I had been researching some herbal remedies when I stumbled upon some important words. I had just finished taking an herbalist certification course and was so determined to fire my doctors that I was in graduate school mode, looking up everything that I could find and collecting the knowledge in a notebook. Having a copy machine in the apartment, not to mention an expense account for office supplies, made that project so easy that I couldn't help myself. But then I found these words:
Just for today, do not worry.
Just for today, do not anger.
Honor your parents, teachers, and elders.
Earn your living honestly.
Show gratitude to everything.
Dr. Mikao Usui
At the time I had no idea who Dr. Usui was. I didn't learn about reiki until almost a decade later. All I knew on that night was that these words seemed to be the only advice about living that I would ever need. I guess you could say that I collected my first clue that night. I completely forgot about the herb project, and spent the rest of the evening staring at these words. The next day, I walked down to the Office Depot on the corner and bought some beautiful parchment paper and a frame so I could hang these words on the wall. For almost ten years, I kept these words in my bathroom so they could be the last thing I saw at night and the first thing I saw in the morning.
Eventually, I came to understand that the real power of this sage piece of advice is in the phrase JUST FOR TODAY. I began to see this same concept repeated elsewhere. Alcoholics Anonymous, for example, teaches that the way not to drink is to take things ONE DAY AT A TIME. Jesus, who had lots of really wise words to say, uses the parable of the lilies of the field and the birds to teach his disciples to stop worrying about having enough food to eat and clothes to wear. He concludes, DO NOT WORRY ABOUT TOMORROW, FOR TOMORROW WILL WORRY ABOUT ITSELF.
And then there's the Israelites. On their way to the promised land, the Israelites wandered about in the wilderness for forty years because they couldn't seem to get their act together enough to just cross the desert and reach their destination. They were a whiny, worrying lot. During this time they lived exclusively on manna. Because God cared about the Israelites, and because He knew that the sparse desert could not provide enough food for such a large assembly of people, every morning God rained manna down from heaven so that the people could eat.
Manna was weird stuff. After the morning dew evaporated, it left behind "tiny flakes of something as small as hoarfrost on the ground." (For those of you who keep track of these things, I'm quoting from the Living Bible, Exodus 16.) The people were instructed to collect enough for each person in their household for one day only, which worked out to be about three quarts each. Of course, people aren't that precise in their behaviors, are they? So "those who gathered a lot had nothing left over, and those who gathered little had no lack! Each home had just enough." God was very precise about his instructions that the manna was intended to be used only for the day in which it was collected. But, people being the way they are, there were some who tried to hoard the manna because they didn't really trust that there would be more tomorrow and they were afraid they would starve. They would wake up the next morning to find that the previous day's manna was a stinky mess crawling with maggots. Yuck! On the sixth day of the week, however, they were instructed to gather two days' worth of manna because God likes to rest on the seventh day.
Here on the Prosperity Project, our daily spending allowance is like the Israelites' manna. We get money every day, and we are instructed to spend every bit of it. Like the Israelites, we are learning to trust that more money will come tomorrow. There have been times, especially now that the numbers are getting larger, that I've felt a little guilty about squandering so much money on things like vacations and toys. The New England Puritan in me thinks that kind of spending is frivolous. Then, the other side of me that wants to trust in the money feels guilty about my Wealth Building Account, because I feel like it means that I don't trust God to take care of future needs. Having grown up Catholic, I have an over-developed sense of guilt no matter what I do!
I'm suspecting that my guilty feelings concerning money are a large part of what has prevented money from flowing to me freely in the past. So, I'm trying to overcome these feelings by applying what I've learned from Dr. Usui and the Israelites. Today, live today. Tomorrow will take care of itself. Give some money back to God every day, because that's where it all comes from anyway. Setting some money aside every day teaches me to live within my means, and gives me cash to sustain me on those days when God takes the day off and money temporarily stops flowing in. And if, for some reason, the money does not show up one day because of some downturn in the economy or unemployment, or whatever life may throw at me, I'm learning to trust that the situation is a temporary one, and that the manna will be sure to rain down again tomorrow.
In other words, I'm starting to learn not to worry. Just for today, anyway.
Just for today, do not anger.
Honor your parents, teachers, and elders.
Earn your living honestly.
Show gratitude to everything.
Dr. Mikao Usui
At the time I had no idea who Dr. Usui was. I didn't learn about reiki until almost a decade later. All I knew on that night was that these words seemed to be the only advice about living that I would ever need. I guess you could say that I collected my first clue that night. I completely forgot about the herb project, and spent the rest of the evening staring at these words. The next day, I walked down to the Office Depot on the corner and bought some beautiful parchment paper and a frame so I could hang these words on the wall. For almost ten years, I kept these words in my bathroom so they could be the last thing I saw at night and the first thing I saw in the morning.
Eventually, I came to understand that the real power of this sage piece of advice is in the phrase JUST FOR TODAY. I began to see this same concept repeated elsewhere. Alcoholics Anonymous, for example, teaches that the way not to drink is to take things ONE DAY AT A TIME. Jesus, who had lots of really wise words to say, uses the parable of the lilies of the field and the birds to teach his disciples to stop worrying about having enough food to eat and clothes to wear. He concludes, DO NOT WORRY ABOUT TOMORROW, FOR TOMORROW WILL WORRY ABOUT ITSELF.
And then there's the Israelites. On their way to the promised land, the Israelites wandered about in the wilderness for forty years because they couldn't seem to get their act together enough to just cross the desert and reach their destination. They were a whiny, worrying lot. During this time they lived exclusively on manna. Because God cared about the Israelites, and because He knew that the sparse desert could not provide enough food for such a large assembly of people, every morning God rained manna down from heaven so that the people could eat.
Manna was weird stuff. After the morning dew evaporated, it left behind "tiny flakes of something as small as hoarfrost on the ground." (For those of you who keep track of these things, I'm quoting from the Living Bible, Exodus 16.) The people were instructed to collect enough for each person in their household for one day only, which worked out to be about three quarts each. Of course, people aren't that precise in their behaviors, are they? So "those who gathered a lot had nothing left over, and those who gathered little had no lack! Each home had just enough." God was very precise about his instructions that the manna was intended to be used only for the day in which it was collected. But, people being the way they are, there were some who tried to hoard the manna because they didn't really trust that there would be more tomorrow and they were afraid they would starve. They would wake up the next morning to find that the previous day's manna was a stinky mess crawling with maggots. Yuck! On the sixth day of the week, however, they were instructed to gather two days' worth of manna because God likes to rest on the seventh day.
Here on the Prosperity Project, our daily spending allowance is like the Israelites' manna. We get money every day, and we are instructed to spend every bit of it. Like the Israelites, we are learning to trust that more money will come tomorrow. There have been times, especially now that the numbers are getting larger, that I've felt a little guilty about squandering so much money on things like vacations and toys. The New England Puritan in me thinks that kind of spending is frivolous. Then, the other side of me that wants to trust in the money feels guilty about my Wealth Building Account, because I feel like it means that I don't trust God to take care of future needs. Having grown up Catholic, I have an over-developed sense of guilt no matter what I do!
I'm suspecting that my guilty feelings concerning money are a large part of what has prevented money from flowing to me freely in the past. So, I'm trying to overcome these feelings by applying what I've learned from Dr. Usui and the Israelites. Today, live today. Tomorrow will take care of itself. Give some money back to God every day, because that's where it all comes from anyway. Setting some money aside every day teaches me to live within my means, and gives me cash to sustain me on those days when God takes the day off and money temporarily stops flowing in. And if, for some reason, the money does not show up one day because of some downturn in the economy or unemployment, or whatever life may throw at me, I'm learning to trust that the situation is a temporary one, and that the manna will be sure to rain down again tomorrow.
In other words, I'm starting to learn not to worry. Just for today, anyway.
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