Below is a “Throwback Thursday” musing from many moons ago.

I was testing out my new video camera yesterday. I recorded my neighbor’s golf swing and then my own and we were reviewing the finer points of our mechanics on the viewfinder frame by frame. Amazingly, we were doing just what our instructors had said we were doing. After this, I just sat down on my front steps, looked into the camera and spontaneously started talking about abundance.

Maybe it was Spring that was coming up all around me that inspired my musings but the essence of it went something like this:

There is a difference between glitter and gold.

That which we reach out for is glitter; that which we mine for is gold.

When we reach out to grasp something, it’s very difficult to hold on to it for long. It becomes heavy and slips from our grasp. It’s temporary. We attempt to hoard it so we don’t have the burden of holding it. This practice sets up a mindset of lack and produces thoughts and actions that there will never be enough.

The reaching out process keeps us off balance – just like when you lean off your merry-go-round horse to reach for the brass ring. The risk/reward ratio is not in our favor. Reaching is a large wager with a puny payday.

Also, with reaching, many of us have been conditioned that we have to take what we want. We have to “go for the gusto.” And if your parents are like most, they taught you something else – not to take things that aren’t yours. When you reach out for something you don’t have, at another level, it is sensed that you are taking something that doesn’t belong to you. This out of awareness tug of war will keep you reaching and dropping.

We reach because we are conditioned to be mesmerized by the shiny exterior. This has us reach for all things that glitter. Reminds me of an old joke . . .

Why did the husband give his wife a cheap, shiny ring for Christmas? So it would turn green in time for St. Patrick’s Day.

The glitter is the bait to make us reach. And even though our instructor has told us that reaching won’t get us what we want, we continue to do it until we see our actions, frame by frame, are not getting us what we want.

That’s when we start mining for gold.

All abundance comes from within and spills outward. There is no reaching and no illusionary thoughts that you are taking it away from someone. In fact, there is so much of it; there is more than enough to go around. This is the lesson of the loaves and fishes that Jesus taught his disciples.

There is no need to hoard it because there is plenty more where that came from. It is a self replenishing supply because it is coming from infinity to which there is no end.

There is no end to true abundance. Once you know that you are the source of it, it’s no longer necessary to look for it in the Jones’ driveway.

Once you begin to realize that the same abundance you see outside is also in you, that’s when you stop reaching and begin mining.

If you don’t know there is a mother lode within, you’ll never carefully look at your reaching strategy to find out that it’s not working. You’ll just keep making the same mistake over and over again and over extending yourself.

The real you beneath your grasping ego has access to universal abundance. You just have to go there and mine for gold. Once you recognize the abundant state within, your reach will never exceed your grasp.

All the best,

John