Abundance

This week our topic over at The Care and Feeding of the Girls in the Basement is Abundance. For fun, I googled abundance and found several sites at which abundance is equated with the financial prosperity that will most certainly result from multi-level marketing. I also found an online clothing boutique for plus-sized women.

Not exactly what we're talking about.

The basic theory underlying laws of abundance goes something like this: The universe is abundant and free flowing. Abundance is accessible by everyone equally. However, abundance attracts abundance and scarcity attracts scarcity.

This isn't a new concept. I'm sure you've heard some form of it. Success begets success. Gratitude begets gratitude. Grace begets grace. Compassion begets compassion. Love begets love. Misery begets misery. Loneliness begets loneliness. Pain begets pain. Failure begets failure. And so on. We are limited by our beliefs, by how we think, by our self-fulfilling prophecies. We attract those things in our lives (money, love relationships, success, wealth, employment, misery, pain) that we focus on. In other words, we create our own realities.

The best way, according to these laws, to become socio-emotionally, spiritually, financially, physically and intellectually abundant is to be socio-emotionally, spiritually, financially, physically and intellectually abundant. How? Via gratitude, affirmations and positive thinking for starters.

I happen to believe this-- despite commercial exploitations of the theme. "As a man thinketh, so he will become."

Keep in mind, that we CAN change the way we think. Sometimes, that's all we CAN change-- but if we take that first step, blessings come our way. Of course, the first step can be difficult.

Barbara Samuel writes:

Abundance is about having what you need. It means that when you are in harmony with your path, there will be plenty of everything-love and pleasure and joy and all the things you as a human need to feel prosperous. It means you have work that thrills you and food that nourishes and friends to call on the phone or maybe "just" a great dog (ha!). It means there will be help when you need it, though not always what you expect.

Luckily, I feel/think/believe my life is pretty darned abundant. Sure, I'd like a little more adventure sometimes-- and I haven't totally accepted what in the heck gravity is doing to my body--and sometimes I do a whole "woe is me" thing for a couple hours-- but I'm working on it and my life is chock full of love, compassion, forgiveness, friendship, fun, laughter, happiness, growth, healing and all kinds of good stuff. I wanted writing in my life, and cool, intelligent writing friends-- and voila, I'm writing and I have cool, intelligent writing friends.

But time . . . oh dear, time!

One of the women in our class mentioned time as an area where she feels scarcity and that clicked for me immediately. Sure, sure I'm a stay at home mom/babysitter/tutor so I'm not working grueling hours somewhere that I don't want to be BUT have you swam like a Honu for two hours lately with three wild toddlers on your back or walked like a stegasaurus for hours on end when you want to be writing? Does it take you an hour to get everyone loaded into the car with all the appropriate paraphernalia? (Patience is not my middle name-- and if you note a twinge of negative thinking in there, you are soooo right!) I try-- oh, I try-- to remain in the moment and feel the abundance of time. I thank God for all my blessings -- but I always find myself thinking there aren't enough hours in the day.

So last night, I decided to start thinking differently about time. To think like my son, Dante, or my dogs. They don't think about time. As far as they are concerned they have all the time in the universe to do exactly what they are doing in the present moment.

I got up at five this morning, despite the whole night owl thing, despite the fact that I fell asleep late. I figured there was no time like the present to turn things around. And I feel good. I feel abundant-- a little sleepy, but . . . I suppose sleepiness begets sleepiness. He, he.

For the cynics out there, Barbara writes-

So, if the universe is endless, why doesn't everyone have the life they want to have? Lots of reasons, mostly dealing with fear and thinking in terms of lack, but there's an important one I want us to think about and talk about here: suffering as a secret virtue.We all know people who cling to painful things as if there is some holy grail contained in it.

In other words, no affirmation is going to work if your thoughts are negating the positive. When we focus on "having less" in any way, we create that experience for ourselves.

I'm an optimist and I'm not very competitive with anyone but myself-- or at least not that often and not for quite some time-- but I do sometimes fall into all-or-nothing thinking, and catastrophizing, particularly when I get around certain people, fondly known as my "trigger trippers." I also sometimes think "nobody understands me because . . . " ( I have a list of reasons A-Z. My top choices-- nobody understands me because I'm so different, unusual; I go to the beat of my own drummer). I also sometimes worry that my novel will put people off because maybe it's not happy enough, or conflicted enough, or my writing isn't eloquent enough or witty enough. I admit, however, that most of the time I think-- Hey, why not me? Why can't I be a brilliant and prolific, high profile author? If I put in the time, I can do it.

Ah, the time thing again.

I also worry that people will think I'm arrogant ( which I can be) or a big, unrealistic dreamer (which I can be) because I'm pretty darned sure I'm going to make it as a writer/teacher.

Barbara writes--

A writer yearns to find her audience because she is being called to do her right work. . . You yearn for your audience for a reason. Because this is your calling.

Abundance thinking begins by believing you are important and worthwhile and this need you have to put words on the page is an edict:

Get thee to a page and write . . . .

I'll end this post with two quotes that I just love--

If you don’t write your books, they might not ever get written. ~Madeline l’Engle.

If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it. ~Toni Morrison

Abundant cheers and happy, prolific, brilliant writing, Alyson

p.s. I love the image of your warrior goddess on a mustang, Macy. Go grrrrrl!