Seeing through the Illusion of Money and Power

A note to the desperate reader –

In your desperation you might ask, with considerable epithet, how the f*&^ reading a treatise on metaphysics is going to help you out of your situation and into a better life when all you really need is some money – just a wee tad of charity would do.  Well, not unlike you, many others are also in the same situation of having no money, so you might think that these people cannot be of any use to you. But consider the difference between having no money and facing fear and destitution, and having no money but having everything one needs and therefore no use or need for money. Considering that deeply should lead you to the oft-repeated conclusion that money isn’t everything. In fact, it isn’t even something. It’s a concept associated with power, and some power is necessary in order to better one’s life. But even power does not come from money, for money without clear thinking is quickly vaporized, and one’s situation of desperation is never lessened. So where does power come from? Ultimately it comes from God. So why don’t we pray to God for power and not for money? Isn’t it obvious that with power we can get money but money without power is never well spent and often leads only to deeper problems? So let’s stop the incorrect practice of idolizing money. We do not pray to God for money. That would be stupidity displaying itself, and it rarely works except in some special cases. What we DO pray for is power, or the knowledge of how to earn some money (or get by without it). 

Power is easily accessible with a few mental deviations from normal desperation thinking. First, we must stop. Stopping is by no means easy, so we have to understand why it’s important or we will not devote the time and energy to its mastery. Stopping is more difficult than we think because we have learned to believe that only through persistence, even in stupidity and without any recognizably successful plan whatsoever, will our goal of obtaining money without offering anything in exchange be accomplished. So with that belief firmly in mind, the idea of stopping seems like total disaster.

Why stopping is important

Nevertheless, in order to board the train to a peaceful benevolent existence on this planet, one must first be able to leave the disaster express, and it’s hard to jump off if it is not stopped. So stop it we must. This just means taking a moment or two to breathe, to calm the excitement that feels like normal life to us, and allow ourselves to relax just enough to feel ourselves once again. The depth to which one must do this is equal to the distance one has created from one’s soul through misdirected action. The soul is the recipient of power and wisdom from the divine. The self, that mortal part of us that is susceptible to fear, anguish and mistake, must be in a state of communication with the soul in order to receive enlightened inspiration and be able to act upon it in peace. This is why the great martial arts masters emphasize stillness even in the pitch of battle. This is why the masters of successful living such as the Sufis emphasize that the key to success is realization and the key to realization is self-control. If your self is running away with you that’s exactly what it is doing, running though the dark and scary streets in fear and desperation. And unless that is exactly what is happening to you, if you are actually sitting for the moment in some place of at least temporary safety like your home, then for the moment that fear is only a fearful projection and not a reality, no matter how imminent you may believe it to be. The resolution is not to be found in further fearful thinking but in the very calmness and peaceful living that you strive for. So learn to stop fearful desperate thinking and replace it with calmness and peace. Then you will have at least a fighting chance.

Stopping is the fifth branch of eight in the Ashtanga Yoga system, and is the essential prerequisite to the expected success of the remaining three. These last three are the time-tested and honored disciplines of the system of spiritual accomplishment practiced by yogis and other success-oriented practitioners the world over. They can and have been practiced, once learned and understood, in any circumstance, even the most depraved, such as imprisonment or starvation. So it is important that their understanding is embedded deeply in your soul. The word yoga means communion. It is the highly sought state of total immersion in the reality of ourselves and proportionately related to the extinction of our fears. It is the end of the lower self’s domination resulting in its total extinction with only the reality of truth remaining. These are the equivalents to the fana and baqa taught about in Sufi lore. These practices becomes easier once our resistances are recognized and overcome, because it is actually Divine will anyway and our ultimate destiny that they be accomplished. That’s why the only thing we are required to do is surrender, after which nature, under an overarching divine influence, will take its course.

Without the willingness to see through the illusion of money and power - and by that I mean seeing it for what it really is instead of looking to it as a means of salvation - it will be impossible to attain to the life of your dreams. This is because as long as you believe in the illusion of money and power you will be believing falsely, making an idol and questing for the unattainable. It will always be escaping your grasp, just as this concept seems to be uninteresting to you because you think you know it already and it’s not what you want to hear because it will not help you to obtain what you are looking for as your means of salvation. It’s a worthless quest, and I’m sure you disagree. But indulge me. Even those who have money and power live in constant fear of losing it.

So there is the hurdle to overcome. Without that willingness it is pointless to read further into this work, because it’s all about living in truth, which is impossible so long as one insists on living in falsehood also.

As long as you keep holding onto the impossible falsehood of “if only I had some money, if only I had some power”, you will never attain to the truth that will set you free.

And this discourse is all about that truth.

Look at your life so far. If you are still singing that “I’m poor, I’m poor; well it’s true, isn’t it; and don’t try to convince me otherwise with the foolishness of your positive thinking and prosperity consciousness; reality is reality” mantra, I have only one question for you. “How’s it working for you so far?”

Wasn’t it Albert Einstein who said “one cannot solve a problem with the same mindset that created it? “

Knowing what really matters

Think about it. Money is NOT what you really want - as an item alone it really is quite worthless. Its purported value is in what one has that earns it and what one spends it on. Think about the things that you really want and give up the useless quest for the useless. Money is only a medium of exchange, valueless in and of itself. Understanding the human qualities that actually earn money you will find that lowest on the list of priorities is money itself. None of the people who have plenty actually value money except for its usefulness as a medium of exchange. What is really taking place is the offering of some service or good in exchange for some other service or good of a perceived greater material usefulness.

Think about this final analysis because it is the key to understanding wealth and contentment.
 
Continuing to say “I have not” is not only a waste of time, it is totally self-defeating. Why would one want to cling to such a mindset? There is only one logical answer: revenge; to get back at someone; to show them the wrong of the harm they have done; to cause harm to another through causing harm to oneself.

The fundamental premise of prosperity is gratitude. In all divine scriptures the Benevolent Unity says to mankind that gratitude is the key to increase. How does that work, you ask? A functioning definition of Gratitude is “doing what you can with what you’ve got.” So to make that work you must take stock of what you’ve got, and you cannot do that while singing the old mantra about what you believe you do not have and what you want. So that mantra of death must be recognized for what it is and jettisoned from our repertoire of stories to tell. Once it is clear what is to be avoided, it becomes easier to focus on what needs to be done. And that is… 

We MUST take stock of our assets, spiritual mental emotional and physical. 

Attention is energy. As we begin to pay more attention to our assets and none to our shortcomings, they begin to increase in value - they take on hitherto unrecognized value. Remember, money is what one receives for something of value if one chooses to offer it in exchange. Bartering directly for the good desired from the money is also a means to attainment of the good. But the second aspect of the one who dreams for a living is to be actually aware of the good, material or otherwise, that one wishes in exchange for the money acquired.

In my case I can actually say that money has never been of interest to me and that’s why I rarely have any. But I can also say that I have all that I need. Knowing what the necessities of life really are (not money) and that these necessities will never not be there (as a promise from God) goes a long way to relieving the anxieties that cloud the rational thinking necessary to evaluate oneself in a divine light, thereby seeing the items of value that truly are in one’s possession and at one’s disposal for barter.

Another principle is: “If you can express your unfulfilled desire, you shall have it.” So knowing the reality of what you really want is important, because: “Ask and ye shall receive”.