Again, use this poem as a reference point for this post!
Uncertainty is the root of fear
Distrust is the root of uncertainty
Scarcity is the root of distrust
Hostility is the root of scarcity
Sorrow is the root of hostility
Attachment is the root of sorrow
Fear is the root of attachment
Chaos is the root of all
Harmony is the equal opposite of chaos
I’ve personally never been an angry person. In fact, at first, the therapist that’s been working with me since Erik’s death thought that was a bit odd. After all, everyone gets angry from time to time. But after a couple of sessions, we both discovered that, in my childhood, anger would not have served me well. In fact, being calm and agreeable were necessary for the purposes of survival. Happiness = Fewer Scars, even if that happiness is a façade.
My father, on the other hand, had the whole anger thing down pat. There was nothing more frightening than that beet-red face and those bulging neck veins. But look what his anger brought him. Scarcity. One story, in particular, illustrates this. My younger sister, Denise, had insulin dependent diabetes from the age of sixteen and didn’t take care of herself well. Eventually, her body began to betray her. Before she was forty, she was nearly blind, couldn’t walk without a walker, could only receive sustenance through a tube that was inserted through her abdominal wall into her small intestine, and required diapers and frequent catheterization because of her incontinence. Of course, she was too disabled to have a career of any sort, much less one that met my father’s standards for income potential. One day, he heard that the son of one of his friends received a PhD in business from an esteemed university. He was so disgusted by Denise’s lack of so-called “success” that he told her (and these were his exact words,) “If you were a homeless person wallowing in your own filth, I would spit on you.” She took her own life shortly after. One less child. Scarcity.
His hostility also robbed him of several friendships, relationships with colleagues, countless days of harmony, respect from his children among other things. In the end, his life was a skeleton in the desert stripped clean of flesh by vultures.
Me: Hostility is the root of scarcity. I can see this go both ways. If you feel you don’t have enough and other people do, it seems like that might build up a lot of resentment and anger, and if you’re chronically angry, what you want is just hard to come by.
Erik: Yes. Vicious cycle. When you don’t think you have enough, you get pissed. If you’re in that hostile state, you alienate everything and everyone in your external world so that it won’t give you what you want. In that state of anger, you’re not going to be in that mindset that welcomes abundance. When you’re hostile, you give power to other people, experiences and life circumstances, so how can you get and do and have what you want? You become blind to or destroy opportunities. If you get hostile, your focus narrows. You get these narrow-minded beliefs like, “I can never have that.” For you, the thing you want is not even in your universe. You don’t see the shit that could bring you abundance. When you can’t see the connections and the common ground between you and whatever it is: a situation, a person, material shit, then all of a sudden, you’re not in the same game with these. If you’re a hostile asshole, who’s gonna want to be in your corner to help you get what you want? When you stay calm and open to anything that comes at you, you’re going to see every opportunity. You’re going to welcome others into your life that might bring you abundance. Maybe you meet someone in a bar and start up a conversation with some dude. Then, he ends up handing you his business card saying something like, “Call me in the morning. I think I might have a job for you.” So stay calm. Everything is going to be okay.
Me: So the hostility narrows your focus and cuts off all sorts of interactions with yourself, with others, the environment or whatever, and that creates the illusion of scarcity?
Erik: Yes.
