Preface

 Since its first publication in 1998, A Practical Guide to Prosperous Living has traveled farther than I could have imagined when I first wrote it. Over the years, readers have told me that its central message helped them make positive, life-enhancing changes by encouraging them to be true to themselves and to follow their dreams.

This revised STONYWATER Books edition preserves that original message while bringing the language, examples, and spiritual framework into closer alignment with the understanding that has continued to unfold in me over the decades. I have added new personal reflections, refined older passages, clarified key terms, and updated material that no longer served the book as well as it once did.

The heart of the book remains simple: true prosperity is not merely the accumulation of money, possessions, position, or recognition. It is the unfolding of a freer, fuller, more meaningful life from within. Prosperity begins in the depths of the soul and expresses outwardly through consciousness, work, relationships, creativity, and daily choices.

Jesus taught that human beings are meant to shine as light in the world. My hope is that this edition helps you recognize that light more clearly in yourself and allows it to shine through every level of your life.

J Douglas Bottorff

 

How to Use This Book

This book is not intended to be read as a collection of techniques for getting more things. It is an invitation to look carefully and honestly at the consciousness from which you are attempting to prosper. If you approach these pages merely as another way to increase your inventory of external assets, you may miss the deeper message. The purpose of this book is to help you awaken to the prosperity that begins in your own native soul and then expresses outwardly as a richer, freer, and more meaningful life.

For this reason, I encourage you to read slowly. Some ideas may appear simple at first glance, but they will produce their greatest value when you allow them to work in you. A sentence that seems familiar today may take on entirely new meaning tomorrow when you see how it applies to your work, your relationships, your finances, your health, or your dreams. Do not be in a hurry to finish the book. Give yourself time to notice what each chapter stirs in you.

Because several terms in this book are used in a specific spiritual sense, you may also find the glossary at the end helpful. You do not need to study it before reading, but you may want to consult it when a term such as native soul, surface identity, conclusionistic thinking, evolutionistic approach, or Creative Life Force invites a little more clarity. The glossary is offered as a companion to your reading, not as a separate system to master.

You may find it helpful to keep a journal as you read. Record the passages that speak to you, the questions that trouble you, the memories that surface, and the desires that keep returning to your mind. Pay special attention to any resistance you feel. Resistance is often a sign that some aspect of your current self-image is being asked to loosen its hold so that a truer expression of your soul may emerge.

I learned the value of this kind of writing early in my own life. In my early twenties, my grandmother gave me an old Underwood typewriter she had used for much of her life. I began using it to peck out spiritual insights as they came to me. I had no goal of publication, and I would not now consider working that material into publishable form. The exercise itself, however, was invaluable because it caused me to ask questions, stay with them, and seek honest answers. I still have that collection of articles in a paper file I named “Spiritual Works.” Over time, that same practice became one of the foundations of my writing life.

The exercises included throughout the book are not optional decorations. They are practical ways of bringing these ideas into the realm of your own experience. You do not have to do them perfectly. You only need to do them sincerely. Use them as opportunities to observe how you think, how you feel, what you fear, what you desire, and where you may be trying to draw from the world what can only be evolved from within.

At the end of the book, you will also find A Seven-Day Practice for Prosperous Living. This short practice is designed to help you gather the book’s central ideas into a simple rhythm of observation, journaling, release, and action. You may use it after your first reading, or return to it whenever you want a practical way to re-center your attention on the life that is seeking expression from within.

I once found myself in a situation where the application of spiritual ideas seemed ineffective. Oddly enough, I remembered something I had written in one of my own books: You know your prayer is answered by how you feel. A light suddenly came on, and I began to observe more honestly what was happening in me rather than simply trying to change what was happening around me. I began to release the swirl of negative feelings I was experiencing. In a few moments, the stress began to ease, like a fog lifting and vision clearing. In those few moments, my prayer was answered. The circumstance did not change instantly, but it did not need to. Something in me had changed, and I knew all was well. For me, it was the remembrance of a rather simple idea. It is my hope that the many reminders presented in this seven-day practice, and throughout this book, serve the same purpose for you.

Above all, use this book as a kind of life review. Let it help you examine the difference between the life you have been trying to construct from appearances and the life that is seeking to unfold from the depths of your being. Read with the understanding that you are not attempting to become something foreign to yourself. You are learning to release what is false, awaken to what is already whole within the native soul, and live more consciously from the Creative Life Force that is already pressing through you as your impulse to prosper.

 

Introduction

What does prosperity mean to you? Money? Health? Status? Security? Many books offer practical techniques for acquiring wealth, success, and good fortune. Most prosperity books and seminars promise quick results, but ask little of the reader in the way of growth-stimulating introspection. This is not that sort of book.

Even those who approach prosperity from a spiritual perspective may foster a view of God and the abundant Universe that resembles an old warning attributed to Meister Eckhart.

Eckhart cautioned against loving God merely for the benefits one hopes to receive, comparing such devotion to loving a cow only for its milk, cheese, and profit. To seek God only for advantage, he suggested, is to place even good things between oneself and the inmost truth.

Approaches aimed at little more than getting milk from the cow ultimately produce results that are shallow and fleeting, leaving you short of the rich and satisfying life you desire.

The purpose of this book is to help you awaken to true prosperity—a prosperity that reaches beyond Eckhart’s barrier between you and the inmost truth. I will show you a way to evolve prosperity from the inside out, to touch your inmost truth, and to live from the eternal source already present within you.

To understand this method, we must first identify the three modes of consciousness we see expressed throughout the human family. These are basic survival, creative survival, and artistic expression.

The following comparison is intended only as a working model. These modes are not rigid categories or labels to impose on others, but points of emphasis that help us recognize where our sense of identity, prosperity, and spiritual understanding may be centered at any given stage of growth.

 

 

	Basic Survival	Creative Survival	Artistic Expression
Basis of Identity	Physical body and surroundings	Social status	Spiritual nature
Methods	Physical manipulation	Intellect, reason, social skills	Intuition, spiritual knowing
Goals	Supply material needs	Gain status and respect	Expression of spiritual essence
Religion	Blind faith, emotion-driven, superstitious	Dogmatic, intellectual, morality-driven, socially correct	Personal quest for firsthand spiritual experience

 

In the first category, basic survival, consciousness rests on a body-centered identity or self-image. The person living as a basic survivalist defines themselves according to the condition of their body—age, beauty, and physical prowess—and their surroundings: food, clothing, and shelter. Things are accomplished primarily with physical skills. Prosperity is defined as more of anything that ensures bodily survival and creates comfort in physical existence. To the basic survivalist, the spiritual dimension is vaguely perceived as a realm beyond human understanding. Religion may be shaped by fear, mystery, inherited belief, and the attempt to petition, bargain with, or appease an external God. Basic survivalists typically remain within the religion of their upbringing.

In the second category, creative survival, people define themselves according to social status. Though the physical remains important, creative survivalists take an expanded approach, measuring prosperity by the amount of money they make, the people they know, the boards they chair, their titles and degrees, the schools that educate their children, the church they attend, and the neighborhood in which they live. Prosperity is defined as nearly anything that bolsters social standing. Creative survivalists often favor an intellectual rather than emotional approach to spirituality. Science and philosophy may replace religion altogether. Those who are religiously inclined may be guided more by dogmatic creed and social correctness than by the experience of a deeper reality. Creative survivalists may choose a church that advances their social standing.

I have seen this creative survival mode at work in myself, even in the ministry. As an aspiring minister, I sometimes found myself equating the size and apparent success of a church with the value of my role as minister. Conversations about attendance, budgets, buildings, and “growing the church” could easily become subtle measures of worth if I was not careful. Perceived pressure from my ministerial community, combined with a cultural assumption that more and bigger must be better, could quietly pull me away from the freedom of creative expression and back into comparison. This is the kind of thing we want to become aware of, so that our motive to succeed is genuine rather than inherited, inwardly grounded rather than merely socially reinforced.

In the third category, artistic expression, the goal of life is not acquiring material goods or achieving social status, but rather expressing more of one’s spiritual essence. At this level, individuals recognize their essential identity as spiritual, as an individualized expression of the Creative Life Force, God. Though physical and social skills continue to be developed, intuition—spiritual knowing—becomes the guiding basis of life. Life is viewed much as an artist would view a blank canvas, as an opportunity to creatively express, through the entire range of one’s experience, the innate qualities of the spiritual nature. In this mode, the individual’s external life becomes a reflection not merely of physical prowess or social status, but of who and what they are at the spiritual level. The influence of Spirit becomes prominent. Divinity is perceived, not as a powerful being enshrouded in mystery or as a mere philosophical possibility, but as the Creative Life Force behind all that exists. Artistic expressionists seek association with formal religion to the extent that it inspires and guides them into a more integrated and experiential relationship with the Divine.

Recognizing the Three Modes in Yourself

It is important to recognize that these three modes are not merely descriptions of three different kinds of people. They are also ways of describing movements that may be taking place within your own consciousness. You may be operating from artistic expression in one area of your life, creative survival in another, and basic survival in still another. The purpose of identifying these modes is not to judge yourself or anyone else, but to become more conscious of the level from which you are attempting to live and prosper.

You are functioning from basic survival whenever fear for physical security becomes the dominant influence in your thinking. In this mode, your questions tend to revolve around protection, comfort, health, appearance, food, shelter, and bodily safety. You may find yourself asking, How will I get by? What will happen to me? How can I keep from losing what I need? These concerns are not wrong. They become limiting only when they define the whole of your identity and cause you to forget the deeper spiritual reality from which your life is meant to unfold.

You are functioning from creative survival whenever status, approval, comparison, achievement, or social position becomes the primary basis of your self-image. In this mode, you may be less concerned about mere bodily survival and more concerned about how your life looks to others. You may ask, Am I successful enough? Do people respect me? Do I have the right position, income, relationship, education, neighborhood, or reputation? Creative survival can produce impressive accomplishments, but it cannot produce lasting satisfaction if those accomplishments are being used to compensate for an unrecognized sense of inadequacy.

You are functioning from artistic expression whenever your choices arise from a deeper awareness of your spiritual nature. In this mode, the central question is not, How can I survive? or How can I appear successful? but rather, What is seeking expression through me? You become less interested in using life to prove your worth and more interested in allowing the Creative Life Force to express through your talents, relationships, work, and daily choices. You still care for the body. You still develop social and practical skills. But these become instruments of expression rather than substitutes for identity, and personality begins to serve as a clearer outlet for the soul rather than as a defensive image.

As you read this book, you may find it useful to pause from time to time and ask yourself which mode is most active in the matter before you. If you are thinking about money, are you trying to secure the body, elevate your status, or express more of your spiritual essence? If you are thinking about work, are you trying merely to survive, to gain recognition, or to give form to your deepest interests and gifts? If you are thinking about relationships, are you seeking safety, approval, or an opportunity to love and be true to yourself? These questions will help you use the three modes as a practical mirror rather than as a fixed system of labels.

This comparison is not intended to challenge or discredit either the basic survival or creative survival modes. These modes represent stages of individual growth, and each has its place in the unfolding of consciousness. When you have risen through the ranks of these first two modes and still feel that something is missing, you have, in all likelihood, reached the cusp of artistic expression. At this point, it becomes clear that the missing element is not another thing to be acquired or another accomplishment to be achieved. The missing element is you.

If you want to find this missing element, if you want to remove Eckhart’s barrier between you and the inmost life, then you must learn the art of being true to yourself and find the courage to follow your dreams. This is the way you are seeking. This is the path to true prosperity.

The Road Ahead

The chapters that follow are intended to guide you through this process one step at a time. We will begin by looking at why material things, accomplishments, and even long-sought successes so often fail to produce the lasting satisfaction we expect from them. From there, we will consider what it means to be true to yourself, to awaken to the natural impulse to prosper, and to recognize this impulse as the Creative Life Force seeking expression through your life.

We will then examine the difference between living from a limited, conclusionistic self-image and living from an evolutionistic understanding of your soul. This distinction will help you recognize why your motivation to prosper matters, why your circumstantial tendencies unfold as they do, and why the challenges you encounter are not merely obstacles, but invitations to release weaker elements of identity and evolve new strengths from within.

Finally, we will look at several familiar prosperity techniques—goal setting, tithing, creative visualization, treasure mapping, affirmation, and meditation—not as magical formulas for manipulating the outer world, but as practical aids for bringing consciousness into alignment with the one true law of prosperity: the law of infinite expansion. Used consciously, these techniques can help you recognize where you are still trying to draw life from an empty well and where you are being invited to open more fully to the living spring already present within you.

This journey is not about becoming someone other than yourself. It is about removing what has obscured the truth of who you are. As you move through the chapters ahead, keep one question gently before you: What in me is seeking to be released, and what in me is seeking to be expressed?

 

1. The Essence of Prosperity

I do not remember when I began my quest for a better understanding of prosperity. For a long time, I assumed that prosperity consisted primarily of acquiring money and other possessions. Like many others, I was excited by books that taught me how to use visualization, willpower, faith, and social skills to get the things I wanted.

The use of these techniques allowed me to acquire and accomplish many things. However, I learned something important about the experiences of accomplishment and acquisition. I noticed that things do not possess the power to enhance the way I feel, at least not for long. Have you noticed this? If you’re like me, you enjoy getting new things. It’s fun to buy a new car, new clothing, a new computer, or anything else that makes daily life easier or more entertaining. But have you noticed that within a few days of every new acquisition, you find yourself feeling about the same as you did before you got it? The new item is probably useful, even a pleasure to own, but it soon becomes routine, even mundane, and you quickly take it for granted. When the excitement of newness wears off, you find you’re the same person you were before you brought this thing into your life.

You may have noticed something similar with money. If you are a wage earner or investor, you probably earn more now than you did at an earlier time. Did you once dream of how wonderful life would be when you earned the kind of money you do now? If you practiced certain popular prosperity techniques—goal setting or treasure mapping, for example—you’ll probably find your current level of income on a yellowed list of goals or on a crinkled treasure map packed away in a box somewhere. You now earn this amount of money, but do you seem all that different from the person you were back in the days when you visualized it? Yes, the increased income allows you to have and do things you once could not afford. But now that you have it, you’ve grown accustomed to it, and chances are good that you take it for granted.

This has been my experience, and it has been the experience of many others I have encountered. I remember talking to a man who complained of feeling stuck in his job. He began a daily routine of visualizing and affirming a new job with better pay. He got both, but the new job meant that he had to move to another town. About a year later, he called and explained how well the job had gone and how much growth and excitement it had sparked in him. Then, with a chuckle in his voice, he said, “I know you won’t believe this, but I feel stuck all over again.”

This is only one of many similar examples I could share. Because this experience is so common, I have taken a closer look at this interesting phenomenon.

A Blasé Attitude Toward Things Is Common

If this reaction to material things were unique to me or to just a few, I might not think much about it. But through my close interactions with people over the years, particularly in my role as minister and spiritual counselor, it seems that many share similar feelings toward material things. I’ve known people who were swimming in a sea of possessions but treated them indifferently. Having an abundance of material things did not produce the freedom, peace of mind, or satisfaction they readily admitted they lacked. These masters of creative survival—successful people who had it all—always asked the same question: Why? I have everything, and I should be happy. Why do I still feel so empty? Such encounters remind me of a saying from The Gospel of Thomas in which Jesus observes that many gather around the drinking trough, though the well itself is empty.

I have seen this same pattern in my own writing life. When I first began writing for Unity, the thrill of being published was intoxicating. It began with articles and eventually grew into books. Each publication brought a genuine sense of excitement, but when that excitement faded, I would often feel a quiet letdown, followed almost immediately by the thought of the next project. Nine books and countless articles later, I have come to understand that publication is not an end in itself. The lasting satisfaction was never in simply seeing my name in print, though that has its own rewards. It was in the creative journey that led to publication—the discipline, discovery, struggle, and joy of giving form to something that wanted to be expressed. There are no plateaus of achievement that can give us permanent satisfaction. At best, achievement becomes meaningful when it serves the living process through which the soul finds expression. Publication, like any other accomplishment, belongs in its proper place: not as the source of fulfillment, but as one possible outlet for what is already pressing to be expressed.

Where Things Fit In

Obviously, the acquisition of things does factor into prosperity. Acquisition and accomplishment are important, but they are important in ways that are probably different from what most prosperity enthusiasts generally suspect. The problem is that we have been trained to think that money, accomplishments, positions, and relationships will induce in us a deep sense of satisfaction they simply do not have the capacity to deliver, at least not for long. We have looked to these things as our basis for self-esteem, security, prestige, power, and identity.

What motivates us to continue accumulating these things that promise to enrich the way we feel about ourselves but seldom do? What keeps us hanging around the drinking trough even though we suspect the well is empty? What exactly are we hoping to draw from this empty well?

We are hoping to find our true Self.

Behind each desire you have is the deeper desire for a more complete expression of who and what you are at the deepest level. Every external thing you are trying to bring into your life represents but a small facet of this deeper identity that knows itself immortal and can only be released from within your depths. As you acquaint yourself with this deeper dimension, you too learn to put the material plane in its proper role as servant rather than taskmaster over your spiritual identity.

Of course you continue to acquire things. You continue to set and accomplish goals. But if these acquisitional activities are to produce the satisfaction you hope to draw from them, they must somehow serve the deeper, more fundamental process of bringing into expression a greater, more substantial revelation of your soul. You cannot achieve the sense of completeness you crave by attempting to fill the trough of your life from the empty well of possessions. You must learn to fill the well from the inner, infinite spring—the one eternal source from which your being originates. In this way, you fill your life from the inside out.

Inspiration From an Unlikely Source

Over the past several decades, research into near-death experiences has produced a phenomenal body of evidence supporting the reality and absolute importance of our spiritual existence. A near-death experience occurs when a person is pronounced clinically dead, or comes close to death through some traumatic event, and is then resuscitated, either by medical means or unaided, and able to report details of an out-of-body excursion. Because of improved resuscitation techniques, near-death experiences are becoming so commonplace that medical professionals are being trained to deal with patients who report them.

At first glance, it may seem that this field of research has little, if anything, to do with the subject of prosperous living. However, nearly all people who recall events during a near-death episode report a level of satisfaction and fulfillment so astounding that they cannot put it into words. They find themselves having to speak in similes, metaphors, and parables in their attempts to describe what they see, hear, and feel during their near-death experiences.

From these studies emerge two critical points that are deeply relevant to our understanding of the spiritual basis of prosperity. First, it is clear from the sincere expressions of joy and universal love these people try to relate that, contrary to what most of the human population believes, material things are not needed to produce the kind of deep fulfillment and gratification for which we yearn. Near-death experiencers find themselves in a position of having absolutely nothing, not even a physical body, and yet they consistently report unbounded joy, aliveness, serenity, and a deep feeling of fulfillment beyond any they can adequately describe. One experiencer described it as a state beyond adequate description, a fullness of peace, love, kindness, and goodness greater than anything ordinary language could convey.

The second critical piece of information is the inference that this dimension of the soul not only exists in each of us right now, but is also the eternal, indestructible foundation of our being. Soul evolution, if it means developing a deficient soul into completeness, is a mistaken idea. We are not now something less than we will be in the future. We do not develop the soul into a higher state of being; we evolve a system of consciousness that supports what we already are at our spiritual level.

Research into the near-death experience strongly suggests that when individuals, through an experience of momentary physical “death,” are forced out of their current identity and its attendant life-view, they discover that their real self—their soul—already exists in a state far superior to anything they had imagined. Their previous self-image and life-view simply masked their genuine, core identity.

These are normal, everyday people from every walk of life, many with little or no previous interest in anything resembling spiritual development. They are people like you and me, familiar with the entire range of fears, insecurities, and anxieties that have become so typical of the human experience. They are consistent in their reports that this core identity does not become happy and peaceful by acquiring things. According to these people, the core identity already exists in a perpetual state of unimaginable happiness and serenity.

Almost to the person, near-death experiencers report that during their episodes they feel more alive than ever, their senses more acute, and their minds sharper and more perceptive than anything they recall. This enhanced aliveness transforms, in a positive way, their values and their attitudes about the meaning of life in a physical body by stimulating in them a more universal view of their life’s purpose. We speak of the Christ nature—that individualized expression of God in us—in theoretical terms, as a potential we will someday realize. To the near-death experiencer, there is nothing theoretical or potential about it. Near-death experiencers commonly report that, once free of the body, they recognize the identity they had taken for themselves during earthly life as partial, mistaken, or incomplete. One woman explained that what she encountered outside the body felt like her real self in a way her former self-image never had.

And where did this real self come from? Apparently, it was there all along, buried like treasure in a field of false perceptions.

Near-death experiences indicate that beneath the mask of personality, beneath the sense-based self-image from which most people live out their entire lives, there exists a highly evolved person already functioning as the prosperous being that you and I are striving to become. We all have a “real me,” and if we are to consider the subject of prosperity in its fullest scope, then we must factor this eternal aspect into our thinking.

The life review is a fascinating and frequently reported component of the near-death experience. The individual is given the opportunity to review, in amazing detail, the consequences of choices they have made throughout their entire life. This review is conducted from the elevated perspective of their spiritual identity, unencumbered by fear of death or limitation of any kind. They see in an instant how they have lived their life. Now they are being asked, How will you live your life now that you know you are an eternal, limitless being?

In one sense, my intention with this book is to facilitate a similar life review. What will happen to your attitudes, interests, dreams, and quest for a more prosperous life when you begin living from the point of view of your eternal nature? From the perspective of the artistic expressionist, prosperity and its normal acquisitional associations take on an entirely different meaning. Living the prosperous life starts by letting go of that which blocks the expression of your soul. It involves creating an environment of consciousness conducive to bringing forth your fully functioning, fully intact spiritual self, your completed self.

Does this mean you have to divest yourself of the various roles you play, dispose of your goals, or give away the material things you possess? No, not at all. In addition to their newly discovered interests in loving and learning more, many near-death experiencers come back to their lives with renewed enthusiasm and interest in their careers, relationships, and homes, as well as an increased appreciation for the simpler pleasures of life. As long as we occupy a physical body, we will set goals that involve the acquisition of material goods. We must, however, do so with the understanding that the sense of identity and personal power we were once trying to derive from our external accomplishments can only be unfolded from the deeper reality of our being.

As a balloon filled with helium naturally rises when released, so your true state of being rises to its natural condition of happiness when you release the weight of the false belief that something external must be added to complete you. You are, in fact, to express more of your completeness, bringing it to bear on the achievement of the external goal if the goal is to have any meaning at all. If you do not become more of who you naturally are in the process of attaining your goals, what is the point in amassing more material things?

Be True to Yourself and Follow Your Dreams

The message of this book is simple. If you want a prosperous, happy, fulfilling life, two things are required of you: you must be true to yourself, and you must follow your dreams. The self I’m talking about here is your true spiritual essence, the native soul. This essence is neither the cumulative buildup of your earthly history nor a product of your own making. It belongs to you by nature; it is your soul.

To follow your dreams is to be consciously involved with the natural, expansive activity of your spiritual essence, to embrace as spiritual guidance the heartfelt desires that arise from your core identity. To know your soul is to live from this eternal, cosmic fountain of life that wells up from within you, to live, as Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, “with the privilege of the immeasurable mind.” To follow your dreams is to be guided by your own inner counsel—to draw from your spiritual strength and power a genuine conviction in the expansive purpose and absolute goodness of life and in your special place within it. To engage in the active pursuit of your dreams is to develop and employ your natural talents to express your deepest self in a manner that is both unique and interesting to you. It is to engage in work that you love because it allows you to express on the three-dimensional plane all that you know is true of yourself at the eternal level.

Engaging in these two activities—being true to yourself and following your dreams—is the key to truly understanding prosperity at the artistic level of expression. Until you make the accomplishment of these two objectives your central mission in life, the quality of experience you deeply crave will remain elusive.

If you are unhappy with your life, it is because you are, in a hundred different ways throughout your day, making the decision not to be true to yourself and not to follow your dreams. The source of this denial is found in the realm of your consciousness. It does not matter how good a person you try to be. It does not matter how hard you work. It does not matter how much material wealth you accumulate. What profit is there in gaining the riches of the world if you lose yourself? Until you decide to be true to your soul and to pursue your dreams, you will never tap into the full essence of prosperity that is available to you.

The Wise and Foolish Builders

Jesus gave us a key to why this is true in his parable of the wise and foolish builders. The wise builder laid a solid foundation for his house on rock. A great rain caused flooding to engulf the house, but the house was not shaken because it had been so well built. The foolish builder laid the foundation for his house on sand, and that same flood immediately washed it away because it had no substantial footing.

The rock represents underlying spiritual reality, a dimension not subject to change. The shifting, unstable sand represents the ever-changing material realm. Because this realm is easily perceived through the physical senses, many mistake it for reality itself. This is not a flaw in the nature of the material realm, but in our perception of its function and role in our lives. The foundation represents the identity and consciousness of the individual. The house represents the unique life circumstances that arise from this distinctive combination of identity and consciousness.

With an understanding of these key elements, the message is clear. When your self-image, the foundation of your circumstances, rests upon the rock of underlying spiritual reality, your life becomes a natural progression of the expansive process inherent in the Creative Life Force. If your self-image rests on the shifting sands of the material realm, if you seek to draw your power and well-being from the things you possess, then the inner peace and stability you hope to gain are threatened with every storm of change.

The Prism

Here is another way to think of it. When sunlight shines through a prism, the white light is broken into an array of colors called the visible spectrum. Think of the Creative Life Force—God—as the sun, the ray of sunlight as your soul, the prism as your individual identity or consciousness, and the spectrum of color as your life circumstances.

If colors seem dull or are missing from your spectrum, it is not because the light source is lacking. Nor is there a flaw in the projected beam of light. The breakdown occurs in the prism. It has become smudged and does not allow the fullness of light to shine through. As a remedy, do you pray that the sun begins to shine brighter or more favorably in your direction? Do you affirm that the ray of light somehow becomes purer? Do you take the common external approach and artificially paint the missing colors back into your spectrum? No. You simply clean the smudge from the prism.

This is a clear model for the “inside out” approach to prosperity. The Creative Life Force expresses as your soul, which, in turn, expresses itself in the material realm through the unique filter of your belief system and personality. The Creative Life Force is healthy. Your soul is healthy. It is in the realm of your consciousness that the breakdown occurs.

Because colors are missing from your experience, you may be living under the false assumption that something in your life circumstances must change before you can show the world who you really are and begin pursuing the life of your dreams. Something does have to change, but that something is not, as you might suspect, to be found first in your spectrum of colors—that is, your level of income, your job, your spouse, or the town you live in. What must change is the smudge on your prism, that state of consciousness constructed on the sand of a false understanding of who and what you are at the deepest level.

Not Always Easy

Regardless of where you are or what you are doing in life, you can begin now to discover and be true to yourself. You can begin now to identify and follow your dreams. It will not always be easy, because it will require a complete shift in many of your basic beliefs, as well as much of your behavior. But, as I am fond of telling people, it is easier than not doing it. There is nothing easy about struggling through a mediocre life that is going nowhere. Among other things, living such a life requires working hard, honing your manipulative skills, participating in often fierce competition, prostituting your creative abilities, relinquishing your peace of mind, and sacrificing your self-esteem. And for what? A life whose outcome you can predict thirty years down the road? Is this what you are on this planet to do? Is basic or even creative survival the intended use of your artistically gifted imagination, your natural interests, and your natural love for life? If you agree that it is not, then when will it all change? When you finally make enough money? When you finally surround yourself with enough things? If this is what you are waiting for, let me assure you that you will have better luck making your way to first in line in rush-hour traffic than you will in attaining the life of your dreams.

When you start making a conscious effort to listen to the intuitive urgings of your soul and to pursue the life thus dictated, your well will begin immediately to fill from within. In time, it will overflow into the drinking trough of your experience. You will love who you are, you will love what you do, and, by virtue of your contentment and natural enthusiasm for life, you will become an inspiration to those around you. In addition, you will draw to you the material things and conditions that, as Henry David Thoreau suggested, allow you to advance confidently in the direction of your dreams. You will understand and experience the essence of prosperous living.

Questions for Reflection

What external thing, achievement, relationship, or condition have I believed would finally make me feel prosperous, complete, or satisfied?

When I have acquired something I once deeply wanted, how long did the satisfaction last, and what did I discover about myself afterward?

Where in my life am I still trying to draw from the “empty well” of possessions, status, or accomplishment what can only come from the depths of my soul?

What does the image of the prism suggest about my current state of consciousness? Where might my own “smudge” be limiting the light that wants to shine through me?

What would it mean for me, in one practical area of my life, to begin filling my well from the inside out?