Abundance is the natural state. It’s also your natural state. Whatever you are experiencing right now, the foundation of your experience is abundance. There can be no other way. No exceptions.
Scientists estimate that your human body is made of 37.2 trillion cells, and that’s not counting the microbiome, which is an invisible ghosty layer of cells cloaking the entire inner and outer surface of your body.
Red blood cells are packed densely together — makes sense. It’s their job to transport oxygen throughout your body and deliver it to all your organs, muscles and tissue. Your red blood cells are also working behind the scenes to clear your body of excess CO², lactic acid and metabolic waste. Whether or not you are aware of it, you are breathing about 960 breaths per hour, 23,000+ breaths per day, 8.5 millions breaths per year.
You have 50 billion fat cells in your body (on average —fat cells actually become bigger, not more numerous, in people who are significantly overweight). About 2 billion heart muscle cells are working for you around the clock. There are 46 miles of nerves open 24/7 for business, too. In other words, any way you slice you, you are made of an abundance of cells.
According to the University of Southern California’s Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, the average brain has 100 billion neurons. The left hemisphere of the brain contains 186 million more neurons than the right hemisphere. The left prefrontal cortex — located in the front of your head, above your left eye, is associated with happiness.
Your thoughts create your emotions. It turns out that you can actively and deliberately train your thoughts to create the emotional state you want. You can calm down the right prefrontal cortex, which is always looking for what can go wrong, and you can ramp up the activity in the left prefrontal cortex, which results in greater ease, peace and satisfaction.
Scientists estimate that we have 50,000 to 70,000 thoughts per day, and 70–95% of those thoughts are repetitive, negative and subconscious. Here’s the math of it: you are unwittingly reiterating the same negative thought loops 35,000–66,000 times a day x 7 days a week x 52 weeks a year. That’s over 24 million negative thoughts a year x the number of years you’ve been here. By the time you’re 50, if you keep on subconsciously repeating the same unhelpful, disempowering, depressing thoughts you’ve been thinking your whole like, you’ve run about 1.095 x 10⁹ thoughts through your system, with all the corresponding brain chemistry of lack.
The result of you thinking an abundance of negative thoughts is you create an abundance of fear, panic, dread, anxiety, and self-sabotage in your system.
An Abundance of Ladybugs. Photo by Deborah Fryer
Information Overload. Thank goodness there’s a cure for that.
We are bombarded with stimuli day and night. Your brain — and you — cannot possibly deal with all the sounds, colors, smells, textures, tastes and feelings that are flowing through you, so you brain filters out what it needs to know to keep you safe. Thank goodness that you brain is paying attention to what it needs to pay attention to and filtering out the rest.
For example, as I am typing this, I am standing at my desk, balancing on one leg. I can feel the sock on my foot, and underneath that, the roughness of the Turkish carpet, and underneath that, the barber mat that’s cushioning my weight, and underneath that the hardness of the tile floor. I’m wearing a pair of jeans and I can the comforting heaviness of the fabric on my legs. I am leaning into my desk, so I feel the support of the wood pressing against my waist. I’m wearing a silky shirt that’s soft on my arms. Outside, I can hear an an airplane, a car, and a blue jay. Inside, there’s the thump and click of the keys on my computer, the sound of me breathing, the creak of my desk as I adjust my position. My stomach is rumbling because all I’ve consumed so far today is spring water with fresh lime squeezed into it, and two cups of espresso with organic half and half. It’s close to 11 a.m. and my stomach is gurgling because I’m hungry but I want to stay focussed and finish this first.
I look out and see blue sky and white cottony clouds. The branches are bare so more light reaches me. Across the street there’s snow on the rooftops. Someone is walking their dog past my window. On my desk, I spy a red pen, a yellow highlighter, my orange heart rate monitor, which reminds me I should go to the gym today, a credit card bill that needs to be paid tomorrow, a book left open-spined where I stopped reading it, a box of kleenex with a green filligree design on the box (now that I’m looking at the kleenex, I realize I have to blow my nose), my iPhone (not going to turn it on and check email or Facebook right now because I’m concentrating on writing), a stapler, some heart rocks and an inspirational quote from The Little Prince.
In one of the stars
I shall be living
In one of them
I shall be laughing
And so it will be
As if all the stars
Were laughing
When you look
At the sky at night.
~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
And that’s just what’s right in front of my field of awareness, that I can see directly or in my peripheral vision. I haven’t turned around, but I’m also aware that behind me are hundred of books, filled with millions of words printed on paper made from millions of trees. There are multiple file drawers crammed full of receipts and important papers I don’t want to lose track of. There’s a hand made carpet that contains millions of knots. An embroidered textile on the couch that contains millions of stitches.
It’s cold in my office. I glance at the thermometer behind me — it’s 57 degrees — and now I’m down a whole nother rabbit hole because on the shelf with the thermometer are pictures of my nieces, my mom and dad and sister and husband and all the dogs I have ever loved. Now my body is flooded with emotions of love and sadness and gratitude and longing. I sigh. I inhale. I exhale. I blink. The pleasure of momentary darkness. No more stimulation. I open my eyes. The bright white of my screen. The story waiting to be written.
You get the picture. We live in an abundant universe. We just can’t possibly take it all in so your brain is doing you a favor by filtering out most of what’s happening around you so that you can focus on the one (maybe two) thing you are doing right now.
Here’s the catch: your brain may be filtering out some of the goodness that’s actually available for you to receive right now, but you are ignoring it because you have learned that you only get to receive a tiny fraction of goodness. Call it money. Compliments. Approval. Referrals. Support. If you are used to not receiving, you’ll look for an abundance of proof of more not receiving. You’re still flowing in an abundant stream — in the above case, you’re in the part of the stream we call “not enough.” This is a fast-flowing stream where the majority of the people are swimming. It feels fine, until it doesn’t.
Close Up of Ladybugs. Photo by Deborah Fryer
You could just as easily swim in a different part of the stream of Abundance if you want. It’s all the same stream.
Abundance, by definition, flows like water. The word Abundance contains the Latin root “unda,” which means wave, as in undulate. Smack in the middle of abundance, you see the swell. You literally feel its pull when you say it aloud. Go ahead, let this beautiful word roll around on your tongue and notice how good that feels. It starts deep within you… the initial Aaaa sound comes from your core. It’s the sound of Truth. Relief. Pleasure. Surrender. That same seed sound is heard in Allah, Buddha, Krishna.
Feel the vibration of the B sound on your lips. It vibrates your whole being as it enters you. The dental D is equally ticklish and exciting. Feel how the word abundance is so alive and pulsating. The final sibilant S is soothing. The words feels like a massage for your whole palate. Abundance is when you truly, madly, deeply allow yourself to relax into the tidal truth of this current that flows through all that is.
Thanks to Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr and a bunch of other brainy physicists who figured out that every particle is also a wave, we get tripped up by the particular form of abundance. This is a key idea about abundance. It’s not linear. It’s not fixed. It’s both a particle and a wave that ebbs and flows, cycles in and out, like breath, like food, like the moon, like the seasons.
Abundance is the flow of all things, not to you, and through you, but also including you.
Imagine a river with a giant boulder in the middle. The water is flowing downstream, taking the path of least resistance, which is what nature does. Nature likes ease. Nature continues to flow. Obstacles do not stop her. Nature likes efficiency, so nature finds the most efficient way to keep growing.
You are of nature, so why do you resist what is natural to you?
When that stream of water hits the giant boulder in its path, there’s a lot of turbulence in front of the boulder. A churn of whitewater and froth. Aqueous drama and commotion and noise. It’s a little scary. You definitely don’t want to get flipped into the hole right in front of the boulder, so you go around it, right? You take the path of flow, which is around the obstacle.
You yourself might be the obstacle in the middle of the river. Are you? The only way to get out of your own way is to get out of your own way. Go around your old habits. Honor them. Thank them for being in your path. Thank your obstacles for being there so clearly so that you can see them so that you can appreciate them and can choose to go around them, or to slide into them and pause, if that’s your preference.
In other words, abundance is simply the natural state of all that is. It’s not something to chase after. It’s not something elusive and out of teach. There’s no need to chase it because actually it’s right here, supporting your every experience. It’s pulsating in every fiber of your being. When you tune into the frequency of abundance, you realize that you ARE already abundant. You have never been separate from the wave.
In the words of Rumi, “You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.” You may have been entertaining an abundance of self-sabotaging, self-loathing thoughts, but that’s all that has been happening is that you have been focussing abundantly on what you don’t want, so you have been discovering more of that. By your own creation of it.
Want to feel more abundance in your life?
Do the exercises in this book Best Brain Hacks: 108 Scientific, Spiritual and Sensual Strategies for Success. It’s my gift to you! Thank you for reading this post!
