People often ask me how to get rich. The answer: perform  lots of merit in your past life,   and you’ll be rich in this life.

What?

To be born rich without work, like a Paris Hilton, means that you performed lots of acts of charity and merit in past lives, and the karmic fortune or return for those acts finally appears in this life. That’s why you’re born especially blessed– it’s all cause and effect, and nothing more.  Or those karmic returns  can be spread out over several lives (whatever is necessary to make all karmic debts or imbalances repaid), but it’s all past karma nonetheless. No one can say you don’t deserve it; people can only criticize what you do with it.

So that’s why Paris Hiltonis rich, blond, thin, good looking. A little wiffy in the head, but these are the karmic results of many lives of merit. Mother Theresa, who passed away the same week as Princess Diana, will be reborn quite well off as well. Why? She perfromed great acts of hard work, sacrifice, virtue and merit on behalf of others.

Here’s the problem though. Two problems, that is: 

(1) If you’re rich and dumb, you drop. 

(2) If you squander your chance to perform even more acts of charity during a lifetime of wealth and riches, you basically burn up your merit and squander your wealth.

Guess which case poor dear Paris is in?

As my teacher always says, be careful who you teach merit making to. Don’t teach merit making to the really dumb or stupid or unwise because they’ll blindly/ignorantly sacrifice themselves doing good deeds ("let me become a missionary in Africa for Jesus") and then be reborn rich and powerful, but still without wisdom. Then, with great resources at hand, they’ll create all sorts of trouble in society due to their lack of wisdom. Witness powerful and high up government officials who are as dumb as molasses, but their safe position is the merit of past lives’ work for others.

That’s case 1. It’s easy to be reborn rich, but hard to be reborn with wisdom as it takes many lives of cultivation and study.

Case 2 — Now you’re rich but your life is one of conspicious consumption and enjoyment, and hardly anything goes towards merit making. You’re just burning up your stock of merit, that’s all. Next life won’t be so well. What a stupid fool — you finally have a chance to relieve the suffering sof others, and now you squander that opportunity and use up your accumulated stock of merit in one go. You should be reinvesting it so that next life you have even greater opportunities to do good and sponsor the wise, talented and capable who can help.

Another example: Thousands of actors compete for the same roles in movies and on stage. Why this guy or girl wins the role rather than that one? Because in past lives they performed for free, or as offerings for others, and so forth. They can be great, great actors or singers because of many lives of acting performances and training, but without that voluntary offering they may not be as popular as someone else….or even make money at their craft. 

Skill levels do not necessarily equate with popularity, or income levels. It’s all a function of merit.

As my teacher explained, a Michael Jackson probably made offerings of music and song over countless lives. His skills become great, but those offerings are what produced his popularity. Everything is tied together.

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Somewhere I have a list of Chinese Emperors, and what position or status they had achieved in a past life that gave them enough merit to become the Emperor of China. I sat down with Master Nan and asked him who was this guy, and who was that Emperor. All he would tell me was "heavenly merit," meaning he was previously a heavenly denizen, or "Bodhisattva," or "Asura."

The asuras were always in charge, it seems, when there was lots of killing going on. I remember that only one Emperor was called a "mo-guei," which is the Chinese word for  a demon, and the vast majority of rulers were just people who had done enough good deeds to receive a heavenly rebirth and then later, they still retained  the merit for enjoying the rulership of a country.  They weren’t necessary smart or talented or wise, but simply had accumulated enough good deeds over many lives to finally become a King or Emperor. Bodhisattvas who assumed the leadership helm were rare in this bunch of past Emperors, and if I remember correctly he did identify one Buddha or so.

What I realized from this list is that the country gets the ruler it deserves. Because of the fate or karma of a nation, whoever is to produce that fortune is the one who will attain to the leadeship helm. If the nation is to rise, a nation gets a leader who will make it so. If it is destined to fall, it gets a leader who will make it so.

The leader a nation gets is tied in to the karma of the nation, and the karma of a nation is produced by the actions of the nation and its people. As the Old Testament of the Bible rightly records time and again, to change the fate of a nation, a people must repent of their ill ways and return to what is right and just. I speak of how to change one personal fate in White Fat Cow, but here we are speaking of the fate of a group of people or nation. To change the fate of a nation, the best factor to work on is to uplift the national culture. It’s something I  touch on briefly in Socrates and the Path to Enlightenment.

The secret I-Ching historical prediction books found in the Beijing Palace have accurately predicted the rise and fall of Chinese dynasties hundreds of years ahead of time because of the fixity of the underlying karma. There is a consequence for the activities of a nation — whether famine, war, plague, pestilence or prosperity production — and there is a timing to when that can manifest. That’s why prophets can predict things in the future inthe first place … all because of the existence of  underlying karma.

One of these books, a page shown below, is what I call the "Chinese Nostradamus," and I have often wished it translated to show people that these prediction techniques were far more accurate than the wishy-washy Nostradamus writings of the west. Whoever translates this into English will make a tidy fortune because people will be impressed by its accuracy and want to buy it. Incidently, this book too shows there is no such thing as a Armageddon or nearby end of the world as Rapturists dreamof because it will continue thousands and thousands of years on into the future. So many predictions left to go, and this is just one book of many with an accurate track record of centuries with predictions also going centuries forward.

As an aside, the Holy Books of countless traditions continuously assert the continuity of the world far into the future so the religious fixatation on just one of these books (and anintepretation that may or may not even be acurate) while ignoring the accurate track record of others is indicative of wisdomlessness. To be guided in public policy making because of  one’s or another’s interpretation of these things is also foolishness. Unfortunately, many of our leaders today are actually selecting policies with this idea of Armageddon in the back of their minds to justify policies that would never be justified otherwise.

As one of the lessons of history that Master Nan stresses time and again, a leader who forges policy based on religious views will always weaken the nation…witness Tibet, the Arab nations and so forth. Yes there is cause and effect for what you do in terms of strategy, but don’t attach religious significance to your policy and efforts (other than for the appearance or manufacture of national consent). If policy makers are operating with secret religious ideas in the back of their mind, rather than the pragmatics of real politik and strategic power maneuvering, they are bound to produce errors. This is something we are seeing today on many national fronts. While a leader should actively cultivate themselves according to whatever religious tradition they choose, it is foolishness to bring religous views into decision making that risks the survival or well-being of the nation. If religion becomes the guiding principle behind policy, then the nation always becomes internally weak and open to invasive destruction or manipulation.

That aside, this thousand year old page on the future of China refers to the 1980’s when three children (they weren’t sages by any means) named Lee (Lee Tung Hui of Taiwan, Li Peng of China, and Li Kuan Yew of Singapore) started playing around with money, opening up the Chinese market to economic progress. Resultingly, it also records that the people’s greedy behavior would become animal-like because of the abandonment of ethics in the grab for money and profit. Having lived through it, seems like a good description of this time period to me.

The Bodhisattvas that became rulers of China  typically set the standards and laid the foundations for hundreds of years of peace and prosperity in the nation. Paradoxically, they were the ones most opposed for their reforms, renovations, rectifications and reorderings, but the ones that did the most good. Most opposed … most good done. Most hated and criticized (by the establishment, of course), but most accomplished in turning around the nation for the better.

You see, a Bodhisattva will not assume a leadership role in government  in order to enjoy the staus and position, but only to work. They will only choose to use up their merit in being born as a king  to help prevent a further national decline than what is bound to be, or they will arrive at the bottom of a bad fortune period to help the nation finally transition upwards.

…At the top of yang to prevent a bigger decline than what is due to happen, and at the bottom on a yin period to make sure that yin is transformed into yang and good foundations are laid for the advance.

Sages operate the same way, although they do appear to reiterate and solidify a positive development in culture.

Those with heavenly merit left over who became Chinese rulers typically enjoyed their reigns and promoted a mixture of good and bad policies. Typically, historians loved them because they ruled at a time when everything ran well, which was part of their good fortune enjoyments.

Bodhisattvas never choose to be born  into a time to enjoy things and thus waste or squander their merit, but to work the struggle to change the bad to the good. These guys were born to enjoy the fruits of their past merit accumulations. So of course, people romanticize their lives whereas the hard work, and hence criticism for the changes made that lead to the heavenly lives of glory, are made by the Bodhisattvas.

As to the angry gods or asuras, when these were in power the country was always fighting. Arrogant, egotistical, not too intelligent and mafia-like, you didn’t want to live in the country when it was run by an asura. All they know how to do is insist they are the all knowing king under heaven, that they are heavenly anointed and always correct, that their way is the right way, that THEIR strategy for the national good is correct (and they make sure they profit by it, for sure). They used all sorts of national slogans and righteous sounding words but they were essentially just big Mafia bosses, playing the part of a saint on the ouside but fighting, fighting, fighting… killing, killing, killing. This is the way that asuras know best. 

They rendered destruction on countless fronts and produced a tremendous level of bad karma for their nation that would one day have to be paid. You cannot escape karmic consequences; you may be on the top today but when the situation turns, your enemies will seize that chance to get even. So create policy carefully in order not to offend. When you are designing policies and strategies with wisdom, you must take this long view into mind. Just insisting you are right, bullying others and pounding your fists on the table are wonderful theatrics, but they do not insure the safe and sound future of a nation which is in one’s care as a leader. That is what national leaders are charged with protecting. Woe to the ancients when asuras assumed power.

Asuras reborn into power are the men who destroyed countries. They were lovers of brute force but most of all and worse of all, promoters of inelegant , ineffect and misguided strategy. That is the "sin" or worse "crime" of bad leadership — they were not smart enough or qualified enough to choose the right strategies for national peace, prosperity, predominance and pre-eminance. Had they followed the teachings  of Kuan Tzu, which is the leadership style most appropriate for today, they could have gone down in history as  benefactors. Instead, today people still curse their names even though during their reigns, these kings would hear nothing against them. It’s easy to shut up the opposition when you are king because there are all sorts of reasons you can invent — and who can challenge YOU as you’re the king and the rules are yours — to silence the wisdom that goes  against the angy will.

What’s interesting is that Master Nan also always said…some 50 years ago … that the US only had 50 years of good fortune left being the leader of the world. Of course the US would not disappear, but would fall in importance over time to become a nation like Great Britain — important, but only of secondary status. I have often written about and lectured about the world supremacy cycles, and what it takes to get on top and stay on top, and this "prediction" is not so far fetched.

As a famous saying goes, "God has not granted the boon of perpetuity to any state or nation." Another famous book: "Empires waxed and waned, states cleave asunder and coalesce." You see,  changes in ranks of supremacy happen all the time. They can happen in this very lifetime of yours if your leaders promote short sighted policies out of ignorance. They happen in terms of a nation’s educational preparedness of its citizen, its health care rankings, GNP and all sorts of other factors. How easy it is to lose the leadership helm of the world if one practices foolish polices meant to help, but destroy. It’s all a lack of strategic wisdom, which is why I wrote my book on Kuan Tzu, the strategic mastermind forerunner of Sun Tzu.

To see how this happens, there’s a great video by Hans Rosling on how things have already changed in the developing world. These are changes that have happened and you will continue to see such transitions in YOUR LIFETIME:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4237353244338529080

 

 

Thinking it through, for the loss of US position and prestige to happen, of course, the US would in some way (whether elected or not elected) have to inherit the type of leadership that would produce that sort of result. And it would have to start promulgating policies that  alienate the world and weaken its leadership position, all designed, however, with the view to actually promoting the US…or so the ignorant would think.

Just because one has a position of power and predominance or pre-eminance, do not think that means you are not following ignorant ways. Groupthink has destroyed many corporations grown arrogant, and it is only in studying the principles of history, governing and real politik achieved through Taoist type activities that one can remain in control while seemingly doing nothing, alienating no one, and welcomed by all.  It is just  a lack of leadership wisdom when rulers chose poor policies over good ones, which is why I tell people to study Kuan Tzu once again to make these matters clear. Asuras at the helm arrogantly chose to fight and destroy. How much more elegant, effective and admirable are the invisible policies of Bodhisattvas at the helm.

In Chinese history, there are plenty of stories and films of  stupid emperors being surrounded by their one or  two favorite eunuchs, closing their ears to the sound advice of wise advisors and the commonsense pleas of the nation. History portrays them as stupid and self-absorbed, listening to no one else other than yes-men manipulators out for their on power and profit. History protrays these Chinese rulers, though some Roman Emperors have been painted similarly, as blinded by ignorance, self-confidence and by taking the fact that they were King as meaning more than it did.

Self-deception. Ignorant self-deception. Even the excuses they used to continue following their failed policies were ignorant  self-deception. Asuras are like this - they just insist they are right and try to grab from others rather than create good fortune.

If someone offered honest but contrary advice to what the favored eunuchs were saying, Chinese history shows that off would go their heads, or quick would come the dismissals, jail cells, financial ruin and attacks on the do-gooder’s reputation….including attacks on their families. So nothing could be done while the nation continued to sink and an asura was in charge. A common means of discrediting honest officials and citizens would be to say they were part of a plot to overthrow the emperor or empire. That’s the sort of thing you expect when a country is headed for ruin. It was an excuse that assumed many forms and was used to kill all sorts of good citizens.

I don’t want to go into the strategies my own nation should follow to secure the necessary oil, transportation routes and economic assets for its continued prosperity or ascendancy. That’s far too complex for a blog, and these strategies should only be revealed in closed door sessions anyway … and to lions rather than sheep because openly discussing them dilutes  their power in the sense of a Poker player tipping his hand and thus weakening his position.

What I want to say is that the rules and principles for bringing a nation to a state of prosperity, and then ascendancy, and then pre-eminance, can be found in Kuan Tzu’s writings rather than Sun Tzu or the writings of any other sage, including Lao Tzu. If you wish to become the leader of a country, or corporation or organization, and learn how to manage it and its citizens, then Kuan Tzu’s methods are the ones appropriate for today’s world of monetary, military and economic policies. Sun Tzu was merely an intelligent tactician…brilliant but just intelligent. Kuan Tzu, his forerunner, was a supreme wisdom uber-strategist whose policies united nations without friction and conquered nations without fighting.

And so I wrote the only book available today on how to become the leader of a nation, and how to make your state, or corporation, or country or organization into a superpower, and how to become THE pre-eminent individual in the land even when you cannot obtain the top position.

Kuan Tzu! 

One of the biggest lessons I learned when studying feng shui came from a 70 year old practitioner who told me, "Bill, there’s all these books out there with feng shui formulas. But these methods all come from common ancestors and one of the grandaddy books in this tradition says - on the very first page - that when you enter a place and feel the chi, then throw all those formulas out. You just go with your ability to detect the chi, and go from there. That what the rules TRY to capture, but of course if you can feel or sense the chi, that’s what you deal with."

So much for all these feng shui rules. The REAL thing to do is meditate, open up your chi channels, and then you’ll be able to feel chi and work feng shui. Yesthe formulas work, but this is where you should place your emphasis for as an esoteric art, feng shui’s job is to lift you up for the better, and so it’s actually pointing to the need for meditation.

Another big lesson I learned is that most places have remarkably unremakable feng shui, and so it doesn’t really matter for the common man (in most instances)…. Which is to be expected when you think about it.

And for the common man, fortune is almost always more improtant than feng shui, so doing good deeds and acts of merit, being taught good morals and behavior and how to act properly, wisely, skillfully and effectively .. and learning meditation are once again ways to improve your fortune. Work on these first, because the results of improvements in habits THIS WAY carry over to subsequent lives, whereas feng shui is just the environment you’re in now.

Are there chi flows from mountains that can make people rich, or produce artists and generals? Are there supernatural beings that give off chi large enough to affect and area?  Can you use the feng shui knowledge of chi for rainmaking and changing the weather in a region? Yep, yep and more yep. You can find out more withe the new mp3 CD Feng Shui Secrets

"The Secret" has obtained a lot of publicity lately. Unfortunately, many of  the ideas it popularizes will lead to lethargy, poor mental habits and bad results in societies rather than good results. The secret is in working for success, not in JUST wishing for success, imagining success, visualizing success or wanting success. Even  here I’ve left out a big portion of the ingredient for accomplishment  or success — you need merit to succeed in building what you want.

The whole premise of wishing for something, visualizing something and attracting it  without effort, karma or merit  is just basically fiction. If you already HAVE the karma for something then it will come when it’s time (even if you don’t want it), and if you don’t have the merit or karma for something, then it will not come no matter what. If the  universe runs on cause and effect - which most people would agree upon - you have to build or set the requisite causes in motion, of the appropriate type and size, to achieve the results/effects you want. Sure anything can be achieved, but only if you actively create it … not just wish for it. Thinking plays a part int the doing, but the doing is MOST of the actualization. It comes down to your skillfulness, and merit.

The key, really, to producing the karma you want, namely obtaining the results you want, is WORKING FOR THOSE RESULTS. Whether they will transpire or not will be the result of your merit and efforts, and not because of the wanting. It will be the result of building with actions rather than just dreaming with the mind. Yes, the mind plays the part of coordinator, but in this physical world you need physical actions. Never forget that, or fall prey to those $100, $300 or even $1000 courses that tell you otherwise.

Once I asked my teacher about the American tendency to promote the idea of just wishing for things (and so forth)  to mentally attract them or manifest them. You know what I mean — manifestation type thinking. He responded along the lines of , "If I cannot get things that way, why would I want to cheat others they could do so?"

That in a nutshell, summarizes the situation.

However, it is every easy to get money from people by promising them some secret formula that can attract wealth and prosperity and other things. In fact, the promise of salvation, prosperity or all sorts of results are all based on the same thing — promises only - and these have been used throughout history to even form movements that cheated people int he end. Communism is just one example. The fact is, you have to work for things, you have to build the karma for them to manifest. What the positive thinkers and New Age people fail to mention is that results depend on KARMA. If you have it, then these things come and if not, they don’t. So how do you build the karma? That’s the question… Some results come naturally because of karma from past lives (the type that seems the result of "free manifestation") and others are the results of actions done in this life.

Even then, karma is half the battle because if you don’t have the merit (from having done enough good deeds and acts of charity, merit and so forth), you can perform all the right actions in this life and still not get the results you want. So what everyone neglects to point out is that achievement is the function of action, karma and merit, something I explain clearly in White Fat Cow.

Famous marketer Dan Kennedy, whom I respect for his ability to produce material results, often said that 95% of people won’t do anything about anything, so it’s no wonder no one gets results in terms of the future they want to have. They just go along with the flow.

Those that do say they get results from some secret mind method, and who are cited for getting results through "magical thinking" and the like, usually are just people who  coincidentally manifest or mature their fortune at this time, and think it’s because of the methods espoused. That’s all.  If you really could manifest fortune this way, why aren’t they getting $10 billion or $100 million or $50 million dollars rather than $100K? Why aren’t they senators and presidents rather than what they are? All one need do, is have an astrological method like Iron Abacus Numerology performed to show that the results of fortune come  when it’s timed.  And if they can be timed, that shows it’s all due to karma.

Dan Kennedy also corrected a lot of people’s notions about positive thinking when he wrote:

"I’ve had more conversations than I care to count with my students, clients, customers, peers, and friends about “positive thinking.” Through it all, I’ve come to the conclusion that at least 95% of the people who think they’re positive thinkers actually have no idea what positive thinking is all about.

"Too many people think it’s some kind of mystical, magical shield from the real world. They believe that if they just think positive, bad things cannot happen to them. If something bad happens to somebody, they say: “See, you weren’t thinking positively.” But it just doesn’t work that way. You can think positive until you are turning blue from the effort, but you’ll still run into obstacles from time to time. People who believe that positive thinking is supposed to keep the bogeyman away eventually wind up frustrated, discouraged critics of positive thinking.

"Being a positive thinker does not mean that you should refuse to acknowledge the way things are. In fact, people succeed in business, sales, and marketing by dealing with “what is,” not “What ought to be.” The true positive thinker acknowledges potential and existing negative circumstances and reactions, and engineers a plan to overcome them, to achieve positive results." — No B. S. Sales Success, Dan Kennedy, (Self-Counsel Press, Bellingham: WA, 1999), pp. 17-18.

So let’s stand away from the positive thinking and manifestation and attraction type stuff. Sure, you need motivation and a positive attitude to keep going to solve problems and triumph over adversity. So don’t twist my words. And sure you need to know what you want, in terms of a clear mental picture or visualization, to produce what you desire. So don’t twist my words in all the ways you can. The point is, you need much more than this.

What all these people miss is that there are two sides to the situation. There’s the material accomplishment side — you need the Motivation to achieve something, you need action along a Method to achieve something, and your need a Measuring or Monitoring system to see that your actions are going along the lines you want and producing the effects you want. In a gist, that’s what most self-help books are about.

The second half of the equation, for building a fortune that isn’t already in your karma, is what all the New Age people miss. I’m talking about building a fate, fortune or manifest something that isn’t already in your karma. You can work your whole life at it and never achieve it, so how do you create a NEW fortune that isn’t already in your destiny? That’s what all the self help books should be talking about but never do. They only cite example of people who’s fortunes changed because they did X, Y or Z, but those changes were already in the fortune. That’s not a real change in fortunes, just a going along with the fortune.

See what I mean?

The story of Liao Fan, which you can easily find on the web, illustrates this exactly. Which brings up the second half of how to create a new fate, fortune, accomplishment, success or life if it isn’t already in your fortune. The first half of this equation is the magic of worldly action, which everyone talks about. The second half is self-improvement, but a certain type.

First, you need to create Merit for the new fortune to manifest. No merit = no achievement. It’s as simple as that.

Second, you should ask Heaven (meaning higher beings) for help in manifesting the fortune you want that isn’t already in your fate.  Plenty of stories of saints and sages from dozens of religions talk about this. And the best way to do this is Mantra or Prayer. Whether it’s the Prayer of Jabez, the Zhunti Mantra, or a sincere request to heaven every night is up to you. I always recommend a ledger of behavior such as used by Benjamin Franklin, Frank Bettger, various Confucians and Jesuits, the Greeks, and Liao Fan. It’s all the same idea in different formats. People always talk about creating better  societies and self-improvement citizens but they fail to mention that  this type of journaling is the tool that makes it possible. It produces that result because the goal, and your progress towards that goal, is constantly in front of you.

Lastly, the big thing is to change yourself through Meditation. Why meditation? Your karma works through events from the outside that just happen to you interacting with events from the inside, namely your own actions, efforts and responses. How you react and the future you create is due to your habits and inclinations. By learning how to detach from habits and inclinations and thoughts that would propel you down a different direction, you can create a new future. That’s why all the sages espouse meditation for changing your fortune.  

Naturally there is much more to it than that, but we can summarize the fact that in learning how to let go of the trajectory of your current present fortune, you can then, with wisdom and action, build the new fortune you desire. The key is to watch your mind and learn emptiness or detachment from what might prompt you down the opposite path, and meditation is the tool or remedy for this ill. Only meditation can achieve this. But even if you’re empty you still need actions and merit for accomplishment along the lines of what you intend to build.

So the self-help crowd always focuses on one side of the equation, and nothing more. They resort to mystical exhortations as the cure to a new destiny, and neglect the practicalities of the world and the words of the sages. In fact, they create pseudo-mumbo jumbo explanations to explain why "manifestation  thinking" might work, and neglect the deep basis of karma, working for results, and so forth that the sages from COUNTLESS religions commonly talk about. In fact, they cannot explain away the effectiveness of methods like Iron Abacus Astrology and what they really prove in terms of the truth about karma and so forth. If they did, they’d have to abandon all sorts of other false thoughts, and then they would have nothing to sell.

If they had to admit to karma and self-responsibility and work, customers wouldn’t like that and profits would go down. It’s always better to promise a free universe you can take from with no work to be done, and the idea that you deserve it. Also, if they had to admit to karma, they’d have to admit to reincarnation (which all the sages espouse) and if they had to do that, they’d have to  update their religious notions that they  mix in with their work  to justify the reason people justly "deserve" any future they imagine. It all goes beyond any type of logical thinking.

All of this is detailed in White Fat Cow, which is the first and only book to ever talk about the REAL way for changing your fate and destiny in a way that’s truly beyond your karma, rather than just manifesting the karma you have in store. Maybe you put acts into motion because some book motivated you or propelled you, so you owe your wealth to that, but if you calculated it out according to astrology or Tieh Pan Shen Shen (Iron Abacus Numerology) you’d see it was just a manifestation of a fate you had previously built, and your motivating force was just the tinder box in this life to ignite that fortune’s manifestation. You didn’t step outside of fate to build a new one; you just manifested a new state that was already in your fortune.

Anyway, White Fat Cow: The 6M Method for Changing Your Fate, Fortune and Destiny is the only one that explains the metaphysics behind this in an ontological no-nonsense sense. Finally someone did it by linking up the stories from countless religions and spiritual streams of people who changed their Fixed fates and fortunes by following the recipe of the sages. And since it’s the same recipe, it’s the same non-denominational cure.

White Fat Cow …