It is interesting, how life plays out like a novel. I couldn't fabricate some of the synchronicity and allusions and metaphors that show up in my life. It feels like a plan. It feels scripted sometimes. Maybe this is where God comes from? I spent my twenties trying to deeply cultivate trust in the idea of "going with the flow" and also a quirky little sub religion that I called, "the more you spend the more you get." The more you spend the more you get, sounds shallow and absurd but it is not. I can describe it better: open your hands, let go, stop worrying and clutching, what comes around goes around and comes back again. What can I say? It worked. I still feel it working in my life. And in there, I feel a spark of something like Buddha Nature or God or Goddess or Magic Fairies of Abundance.

One of the most profound things I learned at 21 was an idea, nearly shameful with its strange obscurity, for this middle class white girl. A hippie named Autumn, with actual flowers in her hair (ok, and a Budweiser in her hand) said it to me one day as we sat up in a bar on the Blue Ridge. "Katherine, we have enough." "There is enough, we have enough." Can you even stand the way that jolts through you? She elaborated, "Americans are taught to crave more. But we generally have enough." How pathetic, the shock of it. Marvelous, how this shock can mainline you into the stillness required to feel the truth.

What is this strange truth, that our feeling of abundance is so closely tied to our perception and our attitude? I unschooled this principal through my twenties and discovered that "the more you spend the more you get," is a valid and working life model. Like the Buddhist idea that it is impossible to stand on solid ground in this life, therefore, it could be helpful to learn to be comfortable with instability. The more you grasp and fret, the less abundant you will feel. The less abundant you feel, THE LESS ABUNDANT YOU ARE. Holy Goddess, did that sink in? If you feel impoverished, you are. If you feel the abundance around you, you live in abundance. This is an odd truth.

It works in a macro way. It won't keep your children fed and it won't insulate you from bad luck. You do have to work hard. But there is a way to move with a humble gratitude that actually and concretely manifests abundance in your life.

While I was busy trying to grow up and "let go" into my adult self, I got this beautiful underpinning of faith in chaos. And here is the very heart of my willingness to unschool the children. Chaos, instability, loss, and need are the facts. These are the human condition, even despite unspeakable wealth. If you can feel safe in that truth, you can find abundance. And you can see your children for the luminous creatures on their own path, that we all are.

We like to believe that the construct of school is a safe place for the children. We are, mostly all of us, guilty of the belief that school is a place where the children will be given the keys to abundance. But, (thank you Katie Byron) is that true?