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.”
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