Abundance is Right Where You Are – Cityside Practitioners
This recording features the Sunday Talk portion of the service. For the full service watch here.
DESCRIPTION
Come hear the practitioners talk this Sunday about their experience with putting the practice of Abundance into action! If you’re wanting real examples of setting intentions, extending forgiveness, and making dreams come true through powerful demonstrations of the Law of Abundance, then this is the talk for you. Even better, the practitioners have the perfect ritual to empower everyone in letting go of their old ideas and false beliefs about money and prosperity.
SUMMARY
Cityside Licensed Spiritual Practitioners share personal lessons on abundance.
Paul McHugh states that abundance is a spiritual practice where one can grow their spiritual consciousness by attending this space with like-minded people and taking different classes and workshops. He explains that abundance is about giving and receiving, and that pets are a good example of giving love without expecting much in return.
Paul McHugh provides two examples of giving and receiving – one where an attempt to sell a car to a friend did not work out well, and another where he donated a bicycle to a local shelter which was deeply appreciated by the recipient.
Rob Wozniak discusses how he overcame his hesitation to run the Chicago Marathon by working through a forgiveness opportunity with his mother, which allowed him to dedicate the experience to her.
Jason LaRiviere shares how he overcame his belief that he was too unique and opened up to joining a board game meetup group, which led to new friendships and eventually led him to discover the Center for Spiritual Living. He also shares how making the decision to tithe consistently during the pandemic led to an unexpected raise from his employer.
They end with a spiritual practice to release limiting beliefs.
TRANSCRIPTION
This transcription was auto-generated, please excuse typos, errors and omissions.
Paul McHugh:
Good morning, I’m Paul McHugh. My pronouns are him and he and him. The three of us are up here to give testimonials to. Abundance is right where you are, and it’s a spiritual practice, spiritual principle. I mean, I have chosen to tie the city side because I grow my spiritual consciousness. That’s one of the three things in the mission is grow spiritual consciousness. I do that by number one, just being here because people are like-minded in this space. Two, I love to take different classes and workshops because that kind of brings me back to a spiritual consciousness that I may have left at home that day and I forgot to take with me in the car.
So abundance. So one of the principles, abundance is giving and receiving. There are many principles, that’s one. So in terms of giving and receiving pets, pets give love and they don’t expect much back. A little food, and that’s about it. I never had a dog growing up, kind of wasn’t interested in having a dog. When my family wanted a dog, I said I was a lone vote, no, no dog, and now she’s my dog. Go figure. But of course, dogs give unlimited love, unrequited love, nothing coming back in return. They don’t expect anything. I don’t know how they do it.
I’d like to be more like a dog, but then she gives me something to give love to also, and she doesn’t expect anything back. We all do. Let’s face it, we’re human, but she doesn’t expect anything back. And it’s like it’s such a freeing thing to give love that way. So I’m going to give a couple examples of giving and receiving one. The first example is something that didn’t work out so well, and the second example is something that did. So I had a car I needed to sell. It’s worth X dollars. I thought I’d call up a couple friends and see if I would be willing to sell a car to them for X minus $5,000. All the dealer would give to me, blah, blah, blah. So I reached out to someone and said, I’ll sell you the car if you do X. Now, I didn’t hide the XI put it out there up front, but it wasn’t a clean offer of giving.
I knew that at the time, but still I wanted Y and I would be willing to give her my car for X. And no surprise that the quote, it just kind of fell apart, not for the X or the Y that I wanted, but for another reason. But I’m going, well, that wasn’t very clean. No surprise it didn’t happen. Another simple example was of a good positive thing. I’ve got an extra bicycle. I take bikes for granted. I’ve got a couple bikes, no big deal. Take a bike for granted. So I said, well, I’ve got a bike, I could give it away. I don’t need it. I could give it to the shelter just by my house. That’s a, excuse me, shelter. It’s like a salvation Army for migrants, asylum seekers. It just started what, five years ago when there’s an influx of migrants in the city and this community, I’m not a part of it.
They just started giving stuff away and people started dropping stuff off and they gave stuff away. Now they’ve got a building as big as this that just gives things away once a week. Anyway, so I got an extra bike. I bring the bike over and I say, do you think you can use a bike? They go, oh gosh, yes, somebody can use a bike that comes through here every Wednesday. So I left the bike and I wasn’t there when it was given away, but the story was that a lot of, a number of people wanted the bike there. And they tried to interview the people like, well, who really needs the bike to go to work? Or something important? And they decided they were going to give it to a gentleman. And sort of in this giving and receiving and gratitude all wrapped up in one story.
When they told him he gave it to him, he fell down at his knees and he cried and said a prayer. He needed it so badly to do something like get to work. And I heard that story and I was just in tears. I was receiving, I was giving something that didn’t mean that much to me, but it sure means something to him. So whenever I think of that, it kind of brings tears to my eyes again, just given sometimes I didn’t expect to get anything back. I didn’t know it was going to go to anyway. So that’s my positive story of giving and receiving. So next, Rob is coming up, give his own stories about abundance, right where you are. Am I missing anything?
Rob Wozniak:
Okay, that was perfect. Thank you. Thank you, Paul. What a great story. I’m going to get set up here and I usually like to have a piece of paper in front of me rather than speak from my phone because the phone shuts off and then you got to try to get back on and I start panicking. But anyways, my name’s Rob, Rob Wozniak. I’m one of your licensed spiritual practitioners here at Cityside. I’m very honored to be able to speak today, and I have a story that I want to share with you. And so long ago, and I can speak in terms of actual decades now, I ran, it was the Ravenswood 5K, and I came across the finish line and I was so excited. It felt so good. I said, I’m going to run the Chicago Marathon. I just know it. It’s going to be so great.
But this was, like I said, a long time ago, I was a different person. My favorite bar restaurant had a deal that Sunday for $5 mimosas. So a $50 bill later, no food in my stomach. Brunch was over and it was the afternoon and I got nowhere to go, really, another lonely Sunday. And that dream died. A lot of my dreams that I had and good ideas that I had back then. But things change. And many years later, that dream didn’t leave me. I’m still thinking, boy, I’d love to run that marathon. And I was taking my health a lot more seriously. So in the Lisa Nichols book Abundance Now, which we’ve been studying this month, she talks a lot about we need to get to that mindset like Gordon was reading this morning, and for me, one of the things, if you’ve run a marathon, typically to run it, you need to raise a lot of money for a cause. And to do that, you need to ask people for money, which for me was very confronting. I don’t want to ask people for money, and people are busy. They got things to spend on and important things. And I did what we do here, which is I got prayer support, I did my own work. I looked at the fears that were coming up. And long story short, I did ask a lot of people, including in this community to support me, and they supported me very generously. And it was very gratifying to know that.
But there’s a lot of training required to run a marathon. And to do that, I really needed a higher purpose and an inspiration. And it really, for me came through a forgiveness opportunity, particularly in the relationship with my mother. So Lisa Nichols talks a lot about the need to heal our relationships, to really have the freedom to pursue our goals and to pursue our dreams. For me, as I got older, it kind of became clear to me that growing up I had played a role in the relationship with my mother where I was kind of this emotional anchor. Some would refer to it as what they call a surrogate spouse. And there was an impact to me on all that. And it really affected how I pursued, how I was able to create relationships as an adult. And when the truth of that situation was revealed to me, I went into a period of grieving.
That was what was required at that time was to really experience myself, experience the feelings I, as many people predicted as I came out of that, I was very angry. I was angry to the point of I didn’t want to go to my mother. I didn’t want to. She was living in assisted living at that time. She was getting ready to make a transition and I was like, I don’t even want to go see her. I don’t want to talk to her. So Lisa Nichols again, she talks about taking responsibility for your hurt feelings, taking responsibility for the healing of your relationships, particularly with your loved ones.
And one of the things she goes into is how do you own your part in these dynamics? So in my case, I was a kid. I really didn’t have a part in creating that dynamic. However, I do have a part in hanging onto that hurt, hanging onto that situation for so long and repressing all that anger, all those feelings for so long. And that was for me to pursue that goal. I really needed freedom. I really needed a miracle. And so I do what we do here, which is I reached out for support. And the support I was getting at that time was I was doing sessions with a lot of Mark, Anthony, Lord, and he really got me to, we did a prayer for forgiveness.
So last month we talked about Colin Tippings, radical forgiveness. I facilitate a study group here on a Course of Miracles, which is all about forgiveness. And the thing I want to say about that is that for forgiveness, for a lot of people, it’s really this idea that I’m making a huge sacrifice, letting someone off the hook maybe who did something bad or whatever it is, and that’s not it. And it’s really as I’ve been taught, as I practice, and hopefully as I teach and demonstrate, it’s really learning to see God sees and that God sees only love and the rest simply doesn’t exist. So in that session, I remember it was lifted from me. I was able to just release all those old feelings, all that anger I had repressed for so long. And since that time I’ve really never felt anything but love and peace towards my mother. And so it was perfectly clear at the time that I was going to dedicate my training and the actual race to my mother.
So when I got to the marathon, it was race day and I had done the training and followed the instructions, and I had a picture of my mom in my pocket. So I got to all the mile markers, it’s like mile 10, I’ve got you mom, mile 15 and got you mom mile 20, which they say is the big shift. And I was like, I’ve got you, mom, please have me. And so I finished the marathon in four hours and five minutes. And so now the top finishers that day, they finished in about exactly half that time. But who cares as far as I concerned, as I was concerned, hand me the trophy. Yeah, it was just a wonderful accomplishment, a wonderful healing experience. And it’s still with me today, reverberating. So that’s my story. And now Jason will come and talk about prosperity right where you are.
Jason LaRiviere:
Thank you, Rob. I have to follow that now you beautiful story. About 20 years ago, I was in a very unhappy place. I was in a marriage that wasn’t working for me or probably her frankly, and I was just unhappy in my life. And one of the things I had to do was I had to change something. My thinking, because your abundance really lives a little bit outside of your comfort zone and can often be limited by a thought or something that you believe that’s really not serving. It may not be a bad thought or a stinky thought. It’s like a sticky thought just sits. It’s just kind of keeping you where you’re at and that may not be working for you. One of mine was I believe I was so unique that nobody would understand me, and I had to realize that, okay, we’re all unique, but I had to say, I’m not so unique that nobody else has some of the same ideas or same feelings or same activities that they like to do.
And one of the ones I love to do was board gaming. So one day I took a leap of faith and I went into a place called that doesn’t exist, called the pick a cup for Meetup. And I’m like, well, I got to see what’s going to happen. I’m nervous as all heck, I really don’t want to meet people, but I’m like, got to do something. So I went out and I walked in there and I said, well, hello, my name is Jason. Well, we don’t know. I was like, do you know anybody here? I said, no, I just saw you online. So I decided to show up. They’re like, what? I’m like, don’t ask, I’m here. But from that very day, I met a couple of my closest friends that I didn’t know, and then the following week they invited me back, and before you know it, I’m having friendships with people that a month before I didn’t even know.
All of a sudden we’re becoming closer and closer and we wound up taking trips together and I know them to this day and have had all these wonderful adventures with them. Then another thing happened around a couple years after that dissolved the marriage and I went on, I met a girl who told me, well, if we want to be together, you have to come with me to the CSL called Bodhi. I’m like, okay, I like spirituality and I figure I’m alternatives. I did that. But the good news is I am going to make this a little easy on you. He’s going to talk about sacred sexuality. I’m like, okay, this ought to be good. I’m a recovering Catholic. So it’s like you don’t hear about that in the Catholic church, at least not the ones I went to. And then from there I’m like, so then it’s like, okay.
So I liked it. So I kept going and going, and then I decided to reach out a little bit further and I joined what they called the hug team. Now, before, you may not know this now, but before then, I didn’t want you to touch me. I definitely didn’t want you to hug me. Even my family, we didn’t hug all that much. So I’m like, okay. I mean, knowing me now, you may be like, that sounds nuts. Well, that’s a lot of growth. So that’s where my bunch and I wound up having this great experience with them over time and stuff, and then that went away. But luckily I had met Reverend Amy through that process, and eventually when this started coming up, I’m like, oh yeah, I remember them. So I kind of wandered back in and I’m like, oh, this is cool. It’s small, but I like it.
I’m really feeling the love and I feel like I’m accepted. I can be a little more myself. I don’t always feel like I can be my authentic self. I have to kind of put a little wall up in front to give you a little disguise. I’m true, but not always quite true. But then I had to come to another realization. This one was very, very hard. I had to decide to start consistently tithing. This was around the pandemic. So I made a decision. We were studying Edwin Gaines’s book at the time, and he said, you got to tie the percentage. 10% was her thing. So I’m like, okay, I’m going to do this. I’m going to do this for six months as a test just to see what happens. So I put on automatic. I don’t want to believe in, I’m going to go do it every time because then always find an excuse. I’m like, I’m just going to go do it. Reach out and do it.
I started doing it and on and on, and nothing really happened. I just kept giving and giving. Then one day my boss calls me. Now when you’re in corporate, they only talk about certain things at certain times of the year. He calls me, he said, yeah, what’s up, boss? He goes, I’m letting you know I’m retiring. This pandemic has taught me that life’s too short. I’m going to go and live in Oregon with my wife and enjoy the rest of my years. He’s like, oh, well good for you, boss. I’m sad to see you go and like, I got some news for you. I said, what’s that? Now? This is in September. And I say, well, what’s that? He goes, starting next paycheck. You’re getting an 8,000 raise. I’m like, Hey, now I’m in an office. I can’t just scream. I want to. So I had to be like, okay, now don’t tell anybody. I said, oh, no problem. I understand how corporate works. Now, corporate, if you know, only gives raises at one time of the year, and for that case, it was usually March. So I’m totally out of the blue. I’m like, okay, thanks, boss. So I walked outside with all the poisoning call and trying not to. I go outside, I call my parents, I say, Hey, mom, dad, guess what? I got a raise.
And that taught me the value of also abundance, that being open and vulnerable, and I had to be open and vulnerable before I can enjoy my full abundance in these things. And then recently my dad passed away, and I also remember how much abundance of love and support I got from this community, from my friends and all the people helping. Even when we had to get rid of all the things in the house, I’m like, what are we going to do with all this stuff? What are we going to do? I wasn’t care about trying to get money off, just wanted, how are we going to get rid of this? I want to go to something useful. My mom’s friend calls and says, there was somebody at the doctor’s office who knew your mom very well. Oh, really? Well, that’s no surprise. My mom knew everybody. They were in a 25 mile radius. She knew you.
So she had an abundance of making friends. She was really good at that. So yeah, they love your mom. They want to come and see can they come and see if there’s any stuff. They have an empty house, like an empty house. Yeah, well come by. They came by, they said, we love it. I said, you can take it come by. They came by with two or three trucks over a couple of weekends, took everything I didn’t want, and then they showed me pictures. Their son’s sitting on a couch playing a game. I’m sitting there going, well, gee, if I ever want to see my parents’ house, I just have to go over there, right there at home.
And the funny thing is now, because I’m still residentially fluid is Reverend Linda Lakes talk about, I’m in this position too, but my very friend who I met that first day, I walked in the pick a cup. I’m right now staying in her basement as a long-term guest. So it’s just amazing how this cycle keeps going when you’re willing to take a little step, one step outside your comfort zone, take a little leap of faith, and you see how rich your life can be and how abundant you will feel. So as I would say, your abundance is within you, but you got to step outside your comfort zone. You got to step outside your sticky thinking and challenge some of those thoughts you believe as to why you might be where you’re at, if you’re unhappy with where you’re at, or even just want to expand yourself a little bit. At this time though, everyone will notice that you probably have some cards and pencils. Does everyone have one?
As practitioners, we like to get you to practice. We don’t want to just talk to you, we want you to absorb it a little bit. So we want you to do some practicing. So I’d like you to take a few minutes and just write down maybe one or a couple thoughts that may be sticking or maybe limiting your abundance in some way, shape or form. Also, be aware of maybe how you maybe judge certain groups of people, like if you think that rich people are selfish or greedy, that could be a limiting thought and prevent limiting your abundance from living in what Lisa Nichols will call your true light. And just write some of those things down. Don’t worry, it’s private. We’re not going to read ’em out loud. I’ll give you a few minutes. Is anyone missing any cards or pencils?
You could take just another few minutes and no rush, but at this time, so if you’re ready, we’re going to have garbage pails, I guess. If you really want, maybe convince Piper to eat it as part of your homework, per se. So here’s what you’re going to do. Everyone can come up whenever you’re ready, and I want you to rip it up, throw it in the trash, because when you put something in the trash, it’s out of your life and you can say a little prick and say, I released this stinky or sticky thinking, whatever resonates with you. Or you can just toss it away knowing the fact it’s gone and you’re releasing that limitation and that limiting belief from your life. Feel free to come up anytime. Whenever you’re ready and take your time. Feel free to do it with authority if you want,
Release it.
Has served you, but no further. There’s some people who just have to do both. Alright, we got one more. All right. I never forget about Tony, and then we’re going to take that out to the trash and it’s gone forever. Just knowing that we are now one with abundance, and I am grateful for each and every person. I’m grateful for City Sign. I’m grateful for this opportunity. And with that, and so it is.