Dr Wayne Dyer: 'We are so fixed on our limitations'

We provide lecture highlights from the one-hour address by the 'father of motivational speaking', which centered on spirituality and self reliance.

The American self-help author Dr Wayne Dyer presented “The Shift: The Story of the Most Important Moment of Your Life” on Tuesday at Manarat al Saadiyat. Silvia Razgova / The National

The renowned Dr Wayne Dyer spoke to a packed crowd at Manarat Al Saadiyat on Tuesday night as part of the Muntada lecture series run by the Sheikha Salama bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Foundation. His one-hour address centred on spirituality and self-reliance.

On the UAE's founder, Sheikh Zayed

Upon doing his research before his UAE trip, Dyer was stunned at the breadth of vision Sheikh Zayed possessed. He described how the UAE's founder embodied many positive attributes Dyer expounds in his works.

"He had a vision. He was an elevated being and lived in an elevated consciousness that had a vision that won't go away," Dyer said. "[Sheikh Zayed] decided the UAE was going to be a country that would be living from a place of love. That this place was going to be an oasis in an otherwise part of the world that wasn't accustomed to the kind of thoughts that he had."

Dyer's life mission

Despite the financial success and fame, Dyer says his objective in life is to aim higher than a comfortable home and healthy bank balance.

He explains our true character is defined by how we react to stressful situations. "My goal in my life is to live in a place that I call God realisation. There are different kinds of love and I aspire at this stage of my life, at the age of 72, to live in this place and this place only," he said.

"So that no matter what kind of pressure that is put upon me, no matter what I hear, the only thing that comes out of me is what came out of your beloved Prophet Mohammed. This is not a prescription of building a wonderful country, but for creating a world where we can rid ourselves from the violence, hatred, bitterness, the tension and the fear and the wars and the kind of things that we are hearing every day in the media."

The orange metaphor

Dyer explained his famous orange metaphor in that whatever is squeezed out of ourselves is our true character.

"When someone squeezes you, that is, puts pressure on you, that has said something about you that you found offensive, that behaves towards you in a way that you would be upset about and out of you comes anger, fear, stress, anxiety and worry, is it because of who did the squeezing?" he said.

"Because sometimes we say, 'If he or she hadn't done that I wouldn't have been upset,' but the fact is anyone could squeeze an orange and the same thing would come out because that's what's inside."

The ego

Dyer warned the audience of the doubts and false beliefs instigated by our own egos. "It is an acronym for Edging God Out," he said.

"It is the false self. A belief system we have that tells us who we are is defined by certain types of qualities and characteristics. We are told that our identity is not in who we are. Instead, it is what I own and what I have. If we begin to believe that who we are is what we own, we have a tendency to say the more that we have the better that I am. So we try to accumulate as much as we can."

Self-reliance

As well as living spiritually, Dyer says that learning self-reliance is a necessity to living a content life.

"I believe I came to this world to teach this concept called self-reliance," he said. "When you ask the question who am I and you define it on what you have and what you do, then you keep yourself from reaching a higher level of what I call extraordinary consciousness.

"It is something that the founder of your country had and each and every one of us has. The problem is that we are so fixed, in our subconscious minds, on what our limitations are and what we can't accomplish that we literally begin to react like it was a reality."

Follow us