What shapes the events we encounter in life? What molds them into success or failure, health or illness, poverty or wealth? Fate, luck, happenstance? Or a deeper dynamics not yet understood by science?

While a vice president in the computer industry, Lynda Dahl stumbled onto an astonishing message: Our lives are crafted from the fabric of our thoughts, feelings and beliefs. What seems to happen to us is caused by us. By changing our beliefs, we literally redesign our lives into what we choose to experience.

In Ten Thousand Whispers, she further explores the metaphysical structure behind conscious creation, offers many techniques for making desires of choice happen, and tells startling stories that bring further revealing insights into the framework behind creation, conscious or otherwise.

Full Introduction Chapter

As in your terms the cavemen ventured out into the daylight of the earth, so there is a time for man to venture out into a greater knowledge of his subjective reality, to explore the dimensions of selfhood and go beyond the small areas of himself in which he has thus far found shelter.

The radio talk show host inhaled quickly and let the next zinger fly. "How can you possibly believe, Lynda, that a ring you say you lost could 'rematerialize' (big quote marks drawn by impatient fingers slashed the air) thirty miles from the scene of the loss?" Uh, guess I hallucinated the experience, Jer. "Well, Jerry, as we come to understand the concept of simultaneous time and the creative abilities of consciousness…"

"And how can you believe you created a million dollars through what you call conscious creation?" I dunno. Guess you had to be there. "Well, Jerry, as we come to understand the concept of simultaneous time and the creative abilities of consciousness…"

"Hold on a minute, honey. You honestly canceled your health insurance because you know you'll never need it? Now isn't that stretching things a bit?" Well, sweetie, it depends on your perspective. "No, Jerry, not at all. It gets down to consciousness and time and…"

I watched in awe as Jerry turned into the avenger of the common, the voice of the conventional, the arbiter of the unthinking. With cape flying he soared across the heavens, aglow with the flush of victory. He had slain the interloper and secured the mediocre for yet another generation. He felt damn good.

But the universe works in mysterious ways, at least in dreams. Jerry had flown too close to the heat of new thought, and it was his demise. His cape disintegrated and his stubby body melted. He limped and dripped through the sky, a mere stunted mortal in the end.

I awoke chuckling. I felt damn good.

Since the publication of my first book, Beyond the Winning Streak: Using Conscious Creation to Consistently Win at Life, I've been on numerous radio and television shows, and I only met Jerry in my dreams. Most hosts are gracious and curious, if not completely accepting of the idea that we literally create our lives based on our thoughts, attitudes and beliefs. Their audiences are the same. I noticed that if I have time to explain the basic structure of our reality in concrete terms, they click in, turn on, light up more quickly; but if I ride the surface too long, their natural cynicism overcomes good manners. And why not? I understand their position—I've been there myself. As a former twenty-year computer industry veteran, I am well acquainted with their attitude. It was mine for years.

There is a phrase from the song "I Am Woman" that goes, "…and I know too much to go back and pretend." As I explained in Beyond the Winning Streak, I did materialize a ring lost many miles from where it reappeared, I did create a million dollars after choosing wealth as my road to freedom, and I did cancel my health insurance because I know I'll never need it. And I've accomplished dozens of other things through conscious creation, also. It doesn't take a two-by-four to get my attention: Something of significance is going on here. So why would I choose to go back and pretend otherwise?

I'd have to forget that there is a structure to this reality that can be used to our advantage, helping us to bring abundance in all things into our lives. I'd have to try not to remember that we can use this structure to fulfill our desires and wishes, because that's why it's in place. And I'd have to deny its logic—not logic honed by our present limited ideas of what is and is not possible, but one that is far greater in scope, much grander in design, larger than life as we know it. This logic was initiated at the birth of the universe, an integral part of the vastness called All That Is or God. However, it's a logic that escapes notice because it's obvious only when we become aware of it.

By going back and pretending, I'd have to play victim once more to life's whims and join the billions of people who have died believing in the powerlessness of the individual. Through the centuries they've paraded, participating in the dramas of wars, ghettos, famines, crime and commonly accepted illnesses. They've scurried through the after-dark streets of New York, London, Bogota and Our Town, metaphorically genuflecting to their favorite icon of safety as their fear rose with the moon. In self-defense they've built bigger weapons, developed more medicines and prayed to the current god of protection. And in spite of their safe-guards, the majority of those who have inhabited the face of the earth have died from disease or slaughter.

So goes our world through the millennia, and so it will continue until we change our ideas of what does and does not constitute reality, and until we understand our participation in events. If we continue to choose not to believe we have the slightest impact on the creation of our lives, we can't possibly break the cycle. We will follow in the footsteps of our forefathers, looking to an outside source to bail us out of our latest trouble, but, instead, causing repeated tragedy. And how many more can we sustain, globally and individually?

A Blue, Blue Easter

Along with dozens of other moviegoers on Easter day in 1994, I cried out at the horror of the Holocaust as portrayed in Steven Spielberg's film, Schindler's List. My unfinished popcorn sat forgotten in my lap as I wiped at tears staining my cheeks. I sat mesmerized by scene after scene of indignity, indecency, terror and death. My heart ached with sadness at the gross violations of human against human—acts perpetrated in the name of superiority. My nerves froze with the hopelessness, the helplessness emanating from the wide screen.

But even with great emotion roiling through my mind, I suspected my tears were of a different weather than those of my companions in that high-tech auditorium. I suspected they still believed in evil, in victimization, in a god outside themselves. I suspected most of the Easter day moviegoers still believed in random acts of violence, in vulnerability, in unfortunate circumstances and bad luck. But of course they did, if they agreed with most of the world. And that's what caused my tears.

Over the past ten years I've become intimately familiar with the most freeing, exciting news ever; news that's been around since the beginning of time, but buried under the debris of civilization-imposed ignorance for long, long centuries. It casts individuals and their participation in events in a very different light, one that suggests power, purpose and meaning. And in that movie theater I shed tears for the human race, wondering just how much longer it was going to take us to break the bonds of limiting past beliefs and move into our heritage—the right to consciously develop life on earth in whatever ways we see fit and proper by understanding and using our inherent capabilities.

So, where did we go wrong? In the only place we can ever get off track: our belief systems. We have chosen to believe that we're problem children from the outset, in conflict with a parent god; life happens by chance in a mechanistic universe; a dark force is at play in our world; and only God can secure our peace and only science can heal our hurting bodies.

On the surface of physical reality these assumptions stand tall, cloaked in apparent validity. We study the world at large and find evil incarnate—why else would unspeakable horrors continue? We look at an individual's inability to make the pain disappear—surely such transformations are only in the power of the Godhead or science? We gasp at human acts of nastiness toward all living things—isn't man degenerate by nature, angels gone awry? Given these assumptions and our belief in them, the road to global happiness seems remote indeed, fairy-tale illusion of the highest order.

But there is another way to view the world and our participation in it that maps a road toward peace and value fulfillment that is indeed attainable. This view affords we the people the status of whole, complete beings now and ever more, here on earth for quite a different learning objective than present-day theologies and sciences suggest. It drops the power of creation into the lap of each individual who has ever been or ever will be born into physical life, and it suggests that, once we learn what we're dealing with, we'll finally understand the genesis of events. And through this understanding, we will bring great change into our world.

The Gift of the Gods

I left mainstream America in thought, if not in deed, about eleven years ago. Firmly ensconced in the computer industry for almost fifteen years at that point and riding a wave of executive success, I hardly seemed a candidate for a stunning alteration in belief systems. But, there I was, along with my partner and love, Stan, and thousands of others, questioning the very foundation of world assumptions. My own personal upheaval of beliefs started when I read a book called Seth Speaks by the brilliant author Jane Roberts. The next book by Jane and Seth that I read, The Nature of Personal Reality, clinched it. I would never see our world or our reality through the blinders of the past again.

But who or what is Seth, anyway? According to his own definition, he's an energy essence personality no longer focused in physical reality. You might think of him as an intelligence residing outside time and space. He made himself known to acclaimed writer Jane Roberts and her artist/writer husband Robert Butts in 1963 while they were experimenting with a Ouija board for a book project of Jane's. Neither had had previous interest in or experience with the metaphysical and were quite unprepared for Seth's breakthrough introduction of himself.

But, given time and the quality of what they were getting on the board, Rob and Jane loosened their concerns, and Jane then allowed Seth to speak through her voice instead of the cumbersome Ouija board. With Rob transcribing Seth's words, they established a three-way working relationship that led to almost 1,800 sessions held over twenty-plus years, until Jane's death in 1984. Some of the sessions were specifically dictated by Seth as book material and now comprise nine published books and one yet-to-be-printed manuscript. Other sessions were incorporated, whole, in piece or in theory, into fourteen published books and one unpublished manuscript written by Jane, works not orchestrated by Seth. Then there are more than sixteen other manuscripts waiting to be compiled from Seth's discussions recorded during ESP classes Jane held for many years, and from sessions originally deleted from transcribed book material.

The Seth material challenges the very fabric of accepted global thought from which most theories and conclusions are presently drawn, especially the "law" of cause and effect. According to Seth, we are given the gift of the gods—the gift of creativity. He says there is only one rule of physical existence, and that is the fact that we literally create our individual realities through our thoughts, attitudes and beliefs. Events don't happen to us; we cause them by what we expect to see in our world and our lives. Every event we encounter and participate in is a physical reflection of what we think and feel. The implications of this statement are startling, for if we have created the reality of our individual and global lives, then surely we can change what we don't like.

Seth didn't present the world with the Great Cosmic Bible; he whispered universal truths into our ears. If a person is looking for the Ten Commandments of metaphysics, they'll not find them here. The material's non-dogmatic, non-superficial stance, coupled with information that astounds the intellect at times, has captured many readers' attention— seven million of them, in fact. Prestigious Yale University selected Jane and Rob's work for their archives, a tribute to its quality and importance. Interestingly, it's the only metaphysical body of work housed in the archives and one of the most visited, according to a Yale spokesperson.

But the bottom line is, does it work? Can we really change our lives by changing our thoughts? Do we literally have the power of creation at our fingertips? Run those questions by any number of Seth readers and be prepared for some evocative answers. In my case, as I wrote in my first book, by using conscious creation I moved myself out of a marketing manager's job with Apple Computer, Inc. into a vice presidency with another computer industry firm, and then went on to make a lot of money—all because of what Seth says is possible if we but know how to do it.

Ten Thousand Whispers is not about the Seth material per se, although some basic concepts will be covered. It's about each of us, you and me. It's about our heritage, our abilities, our future. It's about our power, our rights, our value fulfillment. It's about having what we want, becoming who we choose. And it's about our civilization and how we can contribute to its great purpose and intent through new understandings.

Summer of My Discontent

The summer of my twelfth year found me in an upper Michigan Bible camp. For the previous five or so years, my mother, two of my sisters and I had been attending a fundamentalist Christian church, although in the 1950s neither the adjective nor the meaning behind it were known to the general public. No different than most religious institutions, much of what was taught had to be taken on faith and interpretation, the latter being the purview of whatever slice of Christianity held your former.

I remember running to the first-aid station which my mother, a registered nurse, managed, and pulling her aside for a quiet conference. Several of my new friends had been spouting religious doctrine that had been taught to us in class that morning as though it was unquestioned gospel (pun intended). I was quite upset by their casual acceptance of the information and thought my mom could help explain away shadows of doubt lingering around my mind's periphery.

She tried, but I wasn't buying it as easily as she'd hoped. Finally, in exasperation tinged with humor, she said, "Honey, you're never going to be religious. You question too much!" Nine years later with the death of my mother, I decided the same thing. She had died after years of backbreaking work and little happiness to show for it, and my relentless questions about how that could happen to such a noble soul fissured into a break with the Church.

If three words can possibly describe the inner need of an individual, mine would be, "I must understand." I can't help it, I was born that way. My mind insists on understanding, not simply accepting. In recent years I've learned to mesh the intellect and intuitive, paying both their due, but when I first started reading the Seth material, my skittish movement toward or away from it was up for grabs. Fortunately, Seth made sense on a hard-core physical level as well as with the softer, less provable esoterica; so I stuck around.

Being of logic-oriented persuasion, the information that convinced me that if conscious creation can work at all it is because of this, is Seth's concepts of consciousness, simultaneous time and probabilities. No longer was I told simply to have faith that all would work out; I was told why, if I had faith, it would all work out. That information answers so many questions about the universal structure that allows and supports the creation of everything—events, material items, bodies, the environment, our world, indeed, all of physical reality—that it made it easier for me to give conscious creation a try.

I love the term "haphazard constructions." Seth used it a couple of times in his books, and it captured my imagination. Paraphrased, he says much of what we see in the world is a result of beliefs gone haywire. Because we don't know we're creating it all, we don't do it with finesse. We blunder into the creation of events and then must face their results, and it ain't pretty at times. Illness, accidents, poverty, victimization, aggression, loveless relationships…the list goes on. Haphazard constructions made manifest.

So, maybe it's time we drop currently accepted conventional thinking from the "A" list, since it hasn't exactly transformed our world into one of brotherly love and abundance for all, and move on to unconventional ideas that just may do the trick.

In Beyond the Winning Streak I told of my search for answers, the ongoing doubts that assailed me at every turn, and the culmination of my conscious creation efforts after several years of trying. After I completed the book, I realized it was my version of chapter one of conscious creation. My need to understand continues and, by its very nature, leads me into new challenges and further insights. This book is meant to be my version of chapter two of conscious creation. Many others around the globe are writing their own chapters, if not on paper, certainly in their psyches, as they also grapple with the intricacies of consciously living in a reality constructed of thought.

"Lynda Dahl has done it again. If you thought her first book Beyond the Winning Streak was good, wait until you read this one."

"This book is a wonderful option about another way of looking at the world."

"In Ten Thousand Whispers Lynda offers us much wisdom, indeed. I applaud her work. It's a fine accomplishment."

"Lynda Dahl . . . gives us a fascinating account of how conscious creation can enrich our lives. Her ideas are both helpful and practical and are in conformance with much of the new physics."

"Lynda Dahl helps us with the whispers and gives them deep and profound meaning. I strongly urge you put this book on the top of your list for must read."