Embracing the Living Energy
Behind the Symbol
BY EMMANUEL DAGHER
What I’m about share with you may radically change your experience of prosperity permanently. My own radical shift in this area began when I took a chance on myself by leaving a well-paying job in the corporate world. I was at a point where I knew I wanted a change but didn’t know how to enact it. Like many creative types, I wasn’t feeling fulfilled sitting in a cubicle all day long. My life wasn’t making me happy, and I needed a change. Living for the weekends wasn’t the way I wanted to spend the rest of my life.
But in my attempt to pursue my dreams, I struggled. I just didn’t have the awareness and knowledge of how to open myself up to the Universe so I could receive its abundant gifts.
One of the fundamental principles of physics is the law of conservation of energy; energy cannot be created or destroyed, only converted to a different form. This also holds true for our personal energies. If we engage in lower vibrational thoughts about something, we will draw experiences into our lives that match those lower vibrational thoughts. This also applies to the life-enhancing thoughts we choose to engage in. These are the thoughts that lead us to greater expansion and a more positive life experience. Many people call this karma, the idea that what we put out into the world comes back to us.
When I left my corporate job, I held the belief that pursuing my passions and making a good living while doing it might not be in the cards for me. I thought that even if it did happen, it would be difficult to achieve.
I was so stuck on this idea of “success equals struggle” that I forgot all about my seventhgrade science fair project.
When I was in seventh grade, I wanted to explore whether music had an effect on plants. I raised two identical plants and gave them the exact same amounts of water, fertilizer, and sunlight. The only difference was that one plant listened to classical music for hours each day, while the other listened to aggressive heavy metal.
By the end of the experiment six weeks later, the plant listening to classical music was thriving, beautiful, and healthy. The plant listening to the heavy metal every day had withered and suffered. It looked nothing like the plant exposed to classical music. The heavy metal plant wasn’t happy; it told me that in its struggle to survive.
This taught me that the energies we surround ourselves with have an effect on how we think and behave. Everything we do is about the giving and receiving of energies. It’s a constant give and take between the Universe and everything that lives within it.
What is the purpose of my sharing this story with you? I realized that the plants, even though they seemed to be just objects in front of me, were still live beings. Plants are living, breathing entities that share the world with us. Even though those plants didn’t have personalities, they still communicated their needs. Money is the same way. In our everyday lives, money is the physical aspect of the energy of abundance. And like all energy, it embodies the principle of circulation.
In its energetic form, money is a living, breathing being.
While working on my relationship with money, I went through a deeply reflective period that almost felt like I was in mourning. I looked at money as if it were not spiritual. I saw it as a bad, problemcausing obstacle.
I have come to learn that this is simply not true. I was projecting my negative ideas onto money. Money is trying to serve people. As I moved through this period, I started to feel gratitude and compassion for money. Can you imagine projecting the idea that your best friend is evil and not spiritual? That you have to fight for the friendship—that it’s a struggle to be around them? This is what we do to money!
Once I realized this, I felt disappointed in myself. I was sad that I had been putting all of these negative projections onto this entity that simply wanted to fulfill its purpose of being a means of giving and receiving.
Remembering the music experiment taught me an awareness that I’d never had before. I realized that plants, rocks, and nature as a whole are all energy—and that money is also energy. The tangible items that we think of as money are really just symbols of the living, breathing entity that is the energy of money and abundance.
Once I remembered this, it changed everything for me. Money is alive; it’s not just a lifeless object. It’s the living energy behind the symbol that is currency and the collective energy of circulation. I’d assumed that it was lifeless and lacking in energy, because I hadn’t known any better. I hadn’t been taught differently. I had been making it all about myself and not taking into account how money felt about the negative beliefs I held about it. This new awareness has allowed me to have a new kind of relationship with money.
Adapted from Easy, Breezy Prosperity: The Five Foundations for a More Joyful, Abundant Life by Emmanuel Dagher © 2015 and reprinted with permission of Rodale.
Emmanuel Dagher is a transformation specialist, holistic health practitioner, inspirational social media personality and speaker, and author. EmmanuelDagher.com