RESPONSES FROM USERS OF THE PBL:
“This is a remarkable achievement. You've found a way to bring the inside outside, and relate it to money, in a way that brings into the world the mirror that was missing. We never learned how to be present with ourselves through our finances.
“The Portable Blessings Ledger should be everywhere, including taught in schools. You've pioneered something we can all use.”
—Doreen Hamilton,
Ph.D., Licensed Clinical Psychologist, Teacher of “Speaking Quest”
“What’s great is that there are these ledger pages. I’m normally intimidated by ledger pages, but these are presented in a softer way.
“If you have this notebook in your purse, you can take it when you’re
shopping, you can take it to a business meeting….”
—Katayoon Zandvakili, Author, In the Lap of the Gods
“I felt the book was very nonjudgmental. You’re
only asked to observe yourself. This allowed me to actually use it and
notice what’s going on in my finances and inside me.”
—Risala Mary Laird,
Teacher, Artist, Typesetter
“The Portable Blessings Ledger allowed me to make friends with money—and to realize that everybody goes through [the kinds of things the author reveals about her own experience and process].”
—Katayoon Zandvakili, Author, In the Lap of the Gods
“The
beauty and care and loving nature that surrounds Naomi's book opened
my heart to the mystery of money, and its ebb and flow.
It feels so good to be back writing down the ebb and flow of money.
“It
is always surprising to see how much goes out, with so little remembrance;
and how lovely the gratitude always is, when the flow returns to our shores,
supporting and sustaining us.”
—Risala
Mary Laird,
Teacher, Artist, Typesetter
“I can share two positive things with your community about my experience from talking to you about it.
“One
is that I find myself paying much more attention to how I feel when I
am about to make a purchase or even go shopping. And if I have a choice
between an item that feels just OK and one that really attracts me deeply,
I'm giving myself much more permission to follow my bliss even if it means
spending a few more dollars.
“Secondly, it suddenly dawned on me that all I really have to do (now that I have on-line banking) is to keep track of the cash that I withdraw from my account, because every-thing else is recorded on my on-line banking ledger. I think it will be a great exercise to sit down at the end of the month and transfer my expenditures to my ledger and do my reflections then.”
—Alicia Carter, LCSW
“I just wanted to tell you how very touched I am about this Portable Blessings Ledger that you have sent me. It’s absolutely lovely, so clever and original. I just think it’s wonderful! Of course, I want to see it as a best-seller.”
—Rebecca Field, Director, The Mercury Institute
Whether
you’re dealing with pennies or millions or somewhere in between,
The Portable Blessings Ledger offers a path to prosperity that
works on many levels—and
is uniquely yours.
Ah, money!
Who can live without it? Who can live with it?
Who among us has not struggled with the realities of money—
its demands and
the large place it takes up in our lives?
And who has not
felt the yearning
to put our attentions
onto what really matters—
our inner lives,
our callings, the healing of our own hearts
and of humanity?
Naomi Rose’s new book,
The Portable Blessings Ledger:
A Way to Keep Track of
Your Finances and
Bring Heart and Meaning
to Your Dealings with Money
will give you all you
need to bring your heart and finances
together in an immediate,
hands-on way.
It will transform your relationship with money into a blessing
while revealing the unfoldment of the story of your true being.
[Scroll to end for price & ordering information, or just keep reading.]
[NOTE:
For more information on Naomi's class, "Money and the Inner Life,"
based on 3 of her books, including The Portable Blessings Ledger,
click the "Writing Classes" page, on the menu to your left].
["God giving humanity the gift of money," by Caitlin
Mitchell]
No matter what our financial situation,
in our culture it’s almost inevitable that we spend much of our time
thinking about money.
Even if we would rather not pay much attention to it,
money is the coin of
our realm.
Yet responding to this
drumbeat can take our focus and energy
away from what is most
truly precious in our lives:
the unfolding story of
our journey here on earth—
what has formed us and
what we are made of,
and how we may take down
the walls of our lonely self-protections
to feel the pulse and
call of the Source that draws us towards it.
Our souls must
have room and place to tell us what is happening
in the rich, secret world
within.
Yet that part of our lives that depends
on a financial focus
frequently seems to take
up
almost all the room there
is,
elevating the "outside"
life
at the expense of the
"inside" life—
at great cost to ourselves
and even to one another.
What is needed
is a way to honor both the world of our finances
and the world of our unfolding soul-stories
at the same time,
in the same breath,
so that our dealings
with money become blessings—
blessings that
arise from the deepest yearnings of our hearts,
that point us,
even if unexpectedly,
in the direction
of the fulfillment of our needs
and that embrace
rather than avoid
money and financial transactions.
As individuals and as
a human community,
we can no longer afford to live split off,
our energies and souls
parceled off like land.
We yearn for integration,
for the fullness of our being,
and to live in harmony in the world.
The Portable Blessings Ledger can help bring this about.
THE PREMISE, THE PROMISE, AND THE FORMAT
The premise of this unique and timely book
is that if you approach each and every financial transaction
with the openness to discovering the blessings
that are connected with them—
both those that come towards you and those that come from you—
they will appear.
The promise is that if you do this, the process will transform your life,
your finances, your heart, your community, and your planet.
The format of an actual blessings ledger
enables you to keep track of everything you make, spend, and
think about concerning money,
while at the same time becoming intimately aware of
the soul-story pattern that reveals itself in the process.
Once you bring compassion to the equation,
you yourself become a source of blessings.
And you will reap what you sow.
The forms include:
- Spending forms (offered in 4 versions, for your preference:
long, short, ledger, & sketchbook)
- Income forms (also offered in 4 options)
- Musings pages (for when your mind is on money
and you want to better understand what's going on inside you)
- Assessment forms for the end of the period you've initially chosen
to keep a Portable Blessings Ledger—both financial and life-story.
SPENDING FORMS enable you to record:
1. The dollars-and-cents data:
* Date * Transaction number * What you purchased
* Where you purchased it * Why it appeals to you
* How you paid for it * Amount you spent
2. What the transaction reveals about your deep inner life:
"And the story unfolds..."
3. And how things look to you at the ledger entry's end:
"Blessings in balance."
EXAMPLE OF
A PORTABLE BLESSINGS LEDGER
SPENDING FORM
(Option #1: Long form)
_________________________________________________________________
Date: Thursday, May 19th
Transaction
#: 1
Items purchased:
Food
Where purchased:
Berkeley Bowl Supermarket
Appeal/reason
for buying: (a) weekly shopping, and (b) party supplies
How paid
for: Check
Amount spent:
$214.48
AND THE STORY
UNFOLDS…
. . . I am standing at the check-out counter,
all the food ranged on the
conveyor belt—3 packages of chicken
thighs, rice, French bread, 2 plastic
bags of greens for salad, juices, tomatoes, eggplants, sparkling cider and
much, much more. I have just spent well over the usual $100 or so for this
food for company as well as the weekly shopping. As I start to write the
check, guilt sets in at the amount, a low-level panic. I take a breath,
remember the cause of this expense is shared joy.
And things brighten up again.
As
I’m writing the date on the check, I remember that I wanted to buy
today’s paper. Someone I know has a book that’s reviewed, and I don’t have
any change. “Could I write this for 25 cents over?” I ask the young woman
who’s rung up my purchase.
"I'm sorry,” she says, actually looking sorry. “We can’t give change with
chec...”
But
before she can finish her sentence, the young man bagging my
groceries at the end of the counter looks up and smiles. “I’ll give you 25
cents,” he offers, with a full-tilt sunny smile.
I know
his face from the last 15 years I’ve shopped here. I know his
name. It’s Rick. Rick digs into his pocket for a quarter, his smile
undisturbed.
"Oh!" I cry, deeply moved by his offer. I know it’s only a quarter, but
I’ve just spent more money on food than he probably makes in half a week
of work. Something in me is primed to protest, “No, no, please.” But I don’t
succumb to it. His gift is genuine, and larger by far than the amount he is giving
me. Though Rick may not be thinking in terms of “money and compassion,”
his putting them together lifts my spirit well beyond the cash value.
I thank him gratefully, and watch him bag my ten bags of food into two
carts. I’m offered the help of an employee to wheel the second cart to my car.
I can’t say, “No thanks, I can manage,” because I can’t. I have to receive.
A young woman employee gets behind the second cart, smiles, starts to push
it toward the sliding doors.
A voice
from behind me calls out. “Wait! Your quarter!” Rick runs
after
me, puts the quarter in my hand. I’d left it behind on the counter. The offer had
given so many dividends, I’d forgotten the thing itself.
Blessings
in balance: Food, community, kindness, $ out, $ in, not
alone.
________________________________________________________________
INCOME
FORMS enable you to record:
1. The dollars-and-cents data:
*
Date * Transaction number * Source of income
* Conditions
under which you received it
* Satisfaction level * Amount
2. What receiving this
income reveals about your deep inner life:
"And
the story unfolds. . . ”
3. And how things look
to you at the ledger entry’s end:
"Blessings in balance.”
EXAMPLE OF
A PORTABLE BLESSINGS LEDGER
INCOME FORM
(Option #2: Short form)
_________________________________________________________________
Date: Thursday, April 7,
2005, 9:30 a.m.
Transaction
#: 1
Source of
income : Patricia S., book development client
Conditions:
I had already worked with her husband on his book, so she knew
of
my work. But when she saw my ad, she realized that she could enlist me
to help her write her own book.
Satisfaction
level : Incredibly high
Amount:
$113.00
AND THE STORY UNFOLDS . . .
Patricia is one of the great treasures
in my work, both in allowing me to
help develop her book and in continually reminding me that everything is
part of the journey. She reads me the short pieces of writing she has been
able to carve time for—a triumph, considering her very young child.
I listen to her read the writing she has wrested away from sleep,
her voice low and evoking forests, rivers, a city in Illinois I have never been
to before now. My head is as clear as I can make it so that I am of good use
to her, my imagination traveling with her through the lakes and trees, the
woundings and callings of her childhood and beyond.
“Thank you for receiving this,” she says to me at reading’s end,
lifting her eyes up from her laptop computer and taking in my deep listening.
“Thank you,” I tell her, almost speechless, exalted by the beauty of her
search, her recording, her gifts, realizing that serving the deep Self
is the greatest privilege.
Blessings
in balance: As they say, “I get paid to
do this?” Also, she has
requested that each session be an hour and a half. In truth, if I had to,
I would pay her to help her birth this difficult and exquisite story that reveals
so much of me to myself, as well.
__________________________________________________________________
MUSINGS PAGES
enable you to reflect on your thoughts, feelings, and insights
concerning money,
and to connect these with compassion as far as you are able—
to muse in these pages about:
- When you are confused about money.
- When things happen relative to money that you don’t like or understand.
- Your desires.
- Your need for income.
- Your budget.
- Your resistance to a budget.
- The money you wish you had, and what you might want it for.
- How you feel about wanting money not wanting money.
- How you feel about having less than you need or want.
- Distinguishing your wants from your needs.
- And so on.
In the act of “musing,”
or contemplating the inner aspects
of the situation from this perspective,
you are likely to find your outer experience
changing for the better, as well.
Three simple statements help bring your inner/outer life into focus:
1. "This is what’s going on in me as I think about money,
deal with money, worry about money, attempt to bless the
conditions in my life relative to money."
2. "And, having expressed the above, this is what I notice in myself
now regarding my inner state and outer possibilities."
3. [Later:] "And this is what actually manifested as a result of my
becoming conscious of all this."
In this way, you are not only keeping track
of your feelings and finances—
you are building a consciousness, too.
______________________________________________________________
If you would like to see your own finances become friendly,
your inner life meaningfully and movingly revealed
through your financial dealings,
your consciousness of money transform into a blessing,
and what it's like to experience community wherever you go,
then start using a Portable Blessings Ledger of your own.
It will start you on your path with wonderment, interest, and ease.
And then, because your ledger will be not the following of a template
but distinctively yours,
based on your own unique being, needs, and soul story,
it will lead you home from there.
ORDERING INFORMATION
TO ORDER YOUR COPY OF
THE PORTABLE BLESSINGS LEDGER:
The cost of the book, per copy, is $25.00.
If you would like to order the book for yourself or a friend,
for each book add:
* Sales tax of $2.18 (.875%) (California residents only)
* Shipping:
(a) $2.50 book rate (5-10 days USA), or
(b) $4.80 priority rate (1-2 days)
* Handling fee: $3.00, total, for all copies ordered..
Your total is: $_________
__________________________________________________________
Send
your check to:
Naomi
Rose
P.O.
Box 21622
Piedmont,
CA 94620
Include
your name, mailing address, and e-mail
(for Portable Blessings Ledger info and updates only).
If this is a gift you would like sent directly to the receiver,
include the name and mailing address of that person.
Indicate whether you would like
a personal inscription included.
As you become conscious of these blessings,
your real wealth increases,
your relationship with money sweetens,
and money goes from being a source of conflict
to a vehicle for deep human connection.