Alan Cohen’s Secrets

By Philippe Matthews
 (© all rights reserved, www.empowermag.com)

In an exclusive interview with author Alan Cohen, Philippe Matthews, the publisher of Empower Magazine, discuss Alan’s latest book Mr. Everit’s Secret: What I Learned from the World’s Richest Man — a modern-day parable that examines many preconceived notions about money and our ability to create wealth. 

PM: Tell me about Mr. Everit’s Secret.

AC: “Some spiritual teachers say that when material things come from spirit, it comes in a big rush and then it’s just a matter of downloading it and printing it out. Mr. Everit’s Secret came to me in a couple of weeks or a month at the most and I wrote away and all of a sudden I had a book in my hand.”

PM: Who is Mr. Everit?

AC: “It’s a prosperity parable. I’ve been very excited about prosperity material as of late and have had a lot of people signal interest in it. When I do programs at big conferences, usually the prosperity ones are most attended; people are hungry to build their prosperity consciousness. I thought it would be fun to couch very lofty prosperity principles in a simple, easy to read story and wedge the message in the cracks. So that’s what Mr. Everit is and it can be read in about an hour.”

PM: Lesson one: Stars Beyond the Telescope, “The universe was created in utter abundance.” What about that?

AC: “It turns me on to think about that because if you look around at the universe as God created it, there is enough of everything for everyone everywhere. Living in Hawaii, I see leaves bigger than I am and mango trees that literally throw off thousands and thousands of seeds in a season and it just says to me that God has big ideas. The universe was created lush and extravagant, God didn’t skimp on anything and I think that is a model on how we should live too.”

PM: You say, “For every limit I can imagine, there is something beyond it.” What do you mean by that?

AC: “What a way to look at limits! God has no limits and the only place where limits exist is in the mind of people.”

PM: Talk with me about what you learned in lesson two: Pygmy Thoughts, “I shrink my world when I think and talk small. It even gets smaller when people agree with me.”

AC: “We see this all the time. I remember standing in a health food store once and two women were having a conversation. They were both professional house sitters and were basically complaining about their jobs; how the employers were trashing them, how they weren’t getting paid enough and on and on. All they did was complain and I wanted to go over to them and shake them and say, ‘don’t you realize what you are doing?’ You are both agreeing on a limit and the more you agree, the more you make it real in your life and the more you make it real the more you’re unhappy. So please don’t agree on stuff like that. Why don’t you talk about your possibilities and potential?”

PM: Is it true that people find strange comfort in living tiny lives, and resist change even if it might help them?

AC: “There are two reasons. One is we create habits of thought at young ages. We look to our parents as role models and if they fought over money, complained about money or struggled over money then we develop an entrainment in our brain that says this is what life and money is and we basically go on to replicate that as long as we keep thinking those thoughts. A belief is a habit of thought and as long as you keep thinking that thought, you will keep getting that same result. The second reason is there is really a massive notion of limitation around the planet that is fed primarily by the media. The news thrives on murder and mayhem, limits, victimization of fear and terror and as long as those thoughts are projected around the planet and people watch them by the millions or billions, we create this huge thought form around the planet like a big cloud that this is the way things are and we can’t get around it. It is some-thing that is not real and doesn’t have to continue but because we keep thinking those thoughts, the thoughts and experiences continue.”

Alan Cohen is the author of the best-selling, The Dragon Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, the award-winning, A Deep Breath of Life, and the acclaimed, Why Your Life Sucks and What You Can Do About It. This August join Alan in Maui for his life-transforming Mastery Training. For information on this seminar and a free catalog of Alan’s books, tapes, and seminars, phone 1-800-568-3079, visit www.alancohen.com, email admin@alancohen.com , or write P.O. Box 835, Haiku, HI 96708.