There is no distinction between a spiritual practice and wantonly consuming material goods. Both produce the same result. Guaranteed.
So go ahead and consume all you want. Or live your life as an ascetic.
It doesn’t matter too much really.
And don’t worry about the planet. It is easily handling the demand. Though it seems like it’s not.
We know, science isn’t on our side.
That is, if we had a side, science wouldn’t be there. Not yet anyway.
Whether you’re determined to master meditation, go vegan, drive an electric car and recycle everything or generate enough wealth to buy an Airstream, a yacht, five houses and a G-5, you’re eventually going to come to the same realizations.
Everyone arrives at the same realizations after death.
Some, again, on both paths, get there before that.
That’s rare.
Those who do are venerated. Bill Gates–Deepak Chopra. Leonardo DiCaprio–Eckhart Tolle….there are endless examples of the venerable on either path.
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Some say you can not be spiritual let alone experience higher consciousness while pursuing material satisfaction. These people sometimes see consumerism itself as possibly the worst invention of modern civilization, and the most conspicuous consumers, a scourge.
But when you consider where all this material stuff comes from, how it is produced and why, you discover something interesting: the pursuit of material satisfaction is just as powerful a path to “enlightenment” as any spiritual one.
That’s because, all things material, including the pursuit itself, is a spiritual process.
To explain:
Where do things come from?
Every invention starts with inspiration. Whether it’s Facebook, Medium, A Tesla, or BlackKKlansman, creation starts with an idea. Where do ideas come from?
Science will tell you they come from associative processes in the brain which constantly fire in the background of conscious awareness. But there are many steps prior to that process that happen that science doesn’t know about.
These steps take place nowhere “near” the brain. Let alone in the brain.
For example, we recently were designated a Medium Top Writer in the Racism tag. We had no idea there was even such a thing as a “Top Writer”.
One day three weeks ago, we got the impulse (a strong urge) to share our work on Medium. We had been sporadically doing so, but two weeks ago, that strong desire turned into a process where we gradually attained a three-story-a-day publishing regimen.
There was no problem in our mind needing a creative solution. We didn’t even think about how to attain Top Writer status, let along in the Racism tag. We simply started including Medium as a publishing outlet of our work, enjoying the artistic process along the way.
We know the coordination of events in the physical world which had this result show up in our life experience occurred in a “place” we call The Moment Of Becoming. That place doesn’t exist anywhere in physical reality, and is certainly outside the brain. Rather it is a conduit through which material reality emerges.
This is why we practice being more immediately responsive to our intuitions. We have seen so much evidence that intuition is not a random, unreliable source of knowledge, but a highly accurate, intelligent and reliable guide to getting everything we want.
Even things we don’t realize we’re wanting. Until we have them. Such as this Top Writer thing.
The inspiration to increase our publishing on Medium came from somewhere.
Where did it come from? From that no place we call The Moment Of Becoming.
It is the same place a desire for a car, or a bigger house or a better job comes from: an innate process all humans have and use as expressions of aware-ized life experience.
Aware-ized life experience, which is what you are, desires more of everything. As those desires are satisfied, satisfaction births new desires propelling aware-ized life experience “forward”….along the lines of specific desire focuses, or “channels” or, as Seth calls them: Value Fulfillment.
Inspiration is individual guidance from the larger part of who we all are. It indicates paths through which Value Fulfillment can ultimately be experienced, in a given moment of the collocation of time, space, events and participating expressions of aware-ized life experience.
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A person is born with a natural desire to create. She seemingly fumbles around for a bit in life until she gets her footing and tunes into her intuition –– her innate impulses “sounding” from “non physical” and received in The Moment Of Becoming.
All during the fumbling she is creating, but indeliberately. Indeliberate creation is valuable too. So it’s not wasted energy. No more than the millions of seeds a tree produces, only a very few of which actually become trees.
Intuitive inspiration doesn’t just come out of nowhere, it results from a long series of deliberate and focused attention resulting in a momentum of accretion around a value fulfilment unique and inherent to the individual intuition receiver.
At some point our intrepid human follows that inspiration. It doesn’t matter when, because, like all of us, she is eternal. As she gives more and more attention to the inspired idea, resources in the form of people, money, opportunities and events accrete around her.
This process is sometimes delayed by a person who is not naturally attuned to what is going on. A person might try to use the world of “doing” or “action”, manipulating matter, people and events, in order to fulfill intention. Those naturally attuned to this process we’re describing, use far less action, are much more effective and enjoy the journey far more than those who aren’t.
Some time later our individual has a product or service or some kind of value or usefulness to offer. The gestation is perfectly culminated to coincide with the desire for said product or service. Or….due to one or many factors, there is a delay prior to the co-incidence of events wherein eager consumers are ready to consume said value.
This delay humans like to call “failure”.
Which is a misnomer, because there really is no such thing. Just like seeds that don’t grow into trees aren’t “failures”.
In the former instance, where everything comes together easily, consumers consume said invention and life moves on. In the latter, an infinite number of alternative events can result, depending on how the maker reacts to the gap between desire expression (wanting to create value for others) and actual desire realization (having someone consume said offer).
Both parties – consumers and producers – are collaborators in this process. Inventors invent based on input from those who want the invention. That communication happens in non-physical, then is “seeded” to many potential “inventors” simultaneously, which explains why multiple inventors will have the same idea at the same time.
It also explains why patent law is a joke.
But that’s another story.
Collaboration includes aware-ized life experience expressed in the physical world as the material resources used to make the product or service. All matter is representative and contains within it aware-ized energy. Everything is alive, in other words.
The satisfaction gained by all parties in the consumption of the thing –– from the smallest particle to the largest instantiation…a planet perhaps –– and the value produced is the “more” that was only “potential” when the seed of inspiration got planted.
Thus, with the blooming of invention leading to the delight of consumption, the universe, All That Is and all participating parties become more.
In an ideal world, humanity would work its wonders to create more and more efficient and useful (i.e. valuable) ideas which increase the capacity and efficiency of its productive capability as well as the productive enjoyment of humanity’s physical environment, with no resource exhaustion.
Expanding desire would cause resource expansion and both would keep pace with each other in an ongoing expansion of everything.
We see this happening despite obvious signs to the contrary.
But the timing of “desire” and “fulfilment” is wonky because humans pay too much attention to What Is Happening, lose connection with their invincibility, experience fear and insecurity and act from those places.
This connection loss opens a can of worms too complex to go into here. Suffice it to say, we see the world today, where “waste”, seeming resource depletion and environmental destruction are the order of the day instead of what we’re describing.
And yet, underneath all this is what we’re describing: everything working wonderfully in an elegant and consistent orientation towards more and better for everyone and everything.
The problems humanity faces are due to many factors, one of which being the belief that goes something like this:
“Everything has a cost and if you can’t tell me how to pay for it, I’m not going to support it. And if I have to pay for it and I don’t agree it should be done, forget about it, particularly if it benefits others, or makes them lazy. People should work for what they get.”
Desire causes opportunity for desire satisfaction, leading to desire fulfillment, then more desire and thus more “more”. Beliefs like the above just slow things down greatly delaying the process and leaving those who could enjoy satisfaction not enjoying it.
Until after the death moment.
Aware-ized life experience has an insatiable desire for more. It will always desire to experience more of itself. This positive feedback loop –– the desire to have more experiences is partially responsible for you (being an instance of aware-ized life experience) being eternal: it’s just not possible for you to come to an end because you are constantly creating more life experience through experiencing your life experience.
How Consumption Equals Enlightenment.
As we said above, some achieve great prosperity allowing a level of material freedom that affords freedom of time and resource abundance. Sometimes in this state, a person begins to look inward or outward, or both. They want to do good. And they want to be able point to the good and say “see, that’s because of me”.
Of course everything aware-ized life experience does leaves an indelible, positive mark on physical reality. Most people don’t understand that.
So they “try” to become more than they perceive themselves to be.
That is the same outcome some “spiritual” people can also arrive at. For every single spiritual guru we can think of has turned to do exactly what some very wealthy people do. They just do it in ways consistent with the path they are on.
Some spiritual “finders” tend to also become wealthy. Particularly those in the west. In those cases we see them trod both paths: spiritual and material, blessing the world and people as they go along.
But no matter the path, those who make it while still in a body is small. In fact, there are a lot more who don’t make it than those who do.
The following is going to get heady….
What Is Happening and How The What Is Happening Is Happening
People get stuck in another feedback loop, where they don’t understand the “How The What Is Happening” part of What Is Happening. Thus they get lost in the happening, instead of understanding the How The What Is Happening Is Happening.
Lost there, they see the world as random, uncaring dangerous and risky. Their only recourse is to try to take charge of the What Is Happening part. They are oblivious to the How The What Is Happening Is Happening part, even though the “How….” part is the funnest, most enjoyable part of the whole process making up the “What…”.
Thus the challenges in the world.
Racism, sexism, Trump and his supporters, the alt right and the alt-left, Russia and the US, wars, poverty, disease, etc. All sides of any “issue” are oblivious to How What Is Happening Is Happening. Instead they are dazzled by What Is Happening.
So they take sides.
In their dazzlement, they stumble through life fighting against What Is Happening, where they have no power instead of focusing on the “How…” part, where all their power is.
Thus, they suffer.
With the right guidance a person can easily navigate their awareness from the What Is Happening, back to the How What Is Happening Is Happening, regain their power (and their invincibility) and therefore be a Conscious Creator Of Reality.
That understanding, and the deliberate creations which results from that, is enlightenment.
Few are doing that right now, but oh, boy how times are a changing!
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There is no difference between living “spiritually” and living immersed in a consumer lifestyle. Both create experiences which can but usually do not produce lasting fulfillment and unshakable happiness. Not until after death.
Which is why, when it does happen, we venerate such people for their rarity.
The ultimate path of humanity is to become a vast collection of super human individuals in a vast civilization of super humans. We’re speaking both materially and spiritually since they’re one in the same.
We’re a long way from that. But we’re happy with a civilization of ordinary humans, punctuated every now and then by individuals who are super human.
The venerable position of “invincible super human” is available to everyone. Both paths can lead there.
Everyone gets there eventually.
So don’t sweat it. Consumer or Ascetic. You’re on the right path. And eventually, you’ll arrive.
