Embracing Wealth – Open

As a boy I was taught to pray with my hands together, fingers folded between each other so the hands were entwined and closed. I didn’t find a lot of seed sowing in that posture. When I encountered the native Lakota people I learned to pray with my whole body; hands open, sowing spirit seeds everywhere. In the Contemplative tradition, I found my hands open in my lap receiving and giving the invisible seeds of life.

Embracing the Wealth of Life means keeping our hands, hearts, minds, and other multi-sensory systems open and available for new experiences, ideas, and relationships. It means playing and working beyond the conditioned boundaries of the familiar. Engaging this ever present Energy of Life challenges us to risk being curious and lures us into unfamiliar territory. It invites us into new information and opportunities for growth.

Opening feels risky and yet it’s the way of inner and outer Wealth. Life is the greatest art but it’s not the paint by number kind. Rather, it’s the kind of art you have to create as you go. When you think you know the path and how it’s going to play out, you’re always surprised by the vast communion of IAmness with it’s many twists, turns, mysteries and unknown detours. To live with the artistry of Life’s Wealth requires you to be Open.

Rumi gives direction: ‘Open the window in the center of your chest to let the spirits fly in and out.‘ Jack Kornfield says: ‘To open deeply, as genuine spiritual life requires, we need tremendous courage and strength, a kind of warrior spirit found in the heart.‘ Helen Keller adds: ‘No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars or sailed an uncharted land or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.’

This Power of Wealth requires us to be Open to whatever crosses our path with the spirit of thanksgiving and appreciation, even when it’s not what we expect or want. How do you handle this? How do you work through the fear that keeps you walled off from new possibilities and potentialities? What are the clues that point your through the fear into the new challenges and what happens when you ignore them?

Carl Jung once said: “The privilege of a lifetime is to become Who you truly are.” What if who you truly are is Wealthy beyond measure? What if your fear is really about living into this Wealth? What if your resistance is all about your fear of being too much? What would this mean for you? Are you willing to Open to the possibilities? Are you?

We live in a holographic universe where the Whole is greater than the sum of its parts and each part contains the Whole. What does this say about you and me? What’s it say about the holon that’s become flesh, yours and mine? What’s being said about the Power of Wealth, Opportunity, Wisdom, and Well-being in us? We’ve embraced Wealth in Stilling,Trusting, and Opening. We look next to embrace Wealth in Presencing. Hmm.