The Daily Message for today (as I’m writing this, anyway) was about Abundance, which was really timely, because I had let me head get stuck in the illusion of lack. Luckily, I hadn’t gotten so stuck in fear that I wasn’t seeing clues when they get dropped, so I read the whole post.

For those of you who don’t know, my Daily Messages (which get sent out via email, as well as posted to Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Google+, and sometimes MeWe) are from my 2007 book of daily, action-oriented reflections called 365 Days to Enlightenment, with a few rewrites and edits. I’m actually in the process of writing a new one, with some fantastic quotes, with more of a focus on Awakening, rather than Enlightenment. Both are based on a Kabbalistic formula that suggests an energy or focus for each date.

The message was:

Abundance just is. Much like gravity, it just exists within the universe. Lack, its assumed opposite, is simply the illusion of the absence of abundance. It isn’t real.

This does not, in any way, prevent us from believing in it to the point where we make lack a palpable quality in our lives, but the simple truth is that lack is an illusion.

The key question then becomes: How do we dissuade ourselves from this illusion?

Allow yourself to become aware of the manifestations of abundance in your life. What do you have? What does the world serve up to you on a silver platter?

Please note that this is different than focusing on what you have that others don’t, because then you are still focusing on lack.

Create a daily list, every morning, on awakening. Who loves you? Who do you love? What are the joys in your life? What blessings did you receive the day before?

You will be surprised, as you try this for more than a week on a daily basis, at how many more items appear on your list.

This practice of writing a form of gratitude list every day, one where your focus is on your abundance and is not in comparison with others, has become centered these days around my Jar Of Awesome. The Jar of Awesome is a decorated Costco-sized peanut butter jar into which I put slips of paper, each with an awesome thing from my life written on it. I mostly blame my massage therapist for the inspiration, he’ll understand why. My goal has been to put at least one slip of paper in there every morning. On bad days, I can pull some out and read them, reigniting my feelings of awesome.

It’s great, when I can get to it. Getting moving in the morning is hard for me. My physical constraints are such that I have to spend a good deal of time just getting to the point where I can move around well enough to feed the critters and do some personal grooming. Lately, I find more often than not, this leads to me having to rush through my morning routine, which means sometimes more mindful practices get skipped. What I really need to do is keep the materials by my bedside, because I can probably fill them out while I’m still laying in bed, so the practice doesn’t get overlooked.

Since I haven’t been doing it on the regular, earlier this week I spent some time in the afternoon filling out slips and dropping them in the jar. Sadly, for whatever reason, the effect was the opposite than what I was going for, and I had a mood drop. I suspect I was already on the precipice of it, and the practice just let me get self-aware enough to realize I was falling. A lot of my distress was centered around the illusion of lack, as I said at the beginning, so the Daily Message today really spoke to me.

I know that strong feelings of lack are really going around right now, what with the furloughs and layoffs and strikes, and the economy feels incredibly uncertain to a lot of people. It’s important to remember, and I say this as much for me as for you, dear reader, that money is only a representation of an exchange of energy, and anything else I or you attach to that, is something we have attached to it. Money is nothing more than a representation of an exchange of energy. While money can bring a sense of ease, especially when we’re struggling financially, it does not actually buy happiness; just look at all the people with money who are miserable. Money is a tool. It allows us to feed and clothe our families, it gets us to and from work by putting gas in our car or by enabling us to take public transportation, it helps get a roof over our heads. Part of the challenge of the current paradigm in the US is that money has been given more importance than people. It has been rendered into something of a deity, with people having faith or losing faith in it, worshiping it, chasing it (rather than going after the things it brings us and allowing money to be a method of achieving it). Talk about false idols! If each of us, as individuals, shifts our focus back on what matters, on community, on equality, on love, on people, we can start to shift our society back into a place were we are valued, where we value us.

I’m going to start with putting at least three slips of paper in my Jar of Awesome every morning again.

How about you? What are you going to do?