No secret. I've preached about how poverty stricken my childhood and my parents' adulthoods were. Often times at the end of the summer, I would find myself in a panic over whether or not I would have shoes for my summer-hardened, stained bare feet. I've spent a lot of energy focusing on the sense of what was missing or what was lacking or what was wrong.
Then comes along a "smack me in the face with a board" eureka moment. And suddenly I realize poverty is an attitude. Prosperity, too, is an attitude. But not only an attitude. It is a spiritual RITE or "RIGHT".
From the book "The Dynamic Laws of Prosperity" by Catherine Ponder:
"Obviously, you cannot be very happy if you are poor, and you need not be poor. It is a sin. Poverty is a form of hell caused by man's blindness to God's unlimited good for him. Poverty is a dirty, uncomfortable, degrading experience. Poverty is actually a form of disease and in its acute phases, it seems to be a form of insanity."
In my quest for healing the past or for mending conceptual "hurts", part of my journey has led me to a deeper understanding of the energy of "money". Or, a deeper understanding of what it is to have enough, to have PLENTY, to have an excess, to have around you what you feel inside you. Abundance. Wealth.
I've had monetary wealth and along with it the tortured restlessness, insatiable empty space in my soul, a never ending need for collecting more stuff to stuff down an ache. And I've had moments where I've been so hungry I felt faint, so challenged I couldn't afford necessities like toilet paper and laundry soap. And in THOSE moments, I've learned the beauty of being eternally grateful for the tiny, taken-for-granteds that surround us and swirl in and out every day.
I'm beginning to see what goes out and what comes in. How what the internal dialogue of negative energy does. It acts like the end of the magnet that repels. It invisibly draws into itself that which is being focused upon. Example: I've seen my granddaughter get all moody and grouchy because when in a group of three girls, once in awhile she gets "left out" (according to her internal observation). She fights back tears, crosses her arms, whines, pouts, stomps a foot when her other two buddies say, "no we want to go over here!". And the more she acts grumpy, the more they distance themselves. And so it is with the valuables. If we stay concentrated on the "wrongs", the "shoulds", the "lacks", the "impoverishment", there isn't room for anything else to enter in. It's as if an invisible force field is created to block the endless positives from flooding in.
So another story re-write. I am reminded through a friend's eyes of what we were surrounded by as kids. Trees. Pastures. Animals. Ponds. Endless skies. Butterflies. Friends. Connections. All of a sudden through his eyes, I realized the bigger picture. I "got it". I saw how prosperity had always been mine. Even during the dark times and the trials and the struggles. In the bigger picture, all those hardships created the perfect back drop for where I am today, for what I can offer into the world. And it has taught me how to do something so simple yet complex --- change how I THINK. And in response, limitless possibilities begin opening up and I see life through a much clearer lens.
"There is gold dust in the air for me...." ~an un-named salesman
Thank you, mom, for the things I didn't see that you were able to give, even when there was no money. Things that really made me rich -- prayers, laughter, hugs.
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