THE THIRD TRANSFORMATIONAL LEVER: PROSPERITY & ABUNDANCE FORECAST
In this period of personal, societal, and planetary transformation, we confront enormous prosperity and abundance alongside overwhelming poverty, inequality, and greed. Over many generations, our leaders have exploited earth’s resources and organized money and power to create today’s grave climate catastrophe and institutionalized social injustice. As individuals we can feel overwhelmed, incapacitated, and furious. Amid these feelings, how do we move forward with pure intention, purposeful creativity, and love? How do we invest our time, energy, and money to build a better life and world when there seem to be so many demands on our attention?
What do prosperity and abundance mean to us as spiritual and emotional beings, and materially as financial participants in this economy?
Setting Intentions. Nature is abundant and regenerative, and our human nature is also aligned to abundance. To unlock this abundance, we must first clarify our intentions around what we wish to manifest when we envision prosperity and abundance. Without clear intentions, we might be rewarded with an abundance of activities or energies that overwhelm and distract but don’t lead us to our goals. It is essential to set clear vision about the kind of energetic, spiritual, and material abundance we seek, and this will help you know more clearly when offerings coming to you are not right. When this happens, learn to politely turn them away, with gratitude for the gifts that came. And then reflect and clarify what you wish to attract.
Manifesting Prosperity. We each experience prosperity differently and at different points in our lives. For some, it is money in the bank, a specific home or car, or the financial freedom to travel or make purchases without stress. For others, prosperity is having a vibrant community connection or the freedom to explore spiritual fulfillment. In most cases, prosperity results from an investment of time, energy, and resources. But often we feel that we make enormous investments of our energy or time and yet do not receive the energetic or monetary returns that we seek. Through my journey, I have worked through two primary barriers in this area. First, I needed to understand clearly and honestly how my own behaviors hinder me through lack of clear purpose, poor time management, and pursuing the wrong tasks to achieve my goals. This behavioral approach led me to develop new skills, habits and core routines, to pursue additional education and training, and to engage with outside coaches to help me clarify new tactical plans and strategies. Second, I faced structural barriers when dealing with power structures or people that were intent on blocking my success. In these cases, I made changes to find a like-minded and empowering community and workplace. These steps required deep mindfulness and reflection on how to balance potential friction between desires for non-attachment, self-worth, being respected, doing meaningful work, and having fun. Some systems will take a lifetime to change, but we each have the power to take steps to manifest the change we desire.
Accepting Abundance. Often, we crave gifts and abundance but are not fully open to recognize and receive them when they arrive. We may carry fear of not being worthy, embarrassed by the attention, or feel burdened by a sense of responsibility. In some cases, financial trauma experienced by our ancestors is entombed in our lineage, blanketed in familial shame that was never spoken, yet carried from our grandparents to parents to us in unspoken behavior or values that we are unaware of. If you feel blocked from accepting abundance, this may present an opportunity to sit with the discomfort, inquire into the shadows, and seek to release deep trauma around money, success, or self-worth.
Managing Prosperity. When we start with gratitude, it puts desire in perspective. So much of society is driven by consumption without thought. When compounded by billions of people, we exceed need and sustainability. Every year we hit the Earth Overshoot Day earlier; that is the day each year when our collective demand for ecological resources exceeds what the earth can regenerate that year.1 Each one of us must commit to walk lightly on the earth, to live within our means and not take more than what we need, to be responsible and considerate of the collective and seven generations into the future, and to recognize our gifts, our wealth and abundance. Delight in the magic of how the universe provides.
Addressing Planetary Health and Inclusive Prosperity
The planet will eventually restore itself, with or without human beings. For too long our leaders have chosen to extract resources and exploit people to maximize capital for the few. But this is changing. Faced with the twin crisis of outrageous inequality and poverty combined with human-induced climate disasters, more ambitious and impactful positive action is being taken by individuals, communities, corporations, nations, and international cooperation. Each one of us can play a role in this activity.
» Climate-centered policy and economy – a paradigm shift is underway away from extraction and toward circularity, regeneration, and conservation.
» Inclusive prosperity – shifting away from human exploitation that excludes large swathes of our population from meaningful opportunities for growth and building prosperity, and instead embracing skill development, ownership culture, collective well-being, and a guaranteed minimum income.
» Community capital – keep money local by empowering community investment that keeps spending close to home, builds local acumen to develop and build projects, enhances local market resilience and insulation from global shocks, and enables intergenerational wealth and vibrant communities.
Mystics Toolkit for Prosperity and Abundance
As we enter 2023, the Mystic principals for prosperity and abundance can be approached along three trajectories.
» Purpose, Alignment, and Release
- Get clear on goals and objectives.
- Release inhibitors to accepting abundance and manifesting prosperity.
- Establish self-care and core routines that release clinging, grasping, and hording; release feelings of shame around lack of money knowledge; release feelings and helplessness around scarcity, poverty, or unworthiness.
- Break the cycles of ancestral trauma.
- Continuously grow financial literacy.
- Be conscious of your energetic and financial hygiene, and care for your resources.
Global Inspirations:2 The 20,000 Rupiah note from Indonesia highlights a Tari Gong dancer and the island of Derawan in the biodiversity-rich coral triangle. A rich submerged ecosystem is home to extensive biodiversity for deep inquiry and manifesting abundance and alignment with nature. The feathered dancer brings lightness and clearing energies through touch and movement.
Mystics Spread: Higher Self – cleanse what is buried and align to your higher self.
Mystics Cards: Time * Cycles * Ancestors * Children * Inner * Transformation
» Containers and Riverbanks
- Manage money hygiene with containers and flow to balance holding and accumulating on the one hand, with releasing and spending on the other hand.
- When facing the Unseen, recognize and respect the broader forces beyond our control, while also leaning into planning to enable responsible prioritization and flexibility to adapt to volatility.
- Earth – establish containers for savings and investments that enable future flexibility.
- Water – establish riverbanks that guide appropriate flow to enable responsible purchasing, and to see and manage cycles of expansion and contraction (both individually and in the broader economy).
- Be an empowered buyer prioritizing regenerative spending, inclusive prosperity, and collective capitalism - stop purchasing highly packaged goods or plastic materials, reduce mail-order products that have high last-mile carbon loads, evaluate your travel and home-heating choices, become a brand activist and purchase wisely, pressure brands to be more sustainable and hold them accountable.
- Educate your community about inclusive prosperity, renewable energy, circularity, conservation, and biodiversity.
- Let your politicians know that you are a social justice and earth-centered voter.
Global Inspiration: The 10,000 Peso note from Chile reveals peaked mountains, a valley and flying condor, reminding us to maintain clear vision and perspective while growing piles of resources and feeding flowing streams.
Mystics Spread: Inner
Mystics Cards: Unseen * Fear * Discernment * Gratitude * Tools * Earth * Water * Balance
The last few years have brought us through darkness and into a reckoning with our choices, lifestyle, and priorities. As we look forward there will be more volatility with inflation, war and unrest, climate change, and vast inequality and suffering. And yet we also see alignment with the right livelihood to bring light and mindfulness forth in our spiritual and material experience of prosperity and abundance. Now is the time to strengthen core routines around containers and riverbanks, releasing legacies of trauma, deepen awareness of the shadow world, and step boldly into manifesting the change we wish to bring into the world. But we must travel through the cleansing fire to release our collective and individual consumerism, greed, and trauma; and help a world and society that is on fire. What we do for the one, we do for the all. It is time to take action, and you hold the wand!
ABOUT Karin Berardo
Karin has been a climate finance innovator for over 30 years, building a career as a banker for a healthy planet. Karin has served as the first female CEO of a renewable energy finance company in the Abu Dhabi Global Markets in the United Arab Emirates, raised the first global investment fund to finance workforce housing and related infrastructure in South Africa, and led research on sustainable natural resources to management and policy in the Brazilian Amazon, delivering a report that guided World Bank funding strategies in the region. Karin has developed and financed over $2 billion of sustainable infrastructure projects in regenerative agriculture, commercial real estate, renewable energy, waste management, conservation, and natural capital solutions on five continents.
Currently, Karin is the Founder and CEO of ABREN, an advisory company focused on impact investing, cleantech, and natural infrastructure assets in emerging markets. She also serves as the Chief Investment Officer of the DC Green Bank, overseeing lending strategy and operations to promote climate transformation and inclusive prosperity in the District of Columbia, and participates in the Coalition for Green Capital and the new National Green Bank initiative. Most recently, Karin was Sustainable Debt
Director for NatureVest/The Nature Conservancy, where she structured sovereign debt and capacity-building solutions to repair and protect the world’s oceans.
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