Money is the root of all evil

Money is the root of all evil.  Isn't it?

Actually, no, it is not!  Most certainly not!

What actually is money?  What it should be is a measure of the value that you have given to society.  Sometimes that measure doesn't work very well, with society giving greater value to some things and lesser value to others than perhaps should be the case.  But, for all its faults and limitations, that is what money is supposed to be and what in principle it is.

If money is a measure of the value you have given, how can this be evil?  It may be faulty; it may not be as good a measure as we want it to be; but clearly it is not evil.  Not unless you believe giving value to others is evil!

So where does this idea that money is the root of all evil come from?

It actually comes from a misquote of something St Paul wrote to his young disciple Timothy.  What Paul wrote was "For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil."  That is quite different.   Paul was certainly not saying there was anything wrong with money itself, just with the way some people respond to it.  Money itself is not evil, nor is the possession of money evil.  What is evil is simply greed.

Unfortunately, the misconception that money is the root of evil is buried deep in almost all of us.  Consciously most of us know that money is neutral - it is how you view it and how you use it that can either be good or evil.  But unconsciously we have this deep-seated belief that money itself and the possession of wealth are both evil.

It is very important to try to unearth this deep-seated and quite wrong belief about money.  Until you do you will find you have two big problems.

Firstly, you will feel uncomfortable about any wealth you have now, be it very small or very large.  You may not recognize that this is the way you feel, so it will probably just express itself as a general feeling of dissatisfaction.  Don't allow this to happen.  Why feel uncomfortable for no reason whatsoever?

Secondly, your subconscious mind will "know" that as money makes you uncomfortable it is best not to let you have any.  That is a disastrous situation!  Your subconscious is extremely powerful, and if it has decided you should not have money, or at least should not increase your wealth, you will find it extremely difficult to become any wealthier than you already are.  And that is exactly the situation most people are in!

One way to begin countering this unwarranted prejudice is to start thinking about what I have said money is - a measure of the value you give.  Think about it very positively in this way.  Think about the value you give to your employer if you are an employee, and to your clients if you are in business for yourself.  If you feel you do not give much value, then maybe it is time to think more carefully about what you are doing and whether, in fact, you should be doing something different.

Think about other ways you can give value to society and to those around you.  As you do this, gradually you should find opportunities begin to arise for you to give that value and to receive money in return.  The more you focus on this the more such opportunities will arise.

The other way to counter it is to think about all the good you can do with any increase in your wealth you might achieve.  Good you can do for your family and friends.  Good you can do for others around you.  There is so much good you can achieve if only you have enough wealth to fund those plans.

Perform both these exercises regularly and you should find that your money "blocks" will gradually disappear.  As they disappear, opportunities to increase your wealth will arise.  Many of these opportunities have actually been there all the time, but you did not recognize them because you were restrained by your wrong inner belief that money is evil.  Other opportunties will also arise, gravitating to you by the Law of Attraction, which is another subject for another day.

Book of the Law

What is the "Book of the Law" that you carry with you?  How do you use it?

Each of us has a "Book of the Law", even those who appear to be pretty lawless.  And most of us, unfortunately, use it in completely the wrong way.  Do you have a vision of Sylvester Stallone wielding his Book of the Law in the film "Judge Dredd"?  If so, that is probably a good image to retain while thinking about this topic.

Let's first look at what I mean by the "Book of the Law".  It is a complete moral and ethical code that determines exactly what you should be doing, what you should be thinking, and what you should be feeling every minute of every day.  Does that sound rather extreme and repressive?  Good!  It should!  None of us should be so totally controlled as this - but most of us are!

If you are religious you may well say that your Book of the Law is the book that is the basis of your religion.  The Bible.  The Holy Quran.  The Torah and the Talmud.  The Book of Mormon.  The Bhagavad Gita.  The Tripitakas.  Guru Granth Sahib.  Kitáb-i-Aqdas.  The Book of Rites.  The Agamas.  Or whatever holy book contains the rules you try to follow.  Even if you are not religious you may still take something from a sacred text and try to live by it as your Book of Law - for example "the 10 commandments".

Maybe you don't identify with any of the above.  You may think you don't have a Book of Law.  But I can guarantee you do.

For those who believe their Book of Law is a particular sacred text, I am now going to say something that may shock you.  Although that text may be a part of your Book of Law it is not the whole of that book, nor even is it the main content of that book.

As I have said, your Book of Law is a complete statement of everything you should be doing, everything you should not be doing, everything you should be thinking, everything you should not be thinking, everything you should be feeling, and everything you should not be feeling.  It may be largely based on a sacred text, but it is certainly not just that text.  For a start, no sacred text, no matter how detailed, can be so complete that it covers everything.  And also, nobody is so insulated from every outside influence that they are only influenced by one sacred text and nothing else.

We each begin "writing" our Book of Law from soon after we are born.  Mummy says "Don't do that!  It's not nice!" and that goes right in the Book.  Daddy says "That's naughty!" and that goes in the Book too.  Big brother says "Stop it!" and that goes in.  Teacher says "No, you are wrong!" and you write that in your book.  You are told to read a sacred text, and everything you read there is copied into your Book.

So far I have mainly covered the negatives.  But all the positive strokes go in there too.  For example your partner says "Yes, that is so good!" and that gets written in your Book.

I have also mainly covered things said to and aimed at you.  But everything you see, hear and feel gets interpreted and is added to your Book.  You see good things happening to friends, and your unconscious tries to work out what actions led to this and then adds a new rule to your Book.  You see bad things happening to friends, and your unconscious tries to work out what actions led to this and then adds another new rule to your Book.  Sometimes this can be a good thing.  Especially if you have ensured you associate with good, successful people.  But it will not always be good, as your unconscious mind does not always interpret cause and effect correctly, and some quite irrational rules can be added as a result.

As you watch your favourite drama on television, and something good or bad happens to one of the characters, you will unconsciously be assessing what actions led up to that good or bad result and then that gets added to your Book too.  The same with films you watch and novels you read.  Perhaps you need to take a little more care over what you expose yourself to - or at least be aware of what is happening here and try to counteract it.

Nothing written in your Book of Law is ever erased unless you take great trouble to erase it.  So when your partner says "Yes, that is so good!" that stays even if you change partners and whatever it was is not enjoyed by your new partner!

How do you use your Book of Law?

Well, obviously one way you use it is to decide what is good and what is bad.  If you are strongly religious you are more likely to modify this if it conflicts in any way with what you have learned from your sacred text.  But the fact that you are first led one way and then have to consciously counteract this can create issues for you.  It would probably make life more comfortable for you if you had some way of finding out what some of those "false" rules in your Book are and then neutralizing them.

But that is not the only way you use it.  You also use it rather like Judge Dredd in the famous comic series and movie.  You judge yourself for having broken one of the laws - perhaps only by fleetingly having thought how nice it might be to do something which is shown in your Book as inappropriate.  Having judged yourself, you then punish yourself.  Unfortunately that is not an end to it.  Every time you remember that you broke this law, your Judge rises again and punishes you again.  This can happen many, many times for just one lapse (or even something that isn't a lapse but that conflicts with your Book).

What is even worse is that you will find there are many conflicting laws in your Book.  There are bound to be lots of cases where something you were told or you worked out was good, there is later something that seems to illustrate it was bad.  Rather than one rule replacing the other, you end up with both rules in your Book.  So you are "damned if you do and damned if you don't".

What should by now be clear to you is that it would be good to have some way of removing all these superfluous, and often completely wrong, rules in your Book of Law.  Fortunately there are a number of tools you can use and a number of coaches who specialize in this area.  Look for terms such as "Limiting Beliefs", "Abundance Blocks", or simply "Blocks".

One coach I have found who is very good at removing unwanted rules from your Book of Law is Christie Marie Sheldon.  She runs a free Masterclass on this called "Unblock Your Abundance".  Check it out at http://mval.li/?a=84&c=1762&p=r&s1=

Greylag Geese and Why You are Not Successful

Has your past influenced the way you are now?  Of course it has!  We all have free will, but the decisions we make when we use that free will are highly conditioned by things that happened to us in the past.

In many cases that is a good thing.  You have a bad experience because of something you did, and that teaches you not to do the same thing again.  If this were just a memory, from which you could then make a logical decision, this would in many cases not give you enough time to modify your behaviour before it caused the same problems.  So we are all equipped with a way to make the "right" response instantly, before we even have time to think about the response.  This is called "imprinting".

The 19th century biologist, Douglas Spalding, discovered the phenomenon of imprinting and published his results in "Nature" in 1872.  Konrad Lorenz popularised the concept, particularly in his books on the studies he did on the behaviour of greylag geese.  Lorenz found the geese bond with the first object they see after they had hatched.  Normally this is a good thing, as it will be older geese who will show the younger geese what they should and shouldn't do.  But sometimes the process goes wrong, and the geese are inappropriately imprinted.  When this happens, the badly imprinted geese behave inappropriately, even when that behaviour causes them problems and maybe is even very dangerous for them.

The same thing applies to all of us.  Except our imprinting is certainly not limited to the first thing we see after we are born.  Many things influence us in this way throughout our childhood and on into our adult life as well.

For example, imagine as a child you hear your parents having a big argument.  This makes you very unhappy.  You notice the argument is about money - which is one of the commonest reasons for a couple to argue.  This imprints on you the idea that money is bad because it causes arguments and makes people unhappy.  And that imprinting creates within you a block that will always try to stop you making money.  Unless you find a way of dealing with this block it will be almost impossible for you to make much money.  Even if you do manage to make some, the block will act to make sure you lose it quickly!

Very many people have at least one "money block" that was imprinted on them from early childhood.  I would go as far as to say the majority of people have "money blocks".  They also have many other blocks, which stop them from achieving anything they have set their heart on - success, a fabulous life partner, etc.  Which means the majority of people will find the manifestation techniques they learn simply don't seem to work for them.  They study all the books they can find on the Law of Attraction, try to put it into practice, and eventually give up in disgust.  They decide all this talk about affirmations and how you can attract all you wish for through the power of thought is nonsense.

Does this sound at all familiar?  Perhaps you have reached this phase and are ready to give up trying.  Or maybe you are not as far down that road, but are still getting frustrated that nothing seems to work for you.  It could even be that you have only just started, are full of enthusiasm, and have not yet realized how difficult the journey is going to be.

Whereever you are on your journey to your definition of success, you need to find and eliminate the many blocks you have which will either make it impossible or very difficult to reach your goal.

Self Sabotage

Do you have a goal you want to reach and it always seems just out of your reach?  Or perhaps, even worse, even as you reach the goal you find yourself slipping back.  It was right there in your grasp and then it was gone again.  Or you achieve a goal, are happy that you have got there, but then you find the whole world is conspiring against you to take it away again.

For the big goals in your life maybe this doesn't apply.  They are so big you are nowhere near them yet, so they are not "just out of reach" and you don't find you have achieved them and then they are taken away again.  But you will probably agree this does happen to you with at least some of your smaller goals.  Perhaps those goals you need to reach in order to get closer to your big goals.

So who is that goalkeeper who is so efficient at keeping your ball from passing between the goal posts?  Whoever it is, they must be really good at goal-keeping, as you never seem to score!

If only you could make that goalkeeper switch sides just as you are approaching the goal, how easy it would be.  You would achieve exactly what you want to achieve!

Let me reveal exactly who that goalkeeper is.  It is you!  Yes, that is right!  You are the one who is making it impossible for you to score your own goals.  And I agree that goalkeeper is good.  Really good!  As for switching sides?  Well, now you know you are the one standing in the way and stopping you getting to the goal it should be easier for you to reverse this.  You don't need to make the goalkeeper change sides, just recognize he or she has mistakenly been playing on the wrong side all this time.

Enough of the sports imagery though.  Let's have a closer look at what is happening and what you can do about it.

You are guilty of self sabotage.  This is not another metaphor I have made up, but a recognized psychological issue.  We all do it.

Some of us do it in very noticeable ways.

If, for example, you are trying to get healthier and lose weight you may find you are also a "comfort eater".  You have a bad day at work, so the moment you get home you attack a big bowl of ice cream.  You feel a bit depressed (perhaps even depressed about the fact that you are not losing enough weight) and so you reach for the biscuit tin to give yourself some comfort.

Or you are trying to reach a goal of cutting your credit card debt, perhaps even losing that debt completely.  You have the right plans in place and know you can get there.  Then you suddenly find you have gone on a shopping spree, which has dug a deep hole in your debt reduction strategy.  It is almost as if a different person came along, grabbed your credit card, and put you right back to the beginning again.

I have known sales people, good sales people, who have gone along to one of their most important, big sales ever and have completely screwed up the sale.  Not because they were nervous.  Not because they didn't know how to swing the sale.  But because they found themselves saying things that they knew would mean their prospective client would not buy.  Why did they do this?  Not because they no longer believed in what they were selling.  Not because they thought it was wrong for the person in front of them.  They still believed passionately in the product or service they were selling, and they knew it was right for that person.  They seemed just deliberately to sabotage their own sale.  Why?

I have known business owners who, just as their business was really growing and starting to give them the return they had always dreamed of, started taking actions that any good business consultant could have told them would destroy the progress they had made in the business.  They didn't do this because they hadn't taken the right advice from a business guru.  They did it even though if they had stopped and thought carefully about what they were doing, they would have known it was a disastrous strategy.  So why did they do it?

The answer in all these cases is self sabotage.

Your own self sabotage may not be as obvious as these examples, but I can almost guarantee somewhere along the line you are guilty of committing self sabotage.  And that may be the very reason you have not yet reached your desired goal.

It may be as simple as knowing the right way forward but allowing yourself to go in a different direction.  If you are reading this blog it is very likely you understand very well the concepts of positive and negative thinking.  You know if you focus on the negatives you will never get there, yet still those negative thoughts keep coming into your mind and you don't seem able to stop them.

Why we self sabotage is a deep and complex subject.  I could write a whole book about it, and I guess there are a number already written.  But there are just a few reasons behind most examples of sabotage.

Perhaps one of the commonest reasons is that although you think you want to achieve the goal, deep inside you are afraid of getting there.  You may be afraid of changes it will inevitably trigger in your lifestyle.  Maybe you have got into a comfortable rut and subconsciously you want to hang onto that comfort even though you know it is a rut and you cannot afford to stay there.  You may recognize that once you reach your goal many of your "friends" will be jealous and will no longer want to be your friends.  Notice, though, I put "friends" in quotation marks.  The reality is that your true friends will be happy for you if you do achieve what you want to achieve.  Those who are jealous were never really your friends in the first place and you are better off without them!

Another very common reason is that you have some doubts, which may be genuine concerns, and then you surpress those doubts.  But you have not rid yourself of the doubts, just repressed them.  They are still there, and they are now making you sabotage your efforts to reach your goal.  Instead of repressing them, you need to recognize and address them.

Linked to this is what I, and many other coaches, refer to as "blocks".  Often these arose many years ago, perhaps in your early childhood.  They are usually irrational, but that doesn't stop them making you sabotage your progress towards your goals.  The key to dealing with blocks is to recognize they are there, to identify them.  Sit quietly, focussed on your goal, and allow repressed doubts and objections to arise.  This might not happen immediately.  It might not even happen the first few times you meditate in this way.  But keep trying and you should find they do eventually arise.  Even better, let one of the many good coaches who specialize in "blocks" guide you through the process.

There are many reasons for self sabotage, and there are many ways to counter it.  But the very first step is to recognize that, just like everyone else, you are guilty of sabotaging your own progress from time to time.  Once you recognize this you can work on unearthing the reasons and then finding out how to remove them.

Thought Form Blocks

Have you ever tried to achieve something but found no matter what you did there was always something in the way completely blocking your progress?

Frankly, I will be amazed if you say this has never happened to you.  If you do feel you are an exception to the rule I would even suggest it has still happened to you but you were simply not aware of it at the time.

If you feel there is something blocking you, almost certainly there is.  It is unlikely to be pure coincidence.

Usually these blocks are internal, not external.  It is important to recognize this.  Do not start to think the universe is conspiring against you, or there is some evil spirit out there preventing you from achieving what you wish to achieve.

I can guarantee the universe is NOT conspiring against you.  The universe simply does not do this.  It may, though, be responding to unintended messages you are giving it.  For example, maybe you are studying to become a lawyer, but you fail every exam you sit even though you are studying really hard and you know you are intelligent enough to make it.  Why, then, do you keep failing?  I would suggest in a case like this it is because deep within you do not actually want to be a lawyer!  Perhaps you think you want to be a lawyer because your parents encouraged you from an early age to choose this career path.  Deep inside you don't really want to be a lawyer, but this resistance is hidden so deeply within you that even you cannot see it.  You cannot see it, but the universe can.  Your soul sends out messages telling the universe this is not what you want for your life, and the universe hears and responds.  This is not a conspiracy by the universe to stop you, but rather a co-operation by the universe with your inner self.

It is also quite unlikely there is an evil spirit blocking you.  I say this not because I don't believe in evil spirits.  Actually I DO believe in them.  But I also believe they do not normally interfere in this way unless you invite them in or a powerful magician evokes them specifically to act against you.  If you have undertaken an invocation ritual, in which you invite a spirit to take you over for a while, this could have got out of control and that spirit might now be blocking you in some way.  But if that has happened you will already know it!  Likewise, if you have upset a powerful magician enough to make them wish to cause you harm you will probably already know this too.  In both cases you will need deeper help than I can give you in a short blog article.

Most blocks are what I would call "thought forms" rather than evil spirits.  At some point in the past, maybe in your early childhood (and, if you believe in reincarnation, perhaps long before you were born into this existence), you created the block yourself.  You created an intention, for example an intention not to acquire wealth, and then you breathed life into that intention so it became a "thought form".  These thought forms are extremely powerful, especially if they have been around for some time and you have reinforced their power many times over.

Why would anybody do such a thing?  Is it very rare, or is it commonplace?

Unfortunately, this is not a rare occurence at all.  I would go as far as to say that almost certainly you have a number of such self-created, negative thought forms surrounding with you. They travel with you, always there ready to block you in your endeavours which are contrary to what you originally told them you wanted.

There can be many different reasons for creating a thought form block.  More often than not, the reason is quite illogical.  Say, for example, as a young child you heard your parents arguing.  You didn't really understand what the argument was about, but you kept hearing the word money.  You therefore associated "money" with "arguments" and created a thought form block to prevent you acquiring money so that you wouldn't have to suffer the pain of arguments.  Every time there was an argument about money, the strength of this thought form increased.  It may also have been increased in other ways.  Perhaps an adult told you that money is the root of evil, or that it is wrong to want money.  Your thought form block has absorbed all such comments and increased its strength through them.  Anything that is said or that happens which contradicts the "world view" of your thought form block is just ignored, but everything that supports it is absorbed and strengthens it.  Over all the years since it was first created, this thought form has become extremely powerful, able to negate all the efforts you put in to becoming wealthy.

Thought form blocks can cover many areas.  A block on becoming wealthy is extremely common.  In fact, I would go as far as to say that most of us have such a block.  Another very common block is a relationship block.  This may have very similar roots.  Most couples have arguments from time to time, no matter how loving their relationship.  A small child may witness such an argument and then believe that if you enter into a relationship you will have arguments (which is almost certainly true, but is most certainly not the whole truth).  To a simplistic, childish logic the answer to avoid the pain of arguments is to avoid entering into a relationship.

How can you reduce the power of your thought form blocks, and eventually destroy those blocks altogether?

The first step you must take is to identify the blocks.  Sit quietly by yourself and begin meditating.  Focus on one of your objectives during that meditation.  See what thoughts and feelings arise as you meditate on it.  Try to become particularly sensitive to any negative thoughts and feelings that may arise.  As such thought forms appear, start to dissolve the block by using positive affirmation.  Feel the power of the block gradually disappearing as you focus on the positives.

In order to do this properly you will, of course, need a number of very good positive affirmations.  You will need to know why it is you want wealth, a good career, happy relationships, or whatever else it is you are gtrying to achieve.  Really feel the good, positive power of your objective.  It is this power you will use to confront the block that appears.

This is only one way of countering Thought Form Blocks.  There are many other ways of doing this, with perhaps the most effective being with the aid of a good coach specializing in this kind of exercise.  But the mere fact that you have now recognized the existence of the block is a major step forwards.  Once you have done this, keep up that forward momentum and you will start to see a big improvement in your ability to use affirmation properly and achieve your goals.

If you want to try out a coach specializing in this, you may be interested in a free program offered by Carol Tuttle.  You can find out more about this free program here.

Eliminating the Blocks to Success

"I don't have enough money to do it!"

"I don't have enough time to do it!"

"I never get the right opportunities!"

"I am not good enough!"

"I don't deserve it!"

"If I get what I want it won't make me happy anyway!"

"It is selfish for me to want that!"

Have you ever said or thought any of the above?  The chances are you have.  Perhaps without even noticing it.

These are just some of the many reasons we give our subconscious mind, and the Universe, not to deliver the things we want in life.  And when we give reasons like this, especially when we repeat them enough, both our subconscious mind and the Universe listen and act accordingly.

So we are constantly setting ourselves up to fail.

Is it any wonder, therefore, that so many people fail to achieve what they really want in life?  The reason is not because life is unfair - it is because life usually gives us what we ask for, and we are asking for all the wrong things.

Along with many others in the Personal Development arena I refer to these mental states as "blocks".  They are blocks preventing you achieving what you want to achieve.  The only way you can move forward and get what you really want is to eliminate those blocks.  Permanently.  Once and for all! 

This is easy to say, but not so easy to do.

The first step is to recognize what blocks you have.  Sometimes that is quite straightforward.  You may have recognized and identified with one of the above blocks already.  If so, great!  Knowing which blocks are preventing you moving forward is a very good first step.  In fact, it may even be all that is necessary.  Bringing these negative reactions out into the cold light of day may be enough for you to see them for what they are.  Mental vampires as they are, they cannot stand the sunlight and melt away when you expose them.

The next step, if the block does not immediately melt away, is to affirm the opposite.  If your block was "I don't have enough money to do it!", replace this with something along the lines of "The money I need to .... is flowing towards me, allowing me to succeed in my ambitions".  If it was "It is selfish for me to want that", think about all the good things you can achieve, helping others around you, once you have acquired whatever it is you want, and then write and use an affirmation to express that. 

Some blocks, though, are hidden deep within you.  These are much more difficult to remove.  You may believe you do not have such a negative reaction and never recognize it - but it is still there, hidden away from the light of cold logic, resisting all your attempts to succeed.  Meditating on your goal can be very helpful in unearthing these hidden blocks.

A really good way to find and eliminate hidden blocks is to use the services of a coach who specializes in this area.  One I have found who is excellent at this is Christie Marie Sheldon.  Christie runs free online energy clearing sessions which help with removing blocks.  You can check here for the next available free session:

Free Online Clearing Session