He says that his life changed one evening when an angel appeared to him with one simple message: You will only end up as poor and as rich as you are now. Then, after uttering this ominous sentence, the angel began to fade out as he had faded in, but the man made him stop with a breathless, “Wait!”
The angel faded back into view and gave the man his attention once again. The man knew there were many questions he should ask, but he knew neither which was most important nor which to begin with. So, with a hint of anger, perhaps frustration, in his voice, he started with the one that was nagging him the most, “What do you mean I will never be richer than I am now?”
“I mean just what I said and nothing more.” said the angel.
“But I work hard, what about the fruits of my labour and all the other promises God made?”
“The truth, like the commandments, is also writ in stone, and God’s word is truth forever. Nothing I said changes what was inspired and written straight from the heart of God.”
The man was confused, “But… How… What…Why then do you say I won’t amount to anything?”
“I only said what I was sent to say: You will only end up as poor and as rich as you are now,” said the angel as he faded out of view.
“Come back! Please!” but the angel was gone, and the man could never tell if his pleas were even heard.
He says that the message of the angel only became clear to him many years later. After he had achieved success in other ways, he realized that his struggle had been making him blind to the fact that he was already everything he needed to be. He was a child of God, and he had all the talents that God had hidden inside him. God’s kingdom was his inheritance. There he was, already a prince but blind to the fact, and thus firmly stuck in a rat-race trying to become this ‘someone’ or that ‘something’ before he could reach for his dreams.
In retrospect, it is very clear that the angel had not come to prophesy his doom but to open his eyes. Today, 40 years later as he tells this tale, he says his eyes are finally fully opened. He sees the truth that he could not see then. There is a natural law that asserts that nothing new is created in the universe, and that nothing is ever destroyed either. Things only change from one thing to another, transmuting, changing of form without ever going out of existence.
By forcing him to avert his eye from the pursuit of wealth and stature, the angel had redirected him into the outpouring of his true essence into the world. And the more of his skills and natural abilities he exercised, the more he transmuted. And as he actualized the potential within, he was outwardly becoming a new person.
His lesson, he says, is that blessed are those who realize from the outset that they are complete, that they are perfect, in accordance with both the universal nature and their own nature. But even more blessed is the one who immediately starts his job of making the world a better place as early as possible, without any excuses or delays and against all obstacles and hindrances.
Letters from the Men's Den 