Abundance with a Capital A
The Divine Eye: Seeing the Good in Everything and Everyone, March 24, 1995, Oasis Bookstore, Amherst, Massachusetts
I have a question. It is about money.
Good.
I’ve been trying to figure out whether there is a big game out there about money. Money is a real illusion. It really keeps people stuck because the abundance is always available, but people feel like they need money in order to access it. But, is there a way to access the abundance and not play the game?
Let us tell you several things about money. It is a very, very good question. First thing, let us say somebody is living in Uganda, hm? And they are living a village kind of life. Do they have access to abundance in the same way that you here in Amherst do?
We do, but these days they may not have access because other people come in and take over their village.
Ah, so to some degree, abundance depends on other people’s willingness to let you have it?
Yeah.
And to depend on your location. However, this is not Abundance with a capital “A.” The abundance with a capital “A” is, what you need is given to you. The abundance with a small “a” is, what you desire, you can try to achieve. And there is a big difference between the two.
The “game” that you are describing tends to come about with the small “a” abundance, and also, tends to come about with the conflict in the person over which kind of abundance they really want. Most people at heart want the capital “A” abundance: The peace which comes with receiving what you need.
Everyone gets what they need. That is what we call a law, and as we mentioned, laws are things you don’t invent. The laws are things your mind didn’t create. One of the laws is, you get what you need. That is Abundance. But the small “a” abundance is materialistic, and it is not a bad thing, because you are the world in the physical form.
You are material person. Therefore, you have a right to explore the material world. Money is a very interesting commodity, because it actually has no value. It is worthless, and overly symbolic. Symbolic of labor. Symbolic of the value of goods to one person and to another. But the money itself, does not have value.
One of the problems with abundance and prosperity is that the people have attached so many values to money, when it is valueless. Money is not really anything at all. You can’t eat it. It can’t warm you, unless you burn it. It can’t clothe you, unless you have interesting taste. It is not much good, except that you have as a community, decided to attach such importance to it, that it is now your lifeblood. So, those who live without money are free of a lot of worry.
However, it is not practical to live without money. For most people here, it is not practical, and you were not intended to. That is why you were born here, and not in a land without it. The amount of abundance you have a right to have is a very interesting question.
Imagine that you’re in a large— have you ever played a game where you lift a big parachute up, many of you around it, and then you bring it down, and you crawl underneath quickly, and it becomes a dome over you? You have done this? It is a beautiful game, children’s game, but adults should try it. Now, imagine that you are alone under that dome of a parachute, and that it is not deflating, it is staying. How far can you walk? Well, you can walk as far around within it as there is room.
What happens if you want to walk farther? You walk into the parachute. You tangle up in it. You push against it, and you struggle. With all aspects of life your ability to influence other people, your ability to become important shall we say, your ability to achieve your goals and dreams. Your ability to have lots of prosperity and abundance. This parachute idea is a metaphor for how things are, the law of your life.
You are given a certain range in which to wander. But if you choose to wander beyond that range, in the hope of making something new, you have to contend with the fact that you’re getting tangled up in the boundary of what you were given at first. We are not saying you are stuck. No. We say that to move beyond the limit where you have been placed requires you to engage in a certain amount of rolling and frustrating, and fighting against that limit. And that the value of it may not be eventually equal to the effort you expend. This is especially true in spheres of influence.
Everyone would like to make world peace. Your ability to create peace in this world is limited, as an individual, by the sphere of influence you have been given in this life to work with. You’ve been prescribed and circumscribed a sphere of influence so that you could work well within that sphere. If you try to cover the whole world, you do no good. Cover one person, you can really get to them. That is why you have been limited in different ways in this life.
This whole life itself is a kind of limitation. As we mentioned, you have come into this world shedding a lot of your awareness, forgetting a lot of things you used to know. So that you could focus on these few things. Prosperity and abundance are similarly transcribed, circumscribed, prescribed. They are similarly defined so that you will push against the limit and learn how much you do, or don’t want— more than you seem to be able to get. This is another law.
This is called a law of prosperity. Abundance with a capital “A” is here even when people are destitute with the small “a.” When people have no material means at all, the capital “A” of abundance is just as present for the as it is for someone with great wealth. And the peace comes only from that abundance, not from the human materialistic- abundance. Well-being and comfort are really lodged in the divine plan, and not in human capacity.
Many people suffered in this world before your current generation. For example, five-hundred years ago very few people were comfortable every day. Very few people were comfortable any day, even for a few moments. If they weren’t cold, they were lying on the ground. If they weren’t, they were lying in dirt. If they weren’t lying in filth, they were sick. If they weren’t sick, they were hungry.
Abundance with a capital “A” was their only hope. And many of them felt peace because they knew that kind of Abundance. Since you have so much more small “a” abundance around you now, there is so much more temptation to cling to that abundance as the hope for peace. So much harder to go for what is really free. That is a very sort of airy answer to your question. You’ve asked a very practical question.