Prosperity means different things to different people, and its meaning can change for us individually as we go through the stages of life, and perhaps change our focus on a bank balance toward wanting to experience fulfillment in all areas, not just financial success.
However, I won’t argue that money isn’t important. It’s the exchange medium we use to get things we want. Someone might argue that money won’t buy good health—but money will buy you nutritious food, supplements, a safe and clean home, and so on.
I want to share a process to help you get into the spirit of manifesting, no matter what outcome you desire. Perhaps prosperity means having the means to enjoy a certain lifestyle, to take a vacation without having to scrimp or sacrifice to pay for it. Prosperity is an outlook on life, an attitude, rather than a specific dollar amount.
Sometimes, though, we do want to manifest a certain amount of money for a particular project or the down payment on a car or home. Below is an excerpt from Your Invisible Power by Genevieve Behrend. In it, she explains how she opened up her mental faculties to receive the money she needed to travel from USA to England and be able to live there long enough to study with famed philosopher and teacher Thomas Troward. This book was published in 1921. She studied with Troward 1912-14 (and was his only student). Notice that she had estimated she would need $20,000 to cover her expenses. There are various estimates of what the amount would be in today’s dollars. Some say that $20 in 1912 would be equivalent to $500-700 today. So you see she was really planning to manifest a lot of money, about $500,000-$700,000.
But she understood the process of using her mind to first imagine the specific amount, and then to create a physical process (counting the money each night in her mind) to further impress her subconscious with the new truth that she had this money in her possession.
We can use this same technique for absolutely everything we desire. Picture it, make it real to yourself, so real you feel it is happening now, and what will happen is that the new vibration you are in will open your mind to receive ideas for getting what you want, ideas that will not occur to you when you are in the panicked mode of “Help, I need money now!!!!”
Here is the excerpt from “Your Invisible Power”:
So every night, before going to sleep, I made a mental picture of the desired $20,000 which seemed necessary to go and study with Troward.
Twenty imaginary $1,000 bills were counted over each night in my bedroom, and then, with the idea of more emphatically impressing my mind with the fact that this twenty thousand dollars was for the purpose of going to England and studying with Troward, I wrote out my picture, saw myself buying my steamer ticket, walking up and down the ship’s deck from New York to London, and finally, saw myself accepted as Troward’s pupil. This process was repeated every morning and every evening, always impressing more and more fully upon my mind Troward‘s memorized statement: “My mind is a center of Divine operations.” I endeavored to keep this statement in the back part of my consciousness all the time, with no thought in mind of how the money might be obtained. Probably the reason why there was no thought of the avenues through which the money might reach me was because I could not possibly imagine where the $20,000 would come from. So I simply held my thought steady and let the power of attraction find its own ways and means.
One day while walking on the street, taking deep breathing exercises, the thought came:
“My mind is surely a center of Divine operation. If God fills all space, then God must be in my mind also; if I want this money to study with Troward that I may know the truth of Life, then both the money and the truth must be mine, though I am unable to feel or see the physical manifestations of either. Still,” I declared, “it must be mine.”
While these reflections were going on in my mind, there seemed to come up from within me the thought: “I Am all the substance there is. Then, from another channel in my brain the answer seemed to come, “Of course, that’s it; everything must have its beginning in mind. The idea must contain within itself the only one and primary substance there is, and this means money as well as everything else.” My mind accepted this idea, and immediately all the tension of mind and body was relaxed.
There was a feeling of absolute certainty of being in touch with all the power Life has to give. All thought of money, teacher, or even my own personality, vanished in the great wave of joy which swept over my entire being. I walked on and on, with this feeling of joy steadily increasing and expanding until everything about me seemed aglow with resplendent light. Every person I passed appeared illuminated as I was. All consciousness of personality had disappeared, and in its place there came that great and almost overwhelming sense of joy and contentment.
That night when I made my picture of the twenty thousand dollars it was with an entirely changed aspect. On previous occasions, when making my mental picture, I had felt that I was waking up something within myself. This time there was no sensation of effort. I simply counted over the twenty thousand dollars. Then, in a most unexpected manner, from a source of which I had no consciousness at the time, there seemed to open a possible avenue through which the money might reach me.
At first it took great effort not to be excited. It all seemed so wonderful, so glorious, to be in touch with supply. But had not Troward cautioned his readers to keep all excitement out of their minds in the first flush of realization of union with Infinite supply, and to treat this fact as a perfectly natural result which had been reached through our demand? This was even more difficult for me than it was to hold the thought that “all the substance there is, I Am; I (idea) Am the beginning of all form, visible or invisible.”