Scare City and A Bun Dance

When I left school at eighteen years old in 1970, I lived a hand-to-mouth homeless
existence in London.

I saw it as a real-life learning adventure. I had been inspired by reading George Orwell's
book: 'Down and Out in London and Paris’.

I worked selling hot dogs and hamburgers from a mobile stand that I wheeled out every
evening from a garage in Covent Garden, London, and parked on Piccadilly to serve the
theatre-goers. I was paid a third of what I took in sales. The more I sold, the more I made.
I slept most nights in a dosshouse that mainly catered to tramps and the many assorted
London homeless.

Sometimes I worked all night and slept in my car. When I finished work selling hot dogs, at
two in the morning, I started work in the Convent Garden vegetable and flower market
unloading trucks. The produce on the trucks was sold in the market. I was paid a pound for
each truck I unloaded, and it would take me a couple of hours.

Sometimes I made a little extra by presenting myself to late-night revellers on Piccadilly as

a minicab driver. Of course, my Ford Anglia was not registered as a minicab, so what I was
doing was illegal, but an eighteen-year-old teenager does what they think they must do to
make ends meet, and at the time I thought the risk of getting caught was minimal.
At any time, the sum total of my financial worth could be measured by digging in my
pocket, pulling out my wallet, and counting the money in there.

I scrimped and saved and eventually decided to set off on my travels to the east - I wanted
to go around the world - with a total of three hundred and fifty pounds to my name.
I figured that it might get me as far as India, but then I would need to work my passage on
a ship to continue my travels to Australia. I had no idea if this was really possible. There
was no Lonely Planet book to consult, let alone the internet!

Eleven years later, in 1981 I was still traveling and living hand-to-mouth, but now in Santa
Cruz, California.

It was my birthday and I had seventy dollars to my name.

I was beginning to consider the wild idea that just possibly I might be partly accountable for
my situation.

This idea was scary because it meant that I might now have to take responsibility for my
choices, but it was also empowering because it meant that I was not helpless and
hopeless. I could actually take action to change my life by changing the one and only thing
I could change - myself.

The action I decided to take was to invest my meagre savings of seventy dollars in an
experience that would help me to understand and heal myself of the habits that kept me
imprisoned in poverty.

In Santa Cruz, at that time, every new-age, inner-growth modality was available. e.g.
Psycho-spiritual counselling, primal scream therapy, past-life regression, Reichian
bodywork, Rolfing bodywork, Gestalt therapy, to name but a few.
My friends unanimously recommended Rebirthing - a kind of breath-work - as the
experience with the most value for the investment.

On my birthday I gave myself a Rebirthing as a present.

My rebirther was calm, regulated, and present. About halfway through the rebirthing, I re-
experienced my actual birth. At one point I felt a tightness around my throat and I couldn’t
breathe. I was terrified because I thought I was going to die.

I managed to say ‘I can’t breathe’ to my rebirther, who was sitting beside me. She was
completely unperturbed.

She smiled gently and said, “You survived your birth, you will survive your rebirthing”.
Her calm manner helped me to relax because I trusted her wisdom and experience.

“Sip the air slowly,” she encouraged.

I followed her directions and gradually was able to sip more and more air until I was taking
huge gulps. I felt as if the air was filling my entire body, from the top of my head to the tips
of my toes. The rebirthing continued for a couple more hours.
When I was complete, my rebirther helped me harvest the learning that I could take away
from the experience.

She asked me if I could remember what I has said when I was struggling to breathe and
gasping for air. I couldn’t remember.

“You kept saying ‘I can’t get enough'. Is that a theme in your life? Does it ring any bells?”
she asked.

“Oh my god, that’s the story of my life,” I replied, astonished. “My whole life. I can’t get
enough love, sex, money, satisfaction, happiness, fun, - everything and anything. It's the
curse of being a perfectionist.”

I had had this thought when I was struggling for air during my rebirthing. If this was a re-
enactment of my actual birth, it was one of my very first thoughts, and it was combined
with very strong feelings of sheer terror. No wonder it became a neural super-highway! A
place I went every time I could interpret what I saw as verification that there was not
enough, and this was a world of scarcity.

“So let’s make an affirmation to turn around this negative belief,” she said. “Got any
ideas?”

I was still integrating the whole experience and had no idea.

“How about this,” she said. “‘The world is an abundant place, flowing with love, money, and
sex. There’s enough for everyone, including me.’ Does that work for you?”
“Sure,” I said.
“OK, I want you to write it down now on this piece of paper.”
I wrote it down.
“Now draw a vertical line,” she continued, “and on the other side of the line, write your
inner response to the affirmation you just wrote .”

On the other side of the line, I wrote the word “Bullshit”.

“Perfect,” she said, “now do it ten times in total - the affirmations and the answers. And I
want you to do this ten times, every day, for the next thirty days, and then give me a call
for a check-in.”

A month later, I called my rebirther.

“I remember your first response to your affirmation was ‘bullshit’. What kind of responses
are you getting now?”
“I’m getting responses like ‘This could actually be true,” I replied.
“Wonderful. That means that your brain is beginning to accept the possibility that there
may be another way to go. A new highway is under construction. This one will meet your
present needs a whole lot better. Keep up the good work for another month.”
A month later, I had no more negative responses to my new affirmation. I had a good
cashflow and was feeling both lucky and prosperous. I was so impressed by my first
rebirthing I had decided to become a rebirther myself. I was now earning good money on a
building site and could afford the training, which included some advanced one-day
workshops given by experienced rebirthers on a one-off basis.

I went to a one-day workshop on Abundance given by Leonard Orr, the founder of

Rebirthing.

He started off by asking us who had ever used the terms, ‘filthy rich’, ‘stinking rich’, ‘money
is the root of all evil’, or ‘money corrupts’. The room was a forest of raised hands, including
mine.

Next, he took out a hundred-dollar bill and put it on the table in front of us. “Ok - now let’s
watch it do some corrupting,” he said.

Of course, the hundred-dollar bill did no such thing. It remained sitting on the table.
“ What did you learn from that?” he asked me.
“That it’s not the money that corrupts - it’s what people do with the money,” I replied.
“Correct. Money can be used for good - to meet people’s needs - or to prevent people from
getting their needs met, and when those deprived needs are for basic survival, and people
die because of it, we call that evil.”

From that day on I became more conscious of my speech around money. I no longer
referred to anyone as ‘filthy rich’. I stopped affirming that rich was something I did not want
to become by putting it down all the time, and I started affirming that not only am I already
rich in money because I have enough, but I am also prosperous and abundant in love, sex,
and friendship.

Leonard also recommended that we always carry a one hundred dollar bill in our wallets.
This is especially important when we are starting out from a place of scarcity.
The reason is that every time you see that hundred dollar bill you are reminded that you
cannot possibly be poor because you have a hundred bucks in your wallet. It stops those
scarcity thoughts right in their tracks.

Leonard also taught me that wealth is a state of mind. It’s not about how much money you
have. When you know that the world is an abundant place and there really is enough for
everyone, you don’t need to compete with others, you can share.
Money, joy, and love are constantly flowing towards us. We only have to open up our gates
to let them in. Simply imagining we are a ‘money magnet’ can open these gates wide.
Abundance is a state of mind, not a bank balance. We can attract a lot of money, lose it all,
and then easily attract it again.

Living in abundance supports our needs for purpose (i.e. contribution - making a difference
to others), survival, health, and safety.

Since applying these affirmations and working with them, I have experienced a complete
turn-around in my financial circumstances. Money flows towards me in all sorts of
mysterious ways. An example of this happened recently when I was walking along the
beach. A wave rolled in and left a brand new $50 bill lying on the sand right in front of me.
Just a coincidence? You decide.

Living in scarcity is living in Scare City, a very frightening place to be because there is
never enough - of anything.

Living in abundance is A-Bun-Dance - A-Fun-Dance - with a slight spelling mistake!

Anyone fancy a boogie?

“It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.” – Seneca