To Acquire the Midas Touch
Midas was a king of great fortune who ruled the country of Phrygia, in Asia Minor. He had everything a king could wish for. He lived in luxury in a great castle. He shared his life of abundance with his beautiful daughter. Even though he was very rich, Midas thought that his greatest happiness was provided by gold. His avarice was such that he used to spend his days counting his golden coins! Occasionally he used to cover his body with gold objects, as if he wanted to bath in them.
Money was his obsession. One day, Dionyssus, the god of wine and revelry, passed through the kingdom of Midas. One of his companions, a satyr named Silenus, got delayed along the way. Silenus got tired and decided to take a nap in the famous rose gardens surrounding the palace of king Midas. There, he was found by the king, who recognized him instantly and invited him to spend a few days at his palace. After that, Midas took him to Dionyssus.
The god of celebration, very grateful to Midas for his kindness, promised Midas to satisfy any wish of him.
Midas though for a while and then he said: I hope that everything I touch becomes gold.
Dionyssus warned the king to think well about his wish, but Midas was positive. Dionyssus could do nothing else and promised the king that from that following day everything he touched would turn into gold.
The next day, Midas, woke up eager to see if his wish would become true. He extended his arm touching a small table that immediately turned into gold. Midas jumped with happiness! He then touched a chair, the carpet, the door, his bathtub, a table and so he kept on running in his madness all over his palace until he got exhausted and happy at the same time!
He sat at the table to have breakfast and took a rose between his hands to smell its fragrance. When he touched it, the rose became gold. I will have to absorb the fragrance without touching the roses, I suppose, he thought in disappointment. Without even thinking, he ate a grape but it also turned into gold! The same happened with a slice of bread and a glass of water. Suddenly, he started to sense fear.
Tears filled his eyes and that moment, his beloved daughter entered the room. When Midas hugged her, she turned into a golden statue!
Despaired and fearful, he raised his arms and prayed to Dionyssus to take this curse from him. The god heard Midas and felt sorry for him. He told Midas to go to river Pactolus and wash his hands. Midas did so: he ran to the river and was astonished to see gold flowing from his hands. The ancient Greeks said they had found gold on the banks of the river Pactolus. When he turned home, everything Midas had touched had become normal again.
Midas hugged his daughter in full happiness and decided to share his great fortune with his people. From now on, Midas became a better person, generous and grateful for all goods of his life. His people led a prosperous life and when he died, they all mourned for their beloved king. Source: www.greeka.com
In Linda Goodman's Star Signs, she writes that there are 3 reasons why people work.
1) The most common reason for working is to earn your daily bread to pay for your basic necessities, which you need in order tot survive and be able to go to work, so you get enough money for your basic necessities, which you need so you can continue to work to warn the money to pay for you . . . and so on. It is called the treadmill existence, and aptly named.
2) To become immensely wealthy - or famous. Whether the goal is the former or the latter or both, these people fall into the same category.
3) To keep one's self from fading into a nonperson, which you would surely become if you couldn't do the work you're doing, because it's an obsession, a dream that consumes you - and you don't do it to earn your daily bread - you do it for the reason that it provides "hyacinths for the soul." You would do it even if you were paid no money at all, because you can't help doing it. Quite simply, you love it. Your work is a labor of love. Therefore, you're guaranteed to achieve inner fulfillment, outward success - and if you're genuinely devoted to the dream - also bushels of money, under the Universal Law.
4) These are the rare ones who inherit their money, and who don't actually work at anything but hiring people to make sure their inheritance doesn't disappear, and their wealth increases through investment. They're hardly worth considering, since there are so few of them. the sons of wealthy builders seldom inherit, along with the money, the father's driving ambition (or dream obsession). Occasionally, a grandson does, but . . .
Obviously, what is needed, in the words of Linda Goodman, is some sort of gigantic miracle that could transmute or convert all the bored, weary, and frustrated people in Group 1 - and all the tense and hyper people in Group 2 - happily into Group 3. Don't you agree? Of course, it won't be easy, since Groups 1 and 2 share the same blindness to the reality of the Money Mystique.
You would think, she suggests, that everyone would make an intense effort to become part of Group 3? It's logical. But it doesn't always happen that way. You see, the people in Group 2 think they don't need to join Group 3, because they believe they already have the formula for success, although they're gravely mistaken. The equally misguided people in Group 1 aren't sure just what it is they want, and even when they are, the necessity of survival takes priority because the ideal labor of love for them individually doesn't always beckon from the Classified Ads during the same week the rent is due. Thus begins the endless treadmill of existence. And since humans are, unfortunately, creatures of habit, well...
Universal Law regarding money is mysteriously contradictory. Never mind all those self-help books that purport to tell you how to do it. No matter which formula they counsel is used,working hard to make money is not how you make money.
Linda Goodman explains that the immense fortunes in America (and the same rule applies to other countries) always have been and always shall be built upon the deceptively fragile foundation of a dream by men who labored with love and were obsessed by an idea. When they added the letter 'L' for love, to the idea, it became an ideal that eventually, inevitably, and miraculously brought benefit to the world, while simultaneously producing a never-ending flow of money. Women obsessed by an idea-ideal that resulted in changing the world and accumulating a fortune? Not many have been permitted such achievement yet, but from Linda's own words:
"women's dreams are made of sterner stuff, and they will manifest soon enough."
Wealth is built by single-mindedly being consumed by the dream, the idea transmuted into an ideal, by adding the 'L' for love of their work. Then the money materialized in awesome and ever-increasing amounts, under what the science of metaphysics calls the Universal Law of Magnetic Attraction - and the first rule of that law is to work with love - to pursue your daydreams until they lead you into a labor of love.
(Linda Goodman's Star Signs 1988 by Pan Books, UK)
