Excerpt from Spiritual Partnership: The Journey to Authentic Power

Change, possibilities, and power that we could not have imagined are reshaping the entire human experience. New values, goals, and intentions are everywhere appearing like grass in the spring. This grass is growing quickly, and wherever it grows, beauty appears. With it come fields of flowers and vast forests. A new and surprising world is emerging in new and surprising ways. We are all students in a new school, explorers in new territory, and pioneers in a new human experience.

This unprecedented transformation in human experience has two parts. We can call them Process A and Process B. Process A is happening automatically, so to speak. No one needs to do anything to make Process A happen. Process A is occurring in millions of individuals, and soon Process A will occur in all humans. Process B is a different story. It requires choice. Specifically, you must choose to make Process B happen or it will not happen in you. Even if others choose to make Process B happen in themselves, Process B will not happen in you until you choose to make it happen. In short, (1) Process A is happening to everyone, or soon will, and there is nothing that you or anyone else can do about it; (2) Process B is happening only to individuals who choose to make it happen in themselves; no one else can make it happen in them; and they cannot make it happen in anyone else.

Let’s give Process A and Process B names. Process A is the expansion of human perception beyond what we can see, hear, taste, touch, and smell. It is a very big deal. Process A is seeing for yourself that the world is larger than you thought—much larger—and also different than you could have imagined. Before Process A occurs, your perceptions of the world are confined to what your five senses tell you about it. After Process A occurs, your five senses continue to tell you about the world and, in addition, you experience more. The “more” is sometimes difficult to describe to individuals who have not yet experienced Process A, but actually, millions of individuals have already experienced Process A or are experiencing it and haven’t realized it yet.

Process A allows you to know things about others that your five senses cannot tell you, for example, that someone is going to call you just before she calls, that your daughter in another city has been in an accident, that your grandparent is passing on, that you should avoid driving until you check the brakes on your car, and so on. In other words, Process A involves intuition in a big way. Process A also allows you to experience yourself in new ways, for example, as more than your mind and your body. It reveals your life as purposeful and calls you to your purpose like water calls a thirsty man. Process A allows you to encounter meaning in unexpected ways, for example, a brief experience that everything is perfect, or a feeling of connection with a stranger. Process A allows you to see from an impersonal perspective. From that perspective, all of your experiences—even the most painful—serve your spiritual development and the spiritual development of those around you. They provide exactly what you need to develop the strength, compassion, and wisdom to give the gifts that you were born to give.

Process A is an expanded awareness that includes not only the perceptual system of the five senses but also a second system that detects intelligence, compassion, and wisdom that are real but not physical. This system allows you to experience nonphysical reality in many ways, including those just mentioned. Process A is multisensory perception. This is the great transformation in human consciousness that is currently emerging throughout the human species. Within a few generations, all humans will be multisensory. They will experience not only the domain of space, time, matter, and duality that has been the totality of experience for most humans since the origin of humanity, but also nonphysical domains and dynamics that affect us and that we affect.

This brings us to Process B. Process B is bringing the new potential that comes with Process A into your life. Multisensory perception (Process A) changes your perception, but it does not change you. It shows you things that you could not see before, but it does not make you use your new knowledge. It illuminates dynamics that you could not see—dynamics that you can apply to change your life and world permanently for the better—but it does not require you to apply them. It reveals your creative power, but it does not make you create wisely. On the contrary, you will continue to create as you have in the past until you choose otherwise. If you are angry, for example, Process A (multisensory perception) will not make you less angry. It also will not create different consequences for you than acting with anger has created in the past. People will still avoid you, still be intimidated by you, still refuse to be vulnerable with you, and you will still be isolated, lonely, longing for meaningful relationships, and angry. Process B is experiencing and changing in yourself the interior sources of your painful emotions (such as anger, jealousy, vengefulness, and so on), obsessive thoughts (such as judging others or yourself, longing for someone or something to change your life, and so on), compulsive activities (such as workaholism, perfectionism, and so on), and addictive behaviors (such as overeating, smoking, drinking alcohol, using drugs, watching pornography, gambling, and so on). It is also experiencing and cultivating in yourself the interior sources of your pleasing emotions (such as gratitude, contentment, appreciation, and awe of Life). In short, Process B is creating the fulfilling and joyful life that is calling to you.

This takes work, but choosing Process B can produce almost instantaneous results in your life. In other words, choosing Process B can fundamentally change your life in a very short time. This does not mean that you become a radically different person the first or second time you engage in Process B. Process B is not that simple or easy. However, each change that you make in yourself as you engage in Process B is fundamentally transformative. The first change is fundamentally transformative, no matter how small it may appear. The second change is fundamentally transformative, and so forth. Process B is incremental. It happens choice by choice, and each choice that you make moves you in a new direction toward a new and healthy goal—a personality whose experiences are so dramatically different that you cannot always foresee what they will be.

Process B requires you to choose words and deeds, moment by moment, that will create joyful and constructive consequences even when painful or violent emotions roar through you. Process B is changing your life with the force of your own will, guided by your own awareness, with intentions that you consciously choose, assisted by the compassion and wisdom of the Universe experienced in personal and meaningful ways. This transformation is more than change toward a better or more healthy life. It is transformation toward the highest, most noble, healthy, and grounded part of you. That is your soul.

In other words, Process B is finding and changing all the parts of your personality that do not intend what your soul intends, and finding and cultivating all the parts of your personality that do intend what your soul intends. Your soul intends harmony, cooperation, sharing, and reverence for Life. Each time you create with one of these intentions, you create authentic power—a life of meaning, fulfillment, gratitude, vitality, creativity, and joy. Process B is creating authentic power.

Excerpted from SPIRITUAL PARTNERSHIP by Gary Zukav. Copyright © 2010 by Gary Zukav. Used with permission of HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers.