These tough economic times have us playing the ‘blame game.’ What we really need to do is re-activate abundance and bring prosperity to our lives. This is where Adele Slaughter and Bird Sizelove come in. Slaughter has worked as a journalist covering personal health for USAToday.com. In 1993 the White House Commission on Presidential Scholars named her a Distinguished Teacher. She co-wrote a non-fiction book entitled, Art That Pays: The Emerging Artist’s Guide to Making a Living (NNAP, 2004). Sizelove is a mind, body, and massage therapist with a long list of affluent clients. These two extraordinary women teach a revolutionary workshop called, appropriately, the Abundance and Prosperity Workshop. I sat down with them to get a few pointers:
1. What’s the first thing you tell students?
“Everyone always thinks ‘that job, that man or woman, that house, that car, that thing is my source of all that is good in my life,’ and nothing could be further from the truth. The Universe is your source. God, nature, Higher Power, totality, whatever you know as greater than yourself … is it. When you accept this idea and surrender to Source, all good things come to you. When we feel happy, we are in joy and abundant, and our needs are easily met. We find health, wealth, and vitality.”
2. What’s a common stumbling block for your students?
“People create a ceiling that keeps them crouched down and in lack. They do this through negative thoughts and emotions. Thoughts are the causes, which are creating the life we currently have. Everyone’s life is an out-picturing of his or her thoughts. We are what we repeatedly think. Some experts say that we think 2,000 to 3,000 thoughts a day (about three per minute, in case you were wondering). Others say it is more like 50,000 (which is 100 to 150 per minute). Whichever it is, the scary part is that most of our thoughts are the same we had yesterday, and 80 percent of these thoughts are less than positive. This means we are mentally creating our world through mostly negative thoughts and feelings.”
3. Can you give an example of advice that seems unrelated to creating prosperity?
“Each person is a unique sequence of thoughts and emotions, and although it may seem counterintuitive, the way to an abundant life may not always be to go get a job and earn more money. One of my students, who clearly wanted to earn more money, began to speak about her life, and it became crystal clear that she was lonely and had been isolated. For good things to come to her, she needed to explore her friendships and stop being alone. Her instruction was to call friends, deepen existing friendships, stop isolating. She did that, and came back the following week and reported that a dinner party ended up in her husband being offered a job, and another friend helped her get a writing assignment. The place where she was blocked from receiving abundance was in her friendships.”
4. Name three things one can do to reactivate abundance?
“The main thing we have to do is to let go of old ideas. But how do we accomplish that? You need to have a solid meditation practice. Something you do every day, something you are committed to. Learn to meditate and stick with it. Why? Because you need two different upgrades. First, you need the hardware upgrade. The body needs to let go of fear and stresses it has accumulated over a lifetime and the only way I have found to do this is to meditate. In meditation, we settle down into our least excited state. This is where we intersect with abundance, the infinite creativity that is our birthright.
The second upgrade you need is software. Your thinking needs to change — you need to run a new program. In this program, you begin to recognize that the Universe is your Source, not the job, the guy, etc.
Einstein said (and I’m paraphrasing here), “the mind that created the problem is not the mind that can solve it.” Take a class — get someone to help you think outside the box.
Finally, tithing is important. Tithing is giving 10 percent of your income to Source energy. When you tithe to God — Source, Universe, whatever it is you know as greater than your own self, this essence gives back to you. It is a difficult principle for many to wrap their heads around. It’s a personal choice and scary for many people. However, when we tithe, money comes back to us tenfold. It keeps money in circulation and breaks down the fear of ‘not enough.’ It is a principle of the Universe: As you give, so shall you receive.”
