Before we begin to discuss Abundance, let us be clear about what Abundance is not. Abundance is not the result of a Faustian pact to achieve personal greatness. Such quests are, in fact, often motivated by feelings of inadequacy. Abundance is not about running around and trying to score as many points as possible before the game ends. It is not a race to see how much you can get done in a week, or in an ambitious five year plan. Abundance is neither about the accumulation of goods; nor is it the unrealistic renunciation of material comforts. Abundance is not about finding a way to merely become comfortable- a safe way to stay lukewarm.
In essence, true abundance is freedom. It is fundamental well-being, a fulfillment that is not dependent upon exterior conditions. Abundance is learning to trust in life. It is reality lived fully-being conscious, present, and whole. Therefore, the quality of your attention is the genuine measure of abundance and it is your greatest capital asset in any situation.
What we come to understand and affirm is that even through the most difficult circumstances of life, abundant beauty and richness may be found. It is our faith in the goodness and wisdom of things that allows us to work our way through life’s darkest moments. In this way, Abundance is also faith in the basic goodness of life. It is saying “yes” to all that we can know of life-including the suffering that surrounds us. It is also saying “yes” to that which we do not know, to open and accept the unknown with grace. A sense of Abundance gives us the freedom to participate fully in or lives by doing what we can to assist others. If we do not ourselves feel rich, how can we give to others what has been given to us? In this way, Abundance becomes the rainbow shining through the storm, the promise of our divine destiny.
Before we can begin to explore our potentials for Abundance, we must answer a fundamental question. “Why do anything?” Why bother even getting up in the morning? Or as my son used to say to me when I would ask him to make his bed, “Why should I make my bed if it’s just going to get unmade again?” In short, we are asked to confront the issue of desire, its reality, its fulfillment, and its frustration in the face of an impermanent world.
Some time ago, I was pushing my daughter on the swings in a park by the river at twilight. As I looked past the river toward the mountains in the lower Catskills, the river and the mountains suddenly transformed into the Ganges flowing down from the Himalayas. At the same time, I remained conscious that I was by the Hudson riverbank while pushing my daughter on the swing. I knew that before my daughter was born, I had lived by the Ganges in Rishikesh, and I sensed that a time would come when I would return there. Perhaps I would wonder if any of this had actually happened, and yet it was happening. In that moment, I experienced an overwhelming and powerful opening into the great gift of being in front of the river and pushing my daughter on the swings, because I knew it would not last forever. It was something akin to what the Japanese call mono no aware, the deep sadness of life that opens into an appreciation of the beauty and love in a fragile and impermanent moment. The sadness of that moment was that someday my daughter would be too big for me to push on the swings, and that some day- all too soon- there would be no more swings and no more playground and we would both be in other places. But it was this fact that made the moment all the more precious, that touched me so deeply, that filled me with wonder and gratitude at having been brought together with my daughter for this awesome moment! The Abundance here is not so much a question of creating one’s destiny as it is about opening to one’s destiny, to the fullness and grace of every situation.
Abundance moves us to open to the wisdom and destiny of our desire, it creates an alignment that allows circumstances to come into existence and allows us to release them when it is time to let go. The practice of Abundance is one of opening up to the preciousness of every moment and responding to it creatively, in this way it may be thought of as a compliment to mindfulness. We know that the bed will become unmade. We know that someday we will eventually die, but in this moment we are asked to participate fully in the process of creation.
Such full, participatory living can lift us out of the dilemma of Sisyphus who endlessly pushes the rock up the hill, only to have it roll down again. The practice of abundance will allow us to take whatever situations we have been given, imbibe them fully by releasing habitual judgments about their value, and then make the best design we can out of them as an offering and appreciation for being fully alive.
Such work of Abundance is greater than the personal question of who we are and what we want to do. In order to accomplish anything, we need to be in living exchange with others, as clearly as we are dependent on so many people when we sit down to a meal – including the farmers, cooks, and the servers. Our exchange with others is crucial to our life’s work and this sense of sharing, of giving and receiving is one of the fundamental reasons for our desire to manifest in this world. By becoming conscious of the relational aspects of manifestation, we go beyond egocentric desire and experience the desire to increase our possibilities for love and for awakening the experience of joy in our connection with others. Hence, Abundance is found here and now, in our daily doings. When we honor the details of the life we have been given, we discover mines full of the most precious materials, the divine substance that is revealed through the sharing of our being with everything and everyone.
~Excerpt from Alchemy of Abundance by Rick Jarow
