to make money, you will probably end up in the 96% failure group. Although earning money is important and necessary, it is not enough of a WHY to get you past the 96%.

Your WHY must come from inside you—it must be greater than merely making money. It must be so deeply thought through that it will sustain you in hard times and difficult circumstances. Your WHY must be so strong that it motivates you to get up every day, face the “no’s” and other rejections you will face, and yet empower you to get up the next day and the next day after that until your business blossoms, buds, and thrives.

Knowing your WHY is so powerful that it will catapult you into success, regardless of the odds against you. So, invest the necessary time in thinking about your WHY and make sure it is large enough to see you through to success.

Learn to Persevere NOW!

 The most difficult growth stage that all truly successful people must face squarely and master is that period of time which inevitably separates the here and now uncomfortable place of interminable struggle from the then and there elative state that is what you believe to be success. This is the period of time—often long and disappointing—when nothing seems to be happening and you feel stuck in a quagmire that borders on hopelessness.

This is the stage when self-doubt and the doubt of others around you very nearly cause you to give up. Most people who have gained success will not talk much, if at all, about this period of the dark night of the soul.

Everyone who achieves personal success has had to pay their club membership dues in this very difficult, yet defining place. No one has arrived at the success destination without having collected some scars (and been part of the collateral damage) along the way. So, to expect to be successful without incurring some suffering—whether at the physical, mental, psychological or emotional level—is to expect to build muscle mass without painful daily exercise; play the piano as a virtuoso without perfect practice over long periods; or win a world boxing title without having to train relentlessly and take some knock-out hard punches without succumbing to them.

In fact, the role of suffering in your life is the discipline that makes you strong and prepares you to manage the wealth that will ultimately be yours. This is the growth stage where you must use the period of personal suffering as your rehearsal and perfect practice space for behaving as the successful person you aspire to become while in the throes of personal pain.

This is the place where, despite the pain of adversity, hardship, and extreme difficulty, you begin to take on the behaviors and attitudes associated with living the life you have focused on since the beginning of your quest for success. It is here that you learn that you are, in this pain-filled moment, what you have always determined, aspired to, and struggled to become. In other words, you have so envisioned yourself from an Entrepreneurial Mindset of success that you are successful long before it is apparent to you or anyone else!

What you will learn in this very tight, uncomfortable place is that success and acclaim are not one and the same. If you are not lauded for the depth and breadth of your accomplishments and the value you have already created for others, then that failure of others to recognize what you have done is completely unrelated to your personal success. You are what you think, believe, and behave that you are, regardless of your present circumstances.

Your challenge as an entrepreneur is to live as if the future were in the present, without regard for the physical and visible impediments that currently belie your future status. To reach the threshold of the series of events that will catapult you into the manifestation of all that you have worked for, you must manage well the most difficult and discouraging period of deep suffering that comes inevitably at the crossroads of your present situation and your future goal. And it is at this precise moment that you need to learn that perseverance is your best—and oftentimes only—friend. This is not the time to give in, give out, or give up.

NOW is your time to persevere!    

Champion a Noble Purpose

 One of the major keys to personal success is choosing, finding, discovering or otherwise creating a noble cause or purpose that does not benefit you personally. Service to others is a prerequisite to your personal success. Your genuine concern for others, demonstrated by your giving of your time, talent, and resources to a worthy endeavor, becomes a catalyst for moving you toward your own destiny.

As you invest the best of yourself in a noble purpose that has no visible strategic relationship to your personal or business goals, you are planting the seeds of your own business success. However, the motivation for your service to others must be pure: you must serve with no expectation of receiving anything in return—no award, reward, recognition, press coverage or opportunity to network with persons whom you believe could forward your personal agenda—not even your desire to hear a simple “Thank you.”

Your reward for championing a noble purpose is your willingness to serve others from a God mindset. Such a mindset seeks the best for others with no concern to gain personal benefit. To serve from a God mindset is to choose to consider the welfare and interests of others over your own welfare and interests to such an extent that you can freely and happily give others your time and resources that you could profitably invest in service to your own agenda. Thus, serving from a God mindset is not being patronizing or condescending to others, but putting others on an equal footing with you. The energy you use to benefit others is at the same level of intensity as that which you use to benefit yourself.

You can only provide this free, no-strings-attached service to others when you realize that you are a child of God who has an unlimited supply of resources to bless others without the possibility of exhausting those resources in a manner that could possibly be detrimental to you.

Many people serve others for the wrong motives and, therefore, serve from a position of weakness. To serve others because you are compelled, either by job title, contract or forced, uncompensated servitude, is to serve from a position of weakness. To serve others from a God mindset is to serve from a position of strength. Your service is not coerced, purchased, or otherwise performed because you’re seeking an advantage, relationship, strategic alliance, or other consideration that will inure to your personal benefit later on down the line.

Your God mindset service to others originates in and operates from a position of strength—your knowledge of who you are and Whose you are, as well as the inestimable value that your presence and personal involvement brings to others just because of your divine connectedness.

Because championing a noble purpose is directly related to your own personal destiny, you must choose it carefully. You may not be called to support a popular charity or heart-string-pulling charitable endeavor. It may be your lot to serve a noble cause that is not recognized as such by many. Indeed, the noble purpose you end up supporting may be one in which you have no passionate interest.

  

So, you must consider what your motives are when you choose a noble purpose to embrace and/or support. It is at this point that self-examination, criticism, and self-criticism will bring you back to the Law of Iron Will.

You cannot know your true motives for doing a thing or choosing a particular path. But you can challenge yourself to examine your motives and seek guidance from within, as well as from others around you. This is true not only to what motivates you to choose a worthy purpose to champion, but also applies to the choices you make in every other area of your life.

The Law of Iron Will

 The key element of preparation for success in your business is your understanding and utilization of the Law of Iron Will. The Law of Iron Will requires that once you make a decision, you must be unwavering in carrying it out, despite whatever obstacles or apparent impossibilities confront you. You cannot second-guess yourself because other people and/or institutions have issues with what you have decided to accomplish. The Law of Iron Will allows you to commit your decisions to God and resolutely carry them out, no matter what the odds of your success may be according to the well-established and revered pundits of the day.

Every truly successful person has had to take a stand on ground that was not confirmed or believed in by others. Every significant breakthrough in science, education, and industry has come as the result of single-minded, steadfast opposition to the conventional wisdom of naysayers who oppose change and cling to the presumed safety of the status quo.

The key to the Law of Iron Will is your definiteness of purpose. By focusing on the definite object that your decision represents and concentrating on that object while waking and sleeping, you develop the toughness of mind, tenacity of spirit and tautness of emotions to withstand, counter and overcome all the objections and negative assaults of the do-nothings and under-achievers who don’t have the courage and drive that you do.

The Law of Iron Will supports and cradles you during the difficult and oftentimes lonely struggle to bring to fruition the new product, service, or application that you have created through utilizing your imagination and the concomitant skills and abilities that you have developed along the way.

The Law of Iron Will is the full body, mind, spirit, and emotions armor that not only protects you in the thick of all aspects of battle, but also allows you to simply stand your ground, unmoved and unshaken by the negative forces arrayed against you.

Finally, you can’t continue to think about success in the abstract: you must speak its definition to yourself every day. “Success is maximizing my personal growth and development, the highest and best use of myself, the resources I receive, and the resources I create, with the intent to become all that God has created me to be.”

Thus, success is a competitive activity in which you engage only yourself and no other person. You are not in competition with anyone else, because no one is willing to give more than you give, care more than you care, or provide the service you provide above and beyond what you are compensated for. You are the only person who can keep you from attaining the success that is uniquely yours. Your success is measurable both in quantitative and qualitative terms by examining your own life in the light of the Law of Iron Will.

Develop Self-Mastery, Interdependence, and Reflective Leadership

 Develop Self-Mastery. Self-Mastery is the first and deepest laid foundational building block for your business success. It is taking complete responsibility for your own behavior and deciding to control your own reactions to outside pressures. This means that you will not blame others for your past mistakes and your present circumstances. You will use your own self-awareness, self-knowledge, imagination, conscience, and willpower to be self-determining and proactive. Self-Mastery says, “My success depends on me.”

Seek Interdependence. Interdependence is the second layer of the foundational building block after obtaining Self-Mastery. Interdependence teaches you to develop strategic relationships with key people and to understand that you need them to help you create successful business outcomes. Once you have achieved Self-Mastery, you will realize that you cannot attain maximum effectiveness by your own thinking and behaving alone. You learn that by working in concert with others while being personally responsible for your own actions, a team mentality develops. The team mentality allows you and every member of the team to contribute to the effort at maximum levels and to experience maximum satisfaction from the process of working together.

Use Reflective Leadership to maximize business outcomes. Reflective Leadership is the “beyond myself, my family, my community, and my organization” third course of foundational building blocks that requires interdependent organizational strategic partners to function as a “think-tank.” The goal of this Reflection is to think and plan together in new ways, using new approaches to create new products, services, and solutions that meet needs and effectively address common problems. At this foundational level, there is a collective focus on working together to leverage the strengths of each group involved to maximize their collective profitability in their particular sphere of influence.

Everything you desire in life begins with your attainment of Self-Mastery. Once you have gained Self-Mastery, you will come to realize that you cannot become your highest and best self all by yourself. This will lead you to seek out principled people—or to be sought out by principled people—with whom you will develop strategic alliances. When you and those with whom you are strategically allied have gone as far as you can go, you will realize that your circle and sphere of influence must be larger and wider. It is at this point that—through your intention and action—the way will be opened to collaborate with partners who believe in the power of the Master Mind, and together, you will create new systems, products, services and applications that can be implemented to impact, empower and energize multitudes of people for their good and the welfare of millions of people around the world.

Heed the call to GO BIG, or go home!

The Law of Concentration

 The Law of Concentration makes you use your ability to imagine a situation, circumstance, or reality that you have never experienced in the past. It is your gift for seeing the future, as well as your capacity to create what you have seen in your mind into a visible manifestation that others can see. Your endowments of imagination and creativity are proof that you have God’s DNA within you. It is also evidence that the Law of Concentration is immutable—it cannot change or be changed.

The Law of Concentration teaches you to focus the attention of your imagination in order to create your own future. Your destiny is determined by disciplining your thought life. Thus, disciplining your mind to concentrate on the definite goal or object that you wish to achieve is an urgent matter.

The Law of Concentration teaches that you must focus your mind on whatever your goal or object is until the circumstances that will manifest that goal or object are firmly in place and your goal or object has been realized. This means that you must place your desired goal or object into your unconscious by repeatedly holding the image of your goal or object in your mind, waking and sleeping. In addition, it means moving beyond just thinking about your goal or object and actually feeling what it would feel like to have already obtained your desired goal or object—i.e., you must emotionalize your goal or object to such an extent that you experience enjoying the feeling of having achieved your goal or object in the present moment.

Placing your desired goal or object into your unconscious mind and forming the habit of practicing this thought-life habitually are the two pillars upon which the Law of Concentration stands.

Your subconscious mind stores whatever you repeatedly think and practice. Then it acts silently and relentlessly to bring about the realization, in concrete form, of the object of your imagination. Thus, concentration is the habit of fixing in your mind the thoughts, desires, and creations of your imagination and insisting on their reality. You can do this because of the DNA of God that is within you and because of the unchanging nature of the universal Law of Concentration.

You must believe that what you concentrate on will happen for you. This principle of calling things not yet in being as though they now already exist is content-neutral. It doesn’t matter what the object of your concentration is. For example, if you believe and keep concentrating on the idea that you are sick or inept or clumsy, then you will eventually get sick, be inept, and become clumsy. If you believe and keep concentrating on the idea that you will fail in business, then you will fail in business. On the other hand, if you believe and concentrate on the idea that you are well, strong, and able to succeed in business, then you will ultimately be well, strong, and you will succeed in business.

Know, Accept, Believe in, and Love Yourself

 Each person who has ever become extremely successful in business and in life has had one important and unmistakable trait in common: each knew, accepted, believed in, and loved themselves. Knowing, understanding, and loving oneself is the bedrock upon which true wealth, prosperity, and personal success are built. But, knowing, understanding and loving one’s self can be extremely difficult because there are so many distractions around that most people don’t take the time to figure themselves out until much later in their lives. The busyness of life—earning a living, raising a family, coping with the stresses and strains in life—often overwhelms people, so that when they get the chance to assess themselves, they’re too physically tired or mentally exhausted to do so.

Because you’re on the path to becoming a successful entrepreneur, you must take the time to get to know, understand, accept, and love who you really are. You need to make a list of all your strengths—1) those things you do really well; 2) those skills and abilities that you bring to the table; 3) those qualities that showcase your greatest character traits; 4) those qualities that show off your best people skills; and 5) those situations that allow you to do what you enjoy most. Then make a brief mental note about your weaknesses—1) those things you don’t do well; 2) those skills and abilities that you can’t bring to the table; 3) those qualities that showcase your greatest character flaws; 4) those qualities that expose your worst people skills; and 5) those situations that make you do what you hate. 

Although you should write down and keep a copy of all your strengths, you should NEVER write down your weaknesses—if you do, they will become worse! Just make a quick mental note of them so that you can avoid situations where they may come into play. (Feed your strengths and starve your weaknesses. Be sure that you NEVER divulge your weaknesses to others—they will always hold them against you!)

Build who you are now on the foundation of your strengths. Just as you are no longer a baby in diapers, a 7-year-old playing ball on the sand lot, or a teenager rebelling against your parents, you are not who you used to be! You are ever-changing, ever-evolving, and always getting better, smarter, wiser, and surer of yourself and the gift that you are to the human race. Learn to encourage yourself, accept yourself, and love yourself so that you can encourage, accept, and love others. Love must start with you—know yourself so that you can love yourself and the people with whom you will do business.    

On Harmony and Order

 Harmony is undisturbed peace, trust and good will between and among two or more people who are either living together, doing business together or working together on a social or community project. Harmony is third on the list of the top 12 conditions that are required for gaining wealth. This is so because acquiring wealth is not an individual sport, but a group activity.

Without the concerted and harmonious efforts of a dedicated group, wealth is impossible to amass in the U.S. in the 21^st century. What this means is that wealth is acquired these days by groups of people who work together and share in the profits from their labor as owners of a collective enterprise.

Andrew Carnegie, Charles Schwab, Henry Ford, J. P. Morgan—and the list goes on—all got wealthy together because they each assisted the other to amass wealth. They succeeded because they cooperated in harmony. Each chose an industry to thrive in that did not compete with the others’ business interests. Because there was no competition between their Master Mind group, they could wholeheartedly and unselfishly help each other.

As you move into owning your own business, find out what other businesses are compatible with yours and make strong friendships with owners of those businesses. As you cooperate in harmony with owners of businesses that are not in competition with you, you are creating a Master Mind that will provide the catalyst for the quickest and most honorable way to wealth.

Order is the evidence that you lead a disciplined lifestyle that refuses to tolerate clutter, distraction, and dysfunction. It is the ground upon which the virtuous entrepreneur builds her business. Order is the house in which your creativity and innovation live. Order is important because, without it, chaos reigns. Chaos is the enemy of order and the author of confusion. Order is not just the absence of chaos, but the sign and signal that mark you as a person who lives with intention.

Order and intention immediately evoke the mental picture of a progression that proceeds in a one-step-at-a-time fashion. Such a progression is a definite plan of action. Without a plan, your intention has no definite object upon which to focus. If you have no definite object upon which to focus, the Law of Attraction will bring you more of the same—confusion, chaos, and failure.

If you want to be successful, you must concentrate on a definite goal and give yourself entirely to its accomplishment by making a definite plan to achieve that goal. Order in your life is the clear space in which you are able to do the planning you need to do in order to succeed in life and in business.

Harmony and Order are inseparable Siamese twins: one can’t live without the other.

The Necessity of Balance

 Balance is maintaining and manifesting a healthy understanding of duality: wrong is balanced by right; good by evil; south by north; one’s perception by another’s. One of the hardest leadership lessons to learn is that there is nothing in our experience that is all wrong or all right. What makes this such a hard lesson to learn is our misguided belief that our perception of the world is reality. The inconvenient truth is that our perception of the world is not reality, but our perception of ourselves.

Each of us creates from our individual perceptions of the world the picture in our minds that we call reality. Based on our individual notions of reality, we develop a code that we use to explain what we perceive around us. We decide what is good, what is bad, what is proper, and what is improper—all based on what we were told by our parents as children and what we have learned on our own through “good” and “bad” personal experiences.

Your desire to be a successful entrepreneur catapults you to the status of a leader in society. You will lead your company, co-lead your family, and have considerable input in whatever organizations or associations you belong to. Because you are a leader, you have a moral obligation to move beyond the ignorant opinions and self-serving partisan views held by most people with whom you currently associate, and commit yourself to learning all you can about everything that touches you and your family. This is necessary because you cannot be a true leader and a thought follower simultaneously. If you stay in that position, you are merely a client or object—someone’s puppet—to be used and manipulated as others see fit. If you take your rightful place as a thought leader, you are functioning as a subject or agent—a person operating in freedom.

The only way you can function properly as a thought leader is to see the pros and cons of every point of view without siding with one view or another, and to look for, find, or create the third way—the balanced view that only a forward-thinking entrepreneur can promulgate. Lead from balance; serve others from balance; and innovate, improve, and create from balance.

The Urgency of Righteousness

 Righteousness is right standing with God, that is evidenced by your right treatment of people, animals, plants, and the planet. Righteousness is not related to your religious or non-religious beliefs: it is predicated solely on what you actually do and why you do it—your external behavior judged by your internal motives for your behavior, not what you say you believe, or the reasons you give to justify why you believe what you believe.

The financial destiny of a Virtuous Entrepreneur is to become wealthy enough to make a tremendous positive impact on the lives of people and to exercise economic power that promotes economic justice and benefits people by liberating them, such that the world becomes a better place to live for the many who are the have-nots, and not just for the few who are the haves.

Righteousness is urgent because those who gain wealth have an obligation to function from right motives in order to reach right ends that benefit society at large. To gain wealth solely to subjugate others is a misappropriation of the gift of wealth and a crime against humanity.

It is not money or wealth that is sinful: it is the selfish love of money or wealth that causes unrighteous people to write laws that oppress and diminish people, despoil the planet for profit, and reap unjust gain in the process.

As you enter the economic world of entrepreneurship, you have a decision to make. Will you decide to follow the narrow path of righteousness as a Virtuous Entrepreneur, or will you take the wide road of unrighteousness with the greedy and unscrupulous? You can become part of the world’s problem or part of the world’s solution. Which way will you choose?

The Power of an Idea

   It’s amazing how ideas affect all of us. Most of the things and people you like are based on the idea of them that you have in your own head. By the same token, most of the things and people you don’t like are based on the idea of them in your head. The key ingredient here is that your perception of people, places and things—indeed, your view of the world—is always a creation of your own thinking. That’s why how you think and what you think about are so crucial to your success as an entrepreneur.

   Successful entrepreneurs are open-minded and relate well to people without branding them good or bad. They have come to understand that people are just like them—sometimes good and other times not so good; sometimes dependable and sometimes not so dependable, and the list goes on.

   But what successful entrepreneurs have learned is that they can be good more often than not and dependable more often than not by controlling the thoughts they think and the ideas that they allow to come into their heads. There are many ideas that you can use to control your thinking habits, but there are four powerful ideas which have the power to move you from scarcity to plenty and from surviving to thriving.

   The first of these powerful ideas is deliberately deciding to have and keep a positive mental attitude. You can form this habit by mentally willing it to be so and thinking of this idea every day. Instead of complaining about something that looks like a disaster that has confronted you, you can rather look at your situation as an opportunity to learn how to cope with and overcome adversity. This powerful idea, this decision to have and keep a positive mental attitude regardless of your circumstances, will keep you upbeat, grateful and thankful. Without gratitude for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and thankfulness for being alive, you cannot succeed either in business or at living life in general.

   The second of these powerful ideas is to stay in sound physical health. Physical health has more to do with the content of your thinking than you imagine. Scientists tell us that negative ideas that you persistently think about—worry, anger, resentment, hatred, revenge—lead to physical (and sometimes mental) illness. On the contrary, they tell us that positive ideas that you persistently think about—love, joy, music, appreciation, praise, beauty—lead to the maintenance of physical health. By all means, go to the gym and work out, but don’t neglect to work out of your mind the negative ideas that will keep you from living the abundant life of a successful entrepreneur.

   The third powerful idea is keeping harmony in your personal relations. One problem that always arises in most human relationships is the belief that one person must be wrong if the other person is right. You have the power to solve this dilemma for yourself quite easily if you adopt the position that you will commit to listening to people for the sole purpose of understanding them from their point of view. You are not a judge who condemns people who disagree with you. You don’t have to agree or disagree with any person. You only need to hear, understand, and communicate to that person that you have heard and understood their position.

   When you speak to people, you should be trying to communicate as clearly as possible so that they understand you from your point of view. You don’t need people to agree or disagree with you. You only need to be sure that people understand what you communicated to them. You should always avoid arguing or debating with people with whom you intend to do business. Wait until you’re ready to run for political office to do that!

   The fourth powerful idea is having a hope of future achievement. This is an extremely powerful idea because it will get you through the disappointments, delays, and disasters that happen on the way to your success. As you keep your hope alive that your business will prosper and bring you the financial rewards you deserve, you can smile when you must deal with disagreeable people and circumstances.

The Primacy of Truth and Justice

 Truth is reality in itself, not any perception of or reasoning about it. Its existence begins in spiritual form before its manifestation in material form. Anything that is not predicated upon truth is unreality—a lie.

That is why telling the truth to yourself first and then to family, colleagues and business associates is imperative for the virtuous entrepreneur who is seeking true wealth. Building relationships of trust demand truth as the foundation of trustworthiness. The only way a person will come to trust you is if they find that you always tell the truth, even if it hurts you.

When it comes to making critical decisions that will impact profits over long periods, wise business leaders look for trustworthy associates who they know will tell them the truth and stand by their commitments.

There are many entrepreneurs who cut corners, promise more than they can deliver, and function based on their perception of taking advantage of others. They may appear to succeed over the short term, but eventually they are exposed as the untrustworthy, untruthful and unreliable people they really are.

Truth is a rare commodity that is found only in the virtuous entrepreneurs who love themselves to such an extent that they show love to others by fair dealing, win-win diplomacy and honest truth telling in business deals and in personal relationships.

Justice is God’s definition of what is right. It is not based on any partisan view or political persuasion, but rather on the Golden Rule. It is important for entrepreneurs who want to function in a virtuous manner to practice justice in all their business and interpersonal dealings.

In the realm of business, justice means that you commit that you will not enter into any deal that is disadvantageous to any person or entity involved in the venture, and that no harm or disadvantage will come to the end users or consumers of the products or services that are produced by the deal. It means that all the details of the deal will be set forth fully in writing, and that pains are taken to make sure that everyone involved is clear about what work, activity, product or service is expected from each, and how, at what time and under what specific circumstances each will receive compensation for performance or no or limited compensation for non-performance.

The most direct way to ensure justice in a business deal is to create a Performance Contract that spells out clearly and succinctly what is to be done by whom, when, where and how it is to be delivered, and the consequences for both performance and non-performance. A properly written Performance Agreement will minimize litigation and the waste of time and money that occurs when business partners disagree over the terms and conditions of a given deal.

Preparation for Initiation: The Tenth Virtue of Maat

 The tenth virtue of Maat is preparation for initiation. In essence, this tenth virtue is the launching pad from which you will make the decision to commit to the business choice you have made, and give your whole self to its pursuit.

Preparation for initiation is your decision to move away from talking about going into business for yourself and taking the necessary action to do so. It is moving away from simply thinking about going into business and actually doing it.  Preparation for initiation is moving away from merely asking the theoretical questions related to going into business and embracing the practical reality of setting up shop.

The first step in your preparation for initiation is to save the money you need to get started in business while you do a thorough check, your due diligence, of the business opportunities available to you. The second step is to engage a seasoned professional who is qualified to assist you during your decision-making process.

Confidence in Your Own Ability: The Ninth Virtue of Maat

 The Ninth Virtue of the Ten Virtues of Maat is confidence in your own ability. Without confidence in your own ability, you can never achieve personal and business success. The power of who you are as a person created in the image and likeness of God cannot be unleashed until you believe in yourself. This belief in yourself and your ability to succeed is an acknowledgement of the power of God’s DNA at work within you.

The true atheist is not the one who disclaims belief in the Deity who created the universe and humankind, but the one who refuses to believe in the self that was created by God. To denigrate your own ability is to practice false humility—the attempt to appear humble, when in fact, you are insulting the God who created you.

You are what and who you persistently think, believe, and behave you are. If you practice seeing yourself and feeling yourself to be successful, that is what you will ultimately become. Confidence in your own ability is the driver of your success, just as belief that you will fail is the driver of your failure.

The following affirmation, if repeated aloud and acted upon daily, will help you develop your self-confidence:

1.     I know that I can achieve the object of my definite purpose in life. Therefore, I demand of myself persistent, continuous action toward its attainment, and I here and now promise to take such action.

2.       I realize the dominating thoughts of my mind will eventually reproduce themselves in outward physical action and gradually transform themselves into physical reality. Therefore, I will concentrate my thoughts for 30 minutes daily upon the task of thinking of the person I intend to become, thereby creating in my mind a clear mental picture.

3.       I know through the principle of autosuggestion that any desire I persistently hold in my mind will eventually seek expression through some practical means of obtaining the object behind it. Therefore, I will devote 10 minutes daily to demanding of myself the development of self-confidence.

4.       I have clearly written down a description of my definite chief aim in life, and I will never stop trying until I have developed sufficient self-confidence for its attainment.

5.      I fully realize that no wealth or position can long endure unless built upon truth and justice. Therefore, I will engage in no transaction that does not benefit all whom it affects. I will succeed by attracting to myself the forces I wish to use and the cooperation of other people. I will induce others to serve me because of my willingness to serve others. I will eliminate hatred, envy, jealousy, selfishness, and cynicism by developing love for all humanity, because I know that a negative attitude toward others can never bring me success. I will cause others to believe in me, because I believe in them and in myself.