ODE TO WEALTH ….AS YOU LIKE IT! by Julie Chimes

As a child I used to watch endless streams of brightly clad tourists visit the middle-England town that featured as a ‘must-do’ item on every visiting American’s schedule. The proprietors of anything remotely connected to Will-i-am or timber-framed, grew wealthy on the rich pickings from our transatlantic cousins, who were mostly considered to be gullible cash-cows that would keep the town as one of the wealthiest in the land. Somewhat ironic that I now live in southern Spain, where most foreign tourists are viewed in the same light, as a source of easy income for corrupt councils, property developers, beachfront traders and east European mafia controlled gangs. Karmic retribution maybe?

There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads to good fortune. 

William Shakespeare

In half a century not much has changed as we continue to define wealth by the outer accoutrements we are taught to acquire, in order to to be seen as successful and wealthy. However, in the last couple of decades the great divide between the Haves and Have-Nots has spawned a whole new industry, which is that of the Abundance Expert & Coach. The basic premise is that you pay a lot of money for someone else to tell you how to make a lot of money….h’mmm. Now, if I am going into the jungle I want to be sure I am paying a guide who really knows the territory. So how is it that when we feel a sense of lack, we often will pay these so-called experts without testing their knowledge and experience?

Once I was invited to a lunch in a local retreat centre, where a ‘Master of Abundance’ was charging an extortionate amount of money for a group of eager acolytes to receive his secret teachings and advice. Curious as to what this great secret was, and ignoring the fact he had just asked if I could give him one of my books as he was a ‘bit strapped for cash’, I asked him what he taught. I managed to extract the essence of his wisdom from a stream of psycho-babble. It was basically based on visualising what you want. Words from the Bard’s Winter’s Tale came to mind ‘You pay a great deal too dear for what's given freely’. So many of these so-called teachers operate under the erroneous belief that something outside ourselves will make us feel better and somehow the new car or flash holiday will fulfil our purpose. 

So what is this tide in the affairs of men that Shakespeare refers to? And how do we know where and when to take it? A friend of mine who is a Brahmin priest once told me that he could ‘see’ that I’d had fabulous ideas and that I’d worked very hard in my lifetime, yet he told me I still had no idea about Divine Timing and I had also failed to understand that the Divine Will knows what is best for us. We can visualize until we go crazy but if it is not in our Highest Interests no amount of affirmations or mantras will make life As We Like It or bring the object of our desires any closer. He smiled and also explained that all that ‘wanting’ usually pushes things further away – resulting in an abundance of ‘wanting’ and continued lack! He then went on to talk about timing.

Wealth after all is a relative thing, since he that has little and wants less

​is richer than he that has much and wants more.

Charles Caleb Colton

‘Of course you have had many great ideas in your lifetime’ he told me, ‘But you have no sense of timing.  You are like a surfer waiting to ride a wave that looks so promising but fizzles out into a mere ripple…not every wave is yours and you do not own any ideas. They come from the Universal Mind and are available for anyone to use ONLY if it is in their Highest Interest and at the right moment.’ Well that certainly made me feel a bit better about the outline synopsis and beautiful illustrations from my talented soul sister Taran Cameron, we’d sent unsolicited to publishers around the world.  They later appeared in a strangely similar and familiar movie, called Avatar……

My wise friend did let me into an ancient secret. He told me that that everything and every experience we need will come to us in its own good time and all we have to learn to do is to go with ‘That which comes unsought’ rather than always trying to make things happen. Destiny cannot be forced. ‘The secret of how to move through times of lack’ he explained, ‘is to practice the art of gratitude’. Expressing out thanks for what we have rather than a constant whinge about what we have not sets up a completely different vibration in our being, which attracts the tide of good fortune.

Leaning on that stone wall on a freezing day in the place of my birth, I watched Chuck Jnr throw a spectacular tantrum because his weary parents refused him another ice-cream. I fear our Chuck was heading for a life of lack…..

"Blow, blow, thou winter wind!
Thou art not so unkind as man's ingratitude".
William Shakespeare
As You Like It.