12.28.08

Word (Phrase) of the Week 12/28/08

Posted in Uncategorized at 3:18 pm by admin

Abundance

To have enough.  To feel like you have enough.

As people of many traditions revel in all kinds of new acquisitions of gifts this time of year, I was reminded about my intense belief in abundance as some kind of proactive verb.  Abundance, once Hanan stumbled into my life, became an almost obsession that I defined as having all that I want, when I wanted it and how I wanted it. Experience, however, taught me otherwise.

In chagrined retrospect, my definition of abundance was the spiritual equivalent of having a three-year old (or 6 year old, or of course some form of teenager) in all their demanding and impatient and self-centered glory.  Granted I don’t usually throw fits or tantrums, but you get the idea.  The results were predictable: I planned and God (the Universe, the All, etc.) laughed!  Sometimes it was actually funny.  Other times my actions in the name of abundance hurt others.  And there those were times where I suffered.  Eventually I had to realize that I did not know what was going on – and that predicting the future was out of the question.

Now ultimately my goal is to move through this lifetime with as much ease as possible, or as some would say, with as much “flow” as possible.  And even with this all-things-are-possible approach to abundance, there was much ease and flow to be had.  It’s just that the cost of the process was never anticipated:  not really sleeping for two years, having a divorce and the housing crises coincide leaving me stripped of any personal financial resources, being forced to move 5 times and still maintaining the day job, etc.  Ah – that which we cannot control keeping us clear on that fact in a myriad of ways.

This week, some new Hindu friends came over for dinner and the one – who it turns out has quite a bit of knowledge of Eastern religions and Sufism in India and Pakistan in particular – really wanted to see Hanan Says: and read some of it.  I went upstairs to pick of a copy from my “to sell” pile and right away instinctively knew that I would be giving the couple a signed copy of the book, so I also grabbed a pen.  After some additional reading and chatting about some of the poems therein, I told them I was giving it to them, signed it accordingly and passed it on.

Immediately they both said, almost in unison, “But we have nothing to give you!”.  I replied, “I am giving you this book to give it to you for your enjoyment and nothing more.  I do not expect anything in return – it is a gift to you.”  I think they accepted my offer secure in the knowledge that my expectations of them were nothing.  A simple exchange in which I felt abundant enough to let go of that additional money that might be made by actually selling the book.

Yet here, in the midst of this global, national, state and regional economic crisis, I am still out there proverbial resume in hand, exploring new jobs that might be “better” in terms of pay and that would still fit in with our family’s quality of life goals.  It is funny, one of Hanan’s works has the line that we should be careful what we wish for (he is neither the first nor last person to make that statement, clearly) as we dance around with the Universe.  I realized that I was wishing for “more”, simply because I feel it is earned and because I have not been feeling like I have enough for myself and my family…even though I actually do.

When I lived on he border of Haiti in a desert undergoing a 16 month drought with no water and electricity (for those that are guessing, yes the Peace Corps and yes, Dominican Republic) I lived on essentially the same meals (rice and beans) twice a day or sometimes three times a day.  I had it good.  After the Haitian coup in 1991 I and a friend went across the border to explore that side of la zona fronteriza (the border zone) in Haiti.  We had no clue what to expect. But here is what we found:

Poverty like with which we had neither lived in the DR nor otherwise experienced.  A decimated environment that made my desert look like a thinning but still-functioning forest.  People who were in the process of carrying meager goods and water on their heads from place to place.  I will be attaching a photo soon to share that sense of things.  In fact, in every picture we took there, these dirt-poor people were smiling.  Their smiles beamed so strongly that they penetrate my heart even as I review the photos in the present.  The smiled all of the time.  Their smiling was contagious and as we used our modest Haitian Creole to communicate with them I realized that they had found the secret and it was neither verbal, nor scientific, nor material. They had found a way to feel like they had enough. Even though by most any standard, they did not actually have enough.

Yet abundance was theirs.  They had abundance in abundance!

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