Greetings MIP family.  Today's Courage to Change reading speaks about the comforting awareness of abundance, the abundance of our Higher Powers love and guidance.  The realisation occurred to the writer one day at the beach, noticing how, no matter how many people were on that beach, there would be enough sun for everyone there.  This was an amazing contrast to believing there was only a finite supply of everything else.. time, money, love.  

This new awareness came to be tested at first, as the writer first felt that perhaps spiritual love and connection may be limited somehow by others also experiencing and sharing a connection to their Higher Power, but then discovering that the opposite was true.  Rather than feeling insecure, the writer felt that a connection to HP was strengthened by hearing others share about theirs.  

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I will preface my commentary by acknowledging that the HP concept is one many struggle with, usually due to past dictatorship of what constitutes a Higher Power.  Alanon is a spiritual programme not a religious one and so the HP concept can be anything that the member wishes it to be. Some suggestions I have heard here include making the Al-anon programme itself the Higher Power; Mother Nature and more traditional concepts of a Higher Power. For myself I can really click with the contrast of lack and abundance. In my own life,  there was often never enough of the things I can see in hindsight that I craved.  Praise and encouragement particularly seemed to be in short supply and had to be manipulated into being.  Love, non-judgement and time were also short in supply and so I really struggled with the concepts of anyone or anything including a Higher Power being timeless, loving and understanding. 

In terms of a finite supply, I once had the fortune to meet a woman who was recalling a conversation she had with her ex-partner about children and love.  I always remember her analogy.  " Love is not a pie- it does not decrease a slice at a time as you dish it out: it grows. Love is not a pie."

I think this quirky analogy--which I have used many times with my own children, one of whom frets about hugs given to another child as possibly exhausting her own supply of hugs--is a neat summary of the reading and spiritual love.   However we may find our own spiritual connections to the Higher Power, the feeling is one that is never confined by the physical constraints of daily life. It is ours to tap into whenever we wish, it is a limitless supply that grows with sharing.

Todays reminder is:

I may not have everything I want, but today I have everything I need.  I will look for evidence of abundance, and let it remind me that my Higher Power's love is broad enough to touch all who have the courage to place themselves in it's presence.

Have a beautiful weekend all.