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Scarcity versus Abundance
An Excerpt from Empowered, Sexy, and Free by Jolie Dawn

Let’s take a look at one of the primary blockages to experiencing true and lasting prosperity for all humans: a repetitive story of poverty and scarcity that we replay in our heads, versus one of abundance and prosperity. Most of us know what scarcity feels like, and most of us also know the good, spacious feeling of having enough (even if it’s only been for brief moments).

The trick is not to allow habits to get us stuck in scarcity. We compare ourselves to others; we judge other people for having money; we get stuck in dark loops and don’t know how to get out. We stay stuck when we use scarcity language: “I want that, but I can’t have it. I can’t go there. I can’t do that. I can’t learn that. I can’t be that.” If we habitually deny ourselves experiences because we automatically assume we don’t have money for them, we live a life of being played by money. Money does not deserve to have that much power over you and your life enjoyment. Can we agree on that?

Now before you say, “But Jolie! It’s not just a ‘story’ of scarcity. It’s real for me. The rent is due, and I am stressed. I can’t just ‘mindset’ my way to prosperity around this.” Girl, I get it. I really do know what it’s like to feel the crippling fear of not being able to pay bills and the gut-wrenching sadness of having to deny yourself the things you desire. Let me tell you, more scarcity and fear is not the path to the freedom you desire. When scarcity increases, it’s very challenging to think creatively for solutions. My invitation here is to bring awareness to automatic behaviors and responses. To breathe a moment of space between stimulus and response, between opening an unexpected bill and feeling panic. The secret of true prosperity is being able to generate it as a feeling even before you can manifest it as a physical reality. I know this practice can feel hard. But you are so much more powerful and capable than you give yourself credit for.

Maybe for you, it’s not an issue of generating enough money to pay your bills. Maybe you’ve found your path of a lucrative life and/or ample support from others. Maybe the next-level prosperity upgrade is to relax in your body, trust your money, give yourself the freedom to spend money on yourself. Or, on the opposite side of the spectrum, maybe your challenge is to love yourself enough to save for the future. No matter where you are right now, the way out is to become more aware of the repetitive story in your head around scarcity and to consciously choose a narrative of prosperity.

So many women I’ve worked with over the years have a story around their age. “I’m thirty. I should have ___________ by now.” Or, “I’m forty. I should have had this.” Whether we’re twenty-five, or sixty, or seventy, or eighty, this idea in our heads of what we thought each age was going to be like often revolves around money.

Begin noticing your language around money. Do you say things like these? “Real estate is so expensive these days!” “I could never afford a nice car!” “I wish I could wear things like that.” “I’ll never be able to make my rent this month!” “I can’t pay these bills! Life is so expensive!” Think about what you call in when you say or even think these things.

Then there is the heavy, burdensome subject of debt. Many people can’t bear to look closely at their debt because it’s too terrifying. I remember being like that — not wanting to know my credit card balances, feeling guilty about owing money, believing I had the poverty gene and couldn’t do anything about it, thinking nothing would ever change and it was just who I was, who I would always be, who my family had always been.

None of that is true. None of it! There’s always a new future and a different path available to you, if you choose.

Any thought, sensation, or emotion that makes you feel bad, contracted, or heavy when you think about money is keeping you stuck. Look back through your life. Ask yourself when you started feeling this way about money. What belief about money that’s no longer serving you are you ready to release? It might be something that helped you survive at some point, but you don’t need it anymore. It’s time to modernize, to clean up your thoughts, and to look with clear eyes at what is actually available to you — which is everything.

Shame and guilt are among the lowest vibrational frequencies in the human experience, right above death. If we think of death as a flat line, shame and guilt are low, slow, barely discernible vibrations. It’s not about good and bad. It’s about what makes you vibrate high and what makes you vibrate low. Shame and guilt make you feel bad about yourself, that you’re inherently wrong as a person. They keep you locked into scarcity. If you aren’t enough, then how can you ever have enough?

Of course, the systems in place are meant to keep you in debt, forever compounding interest and compounding shame. Plenty of people profit from the debt-shame paradigm. If you’re in debt, big or small, have you ever asked yourself how it happened? Look at student loans. It’s fucking crazy what kind of interest rates institutions get for student loans. I see my friends feeling crushed under student loan debt and filled with shame and guilt. They think they did this to themselves and they are bad, but the truth is that it’s not entirely their fault.

Our monetary system has a history of preying upon vulnerable people. Look what happened in 2008: people were given mortgages that they weren’t qualified for, until the whole house of cards collapsed. It takes conscious effort to say, “I’m not going to get stuck in feeling guilt and shame about this. I trust that I am where I need to be right now. I trust in my ability to creatively problem-solve and find a way out.”

Another low-vibrational feeling is jealousy, which is believing you can’t have what somebody else has. Jealousy has an obsessive, hoarding energy around it. Yet another one is doubt, when you believe that something isn’t even possible for you. Insecurity means you feel like you are on shaky ground. Anxiety and fear, denial and anger — they all influence the flow of energy toward or away from you.

Instead of saying things like “I want that, but I can’t have it,” think, “I could totally have it. I don’t choose it right now, but I can choose it whenever I want to.” This is you taking back your choice.

Jolie Dawn is the author of Empowered, Sexy, and Free and creator of the Dare to Prosper Challenge, the largest women’s prosperity meditation gathering online, attended by women in more than fifty countries. She specializes in helping women awaken their prosperity consciousness, embody their deepest truth, and reclaim personal freedom and creativity. Visit her online at joliedawn.com.

Excerpted from the book from Empowered, Sexy, and Free. Copyright ©2022 by Jolie Dawn. Printed with permission from New World Library.

My husband and I have been divorced for seven years. A couple of years ago he got remarried, and at that point, everything changed. His wife got pregnant right away, and he got caught up in his new family. I hate to admit it, but I didn't handle it very well. One day we got into another argument, and his wife said that she'd had it with my nasty attitude, and if I wasn't nicer, karma would bite me in the ass. I basically told her to go to hell. Well, after this, every time I was anything but kind or polite to them, something bad would always happen to me. Sometimes, all I had to do was THINK about being rude or nasty, and something would happen. For example, one day I was fuming over the situation and thinking about what I could do to get even. The TV was on, and just when I was thinking about what I might do, there was a loud pop, and smoke began to pour out of the TV! Another time I was on my way to their house to really let them have it when my car just died for no reason. The mechanic couldn't figure out what was wrong with it, but he replaced this and that, which cost me a lot of money. Another time I was chewing my ex out on the phone when all of a sudden, I got this horrible pain in my head. Is this karma, did his wife hex me, or am I somehow doing all this to myself?

- Kristin

Dreamchaser:

These things happened for two reasons. First, they were a direct result and physical manifestation of the anger inside of you. There are a number of movies that depict this phenomenon. For example, Firestarter centered on the character of a little girl who would set stuff on aflame when she got upset, so everyone around her did everything they could to keep her calm.

I know that is a rather dramatic example compared to what you're dealing with, but the same basic concept applies in your case. Your anger gets so intense that it erupts in your outer experience, or it explodes inward and you get a headache, some other pain, or feel exhausted.

Second, the Universe was trying to prevent you from actually completing the task of venting your anger on your husband and his new wife because they haven't done anything wrong. Your husband just moved on and married a perfectly decent woman, and they decided to have a baby.

I know it hurts you that they are moving on with their lives because you always believed he would someday come back to you. When she came into the picture and then got pregnant, all those hopes faded away. You then reacted in the only way you knew how - you got mad.

Anger is an emotion you are very comfortable with. You use it to protect yourself. If you didn't have that anger with your ex-husband and his new wife, you would have to actually feel all the hurt deep inside you, and you don't want to do that. It feels less threatening to get angry.

Kristin, your issues are not with your ex-husband. Your issues stem from old feelings of abandonment and fears that you are not quite good enough. You didn't know how to deal with some things you went through when you were a child, and as a result, you developed the habit of getting angry to avoid feeling emotional pain. Even happiness causes you pain sometimes, and as a result, you've become an angry person.

Ask the people around you. Ask them if you strike them as an angry person. I think most will be afraid to tell you the truth, to be honest. You're probably angry at me right now for even saying this stuff.

What do you want now, Kristin? You can ask the Universe for what you want, but then you must be willing to receive it. You can't have your ex-husband back. He is happy with his new family. He also very much wishes happiness for you, and hopes that you will find new peace and joy.

If you want new love, you can have that. You just have to ask and be willing - I mean REALLY willing - to receive it.

I wish you tranquility on all levels.

*****

Astrea:

When someone tells us that karma is going to get us and we believe that it will, we begin to manifest all sorts of bad experiences for ourselves. No one has put a hex on you, and karma isn't the problem. Being suggestible is the real issue here.

The new wife SUGGESTED that because you were so nasty to the two of them, you would suffer from bad karma, and in that moment, you chose to believe that she was right. It doesn't have a thing to do with her or your ex. You made this all about them, but really it's about your perspective on what you yourself have done and how you act toward others.

I hate to pop your wife-in-law's bubble, but karma is a lot bigger than making you suffer for a nasty remark or two. Karma is the energy we bring from PAST LIVES and what we create in THIS LIFE. If you start thinking more positively and creating better things for yourself, this bad luck you're having will vanish quickly.

YOU control what happens to you, though being nasty to others will certainly cause them to say and do some bad things back. If you look for the bad and you generate ill will, bad stuff always manifests. If you look for good things and try to be kind, you'll see a difference almost immediately. I know if you try, you can even find some good in your ex and his new wife. It may be hard to find, but it's there - you know it is.

Start to cultivate the Light by giving up all that negativity. Pick a start time and don't complain about ANYTHING for a week. This includes anything that normally upsets you. Every time you catch yourself complaining either mentally or out loud, find something positive to think or say too. You'll be amazed at how fast your attitude towards the world will change if you stop thinking in negative terms.

We talk a lot here at Kajama about the law of attraction, which basically says if you want good things, think good thoughts and do good deeds and good things will come your way. That's a simple explanation of a very complicated concept, but it covers it. People who welcome abundance into their lives enjoy that abundance. People who chase it away with negativity don't.

The new wife didn't hex you. You're doing this to yourself. What she DID was suggest that if you didn't get nicer, you would suffer the consequences, and that is exactly what happened.

Do a ritual to clear yourself of all that hostile energy. I'm sure by now you are pretty much over most of the bad stuff that happened between the three of you. Move on and find peace however you can with your ex and his wife.

In other words, it's time for you to start behaving yourself!

Astrea:

Many times in life we hear, "You will always have what you NEED, but not necessarily what you WANT." Your spirit must have needed to experience the feeling of leaving your human body, and the suggestion in the next chapter of Sylvia Brown's book was all it took to get you there.

Even though you hadn't read it yet, your SOUL recognized the title of that chapter as something it had been seeking, and your soul, knowing that you had that reference to read after your experience, got with it and out you went!

While I don't usually recommend her books, Sylvia Brown has a wide reaching and powerful effect on lots of people. A Gemini like you would be able to relate easily to her writing and put it to good use. Synchronicity - you gotta love it!

I like your description of "getting caught." That's exactly what it feels like, isn't it? One minute you're free and hovering above the room, and the next minute, ZAP! back down into your corporeal form you go!

As a little kid, I loved that "feeling of return." With practice, most of the time we can control that event, but sometimes, when our physical ears hear a distracting noise or something else occurs to knock us back into reality, back we go. With practice you will be able to control your return better.

I find it interesting that you were visiting your mother-in-law and not someone in your own genetic family. Evidently, you and your husband got married for reasons that are even deeper than love. His family's interest in "psychic stuff" will nurture your children in such matters and help them to grow into their own abilities.

You'll never have to be concerned that when your daughter visits them, she'll be discouraged from exploring her own psychic life and power. My parents encouraged me to develop my psychic senses in a time when it wasn't nice to even discuss such things in public. Heck, it's STILL not considered a great topic at the dinner table in some families!

Your kids will get to talk about it ALL and ask questions and read and study. This is going to give them such an edge in life! Talk with your husband about how you want to present this to your kiddos, so that you are united in your approach and ready to tell them their experiences are all natural and okay.

A word or two of warning: Geminis often have difficulty staying grounded in REAL LIFE. Don't get so strung out on your ASTRAL life that you neglect what you're doing here on Earth.

You are at the beginning of a long journey to learn where your power really lies. Try to be patient with this process and take your time.