Lack is imaginary 

Just because you don’t have something doesn’t mean it does not exist 

Say a stranger walked up to you and gave you tickets to watch your favorite musical artist at RedRocks this summer.  Prior to receiving these tickets you weren’t even aware that your favorite group was coming to town.  What a gift!  Later on that day when you get home you look in your bag for the tickets to put them in a safe place and you realize that they are not there.  After searching for hours, retracing steps and going over every possible place they could be you give up and deem that the tickets are lost forever.

The next day you go to your favorite coffee shop and it dawns on you that you took the tickets out of bag when you paid for your coffee yesterday.  When you ask the barista if they found your tickets, the barista says no, but you can feel that there is more to the story.  You can’t prove it, but you have sense that someone in that coffee shop found and took your tickets for themselves.  You feel bummed, a little angry and like you are missing out big time.

In this story it seems that you are now lacking tickets, however if you follow the story you see that the tickets have simply moved from one person, to you, and now to another person.  Before the stranger gave you the tickets you did not feel you where lacking them, in fact, you didn’t even know that your musical group was coming to town.  As you can see lack is simply a story (aka an imagination that you made up) that you don’t have something, not an actual deficiency of it existing.

Expanding your imagination

Moving from lack to always present: “I” to “We”

When something is not in our immediate experience we have the tendency to think that it is lacking, especially if we had a taste of it before and now its not here.  We do this with money, relationships, health, business and happiness.  Perhaps you see other people with the things you want or behaving in the ways you want to be in the world and you feel jealous.  Jealously is simply a desire paired with your belief that you can’t have, get or deserve what it is you want (which by the way is another made up story of lack).

To move from lack to always present (also known as abundance) requires a shift in “I” consciousness to “we” consciousness.  When you believe that you are a separate person, living in your bubble of reality, and feeling that life revolves around your story of it, then you will perceive lack.  Most people are living their lives in this way.  It drives us to protect ourselves, secure our future, and remain in survival mode perpetuating the belief that I must take care of myself to preserve my life and attain the things that I want.  It is why we do things that we don’t really want to be doing and why we suffer so greatly.

Shifting into “we” consciousness means that just because I don’t have something present in my immediate experience doesn’t mean that some other aspect of me doesn’t.  In “we” consciousness there is less distinction between me and you.  There are still two different expressions (you and me), but of one being.  It requires that you put aside your thoughts of what you need to survive or what your family needs to survive, and think bigger, include bigger.  Ask better questions.  What does humanity need to thrive?  How is humanity already thriving?  How can I appreciate that even more?  What can I give to another aspect of me?  In this way you give instead of lose something and perceive lack.  You feel appreciation of what others now have, instead of jealous of what you don’t have.  In “We” you feel intimately connected with everything else.  Your personal self becomes less relevant than your collective self.  You begin to experience love, happiness, purpose and contribution on bigger scales.

Don’t just believe me, experience this for yourself.  Start by seeing something your previously perceived as lost or lacking as a gift to someone else.  Then include yourself in someone else and begin to taste “We-ness”.

Dr. Amanda Hessel, DC, Network Spinal Analysis & Somato-Respiratory Integration, Boulder, Colorado