Oct 2008- Prosperity Thoughts part III

Prosperity Thoughts October 2008- part 3

Affirmation: Thank you Spirit, I am grateful for all that I have, all that I circulate and all that I am.

One of the beauties of New Thought is that there is little institutional dogma to contend with. In the area of prosperity, for example, each of us is free to make our own definition of “prosperity”. One person’s vision of prosperity might be to live in the country while another’s would be to live in a bustling college town. In healthy New Thought circles neither person would be judged for their choice or their preference.

However, one of the difficulties some people have in creating a prosperous life is finding a definition of prosperity that is sufficiently inclusive to fulfill all their needs. If they are defining prosperity in terms of money, then they often find themselves short of time or in poor health due to the long hours or hard work needed by most people to make lots of money. Some more artistic types define prosperity as the ability and freedom to create their own lives, but then find they are living at the subsistence level when it comes to material goods.

The point here then is not to try and intellectually develop the perfect definition of prosperity. Instead, I suggest that we use our present circumstances along with the innate definition we each have of prosperity as part of a spiritual feedback loop to help us evolve to ever more prosperous thinking and thus more prosperous living- as each of us alone understand our prosperity.

This process of fine tuning our understanding of prosperity requires rigorous self honesty because the world is reflecting back to us whatever it is that we are holding as prosperity. Your thinking alone will dictate your experience, just like my thinking alone will dictate my experience.

One very effective spiritual tool is to develop a practice of intentional and conscious gratitude for those small things that bring us joy and fulfillment each day. It is more powerful if we write these down in a gratitude log and extraordinarily powerful if we speak them aloud to those that help bring us our prosperity. Thus, when we write a check, we write, or think or say aloud “thank you” to the person or institution that gave us the goods or services we sought. When we receive our paycheck, we actually thank our boss for giving us a job. When we pay our taxes, we thank the government for all the services that are provided “freely”. When someone does us a small kindness we treat it as a blessing rather than take it for granted and think or write or say “Thank You”.

In doing this over time, we create a flow of gratitude for the good in our lives. Those things for which we are unwilling to be grateful then stand out more starkly. This helps us it at least two ways. It helps us into alignment so we become more consciously grateful or it motivates us to make shifts to change our circumstances so that we can feel more gratitude. Our innate definition of prosperity will become a more transparent gatekeeper as we endeavor to put this spiritual practice to good use.

Affirm with me now: Thank you Spirit, I am grateful for all that I have, all that I circulate and all that I am.