Chewing for Dollars

Learning how to love money

Question: If you were forced to sit in a hotel ballroom for 41 hours listening to simultaneous lectures by Werner Erhard and Reverend Ike, how would you feel? Answer: Very much like a graduate of Prosperity Training, the hot new contender in the perennially fierce competition for the sappiest California therapy of the year.

Like est, Prosperity Training originated in San Francisco, instructs students to "take responsibility for their own lives" and features marathon four-day courses with few food or bathroom breaks. But Prosperity Training offers a new twist; it is pitched to people who feel guilty that they have too much money and those who are puzzled that they have too little.

To feel better about money, trainees play financial games, dance to songs about money, imagine cash piling up on their laps and chew dollar bills. Some of the trainees are reluctant to chew at first. Explains Ruby Buchanan, 30, a cosmetics distributor: "I thought about all the places it has been, and all the hands that touched it. Then, as I chewed, it just began to feel like a piece of wood. I think it helps change your perception of money. I now feel less guilty when I spend, for instance." Trainees are given "treasure maps" and told to paste in pictures of luxury items they wish they had. In a drill intended to build a proper sense of superiority, trainees pair off and mutter to one another: "You're weak, you're weak, you're noodle weak." At graduation time, each trainee is showered with gold sprinkles.

Prosperity Training is the brainchild of Leo Sunshine, 28, a blond, muscular former jewelry dealer who legally changed his name from Brian Murphy. "Abundance is a natural state," declares Sunshine, who, with profits from his Oakland jewelry business, invested in gold and silver and says he is already rich enough to live off his investments. "I want to bring the fundamentals of prosperity to those who want to clear out their self-limiting attitudes and conditioning." As a teaching aid, he holds up--and argues with--a hand puppet he calls El Protecto, which is supposed to represent a little voice in the back of people's minds that tells them they cannot succeed. He inveighs against "doodoo barriers," fixed ideas that people have about themselves--ideas that restrict creativity.

Sunshine's basic message--it's O.K. to feel good about yourself and get rich--is expressed in muzzy cosmic jargon. "Money is spiritual," says one of his printed lessons. "It represents universal energy and exists only in your consciousness." Some of it also exists in the Prosperity Training bank account: $250 a customer, which brings in about $12,000 a course, two or three times a month. In addition, a few well-heeled clients pay Sunshine $5,000 each for private training. There are always a few spoilsports who complain. One real estate agent who took the course called it "a watered-down version of est: undignified, mortifying and insulting to one's intelligence." But some trainees can't get enough Sunshine. Of the students in one recent class, one-third were repeat customers.

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