Living an
Abundant Life
December 3,
2000
It is a
great mistake to say: "Take what you wish, for you can have anything you
like." We do not take what we wish, but we do attract to ourselves
that which is like our thought. MAN MUST BECOME MORE IF HE WISHES TO
DRAW A GREATER GOOD INTO HIS LIFE.
Ernest
Holmes, The Science of Mind
Both
poverty and riches are the offspring of thought.
Napoleon
Hill
I am going
to start today with a story that Emmet Fox liked to share. It came to be known by the title “Cut My Own Throat” and
it is contained in the book of daily inspirations entitled Around The
World With Emmet Fox:
“A man
came to see me in London in great distress. He had attended some lectures I
gave, and wanted advice. He was the owner of a general grocery store in a
village in the south of England, and hitherto there had been no competition.
Now, one of the big chain stores was opening a branch almost opposite to him in
the main street, and he was in a panic.
He said,
"How can I compete with them? I am ruined."
I said,
"You know the Great Law. You know where your supply comes from. Why be
afraid?"
He said,
"I must do something."
I said,
"Stand in your shop each morning and bless it, by claiming that divine
Power works through it for great prosperity and peace for all concerned."
He nodded his head in agreement.
I added,
"Then look down the street to where they are fitting up the new store, and
bless that in the same way."
"What?
Cut my own throat?" he almost screamed.
I explained
that what blesses one, blesses all. I told him that he was really hating his
competitor (through fear) and that his hatred would destroy him, while blessing
the "enemy" was the way to get rid of hate. I finished by saying,
"You cannot cut your throat with prayer; you can only improve
everything."
It took
some time to persuade him, but at last he got the idea, and when I met him
several years later he told me that his business had been better than ever since
the chain store appeared; and that it seemed to be getting on well too.”
This is
what Jesus meant when he said, Love your enemies (Luke 6:27).
Ernest
Holmes, teaches us in The Science of Mind to “ Let us remember that true
prayer is always universal. There can be no good to us alone, only as that good
is for all. This does not mean that we are to refrain from asking what we
desire, but that we should wish only for that which is good.”
Abundance
then, is knowing that there is enough good to go around for everyone to be
included, that no one is left out. We
need not hold on to our good as if someone else is going to get it.
They are not after yours; they are after their own infinite portion
of the good which is available to all without exception.
We get so confused about this as children; we think this has something to
do with keeping it all fair. Notions
of fairness are simply come from centuries-old ideas about the ownership of
property. The origins of this
concept in civil law are thousands of years old.
These ideas are so old that we forget where they came from if we have
ever thought about them at all. What
would the world be like if we didn’t refer to the objects we encounter as
belonging to someone? What if in
some mystical way, it is all yours as well as all mine, in fact it is all
God’s and we jointly seem to have the ability to enjoy all of what is good in
the world!
For a ready
example of how this idea of material fairness works, I am going to use Dan’s
name, but you could substitute any name. If
life was fair we would have to do what Dan does to be happy, we would all be
just like Dan, wearing exactly Dan’s kind of clothing and doing exactly
Dan’s kind of activities, thinking Dan’s thoughts.
No more dresses, capri pants, or spontaneously assembled colorful
outfits—you’d have to dress like Dan. If
we all did everything just like Dan, seeking fairness, and thus, sameness, we
would think of all of life the way that Dan does.
When it was time to have dinner, everyone would have the same opinions as
Dan and the meal would satisfy everyone’s taste, because we would all prefer
exactly the same food that Dan does. This
means we would all be architects married to me--and we would all have exactly
the same children, the same cars, the same jobs, the same desk where we would
all do the same work!
Now I will
tell you that it is a wonderful experience being Dan, or even being Dan’s
wife, but if “Dan-ness” was all that there is, without the perspective of
diversity, life would soon be boring indeed.
There would be no movies--because there would be only architects and no
producers, directors, actors, dolly grips, costumers and all the other people
who make a movie! In fact, there
would be no buildings built, because building them is not what architects do.
Think of all the things that you enjoy in life that would suddenly fall
away, think of the richness that would disappear if life was fair and all was
Dan! Of course, this is not what
God had in mind when God created multiplicity within the Unity that is God’s
self. God was looking for diverse
experiences, and abundance of diverse experiences and so the I AM became
humanity and many other things too. In fact, this is what many philosophers and spiritual writers
have come to conclude was the impetus for why God created humanity.
God wanted somebody else to relate to!
There is an
old “law” that I wish to share. “If
you want to see what you are committed to, look at what you’ve got!” If this
is truly a law, it must always be true. So
let’s see what it says about the Divine.
If we think about this law and the idea that all that exists is divine in
nature, what would that say about life?
God must
have wanted diverse experiences, there are currently about 6 billion people on
the planet, all having vastly different kind of experiences with certain things
in common. We don’t have to look
far to see the truth in this idea. If
it is all good—since it is all God, then the difficult experiences are a part
of what is divine too. It is the diversity of experience that gives life its
richness, and God an experience through us that is worth having!
So, if
there is no beginning and no end in God, if God is the Alpha and Omega, the
whole enchilada—what good does our self-righteous judgment of each and every
detail earn for us? The Buddha said
this is the true source of suffering. How
he said that is that it is our “attachment” to particular ideas of how life
should be that causes whatever suffering we experience.
This is one possible thing that we can do with the life we are given,
however, there is so much more possible! The idea of “ownership” is an
attachment that causes suffering. If
you have ever bought a new car and discovered the first ding in the door, you
know about creating your own suffering. Imagine
the attachments we have to other material objects and to Mother Earth herself.
What source of suffering has all of this caused us?
Now don’t get me wrong, I am not saying we should all pitch in and
learn to live like a big commune! Just that maybe we could step back from the
idea of private ownership of material things, look out over the world in which
we live and see that in a sense, no matter who has the deed, it is all ours
equally.
Interestingly,
in our prayer practice we have a point in which, within our conversation with
God, we let go of our pictures of how our prayers will be answered, we release
all attachments to the way it will be done, and what it will look like and
accept the truth of what we have said NOW.
Let us take a moment here to let go of any ideas of who owns what and
notice that it truly is a world that belongs to all of us!
Our lives
are vastly enriched by this process of letting go of our designs for how life
should be and our willingness and acceptance that God listens and responds to
our prayers. Often in our ordinary,
everyday speech we do a good bit of creating, and just as Emmet Fox described
the shopkeeper’s original point of view being one of competition with the new
business in his neighborhood. We reinforce some negative belief in there not
being enough to go around, and we begin to squirrel away some portion of the
abundance life offers us; not just enough for the coming winter, like farmers of
old, but we squirrel away our good will towards others, we forget to express our
faith that we will always have what it is that we need in abundance.
At this time of year, if we are not fully awake and conscious, such an
attitude gets into our preparations for the holidays when we run up our credit
cards buying extravagant gifts, when we decide who to honor with a Christmas
card, whose invitations to accept and how it is we will go about honoring the
birth 2000 years ago of one of humanity’s greatest teachers.
About 150
years ago, in the spring of 1855, it is said that with a commanding presence and
eyes that mirrored the great soul that lived within, Chief Seattle rose to speak
to a gathering of both settlers and natives in a resounding voice, before he
chose to be the first Chief to sign a treaty that would result in the Northwest
being sold to the US Government. He was committed that no more Indian
blood be spilled, he could see the inevitability of history, and in this moment
he honored all that is sacred without any view of what it would mean to him
personally. That day he delivered,
in his native tongue, what is considered to be one of the most beautiful and
profound statements of leadership and sacred responsibility ever made.
He demonstrates in what he says, a true and deep understanding of what it
takes to enjoy the abundance to which we are all born.
“The
President in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. But how
can you buy or sell the sky? The land? The idea is strange to us.
If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can
you buy them?
Every part
of the earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every
sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, every humming insect.
All are holy in the memory and experience of my people.
We know the
sap which courses through the trees as we know the blood that courses through
our veins. We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The
perfumed flowers are our sisters. The bear, the deer, the great eagle ...
these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the dew in the meadow, the body
heat of the pony, and man all belong to the same family.
The shining
water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water, but the blood of
our ancestors. If we sell you our land, you must remember that it is
sacred. Each glossy reflection in the clear waters of the lakes tells of
events and memories in the life of my people. The water's murmur is the
voice of my father's father.
The rivers
are our brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry our canoes and
feed our children. So you must give the rivers the kindness that you would
give any brother.
If we sell
you our land, remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its
spirit with all the life that it supports. The wind that gave our
grandfather his first breath also received his last sigh. The wind also
gives our children the spirit of life. So if we sell our land, you must
keep it apart and sacred, as a place where man can go to taste the wind that is
sweetened by the meadow flowers.
Will you
teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is
our mother? What befalls the earth, befalls all the sons of the earth.
This we
know ... the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All
things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave
the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web,
he does to himself.
One thing
we know ... our God is also your God. The earth is precious to the Great
Spirit and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its Creator.
Your
destiny is a mystery to us. What will happen when the buffalo are all
slaughtered? The wild horses tamed? What will happen when the secret
corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men and the view of the
ripe hills is blotted with talking wires? Where will the thicket be?
Gone! Where will the eagle be? Gone! And what is to say
goodbye to the swift pony and the hunt? The end of living and the
beginning of survival.
When the
last red man has vanished with this wilderness, and his memory is only the
shadow of a cloud moving across the prairie, will these shores and forests still
be here? Will there be any of the spirit of my people left?
We love
this earth as a newborn loves its mother's heartbeat. So, if we sell you
our land, love it as we have loved it. Care for it, as we have cared for
it. Hold in your mind the memory of the land as it is when you receive it.
Preserve the land and the air and the rivers for your children's children, and
love it, as God loves us.”
Chief
Seattle
To all of
the Native American peoples, every creature and every part of the earth was
sacred. Let us remember this message here and now in our celebrations for
the end of this year and the beginning of then next.
Native American peoples believed that to waste or destroy nature and its
wonders, is to destroy life itself. This belief is mirrored in our New Thought
teachings with regard to respect for all of life and for the true miracle of
abundance that is ours. From our New Thought perspective, squandering what
we have, failing to recognize all that is ours is to affirm a negative belief in
scarcity. It is our practice to
bless all that we encounter, to know that all of this good that is God is our
birthright. It is through our
appreciation and acknowledgment of this true Grace that we know the truth of the
abundant lives that we are given. Ernest
Holmes taught us that: “Spirit never fails. Affirm this until it is
within every part of your being... failure is a false thought and has no truth
in it. It is a belief in lack and there is no lack.”
Here is a Plains Indian blessing which simply
states what is truly the way in which we go about living an abundant life:
- Let the winds come singing here
- Let the clouds with rainbows greet and most comfortably embrace
- the people of my life, the ones who own my heart.
- And let us, each one, wish one another well.
Thank you
for being here today!
Emerson
Center for
