I walked out of the office from the side door. I bid a last silent, unseen and unheard goodbye to everyone as I did, feeling into the shock, the clarity of this final walk through the door. Without a key card any more to come back in, my computer and account logins revoked. Some people had said goodbye earlier. Most though could not have lunch with me as they had meetings to attend. They apologized, but meetings always take priority over humans – nothing more to say beyond “I have a meeting”. I understand it, having been on the other side many times when other people had left, and I had behaved the same way. It’s an interesting demonstration of our culture. I didn’t expect nor want a big drawn-out goodbye, but it was still shocking to the system to go through the cutoff like that. After all, it was me who had broken up with them. I quit my job.
About an hour after I left the office, still so fresh from leaving the company, the only one now not in one of the endless meetings at 2pm on a Wednesday, I sat on my back deck at home. As I sat there I suddenly saw a vision, so strong. I clearly saw the whole of my experience at the company, the last three years as a high tech executive, wrapped up in a box, a 3D cube, moving away from me, folding into a far distant point, receding rapidly. I could see the red of the logo, I could see the CEO’s face, getting smaller and smaller as it moved farther and farther away from me. It dwindled to a tiny point. I saw it happen again, a few times, clearly in my visual cortex, that cube receding and dwindling to just a dot on the horizon. And then I looked up and out, and saw shining so brightly what was all around – the huge open blue sky. It felt so strongly as if all the rest of my life was now opened up. It felt as if I was passing through the clear wall of a soap bubble floating in space, and entering a different reality. What was the outside of the bubble, I saw now was a whole universe that contained the bubble. What was previously outside is now the inside, is the totality, and what was inside, what was the world, is now a bubble within that, growing smaller. I stepped out, and the bubble disappeared completely. Everything drained away into that tiny point in the distance, and then suddenly it disappeared with a pop. Like the infamous pop right after the sun sets. Pop. Through the wall of the bubble to the other side, to the open. The sky is blue here and there are no more bubbles remaining. My life now feels absolutely whole, no more fractures, no walls.
The next day the sun is shining bright in my eyes as I again sat on the back deck. I am outside, I am writing. It is not even 9am on the first day of leaving the job, and already I am doing what I want. I am being what I am in my heart, I am feeling what I want to feel – being a writer, being outside. I have absolute abundance. And this is what I want to talk about.
Abundance, “having enough”, I have come to find, is found not by obtaining things, it is by completely changing the definition of what “enough” means, and also by changing our view of “having”.
First – on “enough”. Gaining clarity on what I want to feel instead of what I want to own is a very smart reality hack. If we measure “enough” by things (people or material possessions), by the number of things we have, how do you ever know when you have enough? If we measure instead by how we feel, if we say – I want to feel relaxed sitting in the sun, with a piece of paper and a pen, outdoors, being a writer, then, the very smart, very simple absolutely profound magic is that literally at 9am the morning after quitting my job, I was being what I want, doing what I want, and so by definition I had in that moment everything I wanted. I had more than enough, I had and felt abundance. Abundance everywhere because I have more than enough, and always can if I continue to choose to measure this by what I want to feel.
And then on “having”. One of the most profound teachings that I have come to live by and practice is from a quote by Margaret Young:
“Often people attempt to live their lives backwards, they try to have more things or more money in order to do more of what they want so that they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are then do what you need to do in order to have what you want. “
I have encountered this teaching in a variety of schools over my past years of study. It can be summarized as “Be, Do, Have….. NOT Have, Do, Be”.
If we live life where we think that we first have to Have something (a relationship, a job, money, a skill, a house), in order to Do certain things (make love, go on a yacht), and that will eventually lead us to Be (happy, fulfilled, rich, worthy, etc.) then we are always mortgaging our present against the future. The being (happy, rich, fulfilled) is always in the future, and the future never arrives. This is absolutely crucial to understand, and to practice. What’s the practice? It’s to BE first. We can learn to be whatever we want to be. It’s not necessarily easy, and it involves leaving behind many beliefs and protections that we have constructed for ourselves to try and keep us safe. But if we can learn the skill of creating new beliefs, of new ways of being, then we can have whatever we want, and we can have it in a moment.
On that day a few months ago I walked out of my job, walked away from my salary, my benefits, from the known. That vision that happened just an hour later, where I completely normalized not working there any longer, showed powerfully that I have moved into a way of being where I am committed to what is to come, rather than what is. What is-to-come will be an echo of what is currently now, which is all there is. What is here now is an echo of the past. In walking out that side door of the company, within an hour I was in a different now, and so I knew that the future would be different. It is an inevitability. I created this reality wave and watched as it moved from impossible, to possible, to probable and now inevitable, so when it occurred, it was no big deal. Reality is unfolding, predictably following conscious creation.
The speed with which my reality literally and visibly altered, passing through the wall of that bubble just an hour or so later astonished even me. And now, a few months later, I continue to follow my heart and experience deep joy – writing and coaching others in creating freedom in their lives, living out in nature, experiencing and growing in this beautiful world.
The future is bright. Put on your sunglasses now.
Wishing you all joy, magic, peace, love and PLAY.
