The rich have a higher chance at enlightenment than the poor

[thespiritual1]

I will explain three reasons of my foresaid opinion.
1. A rich person will have more exposure to life as compared to a poor or middle class person. He can do all kinds of things in life. He can do stuff that the poor people do but the poor can not do what the rich can do. So basically a rich person will have a greater experience of life than the poor. This will give him a better and satisfied mind, unlike the poor. Such a mindset will be more meditative than the unsatisfied mind of a poor.

2. Maslow's Heirarchy: A person first needs some basic necessaties such as food, shelter, safety. After that he needs love, affection, acceptance in society. In the end, when he has everything, he looks beyond this world towards spirituality. Simply put, a rich person is most likely to be interested in spiritualism.

3. I say this from personal experience that I would like to sit and meditate in a room where no one disturbs me but I am unable to do that. I dont have the time to do that, nor do I have the place. I am a middle class student and I have no choice but to study and establish my career so that makes it impossible for me to become enlightened. Only if I was a rich person, I would buy a place and a refrigerator and I would store a lot of food in the refrigerator and then I would sit down to meditate for as long as required and then I am hopeful I would become enlightened.

What are your thoughts about the relation between wealth and enlightenment?
Also share your analysis of my opinion. Thank you.

[inavalan]

There is no relation between wealth and enlightenment.

The dream-you gets enlightened every time he wakes up. So can you.

[Blue Tiger]

In theory, yes, being wealthy could make the path to enlightenment easier.

But in reality, no. So many of the rich get sucked into maintenance of their wealth and their wealthy life-style. So many just cannot get "enough" no matter how rich they are.

The person who learns to make do with having just enough, and does not thirst for wealth and power is actually in a better position to become awakened. Because they already feel that they are okay and aren't fighting for a bigger piece of the pie or worrying about how to protect what they have, they have both time and peace of mind. Those two factors greatly increase the likelihood of raising one's energy and learning spiritual lessons.

Honestly a rich person is the least likely to be interested in spiritualism. Rich people are far more likely to feel competent, confident, and self reliant. Quite often they also enjoy feelings of self-importance.

Those attitudes don't really lend themselves to the search for a greater force beyond the 3d world, nor to the acceptance of self as part of something larger.

[JustBe]

Originally Posted by thespiritual1

I will explain three reasons of my foresaid opinion.
1. A rich person will have more exposure to life as compared to a poor or middle class person. He can do all kinds of things in life. He can do stuff that the poor people do but the poor can not do what the rich can do. So basically a rich person will have a greater experience of life than the poor. This will give him a better and satisfied mind, unlike the poor. Such a mindset will be more meditative than the unsatisfied mind of a poor.

2. Maslow's Heirarchy: A person first needs some basic necessaties such as food, shelter, safety. After that he needs love, affection, acceptance in society. In the end, when he has everything, he looks beyond this world towards spirituality. Simply put, a rich person is most likely to be interested in spiritualism.

3. I say this from personal experience that I would like to sit and meditate in a room where no one disturbs me but I am unable to do that. I dont have the time to do that, nor do I have the place. I am a middle class student and I have no choice but to study and establish my career so that makes it impossible for me to become enlightened. Only if I was a rich person, I would buy a place and a refrigerator and I would store a lot of food in the refrigerator and then I would sit down to meditate for as long as required and then I am hopeful I would become enlightened.

What are your thoughts about the relation between wealth and enlightenment?
Also share your analysis of my opinion. Thank you.

Exposure to more life certainly opens you to life in a greater variety of connections and experiences, that exposure can bring to you more awareness of life, as life is. In saying that, each person who is on the spiritual path more aware and conscious in this way, still has work to do. The life choices and experiences still require one to be open, surrender and realize themselves through a more conscious self aware way of being. I am someone who has allowed my experiences and people to open me, strip me back, make me face myself in my suffering and conditioned state. I let my life show me myself. I still had to work with myself. Stay present with everything in myself. The way is the creative means, your presence can be present anywhere you are in your life experience. Money doesn’t buy you your inner ticket to freedom, you purchase that, you do the practice. Through the lived experience itcan be harder and more difficult because you have invading external forces that require you to deal with not only yourself, but the awareness of the other or experience you’ve chosen. It can be a bigger load to work with. I speak from my own experience in this way.

If people have all their foundational needs met, this definitely gives them a heads up. The ‘filling up’ at this level lends a more bountiful foundation to work more focused on your other needs at the spiritual level. In fact most of the spiritual journey is about feeling complete and connected to self and the world, so having these platforms is a great boost to fill up in others ways spiritually.

As for yourself,this is your opportunity to connect to the world as your life is and just be open with intention to grow. Let life open you. It’s what I did. Your circumstances are not permenant, it’s a temporary stage of your life, everything comes to you as you need for your process and journey, just not always in the way you believe it will. Your life is your process, it’s already created and in formation of itself. Whatever choices, money or no money, will be as you choose in life itself. Each day you wake up and greet the world is and can be the practice.

Gratitude, open heart, willingness to show loving kindness to anyone on your path. At the end of day, reflect where you noticed yourself reacting, troubled, afraid, angry. There’s a whole days worth of meditation and self awareness awake and walking it!

[Native spirit]

Wealth means nothing to spirituality because it toutches rich and poor alike having money can make things easier,
but it does not affect spirituality.
and how spiritual you are the poorest person in the world could be more spiritual than the richest.
spirituality is a way of life having respect for mother Nature having compassion for others etc.
that is my opinion anyway


Namaste

[running]

Originally Posted by thespiritual1

I will explain three reasons of my foresaid opinion.
1. A rich person will have more exposure to life as compared to a poor or middle class person. He can do all kinds of things in life. He can do stuff that the poor people do but the poor can not do what the rich can do. So basically a rich person will have a greater experience of life than the poor. This will give him a better and satisfied mind, unlike the poor. Such a mindset will be more meditative than the unsatisfied mind of a poor.

2. Maslow's Heirarchy: A person first needs some basic necessaties such as food, shelter, safety. After that he needs love, affection, acceptance in society. In the end, when he has everything, he looks beyond this world towards spirituality. Simply put, a rich person is most likely to be interested in spiritualism.

3. I say this from personal experience that I would like to sit and meditate in a room where no one disturbs me but I am unable to do that. I dont have the time to do that, nor do I have the place. I am a middle class student and I have no choice but to study and establish my career so that makes it impossible for me to become enlightened. Only if I was a rich person, I would buy a place and a refrigerator and I would store a lot of food in the refrigerator and then I would sit down to meditate for as long as required and then I am hopeful I would become enlightened.

What are your thoughts about the relation between wealth and enlightenment?
Also share your analysis of my opinion. Thank you.

1. the more access one has for things the more addictions to break to open one up to spirit. not that having things has to be a problem. but the devotion needs to be on the goal and not the stuff.

2. people fast for development.

3. one has to become able to deal with distractions or there really isn't much development. yes it helps. but at some point sooner or later the distractions can't block the flow. that is the goal anyways.

4. i work stupid amounts of hours a week. most days im trading sleep for meditation. or vice a versa. many days i only have an hour to meditate.

5. it does help to find a job that is more rather than less compatible for ones development. over the road trucking for my make up is perfect for me. 99% not for others. but there is something more compatible than less for everybody. but even with something that isn't doesn't mean it cant still be with a little thinking about it and new perceptions while doing it.

[Unseeking Seeker]

***

Intriguing line of thought, essentially proposing that we need to first conquer the material world before entering the spiritual one.

Assessing whether this is valid or not may be assessed by whom? Perhaps only the one who is still struggling for the basic needs of life ... if he or she says that it is not relevant to inner connect, then such an affirmation may hold good.

As a well known case, we have the Buddha, who was born a king and then walked away one day into the wilderness. When he was enlightened he was at that time, a hermit. Or Ramana, living as a recluse in a mountain ... based on these and many more examples, it would seem that material wealth is irrelevant unless we say that we must first have it, then renounce it and shift attention inwards.

Eventually anyway, when in a continuum of a meditational orientation, there is a seamless & continuous state of bliss which is unaffected by the external ... although the Universe does playfully throw a pebble now & then to create a ripple in the stillness for the sake of variety!

***

[God-Like]

Originally Posted by thespiritual1

I will explain three reasons of my foresaid opinion.
1. A rich person will have more exposure to life as compared to a poor or middle class person. He can do all kinds of things in life. He can do stuff that the poor people do but the poor can not do what the rich can do. So basically a rich person will have a greater experience of life than the poor. This will give him a better and satisfied mind, unlike the poor. Such a mindset will be more meditative than the unsatisfied mind of a poor.

2. Maslow's Heirarchy: A person first needs some basic necessaties such as food, shelter, safety. After that he needs love, affection, acceptance in society. In the end, when he has everything, he looks beyond this world towards spirituality. Simply put, a rich person is most likely to be interested in spiritualism.

3. I say this from personal experience that I would like to sit and meditate in a room where no one disturbs me but I am unable to do that. I dont have the time to do that, nor do I have the place. I am a middle class student and I have no choice but to study and establish my career so that makes it impossible for me to become enlightened. Only if I was a rich person, I would buy a place and a refrigerator and I would store a lot of food in the refrigerator and then I would sit down to meditate for as long as required and then I am hopeful I would become enlightened.

What are your thoughts about the relation between wealth and enlightenment?
Also share your analysis of my opinion. Thank you.

There are so many different aspects to this. Firstly enlightenment is the sum of all parts, not just based upon one incarnation that happens to be reflecting an abundance of wealth or not.

Secondly whatever is present in your life is not by chance, the distractions, the sufferings, the poverty, the stress, the worries etc etc ..

So basically what I am saying is that we have to get our heads around the bigger picture in order to take stock and have a sound understanding.

From this point onwards we are not blaming our circumstance for our lack of enlightenment ..

From this point onwards we work with what is present and devise a way to practice whatever in order to find ourselves / God on a deeper level.

We can only work with what we have at any given moment. This isn't to say that change doesn't become you in certain ways, if it comes, it comes.

Some perhaps can sit on a mountain for 20 years without distractions and not go that much deeper within themselves, some can have the life from hell and be in the depths of despair and awaken to what they are ..


x daz x

Originally Posted by thespiritual1

I will explain three reasons of my foresaid opinion.
1. A rich person will have more exposure to life as compared to a poor or middle class person. He can do all kinds of things in life. He can do stuff that the poor people do but the poor can not do what the rich can do. So basically a rich person will have a greater experience of life than the poor. This will give him a better and satisfied mind, unlike the poor. Such a mindset will be more meditative than the unsatisfied mind of a poor.

The assumption there is that rich people get around more than poor people, not always so. Rich people might go on more holidays but they'll tend to live in one place because of their circle of friends and investment in their homes, careers etc. Poor people will spend more time living in other parts of the country because it's easier for them to pick up and move home. I'm just over 60 and back in the town I grew up in after spending time in the military and other parts of the country.

Originally Posted by thespiritual1

2. Maslow's Heirarchy: A person first needs some basic necessaties such as food, shelter, safety. After that he needs love, affection, acceptance in society. In the end, when he has everything, he looks beyond this world towards spirituality. Simply put, a rich person is most likely to be interested in spiritualism.

These are reasons why a rich person won't be Spiritual, they have their needs fulfilled as far as they're concerned while poor people haven't so they'll look somewhere else. The world trend is that poorer countries have more religion per head of population and a similar theme was happening in the past, especially Europe and into the Americas with the early settlers who were by-and-large poor. For some, self-realisation is being rich so they won't look any further while poor people will tend to be struggling with money and have all the associated issues.

Originally Posted by thespiritual1

3. I say this from personal experience that I would like to sit and meditate in a room where no one disturbs me but I am unable to do that. I dont have the time to do that, nor do I have the place. I am a middle class student and I have no choice but to study and establish my career so that makes it impossible for me to become enlightened. Only if I was a rich person, I would buy a place and a refrigerator and I would store a lot of food in the refrigerator and then I would sit down to meditate for as long as required and then I am hopeful I would become enlightened.

Likewise, rich people will spend more time distracted by materialism and maintaining it than poor people will.



This has nothing to do with Spirituality, it's a mindset in the same vein as placing your happiness in the hands of other people. If you're going down the enlightenment road then you need to understand yourself at a level far beyond this one.

If I have a refrigerator?
Or
I don't have a refrigerator.
I and all have the seed of spirit.
The beauty of growing the seed, is spirit food and nourishment is everywhere, within and without.
Except on the other side of the fence that can't be reached until the fence is realized for what it is.

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^^^^^^^