Series Recap: The First Three Keys

We’re in week three of our four-week series on the seven keys of spiritual abundance.

Key number one, the sacred yes. Saying yes to consciously living in the flow of life.

Key number two, holding the vision. Holding the vision of your highest good, your next possibility.

Key number three, building a greater awareness and moving beyond your limiting beliefs, those beliefs of, “I’m not good enough. I’m not worthy enough. Life is against me.” Moving beyond those limiting beliefs, and that brings us to key number four, making room for the new.

We must make room in order for the vision to take form. We must create space for that energy to flow within us.

Spiritual Abundance Is Measured in Quality

From a human perspective, abundance is measured in quantity. How much we make, how much free time we have, how productive we can be, how many people are in the sanctuary. You know those numbers?

Yeah, so our humanness says that it’s based on quantity, and we gauge our prosperity or our lack by all of those things.

But spiritual abundance is measured in quality. Spiritual abundance is measured in that deep-felt connection that each of us has with Source, Spirit, all that is. It’s living in the flow.

Spiritual abundance is inner awareness, inner awareness of the oneness and the wholeness of all of creation, that we’re all one with it all, with each other, with all of creation.

It’s not separateness. It’s not a quantity or a multiplicity. It is flow.

The Law of Circulation

Spiritual abundance is flow, the flow of life, the flow of Spirit, Source, Substance. And this flow operates under the Law of Circulation.

The universe, although it’s infinite in nature, functions like a closed circulatory system. Life is not static. Everything flows. Everything that is alive circulates.

Your breath, your blood, water, the seasons, money, love, forgiveness, ideas, nature. Everything flows in a circulation. The moment circulation stops, life becomes stagnant.

What we give out to life at every level, our feelings, our thoughts, our intentions, our attitudes, our monetary or material things in life, everything that we give out to life comes back to us in kind, creating an incoming flow that keeps pace with your giving.

So the manner in which we give and how we give, that flow that we’re giving out comes back to us in the same manner.

Have you heard this phrase, “As you give, so you receive”? How about this one? What goes around comes around. Like attracts like. You get back what you put in. Have you heard those things?

The reason you’ve heard them is because they’re true. They’re different experiences of the same thing, of this Law of Circulation.

Abundance flows where the energy circulates. That which we give, we receive. So stagnation blocks our supply. Circulation invites supply.

The Vessel Receives Because It Has Space

In the Tao Te Ching, chapter 11, Lao Tzu says, “Shape clay into a vessel.” We shape clay into a vessel. It is the space within it that makes it useful.

When we shape clay, we shape it into a vessel, and it’s that space within there that adds the value, that makes it useful.

That’s a beautiful teaching of abundance. The bowl receives because it has space. The room welcomes because it’s spacious. The heart is guided because it’s open and can receive wisdom.

The mind can be renewed because we’re curious and open and receptive, and we can receive divine inspiration and ideas.

Abundance is not only the vessel itself or what goes in the vessel. It’s the space that’s available in the vessel. It’s the space that makes the receiving possible.

Where Is There Stagnation?

So think about this in your life. Where is there stagnation? Where do you feel stuck? Think about where you might be feeling an area is just not moving for you.

Maybe it’s in your home. Maybe it’s in your closet. We all have this idea… You’re laughing.

Where is stagnation in your life, and what is clogging your flow? Where is there some clogging involved?

Because spiritual abundance begins by unclogging our mind. Spiritual abundance begins by uncluttering our heart, making ourselves open and receptive and in the flow.

Physical Clutter and Stuck Energy

Now, I think we all have an understanding of physical clutter, yes? Yes.

I know that because we all started chuckling when we started talking about our closet.

Maybe you have this closet that’s filled, and half of it or three-quarters of it you don’t use anymore. Anybody here like that besides me?

That’s my house. That’s your house.

Maybe you have that drawer that barely closes. Maybe you have that garage that somehow has become a museum of maybe someday.

Now, I grew up in that. I grew up in Southern California, and my dad lived through the recession. They were in the East Coast, in New York. They came out to California with nothing.

So he had this idea and understood this idea of scarcity and lack, of the recession. And so growing up, our garage was filled with everything except for cars.

We had the jars of nails and screws and bolts and nuts. You all have seen that? Every little piece of scrap wood is being stored. It was filled. I could barely get my bicycle in there.

Now, all of us kids, we related to that in a certain way. My brother Dave, his garage is very organized, very tidy. I was visiting him. This was like 20 years ago.

We got there, and he opened his garage, and he couldn’t pull his car in because there was some stuff in the way, and I made a comment, “Wow, that’s starting to look like our garage in Anaheim.”

We went inside, and an hour later, he calls me out and opens the garage, completely organized, pulls in the car, shuts the garage door, says, “Let’s go.”

Now, for me, I have a different way of dealing with that clutter. I don’t have a garage. My carport is perfectly pristine. I’m not letting you in my closet though. Or the hall closet, or my three drawers that can’t close.

So yes, we all have this idea, this understanding of physical clutter. And there’s nothing wrong with things. It’s okay to have things. It’s okay to be prepared for that maybe someday.

But sometimes the things become the magnet for our energy. Sometimes that physical clutter becomes our stuck energy there.

Clutter Is Not Just Physical

The idea of clutter doesn’t only pertain to physical things. Clutter is not just physical.

There’s mental clutter: old thoughts that you keep rehearsing, old thoughts that when you’re sitting in meditation just start rolling around in your brain, old thoughts when you’re doing something and all of a sudden you’re distracted because, or you forget where you’re at because your brain is already flowing with these old thoughts.

Emotional clutter. Emotional clutter are resentments, disappointments, regrets, those things that we hold onto.

Calendar clutter. How many of us have commitments in life that no longer align with or match our values? They no longer align with who we’re here to be.

How about financial clutter? How about all of those hidden subscriptions? How about those financial habits or those patterns where you are leaking energy?

How about, yes, even spiritual clutter? Those are the old beliefs about ourselves that no longer reflect who we are, the old beliefs about ourselves that keep us stuck in that room going around in circles.

Clutter is anything that takes up space and no longer carries life with it, no longer has energy to it. It is stagnation in our life.

Letting Go of the Past

And that comes to key number five, letting go of the past.

Now, this is a deep form of inner release because the past can become the most crowded room in our consciousness. The past can become the most cluttered space in our soul.

We carry old regrets, old resentments, the memory of something someone said or didn’t say, the disappointment of something that someone did or didn’t do. We carry around a version of ourselves that we wish we had outgrown.

All of that takes energy. All of that drains us.

Holding onto the past does not change what happened. It only keeps our creative energy attached to what happened.

The past itself is not the problem. In fact, it can be very useful. Sometimes memories can teach us, yes? Sometimes experiences can serve us, yes? And wisdom often comes from what we have lived through in life.

The problem is not that we have a past. The problem is when our past becomes our identity, our expectation, and our boundaries in life.

Clinging Intensifies Suffering

There’s a wonderful Buddhist teaching that says clinging intensifies suffering.

Pain visits every human life. We all experience some form of pain because life is. But clinging to the pain builds a house within us and asks us to live there inside of that pain.

There’s a quote from Myrtle Fillmore, one of the co-founders of the Unity movement, in her book How to Let God Help You. She says, “Your prosperity comes through you instead of to you. And if it seems not to come, that’s because you have thrown up a barrier that prevents its unfoldment through your consciousness.”

I love that about Myrtle Fillmore. She’s often called the heart of Unity, and yet here she is very plain and spoken and saying, “You have thrown up a barrier within you that’s preventing that good from flowing.”

Forgiveness Is Energy Recovery

And this brings us to a practice called forgiveness.

Forgiveness is the practice of making space within. Forgiveness is the practice of liberating our mind of resentment. Forgiveness is the practice of self-love and self-care.

Forgiveness is not saying the past is okay, no big whoop.

Forgiveness is saying, “I am no longer willing to let the past use my life force, to drain my energy, to become obsessed with.”

Because I’ll tell you, resentment is very expensive. It costs us a lot of attention. It costs us our imagination, our peace, our creative energy. It all gets stuck because we’re so focused on the resentment. It keeps that part of our life force tied to that moment that has already passed.

Forgiveness is not approval. Forgiveness is energy recovery. Forgiveness is reclaiming our spiritual power.

When we forgive, we release and let go of that clinginess, we release and let go of our victimness, and we allow ourselves to be present to that spiritual energy that lifts us up, that heals us, that moves us forward.

Myrtle Fillmore and the Loving Reeducation of Consciousness

Myrtle Fillmore’s healing practice was not a fight against the body. It was not a fight against disease and illness. She did not go to battle, but rather it was a loving reeducation of her own consciousness.

She blessed life where others might have condemned it.

No matter what was happening in her life health experience, what she was doing is reprogramming her consciousness, was re-educating her consciousness and bringing herself back to that sense of love, forgiving whatever it was in her life, forgiving her body, forgiving the things in her life, and allowing that energy to flow again.

Daily Practice: Release One Thing

So here’s our practice. It’s very simple. Each day you’re going to practice releasing one thing.

One thing, and I have several areas that you can choose from each day.

You can practice releasing something in your physical space. Maybe it’s an item, a drawer, a shelf, a closet, or a pile on the table.

Maybe it’s something in your mental space: an old thought, a worry, a loop that’s running in your mind, or some limiting belief.

Maybe it’s your emotional state, your emotional space, releasing resentment, regret, disappointment, or an old hurt.

Maybe it’s something in your calendar space: one obligation, one habit, one activity that no longer serves you. Let it go. You have my permission.

Maybe it’s something in your financial space: some small leak of energy, some subscription, some fear-based pattern, some unconscious spending habit, becoming aware of that and then letting it go.

And maybe it’s something in your spiritual space. Maybe it’s an identity, a story, or a belief that no longer serves you, that no longer reflects who you are or who you’ve come here to be.

Letting go of that just once a day.

The Four-Step Release Process

And here’s a process for you.

The first part is noticing. Step number one, noticing. Notice where you’re stagnant. Notice where you’re stuck. Notice where you’re holding on to and clinging to some form of discomfort or dis-ease within our consciousness.

Notice it. Just notice it. No blame, shame, or guilt. No resentments. No blaming anyone out there. Just notice it.

If you’re filled with BSG, if you’re filled with resentments, you’re clinging to it, and it’s not going to go away. So notice it.

The second part is blessing it. Blessing it. Instead of clinging to the resentment, bless it.

Thank you. Thank you for awakening me to this in my consciousness. Thank you for the opportunity to say, “I’m more than this. This is who I come here to be. This is how I want to experience life. This is how I want to express this divine quality.”

Bless it and then release it. Let it go to make room. Empty the bowl so you have space for Spirit to fill it.

And then four, name the new good. Name the quality that you want to experience.

So it might be, “I release resentment, and I claim and am filled with love and kindness.”

It may be, “I release the pattern of not doing the dishes when I should do the dishes, and I rejoice and claim the idea of cleanliness and order and freedom.”

Name the new good that you want to experience in your life, that you want to fill where that stagnation lives.

See, a goal is not simply to declutter. The goal, the deeper goal, is to create spiritual spaciousness within us, to create openness so that abundance can move through us, so that we can experience that energy of life, love, and wisdom, so that we can experience that flow of prosperity, so that we can experience that flow of love within us.

Affirmation

Let’s move to our affirmation. I’m going to read our affirmation and then I’m going to invite you to affirm it with me.

And as we affirm it, again, sink into that feeling of releasing, of being present and welcoming the spiritual abundance within us.

I bless and release what no longer serves me.

I forgive, I release, and I am free.

I make room for the new good flowing to me now.

I bless and release what no longer serves me.

I forgive, I release, and I am free.

I make room for the new good flowing to me now.

And so it is.

Closing Thought

Spiritual abundance is not about getting more from life. It’s about becoming more available to life, and availability requires space.

Space in mind, space in the calendar, at home, in the body, in the heart, space in our consciousness.

Let’s take that into our time of meditation and affirmative prayer.