Horizons Magazine

MARCH 2004
Credit card lessons; prosperity - fake it til you make it? You're not
really looking for a partner - you're looking for a purpose

Hello and welcome to the March issue of Horizons Magazine. Spring has sprung! I'm
loving the weather and have been excited over a new garden a friend put in for me.
Watching him from the window as I worked got me out of a typing mood and into a
gardening mood. As he left, I started watering everything and that led me to pulling
weeds and that led to some pruning and I noticed that in just a few hours on a bright, cool, sunshiney day, an old overgrown garden was transformed. I thought how just a few minutes a day in the garden would really make it thrive, but it's one of those things that I don't always make the time for. I do it here and there when I feel like it, kind of like sit-ups. I do about a dozen a year and not all at the same time.

If there are things I've decided I want to make progress on, I have to put them on a list and schedule them in my appointment book. Otherwise, I'm not prioritizing them. I make a list a few times a day and work from it. At the end of the day, I make the list for the next day. I use a legal pad and divide it into sections for who to call, who to email, who to bill, who I'm waiting to hear back from, what ads to create, and who to pay. I like seeing everything at one glance. It gives me a sense of having a handle on my life, it makes me feel very grounded.

Paying my bills as they come in makes me feel very grounded also. I wasn't always able to do that. For years I paid my bills when I got my paychecks, and I kept a list of what I would pay every two weeks. When I had credit card bills, I didn't have much left after everything was paid. I was glad to learn an early lesson about not overusing credit cards!

A great test of your prosperity consciousness is noticing how you feel when you receive credit card offers in the mail. Is your first thought: "Yay! Now I can fund that trip to China I've been wishing I had the money for! Now I can furnish my dream house or begin my own business that I've been dreaming about!"

Or do you think: "Just what I need - more debt. I can't pay what I owe now and I have very little to show for it. I shouldn't plan a vacation until I get my bills caught up. If I borrow money to start my own business, I'll just owe more if it fails. I know that supposedly my daily thoughts attract circumstances and events into my life, but I am not convinced that is true. If it is, then I don't trust in my ability to attract a successful outcome. I don't have faith that what "might come" may be better than what "now is".
Either way, you're right. If it's always been your dream to take a great vacation and you recognize getting the credit card offer in the mail as an opportunity to fund the trip you've always wanted, then you're likely to have a good outcome: taking the trip of your dreams, your thoughts and feelings of excitement about what you're doing on the trip and fun new places to visit, all of this serving to help you release resistant thought. Which also releases resistant thought in all areas of your life.

As you release resistant thought, all of the things you've been hoping and wishing for begin showing up in your life. You'll soon see the connection between deciding what it is you'd like, having fun, releasing resistance and seeing your dreams come true.
Maybe you're afraid that charging the start up costs for your new business is a bad idea. If you keep that thought always somewhere in the background and don't take steps to correct that thought when you have it, you'll soon begin to voice those thoughts, giving them more power, and attracting more doubt. That becomes a vicious cycle. If this would be your pattern of thought if you used the credit card, then you're right. You're better off not using it, because you will attract a predictable outcome.
Can you honestly be excited about the prospect of a new credit card offer in the mail, and feel the opportunity to be led out of bondage and into freedom by it? If not, then just know you've got a little resistance to release, and it will be easier to release it if you refrain from racking up new credit card purchases :)

Last month, the Universe decided to give me another money lesson, another opportunity to see how much I've really learned, what I really believed. Another opportunity to react as though I believed what I say I believe. I'd just returned home from 10 days of major driving. I went for a routine tire balancing and was told I needed $600 in tires and brake work. I quickly thought, "I'd have stayed home if I knew this expense was coming." * DING * DING * Automatic response * Past programming once again coming to the surface* It took me about 4 hours to feel that this expense was okay, I had it covered, I needed the work done, it was just a matter of timing... This 4 hours is a lot less than it used to be for me to change my thoughts around, and see the good in something, and trust that even better was around the corner. Years ago, I'd whine to all my friends and maybe days or weeks later one of would say something to reassure me, and it'd be ok. Now I can self talk myself in 4 hours or less. Maybe a year from now I'll be so enlightened that when they tell me I need a new roof or transmission, my first thought will be*YAY* that means more money coming in, if more money is going out!

One place I travelled to last month was to Pensacola and Fort Walton Beach, where I got to hang out with Rev. Jamie Sanders for a few days. Rev. Jamie is minister of Unity Church of Pensacola and he gives a lively talk each Sunday. He's hosting a retreat the weekend of April 30th - May 2nd Awakenings '04 "A Celebration of Spirit" in the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina. I'll be joining him there and I'm hoping you'll join us as well.

Spirit is always glad to give us more of whatever we're thinking about and talking about. I find Spirit likes to give me money lessons. Lots of us are having money lessons this lifetime. That's a good topic to talk about because that's the hardest topic to fake it til you make it. How can you write a check for an amount you know you don't have in the bank? Well, you do everything preparatory to writing the check, you put everything else in motion, then trust that Spirit will follow up with the rest. So these aren't really money lessons, they are faith and trust lessons.

So how do you co-create with spirit? You work as though everything depends on you and you pray as if everything depends on Spirit. You live a life of integrity, so you're not continually racking up baggage to work out with others. You think about what it is you'd like to do or be or have and you ask for guidance in gathering information. You take special note of anyone that comes around you during this time and you look for synchronicities. You listen to the messages in songs and on tv, and contemplate their meaning relative to whatever you've been asking about.

You take notes about what you'd like, knowing that as you think about something and write about it, and talk about it, you vibrate in harmony with it. And as you vibrate in harmony with it, you attract more of it. As you think about it and talk about it and write about it, you will attract the people and circumstances and events into your life that can give you what you've been asking for, or can point you in the right direction. This is when you know you're co-creating with Spirit. This is when you can tell you're in the flow.

Your guidance system will let you know you're in the flow also. Your inner guidance guides you by how you feel in the moment. Abraham-Hicks describes it like a giant firehose, flowing a stream of wellbeing into our lives. The only thing that stops the flow, or puts a crink in the hose, is our own resistance. Our own worry, doubt and fear. And we don't need to get too caught up in exactly what the resistance is all about, all we need to do is change our focus, turn the other cheek, put our attention on something else. Appreciation is really good for unkinking the hose. Abraham says we've already told the Universe what we want, so we don't have to keep telling it over and over. Our job now is to simply release resistance and unkink the hose so that stream of wellbeing flows into our lives and keeps flowing. It's our job to let go of doubt and fear and spend time thinking of what we'd like to see or do in the future. It's our job to talk about our goals with friends, to fantasize and daydream about our goals.

Daydreaming and pretending are very effective tools. "Pre" from "before, ahead of time" and "tend" from "intend" so when you're fantasizing and daydreaming, you're actually in a creative workshop setting your intention for what you'd like to experience in the future. And you're vibrating in harmony with what you want. And you're attracting people and circumstances and events to help you get what you want. This is what Abraham calls Deliberation Creation, and Conscious Co-Creation.

Lotsa people are looking for their niche in life, and many think it's a partner they need but it's not a person, it's a purpose they're looking for. When we spend time each day co-creating with Spirit, asking for guidance and then making quiet time to listen for it, then we find ourselves being led by Spirit toward our purpose. And Spirit will be with us every step of the way, opening each door as we get to it. All we have to do is take ourselves to the threshold and recognize when Spirit is holding it open.
Enjoy our offering this month. Hari Om.

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Andrea de Michaelis, Publisher
Photo from 2004