By the Armloads
I put the car into park and let it idle. It was October in New York, and the apple harvest was in full swing.
We visited an apple farm and went picking: Honey Crisps, Pink Ladies, Red Delicious, and Granny Smiths. We wandered up and down the rows of trees still laden with apples, making our selections. The corn harvest was mostly over, but the stocks still stood tall.
What an abundance! We took our finds to the checkout counter, eyeing the squash and pumpkins. More abundance! There were rows of berry preserves. We passed on these. We had our own cooking to do at our vacation rental. We filled the car and headed back up to Slide Mountain.
Our kitchen was well equipped and soon in full operation: two pies later, applesauce cooked, and apple butter baking in the oven -- and we retired jubilantly to the living room to rest! We loved it! The harvest and the abundance we made of it, the scent of cinnamon and allspice and apples cooking delighted us!
It all starts with water. Earth is the water planet. What grows on Earth grows because there is water. All those apples, squash, pumpkins, corn, and berries took water to grow. Take away the water and you have a desert. And even what grows in the desert does so only when there is water. The apples and vegetables are storehouses for water. Such an abundance! The trees, vines, and stalks they grow on are storehouses for water. A great abundance of water!
But that’s not all they store. They store food, food that will be eaten by animals as well as human beings, food that will nourish the soil as it decays. More abundance. The whole Earth is one gigantic storehouse of water and food, an abundant system.
Quite a number of years ago, our hearts were opened by the birth of our first child. We felt so blessed. The labor was long. But the joy of his arrival over the coming months was far greater than I expected. Why? Because my heart was filled to overflowing by his arrival in this world. My sense of abundance soared at his birth. We waited so long to have a child!
Love is a way of being that fills the heart with abundance. It opens the heart up to receive and give more love. Love supercharges living in abundance. Love spills over to others, filling up their hearts as well, opening them up to experience the abundance. In turn, the love that others have spills over, filling up our hearts. Reciprocal love is self-perpetuating and gives rise to feelings of abundance.
Abundance is a state of mind, of heart-filled joyous love, of doing what brings joyous abundance to others. Let’s take those one at a time. When we assess our situation as full, we are in an abundant state of mind. It’s a choice about how to perceive what we have in life. It’s a state of mind that says, “It’s very, very good!” about whatever our situation is. It does not matter how much money is in the bank account, nor how many clothes we have to wear. It’s not about our situation being perfect either. It’s about the joyous love we feel in this moment that makes it abundantly rich. It is the feeling “this moment is all we have”. And that, “this moment is full”, that, “it is good”, and that, “it is to be shared”. Sharing is the hard part, right? No, it’s not. Sharing is what you want to do when you feel like your cup is full, your life situation is joyous and loving, your heart is full of love and abundance, and you know what you have is good.
So back to the apple farm. We picked apples by the armloads, not out of a thought that we could use that many apples ourselves. Rather our joy at having our daughter with us for the apple picking, apple pie making, apple sauce and apple butter cooking brought us into a state of abundance, into a feeling of joyous goodness, into a desire to share the fruits of our labors.
Abundance is a way of life, a way of being, a way of perceiving – lived one moment at a time, a way of life that mirrors our water planet’s abundant system. Earth allows us to find more than we need and then give to others what they need out of a sense of abundance, sharing, and joyous love. Abundance is a soulful mindset, and a joyous loving heart, that want to share the gifts of creation from a place of fullness within.
