HAVE WE GOT A DEAL FOR YOU!

     

     I'm always trying to get a good deal, which means-- get as much value as I can for as little payment as possible. My mother was considered  a good shopper.  Like her, I am a good shopper.  I can get good deals.
     Just imagine all the jubilant conversations going on during the time you're reading this blog, where people are telling each other about the really good deas they just got. You can practically see their eyes lighting up.

     "My first divorce cost me over $10,000, I got a really good deal from my lawyer as a second timer. He's only going to charge me half that.  Almost makes we want to get married and divorced a couple of more times.  Think how much money I'd be saving."

     But when I realized that God* was offering me a Good Deal, I stopped to ask if the deals I was so compulsively driven to get were really the best deals.

      I attribute my compulsion to get a good deal to conditioning, if not heredity--"Never buy retail,"  Like it was the 11th commandment. Even now, when I buy something and don't get a "good deal." I feel guilty. 

     But there is another important side of my motivation, I hold a belief in scarcity, little realizing that I live in  an infinitely abundant universe-what it doesn't carry in stock, I can literally make it myself. Such a deal!

     But I'm not alone. After all, most humans struggle to make ends meet and which is why we run around trying to get good deals.

     But here is the dilemma and the great paradox:  My universe (my sense of self-- what I have, don't have, think, don't think, do, etc) is limited.  Indeed I depend on those very limitations to feel secure in my own teeny tiny island in reality.  

     See, my universe is not only finite, it is generally filled up full with.......me....... as I have defined myself-definitions like being a male, a father, an omnivore, a guy who has to get the best deal, etc, as if the "me" exists independently of the rest of existence. Absurd when you really think about it, but an activity I share with most other homo sapiens. 

     But there's the good deal that God* appears to be offering me. They usually call it, "The Good news," or "The Gospel."  But it might just as well be called,  "The Good Deal."

     And here is the "Good Deal (sound of drum roll) 

     If I'm willing to give up all notions about what is me and mine, the whole universe is available to me for ...well... shopping .... for progressively better and better "deals."

Your deal.                                                                                                            
Think on't
Andy Rumi

*God, as in "All Being-Actual and Potential"or "Love superimposed on itself.....infinitely."