What is lack. Lack of money. I have plenty. Lack of time. Have a lot of that since I sold the business. Food. No lack there. We alway have more than we can eat. What do I lack? Do I write all day due some sense of emptiness. Do I lack attention, love. No. If I feel less than, not good enough there must be something I wish to attain. “The belief that we are lacking something, if we believe it thoroughly, must arise out of the assumption that there is something to attain.” (Wake Up To What You Do, by Diane Rizzetto) When and If we are awake to what is, to Just This, then we are full, full with the richness of the moment. Our minds are full so there can be no thoughts of lack. Full or 1/2 full, a glass of milk, a bottle of juice, is just that, just as it is. There is no attainment, no effort to attain.
I judge myself by what I attain, what I can do, how I much I achieve in one day. We are taught by society to place an emphasis on acquisitions. We are impressed by people positions. This even happens in the spiritual world. Pema Chodron refers to it as going to the “spiritual smorgasboard.”
Listen to yoga practitioners talk about how long they meditate, how many times they went to class last week, how long they can stay in handstand, and how much calmer they feel now that they are using mantra meditation. There is always more to learn, more knowledge to accumulate. Spiritual materialism is real, but the truth is that what we do not know is always infinite
Many people want to achieve enlightenment. I guess that means that we are never good enough as we are in this moment. We must always be trying to improve ourselves and the world we live in. Funny thing is a mind that sees a glass half empty will never be satisfied. There can never be enough no matter how much you learn, how much you earn, how much you have. Satisfaction is impossible. So sad.
What do we lack? We lack the awareness to know the difference between being and having. We care little for the well-being of our own planet, mindlessly depleting it of its limited resources. What will we do when there is no more natural gas, no more fossil fuels, no more water, no more bees, no more clean air? Then we will know the meaning of “lack.” Will we then attack other countries who have these resources? Should we ever take what is not freely given to us? And can we ever learn to give freely of what we have?
The hungry ghost mentality breeds greed and deception. The less we think we have the more we attach to what is ours. We have less and less to give because we believe we are somehow lacking. If we do give, we put a price tag on our giving and use it to manipulate others. “The price tag says, ‘I give, but you pay back. Now you owe me.” (Waking Up to What You Do, by Diane Rizzetto). We want to be appreciated, to be seen by others as generous and kind when in fact we are selfish and self-serving. Giving with conditions closes down the heart. Paying attention to our patterns around giving and receiving, bringing as awareness to our ability to give freely can shine a bright light on how we define ourselves and others.
The act of giving, dana, as the buddhist refer to it, is a practice that opens the heart. Giving freely, unconditionally, can heal anger, fear, resentment and jealousy. Taking is an addiction that can rule our lives. Giving stops this compulsion in its tracts. Giving, letting go of what we have, teaches us that everything we own is only temporally ours. The minute someone needs it more than we do, it is time to let it go. The key is to cultivate the awareness, the understanding, the ability to see the need in others and give what we can to help them without any expectation of return.
“One act of generosity, no matter how small, generates yet another. The flow of giving and receiving is endless.” (Waking Up To What You Do, by Diane Rizzetto).
Writing into the Light 