Here's a taster of my new book - published by O Books in the autumn:
Chapter One: The Credit Crunch and the Law of Attraction“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt said these immortal words in 1933 at the time of the Great Depression.
How right he was. Whenever we are told repeatedly that there is a problem, particularly a problem with something that carries as much emotional weight as money, we are bound to feel afraid. It is the human Ego’s natural response to negative outside stimuli. But, in the modern world, fear itself is the root of most of our problems. Fear – or adrenalin – was designed to make us either run away or to attack. Both of these are appropriate reactions if we are faced with an angry grizzly bear. Both are totally inappropriate if we are dealing with intangible matters such as love, happiness – and money.
Money is intangible? Yes indeed. Money only exists in the mind of humanity. It is less “real” today than it ever has been. When we first invented money it was a token of something tangible such as a sheep or a precious metal. Nowadays, mythical amounts of energy pass between bank accounts with the validation of a piece of plastic. Mathematics keeps a score but nothing of true value actually changes hands any more. The value is all in our minds.
One person on BBC radio who was discussing the 2008 credit situation said, “It turns out that all this prosperity we’ve been experiencing is only based on imaginary money!” He sounded really angry. But if the money was imaginary in the first place, then the problems with the money must also be imaginary. If it’s all imagination, then it’s up to us to choose what we want to imagine.
Can it really be that simple? Yes it can. But simple isn’t the same as easy.
First we need to work out why we got to think that it was complicated.
Thanks to the DVD of The Secret, the teachings of Abraham and many other best-selling authors and spiritual mentors, the idea of the Law of Attraction has become widely known. It works on the simple principle of “like attracts like” or “birds of a feather flock together.”
The idea of the Law of Attraction may only recently have become mainstream but it is not a new discovery. It is at the heart of the Hindu principle of karma (what you put out comes back; what goes around comes around) and it is evident throughout great religious texts including the Bible. Deuteronomy chapter 31 verse 19 puts it quite succinctly: “I call Heaven and Earth to record this day on your account, that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses; therefore choose life, so that you and what you sow may live.”
Judaeo-Christian mystics have also always taught what we would now call the Law of Attraction as a way of understanding how life works and how to lead a happy and prosperous life; they just didn’t call it by the modern name.
The Law of Attraction is immutable. It means that we attract into our lives the things with which we resonate. All of life is vibration and what you think and feel dictates the level of your personal vibration. When we feel good, we have a high vibration and when we feel bad, we have a low vibration.
It follows that if thinking about having a new home, a good job or a wonderful relationship makes us feel good then we need to maintain that level of vibration to attract what we want. Lowering our vibration with thoughts of lack puts us out of alignment with anything that could bring us joy – and therefore it cannot show up in our experience.
Those of us who focus on love, prosperity and happiness attract exactly what we are thinking about – and those of us who worry, fret and beat ourselves up attract more reasons to become upset.
But how can I be attracting it if I don’t want it?
The Universe, the Source, the Chi, the Creative Force, God, whatever you want to call it does not recognise the word “not” as in “I do not want this.” When we say, “I do not want to be broke,” It only hears the emphasis (and the vibration) on the idea of being broke.
You can test this out for yourself by thinking of how much you don’t want to be in financial trouble or something else that you don’t want that would upset you. If you observe your thoughts, you’ll see that if you dwell the not wanting of a subject for just one minute, more negative and unhappy thoughts start to seep into your mind about the likelihood of exactly what you don’t want coming to pass. You get to feel worse and worse – and your vibrational level drops.
It is the same for happy thoughts too – think happy things and more happy thoughts come. But for reasons that we will examine throughout this book, in the modern world, thoughts of prosperity seem to be harder for we humans to access. Certainly they are harder to find when there is already a negative thought entwined within our mind.
Since the advent of New Thought Churches such as Unity, founded by Charles and Myrtle Fillmore in 1889 and the world-famous The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale, first published in 1952, the idea of affirming a positive thought to create a better situation has become a basic principle for those interested in creating a better life for themselves. To affirm good for one’s Self, such as saying, “I am healthy, wealthy and wise,” is intended to re-programme the mind instead of letting it habitually focus on negativity, which leads to a low vibration.
Affirmations work – to a certain extent. They work when they do not oppose any deep inner belief or when the desire to change our life is so powerful that we feel it in the core of our being. When my first husband died and my media career as an expert on China hit the impasse that was Tiananmen Square in 1989, I was desperate enough to engage in the idea of positive thinking for the first time. I tried affirmations and found that they bought great relief. I was in such pain that I was desperately seeking anything that would help so I threw myself into the work of changing my thoughts.
However, once I began feeling a little better, the impulse faded away as my internal opposition set in. I began to think that I probably shouldn’t be too happy as it would be disrespectful to Henry’s memory; it would look as though I wasn’t grieving and I had to grieve if people were to believe that I had loved him. And it would just be preposterous to appear be happy when I was a young widow or when my whole career had gone down the pan. People would think I was crazy! I didn’t have such resistance to the idea of earning a living – after all, my Ego thought, if I was miserable enough I was bound to earn money wasn’t I?
It’s this kind of inner programming which is at the root of our habitual negative thinking and which can so easily scupper efforts to make our lives better. It is known as resistance and it is very powerful. Resistance must never be underestimated or discounted. That way it gets to win. And if it wins, we remain unhappy and broke.
In my case, my unhappiness was such that my subconscious mind felt the situation to be verging on a threat to my survival. If I died, my subconscious would die too. Therefore, it did not put up resistance to something that would rekindle the desire to go on living within me. Once that had been achieved, any more was unnecessary and could make me a target for the derision or even hatred of others. That’s the point where resistance kicked in.
Here’s an example of how our mind works:
“I want to be prosperous and happy.”
I don’t have enough money; I don’t have enough money. I didn’t have enough money when they said everything was economically sound; I’m going to have even less now there’s a crisis. What I have got will be taken away.
“I want to be prosperous and happy.”
I want doesn’t get…I can’t ask to be prosperous when there are people in trouble. Other people would hate me. It’s not fair; I never get what I want. I hate money. Why does it always have to be about money? I’m a good person. I do my best. No one appreciates me. I’ll probably lose my job in this credit crunch. It’s not fair.
“I want to be prosperous and happy.”
I don’t have enough money; you don’t have enough money. It says so in the paper. It says so on the news. We don’t have enough money. I don’t like not having enough money. You don’t like not having enough money. I must listen to the people on the radio who are complaining about them so I won’t feel alone in this. So I won’t have to blame myself. It’s always “them.” It’s their fault. They did this to me. They did this to us. We must shout against them and make them change things so that it’s better for us. There’s nothing I can do for me but I can shout about them.
By the Law of Attraction we have put out three positive desires of wanting happiness and more than thirty negative desires about lack.
Don’t doubt for one minute that the Law of Attraction will respond to that ratio. It’s not a conscious force that thinks “They don’t really mean all that complaining; all they mean is the good stuff.” It can’t do that. All it can do is give us an exact mirror of what we think and feel and with that ratio of negative to positive thoughts, our vibration cannot be at the level of prosperity.
The so-called credit crunch (I won’t give it capitals because that gives it a proper name and names are very powerful to the human psyche) came about through just such a process. We created it through toxic thinking.
Toxic Fashion For years, the world’s economy has been expanding with more building, more services, more goods to be purchased. And marketing (the modern-day magic) has thrived through teaching us by repetition that we must have this product or that concept. For example, people in the Western World have spent millions of pounds taking up carpets and laying wooden or laminate floors because they were told that those were the fashionable floors to have. Both kinds of floors work; it’s just marketing. In the same way, we have all recently changed the design of our spectacles to suit the fashion where the previous style worked perfectly well. Fashion creates desire within a tribal society that wants to be seen to be up with the pack leaders.
But in the four or five years before the economy did its downturn, people were starting to say, “This can’t go on. Houses are too expensive. I can’t afford to buy. My job isn’t paying enough for me to buy all the things that I want to buy. I will feel better if I have a Luis Vuitton bag but I can’t afford one. Oh, never mind, I’ll get it on a credit card. Now I can’t pay my credit card off. It’s not fair. Look at all those wealthy celebrities. They can afford Luis Vuitton and I can’t. I can’t pay my bills; I don’t have enough money to keep up. I must keep up. My friends all have designer handbags so I need my Louis Vuitton. In fact, I need a Chanel bag now because Felicity has three designer bags. I can’t afford it; it’s too much.”
And at the same time, the politicians and the economists have been saying, “The bubble has to burst; it’s all going to end in tears; the expansion’s too much” and journalists have been looking (as journalists do) for the negative stories.
In 1993, British newscaster, Martyn Lewis launched a "good news" campaign suggesting that the constant diet of crime and catastrophe that the News feeds to us was unhealthy and should be counterbalanced by positive stories,of happy outcomes.
The press – and much of the public - heaped scorn upon him and Lewis lost a lot of work. The simple truth is that good news is no news because our Egos are more comfortable with the bad.
Nowadays, with extraordinary levels of complaint, criticism and toxic gossip skidding across the internet and a culture of blame, we are harnessing the Law of Attraction magnificently. The trouble is that we are activating it in a way that cannot help us to thrive.
Luckily, the natural state of this Universe is abundant; it is predicated towards good. It that were not the case, we would have imploded with the advent of television soap operas. But enough is enough.
How We Create “Truth”We create everything in our own lives and the irony is that we create nearly all of it by default; simply by reading or listening to the views of others and believing them.
Strangely enough, it is belief that creates truth not the other way around. So if a number of people believe something, it becomes a truth. Enough people locked into the idea that there was a financial problem for it to come into being. But the good news is that it doesn’t have to be that way. Each one of us can create or resolve a financial issue completely on our own. Yes, of course, it’s easier if everyone else goes along with us but prosperity is a very personal thing. As long as you can raise your vibrationary level and work at the level of the Soul, not the Ego, then the outside world’s affairs don’t have to affect you at all.
Then, if you prosper, you can teach others how to do it too.
At the moment, I am more prosperous than I have ever been despite what would seem to be an outside problem. But I have had two great credit crunches of my own in the past, one of which was in line with the outside world’s thinking (the dot-com crash) and the other of which was entirely personal.
In fact I’ve used the knowledge and techniques in this book to bring me back to prosperity from widowhood, divorce, business crashes, a failed emigration attempt, loss of home, career and the beliefs that I was stupid, inadequate and unworthy of love, happiness and money.
I’m still learning – this is a life’s work. But hopefully, by using this book as one of your guides in creating a happier life, you can take a few more short-cuts than I did.
You don’t have to be affected by the outside world; it is all about you. Your choices, your vibration and your energy. And not choosing is just as much a choice making a conscious decision. Those who don’t choose, rise or fall with the state of the world because they are working from the Ego state. Those who do choose are coming from the level of the Soul. It is the Soul which has the ability to step up and over everyday conditions. But in the secular world, we barely know let alone understand the difference between Ego and Soul.
If you’re not comfortable with the idea of Soul – the immortal, totally human aspect of each of us – you can substitute the idea of consciousness or Self. What is important is not the terminology but the ability to think and act consciously. It is perfectly possible to live a prosperous and comfortable life no matter what the outside circumstances might be. And that is not a selfish thing to do. Those who prosper inspire others and by learning how to live an abundant life you can teach others to do the same.
After all, no one will ever come up to you and say, “Do tell me, please – what is the secret of your failure?”
The plumber came round on a Tuesday morning wearing a navy blue baseball cap with an image of a mountain and the word Wisdom on it. It really floated my boat to think that you could walk around with “wisdom” on your head so I had to find out how to get one.
Yes, it was there on Main Street (still pretty much the only street) and it was such a rite of passage to return to that great outdoors shop and meander over to the shelf which held a small pile of baseball caps. They weren’t navy blue; they were green, but they had the very same mountain and the word “Wisdom” embroidered so what the heck? I put one on and turned to Lion grinning all over my face.
