by Alan Cohen

When my coaching client Lana was a small baby, her parents divorced and she never saw her father again. For much of her life, she felt sad because she was fatherless. As an adult, Lana became a life coach and wanted to set up a studio and business, but she did not have the funds. Then she received a surprise letter informing her that her father had died and left her a substantial inheritance—enough to start her coaching business and a lot more.

Like Lana, you may feel fatherless—not so much for a physical father, but for a source of support, abundance, and well-being to live the life you would choose. You may feel in some way deprived or outside the circle of enoughness. Meanwhile the universe has ingenious ways and means to take care of you.    

The spiritual teacher Bashar defines abundance as “the ability to do what you need to do when you need to do it.”

This definition says nothing about a particular amount of money in your bank account or a specified way your support should come. There are an infinite number of ways you can be taken care of.

Money is just one of them.

I sat on an airplane next to a woman who told me that she and her husband wanted to live amidst lush nature on the island of Kauai, but the couple did not have money to make such a purchase. Then they met someone from a family that had just inherited an 1,100-acre estate in one of the most beautiful areas of that island. The family lived far away and needed caretakers for the estate. They didn’t have to ask this woman twice. Now she and her husband live there full time, enjoy all the amenities as if they owned the property, and the owners hardly ever visit. This entire transaction occurred without the couple having to pay even a penny.

Don’t get stuck on how your supply should show up. You may have your idea that it should come through a particular person, job, sale, or investment, but it could come in any one of a thousand ways. The universe is clever and creative when it comes to manifestation. Affirm, “I am open and willing to have the universe support me in the easiest and most efficient way possible,” and you will set in motion the positive dynamics necessary to work on your behalf.

In my book Handle with Prayer, I designate several different identities or positions from which most people pray.

One is that of a beggar, in which you see yourself as unworthy and outside the kingdom and you must scratch and plead to get your prayers answered. The next identity is the servant, in which you see yourself as a worker on God’s payroll and you live in the kingdom because you have a job at which you are earning your good. The next level is that of Child of God, meaning that you deserve the kingdom not because of anything you have done, but simply because you are heir to the estate established by your infinitely wealthy Source. While all the positions of prayer work if you are sincere, the identity in which you deserve the kingdom by virtue of who you are is the closest to the truth and the most rewarding to exercise.    

Someone gave me a pamphlet titled, Are You Letting Life Love You?

That pamphlet sat on my coffee table for years, and every time I looked at the title I had to do an honest introspection. We spend lots of time trying to make life love us, through people and things and events, but less time noticing how life is already loving us. You have been taken care of very nicely thus far.

The hand of Grace that has provided for your needs will not stop now. The ego wants us to believe that the current challenge is an exception to the presence of love, but it is not. The universe has not let you down so far, and it will not let you down now or ever. You are valuable and you are loved. This is God’s vision of you, calling for you to join it.  

You are not fatherless, abandoned, or unsupported. Those thoughts are tricks of the mind fooled by current appearances. But appearances cannot override the truth that you have an infinite, eternal, loving Source that will give you exactly what you need when you need it. If you discovered that you have a winning lottery ticket, all you need to do is go to the lottery office, show your ticket, and claim your winnings. You don’t have to beg, plead, argue, explain, or convince the bank of good to give you what you deserve. The number you are holding gives you all the entrée you need.

You were born with the winning ticket; everyone was.

But only a few are willing to show it with confidence. Ask and it is given, but claim and it is done.  

Alan Cohen is the author of The Grace Factor: Opening the Door to Infinite Love. Become a certified professional life coach though Alan’s transformational Life Coach Training beginning September 1. For more information about this program, his books and videos, free daily inspirational quotes, online courses, and weekly radio show, visit www.AlanCohen.com.