Commitment

Commitment and the self-discipline it requires are the hardest part of spiritual development.

It’s commitment that makes you do the meditation, do the follow-up work; take the time to process and start eliminating whatever it is that now, obviously, has to go.

It is lack of commitment that says ‘I meant to do it and the intention is good enough.’ It is lack of commitment that never gets round to meditating; it’s lack of commitment that stops us from thriving. It’s lack of commitment that stops us from unlearning the prosperity blocks that are locked in our egos because it’s just too much effort.

The ego doesn’t like commitment, and you can’t blame it. It has been disciplined out of so much of its joy when you were a child. It has been made to show up for stuff that hurt; it’s been told and sold untruths and painful ‘realities’ for so long that it doesn’t realise the difference between external discipline (“you should do that...”) and internal discipline (“the path of the Divine is the narrow path; you can’t follow it with all that baggage”).

But here’s a story which will hopefully show you just how important it is to have the self-discipline to commit for that extra few minutes in spiritual work (and prosperity work is spiritual work).

A young man came to one of my courses on The Sacred Magic of the Angels. On the first evening we featured Raphael, the healing archangel. In this particular system, students write a letter in one of two ancient scripts and conduct a ritual to contact the Divine via the appropriate angelic energy as a messenger. Participants were invited to invoke the energies of Raphael on a Wednesday (that archangel’s day) by lighting a candle, writing in a mystical script, on certain coloured paper with a black pen. “That’s a bit complicated,” you may say. “Why not affirm or pray or just ask the angel?” The answer is because we are rarely committed enough to disciplined enough to formulate a request exactly and clearly — the chattering mind comes in. For example, if we are asking for money, our mind goes something along the lines of:

“I want to earn more; I need to earn £30,000 a year. Or should it be more? Or is that greedy? I could manage on £25,000. But is that before or after tax? So is it £40,000? And if I earned that would I have to help pay off my partner’s debts? And what about that holiday in the Maldives; he really doesn’t want to go there. Would I go on my own? Or would we end up going to Spain. Well at least we could stay somewhere better. But I want to go to the Maldives. Or should we have the house double glazed? Oh, £40,000 isn’t enough. I want to win the lottery... ”

For the angelic forces of the universe, this is just plain confusing. They don’t know how to sort out what we genuinely want from our meandering. Remember they will never overturn a human being’s free will and if we won’t be clear enough to focus without being sidetracked, then they can’t help us.

Even if we are clear, the underlying voices and chatter of the ego often create an undercurrent that lowers our energy which, in turn, negates our desire.

Of course, in some matters we are clear enough to ask and receive without the complication of ritual but this angelic system is for healing the issues on which we do have blocks and need extra help.

Writing to the angels with ritual and intent is very powerful. You have to focus for a full 10 minutes on exactly what you want. And that is often enough to get the ball rolling even if the ego nay-says it later on.

What is also good about this particular system is that you get specific signs to tell you if your request has been granted. For example a Raphael ‘yes’ could be a bird flying into your home. A ‘yes’ gives you confidence to believe, and draw the desire to you with a stronger vibration. A ‘no’ tells you that your energy is not yet close enough to align to your desire and that more preparation work needs to be done. It’s not a system that appeals to everyone but I’ve found it very helpful for those who doubt their own powers to harness the law of attraction for prosperity.

The group came back the following week and all but one of them had received a sign that said ‘yes’. The young man who had not had an interesting story to tell.

He had been interested in the class, he said, but thought that actually writing the letter was unnecessary. Instead, he had formulated the question, asked it out loud and considered that to be sufficient.

The next day, a bird had flown into the glass of the French windows of his living room and killed itself. He was quite certain that this was the archangel saying ‘yes.’

I believe that it was the Universe making it clear that he had certainly asked; he had shone the light and the answer of ‘yes’ had been sent but it had died because his psyche was unable to let it in. While he is a lovely man, he has never been able to commit to any one spiritual discipline.

Within a month, all those in the class who received a ‘yes’ had achieved their desire; two of them were healings that could even be seen as miracles. To be honest, I have no idea whether or not the young man did as I have never seen him since.

So this month’s exercise is to look at where you may stop short of those ten minutes of commitment that might make all the difference. Could you check your bank statements? Could you listen to that affirmation tape every day for a month? Could you write ten appreciations a night in a gratitude journal? Could you clear out one drawer or box a week?

It’s not true that there’s no gain without pain. But there’s no profound, long term gain without committing to you and to your soul’s development. Prosperity is all about worth. Self-worth. And you are worth it.