food for thoughts

[Guest guest]

We have had many posts about abundance.

 

 

 

In this post I want to address it from an other perspective I haven't

seen approached yet.

 

 

 

Yogananda in his book "Autobiography of a Yogi" speaks of the

elimination of hunger in the world. He wonders how it could be done and

thinks the solution might be at hand when he hears of people who no

longer need food to be alive. But when he asked one of them whether she

can share her knowledge so the world of hunger can be eliminated, her

answer was that mankind still needed that experience. In the following,

I suggest an answer why mankind might still need that experience, and it

is not that we need to share more... although that may come as a result

of what I am sharing here this time.

 

 

 

After I chose to leave the pharmaceutical world, when the company left

Rochester, NY, and I chose to stay in Rochester and open a yoga studio,

money that used to flow, suddenly became a trickle, or less. I could not

pay my mortgage or my credit card bills. I had never been so materially

poor. Yet my experience was made beautiful because I was allowed to stay

in my house without paying my mortgage for a year until I was evicted

and very few people got irritated with me about my situation but they

sure called me every day!

 

 

 

Yet the social pressures around me to make more money, to change my ways

and "straighten up" were very intense. And in some ways I needed to

change, but not in the direction the pressures were going. The external

pressures made me feel that I was wrong to "let myself get into my

situation". What was I doing? Did I realized I was not acting

responsibly toward the banks that entrusted me with their credit cards,

with the bank that put money down for me so I could own a house?

 

 

 

My marriage broke down. The money pressure was too intense.

 

 

 

But all along I felt as though it was not my doing. There was something,

a current, that was there for me to enter and follow without resistance.

 

 

 

When I started making a little money again, it felt like abundance and I

was happy to give myself treats I had stayed away from: going to a

movie, having a meal at a restaurant, having some desert, having a

cappuccino... I started to feel I wanted more of these treats. Now for

10 years when I was making good money I had stopped drinking coffee and

any desert with refined sugar. It was easy. Now I was facing a different

situation. I had given myself permission to have coffee and desert with

refined sugar, so every instant offered me with the temptation of it.

And that's when it clicked: What if I accepted the craving without

satisfying it? Then I felt the true craving. I felt my true longing for

peace, my true longing for God. It wasn't despair about not having it.

It was a world I had previously ignored because I had chosen to have or

not to have the object of my desire. Neither way helped me feel much of

anything... I am sure not the only one who has experienced this. I just

never knew that giving in to my desire for a piece of pie could hide

from my experience something as beautiful as a true longing for God.

 

 

 

As I started to experience this, it occurred to me that we live in a

culture whose drive is to create cravings and satisfy them. It is a

never ending business. Who takes the time to feel the cravings left

unsatisfied?

 

 

 

When I did just that, I experienced a world I did not know existed. Now

I don't need to lose weight, people actually keep asking me to add a few

more pounds on, so I never thought it was important for me to be careful

about what I eat except when my body tells me something is out of

balance. So the notion was to pay attention to the feeling of a craving

without any other goal like losing weight or trying to be healthy or

anything, just purely feeling... It was a world that was truer to me. I

could have chosen to live in an ashram or in a Himalayan cave. That

would have been easy for me. I can live in a world that has very little.

I can also live in a world that has plenty and have plenty myself and

not indulge in anything and live an ascetic lifestyle. It is when I

stopped living with rules about what to consume that I gave myself a

deeper experience to feel.

 

 

 

So I wondered: what happens to the world that's being ignored behind the

denial of cravings or behind the satisfaction of cravings? And what

happens when we try to fight world hunger by giving foods to that world

or by teaching these people how to work so they can satisfy their own

cravings? I am not suggesting that basic hunger is a craving that should

remain ignored. But I am suggesting that all we do so far is just teach

people how to satisfy cravings necessary ones and unnecessary ones

alike.

 

 

 

Here's my conclusion of this experience. When a world seeks the

satisfaction of desires, a world is instantly created where desires

cannot be satisfied. That's the basis of our dualistic world: mind and

matter. The heart world is not dualistic. We have created the third

world. It is not riches that create poverty; it is ignoring the true

feelings behind desires. Hunger in the world will not be solved by

sending foods or teaching people how to work and make money. Hunger in

the world will be resolved when enough people start feeling what's

behind their cravings. The beauty of this explanation is there can no

longer be any finger pointing as I have heard so many times in my family

and elsewhere, sayings like: "Oh! these people are poor because they are

lazy! They don't want to work!" etc etc...

 

 

 

One last point: our culture has come to equate poverty with lack of

abundance. Now it may be true that someone has stopped the natural flow

of life and then finds themselves poor. But it may also be that poverty

comes as a new experience, as a gift... the flow of life hasn't

stopped... abundance is still there!

 

 

 

Blessings to all,

 

Awtar

 

Rochester, NY

--

Luc Watelet

lucwatelet (AT) fastmail (DOT) fm

 

--

http://www.fastmail.fm - Faster than the air-speed velocity of an

unladen european swallow

[Guest guest]

Dear Awtar,

That was a very fresh perspective on a fact of life ( poverty ) we seem to take for granted. Never thought poverty could also be a beautiful experience. And you're right about the general mentality of poverty being analogous to lack of abundance. Definitely food for thought. :-)...

Merry Christmas

Sat Nam

Preeti

Sydney

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

Yes Indeed

and to maintain a beautiful out look during times of money problems

in the USA is or takes a very understanding attitude

 

Very Interesting to have had Lots of money to none

A real lesson in all things and to have the courage and love to

accept it is of the greatest sould guidance

To flip and flop and blame oneself and to be unkind to your little

soulor others -

accept and surrender the next moment will change

9thbody

 

 

 

>

> Dear Awtar,

> That was a very fresh perspective on a fact of life ( poverty )

we seem to take for granted. Never thought poverty could also be a

beautiful experience. And you're right about the general mentality of

poverty being analogous to lack of abundance. Definitely food for

thought. :-)...

>

> Merry Christmas

> Sat Nam

> Preeti

> Sydney

>

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>

>

>

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>

>