Soul Over Matter. Zhi Gang Sha
of the first books to reveal to me that changing my thinking would change my financial results. I didn’t need to work harder, I needed to change my mental programming.
Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki taught me how the poor, middle class, and rich think differently and how their finances reflect that different thinking.
The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley showed me how the wealthy upper middle class thought and, as a result, acted differently in managing their money.
These books were a revelation to me—I can’t recommend them enough. Moreover, they point to what is likely a gaping hole in your own financial literacy. I found the whole process astonishing. Why was I discovering this information in my thirties and forties? Where was this knowledge when I was an impressionable child and a young man beginning my career and making critical choices about my future?
I realized that not only did I have no respect for money, I had no understanding of it. I didn’t understand compound interest. I didn’t grasp the great things money could bring to my life in the form of freedom, security, and charity.
Slowly but surely, I began to build my financial literacy. I read the Wall Street Journal and books by Peter Lynch. I began to change my thinking and, as a result, my feelings and actions.
Slowly, I began to create something in my life that I’d never experienced before: financial harmony. Where before I only had conflict, I now felt a growing sense of possibility and peace.
There’s an expression: “Where attention goes, energy flows, and results show.”
If you think something is unimportant, you don’t give it attention.
What if, for example, you thought your children were unimportant? You wouldn’t spend time with them. You wouldn’t pay attention to them, try to nurture them, build their character, or teach them. The likely result of that lack of attention and energy would be a lack of “results” in your relationship with your kids. In other words, you wouldn’t have one.
Financial literacy is a way of saying, “Money is important.” It’s a way of directing your attention to money so that you can give it time and energy and, in turn, receive results. It’s the first step on the road to planting new roots and discovering the peace and abundance that can be created from financial harmony.
The Rich Person Inside You
Early on in my own efforts to plant new roots, I read a lot. One of the books that gave me an enormous “aha!” moment was Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad, Poor Dad. His astute insights into the differences between the rich, middle class, and poor, seen through the lens of his relationship with his father and his mentor, resonated deeply with me. I’d experienced the same conflict myself.
In more recent times, Robert’s path and mine have crossed several times. He and I were having dinner one night in Melbourne when a simple moment of reflection highlighted the inner financial conflict that we all experience.
When the bill arrived at the end of the meal, Robert picked it up. As he scanned the bill, he looked up at me and said, “You know, it’s interesting. I drive a Ferrari. I have plenty of money and property. But I still look at the bill. I still check it. Is it accurate? Does everything add up?”
“For all my money,” he said, setting the bill down, “I still have a poor person that talks to me inside.”
I immediately knew what Robert was talking about. I too had grown up with my own “poor dad,” and I’d heard that inner “poor” voice many times. It was the voice that had helped me, I now realize, lose much of the money I’d earned as a lawyer. It was that voice that helped me spend my money unwisely and invest it thoughtlessly.
Robert, as you can no doubt guess, also has an inner rich person speaking to him, but his point is a powerful one. We all have a rich and a middle-class and a poor person inside us. There’s nothing wrong with that. The real question is: Who are you listening to?
Robert drives a Ferrari. But, like you and me, he still has a poor person inside him. The difference is that he’s aware of it, and he knows which voice to listen to, and when. He knows there’s a time to check the bill carefully and a time to listen to the rich voice. He knows that both voices can contribute to financial literacy and abundance, as long as you know who’s speaking at any given time.
The poor person inside you will never go away. Much like a fear that you’ve overcome, the feeling never goes away entirely, but what does happen is that you learn to recognize it when it comes along. You learn to say, Ah, yes. Hello, poor person. Thanks anyway, but I’m going to ignore you right now. I know you might have something to offer in another situation, but right now I need to listen to someone else.
Although you may not have been born with money or with the skill to manage it, there is a rich person inside you.
Your choice is whether to nurture that voice so that it speaks loud enough for you to hear.
List of Figures
1. Soul Light Era Universal Service Hand Position
2. Hand Position for Tao Calligraphy Tracing Power
3. Tao Calligraphy Da Ai
4. Tao Calligraphy Da Kuan Shu
PART ONE
Before Soul Over Matter
1
Mind Over Matter
ACOMMON WITTICISM on the concept of mind over matter is if you don’t mind, it don’t matter. This is usually said in a deprecating manner, indicating that anyone who believes in the power of mind over matter is delusional or gullible. Of course, if you are facing a firing squad and your only defense is to use your mind to alter the direction of the bullets, mind-over-matter thinking is not going to help you.
In everyday life, however, the principle of mind over matter can be very effective and is not for the gullible or delusional at all. As with any universal principle or law, you must understand the dynamics of the principle in order to effectively achieve the results you seek.
The first recognized teacher of the principle of mind over matter in North America was a successful self-made business leader and entrepreneur from St. Louis, Missouri, named Charles Haanel. In 1912, he created a course called The Master Key System, which he sold as a mail-order course in twenty-six installments for ten cents an installment. The Master Key System was a major success. One of the early readers of the mail-order course was a journalist named Napoleon Hill. Napoleon Hill went on to write the most popular book ever published on the topic of generating and maintaining wealth, titled Think and Grow Rich. This book is still in print, with more than seventy million copies sold since publication. The Napoleon Hill Foundation is still going strong and releases multiple titles annually by individuals and organizations that espouse the effectiveness and importance of mind over matter in generating financial abundance.
As authors, we applaud the success and contributions of Haanel and Hill in bringing awareness of the importance of a proper mind-set and attitude to creating wealth, health, and happiness. In this book, we are expanding on the principles and techniques of mind power to add the even stronger soul power in causation and manifestation. In future chapters, we will explore soul over matter in depth, with specific examples on how soul generates mind reality. In this chapter, we want to help you understand the logic of mind over matter and demonstrate the correct interpretation of this basic yet powerful principle.
On the simplest level, mind is primary to matter because you cannot create any product or service until your mind has imagined it first. With the exception of the entertainment industry, the world of work and money is not in the practical sense a world of make-believe or wishful thinking.