Divine substance falls all around us like flakes of gold and silver.

These are the words of Charles Fillmore, the founder of Unity, one of the American ‘New Thought’ Churches.

It’s a lovely thought – and one that I find can be really helpful – especially if I’m walking the dog in the rain!

What I love about Charles Fillmore’s work is how he was so obviously in touch with spiritual truth that he was not afraid of new ideas and developments which could affect his work. He was writing in the 1920s and 30s and what he wrote about science would have been fairly controversial at the time but, nowadays, they are thoughts that are quite accepted both in the spiritual and scientific fields. In his introduction to his book, Prosperity he writes: ‘Science now knows that space is heavily charged with energies that would transform the earth if they could be controlled…its being is governed and sustained by ideas, and ideas have no physical dimensions. So the Ether will have existence and deposit matter so long as Mind has use for it.’

So, it’s always there, this Divine Substance. It’s a case of our noticing it and using it.

Letting Go of Control.

Charles Fillmore understood that Jesus was talking of ‘heavens’ not ‘heaven’ when he spoke of the Kingdom of Heaven in the Gospels (the New Testament Greek word used throughout the Gospels is ouranos which is a plural). In the same way as the Gospel of John (14:2) states ‘In my Father’s House there are many mansions’ it demonstrates the breadth and variety of abundance – or Divine Substance – that is available to us, if we will just wake up and notice it!

The blocks to our perception and our ability to receive God’s abundance come mostly from our mistaken perception of values and our pride in our own abilities. We believe that we are the power in the Universe; that we must control situations and outcomes; that no one else can do it as well as us – and that includes God. The old phrase ‘Let go and let God’ has saved me from difficult situations more times than I can count – but why on earth did I not let go sooner? Probably because I had got stuck in acting from lack – and didn’t take the time to focus on Divine Substance instead.

The world today teaches us about lack all the time. So much is automatically judged ‘wrong’ or, at the very least, analysed to check out what isn’t right with it! A friend was telling me recently about a survey that showed that most people’s first reaction to any new suggestion was ‘no’ – completely automatically. What would the world be like if the first reaction was ‘yes?’

(Incidentally, Stuart Wilde teaches that ‘maybe’ is just a politer form of ‘no’ and there’s a lot of truth in that).

Check Your Underlying Belief System.

Divine Substance is everywhere and all we have to do to access it is to fill our minds with its reality. What the mind believes and the mouth speaks of, become truth for each and every one of us. If you are howling with fury at that, saying ‘I do all the affirmations but it doesn’t come’ then the hard truth is that your belief system is still that ‘it doesn’t come.’ I’ve fallen into that one so many times.

Louise Hay says, ‘So you affirm prosperity for five minutes a day and don’t get it? What are you thinking for the other 23 hours 55 minutes?’ The lack syndrome creeps up on us unawares…

Jesus’ words on prosperity are clear to the thinker of ‘New Thought’. He states that ‘whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive (Matt 21.18) and, again, in John (14:14): ‘If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it’. The secret is to believe and to ask believing and what we ask for WILL come to us.

Even the famed, ‘It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God’ (Matt 19:24) is a prosperity teaching.
In Jesus’ day ‘The Eye of the Needle’ was the name of a gate into Jerusalem. This gate was too narrow for a camel to pass through when it was wearing panniers so, in a nutshell, it means ‘you can’t get in with baggage.’ The baggage is so often the negative thoughts about wealth – that we have to hold on to every penny or that there is never enough.

The answer is to immerse ourselves in Divine Substance at every conscious moment. See those gold and silver snowflakes falling all around you. Put your hand out with the joy of a child in snow and know that there are millions and millions more prosperity flakes where they came from. The supply is infinite.

The Divine dichotomy is that we must embrace the thought and the belief of Divine Substance unconditionally for the sake of joy they bring us at that moment. But to believe and to think in such a way cannot help but prosper us in the future. If we are happy then – with no visible proof of what we are thinking in front of us – then we are creating provable happiness and prosperity for the future.

Every Wednesday and every Saturday, my husband Peter and I win the lottery. We find out how much is in the lottery kitty and debate what we’ll do with it. So far, we’ve discovered each ‘morning after’ that the win is not a physical one. But it’s really good fun to go to bed twice a week as a multi-millionaire ….