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 "Out of nothing comes the one Out of one comes the two Out of two comes three Out of three comes all things"

Santa, Archetype of Prosperity

December 25th is the day hundreds of millions of Christians celebrate the birth of their Redeemer. It’s also the day hundreds of millions celebrate the generosity of their Rewarder. He’s the bearded jolly chap known as St. Nicholas or Santa Claus (Sint Klaas as the Dutch settlers called him in Holland). I like to think of him as the quintessential archetype for prosperity. In a tough economy where you may be losing sleep over losing your job, an abundant elf like Santa is vital to our national health and imagination.

Known as the patron saint of giving, Santa might more aptly be known as the patron saint of rapid transit. He’s a veritable master of bilocation. In December, you’ll spot him at the Town Center in Boca Raton, Florida, at the same moment your friends spot him on Broadway in New York City, while others insist he’s also on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. Bilocation, shmilocation… Superman may be fast, but Santa is downright omnipresent. He’s more than just a symbol of prosperity, he’s a veritable embodiment of all possibilities.

When I was a small boy, my Uncle Dave was vital to my sense of possibilities. A personification of prosperity, he’d give me the silver dollars he pulled out of my ears with his magic. Dave was a mortal man, so he had his limits, Santa is a myth so he has none. His huge sack full of wrapped goodies is a veritable storehouse of infinite generosity.

This red-suited jolly old guy gives unending presents from just one sack, sleds his way over the rooftops of the world, and shares his bounty with children, the most innocent beings on our planet.

Perhaps St. Nick’s miraculous feats of “sharing-do” are powered by the ever-present mantra he chants– “Ho-ho-ho.” Is this an ancient mantra from China or an esoteric meditation from the North Pole? That ringing bell of his sounds more at home in Tibet than at his snowy digs.

While the holiday season is about love and hope, the girth of St. Nicholas inspires abundance. In December’s endless flashing neon, long checkout lines, and out-of-control credit cards, this archetype of prosperity brings a much-needed smile to the harried shopping class. We shouldn’t even think of foregoing the wrappings and trappings of a saint like Nick, he’s our national symbol of prosperity. Our political leaders forever spout peace and prosperity; these are qualities embodied by Santa Claus.

As I once told students in a prosperity class I gave near the nation’s capital in Alexandria, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.”

Man’s best teacher

A dog is not only a man’s best friend, he may also be his best teacher. A dog embodies so many qualities of the Enlightenment described by the world’s great teachers–from Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Mohammed and Lao Tzu—that it’s hardly a coincidence that dog is god spelled backwards.

All spiritual teachers put love as critical for cultivating the highest state of consciousness we call Enlightenment. The family dog demonstrates a form of unconditional love that’s hard to find in our world. Many a husband who’s turned his head a little too long to gaze at the “hottie” in a mini-skirt, has discovered how quickly his spouse’s love is less than unconditional. What if a woman gains 75 pounds? Unfortunately, that has moved far too many men in our disposable culture to be on the lookout for a slimmer (and, while they’re at it, newer) model. What adult doesn’t like to think his parents love him unconditionally? Yet, break a few laws, and even the kindest of parents have been known to disown such a child, or even turn him in to the authorities.

But it doesn’t matter how much you weigh, how many hotties and hunks yo ogle, it doesn’t even matter how many other dogs you pet, your dog is your pal forever, loving you unconditionally to his dying breath. A dog will greet you with a wagging tail and endless licks and kisses. (Does your wife or husband do that? I didn’t think so.) You can yell at a dog in anger, and h may cower away in fear, but an hour later, he’s forgiven you of your cruelty. Most spouses are less forgiving.

Consciousness firmly awakened in the present is necessary for achieving the highest states of human development. In Eckhart Tolle’s best-selling The Power of Now, he elucidated the necessity for, and advantages of, keeping yourself in the present moment, as compared to looking over your shoulder at the past, or into the future that’s not yet come.

A dog never dwells in what once was, nor is he obsessed with what may be on its way. He’s focused on the present. Even when lying down to catch some shut-eye, he often keeps one eye open to the goings on around him.

Enthusiasm, from the Greek entheos or “in god,” is another attribute of higher consciousness. If a wagging tail doesn’t remind you to stay enthusiastic, nothing will. Retrievers of the Golden and Labrador type are perfect embodiments of an enthusiasm that’s hard to top in this world. A person can throw the same ball to the same Retriever over and over again but, while the person soon gets bored, the dog never does. Each new toss is a brand new ball to fetch. His presence in the moment and enthusiasm for chasing the same thing time and again display the freshness of an awakened state of being that our great teachers have both explained and embodied.

With all these things that dogs teach us, who really are the masters? Perhaps they love to awaken us so much that we’re like our teachers’ pets.

Thanksgiving 1621

]Recently, Thanksgiving has become a gluttonous day of turkey, parades and football, a long fall from its origin when grateful Pilgrims thanked God for the bounteous harvest that their helpful native American neighbors shared with them. Our Higher Power is also generous with His/Her bounty; blessing our every moment with the breath of life while keeping the heart in our chest beating. Rev. Ike spoke of the prospering power of an attitude of gratitude. I like to say that the more grateful I am for what I have, the more I have to be grateful for.

Whether you dine on turkey or a vegetarian equivalent, add consciousness to this Thanksgiving, the day that begins our end-of-year holiday season. Perhaps you can lead your gathering in a heartfelt thankful grace, or ask each person at the table to share something that s/he is truly grateful for. It will be a memorable holiday (as in holy day) for one and all.

Keeping your eye on your goals helps you achieve them.

“Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.”

— Anthony Robbins

If you’re self-employed and worry about making rent or your mortgage to avoid foreclosure, you might think that establishing goals is a luxury you don’t have time for.  Quite the opposite.  Unless you set goals to stretch the way you market, and grow your income, you run the risk of being a casualty of this recession.

Tracking weekly goals makes use of the Law of Attraction, which states that energy goes where attention flows.  There’s a physical law paralleling this—the role that the observer plays in the process of observation: “You cannot separate the observer from the observed,” said David Bohm, the world-famous quantum physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb.  In the case of goal setting for your business, the observer is the entrepreneur and the observed is the business itself.  

To take advantage of this law of nature, create a variety of weekly goals for different aspects of your business.  These might include gross income, number of new clients gained, number of new prospective clients, hours spent on marketing, and so on. 

At the top of your paper going across the page, write Goal, Actual and Percentage.   Then, write your goals going down the page on the left margin. The first thing Monday morning, before your workweek begins, fill in your goals for the week.  As the week unfolds, tally your results as they develop in the category called Actual.  Then, the following Monday morning, total your results.  If your goal was to gain two new clients and you gained one, you did 50 percent.  Do this for each category weekly.

There’s great power in this process for, as Lee Iacocca put it, “The discipline of writing something down is the first step toward making it happen.”  Simply intending certain results and attending to these intentions daily helps bring them into manifestation.  That’s why it’s wise to display your weekly goal sheet where you can see them daily—remember the power of attention. “It was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness,” said Nobel Prize-winning physicist Eugene Wigner.  The same can be said for the laws of quantum business growth.

Sometimes a new client is just a push of a button and a few questions away.

Many business development experts urge you to create an elevator speech of 30 to 60 seconds so you can tell anyone in a short trip that can elevate your business by adding your fellow passenger to your client roster http://www.creativekeys.net/PowerfulPresentations/article1024.html

http://www.quintcareers.com/elevator_speech_dos-donts.html

Once you’ve created an elevator speech, I suggest you create elevator questions.  I believe you can get more clients by asking provocative questions than lecturing someone on what he should do.  People are told what to do by bosses, spouses, commercials all day long.  When a person asks what you do, tell him, and if he shows interest, instead of telling him that he should get massaged, ask him, “Do you have pain in your body?”  When he says yes, which he will because–if he’s an adult in the 21^st century who commutes in bumper-to-bumper traffic, or is bumped around by straphangers in urban subways and railroad cars, or has a boss, a spouse, or a kid–he has pain in his body. Then ask, “Would you like to be free of pain in your body?”

If you ask him where the pain is, he’ll tell you.  The next step is to ask if he’d like to book a session to relieve that pain.  Of course, he would, although he may say that he needs to think about it.  Let him.  Give him your business card, then ask another two questions: namely for his card, and for permission to call within a week if he fails to call you.  Why?  So you can direct the matter instead of being reactive.  Then call seven days later if he forgets.  When you remind him who you are and how you met, ask him again if he’d like to be free of the specific pain that he mentioned.   As  Hamlet said, “That’s the question.”