It’s been a while since I’ve posted about the Million Dollar Experiment, so here’s an update. The MDE has been going strong since November 2005. I continue to receive updates and new submissions every day, and the online database is refreshed once or twice a week.

For those unfamiliar with the MDE, it’s a group thought experiment whereby anyone who wants to participate agrees to focus on the following intention once a day for at least 60 seconds:

In an easy and relaxed manner, in a healthy and positive way, in its own perfect time, for the highest good of all, I intend $1,000,000 to come into my life and into the lives of everyone who holds this intention.

Then we track our results publicly to see how we’re doing. It’s as simple as it looks. There’s no catch. It’s 100% free, and there’s nothing to buy. I’m hosting this experiment out of curiosity. This isn’t a scientific experiment; it’s an experiential one, like experimenting with matches. Instead of playing with fire though, in this case we’re experimenting with pure intention. How much power do our thoughts have to affect our reality? Can our thoughts actually manifest cash?

Based on the feedback I’ve received, I’d say that for some people the answer is a convincing yes, at least temporarily. For other people it’s still a maybe. Several stories I’ve received are quite remarkable. Often within a day or two after joining the experiment, significant sums of money almost magically come into the person’s life. Many times I think, “Well, that could be just a coincidence, since it seems like this person was in a pretty good position to receive that money anyway.” But there have been other stories that have blown me away with such a string of unusual happenings that had to fall into place so perfectly in order for the person to receive the money. Several participants have won lotteries. Come to think of it, I actually won a raffle prize a few weeks ago, and I never win raffles.

As of today there are 1031 public participants, and together we’ve manifested $412,210.29. Many of the people on the list haven’t remained active the entire time after they joined (some haven’t sent in updates since last year), but it’s been interesting to read people’s stories about how they manifested sums ranging from a few pennies up to tens of thousands of dollars.

My personal total is $22,199.39 — not bad for 4.5 months extra income. In fact, just yesterday my wife and I bought a new 2006 Honda CRV for less than this amount (we negotiated a very good deal and badly needed a replacement for our 1994 Pontiac with 158,000 miles on it). Remember that this manifested money isn’t regular income that you’d normally expect to receive. All of this money came from new sources that didn’t exist at the time I started the experiment. I didn’t even need or use the manifested money to buy the new car. I still have almost the entire amount in cash.

In my case it took virtually no effort to receive this manifested money. None of it came from trading my time, i.e. no contract work or paid speaking engagements or anything like that. Most of it arrived in gift form or so close to gift form that the time was negligible, like 20-30 minutes effort to claim thousands of dollars. In fact, after reviewing my spreadsheet, I’d say it took me less than 5 hours total to claim all of that money. It’s been said that intention-manifestation works via the law of least effort, and my experience seems to support that so far.

My biggest single source of manifested money was a $10,000 inheritance I never knew was coming. Another significant portion came from new income-generating ideas… ideas that I honestly never would have even considered if I hadn’t launched this experiment. In fact, in every single case those ideas were brought to me by other people. None of them came from my own brainstorming or old ideas I’d already thought of. I didn’t feel like I went out and actively earned any of this money. Sure I implemented some new ideas, but in most cases that was trivially easy.

To some people $22K is only a nominal sum of money. To others it’s an enormous sum. Relative to my family’s typical annual income, it’s a moderate sum that will make a positive difference in our lives, but I wouldn’t call it a windfall. It has, however, certainly intensified my curiosity about where this experiment will lead. Obviously I’m pleased with the results thus far. I’m 2% of the way to manifesting $1,000,000. Will this pattern of effortlessness continue, or will I only manifest larger sums via personal effort and hard work? Turn the page….

I have to mention something else that seems really strange, but it could be related to this experiment, so I don’t want to ignore it in case others are experiencing something similar. Not only is more money coming into my life, but other people who are close to me seem to be doing very well financially too. Other friends and relatives are doing extremely well too (new business leads, job changes with salary increases, etc). It’s eerie because this kind of change is especially unusual for my relatives. It feels like there’s a great deal of positive financial energy swirling about me.

One very public example was Erin’s second cousin Josh. Josh recently appeared on the TV reality show Beauty and the Geek (Josh was the geek), and he and his partner ended up winning first place. The prize was $250,000. After watching the final episode, he had a big party at my wife’s aunt’s house. My wife and I didn’t attend because it’s 300 miles away, but we watched the final episode and were excited to see him win. I was also silently intending for him to win once I first learned he was going to be on the show. Josh sold a screenplay recently too, so he’s having an incredible year. While Josh certainly did well in the show’s challenges, there was a tremendous amount of luck involved, and Josh had a lot of it go his way. Congratulations, Josh!

I keep thinking of the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Remember Me,” where Dr. Crusher is trapped within a warp bubble created by her own thoughts. I sometimes feel like I’ve switched over to a different thought bubble where good fortune is much more plentiful. Presently I’d say I’m optimistically suspicious that these intentions are having an effect, but I’m not ready to make the leap into full-blown insanity just yet (despite the fact that some people think I crossed over long ago), so I’ll continue focusing on the intention to see where it leads. I can’t find anything negative in this that would make me want to stop, and 60 seconds per day isn’t too much to ask.

If you’d like to join in the fun and participate in the Million Dollar Experiment, the more the merrier.

Incidentally, if this experiment continues to go well and I’m strongly convinced there’s something to this whole intention-manifestation thing, I’ll probably kick off some related experiments, like focusing our thoughts on helping people improve their health, reducing the level of violence in the world, or finding a cure for dandruff.