I’m reading a book, Think Yourself Rich, by Joseph Murphy.

It’s pretty repetitive, and it really talks a lot about God and the bible, but it has some good ideas too.

Honestly, I’m not sure how Christian the author really is. There are hints in the book that he doesn’t believe in the Christian God, but rather believes that the subconscious mind is the gateway to God. If you strip out all the religious information, the ideas are pretty cool.

Here’s a small excerpt, to give you an idea:

You can get acquainted with the riches of the Infinite storehouse within you by reiterating and believing the following prayer: “I am ever grateful for God’s riches that are ever active, ever present, unchanging, and eternal.”

God gave you richly all things to enjoy in this universe. Life itself is a gift to you. The whole world was here before you were born. Believe and expect the riches of the Infinite, and invariably the best will come to you. As you practice this simple truth, the desert of your life will rejoice and blossom as the rose.

As you can see, it’s pretty heavy with the God references. Not that I have anything against God… what I am against is relying on religion to explain your ideas.

Stripping out the religious stuff from the above passage, and taking the meat of the information, you can get some interesting ideas. 1. Be grateful. 2. Life is a gift to you. 3. Belief and expectation will fulfill themselves. Sounds like pretty good things.

The author stresses that by focusing on positive things, you will attract more positive things to you. Law of Attraction and Intention Manifestation, basically. Ok cool.

One idea that differs from the Intention Manifestation model is interesting though. He comes back to this idea that our natural state is to live an abundant, healthy life. He also states that God never punishes anyone - we only punish ourselves. He uses the analogy of if you cut yourself, the skin automatically heals itself. The blood comes to clot, and the tissue starts to regenerate. In that same manor, when you punish yourself by using the Law of Attraction incorrectly, God’s natural reaction is to heal you.

He claims that if we are poor, we are punishing ourselves, and have a disease of the mind. Once that disease is cured (through prayer and meditation), then our natural state will return - the state of abundance.

Ok, so there is a lot of religion in his explanations. It’s important to understand what someone is saying from the perspective that they’re saying it. This way, while you might disagree with some of the axioms, you can still use the same lessons in your own life.

The important idea that I’ve learned so far, is that we don’t have to work to become rich. If our natural state is abundance, then we are doing more work by staying poor, than we would be doing becoming rich. Think of holding up a pendulum - if you let go, it’s natural state is to drop down. If you want to constantly hold the pendulum out of it’s natural state, then that takes energy. If you just let go, it will naturally find it’s way back to the center. Same idea.

This is a new idea to me because I’ve almost always been under the impression that we must work really hard to become rich. Very rarely have I attempted to question that idea. It’s always fun to see someone who disagrees with a belief that you rarely question yourself. It can help you out.

I’m not done with the book, but I think I understand the gist of it at this point. I’ll continue to read, and try and apply the author’s techniques. A fun project :-).

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