I feel quite sure that most of us are interested in prosperity. If someone should ask you “Are you ready to better your financial life?” you would probably hasten to say that you are. Most of us think we’re ready for prosperity. But I wonder if we are, really.
 
Now, it’s hard to imagine not being ready and willing to welcome with open arms the good things we desire from life. Who wouldn’t be happy to have a new car, or the kind of house we’ve always wanted, or a substantial increase in salary, or a promotion on the job?
 
But, says Unity minister and author Eric Butterworth, “simply wanting the benefits doesn’t mean that we are really ready for them. If we were, they would come to us. Make no mistake about it. The amount of prosperity that you have at any given moment is the exact amount you are prepared to accept.”
 
 
There’s Nothing Divine About a Pinched Existence
 
In the opening paragraph of the first chapter in her book Open Your Mind to Receive, Catherine Ponder, Unity minister and well-known writer on prosperity principles, writes, “Why should you deliberately open your mind to receive? Because most of us have endured a pinched, narrow existence for no good reason. We have blocked our good from getting through to us in the process.
 
“There’s nothing divine about a pinched existence. There’s nothing divine about a narrow, limited way of life. It proves nothing but the foolishness and ignorance of man who actually lives in a universe of lavish abundance. Anyone who leads a pinched, narrow existence is not expressing his true nature. He is only cheating himself.
 
“If this has happened to you, there is something you can do about it!
 
“The word ‘receive’ means to ‘accept.’ Psychologists tell us that we can have anything we can mentally accept, but that we must mentally accept it first. A great part of the act of receiving is to accept the good you want mentally rather than fighting it mentally.”
 
To a young man who was trying to open his mind to receive, to accept the belief that unlimited good is his heritage, she suggested he speak forth this statement for at least five minutes a day: “Nothing is too good to be true. Nothing is too wonderful to happen. Nothing is too good to last.”
 
You will readily see that she was helping this young man to make room for more prosperity. So what can you do to make room for more prosperity?
 
  
To Make Room for More Prosperity

To make room for more prosperity, you have to go into a kind of training for it. We go into training for every other skill, whether it’s to become a lawyer, carpenter, engineer, nurse, mechanic, secretary, computer programmer, artist, or whatever. The acquisition and proper handling of money or material blessing is surely no less a skill. Why should we think that prosperity is merely a matter of chance or “luck,” subject to no underlying laws of cause and effect?

What we require is not better luck but better training on the ground rules of prosperity, so that we can develop what we call a “prosperity consciousness.”

Charles Fillmore, co-founder of the Unity movement, says in his book Prosperity: “You may think that you could live better and do more good if you had lots of money. Things wouldn’t be a bit better if you had a million dollars unless you also had the understanding to use it for the good of yourself and others. We must evolve with our possessions until we get the ability to handle them, and then the law is fulfilled.”

Prosperity is subject to Universal laws, just as the sun, moon, the stars and the tides are. Jesus said, “You shall know the Truth and the Truth shall make you free.” And surely that means free from lack and want, free from the inability to pay bills.

Yes, Truth will free us from all these miseries. But there is a condition implied in this promise: before Truth can free us, we must first know it. Until we do that, we are not ready for the kind of prosperity that lasts, any more than we can solve a mathematical problem until we know the multiplication tables.

  
The Truth about Prosperity
 
Now, the truth about prosperity is very simple. Here it is in just a few words.
 
First: God is the source of all prosperity, of all substance, of all abundance. We have the promise: “Every good endowment and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there can be no variation or shadow due to change.” – James 1:17. This is simply a symbolical and theological way of stating that the source of all substance is nonmaterial, it’s in Spirit.

Three thousand years ago Lao-Tzu declared in a similar way that the human spirit has its source in a Cosmic Flow even as rivers have their source in some far-off mountain. To find one’s mountain, he said is to learn the secret of heaven and earth.

Life asks of you only that you flow with it, that you do not resist in its inexorable bubbling forth, and that you do not crawl into dark corners of insufficiency and erect barriers. Thus, the secret of prosperity and success is that they come through you and not to you.

 Second: There is no separation between you and God. The scriptures tell us: “I and the Father are one.” And that’s the Truth about you!
 
Third: God wants you to be prosperous and has already given you all that you can accept as belonging to you. The promise is: “It is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom.” And the “kingdom” is not “out there” somewhere. Jesus said that the kingdom is within you. As it is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom, it should be your pleasure to receive it.
 
We can put all of this into a simple statement. It is what you must know if you are to be set free forever from lack and fear of lack, and it goes like this:
 
“God is my instant, constant, and abundant supply. All that He has is mine, and He wants to give it to me. I now claim my abundance of good.” Take this affirmation and make it a part of you.
 
To claim your prosperity as already yours ant not off in the future somewhere, it is absolutely essential to establish the identity of your oneness with the flow. We are all heirs to God’s Infinite riches, but unless we realize our wealth, we fail to benefit from it. We cannot possible use what we do not know we have.

Someone has said that all the great teachings of seers and philosophers finally flowed into this one point – consent. “Life is good only when it is a perfect timing and consent.” The important thing is reception, to be able to receive the universal power.

In proportion as we are fit, in proportion to our ability to become instruments, we receive. And as we receive the power, the intelligence, it becomes manifest as “simple normal action.” The key to normal action is to be “really willing” to receive it. This is the key to fulfillment in any field of human activity. Consent is not the fruit of a strained effort, but a quiet yielding of the entire being.

  
If You Really Want Prosperity

If you really want prosperity, it will pay you to be decisive and definite in your thinking. Prosperity, of course, means many things to many people. What does it mean to you? What is it that you really want? It will prove well worth your time to sit down quietly by yourself and make a specific list of the things that spell “prosperity” to you.

Don’t be content to say simply, “I want more money,” because that’s indefinite. Substance must have something to fill, and it’s up to you to hold out the receptacle. You don’t need to outline how your prosperity is going to come to you, because God has many channels through which He works. We can leave the ways and means to the Divine process.

Jesus gave us the directions for finding true prosperity when he said, “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well.”
 
You have not trained for prosperity until you have learned first to seek the Kingdom of God. It is not far off somewhere in time and space; it exists right here and now, because it is the state of consciousness that you enter when you realize that the real you is one with the Father, one with the creative flow.

 Ask yourself whether you are seeking this knowledge first, ahead of cars and clothing and food and furniture, ahead of stocks and bonds, ahead of fame and fortune. Jesus didn’t say we must find the kingdom before your prosperity is assured. It’s much easier than that. He said we only need to seek the kingdom, and want it with all our heart. For what we seek, we will surely find.

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Rev. Alan Rowbotham, a Unity minister for thirty-five years, invites you to subscribe to his free inspirational newsletter, Spiritual Solutions
 
Feel free to share this article in its entirety with a friend.
 
If you’d like to receive “Rich Words,” featuring weekday inspirational quotes, you can subscribe at www.alanrowbotham.com
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