MasterMinding for a Dream

I went to the mountain top. My life hurt so bad -- it felt like somebody running their fingernails down a chalk board inside my soul. In a little under three years, I had lost my first born son, my marriage, and now I had hit the wall and was totally burned out, physically and emotionally, and could barely pull myself to work. The irony to all of this is that I had worked so hard to do everything the "right" way.

I sat in the cool spring grass on the side of that mountain, looking over the city and I cried out to God, "Please bring me a man." I just want to be married and have a family. This is what I had held for my dream since I was a little girl. Everyday of my young life, I had played house with my dolls. I played mommy and always had a make-believe daddy who came home at the end of the day.

But I also played something else everyday. Something I never really gave much thought to as being important. I just loved doing it. Every day like clock work, I would go to the basement and turn on the stereo and play music. I could close the door so nobody would know what I was doing.

There was a wall that I called my own. It was my audience, and every day I would sing and dance and sing and dance to my wall. I had two favorite selections, Nat King Cole and The Story of Celeste' a little musical story about a cello name Celeste. It was a similar story to Cinderella, only played through musical instruments as characters. I, of course, was always Celeste, the star of the show. When other children would come over to play, I would get them to enact the entire musical with me. Of course, they played the minor parts.

In the spring and summer, I would run out to my swing set and sing as I played like a tom boy. I always had a musical going on in my head, and I was always the star. We lived on a farm, and our house was surrounded by trees, known in the mid-west as a shelter belt. The trees where my audience. And I would sing and dance and sing and dance. As the years went by, I also found I had other creative talents in oil painting and piano. I played competitively by high school, and I played with great finesse and again, never thought anything about it.

Now, many years later, I'm on the top of the mountain, begging God for a man! I was lonely, and I was spent. I went to college for a MRS Degree. Seriously! I had no intentions of staying long enough to get my diploma. I was marriage-bound. My mother had always said that it was good to get a college education so that if your husband died, I'd be able to support myself and my children. So, after two years in college, and not finding any marriage material and barely applying myself to my course material, I decided I better get with the program. I buckled down and graduated with an Elementary Education degree and a job teaching grades 3,4,5 & 6.

I was an awesome teacher and yet, I hated "having" to do it. I only wanted to be married and raise children and be an at-home mom, like my mother. It never occurred to me that it would never fulfill me, only that I wasn't able to attain it. I never considered how unhappy my mother was. She had a teaching degree. She loved teaching with a passion. But my father didn't want her to work and needed her to help with the farm. So she made me her "work" --and that's a subject for another article!

I had so much talent, and I brought it all to the classroom. I was making tremendous inroads with behaviorally and academically challenged students, while making better human beings out of the kids who already had it all. I still didn't see it, nor give it a thought. I wanted to be married. I wanted to stay home and do "girl" things.

God had a bigger plan for my life, and it was terribly hard for me to accept it. After three years of truly exceptional teaching and one failed relationship after the other, I had my first experience of depression. How much success my students had, how creative and innovative I was as a classroom teacher, had little or no bearing on how I felt. All I could do was cry after work. I had never been like this. The tears just flowed all the time when I wasn't in front of the children. My heart hurt, my soul hurt. I thought it was all about being lonely for a man and marriage. My girlfriend Nancy talked to me about turning to God, but even though I was raised in the church, I still couldn't figure out how to do that.

It was Memorial Day weekend, and I was headed back home to a family reunion and grave site visit. I wasn't expected until the next day, so I got a hotel room and went to a bar where I knew the owner. I proceeded to get drunk that night, all by myself. I had at one point driven my car across town for breakfast, and blacked out. I found myself in my hotel room the next morning, safe, and clearly aware that I had risked everything the night before. This was shattering to me, and I felt even more remorse and depression.

Feeling extremely hung over, I drove out to my mother's gravesite before going to the reunion. I was alone by her grave, and I cried and told her that I didn't know what to do. Nothing was working out in my life, and I was terribly lonely and lost.

In the silence as I wept, and as I missed her, a thought came into my mind, that I should load up my camping equipment and drive to the Colorado mountains and get closer to God. In that moment, I felt peace, the peace that passes all understanding, wash over me, and I got up and went to the reunion. I announced to my father that I was going on a camping trip to the mountains, not thinking about how bazaar that would seem to him or anybody else for that matter.

Within the hour, my aunt had it all planned, her daughter, Sara would go with me. Within the week, we were on our way to Aspen. I took a book that had been given to me called, Meet You At The Top by Zig Ziglar. And through reading it those nights by the campfire, I began to find myself and my self esteem.

I didn't know at the age of twenty-five anything about a plan for my life. But that book started everything in motion. I came home from our trip renewed and with a desire to go after a Master's Degree, which I enrolled in immediately. By the end of the summer, I was happier and involved in life so I took a trip with another girlfriend down the Salmon River Basin for a week of rafting on the rapids. I came back from that trip "higher" and more powerful than I had ever experienced myself before. Two weeks later, I met my husband. We married eight months later.

Sounds like a happy ending, but it was far from that. I married, finished my Master's Degree in Educational Psychology, and my teaching and counseling became even more extraordinary.

I was aware that I "knew" things that other teachers missed about kids. I was aware that I treated kids differently than most teachers, and that the kids nobody wanted ---the at-risk kids -- responded and excelled in my classrooms. I coached volleyball and basketball, and won championships when my team didn't have as much talent as other teams. I used the power of visualization with the kids, even though my colleagues would turn away from me as if I were "nuts." I was aware that I thought differently than most people about most things, and I was aware that it all seemed a bit magical in a "don't make a big thing out of this" kind of a way.

I was still unhappy. I didn't want to be a great teacher or counselor. All I wanted was to have a baby and be an at-home mom, even though I knew we would never be able to afford it on my husband's teaching salary. I still longed deeply for it. After three long years of infertility problems, I finally conceived with the help of fertility drugs. Our much desired and awaited baby died inside me by placenta abruptia during labor. By the time we reached the hospital it was too late. Losing a long awaited child was a devastating loss and deeply traumatized me.

Nine months later, after several more tries, a move and getting my dream job as high school guidance counselor in the biggest school in the state, I became pregnant without the use of fertility drugs. By the fourth month, I was threatening to lose this baby too, and had to remain in bed for the remainder of the pregnancy.

The baby was born a month early, after five hospital stays to stop contractions. He was our gift from God, and my life was now fulfilled. Or so I thought.

I had married a man who knew is purpose and his passion. We both had very similar if not identical talents and charisma. The difference was that he embraced his and gave himself to the thrill of what he was about. I thrilled in supporting and standing behind his talents. Before I had met and married him, I had stepped partially into my talent, but not fully by any means. And so, when we married, all I wanted to be was the doting wife, but there was a 'but' to all of it. My gifts, my talents really would not leave me alone.

Nine months after our son was born, I divorced him because I couldn't figure out how to stay. I was out of energy, and somewhere inside myself, I knew if I remained in this most dependent state, that I would die of cancer or something else that would be devastating. I had headaches daily, and I had to force myself to go back to work every day. I was exhausted with trying to get what I "needed from him" in our relationship. It was another loss, another tragedy in my life. I just didn't know who I was.

 

And now, I'm on the mountain top asking God to please bring me another man! I had this sinking feeling that I wasn't going to get one for quite a while. But I couldn't figure out why. If you were to ask me what my hearts desire was at that time, I would tell you that it was to be a stay-at-home mom with a husband who adored me and plenty of money for a nice house, nice cars and romantic sex three to four times a week!

That's what I thought I wanted.

My soul wanted that for me too, but my soul had a greater plan, and it was calling to me through my pain and loss. I was about to learn how to go into the void and learn to wait for the plan to reveal itself to me.

So being "man-less," I left the wilds of Wyoming, and I moved to the mystical Northwest. Not knowing exactly why, except that I knew I wanted to live there.

All of my job possibilities fell through right before the move was to take place, and I took a leap of faith and moved anyway with $10,000 from my retirement fund believing that I could find work. My former husband also moved with his new partner so that he could be within an hour of us and see his son every other weekend.

The Dream Unfolds

I had all the energy I needed for this move. It felt like a new start to a new life. I was more alone than I had ever been, but I had suddenly become extremely interested in books on spirituality and quantum physics. I could "feel" God's presence and began exploring and building a relationship with God.

Through a series of "coincidences" I found myself checking out a church where, at the first service I attended, the minister said, "God loves you and wants you to be happy." I wept through the rest of the service, I couldn't turn the flood gates off! I have no idea what else she said, I just kept coming back for more.

Now, I was in a big city, a single mother, no job, alone and for the first time in my life, I immersed myself in spiritual literature of Catherine Ponder's The Dynamic Laws of Prosperity, Napoleon Hill's Think & Grow Rich, Jack Boland's audio tapes on Your Erroneous Zones and began going to lectures with Gary Zukav, Deepak Chopra and Wayne Dyer. I was feeling the love, and barely noticing that deep loneliness that once drove me from relationship to relationship.

About a month after the move, I hit the wall. I was too tired to get out of bed in the mornings except to get up and take care of my son. He was such a good baby. His little spirit made my life so easy and delightful. At two years old, he would play on the floor by the couch while I read. It was the first time in my life that I didn't even have a TV. I just read books about Prosperity Principles and enjoyed him with every ounce of myself. I was getting to be an at-home mom and I just wanted it to last forever.

The months rolled by, and by Christmas, there was still no job and my money was gone. I waited for the Christmas trees to go on sale and I bought a little scraggly thing for $3. I decorated it and with my baby, I sat in front of it and cried. My life didn't appear to be working out at all.

My father was very distressed by my circumstances and refused to give me much financial help. He thought it would force me to hurry up and get a job. I couldn't seem to hurry anything up. The bills basically went unpaid and those horrifying phone calls began coming in throughout the day and night. My credit was going to be ruined, and I couldn't seem to do anything about it. I didn't let any of my family or my former husband know how incapacitated I really felt. I was terrified that they would come and take my baby if they knew how bad I felt physically. I knew all too well how well meaning people can do abusive things.

I loved taking care of my baby and that's all I really wanted to do. I didn't go to the doctor because I truly didn't believe I could be helped. I was sure, as with my headaches, they would just tell me it was all in my head, that I was just being lazy. I was a Type A personality, and that's the last thing I could stand to hear. So, I continued to read about Prosperity Consciousness, quantum physics and God. I didn't know what else to do. I applied for food stamps and to my amazement, I didn't feel humiliated.

I had a friend in the city, Connie Dawson, who was an educational consultant (now the author of Growing Up Again) and one day, I was at her place agonizing over my situation, when she asked me what I did best as a professional educator. And without thinking I said, "I make magic with at-risk kids."

In that moment, we both knew what God was waiting for me to "get." I literally think I flew home that day, and began writing how I made magic with at-risk kids. The Universe opened up for me, and as I finished each task that was put in front of me to do, another door would open.

At the completion of writing my first draft of a 20 hour course proposal, the phone rang. The high school around the corner from me needed a drug & alcohol counselor to replace the current counselor going on immediate sabbatical. I received enough money to catch all of my bills up, and take care of our needs through the summer.

MasterMinding for the Dream

I attended a workshop given at my church by Jack Boland, a minister from Detroit, Michigan. I was sitting next to Connie, and we were so moved by what MasterMinding could mean to our lives that we agreed to get started together.

For many, the act of prayer just feels weird. Probably because it's only the most intimate thing we do with our creator. It is something that is banned in our schools because of its implications to some. MasterMinding became my lifeboat, and it was a word that I could use and not feel "weird" about it. I could call any of my girlfriends and say, "Hey, MasterMind for me that _____," but I never felt comfortable in those early years of really getting connected with God, to call somebody and say, "Hey, pray for me that ____." I, like many people, had a lot of "stuff" around religious doctrine. But I still needed to be in relationship with the creative power that breathed me.

MasterMinding is a spiritual - not religious - endeavor, as it definitely involves a recognition of a power greater than ourselves, the third invisible mind - the power of the Mastermind. Because of this, thousands of people have demonstrated dramatic, positive changes in their lives, and have experienced happy, successful living.

No two minds ever come together without thereby creating (contacting) a third invisible intangible force which may be likened to a third mind.

--Napoleon Hill, Think & Grow Rich

MasterMinding became my life boat and vest in the hurricane-like waters I was about to navigate to the actualization of my dream. For the first time in my life, I felt the depths of my purpose. I no longer "needed" a man now, I simply wanted and desired a man to create a future together with. There is a big difference, energetically.

As I began writing my programs for Portland State University on at-risk kids, my phone was ringing off the hook with suitors! Now that I was too busy for a man, I literally had eight men calling me asking me out. I dated only two, got two marriage proposals, and decided not to marry either one. Get outta here! Even I couldn't believe it, and they were great guys!

For the first time in my life, I realized that I had a purpose and I was passionate about it. I had information that people needed. I had something that worked. I had a target audience, and I had no idea how to get from point A to point B.

That was over thirteen years ago, when my dream was at the beginning stages of being more clearly defined, for the first time: I wanted to speak and write a book. I knew for the first time how much I wanted to make per month and per year. Because I could now begin to see the possibilities, it expanded my mind to loftier goals.

Through MasterMinding, the one book evolved and grew to three, four and five book titles. Over the years, my target audience shifted and changed from educators and at-risk children, to a spiritual audience, to the corporate audience, and now, to everybody on the planet who wants what I have to offer.

Finding your dream, your purpose is the first step. Making it happen is the adventure, the thrill. I used three affirmations consistently during the time period when I was not finding work, to get in touch with my purpose. Instead of saying to yourself, "I don't know what my purpose or dream is," try these:

First: I am willing to know what I want.

Second: I am willing to ask for what I want.

Third: I am willing to receive exactly what I've asked for.

They came from a book by Phil Laut, Money Is My Friend, which I bought when my phone was ringing with angry money collectors. I'd repeat the first one every time I caught myself in a state of powerlessness. Then I used the second and third ones as needed.

I look at it like putting the pieces of a puzzle together. When you first sit down and take the pieces out of the box, it seems overwhelming. This is where MasterMinding becomes so powerful, because when you join your mind with another, the creative power available to you is greater. You need to increase your focus and your intention to set energy in motion to actualizing your dreams.

My Dream Guy

Oh, and about the man I wanted. After three more years of doing what was in front of me to do to build a foundation for my dream -- speaking regularly and writing my first book -- when I didn't "need" him, he walked into my life and asked me out for coffee. Then roller skating and then to a movie! I had MasterMinded for him, and we've been together, building this dream together for a decade.

On this journey to actualizing my purpose and my dream, I became very sick and incapacitated with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome for over three years. I took every single situation over the years into my MasterMinding sessions.

During those years that I felt the worst, I raised three children, maintained the household and carved out time to write and speak. I MasterMinded for the energy, because my purpose wouldn't leave me alone. We MasterMind for money. We MasterMind for our children's specific requests, whether it be academic or athletic endeavors. I MasterMind with my son before every game. Whatever they want, we MasterMind for it. We MasterMind through the tough stages, changes and healing in our marriage, because love tends to bring up that which needs to be healed.

Today, I fly all over the country. I speak, and I am now writing as fast as I can to complete what I've been commissioned by my soul to get out there.

You can get started today, MasterMinding and here's how:

"A Quickie" - on the run version of MasterMinding

1) Call or agree to meet with your best, most trustworthy friend or associate.

2) Talk for a few minutes about the problem(s), putting the emphasis on clearly defining what you don't want any more of, or what you want to eliminate.

3) Now, once you've gotten your energy released from what you don't want, you can now shift your focus onto what you do want. The emphasis here is, if you could have it any way you wanted it, what would that be.

You will begin stating what you desire as a request, using this language: "See for me, the way to take the next step in funding the next phase of my dream. See for me, that a creative idea comes that I can generate $25,000 by ___. See my son, being safe and shining on the basketball court today, see him impenetrable on defense and thrilling on offense, making a lot of points for his team. See my husband winning the $______contract. See me enrolling three people in my business this month. See me finding the right health alternatives to heal my current health condition of ______. See me exercising a minimum of three times this week and reducing my weight by five pounds easily and effortlessly this month."

4) The partner's job here is to repeat back to you what you want and to "see" for you that it not only can happen, but it is happening now. Getting you both into the feeling of what it will feel like and be like is very important. Making time to give your partner a visual description of what you saw, as they were making their requests, is so powerful: it literally sets energy in motion. And when your partner does it for you, it will blow you away. I feel my partner's vision with me throughout the week, especially when I get scared and start falling back into thinking what I want is impossible, ridiculous or just crazy!

5) When both of you have made your requests, and have acknowledged each other's requests by "seeing" for each other what each other has indicated as their desired results. Then close your Quickie MasterMind session with the statement: "We go forth with a spirit of enthusiasm, excitement, expectancy and peace. This or Something Better!"

Step three is the hardest, and should be given the most time and deepest concentration in a MasterMinding session, because we have a huge tendency to let ourselves want only what we believe is possible. The intent of MasterMinding is to go past what we presently believe is possible. My favorite scripture that is constantly with me throughout the MasterMind process is Matthew 18:19-20:

"If two of you agree down here on earth concerning anything you ask, my Father in heaven will do it for you. For where two or three gather together because they are mine, I am there among them." (NLT)

What you want in a MasterMind partner, and what you need to be as a MasterMind partner, is someone who can listen and probe deeper to get to the real honest desire of another. The responsibility of the MasterMind partner is not to give advice. Through the power of the creative mechanism of two minds coming together, there will be creative ideas coming forth, but not necessarily during the actual asking of what is wanted. It is vitally important here, not to get into "how" am I going to make this happen. But to keep each other's focus totally on "How I desire it to be."

One time, when I finally succumbed to Chronic Fatigue, I had broken up with my fiancée (the man I had MasterMinded for!), had used up every penny in my bank account, my purse and my 5 year old son's piggy bank for my business. I had nothing left for us to live on because I had literally given it my all. My MasterMind partner was on the phone and she asked me what I wanted. Broken and sick, I said, "I don't know any more."

After a few minutes, I broke into tears and I cried as I said, "Well, I can tell you what I don't want." And for the next three minutes I angrily spewed out what I didn't want any more of in my life, and when it was over and I was cleaned out, I paused wiping my tears away and feeling the fullness of my heart I said, "I just want to be taken care of. I want to be provided for and loved and have money to meet all of our needs."

Previous to this moment, I never had said what I really wanted because it seemed too impossible and far fetched. Besides, it would just be lazy of me to lay down and rest now. Chronic Fatigue was just a mental disorder, right? This is what my internal conversations were, so even though my soul wanted me to rest, I couldn't and wouldn't.

As I completed those two very simple statements, to my MasterMind partner, I felt a click, like things falling into place because I had finally spoken the truth of my soul. Look for the feeling of the click, because when you feel that, it's truly on its way to you.

Self honesty about what you really want, the desire in your heart of hearts, that's what builds dreams one piece at a time. That's what builds bridges, creates electricity and brings dreams into reality. A whole series of events begin to happen when you feel the desires of your soul, and hear them coming out of your mouth.

After we hung up the phone, I went to lay down and take a nap. It was the first time in months I had no more money terrors, and I slept in total peace. I did not know how it could possibly happen that I could be taken care of without my going out and getting a job.

Within two weeks, my ex-fiancée called one night, "out of the blue" and we patched things up. He wanted us to go to counseling, and by the second counseling session I finally agreed to set a date and marry him. He took care of all of my medical needs and provided a living for us, while I continued to build the dream.

Today, after hearing my story, people often ask me if I still sing and dance. In my soul I do. By the end of my high school years, I had ruined my beautiful soprano voice through being a cheerleader and through living my life in a most fearful and constricted fashion. It wasn't until several years into my spiritual trek that my soprano voice came back fully healed.

I feel, my singing, dancing, art and music are still very much alive in me and give me the command of any audience I'm speaking or writing to, and it is thrilling to be living this dream. Sometimes now, when I MasterMind, I just say, "Thrill me some more!"

Mary Robinson Reynolds, M.S. --an educational psychologist, master trainer, is the author of three books, including "MasterMinding: LIGHTNING in a Bottle " (a Heart Productions & Publishing edition, 2002).  She specializes in brain/mind technology, physiology, Quantum physics and introduces life-changing techniques.  The more structured versions for Corporate Team Building and/or Small Business/Entrepreneurs and finally, the Network Marketing version are available in "The MasterMind Principle: A Spiritual Goal Achieving System" book.  Learn more about how the MasterMind Principle program works, and get the more formal version of Mary's "7 Steps to MasterMind Consciousness" free at makeadifference.com/pages/mastermind.htm

MasterMinding works for the person who doesn't know if they can make it one more day, as well as for the person wanting to achieve higher levels of prosperity: responsibility, rank and remuneration. So let's start the new millennium off with something that works!


©2001 Mary Robinson Reynolds, Heart Productions & Publishing

Click for Mary's MasterMinding 101 Online Course:
https://www.MasterMinding101.com/index.php?s=f


Mary ReynoldsMary Robinson Reynolds, M.S., Educational Psychologist, Author and Producer of the world renowned Internet videos, MakeADifferenceMovie.com and AcknowledgmentMovie.com - both amassing over 10 million views within a few short months of their releases - spent many years as a classroom teacher K-8 and then as a counselor K-12. She parlayed her phenomenal success with youth at-risk into her programs for business leaders, entrepreneurs and managers on how to be energetically effective in leading improvement in their organizations through the power of Team Synergy and MasterMinding. She has written eight books, developed UTrain&Coach programs that anyone can take into their place of work to build organization wide Team Synergy, and has presented to over 20,000 people in two year period in every major city in the U.S. To learn more go to: maryreynolds.com

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