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  There are examples everywhere of people who have large amounts of money but are purposeless in their souls. Famous actors and actresses plagued by drug habits, committing suicide at what others thought of as the peak of their careers. Hotshot businessmen plagued by fear, wracked with ulcers, and ending their lives because of business failures. Divorce rates among the very wealthy, skyrocketing along with painful courtroom squabbles over who gets what. Lottery winners plagued with alcoholism and ending up bankrupt or suicidal even though they are in possession of unimaginable bank accounts. When wealth is the reason for your activities, and the quality of your life is based on what you have accumulated compared with others, then prosperity is impossible. You will be back at suffering as your means of enlightenment.

  When you are on purpose, doing what you know you are here for, and forgetting about what will come into your life in the way of money and wealth, then money and wealth arrive in your life in amounts sufficient to provide you with a life of prosperity. And this is real magic in action. I can say this because it has always worked for me. When I chased after money, I never had enough. When I got my life on purpose and focused on giving of myself and everything that arrived into my life, then I was prosperous.

  Prosperity is not the result of following a strict set of gimmicks and strategies, it is a mind-set, a mind-set that is centered on your ability to manifest miracles. Whatever you have believed to be impossible, shift it around to create an inner prosperity picture.

  What follows are guidelines that you can use as you start to befriend your own miracle-making potential. Scarcity can go right out the window, replaced by the abundance that you once believed was only available for those lucky others.

  APPLYING PROSPERITY PRINCIPLES IN YOUR DAILY LIFE

  Paramahansa Yogananda put it in these words:

  Possession of material riches, without inner peace, is like dying of thirst while bathing in a lake. If material poverty is to be avoided, spiritual poverty is to be abhorred! For it is spiritual poverty, not material lack, that lies at the core of all human suffering.

  To create a world of real magic for yourself, keep these words in mind. First and foremost, your objective is to create a kind of spiritual consciousness within yourself. Then allow the universe to take over in all of its perfection.

  • Disdain all disbelief! Work out a system within your mind that allows you to imagine yourself living a prosperous life, with all the material things that are necessary. Send scarcity out of your mind and refuse to have those kinds of thoughts. When an old habitual scarcity thought begins to enter your consciousness, simply say, “Next!” That’s right, simply say to yourself, “next,” and it will remind you that the old thought is now finished, and you are entering a new prosperous thought process. Using “next” as a magic word will remind you to get on with the magic of believing, rather than the anguish of doubt. Commit to paper precisely what you would like to have appear in your physical life. By seeing it and reading it repeatedly you will plant that thought more firmly in your mind and you will begin to manifest that which you are imaging. I use this writing technique often, and I place the affirmation in a place that forces me to constantly read the words of the miracle I am in the process of manifesting.

  • Keep a corner of your mind focused exclusively on your images of prosperity. Go there often and use the power of your mind to sharpen your images of prosperity. Get down to specific details about what is there for you. Remind yourself that you deserve this corner of freedom that is uniquely your own and that no one can take from you. Don’t think for a moment that you have to win the lottery or have some unusually lucky circumstance show up in order for you to have this miracle in your mind become your reality. Just stay with the picture, or that real-magic zone that you are creating. You will soon be acting upon those images as well as attracting prosperity to you. Here is an example of what I am talking about, taken from a fabulous book called The Magic of Believing, by Claude Bristol:

  And this brings us to the law of suggestion, through which all forces operating within its limits are capable of producing phenomenal results. That is, it is the power of your own suggestion—that starts the machinery into operation or causes the subconscious mind to begin its creative work—and right here is where the affirmations and repetitions play their part. It’s the repetition of the same chant, the same incantations, the same affirmations, that leads to belief, and once this belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen.

  I have seen this work with my children over and over again. They repeat verbally, “I can do it, I can do it,” when they previously experienced failure. I am thinking of my daughter Sommer balancing herself on my hands and falling time after time, until she was urged to say those magic words out loud over and over. Then, after failing to balance herself twenty or thirty times, she suddenly experienced the real magic. Saying over and over again, “I can do it, I see myself standing on Daddy’s hands,” she had the power to make it happen. This is not fantasy. If it works anyplace, it can work everyplace. You must believe it, and have that real-magic zone within you that never permits doubt to creep in, and where you endlessly repeat the affirmation that will lead to belief that will lead to miracles.

  • Study the world of matter, of all material possessions at the subatomic level. Begin to note that everything material is nothing more than empty space when viewed from a closer perspective. See the folly of making that material world your master. Just like your thoughts, the material world is limitless. It is without beginning and end, totally abundant and totally available to you if you know what your true purpose here is.

  Remember, prosperity, like everything else, is experienced in your mind. If you are somehow able to think of yourself as prosperous, and no one or nothing outside of you can deter you from that belief, then in fact your life is a miracle of prosperity. It is not in how much you have accumulated, unless that is what you choose to believe. The great irony here is that when you see yourself as prosperous regardless of material possessions, and you act on that belief, then the material possessions will arrive in exactly perfect proportions for your well-being.

  • Develop a trust in your intuitive inner voices. It has been said that those who are classified as lucky are essentially those who go with their hunches, rather than with what others have prescribed. If you feel a strong inner inclination to change jobs, or locations, or to be around new people, or to try a particular investment, then place more trust in that hunch. This is your divine guidance encouraging you to take a risk, to ignore the ways of the herd, to be the unique individual that you are. Prosperity will be your experience of life, if that is how you begin to process life inside. It is inside that counts the most. This is the residence of your intuition, your guiding invisible force that never leaves you. Learn to trust it, and allow your physical body to travel the path that you are feeling within.

  My hunches have always guided me in my investments. I can honestly say that the only time I experienced a big loss financially was when I ignored my intuition and invested in “guaranteed municipal bonds” that were for the development of projects that I knew within me were inconsistent with my beliefs. I struggled with the decision, but since the yields were high and the bonds supposedly guaranteed, I went against my intuition. That decision cost me over $150,000 in defaulted bonds. My intuition told me to stay away from such projects and invest in only those things which I believed in strongly, but my lust for higher yields won out. It was a very powerful and costly lesson for me. I have since learned to go with what I am feeling inside, regardless of the advice I receive from others about the wisdom of my choice. I only invest in what I feel to be proper and moral, and that feeling comes from going within and trusting the guidance that I receive. Some call it a silly investment method, but I trust totally in my intuition—and prosperity is the result.

  • Work at replacing thoughts within you that reflect a scarcity consciousness. If you elect to constantly tell the world what is m
issing in your life, and how you never can get ahead, it is because you are in possession of an inner space that believes strongly in lacks. Those thoughts of scarcity include hardship, losing, difficulty and so on. These may be the topics that you find yourself discussing and the ways in which you present yourself over and over to everyone that you meet. You can replace these inner slogans that have come to be the logos of your life with new thoughts that include abundance, plenty, bountifulness, profit, ease, sustenance and the like. When you see these thoughts as the way your universe is, and process your world in these ways, the words and concepts will be your way of presenting yourself.

  The secret that sits in the center of your being and “knows” is that silent invisible soul that is yours to use as you like. You must begin to catch yourself when you are thinking in ways that subvert your own prosperity. You must monitor yourself all day long, and be sure to catch each and every thought that involves a scarcity consciousness. You can transform those thoughts, but only if you are willing to become your own monitor, and then do nothing more than transform the thoughts. Eventually, you will begin to act on the new thoughts, just as you previously acted on the old ones to create your life circumstances.

  • Develop a conviction in your heart that prosperity truly belongs to you. To think about prosperity is a great beginning. But you must make those thoughts that you are entitled to prosperity into actual beliefs. You must cultivate this kind of mental conviction if you are to manifest prosperity. This is your intention at work. It is the process of living through knowing. Merely wishing for it is not enough, for nothing will be truly in your life until you reach a conviction within you that it belongs there.

  While it may sound extreme to you, listen to these words of St. Mark (11:23–24) in terms of this divine principle, and see if you can grasp their significance for your own prosperity undertakings.

  Whosoever says to this mountain, “be removed and be cast into the sea,” and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will come to pass he will have whatever he says … whatever things you ask whenever you pray believe that you receive them, and you will have them.

  Those are the words of miracles. Yet in fact these are the very stepping-stones to your own prosperity in what you are capable of believing, knowing and intending in your life.

  • Trust in the divineness that you are and that is the perfection of the universe. When you have worked on the above beliefs, monitor yourself for a day, keeping track of how many scarcity thoughts versus prosperity thoughts you have, then surrender and stop fretting about it. Trust in that invisible force that flows through you. Remember—when you trust in yourself, you trust in the wisdom that created you! And obviously when you doubt yourself, you question that same divine intelligence that brought you here! Know within that the universal laws of prosperity and abundance have not been repealed. Know that if they worked for others they will work for you.

  Now surrender and relax about it, and you will know what to do. This is satori—instant awakening. You no longer have to worry; prosperity will indeed come to you, and you will be creating it in a magical way, just like the magic that you experience every time you create a thought out of nowhere. Trust in the miracle that you are. Trust that the universal force flows through you—if it didn’t you wouldn’t be reading these words in this moment. Then get on with your life in a purposeful way.

  • Now act prosperous! That’s right, act as if what you deserve in the way of prosperity were already here. The person who acts prosperous is very generous. Be that way right now. If you’re not generous when it is difficult, you won’t be generous when it is easy. You must be willing to give to others, even when your coffer is not full, for this is your purpose. Your purpose is independent of coffers. It is spiritual. Act in a spiritual way. Give at least 10 percent of what you see coming into your life to those who provide you with spiritual sustenance.

  For me, this principle has always worked in creating prosperity. I have always been a giver, even as a little boy. It was always easy for me to give up what I had in my pocket, even if it was only a few coins. I loved buying things for other people, and helping others of my choice to have more abundance in their lives. I have been giving much more than 10 percent to those I choose to assist and it always comes back to me more than tenfold. It seems to be a part of that invisible law of the divine.

  Living as if one is already prosperous is to be a generous person. Giving it away without any expectation is living according to your spiritual self first, and your physical self second. It is the most divine way that you can be, and it is the secret to manifesting your own miracles in this prosperity domain. Kahlil Gibran wrote the following inspiring words on this subject. Study them carefully—they reflect the prosperity consciousness I have been writing about in this chapter.

  And there are those who

  have little and give it all.

  These are the believers in life

  and the bounty of life,

  and their coffer is never empty.

  There are those who

  give with joy,

  and that joy

  is their reward.

  And there are those who

  give with pain,

  and that pain

  is their baptism.

  And there are those who

  give and know

  not pain in their giving,

  nor do they seek joy,

  nor give

  mindfulness of virtue;

  they give as in yonder valley

  the myrtle breathes

  its fragrance into space,

  through the hands

  of such as these

  God speaks,

  and from behind their eyes

  he smiles upon the Earth.

  When God speaks through your hands and smiles upon the earth through you, because you are an unconditional giver, a purposeful being, asking nothing of anyone, prosperity will be your reward.

  • When you have mastered the art of giving to others, then practice the equally important art of giving to yourself. Take a percentage of all that comes to you in the form of money, and invest it in yourself. Put that money into a savings plan that is yours to monitor. See it as your miracle fund, and be rigidly firm about your contributions to this personal, fast-growing account.

  I have been doing this for my entire adult life. I have put away a certain percentage of what comes to me into my own financial miracle fund. It is automatic with me, and I never ignore this principle. As a result I was able to make myself financially independent at a very young age.

  You will be surprised at how quickly this fund will grow and produce income for you, a specific percentage of which goes right back into your miracle fund. If one does this from as early as childhood, one could be financially independent by the age of thirty. This is nothing more than a physical-world investment in your own prosperity. It is a fantastic policy to teach your children, and it will lead them in the direction of their own financial prosperity.

  • Get rid of the polarity that you may have about money. You have perhaps seen money either as God’s blessing or as the archenemy of spirituality. Money has often been used as a battleground for matters spiritual and matters physical. Thus, if you have accumulated money, you may have come to believe that this is in some sort of conflict with your spirituality. Keep in mind that if your purpose involves providing things that require money for others and for yourself, and if you are uncompromised about your own commitment to your purpose, then money will show up in your life to assist you with your heroic mission. Similarly, if you believe that you do not deserve money and that it symbolizes all that is nonspiritual, then you will block its arrival into your life.

  When you are committed to your own personal highest powers, then a great amount of authentic universal power will begin moving through you. It may in fact be symbolized by the arrival of money into your life, and then you will have to resolve any ambivalence that
you harbor toward this money.

  Thus, the denouncing of money is a trap. Instead, see it as that which is manifesting in your life to assist you with your purpose. Then, stay on purpose and use that money—and any other physical abundance that will begin showing up in your life in larger and larger amounts—to fulfill your commitment to your purpose. You can be spiritual and have nice things. You can be spiritual and have money flow into your life. But you cannot be a spiritual being if the arrival of that money is for the purpose of hoarding it, or using it to prove to yourself and others that you are in some way superior. Your authentic power comes from within, and you live in a physical body in a material world as well. Allow that physical world to be in harmony with your inner world, and you will have resolved your ambivalence toward money.

  I view the money that arrives in my life as the energy that I can use to stay on purpose. It is a blessing and it is used in that context, and as a result it continues to flow into my life in sufficient amounts to meet that commitment of mine to being a spiritual being having a prosperous human experience and helping others to do the same.

  • Realize that you will never get enough of what you don’t want. If money is all that you covet and you want it for the purpose of gaining power over others, then you will never get enough. Your goal is in the invisible realm, that place where you do all of your living. Money and other symbols of prosperity arrive in your life to assist you on that path. If you miss that message, you may see lots of money come into your life, but you will also experience it disappearing. Here is a perfect example of this mentality that you want to shed, expressed by Yogananda:

  I once saw a cartoon drawing of a dog hitched to a small, but well laden, cart. The dog’s owner had found an ingenious method for getting it to pull the cart for him. A long pole, tied to the cart, extended forward over the dog’s head. At the end of the pole there dangled a sausage, temptingly. The dog, straining in vain to reach that sausage, hardly noticed the heavy cart he was dragging along behind him.