Abundant Life

First of all, thanks to my Pastor for his sermon last week (noting the true definition of the "abundant" life that is our birthright) and to my magical eldest daughter, Pastor B, for her notes from a recent trip back to the barrios of Ecuador which re-frame once again my understanding of abundance and scarcity.


So here is the question: Why is it that those who have the most (wealth, toys, land, holdings) suffer most from a feeling of scarcity and wanting, while those with so little are so giving and seem so willing to share ALL that they have? Isn't that backwards? Doesn't that strike you as, if not impossible, at the very least improbable? But that is the truth. And it is the core message of the sacred texts. Give it away and you have more. More what? Simple: more abundance.

Then what is this abundance and this so-called abundant life. It is a freedom - freedom from the addictions of the ego and its petty righteousness around things and symbols. The ego, it would seem, needs to count and to measure. It needs to believe that it means something. But ego, like Kubrick's computer HAL, is a tool gone bad. The mind is an organ of the human body designed to make sense out of nonsense, to make order out of chaos. That's its sole purpose. But along the way it begins to distinguish (in its task of ordering things) self from other, and in doing so begins to count. "I have more of this than he does." "I am not the same as he." "I am different, special, unique, and therefore uniquely loved by my maker." OOO-yeah, I slipped that last one in there as a sucker punch. See that's where it goes of the deep end. And we cannot seem to call it back at that point, "I'm sorry, Dave, I can't do that!"

And so god points us to the poor among us, to the children among us, to the widowed, outcast, disenfranchised; to those who HAVE nothing, as the examples of how and where to access abundance. That is not a non sequitur. It is simply that devoid of the entrapments of stuff, spiritually-inclined people are able to access an abundance of the meaning and meaningful stuff of life - love, aesthetics, charity, compassion. They are able to "get it" because their identity is not so wrapped up in the structures and counting of their ego. As a matter of record, I would contend that their egos have been relatively smashed. All-in-all not a bad thing.

How then do we access this abundant life? It may not be, as Jesus instructed the rich man, to sell of all our possessions and give the proceeds to the poor, unless, of course (as was the case with the rich man) our identity is all wrapped up in that stuff. But can you become, as the Buddha instructed, detached from it? What would you or I need to do to get us to the point of smashed ego-function, and live free from any - ANY - attachment to the stuff and the accomplishments and the numbers in life? Most importantly, how do I teach my son that value (I am confident both adult daughters live there)?

Abundant life is a discipline - a way of being - that practices detachment to stuff and acts with charity in all times and places. It is not a state one can achieve (yes, that would be ego talking again) - it is only a path, a discipline that eventually shapes the mind and soul. Freedom is the state of being that results from the discipline of abundant living. Freedom from counting, freedom from worry, freedom from scarcity, freedom from oppression (can you dig that? - you cannot oppress a man who is ego-less, you cannot take anything from one who holds on to nothing).