Janet McNeill

<June 18/10>

On my very lovely walk this morning (beautiful day!) along the boardwalk (in the Beaches area of Toronto, Ontario, Canada), I articulated the key tenets of what I guess you might call my “religion.”

They are:

• Gratitude
• Walking
• Community
• Service
• Solitude / silence
• Music [added later; see P.S.]

I could elaborate on each of these, of course. Walking also takes in Nature, love of the Earth, & maybe canoeing, kayaking, swimming & snowshoeing… Community takes in love, family, conversation, smiling, friendliness & friendship. Gratitude takes in joy & leads to a happy spirit. Service takes in activism & caring & doing (which also lead to a happy spirit!). Solitude & silence are things I cannot exist without & sometimes wonder whether others might benefit from a wee bit more of…

& music!! Well – music sometimes catapults me right from practically comatose, down at the bottom of a Very Deep Pit (or even a Not-all-that-deep-but-still-definitely-in-a-pit-Pit) into outright exhilaration!!

Janet

P.S. on July 1^st: I’ve been doing this odd nomadic gig lately. Some of the time I’m living out in the boonies, sometimes I’m in the small city of Pembroke, Ontario (up river from Canada’s capital city, Ottawa, & down river from leaking “legacy” pollution at the Chalk River nuclear facility; Gee – sure makes me feel better to know the pollution there is “legacy” as opposed to new…or, hmm…..does it??, & home to (notice I am not saying proud home: many of us here are not merely not proud but frankly appalled about) SRB Technologies, a tritium-emitting local business that has just outrageously been issued a 5-year license by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (boy are they un-aptly named!?!?!? Ought to be more like the Canadian Nuclear Danger Commission); check out the Tritium Awareness Project Web site to learn “the truth about tritium”…)

And some of the time I hang out in Toronto, Canada’s largest city & kind of an all-around pretty fun place…

Well.

On my long walk in Pembroke this morning, I observed, as I have on other occasions, how church-y this town is. It has a quite extraordinary number of churches. Off the charts, really!

Not sure what that’s all about, but the limitations of “organized” religion seem more & more apparent to me as the years go by.

I’ve written elsewhere about what I see as the problem with religion.

What sprang to mind this morning as I noticed Pembroke’s considerable churchy-ness is the sort of somewhere-else-ness of most religious teachings. “Heaven” is somewhere else. “Divinity” is somewhere/someone else. “Salvation” is some other time. “Holy” is other places or people.

Me, I’m convinced all these things are right here, right now, always.

Hmmm. In ‘Pulling Down the Pedestals’ & ‘I’m not OK – YOU’re OK’ I’ve written about our tendency as individuals to see others as…better – more whole…than one is oneself. I don’t think this attitude & the dominance of religion & its “God/holiness/sacredness is somewhere else” message is a coincidence, exactly…

Certainly Eckhart Tolle’s thoughts about presence, & about the pain body (& everything else he talks about!) resonate hugely for me. (I’ve written about ET in a few blog postings – ‘Ducks Unlimited’, ‘Pain Bodies on Parade or Oh, To be a duck’ & ‘Flap your wings’, among others…)

Dear friend Lynn has just given me a copy of the book This is It – The Nature of Oneness – Interviews with Teachers of Non-Duality, including Eckhart Tolle, author of The Power of Now, by Jan Kersschot.

That phrase “This is it!” resonated for me right away.

All is here – right here, right now, in this moment – & it is plenty!

The heck, I say, with the fear & poverty mentality we’ve been so immersed & drenched in for so long.

This is it!

P.P.S. on July 24^th: It became necessary to add that 6^th item – music – to the list the other evening when, under the great spirits & energy-enhancing influence of some lovely, sing-y, dance-y, cheerful tunes, I got hours & hours of useful work done, instead of succumbing to the temptation to veg out in front of a movie. Music sure can be magical!! (Pat Conroy said, “Without music, life is a journey through a desert,” and isn’t it true??)

<June 19/09>

One of the somewhat hard-won lessons in my life has been that wealth has nothing whatsoever to do with money.

This is a pretty radical idea to some – even to many, or most – but for me, it’s truth. My 56 years on this planet have brought this lesson home to me again & again & again.

It’s also true that I often feel like the wealthiest woman in the world – even though I earn less money than most of the people I know, by tens & tens & tens of thousands of dollars.

I’m feeling very, very rich this morning, because I came to Toronto to hear Joanna Macy speak – and she was utterly wonderful and so worth coming for – and in the past 12 hours or so I’ve seen both of my beloved (grown) daughters and two very dear old friends…

And I have a pocketful of twoonies ($2 Canadian coins) with me, and have been giving them to people who are on the street begging. This makes me feel wonderful.(1) I know down to my bones that my life is very, very full and privileged, that I am enormously well-blessed and rich – and the older I become, the more compassion I feel for everyone…

And when I come to Toronto and see homeless people, or people on the street begging, it half breaks my heart – and although I’m not a conventionally “religious” person, I know that, as an old saying goes, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”

The older I become, the more I love the wise, wise teachings of Buddhist tradition – and the need for compassion is a key one.

Giving money to people for whom $2 is a blessing helps me feel rich. (I think there is something about being generous that makes us feel rich even if we don’t happen to have a whole bunch of money ourselves…)

So even though my financial situation is supposedly much “shakier” and more insecure than that of most of the people I know, I know I am wealthy beyond measure.

What a wonderful feeling!

Janet

P.S. There are many, many other things that make me feel rich, btw, that also have zero, nada, nichts to do with money. Some that spring to mind: being outside/in Nature, walking, bike rides, singing, being with friends/loved ones, writing, reading, doing worthwhile work, smiling at strangers, having a great day and feeling very, very alive. It’s a pretty long list!!

P.P.S. The essay ‘Ditching the Poverty Mentality’ is also pretty relevant on this subject.

Relevant Quotations:

“The miracle is this - the more we share, the more we have.” – Leonard Nimoy

“Your wealth is where your friends are.” – Plato    [So true, so true!!!]

“A clear conscience is more valuable than wealth.” – Filipino proverb

“The real measure of our wealth is how much we would be worth if we lost all our money.” – The River of Life

“Wealth is something you acquire so you can share it, not keep it.” ~ LaDonna Harris

“Life engenders life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich.” ~ Sarah Bernhardt

“Only when the last tree has died…and the last river has been poisoned…and the last fish has been caught…will we realize that we cannot eat money.” ~ 19th century Cree saying

<July 2008>

I’m pretty convinced that most – or at least a large, large number of human beings – live their entire lives stuck deep inside a “poverty mentality.”

We think, focus on, and obsess over what we don’t have – what we’ve lost, think we can’t do, don’t have, or can’t afford.

Is it not so??

I must hasten to add that this disease (for surely it is a disease, and it is epidemic) afflicts the materially well-off every bit as much as it does the financially poorly off. I once heard that Bill Gates – the richest man in the world, is he not? – when asked if he had enough money, replied “Not quite.” If that is not some kind of illness, I don’t know what is…

I’ve met people with lots of money who are every bit as deeply mired in the poverty mentality as the folks I know who have very little of it indeed.

So, the poverty mentality is really a mindset (or attitude) then, and mindsets and attitudes can be changed. We are each in charge of our own attitudes and mindsets (are we not? If not, then who is??) – and therefore, if we genuinely want to “ditch” the poverty mentality, that is quite clearly our own choice.

Perhaps personal examples speak the loudest, so I’ll share some of my own experiences in this regard:

I was born into what I now see in retrospect was a family of some privilege. (1)  My father was an airline pilot and made a pretty hefty salary. We lived in a big house on a nice lake (polluted, but I digress…), and we belonged to both the local Yacht and Golf and Country Clubs.

However, there was a distinct, continual attitude of lack that pervaded the atmosphere in our home. We lived “on the cheap” compared to the other airline families in our social circle (my father lost an awful lot of money on bad investments), and I learned early and well the important lesson that money really does not bring happiness.

This lesson picked up in childhood has served me rather well in life, I must say. I live on less income (by a very, very long shot) than most folks I know, yet I also feel rich (many folks I know, who have lots and lots more money and security, certainly don’t seem to…).

The poverty mentality is a stubborn little critter, though, and it does rear its ugly little head from time to time, still (as in, this morning, when I was paying bills and juggling money. I do have to have stern little chats with myself at such times, to remind myself not to get bent out of shape over ridiculous, petty nonsense. These stern little chats can be most helpful on this score – and on others I could mention…).

What I wish I could get across to people in a really crystal-clear way is that wealth has nothing whatsoever to do with money, and that an abundant life is a possibility for each and every one of us.

It’s a choice.

My life is rich and abundant because I focus on gratitude, “follow my bliss,” have gobs of great people in my life, do lots of challenging and rewarding work (most of it unpaid) that I love doing and feel appreciated for, have a deep appreciation and love for our beautiful Earth, sing and walk often, and hang out with others who see the world in much the ways I do.

The people I hang out with and enjoy the most focus on possibilities – not limitations. We focus on what we have – and what we can do and be and achieve – not on what is impossible, unattainable or un-doable.

I think human life on this planet – for the past 10,000 years, anyway – has been a fear-based exercise in trying to control this, that and the other thing – when in fact, if we loosen up and open up and recognize that we are not in fact in control, but do have access to enormous power (of a positive nature) – all things become possible.

I’ve had a lot of excellent help along the way, of course, to help bring me to these realizations. Inspiring books, great friends, fantastic conversations, challenging life experiences and some very helpful workshops.(2)

Life is not meant to be about hogging and hoarding and controlling – at least I’m utterly convinced of this.

I think it’s about generosity and compassion and caring about others and the Earth – and a deep, deep inner faith and conviction that it’s a wildly abundant Universe that actually appears to be constructed in such a way that we can indeed receive what we really desire – unless we’re all tied up in knots inside that darn poverty mentality that insists we cannot have what we really want. (3)

I do know that the more generous I am as I go about my days – with my insights, energy, work, money, and ideas – the more I receive. I could tell some amazing stories about the generosity shown to me by my friends, that frequently blows me right out of the water (perhaps I’ll do so elsewhere; this essay is long enough already!).

I hope more of us begin doing our very, very best to learn to ditch the poverty mentality – to focus on gratitude & possibilities. I think we’ll soon be astonished at the miracles both large & small we’ll begin to see happening around us!

Janet

P.S. The essay ‘Ditching the 2 x 4’s’ covers some ground that may also be of interest.

A Few Relevant Quotations:

“Wealth is something you acquire so you can share it, not keep it.” – LaDonna Harris

“The miracle is this – the more we share, the more we have.” – Leonard Nimoy

“The real measure of our wealth is how much we would be worth if we lost all our money.” – The River of Life

“Your wealth is where your friends are.” – Plato

“We are not lacking in the dynamic forces needed to create the future. We live immersed in a sea of energy beyond all comprehension. But this energy, in an ultimate sense, is ours not by domination but by invocation.” – Thomas Berry in The Great Work – Our Way into the Future

“The universe oozes with power, waiting for anyone who wishes to embrace it.” – mathematical cosmologist Brian Swimme, author of The Universe is a Green Dragon, quoted in Matthew Fox’s The Coming of the Cosmic Christ – The Healing of Mother Earth and the Birth of a Global Renaissance

“What lies behind us and what lies ahead are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves: ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? … We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we’re liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” – Marianne Williamson