“I am what I HAVE” Or Greedy and Needy

I find myself driven to acquire people, places, and things. Lot’s of things. Recently I was sitting in my office working when this dropped in, we used to live with just the stuff we could move and carry. And now I live in a box, and I can see that part of the game was to fill up the box with stuff. It all represent me, doesn’t it? My stuff. I have so much stuff that the box has little boxes called drawers and closets and tucked away is more stuff. Some stuff I haven’t seen for years. Some stuff I don’t remember I acquired anymore. It must have been very important to get it, whatever it is. Hidden in this box. I must really need it, right?

Lately I get it. I don’t own anything, I don’t own another person, place, or thing, nothing and no one is “mine.” The only thing I can consider in the realm of “mine” is this experience of typing these words. Even then, once my attention moves on, even tying these words, the experience, fades and is gone. I was born unattached to anything in the universe, yet at the same time, woven and enmeshed into the fabric of life, until I’m not.

A lot of wise people have noticed this in the past, it’s significant that we ignore them. We still want to own, to possess, to acquire, to HAVE. I notice that even information, insights, and “knowing” can also be fodder for greed. We see that a lot, people “teaching” others about “emptiness” and “mindfulness,” acting as though they own special or unique information, but they don’t and they aren’t special at all. They are Us. They don’t have or own any answers either, no one does.

The wise people who are focused on Being, have something that’s outside the arena of having something. They dwell in the experience of how amazingly fortunate we are, just to exist at all. Perhaps it’s time to start asking, How much is enough?

See your abundance today, see what’s already there!

Bryan Wagner