Wealth and Spirituality

It was more difficult than I thought it would be to write this particular post in this series on wealth.  So I decided to start with a simple question.

How do I define spirituality?

Okay, not so simple.  It’s a word that means many different things to many different people.

For the purpose of this blog post I will define it this way:  Spirituality encompasses our morals and ethics, our capacity to love others as we love ourselves, our sense of justice and mercy, the level to which we are able to discern good from bad, the generosity, gratitude and grace we give, and a willingness to let everything go.

As I have mentioned in past posts, wealth is not just about money or material possessions, but also about being content.

Spirituality is tied to contentment and shapes how we interact with material wealth.  Material wealth and the allure of possessing more and more can negatively impact our spiritual health and contentment, but only if we become spiritually lazy.

Spiritual health is like physical health – it takes exercise and training to maintain.  More money and more possessions vie for our focus and time.  We start to worry about whether it is enough, where we can get more, how easy it might be to lose it all, where to store it all, and how to keep track of it all.  Over time we become more self focused and wary of those around us.  Are they trying to get at my stuff?  We even start to call close friendships into question while we make poor choices in new ones.

Yuck.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.  Spiritual health leads to contentment, and contentment is the key to true wealth.

Contentment is the ability to let things go.  Possessions as well as fears, ideologies, grudges, dreams and on and on.  I have only just begun to experience being content, but with practice it allows us to go places and experience things that we never would have otherwise.

Being content leads to a growing desire to live simply (this does not mean poorly!) letting go of the need for more stuff simply because it is shiny and available and everyone else has one (according to the advertisers).

Living simply means living on less, and as a result leaving more to save.  More to save means, you guessed it, more to build wealth and share.

Those most content in life have what they need, are satisfied with what they have in any circumstance, and enjoy sharing what they have with others.  They are not burdened by any of their possessions.  The few possessions they have are chosen because of the joy they bring.

Tend to your spirituality – it is like a garden, untended it grows wild with weeds and becomes ugly and overgrown, while properly tended it not only provides nourishment but beauty as well.