A Look at Scarcity
We all have been indoctrinated into a scarcity-driven world.
We’ve been conditioned to believe there isn’t enough. Not enough money, time, security, opportunity, attention, success, or even love. Beneath that message there is a threatening drumbeat: What if there isn’t enough for me? What if I don’t have what I need? What if something I’m counting on disappears?
When scarcity becomes the atmosphere we live in, our ego-selves jump in to rescue us. We work harder. We ruminate on what isn’t right. We try to control what happens to us. We become over-responsible, attempting to anticipate problems and mitigate every possible risk. Or we go the other direction, toward distraction, or numbing ourselves to the threat altogether.
However we respond, the result is often the same: contraction and fear. Our attention narrows. Our sense of possibility diminishes. We become preoccupied with what’s missing and with protecting what we have rather than noticing what is available.
And eventually, we experience what always lies in wait in a scarcity-driven world: weariness.
Shifting to Abundance
An abundance orientation flips the script. It offers another way and another world.
Abundance does not mean believing that everything will always work out, or pretending that real limitations and losses don’t exist. Nor is it a feeling we manufacture, or a positive mindset we talk ourselves into on a hard day.
Rather, it is a shift in our relationship to what is flowing through our lives - the problems, opportunities, money, time, relationships and all the other resources we receive and share.
Rather than seeing these things primarily as scarce commodities to protect or control, we begin to look for the lessons and richness that each possesses. We slowly begin to trust that life always holds more resources, creativity, grace, and possibility than our contracted minds can see.
Tosha Silver, in It’s Not Your Money, describes three stages of “offering” that nicely parallel three different options we have for orienting ourselves in this scarcity–abundance continuum…
Stage One: Protecting What’s Mine
In the first stage, we are living almost entirely from a scarcity mindset, with the threatened ego firmly at the wheel: I don’t have enough. I’m not okay. I need more of this and less of that. If things don’t go my way, I’ll be anxious, angry, scared, or hopeless.
Scarcity puts us on high alert. We brace against life, grip what we have, and try to manipulate reality into filling the vacuum of what’s missing. Our world becomes a kind of cosmic cookie jar: there are only so many cookies to go around, and if someone else gets more than their share, we’re in trouble. Because, let’s be honest, we like our cookies!
This is the world of not enough, where security always seems just beyond our grasp. We work harder, accumulate more, and try to protect what we’ve secured. Yet the more tightly we grip, the more elusive that sense of okayness can become. And because scarcity is a mindset, it doesn’t matter how much money is in the bank. A billionaire with a scarcity lens will always live in financial fear; the next deal or cushion of security brings momentary relief, but the finish line always keeps moving.
At the heart of this stage is the conviction: This is mine, and I have to protect it if I’m going to be okay. As human beings shaped by the protective patterns of the ego, we all know this territory. And many of us visit it more often than we’d like.
Stage Two: Learning to Trust
In the second stage, we are learning there is a mindset beyond scarcity. We’ve tuned into the idea of abundance, and we’re opening to the possibility that love, grace, and possibility are available to us. We experiment with surrender and letting go, and we challenge ourselves to trust more: Maybe I don’t have to control everything. Maybe there really is enough. Maybe life will meet me in new ways if I loosen my grip.
And yet, underneath it all, the ego can view an abundance perspective as a subtle transaction: If I think this way, practice these beliefs, and learn to trust, then abundance will come to me. We’re still trying to influence reality toward a desired outcome. We may have loosened our grip, but the hand hasn’t fully opened. Abundance has become a strategy rather than an expression of trust. This is the territory where we are beginning to recognize how significant mindsets can be, but underneath it all we are still trying to manage the results.
At the heart of this stage is the conviction: If I practice this counter-culture perspective, learn to trust, and do the right things, life will provide what I need. The ego is still quietly hoping for something in return. And it’s important to note that there is genuine growth in this stage. It’s a key mental reframe as we start applying spiritual practice and learning. We have begun to move beyond scarcity. We are learning to trust without guarantees.
Stage Three: Becoming the Channel
In the third stage, we begin to inhabit a fundamentally different relationship with life, what Spiral Dynamics describes as Tier 2 consciousness. Our attachment to particular outcomes starts to fall away, and we become more available to what is unfolding rather than trying to make life conform to our expectations. There is a lived sense - not merely a mental belief - that something larger is moving through us and with us, even in the hard parts of life.
Our world begins to open. Problems can become something of a sacrament, a portal through which Divine life and learning flow. Gifts and blessings are confirmations of a generous universe that seeks new life for all that is. Gratitude becomes less a discipline we practice and more a way of inhabiting the world. Giving and receiving are no longer separate acts but part of one continuous movement, like breath moving in and out. We grow in our trust that the universe is friendly and always luring us toward wholeness. Rather than bracing against life, we find ourselves participating in its flow.
At the heart of this stage is the conviction: I am not the Source of life’s abundance. I am a participant and a channel through which my Source can move. Instead of asking, “What can I get or give?” we begin to ask, What is flowing - and what wants to flow - through me? In a world oriented toward scarcity, living out of Stage Three consciousness is revolutionary. We grow into this worldview - first for moments, and then for more extended periods. We discover that abundance is not simply something we possess, but something we can embody and give back to the world.
What Abundance Looks Like
Dancer and choreographer Martha Graham put sacred living into fluid, beautiful motion. Her following statement is a vivid example of an abundance mindset:
There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it.
It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.
And Wayne Dyer, who was a passionate spokesperson for living out of an abundance framework, provided an example I return to monthly. A bill arrives. Our ego grumbles and frets. Our abundance mind flips the script: How fortunate that I can support the livelihood of [insert name] as they provide this service in the world.
Living the Sacred Life
Living a sacred life isn't about escaping a difficult world - it's about meeting it differently. We notice fear take the wheel. We breathe, and return to presence, remembering we're connected to something larger than ego's calculations.
An abundance mindset is less about having more than being available to more, rooted in trust that the Source holding our wellbeing has the whole world in its hands. It opens us to more possibility, more grace, more of the life wanting to move through us.
Choosing abundance in a world that teaches contraction becomes a spiritual practice, a quiet yet profound act of resistance. We open our hands. We open to Life.
How to Live Into Abundance
At first, it feels mechanical. We have to “fake it till we make it.” Over time, it starts slipping into our awareness in unexpected moments. We worry less. We trust more. We let go. We recognize when scarcity rises up in us and we comfort it back down. And we weave it into our spiritual lives as a sacred practice.
Here’s a beautiful example of a prayer that I often turn to and can’t hear enough.
Tosha Silver’s Abundance Prayer
Divine Beloved, Change Me into someone who can give with complete ease and abundance,
knowing You are the unlimited Source of All.
Let me be an easy open conduit for Your prosperity.
Let me trust that all of my own needs are always met in amazing ways
and it is safe to give freely as my heart guides me.
And equally, please Change Me into someone who can feel wildly open to receiving.
Let me know my own value, beauty and worthiness without question.
Let me allow others the supreme pleasure of giving to me.
Let me feel worthy to receive in every possible way.
And let me extend kindness to all who need, feeling compassion and understanding
in even the hardest situations.
Change me into One who can fully love, forgive and accept myself… so I may carry your Light
without restriction.
Let everything that needs to go, go.
Let everything that needs to come, come.
I am utterly Your own.
You are Me. I am You. We are One.
All is well.