I am sharing a piece of Thomas Troward's essay "The Sprit of Opulence" because it has had a profound impact on many lives including my own. So here goes:

We must not make ourselves dependent on any particular form of wealth, or insist on its coming to us through some particular channel. That is at once to impose a limitation, to shut out other forms of wealth, and to close other channels. Rather, we must enter into the spirit of it. Now the spirit is Life: and throughout the Universe, Life ultimately consists in circulation — whether within the physical body of the individual or on the scale of the entire solar system. Circulation means a continual flowing around, and the spirit of opulence is no exception to the Universal law of all life.

When once this principle becomes clear to us we shall see that our attention should be directed rather to the giving than to the receiving. We must look upon ourselves, not as misers' chests to be kept locked for our own benefit, but as centres of distribution. The better we fulfil our function as such centres, the greater will be the corresponding inflow. If we choke the outlet, the current must slacken, and a full and free flow can be obtained only by keeping it open. The spirit of opulence — that is, the opulent mode of thought — consists in cultivating the feeling that we possess all sorts of riches which we can bestow upon others, and which we can bestow liberally because by this very action we open the way for still greater supplies to flow in.

But you say, "I am short of money; I hardly know how to pay for necessaries. What have I to give?"

The answer is that we must always start from the point where we are. If your wealth at the present moment is not abundant on the material plane, you need not trouble to start on that plane. There are other sorts of wealth, still more valuable, on the spiritual and intellectual planes, with which you can begin. You can start from this point and practise the spirit of opulence even though your balance at the bank may be nil. And then the Universal Law of Attraction will begin to assert itself. You will not only begin to experience an inflow on the spiritual and intellectual planes, but it will extend itself to the material plane also.

If you have realised the spirit of opulence, you cannot help drawing to yourself material good as well as that higher wealth which is not to be measured by any monetary standard. When you truly understand the spirit of opulence, you will neither affect to despise this form of good, nor will you attribute to it a value that does not belong to it; but you will co-ordinate it with your other more interior forms of wealth so as to make it the material instrument in smoothing the way for their more perfect expression.

Used thus, with understanding of the relation which it bears to spiritual and intellectual wealth, material wealth becomes one with them, and is no more to be shunned and feared than it is to be sought for its own sake.

It is not money, but the love of money, that is the root of evil. The spirit of opulence is precisely the attitude of mind which is furthest removed from the love of money for its own sake. It does not believe in money. What it does believe in is the generous feeling which is the intuitive recognition of the great law of circulation, which does not in any undertaking make its first question, 'How much am I going to get by it?' but rather, 'How much am I going to do by it?' And making this the first question, the getting will flow in with a generous profusion, and with a spontaneity and rightness of direction that are absent when our first thought is of receiving only.

We are not called upon to give what we have not yet got and to run into debt; but we are to give liberally of what we have, with the knowledge that by so doing we are setting the law of circulation to work. As this law brings us greater and greater inflows of every kind of good, so our out-giving will increase — not by depriving ourselves of any expansion of our own life that we may desire, but by finding that every expansion makes us more powerful instruments for expanding the life of others. "Live and let live" is the motto of true opulence.

Mark Styranka is the owner of Exciting Destiny.com. He writes on a variety of topics but primarily relating to money making secrets for the stay at home business. To learn more about how you can work & stay at home, Mark recommends that you visit:
http://www.ExcitingDestiny.com
http://www.BargainDealsMart.com

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