Praise
Abundance Everywhere!
by
Joanne Blum, Ph.D.
Whatever
is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever
is pleasing, whatever is commendable; if there
is any excellence, and if there is anything worthy
of praise, think about these things.
Phillippians 4:8
This
passage from Phillippians isn’t just a beautiful
sentiment. It’s a powerful prosperity
practice. If we have not intentionally
developed the habit of noticing the good around us—and most of us are taught
the reverse habit of focusing mostly on what is wrong—we must retrain our
eyes.
We must
also broaden our understanding of abundance.
Too often, especially in times of financial stress, we think of
prosperity only in narrow, monetary terms.
But evidence of a prosperous life is much vaster. Those with truly prosperous lives have an
awareness of abundance on all sides—from the lilies that appear in the yard, to
the friendly “good morning” of a neighbor, to the check in the mail.
Abundance
is everywhere—and the more we recognize it, the more we will experience
it. For about a year and a half, I had a
discipline of writing down on a wall calendar in my kitchen some beautiful
thing I saw or experienced each day. It
became a pleasant daily habit, while I was cooking dinner or washing dishes, as
my mind was wandering over the events of the day, to step over to the calendar
and jot something down: a vibrant pink
sunset, a pair of Canadian geese I saw by the river, a kind word from a friend. This simple habit improved my eye for
abundance and, I’m convinced, played a significant role in moving me toward
greater prosperity.
It’s a
powerful prosperity-building practice not only to notice the abundance around
us, but also to magnify it, to generalize it, to see it everywhere. Human beings are very practiced in magnifying
the negative. In an apparent effort to
frighten ourselves, we’re very good at coming up with shocking statistics on
violence, disease, and disasters. We
like to compute, to the second, how often someone is murdered or raped, goes
bankrupt, gets cancer, or dies. Wouldn’t
it be refreshing if for once someone would instead magnify the good things, and
compute them statistically down to the minute and hour? Every second, a baby laughs. Ninety percent of Americans have never been
robbed. Every five seconds, someone says
“I love you.”
The human
tendency to magnify the bad is at work in our daily lives whenever we are quick
to take a single unpleasant event (the car needs a new transmission, a check
bounced, we’ve come down with the flu) as proof of a wider negative reality
(nothing goes right for me, it happens every time, I get sick every
winter). Using the same power of
magnification, but changing our focus, this human tendency can serve in a
powerful way to increase the good in our lives.
I have been
a journal-keeper most of my life. From
the lockable 5-year diaries of childhood, to the unlined sketch books I use
today, a journal has never been far from my hand. The joy of chronicling my life’s events, and
the luxury of reflecting upon them, has always appealed to me. The way I use my journal, though, has shifted
as I have grown. In my teenage years, I
used my journal often as a place to voice my complaints over faithless
boyfriends, unkind friends, or other everyday misfortunes. Many’s
the time I filled page after page with my bitter diatribes and mournful
ruminations. This habit continued for
some years. I was in my twenties when I
finally became aware of what I was doing—working against spiritual law. Since it is true, as the old adage has it,
that “where the attention goes, the energy flows,” I had actually been
increasing the negative experiences in my life by focusing so enthusiastically
upon them. The more I wrote about my
problems, the more I had to complain about.
I never lacked for material.
Finally, I began to realize that I was not using my journal habit to its
best advantage. I made a change. Taking a more constructive approach, I began
to use my journal to celebrate victories, revel in blessings, and find the
spiritual meaning in the day’s events.
Not surprisingly, I found that I had more and more blessings to report,
and that I was enjoying my journal time more than I ever had before.
The power
of affirmation can be brought into the act of focusing—and magnifying—the good
in our lives. We can learn to use life’s
small daily gifts—and there are so many in all of our lives—to build powerful
affirmations of abundance. When someone
does a kindness for us, we can magnify it, saying “Everyone wants to help
me!” If we find a quarter or a dollar in
the street, we exclaim “Prosperity is seeking me!” Such affirmations,
uttered often and heartily, can be an effective technique in increasing the
flow of prosperity in our lives.
Once,
during a difficult financial time, I was driving through a toll booth in
According
to the same spiritual law of which Paul wrote—that praise actually generates
abundance—we must learn to praise bounty even when we don’t yet see it. Based on the knowledge that abundance is in
the nature of God, and therefore abundance is just as natural to us, even if it
is not yet visible, we must learn to believe in what we do not yet see. This is the only way to bring something new
into our experience. E. V. Ingraham illustrates this beautifully in his classic
prosperity book, Wells of Abundance, as in this affirmation:
My
supply is at hand. It fills me,
surrounds me and is poured out
upon me
from everywhere. Supply flows to me
wherever I am and in
whatever I
do. My supply is constant and
exhaustless and I am richly
endowed
with all things in Heaven and earth.
(Wells of Abundance, DeVorss,
p. 16)
My supply is at hand, constant and exhaustless. How lovely that is—just here within reach, a
magnificent flow of good!
Appreciation
is like fertilizer in the field of our dreams.
The more we praise, the more we’re given to praise. This is the metaphysical meaning of Jesus’
words, “For to those who have, more will be given, and they will have an
abundance; but
from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away” [Matt.
Building a
prosperous life doesn’t tend to happen in one upward swoop. More often, it’s like the rollar
-coaster rise and fall of a goldfinch, with every upswing going a bit
higher. Anyone who’s gone through a
period of unemployment remembers well the discouraging reversals that sometimes
occur. A job you think is going to come
through doesn’t. The check you were
awaiting doesn’t arrive or is made out for less than you expected. An unexpected car repair comes up, or a
medical expense, or a leaky roof. At a
time when I was unemployed and struggling to make ends meet, I remember well
the sometimes halting, start-and-stop ways in which I moved toward greater
prosperity. A part-time job appeared, then a need for expensive dental work, then an article sold
to a magazine, then a rejection letter came from another—the up-and-down
emotional ride was sometimes exhausting.
Little by little, though, idea by idea, solutions came and the situation
changed, despite any sporadic appearances of lack.
Joel
Goldsmith called these set-backs the “valleys” of human experience, and he
cautioned that we should not pay attention to them: “These periods have no particular
significance and are of no real importance; they are part of the rhythmic cycle of
human life.” On no account should a
“valley” be interpreted as evidence that you are doing something wrong or
heading in the wrong direction. A valley
means only that you are progressing in the usual, up-and-down, human way. Maintain your disciplines, hang on, and wait
for the next crest. As Goldsmith put it,
“As the journey continues, the mountain experiences will be of longer duration
and the valley experiences shorter. . . . until a
point of transition is reached when the heights remain [your] permanent
dwelling place” (Art of Meditation, p. 135).
If there is
one prosperity practice that is easier to practice and more profound in its
results than any other, I believe it is this:
learn to see the abundance around you. Train your eye. Look everywhere—inside and out, high and low,
near and far—and celebrate every good and beautiful thing that you see. Praise without ceasing. Praise even the bounty that you do not yet see, knowing that what you do not see will become visible in
time since whatever is praised flourishes.
Assiduously overlook lack, which is temporary and unimportant. What counts is the truth of God—the truth of
abundant, unstoppable life we see all around us and feel at our very core. This life has never yet failed us and it
never will.