Steps on a Prosperity Journey

My first memory of a ‘prosperity experience’ was when I was a child walking home from my friend’s place. I could have taken the road, but I preferred cutting through ‘the woods’, a large undeveloped tract of land with a pond, a stream, and a huge boulder that made a great castle. I was usually all alone in those woods and I used to on call everything around me to protect me from anything scary or dangerous on the path, especially if I was running late and the sun was setting. The birds, squirrels, frogs, and toads were my scouts and the trees my protection. It was my first glimmer or glimpse into the life and light and energy that surrounds us, and how it can nurture and sustain us.

And maybe that impulse or awareness morphed into a realization of how asking or wishing or even imagining receiving good things might have desirable consequences. So I was always wishing and asking for things and experiences. Clothes, toys, books, new games, playdates, sleepovers, getting to play in a ball game, or dive off a boat, or getting a new friend. Sometimes I got them, sometimes not, but my hit rate was pretty good.

Fast forward to high school. New town, new friends, new lifestyle, but I still practiced the same routine. Ask and sometimes sooner or later I would receive. Clothes, books, friends, but I added adventures and mysteries and opportunities and interesting projects and cool friends to the list. I was so grateful when these wishes materialized. It wasn’t as though I was given everything. I had to work for it. Get good grades, babysit, help your mother, reach out to people, be kind. I might not get exactly what I asked for but ultimately I gave away what I really did not want and embraced those things I really wanted. And sometimes the things I really wanted were not the usual. And the universe paid attention. Gave me a much higher order of stuff. My parent always said they were broke, so I went out and worked. By the age of 16, I was flying off to California to see my friend or going to shows on Broadway with another friend, on my own money. That’s what I really wanted then. Adventures with friends.

Better yet, around this time I became acquainted with my library angels. Whether at the school library, the local library, or even the New York Public Library, I always found books on the topics I was looking for, or they found me. Because those were another gift I loved, learning about lost lands and ancient religions and history of the world and mystery teachings. The trickle of awareness of an abundant universe became a stream. And that is how it stayed though college, much to my advantage. Earn money, go on trips, and read good stuff. And throw in doing some service work; I tutored young kids in Spanish Harlem. So I guess one could say there was a pattern emerging, but I had very little consciousness about it.

Next Chapter: Went to Africa having no idea of what awaited me and found all my tendencies to talk to birds and plants and imagine things happening and then having them happen were completely reinforced and validated. I stayed healthy, worked hard, wrote up project plans, got money, traveled with friends, danced and partied. But best of all I had mentors and teachers who shared their worldview and taught me visioning. How to get quiet, focus, become one with the flow. The unconscious moves towards consciousness.

Back in the states it was time to grow up get serious and not live in a fantasy world as my professors opined. No idea really what they meant, but I went along with their schema for a while, until their less than aware awareness just wasn’t cutting it for me. I moved back into my comfort zone, meeting and hanging out with American based shamans and healers, gurus and monks, savants, clairvoyants and metaphysicians. People all around me, inhabiting and functioning in the world, often with advanced degrees, but holding philosophical ideas nearer to my own, that I had read about in high school and college and learned about and studied in Africa and now they were right in my sphere. Having deep conversations with me over kitchen tables and at crowded restaurants.

I had asked for an alternative worldview than that which I was getting in graduate school, one that would complement the blank spaces, fill in the gaps. And the universe listened. Ask and you shall receive. In the first semester of a four-year program to become a practitioner my teacher of metaphysics required us to read Diane Ponder’s The Dynamic Laws of Prosperity. It confirmed some of what I practiced quasi- unconsciously, but was so much more. The world of prosperity opened up before me. It was not a myth or an illusion. I practiced visioning, affirming, forgiving, being grateful, tithing, giving and receiving. The stream became a river. I was twenty- nine years old.

In quick succession I bought a car, a house, had children, overcame my resistance to finishing graduate school, got a job, made more money, bought another house, got another job, moved, bought another house. Always believing in a prosperous universe. Outward success, inward awareness. Yes, there were challenges. Yes, sometimes money was tight or things didn’t work out. We live in an abundant universe, that feeds us the experiences we need and those that we ask for and are open to will come to us, eventually.

At the age of 24, when I was leaving Africa, the shaman who advised me, prognosticated that I would become very rich. At first I was shocked and wanted to say I don’t deserve that, or it’s not really my thing. He laughed and said I would be foolish not to accept it. So I said okay, I’ll take it. I had no idea what he really meant.

Retrospectively he was totally on target, about everything, and I am so grateful for his vision and wisdom and friendship. He was teaching me about prosperity. That we live in an abundant universe. As we journey along our path, there are unlimited riches, resources and experiences all around us, nurturing our souls, showing us the way, ready to be given to us, if and when we are ready to receive them. And when we see and feel the light and energy and rhythm of life within us and around us, there is a quickening, the potential awakens, and never-ending gifts from an abundant universe manifest in our lives.