Whenever I get a bit of extra money, I always invest it in personal growth, which I would assert is synonymous with learning to be happier with less. Who is richer: the man with the house on the hill constantly fearful of losing it, and constantly desirous of getting more; or the person who has mastered his or her inner domain, and is able to live quite contentedly in a shack somewhere?
This is of course a commonplace, a truism, the sort of thing that pedants preach and rarely practice. But could we not consider that the great avarice of our time, the great and frantic, overwhelming thirst to have more and more and more is symptomatic of spiritual emptiness?
This, too, of course, is a truism, but one that can have practical consequences.
What is wiser: taking an expensive vacation to relax, or learning to relax even while working? What is wiser: amassing objects to enjoy, or learning to enjoy all the things which have been provided for free?
Where, in short, should you be spending your money?
The short circuit in all this, the great problem among ideas which are otherwise logically irreproachable, is that most people who claim they can provide happiness don’t. Most self help courses are bullshit. Most cynics are justified in their cynicism. Your emotional need becomes merely a means for them to buy more trinkets and more praise for their worldly success. As much good as Joel Osteen has done–and I don’t dispute him this, and only single him out to provide a specific example among countless others–he has still chosen to live in an enormous mansion.
People think of voluntary relative poverty as a punishment. You wear the sack cloth to punish your body and all its sensations. You seek misery in this life to attain happiness in another world. This is stupid, in my view. It is vanity and folly.
There is nothing wrong with happiness. There is nothing wrong with living a life of pleasurable sensations of all sorts. There is nothing wrong with pursuing the appreciation of beauty, of love, of taking pleasure in both work and rest.
What is needed is the capacity for digestion. Gorillas are able to amass their great strength on a vegetarian diet. They make the most of what they have.
My vision for a future world is one where people are able to digest experience sufficiently well that they can live extremely well, extremely happily, on very little. This is my answer to those who want to depopulate the world to “save it”. What is needed is not violence, but meaning; not anger and brute force, but reasoning and methods of the soul. This is the path forward.
My own work, of course, is oriented around finding things that actually do work, and eventually putting together a system which yields uniformly positive results. Even if I am wildly successful, I don’t plan to ever pay myself more than $100,000 a year in today’s dollars. That amount will purchase anything I could conceivably need, and one day even that may be excessive. Money will not buy me love, or the esteem of others, or self respect, or the capacity to fully enjoy the days remaining to me.
I will add that some of the things that are not in my view bullshit are the Hoffman Process, Holotropic and Integrative Breathwork, Kum Nye, the EmWave2, Somatic Experiencing, EMDR, Emotional Transformation Therapy, and seeking out and regularly enjoying beautiful art, particularly music.