How to Prepare for The Shift

Exclusive Interview with Laurie Nadel, Ph.D.

Q: Dr. Dyer, you write about what happens when we step into the afternoon of life. How do people know when they’re in the afternoon of life? I mean, what kind of shifts happen in our lives?

WAYNE DYER: Carl Jung writes that the afternoon of our lives represents the time when we begin to shift away from the ego being the dominant force in our life. We begin moving towards a life journey that has meaning. The morning of our lives is really occupied by ambition—getting as much as you can, collecting as much stuff as you can get, impressing as many people as you can, preparing yourself for a job, saving your money, setting goals, pleasing everybody, and doing the right thing. Even getting good grades in school revolved around the ego part of us, which really believes that who we are is what we do, what we get, and what other people think of us. That’s basically the essence of the ego. In the afternoon of your life, you don’t do life. You do what resonates with the callings of your soul.

Q: How does the current global economic, sociopolitical, and spiritual crisis give people a surprising opportunity to find their true purpose?

WAYNE DYER: Yeah. First of all, I’m not in a crisis, and I’m not in an economic crisis at all.

Q: No, I understand that but other people are.

WAYNE DYER: I think a big part of this “crisis” that everybody is talking about is all about fear. We’ve been force-fed a steady diet of fear. The statistics come out—500,000 jobs lost. Five-hundred thousand jobs lost doesn’t mean that a half a million people are going to go jump off a cliff or even get unemployment. They’re going to get different jobs or they’re going to do something different.

Everybody that was making cassette tapes ten years ago lost his job, but it doesn’t mean that that’s a horrible crisis. It means that those people are now making DVDs or that they’re moving. The world is always shifting. The Tao teaches us to get to a place of contentment and become the observer. Just notice it. The material world is never flat. It always has its ups and downs. In a deep well within us all misfortune and good fortune is hidden. In all good fortune, misfortune is hidden. When you’re at a peak, you know you’re going to go down into a valley. When you hit the bottom, you’re going to go up. We just kill ourselves with all of this information, and all of this fear. You can’t go anywhere without hearing people talk about it.

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