Let's close our eyes.
While eating lunch today,
I came across a quote that intellectually needed more unpacking,
But my heart knew the truth of those words.
Abundance is a choice.
If you approach this sentence from an intellectual standpoint,
It can probably become a thesis and we will still not be able to convince everyone about it.
But some sentences have this magic,
That's why we call them poetry,
That don't need unpacking.
It cuts through the intellect and straight touches the heart.
Abundance is a choice.
Generosity is a natural corollary of this abundance.
Being selfless is right up there as well.
And the thing about abundance is inherently deep in our hearts.
We know we have an abundant supply and that's a complete sentence in itself.
Abundant supply.
There's no off something missing there,
As our minds would like to think.
Because the moment you add we have an abundant supply of something,
The sentence becomes untrue.
Everything that can be gathered is limited.
No amount of money,
No amount of resources,
No amount of good merit can last forever.
But this deep recognition that I have abundant supply in my life,
I have abundance in my life,
That captures everything that is gatherable and also that is not.
We might have just enough money,
Just enough food,
But this recognition of abundance has nothing to do with the actual physical quantity.
For me abundance is a self-evident word that doesn't need meaning.
Because the moment I supply any meaning to it,
It becomes meaningless.
Like love,
Like freedom,
Like beauty.
And the thing about abundance is,
If you look for abundance in your life,
You will without a shred of a doubt find abundance in your life.
And not the contrived abundance,
But the obvious recognizable abundance.
Just the fact that we are all here,
Peaceful,
Sitting,
Having the luxury of sitting with our eyes closed in a protected environment,
Says a lot about how abundant we are.
The flip side is also true.
If you were to find lack in your life,
You will without a shred of doubt find tons and tons of lack.
Lack in terms of things,
People,
Situations,
Possessions.
And if we dive a little deeper into this exploration about looking for abundance and finding abundance,
And looking for lack and finding lack,
Only one is an actual meaningful conversation.
What I mean by meaningful conversation is,
You can only have a conversation about something that is there in a meaningful way.
I remember reading a spiritual book,
Maybe last year or maybe year before last.
And I remember this book was a series of observations that this realized person had written down in a volume of three books.
So one of his observations was,
Let's say there is a painting on the wall,
You can have a conversation,
A meaningful conversation about a painting on the wall.
Now let's remove that painting from the wall.
Now you can have a conversation about a painting that is not there on the wall.
But if you carefully notice,
The painting that is not there on the wall is a fictitious discussion.
It's only there in imagination.
The not existence of something is overlaid and pretended as an existence and spoken about it.
I hope this is not too intellectual for some of you.
But if it is,
Just try to see the truth in my words.
If you didn't imagine something,
Would you see the lack?
So is the lack actual in existence?
Or is it a projection?
Whereas abundance is a fact,
It's there,
You can actually talk about it.
You can actually see it,
Feel it,
Just like the painting on the wall.
It's there,
You can talk about it.
You cannot talk about something that is not there.
Obviously,
You can talk about it.
But that's not a meaningful conversation.
So instead of spending our lives imagining,
Projecting,
And subsequently feeling the effects of that projection,
Can we see the truth?
Whatever you feel you're lacking in your life right now,
If you didn't imagine,
If you didn't imagine its existence in the first place,
Would it still be lacking?
Be it any relationship,
Money,
Situations,
Opportunities,
Nobody can contest the feeling of lack.
But we can contest lack itself.
And the feeling subsequently will dissolve without acknowledging or dismissing the feeling.
So now that we have spoken about the lack that doesn't exist in our experience,
Let's talk about what does exist in our experience.
And that is abundance.
When we give,
We think we are giving the thing,
Which is always limited.
But what we are giving is the abundance that we have,
Which lies underneath that thing.
The generosity is not for the things that we share,
But it's an attitude that we share.
I was watching something yesterday from one of the aboriginal tribes,
And they were saying how in their language,
They don't have the words,
Please,
And thank you.
And they went on to explain that by definition,
Everything is for sharing.
Nobody has to ask for it.
And nobody has to thank each other because everyone knows it belongs to everyone.
What I have can be shared,
What you have can be shared without this feeling of entitlement,
Or snatching or grabbing,
Protecting,
Guarding.
On the first day of the retreat,
When I go to my teacher's house,
The standing instruction is for the next two weeks,
Or week,
Or a week,
Depending on how long you go for a retreat.
This house is your house.
And suddenly there is a relaxation.
There are no rules.
You have to treat their house as your house.
No formalities.
Life is so much fuller.
I have tried to practice some of that in my house.
And somehow,
Unanimously,
Our friends have made it a point,
Maybe at that time or later,
To acknowledge how welcome they felt,
How unjudged they felt.
Not that anything was done in particular,
But just that attitude of abundance is so seamlessly sprinkled everywhere.
Abundance in terms of knowledge,
Information,
Food,
Welcoming,
Just everything.
Yes,
In that regard,
It is a choice.
But if you come from what is real and what is unreal,
Then abundance is not a choice.
It is the only thing that is real.
The lack is never a choice.
It's an imaginary choice.
So we can approach this in two ways.
To look at it as a choice and dive deeper to see the untruth behind lack.
And once you reach the untrueness of something,
Then the trueness becomes the only choice there is.
I didn't mean to have this become an intellectual discussion,
And I hope it wasn't.
So can we see the abundance in our life and don't look at the things?
I mean,
You can start with looking at the things directly,
But then see the continuity.
You might not have had this thing in your life,
But something was always taking care of you.
That's why you are here.
Even in dark days that caused you a lot of pain and suffering,
Probably later on brought a lot of wisdom and insight in your life.
Even the people that might be bringing grief to you right now is probably forcing you to look deeper,
To find a better way,
Which otherwise would not have been attempted to be carved out.
And I'm not saying manipulate what is happening in your life.
No,
You need to see it without adding a veneer of projection on top of it.
Sometimes I don't believe what comes out from my mouth,
Not because it is untrue,
But because how grateful I am to be able to facilitate these words to come out.
They nourish me just like they might be nourishing you.
Thank you.
