manifesting abundance-caveat-be careful

Following the film called "The Secret", there has a been a shower of courses and businesses relating to Manifesting Abundance with money, cars and houses usually at the top of some list. Of course I too practise the art of manifesting my dreams and I have received materials from these sources through my email address. On the 6th January 2008, I received an email announcing I had won a million and a half Euros. Before you shake your head and imagine how could a person be so fooled, 1. I was in a state of expecting good fortune. 2. the message led directly to the Dutch National Charities Lottery with lists of respected organisations like UNICEF and Greenpeace and then to a boring Dutch bank. All the information was in Dutch which I dont speak. Never mind the gangster the other end spoke with a Nigerian accent. Amsterdam is full of African refugees who could be working in banks. The other was from Vodafone in the Netherlands. In brief, the thieves ask you to urgently send money for legal fees via Western Union and then they are gone. I lost a considerable amount of money. It is gone and so yesterday must be forgotten. However I also ask the question, is there a lesson in this and if so, what? The internet is a source of both good things like free ebooks, videos, music and friends. It is also the highway for indentity theft, crime and lottery scams and they are becoming cleverer to the unaware. My email uses a Czech server and it was not widely in circulation until I joined these spiritual forums and those Manifesting Abundance web sites. How did my email address land in the laps of this syndicate apparently operating out of the Netherlands?. So I say to you, please be wary. People do indeed fall prey. Otherwise such scams would have died-the Nigerian 419 goes back to the 1920s when appeal was made to release an heir from a Spanish prison! I am not naive. Usually I receive such information and immediately press delete without even reading it. However a prior state of mind which expects fortune to smile upon us, can render a person vulnerable. On the very day the thieves struck, the day of the three kings, my beloved sister had sent me a queque from the south of France, as if she knew I was in trouble. Maybe this also shows the power of choice and focus. I focus on the gift and not the loss.