Abundance is about how we are in life rather than what life brings to us.
Please discuss. How does this play out in life?
I’ll start us out. In many of our minds, abundance = prosperity = money. We may feel rich in our lives when we have plenty—and how much is plenty, really?—of money, assets, and desired material things. This ties our happiness and satisfaction to numbers, counting, and amassing.
We can also be rich in relationships, experiences, and learnings. These things can also be counted, but often it is more about quality than quantity. One strong and lasting friendship may be more fulfilling to us than several surface-level ones.
What we invest of ourselves in something tends to define how satisfying it is to us. How we believe, think, feel, and act determines our relationships to beings and things. Our sense of the abundance of life, our appreciation of our life experience, depends not on what happens to us or what we amass but on how we perceive and behave.
They key here is gratitude for all we encounter in life, no matter what. Creation is an infinite banquet. We may prefer some dishes we taste to others, but there is always more, an endless array of bounty. Thankfulness for the infinite possibilities places us on a journey of variety, discovery, and appreciation rather than a quest to accumulate.
Today’s message comes to me from passed cat Shaman, a wise soul who knew how to dive into life—and particularly a food bowl—with gusto and joy. He reminds me that my wealth lies in how I approach life. Being curious, loving, and grateful transforms everything I encounter into something I somehow can appreciate. Abundance arises from within me.
How about you? What is your relationship to abundance?