Gratitude as Money

One of the most frequent requests for help that we receive is around the issue of money. There are many different magickal ways to attract money, increase your bank account, or solve monetary problems. Many people find simple candle spells with a well-defined set of Directors and Limiters (what you want and what you don't want) works very well. Many people also like this approach because it seems to tackle the issue directly.

However, many of the same people who use this approach find that they have to use money spells frequently because they often need to solve financial problems. This is usually because some aspect of their lifestyle consistently produces a lack of money.

Another magickal approach to more permanently solving financial problems is to do a simple daily magickal ritual. This ritual is mostly about changing one's view of the world, as well as altering the energy that one puts out into the world.

Money As Energy
When you spend money you can easily see the exchange being made: dollars for goods or services. You can also see the exchange when you work to receive a paycheck: money in exchange for your work effort. But if you look behind all of these transactions, you will see that an energy exchange is at the heart of all of these transactions. When you work for a paycheck, you are being paid for the energy that you expend in different ways. Similarly, when you buy an item, you are ultimately paying for the energy that went into producing that item.

So money is really just a form of energy that we humans trade back and forth many times per day.

If we look at what occurs on the next higher spiritual level, we will see this energy exchange even more clearly. Consider the angels. They help us whenever we ask. So how do angels get paid? Partially by helping us. Angels get "brownie points," if you will, by helping us. These brownie points help angels ascend up their evolutionary ladder. Beyond that though, angels are paid in the spiritual coin of appreciation and gratitude.

If you consider the process we outline for hiring an angel for help from the higher, we recommend that people thank angels when they request help, while waiting for help to arrive, and after the desired result has manifested. When we express our gratitude to our angels before, during, and after the whole process, we are paying angels with the spiritual coin of gratitude. What's more, we are exchanging energy, which is at the heart of the monetary exchange system. Instead of dollars, we use the energy of gratitude and appreciation to pay the angels.

At the end of the day, whether we consider spending and receiving money or doing the same with gratitude and appreciation, we are exchanging energy with beings on the Earth plane as well as beings on higher spiritual planes.

How to Use Gratitude to Increase the Money in Your Life
Using the above idea that gratitude is the spiritual coin we use to barter with higher beings, and considering the idea that all types of money (on Earth and on higher spiritual planes) are simply exchanges of energy, we can come to a radical conclusion. Any form of energy exchange can be profitable. So what does that mean?

Let's say that you have a financial crisis in your life. You have more bills than you have money. In addition, the bills are due and you have no idea where to get the money to pay the bills. Can you use another form of money to pay your bills? Yes... albeit in an indirect way. Instead of getting a second job to pay your bills, how about using spiritual coins to pay your bills?

This is how you can use spiritual coin to attract enough money into your life to pay your bills. For the next 40 days, spend as much spiritual coin as you can. In other words, for the next 40 days feel as much gratitude and appreciation as you can about anything and everything in your life. In addition, spend as much spiritual coin as you can for the next 40 days. That is, express as much gratitude and appreciation to others as you can. When you express gratitude to someone, they are paid in spiritual coin that gives them a spiritual boost. The Universe notices that you have paid someone with spiritual coin that led to a higher state of being for the recipient. According to the Law of Karma, what comes around goes around (or, what you sow so shall you reap). The Universe will then convert that expression of gratitude into something you need: money to pay your bills.

This may sound a little crazy, but if you try this experiment for the next 40 days, you will be amazed at the variety of sources from which your money will come. If you spend the next 40 days noticing every "little joy" in your life, expressing sincere gratitude and appreciation to others (and yourself!), you will be paid tenfold in both physical money and spiritual coin. It is Universal Law. You need only practice this to verify the truth of this law for yourself.

It's a good idea to keep notes about your starting point, the ways you express and feel joy and gratitude and appreciation in your life, and the flow of money and spiritual coin that is returned to you. Keep track of the ways in which you spend your spiritual coin as you would a bank ledger. Then see what changes are reflected in your actual checking account ledger. You will be surprised at how quickly both ledgers fill up on the positive side with credits in abundance.

Gratitude and appreciation require only true sincerity and the willingness to keep an open mind. Spending a little energy each day giving yourself and others a spiritual boost costs so little that the risk and reward ratio is very good. If it doesn't work (but it will), you have lost nothing more than a few kind words that are appreciated by those around you. Learn more about daily rituals and how they can enhance your life and bring magic to your life with our Daily Rituals for Attracting What You Want in Life ebook.

Ready... Set... Spend!

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Why Ditching New Year's Resolutions is Magickal!

Everywhere around the globe, during the last part of the year people make New Year's resolutions of what they are going to do (or not going to do) in the coming year. Whether the resolution is to lose weight, stop smoking, be kinder, or spend more time with the family, most people make resolutions. Sadly, most people also fail to achieve those resolutions by February 1 of the new year (82% of people fail according to some research).

Since New Year's resolutions don't seem to work for most people, why bother? If you want your life to change, you will probably find that you gain better results with a magickal yearly aim. While a magickal yearly aim sounds very much like a New Year's resolution, a yearly aim is actually quite different. While a New Year's resolution is about "things" and "doing" or "not doing," a magickal yearly aim is about improving everything in your life by raising the level of your Being through the use of magick. Why would you want to raise the level of your Being? According to Gurdjieff and other metaphysical teachers:

"The level of your Being attracts the level of your life."

Thus the fastest way to change your life is to raise your level of Being. The higher your level of Being, the higher will be the things you attract into your life: a higher salary, a higher caliber of people around you, a better level of health, a higher feeling of satisfaction with your life. Instead of just trying to change one thing in your life with a New Year's resolution, wouldn't it be so much more fun to play with a magickal yearly aim that requires less work and produces better results in every area of your life?

What's a Magickal Yearly Aim?
A magickal yearly aim is a magickal exercise of your choosing that you practice all year long. The goal of this magickal yearly aim is to identify and dissolve the resistance in your Being that causes you to think, act, and do in ways that detract from your life. For instance, suppose you find that the people around you at work are not as kind, giving, warm, and caring as you might like. In fact, suppose that you find these people downright mean or overly competitive. This kind of cutthroat behavior may just be part of the company culture. That culture existed before you were hired, and has never changed since you've been an employee. What if you could use a teeny-tiny magkical yearly aim to change the way people around you behave?

An Example of a Magickal Yearly Aim
One of our students made that very change with a magickal yearly aim that was so simple as to be absurd. His aim was to remind himself daily of this fact: "Gratitude is free." Then he would find some way to express his gratitude or caring, no matter how tiny that expression. Since he was uncomfortable, at first, with changing his behavior at work, fearing that people would find his behavior odd and suspicious, he began with something less obvious. Each day, he would remind himself that gratitude was free, and then he would do a kind act for a stranger. More importantly, he would tell no one of his kind act. Some of his kind acts included:

• helping someone load groceries into their car 
• smiling at a person sitting on a bus bench and telling them to have a great day
• paying for a taco for the person behind him at the taco truck
• allowing a car into traffic in a crowded intersection
• placing an extra roll of toilet paper near the toilet before the current roll ran out

As you can see, these acts ran from the obvious to the "pay it forward variety." All these acts centered around the fact that he was grateful for all he had in life (though he still wished for more, such as a caring work environment), and he wished to share it with his fellow humans. After our student practiced his free gratitude on strangers for a few months, he was able to gradually practice his yearly magickal aim at work. Again, his gratitude was expressed simply. He would:

• model happiness whenever possible with a happy demeanor
• thank people whenever possible for their efforts, even if those efforts were part of the job
• bring an extra cup of coffee from the coffee cart to a random fellow employee once a week
• thank his boss when he could for any praise
• praise his boss whenever he could

As he began modeling gratitude, slowly he began to feel happier regardless of how the people around him acted. Even in the face of overly-competitive behavior, he offered gratitude. This gratitude in no way reduced his level of performance or his steps towards his goals at work, but all of his work was done with a smile and a feeling of warmth. Eventually, over a period of nine months or so, his co-workers began to change. A little at a time, the people around him smiled more. He sometimes was the recipient of a free cup of coffee. His workload became easier to bear, and his yearly reviews were much less of a trial. His promotion also came sooner than he had thought possible.

Gratitude is a Higher Level of Being
Some scientists have studied the various parts of our physical body, such as blood pressure and heart rate, and found that people who are happier are also healthier. Studies also show that emotions such as gratitude, love, caring, and faith have a higher vibrational frequency than emotions such as sadness, depression, hatred, and fear. While this may seem self-evident, many of us don't make use of this knowledge. But since we know that New Year's resolutions quickly fail for most people, wouldn't it be so much easier to use a simple exercise that helps us practice a magickal yearly aim? If you could raise every aspect of your life just by doing one kind act for a stranger each day, wouldn't it be worth it?

As with our student, you can identify a part of your Being or your life that has a great deal of resistance. Then create a simple magickal exercise as part of your yearly aim to address that resistance. The exercise should be small, simple, and easy to remember. Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Workaholics: Hire more angels to do the heavy lifting so you can work less
• Depressed People: Make Sun Yellow a primary color in your life for a year (and try the Sun Yellow Candle Blessing daily)
• Feeling Lost: Practice getting information from the Universe daily to realize you are never lost
• Stuck in a Rut: Move your body to move out of the rut (try cross crawling to get unstuck)

Sounds simple enough, right? This year, why not ditch the New Year's resolutions and try a magickal yearly aim? Need help? Ask us on our Facebook page... or post your magickal yearly aim and inspire others!

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The Magick of Enough: Want to know the secret to "The Secret"?

So many people understand the logic behind "The Secret" but can't seem to make it work as well as they would like. Why is that? Because "The Secret" has you focusing on your desires. Nothing wrong with that, but often that focus brings up feelings of contrasting lack (especially later in the day, when you are not focusing on yourself living the life of your dreams).

Finding Enough
The real secret is to get happy about where you are, your square on the chess board of life, if you will. The square may seem small, cramped, dirty, unfulfilling and lacking in money, health, or joy. That may be so, but the square on which you stand is the one you have, right here, right now. And the big secret to "The Secret" is that you have to accept the square on which you stand, feel that it is "enough" and then the Universe will give you more. Find ways to feel fulfilled about where you are. Anything will do. Little joys of life. The power of "enough" is that when you can find any feeling of "good enough" about any part of your square, the Universe will respond with more "enough". You don't need to spend much time focusing on your desires unless that brings you joy. The Universe already knows what you want. When you feel a sense of "enough" with what you have, the Universe will dish out more things that will make you feel more "enoughness." Silly and simply, but it works.

Why It Works
This works because of the Law of Vibration. Merely focusing on your desires won't bring them to you unless you are putting out a vibrational energy that is a match for those desires. That is the basis behind the Law of Attraction. When you can genuinely feel fulfillment with your current place and circumstances in life then you set your vibration at a higher level than when you have negative feelings about your conditions. Remember that positive will attract more positive and negative will attract more negative. So to move forward or up the ladder to where you want to be and what you want to have, you have to shift your energies and vibrations to a frequency that will attract more of the positives that you want.

Now that you know your "job" to attract more of your desires, do some thinking about ways you can raise your vibrational level starting with being satisfied with where you are now. You might write up a gratitude list that you can focus on daily, develop some affirmations to chant throughout the day based on those gratitudes or blessings you have in your life, or you might begin doing some forms of daily rituals to make a higher connection with the Universe and get to know your spirit guides. Our Daily Rituals for Attracting What You Want In Life ebook can help you with simple daily rituals to incorporate into your spiritual practice. No matter what your circumstances are currently, getting to know your spirit guides and developing a relationship with them will give you a place to start counting your blessings. Even if you can't find anything else to be grateful for in your situation, those relationships will give you one to begin your gratitude list.

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