Hi,
I'm Bassem.
Thank you.
If you're joining me for the first time,
You're most welcome.
Settle back,
Relax,
Ground into the here and now.
We have a,
What I hope will prove to be a very helpful conversation on abundance,
A topic that is at the forefront of our minds.
For the vast majority of people,
Abundance is a talking point for all of the things that they hope for.
It encompasses ideas of empowerment and certainly ideas relating to the ability to do our lives in a way that enhances our experience,
In a way that allows us to feel joyful.
A good way to begin is by asking you the question,
What does abundance mean to you?
Let's take a moment to reflect on this.
Inquire into this word.
What does it mean to you?
Give yourself a moment to tap into the content of the word,
If you will.
And you might,
As you reflect over it,
Just become aware of your breathing so that you can ground into the now.
Feel the reality of your being.
What is abundance?
What does abundance mean to you?
As I try to speak from a place inside myself that is anchored in the here and now,
So that I may be able to share with you not merely what you have already heard about abundance,
What you already know,
But rather to bring into the conversation something valuable,
Something practical,
Something applicable,
Something that in the here and now can cause a shift in our understanding.
It's associated with wealth,
With money,
With good fortune,
With the ability to access a particular quality of experience that we all long for.
I guess the question that we can also add to this is abundance just a matter of wealth,
Having,
Possessing,
The ability to do our life without worries,
Fun,
Love,
Creativity.
Is that what abundance is?
And I'm not suggesting that it's not.
I'm just inquiring.
I'm asking these questions in order to see what doors open,
To see what might make itself known through those doors.
Is abundance just a matter of wealth,
Having,
Fun,
Creativity,
Lack of fear,
Lack of worry,
All of which are wonderful things?
I suppose the question that I'm trying to get at is,
Is abundance exclusively related to experience,
Or is it related to something more internal,
Something like mindset perhaps?
I think that the best way of looking into this a little bit more deeply is if I share with you a story,
Perhaps.
There are many examples of abundant mindsets,
But I think that one that is particularly poignant for me or has been poignant in my life is a story of Helen Keller.
Are you familiar with her?
Quite a remarkable woman in the early or the late 1880s,
Born in Alabama in the States.
She was about 19 months when she fell ill,
An illness that left her both deaf and blind.
Can you imagine suddenly trapped in a world of darkness and silence?
Anyone would be right to imagine this would be a state of extreme deficit,
Right?
Extreme scarcity.
The opposite of abundance,
Scarcity.
Certainly by conventional standards,
You wouldn't be wronged for thinking that that's a great misfortune.
But not Helen.
She had a,
Or must have had a profound drive,
Something more internal,
Something more,
Something greater than her drive to learn,
To overcome.
And then with the help of a devoted teacher,
Learned to communicate through touch,
Using a system of finger spelling words in her palm,
By touch,
By sense.
The adversity she would have had to overcome,
Her insatiable hunger or thirst for knowledge,
It must have been internal already in her,
That drove her.
And she became the first deaf and blind person to get a Bachelor of Arts degree.
And went on to write,
I don't know how many books,
But certainly more than a few.
And she learned to speak multiple languages and she even became a political activist advocating for people with disabilities.
Now,
Why am I telling you about Helen?
Because in many ways,
Helen's life exemplifies that abundance is not about external circumstances.
It's not about ideal conditions.
It's not about what you have.
It's not about what you don't have.
It's about the internal mindset that she certainly used to action by her own determination to create a meaningful and a standout exemplary life.
Not saying that everybody should be faced with such adversities,
But certainly all of us are faced with our own adversities that we must overcome.
And scarcity is but one of them.
It's a major one,
The transformation of which we call abundance.
Despite Helen's profound physical detriment,
Deficit,
Limitation,
She manifested a life of abundance.
Abundance of knowledge,
Abundance of wisdom and inspiration.
An ability to persist,
Abundance of resilience.
She recognised herself at some level,
She must have,
As the enabling agent of her life experience.
Not confined by her disabilities,
Not dependent on others.
When I first read Helen's story some years back,
What it taught me was that no matter my starting point,
With the right mindset,
The right understanding,
With determination,
Even against all odds,
I can live an abundant life if I choose.
At its core,
Abundance we start to see is a state of mind.
It's not associated with gain.
It's not associated with condition.
It's not associated with circumstances.
Anything outside of self,
It is within our own capacity to use our mind in the right way.
I myself have a story,
It's by no means comparable to Helen's.
I was in Cambodia some years back traveling.
I didn't have a lot of money,
But still what I had was plenty in Cambodia.
It's very cheap,
You buy a meal for about $1.
50 or $2.
At some point I became so frustrated with myself that even though it was so cheap,
I was still counting cents,
Dollars,
Calculating cost in my own head.
I really,
Really got frustrated and I started to get angry with myself.
What is this all about?
It's this mindset of scarcity,
Continuously counting and calculating to see how much I have in my pocket.
And suddenly the question rose for me.
When did I give money the power of my ability to have the experience that I want or not to have?
When did that happen and how did it happen?
Aren't I the enabling power,
The enabling agent,
The one who earns the money?
And suddenly with that I realized that I had indeed given up my power to money.
I started to forget that I was the resource,
Not money.
I was the one capable of making the money.
I'd been fixated on money,
I'd forgotten myself as the resource,
As the fundamental resource.
And with that something opened in me,
A relief if you will.
I started to realize that I am the enabling agent,
I am the power.
Money is simply a medium of exchange,
But I make it.
The number had in no way the ability to gauge my own possibility.
It was just a number.
I had in some way become distorted when I understood that I was the enabling agent.
I am the resource,
Not money.
And something switched,
Something opened.
So this is what we really must realize for ourselves,
That we are the enabling agents of our lives,
Not money,
Not wealth.
You can't do something not because you don't have money.
You can't do something because you don't realize yourself as the enabling agent,
As the creative force.
You don't realize yourself as the innovative power.
You have sold out,
You have given your power away to the middleman,
In this case the medium of exchange,
Something called money.
When you realize yourself to be the enabling agent,
Something opens,
Something happens.
And now it's a matter of realizing your capacity,
Using the now as an opportunity to expand,
To grow,
To learn,
To create,
To manifest.
Doors to new opportunities begin to open.
They did for me,
They continue because I see myself as the resource.
I don't say I can't travel because I don't have money.
I don't say I can't do that because I don't have the money.
I can't travel because I see myself as unable to.
It's not because of money.
I can make money.
You can make money.
You can have the circumstances and the conditions that you want,
That you think would be ideal.
That's not what's stopping you.
What's stopping you is that you no longer recognize yourself as a sovereign power capable of manifesting.
You say,
Well,
I'm not sure I believe.
But whether you believe or not,
That may be true for you,
But it's certainly not true for others who like Helen Keller,
In spite of the odds roads to impossible conditions to realize and celebrate her possibility.
So for me,
Abundance is always associated with possibility,
Associated with the recognition that I am the resource.
I am the enabling agent.
As long as you think that you cannot,
That you are not having the experience you're not having because of money,
Because of scarcity,
What do we make of Helen's story?
And many like her.
What do we do with that?
Is she supernatural?
What about all of those people who have realized impossible odds to celebrate their possibility?
Are they anomalies?
What about these great spiritual masters?
Are they just anomalies of existence?
Or were they simply ready for realizing their possibility?
So what are some strategies that we can use to cultivate abundance,
To hone in this kind of mindset?
We begin with the understanding that I am the resource,
Not money,
Not possessions,
Not things.
But money is not the only thing.
There are those who give their power to others,
To their partner.
I'm unhappy because of my husband.
I'm unhappy.
I can't do my life because of my partner.
He stole my dream.
She stole my dream.
No one can steal your dream.
Certainly the circumstances are not ideal,
But was Helen Keller's circumstances ideal?
She can't see and she can't hear,
Existing in a world of silence and darkness.
Genius is not because of the odds,
But in spite of the odds.
Genius is that which occurs in spite of the odds.
And we can cultivate that kind of mindset.
Positive affirmation have captured people's imagination.
And whilst I don't mind positive affirmations,
I think they are lacking.
The trick with affirmations is that you've got to be able to feel what you think.
And so they say you must imagine that you're already in this situation and all this convoluted,
Difficult stuff.
I found a way of going around this.
I don't mean to tease you,
But this is not the place for that right now.
Positive affirmations,
Use them for now.
Affirm your possibility.
Affirm your right.
Affirm your divinity.
The issue,
Of course,
Is that most of us continuously affirm what we are not,
But also take an inspired action.
Helen didn't just sort of recognize her possibility.
She took action.
She wanted to communicate.
She wanted to communicate,
To come out of the darkness,
Out of the silence that was her fundamental reality.
She wanted to share herself with the world,
To experience,
To grow.
Consistent action,
Persistent action.
The great teacher Gurdjieff once said,
Theory there is plenty of,
Practice there is not.
And I am sympathetic to this.
The reason we fail to realize our possibility is not because of lack.
It's not because of circumstances.
We live in the most industrial time ever.
You can access remarkable resources at the touch of a button.
You have more available to you today than the greatest emperors and kings of the past.
I believe that failure to realize our possibility is a modern phenomena.
I believe that failure is because of boredom.
We're used to doing things together and now we have to do alone.
Our past is communal.
The reason we survived is because we do things in communities.
We do things together.
The reason we survived in spite of all adversity is because our life,
Our daily activities were a communal effort.
In the tribe,
In the clan,
The whole community did a single task.
Today it's much more difficult because the individual is required to do all facets of his individual life,
Her individual life,
Alone.
So you decide to go for a run,
You do it one day,
It's a good idea,
Two days.
But try doing it with a group and see how it becomes all possible.
And yes,
There are amongst us those who are of a particular type,
They're intended to be leaders.
But leaders are not more important than the community.
What's the point of a leader without a community?
Imagine all leaders in the world and no community,
They would have destroyed the world by now.
They would have been warring with each other continuously,
They already do.
No.
No,
Leaders need community and community need leaders.
They're both equally important.
But we live in such times where today only the leader is celebrated,
The community is not.
So taking inspired action is important,
But even more important is joining a community and working together.
You can overcome scarcity.
Mindset in community is more readily than you will be able to do it alone,
Because let's face the facts.
97% of the population,
As far as one particular statistic is concerned,
Don't even have a vision for their life.
Only 3% of the population of people in any one generation have a vision.
They know what they want their life to add up to.
They know what they want their lives to be about.
They have a destination.
They know what they want.
They don't make excuses,
Justifications.
The rest,
97%,
Languish in lives of quiet desperation,
I believe,
Is the term that I've read somewhere.
So overcoming scarcity and realizing abundance is not just a matter of,
Yes,
I understand now,
I have to think positively.
Decisive,
Inspired action,
Working with a community.
This is in order to be able to overcome the barriers to abundance.
You think fear is just going to give up because you have a good idea today?
You think self-doubt is just going to lie down and drop?
Negative thinking is just going to abate?
What about the momentum behind it?
That's just going to suddenly stop?
How do we overcome all these obstacles alone?
It starts with recognizing that scarcity,
It's a mental construct,
But yet it is a living construct.
We can change our perspective,
Yes,
But it takes dedication and it takes action and it takes support in order to overcome that initial hurdle,
At least those first hurdles.
Gurdjieff also shared something which I find quite remarkable.
He said,
Whenever a person decides they want to do something in life,
Two forces are naturally provided by the universe.
One that is positive and one that is negative.
Let's say you have an idea,
You want to write a book,
Two forces are provided.
One force that is going to support your endeavor and one that is naturally designed in order to obstruct your possibility.
And it's these two forces that push and shove against each other that cause reality to manifest.
First hurdle we meet,
We begin to doubt our idea,
Maybe that's not what I'm supposed to do,
Maybe I'm supposed to do something else.
Not realizing that it is our ignorance that is in the way.
Life is going to produce two forces,
One is going to support you and the other one is supposed to hold you back.
And it's push and shove,
Push and shove.
And your job is to hold the difference,
The tension between the positive and the negative,
To make sure that not one gains dominion over the other.
Too much possibility or positivity,
No creation is possible.
And our job is to hold the tension.
And the way we do that is by having a goal,
A destination,
Knowing what we want our life to be about.
What is it that I want my life to be about?
I've spent years on this question.
My life is about spirituality,
Personal development,
Self-realization.
That's what I want my life to be about.
That's my vision.
My vision is just that,
Sharing this with the world.
I use my communication and spiritual insight to do that.
How you want to get there is up to you.
You want to get to your destination in an airplane,
In a motorbike,
In a bicycle,
A boat,
Up to you.
You can decide how you want to do that.
But we've inherited all sorts of distortions about ourselves.
You need to be deserving,
And you need to be worthy,
And you need forgiveness,
And you need all of this.
And yes,
Whilst all of these elements are great,
Because they open up the heart,
But only you decide that you are unworthy.
Only your own judgment decides that you are not deserving.
True abundance comes from recognizing oneself as the source of power.
Money is cool to have,
But for many of people it's a curse.
The individual is the enabling agent.
This is what I discovered in Cambodia.
I am the resource.
I am the money producer.
I am the producer of love.
Love is not because of some other person.
Happiness is not because of some other agent.
I am the agency.
I am the factory.
That's the starting point.
That should be the starting point.
Then from here I can live an empowered life of possibility.
Helen's life exemplifies the idea of all of this,
That true abundance is not measured by material wealth,
But by the richness of one's mind,
One's spirit.
How wealthy are you in spirit?
Helen manifested an abundance of knowledge,
Wisdom,
Inspiration,
Dedication.
All of these things are within your own inner power.
Money,
Okay.
Let's say,
Well somebody else has got it today,
Right?
But can you say that somebody else has got your possibility?
Can you say that somebody else has got your dedication?
Can you say that somebody else has got your decision to make a decision to join community and work together?
The problem is you no longer recognize yourself as the resource,
The enabling agent.
So if there's anything that I want you to take away from this is this idea of being the enabling agent.
I am the resource.
And get rid of this idea that you're going to be able to do this on your own.
It is hard work made easy in a group,
In communities.
Another takeaway is that it's not external circumstances.
Your current situation is absolutely ideal for you to explore your possibility as a resource.
Reality doesn't lie.
If you're living in a one-bedroom little place and you can't move,
That is your ideal situation.
It tells you exactly what you would prefer.
Not philosophically speaking,
But actually people who have everything,
It's very difficult for them to know what they truly want.
I've got everything.
The opposite of that is nothing.
Is that what I really want?
If you've got nothing,
That's great.
If you're having difficulties in relationships,
That's great.
You know what you want.
You want a relationship where you don't have trouble.
If you don't have a view,
That's great.
You know that you want a view.
I mean,
Not everyone wants a view,
But the point is clear.
I encourage you all to embrace your abundance mindset.
Forget about money.
Stop focusing on money.
As long as you're focused on money,
You cease to recognize who you are.
You don't see yourself.
You don't even need to believe in your potential.
How do I believe in my potential when I don't even know what my potential is?
Believe in your ability to explore your potential.
Believe in your ability to explore your possibility.
Daily,
I tell myself I'm in exactly where I need to be in order to explore my possibility.
I'm not here to succeed.
Succeed is for somebody else.
I'm not interested in success.
I'm interested in exploring my possibility,
Seeing how far I can go.
I'm an explorer here on this planet.
Succeed in what?
I'm already a success.
I was born a success,
Like you,
Like all of you.
You should be concerned about missing out on your opportunity to explore the now,
Your possibility.
Let yourself fail.
The worst thing that can happen to you is to die,
And you will discover that to be the best thing that's ever happened to you.
Return to heaven,
Anyone.
Our fear is irrational.
You are that sperm who made it to the egg.
You're here.
So that's it from me.
Thank you,
My friends.
I wish you well.
