Money
“The best things in life are free, but you can give them to the birds and bees. I want money. That's what I want…”.
That song captures the essence of this world we live in: 1) we cannot legally get any material thing without buying it through an exchange for money, and 2) we determine our happiness, success, and sense of fulfilment from the material wealth we accumulate – the more money we have the happier we are. In our world, money is the ultimate goal. So, of course the song by the Flying Lizards is an anthem for humanity.
We are brainwashed into unconsciously believing that if we do not work to earn money, we are lazy “slackers” with no direction or ambition in life. Here’s the thing: we can have direction and ambition – we can even work very hard for something we believe in – but if it’s not aligned to the money-making world we live in, we will not make lots of money, and we will not be examples of success in this material world.
I know someone who runs a small business in alternative healthcare – they provide psychological counselling and coaching to individuals. This person has a strong belief – a conviction – that helping people who cannot (for whatever reason) help themselves is a meaningful and noble mission in life. Of course, that is true: helping others to be better humans is a good thing.
Unfortunately, this small business owner can only serve so many people per day. For example, if they were to see 12 people a day at a consulting time of 45 minutes per person, that’s a 9-hour workday, excluding 30 to 60 minutes for lunch. It’s also a very demanding day, as the business owner is constantly listening to a variety of complex problems with a view to guiding “patients” to find a solution. Now, if the business owner charges $120.00 per consultation (which, in my opinion, is quite a steep price), the daily gross income is $1,440.00. Across a working year of 222 days (excluding weekend days, public holidays, annual leave, sick days), the gross income is about $320,000.00 per year. That might sound like a lot, but it must cover operating costs of running the practice before the business owner can draw anything as personal earnings. Then there’s personal income taxes. For the person running the small practice, the final net income position is not much.
The small business owner in the above example is not a lazy “slacker” with no direction or ambition in life. They’re working very hard to gain a net income that is very low relative to the effort they’re expending. This is the problem with our money-driven world: if we cannot make money “at scale”, so that we become insanely rich for doing very little, we will never amount to the “fame and fortune” this world loves so much. Another problem is this: if we want to make insane amounts of money in the limited 24-hour period of each day, we must work longer and harder in that day – basically we must sell our soul for our job and money.
Many of us believe that money is everything in life, and that if we are to be anyone of any importance in this world, we must have lots of money. Many of us even go to the extreme of believing that the more money we have the better we are in comparison to those who have less money than we do. That is dysfunctional thinking – having more money than anyone else does not make us better than those with less, it just makes us wealthier than them. There is such a thing as “money without character”, where very wealthy people turn out to be the worst example of humans on the planet – they epitomise greed, arrogance, conceit, callousness, and very low emotional IQ. But I guess that’s what The Flying Lizards were saying when they sang “The best things in life are free, but you can give them to the birds and bees. I want money…”.
So, why am I even writing about this? As regular readers of my articles know, I believe that our ability to transcend this world and integrate with the ONE true God depends on our ability to find soul consciousness and spiritual enlightenment. If we are blocked in our efforts to find such soul consciousness and spiritual enlightenment, then we will struggle to transcend and integrate.
Chasing money for wealth and success in this world is a major “blocker” in our search for soul consciousness and spiritual enlightenment.
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus Christ is recorded as saying:
“No one can be the slave of two masters: he will either hate the first and love the second or treat the first with respect and the second with scorn. You cannot be the slave both of God and of money” (Matthew 6: 24).
This is telling us that for as long as we fixate on the ways of this world and constantly work to earn vast amounts of personal material wealth, we will not find time for soul consciousness, spiritual enlightenment, and integration with the ONE true God. Ultimately, this means that we will be prone to staying in this world and constantly returning to it (through reincarnation of our un-enlightened soul) to perpetuate the money-hungry existence of a mere human mortal.
Later in the same Gospel, it says:
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “I tell you solemnly, it will be hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Yes, I tell you again, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven”. (Matthew 19: 23-24).
This is telling us about a place – a gate – in the wall surrounding the ancient city of Jerusalem that was known as the "Eye of the Needle". It was a narrow gateway into the city. Camels heavily laden with goods and riders would have to be dismounted and un-loaded before they could pass through the gate. It is a metaphor for the “rich man” – that is, to enter the kingdom of heaven – to integrate with the ONE true God – the person fixated with vast personal riches and success in this world will need to “unload” their soul of all worldly ways, physical earthly body, and material wealth before they can enter.
Can we live in this world, chasing money and our dreams of wealth and success, and still look forward to entering the kingdom of the ONE true God when we die from this world? Perhaps we can, but it will depend on how much soul consciousness and spiritual enlightenment we find.
There is a passage from the Gospel of Philip that says:
“All those who have everything should know themselves, shouldn’t they? If some do not know themselves, they will not enjoy what they have, but those who know themselves will enjoy their possessions”.
This very important passage deserves much reflection.
“Those who have everything” does not refer to those who have every material possession they ever dreamed of having in this world. It’s saying that those who have attained soul consciousness and spiritual enlightenment have everything – that is every thing of any real importance and every thing that exceeds all material possessions. Those who have this “everything” know themselves because they directly experience themselves as the soul that is in their body, as the essence of being. They experience themselves as the spiritually enlightened soul that is from and with the ONE true God. For those who know themselves in this way, material wealth and success are of little importance – money is just a means to an end in this dysfunctional world of the Fallen. We use money to buy things because that is the way of this world – that’s all there is to it. Accumulation of material wealth is a delusion and an illusion.
Those who do not “know themselves”, will not enjoy what they have. Even if you are the wealthiest person on this planet, if you do not “know yourself”, you will not enjoy what you have, because you will be using your wealth to serve your own material ego with no regard for the soul or spirit of the ONE. Money will be your god, and you will not find integration with the ONE no matter how much money you accumulate. But, if you “know yourself” you will find ways to use money (to spend it and not cling to it) to perform the will of the ONE true God on earth; if you can do this, you can live in this world and look forward to entering the kingdom of the ONE when you die from this world. This is what is meant by “those who know themselves will enjoy their possessions”.
Image: Lloyds of London, London, England, United Kingdom. Copyright - Michael Beaton
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