Living The Abundant Life

Let's talk about wealth and living the abundant life. In the last message we discussed health and how to begin to use the power of God's Law to heal our body, our mind and our lives. Now we will turn our attention to perhaps the most misunderstood area of human life - wealth and abundant living.

In many cultures, notably in the US, there is a very conflicted attitude about wealth. Everyone seems to want it, our society glorifies the "good life" and the American Dream which includes a comfortable, happy life, but many disdain those who have wealth as unworthy, greedy and uncaring of others. While there are certainly many examples of wealthy people who fit that description well, there are also many, many more who spend much of their time giving a great portion of their wealth away to good and noble causes.

I believe that our problem with wealth lies with us being a predominantly Christian nation that has often misunderstand the Bible and what it has to say about wealth and the wealthy. As children we were spoon fed Bible tales that seemed to say that to go to Heaven you must be meek and poor. We have an idea that goodness and money are mutually exclusive. Few people plan to be a bad person, so its no wonder that we seem to make poverty somehow noble and fine and it is anything but! We often hear the phrase "money is the root of all evil" spoken in churches across America and in many other cultures and countries. The Bible does not say that money is the root of all evil.

What the Bible actually says is that the love of money is the root of all evil which is certainly true! To place your focus on money as an end and take your attention and focus off of the Creator of the Universe; the Indwelling and Most High God, is to miss the entire point of your existence on this planet. You were not put here to see who could die with the most toys and have the most money in the bank. I have never seen a luggage rack on a hearse, have you? You were put here to learn to love unconditionally and to enjoy the abundant life while learning unconditional love. It is very possible to do both at the same time.

Remember, money is a tool, nothing more. To love money is error thinking; it is a bit like the carpenter falling in love with his hammer. He may value the hammer as the instrument of his work which allows him to make a good living, but he understands that taking care of his family and himself is the goal and the focus - not the hammer. So it is with money. Money is a tool that allows us to be comfortable and to give comfort and pleasurable experiences to those we love. Money gives us choices and freedom of action and as such is a gift from God. God wants us to be free to choose the life we wish to live but living without a dime makes this pretty difficult. The freedom to thrive economically is vital to living the life we are all born to live-the abundant life.

Without economic freedom, there is no real freedom - the Founding Fathers of the United States knew this very well and that is why they enshrined the sacred right of acquiring and protecting property as a pillar of the American way of life. This does not mean that money should ever be the focus or center of your life. Living a money centered life brings emptiness and the nagging feeling that there must be more and indeed there is.

Without the peace of knowing that you are God expressing as you, that there is no separation between you and God; how does it profit you to be a billionaire? But with the peace of God, with the knowledge of who and what you are; with wealth you can be of service to your fellow human in ways that can make a lasting difference and perhaps change the world.

The great Truth about material wealth is that poverty is a state of mind and not a state of your bank balance. Poverty is optional and if you like poverty you have a perfect right to it. This is what Jesus meant when he said that the poor will always be with us. Some people would rather live in lack than learn the lessons and make the deep changes in thinking that are necessary to truly get out of poverty or the state of "just enough", which is the state of being in which so many of us spend our lives.

Are you ready to move from not enough or just getting by to the Abundant Life? To do this you must first change your thinking and speaking about wealth and the people who have it. Do you believe that you cannot be a spiritual person and be wealthy at the same time? Do you believe that you must "sell your soul to the devil" to become abundant? Do you believe that people of wealth are less worthy or less good? If you have these beliefs you will never be abundant! What you are inside and what you believe at your core of being is what you create as your life. You cannot change your life in any meaningful way until you change you from the inside out.

Why do so many live in poverty if abundance is just a change of mind and heart away? Our beliefs imprison us in the state of mind we inhabit right now. If you live in the mind state of poverty, you can struggle all you want and you will remain poor. Even if you inherited or won riches, you would find a way to get rid of the wealth in short order because you cannot inhabit a state of poverty thinking and be wealthy. You mind creates your reality. You must change your belief in the nobility of poverty and that somehow it is better to be "poor but honest". This belief implies that to be wealthy is to be a dishonest, deceitful and a crook..

There are thousands and thousands of wealthy men and women who are wonderful people who help millions directly and indirectly with their wealth and their love. Have you ever considered that the poor have only their labor to give and thus can only make a limited impact on the world? A billionaire can, and often does, change society, fund a cure, create wealth for others through employing thousands. Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, T. Boone Pickens, John Templeton - this list is endless of these modern day "angels" of prosperity.

Your poverty thinking will keep you scraping along with just enough all of your life.
Get over it! Remember poverty is a state of mind, not a financial fact. Mike Todd, the famous movie producer and first husband of Elizabeth Taylor, led a millionaire's life one year and flat broke another. He was a classic risk taker, a throw the dice and let it ride kind of man and he made no apologies for it. He is quoted as saying "I have been broke many times in my life but I have never spent a day poor". He may have not had a dime in his pocket but in his mind he was wealthy and what the mind believes tenaciously and consistently will always come to pass.

As long as you think, speak and act poor you will be poor. If you read our last message then you know that the same is true for health. Think sickness, speak of illness and expect illness and you will surely have it. Is it just happy talk or "positive thinking" that will make you rich? No, I am sorry to say that it takes much more than that. Here is how it can work for you.

You decide to change from the poverty state of mind to the abundance state of mind. OK, fine, that's a great start but you still won't wake up the next morning with a million in the bank. You have, however, ploughed the soil of your Mind and planted the seeds of abundance with your new thinking, speaking and new expectations. You have made a great start. Now what?

In your poverty mind, you would say: "things like that never happen to people like us", or "I could never have anything like that". And so it was. As you thought, so you were. Now you say: "I can see myself living in that lovely home - I belong there, I deserve to be there". Or "my children are going to go to that college, they are smart and they deserve to be there and I will make sure they can go" instead of "no one in my family ever went to college, who do you think you are?" This is poor folks talk and I heard it for 18 years as a teacher in inner-city Los Angeles. The only difference between the people in South Central and the people in the Valley (sections of Los Angeles) is that one section accepts their condition of lack and limitation and expects more of the same and the other section, even if they are working class people, believe that they can live the good life and that they will. Both areas have fine people who deserve the very best but to get it they have to learn to expect it, think abundantly and imagine it as done regardless of their current bank balance.

It is all about belief - "it is done unto you as you believe".

Here are the basics:

1.Think about where you want to go in life, never about where you are now.

2.Expect what you want in life, no matter what the "facts" are now.

3.Remember, today' facts are the results of yesterday's thinking and believing and today's abundant thinking will produce tomorrow's life of abundance!

4.Watch programs on TV about the life you want. Read books about the life you want. Spend time with the people who are living the life you want; watch how they talk, what they talk about, who they are inside.

5.Then, use the greatest gift God has given to each of us, and humanity alone, the power of imagination. Imagine yourself in the fine home, that nice car, those lovely clothes and your children happy and safe.

6.Imagine everything about the life you want - the sights, the smells, the feel of it. Make it real. Go see homes like the one you want. Go look at cars or boats or RV's like the one you want. Imagine yourself owning and enjoying these things.

7.Imagine yourself as God's deputy, licensed to have the abundant life. The fact that you are here on this planet means that you deserve abundance. It is your birthright, claim it!

8.Imagine yourself as One with the Infinite Mind of God, able to create your desires with Love and Light and ease.

9.Imagination is the portal to all of your life. Positive and negative - it is neutral; it works both ways so watch how you use this greatest power that you posses!


10. Fear not for I am with you always, God has promised you this, so no fear! Your greatest fears will come to pass! So will your greatest desires if you use God's Law of Mind Action.

Next time we'll explore the concept of happiness, what is it and how do we get it.

God loves your and so do I!

Rev. Dore' Jacques Patlian

It's Simple But It's Not Easy!!

I believe that many of us have the idea that the Laws of the Universe (Divine Law) are almost impossible to understand by the average person and that they are best left to theologians and professors of philosophy.

We may have gotten this deep seated belief from being told that "God Works In Mysterious Ways" by a priest, minister or rabbi. They use this bromide as a way of answering the 3 toughest questions that any clergyman faces in his or her daily work.

These are: Why does God allow such suffering in the world, if He loves us unconditionally? Why did God kill thousands of little children in the Tsunami ? (earthquake, hurricane, war - you fill in the blank) or Why did God take my little child? And the big one: Does God hear my prayers and how do I know if He will grant my request?

Did you notice as you read these questions that they are all asking the same thing? "Why doesn't God protect us from all the bad things that can happen in this life? Isn't He here to be our Parent and wouldn't any good parent take care of his children?" Your clergyman may know the true answer to these questions but may not share it for fear of destroying your faith in the Parent God of your childhood teaching. Your minister, priest or rabbi knows all too well that it is faith that does the work. Faith is the greatest power in the Universe, it empowers us to do that which might well be impossible "in the natural", logical world.

The day that you put the Parent God away in the same way you put away the toys of childhood, that is the day that you will finally understand how God operates the Universe and how Divine Law works. On that day, you will move from a little God of spite, anger, caprice, reward and punishment to the Most High God who is the Mind behind all Creation. The real God is so much more, so vast as to beggar human understanding.

Our minds understand boundaries, limits and things that begin and end. Understanding that the true nature of God is an Intelligence without a beginning, without an end and that is everywhere present all at the same time takes a lot of spiritual maturity. There is nothing wrong with God, the fault lies in your "little concept of God". God is so much bigger than you can imagine!

God is mysterious to us only because God and his Law are so magnificent that we have a very hard time comprehending a Mind totally unlimited by time or space. God's Mind moves with a thought; it creates with a Word and it loves in such a pure, unconditional manner that there is no human equivalent. God was never born and will never die - God just is! God is the eternal life force that existed before the beginning of time and before all that is - and will exist beyond forever. You and I and everything in this Universe are to God as the cells of your body are to you. We are part and parcel of God, one and the same - different only in scale but not in substance or nature.

God, before the beginning of time, instituted with a thought a series of Laws, both physical and spiritual that are immutable (unchangeable), predictable, constant, and can be depended upon. The operation of these laws can be observed and predicted with absolute certainty. This is the essence of science, thus our philosophy is called Science of Mind or Religious Science.

There is no chance or randomness, no parent God to please, no reward or punishment. God is not in the reward, punishment or protection business. You might ask, why have a God at all? God is in the Law and Creation business. He provides the plans and the materials but it is our job to build the house! If the house falls down due to shoddy construction (lack of trust or faith), that is not the architect's fault or the building material supplier's fault - it is the contractor's responsibility and that contractor is us.

God has given us the intelligence, the mind which is His Mind in microcosm, in order that we may build the life that we desire and that we expect. It is not God's business to question our choice; that is the whole purpose of Free Will, that we may choose no matter how wise or how foolish the choice. We are not punished for our choices but we must live with the consequences for good or ill. The Law of Cause and Effect is the mother of all Universal Laws. It is totally predictable, never fails and can be absolutely depended upon. This Law demands our obedience and will return just what we put out.

So if we understand that God is anything but mysterious we can begin to see how we might transform our lives by using the great power we have been given as our birthright. We can imagine things that never existed. We can conceive of things that have never before been made. We can travel by thought long before we finally buy the ticket and send our body on the trip. We can love before we meet the beloved. We can dream of a world that never was and create it with our thoughts, our beliefs and our expectations of Good or Evil (remember we are always at choice).

We are the inheritors of a Great Promise and that promise is that God will never change the rules, never play games with us and will always give us what we truly believe in our heart of hearts. We will never get what we wish for until that wish hardens into a belief and an expectation.

What will you imagine? Will you imagine danger, disaster and poverty? You will receive it right on schedule. You can make book on it! Will you imagine adventure, abundance, joy, love beyond measure, health, strength and lifelong happiness? That too will be delivered right on schedule. The stronger your belief, the firmer your faith, the faster your expectation will appear in your life.

If you blow hot and cold, if your faith is a sometimes thing, if you have constant doubt and often succumb to fear - you will create what I call a "roller coaster" life. So many of us experience this - up one day, all is well and in the dumps the next. A two minded person is incapable of creating anything permanent except chaos. Fear is the mind killer. Trust will set you free!

More next week, until then be well happy and keep your thoughts on what you truly want!

AND SO IT IS!