Once upon a time (say, in the Reagan years) we were taught that it was desirable to use our wits to do more, have more and be more than our fellow citizens. There was no such thing as too much. Now, as it all falls apart, we’re seeing the end result of a strategy that raised up a few at the expense of the many. Where we once took pride in “separating ourselves from the herd,” we now find some meager comfort in knowing “we’re all in the same boat.”

Money is a heady drug and there are countless books, seminars and methodologies out these days that feed our addiction for accumulating wealth, ranging from financial strategies taught by investment gurus to metaphysical techniques using the “law of attraction.” Before we make money our goal, however, it may serve more in the long run to understand why we want more.

Addiction results when we use any activity or substance to try to fill a void that can’t be filled that way. We wind up needing more – and more and there’s never “enough.” When inwardly we feel lack – something that has nothing to do with money – we’ll never be satisfied with what we have. No matter how much money we make, we’ll create debt, struggle and worry out of it.

This isn’t meant in any way to moralize on the virtues of poverty. It’s consuming and debilitating to struggle with financial survival, even if it’s a six-figure income we’re struggling on (I recently heard a report on the lifestyle of bailed-out Wall Street bankers, describing how difficult it would be for them to manage on a $500,000 salary cap). It limits our ability to thrive and to be of use to the world around us. But, regardless of our income, don’t we all personally know someone with a bigger income who struggles to make ends meet, and another who seems at peace with less? (Think about that.)

Prosperity is a state of mind, and when we have it, we automatically program our lives to work financially. Whether we have a lot or a little, we have our needs and wants fulfilled. We have the ability to attract money, without compromising ourselves in the process, and we also are able to create an abundant life without an abundance of money.

True prosperity is available to us without limit. We can have all we need to fulfill our highest purpose and live our highest joy. For some this takes a lot of money, and for others it requires much less. My own personal role models of prosperity include the well-known spiritual teacher “Peace Pilgrim,” who owned only what she could carry on her person and felt freer having less, as well as a wealthy couple who have given great gifts to their community through their philanthropy. Falling in the middle of these extremes is an individual I know who simply practices kindness and generosity and always seems to easily manifest the trappings of a happy, gracious, materially comfortable life without a terribly large income.

As we unhook the idea of “prosperity” from the prerequisite of “a lot of money,” it suddenly becomes easier to create a happy, abundant life with or without money, whether or not it looks like our neighbor’s version of wealth. This point is often missed, even in popular metaphysical teachings on prosperity, that it doesn’t necessarily take a large income to live prosperously.

The hidden blessing, and perhaps higher purpose, underlying the financial crunch shared by so many of us is that it’s forcing us to break the easy habit of money addiction. As we face head-on the void that money could never fill, we discover that it doesn’t take money to nurture our spiritual lives and intimate relationships – and that the experience of joy is completely free.

Here’s an experiment that might help break some of your spending addictions and rewire your thinking about money. For a month see how many days you can go without spending money. Also, consider letting go of small purchase routines that you don’t really need. Take a snack or beverage with you so you can let go of the purchased coffee or snack habit, for example. Notice ways you’ve become dependent upon money for recreation, self-nurturing or socialization, and be creative in finding less-costly alternatives. Take the money you save and put it toward some sacred purpose. It might be a gift you give away, or you could use it as seed money to fund a cherished dream, or even to buy yourself something that usually feels too extravagant.

See if you don’t start noticing the difference between “spending” and living prosperously.

“The Law of Attraction” has become a mainstream topic of talk that tells us that anything is possible if we just change our mind. Meanwhile the world is undergoing the worst economic downturn in most of our memories. Never before have such widely divergent realities of hope and fear pulled at us.

Those of us willing to entertain New Thought ideas of limitlessness may still find ourselves drawn into the collective experience of scarcity as the crashing economy and mass panic make “changing our mind” no easy feat. Practicing popular prosperity techniques without addressing the season of growth our world is in can backfire, like trying to plant a garden in the middle of a snow storm.

There are ways to work with times of apparent scarcity that aren’t rooted in fear and actually help build energy for a leap into new abundance and growth. What’s more, when we successfully rise above the collective wave of fear, not only do we create personal prosperity, but our increase is rooted in love. Then, instead of prospering on the backs of others, we create a healing ripple that raises others up with us.

While there is a plethora of New Thought teachings on how to separate ourselves from the collective experience and create our own personal prosperity, I believe it’s important first to acknowledge how we’re part of the collective, and as such, had a part in bringing about the current experience of financial crisis.

It’s not hard to see how the attitude of “Me first” got us into our current situation, but it may be harder to recognize that “Me” consciousness isn’t the exclusive purview of billionaires and corporations. Neither is it simply a matter of overt greed and malevolence. Its more subtle manifestations include all the ways we get so caught up in ourselves that we have nothing left for the world around us. It might look like depression, or getting absorbed in worries and survival fears, or becoming so busy with the demands of life that there’s no attention left for kindness or caring; it might look like stubborn self-sufficiency that forgets others might be there to help if we could just bring ourselves to reach out.

As “Me” consciousness got us into crisis, “We” consciousness will take us out of it. Just as the 1980s made personal ambition and wealth chic, I foresee the next decade will bring compassion and relatedness into vogue, not dollar signs. The New Age success techniques that were popularized in the ’80s – from affirmation work to creative visualization – need some updating. These times call for something more than simply locking ourselves away with our vision boards and copies of The Secret, intent on achieving our personal wealth. I think the strength of the collective experience right now is calling us to have a collective experience.

Prosperity in this era must come through cooperation, collaboration and community rather than through personal advancement. Interdependence is the new path to prosperity.

Having a network of support and interdependence requires the investment of time – something many of us in today’s fast-paced world believe we simply don’t have to give. When individuals believe they have no time for quality-of-life priorities, they may well unconsciously “resolve” the dilemma by manifesting a physical illness that forces new choices and a slower pace. On a macrocosmic scale, when we collectively can’t find time for the human interaction that nourishes heart and soul, perhaps we’ve unwittingly “solved” the problem by disappearing jobs and other financial supports that keep us locked in self-sufficiency, so that we have no choice but to rely on one another.

An obvious payoff to the financial downturn is that it’s inspiring people to appreciate what we still have without money. Over the Christmas holidays, I was surprised by how many people I encountered, including those whose finances haven’t been directly affected, who chose to dispense with long-held gift-giving traditions and, like “the Who’s down in Whoville,” created a holiday based simply on being together.

That we all had a part in creating the circumstances of today isn’t a cause for shame but a call to action.

As a move toward prosperity, instead of focusing on your wealth and self-sufficiency, consider the richness of your personal community. What is your experience of interdependence? Who’s there for you emotionally, spiritually and in times of need? Who’s there when you celebrate? Who can you rely on? Who are you there for? If self-sufficiency has triumphed over interrelatedness in your life, consider giving your greatest resource, your time and caring, toward nurturing relationships. Find those people with whom you can give and receive, accomplish more together than separately, have fun without spending money; and be fully yourself.

It may seem costly to find the time, and not relevant to the goal of prosperity at all – yet, in the long run, it may be the wisest investment of your life.

The next installments of this series will include practical steps for supporting prosperity in times of scarcity and spiritual steps for creating True Prosperity any time.

Every election day I see a smaller than usual turn-out for my Tuesday night class, what with people’s time and attention so taken up with the political process at hand. In the historic election of 2008, I decided the best way to get any turn-out at all would be to hold an after-voting event aimed at envisioning healing for our world and its leaders.

But as class was about to start, I was distracted and agitated. I wished I had just cancelled for the evening, because all I wanted was to glue myself to a TV and watch as results trickle in. We were all tense, still in that early hour when just two states had been called: one blue, one red. My small group of five, a bit reluctantly, tore ourselves away from the radio that had been tuned to a news station and refocused our attention on the healing work set for the evening.

A little later, still in the mellow afterglow of spiritual healing, I came up with an exercise just for fun. I asked everyone to write the names of two wise and well-known leaders from the past on separate 3×5 cards and throw them face down into the center of our circle without sharing what we wrote. When we had a pile of cards representing various history makers of the past, we chose five of them, one at a time. We let each leader "speak" to us by using our intuitive minds to imagine what they’d say. The experience that followed took us beyond the interesting exercise we expected into the territory of goose bumps and tingles. It became even more meaningful in the hours after the election.

Here are some of our "conversations with wisdom" that night.

The first card turned over was John F. Kennedy. He spoke to us about seeds of change planted in the 60s that seemed to disappear for a while but had actually been germinating in the collective consciousness and now are ready to reappear, with lasting strength this time.

The second card was Jesus, who spoke of everyone needing to become a leader. He said this is why Barack Obama has been so quickly propelled to the position of president. He is one who leads by empowering everyone and, collectively, we are now ready for this.

The next card turned over was Martin Luther King, Jr. At first, he appeared so overcome by emotion that he just wordlessly shared his tears of joy. But, being a man of such powerful words, the speaking soon followed. He said Barack Obama is a "bridge," that this soul chose the unusually diverse circumstances of his early life as preparation for playing this important role for the world. His purpose is not just to bridge the divide between races or political parties. He is here to bring the world together, bridging separateness of all sorts, and to demonstrate the greater power of love over fear.

As we all let the impact of these words sink in, we decided to move on to another voice. The next card picked was…Martin Luther King, Jr., again! We jokingly apologized for moving on before the honored Doctor was finished, and let him "speak" once more.

This time he emphasized how Obama can’t do it alone. Everyone is called to a new level of involvement and service. There must be more mass demonstrations of peaceful cooperation. He said the huge turnout to vote was one such demonstration and more are needed. He spoke of a new resurgence of patriotism; that patriotism has in recent years been commandeered by a small group in service to fear-based agendas. Now patriotism will be something different – a love of country rooted in love of humanity and in service. Rather than defending what we love against the rest of the world, the new patriotism would seek to reach out in love to the world around us. He said that our new national "defense" program will be an offering of aid and education to the people of the world, which will quite naturally disempower dangerous governments.

After this rather long message, we decided to turn over another card to hear one last voice. When the next card was revealed, we all seemed to catch our breath in synch as it once again showed the name of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

By now we felt there was no coincidence in play, that this wise soul is profoundly involved in the historic events of the evening. In his last message to us he gave reassurance – a reassurance we didn’t realize how much we needed until it was given – that this one, Obama, would not need to sacrifice himself as many who preceded him did (at which point we all connected the dots: J.F.K., Jesus, Dr. King…all killed for their service). Not to worry, the need for this kind of pain was over.

I left class that night deeply grateful to have been exactly where I was instead of anxiously fixed on my television. And later, I watched on TV the many tearful faces overcome with joy, just as Dr. King first appeared to us. I saw his daughter speak eloquently of Barack Obama as a "bridge," echoing with eerie precision her father’s words. I watched the predicted president elect, Obama, so gracefully reach across party lines to recognize the importance of each of us and to ask for everyone’s help.

Then I, who have never felt patriotic in my life, who even thought patriotism to be too divisive a sentiment for a world so in need of common ground, felt a wave of pride and love for my country unlike anything I’ve ever known before.

The first healing service I ever attended with the world-renowned healer, Dr. Willard Fuller, was in 1999. It was a packed event held in a Unity Church in Golden Valley, Minn., and in no time at all he had hundreds of normally taciturn and composed Minnesotans laughing, shrieking and screaming "AAAA-men!" in true Southern Baptist style. After an hour or so of lively talk, he and his wife Althea, also a minister of healing, laid hands on everyone in the house, healing at breakneck speed.

Afterward, he began pulling people out of the audience and quizzing them about the state of their dental work. Discretely popping a Tic Tac breath mint, he asked them to open their mouths and, with flashlight and dental mirrors, peered in to take a look. Then he let them see for themselves. Pandemonium broke out as one person after another saw gold fillings where there had been none and other such startling changes, no short of miraculous. Members of the audience rushed up to crowd around someone’s open mouth to watch teeth change right before their eyes, while others inspected their own teeth with mirrors that had been passed around the room.

I enjoyed the spectacle, feeling uplifted and inspired but didn’t realize that I, too, had received a mouthful of shiny new fillings until hours later at home when, just for the heck of it, I looked in a mirror. Since then, I’ve attended a number of other large healing services with Dr. Fuller – and they’re always the same. After a while, the mind-blowing transmutation of teeth, as well as all sorts of other spontaneous healings, begin to feel common place. A teenage friend of mine had the experience of all her fillings and cavities disappearing. She left the healing service with a mouthful of perfect virgin teeth, much to her mother’s astonishment.

I travel in circles of people who are open-minded and willing to believe all manner of things most people don’t. But even my most "out there" friends looked at me dubiously when I told them the story of my teeth instantly growing new fillings through prayer. I found that people whO’d have no trouble believing that inoperable cancer could be spontaneously healed have difficulty believing that teeth can spontaneously heal.

This is exactly why I find Dr. Fuller’s ministry of dental-healing so compelling. It could be argued that dental needs aren’t as crucial to our well-being as the healing of more serious diseases. Yet teeth are such a bony, stony, unchangeable part of ourselves – a part we believe simply can’t get better without the extreme interventions of drilling, pulling, filling and replacing. If we can experience this rock-like part of our body changing so easily and instantaneously, then what, truly, is impossible? What other "carved-in-stone" aspects of our body, mind and life circumstances might also be subject to some new rules of reality?

Though Willard’s style is all Southern, his theology couldn’t be further from his roots as a Southern Baptist minister. When the gift of healing came to him some five decades ago, as he put it, he had to make a choice between Christ and Christianity. Now, his great passion is the formation of a "Spiritual United Nations" to bring spiritual leaders from all religions together to find the common ground of unconditional love that all spiritual paths share and help lead the world to unity.

In his mid-eighties, Dr. Fuller and his wife, Dr. Althea Cook, retired from the non-stop travel of their ministry and established a small retreat center in the remote town of Lloyd, Fla., where he now teaches theology, ordains students and offers healing to all those willing to make the pilgrimage to Northern Florida. Now in his nineties, it’s been a handful of years since Dr. Fuller has conducted one of the exciting, large group healing services that made him famous. However, with the help of phone conferencing technology, all that’s changing.

On March 30 at 4 p.m. Eastern (3 p.m. Central), Dr. Fuller and Lynn Woodland will conduct a national, phone-in healing service for up to 250 callers. While participants need to pay their usual long-distance rates, the healing, like all Dr. Fuller’s work, is offered unconditionally, with an option to make a free-will donation. To find out how to take part in this event, see wwwlynnwoodland.com or call 651.642.5405.