Here in the material world what matters is what we do, not our intent. It is all about the results. Because we are judged by our actions, the temptation is obtain a certain result, and often by whatever means possible. “The ends justify the means” is something often said. This is the consequence of living in an apparent world. We are not punished for violating the law, we are punished for getting caught.
We create rules and laws so as to maintain order in the material world. The benefit of creating the rules is that we can amend them to fit our desires. After time, we equate what is legal with what is moral and ethical. More often than not, honesty is motivated by fear rather than a need to live by Spiritual truths. Ultimately we seek material security and we see this as best achieved through wealth and power. We are like babies, who play peek-a-boo. They think that if they can’t see you, you can’t see them. A desire to feel significant motivates us to meet or exceed whatever society currently deems the standard for being valuable.
If Society applauds charity, we will be seen as charitable, if it is money, we will appear to have money. If it is beauty, we will do whatever we must do to look beautiful. We seek to look good. When the light shines on us, we want to be viewed as special. Most of us judge ourselves by the judgment of others. Someone can go to church or to Temple every week, and be certain to tithe the appropriate amount to be seen as a charitable church going person. Monday, that same person can lay off hundreds of workers in order to avoid having to deal with a decrease in his or her lifestyle – unfazed by the lives being destroyed in order to maintain a level of opulence.
A knife can be used to cut the food that we eat, and it can be used to kill. We have found that almost everything that we create can be used to enhance lives or destroy them; the choice is dependent on our free will. So, we have been given the ability to use logic, reason and creativity to make the world into a Heaven, or to justify why it is not our responsibility. If there were a Satan, then the extent of his power would be to present us with an opportunity to make a choice. Everything in our lives creates a choice. And as a race, as inhabitants of this planet earth we have all participated in making the choices that have led us to where we are today. It is very easy to see that the problems that we face are the result of greed, greed we attribute to the comparatively few who control the greatest amount of the world’s wealth. But that is the easy answer. It is easy to blame them because they are sitting on piles of money while we are waiting for the crumbs that will no longer be flowing downward – but we are all, or the majority of us are equally to blame.
The system that ensured that the wealth of the world would eventually settle in the hands of a privileged few has been fought for and protected by us, we the majority who hoped that if we fought to maintain the system – we too would one day be on top of that mountain and reap the rewards of that system. Those who have are no greedier than those who want. The difference is positioning – not intention. The Capitalist system that has evolved – as it naturally would is by its design exclusionary. It is a pyramid by continued design and fortification. Most of us have not fought for an auto executive’s right to make $50,000,000.00, we fought so that, the right to make that money will be waiting if we get there. Capitalism was never unfair until it became unfair to us. We don’t follow the obviously – built-in trail of Capitalism that leads to poverty unless that poverty leads to us. Everything that is a reality becomes so because there is enough emotional energy behind it to raise it from the unmanifest realm to the manifest. We have fought to defend a system that only works because the bottom is heavy enough to support the top.
The system is wrong. It is not open and it is not fair. It is not built to be fair, and that is why we have liked it, because if and when we rise to the top, we too, want the ability to block all the entrances so that none of the wealth slips out. It seems impossible to imagine that anyone with a High School degree could not figure out that if we keep milking all of the resources from the bottom of the pyramid, thereby shrinking it, and pulling all of those resources to the top of the pyramid, thereby grossly enlarging it, it would become an inverted pyramid and fall. The only possible explanation for how we could have reached this point is that we have, in great numbers, become consumed with lust for the things of the world at the expense of our ability to see where this would take us all.
There are four basic rights which form the foundation of Capitalism. The four basic rights are: the right to private property. The right to keep all profits made after taxes, the right of choice and the right to compete with other business’. As with all rights, there is no limit to the extent to which one may go to defend those them. If I come up with an idea for a new kind of car, the major auto makers have the “right” to use their considerable wealth and power to make sure that my car never reaches the market. Capitalism eliminates the possibility of a free market. I don’t have a lobby. If a corporation chooses to pay all of the earnings to the upper management, while eating through the pensions of the employees, they have that right. However, under this system, the only right that I have as an employee is the right to quit. It has become almost the equivalent of being anti-American to criticize the Capitalist system, as though it has somehow replaced Democracy in our minds – somehow we have come to see the two as one, when in reality the fulfillment of one nullifies the other.
It is the Capitalist system that has spread like a cancer throughout the world and is eating us alive. Capitalism is not Democracy. Democracy is harder to spread. Equality is only popular with those who believe that they are not being treated equally. We are only at the beginning of the suffering that this cancer is causing in the world. We are like diabetics who are looking for another cause for our diabetes because we can’t face giving up sugar. I think that we all know how that turns out. We need to give up our search for happiness in money. People with money are not happy because of the money, they are happy in spite of it, and we need to stop buying the whole appearances thing. It is time for us to revision the American Dream. It should be the dream where everyone is able to have enough, enough food, enough shelter, enough love and therefore, enough happiness.
Those of us, who are not on the top of the material food chain need to seek joy in what we can all share, seek entrance into the club with open membership. And those of us who are hiding behind our golden gates, need to open those gates and find ways to share what we have that we will never need with those who need but will never otherwise have. This is a moment of choice. It is a time to reach into all of our hearts and light them up with generosity, and a desire for equinimity, or wait, just a little while longer and it will all be taken away as our world crumbles around us. At this time, it no longer matters what other people think about us based on what they see. Now we are being carefully monitored by the One who sees what no one else does, the One who sees into our hearts and watches what we do. It will never again look as good to have more as it does to give more.
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