by Tosha Silver
ALSO BY
TOSHA SILVER
Change Me Prayers: The Hidden Power of Spiritual Surrender
Outrageous Openness: Letting the Divine Take the Lead
Make Me Your Own: Poems to the Divine Beloved
Copyright © 2019 by Tosha Silver
Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Excerpt from Outrageous Openness by Tosha Silver. Copyright © 2014 Tosha Silver. Reprinted with the permission of Atria Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by: Hay House, Inc.: www.hayhouse.com® • Published in Australia by: Hay House Australia Pty. Ltd.: www.hayhouse.com.au • Published in the United Kingdom by: Hay House UK, Ltd.: www.hayhouse.co.uk • Published in India by: Hay House Publishers India: www.hayhouse.co.in
Cover design: Micah Kandros • Interior design: Nick C. Welch
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, or in the form of a phonographic recording; nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or otherwise be copied for public or private use—other than for “fair use” as brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews—without prior written permission of the publisher.
The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.
Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4019-5473-4
E-book ISBN: 978-1-4019-5474-1
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
1st edition, February 2019
Printed in the United States of America
To Maha Kali
CONTENTS
Introduction
A Word on Terminology
Week One: A Total Relief
Week Two: The 5 Divine Steps
Week Three: Deepening
Week Four: Energetic Clearing
Week Five: The Forgotten Inner Kid
Week Six: The Crown Jewels
Week Seven: No, You’re Not Crazy, You’re Being Tested
Week Eight: Being the Abundant Road
Resources for Going Deeper
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Ironically
when you let the Divine take the lead
old desires often begin to hatch
and be fulfilled
anyway
(as a gift from Love Herself)
except now
you’re not
their slave
— Tosha Silver, “Unshackled,” Make Me Your Own
INTRODUCTION
Dad, I TOLD you. If God’s not included,
I just get bored.
— Little girl in line at Kohl’s
If anyone told me years ago that I’d be writing a spiritual book about money, I’d never have believed it. But when I look back on my life, it makes total sense. All my other books have centered on the practical ways to surrender and let the Divine lead, and money might be the single stickiest topic for this approach. Many spiritually-minded people will invite the Divine into almost anything, except the moolah.
I grew up the middle child in a middle-class Jewish family where my parents worked incredibly hard for my two brothers and me to feel physically comfortable. I’ll be grateful to them forever. Nonetheless, my obsession from a very young age was a single topic: Impending Doom. No matter how seemingly safe we were, I was always sure that in some vague and intractable way, disaster waited right around the next corner.
Perhaps this incessant fear came from being born just a couple of generations from the Holocaust with distant relatives who’d perished there. As a kid, I’d heard stories about pogroms, concentration camps, and collapsing economies. Perhaps terror was encoded straight into my DNA.
Or maybe it was the legacy of past lives replete with suffering, loss, and travail. All I know is that despite growing up in a quiet ranch-style home with a weeping willow tree I madly loved in the backyard, nonstop anxiety was my steady reality. My constant wait for that indefinable other shoe to drop emerged in some wild and dramatic ways.
When I was six, my mom left the house one rainy afternoon without saying anything, which was rare. Within twenty minutes, I was running down the street, banging on doors and frantically screaming her name, sure she’d been kidnapped. When I found her calmly sitting in a neighbor’s kitchen, drinking coffee and borrowing eggs, I collapsed into her lap in heaving tears of relief. She gave the neighbor a wry look like, “Yes, here is my darling, hypersensitive daughter.”
When my parents went out for an occasional date, my older brother would look forward to winning Scrabble with Patti, our babysitter. Meanwhile, I’d sit with my face flush against the cold bedroom window, staring down the dark street, waiting hour after hour for the lights of their returning Pontiac. When I’d finally hear the key in the door, joy would flood my body like sunshine at midnight. I’d feel as if tragedy had somehow once again been averted for another evening. But who knew when it might strike next?
So yes, I had a feverish imagination with a sense of nonstop peril, though I learned early to appear as brave and normal as possible. Once I graduated from college, those survival fears immediately swamped me, almost in spite of the job opportunities that came. I began teaching ESL part-time at a community college and eventually had a side business doing bodywork and intuitive counseling.
The terror of “not-enough” was a constant storm cloud. If a client canceled, I panicked. Though I covered the bills month to month, I kept fretting about what I’d do if I couldn’t one day. This led to such overwork and exhaustion that by the time I was 30, I was bedridden for 3 years with adrenal failure, something I wrote about in my first two books.
By the ’90s, when I was regaining my health, the New Age ideas about manifesting and the Law of Attraction were beginning to boom. Many of my clients were enamored with the notion that any desire could be “magnetically attracted” through visualizations and positive thoughts. They put up vision boards with pictures of everything they wanted, from Balinese vacations to artist’s lofts in Manhattan. But I also noticed that many lived in fear that any negative thought might stunt the delivery. Some even blamed themselves ferociously when each and every wish didn’t hatch, assuming they’d surely “blocked” them.
Yet right from the start, this Grand Chase of the Wishes, kind of like a metaphysical Iditarod, left me feeling empty and bemused. Growing up in relative comfort yet beset by constant fear, I had no illusions that fixating on that laundry list of desires could ever bring much peace. I’d watched some of my own clients create fame and fortune, then have it all crash. People manifested soul mates, then lost them just as fast. One painful desire only seemed to beget another.
At the same time, I longed to go deeper into my own spiritual studies of yogic philosophy. I’d been introduced to yoga in college and I sensed it held many answers, far beyond stress reduction and a better butt. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that, as Seinfeld would say.) I knew there had to be a deeper, more nuanced answer to life than to be born, chase stuff, and die. I longed to find a sense of safety and enoughness—the sense that de
spite ups and downs, crashes and cataclysms, one could somehow prosper—separate from life’s inevitable flux.
So I began to study famous ancient texts from India such as the Bhagavad Gita and Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. I found unspeakable comfort in their ideas such as detachment (vairagya), nongrasping (aparigraha), and surrender (ishvara pranidhana). They were the delicious, calming drinks that my fevered mind had been thirsting for forever.
At the same time, I discovered the works of Florence Scovel Shinn, a metaphysical author from the last century. She’d been a no-nonsense New Yorker who most notably wrote The Game of Life and How to Play It. Through Flo, I “got” that God is the Source of all. Period. The End. I came to see that this Source could be invoked in all situations, no matter how seemingly impossible. Florence’s understanding of Divine Order—that a coherent plan underlay even the biggest challenges—began to feed my starving psyche. Combined with my studies of yogic texts, a new way forward began to emerge from the blinding fog of my fears.
It was as if God just rolled over laughing: “You know, honey, you’re here to learn how to serve Me, not issue one command after another. So, just let Me take over. You’ll stop living in abject terror and recall why you were born. All needs will be met beyond what you can imagine!”
Besides, my own ego could never manifest much of anything even when it tried! And while I knew that the Law of Attraction had some truth (our thoughts in part indeed create our reality), I came to see that other laws reliably operated as well. From the yogic texts, I was especially drawn to the Law of Prarabdha Karma, the idea that in each lifetime, a soul is born for a distinct curriculum. Every desire might not be meant to occur, no matter how many vision boards you make.
I began to sense that the peace I’d always craved would come from learning to live in conscious harmony with this Force. I ferociously longed to learn how to let It use me, rather than trying to use It to get wishes. The hyper-vigilant chasing of desires felt like utter micromanagement to me. So many people thought, If I’m on guard every blessed second, maybe I’ll finally, finally get what I want. But I was coming to see that the ego could be a bottomless pit of wishes, not all of which are for the soul’s highest good.
Through Florence Scovel Shinn’s vision of Divine Source—the idea that no person, place, or thing was my protection and safety, only Love Itself—my life began to shift even more. I learned how to drop the ego’s agenda and let go, sometimes very, very painfully. But as I did this, a new sense of holy abundance began to emerge. It had nothing to do with manifesting millions and everything to do with knowing how to open, give, receive, and serve the Flow.
This is something I believe anyone can learn, regardless of age, race, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, or anything else. Because in the most practical way, God transcends all of it.
Now, I’m in no way ignoring the very real “isms” that afflict and infect this society, often in the most brutal and unjust ways. Nonetheless, when you invite and embody this Source, your current, temporary incarnational body and conditions are transcended. You open to however Divine largesse is meant to come for you personally. With willingness, curiosity, or even just “Hell, I’m completely exhausted,” this new way can be learned.
THE ORIGINAL COURSE
The idea for this book originated from an online class I taught a couple years ago—one people had begged me to do forever. Many had read my other books or had been part of a Living “Outrageous Openness” online forum I run, where the art of letting the Divine lead is practiced.
In a world that feels more insanely unstable by the day, folks wanted a step-by-step way to feel enoughness. Most of all, they wanted to be able to stop agonizing about abundance. The irony was not lost on me that through God’s exquisite sense of comedy, people were coming to the former consummate Catastrophe Queen herself for help.
Hundreds of people signed up for the initial online voyage, and we set sail together. The enthusiasm every week was electric. The longer it went on, the more excited we all got. (By the way, all the letters and most of the stories in this book are from people in the course, though some are altered for the sake of anonymity.) I saw how anyone, regardless of background, who sincerely applied the principles of Divine Source could gain a new relationship to money that did not require manifesting a damn thing.
By the time the voyage was over, I felt an incredibly strong pull to write this book. Its message is the opposite of “You’ll learn how to change or improve yourself.” You’ll be letting Love Itself bring changes that you might have zero idea how to execute. This isn’t about “I can do it!” Instead, “I, the ego, may not have a clue, but God sure does!”
You’ll learn to offer all your financial problems to Love—and not just as a dry intellectual exercise. The fixation on manifesting has sadly led many people to think of God in only a utilitarian way. But luckily, She is more than a Cosmic Costco.
This isn’t about co-creating, vision boarding, or writing yourself a pretend check for a million dollars from the Bank of Divinity. Instead, you’ll begin to offer your money, your problems, your desires—all of it—back to Love, and you’ll disentangle from the matrix of grasping and forcing. Over time, the awareness will come that this indeed is not yours. You’ll feel part of something larger that you can serve and that longs to serve you.
In short, you’ll become a conduit for Divine Flow. Since no individual person, place, or thing will be mistaken as your salvation, you’ll become open to how God wants to deliver, often in ways you’d never imagine! Equally, you may open to how Spirit wants to use you in order to give. These are all highly learnable skills.
Now perhaps you’re reading this and thinking, Um . . . I have $38 in my bank account right now and I had to borrow the money to buy this freakin’ book, so how the heck will this all happen? (On the other hand, you may be someone who has plenty of money, yet always fears loss.)
Yet wherever you are financially matters not, because if you commit wholeheartedly to this process, you will move into the Divine Flow, with the idea that God alone is the owner and origin of all.
And then, I promise you, everything will change.
SO WHAT’S WITH THE TITLE?
Maybe this book’s title is what lured you in the first place, but it truly wasn’t meant as some catchy catnip phrase. When I say, “It’s not your money,” holy mama, I mean it.
It really isn’t.
And it’s sure not mine, either.
It’s all God’s.
Perhaps the more cynical of you are thinking (as a radio host once said to me), “That’s not even possible! Are you on crack? If someone stole your car tomorrow, they’d be taking your vehicle. You’d be the one who’d have to deal with it!” Which is true. Yes, of course, on one level it’s your car, your money—all of it. But on a deeper level it is not. That’s the paradox.
Before too long, you may well sense and trust this for yourself.
Because if something—whether fate, desperation, or your best friend—drew you here, perhaps you’re ready to wake up from a certain culturally induced sleepwalk. Your inner alarm clock may have gone off, saying, “Time to know that Love is the provider of all.”
You may be ready, finally ready, to be abundance rather than chase it.
I’ll take you through specific steps to help this shift happen. The original course was eight weeks, and I strongly suggest you follow suit and carve out the same amount of time. Because the limiting beliefs most people carry can be so entrenched, eight weeks will feel long enough for the brain to shift yet short enough for you to keep you inspired.
Don’t forget: Little by little, as you serve Love, you’ll start to feel that you’re being taken care of. Trust will develop that every true need will be met.
For me—and many who have followed these principles—discovering that this fear could abate was like getting early parole on a life sentence. Since it’s not your money, but God’s, you don’t have to stress, strategize, plot, or ma
nifest to make it all happen.
Anything gained through the ego can be lost, but when you’re part of the Flow, God can use anything and anyone to provide. The right actions and connections can come from anywhere. Something larger than the ego can finally take over, and if your soul needs something, it will come.
The power of constant incoming grace, the joy of receiving, the arrival of synchronicity after synchronicity like crashing waves onto the sacred shore of your life—now that is true abundance.
A WORD ON TERMINOLOGY
Before we dive in, I need to address two issues.
#1 SO WHAT ABOUT GOD?
I’ve found that many people need permission to rewrite old language so that it feels empowering. For some, the word God is laden with such emotional and historical baggage that it triggers only shame, fear, and guilt. A woman wrote me that she was troubled by the idea of a Divine plan, since growing up as a strict Catholic in the ’60s, to her, plan meant suffering. She was wondering if by Divine, I actually meant Infinite Goodness instead of Cosmic Punisher.
Yes, indeed. I suggested she use the term of her choice. Or Love. Or Eternity. Or maybe the Flow. Or even one of my favorites, the Sanskrit Shakti, the Supreme Force that animates all creation. To me, it doesn’t matter. The name is a holder for what, in the end, is incomparable and unnamable.
Everyone is different. If you have an affinity with a particular deity, you could use Its name. For example, some offer to Jesus, Buddha, or Lakshmi, the shimmering Devi of Abundance from India, while others see God as formless light. Some prefer Goddess to escape the 2,000-year-old noose of patriarchal language, while still others relate to the idea of the Beloved, in the way of Sufi poets like Rumi.
Some folks like myself find words like God, Lord, or Divine, or Spirit to be protective and comforting. However, I see them without gender, so I interchange He and She often. I’ll mostly use these, but I’ll sprinkle in others as well. Please do what you need to make this language supportive, personal, and inviting.