Radiant Spirit (cont.): Abundance Practices 1 & 2

This is the second installment of Rick’s “Radiant Spirit” article, featuring the first & second practices of abundance.  The first installment was posted on April 4.

Turning a Negative into a Positive 

The great mantra, “All things are working together for good,” is imminently applicable here. You lose something, or miss an appointment. Instead of cursing your karma, blaming yourself or others, and getting caught in a whirlpool of bad feelings, you always look for the healed vision. “I can let this go and know that it is bringing me a new opportunity,” or, “Whoever needs this, may it be with them. I give thanks for realizing that I am the same without it.” In other words, you recreate your interpretive pattern to honor every guest who enters into your life.

Bearing Your Yoke with Gladness 

The idea of “abundance” as unrestricted freedom and pleasure is the Faustian fantasy of our age.  As Faust made a pact with the dark forces to succeed, we have all striven and achieved and have still come up empty. A vision of abundance as all pleasure and ease is the new age remodeling of last generation’s suburban fantasy. It is unwise, untested by challenge, unconcerned with character, and unresponsive to the needs of others. The same holds for contemporary prosperity programs that claim you can have anything you want if you just think it. Such childish teachings play on people’s fears and weaknesses in the same way that riverboat confidence men (from where we get the appellation “con man”) did selling snake oil a century ago.  

We are obliged to live both in and through our histories. Denying them bars involvement with everything and everyone around us. Every one of us has a cross to bear and a yoke that holds us. And how we work with this is often what earth life is about. Can we bear our yoke joyfully? This is the challenge of living abundantly. A colleague of mine described how she resisted again and again the fact that her profession was that of cleaning houses. It was not her ego ideal, and it was not what she was trained for, but it was the reality of the moment. The moment she let go of her resistance and felt her full presence in doing what she was doing, she felt amazingly light and free. She opened to enjoy the life she had, and at the same time spontaneously began to envision new paths and possibilities.

to be continued…