A Prosperity Paradigm Shift

by Guru Rattana, Ph.D. - Issue #41, January 21, 2002

Prosperity is a complex and evolving topic. Each person has a unique path to follow, to achieve abundance this lifetime. What worked another lifetime may not work this time around. The formula for one person may not be the winning formula for another. In this issue, I comment on some pieces of the prosperity puzzle from my own perspective and experience. Please keep in mind that the path of your own success is revealed by following your intuition, heart and Divine guidance.

The energy of Capricorn reminds us that we must master the physical dimension of reality by taking one step at a time up the mountain of life. There are no free lunches in Capricorn territory. Everything is earned by hard work and merit. Mastery is the prize offered by Saturn - the ruler of Capricorn. With self-mastery comes the deep satisfaction of personal growth and achievement. Nothing can replace the feeling we get from the accomplishment of our goals through our own discipline and effort.

Aquarius teaches us that we are here to make our contribution to humanity. Satisfaction in Aquarian territory comes from innovative and selfless service to higher goals. Aquarius dictates that we must be our own unique self and enjoy the freedom of "being me". It is through connection with our own soul that our contribution is revealed to us.

During this time of the year, when the Sun is in Capricorn (Dec 21st - Jan 18th) and in Aquarius (Jan 19th - Feb 17th), it is appropriate to ask ourselves if our hard work is appropriately aligned around making our unique contribution. If not, what can we do to shift at least some of our energy towards satisfying service?

Bank Account and Bliss

I am well aware of the books and motivational seminars on the theme "Follow Your Bliss". I am also aware of the financial hardships that many people go through when they try to make a living in the sincere, but often naïve, pursuit of this frequently not so blissful path. Divorcing ourselves from the mainstream, and attempting to create under the roof of a new paradigm, does not always immediately pay the rent. We experience that there is a disconnect between "Just do it!" and monetary compensation. We are left wondering, why the application of the traditional work ethic formula to making our contribution to the world, does not yield intended and visualized results.

"Following our bliss" can be tricky business during the transition from the Piscean to the Aquarian Age. When the old system seems to be falling apart and a new system is not yet in place, those who are here to help create the new can fall between the cracks, and wonder what happened to the floor beneath their feet. Creation of the new system REQUIRES the evolution of individuals in the system. It just does not work to rationalize away our frustrations, with the excuse that the economic-political system does not support us. Our personal transformation is the foundation for a more conscious global structure that we are in the process of creating.

My Story

For years I was a prosperity meditation junkie. Every time Yogi Bhajan taught a new meditation for prosperity, I faithfully did if for the required amount of time. I sincerely believed that these meditations held the key to my prosperity. Two events woke me up to the possibility that more might be required to open up the cosmic cash box.

The first event was an exchange with Yogi Bhajan around 16 years ago, during a break at a White Tantric Course. He looked at me and said, "I want to thank you for doing all those prosperity meditations. You have brought millions of dollars to the Dharma". At the moment I was pleased. But later I realized something must be the matter because my financial situation had certainly not improved.

I got a hint of what might be a missing piece, several years later in a conversation with a psychic friend. I mentioned to him that I was going to do yet another prosperity meditation, and asked him what impact this might have. He looked at me and said, "Your energy is all over the Universe. You do not need to do any more prosperity meditations. You need to get grounded so that you can receive what you have earned".

Being grounded was a new concept for me. I am still exploring how to be present to physical reality, my body and the Earth. My major challenge is moving from the mental understanding of "being in my body" to the actual physical-emotional experience of being present in the moment to my energy.

No Quick Fixes

My observation, that for me there was no immediate measurable relationship between my practice of prosperity meditations and my personal prosperity, led me to search for other pieces to the abundance puzzle.

For an overall context, I hooked my mind on what I call the "Pit Theory", which I adapted from Zen. The idea is that we are in a pit, and everything we do helps to fill up our pit, so we can eventually reach the top. When we get to the top, we join the cosmic river, and everything flows. The Pit Theory explains why one or many things may appear not to be working. However, they are working. We just don't see the results until our pit is full. It gets full by doing all the things that we must do to learn our life lessons, align and balance our energy, shift our mindset, and align our magnetic field with the universal magnetic field.

Since meditation and daily sadhana alone did not guarantee that the cosmic goodies would magically be delivered to my doorstep, I began to painfully examine and extricate myself from self-sabotaging beliefs and illusions. One was the fantasy that somehow something would save me. The "lottery mentality" was definitely a part of my mindset, and I had to own it and send it "back to God". I tried to anchor in my consciousness, in both a positive and realistic attitude - "There are no quick fixes, but everything I do is part of my destiny path, empowers me and brings me closer to my goals".

Because practical action is required to be a success in the world, I enrolled in several seminars based on the assumption that, if you create a business plan and carry it out step by step, you will succeed. I enthusiastically followed the program with no tangible results. Furthermore, this model never felt comfortable to me. It was like trying to manipulate the Universe and playing God. Although it worked for some people, my file cabinet became a graveyard for unimplemented business plans that expired at the idea phase.

Two other things that did not work for me were abundance affirmations and visualizations. Both felt like I was lying to myself. I simply could not convince myself of something that was not true. In sum, the methodologies that involve using the mind "to create your own reality" did not appear to do much to fill my pit, appease my psyche, or calm my fears.

Two Ways of Life

The one thing that has always felt true to me is what Yogi Bhajan taught us at Khalsa Women's Training Camp. "There are two ways of life. You can either go after things or you can let things come to you". He taught us that, as women, we were naturally magnetic. A woman's power comes from cultivating her magnetism, so that we attract to us opportunities and what we need. We use our masculine energy to respond, to implement and to create, but we do not waste it by aggressively pursuing what we want.

Over the years I have explored the nuances and modalities of magnetism. Magnetism requires being totally present to ourselves. The more we concentrate on ourselves, the more magnetic we become. Grounding and magnetism work together. They require being mentally present in our bodies, feeling our emotions and the sensations that are ever changing. I think, being present to our energy is how we contain our energy. Yogi Bhajan used to talk a lot of about containing ourselves. I think that, whatever we are consciously aware of, we contain. Whatever we are unconscious of, we do not.

Containment, grounding and awareness take lots and lots of practice. They require directing the mind, but they are not mental, masculine concepts. They are physical, emotional, feminine concepts. They are NONVERBAL experiences. If there are any thoughts involved, we are in our minds, not in our bodies. It took me years to learn how to move from my mind to my body. One reason is because I found it very uncomfortable to be present to my emotions. Most of them did not feel good, and I was in the habit of intellectualizing my positive as well as my negative emotions. The reality is that we have both. The only solution is to develop the skill of "being comfortable being uncomfortable". And therein lies our power.

When we are always present to our emotional energy; we never leave ourselves. When we are present, we are in control. When we are not, our past programming and subconscious dictates our lives. Over time, being present to our emotional energy has big payoffs. Instead of our emotions being co-opted by our past conditioning, they begin to be direct messages from our souls. Both give us valuable information. Negative emotions are warnings. Positive emotions are confirmations.

The more present we are, the more magnetic we become. The more magnetic we are, the more we attract to ourselves, and the less we are obliged to go after what we want and need. We are also less needy because paying attention to our feelings helps take care of us emotionally. The less neediness we project, the more we attract. The less we have to hassle in life, the more energy is available for getting things done.

I find that, being present to my emotional energy in my body also helps me monitor my mind. I can feel the relationship between my mind and my emotions, and watch which emotions trigger what thoughts. Over time, it becomes easier to discern which thoughts serve me and which ones do not, and to let go of the latter.

A Few Conclusions

The exploration of my personal prosperity path has lead me to reach several conclusions:

1. There is no simple formula for prosperity or for health, relationships or anything else for that matter. Every human challenge is a path to personal empowerment, enlightenment and the experience of love. Every lesson must be learned step by step. There are no quick fixes and no free lunches.
2. Everyone's path is unique. Although there are common denominators, we each have to find the sequence and the modalities that work for us. Part of our empowerment is to listen to our inner guidance, and not be caught up in other people's advice.
3. Some people, through natural aptitude, good karma, social status and energy make up, are naturally grounded, and find it easier to manifest than others. These people often have a lot of earth energy in their astrological charts, i.e. Taurus, Virgo and Capricorn What may come naturally to earth signs may have to be cultivated by the air, water and fire signs.
4. To manifest we have to be connected in some way to physical reality and the Earth plane. We can't be floating in the ether and expect God to take care of us.
5. All spiritual paths help us raise our frequency. The trick is to incorporate the higher vibration in our bodies and not use it to escape. We will naturally move to the upper chakras and stay there unless we cultivate the lower chakras. Yogi Bhajan has often demonstrated that we have to have a bottom to our cup if we want it to hold the tea. (Yogi Tea of course). The first three chakras are the bottom of the cup. This is why Yogi Bhajan started out teaching us to balance and align the lower chakras. This is also why many of the prosperity meditations pump the navel. The third chakra centers our physical energy and gives us the will to take action.
6. We might as well relax because we can merge with, but we can't control, the Universe. Everything happens in divine timing. We can't change the timing, but we can prepare ourselves to take advantage of opportunities as they appear. Relaxation, acceptance, allowing and gratitude make merging easier.
7. It is useful to honestly examine our priorities. Would we trade our freedom and spiritual path for wealth? Maybe we are already living the lives we desire.
8. Our inner reality creates our outer reality. Transforming our inner reality is the most critical and challenging part of our quest.
9. Transforming our inner reality amounts to nothing less than an internal paradigm shift. We have to redefine our belief system, reorient our attention from an external focus back to ourselves, expand our awareness, and restructure our minds.
10. Our internal paradigm shift is part of the transition from the Piscean to the Aquarian Age.

Transition to the Aquarian Age

According to Yogi Bhajan and others, we enter the Aquarian Age in 2012. The transition between ages is a particularly challenging time to figure out life strategies. The old ones that once worked do so no longer, especially for those who are here to usher in the new era. The new ones are not yet defined or proven, and we have to develop a whole new set of skills to implement them. In other words, the "go get what you want at anyone else's expense including the Earth herself" model, that has been perfected at the end of the Piscean Age, is not appropriate for the Aquarian Age. There is a lot of clearing of inappropriate mental and emotional programming that needs to take place before the "relax, attract, do your destiny and serve humanity" model, that many of us feel attracted to, can pay off and function as an uncontested model for success.

We are the pioneers of a new paradigm and a new way of doing and being. The Aquarian Age is not just going to happen. We are here to co-create it, which means this is both an exciting and intensely challenging time. We may not only be filling up our own pit; we may be doing so for all of humanity. After all, we are all in this together. In this overall context, prosperity meditations play a profound and significant role. They help clear old thought forms from the morphogenic field (1) of mass consciousness. They also help create a new field, which makes new thoughts, responses and ways of being possible.

Radical Transformation

The transition to the Aquarian Age involves redefining masculine power, embracing true feminine power, and integrating both into our being. Embracing our feminine (in both men and women) involves deep cleansing and facing our dark (underdeveloped) side. The good news is that the process allows us to claim our power, unleash our creativity, and manifest from our soul identity. We are able to use our special gifts to support ourselves, and to make our unique contribution to the world. Our attitude of struggle is transformed into a passion for life. Our life challenges open our hearts to others and ourselves.

The Aquarian worldview requires a radical transformation of spiritual paths, that have previously focused on the upper chakras, and viewed the lower chakras, emotions and feelings as bad. Instead of trying to escape physical reality, we must now reorient ourselves to the spiritualization of matter, and embrace physical reality and our earthly experience as a divine gift. The psychological and social implications of this paradigm shift are radical. Our subconscious death wishes are being replaced by a powerful will to live. The abuses of the patriarchy must yield to economic, political and social systems that honor the Earth and her resources, and value the feminine, women and every living being. Our attitude towards wealth and prosperity are also up for a complete overhaul.

A Prosperity Paradigm Shift

The rational scientific and Piscean worldviews that have dominated for centuries, have limited our perceptions of what is possible, how we manifest, and why. One goal in the New Millennium is to learn to create prosperity from a more complete perspective, without greed, fear, alienation, and the exploitation of others or the Earth. The new paradigm of prosperity is based on equity, abundance, and serving the greater good of all. The new prosperity paradigm requires honoring our humanness, caring for our bodies, embracing our feelings, learning to live by natural laws, connecting with Mother Earth, and supporting ourselves by offering our unique contribution to the world.

This paradigm shift requires establishing an inner spiritual connection to our soul and the Universe. Cultivating this connection involves getting in touch with our feelings, our body, our unique gifts, and the divine feminine principle. We must cultivate sensitivity to energies that are not perceived through the mind, and reorient our psyche from belief to experience. "It is through the development of our feeling awareness (sensory system) that we attain an energetic relationship with the Earth, the Universe, our body and our soul. Such awareness is not a belief, an ideology, or simply a good idea. It cannot be acquired through mental effort, an intermediary, or an external authority (masculine). It is a direct experience (feminine) that is uniquely and delightfully our own".(2)

Our internal empowerment is the basis for the external manifestation of the new prosperity paradigm, and the creation of the Aquarian Age. It is the transformation of our inner reality that is creating the foundation for the transformation of our outer reality, and indeed for a new world.

Over twenty years later I am close enough to the top of my pit to hear the flow of the cosmic river. I now realize that prosperity meditations do help release the wealth of the Universe, when we are ready and able to receive and use it for the highest good of all; and this wealth is so much more than money. The joy of aligning our psyche with the universal psyche, and living in the cosmic flow of love, is one of the greatest gifts available to humans. Each time we chant, we are not only aligning ourselves with the frequency of love, we are making our personal contribution to shifting mass consciousness, so that together we can create a peaceful, equitable and sustainable world.

Kundalini Yoga - Prosperity Meditation for Alignment with the Universe

Alignment with universal energies is critical in achieving prosperity. We receive blessings from the Universe when we are clean, clear, straight and kind. We often block universal energy flow through our beliefs and belief system. "Spiritual" people often have erroneous beliefs that prevent them from excelling. This can include lack of self-esteem, problems with self-worth, guilt about receiving, thoughts of bargaining about exchange, and reluctance in giving, i.e. false beliefs about the abundant nature of the Universe.

Prosperity mantras and meditations facilitate our alignment with universal energies. Consider the following mantra and meditation.

Har Har Har Har Gobinde (Go bin day)-Sustainer (Pronounced with a slight aspirated "a" at the end but not "har ra"

Har Har Har Har Mukunde (Moo kun day)-Liberator

Har Har Har Har Udare (Ooo da ray)-Enlightener

Har Har Har Har Apare ( A pa ray)-Infinite

Har Har Har Har Haring (Har ee ung)-Destroyer

Har Har Har Har Karing (Car ee ung)-Creator

Har Har Har Har Nirname (Nir na may)-Nameless

Har Har Har Har Akame (A ka may)-Desireless

This mantras is chanted while pumping the navel center (below the navel) with each Har, using the tip of the tongue. The "HHH" is felt at the heart center.

The "H" sound of Har opens the heart. Pumping the navel with each Har pulls energy into the physical reality. If we meditate on the meaning of each of the other parts of this mantra, we realize that it contains all the aspects of God. Chanting this mantra imprints our aura and being with these qualities, and aligns us with universal energies.

This mantra has 40 sounds. It affects the 5 tattvas (air, water, fire, earth, and ether), the 7 chakras and the arch line. This mantra can penetrate into anything and help avoid misfortune. It has the power to break through any resistance or obstacles. It is sacred but it is not secret. This meditation has been given by Yogi Bhajan to be successful during these challenging times.

Yogi Bhajan has taught many meditations and mudras (hand positions) using this mantra. On January 15, 1989 Yogi Bhajan taught the following meditation.(3)

Instructions for Prosperity Meditation

Sit in easy pose, or a comfortable meditation posture with a straight spine. Center yourself with several long deep breaths. Then place left hand on left knee with thumb and forefinger touching. Place right hand on heart, as in the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance. With the eyes closed chant the mantra, with the tip of the tongue hitting the ridge of the palate. The tongue must be stiff. The closed eyes must be fixed on the tip of the nose, to maintain concentration. Chant 11-15 minutes when you wake-up and 11-15 minutes when you go to bed. You can also listen to the mantra on auto reverse when you sleep. Recordings of this mantra can be found, both on CD and as MP3 downloads.

Comments

Har(a) means God, the Krishna aspect. Without the "Har(a)'s, this is called the Guru Gaitri Mantra. It eliminates blocks or curses from the past and cleanses the aura, so that it is easier to meditate and relate to the Infinite. It is an ashtang mantra, which means it contains the eight vibrations that balance the brain. This mantra was given by Guru Gobind Singh, who was the 10th and last Sikh Guru (1666-1707). The tongue hitting the palate ridge activates neurons in the brain, which brings prosperity if done correctly. The closed eyes, fixed on the tip of the nose, focus our attention, center us and stimulate the pituitary gland. You can make a recording of your own voice singing this mantra, in any melody or in monotone. Listening to your own voice is a very effective way of imprinting the vibration in your subconscious.

You will enjoy the power and alignment of this meditation.

References and Footnotes

1. A non-material, energetic region of influence that guides, organizes and determines the characteristic social, cultural, and mental patterns, behaviors and structures of organic forms within that region. Used to refer to the energy patterns encompassing the Earth that determine/influence what takes place here.

2. The Destiny of Women is the Destiny of the World, by Guru Rattana, Ph.D., Yoga Technology Press, 2006

3. Transitions to a Heart-Centered World by Guru Rattana and Ann Marie Maxwell.

Top of Page

For news of all the latest astrological events, check out Guru Rattana Blog