Fredric Lehrman’s Prosperity Consciousness
Fredric Lehrman’s Prosperity Consciousness Audiobook review:
Prosperity is a psychological process. That is obvious. What is not so obvious is why psychology pays so little attention to it. Articles by psychologists about the Oedipus complex, which most psychologists today doubt even exists, has used up enough ink to fill Lake Ontario, but one could review thousands of articles in the leading psychological journals before finding one that addresses the best way to overcome the pressure or anxiety that any rational person feels when attempting to build a new business or undertake a new commercial venture.
Of course, business persons know the value of attitude, and there is a rich wealth of material on how to improve motivate and cultivate creativity and so on. But by and large it is not the product of professional scholars, but rather of experience, if one is lucky, or wishful thinking, if one is not; but both tend to encourage and cheer-lead rather than to provide direct effective steps to re-shape thought so as to take one from financial struggle to financial – and spiritual – flourishing. NLP, which began as formal academic psychology and has morphed into the seminar circuit, had a brief moment when creativity was still girded by rigor and produced a number of practices that remain worth exploring. But apart from that, what is new in financial psychology has not been especially true, and what is true has not been especially new.
The Man
Enter Prosperity Consciousness by Fredric Lehrman. He attended Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania. He studied Eastern music with Koto master Shinichi Yuize, and North Indian vocalist Pandit Pran Nath. For nine years he studied Tai Chi under the late Tai Chi master, Cheng Man-ch’ing, and founded several schools of Tai-Chi Chuan in American cities. At other times he was a director of Domain, Ltd. a real estate company in Pennsylvania; a partner in the Arnolfini Emprise, a development firm in upstate New York; a director of the Sky Self-education Foundation in San Diego, specializing in cultural trend analysis; and was active in venture capital funding for new technologies. As a consultant his clients have included Microsoft, 3M Corporation, Celestial Seasonings Tea Company; the Center for Soviet American Dialogue, Seattle, and Banana Republic Clothing Stores.
In short, he is one of the more eminently qualified teachers, and one of the more thoroughly experienced entrepreneurs, of our time. And in 1994, on the heels of a seminar called “Getting Money Right: The Psychology of Wealth”, Lehrman received a request from Nightingale-Conant Corporation to create an audio course on the subject. The result was Prosperity Consciousness, an audio program which has sold over 20,000 copies and is now being translated into several languages.
The Message
Lehrman, like Geshe Michael Roach of The Diamond Cutter, combines a thorough grounding in meditative practices with an equally thorough background in business and business success. He knows from experience how cultivating inner subjectivity can lead to greater outer productivity and creativity, and he details it not in vague psychobabble but in effective core practices.
‘Prosperity consciousness’ has since become something of a popular term used to describe the view that by welcoming and opening one’s mind to financial opportunities, one thereby attracts financial wealth. Lehrman’s views are quite a bit more sober: success stems from doing the right things, doing the right things stems from facing and analyzing your beliefs and attitudes concerning those actions (and understanding how attitudes can supercharge or undercut the right actions), and – perhaps most of all – understanding that the criteria of success is not something provided by others but rather lie at the center of one’s views and one’s self. In other words, his approach is not one of blankly repeating affirmations, or passively daydreaming of wealth, but instead involves a close examination of one’s subjective attitudes, objective activities, and ultimate values.
The approach is almost more existential than meditative, in that one is not trying to transform oneself, but rather to genuinely encounter oneself, perhaps for the first time, and to insightfully relate that understanding to a world in which money is a central tool in enabling self-development, and in which entrepreneurship can in fact be a valid spiritual path.
Five Star Reviews
Not for nothing is every Amazon review of Lehrmann’s Prosperity Consciousness a five-star review, nor is it a surprise that one begins, “Fredric’s Knowledge Has Changed My Life As I Know It!” This is indeed material that can make you richer, but not simply financially richer – emotionally richer, intellectually richer, perhaps even spiritually richer. Prosperity as a spiritual path, and a spiritual practice, is something quite novel in the history of spiritual development; it may well turn out to be the West’s most unique contribution to Eastern spiritual traditions. Whatever its historical impact, however, its personal impact can be life-enhancing in every respect. We who live within capitalism must extract spiritual value as well as financial value from it, or we will drown under the waves of consumption and crisis. Lehrman’s Prosperity Consciousness is one of the very few, very very good programs that shows us the way.
