Earl Nightingale said, We are at our very best, and we are happiest, when we are fully engaged in the work we enjoy on the journey toward the goal we have set for ourselves. It gives meaning to our time off and comfort to our sleep; it makes everything else in life so wonderful and so worthwhile.
James Ray is a man who has been on a fabulous journey and is fully engaged in a work that he loves. He has enjoyed great success in the corporate arena, and then he followed his passions to the far corners of the globe to learn the wisdom of the most ancient cultures in the world. He has brought that wisdom back so all of us can benefit from it. He was featured in the movie The Secret, as well as on both Oprah and on Larry King Live.
The press has called him The Rock Star of Personal Transformation. James is one of the few spiritual teachers who has also achieved great business success. He spent five years as one of AT&T’s top sales managers, four years as a personal- and business-growth expert with the AT&T School of Business, and four years working with bestselling author Stephen Covey.
He left the corporate world to study the wisdom of the ancients in Peru, the jungles of the Amazon and the deserts of Egypt. Today, he is CEO and President of James Ray International, and his Harmonic Wealth Program shows participants how to bridge the gap between real-world success and spiritual fulfillment. James is a man who communicates some of the most fundamental truths of life with power and skill.
Interviewing James is Scott Martineau, the founder and CEO of the online powerhouse ConsciousOne. ConsciousOne is the leading provider of online training with the top authors, speakers and coaches in the world including James Ray. You can get a free subscription to the beautiful and inspiring daily WisdomFlashes from ConsciousOne by going to www.ConsciousOne.com.
JAMES RAY: It’s a pleasure to be here.
SCOTT MARTINEAU: James, maybe we have to start off with just a little appreciation for what Chris and Janet have put together, and this opportunity to share the wisdom on a special night. In fact, it’s the first night of Hanukkah.
JAMES RAY: How about it?
SCOTT MARTINEAU: It’s a great night for us all to get together, and for any of those who are enjoying Hanukkah tonight, thank you for taking a moment to join us on your first night. Janet, Chris, everyone, thanks again for joining us. James, are you ready to get started?
JAMES RAY: I’m ready.
SCOTT MARTINEAU: Chris was talking a little bit about you following your passions, really walking the talk, and being a role model for all of us. What role have your passions, things that are most important to you in your life, played a leading role in the work you do today?
JAMES RAY: Scott, I was kind of a weird kid. There has never been a time in my life where there was anything more important to me, anything I was more passionate about, than to understand the laws of the universe and how they apply to every area of life. Being that weird kid, I was really skinny, I was scrawny, and I was the one who got picked on all the time, flubbed out of every sport.
That drove me to my inner world, so while most of my friends were out going to dances, parties, movies and such, I was home reading. I started studying Buddhism when I was 18 years old in the household of a Protestant minister, which is kind of weird. I was reading Shirley MacLaine, for God’s sake, when I was in high school. I’ve studied about everything from all the great spiritual traditions, all the great religions, philosophy, even quantum physics.
Those things have laid a foundation for what I teach today, and have helped me understand really how the universe works. I primarily did that on my own pain. As my life started to transform, then I really was compelled to share that with other people.
SCOTT MARTINEAU: I have this vision of a young man really searching. If he’s in Tulsa, the son of a Protestant minister, even at a young age you were searching early on. If you are searching for Buddhism and Shirley MacLaine, clearly there was probably a lot of pain, but an awful lot of interest to find your own way.
JAMES RAY: I say frequently, Scott, that we all are born seekers, and yet very few become students. The difference for me as a seeker, we are all seeing something, and we tend to seek that in a variety of ways. I happen to seek it in all the great spiritual traditions, in the books, and in the teachers. A lot of people seek it in the new house, the new car, the love interest, whatever.
Very few of us become true students, and the difference for me is that a true student is a person who is willing to discipline him or herself to really buckle down and to dive deep. I meet a lot of seekers, Scott. They want to study this for a little while, then they want to study that, then they want to dabble in this and dabble in that. That is never going to develop a level of mastery. You’ve got to truly become a student, pick a teacher, pick a path and go deep.
SCOTT MARTINEAU: Absolutely, absolutely. Let me ask you this. You do have an unusual adult experience, as well. You start off in corporate America, and then I don’t know if you reject it, but you take a different path, and you say, I’m going to study now with shamans in South America. You go from that to being featured on Oprah and Larry King. You have an unusual path.
JAMES RAY: It is, it is very eclectic; call me eclectic. I said I was a weird kid; maybe I’m just weird all the way around, as compared to the average individual. Who knows whether we can ever prove reincarnation or not? Every great spiritual tradition believes in it, including Mystical Christianity. Who knows? No one can prove it, and yet one of the theories in reincarnation is that you can tell where someone has been in the past life by the things they are attracted to in this lifetime that don’t make sense.
The son of a Protestant minister who goes to study at 16,500 feet in the Andes Mountains doesn’t make sense. I’ve really had an eclectic upbringing, and while my father taught me and really grounded me in fundamental Christian beliefs, he always taught me to keep an open mind, as well, and always supported me. I was very successful in corporate America. I was AT&T’s top sales manager for a number of years, and I was in charge of AT&T’s School of Business.
I didn’t really reject that. It’s just that it kind of ran its course. Even while I was at AT&T School of Business, I was in charge of all management training and I was still training people on how to think, feel and act differently. I was putting it in disguise. That was my passion even in corporate America. Then in 1992, I jumped off and started my own business after all those different experiences and all those different teachers. They still continue today. I promise you this, God, I’m going to be a student for the rest of my life.
SCOTT MARTINEAU: I think that’s evident. We’ve worked together over the last four years, and I’ve really come to admire your dedication to continuous knowledge, continuous education. I think one of the things we found at ConsciousOne, too, and what we’ve done is that we decided that we had kind of been in the corporate world. We had decided we had to quit playing around the edges of personal growth and of our own seeking of information.
We had to quit jumping from one to the next, and really go deep. That made all the difference for us with regards to what we’ve done. I know, like you said, when you were at AT&T you were just doing it through a different means, and it had to run its course.
JAMES RAY: Even when I left AT&T in ’92, the first three years of being in business for myself I did corporate consulting and training. Here is the thing that I know is still true today. Corporations don’t perform; people perform. If you change the person and the individual within a corporation, then you have to impact the collective results.
I just decided to get closer to the real answer and invest in the individual and assist the individual. If they want to go into corporate America, if they want to start their own business, or if they want to just be a great parent, the principles are principles, and they are really cross-contextual.
SCOTT MARTINEAU: That’s exactly right; they carry with you no matter what you are doing.
JAMES RAY: Exactly.
SCOTT MARTINEAU: Let’s talk a little bit about passion and Harmonic Wealth. How is passion part of creating Harmonic Wealth?
JAMES RAY: If you’ll allow me, let define Harmonic Wealth for just a moment, because as recent as just last week, I was on a TV show here called San Diego Living as a morning show. I’m on television all over the United States and in the media quite a bit these days. When I come up with the word ‘harmonic,’ when I talk about Harmonic Wealth, people instantly, Scott, think it’s about money. I promise you this, you can go after the money and you might get rich, but it doesn’t mean you will be wealthy.
I know there is a listener or two out there who would like to try that one. I guarantee you, and let me just give you an example. A recent study by US private banks-they interviewed people who had a net worth of $38 million or more-found that 65% of those people with a net worth of $38 million or more stated that they felt financially insecure.
I know $38 million is not a lot, Scott, but what does it take? Forty million, $45 million. Here’s the thing: if you are feeling financially insecure, you don’t have wealth. Trace the root of the word ‘wealth’ back to its origins, and it literally translates as well-being. Harmonic wealth is a state of harmony and well-being in the five key areas. I call those the five pillars of your life. Financial is one of them.
Financial, relational, mental, physical, and spiritual. When all those are in harmony, you have the well-being, and you truly have wealth. How is passion a part of that? It’s all about passion. What you do is choose the things you are passionate about in your life, and you get very specific about what you are going to create in those five areas. Then you get that harmony and well-being around those areas, and your life is on fire, it really is.
SCOTT MARTINEAU: It’s on fire on any of the areas that you want: financial, relational, physical, spiritual, any of those.
JAMES RAY: Right, or mental.
SCOTT MARTINEAU: Or mental.
JAMES RAY: Yes. It’s actually in harmony in all of those areas. Here’s the thing that we need to make a key distinction about, because when I started talking about Harmonic Wealth, again, the media quite frequently, or the listener, might be thinking that James is talking about balance. Let me tell you something about balance. Balance is baloney. All these people who are running around talking about and preaching about balance, not one of them is balanced.
I used to be one of those guys, Scott, so I’m not throwing rocks. Here is the thing. Imagine, if you will, one of those old-time scales that have two plates on either side, they’re connected by a chain in the center, and there is a pivot point. Do you have that visual?
SCOTT MARTINEAU: I do.
JAMES RAY: Now imagine that scale in perfect balance. You got it?
SCOTT MARTINEAU: I do.
JAMES RAY: Tell me what’s happening?
SCOTT MARTINEAU: Nothing. It’s in balance, it’s resting, and it’s static.
JAMES RAY: It’s dead. In perfect balance, nothing happens. Please put that in your notes if you’re listening tonight. In perfect balance, nothing happens. You see there is no vitality, there is no dynamism, there’s no life. It’s not realistic; it’s not going to happen. The only people who are perfectly balanced are six feet under. That’s a fact. Harmony, on the other hand, is dynamic. It’s vital, it’s vibrant, it’s like an orchestra.
They’re not in balance; they’re in harmony. Sometimes they’re leading with the woodwinds, sometimes it’s the brass section, sometimes it’s the bass guitar, sometimes it’s the drums, but they all come from this diverse perspective to intertwine this magical tapestry called music. That’s life. Sometimes you are going putting more emphasis on your finances, sometimes on your relationships, sometimes on your health and fitness, sometimes on your spiritual connection.
They are not ever going to be equally the same. Where you run into problems is when you totally neglect one or two of those pillars, and that’s when you break. As long as you put energy towards all five of them-financial, relational, mental, physical and spiritual-consistently, but not equally, by the way. Let me just shatter another misnomer. Just because you spend 10 hours at the office, Scott, doesn’t mean you have to spend 10 hours in the gym to be healthy, thank God.
SCOTT MARTINEAU: Yes, thank God.
JAMES RAY: However, you do have to invest some time in each of those areas, and when you do, then here’s the real cool thing. They all start working synergistically together to increase. None of them operate in a vacuum. What’s the number-one cause, Scott, of disconnects and insecurity in romantic relationships? Number-one cause, any guess?
SCOTT MARTINEAU: Lack of intimacy.
JAMES RAY: That’s a good guess. Money. Money is the number-one cause of arguments and disconnection in relationships. I ask that question all over the world to live audiences, and I always get the same answer. Does money affect relationships? You know it does, absolutely. Does your level of health and fitness affect your performance in your career? You know it does, absolutely. Does it affect your spirituality? You can’t meditate when your back is hurting. If you can, it’s a real challenge.
All of these things intertwine and work synergistically. Here’s what we know in spiritual evolution. Cross-training is the key. When you begin to put emphasis on your cognitive powers, on your physical powers, as well as your spiritual powers, and your money is taken care of-Gandhi said, You can’t talk to a man about God whose stomach is hungry for bread-all these things operate synergistically, and that’s Harmonic Wealth.
SCOTT MARTINEAU: I have to believe that you’ve got to start by investing in yourself in some ways to learn these tools, to learn these skills, so that you can have the Harmonic Wealth, you can be in harmony with all these. These were not things that were taught to us in Tulsa, Oklahoma or in Owatonna, Minnesota.
JAMES RAY: No, unfortunately. People come up to me all the time and say, James, when are you going to do something for kids? I say, That’s what you need to do. I think that’s noble, I think it needs to be done, it’s not my calling in this lifetime, but it certainly is noble and it needs to be done. Here’s what a lot of research tells us in the study of the spiritual path. Most paths of personal transformation start out with a physical-fitness program.
For good or bad reasons, in most cases people start a physical-fitness program either out of vanity or fear. They look in the mirror and they say, Oh, my God! I’m fat; I’ve got to get into my old jeans, and they want to lose some weight. Or, the doctor says, You are going to have a heart attack if you don’t get your butt in gear. Most people start a physical-fitness program out of vanity or fear.
That’s probably not the best motivation, but it’s still good and it gets them started, nonetheless. If they continue, then they will move into their cognitive powers, and they’ll begin to explore their cognitive mental capabilities and expand those. Then I firmly believe, and my research proves, that any path taken to completion ends up in a spiritual quest. I firmly believe as well, Scott, that all goals are spiritual goals.
For you to go after a million-dollar house, a lot of people might say that’s not a spiritual goal. Yes it is, because from a quantum physics perspective, every single thing is made of the same source, it’s made of energy, it comes from the zero-point field. From a spiritual perspective, everything comes from God, so call it the zero-point field, call it God, it all is the same stuff.
Everything from a pine tree to a Porsche, from a palace to a possum, is all the same stuff. When you are going after that million-dollar home, it’s your spirit longing to more fully express. It’s not really the home you want; you want to become the person whom it takes to get that home, fill in the blank. Any quest taken to completion-and that’s where someone really becomes a student, as we were talking about earlier, versus just a seeker-ends up in a spiritual quest.
SCOTT MARTINEAU: I think that’s really interesting. This is a subject you and I have talked about many times in our work at ConsciousOne, and your work. You talked about movement, then to a cognitive recognition of working on it, to a spiritual quest, but it begins with movement. Isn’t it amazing that everything begins with that call to action, where you literally have to physically get yourself moving and kind of break away from some of the old stuff that was holding you around? Whether it’s actually in a health program or not, I know a lot of great teaching tells us to get moving, get some action.
JAMES RAY: Right. If you look at the word ‘motivation,’ two-thirds of the word ‘motivation’ is motion. You look at the word ’emotion,’ 90% of the word ’emotion’ is motion. You’re right on the money, Scott. Emotion is nothing more than energy in motion; you’ve got to move. That’s part of what I teach in a process called ‘Going Three for Three.’
A lot of people watch The Secret or read The Secret, and they can’t figure out why it’s not working like they’d like it to. They are not going three for three. You may have heard me in the media, and I know we’ve talked about this before, your thoughts, feelings and actions all must be firing in alignment. That’s going three for three. Thoughts, feelings and actions all must be firing in alignment. When you look at anyone who’s creating what they don’t deserve in life, then one of those components is missing and, 99 times out of 100, guess which one it is?
SCOTT MARTINEAU: It’s the action; it’s always the action.
JAMES RAY: It’s not always, but 99 times out of 100 it is. It certainly is pretty close to 100%, the action. They’re not moving and getting going.
SCOTT MARTINEAU: Let me just ask you a little bit more about this, because I know it’s important to your work. Feelings, thoughts and actions, you have to have all three, so when we’re talking about Harmonic Wealth, you have to have a connection to your feelings: How do I feel about this? How does it feel to me? You also have to have some thoughts about it, it has to work. You also have to take action. That’s what you’re talking about in going three for three?
JAMES RAY: Exactly. You’ve got to create a very clear, crystal-clear and specific measurable vision of what you chose to create in your life in these five areas. Here’s what I recommend with regard to Harmonic Wealth: financial, relational, mental, physical and spiritual. Sit down and write very clearly and specifically what you choose to create in each of those areas.
That creates your intention. That’s your intention for what you want in your life. Those are the thoughts. Then you create a mental image around that thought. Once you have that, then you have to feel the feelings of already having that in your life. That’s the vibration. What does it feel like to already have that $100,000-a-year salary? What’s it feel like to already have that size-six body where you’re getting on the true- religion jeans, or whatever?
What’s it feel like to have the mate who you’ve always dreamed about? The third thing is you’ve got to take action. You’ve got to ask yourself every single day. You and I have done a lot of work with my coaching program, Scott, and one of the things that I recommend people do every night is to write down the six most important things that they need to do tomorrow to take them in the direction of their dreams and intentions.
What do I need to do first thing tomorrow? If you are talking about today, what do I need to do today, in the action category, to move me in the direction of that intention? It’s thoughts, feelings, actions, and that’s how I’ve created every single thing I’ve created in my life.
SCOTT MARTINEAU: As your head hits the pillow at night, you’ve already jotted down the six most important things that are going to help you get started on your quest in these five areas, and that’s how you bring real Harmonic Wealth into your life.
JAMES RAY: It really is, and that’s how you create a life that legends are made of. It seems so simplistic, and it is simple, and yet it’s simply not used. Most people get ready to get ready in the morning for about two hours. I remember I used to watch people in the office when I was at AT&T. A lot of my peers would come in and take at least an hour getting ready to get ready. I’d already be ready. By the time my feet hit the floor tomorrow morning, I know exactly what I’m doing tomorrow and what I need to get accomplished.
SCOTT MARTINEAU: I love that, ‘getting ready to get ready.’ I love that; it’s a great visual, because you see that in people. Let’s hope that after tonight’s call, it’s nobody on this call, and that you are ready because you’ve written down the six most important things to help you accomplish these five important areas of your life. James, you talk about something else that people sometimes come with a great excuse, or great story, I think, is the way you say it. People, instead of accomplishing their goals and accomplishing what’s really important in life, really perfect a great story.
JAMES RAY: Yes, I talk about it in my Science of Success Learning System. I talk about results do not equal no results plus a good story. Sometimes we have convinced ourselves in our society that we don’t have to get results as long as we have a good story. I said I was going to be there at 7:00 and I didn’t make it, but let me tell you all my good stories, all my good reasons, and all my good excuses as to why I didn’t show.
I said I was going to make x amount in my quota in this particular month, but I didn’t get it, so let me tell you all my good stories. Results do not equal no results plus a good story. Do you know where good stories get you? They get you in a mediocre life. Study after study, Scott, of people who are interviewed on their death bed, taking their last breath, invariably leave this life with a tremendous amount of pain. It’s the greatest pain a human being can experience. Any guess what that might be? It’s regret.
It’s the pain of regret. They look all the way back across a long life, and they say, Oh, my God. I could have done something. I had an opportunity to do something great. I just didn’t have the courage. That’s where good stories end you is in a place of regret where you say, God, I could have done something great, and I just didn’t have the courage to do it. Here’s the thing, Scott. You don’t ever have regret when you say yes. The times you have regret almost invariably are the times where you didn’t have the courage to say yes.
SCOTT MARTINEAU: That’s so true. That’s where you have to have an understanding of what you’re passionate about, and you have to say yes, and then have the courage to see it through.
JAMES RAY: Yes. Joseph Campbell said, The great question in life is whether or not you are going to say a hearty yes to your adventure. Yes, that’s your passion, that’s your adventure, and that’s where you’ve got to get busy. Here’s another misnomer; I would encourage you not to listen to any teacher who tells you that all you’ve got to do is visualize something and feel the feelings of it, and it’s going to drop in your lap. That’s not true. I know the best of the best.
I work with you at ConsciousOne, I work with Healthy Wealthy nWise and Chris, and I work with all the best of the best in this industry and in a lot of industries. I guarantee you that every single person who’s at the top of their game is busy. They are all busy. Here’s one of the reasons why. They are not bad people if they tell you they’re not really that busy. It’s just that they don’t get it. One of the reasons why they don’t think they’re that busy sometimes is because they are doing what they love, and so it doesn’t feel like work.
SCOTT MARTINEAU: That’s so true.
JAMES RAY: Again, back to passion, when you do what you love, it’s like Mark Twain said, The secret in life is to make your vocation your vacation.
SCOTT MARTINEAU: James, we just touched on it in your answer, and I want to come back to this just a bit. I think one of the misunderstandings in the Law of Attraction that has occurred over the last year-and correct me if I misstate this in any way-or in the common knowledge, has been the kind of wisdom that has come from it, if you just visualize things or just think about it, then things are going to happen.
I don’t think that’s what’s really in the Law of Attraction. I think that’s somewhat become part of the common wisdom, common knowledge of the way people are talking about the Law of Attraction. That’s not what’s going on in the true Law of Attraction. Can you set us straight there?
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