Mustard-seeding–as I am coming to call it in my own life–pays in life. It pays in light.
There are wages of life and wages of death.
Money, itself, is an illusion, particularly now. It can be waved into existence and waved out of existence in unlimited “quantities”–nothing is really there for the most part–and the whole game depends on the collective stupidity of most humans (this problem exists to varying degrees nearly everywhere).
And if you think about it, what we want material things for is the EMOTIONS they bring. For the greedy power mongers, it is usually a sense of relative safety, in the face of a neurotic and continually nagging fear.
We value things for the feelings they bring. Pride is one emotion, but it is pride in the sense that you have MORE than someone else, not the healthy pride of honest work well done.
Money buys experiences. It buys sex and drugs and boats and planes and amazing vacations. The net effect of all of these? Emotions. Feelings.
Here is the thing: feelings do not DEPEND on things. You can be happier with the proverbial bowl of gruel than with a personal 3 star Michelin Chef. Contentment is the best seasoning and sauce is I think a proverb.
Much of spirituality comes from finding riches by seeking out the emotions directly that are desired. What we REALLY want, what are really satisfying, are purpose, connection, gratitude, joy, tranquility, and a sense of loving and being loved by people who truly understand us. None of these depend on objects.
One of the many truly awful things about Leftist dogmatism is that it works to impoverish most ordinary people while ALSO denuding them of all the latent means by which process and appreciate their diminished lives. Means specifically like religious belief, and honest ethical theory, both of which are explicitly denigrated in Leftist ideology. Some music and dance is perhaps allowed to remain, but little else. Their culture–which exists to provide these props and aids–is largely destroyed. Leftists take not just physical wealth, but spiritual and social wealth. It is not hard to see all this as Satanic in tone if not in explicit intent (which is also possible).