Four teenagers went to see a staging of the play called “Our Town” as guests of the show Sunday Morning. The question the show wanted answered was, “would this play resonant with the ‘twitter and instant gratification’ generation”.
After the play the two boys and two girls were interviewed and the question, based on the play, was asked, “Is there enough in just (a blue sky), a sunny day, in just an ordinary day, to fill the need for stimulation?” The answer from one of the boys was a marvel of simplicity and truth. “The question is not – is there enough – but are you looking up?”
With an increasingly instant world comes the risk of not appreciating and enjoying the overflowing gifts of each moment. The sun streaming in our windows, the voice of a loved one, the tips of daffodils emerging through the earth, and the flight of a bird are all enough just in themselves, if we are paying attention.
There are not enough words to describe the richness and overflow of wealth in each moment, no matter where we live, or who we are – it is there if we but “look up”.
(Speaking of abundance in the moment ..Our Ohio family has an annual PJ Movie Day. This is a short clip of the pillow fight that of course had to happen on a PJ Day!)
It’s too easy to be caught up in what is not working, and forget what is just right. It’s too easy to focus on other people’s lives and either admire them or hate them for what they have in life. It’s too easy, and it is dangerous because it blinds us to the richness and abundance found in each moment of life and leaves us in the illusion of “not enough” which is the breeding ground for all forms of fear and greed.
What we call a material world is the objectification of our current highest awareness of each idea, person, or object of its actual spiritual and eternal identity as the effect and idea of the divine infinite Mind.
We are not creating anything with our thinking and our beliefs. We are hiding what is present now as a spiritual fact from our own view, and therefore the ability to experience it in our lives. When we agree with the worldview of lack, and debt, and obligation to matter we are both blinding and binding ourselves.
It may appear to be easy to take off those blinders because they are not who we are, but when the habit, training, and worldview is to wear them at all times, it takes obsessive vigilance to keep them off.
The universe is expanding, not contracting. What we perceive as reality is a tiny speck in what is, in Big R Reality, infinite and always present. Far out of reach of the five senses is the “invisible” universe, the spiritual universe that is here and now. This infinite consciousness is in the mode of constant provision.
We experience this infinite abundance in greater degrees as we shift our perception away from what appears as a limited and problematic materiality, and into the awareness and gratitude for the presence of the abundance in every moment of our lives.
We can refuse to discuss, chew over, be swayed by, and driven by the illusion of lack. We can give up the habit of staring at what isn’t working, and reacting to the problems of the world as if they were real. We can give up demanding that the material world owes us something, and we will give up the habit of debt to get it.
We can stand still and listen in the pause to the still small voice of Truth, which throughout human history has been the voice of the infinite singing of Its presence. When we listen, it has the power to dissolve the lie of lack. Stand still in that awareness and feel the gratitude for your abundant life that exists now. Stand there in that Truth, and be the inspiration for others to stand with you.
Together we can look up; together we can be aware of each abundant moment, and that surely is more than enough.
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You have permission to reprint The Shift® Ezine as long as it is copied in full without changes and includes the following footer: *Article by Beca Lewis, author of Living in Grace: The Shift to Spiritual Perception. Visit http://www.theshift.com/ez.html for more ideas to help Shift perception. Reprint permission granted with this footer included.
(Take a moment and watch this video to get a visual of the idea of infinity.)
I stepped into the lovely fall day and was surrounded by leaves. Leaves on the trees, leaves falling like rain, leaves covering every surface on the ground. It was a stunningly beautiful sight!
For the next few hours I blew leaves into piles, raked leaves into more piles, and carted leaves to the edge of our lawn to add to the millions of leaves already blanketing the “forest” part of our property.
As I moved hundreds and hundreds of leaves to their resting place and marveled at the abundance of leaves a “what if” question formed in my thought. What if we believed that leaves were currency? What if we traded leaves for our food and leaves paid our rent and our mortgages?
On that same day I had another task to accomplish. It was the day to pay bills, and balance checkbooks, and it struck me how differently those two tasks felt.
Although it was many days of taking care of leaves, hours and hours of moving them as more fell every day, and sometimes feeling as if it would never end, there was a glorious awareness of the beauty and intelligence of the divine in action.
Paying bills can feel exactly the opposite because for every bill paid it often feels as if the pile of money diminishes rather than growing without effort like the leaves falling to the ground.
What if we had the same feeling about money as we did about leaves?
On a spring day many years ago I felt paralyzed by fear that I didn’t have enough money to take care of our families current needs. Looking at the human picture that lack appeared to be true.
Seeking solace, and an answer to my perceived problem, I walked outside and stood in a friend’s backyard. It had a ring of trees around it. I glanced up at them and admired their beauty and the contentment they stand within, and as I did so I noticed the abundance of leaves they were wearing.
“This is what is True,” I heard within. “This abundance, the display of so many leaves that they cannot be counted. Look around at the overflowing variety of abundance and know that this is a symbol of the overflowing abundance that is divine Love, always giving to everyone, including you.”
I returned to the day with that message ringing within me. I don’t remember what happened after that because it was a non-event. Our needs were met that day and the next because of that simple momentary awareness that abundance is the law, which meant that the appearance of lack was a lie.
On a recent walk along the route I often take I was astonished to notice a blue house I hadn’t seen before. It took a few minutes before I realized that I had taken a different turn and was now approaching the street from the opposite direction from my usual walk.
The house was always there, but I didn’t see it going the direction I walked before. By going the opposite direction it was clearly visible.
This is why shifting or repenting and taking an opposite or different perception than held before reveals what is always present.
Seeing the abundance of leaves on the trees in my friend’s yard shifted my perception to the law of abundance and in turn that shifted what was visible to me.
Returning to the recent beautiful fall day I was reminded tenfold of this law of abundance. No matter how many leaves we blew and raked they continued to fall. Each leaf beautiful by itself, but glorious as it joined the millions of other leaves to create patterns of color on the ground.
So what if we declared leaves as currency? It’s not as far-fetched as it may sound. Tulip bulbs, salt, and tobacco are just few of the items that were traded as money at one time or another. What made them currency was the lack of them. As soon as they became abundant we no longer saw them as valuable. In the human condition and the worldview, lack is the game we play.
Let’s not play anymore. Let’s live in the Truth of abundance and stop agreeing with those who continue to produce fear, either through ignorance or intention.
Perhaps some people would have more trees then others, but knowing that trees continue to produce leaves and they are happy to share them with us at the right time, and knowing that trees only need to be planted and cared for with no special skills required, wouldn’t we be happy to give our leaves to those without trees, and assist them in planting their own?
Let’s see money in this new light. Let’s walk a different direction to view what we call supply.
Leaves give us the perfect symbol of beautiful abundance. Keeping the idea of the abundance of leaves as the symbol of supply, and trusting in the power of shifting perception to the Truth of what is, and giving up what isn’t (lack), we will see what has always been present available at all times to meet any human need.
Step outside and see for yourself, abundance is the law, all that is required of us is the awareness and discipline to stop believing in and promoting the lie of lack.
Rev 22:2
In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
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You have permission to reprint The Shift Ezine as long as it is copied in full without changes and includes the following footer:
*Article by Beca Lewis, author of Living in Grace: The Shift to Spiritual Perception. Visit http://www.theshift.com/ez.html for more ideas to help Shift perception. Reprint permission granted with this footer included.
Yesterday we saw a squirrel running by our door. He was intent upon burying the nut that he had just found. We can tell that winter is coming because instead of just using the “squirrel highway” in the trees, the squirrels are on the ground looking for and burying nuts.
The squirrels are doing what they always do, gathering and planting. Someone must have forgotten to tell them about the current financial crisis.
What if no one told us about it? What if we never heard the scary projections of those whose fear, turned into greed, bred the results of what they are now experiencing.
Writer H.L. Mencken said at least a half a century ago, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed – and hence clamorous to be led to safety — by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
That was then, and this is now and it is the same intention. If we agree with these imaginary hobgoblins it is because we have forgotten that illusion begins within. When we accept illusion as realty it becomes our perceived reality.
And we all know that perception is reality. It is up to us to decide if we want to live in Truth known as big r Reality or with what is being sold to us as an alarming perception. (more…)
