Everyday Enlightenment, page 11
Making Money, Making Choices
Most people grow up, find work, spend money on themselves for a while, maybe even save or invest a little money, eventually settle down with a partner, create a household, and pay rent or a mortgage.
Based on our choices and priorities, our needs expand or contract over time. Shall we get married? Have children? Buy new clothing or used clothing? Live in the suburbs and commute to work? Send the children to public or private schools? State or private colleges?
If you earn a bare subsistence income, your choices are relatively few. The more you earn, the more choices you have. Those choices, even more than your income level, will determine your financial present and future. If you make choices that result in spending less than you earn and saving even a little money, regularly and consistently, you are well on your way to mastering one basic skill of money management: Spend less -than you earn; earn more than you spend.
Meanwhile, notice the choices you make.
Man's greatest riches is to live on a little with contented mind for a little is never lacking.
—Lucretius
The more money you make, the more you will seem to need. You'll find that you can quickly grow accustomed to a different level of service and experience, moving up from three- to four- to five-star hotels. A rowboat becomes a motorboat, a cruiser, a yacht. Desires are infinite. Escalation can be endless.
What Money Cannot Buy
Money cannot buy security, because security is a psychological state. To some, it means having enough food to eat, clothing on your back, a shelter over your head, or someone who loves you. To others, security requires millions of dollars in tax-free accounts around the world.
Money can't buy happiness, either. In one telephone survey, 275 people in the San Francisco Bay area were asked if they believed that they would be significantly happier if they had a million dollars. Seventy-six percent of the respondents replied, “Yes. Absolutely.” Then the research company contacted ten millionaires and asked them, “Did making your first million dollars make you a happier person?” The response was unanimous: “No.”
The best things in life—the sun in the morning and the moon at night—are free. And money doesn't guarantee happiness. But financial abundance does offer a number of practical benefits. Sleep, for one thing: very few affluent people stay up late worrying about having too much money. Money also buys privacy, space, and silence.
Wealthy people do have problems, but they have less to do with survival. There may be some forlorn rich people and some delighted poor people, but on the whole, managing your money certainly gives you a leg up.
Earning a Living: The Right Career
Most of us need to produce income. Why not do so in a manner that uses your talents and interests while providing a tangible service to others? It can be nearly any kind of work, from the high-paid pressure professions to part-time hourly wage earners, or the all-important work of caring for and raising children.
Soul Work
Banish the illusion that certain professions are inherently better than others. A job or profession is only better or worse for you, depending upon your tastes and values. There are people in every field who are happy with their work and others who are unhappy with it. The key is finding work that matches your values and challenges your capacities. Finding the inherent meaning in any work is one of life's great blessings. More accurately, you don't find meaning in work; you bestow meaning upon your work. We have become befuddled by status professions and star power, while the Eastern traditions are filled with stories about master butchers, Zen bakers. I once met a very interesting old gas station attendant. And there was another man, I recall, a carpenter by trade. . . .
Finding or creating the most suitable livelihood—or making the most of your current occupation—can become one of life's most creative challenges. Relatively few of us figure out what we want to do when we are young. Most of us happen upon, it, the same way the winds of fate carry us to our spouse or home. Still, the better you know yourself, your interests, and your values, the easier time you have finding your soul work.
Psychologists who do career counseling offer vocational interest tests that help you evaluate what vocation might be for you. You can also consult Richard Bolles's career hunter's classic, What Color Is Your Parachute?
In the meantime, take a few minutes to consider and write down a list of ten of your primary values (such as health, solitude, group interaction, financial or spiritual rewards, or the right geographic location). Sort them from the most to the least important, and let these values guide you in any job searches or changes.
It can be said that the goal of life should not be to get rich, but to enrich the world. The secret of satisfying work is to provide quality in whatever you do. Appreciate your work as a means of spiritual development; use it to serve, connect, lend a helping hand, and make your labor an offering for the good of the community.
He is well paid that is well satisfied.
—William Shakespeare
Trampoline and Career Change
our income flow has its ups and downs just like bouncing on a trampoline. There may come a time when opportunity calls but entails a pay cut. Unless you are prepared to tighten your belt and simplify your life, you may miss the boat.
Stay flexible. Don't get locked into your standard of living, current purchasing power, lifestyle, location, and options. Sometimes the only way you can rebound to a higher plateau is if you are willing to drop down for a while. Life may require you to back up in order to get a running start.
If You Can't Find the Perfect Career, Create Your Own
I enjoy telling the true story of Ron Kaufman, a friend who loved nothing more than to play Frisbee and see those plastic disks glide through the air. But he was thirty-five years old, and his parents suggested he grow up and find a real job. In addition to tossing Frisbees, Ron had a larger vision of promoting world peace. One day it occurred to him to combine his passions. He contacted the representatives of the Wham-0 Company and asked if they would sponsor him to fly to the then-Soviet Union and provide him with five hundred Frisbees imprinted with the words “World Peace” in English and in Russian. They agreed, and Ron became a Frisbee goodwill ambassador, teaching people throughout Russia to play the game and talk about peace. Ultimately Ron formed a company that led goodwill Frisbee tours to Russia, where he also met his wife. Doing what he loves, serving other people, Ron thrived, along with his business. The moral is simple: If you can't find a career that satisfies you, invent your own.
Those who view money as an incidental benefit of work they enjoy for its own sake seem to be the most satisfied with their lives. Ask yourself this: “If I had enough money to live on for the rest of my life, what would I do with my time?” When you have the answer, find work in that area if you can. If you became wealthy and would nevertheless spend some of your time doing just what you now do for a living, you are fortunate indeed.
Every kind of work that provides a service has innate meaning. It doesn't have to make you famous, or dispense charity, or be connected directly to healing or spiritual teaching. If you provide a helping hand, whether behind the counter of a grocery store, building automobiles, cleaning someone's home, doing market research, mowing lawns, working in sales, or practicing law, your work, and the relationships you develop with the people you meet through it, can shed light and provide a vehicle of transformation.
My friend Lou was a stockbroker and insurance salesman—but the way he saw it, that was just an excuse to get in the door and meet people, and maybe provide a service. Maybe they did business and maybe not, but Lou considered himself successful only if he shared some laughter and some light. Maybe that's why Lou was such a successful person. He was also a very good stockbroker.
Simple Principles for Sufficiency
In Walden Henry David Thoreau described how by living frugally, growing his own food, building a hut with scrap lumber he'd found on some land near Walden Pond, he would have to work for only six weeks a year to earn enough to live a quiet, contemplative life. There is much to admire about his experiment (which lasted a season or two), but such a life is not for everyone. You may not want to follow Thoreau to Walden Pond, but here are some simple principles that you can follow:
Live Below Your Means
Many of us believe our main money problem is how to make more of it, but how we spend it is in fact more important. Because as our income increases, so do desires and expenses. It's all a matter of scale. Many wealthy people end up in debt.
Money is so easy to spend that an alarming number of us have put away little or nothing toward our later years. Applying fiscal discipline is a central part of managing your money. Most affluent people become and stay that way owing not to extraordinary incomes, but to an unassuming lifestyle and the self-discipline to spend less than they earn, while investing the rest.
According to Thomas Stanley, author of The Millionaire Next Door, the road to financial independence is paved with frugality—letting consumption take a backseat while you doggedly cultivate financial stability. Twice as many millionaires have a credit card from Sears than from Neiman Marcus; most drive Fords. On the other hand, many with moderate incomes often fail to create wealth because they spend money on things of relatively little lasting value, like flashy cars and clothing or expensive vacations.
Pay Yourself First
Make it an ironclad rule to pay yourself by putting away ten cents of every dollar you ever earn until you are seventy years old, and teach your children to do the same. Before you pay the bills, before you pay the IRS, before you give to charity, put that money away as if it never existed and learn to live on the rest, no matter what. Put aside that 10 percent in a safe nest-egg account or very conservative investment and let compound interest work for you all day and all night over the years. Never mind the fancy investment strategies, schemes, and experts. If you do have money to experiment with, that's icing on the' cake. In a true emergency, give yourself a few days to decide if you really need to draw out any of the principal to spend. Never draw out more than half of the principal. At the age of sixty-five or seventy, it is yours to do with as you wish.
Earmark Your Money
Whether your income is derived from a salary with taxes withheld, or whether you are self-employed, one of the most practical steps you can take in managing your money is to create a budget, clearly earmarking your money for distinct purposes. Once you've created the budget, stick with it. While this is not a radical idea, obviously few of us put it into practice, given the level of credit card debt in this country. Unless you already have tax withholding at your work, divide your income—every $1,000 you make—as follows:
• Immediately put away 10 percent of every dollar you earn into your savings.
• If you are self-employed, put aside whatever percentage of your gross income (20-40 percent) that goes to state and federal taxes, and social security.
• If you donate a share of your income (say 5 percent) to charities, earmark that fund next.
• Put 5 percent into an account for Christmas, Hanukkah, or other holidays.
• Put another 5 percent into a vacation account.
In the preceding model, that means immediately setting aside from 45 percent to 65 percent of your income (depending on your tax bracket) toward retirement, taxes, charitable donations, holidays, and vacations. The remainder (35 percent to 55 percent) of your income goes to monthly living expenses: the mortgage or rent, food, utilities, medical care, and so on. The precise percentages may vary from household to household, but the principle is the same—earmark and budget your money. Exerting this financial discipline will eliminate a great deal of pretax as well as postretirement stress. Such fiscal discipline is far easier than the live-for-today, if-you-have-it-spend-it approach, but you gain self-reliance and self-respect by taking responsibility for managing your money in this way.
The Two Essentials of Business Success
In order to succeed in nearly any business enterprise, whether you work for a large corporation or are self-employed, you must operate on these two principles:
1. Be good at what you do. That means ongoing study, practice, innovation, and refinement. Treat your work as a form of skill training. Never believe that you are as good as you can get. Each day, each year, strive to master your work. No matter what you do, if you become one of the best in your field, you will do well (if you also pay attention to the second principle).
2. Be good at promoting what you do. There is no telling how many exceptional, gifted people exist in every field who are not successful because they were unwilling to promote themselves. I know extraordinary musicians whose songs will never be heard by more than a few people, while the top forty charts include many forgettable but well-promoted clichés. It's a sad irony that those most dedicated to their art or craft, who most love what they do, understandably want to spend their time getting better at what they do but fail to grasp the need to promote themselves.
Ask yourself: “Am I good at what I do? Do I provide a valuable service?” If the answer is “No,” then stay out of sight and work at improving what you do. But if your answer is “Yes,” then blow your horn! You can't help anyone if they don't know you exist.
Whether or not you have any innate interest in promotion and marketing—whether or not you enjoy it—it has to become at least half of your job, your energy, and your attention at the beginning stages of a new venture. Promoting your business helps you to help others and provide a valuable service in the world as only you can do it.
The Soul of Money
It is easy to get lost in the practical details of managing money and forget the higher purpose of this gateway: to provide a foundation for spiritual practice and to free your attention from the task of survival. Lynne Twist, cofounder of the Hunger Project, put it this way to Michael Toms on New Dimensions Radio:
Money is an inanimate object [but] we can assign to it a spiritual meaning and voice and power if we choose to, and give it some soul. Money doesn't have any soul, but we do, and we're the people through whom money flows and with which money speaks…And when our spirit is unleashed, what's unleashed is the prosperity of the soul, of the heart…and in that truth, the whole world belongs to you.
When I became committed to teaching whatever I learned, more information poured in. In the same way, as you contact the joy of sharing your abundant spirit, more spiritual wealth pours down from the heavens, bathing you in its light. Managing your money provides another arena of practicing everyday enlightenment.
From that point of awareness, we turn now to the source of all beliefs—the mind. It serves as a prison for some, but for you it can also hold the key to freedom.
THE FIFTH GATWAY
Tame Your Mind
You perceive the world through an obscure window of beliefs, interpretations, and associations.
The world is therefore a reflection of your mind.
As your mind clears, you perceive reality simply as it is.
What does your experience of life reveal about your filters of perception?
Inner Peace and Simple Reality
We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts, we make the world.
—Buddha
Road Map:In the Realms of Thought
In his Republic Plato describes a group of people living deep within a dark cavern far from the light of day, seeing only their shadows, cast by firelight upon the walls. These dark shapes are their only reality, because they have never ventured outside the cave—indeed, they are unaware that there is an outside.
Plato's allegory of the cave goes on to describe how someone escapes from the cave into the sunlight of the real world. Having seen the light, he returns to the cave and tries without much success to tell the others imprisoned there about the real world outside. His words make no sense to anyone but a few adventurous souls who dare to venture with him, upward, into the unknown, toward a brighter, shining reality.
We are each living within the caves of our dimmed and distorted perceptions, seeing not the world, but our own minds. Tame Your Mind shows how to grasp reality as it is, beyond the shadow-play of thought.
Reality is not what you think.
A Fresh Approach
Now that you have seen the tip of the mind's iceberg, you are ready to look beneath the surface and gain access into the heart of the mind—see its all-pervading influence in every facet of your life experience. If thoughts are a muddy river flowing past, this gateway provides stepping-stones that allow you to cross to the other side, to a place of simple reality, humor, and peace.
This gateway reveals how to tame your mind—not by subjugating it, controlling it, or trying to quiet it, which you will see is fruitless, but by making peace with it.
We begin by exploring the hidden anatomy of the mind, including original, intuitive material I believe will one day be supported by scientific research. We then move on to several key areas, including filters of your mind and how they influence your perception, communication, and relationships; the nature of thought and the illusion of a quiet mind; a radical approach to finding inner peace; a fresh look at meditation; why no one can control thoughts; directing attention as a realistic approach to taming the mind; and, finally, a return to simplicity by living in the moment.
A Simple Self-Assessment
As in the other gateways, self-reflection and assessment prepare you for the territory of the mind. A self-assessment makes the material relevant and personal. If you are going to tame a lion, you had better know something about lions. The same applies to your mind. So consider the following:
