I met a human man today. His pants were covered in shit. His mother died today. He stood in a parking lot, in a hedge along the wall, waiting for his girl. She had run off with another man. He waited distraught, hoping she might come back. All his belongings were in a suitcase. The suitcase had been stolen. He had only the clothes on his back. These clothes were covered in shit, he had soiled himself. He knew no-one in California, he had never been here before. He had come here, with his girl, to go into rehab, but she had got both of them kicked out. Then she left him because another man gave her some money. He was sobbing to me, but not really to me, telling me his story, a stranger in the parking lot, another grown man witnessing his experience.
His sobs and his pain were so unfiltered, he had absolutely nothing left to cover himself up with.
He asked for help: some cleaner clothes. A pair of boxer shorts. A way to charge his phone. All of these I could provide easily, simply needing a short trip home and back to get him some of the clothes I have plenty of, and a USB charger, which are just lying around, unused. Thinking of how much we have lying around unused brings tears to my eyes. How much we consume, not for the joy of its use but for the consumption itself.
In picking out the clothes for him I found myself noticing with a new eye the brands, the logos, the design of the shirts, the things we mostly pay attention to rather than the shirt itself. In this moment I found myself asking instead what function the shirt provides, whether he needs a warm shirt or a light one rather than what color it was, or what logo design it had on it.
It showed me all the layers of consumption we build on top of the abundance we have. We actually contract away from what is really here, which is abundance, into scarcity. In order that we can consume, we create lack and scarcity for ourselves, so we can fill that lack with consumption. Then we do it again, create more lack in order that we can fill it with consumption.
It’s such a reflection of the mind within – we do the same thing “out there” as inside. Inside we believe we’re not good enough, that we are lacking, and so we project that lack outside and try and fill it with something, in order that we might feel good enough inside even for just a few seconds.
In looking at the closet we say “I have nothing to wear, I need to buy something,”, ignoring the 30 shirts that are there, they are not the “right” ones. How consumed by our self-created lack we are! We love to create artificial scarcity – we must have the expensive thing, the pretty thing, the most up-to-date thing, the fashion for this season, or the rebellious anti-fashion thing.
A large portion of our economy has been built from this internal self-created lack, which we call advertising. We all buy into this trap, this contraction away from abundance. We forget ourselves into agreeing with the premise that we are lacking something, in order that we can buy it.
It comes at a very high price however, and I don’t mean the money. It perpetuates our own beliefs about ourselves, that we are lacking, that we are not good enough. It creates isolation, separates us from others, and leads to the polarized political landscape and destruction of community many of us are experiencing. In order to sell advertising, media shows us things that we will watch, which are essentially 100% the “awful” things, so that we can consume this and get a little hit of self-validation by creating enemies of our human brothers and sisters. And around the circle we go.
To change this, to live in a different world, one of abundance, the practice here is always the same three steps. This is “The Reality Creation Loop”:
- Notice. Notice when you are contracted into lack. Notice who you are being in this moment. Notice when your attention is on what you don’t have, or how terrible things are. The first step is always noticing. Until we do this we can’t change our experience.
- Become Willing. You have to have the willingness to change, to do something different, rather than allowing the pull of how you have been thinking to suck you back in.
- Place Your Attention on What You Want. Instead of putting your attention on the lack, place it on the abundance. Notice what there is, instead of what there is not. Soak it in, really see that you are surrounded by an incredible abundance of everything you need. Become what you want, which is a person living in the abundant world of loving-kindness.
Then, do it again. 1) Notice you are in lack, 2) become willing to do something different, 3) put your attention on abundance.
Repeat this consistently, with diligence, and you will completely change the experience you’re having of your life.
The pure simple feeling of awakened heart energy I felt, in the very ordinary thing of bringing some clothes to a man who needed clothes because his were soiled – this is what there really is at the core of our experience here. Not because it showed me how better off I am than him, although that ego judgement is also there. But more powerful is the simple loving-kindness energy of giving something to someone that needs something, witnessing another human going through their experience, as I am going through mine.
Loving Kindness Wins.