The Recession From A Spiritual Perspective
I thought I would meditate on the current economic downturn to gain an inner perspective on this global situation. An inner perspective is looking at something from the 'inside out' as my guru used to say. The 'inside out' perspective is a meditative perspective. It can reveal surprising information and insight into a subject or situation that would otherwise escape us, as this perspective draws directly for the Omniscience of God.
To get into this perspective I first need to identify at least three external ramifications of the global economic slow down. The most obvious ramification is the climate of insecurity. This insecurity encapsulates the fear of loss of income, job insecurities and general money matters. The second ramification are those who have lost their sources of income and the difficulties they may be going through in managing their finances and looking for a new job. The third ramification is the uncertainty of recovery. With many predictions of recovery time creating an air of confusion. I package these three ramifications neatly in my mind as three basic emotions and state of mind which are, fear, depression and confusion.
Holding three points of concentration and meditating by dissolving each one into God's Consciousness is a meditation technique that is called samayama. It can reveal surprising and useful information.
The vision that I got from this meditation, is that this economic down turn is a cycle of nature. One might think that nature is climate, birds and trees, space and the such, but money? Yes wealth also follows a cycle of nature because the people manage wealth and people are products of nature. Our natural urges that causes us to buy and sell come from within us and as much as we might think that wealth or more specifically money is an inanimate product, its flow is dictated by nature.
As the vision progressed, I saw the cycle of ecology working on the larger economics. This cycle is the most basic supply and demand cycle. Ecology keeps nature in a state of balance. If there is too much of something, then the opposite entity that will consume whatever that is in excess grows, thus maintaining the balance.
These are the two visions that I got. The product of samayama are terse visions like these that give clues to deeper understanding. As I pondered these visions after the the samayama session, the first question that came to mind was, 'what in human nature got too such an excessive extent that it warranted such a drastic collapse of tradtional system of wealth management?' The answer was obvious, it is greed.
Greed is part of human nature and it is responsible for this massive financial collapse that is effecting millions, even billions of lives with tribulations. When greed took over the global financial system, it colored peoples mind with a dirty green of amassing unequitable amounts of wealth for themselves. This process is most clearly highlighted by the Bernard Madoff scandal (which I am not going to bother to get into since there is enough information out there about it).
My purpose of doing this meditation is not only to find the source of this problem from the 'inside out' but also to look for a practical lesson that can be learned and applied. Finding the source of the problem is the first step. Now that the source is discovered the easy part is deriving the lesson, but the toughest part will be application of the lesson.
It is a basic lesson, don't get greedy. Greed first seems to give, albeit for selfish ends, but invariably it will end up taking away more than it gave in the first place. As the cycle of nature has it, we are now forced to live by principles of frugality, in managing our resources more wisely, of not wasting, of living by our means, of being content with getting what we need even if we cannot get all that we want.
If we do learn the lesson of not being deceived by greed again much good will come out of it. One of the most important outcome of applying the lessons from this global trial is much less wasteful spending, which is good for our planet as a whole. After all if people bought less stuff, there would be less rubbish to be dealt with, which means our environment will benefit tremendously and of course we will benefit from better climate. After all isn't drastic climate change a bigger trial that is looming on the horizon; is not greed also the cause current climate crisis that is getting more serious by day?
When I ponder these thoughts deeper I shudder to think of what is yet to come as our weather gets more intense. This intensity in climate is also nature bringing our exploitive greedy nature in check. In a sense I tend to think that God is giving us a warning of what is yet to come if do not learn and apply the lessons of responsible wealth and resource management and not wasting. These are basic lessons really, but ones we need to learn and apply quickly. Otherwise we are in for facing a greater blow to our greed's pride, one that is much more ominous than our current situation.
So lets do our part. Lets be careful how we spend our resources. Lets adapt our desires so we glorify contentment in life instead of short term gratifications of materialism. Lets be concerned about the little things like recycling our resources, not wasting what we use and inculcating the younger generation in this culture.
We have time, but we must not dally in the complacency of waiting for things to get better so we can continue our previous patterns of excess in the future. We must be proactive, we must turn this negative energy created by this recession into a positive habit pattern, so the we do not need to learn the same lesson from the same old mistake, especially since the next time around the lesson will be harder. We must make a difference and do our part in conservation and being more benevolent and not greedy.
Search My Hindu Page Website
|
