Edwene Gaines has made a 100% commitment to the transformation of the abundance consciousness of the world. She is the author of the book The Four Spiritual Laws of Prosperity, published by Rodale Books.
An ordained Unity minister since 1979, owner and director of Rock Ridge Retreat Center in Valley Head, Alabama. She is also president of The Masters’ School in Valley Head, Alabama, where she has trained over 500 Master Prosperity Teachers. She travels approximately 250 days a year presenting Prosperity, and Commitment workshops. She has created and markets CD’s and affirmation cards through her company Prosperity Products.
As Certified Firewalking Instructor, Edwene facilitates the Firewalking Ceremony several times each year. She has served as a member of the International New Thought Alliance Executive Board. Edwene is committed to power, passion, prosperity, and performance.
KIMBERLY: Welcome everybody. I’m Kimberly Maska, your host of Spiritual Biz Chat for Spiritual Biz Magazine. Today, I’m truly honored to be having with us and on our cover, Edwene Gaines. She is one of the leaders in helping shift our consciousness about abundance, letting us all know that we can all be prosperous no matter what. So, Edwene, thank you so much for doing your work and being here with me.
EDWENE: Oh, I’m so grateful. This sounds like so much fun.
KIMBERLY: We’re going to have a blast. So, tell me how you started your journey in the whole prosperity world and being able to teach this. What was your story, for those that don’t know?
EDWENE: The main issue that bothered me most of my life was poverty because I was working 2 jobs 16 hours a day… just getting by, putting up with making ends meet. That’s a typical story that you hear. I decided that there had to be a better way to live. I began researching and little by little, I finally started my first business with a $2.75 classified ad and my phone rang off the wall. I thought, “Oh my God, this is different. This is fun.” I got to do a job that I didn’t know I could do and every time I got a request, they asked me, “Could you do this?” I said, “Yes,” and then I learned how to do it. It was really fun. So then, I opened a second business.
Then I began studying in depth what I call the spiritual laws of prosperity and my life has been one grand adventure after the next. I’m really loving it. I love this teaching. When we come into alignment with it, things happen. They seem like coincidences but we both know there’s no such thing.
KIMBERLY: No, that is true. It’s beautiful when it lines up. What do you think is the biggest thing that holds people back when it comes to creating that abundance in their lives?
EDWENE: I really think it’s probably fear, because there seems to be in the human soul, a fear of the unknown. There’s an old saying, “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know.” It takes us a little bit of courage to step outside your comfort zone and to learn something new, to do something different, to take a chance. To me, it came down to desperation. Life was so miserable. I knew there is something I’m missing. I began to study all the books in the library. I would go and read all the positive thinking books I could find and got addicted to Catherine Ponder, who’s been my teacher for many years, and Charles Fillmore, and some of the religious science writers like Ernest Holmes. And I really found a way that made sense to my soul. I began doing these things.
I wrote a book called “The Four Spiritual Laws of Prosperity: A Simple Guide to Unlimited Abundance.” In that book, I tell my story of moving through my fear, my limiting believes and taking, at first, baby steps. But I know now that we’re destined, it is our honor, our inheritance to be wealthy. Not just in money but in health and vitality, and energy, and friendships, and relationships, and just every part of your life begins to work. When we do these four things that I mention as the four laws of prosperity, that’s a jumping off point for really becoming the light, the love, the power that we really are.
KIMBERLY: Beautiful! I know we all have these fears around money for whatever reason. I love that you wrote the book about the spiritual laws of abundance, and I find that spiritual entrepreneurs get very skittish when it comes to money, and they have a hard time doing that energy exchange of their gift for money. Let’s talk about that a little bit. Share your thoughts.
EDWENE: That was my hardest step. When I began to do the work that I do, primarily on a love offering basis, but my retreats are set to a certain fee low enough so that anyone could do it at least once and see if they wanted to. Then I receive a love offering or just an offering of appreciation after the event. I came to know that my work is not my source. That there’s a higher power that’s moving through me. I just don’t worry about money anymore. I used to a lot. But I have no debts. My retreats are very successful. I have more invitations to speak than I want to handle and I keep having what the world would call ‘miracles’ happen in my life.
It came to me, that these feelings of great peace and satisfaction and joy came after many years of just stepping outside of my comfort zone one more time and doing the next right thing. Doing a lot of forgiveness work, keeping on purpose, not letting my ego get diverted to other things that I might do because I really want to do what I’m doing, which is teaching prosperity.
KIMBERLY: So someone is in that fear of doing that energy exchange. They’re out there giving their gift away for free and they’re out of balance. What would you give them as a bit of advice about that?
EDWENE: Well, the first time that I confronted that, I wanted to start teaching people how to teach prosperity. I started a retreat called The Master Prosperity Teacher Training. I didn’t want people who were coming just to have a good time for the weekend. I wanted people who were on purpose. I want to set a fee that I thought was fair and that I thought would challenge them enough. I just prayed and prayed and prayed about it. What I got was… I started at $1,000. I got, “No.” I went to $1,100. “No.” “What about $1,295?” “No.” Finally, got it was $1,795 and I got “Yes,” and it scared me to ask for that much money. “Oh my God, they’re going to think I’m crazy.” Every year it was a full, enrollment was full. But it was really during the check within, going within and asking that, I call, our higher selves. Whatever that is, it knows what to do and all we have to do is learn to ask the right questions.
KIMBERLY: It’s funny. I had a client just talking about that today. She kept working up her pricing and she’s like, “No, no.” Amazingly, she hit the $4,000 number, she got a very clear ‘Yes’ to bring in those amazing clients.
EDWENE: Wonderful! I love that. That’s amazing! If we have the courage… because most people do value themselves and do value the information they have to share. But my faith in myself did not come immediately. It came over time. I think when I opened that business, the first client that I got, gave me a $500 retainer and I should’ve asked for thousands because I was doing a grand opening for a very big hospital. But I didn’t know any better and they were very pleased, I got a really nice job done for a little bit of money. But for me, $500 was a lot of money. We start where we are. Start, that’s the key. You have to start.
KIMBERLY: You have to actually begin the process. When you’re testing things out now, you do have a very successful business and clients come from all over the world I know to work with you. What do you see as the biggest take away as they’re leaving their time with you? I know you do these beautiful retreats. What is the biggest “Aha” for them that they’re seeing and leaving with?
EDWENE: I think they’re all very, very different because I have people who come over and over and over. Every time, they get something new. But primarily, my job is to wake people up to their own divinity, their own holiness, their own integrity, their own gifts. My goal is to see the face of God on every face I see. When I see someone and I really encourage them and I give them real honest feedback and build up their willingness to take some chances, you can see a shift in them. They begin to move from one new project to the next and bigger and bigger and I have some people who do some amazing things because they were willing to step outside of their comfort zone and to believe in themselves and to be willing to fail. Yeah, willing to fail. You have to take a risk and when you take a risk, there’s a willingness to fail. Surprisingly, we don’t fail very often.
KIMBERLY: It’s just one big lesson, right? I always say that when I have these failures, it’s the universe asking me, “How bad do you want it?”
EDWENE: Yes! That’s one of the things I teach and when your intention to come to a retreat… and maybe you’re a little scared because you don’t know what it’s going to be about. There’s a Russian metaphysician, Ouspensky, who says, “What happens when you set your intention to do something new or to be something bigger than you’ve been, there comes something called second force. It says, ‘Do you mean this? Are you really sure you mean this?’ That’s when we have the steps, ‘Yes, I do and I’m doing it.” Yeah, you know the feeling.
KIMBERLY: I kind of see in that leap, like you said, making that decision to move forward. And people get so stuck not making the decision. I love how you said that you’re really just showing people how to connect with their divine selves. Somehow, I think people miss the idea that your divine self is wealthy. They make this disconnect. How do you bring that together for people?
EDWENE: I am a minister. I use a lot of Bible. There’s a lot in the Bible I don’t understand. So we don’t ask big questions about some of the hard stuff but the simple things. Over and over, it says, “God provides.” It’s the Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom and asked. The scripture say, “We have not because we ask not.”
When I started my business, I asked God about every move, “What do I do here? What do I do here?” I followed that. Even though it scared the beejesus out of me, I did it anyway. Amazing things began to happen, but it’s learning to trust your inner guidance system that is so powerful, that higher, holy self, that really wants you to have all that your heart desires. The whole notion is that we’re moving in evolutionary steps toward really being that life that we have to be. God wants us to have everything we want.
A lot of religion has taught poverty as a virtue. It’s really not. Poverty’s a sin. Sins simply mean missing the mark of perfection. If you’re not as wealthy as you want to be, it’s because there’s some thought or some feeling that you’re letting yourself be held back by. It’s good to do some prayer, some meditation to go with it and to find some place in you that says, “I’m bigger than this. We can do this.” Not let the ego say … The ego loves the status quo, “Don’t do it. You’re probably going to fail.” It’s like your old grandmother, somebody saying, “Who do you think you are?” Well, I think that I am beloved of God and I can do anything I choose.
KIMBERLY: That is so beautiful! Everyone can stand in that moment of that connection and just know that we’re supposed to be happy. We’re supposed to be tapping into that divine. We’re supposed to be wealthy in so many ways. I love how we’re trying to do this consciousness shift. I’m so honored to be speaking with you and being able to get people to see that shift and I love the part of, since you are a minister, bringing in the Bible, because I get that where people would come at me with the quotes from the Bible. But Jesus was one of the wealthiest people and He taught abundance.
EDWENE: He didn’t even carry a wallet. I love it. I just want to mention what I call the four spiritual laws. I believe in tiding… one-tenth of all belongs to where you receive your spiritual food. Tiding on a regular and discipline basis, not just when it feels good. Then forgiveness… we’ve got to let forgiveness work every single day. Every single day, there’s someone who has something that I don’t like. I have to spend time really saying, “Okay, your control issues are showing again. So, go back and forgive yourself and forgive them.” Then you have to set goals. You have to really say what it is that you want. Then finally, you have to get on purpose with your life. What are you here for? What do you want to accomplish? What is your big goal? Whatever it is, God’s got bigger things than that for you. So just start where you are and begin.
KIMBERLY: That’s beautiful! I love that you and I are on the same page with tiding. I talk about it all the time. People think it’s some old fashioned thing. I’m trying to also, with your message as well, bring this forward that people have to understand it. When you give that 10% and especially when you’re in scarcity, that’s when you should be giving that 10%.
EDWENE: Exactly. I have people come to me saying, “I was tiding last year really, really well … But I need to have the house payment so I didn’t tide and stuff started to happen that wasn’t right.” I say, “See? The year is not doing this to you. You’re doing this to yourself.”
KIMBERLY: That’s so true. We are in control of that. We are in complete control of what that looks like. I think we could probably talk about this all day but I like to keep it where people are getting just what they need to hear. So they get that they are divine. We are abundant. That is what we’re here to do and to be able to spread that abundance to help. Is there any other little tidbit you’d love to leave them with so that they can take it home and start to practice?
EDWENE: The thing that I want people to know more than anything else is that you are loved. You’re loved with the love that you can’t even begin to imagine and you’re watched over and you cannot fail. Get out there and just start taking some step and seeing what life is really like when you live it full out and technical.
KIMBERLY: Thank you so much for just taking this time to chat. And people want to find you because your retreats I’ve heard are amazing. A few of my friends and clients have gone. I’m going to put that on my to-do list over the next year. Where can people find you so that they can get more information about your abundance retreats?
EDWENE: My webpage is prosperityproducts.com. There is a listing of the retreats and the workshops and the products that I have. You can email us to get on our email list from the webpage. I would love to hear from people. I would like to tell people who are in my realm about your programs.
KIMBERLY: Thank you so much and I really hope everyone who’s watching this take the moment to hear what we said to know that you are in connection with your divine source at all times. You just have to be open to receiving and that you are meant to be abundant and wealthy in every way, shape and form. I will see you on the next chat and thank you so much, Edwene, for being with us.
