Over the years, one of the applications I have used in my day to day life is using my deep awareness of scarcity and abundance consciousnesses as an aid in certain types of decision making. More specifically, I use it regularly to make decisions around who I will and who I will not ask for many types of help and assistance from in my life. I attempt to base such decisions on whether or not I view someone in my life as coming, in their essential philosophy of and approach to life, primarily from either scarcity consciousness or abundance consciousness.
There are many difficulties and potential traps with attempting to determine this. One must be very mindful with this pursuit.
First, it is my firm belief that there are currently considerably more people on the earth who are coming from scarcity consciousness as opposed to abundance consciousness. I believe scarcity as a personal life philosophy--whether it is conscious or unconscious--to be far more prevalent than abundance consciousness. I have done a number of informal, completely unscientific experiments over the years that seem to add at least some credence to those beliefs and imaginings.
I have also discovered that things are definitely not what they appear with regard to this issue. Stereotypes cannot be strictly relied upon. For example, I have discovered that people who exude a perceived energy of deep warmth, kindness, compassion, caring and love are often people who are also coming from an equally deep scarcity consciousness. Conversely, I have also discovered that those who may appear to exude a cold, businesslike, unfeeling and self absorbed energy can easily be people who are coming from some of the most sincere and authentic places of abundance consciousness I have encountered. Superficial appearances cannot be relied upon here.
In general, it seems that many people who come across as exceedingly "nice" all the time, can often be people who may literally be putting on this face of kindness because they have a deep seated desire to be perceived as such. They have a deep need to also be liked. I have learned over the years to be leery of many such people. That being said, it has generally been my experience in my personal dealings with people that the more financial wealth someone has, the less likely they are to assist me and others close to me, financially. Similarly, I have repeatedly, in this life, been shocked at how often someone who is just a half a step better off than myself, or in some cases, less better off than me, is overwhelmingly the one who open- heartedly offers me assistance far more readily than those I know with deep resources.
As I have said in the original writing on this subject, extremely wealthy people can be coming from a place of abundance consciousness and people who are poor can be coming from a place of scarcity consciousness and visa versa. I have also learned that what could in reality simply be a finely tuned business acumen, a sharp business sense combined with a social and/or fiscal conservatism can easily be misconstrued as scarcity consciousness. Similarly, people who are very clear and resolute in their desire to take care of themselves and those closest to them first, are not necessarily coming from a place of scarcity. They very well could be. But it is not an automatic assumption one can make.
It can all be so confusing.
You may be wondering why it even matters. Here is why this discussion matters: There is no such thing, no matter what anyone or anything, including history books tell you, as a self made person. This is the truth. Anyone who has achieved anything in this life did so through the assistance of numerous people in numerous ways. So all of us need some help some of the time. Period.
Let me back up a little and explain a little more clearly why I have in fact made the decision to try to only ask for assistance in some of my life's more intense life challenges from people I believe are coming from at least a basic abundance consciousness life philosophy. I have found that when I have asked for assistance from those I now know to be people who are coming from scarcity consciousness, as opposed to those who are not-- the experience was so substantially and incredibly less positive that there was huge cognitive dissonance between the two experiences. One experience joyfully lifted me up. The other one practically threw me in a fire of despair. I have been working with this energy so long in my life at this point it simply is not worth it and is completely counter intuitive for me to seek assistance from those I know to be coming from scarcity consciousness.
What I have also found is that many people who are coming from a scarcity consciousness cannot easily escape the type of anxiety and general sturm und drang that is a strong byproduct of it. If you ask for assistance from such people, even if they assist you, they will bring that anxiety along with their assistance. If you ask them for money, they will be overly concerned with when they are going to get paid back, even if the terms of the agreement were clearly spelled out around that at the onset. It doesn't matter. They are about scarcity not abundance or even common sense. If you ask them to assist with some project, they will consistently bring an energy of high anxiety around their time, concern about the duration of the project and perceived expectations around it all, etc. If you have an emergency and need to go to the hospital, for example, they eventually almost always find a way to make the whole exercise about them--how much time they had to spend, how their life was upended to help you, all the things they had to put on hold in order to help you, etc. If they don't share these things with you directly--and many at least have the common courtesy not to--they will certainly share it with people you know in common and it will eventually get back to you. The examples I could give are literally endless.
I don't know if anyone reading this has any desire to like me, ask for assistance only from people you perceive to at least be attempting to be coming from a space of abundance consciousness. If you do desire to do such a thing, with all the difficulties I've outlined in accurately assessing such a person, you may wonder if its even possible to recognize these people in your life. The answer is a resounding YES! Part of the difficulty is that we may not want to see some of the people in our lives for who they really are. Scarcity consciousness cuts across all relationships--mother/child, siblings, best friends, spouses--all of them. There can be a very steep learning curve here, mainly because many of us are trained to believe that nice and kind also equals generosity and abundance. And as I've said, that's often not the case. I have learned to primarily go with my gut, instinct and intuition on this one. Still, I have some pointers. Here is what I have learned:
1. People who are coming from abundance consciousness tend to find some way to make themselves available to us even if it is not in the ways we requested. People who are coming from scarcity consciousness will often give us excuses or if they do assist us they will make it a point to inform us of all the other people they need to also help or all the other things they also need to do.
2. People who are coming from abundance consciousness may not always be the first to respond to any "cry for help" we've sent out. When they do respond however, it is usually in a concrete and helpful way. People who are coming from scarcity consciousness will often be the actual first people to respond to us, but not in a truly helpful way. They will more likely be quite anxious to tell us why they cannot assist us though usually in a superficially "nice" way.
3. People who are coming from abundance consciousness are generally people of action. If we have a crisis, they are the people who will most likely make a list of all the things we need to do, all the people we need to call and who is the best person/people to address each item on the list.
4. People who are coming from abundance consciousness do not make our crises about their ability to ferret out the real underlining issues in the crisis, which are almost always presented as our inadequacies, our incompetence, our poor money management (unless that's appropriate and still it won't usually come across as their primary response to us about the whole thing), our flaws or our "incessant" dependence on others for assistance, etc.
5. People who are coming from scarcity consciousness will tell us very quickly why they can't help us with no other advice. People coming from abundance consciousness will process with us how they might be able to help us or how someone else might if they are unable to help.
6. People coming from scarcity consciousness will remind us how they have helped us in the past and how that didn't really work out for them so well in their view (or they won't do this but they will tell this to other people in the form of complaints/gossip about us).
7. People coming from abundance say the word "yes" alot.
8. People coming from scarcity say "yes, but" alot.
9. Abundance consciousness people tend to have alot of contacts and tend to be very generous with those contacts.
10. Abundance consciousness people are constantly praying for us, sending healing energy our way and performing other rituals for our benefit either with or without our knowledge.
We are all learning and growing at our own perfect pace.
May All Beings Be Free.
The other installments in this series:
1. Questions for Sage: Scarcity and Abundance Consciousness
2. Scarcity and Abundance Consciousness (con't)
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