There’s a big trend these days among coaches selling their own ‘manifesting success’ stories in the form of really expensive coaching programs – I’ve seen a lot of these over the last few years, and it makes me really uncomfortable, for a few reasons.

The first is tangling spirituality up with money, around the underlying message that if you just have good energy (i.e. high vibes), you’ll attract wealth. Gah. The second is the promise that anyone can manifest the relationship, or business, or income of their dreams using proven manifestation techniques (with little mention of business skill sets required, or the greater concept of Dharma !#@).

So, while I’ve indeed written about topics like conscious manifestation, quantum manifestation (aka co-creation) and how the divine feminine factors in (all in an effort to support people in creating the shifts they know their soul is here for) it’s also clear to me that the business of manifestation has a gross side.

Personally, I hold two seemingly opposing beliefs: The first is that I do believe it’s our birthright to live prosperous lives, whatever that means to each of us: having a beautiful home, beautiful things, travelling, passionate work, a flexible schedule, loving relationships. The second is that I also believe that true, deep, untouchable peace is actually about desire-lessness. The highest form of consciousness is when we don’t actually NEED anything to bring us peace or joy because we’ve tapped it all from within, and from our connection with Source. This propserity is about aligning with the flow of God, and all of nature. 

In my most recent search for wisdom on the topic of wealth and prosperity, I came across an older- somewhat dated, audiobook (originally recorded on tapes?) called Prosperity Consciousness by Fredric Lehrman. 

Here is a round up of the biggest takeaways I learned through this book – and from several other abundance teachers I’ve explored over the years. 

What Prosperity Consciousness is

As Lehman so beautifully puts it, ‘Prosperity Consciousness is about functioning effortlessly and conveniently in the physical universe whether you have money or not.’ Amen. This is a foundational point to all (wise) abundance teachings. Abundance is not about how much $$ we have in our bank accounts. It’s about how we feel about ourselves and our lives no matter what, with the understanding that, as Lehman says, “virtually all of our thoughts and memories create our physical reality until we change them.” Key point: Our mindset, emotions, subconscious, and desires all work together.

Emotional Intelligence v. Wealth

Our emotional intelligence is a key part in our ability to make effective financial decisions and manage money wisely. So the foundational work of building a prosperity consciousness, is to develop an honest emotional awareness of, and understanding of, our relationship with money. Highlight: This isn’t something you can do by reading a chapter in a book. This is a process that requires some time, embodiment practice, stillness and contemplation and that may need to be revisited over days or weeks. Key point: we all have stories, expectations and habits around money, spending, and (drumroll please) what we feel we actually deserve. We’ve got to do our shadow work here.

In his audiobook, Lehman shares many stories on this, one in particular about a man who had inherited 2 million dollars, and went about doing all the right things to properly invest it, first with one of the top firms in NYC, and second in Real Estate. However, while everyone else’s investments were thriving doing virtually the same things, his tanked. He lost almost all of his money. As the story goes, Lehman helped him to uncover tet fact that he had been carrying immense guilt from having inherited the money via the death of his parents. By working through his intense emotions, and then going back to investing the remaining money, he was able to eventually regain + even grow the initial amount to a much higher amount.  According to Lehman and many other abundance teachers, money is simply a form of energy and it goes to where it can flow the most freely. So emotions like guilt, shame, and low self worth energetically repel money away while emotions like gratitude, appreciation, and celebration of money, attract the energy of even more money.

Money Affirmations are great teachers 

With this understanding of how our emotional beliefs and expectations around money work energetically, it makes sense that affirmations can be powerful tools for attraction, and for helping us uncover any core beliefs that may be blocking the flow of money into our lives.

What we focus on, expands. What we expect, becomes our reality. Our lives really are a reflection of how we feel about ourselves, which is why I loved the mantra Lehrman shares at the very start of his book. 

I am pleasing to myself in the presence of others

Lehrman was told that if he wrote this down 20x every day for a month, it would double his income. While I haven’t tested this out yet, I do acknowledge that by embodying this mantra, one is embodying self love, self respect, and self appreciation, which are ultimately the qualities that magnetize people, opportunities, and wealth. So, I’m ready to try it. 

In his book, one of the mantras Lehrma prescribes is this:

 I deserve to be wealthy

He instructs his listeners to write this down, and watch what your mind says. Does your mind say ‘yes, that’s true’, or ‘no, that’s not true’. Write down what comes up. If it’s ‘yes, that’s true’, amazing. But if it’s ‘no’, write down why your mind doesn’t accept that you deserve to be wealthy. This is a very informative starting point to help shift any beliefs you have about not feeling worthy of wealth. This really one of the best spiritual alignment practices.

Personally, I did this exercise and the thing that came up was that I don’t actually like the idea of valuing wealth as a top priority and I just don’t like how ‘girl boss’ this statement sounds. It’s cheesy. I can get behind: ‘I deserve to have a beautiful home. I deserve to travel to beautiful places. I deserve to enjoy all aspects of my life. I deserve to have meaningful work. I deserve to feel free and spacious in all that I do. I deserve to be supported abundantly.’ I’m still coming around to really loving the mantra, ‘I deserve to be wealthy.’ How about you?

Here are some questions to help you uncover the deeper layers of your beliefs around money:

  • What is your relationship to receiving? 
  • What is your relationship with generosity?
  • Do you know how to give without condition, and to receive without condition? 
  • What are your current thoughts on what’s possible and available to you? 
  • Do you believe it’s possible to double your income in one month, or in one year? 

Here’s a great practice that my wise friend Angela Prider shared with me: 

Imagine a monthly income that feels abundant. Say this number. Write it down. Feel into your nervous system- does it feel right? If it’s absurdly high, or too within reach, it may not feel like actual abundance. Allow your nervous system to calibrate the truth of what would feel abundant. Then, consider any blocks or beliefs that may be coming up internally. Things like negative emotional responses or limiting thoughts, and give yourself the support to work through those. 

Prosperity Consciousness + the Subconscious

Understanding the different levels of our mind is another part of the prosperity journey that I am enjoying playing with. 

Lehrman says. “Before you dive into a new business, or venture, consult your subconscious mind… in a way that uncovers any subconscious blocks, and ask your subconscious for permission to set you up for success.” He shares that he does this all the time, and doing so brings the connections and opportunities, in a way that reaches the subconscious of those he’s doing business with. I love this, I believe it works, and I’m starting to practice this with the clients I’m attracting in with The Ceremony, my spiritual websites business.

Prosperity as Service

This is where I can breathe a sigh of relief because it all starts to make sense.

just imagine if the top 3% of the richest people on the planet, were the ones with the most power – in government, international trade, human rights, and the environment. If our most wealthy and powerful people were also our most conscious people, it could become Heaven on Earth. No more sex trafficking, far less pollution, no more gun violence. For those of us who desire to align with our highest form of service, for the good of others, Lehrman actually says that this is the catapult to attracting abundance effortlessly. As he puts it: “When we do what expands our own aliveness, and also the aliveness of those around us, we enter into greater prosperity consciosness. 

I’ll leave you with one of my favorite questions: What if your career gave you the opportunity to do what makes you feel more alive? Is this your current reality?

To sum up, over the years, I’ve heard several manifesting teachers, including Esther Hicks, say that we can all become an energetic match for our highest desires, but I think this only really becomes abundance (in the sense of true prosperity consciousness) when it’s about creation from a place of inner alignment. Just think of all the people who do have millions in the bank and don’t feel abundant. We’re entering into a new age of humanity where people are being invited to explore what personal power actually means, and how connected it is with prosperity, which is connected with the deepest freedom of being so in flow with Life that we don’t need anything at all. I believe this is available to all of us. Love to know your thoughts on this topic, please send me a note.  

More Prosperity Resources:

Louise Hay Explains How Thoughts Can Anchor Your Reality into Place

Echkart Tolle Teaches About Conscious Manifestation

Manifesting NOT Fighting the Universe by Michael Singer

How to embody prosperity consciousness.