“We have three worlds that exist in us simultaneously at all times. And the important thing to understand about these worlds is where the power really lies. Where the potential for success in life is located. It’s not in the physical world, as we all assume it is.”
Duane explained that we spend most of our time focused on the physical world. But the physical world is just the manifestation of what has been created in the inner two worlds. By the time you see it, it’s too late to change anything.
“Because the physical world is nothing more than manifest destiny,” he said. “The real change happens internally, not externally. Change only becomes visible in the external world.”
So our ability to make a difference and change the results we’re seeing does not happen by focusing on and fixing external events. Our access to destiny occurs earlier in the process than that. It occurs when we focus on spirit (our intuition and inspiration) and mind (our thinking and planning). That’s the only domain where we can exercise free will and free choice.
“You don’t get to choose whether the sun’s going to come up tomorrow.” said Duane. “Nor do you get to choose how other people are going to behave or react to a given circumstance. But you do get to choose who you are being.”
Our behavior is nothing more than a reflection of our inner way of being.
“So if you think you can control your behavior without altering your inner being, you’re living in a dream world, not in the world of reality.”
Employee surveys will confirm it
Notice that all the employee surveys that show people’s dislike of being “micromanaged” and “distrusted” and “not communicated with” reflect the manager’s misguided and ill-chosen attempts to manage things that have already happened. The second-guessing and criticism runs rampant through the workplace because the manager is not operating at the source.
Hands-off managers know all three worlds and, therefore, become masters of mind and spirit, as well. They know that the world of spirit is universal. It’s an interconnectedness of everyone and all things. It has unlimited potential.
Duane explained to me that the world of the mind is another world inside us: It’s our thinking and our beliefs. It’s our fears (generally caused by judgments) and anything we’ve incorporated into our thought process.
Our negative thoughts are the very things we should be working on clearing out so that more of our potential can come through.
“And then there’s the physical world,” Duane said as he pointed to the “physical world” section of his diagram. “This is going to sound strange, but it’s an imaginary world.”
“In what way?”
“It is made up of images!”
The Native Americans were once criticized because they believed their waking hours were imaginary and their dreams were real. Consider that this may not have been too far from the truth, because what we see is not really what has happened. It’s only how things have come together in the end.
This has been referred to as the Iceberg Principle.
The Iceberg Principle would say that what you see above the surface in the ocean when you look at an iceberg is only about 10 percent of the entire iceberg. The other 90 percent of the ice floats below the surface and is not visible to the eye.
“That’s exactly what’s occurring in our own world,”
“That’s exactly what’s occurring in our own world,” Duane said. “What we see coming through in physical form is a very tiny portion of all that’s actually happening.”
Duane added the metaphor of electricity to illustrate his point. He recalled an electrician friend who went to the Middle East as part of a job. His friend was trying to teach people in a remote village to run electrical wiring in their houses. Duane said:
You know how we hide wires in the walls here? He couldn’t do that there. They wouldn’t accept it. They wouldn’t believe that a light switch that had no visible connection to a light at the top of the room would ever be able to turn it on and off. It was inconceivable to them that that was possible, even when he showed them how to do it! As soon as he covered it up with drywall or plaster or some sort of surfacing material, they would not accept that it would be possible. They would think it was dark magic. And so my friend had to rethink how he taught people to install electricity in their house, because they could not do it in the American format; it was unacceptable to these people.
We may be surprised at the ignorance of those people. “But we are equally ignorant,” said Duane, “about something more important than wires in walls. About the spectrum of life itself.”