From Victim to Creator - Part 6

What is Abundance?

When I lived in the city and had city job, I had it all.  Or so it might have seemed...  I had a beautiful home, a zooty car and every possible luxury.  But my life was not abundant.  No matter how much money I earned or how many parties I threw or what beautiful things I bought, I always felt more than a little impoverished.

My time was not my own – in exchange for a monthly cash payment I bartered a huge slice of my time and energy away.
Worse than that, as a result of this negotiation, I also did not possess my own integrity.  Working in the corporate environment and always being honourable, truthful and forthright were incompatible activities.  I couldn’t do what I was paid to do and still be the person I want to be.

I wasn’t free to leave the city and all its madness, aggression and stress and just go and live in the forest as my heart ached to do.
I breathed polluted air daily.

On and on I can go.  In a number of large ways and a million little ways, I felt I didn’t have enough of what I wanted and needed.  And ironically the more my monthly income grew the more my debt ballooned.  The bank kept awarding me a larger and larger overdraft facility - and I kept using it!  No matter what I earned, I certainly did not have financial abundance!

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not actually complaining.  There was much about that life that was wonderful.  And every bit of it was exactly what I created for myself – so it was actually just a perfect reflection of the "me" that I was when I chose all that for myself.  But now, in retrospect, I can see that I was finding all kinds of ways to keep myself impoverished.  My life was very far from abundant.  From the outside it looked like I had it all but on the inside, I often felt quite poor indeed.

And then, a couple of years ago, Lisa and I decided to follow our hearts instead of our egos.  Slowly, very slowly, everything began to change.  Our values shifted and we began to discover that abundance does not vest in money alone.

And now, as a result of the process of "following our hearts" I find myself living in the forest beginning to put together a new life based upon entirely new principals and goals.  Lisa and I have, by selling everything and cashing out of our lives in the city, bought ourselves the luxury of having a little time in which to figure out what this new life should be like and how to make it work.

And so I come to the realisation that I really need to figure out what the deal is with “abundance”.  What is it?  What does it mean for me?  And how do I get it?

I’ve given this a lot of thought and opened myself to some inspiration on the subject and I’d like to share with you what I have got so far.

What is Abundance – A Definition

I looked online at some dictionary definitions of abundance and I wasn’t impressed.  These definitions were completely two-dimensional and without soul.  So I opened myself to inspiration and received my working definition for abundance.  It’s this:

“Abundance is always having more than I need to have, to allow me to do whatever my heart calls me to do”

That’s a pretty clear and simple definition and I like it.

But when I look at that definition it occurs to me that I have some more figuring out to do.  I need to know:
1. What does my heart call me to do?  If I don’t know that how can I know…
2.  What I need to have to do what my heart calls me to do.  If I don’t know that how can I figure out…
3.  How much is “more than enough”?  How much is actually ABUNDANT?

Only when I have answered these questions will I be able to know for sure what it is that I need to get – and how much of it.

And as I ponder this question, a realisation suddenly dawns upon me.  Like a light-bulb going on I see it:  
I have always been going about this the wrong way round!  What I have been taught by the society I have lived in has been utterly wrong!  

What society taught, and what I did, was that we should go about accumulating resources: “get a job, earn an income, make some money,” everyone said.  And so I did.  And then, once I had some money it was easy to think my purpose was to buy a nice house, a nice car, get a better job with a bigger salary, buy a nicer car and a bigger house, get better clothes and better furniture, get a better job, go overseas for a holiday, get a better job… you get the picture?  I allowed myself to be convinced that it was all about the “resources”.  And I also believed it when I was told that the only resource of value was money.  And so I bought into the biggest con of the current age.  Business, Money, Corporatism, Capitalism.  Call it what you will.  It’s a big lie.

And the reason it’s a lie is because it is the wrong way round.

I now see that I must begin with defining my own purpose.  Then I must decide what I need to achieve that purpose.  And then, suddenly, it is obvious to me that the whole money-and-power game that was being proposed to me does NOT serve my own best interests.  All it does is lock me into a game in which I bring my energy and talent and ability to serve someone else’s interests.  Some nameless, faceless, owners of The Machine.  I become their willing and obedient slave by the simple expedient of me agreeing that money is my purpose.

So enough of that!  Money is not my purpose!

But what is?  I come back again to "what does my heart call me to do?"

Again I have opened myself to inspiration and this is what I understand:

What is My Purpose?

We all have many layers of purpose.  There is God’s purpose which IS our purpose, then each of our Inner-Selves have a purpose, which also, of course is our purpose.  And then finally we each create our own purposes.  Each time we declare “I will do this,” or “I agree to do that,” we are defining our own smaller purposes. 

 

But the subject of Purpose is a big one.  Much too big to be addressed as just a sub-topic in this blog post.  I’ll deal with it in more detail in due course.  But in the mean time I can share with you that I have set myself these two purposes:

1.  Finding my true connection to the divine and then living in relationship to the divine.  Being an embodiment of the divine.  In short: living the ascended life.
2.  Finding my greatest gift and then giving that away.  For now, this is The Ascension Papers and all the peripheral material that goes with that.

So if THIS is my purpose then what do I need?

Clean, pure air and water.  Nourishing, healthy, life-filled food.  Good health.  A safe, secure, comfortable home.  Friendship, love and support.  Occasional help, guidance and input.  Inspiration.  To feel that I am contributing something of worth and beauty.  To feel that I am not causing hurt or damage to anyone by my actions (including and especially to my environment and the planet).  I want to know that Life is much richer and more joyful for the fact that I have passed by here than it would have been had I not.

In broad strokes this is what I need.

Isn’t it amazing to see it laid out like this?  Suddenly I see that I already have almost everything I need.  Suddenly I see how very little of my needs have anything to do with money.  Granted – if I had no money or if I run out of money while the world I live in is still as money based as it is – money will suddenly become very important to me.  But the same can be said for any of my needs.  If I had no love then that would be very important to me to find.  And if I had no air to breath… wow… you get the picture?

So, as I say I already have ALMOST everything I need - in abundance!  But what is it that I still need?

Let me tell you about my plan for a self-sustaining homestead and then I'll get to it:

Lisa and I are, at the time of writing, renting a really beautiful place in the forest.  It’s wonderful here and I am not complaining.  But it IS rented.  This is not ideal. Very soon we will purchase a parcel of land.  When it is registered in our name at the deeds office we will begin building an off-the-grid home.  This too is a very big topic and I will begin to describe what that is, what it means to me and how we’ll be setting it up in some follow-up blog posts.  For now all I wish to tell you is that this will be a home that is not connected to the electricity grid, to a municipal water-mains nor to the sewerage system.  We will be getting everything we need in terms of electricity, hot and cold water, fresh fruit and vegetables and heating for our home from the land, the sun and the rain.  This means a whole bunch of my above-listed needs are all taken care of right there.  No bills to pay (after the initial outlay, of course).  But even more importantly it means we are not feeding into these unsustainable, polluting and damaging systems of power-generation and water waste.  So that will be awesome and we are well on the road to achieving all that.  And then I have very, very almost everything I need.

But I will still need money.

As I look at it, it becomes clear to me that I will not have the huge monthly costs that most people have (and that I had back in the city).  No debts to service (thank GOD!).  No mortgage.  No car payment.  No municipal bills for water, sewerage, waste-collection or electricity.  We’ll grow a lot of our own fruit, veg and herbs and probably trade our surplus with others but we’ll still need to buy some things in – so that’s a small cost.  We’ll need to buy fuel for the pick-up truck.  We’ll need to budget to replace the batteries for the home’s solar-power system after about 8 years and the solar panels after 20 or 30 years.  I need money to pay for the costs associated with web-development and hosting for Zingdad.com (can’t give my gift if I have no place to give it!)  And then, of course, one needs money in this world we live in for “the unexpected”.  

So I come to the conclusion that I will burden my self unduly if I strive to live a moneyless life.  I will need SOME money but at the same time, as you can see, it won’t be a lot.

For all my life I have had quite an uncomfortable relationship with money and I still have some deep misgivings about it.  I still think the current money system is quite an ugly way to do things.  But until I, or someone else, can come up with a better way to exchange energy at a distance and with ease, I’ll accept that I must use the money system.

The question for me is how do I make (the admittedly small) amount of money that I need whilst still being congruent with my greater purpose.  I simply will not a gain negotiate my morals and principals for money.  So I must keep doing what I most believe in.  I must find a way to make money out of giving my gift.  I was told by my Inner-Self that I must not restrict access to The Ascension Papers.  It is a gift given to me and though me to anyone and everyone that wants it or needs it.  If I try to charge people money to read it I will not only limit access to it but I will also pervert it.  It will lose it’s “magic” and become something a lot less than what it is.  So that’s not it.

Thinking about this it came to me that I needed to find another gift that I could give.  Something that I could make or do… some other service that I could provide… which I could offer people for which they might be willing to pay.  That way I could still be aligned with my purpose, still be giving my gift away, still not be restricting access to The Ascension Papers, and STILL be giving Life an opportunity to give me back some of what I needed.  

As I thought about this I also knew what it would be.  I have for some time now wanted to make “guided meditation journeys”.  And THIS, I have decided, is one way in which I can get a financial return.  I will make them and offer them for download on my website.  The only difference here is that I will insist that anyone what wants to download them MUST make a donation.  It’s an honour system because it is entirely possible that people could abuse this and download them without paying.  But I will know it (because I’ll see the member download) and MUCH more important THEY will know it.  And good luck with their spiritual quest if that is who they are declaring themselves to be!

So that is what I am going to try.  There will, of course be other things I will come up with in due course.  But for now I have begun by making available the first of a series of “Guided Journeys”.  So, if you’d like to support me then I would be very grateful.  You can read more about the Guided Journeys here.

But rest assured, The Ascension Papers will always be free for you to read (in ebook form at least).  While I DO need to begin putting together a plan to make some money, I am not hard-up or desperate and the words that were gifted to me will always be available for free.

And now I’d love to hear your comments.  Things I’d be particularly interested to hear about are:
1.  What do you think of my idea to offer Guided Journeys?

2.  Do you have any other suggestions or ideas for me?  Have YOU possibly found a way to create abundance out of YOUR gift?  I’m open to inspiration!