CHAPTER TWELVE
TIME, WORK, AND MONEY:
CONSCIOUSNESS AND ABUNDANCE

     Some of the most fascinating manifestations of the negatives involved in our birth imprints and our Parental Disapproval Syndrome are our characteristic attitudes about time, effort, strength, work, and money.

     Basically, these attitudes can be summed up either as scarcity consciousness or abundance consciousness.  Both rest on what our conception, carriage, and birth were like-followed by how and what our parents taught us by example and precept.

     For many people their first introduction to New Age philosophy comes in the form of a money seminar or a workshop on prosperity.  Some of the best of these that I've had the opportunity to experience were ones led by Phil Laut, Leonard Orr, Susan Skye, or Jerry Gillis.  I wholeheartedly recommend to all my readers that they take advantage of any opportunity to join with any of these prosperity experts in their money workshops.  I also recommend books by Og Mandino, W. Clement Stone, or Napoleon Hill.  After all, the idea of positive thinking goes back forty, fifty years to their books on salesmanship, and a lot can still be learned from reading these earlier works.

     In this chapter, I want to discuss mostly some new ideas that these people may not have presented in their writings and workshops.  All of the thoughts that I'm about to discuss aren't necessarily only mine, but they're really good thoughts about scarcity which I want to share with everyone.

     Keep in mind that, if there was any highly-charged scarcity surrounding your birth, your current reality probably mirrors such scarcity thoughts-complicated by all your other old PDS negative reactions.

     You may feel you don't have enough-not enough time, not enough strength, not enough motivation, not enough reward in the form of money or recognition.

     In reaction, you may become a schnorrer, the Yiddish word for somebody who never has enough and who's always begging or borrowing from other people.  As a result of such scarcity thought patterns, the schnorrer not only never thinks he has enough, but he never gets enough either, because people begrudge giving to him when he begs from them or `borrows.'

I have met many schnorrers in the Rebirthing movement.

     They mistakenly believe that Rebirthing will enable them to get without giving.  That without offering enough to get enough, you can still get enough, simply by being open to receiving it.

     Please understand, I have no objection to just receiving God's Grace and being fortunate enough to win a lottery or have an old, forgotten, distant relative die and leave me a fortune, etc.  I also don't have any objection to having everyone in the world know that everyone around them loves them completely and supports them and they are loved enough.  But, as I pointed out in the preceding chapter, I highly value work and independence.

     Rebirthing seems to attract lots of people who think the breath and affirmations will save them from having to take responsibility for letting go their scarcity thoughts.  It attracts schnorrers who hope they can use affirmations to create, directly, a higher income, a better job, more energy, more time, even more skill for themselves.  I object if they're unwilling to work for such benefits.

I remind them to do abundance affirmations.

     I'm sure that the root negative is not enough love.  If we start with enough love, we can always create something positive for ourselves.  An infant who was lovingly, deliberately conceived by passionate, affectionate parents who took good care of him up to his birth probably imprints even a lengthy difficult birth quite differently from the way an unwanted unloved infant does, even with an ostensibly easy birth.  For the first, the loved child, any birth is an opportunity, a challenge.  For the second, everything is always a struggle.

     My purpose when working with a person who makes either of these complaints-not enough money, not enough love-is to point out to him where the negative in his consciousness lies that is preventing him from receiving all the love, as well as all the abundance and financial success, that he desires.

     I prefer to get down to the essence of prosperity: Positive Thought about the elements-time, energy, and skill-that lead up to True Financial Prosperity. I prefer the thought:

•  I always do enough, well enough, to receive an abundance.

     Many of the people I've Rebirthed not only initially believed they didn't get enough love, but also seemed to believe they deserved love even if they, themselves, weren't considerate or responsible, even if they weren't reliable, decent, ordinary people whose word can be counted upon.  Fundamentally, they acted as if they didn't care about anyone else in their life.

     If they got to the deeper and larger negatives that they were walking around with, their complaint would have changed from, "No one loves me as much as I want them to love me," to, "I'm afraid I don't really know how to care for anyone, and so I may never, in turn, inspire love in others."

     Their major negative wasn't, "I am not loved enough."  It was really, "I don't love enough."

     Connected to that complaint might be another scarcity thought, for example, "I don't have enough time to show others I care for them," or, "I don't have enough money to put out showing other people I care for them."

     So I ask my clients to think with affirmations concerning these points:

• I have all the time I need to be loving and considerate.

• I have all the energy I need to be loving and considerate.

• I already know everything I need to know in order to do everything I want to do.

• I feel safe being loving and considerate.

     In my effort to flesh out my client's understandings of his negatives so he can develop an attitude of compassion toward himself and his parents, I usually direct attention to such things as how many other children there were in his childhood home, what his parents were doing, how much time and opportunity he actually had to do what he needed to do in order to show how much he loved his parents, and how much chance his parents had to show him how much they loved him.  I always remind my client that, basically, every child loves his parents so much that he does anything and everything he can in order to be what they want him to be, so that he can show them how much he loves them.

     So, for example, some children learn that the only time their parents spend with them is the time spent calming them and comforting them or taking care of their material needs.  Some parents don't play much with their children, interacting with them and hanging out with them.  Only negative behavior gets attention.  Unless the children are naughty, upset, or sick, the children are ignored and neglected.

     The parents, themselves, may not have enough time or energy to play with the child and to show the child how much they love him or to have him show them how much he loves them.  Busy parents often fail to encourage a child to do things for them, just as they often don't let the child do things for himself.  Impatiently, because they can do it faster and better, they don't make time for such display.  A child brought up in such circumstances may later, as a parent himself, in turn, believe he doesn't have time enough to spend just playing and being with his child so they can show each other how much they care for each other.  Thus, the circle of "not enough" is perpetuated.

     Sometimes this is expressed by the hard-pressed, hard-working parent in terms of time.  "Leave me alone, don't you see I've got things I've got to get done.  If you want to have supper tonight, you've got to leave me alone and stop wasting my time.  I've got other things to do besides play with you, I've got to do some work.  When you grow up, you're going to have to work!"

     Sometimes this is phrased in terms of energy instead of time.  "Listen, I'm so tired I don't have enough strength to even finish my work and you want me to read to you?  Leave me alone, go read to yourself!  Go play by yourself!"

     Sometimes parents are sickly and they actually do lack in strength.  The child may be cautioned by the healthier parent, "Watch out!  Don't be so rough, can't you see that your mom isn't feeling well?  Now go away from her.  You know she loves you, but just leave her alone.  She doesn't have enough strength to pay attention to you right now."

     Sometimes the parents have weird working schedules and the child is told, "Be quiet!  Your father is sleeping and if he can't get his sleep he won't be strong enough to go to work and if he can't go to work, he can't earn a living, and bring home food, and then you'll be unhappy, won't you."

     One way or another, a Rebirthee must forgive the people he thinks didn't give him enough so he can eliminate his scarcity consciousness. 

     Then he needs to start obeying the Four Laws of Money I first heard of from Leonard Orr and Phil Laut.

     These Laws concerning money have to be obeyed if your money picture is to be a positive one.  These Laws concern the various activities that money is directly involved with.  The First is the Law of Earning.  Then come the Law of Spending, the Law of Saving, and the Law of Giving.

     When it comes to the Law of Earning, the most important factors are your outstanding negatives about earning.  How do you make your money?  How do you want to make your money?  What do you do that you do well enough so that people benefit from it enough so that they're willing to pay you a handsome amount of money for doing it, frequently enough so that you can live by doing what you like to do?

     Quite obviously, if the way you're earning a living is something that bothers you, that makes you feel bad, at least two further negatives come up: one, you won't like to do it enough to do it really well, and two, no matter how much you earn from that activity, the money will never suffice.

     The typical case is the common enough story of someone who works at a job he hates, working for people he dislikes, doing something he doesn't like.  He does all that for fifty weeks of the year, so that he finally has enough money saved up so he can go off and do something he likes to do for two weeks (if, of course, he saves enough to do what he really likes).  On that basis, the person is living less than four percent of the time, because he's only living during his vacation time; otherwise he's suffering and simply existing.

    So it's vital to think about what you like to do.

     The first Law of Money, the Earning Law, says you have to earn your living doing something you like to do, that you do well, something that's legal, and, preferably, something good for others.

     Generally speaking, people who do something very well get paid better than the people who do something not so well.  And, generally speaking, a person is more likely to do something well if he enjoys doing it.  So the starting point for any prosperity consciousness seems to lie in the consideration of what a person likes to do.

     Let's assume that you're a person whose major complaint about life and whose major reason for wanting to Rebirth is that you're poor and you're tired of being poor.  You believe that if you can develop a positive attitude about money, you will then be in a better position to receive large sums of money.

     I generally start working with a person like you by asking, "Well, what do you like to do?" 

     I explain that it's really important to know what you like to do, not in terms of doing such things in an eventual job, but just what kinds of activities you like.

     If you have problems with money, I suggest that, until these problems clear up, you take a few minutes every day to sit down and write down ten things you really like to do.  Start a new page every day.  If you write fast enough, it shouldn't take more than a minute, for example:

"Ten things I really like to do are talking, writing, explaining my point of view, cleaning, making love, listening to music, dancing, getting stoned, smelling my roses, looking at my bunnies, thinking about God."

     It took me several years to realize that the thing I like to do more than anything else at all, apparently, was cleaning!  I have kept my husband waiting for me to go to bed to make love with him while I finished cleaning up something that could have waited for the morning, but I didn't want to let it wait.  When my children were little and wanting something from me, I often kept them waiting while I finished cleaning something up.  And I have certainly worn myself out temporarily to the point of almost total exhaustion by making myself finish cleaning something instead of leaving, doing something to replenish my energies, and then coming back to it at some other time.

     When I finally realized that one of the strongest drives in my life is to clean things up, I began to recognize that a lot of that had to do with some old imprints about dirt.  Perhaps my mother was afraid of getting dirty when she was carrying me for fear that I might get infected in her womb.  I don't know.

     All I know is that, With every breath, I now let go any old negatives about dirt.

     And in the meantime, of course, my job allows me to clean everyone's act up at the same time that I'm cleaning my act up.  And so, I am still expressing my old desires.

     What is true for a lot of people is that they have never once asked themselves what they like to do.  They've missed the boat on reaching into the deepest parts of themselves for their own self-determination.  They have instead taken the opportunistic point of view and have asked themselves what can I do?  What do people want?  What kind of jobs are open for people like me? 

That doesn't work.

It has to start with you.

      Once I have a person starting to think along the lines of doing what he wants to do, I ask him to think about what might prevent him from doing these things now that he's got them acknowledged and can see them clearly.  At that point, frequently, the person tells me that he doesn't have the time or the energy to do the things he wants to do!

     So, I'm back at reminding him that he, in his universe, is the only one with self-direction, with free will.  If indeed he no longer wants to "pretend" that he'd doing things that he has to do, but which are things that he really doesn't want to do, then he can simply change his mind.  He can re-mind himself:

• I always serve myself first and as well as I serve others.

• I serve myself best by doing those things which I want to do.

• I handle the mechanics of living so that I have the time and the energy to do those things which I want to do.

     Speaking personally, I have found, as I look back over my more than seventy years of life, that I've always had the feeling that, before I could pay attention to what I wanted to do, first, I had to do anything that everyone else wanted me to do, unless what I wanted to do was clearly marked as "'work that had to be done."  Even then sometimes I put off my appointed task to help someone else.  I find that, as I review my life, mostly I've been open for whatever interruptions have come my way.   I have believed that I always have all the time I need and all the energy I need to be there for anyone else whenever they want me.  Typically, I set aside what I'm doing for myself because I believe that, indeed, I always have enough time and energy to do everything I want to do for myself. 

     That's true.  And I have gotten a lot of my personal goals accomplished, and a lot of them have been in the nature of personal expression as well as even just plain self-indulgence.

     One of my neighbors, in the effort to make sure that she improves my life somehow or other, got me to commit to her that after I retired from teaching college every day, I would spent at least an hour a day writing a book about Miracles and Babaji and the Magic of Rebirthing and what I know about Rebirthing and other therapies.  So I made that commitment to her and I promised I would spend at least an hour each day writing.

     When I retired from college teaching three years ago, I kept my promise.  I have been writing this book since then.  But each day, first I straighten the house and handle the laundry, feed the bunnies, deadhead the roses, open and answer the mail, shop for and prepare dinner, answer phone calls, pack and ship orders for cards and tapes, and see clients.  First!

     As I've said before, fortunately, I really like working-at anything.  It was not for naught that I took three days getting born...

     The Law of Earning seems strange to many people when they hear it for the first time.

     People who are having money problems often laugh when I tell them they must first consider what they like to do.  They snort in derision, "How can I possibly expect to make money doing those things?"

     My reply is that the emphasis in this exercise, the focus, the value, is not primarily derived from thinking of ways to make money doing things that you like.  Instead, it derives from finally actually consulting yourself, your Will, and deciding what you like to do.

     Most of us, when we think of earning a living, think of what we can do to make a living.  We don't think of what we like to do.  Yet that is basic to developing a feeling of satisfaction, as well as to succeeding.  If you are doing something you like to do, you tend to do it often, and you tend to get better and better at doing it every time you do it.  The better you are at doing something, the more likely it is that someone will pay you, frequently and handsomely, to do just exactly that.

     So, when I see a person who's dissatisfied with his job, with his way of earning money, I tell him the first thing he must do is get into the habit of consulting himself, consulting what he will and what he will not like doing, without concern for whether or not money can be made from doing those things.

     Sometimes a person asks me what to do if there are more than ten things that he really likes to do and he can't decide which to put down.  I tell him, "Limit yourself to ten.  That's all there is to it.  You're not signing a contract-you're just asking yourself what you like in order to get into the habit of consulting your Will."

     If the list changes from day to day, fine.  If you find that some of the things you've been putting down almost habitually or automatically aren't really as satisfying as other things that you do, change your list.  Just keep working on it, day after day after day.  Write down, "Ten things I really like to do are... one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten." 

     Don't write more than a few words each line.  Get down to the essence.

     Your are consulting your Divine Intelligence, putting it at the service of your Will. 

     After a couple of weeks of practicing this simple exercise every morning, select one-any one of them (a different one each day preferably)-and write down three ways (only three ways) that you can make money doing that.  Not a living, just some money-even if only a dollar.  Then practice this exercise for several weeks.

     Everyone I know who has followed these instructions has developed a startlingly different focus to their concerns about earning.  Usually, without any struggle at all, they have improved their earning circumstances, either by finding a different job completely or by focusing on different aspects of the job they already have.  In many cases, they have improved their earnings by adding some activity to the ones that they were already carrying out, or they've started charging for an activity they were already engaged in on a non-paid basis.

     In any case, the Law of Earning says you must do something that you really like to do so you do it often enough to get good at it.  If you are good at something you like to do, someone will pay you for it, especially if what you're doing is something that is uniquely of benefit to them.

     If, in addition, what you're doing is in accordance with high moral purposes, with highest spiritual aims, then you can feel that you are joining in an intimate, profound union with all the Good in the universe.  Being a Rebirther provides just such satisfaction to me.

     The Law of Earning, once obeyed, allows you to enjoy what you're doing to make a living.  At that point, the amount of money that you're earning for doing what you enjoy doing becomes subordinate to your pleasure in the activity itself.

     Therefore, even if you only get two weeks of "vacation" a year, fifty weeks of the year are spent in enjoyable occupation, and after all, that's what satisfaction is all about.  Your work is your play.

     Sometimes I work with someone who keeps himself from greater financial success because of fear he will lose his parents' love and approval.  He worries about being more successful than they ever were, or he fears they disapprove of money as such.  In such cases, it helps to remember: The whole world, especially my parents, enjoy my being a huge financial success.

     The other three Laws of Money, the Laws of Spending, Saving and Giving are very simple: Put 10 percent of your after-tax income into each. 

     Discipline yourself and practice these Laws automatically.  Save 10 percent of your after-tax income by depositing that amount into your savings accounts.  Give 10 percent to charities.  And spend 10 percent on things and activities you don't regard as necessities to be budgeted for and paid for with the remaining 70 percent.

     If you haven't been completing some or all of these three money transactions, if it's all you can do to cover your bills for necessities with your entire income, you need to make changes to reduce your usual expenditures for necessities.  Putting the same thought into different words, you have to keep your costs for shelter, food, clothing, health-care costs, transportation, and other necessities within 70 percent of your after-tax income-even if it means moving to less expensive housing, cooking for yourself and  eating a healthier, fresher diet that doesn't include more costly prepared meals or snacks and junk food, simplifying your wardrobe, or even selling your car and using cheaper public transportation.

     The same thing applies to giving.  I'm often surprised when I do fund-raising for my old university, the University of Chicago, or for a couple of Jewish organizations.  Many people I contact who have really good earnings, who are what is known as wealthy people, actually make no provision whatsoever to give.  They tell me, AI don't have enough to give anything to charity."

     I doubt that such a statement is true.  I wish they would be honest enough to say instead, "I don't want to give, I'm afraid I won't have enough."

     I generally advise people to practice giving before taking care of saving or spending because it makes such a perfect affirmation:

• I have such an abundance of money that I can give it away even before I pay my bills!

• I have so much money that I can afford to give it away and still have enough to handle everything else I want to do with my money.

     By the way, Leonard Orr says charity is when you give money to people who need your help, and generosity is when you give money to people who have enough.

     Try generosity!  It is very instructive to take money and give it to somebody who has more than you or who doesn't "need" it.  It begins to put money into a proper perspective in your life.  It ceases to be only a measure of worth and value.  It goes back to being the medium of exchange that it actually is, only this time Money ' Love.  Love and compassion are what you're actually exchanging.

     Practice charity and generosity.  Don't rationalize, AI take plenty of people out to lunch and dinner and I always buy really great presents for people on their birthdays and I'm tired of enabling people who can't function in this modern society to go on.  If they can't figure out how to make a living, then tough, let them go on welfare.  It's not my job to give them anything.  I don't want to enable them to be bums."

     Well, that's a fancy rationalization, but I sincerely believe that's all it is.  The purpose in giving money to others is not to help them.  The purpose in giving money to others is to show to your consciousness that you know, with certainty, that you have plenty of money.

     At least until you have no major money problems, don't spend more than 10 percent, save more than 10 percent, or donate more than 10 percent.  Otherwise, you're being a fool or a miser, and you're not letting yourself experience your abundance.

     People usually deny being cheap or stingy-whether it's about money spent on others or on themselves.  They need to learn not to cheat themselves.

     I had a woman at a workshop who told me she couldn't afford the full fee, so I let her attend for half.  Imagine my surprise when, during the money seminar, she boasted about saving 40 percent of her salary.  Imagine hers when I said I didn't think I should support her being a miser, and I wanted her to pay full rate for my services! 

     Another woman attending that same workshop who had also appealed to me for a reduction to half and had received it said she gave a fifth of her income to her church.  I reminded her the Bible says a workman is worthy of his hire, and that I deserve full support for doing what I consider just as much God's work as anything else is. 

     They both agreed, figured out exactly when 50 percent of the workshop time was finished, then left.  They didn't want to stay if they had to pay.(!)

      never understand why.  Was it PDS making them want to "get" something extra from "Mommy"?  PDS keeping them from feeling they deserved to spend money on themselves?  PDS making them resent giving me my fee?  PDS making them angry at "Mommy" for calling them on their money cases?

Whatever-I think they cheated themselves.

     Please be assured that these Four Laws of Money are not a profligate, careless, slap-happy approach to the important topic of money.  They're a simple, practical guide to how to handle money.

     Reducing costs, making small sacrifices, is a time-honored way of developing an abundance.  If 70 percent of your income doesn't stretch to cover the budgeted items, then you need to investigate where you are misusing your income, and then you must make changes.

     Amazingly enough, many people struggle in a relative state of poverty because they want to have a good address or they want the particular space that they've been living in.  Some people I know pay almost half of their monthly income for rent or house payments.   They say, AI don't have enough money to do anything except pay my rent." or "It's all I can do to pay my monthly mortgage payments."

     They're so strapped for other necessities of life that they are constantly in a feeling of scarcity.  And scarcity thoughts prevent abundance.

     If that's so for you, either figure out a way of sharing the rent with somebody else, refinance your mortgage, or leave the place that you are renting currently and find a place that is less expensive, or whatever else you can imagine will help. 

     Once you start exploring the possibility of reducing the outlay just for rent or house costs, you may find that you can, without needing to move to a different address or needing to sharing living space.  For example, maybe you can rent out part of your space as daytime office space or as storage space, and from that make enough to cover part of your housing costs, as well as being able to deduct a proportionate amount of your total housing costs on your Schedule E.

     When it comes to making or rearranging your budget, I suggest that you go to your public library, to the section that contains books on how to budget living expenses.  You'll find that hundreds of people have written books on how to handle money.  Almost all of them have a formula that says something similar to: no more than 25 percent of your monthly income goes for shelter, no more than x percent goes for food, x percent for transportation, x percent for clothing, x percent for insurance, etc.

     Check your actual expenditures against these guides.  This requires that you keep track of where your money goes.  That in itself is helpful.

     Most standardized budgets include some percentage for entertainment.  Don't cheat yourself by economizing on that.  After all, If you're not enjoying the money that you make, what's the point of making it?  So, be sure to plan to go out.  I know that lots of pleasures are available free; for example, parks and community centers often present free plays and concerts and, of course, you can see plenty of movies on TV.  But you deserve the thrill of actually spending money on yourself.  So be sure to do it.  Don't break the Law of Spending!

     A lot of people who have come to me for Rebirths make excellent incomes, but live in a perpetual poverty consciousness because most of their money goes for items that are part of the display process.

     Don't symbolically spend in order to prove that your income is sufficient.  A one hundred dollar meal proves that you can pay for a $100 meal.  It doesn't prove that you "have enough."  A new outfit every single week only proves that you spend plenty of money on clothing; it doesn't help you find real satisfaction and comfort, ease, or pleasure, even in the way you distribute your income to handle your bills and your expenditures.

     One unmarried woman I know, for example, who makes close to a quarter million a year, had minimal savings and investments and didn't own any property other than a few personal items when she first came to see me.  She did have, however, a wardrobe that fills an entire normal-sized bedroom!  Rack after rack are filled with beautiful clothes, all sorts of leisure as well as work outfits.  Because there are so many of them, many have been worn only once or twice and have then hung on the racks, not worn again.  For her, shopping substituted for eating, and clothes for food.  Her habit at lunchtime was to buy something expensive, showy, and very vogue.

     After many efforts, she was finally able to limit such impulse spending on clothing to 10 percent of her gross.  Such discipline enabled her to accumulate property and develop an investment and savings program that will be of great benefit to her when she finally decides that she wants to reduce the number of hours she works each week in her own self-employment.  Now she has some savings to fall back upon.  That's better than a room full of unworn clothes.

     Another single man I know who makes close to $100,000 a year also owns no property and has no savings for retirement laid aside other than the pension to be provided to him by his company.  In essence he has nothing to show for all the work he has been doing for his entire adult life.

     By disciplining himself so that he has breakfast at home before he leaves for his office, and by reducing the number of times that he goes to restaurants for evening meals each week, he has succeeded in investing several thousand a year into mutual funds, and is currently developing an annuity program.

     For some people, the cost of eating out isn't the major consideration.  Instead, it's the cost of drinking when they're eating out.

     For such people, I suggest that if they don't want to choose cheaper wines or less expensive mixed drinks because of display desires, that they simply cut out drinking completely.  They would be better off saving that outlay or donating it.  Alcohol is generally not necessary for peace of mind-it's essentially a way of tuning out rather than turning on. 

     In addition to people who spend more than they should on the simple necessities of life, there are also people who have made no provision whatsoever for the vagaries of life, like age or illnesses or accidents, that might seriously reduce income.

     "I'm not worried about having any savings set aside because I'm going to be able to work until I drop dead" and "Nothing will ever hurt me."

     I think their unwillingness to take care of themselves by providing emergency funds for themselves bespeaks some negative, some underlying poverty of thought.  I don't think it displays immense faith and trust in the Universe.  Some of them are afraid to think about getting old.  Others are keeping themselves chained to the daily work routine because they're unable to conceive of life as being anything else.  They may be afraid to explore the possibility of enjoying life without earning a living, determining their own activity from the start of the day to the end of the day, day after day.

     The same poverty of thought may apply to people who can but who refuse to retire.  Maybe they're workaholics, caught up in their functions and work processes, to the exclusion of any other roles.  They may be afraid to face a life without getting the daily dose of the regard from others that they've been receiving for the past fifty or more years.  They may worry that everything will fall apart if they're not there.

Remember:

• You have enough.

• You always have enough.

• Your breath is your connection to the Infinite Abundance of your economy.

     And it is infinitely abundant.  Sometimes it may not seem to be well distributed, but it's always there.  As soon as you acknowledge that, you can connect with it through your breath and through your Thought.  That Abundance is available to you.

So, practice obeying these laws.

     Always keep in mind that money and energy and time are interconnected.  Your scarcity thoughts, which can be manifested in how you handle your money, can also be functioning in how you handle your time and energy, manifested by your capacity both to work and to play.

Money and energy and time are all Infinite.

     The only one that seems to be limited for most of us is time.  We think we only have twenty-four hours in the day.  But that's not true, per se, because how much time we have is relative to what we're doing.  As Einstein said, "To a man sitting on a hot stove a minute is an hour; but to that man sitting on a park bench next to the girl he loves, an hour is a minute."

• We always have enough time to do everything we want to do.

     We can always make conscious choices that enable us to enjoy our time more.  That way, we have lots of time.

     Just as we need to budget money, we need to budget time and energy.  I believe we also need to make certain that we take time to do the things we like to do that don't necessarily produce income.

     Some money advisors suggest the opposite, and suggest to their followers that they arrange their activities so they can charge for almost everything they do, including such things as sharing meals, sailing, or just talking together.  To me, that seems not only ungenerous and money-grubbing, but it means the person is always performing, is always working.  I deserve just to waste time.

     Sometimes, people tell me, AI don't have any time to waste.  By the time I get home and finish fixing supper, all I can do is watch TV for an hour or so and then go to bed."

     If you don't have all the time you need to do everything that you want to do, then you're not managing your time right.  Don't spend your time at activities that you don't especially enjoy (like mindless TV watching).  Limit time-wasting activities like idle phone calls, so that time no longer slips away, the way money goes through the fingers of a spendthrift.  If there's a lot of down time for you, change!  Generally speaking, you'll find you have many hours each week which have previously been absolutely empty, vacant wastes of time but which you can now alter simply by choosing, for example, to read a book while you're waiting in checkout lines or in traffic.  Make waiting satisfying.

     In this connection, I'm struck by the generalized difference in attitude, mood, and energy levels and by the amount of fearfulness and irritability and violence that I see in such places as luggage arrival areas in airports.  I think it all goes back to how we're born in the East compared to the West.

     Westerners seem to be extremely worried about how soon they're going to get their things.  I guess they want to get their luggage quickly, so they can get out to the front of the line, so that they can get the first taxi, so that they can get to where they're going quickly.  To do what?  Usually it's so they can get a regular night's sleep!

     Easterners seem to act different.  When I watch them, I see a generalized kind of excitement and anticipation, as if the routine of having baggage delivered were a source of fun, breaking up the day.  That Time Consciousness which seems to press so heavily on the average Westerner doesn't seem to be so present in the East.  I conjecture that this may well have something to do with the fact that more births in the East occur naturally, rather than with the artificial aids of anesthesia and forceps, the surgical deliveries so prevalent in the West.

     Time in the West is given a great deal of importance during birth.  How long are the labor contractions?  How frequent are the contractions?  How long has labor been going on?

     Most hospitals and individual doctors have limited beliefs about these time questions.  For example, many USA hospitals limit labor to eight hours-after that, hospital rules insist a Caesarian be carried out.

     There is no natural reason at all that I have discovered why the labor should be routinely terminated at eight hours.  If the labor is proceeding naturally and there's nothing wrong with the child, what significant difference does it make whether a baby is born after eight hours of labor or after ten hours of labor?

     The reasons that are given in American hospitals and western European hospitals for intervening in the birth process at the end of eight hours of labor seem to derive from statistics and the threat of malpractice suits.

     Statistically, most babies who have birth-related difficulties or defects are born after eight hours of natural labor.  Should anything be wrong with the baby after a longer, protracted labor, parents are in a position to sue the hospital and the physician for malpractice in not delivering the baby earlier.

     So the hospitals seem to have simply taken that fact and turned it into a routine procedure: "We can't permit a mother to labor for longer than eight hours.  We must intervene and therefore preclude her being able to say that we didn't take appropriate precautionary or intervening measures."

     Women in Third World countries have a kind of plow horse attitude toward birthing.  They figure it's got to be done, it's going to be a drag, it's going to take time, and eventually it's going to be over and the baby will get born.  They're not seeking some way of avoiding being conscious and present during the birth. (Of course, many anesthetic techniques aren't available to them, either.)  A mother is given plenty of time and support, usually loving support from people she knows and trusts, while she's giving birth, and she typically regards it as another thing she does that's completely all-engrossing.  She might as well relax and be fascinated by what's happening.  Not a single one of us, even my grandmother who had fourteen children, goes through the experience of childbirth so often that it becomes mundane and boring.  It's always an all-engrossing kind of activity.  It certainly claims our attention if we're aware of the process.  So why shouldn't we give it that?

     In any case, I am impressed by what I regard as a realistic attitude about time that's manifested by people who have been born naturally after an ordinary labor.  They don't seem to resent having to effort and they don't seem to resent having to wait.  Their fundamental attitude toward life seems to be one of acceptance, without anxiety to push and shape and make things be the way they believe they ought to be.  They seem to trust that life is perfect.

     Giving birth naturally, consciously, seems to be an extremely important way for a mother to allow her child to experience safety and patience in regard to work, time, and money.

     Phil Laut says that the single greatest reason people remain poor is PDS-they are unwilling to give their parents the pleasure of having helped them succeed.

     A person who remains poor or unhappy is making an implicit accusation against the parents, "See, if you hadn't ruined me the way you did, I would be able to make plenty of money and I'd be enjoying life.  But you ruined me by doing thus-and-so or so-and-such."

     People who refuse to allow themselves to be cheered up or to be swayed or coaxed or appealed to may still be acting out their resentment towards their parents.  It's as if they are still very young, in suspended animation in the high chair or on the potty, disliking their parents for trying to get them to eat or use the toilet.

     PDS is also linked to our sexual and loving behavior.  In her many books, Sondra Ray frequently reminds us that a healthy loving sex life depends on letting go the negatives that comprise our PDS.  The next chapter discusses this idea in detail.

     We must not begrudge our parents the joy of seeing us succeed in both work and love.  To do otherwise is tantamount to cutting your nose off to spite your face.  More importantly, such self-defeat isn't satisfying, because what we want fundamentally is to forgive our parents and have them forgive us, we want to come back into a state of harmony and love with them.

So, use affirmations to change your PDS-Money case:

• I totally forgive myself for ever mistakenly believing that anything my parents did to me ever harmed me in any way.

• I am grateful to both my parents for treating me the way they did so that I am able to make a fine living for myself and enjoy all aspects of my life.

• I enjoy making my parents proud of me by being such a total success in life.

See Appendices N, O, and P for more affirmations to help you let go your PDS case.

Be sure to pay serious attention to how you work, how you spend your energy. 

     Decide for yourself how you really are.  Are you the kind of person who prefers to produce and construct, or are you the kind of person who prefers to spend your energy competitively?  Everyone has their style.  Once you cotton on to your style and you start arranging your activities so that your stylistic requirements are satisfied, you will find life is infinitely more enjoyable.

     Several days ago a person I know, a close acquaintance, said, "You have an infinite capacity for hard work, Eve." 

     To which my reply was, "Well, no, I don't put out any more energy in gardening and fixing up the house than you spend swimming each day or than my neighbors spend going to the gym each day and working out for a couple of hours."

     Her reply to me was, "Yes, but you're much more productive.  You have something to show for your effort."

     Well, that's just an attitude.  I could argue, "Yes, but you have all the fun of competing and winning, and I'm not getting any of that competitive pleasure directly out of how I put out my energy."

     A great number of people waste an immense amount of their time and effort on activities which depend upon certain scarcity thoughts, ones that have probably been present since birth, which is, after all, when we first get the idea that there isn't enough time, there isn't enough energy, I don't have enough room, I can't get enough air, whatever.  Whether these were our mother's thoughts and feelings or the doctor's or our own as we were going through the birth process, it doesn't much matter, because we absorbed their thoughts and feelings.  And we continue to manifest these thoughts.

     Birth is about time and energy.  It's called labor because energy is spent by the baby and by the mother in the squeezing and pushing that is the birth process.  Our attitudes about time and energy come from the particular circumstances of our births.

     As you look at how you handle money and work and time, you can see manifested the fundamental ideas you have been holding on to since your birth.

     People who had long arduous births, generally speaking, are marvelous workers and get a lot accomplished.  But they don't know when to quit, and that may be a problem.

     People who had almost effortless births, say, after less than an hour's worth of contractions on the mother's part, are usually great at receiving and don't even have to wait for birthdays or Christmas in order to get presents.  On the other hand, they may not know how to use their own energies to make something happen for themselves and work productively.

     For example, many of the ten or eleven new Primal patients that I took each year for the seven years I was a Primal therapist had been delivered by Caesarean section without any trial labor.  A relatively large percentage were people who were inept and ineffectual in terms of running their lives.  Often, someone else supported them.  They didn't muster their energies in their own behest.

     I suggested to one of these Primal patients that he practice doing things which automatically regulate breathing so he altered how he handled his physical energies.  He was one of those people who constantly was complaining of being unable to cope with life.  He almost never really finished anything and he lived off of an inheritance and the good-will of a former lover.  He often walked around literally throwing his hands up in the air, saying, AI don't know what to do.  I can't find a good job, I can't..."

     My suggestion to him was that he start going to a gym every morning, and working out for at least an hour at rhythmic activities with the machines.  I suggested that it was not only so he could prove to himself that he did have the musculature, strength, and energy that he needed in order to work out, but also because, as he was moving weights up and down and as he was jogging on the track, he was being compelled to breathe in a rhythmic fashion.  Working out also forced him to breathe in deeply.  As he breathed in deeply, he started getting more satisfaction from the act of breathing, and, in a fairly automatic way, proceeded to alter his life activities so that he was doing more other things that he enjoyed.  He started working at an enjoyable job and stopped his previous pattern of moving from one job to another every few weeks, hoping that something would capture him.

     As a teacher I found that students who didn't turn in their last term paper or didn't show up for the final exam very often turned out to have been born either with high forceps or with a late C-section, where they may have worked, but they didn't get the payoff, which is the birth.  They didn't emerge on their own.  Someone else had to bring them out.  They didn't know how to finish up for themselves.

     Whatever our own peculiar idiosyncratic attitudes about money, work, and time may be, they are all, so far as I can see, determined by qualities and characteristics of our birth.

     Your breath is connected with your use of money and energy and time.  As you practice what I maintain is the ideal Rebirthing breath, you also will find yourself practicing habits that will result in your getting more and having more than you did previously.  As you concentrate on making certain that your inhale is full and satisfying, you're also bringing into consciousness old dissatisfactions which now, with your present intelligence and power, can either let go of through breathing or alter by taking some direct action.

I always get enough.

     Keep in mind the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.  The attitudes or the characteristics of each of those bears is how you use money, how you work, how you use time.  You can do too much, you can do too little, or you can do just the right amount.  Take a look at your life, decide what is wrong with your money picture, what is wrong with your work picture, what is wrong with your time picture.  Come up with the affirmations that will fix those things.

• I always earn enough.

• I always enjoy my work.

• I always have enough time to do everything I want to do.

• I always have enough money to do everything I want to do.

• I always have enough energy to do everything I want to do.

• I automatically manage my time and energy and money so that I always have enough to do whatever I want to do.

• My breath is my connection with Infinite Wealth.

• The more fully and freely I breathe, the more open I am to receiving great wealth and abundance.

• My breath is my connection with Infinite Energy.

• The more fully and freely I breathe, the more energy and strength I have.

• My breath is my connection with Infinite Time.

• The more fully and freely I breathe, the more clearly I see that I always have plenty of time to do everything I want to do.

     Such affirmations help us put time, work, and money in perspective and separate them from our old birth negatives.

     Those old negatives come from your birth.  Since you've been out of the womb for a long time, it's certainly time to let those old negatives go.  They are of no value in your life of today any longer.

     Whatever your negatives might be about money, work, and time, you can be certain they're connected to your birth and to your reactions to your parents when you were a young child.  You can also be certain that by changing your thought through use of affirmations, and by practicing the Rebirthing breath that proves you are open to receiving abundance, you can change those circumstances.