Publisher: 2012-01-01 00:00:00
Published Date: January 1, 2012
Source: Book
ISBN:
Copyright: © Copyright 2012 Peace Theological Seminary & College of Philosophy®
This Second Volume Continues the series on Living the Spiritual Principles of Abundance and Prosperity. John-Roger’s Teachings on this subject couldn’t be more relevant for the times that we are living in.
Each short chapter can be read as a daily or weekly meditation. I suggest that when you have read the chapter, you go back to the original J-R quote that began it. You may find it contains more depth and nuance for you to contemplate and be with inside you.
This volume contains a chapter on the Money Magnet that proved very popular when it was first released as a “God is my partner” email newsletter.
May the reading of this book deepen your knowledge of the abundance and prosperity, and wealth beyond measure, that reside within you.
LIVING THE SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLES OF ABUNDANCE & PROSPERITY VOLUME (2)
JOHN-ROGER, D.S.S.
with PAUL KAYE D.S.S.
LIVING THE SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLES OF ABUNDANCE & PROSPERITY VOLUME (2)
Mandeville Press
Los Angeles, California
INTRO
*This second volume continues the series on Living the Spiritual Principles of Abundance and Prosperity. John-Roger’s teachings on this subject couldn’t be more relevant for the times that we are living in.
Each short chapter can be read as a daily or weekly meditation. I suggest that when you have read the chapter, you go back to the original J-R quote that began it. You may find it contains more Depth and nuance for you to contemplate and be with inside you.
This volume contains a chapter on the money magnet that proved very popular when it was first released as a “God is My Partner” email newsletter.
May the reading of this book deepen your knowledge of the abundance and prosperity, and wealth beyond measure, that reside within you.
Paul Kaye
© Copyright 2012 Peace Theological Seminary & College of Philosophy®
Library of Congress Control Number: 2010925886
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
Mandeville Press
P.O. Box 513935
Los Angeles, California 90051-1935
(323) 737-4055
jrbooks@mandevillepress.org
www.mandevillepress.org
Book design by Shelley Noble
Printed in Hong Kong
ISBN 978-1-936514-18-2
Contents
Intro IV
No Need to Grab or Possess 1
Creating a Money Magnet 3
Prosperity Is Your Heritage 9
The Simple Life 11
Open to Infinite Supply 17
The Wings That Lift 19
The Relaxed State 23
An Effective Technique for Manifesting What You Want 25
Love Is the Cure 29
The Power of Grace 33
Effortless Action 37
Your Natural Space 41
Manifestation Is for the Awareness of the Beloved 43
The Beauty of Frugality 47
You Are the Source 51
Transcending Lack Through Wonder 53
There’s More to Life Than Money 55
Being Open to Receive 59
Having a Good Laugh About It All 65
The Readiness Is All 69
Accepting Life Unquestioningly 73
Out of the Silence 77
A Countenance That Is a Form of Glory 81
Life Is Divine Communion 85
Afterword 89
Appendix: Sources for the Quotes 91
NO NEED TO GRAB OR POSSESS
On this level, you don’t grab. You can’t possess, and you can’t hold on to anything. If you try to possess, you lose. You can’t even possess your own body.
But if you love yourself, if you love the Soul within, you have access to all things.
We shut down God by moving into the world, professing God’s greatness out there. And we’ve lost track that God is inside us in the greatness.
From The Tao of Spirit by John-Roger, D.S.S.
About ten years ago I co-authored a book with J-R called Momentum: Letting Love Lead, from which I developed a five-day workshop designed primarily for newcomers to MSIA. I specifically recall one that I facilitated in Bogota, Colombia, where 180 people took the workshop and at its completion 32 people signed up for Discourses – an impressively large number. I was very pleased.
When I went back to Colombia on a staff visit a couple of years later, someone casually commented to me that out of all the people who signed up for Discourses after that workshop, not a single person had renewed their subscription the following year. On hearing the news, I was in shock for several days because, despite the fact that the workshop had immersed them in the energy and teachings of the Traveler for five days, not one had continued with their Discourses.
My ego underwent one of its many deaths, and I remember my self-talk at the time was along the lines of, “Listen, this is so outside of our hands. Yes, people can be on Discourses, but whether they’re truly connected is a matter for the Spirit.”
I also recall a time about 20 years ago when staff was planning a trip to Nigeria and we were thinking of going to Port Harcourt in addition to Lagos. J-R suggested that we only go to Lagos. I remember appealing to him, “But, J-R, there are 200 people on Discourses in Port Harcourt!”
J-R replied, “Just because there are 200 people on Discourses doesn’t mean they’re doing Soul Transcendence.”
A short time after J-R’s comment, the interest in MSIA in Port Harcourt slowly dwindled until it was left with a very small but dedicated group. This remained somewhat of a mystery to me for many years until I had my own experience in Colombia.
*If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having.
Henry Miller
*You have not to do anything in the positive sense of the word, in order to realize God. Simply undo what you have done in the way of making your prison house, and there you are, God already, Truth personified already.
Sawan Singh
CREATING A MONEY MAGNET
Before we continue, I want to explain two important concepts involving the spiritual principles of abundance and prosperity: the basic self and the money magnet.
1) The Basic Self
Here is a summary of the essential points of the basic self through quotes from John-Roger’s book, Dynamics of the Lower Self. It is available in a downloadable pdf format at the MSIA online store (www.msia.org/store).
When you came into the physical embodiment, you picked up what has been termed a basic self. Its job is to hold the physical consciousness intact on this plane. When you came into existence physically, at the time of conception, when the sperm and egg united and flamed forth an energy pattern, the lower self came into this creation as a frequency. It is not a Soul; it’s just a level of consciousness.
You can look at the basic self as being about a four- or five-year-old you, inside of you, that seems to have its own free will, which it apparently uses a great deal. The basic self isn’t in the mind; it’s in the emotions. It functions out of the stomach chakra [energy center] a lot of the time.
The level we’re communicating on now is called the conscious self because we’re conscious of this. The conscious self is responsible for making the choices and determining the direction you will take. We also have a level we call the basic self or the lower self. You might want to relate to it as animal instinct, or to the areas of memory or habits or emotions. It is all of these things and more.
If the feeling comes up, “I’d like to hit you right in the nose”—that’s the basic self. The conscious self says, “No, I won’t do that.” And the High Self says, “Love them. That will clear things faster.” The High Self’s approach is more in the area of the lofty ideals.
The High Self expresses the feelings of great inspiration and great lofty ideals; it creates the desire to lift mankind in your arms and save everyone. Those moments when you see everything in the world in love and in beauty and in harmony, those moments when everything is right and perfect, come out of the High Self.
So each one of you has within yourself a Higher Self, a conscious self, and a basic self—the three selves.
The job of the basic self is to make sure the physical body maintains itself on the physical level. Its job is to maintain the physical body, to maintain physical functions and all those things that go with it. It keeps the body breathing, the circulation going, and all the bodily systems functioning, until it can establish these areas into habit patterns. It likes habits.
You must work with your basic self in cooperation and love if you want its support. The basic self will be so much easier to work with if you understand that its job is body maintenance, memory, emotions, habits, and releasing karma. If you start berating your basic self, you can produce diseases. It is so much nicer to say to your basic self, “You did a pretty good job today, and tomorrow we’ll do even better.”
When you look in the mirror in the morning or in the evening, look in your eyes and just say to the basic self, “I love you very much. We’re going to work together. It’s going to be okay. You keep the energy moving up, and I’ll give you good positive direction that will lift us both and help us all.” If we’re going to have the basic self function with us, we honor it.
The basic self wants survival. It wants comfort. But it doesn’t have the wisdom to select accurately. So you monitor it consciously. It’s your attitude that you have to watch when you’re relating with the basic self. You watch it with love.
2) Money Magnet
And here is a summary of the essential points of the money magnet from John-Roger. This time the quotes are from his book Wealth & Higher Consciousness.
You can establish your own money magnet by tithing to yourself, in cash, every time you receive money, whether it’s a paycheck, a bonus, or a gift. Tithing to the source of your spiritual teachings and to yourself is part of the process of prosperity that is your heritage.
In tithing, you recognize that all things come from God, and the money magnet contribution is a reward for yourself. The basic self thinks, “That 10 percent is for me! You mean I’m going to get something? You are really going to pay me now? Me! Mine! I’m going to bring more in; I’ll open my consciousness!” You can be walking down the street, and there will be a five-dollar bill. The basic self will say, “Get that five-dollar bill! I get 10 percent of that; that’s 50 cents. You can do whatever you want with the rest, but 50 cents goes to me.”
When you keep a money magnet—always putting 10 percent of what you get into the money magnet, in cash—the basic self will learn that it can trust you. It can trust that it will get its portion, its 10 percent, and so will work diligently to bring in money to you. 5 Keep the money magnet where you can actually touch it. If you put that money into the bank, the bank gets your money magnet. As far as the basic self is concerned, putting the money into the bank takes it away. You have to be able to go to that money and pick it up and hold it or count it. You keep 10 percent at home, and it will pull more money to it. Once you have your money magnet going, don’t use it for any other purpose. Don’t spend it. It is a magnet; if you spend it, you have lost your magnet. Don’t borrow from your money magnet; if you borrow from it, it’s gone. Put 10 percent in the magnet. This is important. Don’t put in 11 or 12 percent, and don’t put in 9 percent. Put in 10 percent; there’s something “magical” about it.
After you have put the money in your money magnet, get it out periodically and count it. What do you do when you get ten thousand dollars in your money magnet? That ten thousand dollars will pull in more money than a thousand dollars will pull in. What if you need that money in some other area of your life? You may not need it because the money magnet will pull more money to you. All you have to do is keep putting 10 percent in there and use the other 90 percent in other areas.
As you get more money, if you aren’t careful, there can come the fear of losing it, and that fear can be difficult to work with. If the money is yours, you can’t lose it, and if it is not yours, it’s going to go—one way or another—so there’s really no need to be fearful. If you are fearful, you may not be working with money as a spiritualized medium of exchange; instead, you may be in a consciousness of hoarding.
You could also invest it in something like real estate, where you can walk on the property and know it is yours. This is different from putting it into the bank. With property, you can physically be there and say, “This lot is mine.” It will start pulling in more of the same. If you buy a house or land to build upon, you can be there on it and know, “This is mine to do my work.” But if you buy a boat to ride around in, you have to think, “Is this to do my work?” If it’s not, then use your “fun fund” to buy your boat, but don’t use your money magnet. You can invest money from your money magnet as long as you can keep it within your grasp, keep it close to you.
As you learn to build a money magnet to bring you greater wealth, you may find that you want to share your knowledge and abilities with others, to become of greater service. Become a positive precipitator first because until you can really work these ideas, it will probably be difficult to share them with others.
3) A Sharing on the Money Magnet
Reed Bernstein had this to share about the money magnet: I have kept a money magnet for many years, and my experience is that it is a powerful statement of abundance. When it comes to money, abundance is about more coming in than going out. I put 10 percent in my money magnet, and 10 percent into savings. The first magical point was when the money magnet hit $1,000. And then at each one thousand dollar mark I felt a shift, a more solid foundation both inwardly and outwardly.
And then almost to the day that my money magnet reached $10,000 my business shifted into a higher gear, and suddenly there was a tremendous feeling of success due to the increase in the flow of my work, and a marked increase in income.
Be ruthless with your money magnet and, as suggested, do not borrow from it or spend it. Like exercise, maintaining a money magnet is a healthy discipline, the positive effects of which build over time.
4) In Summary
So, in summary, first we tithe in gratitude and joy to the Source of our spiritual teachings, acknowledging that all things come from God. Then, we tithe to ourselves, honoring and thanking our basic self and building a magnet through which to draw more money to us.
The following two questions and answers are from God Is Your Partner by John-Roger (which is downloadable for free at the MSIA online store).
Q: Should I keep a money magnet, or should I tithe?
A: The optimum thing is to do both. However, if you were to do only one, I would suggest you tithe. Donations are man’s law, tithing is spiritual law, and the money magnet is a law unto yourself.
Q: Why is it that when I tithe to the money magnet, it’s on my net income and when I tithe to MSIA, it’s on my gross income?
A: The gross represents the totality of Spirit; it’s what God has given to you. The net represents what you use for your own Soul development.
PROSPERITY IS YOUR HERITAGE Tithing to the source of your spiritual teachings and to yourself is part of the process of prosperity that is your heritage. From Wealth & Higher Consciousness by John-Roger, D.S.S.
I tithed for many years with gratitude, enjoying the many benefits of doing so, but found that I was still struggling financially. It was mystifying to me. Although I didn’t lack for anything, I didn’t enjoy looking at the credit-card debt, the IRS debt, and the constant pinch to make ends meet. Something was off, and I knew I had to look deeply to find out what it was.
I was tithing with the right attitude, I was joyful and grateful, and I was unconditional in my giving—so what was it? Then it hit me. My basic self was feeling left out. Tithing was training the basic self to let go, but the basic self still wanted something for itself in acknowledgment of the work it was doing.
My wife and I started our money magnets on our wedding day with the gifts we had received. That day and that decision changed our financial fortunes. In a short period of time, most of our credit-card debt went away, and the IRS matter dissolved in an ocean of grace and tax refunds. The blessings continue, and my basic self is happy and content.
The money magnet was the missing link. So now, first, I tithe to God on my gross income, and, second, I tithe to my basic self (the money magnet) on my net income.
*One of the many things I learned studying classics at the age of 18 in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: “What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.” J.K. Rowling *What we are talking about is the idea of precipitation. The money magnet will pull money to you. Even more than that, you can also learn how to precipitate into your beingness those qualities that can enhance your life.
The money magnet is like lifting weights. It’s getting you in shape to reach into the greater things and work within the higher levels. It’s a process of training the mind, training the consciousness, learning to place the desires and emotions where you want them. It is tuning in to those qualities you want and bringing them forward.
Then you find out that you are able to tune in to an even greater frequency than the money magnet frequency. You’ll tune in to divine grace and manifest everything you need for yourself. You will learn to precipitate your happiness and your joy because you will tune in to it through your own joy within. From Wealth & Higher Consciousness by John-Roger, D.S.S.
THE SIMPLE LIFE If you really examine your life, you’ll probably find out that you don’t need about 95 percent of what you have. John-Roger, D.S.S.
It could be that I have never subscribed to materialistic values for the simple reason that I have not had the resources to pursue them. In my working-class family, our richness was found in conversation and in a loving environment. And there was always food on the table despite a scarcity of many other things. So I had no problem with choosing a vow of poverty in order to work for MSIA in the seventies and, subsequently, upon marriage, a modest salary.
A case could be made for my being rather limited in my outlook, and while there may be an element of truth in that, the fact is that I do enjoy the simple values I was raised with and see no reason to discard them. In fact, I often seek to enhance them. It’s no surprise, therefore, that finding myself out of kilter with mainstream America, I have chosen to live a lifestyle more akin to a bohemian than to a typical Los Angeles resident—not to say that the latter person actually exists.
In his book Status Anxiety, Alain de Botton says: Just as money cannot confer honor in the bohemian value system, neither can possessions. Through bohemian eyes, yachts and mansions are symbols of arrogance and frivolity. Bohemian status is more likely to be earned through an inspired conversational style or the authorship of an intelligent, heartfelt volume of poetry.
*I keep saying to myself that I want a simple life, but keep meandering off that path into complexity. Spending the day in quiet led me to this thought: re-center your life around the things you are grateful for.
Many of the truly powerful people I’ve known—the centered, the balanced people, the people who have affected my life with their kindness and gentleness—live simply, have confronted themselves, and have come to peace with themselves. I have noticed a kind of quiet about them. Roderick W. MacIver writing at HeronDance.org *His name was James Teal. He drove in when trillium were in full flower, April of 1954, in a green 1946 Dodge and stayed first for several weeks at the Courtyard Motel in Ordell before moving up on to the Bennett.
He brought no remarkable possessions. He walked with a slight limp, which my father thought might be from a war wound. He was tall, lean, his face vaguely Asiatic. I remember people noticed right away that he was not an intruder, and was easy to speak to. For a stranger who didn’t have a job, or a way of life that fit him anywhere, he drew remarkably little suspicion in Ordell.
Many years later, I wanted to see his place. I wanted to talk with him. Where did he come from? What sort of things did he work at? Did he have a family somewhere? I’d never had a conversation with the man.
What could he believe in? I wondered. What allowed him to be comfortable out there from one year to the next? Whatever his beliefs were, he didn’t bother anybody with them. Whenever he came to town he got on easily with people. I remember even a few times he played softball with us, laughing as much as anyone when he dropped easy pop flies or struck out. Did he keep a tidy shelf of books up there? And which books would those be?
The following spring I decided to go visit James Teal. One morning I just got in the truck and drove up the Bennett. It was raining when I left the house and pouring by the time I got to Teal Creek. I followed the deer trail all the way in to the cabin. From a clearing in front of the porch, another trail went between trees over a rise and out onto a treeless bench. I saw Teal standing out there in the downpour, beyond the green rows of a new garden.
He was bent far over before the flat gray sky in what appeared to be an attitude of prayer or adoration, his arms at his sides. The rain had plastered his shirt to his back and his short black hair glistened. He did not move at all while I stood there, fifteen or twenty minutes. And in that time I saw what it was I had wanted to see all those years in James Teal. The complete stillness, a silence such as I had never heard out of another living thing, an unbroken grace. From Field Notes by Barry Lopez *Simplify your life. You do not need all the clutter you are holding on to. Get rid of it now because it is stealing your energy. The clutter in your life takes energy to maintain.
Start with the smallest things. Clear away a little and you’ll be amazed at the vast amounts of energy it releases inside of you.
Keep around you only the things that give you energy. From Spiritual Warrior by John-Roger, D.S.S.
Back to Alain de Botton in Status Anxiety: In July 1845, one of the most renowned bohemians of nineteenth century America, Henry David Thoreau, moved into a log cabin he had built with his own hands on the north shore of Walden Pond, near the town of Concord, Massachusetts. His goal was to see if he could lead an outwardly plain but inwardly rich existence and in the process demonstrate that it was possible to combine a life of material scarcity with psychological fulfillment.
“Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only dispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind,” wrote Thoreau, adding, in an attempt to upset his society’s connection between owning things and being honorable, “Man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can do without.”
Thoreau tried to reconfigure our sense of what having little money could indicate about a person. It was not, as the bourgeois perspective tended subtly to suggest, always a sign of being a loser at the game of life. Having little money might simply mean that one had opted to focus one’s energies on activities other than business, growing rich in things other than cash in the process.
Instead of using the word poverty to describe his condition, Thoreau preferred the word simplicity—this, he felt, conveyed a consciously chosen rather than an imposed material situation, a simplicity which, he reminded the merchants of Boston, had once been willingly practiced by the Chinese, Hindu, Persian, and Greek philosophers. As he put it, “Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.”
Of course, whether our approach to simplicity is about having fewer possessions or about the way we use our time and energy, we do not need to embrace bohemian values to simplify our lives. However, in pursuing the spiritual principles of abundance and prosperity, it is important to note that simplicity may actually result in “more” not “less.”
*Too lazy to be ambitious, I let the world take care of itself. Ten days’ worth of rice in my bag; a bundle of twigs by the fireplace. Why chatter about delusion and enlightenment? Listening to the night rain on my roof, I sit comfortably, with both legs stretched out. Ryokan (1758–1831) Ryokan was a Zen master, hermit, calligrapher, and poet. He was known for his great kindness and it was said that he smiled continuously. People said that when he visited they felt as if spring had come on a dark winter’s day. He took the name “Great Fool” for himself. When a thief stole his few simple possessions, he wrote this famous haiku: The Thief left it behind: the moon at my window.
*“Impeccability, as I have told you so many times, is not morality,” he said. “It only resembles morality. Impeccability is simply the best use of our energy level. Naturally, it calls for frugality, thoughtfulness, simplicity, innocence; and above all, it calls for lack of self-reflection. All this makes it sound like a manual for monastic life, but it isn’t. From The Power of Silence by Carlos Casteneda
OPEN TO INFINITE SUPPLY Ultimately, you can’t do anything “wrong,” because God is with you, in you as you, and is making sure that it all comes out perfectly. And that is a lot to be thankful for.
An attitude of gratitude is also a key to being in harmony with infinite supply.
When you can honestly and truly thank God for what you have, for all your experiences, for all the people in your life, and for all your expressions, the sense of gratitude goes very deep.
In that depth, you are open to infinite supply. From Timeless Wisdoms, Vol.1, by John-Roger, D.S.S.
In practicing the spiritual principles of abundance and prosperity, we are also pursuing openness. The act of joyful giving is a process of letting go, and in letting go we create space and openness, not only to receive but to be. In giving, in letting go, we peel back the layers to reveal the gold of our being underneath and await the next spontaneous, delightful surprise that God has for us.
The practice of being open is an art in itself. I have a personal approach I call A Thousand Blessings. Each day I anticipate a thousand blessings falling from God like light, refreshing raindrops. When I find myself down or negative, I start counting them. I have yet to get to a thousand before my mood turns around, but I know the thousand blessings are always there, every day, should I need to count them.
*One has to abandon altogether the search for security, and reach out to the risk of living with both arms open. One has to embrace the world like a lover. Morris West
*the best lover ever the best lover ever was a Czechoslovakian, macrobiotic cardiac surgeon who carried viburnum flowers in from the garden to lay them on my belly before pressing them flat and fragrant with his own.
reaching above the bed for the stethoscope that hung there, he laid the cool, flat membrane against my neck, below the ridge of my clavicle, along the margins of my breast, listening to all the chambers, portals, and vessels of my heart.
(ah, the pleasure of lying naked before a man who undresses you further still.) the good doctor, at the end of his exploration pronounced with a certainty that resonates still: “you haf a gud heart.”
now, the wise among you already know the end of this story.
the Czechoslovakian, macrobiotic cardiac surgeon, the best lover ever, followed his books back to the homeland to listen to other hearts, bear a few children, have a dog named Bonnie.
perhaps you know I married a man far less kind, who took that same heart and pried it open with the crowbar of his own great disappointment.
can you tell me, does it matter to the heart who opens it? does it matter to the heart whether it is cleaved with force or tenderness?
and is the light any less pleased, any less persistent as it streams through the fissures, finally illuminating the interior?
Lillian Ralph Jackman
THE WINGS THAT LIFT
Grace is given by God, and when we receive that, we become full. When we go into our heart where the Beloved dwells, then we not only have the grace and we’re full, but we’re great and we’re full.
The heart does not say “I.” The heart does not speak. The heart gives out and manifests the loving nature.
The loving heart, the spiritual heart, is the place to be. When that is unlocked and is unfolding, if it pats you on the back or kisses you on the forehead, then you should thank God from your very being that it happened, because the loving nature is the key to all things. From The Rest of Your Life by John-Roger, D.S.S., with Paul Kaye Grace and gratitude have the same Latin root word, gratus. When I am stuck, in my mind or in a situation, I often tell myself, “Be open to grace.”
When I seed, many times what I receive far exceeds my expectations—an example of grace at work. In such cases I like to give back more to God, in gratitude. Such giving is called grace tithing.
If the seed is for a tangible, financial return, I tithe on it, of course. However, if what I seeded for is intangible, for example, a great vacation for someone close to me or a successful medical procedure, and the results exceed what I had envisioned, I also place a grace tithe.
A grace tithe has no obligation with it. It is giving to God out of pure gratitude— in thanks for and in acknowledgement of the grace and blessing of the harvest. The amount given is completely up to the individual. It is a pure and ecstatically joyful process, and when I do it, it opens my eyes to seeing even more grace in my life. Grace starts to appear everywhere.
*Give up to grace. The ocean takes care of each wave till it gets to shore. Jalal al-Din Rumi
*To shine my own light—that’s my quest. As for music, well, it’s just the scent of the rose. Bobby McFerrin
*
The Silk Worm I stood before a silk worm one day. And that night my heart said to me, “I can do things like that, I can spin skies, I can be woven into love that can bring warmth to people; I can be soft against a crying face, I can be wings that lift, and I can travel on my thousand feet throughout the earth, my sacks filled with the sacred.” And I replied to my heart, “Dear, can you really do all those things?” And it just nodded “Yes” in silence.
So we began and will never cease.
Jalal al-Din Rumi (translated by Daniel Ladinsky)
THE RELAXED STATE For you to want to manipulate the physical world indicates that you haven’t found the spiritual place within where you exist as a total creative form.
The one who has “got it” could not care less about manipulating anything because they see the total picture of how everything is on schedule.
They sit back in a very relaxed state, and Spirit pours through them and brings to them everything they need, and people say that they lead a charmed life. No, they lead a very relaxed life. They don’t get irritated or upset by things.
It’s really a nice day when you can sit by yourself and not have any problems. When you do that, then you’ll find out that you were also the source of your problems. And all the people you blamed for being your problem were only reflecting to you your state of imbalance. John-Roger, D.S.S. Having been considerably tense and a serial worrier for most of my life, I am at the point where there doesn’t seem much point if something I choose consciously does not move me into a more relaxed state. After all, why would I choose something that makes me even more tense?
So when it comes to the spiritual principles of abundance and prosperity, the very act of tithing, seeding, and grace tithing is an act of letting go and of consciously putting my life into God’s hands. The miracles then can unfold without my interference. A thousand miracles, perhaps.
*An old Chinese Zen Monk, after many years of peaceful meditation, realized he was not really enlightened.
He went to his master and said, “Please, may I go find a hut on the top of the mountain and stay there until I finish this practice?”
The master, knowing he was ready, gave his permission.
On the way up the mountain, the monk met an old man walking down, carrying a big bundle.
The old man asked, “Where are you going, monk?”
The monk answered, “I’m going to the top of the mountain to sit and either get enlightened or die.”
Since the old man looked very wise, the monk was moved to ask him, “Say, old man, do you know anything of this enlightenment?”
The old man let go of his bundle and dropped it to the ground.
In that moment, the monk was enlightened.
“You mean it is that simple: just to let go and not grasp anything! So now what?”
The old man reached down and picked up the bundle again, and walked off toward town.
*Don Juan: “Things don’t change. You change your way of looking, that’s all.” Carlos Castaneda
AN EFFECTIVE TECHNIQUE FOR MANIFESTING WHAT YOU WANT
God is intention.
When you tithe you make God your abundant focus.
God’s intention is in that focus, so God will know right where to find you.
From God Is Your Partner by John-Roger, D.S.S.
Question: If God’s my Partner, can I just seed and let him decide what to do?
J-R: No, because he’s saying to you, “Give me a blueprint of what you want.” Your job is to provide God with the blueprint.
As the Cheshire Cat tells Alice when she asks for directions in Wonderland, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.” So when looking at what you would like to manifest in your life, you may want to try the following exercise, developed by MSIA staff member Betsy Alexander, which has proven itself to be very effective in assisting in knowing where you are going and what it looks like when you arrive. On staff we often use it when looking for a great volunteer, and many folks have used it successfully when looking for a house or apartment. I have even heard that it has worked for finding a relationship.
Specifically, it involves writing three lists. As Betsy describes it: Must Have: These are the deal breakers: each one must be there. I use this category sparingly and make sure I really MUST have every single thing on this list.
Would Really Like:
This is usually my longest list. I include what I’d like to have. If I get most (but not all), that’s fine.
Gracious Touches: This is where I list things that I think of but would be fine if I didn’t have any of them.
When I first came up with this approach in 1971, I needed an apartment. I wrote “For the Highest Good” at the top of the page.
Under “Must Have,” I included such things as 2 bedrooms, in a safe neighborhood, the rent I could pay, nice neighbors, in good shape. If any one of these were missing, I would not take the apartment.
Under “Would Really Like,” I listed the things that would make living there pleasant and easy. I included things like dishwasher, carpeting, pretty, two bathrooms, etc. If I didn’t get a few of these, I could still live there. I think I got most if not all of them.
Under “Gracious Touches,” I listed things like a fireplace, a patio to barbecue on, enclosed garage, swimming pool. I got everything on this list except the pool.
A huge key for me is to be thorough, really think about it, take several days to do it, and work with myself on anything that comes up.
Example: I needed an assistant once. After making my lists, I thought, “I want someone who will do anything I ask.” Shocked at myself, I thought, “I shouldn’t ask that.” Then I realized I really did need someone like that. So I put it on my list, and we hired an assistant who actually did do anything I asked. This showed me that working with doubts and hesitations is important, as is being clear about what I want.
When I did this the second time, for a job, I got everything on the 3 lists (including, in those pre-computer days, a Selectric typewriter so I could do my USM homework on it). Once in the job, I realized people there smoked and that I had forgotten to list “nonsmoking.” About 2 months later, the company moved to a new office, and the manager said it would be entirely nonsmoking.
This approach has worked with others, too. For example, one staff member found an assistant two days after she finished her lists. A friend used it to find a home. She made her 3 lists and put them away. When she found the lists a couple of months later, she was amazed to find that she got everything on all 3 lists.
So there you have it—a great way to get clear on what you wish to manifest. It really is giving God a clear blueprint. And of course we always want to keep in mind the highest good of all concerned.
*The sun hears the fields talking about effort and the sun smiles, and whispers to me, “Why don’t the fields just rest, for I am willing to do everything to help them grow?”
Rest, my dears, in prayer.
St. Catherine of Siena (translated by Daniel Ladinsky) *If your intention is to be loving and caring, that means you cannot let anything not loving or caring come in. John-Roger, D.S.S.
LOVE IS THE CURE When you are dealing with any karmic pattern or situation, your time and focus are much better spent on loving everything in your current life and not trying to go back and figure out or change anything in the past that might be connected to the karmic situation.
Spirit is present in each step you take and each movement you make.
If you bring your awareness to that each second, you are doing far more for yourself than you would do if you tried to look into the past for causes, reasons, and so on.
From Fulfilling Your Spiritual Promise by John-Roger, D.S.S.
A key principle of abundance and prosperity is that we don’t have to feel a victim to anything because we always have a choice to love it all. And if we can choose to be loving, we are wealthy beyond measure, regardless of what we may or may not possess in the world.
It’s easy to get caught up in what we want and to get very serious and intense about it. But the most important thing is maintaining our loving—our true wealth. As J-R clearly says: I don’t care what path you are on, or what path you study, or what kind of techniques or spiritual exercises you know. If you’re not loving as you do it, you do nothing.
I have also found these J-R quotes on loving very helpful: *If you want to create an opportunity to bring forward your success, loving is the most powerful beam for it to ride in on.
*Loving is the most important quality you can nurture in yourself.
*If the key is to be loving, you’ll give up every consideration, every hesitation, and every reason not to be loving, and you’ll be loving in every situation in your life.
*In love we bring forward all things, in love we maintain all things, and in love we change all things.
*In love we then become all things because, truly, we already are love.
*Nothing else is worthier than the loving consciousness.
*You throw all caution to the wind and love completely, unabashedly—everything.
*Do everything with your attention on getting a smile on your face and love in your eyes.
Let’s close with one of my all-time favorite quotes, from Jalal al-Din Rumi: *Love is the cure, for your pain will keep giving birth to more pain until your eyes constantly exhale love as effortlessly as your body yields its scent.
THE POWER OF GRACE I have looked ahead at some of the things that have been coming my way and realized that I could, through this consciousness of grace that is given to humankind by the Holy Spirit, precipitate a re-creation into this physical reality, which looks completed.
The joy is unfathomable to think that although it’s completed, through the Holy Spirit or the Divine, through moving myself into that God consciousness, I can precipitate new patterns on top of the “possible” or “probable” things and completely change the old prophetic pattern.
It is also possible for you to move into this type of action. When you do, you are confronting and overcoming all karmic conditions and reincarnation patterns, and are now creating in a God consciousness throughout all universes wherein you travel.
These actions take place through the power of grace, through God saying, “You may do this because you and I are one and you are working as a representative for me. In that action where you represent me, all must come under your dominion. All principalities, all laws, all forms of nature are now yours to command, if you so desire to command. If you wish it into being, it will be done. If you desire it, it will manifest itself. And before you even need it, it will be there.” From Wealth & Higher Consciousness by John-Roger, D.S.S.
A continual theme of this series of books is that abundance and prosperity are about consciousness, not money or what one owns. Going deeper with that approach, we can say that the principles of abundance and prosperity lead us to connecting to God, as the Source of all, in a more profound way. Perhaps the principle of principles, or intention of intentions, is God consciousness.
The very act of joyfully giving our tithe is one of gratitude—of placing God first in our lives and thus demonstrating our knowing that all things come from God.
Taking this further, maybe we should give all we have to God—indeed, many saints of the past have. However, the ancient wisdom of Melchizedek and other spiritual masters and guides throughout time shows us that we need only give the first 10 percent of our increase to the representative of God on this level—one who gives us the Word of God—and we fulfill the intent of giving to God.
*One of my favorite stories tells of the prominent rabbi who ran into a member of his congregation in the street one day and said to him, “I haven’t seen you in synagogue the past few weeks. Is everything all right?”
The man answered, “Everything is fine, but I’ve been worshipping at a small synagogue on the other side of town.”
The rabbi responded, “I’m really surprised to hear that. I know the rabbi of that congregation. He’s a nice enough fellow, but he’s not the scholar that I am. He’s not the preacher that I am. He’s not the communal leader that I am. What can you possibly get from leaving my synagogue to worship at his?”
The congregant replied, “That’s all very true, but he has other qualities. For example, he can read minds, and he’s teaching me how to read minds. I’ll show you. Think of something. Concentrate on it. I’ll read your mind and tell you what you were thinking of.”
The rabbi concentrated for a few moments and the congregant ventured, “You’re thinking of the verse from the Psalms, ‘I have set the Lord before me at all times.’” (Psalms 16:8) The rabbi exclaimed, “Ha, you’re wrong! I wasn’t thinking about that at all!”
The congregant responded, “Yes, I know, and that’s why I don’t worship with you anymore.” From Overcoming Life’s Disappointments by Harold Kushner *Tithing is one of the ways that I experience my relationship with God, my knowing that God is walking with me and being with me bodily, all the time. John Morton *Why can’t we see God? Because we’ve been taught that God is someplace else. God is all. John-Roger, D.S.S.
*Those who realize God consciousness are those who enter into it, hold to it, and maintain it as the one thing they must never forget. John-Roger, D.S.S.
EFFORTLESS ACTION We can be in a state of doing, or we can be in a state of being.
In a state of being, we don’t have to do anything. All we have to do is just be here.
When you come to the state of being, there are no compulsions. Being just expresses itself through you as limitless love and energy. Whatever you do, you walk in your state of being, and, therefore, the action is karmically free.
If we can just be, and we can let that being of who we are come forward, and we can let our voice and our mind just present themselves, this being will do away with all the doing that has been our compulsive and obsessive behavior.
Do you understand this? That being comes forward, and then it does the doing. And there’s no karma because the action is done from the state of being, not from the state of ego, or from right and wrong, or from “I’m supposed to know,” or anything else like that.
People say, “How do you know these things?” I reside in the state of being. They say, “But how do you accomplish so much?” What I do is done from the state of being, or I don’t do it. From The Tao of Spirit by John-Roger, D.S.S.
A few months after a marvelous trip to Japan with J-R in which I had felt complete with life, I approached J-R to check my perceptions. J-R told me that, indeed, a lot of karma had been cleared up on the trip. He added that there was a lot of Paul in me and that now, maybe, there could be more of the Spirit. That was over 20 years ago. Progress has been very slow. Being curious and engaged with life, even in the rare moments when I am aware enough to recall J-R’s words, I still find it an enormous challenge to empty Paul and make space for the Spirit.
*A truly good man does nothing, Yet leaves nothing undone. A foolish man is always doing, Yet much remains to be done. Lao-Tzu *When we let drop the veils of our usual preconceptions, we are closer to our lives, sustained without knowing why. When we cannot see how healing or the next step in our lives will appear, and no longer know what we can expect, the step we must take just emerges, out of nothingness, like the grass. Visible and invisible hands reach out and we find that we have always been supported by much that is unknown and beyond our plans.
The old Chinese teachers called such activity “doing nothing,” or “not-doing.” This doing nothing is an inner event that can take place in strenuous action or utter stillness. To do nothing is always harder than we imagine.
Unlike ordinary laziness, in which we merely avoid something we think we ought to be doing, the laziness of not-doing has a refined and charged quality. By comparison, ordinary laziness is hard work and requires distraction. When we truly do nothing, a fertile, widening silence appears. Close to the mystery, we drift along. There is no resistance to delusion, yet delusion can find no ground to cling to. In the midst of action we rely on the stillness that is everywhere present. If the world is imagining itself without our assistance, why then, we let it do so. When we truly do nothing, we allow that falling can be good, that arms might catch us when we do fall, that the world may sustain and surprise us at the same time.
From The Light Inside the Dark by John Tarrant
*Breathing… All important. And yet not yours. Inhaling, exhaling. Taking and giving. To give is yours. Taking is not. Be happy to receive. Knowing that what you get is never what you expected. Therefore, give, give! Exhale, exhale! And see how, the moment you are totally empty, something takes place that makes you full. Spontaneously. Effortlessly.
“Hints” from Inner Beauty, Inner Light by Frederick Leboyer
YOUR NATURAL SPACE You cannot look into the world for the fulfillment of desire and look to Spirit at the same time. It’s a mirror. You find that if you lust, lust finds you. If you seek sensation, sensation finds you. If you seek love, love comes to you. And if you stand within your own natural, neutral space, you are able to choose the time, the place, and the extent of your participation. From The Tao of Spirit by John-Roger, D.S.S.
The news in the papers and on the Internet gives me a constant reason to be concerned unless I remember that I can send each piece of news the Light and realize that every concern that surfaces inside me is just waving and telling me it needs to be loved and, thus, be brought to peace and neutrality.
*In this house of mirrors you see a lot of things— Rub your eyes. Only you exist.
Jalal al-Din Rumi *Look how a mirror will reflect with perfect equanimity all actions before it. There is no act in this world that will ever cause the mirror to look away. There is no act in this world that will ever make the mirror say “no.” The mirror, like perfect love, will just keep giving of itself to all before it. How did the mirror ever get like that? It watched God.
Hafiz
*There’s no relationship out there. There is only the reflection of what you are doing inside yourself and how you’re dealing with relationships inside of you, not out there.
From The Tao of Spirit by John-Roger, D.S.S.
*Without going outside, you may know the whole world. Lao-Tzu *But if a mirror ever makes you sad You should know that it does not know you. Kabir
MANIFESTATION IS FOR THE AWARENESS OF THE BELOVED Why should we stop short and just manifest the law? That means we’ll always be beggars. We’ll always be trying to manifest our need, which then puts us right back in materialism. We become materialistically minded. Manifest the car, manifest the wife, manifest this, manifest that. We’re right back in it. What happened to all this spirituality? It is masquerading. So, the manifestation isn’t for that of the world, but it is for the awareness of the Beloved that is you inside. From the CD Manifesting God’s Abundance by John-Roger, D.S.S.
J-R’s quote has inspired me to look more deeply at my seeding process and perhaps to remove a layer or a veil in order to perceive and inquire what is underneath my request to God. What am I really asking for? What do I really want?
It reminds me of a story about Alexander the Great, who was an admirer of the great philosopher Diogenes. Diogenes lived very simply, and his attitude was grounded in what he perceived as the folly, pretence, self-deception, and artificiality of much of human conduct.
When Alexander the Great found himself in the same town as Diogenes, he went to see the wise man, who was outside the town boundaries, lying on the ground and enjoying the sun.
Alexander greeted him and said, “Diogenes, I have heard a great deal about you. Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Yes,” said Diogenes, “you can step aside a little so as not to keep the sunshine from me.”
Diogenes asked Alexander what his plans were. Alexander answered that he planned to conquer Greece. “Then what?” Diogenes asked. Alexander said that he planned to conquer Asia Minor. “And then?” Alexander said that he planned to conquer the world.
Diogenes asked, “What after that?” Alexander the Great told Diogenes that after all that conquering, he planned to relax and enjoy life.
Diogenes said, “Why not save yourself a lot of trouble by relaxing and enjoying yourself now?”
*Wabi-sabi means treading lightly on the planet and knowing how to appreciate what is encountered, no matter how trifling. Wabi-sabi tells us to stop our preoccupation with success—wealth, status, power, and luxury—and enjoy the unencumbered life.
Obviously, leading the simple wabi-sabi life requires some effort and will, and also some tough decisions. Wabi-sabi acknowledges that just as it is important to know when to make choices, it is also important to know when not to make choices: to let things be.
Even at the most austere level of material existence, we still live in a world of things. Wabi-sabi is exactly about the delicate balance between the pleasure we get from things and the pleasure we get from freedom from things.
From Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers by Leonard Koren
*It is possible to live out your whole life in perfect contentment, even though the whole world deafens you with its roar and wild beasts tear apart your body like a lump of clay. For nothing can shake a steady mind out of its peaceful repose; nothing can bar it from correct judgment, nor defeat its readiness to see the benefit that all things bring.
True understanding is to see the events of life in this way: “You are here for my benefit, though rumor paints you otherwise.” And everything is turned to one’s advantage when he greets a situation like this: “You are the very thing I was looking for.”
Truly whatever arises in life is the right material to bring about your growth and the growth of those around you. This, in a word, is art—and this art we call “life” is a practice suitable to both men and gods.
Everything contains some hidden purpose and a hidden blessing. What then could be strange or arduous when all of life is here to greet you like an old and faithful friend?
Marcus Aurelius
THE BEAUTY OF FRUGALITY One of the fundamental human errors is materiality, manifested mostly in terms of concern for the monetary value of things.
Greed, by its very nature, strikes against the Spirit inside. Once you come from greed, there is never enough in this world, and there is always a hunger for more. You can break the greed pattern by tithing.
From Relationships: Love, Marriage and Spirit by John-Roger, D.S.S.
With the financial crisis looming in June of 2008, I started to talk more about frugality and was immediately criticized for having poverty consciousness. While my intent was clearly misinterpreted, I did understand the confusion over the word.
For one thing, frugality is not part of MSIA’s lexicon. Plus, it is an unattractive word. However, digging beneath appearances we find that frugal is not so bad after all and actually soars above other words whose appearance, though perhaps more attractive, turns out to be lacking depth. This excerpt from Neal Templin’s “Cheapskate” column in The Wall Street Journal explains more: According to the experts, being a tightwad isn’t the happiest state of being. Many cheapskates experience something akin to physical pain when they spend, and are constantly anxious about money.
Spendthrifts aren’t necessarily any happier. Their free-spending often causes stress in their lives and marriages.
Indeed, the experts say the happiest people are frugal, which they define as people who are able to spend without suffering but take pleasure in saving.
And then Harry Eyres, in his “Slow Lane” column in the Financial Times, had this to say about frugality: Frugality, which sounds so stern and ascetic, actually comes from the Latin word for fruit. To be more precise, the words for frugal in English and Romance languages derive from the Latin frugi, an indeclinable adjective formed by the dative of frux (fruit), and often combined with bonae—so “to or for the good fruit.”
Being “for the good fruit” means being honest and temperate, dedicated to long-term flourishing: as vital for human beings as for the earth itself.
So there you have it. Go forward and flourish.
*Materialism is a strange game. It’s caught more than one person and rubbed their nose back into the world time and time and time again. From the CD Manifesting God’s Abundance by John-Roger, D.S.S.
*To see a man fearless in danger, Untainted by lust, Happy in adversity, Composed in turmoil, And laughing at all those things which are coveted or feared by others— All men must acknowledge, that this can be nothing else but a beam of divinity animating a human body. Seneca
*My daily affairs are quite ordinary; but I’m in total harmony with them. I don’t hold on to anything, don’t reject anything; nowhere an obstacle or conflict. Who cares about wealth and honor? Even the poorest thing shines. My miraculous power and spiritual activity: drawing water and carrying wood. Layman P’ang Here is an email I recently received: This afternoon I was reviewing my budget and was feeling kind of flat, deflated and unsure, and a little disappointed with how the numbers all looked. It was not as much as I thought it would be, and I felt a little fearful that I would run out of money. I then remembered I had not yet factored in my tithing. So without hesitation I got to work on calculating my double tithe, and factored that into the budget. Of course the figures were even lower than before, but I had a feeling of joy and exhilaration. How I related to the numbers on the page was dramatically different. I felt so happy and safe, and I knew and I know that I have, and will have, more than enough. Love always, T.R.
YOU ARE THE SOURCE If I could really get you to understand that you are the source individually of all things around you, you would have the knowledge necessary for your life to come abundantly to you.
When you go out there in the world to “get” things, you are operating from lack. You are saying, “I don’t have this within me, so I have to find someone to give it to me.”
If you could know that you are the source, you would not operate from lack. You would be manifesting your natural abundance, and the presence of Spirit would be with you. John-Roger, D.S.S.
I find the above from J-R, which was also in the first volume of Living the Spiritual Principles of Abundance and Prosperity, so complete and enlightening that each time I read it something else inside me awakens.
*Regardless of how you have limited your awareness, you are a free and self-determined being. No other being, nor any group of beings, can control your vibration level.
That means that the physical world has no power over you whatsoever: it doesn’t tempt you, it doesn’t corrupt you, it doesn’t get in the way of enlightenment, “it” doesn’t do anything to you.
You are the sole cause of your level of existence. Your internal condition is never programmed. The experience of being forced or controlled against your will can occur only when you make yourself dense, when you contract your awareness.
From The Lazy Man’s Guide To Enlightenment by Thaddeus Golas
*Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate, or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such. Henry Miller
TRANSCENDING LACK THROUGH WONDER The challenge for you on this planet is simple: do not ask, do not want, do not desire out of lack—because by doing that, you are doubting the existence of God, who can grow the trees and the flowers and who can certainly take care of you. If you simply affirm God’s existence, saying, “I am open; I am receiving,” you will find that greater things will come to you. If you can go further by saying, “Thank you, Beloved” or “Baruch Bashan (the blessings already are),” you will be awakening to even greater blessings of Spirit. From The Rest of Your Life by John-Roger, D.S.S., with Paul Kaye Beauty is all around us—in abundance. Thank you, Beloved.
*There is another kind of spiritual courage as well, quieter and less celebrated, but just as remarkable: that of making each day, in its most conventional aspects—cooking, eating, breathing—an oblation to the absolute. Philip Zaleski (Oblation: The act of offering something, such as worship or thanks, especially to a deity.) *“In my youth,” Rabbi Abraham Heschel wrote of his childhood in Warsaw, “there was one thing we did not have to look for, and that was exaltation. Every moment is great, we were taught, every moment is unique.” Heschel was renowned for his unflagging sense of wonder.
Rabbi Shapira, the Warsaw ghetto’s Hasidic rabbi, preached “sensitization to holiness,” a process of discovering the holiness within oneself and the natural world. This included mindful attending to everyday life. He gathered this teaching from “the world as a whole, from the chirping of the birds, the mooing of the cows, from the voices and tumult of human beings.” From all these, he said, “one hears the voice of God.” It is only through wonder and transcendence, the ghetto rabbi taught, that one could combat the disintegration of everyday life in the ghetto. “To project the supernatural powers of kindness into the realm of speech, so that they may take on concrete, specific form.” Diane Ackerman *Beauty is one of the great marvels, so simple and so profound, evident and ineffable. How can anything so delicious be so good for you? It is an effective answer to so many things that go wrong in life. If your definition of beauty includes the experiencing of beauty (as mine does), it comes as close to being a cure-all as anything I know.
Beauty lives only in active collaboration between the thing and the perceiver. It requires that we come out and engage. At the heart of that live encounter we call beauty lies wonder. To experience beauty, we tap into and revive our capacity for wonder, and experiencing wonder reorders the world for a while. In experiencing beauty, we create beauty, and we become beautiful.
With practice, beauty becomes a habit of mind. This mindset becomes an ordinary way to experience life, a celebration of the aesthetics of everyday things, which include the way the light falls across a sidewalk, and the pattern of wrinkles in a weathered face. The habit of beauty is expressed in a thousand tiny adjustments and thoughts within each day, all aiming toward the highest quality. From The Everyday Work of Art by Eric Booth *It has been said that art is a tryst, for in the joy of it maker and beholder meet. Kojiro Tomita
THERE’S MORE TO LIFE THAN MONEY God does not supply you materiality. God supplies you with the harmonics—the ability to be in harmony. God supplies a melody and you produce the words. God supplies the air and you breathe it. God supplies the love and you partake of it. From The Rest of Your Life by John-Roger, D.S.S., with Paul Kaye A continual theme I like to explore is that there is more to life than money. Obvious to many but then, so what? The “so what” to me is, how best can our energy be used in the most fulfilling, efficient, and effortless way as we live in this world? Below I have included two examples. (Of course, anyone who exhibits effortlessness in adulthood has often had to put in a lot of effort and focus to get there.) The first will be familiar, Mahatma Gandhi. The second is a little out of the ordinary and is about Ricky Jay, “who is perhaps the most gifted sleight-of-hand artist alive.” Ricky Jay’s interest in his craft rather than in promoting himself as a performer and “his devotion to his art rather than a devotion to popular success” are a source of inspiration. In some ways there is no comparison between the two men, but then, comparison is inefficient use of energy and takes too much effort. Better to pursue excellence in our own fields.
*Gandhi never held any official position in government, he had no wealth, he commanded no armies—but he could mobilize millions. People were willing to serve with him and for him because his life was devoted to serving them.
Many of us have come to believe that leadership is the attainment of power. But as long as power dominates our thinking about leadership, we cannot move toward a higher standard of leadership. We must place service at the core; for even though power will always be associated with leadership, it has only one legitimate use: service.
The ideal of selfless service is that you see everybody as yourself and expect no reward. But if you wait until you can serve without any selfish motive, you may wait forever. Gandhi insisted that the best way to attain the ideal was to start on the journey: “If we all refuse to serve, until we attain perfection, there will be no service. The fact is that perfection is attained through service.” From A Higher Standard of Leadership by Keshavan Nair
*I regard Ricky as an example of the “superior man,” according to the I Ching definition. He’s the paradigm of what a philosopher should be: someone who’s devoted his life to both the study and the practice of his chosen field. David Mamet *The playwright David Mamet and the theatre director Gregory Mosher affirm that some years ago, late one night in the bar of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Chicago, this happened: Ricky Jay, who is perhaps the most gifted sleight-of-hand artist alive, was performing magic with a deck of cards. Also present was a friend of Mamet and Mosher’s named Christ Nogulich, the director of food and beverage at the hotel. After twenty minutes of disbelief-suspending manipulations, Jay spread the deck face up on the bar counter and asked Nogulich to concentrate on a specific card but not to reveal it. Jay then assembled the deck face down, shuffled, cut it into two piles, and asked Nogulich to point to one of the piles and name his card.
“Three of clubs,” Nogulich said, and he was then instructed to turn over the top card.
He turned over the three of clubs.
Mosher, in what could be interpreted as a passive-aggressive act, quietly announced, “Ricky, you know, I also concentrated on a card.”
After an interval of silence, Jay said, “That’s interesting, Gregory, but I only do this for one person at a time.”
Mosher persisted: “Well, Ricky, I really was thinking of a card.”
Jay paused, frowned, stared at Mosher, and said, “This is a distinct change of procedure.” A longer pause. “All right—what was the card?”
“Two of spades.”
Jay nodded, and gestured toward the other pile, and Mosher turned over its top card.
The deuce of spades.
A small riot ensued.
Deborah Baron, a screenwriter in Los Angeles, where Jay lives, once invited him to a NewYear’s Eve dinner party at her home. About a dozen other people attended. Well past midnight, everyone gathered around a coffee table as Jay, at Baron’s request, did closeup card magic. When he had performed several dazzling illusions and seemed ready to retire, a guest named Mort said, “Come on, Ricky. Why don’t you do something truly amazing?” Baron recalls that at that moment “the look in Ricky’s eyes was, like, ‘Mort—you have just messed with the wrong person.’”
Jay told Mort to name a card, any card. Mort said, “The three of hearts.” After shuffling, Jay gripped the deck in the palm of his right hand and sprung it, cascading all fifty-two cards so that they travelled the length of the table and pelted an open wine bottle.
“O.K., Mort, what was your card again?”
“The three of hearts.”
“Look inside the bottle.”
Mort discovered, curled inside the neck, the three of hearts.
The party broke up immediately.
From “Secrets of Magus,” The New Yorker, April 5, 1993, by Mark Singer
BEING OPEN TO RECEIVE
Q: It’s very easy for me to give and give, but much more difficult for me to receive. How can I learn to receive?
A: You must be open to receive. If I have something to give you but your hands are tightly closed behind your back, I have no vessel in which to place my gift. But if your hands are open and you reach out to receive, I can place the gift in them. The same is true for those things that are of Spirit. If you are uptight and closed down inside of yourself, how can you be open to receive the bounty that is available to you?
If it’s truly difficult to receive, you might begin by receiving in small ways. Let someone buy you lunch, open the door, or run an errand for you. Most people will be very willing to give to you. It’s you who decides how much you want to receive on all levels. From Q&A Journal from the Heart by John-Roger, D.S.S.
I have shared that one of the biggest factors in turning my financial indebtedness around was the creation of a money magnet. The other big factor was the creation of a budget. A budget is simply looking ahead and estimating what income you will be bringing in and what you will be spending, and seeing if you will end up with a surplus or deficit.
If you are like me, you may have the following two objections to a budget: —I am spending as little as I can, so what use is a budget to me? —I am having difficulty enough making ends meet—if I look ahead I’ll get even more depressed.
I certainly have empathy for these points of view and buy into them from time to time myself. However, the benefits of doing a budget are great, and there is no downside except some of my time.
Most bad management is as simple as not being willing to look. Budgeting makes me look. And it is a very good thing. Being willing to look at what I am spending does wonders for aligning myself. I am brought face to face with my spending habits. It clears the head. And knowing what I need to bring in and seeing it on paper also assists the basic self, from my experience, in doing what it needs to do to pull in money for its magnet. It’s a way to be of service to myself and get inner cooperation.
If you are in a relationship, married or living with your partner and sharing finances, it is also a great way to share, get on the same page, and come into harmony.
*Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love. Rainer Maria Rilke
“Budget” might well be the dirtiest word in the financial language.
People hate budgets because budgets seem confining. Like diets, budgets are forever begun with grand intentions, only to be quickly ditched when spending restraints seem too much like a yoke preventing you from disbursing your money as you like.
A budget is the very tonic many households need. It doesn’t have to be painful if you understand one salient fact: You control your budget; it doesn’t control you. Every month, you dictate how you spend your limited financial resources. Your budget has no control over that. You can choose to eat out every day, or you can choose to replace your wardrobe, or you can choose to pay off additional principal on your debt balances, or you can choose to afford a getaway over a long weekend. Whatever you want to do with your money, you can do it. But here’s the catch: You can’t do everything.
And therein lies the problem. Too many people want their paycheck to cover everything they want, the instant they want it, and if the money’s not in the budget, they turn to American Express and MasterCard. Bad, bad idea. That credit-reliant mindset got this country into the mess it’s now in.
So, as you seek once again to hew to a budget, let’s come at this problem from a different point of view. First, we’re not going to call your budget a “budget,” and, second, we’re going to focus on the one component you have real control over, your discretionary spending.
Money is as much a way of thinking as it is a means of interacting in the consumer economy. As such, we’ll attack the budget from a mental angle. From now on, start calling your budget a “spending plan,” because that’s exactly how it operates. It is your personal plan for spending your dollars in any given month.
Every month you have certain costs that do not change. The mortgage/rent, a car note, insurance payments, electricity and groceries (give or take a few dollars). Those costs are fixed, unless you pay off your car, reduce your electrical consumption, change your insurance policy or move to a cheaper or more pricey apartment (or you refinance your mortgage).
Add up all the fixed costs in your life and subtract that sum from your monthly take-home pay. The result is your discretionary income—all the money you have for the month to pay for the wants you harbor. Exceed that amount and you are living beyond your means.
From “How to Make a Spending Plan,” The Wall St. Journal, by Jeff D. Opdyke *Being vigilant means exactly what it sounds like: paying close, careful attention to the little things that will make a big difference in your life.
Being financially vigilant allows you to feel more confident and optimistic about your life, because you’ll know that you have control over your finances. You won’t be buffeted about, at the mercy of whatever bill happens to arrive in your mailbox. From the Internet blog, Bluntmoney.com
And to end, here is a spending tip from an email I received: When I am about to pay for something, I inwardly tell myself, “God is my Partner.” Then I pause for just a moment to really experience that partnership. Often I will feel something inwardly like a joyful expansion inside my consciousness, or a warmth, or an inner re-alignment. I sometimes spontaneously change my mind and put the item back, and don’t buy it. Often, I don’t even want it any more. In a flash I may see how it would simplify my life to do without the item. Other times I go ahead and buy it because I come into clarity that the item will have value in my life. Since I started saying this affirmation while in the act of spending, I have more peace of mind and perceive that my relationship with money is organically, gracefully and naturally being realigned for my highest good. B.W.
HAVING A GOOD LAUGH ABOUT IT ALL This whole world boils down to one word—energy—and it’s either used for you or against you, but it is used.
Since this one energy is always a source, and always (all ways) a supply, there’s only one thing left to do with this whole process called life, and that’s just to have a good laugh about it! Because it’s hilarious to think that we have within us the absolute essence of perfection, and we’re messing around with it and getting sick, having problems, having despair, and worrying about things going on in life, and it’s all under a direction of something that’s going to handle it all anyway.
From Living the Spiritual Principles of Health and Well-Being by John-Roger, D.S.S., with Paul Kaye I do often feel upset by what I see happening in the economy and in the world. I have the enormously helpful tools of being grateful and moving into forgiveness when I judge. However, nothing beats a good old laugh for getting clear, feeling better about things, and gaining perspective.
When I just don’t have it in me to see the humor, I like to have something around me that can make me laugh and quickly take me out of my stuckness. I particularly like David M. Bader’s Zen Judaism.
Here are four of my favorite pieces: *Practice the wall-gazing meditation. Pick a spot on the wall and then focus on it. Maintain complete silence. Do not budge or look away. The sixth-century Zen master Bodhidharma once sat facing a wall for nine years perfecting his Enlightenment. See if you can hold out until the person arguing with you apologizes.
*To practice Zen and the art of Jewish motorcycle maintenance, do the following: Get rid of the motorcycle. What were you thinking?
*For harmonious, focused concentration, sit cross-legged, as though balancing a lotus blossom on your head, with your tailbone planted in the earth. Place your right ankle on your left thigh. Place your left ankle on your right thigh. Pull both feet in toward your kidneys. Press your knees firmly against the floor with your head upright, your chin drawn in, and your shoulders spread back. Stop screaming. If you keep scrunching up your face like that, it will stay that way.
*To know the Buddha is the highest attainment. Second highest is to go to the same doctor as the Buddha.
*Laughter is love being demonstrated, love being expressed. It’s so good and healing to be able to laugh at yourself and with yourself. If you take yourself too seriously, you are going to fall to your knees before too long and have the world on your back. That may be a very hard burden. From Momentum: Letting Love Lead by John-Roger, D.S.S., with Paul Kaye *It is important to see that you must go on, regardless of your attitude. You have at least two choices of attitude. You can go on crying, or you can go on laughing. If you have the choice (and you do), you might just as well go on laughing. It’s more joyful.
Spirit is joyful. The nature of the Soul is joyful.
The personality isn’t always joyful, but it is part of the illusions of the physical level.
From The Way Out Book by John-Roger, D.S.S.
THE READINESS IS ALL Part of this process of creation and manifestation and abundance is that we do not put energy into what we no longer have use for. As spiritual warriors we are impeccable, we are purposeful, and so we must return what we don’t need to the Source, to allow the new to come forward.
We are so full with what we don’t need that we do not have space for the new. We get attached to how pretty something is, or to its sentimental value, and to how “desperately” we need it. So we live in our desperation instead of our supply— instead of our abundance.
We need the ruthlessness to look at it and say, “I know it’s pretty. So what?” And we send it out of our energy field to where it can be used, instead of it stagnating and pulling on us.
You see, a person who is going to work in Soul Transcendence must only engage in ruthlessness. Never self-pity. Ruthlessness is the opposite of self-pity. It’s called, “Ask no quarter and give no quarter, I’m on my way to God.”
Self-pity says, “Oh, I stubbed my toe and I can’t go today.”
Ruthlessness says, “I stubbed my toe, I’m going to be walking funny until it’s well, but I’m on my way to God.” John-Roger, D.S.S.
Shakespeare’s Hamlet contains several profound spiritual themes. Some of humanity’s greatest sayings have come out of this work of art. For example, “To thine own self be true,” and “There is nothing either good or bad, only thinking makes it so.” Then there is, of course, “To be or not to be…” However, my personal favorite is, “The readiness is all.”
One of the many themes running through the play is decisiveness. Hamlet appears indecisive—understandably, as his father, the king of Denmark, has recently died and his mother has married his uncle within a short time. And it turns out that his uncle murdered his father. This is Shakespeare, after all! However, by the end of the play Hamlet has resolved his indecisiveness and faces his fate with equanimity. In the closing act, Hamlet makes a reference to the Bible when he says words to the effect that God’s hand is in everything. He then goes on to say that when we think something is coming, it often doesn’t come in our timing, and just when we think it isn’t coming, it arrives. Our only real choice is to be ready. Although he is referring to death, the thought is a useful one and can be transferred to many situations in life.
What is readiness in the context of abundance and prosperity as we face this time of great change? For myself, I’ve been attempting to lay the groundwork of readiness through practicing the spiritual principles of abundance and prosperity— tithing, seeding, grace tithing, money magnet—so that the channel to receive God’s abundance and grace is maintained and kept open.
While it’s all ultimately in God’s hands, there is also my part to play by having a minimum of debt and living within my means. Very practically, it’s having my financial affairs organized and in order, and having a budget in place. Having some money put away for the inevitable unexpected expense can be very helpful.
So am I ready? No. That’s one of the pleasures of writing these pieces: they inspire me to do better.
Readiness is also an inner state I try to cultivate by telling myself not to worry about things that are outside my control and, instead, to focus on what I can influence. I often say to myself, “Choose your values and act accordingly.”
Here, too, I fall short. However, if I can recall that God is my Partner and that, regardless of circumstances, there is always God’s unconditionally loving hands to rest in, I find that all is well.
*Sam Keen (Interviewer): How did Don Juan teach you to be decisive?
Carlos Castaneda: He spoke to my body with his acts. My old way was to leave everything pending and never to decide anything. To me, decisions were ugly. It seemed unfair for a sensitive man to have to decide. One day Don Juan asked me: “Do you think you and I are equals?” I was a university student and an intellectual and he was an old Indian, but I condescended and said: “Of course we are equals.” He said: “I don’t think we are. I am a hunter and a warrior and you are a pimp. I am ready to sum up my life at any moment. Your feeble world of indecision and sadness is not equal to mine.”
Well, I was very insulted and would have left, but we were in the middle of the wilderness. So I sat down and got trapped in my own ego involvement. I was going to wait until he decided to go home. After many hours I saw that Don Juan would stay there forever if he had to. Why not? For a man with no pending business, that is his power.
I finally realized that this man was not like my father, who would make twenty New Year’s resolutions and cancel them all out. Don Juan’s decisions were irrevocable as far as he was concerned. They could be canceled out only by other decisions. So I went over and touched him and he got up and we went home. The impact of that act was tremendous. It convinced me that the way of a warrior is an exuberant and powerful way to live.
Keen: It isn’t the content of decision that is important so much as the act of being decisive.
Castaneda: That is what Don Juan means by having a gesture. A gesture is a deliberate act which is undertaken for the power of making a decision.
From “Seeing Castaneda: An Interview” by Sam Keen Psychology Today, December 1972
ACCEPTING LIFE UNQUESTIONINGLY You may not be turning to face Spirit enough to build up, hold, and expand your awareness to encompass the whole vista of the cosmos and its creation. To be involved with that is an experience of now because Spirit is always evolving, devolving, exploding, and imploding all at the same time.
It’s chaos. Out of the chaos comes creation in its finest state and beingness. But almost in the moment of its happening, it’s past.
It is an ongoing process. Creation is always new in every moment. What you focus and act upon is your creation. As soon as you talk or think about it, it’s past.
Be willing to not know what’s going on so you can know what’s going on. Be willing to not know who you are so you can find out.
From The Tao of Spirit by John-Roger, D.S.S.
I must say that the current state of the economy and the world drives me a little nuts. I find myself easily slipping into judgment when I see all the missed opportunities and all the dishonesty and corruption. And with the wealth of information now available online, it is easy for me to spend the whole day feeling righteous and judging.
When I come to my senses, I see that my misalignment is purely a matter of two factors: where I am placing my attention, and my continual refusal to accept the fact that the world has always been this way. Nothing much has changed in thousands of years. Human beings are doing the same things they have always done throughout history.
When I turn to the wisdom of the MSIA Discourses, J-R’s books, and other literature, I find that my perspective is immediately changed. Peace returns. At least until the next time I forget—usually a few moments later. This vigilance really is eternal, and it really helps to have J-R’s words and others’ wisdom at hand.
*Those who look down on the world will surely take hold and try to change things But this is a plan I’ve seen fail again and again.
The world is Tao’s own vessel It is Perfection manifest It cannot be changed It cannot be improved For those who go on tampering, it’s ruined For those who try to grasp, it’s gone.
Lao Tzu
Then again, there is good old positive thinking. This provocative post is from Seth Godin’s blog: All the evidence I’ve seen shows that positive thinking and confidence improves performance. In anything.
Give someone an easy math problem, watch them get it right and then they’ll do better on the ensuing standardized test than someone who just failed a difficult practice test.
No, positive thinking doesn’t allow you to do anything, but it’s been shown over and over again that it improves performance over negative thinking.
Key question then: why do smart people engage in negative thinking? Are they actually stupid?
The reason, I think, is that negative thinking feels good. In its own way, we believe that negative thinking works. Negative thinking feels realistic, or soothes our pain, or eases our embarrassment. Negative thinking protects us and lowers expectations.
In many ways, negative thinking is a lot more fun than positive thinking. So we do it.
If positive thinking was easy, we’d do it all the time. Compounding this difficulty is our belief that the easy thing (negative thinking) is actually appropriate, it actually works for us. The data is irrelevant. We’re the exception, so we say.
Positive thinking is hard. Worth it, though.
OUT OF THE SILENCE If God is going to be called forth, you sit and listen.
If you get nothing and it’s still, you must realize that underneath the stillness is the Creator, who is holding the stillness.
So, in everything you do, whether failure or success, you must realize that God is containing and holding all of that.
From The Tao of Spirit by John-Roger, D.S.S.
I am a great fan of silence. Then again, I may be deluding myself. For one thing, I rarely get to experience it. I live on a busy commercial road. A factory is on the other side of the building. I sleep with earplugs.
Then there is my mind. It produces far more noise than either the road or the factory.
Thus the idea of a silent retreat has always appealed to me. A weekend without the Internet, without speaking, spent in spiritual exercises, devotion, reading Discourses, meditating in the gardens, and returning to stillness—all this seems like heaven to me.
Above all, I think that silence and stillness enable us to tap more fully into our inner riches, our inner wealth and prosperity. That’s what most of the world seems to be after—just looking in the other direction. Perhaps silence and stillness are the greatest spiritual principles of abundance and prosperity of all.
Now to live it.
*Student, tell me, what is God? He is the breath inside the breath.
Kabir *Listen for whatever comes forward out of the silence. Listen past the inner conversations of your mind.
If things start to distract and disrupt you, bring your focus back to the silence.
As many times as the silence is broken, you can refocus on listening to the silence one more time.
From The Tao of Spirit by John-Roger, D.S.S.
*The word ‘listen’ contains the same letters as the word ‘silent.’ Alfred Brendel *You do not need to leave your room… Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, be quite still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked. It has no choice. It will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
Franz Kafka
*It is often a devastating question to ask oneself, but it is sometimes important to ask it—“In saying what I have in mind, will I really improve on silence?” Robert K. Greenleaf
A COUNTENANCE THAT IS A FORM OF GLORY
One of the fundamental errors that we have as human beings is greed, which is manifested mostly in terms of money or monetary value. Greed, by its very nature, is a striking against the riches within oneself because it appears that there is never enough here in the world. Our eyes are always “hungry.”
We can help to break the greed pattern by tithing, giving 10 percent of our personal wealth. When we tithe, two levels are activated—a level here in this world and, at the same time, a mystical, invisible level. The mystical is a communication saying, “You are abundant and handle abundance well, so here’s some more.”
The other level, in this world, is when we look at our abundance and contribute joyfully through tithing. We are actually cheerful about it. This action sets up a countenance that is a form of glory in the human being, and that glory attracts more abundance. From God Is Your Partner by John-Roger, D.S.S.
One of the things that amazed me on a recent journey to Israel and Jordan was the richness of the desert. I noticed it first in Israel, on top of Masada by the Dead Sea. I had been to Masada several times and had been struck by the austerity and barren environment. This time, visiting after 14 years, I experienced it completely differently. I was enchanted by it: the monochromatic scenery, the lack of distraction, and the wealth it contained. It drew me inward, beckoning and reflecting to me that I had become a more interior person over the years.
When our group went to the Wadi Rum in Jordan—a vast and gorgeous desert with its red sands and Bedouin inhabitants—again I was awed by the immensity, the silence, and the call inward. Being with the group, I had little time for solitude, and though I longed for a day or two to surrender to what the desert had to offer, I had to take quiet moments in 10-second intervals. Somehow this was enough, and it transported me to an altered space that took me days to return from.
Many years ago I had seen the movie The Sheltering Sky with Debra Winger and John Malkovich. The story took place largely in the open desert, and I recall leaving the theatre after the movie pretty clueless as to where I was. Yes, there is certainly something about the desert.
When our group assembled and called in the Light at the Wadi Rum, and a prayer was issued for the land to be returned to its prior lush and verdant state as in previous centuries, I found myself heretically questioning, why? I had found the desert to be rich, opulent, and luxurious—and perfect just the way it is.
*Being with Deh Chun was like dropping through a hole in everything that the world said was important—education, progress, money, sex, prestige. It was like discovering that nothing else mattered and all I needed was now—the moment—to survive. Sitting there in the little house, listening to the water boil, to the twigs crackling in the wood stove, I was temporarily removed from the game.
Nowadays, in books on meditation, it has become standard practice to say that your teacher was a mirror that allowed you to see your true self. But that was not my experience of Deh Chun. It was more like floating weightless on the Dead Sea and looking up at an empty sky. There was a feeling of tremendous peace and freedom, but that was all. I didn’t know anything after I was done. Trying to pin him down on some aspect of meditation was as pointless as trying to drive a stake through the air. He taught one thing and one thing only, and that he taught to perfection: meditation happens now.
After the first few visits to his house, I realized that nothing pivotal was going to happen, but I kept returning anyway without knowing what it was about him that held my attention. I was a college student, and fairly typical of other nineteen-year-olds in that I was not particularly interested in spending time with someone four times my age. Especially someone who by ordinary standards was little better than a bum.
Deh Chun was completely simple. He lived on fifty dollars a month. He was a Buddhist monk who never spoke of Buddhism, an accomplished landscape painter who never sold his work. He wore only secondhand clothes and was without pretension of any kind.
Long after his death, it is finally clear to me that he taught only by example. Recently, a friend of mine said of a certain Catholic priest, “He practices what he preaches, so he doesn’t have to preach so loud.” Deh Chun practiced so well he didn’t have to preach at all. From The Wooden Bowl by Clark Strand
LIFE IS DIVINE COMMUNION
Life is divine communion. It’s an eternal process that breathes in and breathes out. This process of life is present, now. What makes it all so very nice is that there is only God, and God is present in your consciousness, directly. Knowing that, then, you can participate in the divine communion of life by physically experiencing the fullness and “realities” of the world without identifying with them. As you move through the world you use your emotions to enhance your experience and your mind to select and direct you in your activities. These are tools to place those things that come to you in the right perspective so that you can recognize the divine essence that is the Soul in all things.
Divine communion is being loving. It’s that quality by which you experience yourself dancing in your own heart. It’s where the sacred sounds sing in your heart. Not saying the sacred tones in your mind, but hearing them resounding in your heart and through every part of your being as you ride on the bliss of your own true nature; that is participating in your own divine communion.
At the moment of communion with your own being, your consciousness automatically expands. An analogy is that when you breathe out, breathing in is automatic. That’s the process of life. So you don’t try to expand your consciousness. You can’t do it by trying. You expand your consciousness by making yourself available to Spirit, to the Beloved, by your willingness to be open and present within that total loving presence of God.
When you are in divine communion, you may find yourself moving very naturally into the stream of Light we call the Sound Current of God.
From The Rest of Your Life by John-Roger, D.S.S., with Paul Kaye
*A fishbowl can be seen as representing the difference between the way the East and West view freedom. For a Westerner, a fishbowl limits the freedom of the fish. For a Chinese, it provides a framework enabling the fish to develop its freedom. Ed Young In the new economic “reality” that we are facing these days, perhaps there is also an opportunity for greater freedom, creativity, and expansion. This has very little to do with interacting with the world but everything to do with consciousness.
It’s why I am a big fan of the spiritual principles of abundance and prosperity. The act of tithing is a direct relationship with Divinity and is, in itself, an act of expansion. At the moment of writing my tithing check, I am confronted with many inner choices and with my commitment to growth and awareness.
When I am in a contracted place, I remind myself of J-R’s words: Listen, there is endless supply. Once you understand that, you are on your way to a much higher level of freedom.
That seems to be the reminder I need to expand and to open and receive.
*To the untrained eye ego-climbing and selfless climbing may appear identical. Both kinds of climbers place one foot in front of the other. Both breathe in and out at the same rate. Both stop when tired. Both go forward when rested. But what a difference! The ego-climber is like an instrument that’s out of adjustment. He puts his foot down an instant too soon or too late. He’s likely to miss a beautiful passage of sunlight through the trees. He goes on when the sloppiness of his step shows he’s tired. He rests at odd times. He looks up the trail trying to see what’s ahead even when he knows what’s ahead because he just looked a second before. He goes too fast or too slow for the conditions and when he talks his talk is forever about somewhere else, something else. He’s here but he’s not here. He rejects the here, is unhappy with it, wants to be farther up the trail but when he gets there will be just as unhappy because then it will be “here.” What he’s looking for, what he wants, is all around him, but he doesn’t want that because it is all around him. Every step’s an effort, both physically and spiritually, because he imagines his goal to be external and distant.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig Volume 1 of this series started with J-R’s quote: “Listen, there is endless supply. Once you understand that, you are on your way to a much higher level of freedom.” And it seems a very fitting way to close this volume. Given the illusion of lack we are confronted with and reminded of daily in the news, I can’t be reminded of J-R’s words enough. Embracing them, I am given the precious gift of inner freedom.
AFTERWORD
John-Roger’s book God Is Your Partner laid out the spiritual principles of abundance and prosperity in a very clear and practical way. Living the Spiritual Principles of Abundance and Prosperity is inspired by that foundation.
In April 2009, I started an e-newsletter called God Is My Partner to encourage people to practice the abundance tools John-Roger has so lovingly laid out for us. The response was more than I could have hoped for, and many people requested that the pieces be put in a book. This first volume is a response to that and contains the first 25 newsletters.
If you are new to John-Roger’s work, two terms that you will see throughout this book and the subsequent volumes are tithing and seeding. These are two of the fundamental practices for living an abundant life. Tithing is the spiritual practice of giving 10 percent of one’s increase to God by giving it to the Source of one’s spiritual teachings. Seeding is a form of prayer to God for something that one wants to manifest in the world. It is done by placing a “seed” with (giving an amount of money to) the Source of one’s spiritual teachings.
God Is Your Partner has step-by-step directions for both tithing and seeding and describes how to create financial abundance and other things you want by working with God. The book also explains the spiritual basis of tithing and seeding and why it is very hard for people to shake you loose from your spirit if you have done both tithing and seeding.
God is Your Partner can be obtained free of charge by;
1. Downloading a pdf at www.godismypartner.org/goodies_get.php
2. Ordering online at www.msia.org/store
3. Writing to MSIA at 3500 W. Adams Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90018
FOR MORE *If you would like to receive the bi-weekly e-newsletter God Is My Partner you can sign up for free at: www.godismypartner.org/subscribe
APPENDIX: SOURCES FOR THE QUOTES Here are the sources for the quotes that are not cited in the text.
PROSPERITY IS YOUR HERITAGE, page 9 J.K. Rowling from commencement address she delivered at Harvard University on June 5th, 2008
OPEN TO INFINITE SUPPLY, page 17 Morris West from The Shoes of the Fisherman (1963) Lillian Ralph Jackman poem is as it appeared in The Heron Dance Book of Love and Gratitude By Roderick MacIver
THE WINGS THAT LIFT, page 19 “The Silk Worm” is from Love Poems from God by Daniel Ladinsky
THE RELAXED STATE, page 23 This version of the monk story was from A Path with Heart: A guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life By Jack Kornfield The Don Juan quote was from A Separate Reality by Carlos Castaneda
THE POWER OF GRACE, page 33 The “God is All” quote appeared in the daily email series Loving Each Day and was originally from audio and videotape #7622, “How Close Are You to God?”
The “God consciousness” quote is from The Rest of Your Life by John-Roger, D.S.S., with Paul Kaye
EFFORTLESS ACTION, page 37 The Lao-Tzu quote is from Chapter 38 of the Tao Te Ching, translated by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English 91
YOUR NATURAL SPACE, page 41 The Rumi poem comes from A Garden Beyond Paradise by Jonathan Star and Shahram Shiva, Bantam Books, 1992 The Hafiz poem “Perfect Equanimity” comes from Love Poems from God by Daniel Ladinsky The Lao-Tzu quote comes from Tao Te Ching, translated by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English The Marcus Aurelius quote is entitled “A Practice for Men and Gods” and can be found in The Inner Treasure: An Introduction to the World’s Sacred and Mystical Writings by Jonathan Star, Tarcher/Putnam
THE BEAUTY OF FRUGALITY, page 47 The Seneca quote is entitled “A Beam of Divinity” and can be found in The Inner Treasure: An Introduction to the World’s Sacred and Mystical Writings by Jonathan Star, Tarcher/Putnam The Layman P’ang quote can be found in The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry, Edited by Stephen Mitchell, Harper & Row
YOU ARE THE SOURCE, page 51 The Henry Miller quote can be found in The Henry Miller Reader, Edited by Lawrence Durrell, New Directions Publishing Corporation (May 1969) 92
TRANSCENDING LACK THROUGH WONDER, page 53 The quote from Philip Zaleski was from the article “A Buddhist From Dublin”, New York Times, July 24, 1994 The piece from Diane Ackerman was originally published in the March 2008 Shambhala Sun magazine
BEING OPEN TO RECEIVE, page 59 Rainer Maria Rilke was from Letters to a Young Poet #8
ACCEPTING LIFE UNQUESTIONINGLY, page 73 The Lao Tzu quote is from the Tao Te Ching, Chapter 29, and is translated by Jonathan Star in The Inner Treasure: An Introduction to the World’s Sacred and Mystical Writings by Jonathan Star, Tarcher/Putnam “The Problem with Positive Thinking,” was posted on September 4, 2009 on Seth Godin’s blog at http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/
OUT OF THE SILENCE, page 77 Kabir as translated by Robert Bly in Kabir: Ecstatic Poems, Versions by Robert Bly, Beacon Press (April 15, 2007) The Franz Kafka quote is from Aphorisms (1916-1918), a collection of his writings. 93
LIVING THE SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLES OF ABUNDANCE & PROSPERITY VOLUME (2)
JOHN-ROGER D.S.S
with PAUL KAYE D.S.S
www.godisyourpartner.org
“YOU ARE PLACED ON THE PLANET WITH EVERYTHING THAT YOU NEED ALREADY INSIDE OF YOU. EVERYTHING IS ALREADY THERE. YOU CAN’T BE UPSET UNLESS YOU ALLOW IT. YOU CAN’T BE CONTROLLED UNLESS YOU ALLOW IT. THIS PUTS YOU IN A VERY UNIQUE POSITION. YOU ARE A CREATOR. YOU CAN CREATE HARMONY OR DISCORD, HAPPINESS OR DESPAIR, JOY OR DEPRESSION, PRODUCTIVENESS OR LACK.”
JOHN-ROGER, D.S.S.
Mandeville Press
www.mandevillepress.org
jrbooks@mandevillepress.org
OTHER BOOKS BY JOHN-ROGER
Blessings of Light
Divine Essence
Dream Voyages
Forgiveness – The Key to The Kingdom
Fulfilling Your Spiritual Promise
God Is Your Partner
Inner Worlds of Meditation
Journey of a Soul
Living Love from the Spiritual Heart
Loving Each Day
Loving Each Day for Moms & Dads
Loving Each Day for Peacemakers
Manual on Using The Light
Passage Into Spirit
Psychic Protection
Relationships: Love, Marriage & Spirit
Sex, Spirit & You
Spiritual High (with Michael McBay, M.D.)
Spiritual Warrior:
The Art of Spiritual Living
The Consciousness of Soul
The Path to Mastership
The Power Within You
The Spiritual Family
The Spiritual Promise
The Tao of Spirit
The Wayshower
Timeless Wisdoms, Vol. I
Timeless Wisdoms, Vol. II
Walking with the Lord
The Way Out Book
Wealth and Higher Consciousness
When Are You Coming Home?
(with Pauli Sanderson, D.S.S.)
OTHER BOOKS BY JOHN-ROGER with PAUL KAYE
Momentum: Letting Love Lead
What’s It Like Being You?
The Rest of Your Life
Serving and Giving
Living the Spiritual Principles
of Abundance and Prosperity
(Vol. 1 & Vol. III)
Living the Spiritual Principles
of Health and Well-Being
jrbooks@mandevillepress.org
www.mandevillepress.org