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Living In Full Abundance
Eileen Workman | Reality Sandwich
It seems to me that our ongoing quest to secure material wealth—often to the point of excess, and with little regard for the harm we may do while in blind pursuit of money—reflects the fact that, as a species, we’ve never really come to grips with what we’re livingfor. While there’s no point in denying that we’re biological creatures, and that we each have pressing physical needs that must be satisfied if we’re to survive, are we surviving just to meet those needs until such time as we die? Or are we meant to meet our physical needs so our bodies, hearts and minds can grow strong enough for us to activate our precious gifts, and enable us to deliver our gifts to the world…and thus to each other?
How we consciously choose to answer that question, both as individuals and as a social collective, will determine the quality of how we live. While our pursuit of material comfort reflects our deeply conditioned desire to survive, our quest for fulfillment exposes our longing to live a rich and useful human life. We presently face a challenge then, in that we’ve mostly convinced ourselves this choice is an either/or proposition. We’ve come to believe that we can seek material comfort or we can self-actualize, but we can’t manage both unless we’re incredibly lucky. But what if it’s not an either/or proposition? What if they’re both fundamental aspects of what it means to be human? What if, by telling ourselves that we need to prioritize our material comfort above self-actualization, we’re rendering it less likely that we can accomplish either objective over the long run?
What happens if we embrace the belief that we’re not just here to survive until death, but to be the best human beings we can become? What happens if we consciously expand the definition of wealth beyond only that which services or gratifies our bodies, by also including that which expands our hearts, enriches our minds, and unleashes the full potential of our souls?
If we elevate to its rightful position, alongside material comfort, the boundless immaterial wealth that’s presently available to us all (which is, by the way, a resource pool that those who wield physical power can never confiscate or deplete for their short-term advantage) we can realize ourselves to be full to overflowing with love, compassion, kindness, generosity, beauty, wisdom, freedom, truth, gratitude, nurturing, passion, talent, skill, curiosity, patience, trust, peace, openness, joy and creativity. In this expansive process of redefining wealth we needn’t reject or denigrate our amazing material world, or ignore the needs of our biological bodies. All we need do is expand the lens through which we measure the relative worth of our physical realm. This simple act of re-contextualizing the material within a much broader, though mostly invisible, bandwidth of available human resources exposes how falsely impoverished we’ve long imagined ourselves.
Source: http://truthisscary.com/2014/02/living-in-full-abundance/
