Mike Dooley’s Excellent Adventure

by Roger Yale, Los Angeles Entertainment Today, 2/7/03

"Don't just see the magic, engage it! Challenge it! Dare it! Dream big, with every expectation that your dreams will manifest. Demand that they come true! You're not beholden to life, life is beholden to you. You are its reason for being. You came first." — Mike Dooley

"Infinite Possibilities proves Dooley to be the most literate and professional of all inspirational self-betterment gurus." — Roger Yale

A few months ago I was invited by a friend to join something called the TUT Adventurers Club by visiting www.tut.com and taking “the oath,” which begins, “In the face of adversity, uncertainty and conflicting sensory information, I hereby pledge to remain ever mindful of the magical, infinite, loving reality I live in — a reality that conspires tirelessly in my favor.” The oath continues for another paragraph, but I got the gist and decided to sign up, deciding it couldn’t hurt and that I have a lust for anything smacking of self-improvement anyway. Since then, I have received regular e-mails with the subject heading “TUT: A note from the universe.” For the most part, these little messages have been uplifting, challenging and loving. It as never occurred to me that with a single mouse click I could unsubscribe from the Universe itself. I need all the help I can get.

After a while, I began browsing the actual TUT Web site, and I became intrigued by Mike Dooley, the guy who put all of this together. I noticed that he had a couple of books in the offing, Lost in Space (TUT $5.95) and Totally Unique Thoughts: Reminders of Life’s Everyday Magic (TUT $8.95). I was most interested in a 12 CD set called Infinite Possibilities: The Art of Living Your Dreams (TUT $129.40), which is a full 12 hours of Dooley himself laying out his compelling philosophical take on what he calls the “Truths of Being.” I had to take a chance, so I approached Dooley for a copy of the CD set and both books.

Twelve hours of audio is daunting in itself, but having been a fan of the “big boys” like Anthony Robbins, Wayne Dyer, Earl Nightingale, et al, I came away with the realization that Dooley is the most literate and professorial of them all. Even in casual conversational tones he betrays a dazzling intellect. His “thoughts become things” premise is used as a point of departure into everything else he covers here, and that is quite a lot: beliefs, relationships, reincarnation, angels, soul mates, UFOs, ghosts, visualization, etcetera. With Dooley, it is all about “bulldozing our limitations” and creating our own realities. We have the power to choose, we write the script ourselves, and “sin is nothing more than an honest mistake.” Thankfully, Dooley reminds us that we can never manipulate others with any sort of mumbo-jumbo. It just doesn’t work.

Dooley was raised a Catholic, but soon started to feel alienated by all of the dogma. He feels that Jesus was misrepresented. He holds that the Bible is full of “mind-blowing insights and parables” but could prove to be misleading. I enjoyed the references to the old biblical adage “as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he,” but I thought James Allen and Napoleon Hill had that concept sown up. Dooley goes beyond this by telling his audience “as one believes so shall one think.” An interesting slant.

Cornerstone to this philosophy is the enticing thought that anything is possible, and that the Universe itself conspires to make our thoughts reality, with the caveat that one shouldn’t try too hard. We must let go a bit more and let the Universe do its job.

I found myself speculating as to why none of the heavy hitters in the self-improvement industry are taking Dooley under their wings. My theory is that Dooley is much more of an entrepreneur than I suspected, or that he is simply too intellectually elite than the others and is an untouchable to all of those Chicago or Madison Avenue types. Does Dooley’s professorial approach shoot him in the foot or does this enrich his coffers more than I can comprehend?

The site itself (www.tut.com) is a model of e-commerce, is simple to navigate, and gives another insight into why Dooley doesn’t have to deal with third parties: control! Launched in 1989 by Dooley, his graphic artist brother Andy (www.andydooley.com) and their mother, author cum screenwriter Sheelagh Mawe, TUT began as a T-shirt company, originally selling these from sidewalk carts, kiosks, etcetera — and eventually garnering stores at bigger malls and wholesaling to companies like Macy’s and Disney World. This phase of the business closed in 1999. In July 2000, TUT’s Adventurers Club was launched. The site boasts not only online shopping, but free discussion groups called e-Safaris, and will eventually host actual adventures to exotic, faraway lands.

Dooley favors the Swahili greeting, “Jambo,” and has morphed it to mean “glad our paths have crossed in this most amazing of all adventures called life.” I am glad as well, and I believe the man is on to something. We need only to think for ourselves to see the truths at our fingertips.

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