Abundance is not a struggle. You don't have to fight to be rich, to be happy, to be successful, to have great relationships. It's not as if there's a limited resource and we all have to fight to get our piece of it. There's abundance for everyone, and there always has been. Money really does grow on trees. We live in the Promised Land, a land flowing with milk and honey. But some of us are starving to death because we can't see what's in front of our eyes.

Here's a story which I recall reading in Eckhart Tolle's book, The Power of Now. 

A beggar is sitting on an old wooden box, and he's been sitting there for years - he sits on it on the street and begs for money. One day someone walks past and tells the old beggar that he has nothing to give except a piece of information. The stranger tells the old man that his wooden box is full of money and treasure. The old man laughs and soon forgets what the stranger told him. He dies without ever opening the box.

Here's another story from Anthony de Mello's wonderful book, Awareness.

An eagle lays an egg but somehow the egg finds its way into a chicken coup. A chicken incubates the egg with all her others and when it hatches, she rears the eaglet as if it were one of her own chicks. It learns to peck the dust for food, to flap its wings and to strut around the farmyard. One day, an eagle flies by overhead. The little eagle looks up and sees this, and says to himself, 'I wish I were an eagle - how majestic, how free, how beautiful to be like that and have such a life.' The eagle lived like a chicken and died like a chicken, because that's hat he thought he was.

And this is the tragedy - so many people think they are chickens; they don't see the grandeur inside themselves; they don't see the treasure. They think it's for other people. But it isn't - it's for you and me! It's all set up for you. The universe (for want of a better word) is, by default, a provider of everything you choose.

If life isn't easy, if you're not gliding through the air like a majestic eagle, you're resisting the flow of abundance into your life. What's causing this resistance? Thoughts that emphasize fear, worry and lack. And where do these thoughts come from? They come from you! You're creating them, and they're sending out a message to the universe, and so the universe responds by giving you this experience. In Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, Susan Jeffers says 'The truth is you really are in control - in total control. Until you fully understand that you and no one else, create what goes on in your head, you will never be in control of your life and you will never create the life you desire. You are creating all the time, but you are creating an experience of fear, lack and unhappiness.' I strongly recommend you read Chapter 4 of this wonderful book.

Nobody else can do it for you. Many people go through life blindly accepting what they are told by others - they think they are chickens, when in fact they are eagles. But you can only cone to this conclusion yourself - you can only look at yourself and decide that you are magnificent, that you are free and that you can have anything. Or you can decide that society is right, that religion is right, that all this talk of greatness and freedom is dangerous stuff, and that we need to know our place and accept our lot, to struggle through life and to hope for something better later - much later.

Stop blocking the source! Be open to new possibilities.

You are a manifestation of the source of all abundance, and that source works through you every moment. To work consciously with this, you need to focus your thoughts and feelings on what you desire - not on the lack of it, not on excuses for why you don't or can't have it. Your job is to think about it, feel it, and intend it. The rest is out of your hands.

Maybe it won't happen as you imagined it. The universe will deliver what you focus on with the maximum speed and efficiency. Events will order themselves so as to provide what you have chosen. People will walk into your life at just the right time; you'll see something on TV or on the Internet at just the right moment. You'll miss your flight or your train and that will cause you to read something in the newsagent or meet someone in the waiting area. This is called synchronicity, and you cannot engineer it. You cannot make it happen. You cannot force it. That's why effort and work and politics can only get you so far. The universe is much wiser than you can ever know. So stop trying to fix everything and let the universe take over.

Being rich (or happy, or successful...) is all in your mind

If you believe that life is hard, then it is. If you believe that money is bad, tainted, that rich people are crooks, you'll never attract it into your life. And if, somehow, you do stumble across some money (maybe you'll win the lottery), you'll lose it all.

Being rich (or poor) is not primarily about how much money you have - it's about your state of mind.

Finally, remember that you don't need to improve yourself. You don't need to become something more than you are. You just need to realize your innate greatness, that you are, in fact, one with the source, and can have all that you chose. This has always been true, and always will. There's nothing to improve except the way you think and feel. This doesn't mean you shouldn't have targets, set goals, have ambition - of course you should. But these are things you are choosing to do; they're not part of you and achieving them won't make you more or better or more worthy or valuable. You have all that right now. The nature of the goals you set - things you love, things you feel passionate about, things you want to do anyway - is a topic for another article. But remember that you can have it all, effortlessly, if you know - really know - who you are. The you'll know that money really does grow on trees...