An important part of our spiritual growth and development is beginning to trust in our own inner guidance. To do this we must develop self-trust. But self-trust is extremely difficult when we feel that we are all alone in a dangerous universe. Living in a society that has cut itself off from a divine source, we feel at lose ends when we have no person or persons to whom we can turn for help and guidance. The main god of modern western society is science, which doesn’t lend us much inner guidance or support. All people, whether they’re aware of it or not, yearn for a connection with a divine source. And it is when we become aware that we truly are connected to a divine spirit that we can relax a little and see that self-trust is part of trusting in our own spirit in conjunction with divine spirit.

If you have been unaware of your own divine spirit connection until now, it may take a little time for you to remember when you last experienced guidance or help that sprang from outside the realm of logic, but I assure you that if you spend some time looking back over your life you will discover at least one event in your life that defied rational explanation – a moment when you experienced yourself trusting in and being helped and supported by a divine source.

The best place to search for these irrational, divine moments are during the difficult times in your life. Life’s circumstances often force us to surrender to the Divine because there are some things that we simply don’t have the strength to handle our own. Those times come up when, no matter how hard we try, we can’t control the situation, fix the hurt, or solve the problem. Death, divorce, severe accidents, money losses, and parenting are a few of the things that can trigger a divine intervention.

As I began to look back over my own life I remembered a simple yet powerful example related to parenting. The responsibility of raising a child can often be overwhelming, especially for very young mothers. There you are, footloose and fancy free, and suddenly the life of this tiny person is given into your care. You know it is your responsibility to keep this baby safe, but the world is a frightening place, and some days it seems like you may not be able to protect your child from everything.

When I was twenty-two I had an eighteen-month-old son. I lived in a constant state of fear that he would hurt himself and die. One day I took him to the beach for the first time. It was a gorgeous Southern California day. I set my precious baby boy down on a blanket and sat back to watch him experience the beauty of the ocean. The first thing he did was toddle off the blanket and scoop a handful of sand into his mouth. I leapt up and cleaned the sand out of his mouth the best I could and scolded him. Within seconds he was right back at it. I was very upset. I wasn’t sure what eating sand would do, but I knew it couldn’t be good. Nothing I did or said made the slightest impression on him. I took him into the water to play in the waves, but he just scooped up the wet sand and ate that.

I was becoming exhausted from the fear that I could not protect my child. The only thing I could think to do was take him home, but we were with other people who weren’t ready to leave. Then, suddenly, for no apparent reason, I had this overwhelming feeling of calm. I sensed that I could stop worrying – that my baby would be all right. From somewhere the knowledge that his life wasn’t in my hands alone popped into my mind like a little epiphany. Someone, somewhere was telling me that the life and death of my child was out of my control. From that moment I became a more relaxed mother. I learned to let him try things and find out for himself, when it was appropriate. I didn’t relinquish my responsibility, but I realized that I wasn’t alone. I began to trust that I was doing the very best job I could, and that the rest was not up to me. Over my lifetime I have been reminded many times that I am not alone. And each time I let go and trust divine spirit, I am able to trust myself a little more at the same time.

To find some moments of divine interventions in your life, ponder the following questions. Write about them. Take them into your meditation. See what you begin to remember. Remembering that we are not alone helps us to remember that we can trust ourselves, because we are equal partners with the Divine.

QUESTIONS TO PONDER

• Can you remember a time when you trusted your own judgment completely?

• Can you remember a time when you knew a divine power of some kind was helping or guiding you?

• Have you ever had to give up and just trust that your life or the situation was out of your hands?

Barbara Wilder: http://barbarawilder.com

When we think about well-being, we think mostly of our health, but have you thought about your economic well-being? I’m sure you think about money concerns every day, but have you actually considered healing your money in the way you think about healing your body? This may sound a little crazy, especially in today’s economy. The media blasts at us day in and day out about the terrible economic trends. The stock market falls and the unemployment rolls rise. There seems to be little hope of returning to the halcyon days of the nineties when everything – stock markets, real estate, technology companies, et al – was escalating breathlessly. Now, suddenly, the bottom has fallen out, and millions of Americans are hanging on by their fingernails, wondering what happened.

The economy is a lot like the human body. We can be going along thinking everything is fine, and then boom, we find out we have a life threatening disease. Suddenly our world is turned upside down. We start to take stock. We begin to ask ourselves why we didn’t see this coming. And then we begin to remember subtle hints that we might have taken note of, if we’d had the presence of mind. We think about the nagging feeling we got when we ate bad food or skipped our workout. We think about the heartburn, neck pain, or stomachache we got every time we harbored hateful thoughts. In this same way people are beginning to remember the subtle feelings of unease that they felt during the high-rolling nineties. The one thing that causes disease in our body, our world, and our economy is lack of balance.

Health, peace, and prosperity are all the outcome of living a balanced life. But though many people are coming to understand the validity of this statement with regard to the first two – health and peace – the majority of people still believe money is something alien and apart. And that’s only natural. All of our lives we’ve heard the phrases, “Money is the root of all evil.” “Money is dirty.” “Money can’t buy you love.” and on and on. And though we can’t survive without money, most people consider money a necessary evil. But money itself isn’t evil. It is the consciousness with which we get it, spend it, and hoard it, that can be evil. Money is the energy that we human beings exchange for the purpose of surviving and thriving on earth. It is an essential part of human life, and without it we would not be able to share the goods and services that we all need to exist. But when this exchange of energy is out of balance the economy becomes diseased, and because money circulates through the planet touching everything and everyone, when it is out of balance and diseased, we are all affected.

Money has not always been considered outside the circle of life as it is today. We live in a society that has lost its connection to the Divine. We have given power to those who stand outside the moral boundaries. We have come to believe that those who have money are the best people. We find ourselves feeling small and worthless when we have less money than others.

We give the attention that human beings once gave to spiritual matters exclusively to material matters. Getting and spending money is our greatest concern. Consider for a moment your average day. How much of your day do you devote to your health (thinking about it, discussing it, exercising, shopping for healthy food? How much of your day do you devote to your family? How much of your day do you devote to your spiritual practice? And how much time do you devote to getting and spending money? If you are like the great majority of human beings, you spend at the very least 75% of your waking day getting and spending money. If you are like most people your family comes second, your health comes third, and your spiritual life comes last.

In the past when people lived closer to the earth, they felt a deep spiritual connection to it and the crops they grew and the livestock they raised. They knew that God was their support. They prayed for good weather and healthy crops, and when they went to market, they were very aware that it was God or Mother Earth who gave them the products that they sold. They gave thanks to the Divine for a good crop, a good harvest, and the good prices these brought. The land, the product, and the marketplace were all part of the sacred circle of life, without which no human could exist.

Our marketplace is that same marketplace, but we have forgotten that it’s sacred. We have lost our connection to the sacred circle of life, and if we even think of sacredness we consider it to exist outside of normal life. We have created a separation between our material lives and our spiritual lives and in so doing we have divided our life from spirit.

The ancient Hebrew culture celebrated a sacred marketplace, and it was in this sacred marketplace that people came together to exchange the energy that we call money for the purpose of living healthy, prosperous lives. In “The Kabbalah of Money” Rabbi Nilton Bonder quotes the Talmud, which says, “True wealth is abundance that does not create scarcity.” In a marketplace based on this principle everyone prospers. But to create this kind of marketplace we must be open to letting go of the fear/greed precepts on which our current economic system is based and receptive to the healing properties necessary to create a love-based economy.

We are on the cusp of a new era in human history. The old order is fighting desperately to maintain its domination, but it won’t win because its time has passed. A new balance is coming into human experience. To help facilitate the new alignment, we can begin to create a sacred marketplace – one based on love not fear – simply by changing the way we think. When enough of us have made this change in consciousness the human race will make a quantum leap that we can only just begin to imagine.

A simple way to begin to move into personal economic well-being while simultaneously becoming part of the critical mass needed to create a new world economy is to begin to think of money as love. To do this, simply think the thought “Money is love” each time you enter into a monetary transaction. Write it on your checks and credit card slips. Allow this simple phrase to become your teacher. It will, if you focus on it consistently. Let money is love become your mantra. If you do, every time you think or write money is love you will step out of the old paradigm of the fear/greed economy for just a few seconds. A small amount of the fear we all carry in our hearts about money and our own economic well-being will dissipate and transform into love. The more you write, think, and say money is love the more love will replace fear, and your economic well-being will become reflected in your bank account and in your daily life. Peace will replace anxiety, and prosperity will replace scarcity. And while you are in the process of changing your own thoughts about money from fear and greed to love and peace, you will begin to pass money imbued with the energy of love out into world’s economy. oney flows through the world like blood flows through the body.

When the energy that is money is infused with fear, greed, and scarcity, as it is today, it flows throughout the world carrying these destructive properties and infecting all that it touches. Since money touches everyone, the people of the world, the communities they live in, and the land they live on are all polluted with the disease of fear, lack, greed, and anger. But if one by one, we as individuals begin to change the money that moves through our hands and our bank accounts into love, the money itself will become healed. And like a blood transfusion, we will begin to infuse the money flow of the planet with love, creating an economy of love not fear. Money is the blood of the planet. When we heal the money we will heal the world. In the process we will find personal peace and economic well-being.

Visit Barbara Wilder’s website

Visit Barbara Wilder’s website