"True spiritual wealth
has an amazing property:
the more generously a person shares it,
the richer one becomes.”
T. Tess
"In this world the rich
it's not what we are that makes us
what we receive is not what we give.”
Henry Ward Beecher.
“He who is rich in knowledge is rich indeed,
but a rich fool is poor in every way.”
Sage Chanakya.
If you were given the choice to be spiritually rich or materially rich, which would you choose?
Wisdom is to harmoniously combine both spiritual wealth, So and material. Spiritual values, just like material ones, are equally important, valuable and necessary. Excesses and excesses in one direction or another lead to imbalance and disharmony in a person’s life. Only when united do wealth and spirituality bring happiness to a person.
How to combine spiritual and material wealth in order to be truly happy?
To do this, you need to understand a very important thing: everything that surrounds a person in the external world is a reflection of his internal state, his values, beliefs and thinking.
Successful people harmoniously combine both spiritual, So and material wealth, harmoniously revealing their inner potential, their purpose, they improve in the name of the highest good of themselves and other people.
A person who has material wealth, but does not have spiritual wealth, cannot be called rich and happy.
The same can be said about those people who consider themselves highly spiritual, but do not have a means of subsistence. If a person develops correctly, then he simply cannot be poor. What does it mean to be a spiritually developed person? This is, first of all, a person capable of wisely and harmoniously thinking and acting, a person with a high level of self-control, he feels and understands the laws of the world and the Universe, lives with them in unity, realizing himself in unity with God and the Universe, has an expanded consciousness, acting for the good of oneself and others.
A spiritual person loves both himself and other people. He understands that he is similar to the Creator and is endowed with the same Divine qualities and properties. Such a person simply cannot be poor, since the Universe itself will reward him. As they say: “According to your faith it will be given to you.” The better a person can demonstrate his talents and his uniqueness, the more material benefits he will receive from the Universe (i.e. from the people around him).
What makes a person truly rich is not having money, but wisdom and knowledge.
If a person is engaged in his personal growth, self-improvement, self-knowledge, has revealed his purpose, has pure thoughts; his creations bring benefits to people, then the Universe will definitely thank this person in the form of material wealth and abundance.
This is what is told in one wonderful Indian parable. One young man dreamed of becoming rich. He came to the sage and asked him how one could achieve wealth. “Know, O young man,” answered the sage, “two goddesses live in the heart of every person. One is called Saraswati and the other is Lakshmi. Saraswati is the goddess of Wisdom and education, and Lakshmi is the goddess of Prosperity and Happiness.
You strive for wealth, however, you must, first of all, strive for the goddess Saraswati, that is, study, reflect and work on yourself. Then Goddess Lakshmi will become very jealous of you for Saraswati. After all, women cannot stand rivals. She will try to attract your attention. And the more you pay attention to Saraswati, the more Lakshmi will follow you. Choose education, read books, do what you love, and then Lakshmi will be with you all your life.”
Using this wonderful parable as an example, we see how necessary it is to combine spiritual and material wealth.
The true path is this: striving for self-knowledge, wisdom and knowledge, improving in what we love, gaining spiritual wealth, we invariably receive material benefits.
If a person does not have spiritual wealth, then material wealth will not bring him any benefit or make him happy. Only in the harmonious union of the spiritual and material will a person find true happiness. And one should not be mistaken in thinking that some area is more important or more important. Only the “golden mean”, balance, harmony - this is the answer to the question, how to combine spiritual and material wealth.
Therefore, first we develop ourselves, fill ourselves with knowledge and wisdom, reveal our talents and, as a result, receive material abundance and well-being in all areas of life from a grateful Universe.
What should those who believe that they cannot find their favorite job and their purpose do? I can say one thing: don’t convince yourself of this! You can! It only bothers you:
2) Lack of faith
As soon as you cast away all doubts, fear, believe in yourself, decide to take specific actions, life will begin to change. You must believe in your own ability to achieve everything you want and need. Your faith must be based on your inner qualities.
So, how to combine spiritual and material wealth?
– Living and acting in the present, “here and now”
– Remembering that within you you have everything you need to live the life you dream of.
– Set goals and implement them
– Love yourself and other people
– Show your inner beauty and uniqueness
– Sharing your treasures with the world around you
– Remembering why you came to this Earth
To be unique, inimitable, unlike anyone else - to be WHO YOU ARE!
What do you think, dear friends? Please share in the comments.
For a long time I believed that wealth was an excess of something, something superfluous, something that I didn’t deserve. I believed that in order to become rich you had to either work terribly hard, or give up yourself in order to sell yourself for more, or attract wealth to yourself by great chance, win the lottery, or meet rich people who would help me financially.
For me, wealth itself was unreal. When I started working on limiting beliefs, I discovered that I unconsciously believed in poverty, in lack, in difficulties, in the fact that money is hard to come by. And, of course, I had all this in my life.
The feeling of the reality of wealth arose after I realized that wealth is the state of a person, his soul and mind. Wealth is not an excess of something, as I previously believed.
Wealth is the abundance of what you desire; it is the possession of an abundance of material and spiritual values. Wealth is a manifestation of your infinite creative essence.
Wealth reflects the inner state of a person, his values and beliefs.
It is only a mirror of what lives in his inner world. We create the world based on our inner values and preferences.
Of course, we did not consciously choose to be poor or to experience a constant struggle for survival, but our beliefs, which are so deeply ingrained in the mind, create the same picture of our reality every time in life.
For a person, what is real is what surrounds him, what he saw and sees, what he perceived and perceives while among relatives, friends, and various groups. If you have received the reality that money is not enough, that there is not enough of it, that the rich are dishonest, then this reality begins to reproduce and repeat situations with a lack of money. We learn and gain reality by observing our surroundings, we draw conclusions and accept what we see as fact.
As children, most often, we had no choice in what to believe. We simply believed what we saw and heard. We adopted the faith of our family, school, friends, only by constantly being in this environment and perceiving their beliefs, their stories, their problems.
We learned from others how to react in certain situations. And, if someone had a bad attitude towards money or rich people, we automatically, due to our sympathy and trust in the person close to us, unconsciously agreed with their beliefs, attitudes and reactions.
“Poor is not the one who has little, but the one who
wants to have more"
“He who lacks nothing is rich.”
Both of these aphorisms belong to Seneca and contain the banal truth that poverty and wealth are relative concepts. I believe few people will object to this truth. In my opinion, our standard of living can be represented as a fraction, with our capabilities in the numerator and our desires in the denominator. In the famous toast from the film “Prisoner of the Caucasus,” there are the words: “So let’s drink to the fact that our desires always coincide with our capabilities.” MATCHED! It seems to me that this coincidence is what we call “ENOUGH”.
If our capabilities (numerator) exceed our desires, we are rich; if our desires (denominator) exceed our capabilities, we are poor. From a mathematical point of view, the "wealth coefficient" is equal to one, and the "wealth and poverty coefficients" are higher or lower than one.
But all these are general, theoretical considerations, relating mainly to material well-being, not taking into account other types of wealth and poverty, which, however, are no less real. First of all, we can recall here the emotional wealth of a person, that is, his aesthetic development, the ability to deeply, subtly feel the beauty of nature, poetry, music, high-quality cinema, etc. Emotional wealth is directly related to intellectual wealth, that is, knowledge and the ability to think creatively. It's clear. In order to enjoy works of art, you need to know them, and creative thought is always passionate and full of emotions.
In accordance with the triple composition of a person (body, soul, spirit), emotional and intellectual wealth, in total, can be called spiritual wealth, which can be contrasted with spiritual wealth, which will be discussed below.
In my opinion, spiritual wealth is immeasurably more important than material wealth, just as a person’s soul is more important than his body. If a materially rich person is emotionally limited and poor, how can he use his wealth, what benefit can he derive from it? Palaces, yachts, cars, Swiss watches, fashionable clothes, first-class cognacs and wines, a TV on an entire wall - how can such blessings satisfy a soul striving for knowledge and creativity? A materially rich person can buy all the most significant works of world literature and put them on his shelf, but that’s all there is to it if he is mentally poor. At best, he will, from time to time, take books from the shelf, leaf through them, and then put them back with a sigh. Well, maybe sometimes he’ll look at pictures in books if he finds them.
One day, I walked down the street past an impressive jeep, shining with varnish in the sun. Such an expensive car left no doubt about the material well-being of its owner. And in this luxurious car there was music that could only be called music with great stretch. The low frequencies of the speakers hummed and hit my ears, and under this terrible roar, the voice of some pop singer squealed something. “Poor thing,” I thought about the owner of the jeep, “What kind of bullshit are you listening to. And I’ll come home now and turn on Chopin, Grieg, Wagner.” I would never change places with this rich man, just like he would with me. But here, as they say, to each his own.
Spiritual wealth is very different from mental (emotional + intellectual) wealth. A spiritually rich person is filled with himself and is little dependent on external sources of filling the mind. A spiritually rich person does not need a computer, TV, books, or music. Any thing, any activity will limit him, violate his inner completeness. I can’t imagine Ramakrishna or Seraphim of Sarov reading a book, watching TV or on a computer. I know from myself how much I don’t want to do anything in the morning (especially empty conversations) when the soul, renewed by a night’s sleep, has not yet had time to spill itself. Alas, only in the mornings.
Rajneesh has this idea:
“The mind needs constant occupation, otherwise the mind cannot exist. But if you feel that to be unoccupied, to have nothing to do, to just be, that it is full of meaning, significant, then you are a religious person.”
In my opinion, Rajneesh’s phrase ideally defines not a religious person, but a spiritually rich person.
Personally, I am not one of the spiritually rich people, because I am too dependent on external information. I need a computer, tablet, audio books, music recordings, etc. When one evening the lights went out in our apartment for a long time, I didn’t know what to do with myself, and I was bored. I was constantly remembering something, thinking about something, but with all my being I was waiting for the light to turn on.
Let me pose the question: should a person strive for spiritual wealth in his young and mature years of life, neglecting his emotional and intellectual development? I remember the spontaneous book markets of the 90s of the last century, sellers and buyers of esoteric literature. Some young men, in jeans, sometimes with pigtails, with detached looks, incomprehensible, mysterious... No, I don’t think that it is right for young people to naturally get carried away by Eastern practices, pacify the mind, go deeper into themselves, strive for some kind of self-realization and enlightenment. The correct sequence is needed: first mental development, then spiritual development.
A young man, in my opinion, should live a full “earthly” life: set worldly goals for himself, arrange his personal life, fall in love, make mistakes, make mistakes, discover the treasures of world culture of the past and present, and engage in creativity. This does not apply to people with monastic inclinations, who are initially alien to everything earthly, we are talking about ordinary people. And only at a certain age, when the main work of life is behind you, the time has come for retirement and grandchildren have appeared, can you begin to “pacify the mind” and accumulate spiritual wealth. It seems so to me, although I may be wrong.
I will add in conclusion that spiritual wealth, in the process of life, accumulates by itself, even if we do not strive for it. With age, our energy weakens, some passions die off on their own, and life wisdom appears. Seraphim of Sarov said about it this way: “Just as wax that is not heated and softened cannot accept the seal placed on it, so the soul, not tempted by labors and weaknesses, cannot accept the seal of God.”
The issue of spirituality is currently being considered very widely. Everyone has their own understanding of what it means to be a spiritually rich person. For some, this concept is inextricably linked with faith in God, some expand the boundaries of their soul and improve themselves with the help of Eastern practices, while others simply act as if they put the interests of others above their own, for example, as Mother Teresa did.
What does it mean to be a spiritually rich person?
A spiritually rich person is rich because he puts the needs of the soul, not the body, in the foreground. For him, it is not material values that matter, but those that contribute to the improvement of the soul. By showing interest in religion, painting, music, and other forms of art, a person learns about the environment and social phenomena. As a result, his inner world is filled, a person develops from different sides, becomes an interesting interlocutor, thinking, having his own point of view on everything.
A spiritually rich person strives for self-improvement. He learns new things, using the works and discoveries of famous artists, writers, and poets. The actions and actions of such a person are responsible and meaningful. Thoughts and motives always have a positive color, because he understands that the real treasure is not material values, but inner peace, fortitude and spiritual values. But for those who are interested in what a spiritually rich person should be, it is worth saying that the fullness of the soul is achieved not only through knowledge. Most often this is achieved through suffering. Trials change the worldview, as they say, turn the world upside down.
For those who are wondering what it means to be spiritually rich, it is worth answering that a person can accumulate knowledge all his life and never achieve perfection, but suffering does this in a shorter period of time. It happens that a single event turns the entire mentality upside down, crosses out the past life, dividing it into “before” and “after”. Often people then come to God, considering spiritual well-being as a relationship with the one Creator.
Distinctive characteristics of a person with a rich inner spiritual world- Such people emit some kind of inner light that seeps through a kind smile, the look of wise eyes and the desire to share their wealth with others.
- High morality is what is characteristic of such people. They are endowed with honesty and responsibility, and there is a sense of dignity in them, which is expressed in respect for others, goodwill and devotion.
- Such people do everything not from the mind, but from the heart. They understand the true meaning of God's commandment to “love your neighbor as yourself” and follow it.
- Modesty and forgiveness are what distinguish them. At the same time, we are talking not only about forgiving other people, but also oneself. They realize the depth of their mistakes and, first of all, repent of themselves.
- Peace and harmony live in their hearts. There is no place for base passions and emotions. They understand the meaninglessness of feelings of guilt, aggression or anger and bring only goodness into the world.
Of course, becoming a person with a rich soul is not easy. The combination of all factors plays a role here - upbringing and piety. You can be a devout person, but still not understand the meaning of faith, or you can read a lot and develop, increase your intellectual level, but remain callous in your soul and hate everyone and everything. In general, spiritual wealth is inseparable from forbearance, wisdom, patience and readiness to lend a helping hand to your neighbor at any moment. Only by giving, without demanding anything in return, can you become rich.
Not everyone can call themselves a spiritually rich person. Sometimes such controversial definition criteria are mixed or replaced with obviously incorrect ones. The article will tell you what signs are the most accurate and what it means to be a spiritually rich person.
What is it, spiritual wealth?
The concept of “spiritual wealth” cannot be interpreted unambiguously. There are controversial criteria by which this term is most often defined. Moreover, they are controversial individually, but together, with their help, a fairly clear idea of spiritual wealth emerges.
- The criterion of humanity. What does it mean to be a spiritually rich person from the point of view of other people? Often this includes qualities such as humanity, understanding, empathy, and the ability to listen. Can a person who does not have these qualities be considered spiritually rich? Most likely the answer is negative. But the concept of spiritual wealth is not limited to these signs.
- Education criterion. Its essence is that the more educated a person is, the richer he is. Yes and no, because there are many examples when a person has several educations, he is smart, but his inner world is completely poor and empty. At the same time, history knows individuals who had no education, but their inner world was like a blooming garden, the flowers from which they shared with others. Such an example could be A simple woman from a small village did not have the opportunity to receive an education, but Arina Rodionovna was so rich in her knowledge of folklore and history that perhaps her spiritual wealth became the spark that ignited the flame of creativity in the poet’s soul.
- Criterion of the history of the family and homeland. Its essence is that a person who does not carry a store of knowledge about the historical past of his family and homeland cannot be called spiritually rich.
- The criterion of faith. The word "spiritual" comes from the word "spirit". Christianity defines a spiritually rich person as a believer who lives according to the commandments and laws of God.
Signs of spiritual wealth in people
What it means to be a spiritually rich person is difficult to say in one sentence. For each, the main feature is something different. But here is a list of traits without which it is impossible to imagine such a person.
- humanity;
- empathy;
- sensitivity;
- flexible, lively mind;
- love for the homeland and knowledge of its historical past;
- life according to the laws of morality;
- knowledge in various fields.
What does spiritual poverty lead to?
In contrast to the spiritual wealth of a person is the disease of our society - spiritual poverty.
Understanding what it means to be a spiritually rich, whole person cannot be revealed without negative qualities that should not be present in life:
- ignorance;
- callousness;
- life for one’s own pleasure and outside the moral laws of society;
- ignorance and non-perception of the spiritual and historical heritage of their people.
This is not the entire list, but the presence of several traits can define a person as spiritually poor.
What does the spiritual impoverishment of the people lead to? Often this phenomenon leads to a significant decline in society, and sometimes to its death. Man is structured in such a way that if he does not develop, does not enrich his inner world, then he degrades. The principle “if you don’t go up, you slide down” is very fair here.
How to deal with spiritual poverty? One of the scientists said that spiritual wealth is the only type of wealth that cannot be deprived of a person. If you fill yours with light, knowledge, goodness and wisdom, then this will stay with you for life.
There are many ways to become spiritually enriched. The most effective of them is reading decent books. This is a classic, although many modern authors also write good works. Read books, respect your history, be a man with a capital “H” - and then poverty of spirit will not affect you.
What does it mean to be a spiritually rich person?
Now we can clearly outline the image of a person with a rich inner world. What kind of spiritually rich person is he? Most likely, a good conversationalist knows how to not only speak so that they listen to him, but also listen so that you want to talk to him. He lives according to the moral laws of society, is honest and sincere with his surroundings, he knows and will never pass by someone else's misfortune. Such a person is smart, and not necessarily due to the education he received. Self-education, constant food for the mind and dynamic development make it so. A spiritually rich person must know the history of his people, the elements of their folklore, and be diversified.
Instead of a conclusion
These days it may seem that material wealth is valued more than spiritual wealth. To some extent this is true, but another question is, by whom? Only a spiritually impoverished person will not appreciate the inner world of his interlocutor. Material wealth will never replace the breadth of soul, wisdom, and moral purity. Sympathy, love, respect cannot be bought. Only a spiritually rich person is capable of displaying such feelings. Material things are perishable; tomorrow they may no longer exist. But spiritual wealth will remain with a person for his entire life, and will illuminate the path not only for him, but also for those who are next to him. Ask yourself what it means to be a spiritually rich person, set yourself a goal and go towards it. Believe me, your efforts will be worth it.