Prospering women are powerful women; they have made friends with their personal power.  They did not become strong; they acknowledged the strength they al-ready had.
     Personal power is not aggressive, muscular, manipulative or authoritative power, but an inner power that comes from knowing we have all the resources we need to handle whatever happens in life.  When we have personal power we shift from the pseudo-strength of appearing strong to the real strength of feeling strong.  An example of this for me is being confronted with criti-cism from powerful men I admire, and being able to remain objective.  It is a personal victory every time I do not cringe in self-blame, or feel the need to lash back at /unjust' criticism in a defensive manner.  When I'm coming from a sense of my own personal power, I can listen, be open to the truth that is coming through, and release the rest.
     With this inner strength to face our challenges, life is accepted on its own terms.  With personal power we engage in the dance without having to be the choreographer.  Coming from strength, whatever happens is ok because we're ok.
     Women have always had the potential for all the personal power they needed.  They have always been strong; they had to be.  By withstanding the centuries of being told they were the weaker, ineffectual, dependent, non-assertive half of the human population, they proved their strength.  Even in the face of these charges, women have always known, deep down, they were 'capable, strong, smart, assertive, rational, and decisive.
     The only change in the power of women is that now we are beginning to acknowledge this strength and take it, en masse, into the 'male world'.  We are making that leap from experiencing 'inner strength' to accepting re-sponsibility for our lives.
     With that leap in consciousness we are rejecting the 'trickle down' economic theory we all grew up with.  Under that theory we believed that men had power by nature, and that women would benefit most by pleasing the men in their lives.  In this way, a woman was encouraged to seek power through osmosis - to be content with the power achieved through association with a strong male.
     The reason this theory has lasted so long is that we saw our gains, and ignored our losses.  It felt good to think there was someone wiser and stronger who could always answer our questions and take away our pain.
     Obviously, there are several major flaws in this system.  For one thing, in order to make it work, women have to actively throw their power away.  We hand out fistfuls of energy to anyone we allow to have control over us. Psychologist John Enright uses an analogy of the trained falcon to illustrate living under the illusion of powerlessness when operating from dependency.  The falcon, after making a strike, always returns its prey to the master and then gratefully accepts its small strip of flesh from the kill as reward.  Dependency has been trained into the bird until freedom is forgotten, and the source of food is associated only with the master,.  When we become dependent, we forget that we are our own source.
     We also give away power to those we feel are superior to us.  The world is only a reflection of who we are.  In order to see admirable characteristics in others, we must already have them in ourselves to some degree.  We are potentially all that we admire; there is no need for females or males to deny personal power and separate themselves as superior or inferior beings.
     The second major flaw in the 'trickle down' power-through-association theory of female-male relationships is that women lose their decision-making power when they deny responsibility for themselves, for the two go hand in hand.
     One difficulty during this period of transition when women and men are finding new paths together is that many women want to keep benefits from both roles.  They want the freedom to make decisions and still be protected and provided for.  The answer seems to lie in women developing an even greater sense of personal power within themselves.

     Prosperity is experiencing more choice in life.  But choice only has meaning when we have the power to handle the consequences of our choices.  The question therefore is: How can we increase our power to have more choice in our lives?
     Personal power is dependent upon having a strong sense of integrity.  The root meaning of integrity is to act as one.  When we act from integrity, our desires and actions are aligned.  The power that comes from acting with integrity can be likened to the power of a group pulling a rope in one direction, versus split action by the same group pulling in different directions.  We have much more 'pull' when the desires of our body, mind, and feelings are integrated.
     Personal power comes from within and depends upon you approving of you.  Your approval comes from your sense of integrity - a total honesty within yourself.  It is being who you are without pretense - acting on what you truly feel.  When you live with integrity, your actions, words, and intentions are congruent with your values.  You believe what you are saying and doing.
     Lack of integrity creates a sieve out of your pot of personal power.

     Being honest about intentions with oneself and others is a basic ingredient of personal power.  Keeping agreements is an example of being honest with oneself.  For instance, there is always a good 'excuse' for being late to work or to an appointment.  Even when the other person accepts your excuse, however, you feel an internal 'scrunch'.  You know the truth that you could have made it had your intention been clear.  If the appointment had been the last possible time to receive a free $10,000 bonus, you would have made it on time!  Pay attention to how you feel the next time you give an excuse.  No matter how good you are at acting justified, you devalue yourself inside when you don't keep your word, and your sense of integrity drops.  Our energy contracts rather than ex-pands when our integrity drops, so less integrity means less power.
     Personal power is increased by, becoming clearer in our intentions.  As we get hungry for more power, we quickly learn the importance of saying yes only to those agreements we intend to keep.  This plugs some of the holes of that sieve fast.
Taking responsibility is another way to increase per-sonal power.  This next prosperity key tells us how:

     If we live as though the world is against us, we don't experience much power.  If we want increased power, we must assume responsibility for what we do, and don't do, in every situation.
     Taking responsibility has been considered a male attitude - and one that often seemed more a burden than a blessing.  Many women did not recognize the hidden 'goodie' behind responsibility was being in charge as the decision maker.  The interrelationship of power, responsibility, and prosperity can be simply stated as 'The Buck Stops Here!"
     When I take responsibility for the circumstances of my life, I am acknowledging that I created those circumstances.  The more responsibility I accept for the consequences of my actions, the more power I am assuming.  I did it, so if I don't like the results, I can re-do it.
     The more power I accept over all circumstances of my life - as consequences of my actions - the more prosperous situations I can choose to create.

     Responsibility is a position - an attitude toward events.  You either take responsibility, or you feel victimized by the world.  Your choice of whether to play the victim or to take responsibility will determine whose power grows - yours or someone else's.  If you take the position of victim, you lose power.  If you choose responsibility, you have power then to do something about what's happening - to choose your next step.  It is all in attitude.
     For example, if you take responsibility for your husband's leaving you (when you didn't want him to), you are psychologically free to look at the ways you helped set up the relationship so he would want to leave.  You then learn quickly what you don't want to do next time, and you benefit from the experience.
     In the past we have blocked our prosperity consciousness by rejecting responsibility because we confused it with blame.  When we're stuck in 'victim con-sciousness' we often refuse to assume responsibility be-cause we think: (1) If I'm responsible, then I am to blame, or (2) If I take responsibility, then the other person gets off scot-free.

     Blame has no place in prosperity thinking.  Blame is only a judgment , superimposed on the event.  Blame is anger at oneself for feeling stuck.  Blame leads only to further blame.  Look at areas in your life where you may still be holding anger and blame.  You will need to decide if you are willing to let go of these negative feelings for your own benefit.
     For example, parents have always been the recipients of our blame.  Few of us want to acknowledge we had much to do with our own up-bringing.  Parents are the reasons why we aren't the sweetest, nicest, most gener-ous, lovable creatures imaginable.  If our parents had only been half-way what we 'needed' them to be, we would probably have been a president by now - or at least not nearly as neurotic.  We often feel ruined for life by what our parents did or did not do in raising us.
     As long as we sing this old, sad song - true or untrue - we are cutting ourselves off today from our power far more effectively than Mom or Dad could ever have done.
     The question of whether parents are to blame is not important. it is time to get on with life, and the way to do it is to assume responsibility.  Coming from a position of responsibility is to say, "I got my parents to treat me the way they did - given who they were."
     We always bring out certain traits over other traits in people.  For this reason, no two children are usually treated alike in the same family.  Without blaming your-self or your parents, you gain in power every time you can identify the choices you made in attitude and behavior and the benefits you received by creating your formative life.

     The truth is we started projecting our desires and personality into our circumstances at a very early age.  If you don't believe a kid has power, try feeding a six-month-old infant some cereal when she isn't hungry.  You get it all back - double!  Parents did what they did, and we did what we did.  It was a two-way dance.
     One way out of this negative, blaming cycle is to pretend, just pretend, you chose your parents.  If this crazy idea were true, what benefits would you have received from your choice?  What lessons did you learn fast?  In what way are you a better person from having learned these lessons?  This is the type of responsible thinking that allows you to release a negative, blaming attitude.

     We have the choice of experiencing the temporary power that comes with acting from anger and blame, or we can recognize the pain of a particular situation, look at what we did to help create the situation, and put our energy instead into positive planning for moving toward what we want now.
     As we begin to take responsibility for ourselves, to follow the E = MC2 Key, we are more open to signs and signals from our environment giving us better directions.  Our senses are activated as we open up to our intuition.  With more complete information and increased personal power we automatically make better decisions.  Because of this, we are now ready to start creating a world that fits us better.

Shakti Gawain, author of Creative Visualization, seminar leader, author, publisher.

Q: Do you see yourself as a Prospering Woman?

A: Yes.  To me prospering is aligning myself with energy flow and universal life principles.  It is feeling the flow of energy of money, appreciation, enjoyment, and the excitement of chal-lenge.  I love the process of manifesting my creative ideas into form.
     I used to feel constricted, as if there was never enough money, time, or anything.  I would hang on, tightly.  Now I experience total trust in the universe and know it is supporting me as long as I keep tuning into my intuition and acting on it. Prosperity is to me a sense of trusting the higher self within me - letting go of fear. This means I can risk, try new things, spend money, venture into new areas, and change my lifestyle without feeling insecure.
     The actual amount of money I have is relatively inconse-quential to me when I have this inner security.  It is more important that I am doing what I love, and then the money seems to follow.  I now spend very little time doing what I don't want.  Another thing that is important to me is creating free space and time in my life - time to just be quiet and tune in. Before I got in touch with the prosperity principles, I was always too busy doing what I thought was important rather than trusting what I really felt like doing, moment by moment. Now, when I get uptight, I stop and ask myself what I need, what I want, what I feel.  I may find I want to take a walk, get a massage, be with a friend - and I71 do it.
     When I nourish my own self I find miracles happen.  I notice the next day that I have lots of energy to take care of my outside needs because I've taken care of my inside needs.
     Another way that I feel prosperous is in the feeling I have that I've contributed something valuable to other people.  That gives me a deep sense of satisfaction, of fulfillment.  Until I wrote my book I often felt, "Someday I want to do something significant." Now I feel I have done something.  There is still plenty to come, but writing a book caused a definite shift in my life.  Because I feel I've made a difference, I've fulfilled some sense of purpose in life; I experience a satisfaction that can't be taken away.

Q: Can you identify the changes in consciousness that caused you to create a prospering life?

A: I think it came in two parts.  The first part was when I became willing to take total responsibility for my life - to give up being a victim of life.  Prospering thinking was realizing that no one does a thing to me that I don't in some way attract; no one has power over me unless I give it to them.  If there are things in my life I don't like, I can change them.  I am the co-creator (with the higher power) of my life.  Believe me, taking responsibility didn't happen overnight.  It was a slow process of 'trying out' the principles of responsibility.  But when I did, everything shifted radically.  Each step is important.  Each step is learning. Each time I 'tried' I became more conscious, and could more clearly see the principles of how life works.
     The second part was my conscious commitment to growth.  I made the decision to follow the truth inside me, to give up anything to follow and act on it.  I saw that by making that commitment, a higher force would teach me everything I needed to know.  The act of that commitment is the single biggest major cause for my prosperity.  There's no turning back.  I can no longer blame any outside force for my not following my own inner guidance. The pay-off has been better relationships, further openings in my spiritual life, money, success of all kinds.  Everything is improving.  Love and appreciation are there.  I feel heal their and more beautiful than ever.  I am happy, and excited to see what unfolds next.