abundance

Today we are going to consider abundance.

I don’t know whether you’ve noticed; Those things which are plentiful, we don’t value much; and those things which are rare, we put a great deal of value on.

For example, diamonds are not so common and they are highly valued. And indeed, to look at a diamond in light is a beautiful thing. I don’t know whether you’ve ever gone out in the early morning, just as the sun is rising, and looked at dew drops on the grass. They catch the light also, in a way that no diamond ever has. They are alive. Their shape is so perfect, not cut with flat faces, curvaceous, full of the energy of life. And the dew drops are plentiful, every blade of grass has one. Do we value the dew drops? No; just because they are so plentiful. In fact, the dew drops are abundant. There is that beauty there for us, in abundance. We choose not to see it, or not to feel it, merely because the dew drops are abundant.

So in considering abundance, we first have to realise that, somewhere in our psychology, we don’t value things that are abundant. By definition, we value things that are rare and therefore we will always be valuing those things that are not abundant. And we will have this feeling of a lack of abundance because of that.

And even when there is a plentiful supply of something, something that we value, we will tend to feel it still as lacking, for the same reason, in our mind, the relative lack, or lack of abundance, is so tightly tied to the feeling of value. So if we come to value something that is relatively rare, if it then becomes abundant, one of those two feelings will disappear; either the feeling of valuing, treasuring; or the feeling of abundance, even though abundance is actually manifest.

Take money for example. Maybe you’ve had times in your life when you’ve not had so much money. And certainly as a society we put great store in the value of money. It has more or less taken the place of God in Western civilisations. Yet, if you start to accumulate plentiful money, if money is in abundance for you, the chances are you’ll still feel you don’t have enough and you need more, always more. Even extremely wealthy people spend much time and energy chasing after yet more money.

This is another paradox with regard to abundance. If we want something to be abundant, psychologically, we never allow it to be so. We never allow ourselves to feel the abundance. We always want more.

So to feel abundance, something has to change. But, as usual, it doesn’t have to change in the outer world, that may or may not follow. First and foremost, something has to change within us. And really, the change that is needed to feel abundance has to do with this link that we have made, foolishly, between rarity and value. Until that link is broken, deep in our psychology, we cannot feel abundance.

So how to go about breaking that link? As ever, awareness is the key. Become aware of what you are valuing. Become aware of what society says is valuable. And see, this is not necessarily so. That whatever pleasure a diamond can give you, a dew drop can give you a thousand times over. And for every diamond you will see in your life, you can see a thousand million dew drops.

But this you have to become aware of. Sit and watch and see what you value. It is very important that we get to the bottom of this in ourselves. For much follows from our linking a sense of value to rarity. Even if we have something, enough of something, we will want more. And furthermore, we will cling to what we have, for fear that it is irreplaceable. And in that clinging, in that attachment, we become dragged down. We close ourselves.

Look into this for yourselves, in your day to day lives, small things, big things. You will see, psychologically, we are not valuing that which is abundant. We are clinging to things, attachment is forming, because of this feeling of lack of abundance in the things that we do value. And with this attachment and this feeling of lack of abundance, all sorts of misery follows: insecurity, feeling of not being provided for.

Existence has its ways. It is providing. Have the courage to see it. Trust. Learn to love simple things. A leaf of a tree: Have you ever seen such a beautiful dance as a leaf fluttering in the wind? And every tree has hundreds, thousands of leaves; And there are thousands, millions of trees. Do we value leaves? Not as much as we should. Go out, find a leaf, living or dead, and just look at it. See its beauty. Let it fill you with its beauty. It’s giving, it’s giving its beauty to anyone who’ll look. Touch it. Stroke it. Feel its beauty. Let it fill you.

Abundance is everywhere when we allow ourselves, allow ourselves, allow ourselves, to feel it.