Abundance in 2012

Learning about you

Charles Fillmore, the co-founder of Unity said there is a divine law of equilibrium that corresponds to the law of balance and poise that holds the suns and the planets in place.  The law of balance that he spoke of is based on love and justice.  Love and justice is your true nature.  It is who you are, and you can’t be anything else.  Being created in the image and likeness of God means your nature is the nature of God.

Let me ask you some questions about your nature.  Can you accumulate your own wealth for your own use, and never give any of it to help another person, or to help an organization you believe does something worthwhile for others?  Are you capable of hoarding it all for yourself, and being happy doing it?  Can you play a Saturday game of golf or tennis, and fully enjoy the strength and health of your own body, knowing there are people dying of cancer, children being born with Aids, elderly suffering with Alzheimers, and do nothing about it?  Can you enjoy the smooth relationships of your own small family, knowing there are people who suffer because of family violence, and don’t even know healing is an option?  Can you join a wonderful community and take what you need from your time there and give nothing to support it?  Of course you can’t.

   The point I’m trying to make is that living a life of love and justice isn’t some distant goal you have to accomplish.  You are already doing it because it is your nature and you can’t help it.  What we can accomplish is to make our lives of love and justice more powerful, more effective, by making that twelve inch journey between heart and head; by becoming more aware, more conscious of our true nature.  How many of you consciously think of yourselves as a force of love and justice?  What would happen if you did learn to think that way all the time?  Suppose every conscious decision you make, every waking action you take, was based on the clear realization that you are love and justice in expression.

   Know the truth about yourself, and watch your life expand!

Abundance 2012

Learning About Others

Whether we think the world is a wonderful place or think it’s an awful place, we mostly operate on unconscious assumptions.  We have assumptions about the ways love can show up in our lives.  We have assumptions about what will make us happy or unhappy.  But if we take the time to notice the daily details which comprise the quality of our lives, gratitude blooms.  Here are some ideas to ponder from Rabbi Pliskin's "Happiness: Formulas”

“Right this moment, there are a multitude of people all around the planet involved in serving you. Many of them you will never meet in person, but you will benefit greatly from their activities.
There are farmers who are planting and harvesting for you.
There are people in the clothing industry who are weaving the cloth and designing clothing you will eventually wear.
There are trucks, boats, and planes that are shipping the food
you will eat, the clothes you will wear, and many other items
that you will buy or use.
There are people who are involved in making certain that
you have water, electricity, phone service, and books.
The postal authorities are busy at work
delivering the letters you sent and bringing you mail that others
have sent you.
There are inventors who are working day and night on items
that will one day be yours.
There are engineers, mechanics,
and a wide variety of laborers all around the globe
who toil for your benefit.
There are medical researchers working to
find cures for illnesses that might one day save your life.
Whenever you see a large crowd of people, it is a
reminder to be grateful to all of those who are involved in one
way or another in enhancing the quality of your life.”

So, what are you contributing to enhance the quality of life for others?  Begin to look at what you do, whether at work or in your leisure time, as sacred service.  Recognize that you touch the life of every being on the planet with everything you do.  Even the simplest, most ordinary activities are a blessing when you make it your intention to be a blessing.  Try these words as a reminder in the morning.  “I am blessed and I am a blessing.”

We are all one family.  Our personal energy interacts with that of everyone else.  Everyone; two legged and four, wings or fins or none of these.  Learn to look for the sacred in each and you will discover how much more joy is waiting for you and how very much you are loved.

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Abundance in 2012

More of Learning to Ask

   The first barrier to asking for what we want is ignorance, and the second barrier to asking for what we want is limiting and inaccurate beliefs about ourselves and those with whom we share our world.  Parents, schools, the media, religious training, and the medical profession have programmed us all with some of them.  Have you ever heard any of these phrases at home, or, worse are you saying them to your own children?  “You’re so selfish, all you think about is yourself.  As long as you live in my house you’ll live by my rules.  When I want your opinion, I’ll give it to you.  You don’t understand enough, I know best.  Just shut up and do as you are told.”  At school, the one who ask questions or asks for the teacher’s help is the brown-noser, the teacher’s pet.  The media sets unreal standards of wealth and beauty and character.  The Marlboro man never cries.  Church doctrine, misused, can be devastating.  “It is more blessed to give than to receive” has created generations of martyrs.

   Stop listening to that stuff and use your Divinely seeded intelligence!  You won’t receive if you don’t ask and you won’t have anything to give if you don’t receive!  We are taught not to question the doctor’s diagnosis, prescription, or the amount of time we have to wait for our so-called appointment.  The programmed message is that we are too ignorant to participate in our own health care.  All of these messages and others like them warp our understanding of who we are and what is possible for us, and we come to believe we don’t deserve any more than we get.  We all have limiting beliefs.  What are yours?

   The third barrier to asking is fear.  Fear of rejection, fear of looking stupid, fear of being seen as powerless, fear of humiliation, fear of punishment, fear of abandonment, fear of endless obligation.  Can you identify your fears about asking for what you want?  We already know what the worst thing not asking gets us.  Nothing.  Nothing but a life of quiet desperation.  What is the worst thing that could possibly happen if you asked mother, spouse, boss, child, authority figure or God, to give you what you want?   Even if the answer is “no” there is a blessing in it.  Maybe we need to learn to ask more clearly or improve our timing or learn who is the right person to ask.  Any time we learn something, we have received something.

   The fourth barrier is low self-esteem.  Believing my needs are not important, I’m not worth it.  The Alladin Factor by Canfield and Hansen suggest we look to the person on our left and the one on our right.  Only one of the three of us is OK.  We are suffering from a national epidemic of low self-esteem.  Would you pick yourself out of any given crowd of three people as the one who was OK?  As the one who was truly worthy of the abundant life, the kingdom of heaven as your dwelling place, right here and now.  Low self esteem is immensely dangerous.  Those who suffer from it become either manipulative, aggressive or hermits rather than being able to face life with faith and joy.  Remember who you are: a spiritual being created in the image and likeness of the Divine.  Low self esteem is a huge lie.

   The fifth barrier to asking is pride.  How many of you are familiar with the Marine Corps cadence count.  Guts, guts, pride, pride, loyalty, loyalty, one, two, three, four, United States Marine Corp.  We women have enough trouble with pride, but men have really had it ground in.  Asking is equated with being a wimp, a failure, not pulling your own weight.  You’re weak. You’re needy.  If you ask, you will be judged as not having enough, or doing enough, or being enough.  So what.  If you don’t ask, you won’t be able to have enough, do enough or be enough, and neither will anyone else.  Stop and think about this for a minute.  If I have to ask someone else for something, I’m afraid it means I’m weak.  If someone else asks me for something, I don’t look down on him or her, I feel needed and valued.   Why am I so much more generous in my opinion of others than in my opinion of myself?  Or am I being generous to others?  Maybe it’s my arrogant pride that says “I’m good enough to help you, but I’ll never let you think I need you for anything.”  Excessive pride and low self esteem are two sides of the same coin and neither one serves us.

   By the way, I’d just like to let you know that all my “I am Prosperous” affirmations really did work.  They led me to discover the critical importance of asking, and my prosperity has been continually increasing ever since.  So my prayer for you is that you will go out and catch a good dose of “Gimme” consciousness and begin to put it to work for yourself.  Discover the limiting beliefs you have accepted from your environment and choose again based on your adult intelligence.  What are your fears?  They are usually silly shadows without real substance.  How would you measure your self esteem?  As a child of the divine you should have a healthy dose of it.  A sense of pride is a good thing, but excessive pride blocks every area of abundance.

   Take this journey of inner exploration.  Take all the time you need.  Then choose again.  No one and nothing outside of you can block you from a life of complete abundance.

Abundance in 2012

Learning to Ask

   The ideas shared in the next few weeks of this blog come from my own experience and from a 1995 book by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, titled The Aladdin Factor.”  It is one of the best, most practical books on prosperity I have ever used in ministry and in my personal life.

  I’d like to invite you to take a moment and examine the prosperity you are experiencing.  Are prosperous financially?  Are you experiencing abundance in your relationships?  If you feel prosperous because your job is fulfilling, acknowledge that.  Do you have a rich spiritual life?  How about your health?  Are you abundantly healthy?  For every yes answer, congratulations!  How did you create that?  You did, you know. 

   Now think about all the areas of prosperity I just listed; financial, relationships, work fulfillment, spirituality, physical and emotional health.  If you are less prosperous than you want to be in any one of those areas, continue reading.  Not a single person has reached perfection yet.  Well, that’s why we’re here, isn’t it?  Just let’s not try to reach perfection alone, and please let’s not judge the time it takes or the quality of mine vs. anyone else’s.

   What does prosperity mean?  What does it look like?  How much of it do we already have?  How can we get more?  Why does it often seem to be so elusive?  What are the barriers to prosperity?  Are they our own barriers, or is that just the way the world is.

   I want to start by exploring some of the barriers to our prosperity.  Why doesn’t prayer work sometimes?  New Thought teaches that denials and affirmations change your mind, and changing your mind will change your life.  So you say “Nothing can keep me from my good, I am prosperous,” 200 times a day for three months and nothing happens.  Your bank account is still in the red.  Why?

   The first time I participated in a 4T Prosperity Program was difficult.  4T stands for Tithing of your Time, your Talent and your Treasure.  I was a full time student, working part time and not doing well in my primary relationship.  About the tenth week the fifteen or so of us ministry students in the class hit the same wall.  We had seen no results after faithfully following the program and repeating “I am prosperous” two hundred times a day and we were all feeling a little surly and ill used.

   We had a substitute teacher that night, and she had to leave early.  She told us to turn over the tape we used in the first half of the class and finish the second half by ourselves.  The tape was in one of those dual tape decks, and when we came back from our break and punched the button, we punched the wrong one, and instead of hearing the 4T tape a children’s song started playing.  It went something like this.  “Gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme, more, more, more.  Bigger, bigger, better, better, what’s it all for?”  We all broke up.  Several of us said, “I’m not using this junk in my church.  It’s just a slick used car salesman way for a church to squeeze more money out of the congregation.” 

   We laughed at 4T as a used car salesman program, but we were wrong.  Any time you find yourself getting judgmental about someone else or something else, it’s because something has been triggered in you that needs healing.  Our somewhat holier than thou group of ministry students was no exception.

   You know, God is so good to us.  We are being loved into existence by the force, the power, that created the universes.  Loved into existence, and loved into growth and change and healing.  And the Creator has a wonderful sense of humor.  It’s true!  I think God laughs the hardest when we are taking ourselves soooo very seriously that we feel we can make correct judgments from our exalted plane of consciousness.

   The message about what exactly we needed to heal was given to us clearly and precisely in that children’s song that made us laugh so hard.  Gimme, ....................  We were all having trouble with the Gimme complex, but not quite in the way we thought.  We weren’t upset because somebody was saying “gimme” to us.  The issue was our belief in our own right to say “gimme.”  It’s not spiritual to be selfish, you know.  It’s not even nice socially.  And here we were, a group of judgmental students, participating in a program that required that we clarify what we wanted, and then ask for it, and keep asking for it in front of each other.  We had to learn to say “gimme” and it just didn’t feel good.

   Did you ever get a hand slap and a sharp “no” when you were a kid and grabbed for something you wanted?  Did you ever have to wait for everyone else to get some before you got some?  Maybe there wasn’t any left when you got there.  “Wait your turn, wait in line, don’t grab. Never ask Aunt Rose or Grandma for money.  That’s his toy, don’t take it; be nice and share your toys.  Aren’t you ever satisfied?  The more I give you, the more you want.  Don’t act greedy you’re embarrassing me.  You’re such a spoiled child!”

   Yes, some of this training is necessary.  We need to teach our kids how to wait in line, to respect what belongs to others, to be fair.  But often we go overboard.  Some children are expected not to want anything at all, or even to know what they want.  Mom and dad know what we want and need, so asking is selfish and unnecessary.  Instead of being taught how and when to appropriately ask for what we want, we have been taught not to ask at all.  Somehow it’s shameful to ask.  If you’re going to ask for something, do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.

   As a result, women grow up learning to manipulate and men grow up learning aggression, and we all expect someone who loves us to automatically know what we want and need and give it to us.  “If you really loved me, I wouldn’t have to ask.”  That’s what we were taught.  Of course the other side of that is when someone who loves us gives us something we don’t want at all, we have to pretend to like it or risk hurting his or her feelings. 

   The Christmas and birthday presents I always wanted were things like perfume or jewelry or a silk blouse; the stuff I wouldn’t buy for myself because it was extravagant.  What I got was new toasters, vacuum cleaners, a sewing machine, (I hate sewing.  I really hate it.) And one birthday I got a new umbrella; a big black masculine thing, because it was larger and sturdier and more practical than the pretty ones made for women.  I’m not just talking to the women here.  How many men are thrilled with a new tie or pajamas or a new wrench under the Christmas tree?  And how many of you have pretended to like those presents, while feeling hurt that this person who is supposed to love you never gives you what you want?  Did you ever ask?  I didn’t.  And I never got what I really wanted.

   Not being able to ask for what we want completely blocks our prosperity.  Asking is the way we rub the magic lamp with the genie in it.  You know, God doesn’t force anything on us.  We can all go home every day, flop in a chair with a beer and moan about how everyone else has more than we do.  We can spend the rest of our lives doing that and no one is going to interfere.  That’s why Jesus said “Ask and it shall be given to you, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you.”  He’s teaching us that it’s not only OK to ask, but it’s also necessary.

   The first barrier to asking is ignorance.  We don’t know its ok to ask and we don’t know what to ask for.  I have a friend who has hated her job for 20 years, just hated it, but she has no idea what else she could do with her life.  And she is so numbed out that she can’t even get interested in exploring other possibilities.  Some of us don’t know who to ask or when to ask, or how to communicate skillfully when we do ask.  We just don’t know!!  Ignorance is like cancer.  If you don’t treat it, it will kill you.  But as long as you’re still breathing, it’s not too late.

   Here is the invitation.  Explore your own inner world deeply to discover exactly what you want to ask for, who to ask, and how to do it appropriately.  If you take the time to post what you discover as a response to this blog, you may just discover how much you have in common with others.  As the Dalai Lama said, “we all want the same things.”

Happy New Year

New Year Invitation

Welcome to 2012.  We haven’t had this much hype about end times and disasters since the millennium.  Maybe I’m a bit daffy, but sometimes the gloom and doom gets so intense it makes me giggle.  After all, we have survived through two millennia since the time of Jesus and many others before that, and hardly anyone talks about the predictions of Nostradamus any more.  Most of them either haven’t happened or haven’t been recognized and understood.  The human race appears to be addicted to the boogyman and we seem to relish bad news more than good.  Psychologists might have a good time with that one, but as for me, I prefer to giggle at the silliness.

In spite of an ingrained tendency to worry which was firmly implanted in my early environment, it’s impossible to keep me stuck in the nasties for very long.  My ease in the face of dire predictions comes from many years of studying and practicing New Thought principles.  In the beginning it all seemed too good to be true; Pollyanna-ish in fact.  Over time it became very obvious the practices work.  Here’s a test you can run yourself.  Make a list of your hopes, dreams, fears and habitual language over the last five years.  Compare that list to the life you are experiencing today.  You will find more similarities than can be accounted for by coincidence.  For instance, my father who refused to swear used words like ‘my aching back’ and ‘pain in the butt’ experienced five surgeries in those areas in his later years.

So, what is a ‘Pollyanna?’  Someone who is an eternal optimist and sees good in spite of appearances to the contrary.  That’s not easy; it takes discipline and practice but it is so worthwhile.  It’s much easier to follow a belief that promises redemption if you just obey, but if you wan to be the master of your soul, the discipline of New Thought is far more useful.

Here is a key to the invitation for 2012.  Like minds joined in focused intention can accomplish anything.  In the words of anthropologist Margaret Mead, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

So, here is an invitation for 2012 that may make even the doomsayers celebrate.  Pay careful attention to everything that is good, globally and personally.  Then tell people about it.  Email your friends good news, post it on Facebook, talk it up every chance you get.  Two things will happen. 

1. Your outlook and therefore your life experience will dramatically improve.  I promise, but you have to make it a practice so deeply ingrained that it becomes automatic.  

2. Enough of us can create a tipping point that will lift the world out of problems that seem hopeless into a new and abundant way of life for all the children of the earth.

These are not new ideas.  The promise can be found in the book of Revelation, 21:1-2  “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.  And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.”

It doesn’t matter if the change we need comes because it is destined and the Mayans predicted it, or if the change comes because we are using 2012 to make up our minds to change.  Lets just do it.