The plum tree outside my window is exploding with fruit. It is so heavy laden that my husband had to prop up a branch so it wouldn't break before the plums were ripe. As I was sitting at the kitchen table, eating one of the super sweet plums and looking out the window at how many more were there to eat, I thought "this is truly a picture of abundance."

I think about abundance often. In my work as a Marriage, Family Therapist and Life Coach I consistently think about attracting abundance to my private practice...an abundance of clients, abundant ideas and good will to share and of course abundant financial success for us all. Increasingly I find myself helping clients and colleagues attract their financial abundance. It is becoming sort of a specialty of mine, probably because I have such an interest in it.

Yesterday in my Adult Ed class at church, we were reminding ourselves of God's promise of abundant resources as an expression of God's abundant love. Some of you may prefer to substitute the word "Source" or "Force" (as in "may the force be with you") for the the word God, but we all get the same idea. Why is it so easy to believe that a plum tree can bring us fruit in abundance and so hard to believe that the Universe can bring us abundant wealth?

I suspect that the difference lies not in the actual amount of plums or dollars available but in our belief about them. When I looked out the window at the plum tree today, I knew that the same force is at work within both, dollars and plums, and we can attract them both equally. Money is just a much more charged concept than plums. My sense of my self, my identity as an ego and a person living in this world, tends to get wrapped up in how much money I have. My ego is not too invested in my plums.

Somehow when our ego, our concept of self, gets over involved or invested we seem to short circuit that force of abundance flowing through. The trick is to see and appreciate the abundance flowing through and know it is larger than our small, personal selves. It is much more helpful to think of a larger "S" Self, connected with God, Force or Source. I'm sure that's what the plum tree does, without even thinking. It is just connected Self. And that's what we can be and are, truly.