The pulse of abundance

 

Sometimes I think that if I could draw my life not as a straight line but as a sine wave of well-being, I would feel less guilty about the downturns, less anxious about the pauses, less harsh toward myself on those days when nothing grows, nothing opens, nothing bears fruit. It is as if a secret intuition has long lived within me—that abundance is not a state but a movement, not a possession but a rhythm, not a guarantee but a pulse—it comes, withdraws, returns again, like the breath, like the waves, like prayer, which is sometimes spoken aloud and sometimes remains only as silence.

Today I am trying to write down this feeling not as a theory, but as a diary confession—because I carry it in my body, in my fatigue, in that strange sense of guilt that appears when I am not productive, when I am not “giving,” when I am not in bloom. Psychoanalysis would say that this is my internal superego—strict, insatiable, always demanding more, always dissatisfied with the pause. The spiritual perspective would whisper something else: that there are times for sowing and times for gathering, times for speaking and times for silence, times for light and times for darkness. And that none of this is a mistake.

Nature has known this for a long time. It does not apologize for its winter. It does not justify itself for being bare, cold, seemingly barren. It does not rush to become spring, it does not feel ashamed of its rest. Within it, the curve of well-being is clear, almost sacred—spring is promise, summer is unfolding, autumn is maturity and giving, winter is an inward gathering, the accumulation of strength, sleep. And when I think of this, I cannot help but ask myself: why do I insist on being summer all year long? Why do I demand of myself constant fruitfulness, constant clarity, constant abundance?

Inside me, there are seasons. There are days when everything flows—words come, ideas arrange themselves, the body feels light, faith is near. And there are days when I feel as if I am under the snow—thoughts are slow, movements heavy, prayer dry. From a psychoanalytic perspective, these are cycles of libidinal energy, of psychic investment, of withdrawal and return. Spiritually, these are periods of hidden work, of inner fermentation, of invisible preparation. And if I try to be honest with myself, I will admit that my deepest transformations did not happen at the peak of success, but in the silence of winter, when I had nothing to prove, when I was forced to stop.

There is something comforting in the thought that abundance has its own curve. That it is not a failure to be in decline, not a moral weakness to earn less—materially, emotionally, spiritually—in certain seasons. That winter is not a punishment, but a necessity. Within it, the seed does not die; it waits. It gathers strength. It learns patience. And I, like the seed, have the right to wait.

When I move unnaturally against these balancing processes—when I force myself to work, to produce, to smile, to be “functional” in a period that is essentially meant for rest—I feel something within me begin to crack. That quiet deficit of energy appears, the kind that cannot be cured by sleep or motivational speeches. Burnout emerges—not as a dramatic collapse, but as a slow drying out, a loss of taste, of meaning, of presence. Psychoanalysis would call it a rupture between the ego and the body, between desire and capacity. Spiritually, I experience it as a distancing from the rhythm of life, as a refusal to listen.

Sometimes I imagine that if we had an ultrasound of abundance—if we could see what usually remains hidden—we would notice that it is not a constant flow, but an impulse. Ebb and flow. Systole and diastole. The pulse of the universe. Energy comes in waves—it nourishes, enlivens, then withdraws, so that the body, the soul, the psyche can integrate what has been received. Nothing can be absorbed all at once. Nothing grows without a pause.

In this sense, winter is not poverty, but an inner wealth that has not yet taken form. It is a prayer without words. It is light hidden beneath the snow. It is that moment when you do not know what will happen, but you know that something is happening. And this not-knowing is painful, because the human psyche longs for control, for predictability, for certainty. But the spiritual path—if such a thing exists at all—passes through trust. Through permission. Through remaining in the dark without rushing to illuminate it.

There are days when I sit quietly and feel something move within me like a deep, slow breath. It is not joy, it is not sorrow—rather, presence. In those moments I understand that well-being is not always recognizable as abundance. Sometimes it is simply the absence of noise. The absence of pressure. The absence of the need to be something other than what you are in that moment. And this is extraordinarily difficult to accept, especially in a world that worships growth, speed, productivity.

Psychoanalytically, this is a process of mourning—mourning the fantasy of perpetual summer, the idea that we can avoid loss, emptiness, pause. Spiritually, it is an act of surrender—a conscious relinquishing of control, trust in a greater order that we do not always understand. And between these two perspectives—the psychic and the spiritual—I live. I waver. Sometimes I resist. Sometimes I surrender. Sometimes I simply write.

Perhaps that is why this text is a diary, not a manifesto. Because I do not want to formulate truths, but to leave traces. Traces of a slow learning—that when it is time to work, one works with devotion and presence, but when it is time to rest, one rests without guilt. That we cannot demand of ourselves to bloom in a season meant for roots. That well-being is not a constant state at the peak, but fidelity to rhythm.

And if there is a prayer in this text, it is a quiet one: to have the courage to be in my winter without rushing it; to recognize spring when it comes without fear; to give during summer without exhausting myself; to let go in autumn without clinging. To live within the sine wave, not against it. To trust that the pulse of the universe knows what it is doing, even when I do not.

And perhaps this is well-being—not as quantity, but as consent. Consent to be in process. Consent not to be complete. Consent to listen.