Way of the Wizard, Lessons 1-10

The Way of the Wizard: Twenty Spiritual Lessons in Creating the Life You Want.
By Deepak Chopra, 1995.

Lesson 1. A wizard exists in all of us. This wizard sees and knows everything. The wizard is beyond opposites of light and dark, good and evil, pleasure and pain. Everything a wizard sees has its roots in the unseen world. Nature reflects the moods of the wizard. The body and mind may sleep, but the wizard is always awake. The wizard possesses the secret of immortality.

Lesson 2. The return of the magical can only happen with the return of innocence. The essence of the wizard is transformation.

Lesson 3. The wizard watches the world come and go, but his soul dwells in realms of light. The scenery changes, the seer remains the same. Your body is just the place your memories call home.

Lesson 4. Who am I? is the only question worth asking and the only one never answered. It is your destiny to play an infinity of roles, but these roles are not yourself. The spirit is nonlocal, but it leaves behind a fingerprint, which we call the body. A wizard does not believe himself to be a local event dreaming of a larger world. A wizard is a world dreaming of local events.

Lesson 5. Wizards don't believe in death. In the light of awareness, everything is alive. There are no beginnings or endings. To the wizard these are only mental constructs. To be most fully alive, you have to be dead to the past. Molecules dissolve and pass away, but consciousness survives the death of the matter on which it rides.

Lesson 6. The wizard's consciousness is a field that exists everywhere. The streams of knowledge are compressed in revelatory moments. We live as ripples of energy in the vast ocean of energy. When the ego is set aside, you have access to the totality of memory.

Lesson 7. When the doors of perception are cleansed, you will begin to see the unseen world - the wizard's world. There is a wellspring of life within you where you can go for cleansing and transformation. Purification consists of getting rid of toxins in your life: toxic emotions, toxic thoughts, toxic relationships. All living bodies, physical and subtle, are bundles of energy that can be perceived directly.

Lesson 8. Power is a double edged sword. Ego power seeks to control and dominate. The wizard's power is the power of love. The seat of power is the inner self. The ego follows us like a dark shadow. Its power is intoxicating and addicting but ultimately destructive. The eternal clash of power ends in unity.

Lesson 9. The wizard lives in a state of knowingness. This knowingness orchestrates its own fulfillment. The field of awareness organizes itself around our intentions. Knowledge and intention are forces. What you intend changes the field in your favor. Intentions compressed into words enfold magical power. The wizard does not try to solve the mystery of life. He is here to live it.

Lesson 10. We all have a shadow self that is part of our total reality. The shadow is not here to hurt you but to point out where you are incomplete. When the shadow is embraced, it can be healed. When it is healed, it turns to love. When you can live with all your opposite qualities, you will be living your total self as the wizard.

The Way of the Wizard: Twenty Spiritual Lessons in Creating the Life You Want. By Deepak Chopra. New York, Harmony Books, 1995. 169 pages. ISBN: 051770434X.

The Green Wizard: Bibliography, Links, Resources, Quotes, Notes.
Research by Mike Garofalo
90 Kb, 2007