Abundance is what you were made for

Abundance is all around you; all that's missing is your willingness, capacity, readiness, to receive it.

There's a famous Chassidic story about a man, Isaac ben Yakil of Krakow, who dreams about buried treasure in a faraway place, and he travels there to find it. When he gets there, he doesn't find the treasure, but meets a guard who tells him that he had a similar dream about treasure buried under the stove of a man named Isaac ben Yakil of Krakow.

Of course, Isaac ben Yakil goes back home and finds the treasure, which was in his own home the whole time.

Don't get trapped into thinking that to get the more that you want, to fill that hungry ache in your spirit, to find love and beauty and joy and the abundance that you dream of as you sleep at night, that you have to leave your life behind and go somewhere beyond your body, situation, and reality.

Abundance is a way of being in the world; it's not something you acquire, but rather something you tune into, like a wild river when you jump into its flow. 

Abundance is what happens when you stop needing more and start using what you have with gratitude and grace. 

Jesus, his friends, and his people were in desperate times under the rule and reign of a ruthless foreign military superpower who were stealing their lands, taxing them of nearly all their income, raping their women, murdering their children, and more. It was confusing, oppressive, and dark. Into this political and social atmosphere, Jesus said: 

"I have come to give you everything in abundance, more than you expectólife in its fullness until you overflow."

And then, Jesus didn't lead them into victory against their foes; he didn't go all Robin Hood and steal from the Romans to give back to the Hebrews; he didn't plan a coup or encourage a resistance.

He was killed. Murdered. Executed by his own people on a Roman torture device. 

It could seem that the abundance Jesus spoke of died with him, was null and void if indeed it was about winning and achieving and dominating.

Abundance challenges the prosperity structures of empire. It defies the hierarchy of fame and fortune. It flies in the face of lack and greed.

Abundance is the manifestation of gratitude and wonder; of the Divine creative energy that got this whole thing started and keeps it all going.

There was an abundant source of life that Jesus was showing and teaching his friends how to access, even as they were slaves in their own homes and towns and lands.

Abundance isn't about acquiring and buying, and it's about being and becoming. 

You have permission - not that you need it - to seek this abundance with your body and heart and life.

You have permission to want more than a life ruled by lack and greed, poverty and prosperity.

You have permission to rebel against the social hierarchies of vanity and significance which are always entrenched in toxic privilege and entitlement.

You have permission to want more for yourself than pain and heartache and defensiveness and fear and worry and shame and hiding and over-working and pleasing and placating and pretending.

You have permission to seek love and grace and truth and hope.

You have permission to want connection and freedom and justice and peace.

You have permission to seek and find all the realms of abundance within you and around you, and in others, too. 

And even if it takes a trip around the world only to discover that the treasure you were seeking was always yours, then I pray you find this abundance and let it flow, flow, flow your whole life long. 

Mindful Prompt: What you seek is seeking you (Rumi), so let it find its way home.

From my upcoming series, "You Are Allowed To Want More" this week with a subscription in the App.

Written by Liz Milani.
Instagram: @thepracticeco