Posts Tagged ‘Wattles’

I’ve been struggling lately to articulate to myself why the following passage in a famously mysterious book is so inspiring to me.

The Passage

“By thought you can cause the gold in the hearts of the mountains to be impelled toward you; but it will not mine itself, refine itself, coin itself into double eagles, and come rolling along the roads seeking its way into your pocket.

Under the impelling power of the Supreme Spirit, men’s affairs will be so ordered that someone will be led to mine the gold for you; other men’s business transactions will be so directed that the gold will be brought toward you, and you must so arrange your own business affairs that you may be able to receive it when it comes to you.  Your thoughts make all things, animate and inanimate, work to bring you what you want; but your personal activity must be such that you can rightly receive what you want when it reaches you.  You are not to take it as charity, nor to steal it; you must give every man more in use value than he gives you in cash value.” (Italics mine)

To my way of thinking, this passage  from Wallace D. Wattles’ 1910 book The Science of Getting Rich is the secret to the, now famous, Law of Abundance. 

My Thoughts

When the movie first came out, I was in a bad place. I was unemployed for the second time in three years and pretty much convinced that I was unemployable.  Each day I was consciously fighting the self loathing I felt I deserved.  As I stood staring into the abyss of depression, along came The Secret to tell me I had caused my own results.

On some level I knew this was true because I was literally counting the days (days actually still numbered in years – many years) until I could retire.  The work, writing documentation, was, to me tedious, mind numbingly mundane, and Sisyphean.  The corporate culture required long, intensely focused hours scrolling through thousands of pages of documents to make tiny little changes to various numbers and acronyms.  The hours grew longer as the release date grew nearer and the motivational light at the end of the tunnel didn’t exist.  Each release was already outdated and work would begin immediately on another release.

I had only taken the job for the money.

When The Secret came out I decided since I was only working for the money, I could visualize my way to the wealth I wanted and skip the J.O.B. since that part was unpleasant and wasn’t working out anyway.

That Was Then

That was 2006.  In those days it still seemed do-able to just choose to get rich.  And so I began to study the books of wealth building and follow the voices of the wealth building industry.

Working backwards from The Secret I read Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill and, eventually, found my way to this The Science of Getting Rich: The Proven Mental Program to a Life of Wealth, published 100 years ago by Wallace Wattles.

The book, reportedly the same 100 year old book, that Rhonda Byrne, discovered and subsequently shared with the world as “The Secret” sets out a system for acquiring whatever wealth you desire.

Here are the steps, as described in the movie.

Ask

Know what you want and ask the universe for it.

This is where you need to get clear on what it is you want to create and visualize what you want as being as ‘real’ as possible.

Believe

Feel and behave as if the object of your desire is on its way.

Focus your thoughts and your language on what it is you want to attract. You want to feel the feeling of really ‘knowing’ that what you desire is on its way to you, even if you have to trick yourself into believing it – do it.

Receive

Be open to receiving it.

Pay attention to your intuitive messages, synchronicities, signs from the Universe to help you along the way as assurance you are on the ‘right’ path. As you align yourself with the Universe and open yourself up to receiving, the very thing you want to manifest will show up.

It Doesn’t Work That Way

This last step is where I and others take issue with the magical, mystical promise of the movie version of the law of attraction.

It doesn’t work that way and the passage quoted from the Wattles Book explains why.

“You must give every man more in use value than he gives you in cash value.”

To receive one must be ready. 

It may be as easy to manifest a million dollars as it is to manifest on dollar but it is a lot harder to be ready to receive the million because,

Your personal activity must be such that you can rightly receive what you want when it reaches you.  You are not to take it as charity, nor to steal it; you must give every man more in use value than he gives you in cash value.”

Interdependent Web

We are all part of the cornucopia of abundance.  The riches we manifest from the universe are not magical but reciprocal. The Law of Abundance is reciprocal.  It is the law of energy exchange.  Without each individual adding value there is no abundance.

So I ask you, what value do you offer in exchange for the riches of the world?  How is the universal law of attraction manifest in you?  If the law is true, then you are a manifest gift to each person you meet. You are a manifest gift each moment of your day, every encounter is an opportunity to give more value than you get.  Are you ready to receive?   Are you creating for others the abundance and wealth of the universe in every moment of your life?

Photo by Netstream

Marketing genius Seth Godin says change can be best effected by a tribe: a group of people connected to each other and to an idea.   My idea is that we all have something of value to offer.  We need each other to help us discover what it is.

 Here is a story from one of the earliest thinkers about wealth and abundance, Wallace D. Wattles, author of The Science of Getting Rich.

This story inspires me:

 “By thought you can cause the gold in the hearts of the mountains to be impelled toward you: but it will not mine itself, refine itself, coin itself into double eagles, and come rolling along the roads seeking its way into your pocket.

Under the impelling power of the Supreme Spirit, men’s affairs will be so ordered that someone will be led to mine the gold for you; other men’s business transactions will be so directed that the gold will be brought toward you, and you must so arrange your own business affairs that you may be able to receive it when it come to you.  Your thought makes all things, animate and inanimate, work to bring you what you want: but your personal activity must be such that you can rightly receive what you want when it reaches you.  You are not to take charity, nor to steal it; you must give every man more in use value than he gives you in cash value.”

It is my passionate belief that we all have something of use value that we can share with others.   That we owe it to the world to share it in exchange for cash value is the work I believe we are all called to do.  When each of us has discovered our “use value” and so ordered our affairs as to be able to exchange it for cash, we will be doing our part to activate miracles. 

And so I call this blog the Working Miracles Blog where we will talk about work that touches our hearts and minds, makes us proud and engages our energy and enthusiasm and where we will support each other as we build businesses valued for the miracles they generate.