We all long for abundant life, but it appears to be abundantly elusive. I think we have been seeking it in all the wrong places, because it’s not to be found in external experiences but in our internal existence. Abundant life literally dwells within all creatures, including humans. It is born of the lifeforce which occupies us from the day we are conceived to the day we breathe our last breath. I believe the lifeforce is abundant and never ending, and represents peace, freedom, and joy. It lies at the core of all matter, whether on earth or in the greater cosmos. It speaks to the order of everything, held together in a dynamic and expanding evolutionary process, of which we are all a part. The origin or genesis of the lifeforce is unclear and unimportant – big bang or divine intervention, but its personal existence cannot be denied. The sooner we start to properly connect with the lifeforce within us, the sooner we will experience abundant life, and the peace, freedom, and joy it represents.
Having followed the Christian faith for most of my life, I believed that Christ’s promise of abundant life would come through discipleship. There is no doubt that living by faith, and not by sight, transported me into adventures and situations I might otherwise not have encountered. But after dedicating most of my life to the Christian way, I found myself stuck in a horrible rut, with no tangible evidence of abundant life. And so, I embarked upon a new path, walking away from organized religion into one of personal responsibility and autonomy. I had studied psychology to help myself as much as others, and for me the nature versus nurture debate is at the heart of the human condition. What I realized is that for the past 4000 years, under a predominantly patriarchal and material worldview, human nature has been portrayed as sinful, corrupt, immoral, depraved, debauched, and untrustworthy. We have been socialized and conditioned by a cultural system that is anything but nurturing, to turn against ourselves, by rejecting, undermining, disowning, and abandoning our own inherent natures.
It is no wonder that we are the most dysfunctional and discontented species on the planet. As a result, we have made life a living hell not only for ourselves but all the other species, contaminating our environment as we try to fill our misunderstood and unaddressed emptiness with every conceivable thing. As we now face the impending human disaster of famine and war, there comes a small window of opportunity to realign ourselves individually and collectively at a body, heart, mind, and soul level. It is time to nurture our extraordinary human natures, which represent the millions upon millions of years of evolutionary adaptation and overcoming for us to be here today. Within you and me, is a profound working compass, consisting of our species inherent creativity, confidence, and clarity – everything we need to guide us into peace, freedom, and joy – abundant life. But for it to be realized, we need to all learn to spend quality time with ourselves, ‘to be as opposed to do’. Through daily practices like morning pages (by Julia Cameron ‘The Artist’s Way’), conscious breathing (Breathwork Africa), emotional regulation (Brian Blem et al), the work of mental flexibility (Byron Katie ‘Loving What Is’), meditation (TM), and cold-water exposure (Wim Hoff), to name just a few practices of presence, we reawaken ourselves. When our wild and wonderful natures, born of a profound personal relationship to the lifeforce, create a fully human culture, then the possibility of peace, freedom, and joy – abundant life, becomes reality.