Abundance Consciousness

Abundance consciousness involves the sense that we will be provided with what we need to sustain a path of healing and growth. For persons on spiritual journeys this concept envelops every aspect of life, and is a centering thought against frustration and fear when we do not get what we think we should have or when we are afraid that what we have will not last.

The opposite of abundance consciousness is scarcity consciousness, which is the fear that what we need is in limited supply. A belief in scarcity is the foundation of our feelings of insecurity, the root of competition and aggression, and a source of great personal unhappiness. It is also the predominant consciousness on earth.

Because life can be hard, achieving abundance consciousness can be a challenge. We have all witnessed suffering and death, and without it being specifically discussed, we have been encouraged to consider faith in abundance naive and dangerous. The problem with this reaction is that true security is a state that emanates from within. This means that to be at peace we have to go to our inner world and transform fear into trust that our paths will provide us with what we need and not over-invest in trying to control the outer world to insure a constant supply of what we want.

To accomplish this we have to do two basic things. One is to accept suffering and death as facts that cannot be overcome. We may endeavor to reduce suffering and premature death, of course, but all hope of substantial change in this regard starts with personal change, including the faith that by altering our personal perspective, the world might eventually change, too. If we refuse to accept our personal destiny, or we wait for the world to change before we do, we will never feel secure. 

The second is to learn that there is a difference between what we actually need and what we think we need. This is not easy to do. Habit, desire, dependency and willfulness can make us think that what we crave, grasp at, or are attempting to hold onto is correct for us when it may in fact be the opposite.

By simply looking back, most of us can see that we have received what we have needed to get where we are; that what we thought was best and what life offered were not always the same; that much of our suffering resulted from our insisting on having our way when our paths insisted that we go in another direction; and that In the end, when we compare what we wanted with what we have, we find reason to be humble.