You can’t have that ice cream sundae with whipped cream and a cherry on top if you don’t have a bowl to put it in. That’s pretty obvious. What’s not so obvious is that this is true on many, many levels.
Experience shows that most people who win the lottery jackpot tend to lose all their earnings very quickly. This is such a well-known phenomena it has a name: “the curse of the lottery.” Why does this happen? No “bowl” = no sundae.
That “bowl” is a spiritual concept known as containment, and it applies to many things in life. Want to know why happiness is so elusive, why love doesn’t last, why success is sometimes hard to find or keep, and why so many lottery winners experience the curse? No containment.
From an inner perspective, the sundaes we seek are joy, love, serenity, power, freedom, confidence, and the like. When we have the inner strength to receive and hold these goodies, our outer world reflects them in lasting love relationships, close friendships, success and fulfillment at work, and overall, a really great life.
But we first must build that container to hold those sundaes in place. That container is made up of awareness, emotional maturity, integrity, detachment, and self certainty. These qualities result in an internal strength and joy that become the beacons which attract and hold the good things in our lives … and get us through the rough patches.
And while you may have a decent container, you must watch for “holes in your bucket.” We weaken our strength with things like self-pity, fear, shame, neediness, self-doubt, irritation, complaining, and inertia. These are simply obstacles, distortions that must be dealt with in order to have the great life you know is possible.
You can avoid the curse of the lottery – you can have your ice cream sundae and eat it too – by developing a strong personal foundation.