As I see more and more countries, there is slowly a frightening feeling that people's greatest motivations are the #geld is. Man seems to be trapped in a never-ending machine called a monetary system. Whatever country you visit, money comes to the forefront; India, Kazakhstan, Portugal, Spain or France. The animal survival mechanism holds us hostage within the limits of our conceptual reality. Reality consisting of carefully constructed and recurring 'thought systems' and beliefs. What is the right way to deal with this? Is money just energy that flows in the form of matter and manifests things that are bubbling up in our minds? I do not want to build a philosophy around this, rather to find a practical approach to the perpetual issue that affects many people.
Once upon a time there was a wise man whose name I don't remember who said: People are strange creatures, first they work half their lives to gain money and prosperity. In the course of this work, their health deteriorates, and then they spend their accumulated wealth to recover the lost health. The same health they lost in the rat race to get the money and prosperity.
It is not exactly the literal takeover of that quote, simply because I did not find its author on the Internet. I posted it here to make an idea clear. Things that now appear on the screen serve first and foremost to encourage the reader to think and introspection. If there is a common thread in this kind of blogs, that's it.
At this point, I think that money is mainly the result and not the cause of things. Through your education, thinking and the growth that you make as a human being, you eventually attract the resources you need to provide your livelihood. Take, for example, an application procedure in India. If you apply in that country to work in a hotel (although in the tourist areas), the first thing they ask is your knowledge of English. An Indian must have at least a basic knowledge in order to be admitted to this 'hotel sector'. Don't get me wrong I generalized a little, yet I think the people who know the language are in the favor. The chances of them sending you out if you don't know English are much bigger anyway. In other words no knowledge —> no job —> no money —> no possibility of further self-development.
Money is a fruit hanging on a tree, make sure you have a healthy tree with deep roots, and the universe provides everything you need in time and space at a given time. Consequently, the focus should rather be on skills and your own development as a human being and not the means of livelihood.
The second point that strikes me is that if you spend money freely without having to make it difficult, it returns. It's like a flowing river, and if you try to stop it, the place starts to stink and it becomes a swamp. That means help others where you can, spend for things that make you happy and avoid stinginess.
The moment this is written, I'm inside the walls of a fortress somewhere in India. The fort is located in Jaisalmer and it is a large tourist patch that gets thousands of people across the floor every year. I'm sitting on a plastic chair somewhere on the side of the street and observing everything that's going on around. Underneath me there is a dog, restlessly looking for something edible. For some reason it has assumed that my left shoe is quite worth a bite. For me, there's a guy pointing a big camera at my face. Probably to adjust the sharpness, or to photograph my frustrated face while trying to save my foot from the mouth of the street dog. A song from the American play is played from the music system of the coffee shop. It's an old kind of song, from the 70's or 80's, this kind of music creates an atmosphere of nostalgia from times gone by. Times that were seemingly better than what's going on on on our globe right now. To my left there is a street full of rickshaws, scooters, cows and tourists, trying to reach their destination at a great speed. For me (behind the photographing guy) a group of tourists arrives, accompanied by their guide. He explains to the umpteenth group of tourists what this falling apart fort represents. Within the walls of that fort are several hotels, shops, restaurants and many other things. I live in a hotel somewhere inside this walled whole. The owner is a friendly man who does a lot for his Western fellow brothers. And while I try to produce something sensible in all that noise and chaos, a smile is bubbling outside. It's nice to notice that you're living the life you dreamed of. Traveling in India is like loving a woman, sometimes it makes you euphoric and indescribably happy and sometimes you want to jump off a rock without a parachute (preferably towards the sharp points). It is a very dynamic place with a high percentage of 'an unpredictability level'.
Money means resources, and resources are for survival, which means that you need to have a healthy foundation in order to grow further. Countries that cannot provide this base to its citizens result in a group of people who are mainly concerned with survival. India is a textbook example of such a country. In case you are a seeker who wants to find something higher, whether it's enlightenment, life wisdom or a higher philosophy, chances are that you will return disappointed. This here is a subjective blog, and I also try to clarify the situation for myself by writing. Personally, I find that they are mostly in the dark in that country. Astrology, fortune tellers, yoga, meditation, ayurveda has become a big commercial circus (I myself spent months doing all these things). And this in the country that has had such giants as: Buddha, Bodhidharma, Mahavira, Krishnamurti etc.
In a distant past on the banks of secondary education, as a pustfully covered teenager, I got acquainted with the need pyramid of our best friend Abraham Maslow.
In my experience, Maslow has a point regarding the hierarchy. First, we need to get to a level that meets its basic needs and so on. Only then can there be slow growth to #spiritualiteit and introspection. You are not going to start looking for the meaning of life until the needs have given you satisfaction to such an extent that you realize how meaningless they really are. A nice car, wife, good food etc. It's nice to a certain point, but after a while when you've had all those things you'll end up in a void. You start to realize that these things can never fill this void, and it's only then that a crisis arises that leads to a search. There are also exceptions, life is not black and white, but also has gray tents. There are people who want to become a monk from an early age and dedicate their lives to God, philosophy, meditation etc. Here I am only talking about collective masses of people. In India they are still too stuck in physical, safety and security levels to look beyond those two. In other words, however paradoxical it may sound, the probability that someone is genuinely engaged in big questions of life is much greater here in the west than there in the east (India/Kazakhstan). We already have the basics, and can afford more to think about self-realization, they do not yet have that basis and therefore strive for higher stairs first. That does not apply to everyone, there are a lot of exceptions, I'm generating a little here to clarify things. I can quite earn that there are very rich people living in India, which is also something that was often told by the people I met in the course of my 'hanging' around that country.(If you want to gain more insight into the motivation theory of #Maslow , you can easily find everything on the internet.)
Finally, I think that money and spirituality do not exist separately, but are in fact the branches of one and the same all-embracing and penetrating intelligence. Some call it god, others the higher consciousness and others the Dao. You don't have to sit half naked in a cave with unhygienic dreadlocks as your only companion. You can live in a big house and drive in a BMW and still be connected to the all-pervasive reality. It is not about material or external reality rather about internal reality.
This quote I came across in a Western Union office somewhere in Delhi:
