Epiphany at the Portola

Last month I took a group of students, primarily high-powered businessmen and women, to China and Tibet for a meditation retreat. I was amazed at how much China had changed from the late eighties. Back then almost everyone wore a drab uniform and very few people looked happy. What I remembered most were all the guards carrying machine guns and being watched very carefully wherever I went. Now, in Shanghai and Beijing anyway, I was happy to see thoroughly modern cities. People were wearing bright colors and had happy, hopeful faces. Evidence of prosperity was everywhere. Even the guards at the Great Wall would sit and laugh with us.

Tibet was even more amazing. It is such a beautiful country, with majestic mountains and magical temples filled with brilliant murals and golden beaming Buddha's. We were quite taken aback when at every temple and every statue we would be met by a monk who would inform us of the fee for taking a picture. Ten Yuan for this room, twenty for this Buddha, forty to videotape it. Of course, we were happy to make some donations to help restore the temples and delighted to support the ongoing work at the monasteries. But the gift that was given to us, perhaps by the Prosperity Buddha, was the idea of being open to receive and how money served as a means to help people.

In my early years of meditating as a "yogi in training," I adopted the notion that money was un-spiritual. My mind had created a division between my business life and my spiritual life. As a result I lived in lack because my mind thought it was a more spiritual state to be in. Teaching yoga and meditation in the eighties I would always teach on a donation basis but rarely received enough to pay for the overhead. For years SAI remained a meditation backwater in Orange County. Then, in the early 21st Century, my friend, student and teacher Matthew Ferry, pointed out to me that my lack of prosperity consciousness was keeping my work from being enjoyed by other people. Once I was open to receive, others began to receive more too.

Once my consciousness shifted from lack to value, The Self Awareness Institute grew from a few hundred people to tens of thousands all over the world in just a few years. This same shift may be helpful for you too. Are you living in lack? Do you deny yourself prosperity, happiness or peace of mind? Later this month I am conducting a Prosperity Consciousness workshop that I encourage you to attend. Prosperity is a state of consciousness, and your prosperity contributes to global prosperity. Lack serves nobody. This epiphany occurred at the Portola Palace in Lhasa. God bless the people of Tibet. Check out the photos visit: www.selfawareness.com/VideoPhotoGallery.html.

From the heart, Steven S. Sadleir