This quote from Lao Tsu brought me back to my childhood and all of a sudden, I can hear myself as a child singing, “She’s got the whole world in her hands. She’s got the whole wide world in her hands. She’s got the whole wild world in her hands. She’s got the whole world in her hands.” Whenever my Bubby and I would sing this, she would remind me the Ultimate did not have a sex or a gender. The Divine could be male, female, and everything in between. Because of this, she would say, we could sing it she or he.
Perhaps more importantly, she would always use this song to remind me that when I kept the Ultimate close to me, then I would never lack for anything. She would remind me that the Divine would provide me with everything and anything I needed in my life and that I would never lack anything essential to my purpose in life.
I remember feeling the same way when studying the Hebrew Bible and New Testament. Scriptures such as Philippians 4:13, which reminded me it is through my relationship with the Divine that I can accomplish all things. Then there was Luke 12:27 that reminded me that I needed to have faith like the wild flowers and know that through my relationship with the Ultimate, I would lack nothing.
So why is it that we so often focus on what we lack, rather than what we possess? How did our perspective become so twisted at times, that we can no longer see that we have the Universe in our hands? I remember reading Michael Beckwith’s book Spiritual Liberation several years ago and thinking about how throughout our lives many of us have been trained to focus on what we do not have, or what others possess that we do not. When we compare ourselves to others, it is like comparing apples to oranges. What they have in their lives is for them and what we have in our lives is for us.
When we focus on our abundance and our blessings we begin to realize just how amazingly rich we are. I am not talking about how much money you have in the bank, but the abundance of blessings, which fill our lives every day. However, if you are focusing on what you do not have, versus what you have then you will miss them.
It is kind of like the scripture in Isaiah where God says I am about to do a new thing, did you see it? Are we so focused on everything else in our lives that we do not see the blessings and abundance? Don Miguel Ruiz has suggested that many of us have mastered the skill of focusing on lack and no longer need to practice it. What we need to practice is focusing on the positives in our lives, the blessings, the gifts, and abundance in our lives.
Perhaps this is one of the reasons that maintaining a gratitude journal is so important in my life and the lives of others. It keeps us focused on the abundance and not the lack. It reminds us of all the world is giving us, not what we do not think we have. So this month, may we practice being mindful of all the gifts which enrich our lives each day. Let us focus on our abundance and not our lack. As you become aware of how spiritually wealthy you really are, feel free to share it with us. I