Abundance is one of those words, like sustainability, that gets used often but means different things to different people. The last few years of economic change in our world have been an invitation to re-visit our definition of abundance and the values that move and motivate us. Our response to that invitation includes looking at our language and the ways we use it to describe what is meaningful to us. I take a broad view of abundance and consider it an approach to life; a perspective rather than the harvest or goal of labor. The best model of that is our own human heart.
An abundant approach to living is seeing with new eyes….seeing with the eyes of compassion and sense of possibility. A willingness to trust in what we have to work with, our self, and life. Our compassionate heart knows that we are all vulnerable, we all have something to give, and we are all in this together. All – the planet, the animals, the plants. Seeing with the eyes of compassion, trust and Love is an act of abundance and generosity. An abundant perspective is willing to look beyond what seems to be lacking to what is being given, what is being learned, what is being asked of us.
“Things don’t change, we change” ~ Henry David Thoreau
When we trust in enoughness and plenty, we give, we open to receive and we let ourselves love and be loved. Our hearts are abundant, this universe is plenty….it is our choice to open to that. We are being asked to let go of all that we thought, all the conditioned views of plenty that have gone before and set us up for struggle. Our Mother Earth is teaching us, the children are here to help us remember, and all the wisdom traditions have pointed us in the direction of our own heart. We have all we need. We.
“Our duty as people is to proceed as if limits to our abilities did not exist. We are collaborators in creation” ~ Pierre Chardin