Abundance

With help from the fabulous Jesse Jennings in the December SOM Magazine.

“Abundance is a state of consciousness. It’s knowing that your needs are easily and naturally met – that you can relax and express creatively and generously. You realize you don’t have to finesse life or work the angles in order to thrive. Nor do you need other people to be fastened onto for support, which allows relationships to breathe and be balanced, where each party is of equal value.

“Abundance is the feeling of being enough and experiencing inner contentment, even when seeking change and growth. Frantic acquisitiveness and conspicuous consumption are not at all signs of inner abundance consciousness,” but its opposite. “we are not what we have, or what we do. These things are merely temporal effects.”

“Abundance is a context in which we view ourselves and our world. Money isn’t the summary of abundance any more than a greeting card is the summary of one’s love and caring. Abundance is as universal as gratitude.” Be grateful for what is, being appreciative even for the things that you’d like to change. “Suspend any disbelief in the idea that there now is more than enough of everything for all people everywhere. Acknowledge one infinite, limitless Source that has emanating from within It an infinite array of re-Sources for our use as powerfully creative beings.”

Spirit and Matter

From the SOM Magazine reading for 12/25/10:

“The Spirit shall look out through Matter’s gaze and Matter shall reveal the Spirit’s face and all the Earth become a single life,” Sri Aurobindo.

“Christ is Universal Idea, and each one ‘puts on the Christ’ to the degree that s/he surrenders a limited sense of Life to the Divine Realization of wholeness and unity with Good, Spirit, God.” SOM Text, p 579

Now, this very moment, is the Christ born in me as I awaken to a deeper realization of my wholeness. Communing with my innermost being, I become attuned to my transcendent self. I see beyond what seems to be and am not misled by appearances, knowing separation is an illusion and not what is ultimately true, right now, in this moment.

I shift my perspective to that Truth. I release all sense of smallness, lack and limitation and know spirit is the source and essence of all and as Jesus said, meaning this as the truth for you and I, not just for himself, “I and my father are one.”

I practice in realizing this truth and seeing beyond the appearances of separation: lack, fear, limitation and scarcity. I am ever more receptive to the gifts of goodness, love and peace that are my birthright, and yours, as a child of God. Surrendering any sense of myself as limited or separate, I celebrate a glorious renewal of my life and the way before me is made straight and grace filled.

An alternative to the ego

God’s teachers – you and I when we know who we are, beings connected to spirit and thus because spirit is back of and within everything and everyone – represent another choice, which has been forgotten, an alternative to the ego. When Jesus the great example and way-shower, not the idol we have made of him, healed the sick, he did not heal them, but reminded them of the remedy God had already given them. So, too, our holiness blesses, by asking nothing of another. Those who see themselves as whole make no demands.

With ego, because ego is the separation from source, and therefore lack and scarcity personified, if we look honestly at our relationships, we’ll realize we’re always making demands because we’re always feeling something’s missing, which of course, it is. Sometimes it’s quite obvious, others it’s quite subtle. The sense of lack must be there as long as I believe I’m an individual, separate from God and each other, and I do believe that, I do, I do, I do. As long as this underlying belief remains uncorrected, it will generate a continual need to fill up what is missing, to substitute material things for spiritual lace.

But when I fill myself with spirit, or better, allow the spirit that’s already there to enter my awareness, when I identify with holiness, I ask nothing of anyone because I am everything and have everything. Having and being are the same. Healing the sick and saving the world really means saving myself from the belief that there is a world. Since all minds are joined in the holiness of spirit, if my mind is healed in any given instant, the world’s mind is healed, too.

None of this is completely understandable from the world’s perspective and can’t make sense within our experience here. It can be grasped and understood only by giving up everything I think I know and believe and go above the battlefield with spirit, to be with spirit and have spirit as my teacher. From there I can look back on the world and see it differently, realizing what has to be saved are my thoughts about the world, which result from my thoughts about myself.

What is born on Christmas Day

The babe born on Christmas day, the light of the world, the star that guided the wise men is awareness – awareness of our, and everyone’s, reality as spirit - mindfulness – awakening to the truth that we are spirit first, then physical. It’s not necessary wait for Christmas to do this, or do it once a year. In fact, that’s blasphemy. Christ consciousness, the awareness of the benign blessings and the absence of the ego’s fear, loathing and hatred, is always there in the manger of our everyday consciousness, calling out to us, a pure innocent babe, wanting to be nurtured. It’s not for some people, the baptized, or for a special day, Christmas, but for all human beings all the time. Jesus was and wanted to be, the great example, not the great exception. We are, right now, as holy as he was. “Greater things than this shall you do also,” he said.

And in Lesson 37 in the Workbook of his Course, he gives us this affirmation: “My holiness blesses the world.” He’s not telling us that we should bless the world outside us, for that would contradict everything he’s been teaching so far in his Course. Rather, he is teaching the world is nothing more than a mirror of out thoughts; saying that if we choose his blessing – within our minds, which is all that is truly real - our minds, not our brains – and see ourselves as holy because we have joined with him, because holy and loving and all-inclusive is all he is - there is no duality or judgment, guilt or blame in spirit, holiness will automatically extend through us and envelop everything se see.

Our purpose is to see the world through our own holiness. The problem is that we see the world through our own un-holiness, as separated ego/bodies whose mission in life is to protect and preserve our separate specialness. Our focus is to be on our thoughts and which teacher we’re allowing to guide us, not on the world. The world is only a reflection of our thoughts.

If we see things we don’t like in the world, we need to realize we’ve been looking with ego, go back into our minds, and ask spirit to help restore us to our right minds. Fixing things in the world without going inside and connecting with spirit first, will not work, because we’re still coming from ego. It’s like trying to fix an out of focus movie by going up to the screen. It’s the projector, our minds, that needs to be adjusted.

The principle is: ideas leave not their source. If my holiness is the source, the idea of the world must be holy as well. The ideas that comprise our perceptual world are merely the projected self image that has its source, either spirit or ego, in our minds, and thus what is projected out always remains within.

Claiming the good

Ervin Seale said, “It is the light of the mind which determines whether you see confusion and limitation or whether you see order and abundance.” I’m not sure who Mr. Seale was, but those are wise words. Page 406 of the SOM text continues Seals’s theme: “We must learn to think in the Absolute. This means to think independently of any given or experienced effect.”

We’ve just past the Winter Solstice, the day the sun shines least, the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. In actuality, the sun is always shining, whether or not we can see it, just as spirit is always present no matter what appearances and conditions may suggest. We’ve got to look beyond appearances of disharmony and lack and realize that omnipresent spirit is always shining in our lives.

Just as daylight may last for a shorter or longer time, depending on the time of year tho the sun is always shining, so spirit is always shining in our lives, even when it does not appear to be. I now claim spirit as the cause and essence of my life and see beyond the darkness of temporary appearances.

I could see peace instead of this

Course Lesson 34: the affirmation: “I could see peace instead of this,” is an appeal to the decision maker within that hears both the still small voice of spirit and the raucous shrieks of the ego, to choose spirit, even tho the ego speaks first and loudest, and even tho we identify most completely with the external reality of the ego world. It’s an inside-out job. “It is from your peace of mind that a peaceful perception of the world arises.” No peace within the mind, no peace in the world. To ask for external peace is to have first made the ego’s world of conflict within real, then projected it out.
There is no world apart from the way the decision maker perceives it and how s/he perceives it depends on which teacher we’re using, spirit or the ego. What matters as a student of the Course is correcting how I perceive, which I involves correcting how I think, which in turn involves correcting my choice of teachers. I can affirm: “I could see peace instead of this,” and/or “I could see spirit instead of this.”

It’s important to be mindful and aware of our unloving thoughts and not deny, hide or suppress them. This is a big part of the process. I want to look at the darkness and bring it to the light. “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all of the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. It is not necessary to seek for what is true, but it is necessary to seek for what is false.”

In other words, you can’t let a thought go if you’re not aware of it. And, you can’t let it go unless you have something to let it go to, have chosen spirit as your teacher/guide. It’s a process of mindfulness, watching my mind and noting my ego/cloud/thoughts floating by and noting them casually, without making a big deal about them. As soon as I make a big deal about them, or judge some better than others, I’m making them real and thinking with ego. Choosing not to look also makes them into a big deal, because it usually means I’ve taken them so seriously, I’m afraid to look at them.

Taking things lightly, slowly, steadily and gently is the kind of mindfulness process we want to practice. As soon as we experience ourselves taking things too, seriously or making a big deal about them, which I do often, we want to remember to say, “I could see peace in this situation instead of what I see now,” or, “I could see spirit in this situation instead of what I see now.” I’ve been saying this a lot lately, especially as I hear about what our Republican friends in the Senate are doing, and it helps a lot. Try it; it works equally well with Democratic friends, with family members and co-workers, too.

Spirit's view an alternative to Ego's view

The alternative to the ego’s view of the world is spirit’s view. It’s knowing it’s all still just clouds and getting involved with some of them, but also knowing by intuition – the still small voice within, the sun behind the ego/cloud/thoughts, that “there is something, beyond what we have so far consciously experienced in this world,” SOM Text, p 465. It’s understanding that the experience of limitation results from not calling forth the greatness that is my, and your, true nature that usually lies dormant.

I can decide right now, as you can, to call forth my greatness and move beyond my comfort zone, and freeing myself from perceived, most imagined limits, enter into the new and unknown loving relationship with spirit in the world. I can turn from the ego’s fear, lack and limitation expand and extend my awareness of my oneness with a loving, all-good spirit, and allow that to manifest here, in the world.

Realizing that spirit is my true nature and essence, I now call forth my wondrous gifts, talents and abilities! I know that the more I call upon these gifts and abilities, the more fully they come forth into expression. Such is the primacy of thought and awareness of the still small voice, not external conditions. I cultivate my awareness of my partnership with spirit by consciously aligning my thoughts, feelings and actions with all that is great and magnificent, turning from all that is hateful, mean-spirited and fearful and keeping my eyes fixed on my, and everyone’s, larger possibilities. Now I dare to dream big, and invite you to do so also, and to join with me in contributing to a world that works for everyone and everything.