Abundance

Part One\nThe Yoga of Money\nYoga provides us with the greatest way to make and handle money, to give money its true value, and to use it to achieve success and happiness. I know how surprising this claim sounds. Indian spirituality is identified with renunciation and detachment from the world. Our typical image is of a white-bearded hermit, meditating in a cave high in the Himalayas. But, in reality, Yoga isn’t spiritual in the religious sense. Yoga is the science of consciousness.\nWhen you know how consciousness actually behaves, you find that something startling happens: You change with it. Learning about anything else doesn’t have this dramatic effect. You might be enthusiastic, even delighted, to learn about anything else—history, geography, physics, etc.—but you won’t be changed on the inside; you won’t experience the personal transformation caused by Yoga.\nThere is an immediate connection to money, strange as this seems at first glance. At the soul level, there is generosity of spirit. This manifests as the following:\n• Infinite abundance\n• Infinite possibilities\n• Unlimited creativity\n• Mercy, grace, and loving kindness\n• Eternal love\n• Boundless giving\nThese gifts are innate and human awareness is designed to express them. If you embody them in your own life, you are wealthy in the truest sense of the word. Measuring wealth by money alone is spiritually empty. (I know nothing about reggae music, but the great reggae musician Bob Marley spoke like a yogi when he said, “Some people are so poor, all they have is money.”)\nTo attain wealth of the lasting kind, the kind that gives your life meaning, value, and sustenance, base your daily existence on the generosity of spirit. Everything else you desire will follow of its own accord.\nOnce you make the connection between consciousness and money, you have stepped onto the right path. Money isn’t all the gold in Fort Knox and all the dollar bills floating around in pockets and purses. Money is a tool of consciousness. Therefore, your state of awareness determines how you see money, how you gain it, and what you use it for. Consciousness is always in motion, and so is money. Consciousness motivates us to seek more out of life; money follows this journey and eases the way if you have enough of it.\nIf you shift your attitude away from money as the goal, but instead intend to get more out of life, you will have the support of consciousness. In Yoga this support comes from dharma, which comes from a Sanskrit verb that means “to uphold or support.” If you are in your dharma, as it is usually phrased, abundance follows. If you are out of your dharma, you experience lack. Without the support of consciousness, nothing valuable can be achieved.\nThe concept behind money is powerful, and once it took hold (archaeologists trace the first money to the Mesopotamian shekel around five thousand years ago), money exploded as an idea. Behind modern life, the idea still flourishes. Seen as an invention of the mind, money accomplishes four different things that are necessary to human society. Money serves us as reward, value, need, and exchange. Pause and consider why you personally need money, and you’ll see that all four things are present in your life.\nReward: The money slipped into a child’s birthday card, the salary every worker is paid, and the tip left for the waiter in a restaurant are all rewards.\nValue: The money slipped into the birthday card is pure giving, not needing to be earned. But it conveys that the child who gets the money is valued. The salary you earn expresses the value of your work, and for many people this becomes a way to measure their self-esteem.\nNeed: We live in a service economy that exists to fill people’s needs much more than to provide physical necessities. When you need a doctor, a college education, a set of new tires, and a thousand other things, money brings you what you need, even seemingly superfluous needs, like this season’s new fashion in sn