“Prosperity and poverty are dependent on the mindset of the individual. If your thinking is defective, it will result in failure and disorder. People who worship poverty and have a wrong understanding of detachment ruin their lives. A spiritual person is often supposed to be otherworldly and is expected to express contempt for money and material prosperity. Let me tell you: to create wealth and to succeed, by itself, is a spiritual sadhana, given that it needs a focused mind, creativity and hard work. If people would realize that creating wealth and sharing it with others is an extraordinary spiritual activity, they would become much happier and would be responsible for creating a better world.” – Bhagavan
We have been taught to believe that it is not spiritual to have money. I have spent years on my spirituality and have neglected my financial life out of that belief system. Living in abundance helps us understand and participate in the four spiritual laws of attraction, the law of deliberate creation, the law of allowing and the law of balance. These laws are always working whether we know it or not so it is best we learn how to work with them on a conscious level.
If we want to be financially free and have wealth, making money shouldn’t be our primary goal. The ultimate role of money should be to afford us the time and resources to grow spiritually, delight in what we have and be grateful and share our wealth with others by doing good deeds for others.
I have explored ways to balance health, spirituality and wealth for a long time with varying degrees of success. I had a prosperity wake-up call about 10 years ago during a phone conversation with a friend. The turning point in the conversation came when I said, ” I can’t quit my job!” When I heard these words tumble from my mouth I got angry. I felt I was trapped in something from which I could not escape.
Some years ago I worked part-time for a non-profit agency as a family therapist. I learned that I would only get a 1.5 percent raise in pay this year. Trust me, this is not a lot of money. If I stayed with this job, receiving that percentage of raise per year, I would never be able to retire and do what I came here to do. The program of financial support that most of us are caught in keeps financial freedom our of reach. In essence, we work to support someone else’s dream at the expense of our own. It is okay to work for someone else, but without residual streams of income it will be difficult to quit working. Residual income is money that keeps coming in after we stop working on the project that created it, such as royalties from a book.
Secret dreams
Financial freedom is a foreign concept for many people. In my parent’s generation, people had survived the Great Depression and it was important to work the same job to support the family and retire with benefits. My father, like many in his generation, “worked hard for his money.” Unfortunately over all the years he worked, he never looked happy to me. I am sure he had secret dreams that never were fulfilled-and less than two years after he retired, he passed away.
So when I heard the words ” I can’t quit my job!” come out of me, it catapulted me into action. I wasn’t going to press the snooze button another time and end up like my parents. It was like the final key in a series of locks that opened the door for me to see the world of financial prosperity in a new way.
I learned about money and how to use it from my parents, and it wasn’t a subject taught in school. This meant that I learned very little about money, how to manage it and nothing about investing, which are the key ingredients to financial success. My parents spent all the money they had to support us. As a female, growing up in the 1960s, it was even less important to know about money because, as my father said ” your husband will take care of that part.”
What I learned about money was gleaned by not having money. On the continuum of poverty verses prosperity, I had a master’s degree in poverty and was a novice at creating financial prosperity.
I have secret dreams and I am committed to seeing them manifest! The only way that can happen is if I have money. How many of us were taught that money “is the root of all evil” or “money doesn’t grow on trees”? The energy behind these statements and many others we have heard is that money is bad and it is hard to get. If you take that a step further, anyone who has money must also be suspect.
Deep in our programing is a foundation of lack consciousness. It is no one’s fault. It started long ago and has been passed down from generation to generation. It is a program that is about to come apart, because it is not supporting us in our evolution.
How many of you have said, “I can’t afford this” or “I don’t have enough money to buy that”? Thoughts like that re-enforce lack and create more of it. Fear creates poverty consciousness and leads to lack. Love and action creates prosperity consciousness and leads to abundance. In truth, money is just an energy form, given in exchange for services rendered. We deserve it.
The Poverty Spell
Poverty is a collective spell that impacts us all to some degree. I call it a spell, because it has been passed down for generations and has taken control of our collective psyches. A spell is a word formula used to charm or overpower. Unquestioned beliefs are words that take one’s power away. To be spellbound means we are caught in a state of mind that holds us in place.
Our society has perpetuated the myth for years that successful people are mean, greedy and even untrustworthy. As youths, we were spoon-fed certain beliefs that have been perpetuated through the media.
No one is to blame, because part of the spell is that passing the information on to our children constitutes good parenting. For my parents, the myth came out of the Depression and it felt like the truth; it was all about survival.
As a spell breaker, I am compelled to help shift these antiquated beliefs. The status quo doesn’t work, because each of us is individual. There is not just one formula for living a healthy, wealthy and fulfilled life. We don’t all have to go to school, study hard, get good grades and find a good job. In fact, that is bad advice for most people.
Money has become a symbol for power. People are afraid of power, because they have seen it misused. There is an unconscious belief that if we have money, then we have power-and at the same level of consciousness, we believe it is bad. In reality, not having money is a great way of keeping yourself powerless.
True power is creative. As Carolyn Myss says: “The power to create is one of the highest alchemical spiritual principles that could possibly activate in the soul.” Creating is our soul’s mandate, and as soon as we come into alignment with this truth, we will create the life we desire. The power of creation is a calling.
The dream
I had a powerful dream about unconscious programming that really shows how deep it is.
I was in my car, with the door open-and my computer was outside of the car. I used a remote control to turn it off because I couldn’t reach it. I was in the e-mail program at the time. As I deleted the last e-mail, I watched as all of the megapixels broke down, like they were melting, and I knew a virus had just taken over my computer. I was really upset, because that meant that all of my memory was gone. Someone gave me an 800 number I could call and they would send all of my memory back, because it was all stored some place. I made the call, and I was able to retrieve my memory without losing everything.
This is a powerful metaphor for how our mind is programmed:
A virus is a program that can copy itself and infect a computer without permission or knowledge of the user – our childhood programming.
The original may modify the copies, or the copies may modify themselves, as occurs in a metamorphic virus – our beliefs passed down from generation to generation.
Some viruses are programmed to damage the computer by damaging programs, deleting files or reformatting the hard disk – social programming damages our original blueprint.
Other viruses are not designed to do any damage, but simply replicate themselves and perhaps make their presence known by presenting text, video or audio messages-those useless thoughts that spin around in our heads and the pictures and messages they create. Even these benign viruses can create problems for the computer user. They typically take up computer memory used by legitimate programs. As a result, they often cause erratic behavior and can result in system crashes.
Transcending poverty and lack
Poverty and lack are like viruses-and we can transcend them and become virus proof, and in the process, maybe even become prosperous. I love the part in the dream about being able to call a toll-free number and have all of your original memory returned to you! It’s always there and can’t be erased. That number is our original blueprint. It is our higher self, where the memory of how to create a prosperous life is stored. People are stepping forward to help us remember by reminding us how to use the laws of attraction and change our thoughts.
The archetype of the nun and monk who sacrifice material goods for spiritual values has been with us for a long time. The new archetype of the spiritual community is the Networker, which replaces the archetype of sacrifice. Networkers expand their sphere of influence by forging alliances and making connections among vastly different groups of people. We network when we create community. We network when we meet to share what we know with others. The messenger, courier, journalist, the storyteller and communicator exemplify this archetype, however it has also been reborn through Internet technology.
Collaborating as a team
A couple weeks before the conversation I had about quitting my job, I had become an independent business owner in a network marketing company that offers health and wellness products which is changing people’s lives around the world. Network marketing is a way to create residual streams of income that can be done part time in conjunction with other forms of work. I was invited to learn about this company by a mentor/friend. The level of consciousness of those involved with the company matched where I am in my own evolution.
I was drawn to the idea of using this business to explore the laws of attraction in action. I had taken a leap of faith that said to the Universe, “I am not fooling around any more! I am serious about becoming a conscious co-creator of my life and experiencing financial freedom.” I like the fact that everyone involved in our organization is collaborating as a team to create health, wealth, wisdom and freedom for the group. Our group was interesting in using the platform of network marketing to explore success consciousness.
Personal contact
Network Marketing is a business model that supports financial freedom, community building and mentorship. It is a way to meet one-on-one to share cutting-edge products, usually those not available in the mainstream. Creators of these products want to sell through personal contact with its market, rather than the impersonal market of the department store. Network marketing is a way to share information about the product and answer questions on a personal basis.
I prefer the term Conscious Network Marketing using attraction marketing, because it doesn’t carry the negative stigma associated with earlier forms of network marketing. Network Marketing is legal business model just like corporate america and it is not a pyramid scheme. It is one of the best-kept secrets in America, though corporate America tries to keep people from it.
Corporate America is the true pyramid scheme, because someone at the top gets all the financial benefit while those below give up their own dreams to work for a fraction of what they are worth so they can eek out a meager living. Donald Trump and many other wealthy people say that if their financial empire fell apart, they would find a good network marketing company so he could build back his fortune. Many of them have bought network marketing companies for their portfolios. In network marketing, you come into a line of other business owners-and if you do what it takes to create a successful business, you can by pass those at the top with your income.
It isn’t easy pulling out of the web of lack consciousness and building a new consciousness of health, wealth, abundance and wisdom that incorporates spirituality, because the old programing doesn’t want to go away without a fight. But it is a necessary shift at this time in our evolution. Many of us are learning new way to live lives that include the physical world of wealth and material goods in balance with our spiritual consciousness. We are creating something that will support and sustain our broader dreams.
If you would like to know more about the Conscious Network Marketing Team I am creating send me an email.
Katelyn Mariah, Empowering Health 