A Different Kind of Abundance

In the view of the old alchemists, abundance is being-based. And also: rhythmic, cyclical, mycorrhizal, thermodynamic. Much of the alchemists’ approach involved shining a blazing spotlight on a single question: if there is dissatisfaction with what one has, what is it's source? Sometimes an answer comes simply. If its raining and your socks are wet, there's no mystery as to why you might want a roof overhead, dry clothes and a warm cup of tea. It's a little trickier when the desire is for a new porsche or a partner with a list of ideal qualities. Beings from spiders to sparrows seek out partners. It's not as if there's some innate greed or sense of lack in that. For human beings though, we might try to manifest a partner on the basis of dozens or hundreds of impulses - many of them in direct conflict with each other. If - in manifesting - we envision ourselves communicating with the universe, it seems wise to deliver a message without internal contradiction. To avoid a situation akin to ordering a restaurant pizza with such indecision about toppings that the server throws up his hands and walks away, leaving you hungry. So becoming aware of the nature and source of our desires - self-knowledge - becomes practical.

<p>The basis for understanding abundance in thermodynamic terms has a great reflection in nature. It’s so inviting to focus only on the harvest: the joy of picking the apple from the tree. Piling up more and more apples in a bucket. But then, nature demonstrates the  flourishing of bright fruit is only part of a larger system: of plant life dying and decaying into the soil, of deep roots in darkness, of hidden interconnection and complex sharing through systems of fungal threads benefiting individual trees/the whole forest. With nature’s reflection in our inner world, we’re pointed to an abundance that encompasses both the harvest of  beauty and joy…and the harder opportunity of letting go into death - letting go positions, attachments, reactions. </p>

Through this lens, we can see that a certain kind of abundance asks that we at times surrender a prized cluster of values: linear productivity and efficiency toward the pursuit of goals, growth, and established images of success. Rather than propelling a train down the tracks with top machine-precision, we’re invited to utterly derail - letting the train smash through dense forest and sink into swamp. To be truly open to all of what life offers, we’re asked to - sometimes, only sometimes! - put aside being strategic and laser-focused in the pursuit of our goals. To sit and feel our heartbreaks and griefs and uncertainties and the wild, erratic emotional depth and complexity and fierceness that doesn’t contain itself to a standard of boardroom composure. We’re asked to set aside knowing what we’re doing and having things figured out. <em>To be open, to let the world provide radically new visions of who we are, what we love, what our lives are for. </em>We’re asked to release tribal opinions and take refuge in a self-knowing beyond identities like Democrat, Catholic, spiritual, human. To befriend the animals that wander from dream to dream. To know oneself as the consciousness that was here before monkeys came down trees to pick up tools and build iPhones. To not know and find the thunderous stillness radiant beneath clung-to opinions.

We find out just how much reality isn’t an atm from which we are entitled to endlessly extract richness. Instead, reality may reflect a matrix of generosity in which one participates joyfully… receiving a steady stream of unlooked-for blessings by accident. Or reality may involve a style of flourishing inseperable from its underside of decomposition in the underworld: an aliveness that includes peace and pleasure, and also deeply felt: vulnerability, grief, trauma, unfulfilled hopes and dreams. Letting go what’s held frees up energy for the new. But also - both the bright meadow and the graveyard become enjoyed as part of the fullness of life.

In the alchemical tradition of ancient China, abundance was linked insperably to death and letting go. A practitioner stood in time as if it was a river. With the right attitude of open surrender, the current would carry away all that was dead, stagnant or toxic. And at the same time, the river's flow carried to the practitioner all things new: new blessings, new opportunities to live well. But receiving these blessings also involved a certain attitude.

The Chinese sages didn’t believe blessings came by right of being special or especially entitled. In their view, a certain kind of abundance came from tuning one’s soul to Heaven - it’s frequency and it’s gifts. In those days, this often involved ceremonies and festivals dedicated to the gods, goddesses and other figures. Through offerings and sacrifices, ancient people volunteered themselves into a system of generosity that flowed between visible and invisible worlds. Rather than simply waiting to see what fate would bring, the practitioners of these old ways were tuning into the underlying nuances of reality.

If we lean now more toward understanding the world in psychological terms, we can play out something of that same ceremonial dynamic by tuning our focus toward the flow of images, sensations, emotions and shifts in belief that come through focused attention on the divine. All of this that flows toward us in this way nourishes and reintegrates our sense of who we most deeply are. The fullness and richness of this becomes reflected in the material world - not necessarily as golden palaces, but as the circumstances that and naturally fit and express who you are.