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Trance of Scarcity
The Trance of Scarcity...interesting ideas here.
Most of us have developed a Hurculean tolerance
for suffering, this article says.
The Trance of Scarcity is the unexamined predisposition that lack, struggle, and separation are our given reality.
Date: 4/4/2006 8:15:13 AM ( 18 y ) ... viewed 2083 times found this on the web
just now.
very interesting
and relevant
to my own life.
Any relevance to your life?
your eg
by Victoria Castle
Victoria Castle
http://newconnexion.net/article/03-06/trance_of_scarcity.html
"I'm 55, and I want to feel alive." Outwardly, Barbara was successful in every sense of the word, but secretly her life felt desolate. "I've done everything I know to do, but it feels like my energy just keeps getting siphoned off somehow. What will it take for me to ever be good enough?"
It's a question that goes to the heart of the matter for a great many of us. What must we do to feel that, at long last, we're enough as we are? Is it ever possible to feel a sense of true belonging? Or is our only option to join the Stoics of ancient Greece who believed that humans should be free of passion and accept all occurrences with indifference? Seems to me the last thing the world needs is more indifference!
Most of us have developed a Herculean tolerance for suffering. And we put up with far more than what is biologically wired into our nervous system. Our survival instinct increases our awareness of stimuli, especially pain, alerting us to adjust to conditions as they occur. Pssst, feel that burning in your hand.... Let go of the electric fence! But if we believe that no adjustment would help (if letting go of the fence is perceived as not an option) then we keep turning down the volume on our sense of aliveness. If we believe our pain or difficulty is inescapable, we numb out in desperation. Like Barbara, we may keep trying harder and harder to follow the wrong prescription, attempting to cure ourselves of being ourselves. And it's all we know to do, because we've spent years designing our entire life according to what we believe is real. Our belief in scarcity shows up in our bodies as a lack of aliveness, and in our lives as the experience of lack and limitation.
This is where the mischief begins. We're not always great assessors of what's real and what isn't. See if any of these statements sound familiar: I'm not enough, There's never enough to go around, It's so hard, Nothing comes easy, That'll never work. Most of us have been repeating such statements to ourselves for decades, and as far as we know, they accurately describe "reality." When actually they're just ideas.
These ideas, in time, become a big part of who we think we are. At this point the thought that "I'm not enough" or "There's never enough" is no longer a thought: It lives as The Truth (and we're convinced that everybody else accepts that Truth, too). We'll actually defend these statements, no matter how lousy it feels to believe them, because we've built our whole reality on them. They're our foundation--our security. Without them, how will we know what's what?
Human beings are natural storytellers, and we are most captivated by the stories we tell ourselves. An event occurs, and right away we go about the business of interpretation. We assign some meaning to the event. Once we've assigned that meaning (and we've deemed ourselves to be right) we forget that there might be other possible interpretations of the same event. We then pass on our conclusion to our neighbors and children and students. And here's the trouble: if they don't recognize our "Truth" as a mere interpretation or a story - just our personal perception of things - then they, too, treat the story as though it's The Truth. They move right in and set up house inside it. From there, we become entranced by the story and it may persist for centuries, generation after generation, as though chiseled into the side of a mountain.
Trances are sneaky. A trance is a semi-conscious state that operates in our lives without question or discernment. It becomes our way of living, directing our actions according to whatever programming is featured in the trance. Living entranced is the opposite of living in sovereignty, of being self-governing. Stage hypnotists are famous for inducing trance states in which people act in ways they would be unlikely to act when fully awake. A trance can be a source of entertainment, or a source of suffering.
The Trance of Scarcity is the unexamined predisposition that lack, struggle, and separation are our given reality. It produces endless suffering both personally and globally. Daily we are offered increasingly sophisticated strategies for surviving in a world of scarcity. All such survival strategies share the same starting point: they accept scarcity (lack of self-worth and lack of resources) as a fact of life, as the only proper orientation in response to the evidence. But what if the truth were actually the other way around? What if our default way of thinking--maintaining the idea that scarcity is real--is the source of the conditions producing the "evidence"?
If we want to make changes in our lives, we first must identify the elements that created the current state. And then we can wisely apply those elements to create the desired state. The stories we tell ourselves and how we embody them (how they literally live in our muscles and nervous system) are the two key ingredients to creating the life we want.
To successfully upgrade from scarcity and struggle to abundance and ease, we must interrupt and dislodge old patterns that have been living quite comfortably within us, acting like they own the place. These old patterns are like a cat that likes to sleep on your head but isn’t the least bit interested in the fact that you are allergic. It’s time to move the cat. A little discomfort can end a lifetime of suffering.
Excerpt from The Trance of Scarcity by Victoria Castle, executive coach and spiritual mentor. Victoria has helped thousands of people embody abundance (rather than just understand it conceptually) through her workshops, trainings, and coaching that shift the cultural paradigm from chronic scarcity to embodied abundance. Her book is available through http://www.tranceofscarcity.com.
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