On Monday, Ken and Karen were given until Friday to decide whether or not they wanted to transfer to a new department at work. Each morning, the dark circles under Ken’s eyes were more prominent. By Friday morning, he was so worried and weary that his voice trembled slightly when he asked for an extension of the deadline, “I’m exhausted. There are so many things to think about.  I can’t figure out which decision to make.”

Karen’s work situation was virtually identical to Ken’s. Their personal responsibilities and support networks were so similar that they had instantly bonded as coworkers.  Even though Karen had been given the same pressing deadline to make a decision, she showed no evidence of stress.  Apparently, her decision-making was quick and easy.  On Wednesday morning, she informed the supervisor with a confident voice and a thumbs-up sign, “The best choice is clear to me. I’m ready to make the transfer.”

As a Wall Street investment banking executive for many years, I discovered the power of invested capital to create companies, build new industries like biotechnology and the Internet, and create billions in stock market value. But as a business and life coach and spiritual teacher, I realized that our greatest resource is the inner wealth that lies within us — our spiritual or inner qualities such as insight, intuition, vision, and so on. Learning how to awaken and invest this tremendous inner wealth will enable you to reach your goals, increase your income, and find deep personal fulfillment.

Affluence, unboundedness, and abundance are our natural state. We just need to restore the memory of what we already know. — Deepak Chopra

Affluence is the experience in which our needs are easily met and our desires spontaneously fulfilled. We feel joy, health, happiness, and vitality in every moment of our existence.

Affluence is reality, and the true purpose of this book is to give us an insight into the nature of reality. When we are grounded in the nature of reality and we also know that this same reality is our own nature, then we realize that we can create anything, because all of material creation has the same origin. Nature goes to the same place to create a cluster of nebulas, a galaxy of stars, a rain forest, or a human body as it goes to create a thought.

We are not created to spend our lives in fearful preparation over what may come – but rather to use whatever comes our way, each moment, to help us perfect our understanding that God is good.

In those moments when we meet a challenge that stands in our way, we are not meeting some immovable, transient object. In reality, we are meeting nothing more than our own present understanding of that event. Wherever we are - whatever we encounter - we meet there our own understanding.

This is such an important insight for us to ponder: the dimension – the breadth and depth of any event transpiring before us – is a reflection of the level of self that perceives it. In other words, life cannot be any deeper, wiser, shallow, or selfish than permitted by what we are capable of understanding about it.