This is a “Best of Erik.” I felt bad not posting today. 🙂

Me: Erik, why do so many people have so much money while others starve?

Jamie: I know! Isn’t it unfair?

Me: Yeah. What’s that all about?

Erik: We can chalk that up to lessons. It’s all about fear of abundance. There’s enough for everyone. Scarcity is just an illusion.

Me: Okay.

Erik: For instance, there’s enough food for everyone all over the world, even though it might not seem like it.

Me: Yeah. Well it seems like there are finite resources, right?

Erik: Actually, no. I know it’s hard to imagine, but you have the power to create whatever you fuckin’ want. Even a new universe.

Me: Whoa, what?

Erik: But what happens is, we’re taught that maybe we can’t have it or that we’re not good enough. It’s your own personal lesson to stand up and say, “This is what I want, and this is what I’m getting.”

Me: Okay, but what about the other side? Shouldn’t we feel indignant when some people have an obscene amount of wealth, more than they could possibly spend while so many people are suffering in poverty?

Erik: Like I said, everybody can have what they want. Scarcity is a bullshit illusion.

Me: So the super wealthy aren’t doing something wrong? They’re not evil?

Erik: No! Humans have just created this reality of limited resources, and I know it’s hard to imagine, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

Me: Okay, good—unless the rich use their money for nefarious purposes, of course.

Erik (laughing): What, like porn?

Me: Oh, that’s okay, watching or reading porn, as long as it not illegal like child pornography. To each his own.

Erik: No, if we get into that sort of thinking, we’re going down that path of judgment again.

Me: Exactly!

Erik: So, abundance is infinite. The only thing in the way is your narrow awareness and weak intention. Most people people just don’t believe they can create wealth, so they can’t. And some people don’t think they deserve it, so they don’t get it. A lot of people think the rich poor thing is unfair, so they just keep that idea going on and on. It’s the reality the collective belief creates.

Me: Makes sense. I guess.

Erik: And people’s level of abundance varies so greatly. You know, if we go to a tribe in Africa and we ask, “What’s your idea of abundance,” it might be capturing one big animal a week.

Me: Ah!

Erik: It doesn’t have to do with the clothes they wear, the threads they use, or other possessions. America is so driven by material things, that our definition of abundance—

Jamie (giggling): He looked at me and, I don’t know, he kind of dropped his posture and cocked his head and said, “ so fucked up!”

Me: Oh, my god, I can just see him doing that with his body!

Jamie: He kind of went ghetto; you know how you do your fingers, like to the back?”

Me: Yeah, yeah!

Erik: —so fucked up! And so we don’t know how to get out of that definition, and that spiritual evolution we’re kicking into is going to help us, but right now we’re such a sick society.

Me: We’re still so ego-driven, I guess.

Erik (announcing like a ringmaster in a circus): EGOCENTRIC! Everything revolves around MY ass!

Jamie and I laugh.

Me: I guess that stokes the fires of the separation illusion. In order for me to be me, I have to have an enemy to oppose. That’s how people define their own separate egos, by having counterparts.

Erik: Yes!