Sacred Abundance: Living Out of the Infinite Love Within

One evening when I was alone and too tired to do anything but watch a movie, I came across The Secret. I was a bit familiar with it and was curious, so I fortuitously selected it.

Several things about the film drew me: the focus on abundance; the use of visualization to manifest what one deeply desired; reliance on a power greater than oneself to ask for these things; the practice of imagining the felt sense experience of having already received them; and cultivating a feeling of deep gratitude.

While the intention of seeking abundance in The Secret is for material goods, I found myself becoming ignited with a creative sense of wonder of what it would be like to modify its processs so that I could apply it to my spiritual life, to deepen my relationship with God, to grow in my capacity to love, cultivating hope and healing. My soul felt like it was coming alive. I felt like I was on fire for God, on fire with Love. 

I wondered what my life would become if I stopped living out of a sense of scarcity and chose to live out of an actualization that there was an abundance available to me, provided by God, in my interior and exterior life to live out my soul’s desires, my soul’s path and purpose.

What transpired over the following weeks was an evolving contemplative practice with an intentional openness and receptivity to God’s abundant love and support within and around me.  Through practices of mindfulness, contemplative prayer, visualization, imagination, and cultivating gratitude, I found support for “living out of the infinite Love within” to which Ilia Delio invites us.  

I began envisioning an energy field above me and within me, like a sacred funnel, where God’s abundance poured into me. As I became more and more open and receptive to God, I experienced the Love of God within me as a veritable magnet for all that would support me in fulfilling the deepest desires of my soul.

What exactly was my spiritual practice? I began by asking God to help me to be open and receptive to the abundant resources internally and externally that would support my growth spiritually in particular ways.  I believed God was conscious of my need in my limitations and offered mentoring and encouragement. I trusted profoundly in God.

I imagined and visualized what having already received the things I prayed for would look like, feel like, in my body, in my interior self, and exterior life. I recalled that Yeshua taught, “Believe you have received it and it will be yours”. This felt creative and energizing. This engaging of the imagination and felt sense is significant. John of the Cross spoke of the imagination as the borderland between the senses and the soul.  

The last part of my spiritual practice was being mindful of my deep gratitude to God, mindful of the felt sense of fullness and the radiant nature of gratitude within me.

I will share an example of a consequence of this prayer practice. I had been praying for sustained attention as an act of loving presence in the stillness of prayer. After several weeks, I began experiencing, quite spontaneously (an act of grace), that all my dissipated attentions, all the beauty and the mess, I began calling home, gathering them in lovingly.

I imagined all my attentions as being funneled into me, converging, aligning, settling down into my heart where they were filtered, until only the love within them remained (Like the love underlying lament). I then imagined my attentions converging further as they settled deeper and deeper, until they became concentrated to a still-point touching my soul. I envisioned my soul becoming a magnifying glass, magnifying the fire of the light and love of God within my deepest essence. I savored this moment. I felt rooted in the ground of God.  I felt I was “coming home to where love dwells.”   

I had an experience of integrating this further into my life when I woke one night feeling the sadness of regret for not having done something for a loved one, and my mind was aswirl. I intentionally sought to gather my thoughts, filter them through my heart so that only love remained; love as understanding, compassion, forgiveness, tenderness, qualities of the heart needed for presence, for connecting, for acceptance, for hope and healing. I felt immersed in God’s love.

In my efforts to live out of Sacred abundance, I find it very helpful to remember the wisdom of a spiritual teacher who said, “Forgive yourself for forgetting”. This is encouraging and gives me patience with myself, remembering that I am a perpetual learner, an apprentice for God, an apprentice for Love itself.

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