I want to wish you a joyful Thanksgiving holiday! I hope your day is filled with love and gratitude.
We’re moving into the season of giving – also known as the season of over-consumption, over-spending and over-giving. Gratitude can quickly turn to “Oh crap! What did I do? Why did I eat and drink so much? Do I really have to spend this much? Do these gifts really express the love and care I want to share with my loved ones?”
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Can you relate? Here’s a message that I hope will take some of that pressure off…
The Abundance Movement has been popular for a very long time. It has ingrained in us cultural expectations based in material possessions and comforts. If you have children or grandchildren, you see how the television commercials target their sweet little minds and inspire them to want, want, want. And, let’s be honest, there are a few shiny objects that catch our eyes, too, right?
But, let’s take a breath and pan out to gain a broader perspective.
The abundance mindset encourages behaviors of over-consumption that are unhealthy for the body and overtax the planet. This mentality has had a snowball effect on our planet, and most of us have come to depend on the very systems that we aspire to change.
The food systems, the financial systems, the transportation systems – we support them with the demands of our lifestyles, and we abhor them for the imbalances and inequalities they bring among people and the harm they bring to the earth.
We need to shift to a mentality of sufficiency, which really means trust.
Every human has come to this physical life with certain purposes, and we are each given everything we need to fulfill those purposes. If we want harmony, balance, health and a sustainable future, we have to trust that we will be sufficiently provided for to do what we’ve come here to do.
If our minds get fixed on abundance, it has detrimental effects. We get off track with purpose. We strive for more than we need, which shakes our trust in provision. We take more from the planet without respect for her resources, which contributes to all the man-made systems that harm the planet in order to provide for our ever-growing needs.
Regardless of whether you have the money or can afford the weight gain, think about the consequences of over-consumption. What do you need to spread joy? What do you need to share love? Can you keep your needs – your eating habits and spending habits – in line with the needs of the planet?
I encourage you to keep this in mind as you celebrate Thanksgiving and move into the holiday shopping season. I’m not suggesting a fear of lack, but a respect for nature and our planet’s resources and the gifts that are intended for us.
In honor of this day of Thanksgiving, in support of wisdom and trust, and in support for our country’s native people and the people at Standing Rock, I leave you with this prayer:
Wakan Tanka, Great Mystery,
teach me how to trust
my heart,
my mind,
my intuition,
my inner knowing,
the senses of my body,
the blessings of my spirit.
Teach me to trust these things
so that I may enter my Sacred Space
and love beyond my fear,
and thus Walk in Balance
with the passing of each glorious Sun.
According to the Native People, the Sacred Space
is the space between exhalation and inhalation.
To Walk in Balance is to have Heaven (spirituality)
and Earth (physicality) in Harmony.
from Sapphyr.net, Native American quotes
Hope to see you Sunday for the Community for Conscious Living broadcast!
Live & Love Joyfully!
Mastura Debra
