Last fall I wrote about working on the I Ching of Gain and was having quite a problem with that, since it concerned getting a handle on one’s money. I took it off after 5 months and set it by my bathroom sink. There it sat for 8 more months next to the toothpaste. I’m happy to report I’ve finally mastered it, and it found it’s way to the tree with the others. I now see money out the same as money in and have a stronghold on spending. Time to move on to a new path…..abundance.
When I think of abundance, I think of it as having more than enough of everything – from love to money and everything in between. Ahha…this should be an easy one, I thought when I chose it. Then I got it home and found out it really means the opposite. Visions of this charm beside the toothpaste began to dance in my head.
Abundance does not mean surrounding ourselves with material goods. Abundance is living fully with what we have now. The following came across my desk today:
“If you haven’t got all the things you want, be grateful for all the things you don’t have that you don’t want.” ~Anonymous
As my list of things I don’t have and don’t ever want grows, the things I do have become more important. Lately, getting ready for my garage sale and beginning the renovation of another room, I have been sorting and paring down the amount of things I do have. In doing so, I’m finding life a lot easier to manage by simplifying and making do with what I have. In doing the room over, I am dying the curtains and selling more furniture than I’m going to replace. Sometimes we need to start with the concrete, then move into the abstract.
In my quest to make abundance less about acquiring material things, and more about appreciating spiritual things, I find the blessing of the friends and family I have around me right now place “living in abundance” within myself. True abundance also lies in appreciating the things of the earth we pass through and by each day, such as water, air, and sunlight.
The Taoist masters would laugh at the way we go about struggling to achieve more and working harder to succeed, while all the while most of what we need to live a happy, full, life lies in what we already have – both on the inside and on the outside. We sometimes get so busy acquiring, that after awhile, we’re just acquiring to acquire.
I wear my I Ching charm and use it as a touchstone to remind me less is more, make do with what I have, and give a lot of gratitude for things I’m glad I don’t have.
And so, as another day goes by, hoping toothpaste isn’t in the future of this one, and …I have written.
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