Drowning in Abundance ... and Still Empty - Stepping Up to your Potential Podcast & Blog

Jun 27, 2025

Have you heard about the various manifesting abundance practices floating around out there? It’s hard to avoid them, actually. But I decided to try one — it was the challenge of the month in one of my practice groups. Midway through that month, I ended up watching the 2020 Dracula series on Netflix. (I know — unexpected detour. Just stay with me.)

To set the stage: Dracula has just arrived in modern England after centuries locked in his old world. He breaks into a modest suburban home. The woman inside is terrified. He looks around — average furniture, little chotchkies everywhere, laundry piled in a basket, a fridge full of food, a car in the driveway. And with absolute awe in his voice, he says to her:

“I’ve been a nobleman for 400 years. I’ve lived in castles and palaces among the richest people of any age. Never, never have I stood in greater luxury than surrounds me now. This is a chamber of marvels! There isn’t a king or queen or emperor that I have ever known — or eaten — who would step into this room and ever agree to leave it again. I knew the future would bring wonders. I did not know it would make them ordinary.”

That line… “I did not know it would make them ordinary.” … whoooooo… Talk about a truth bomb. Hats off to the writers for that one! Moments before this perspective drop, the woman called her home “a dump.” And here’s Dracula — ancient, powerful, a literal apex predator — calling it a room of wonders. She couldn’t see it because abundance had become ordinary.

Finally Seeing The Flood

It wasn’t long after watching that Dracula episode that I found myself wandering through a megastore, his words echoing in my mind. And then… I stopped. Really stopped. For the first time, I actually saw the depth of what I was standing in the middle of. Shelves upon shelves. Products stacked to the ceiling. Just… so much. So much to choose from. So. Much. And for the first time, I recognized that I was standing in a chamber of marvels too — I just hadn’t been seeing it.

And in that flashpoint moment, my ordinary briefly became wondrous. Just one aisle in a grocery store holds produce from every inhabited continent. I can pick up fruit from Brazil, grains from Egypt, spices from India — all in a single cart. Just… pluck. Drop it in. Walk away.

That’s when it really hit me. We HAVE abundance. We have so much abundance we are literally drowning it.

One of the fastest growing industries is storage space warehouses. Across America, retailers hold close to $740 billion worth of unsold goods—enough to cover a quarter of the U.S. GDP. There are currently 92 million tonnes of clothing discarded globally each year — that’s one garbage-truck–load every second. Over 1 billion – Billion with a B – tonnes, TONS, not pounds of food is wasted annually across homes, restaurants, and retail worldwide. World hunger is solved – in our lifetime! Now all that’s left is figuring out effective distribution.

For perspective: In 1925, “trash” barely registered — a few million tons, often burned or buried out back. Today, the U.S. generates nearly 300 million tons of it per year. That’s a 23× increase in just one century. Globally, we’re barreling toward 4 billion tons of waste.

That’s beyond prosperity. That’s a tidal wave of too-much. And still — I keep trying to manifest MORE?

Bridge Builders

There I was — standing in the middle of a megastore, basket dangling from my fingertips, mind suddenly racing. Why? Why do I think I don’t have enough already?

Wait. I’ve done enough inner work to know ‘why’ won’t get me there. Better to ask things like: “What am I trying to fill? What is so empty that I keep reaching for more? What inside of me still believes I’m not enough or I don’t have enough?”

In trying to answer that, the first place that my heart actually landed on was a pattern I first noticed in my mom and often wondered about. After my brother and I moved out, she got really into the Home Shopping Network. Not just watching it — buying. Constantly. The boxes were continuously showing up, and stuff just kept arriving. My dad, half-joking, would point to some gadget or decoration and say, “Guess where this came from?” And of course the answer was always HSN.

Standing in the store, open to new insights, it hit me. I realized that my mom wasn’t buying all that stuff to fill any material need. She was trying to fill silence. The kind of silence that creeps in when a house that once held the daily chaos of kids now holds only memory. No matter how many treasures she filled the home with, it wasn’t going to echo with our laughter again. That kind of fullness — the kind you can’t order in a box — was gone.

Because I live in what I call my Hall of Mirrors — where anything I notice in others becomes a reflection of myself — I had to ask, since I noticed this in here, where do I do this? That answer came fast! While my mom turned to jewelry and clothes; I turned to crafting and knowledge.

My sewing studio is borderline mythic at this point, and I’ve attended at least five different colleges so far. The number of classes, seminars, and workshops I’ve taken or am currently enrolled in is ridiculous. And don’t even get me started on my book hoarding. So what am I trying to fill with all this?

Hrm. That question doesn’t feel quite right now that I’ve let it echo for a while. Follow me as I you into my process here to model it for you, alright? So I’m letting this question sit. So, it isn’t about egoic “needs”, it’s about an emotional need deeper than the ego level. That’s what I’m feeling into here. I won’t be able to answer that questions with my mind, but rather I have to drop into the heart, to feel my way to the right question here. Kinda like a safe-cracker with my ear to the dial:

“What emotion is this action reacting to?” (tick)
“What is this behavior trying to resolve or restore?” (tick)
“What part of me feels unseen or underfed right now?” (… tick)
“What outcome would finally feel like enough?” (click)

Aaah! With the right question, the door to the safe can swing wide, revealing the gold within. And there it was: “I think the result of my crafting and knowledge gathering will be community; that someone will see enough value in me to want to engage.”

Immediately, I saw the lonely child that I was — trying so hard to connect, always slightly out of sync. If my love language is shared work, then of course I reach for tools, skills, and projects. I’m not just accumulating things. I’m trying to build the possibility of meaningful engagement.

I wonder if my mom’s love language is gifts? We don’t all reach for the same things. Maybe understanding your love language can help you figure out your own pattern. I suspect women are more likely to “gather” physical objects — a deep imprint of our evolutionary wiring as gatherers. What does it look like for men? Maybe workaholism? Maybe achievements? I don’t know. But it’s worth pondering.

Whatever the form, the pattern’s the same: We’re not just buying or building or bingeing. We’re trying to bridge something. Trying to be seen. Trying to find wholeness, connection with others. Community. To feel like we are enough.

All This, and Still Alone

We humans are profoundly social creatures. Without real, living connection — we begin to hollow out. Digital relationships help, but they can’t replace the nourishment of presence. If we’re lucky enough to already have connection and community, then digital tools can reinforce it. But when it’s missing? No screen can fix that.

And connection isn’t just about people. We also need to feel connected to something bigger than us — to Life, to Spirit, to the rhythms of the natural world. Without that, something in us aches. That ache doesn’t go away on its own. But it can be softened through a variety of reconnection paths. Sometimes, connection starts small. I talk to my pets, even my houseplants. I garden. I feed the birds every day. I walk a familiar trail until the land begins to recognize me, too.

Because connection — real connection — is attention paired with care

But when that core need for connection goes unmet, something shifts. When there’s no one to notice us, no rhythm to align with, no place where our presence matters — we start to reach. We reach for distractions. We reach for things. We reach for control.

That’s what psychologist Bruce Alexander noticed in the late 1970s. He was looking at addiction and wondered: what if the problem wasn’t the drugs? What if it was the cage? So he built Rat Park, I’m sure you’ve heard of it — an enriched environment where rats had space to roam, toys to explore, other rats to play with, and yes, access to morphine-laced water. In that connected, dynamic space, the rats mostly ignored the drug. They didn’t get addicted. They didn’t overdose. Instead, they thrived.

But the rats who were isolated in small cages with nothing but food and morphine? They became addicted fast — and often drank themselves to death.

Same drug. Same species. Different environments. Radically different outcomes.

Turns out, addiction isn’t just about substances. While it’s a complicated topic, it’s also about the ache of disconnection. About trying to soothe the hollow place where belonging should be. Where meaning should be. Where shared experience should live. And if we’re crafting or collecting or consuming — maybe it’s not about acquisition. Maybe we’re searching for something – about who we are, and what it means to belong.

We’re not so different from those rats.

We keep thinking we need more stuff — more sparkle, more security, more tools. But what if the thing we’re trying to feed isn’t hunger for stuff… but hunger for connection?

Connection turned addicts into survivors.

From Scarcity to Signal

Here’s where it gets tricky: to even want abundance implies that I believe something is missing. I don’t crave what I already feel I have. So if I’m asking to manifest more, I’ve got to get honest about what’s fueling that desire. At some level, I’ve internalized that what I have isn’t enough — or that I am not enough.

This is the trap of the scarcity-abundance spectrum. They’re not opposites. They’re a continuum. Two sides of the same coin, and buying into one means buying into both. Wanting more doesn’t mean I’m greedy — it means I haven’t yet felt the enoughness that I already stand inside of. And that’s not some spiritual failing. That’s a very human, very contextual reality.

And that’s the heartbreak — what we’re starving for can’t be boxed or bought. But try telling that to a system that’s monetized our ache. The culture we live in isn’t just aware of our longing — it’s built to exploit it. The economy thrives on that hollow ache. It sells us the illusion of belonging, wrapped in lifestyle brands, curated identities, streaming subscriptions, and algorithmic promises of connection. It’s not just that we’re surrounded by stuff. It’s that we’re constantly being told ‘the next thing’ might finally make us feel whole. We’re offered products instead of people. Performance instead of presence.

And it works — because it targets something ancient within us. The drive behind the marketing machine is aimed straight at our evolutionary wiring. The survival logic that once kept us alive — “get it while you can,” “don’t miss out,” “there might not be more” — is still running the show, just dressed up in limited-time offers and curated shopping carts. It’s FOMO, weaponized for someone else’s profit.

That’s why it’s too simple to call it a “lack mindset” — as if the problem were only in our heads. What we’re dealing with isn’t just psychological; it’s cultural, ancestral, and systemic. And for most of human history, that logic made sense. My own ancestors lived and died by it. Scarcity wasn’t imagined. It was survival. The nervous system remembers what millions of years of training have given it: keep reaching. Keep preparing. Just in case.

And our bodies know that.

We are designed to handle lack. We have entire biological systems that kick in when resources are low — starvation mode, fat storage, stress responses — all built to help us endure scarcity. But abundance? Our systems aren’t built to regulate that. Sure, there are satiety cues — a signal when the stomach is physically full — but that’s not the same as an entire system for recognizing when I’ve had enough. It doesn’t track whether I’ve actually met my needs for the day. And it’s shockingly easy to override. There’s no “enough” switch. No native mechanism which effectively handles long term excess. It’s never really been needed before! So we just keep going. Keep consuming. Keep producing.

Until the system strains. Then falters. Until our bodies break down. Our minds grow anxious. Our homes overflow. Until the excess stops feeling like luxury… and starts feeling like drowning.

And still, I reach for more.

Why? Because I, we, are all still learning how to live in a world of so much. Still learning how to move from just surviving the scarcity to stewarding the abundance. That is evolution in progress.

Receiving as Sacred Practice

The truth is, I think that we are outgrowing scarcity. I can see it in our capacity to produce, to distribute, to innovate. But what we haven’t yet learned is how to recognize the abundance we already have — or how to align our asking with who we are becoming, instead of what we think we lack.

When I manifest from lack, it’s a cross-frequency signal — asking for abundance while rooted in emptiness scrambles the message. If I’m not aware of what’s really driving the desire, then my manifestations become frantic grasps for comfort instead of grounded invitations for expansion. I’m not manifesting from soul clarity. I’m manifesting from ache.

Gratitude becomes the recalibration. A way of saying, “I see the abundance already in my life, and it is good.” It brings me back into resonance. It reminds me that I’m not starting from zero.

Attempting my manifestation practices without this inner awareness means that I am attempting to pull toward me things that I hope will complete me, that I think might answer that hidden deeper need to connect meaningfully with loved ones or to feel safe.

But when I manifest from alignment, I amplify who I already am. And that’s the shift I’m working on. I’m not aiming to manifest more to become more. I am stepping up to reveal more… and then what I manifest is simply the echo of that. Then maybe, just maybe that’s how I’m going to turn drowning in abundance into dancing with it.

TL;DR

We’re not lacking stuff — we’re lacking connection. Manifestation misfires when we ask from emptiness. Align first. Then ask. We live in overwhelming abundance, but our bodies and culture are wired for scarcity. Manifestation shifts when we align with enoughness.

About the Image

A sand dollar. How perfect, and poetic. In case you haven’t noticed, I pick images that are puns, oblique references, strike me as funny, or abstractly symbolic all depending on the subject matter of the post.

Audio

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