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Jim Harold interviews experts on metaphysics in this PLUS ONLY podcast. For Jim's other PLUS shows, go to JimHaroldPlus.com

Jan 27, 2022

Dr. Susan Shumsky talks to us about ways to create abundance in our lives. You can find her recent book on the subject at Amazon: 

Prosperity Meditations: Everyday Practices to Create an Abundant Life

TRANSCRIPT

Please note we do not guarantee 100% transcript accuracy. The below reflects a best effort. Thank you for your understanding.

Jim Harold 0:00
Fleeting glimpses of things seen through a veil, darkly. Do we understand the meaning of these visions? Of life? Why we are here and how little of our existence we truly understand? Tonight we will talk about these things on the Other Side.

Welcome to the Other Side. I am Jim Harold. So glad to be with you once again. And we have a returning guest, who always has a very interesting perspective and does very interesting work. We're talking about Dr. Susan Shumsky. And she has a new book out that is perfect, I think for this time of year, as I told her offline. It's called Prosperity Meditations: Everyday Practices to Create an Abundant Life, and Susan has dedicated her life to helping people take command of their lives in highly effective powerful and positive ways. For two decades, her mentor was Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, guru of The Beatles and Deepak Chopra. She is an award winning author of 19 books, including Instant Healing, Earth Energy Meditations and Third Eye Meditations. She is a pioneer in the human potential field and a new thought minister. She has taught meditation, prayer, affirmation, and intuition worldwide for 50 years. And we're so glad to have her back on the program. Dr. Shumsky, welcome back.

Susan Shumsky 1:27
Oh, thanks for inviting me, Jim, it's always great to speak with you.

Jim Harold 1:31
As I mentioned to you before we hit record, it seems to me that those of us who have interest in spirituality and the higher planes of life, sometimes some of us get into our heads this idea that money is bad, and we should shun money, because it is the opposite of the light, the opposite of the positive. Do you find that that's the case? And if so, why do you think that is?

Susan Shumsky 2:00
Yes, people believe that way, because they've been brainwashed to believe that way since birth. So many of us who are raised in this kind of Judeo-Christian background, where we are taught that money is the root of all evil, that it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a wealthy person to go--to enter the kingdom of God or kingdom of heaven. I mean, when we've been taught that it's better to be poor, and that the, the poor people are spiritual, and that wealthy people can never be spiritual. Unfortunately, that really puts a dent on spiritual people who have the welfare of the world in their minds and in their hearts. I would think that if such people who have all the best intentions, if they had more resources at their command, that means they would have more power to do good in the world. Because money is not evil. Money is just energy, money is a way for us to be effective in the world. And if we have more resources, and we're more effective, and if we have the, the welfare of, of the world in our heart, then we could create heaven on earth here.

Jim Harold 3:34
Now, let me ask you this. And I want to be very careful how I say this, because sometimes people are in dire straits, where they're, you know, they're--they're critically ill, or they have some other things working against them. So I don't want to come across with the idea that you just, you know, think good thoughts and everything turns out okay. But it seems to me--I'll just use myself as an example. In my times of my life, where I considered myself--I'm not a wealthy person, I'm a middle class person, but I do okay, and I'm pretty happy with my life and pretty thankful. But the thing was in times where I wasn't doing okay, I had this mindset, that the mindset was, I'm stuck in this rut, I'm never going to get out, this is never going to get any better. And that was career wise, that was financially wise. And I have noticed over the years, as I think more positively, positive things happen out of the blue. Do you find that with people that, you know, whether it's career, whatever it might be, aspect of life or financial prosperity, that, you know, like attracts like, and when you tend to be positive about these things, they tend to work out better than when you're the other way?

Susan Shumsky 4:49
Well, yes, absolutely. And it's--that's just really a spiritual law. It's a law of the universe. It's, it's the law of karma. And that law states that it is done unto you, as you believe. It states that when you are positive, you attract positivity into your life. Buddha said in the very first verse of the first chapter of the Dhammapada, which is arguably the most important scripture in Buddhism, he said all that we are, is the result of what we have thought, which I think that's quite a statement. All that we are is the result of what we have thought. And then he goes on to say in the same verse, he says, if a person speaks or acts with a pure thought, then happiness follows him or her. If a person speaks or acts with an impure thought, and--or an evil thought, unhappiness follows him or her. So what he's saying in this verse is that we do create our own destiny, moment by moment, day by day, through every thought, every word, and every deed. So we are really responsible for our own destiny, we are creating it moment by moment. And Jesus said the same thing. He said that we are not defiled by what we put into our mouths, we are defiled by what comes out of our mouth. So he is also saying that thoughts, words and deeds--well words, in that case, have tremendous power. So you know, if we go around saying, 'Oh, I'm so unhappy, I'm so poor, I'm so sick, I'm so, I'm so weak." If we go around saying these types of things, certainly, we're creating--we're creating that in our lives. But if we go around, saying, "I'm so happy, I am joyous, I am fulfilled, I'm filled with light and filled with love, and filled with power, I am an all powerful being, like, the world is at my command," if we say these kinds of statements, then we are creating that reality. So especially when we invoke the mighty I Am Presence by saying the words I am. Whenever you say the words I am, it's really important that we--what you say after those words. That should be something that you want to own that you want to create in your life. Because we have that creative power. The reality is, we are creating moment by moment, every thought that we have is a prayer, because every thought that we have contributes towards our destiny, towards our reality, towards our own fate.

Jim Harold 7:56
I'll use another example from my life because it's kind of what I've got, I don't mean to make it the Jim show here in terms of talking about my life, but I know why people deal with this. It took me decades to get out of some kind of negative self talk, you know, you can't be successful because of where you came from, you know, I came from a very working class area, I was not--I did not grow up surburbanite, I grew up in, you know, I could see smokestacks from my house. So I was always told, "Well, you might have done well in school, and so forth. But you know, you're only going to make it so far, because you don't know people are because of this or because of that." And I think a lot of times those older generations, honestly use that kind of thing as a defense mechanism. They didn't want you to get your hopes up. Because sometimes through their lives, they had seen their hopes dashed, and they just assumed it was going to work out that way for you. So they kind of try to, quote, toughen you up and let you know, well don't you know, don't think that you're going to go too far because of where you come from, or whatever, you don't know the right people, or whatever it is. It literally took me decades to push through that and say, Hey, I'm my own person. You know, yeah, I, I might have started a little behind at the starting line. But boy, I've done a great job of catching up, and I'm just as good as these other people, and I can achieve anything they can. And it took me, I would say til my 40s, till I kind of got my head screwed on straight and said, Hey, don't don't self limit yourself. You can do anything anybody else can do. I'm not going to be playing in the NBA (laughs). I wouldn't have been doing that when I was 20. But within reason, I can do anything anybody else can. So how do we kind of pull ourselves out of those grips of self talk that may have been put on us not as not meant as a negative but as like an armor, but how do we--how do we throw those off and push through that?

Susan Shumsky 10:02
Well you know Jim, you have to start somewhere. And I know that it's challenging to change beliefs, it's really, really challenging because of the fact that that's how we've been brainwashed for so so so long. But we have to start somewhere, we can't just stay in the rut that we're in. And that's the reason why I wrote the Prosperity Meditations is to help people to begin a new path. And the way forward is to use some of the methods in this book. One of the methods is a guided meditation. Guided meditation is the easiest possible way for anyone to meditate. Because all you have to do is follow the instructions step by step. So a guided meditation, you can either read it from the book, just read it, which will help you to go into a meditative state, or even better is to record the words onto a device, and then sit comfortably get into a really comfortable position. And then start the playback and close your eyes. And then your own voice will guide you into the meditative state. Meditation is very, very powerful for changing our intentions, changing our beliefs, getting us into a peaceful state, getting us into a state where we feel this unbounded awareness, this peacefulness within and also inner strength, it will increase our confidence in our inner strength when we are in touch with our own Higher Self with our true divine nature of being. So guided meditation is one thing. Another is affirmation. Affirmation is so powerful, you may have noticed that when I said the negative statements, it just contracted the whole atmosphere. And it was kind of depressing to hear these negative statements. But then when I said the positive statements, it was like the whole thing shifted immediately. And the fact is that affirmations are the most incredible way to instantly change your mood to instantly change your intention and change your atmosphere, your mental atmosphere and the atmosphere around you. So words have so much power. And affirmation is one really powerful way to use words in a positive way. So there's affirmations in this book, prosperity, meditations. Also there are mantras, mantras are traditional Sanskrit sounds, and words that have specific effects. So there are mantras for, for magnetizing prosperity into your life. So and then also prayers are in the book, various, various religions. So you know, all of these techniques, and there's also by the way, other methods, prosperity, methods, such as vision, scrapbooking, in vision boards, and goal setting strategies, all of these things go towards making really changing your attitudes about money. Because the attitude is what's going to attract prosperity into your life and abundance on all levels, not just--we're not just talking about money, by the way, in my book.

Jim Harold 13:52
And let me ask you this, what role does thankfulness play? For example, I'll give you example, everybody listening to me, by the fact that they have a device to listen, or they have access to the internet, they are in a better position than a huge percentage of Earth's population who do not have access to these things. I mean, you know, we can talk about spirituality because people who may live in technologically, quote less advanced societies may have some spiritual advantages on us. But in terms of resources, almost everybody listening to this basically has more resources than a huge percentage of the word, and then the people who get to read your book, so does thankfulness for what you do have, and kind of your starting point, does that play into it as well?

Susan Shumsky 14:46
Thankfulness is extremely important. An attitude of gratitude attracts abundance on all levels, physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, material, on every level. When we are grateful, it just amps up our intention for good. It amps up our ability to attract good into our lives. So yeah, gratitude is very important. And of course, gratitude is included in my book, Prosperity Meditations.

Jim Harold 15:23
Now, how does that work with the meditations and the affirmations? Because maybe when you're starting out, you say to yourself, "Well, I really want to do this, I want to give this a try." But then you start saying the affirmations or you start listening to the meditations that you've recorded. And then that inner skeptic starts saying, "This doesn't work. That's not true." How do you overcome those, and does just the act of going through with it help overcome that?

Susan Shumsky 15:54
Well, yes, you just nailed it on the head. Yes, the act of going through it, the act of just going through the process of speaking the affirmation, of practicing the meditation, that will begin to heal, the skeptic will begin to heal the old programs, the old beliefs, habits, conditioning, that we've all been brainwashed to believe. And you know, it's difficult. It requires effort, it requires effort in the sense of doing it. I mean, it's not effortful, it's not difficult or anything. It's the easiest thing, especially in guided meditation. I call it the Do Nothing program do nothing, nothing and less than nothing. Just follow the instructions and that will guide you in meditation. People say, "Oh, I can't meditate, I can't do this. I have to blank my mind. So I can't meditate," that--these are erroneous ideas. There's all kinds of erroneous ideas about meditation. Guided meditation is something anyone can do. Anyone who can either read or listen to the instructions, can go into meditation, and it--and give up preconceived notions about what meditation quote unquote is. Just go with instructions and see what happens. And yeah, I think just giving it a try, you have to start somewhere. How are you going to change all of these decades of beliefs? It's not going to change instantaneously. I mean, it's not going to change entirely instantaneously. But there will be instant results with every single step that you do. With every meditation and with every affirmation and every mantra, it's going to produce an instant result, you're going to feel better, you're going to feel more positive, step by step. You know, this is a skill, really, it's a skill, meditation, affirmation. These are all skills that take time to practice, and learn and, and master. It's just like playing the piano, you know, you might make mistakes at first, it doesn't sound so good at first, the then eventually, you master it, you become good at it, and people want to hear you play.

Jim Harold 18:29
Now you talk about in the book, you talk about a vision scrapbook. What is a vision scrapbook?

Susan Shumsky 18:35
Yeah, a vision scrapbook as a fun kind of project that can transform your life. And the idea is to just get a scrapbook, buy a scrapbook. And then you're going to be filling your scrapbook with your dreams and desires, your heartfelt dreams and desires. So for example, each page of your scrapbook will be a different theme. Like one page might be health. Another page might be money. Another would be career, another would be home, another might be automobile. So each page of your scrapbook will represent a certain area of life. And what you would do is you would cut out pictures from magazines or download pictures from the internet, and then paste them onto the various pages of your scrapbook in to be pictures that would represent the things that you want to manifest in your life. And so you might for example, cut out a picture of a place you want to go on vacation. One of your pages might be you know, my summer vacation or something, and then putting some words onto the page. You can either write some affirmations on the page, or you cut out some phrases, positive phrases from a magazine, or type out some words and then print those out and put them in your scrapbook. And then you might also include what represents your higher power, a picture that represents your higher power. And you might put that on the top of the page and maybe draw some golden rays from that, that picture onto the thing you want to manifest. And then you would spend just a few minutes, a couple minutes every day going through your scrapbook, and reading audibly, the affirmations that you've written there, the positive phrases that you've written there. So what this does is, it focuses your attention and intention to manifest these things in your life. So it keeps your goals in your mind and in your heart. And that helps you to have the incentive and determination and drive and persistence to manifest your dreams and desires. Because in reality, you're the creator of your destiny, and you have to create it yourself. So keeping your goals in your--foremost in your mind will help you to persevere. And I keep talking about perseverance and determination, because you have to do it, you have to make it happen. You can't just sit around and look at your scrapbook, you have to make it happen.

Jim Harold 21:33
Yeah, that's--well, that was the thing I was gonna ask you about. Because I fully believe that these kind of things can work, I do believe. But it also takes--to me, I think of like a chemical reaction, and you put things in a test tube, and then, you know, maybe they go poof. And for me, you know, you do these practices. But then you also, you know, if you're talking about a career thing, you work hard. Now, if you don't--if you don't put in the effort, then just looking at your vision scrapbook, you know, that, that might not be as productive. Is that the right way of thinking about it?

Susan Shumsky 22:15
Absolutely. So I've always believed that in order to make anything happen in life, you have to just do it, you have to persevere, you have to have absolute resolve and determination. And for me ever since I was a youngster, and I always just simply made decisions to do things and then made them happen. And when I made a decision, it was an absolute decision. It wasn't just a dream or something. I made a firm and final decision with absolute resolve. And absolute resolve means, you know, there's no, there's no alternative, if you're going to do this, this is what you're going to manifest in your life. So whenever I have done that, then I've created my destiny and moved forward to manifest those things. And that really, our thoughts, our Power of Intention is the most important factor.

Jim Harold 23:24
Now what--what would a visualization maybe sound like? Or what--if you could talk us through some of that?

Susan Shumsky 23:34
Yeah, visualization is also a method that is in this book, Prosperity Meditations. There are visualizations, there are meditations that are visualizations. And visualization means, it says if you have a screen--movie screen, in your mind, in your mind's eye, and you place your desired target, the thing you want to accomplish, you place that on your movie screen, in vivid color, and with vivid action. And you imagine yourself in that situation. And not only seeing it, but hearing, feeling, using as many senses as possible. Getting the real feeling of what it's like to manifest that thing that's in your heart. So for instance, maybe you want a beautiful home. So you would put that in your movie screen--on your movie screen, and you would walk through that home and imagine every room in the home, and imagine the landscaping outside, the inside, and you play a little movie in your mind. So that's what visualization is. Some people are better at visualization, some people are not so good at it. That's the reason why I suggest the vision boards and the vision scrapbooks. Because you don't have to do it in your mind. It's just easier to visualize when you have it right there, concrete, something you've cut out of a magazine (laughs). There was a gentleman named John Assaraf and he was one of the stars of the movie, The Secret. And what he did is he created a vision board. He cut out a picture from a magazine of a house that he was attracted to, that he would dream about living in. So he put it on his vision board. And then he had his vision board. You know, he posted it up in his home somewhere where he would see it every day. And then after a while, he forgot about it, he put it away, boxed it up and put it away when he moved somewhere else. Then many years later, he had just moved into another new home. And he had a three year old son and his son said, "Daddy, what's in this box here?" And so Daddy said, "Well, let's just open the box and take a look." So they open the box and there was the vision board. And this vision board--he was completely stunned. Because the vision board had a picture of the house--in this, in this box, this vision board, there was a picture of the house. And it was--it wasn't --it didn't just look like the house that they were living in at the moment. It was the house that they were living in. It was the exact house and he was completely stunned. And I had a similar experience myself where I made a vision scrapbook. And one of the pages was my perfect mate and companion. So I cut out a picture of a guy from the GQ magazine, a guy that just looked attractive to me. And I stuck it on that page on my relationship page and my vision scrapbook. And I would look at the scrapbook every day, and read the affirmations. And then after a while, I packed it up and put it away. And then many years later, I opened up that box and I looked at that vision scrapbook. And I was completely amazed and flabbergasted because the guy, the picture of the guy from the GQ magazine looked like the spitting image of a guy that I had dated for a year.

Jim Harold 27:32
Oh, that's funny. You know, I got to tell you, it reminds me a story that happened to my wife. My wife and I met in 1990 in college. And I guess she liked me, but I didn't really know it or whatever. We were in a group, a science and religion class where we talked about a lot of, kind of almost spirituality and tied with, with Science, which was kind of interesting in and of itself. We both had an interest in those kinds of things. And we met in 1990. And then we lost touch and did not reconnect until I would say what, early 1994. But the funny thing was, is I was on the school newspaper. And one time, they had a staff photo and I was in it. And she had cut it in--she had cut it out and put it in a scrapbook around the time we met or whatever, which was very nice. That was very sweet. But the funny thing was, is that one day she was gonna throw it out, and she said, "No, no, I'm gonna keep that because someday I'll tell my, you know, grandchildren about this guy I met in college I really liked." And then lo and behold, in 1994, through just like a series of coincidences, we reconnected and, you know, we've been married for--well this will be 26 years in May. And I just--it really resonated with me when you said about the scrapbook. I thought that was really interesting.

Susan Shumsky 29:03
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Jim Harold 29:07
So if somebody wants to start this practice, but they're a little apprehensive, you know, "this sounds like oh, this is too big for me." Or, you know, "I like the idea but I'm, I'm afraid." Obviously, they should pick up the book, what are kind of like the baby steps just to kind of ease into it? Or should we not ease into it? Should we go with both feet?

Susan Shumsky 29:29
(Laughs) Some people, some people might jump in the deep end. Other people, they want to just play in the shallow water a little bit. It doesn't matter. Start somewhere. That's the idea is just start somewhere, start anywhere. This book has a great appendix by the way. In the appendix is a list of all the methods in the book. So you can choose. Just go to the appendix and there there's various areas of life, prosperous awareness, prosperous empowerment, prosperous happiness, prosperous pathway and purpose, manifestation, career, home and automobile, lifestyle, bank account, physical health, mental health, spiritual health, self love, relationships, and world, and peace on earth. So there are various methods. Within each of those topics, there are all the methods are listed in the appendix. So you can just go through and see what you'd like to focus on at the moment. Or, I would suggest you just start from the beginning of the book and go through the book step by step because it's written in an order to help you to develop what I call prosperity consciousness. So it's best to do it in the order, but like I said, you can skip around and just go to the appendix and find things that really attract you. For example, healing your home atmosphere, or purposeful career path, or prosperous purpose affirmation. Those are just some titles of the various practices in the books.

Jim Harold 31:25
Well, it's been a great discussion and very interesting indeed. Dr. Shumsky, where can we find Prosperity Meditations: Everyday Practices to Create an Abundant Life? And where can we find everything else that you do? Because I know you have multiple websites and so forth.

Susan Shumsky 31:44
Yeah, so my websites are drsusan.org, drsusan.org and then also divinetravels.com. That's plural on the travels that's d i v i n e t r a v e l s, plural, divinetravels.com. Now as far as the book Prosperity Meditations, anywhere that books are sold, you can get Prosperity Meditations, I recommend that you go to your local bookstore, or call your local bookstore, support local businesses. This is a time to do that. You can go to indiebound.com, which is a way that you can look up your local bookstores. Obviously, you can get my books on everywhere the books are sold online, and so on, as well.

Jim Harold 32:42
Well, very interesting. Indeed. We've had a great discussion with Dr. Susan Shumsky. The book is Prosperity Meditations: Everyday Practices to Create an Abundant Life, and we hope that you check it out. Dr. Shumsky, thank you for joining us today on the program, continued success in 2022.

Susan Shumsky 33:03
And thanks for inviting me, Jim. It was really great to speak with you today. I enjoyed it tremendously.

Jim Harold 33:09
Thank you, doctor, and thank you for tuning into the program. We appreciate it, and may you have a very prosperous 2022. Thanks so much for tuning in. And we'll talk to you next time. Bye bye, everybody.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai