Abundance is not something we acquire. It is something we tune into.
Wayne Dyer
I’ve learned that men and women who are living wholehearted lives really allow themselves to soften into joy and happiness. They allow themselves to experience it.
Brené Brown
As long as we remain vigilant at building our internal abundance – an abundance of integrity, an abundance of forgiveness, an abundance of service, an abundance of love – then external lack is bound to be temporary.
Marianne Williamson, Everyday Grace
Abundance is allowing ourselves to learn, by experience, deep in our beings, that the greatest gift indeed is in receiving the recovery-love offered us and not merely in giving it. Giving without receiving breaks the wheel in half.
Earnie Larsen, Destination Joy
In our culture there seems to be a lot of confusion surrounding the concept of abundance, with the fault line drawn between the concepts of `fully being´ and `having more´. I would like to explore this topic based on my own experience of addiction, recovery, and growth towards emotional sobriety.
It has been pointed out by wise teachers – both ancient and modern – that we are `human beings´, not `human havings´ or `human doings´. Having and doing are obvious traits of human behaviour, indeed often paraded, in our culture today. The concept of `being´ is less easy to grasp, so requires a deeper level of exploration.
`Being´ becomes the first victim of the separation of head and heart. It is this separation that has led us to levels of alienation in our culture which now threaten its destruction. The process of re-unifying these two aspects of human existence can be referred to simply as `recovery´.
Today’s spearhead of cultural and societal recovery is populated by a motley crew of people who identify as recovering `addicts´. The classical addict, the type most easily identified, is the alcoholic.
In this part of the world (Europe) – as in many societies – it is estimated that one in ten drinkers has a problematical relationship with alcohol, with more than half of those identifying as alcoholics, i.e., addicted to alcohol.
According to Dr Gauden Galea at the World Health Organization, speaking in July 2024 on the publication of their latest study, `the numbers tell a sobering story. Men drink nearly four times more than women among the 470 million people identified as drinkers in the region. Two out of every three adults drink, one in ten has an alcohol use disorder and almost six per cent live with alcohol dependence.´
The report pointed out that alcohol is the leading cause of death in Europe, accounting for almost 800,000 deaths a year; 2,200 people die daily from alcohol-related causes, almost 9% of all deaths in the region. Under-reporting of alcohol-related deaths would not be surprising in such a study.
As alcoholics, we know all about denial in the context of our personal stories. A phenomenon less visible, however, is the role of `collective denial´ in the shaping of the values, policies, and behaviours manifested in our society.
Under any other circumstances, an approach which could offer a solution to the `leading cause of death´ would be whole-heartedly embraced and acted upon. Not in this case. Instead, the topic of addiction is generally relegated to `those poor people´ to be found in the taboo zone of homeless shelters and church basements.
Seeing the problem pertaining to others `out there´ is a classic hallmark of any addictive dynamic.
As we have just been making our way through the so-called `Festive Season´, it is impossible to miss the glamour attached to alcohol consumption as an integral part of the deal. Astronomical marketing budgets will have been spent, to good effect.
The approaching New Year celebrations will be accompanied, once again, by the consumption of vast amounts of alcohol in most countries around the world. As used to be the case for me, any celebration without alcohol would be unthinkable for most people in our culture.
This is no longer the case for us in recovery, however. We learn to rise to the challenge of celebrating life without the aid of chemical mood alteration while remaining non-judgmental in the spirit of `live and let live´.
The polytoxification of our culture, moreover, means that now most alcoholics find themselves in bondage to other drugs as well – street drugs and prescription drugs – making the situation even more complex, dangerous, and challenging.
In Ireland, for example, where I grew up, it is estimated that 60% of the alcoholics seeking help today are also addicted to cocaine, benzodiazepine, and/or other substances.
Then, as the icing on the cake, so to say, we have the so-called `process addictions´. These include addiction to work, food, sex, social media, pornography, and a raft of behaviours which become problematical when engaged in obsessively – to zone out – to self-medicate, to shield us from feeling what we are really feeling.
Please don’t get me wrong. This is not meant to be a diatribe against having a good time. In fact, I didn’t get sober to walk around with a long face for the rest of my life. We like to have a good laugh. There is much joviality to be found in our gatherings. We are not saints. Alcohol and other drugs have been used in moderation throughout the ages to lubricate the wheels of social interaction.
The point is that when we move from moderation to compulsion – into the addictive dynamic – we are headed for trouble. The acting out of any such dynamic is a compulsive negating response to life itself, a form of suicide by instalments.
It is no wonder, then, that contrary to the initial intention, those of us affected become less and less vibrant over time, as if the life were being sucked out of us. Obsession supplants imagination, compulsion replaces creativity, fear displaces joy, connection makes way to alienation, and the `being´ in `human being´ begins to wither on the vine.
Recovery becomes possible when we hit bottom, when we become so sick and tired of being sick and tired that we admit we face a life-or-death choice. Some reach this point at the age of 22, some at 42 (as I did), some at 62. It is never too late to turn things around.
Since the founding of AA in 1935 and the spawning of countless associated Twelve Step recovery fellowships since then, help is at hand. This is a game-changer. It is good news for humanity today.
On opening ourselves to the possibility of shifting from a (perhaps unconscious) `No!´ to life to an unconditional `Yes!´, the process of recovery begins. The `Yes!´ manifests as abundance. It is one of the main characteristics of this restorative process.
It is clearly not merely quantitative, not limited to having more or doing more. What does it look like in practice?
Abundance is the choice, cultivated anew each day, to let go of the illusion that we can control life. While admitting that life is unmanageable, we learn that it can be successfully navigated. We learn to tune into and work with the stream of life.
It is what transpires when we risk letting go of insisting that life bow to the low-frequency power of our egoic willfulness, as we surrender to the invisible greater powers of higher frequencies instead.
Abundance is letting go of the dictates of our fears and building trust in the power of love. For those of us who, as children, experienced abandonment, this conscious, voluntary abandonment is a major challenge.
It requires of us a deep dive into the painful woundedness we experienced in childhood, and the ensuing acknowledgement and treatment of those wounds we had tried, through repression, zoning out, and even dissociating, to avoid ever encountering again.
Abundance is not about how much of the spotlight we can garner from our fellows but how many fellows we can help, in kinship, in the process of shining their own light.
Reciprocal by nature, this relationship requires that we allow ourselves to learn, by experience, deep in our beings, that the greatest gift is in opening our hearts to the recovery-love offered us, not merely in giving it. Giving without receiving breaks the circuit, whereupon, at depth, the flow seizes up.
Abundance is learning to deal with the full array of our feelings when, having relinquished self-medication as an option, we get our feelings back. We learn that they can be simply experienced without the need to manipulate or repress them, that while we now have our feelings, they no longer have us.
Human interaction is filled with what we call triggers. As we grow in recovery, the gap between stimulus and response widens; instead of reacting in line with our old unconscious scripts, we learn to respond consciously to whatever we encounter, using the tools and resources we have accumulated while growing and healing.
Abundance is the return of vitality and the growth towards our full potential by revisiting and transcending the wounds of childhood. The deeper we go, the better we become able to guide our wounded sisters and brothers through their own recovery process.
We shift from `nowhere´ to `now here´, from spending our lives elsewhere, – alternating between the regrets of the past and the anxieties of the future – to participating more in the present moment. We can be enthralled in the moment as the sun rises silently on a frosty December morning.
By cultivating our conscious participation in the present moment, our true element, we begin to realize the fullness of our magnificent potential, where the best of us governs the rest of us, as Dr Allen Berger puts it in his `Twelve Essential Insights for Emotional Sobriety´.
Abundance is the spiritual experience of knowing we are perfect in our human imperfection and worthy of unconditional love. Indeed, it is the manifestation of the truth that we are that love.
