SPIRITUALITY AND MATERIAL WELLBEING
When I speak about maturity of a soul, I mean not the maturity of a physical body but a soul who travels through embodiments. At first when a soul is young, active, desperate and energetic, it extremely cares about material values, power and glory. It rushes to that without seeing anything else. When it finally becomes stronger in the age of a young soul, this is often what it achieves, even though one still does not have spirituality.
What is its further journey? I think it is towards maturity of a soul. A soul will move forward on the road of evolution when it decides: “I’ll seek love, compassion, beauty, harmony, talent, etc.” An aging soul often losses ability to stand for what is important to it and defend it, it loses ability to maintain material wellbeing, that is, it loses qualities of a young soul while looking for qualities of a more mature soul. So it focuses its attention on the search of other values.
There can be creation of common, all-embracing wellbeing but this comes even later. You just have to consciously seek it; this is a big work of a soul. Certainly, a person who seeks natural wellbeing but neglects the environment receives karmic retribution not at once but later.
It is sometimes so that a person, who is rich, is rude and selfish: young souls have a big reserve, they get it in advance. There is a time when each soul has to learn to fight, seek benefit for himself or herself, learn how to transform substance from one form into another (this is what business does when a thing is created from a raw material; for this huge energy is put here and people learn resolution and courage). Later other tasks come.
The big mistake is that we look for redemption right here in this life while the law of karma is “extended”, “spread” over all embodiments and often consequences of some action come in two, three, four, five lives or even later. There comes an illusion as if there is no reward neither for good nor bad works. Spiritual blindness, disability to see in time, attempt to discover the whole law of karma and retribution in frames of one life: is what disturbs us. Then it seems that there is no need to seek virtues, even though you have intuition and feel which virtues are more subtle and higher.
question has been asked: “Why people, who seem to be unspiritual and unworthy, have material wealth, while people who seem to be more subtle, better and more spiritual, are struggling. Why is this so? Why so wrong?”
One stage is when a person seeks goal simply predatorily and egoistically, not choosing the means. He or she desires this very much and only because of this he or she puts lots of cunningless and their effort is worthy of it. Certainly, this is temporary. Later a soul develops, goes throught the period of a young soul and gets mature, seeks subtlety, kindness, compassion, sacrifice and, thus, topics of material wealth lose their importance and often are totally refused as luring and tempting, as something corrupting. And often people go too far. Attempting to tear themselves away from wealth, money and temptations, people go to monasteries, they turn to the road of total refusal of material wealth. Later a person is reborn in another life and he or she has this gift of sacrifice, kindness and subtlety, however, he or she lacks the material background. And this is when a person asks: „Why? Why a person, who ir ruder and more impudent has things and I don‘t?“ Then it becomes relevant to take a new look at the same thing that once you refused in your karma, in your past lives, often consciously. There comes a time to take a new look at the material wealth as a base, which is necessary and needed for evolution, balance and harmony.
People often confuse something when they speak about wealth.
Wealth is abundance, when there is too much of something, if we look at the very meaning of the word. But do we really use this word in this meaning? When we speak about wealth, do we not mean that we simply want to have good home, good food, proper clothes, and good quality instruments for work and studies? In the end, to be able to travel where needs of our personality, mind, soul and spirit guide us. And if a person has this, then according to the present concept, people say that he or she is rich. But if we looked at the very archetypical word “wealth”, it is not wealth yet, nevertheless, for this reason, I think we need to fix the attitude towards that. If you really speak of wealth as accumulating money, when you seek to have as much as possible, then I do not think that a spiritual person really needs this – this is not necessary for his or her evolution. But if you say that you need material base, quality shelter, food, work instruments, ability to create a bond with the world (i.e. travel, study and the like) you speak not about wealth but about wellbeing. In order for this wellbeing to return to you, you have to change your approach to it, to remove that shadow from the divine and blessed wellbeing, which you had given to it: shadow of disgrace and degradation.
You simply need to understand that if you want to have material wellbeing, you have to want it, do not disdain it, do not condemn it, and you have to strive to have it. You have to believe that it is possible in your life. It has to be a stable flow in your consciousness supporting the concept of the meaning of material wellbeing. This is needed and meaningful. You need energy which would keep its existence in your life, then wellbeing will be able to live in your life already in a new quality. You will be able to observe and learn how to seek this not in a predatory or egoistic way, but the way already a more mature and subtle soul should do, with the help of its talents and skills, so that it would not only be talented, creative but with a background of material wellbeing too. Much effort is needed here and this is possible when you constructively and positively think that material wellbeing is a natural background to express more subtle things such as talent and the like.
If you really think that material wellbeing is not necessary for a spiritual person and that these are contradictory things, then do not complain. Then with holy and immense modesty, moderation and asceticism accept the fact that you can have nothing, eat anything, wear anything, live anywhere and only help your close people whenever he or she needs. But will you not devastate yourself, for this road is more for a monk, who is totally devoted to asceticism and sacrifice, than a secular person. For if you are not such a monk or nun, if your attitude towards asceticism is not holy, pure and integral, then change your attitude towards material wellbeing, dare to want and seek that in a way that would not be greedy or wild. Be a spiritual person who sensibly creates his or her material wellbeing, does not despise one and does not look at others thinking why that person, who is fat, is so rude, impudent but has much, and I being such a subtle divine being have nothing. This is so because you despise, do not try, do not want, do not desire, do not put any effort, and thus, be happy with what you have: absence of material wellbeing, bad shelter, poor food, bad clothing and no background for studies, development, good instruments of work nor possibility to reach holy places or masters, to go and see things that are needed for improvement of your soul, spirit and personality.
Maybe I have been too strict in my speech but maybe this, nevertheless, will help you release these “loads” of the past when a soul often does really commit a crime seeking material wealth and later, it does not even want to look at it, on the whole. It sometimes lasts for a few lives, but then there comes a new stage and it is important to notice these new positive ways of how you can peacefully and harmoniously create an all-embracing wellbeing. I think that at the very beginning you have to believe that this is possible for a secular person and then become a harmonious and humane person who, nevertheless, little by little, peacefully and wisely accumulates his or her material wellbeing as a base of his or her general wellbeing.
