real wealth

Because we believe this life is a means to an end, somewhere and sometime else, everything gets turned upside down. Because we believe we are fatally flawed and not good enough, we are on this constant treadmill, going somewhere, peddling harder, running faster, striving, seeking, achieving. Places to go; people to see.

Because the feeling of ‘not good enough’ becomes our neurosis and our nemesis, we are continually trying to ‘fix’ it, to fill the hole, to stave off the dread, to satisfy the inner emptiness. We become perpetual motion machines where the next ‘fix’, that next deal, job, achievement, conquest etc. will make us good enough.

But it never does. The hole gets bigger, and deeper. The pathos more unbearable. And Madison Ave comes along with the next big promise and promotion. The next fad. The next cure. And that is how this society works, constantly consuming more to allay the inner emptiness, to fill the void, to get a temporary hit, a high.

That is why I say these misbeliefs seep into every corner of our lives both individually and collectively. The western capitalist socioeconomic machine is driven by placating the feeling of not good enough. It is the economic motor.

We spend our lives making money to buy goods we do not really want, to hopefully make us feel better. We waste our lives chasing the future, forfeiting the present. We are rarely still, content, happy, silent, at peace. Present. The present moment is the ‘present’ of life. The gift is hiding in the moment.

Being in the moment is the joy and the purpose. The moment is divine. The moment is the elixir of life, the fountain of youth. The present moment is the only place you truly meet God and find yourself.

But we believe God doesn’t live here anymore because we are unworthy, because we are sinners, because ‘he’ is angry with us. We were expelled from the Garden – the place of grace and innocence and forced to confront our sins and our nakedness here on Earth, to earn ‘his’ forgiveness and our salvation. We roam in the wilderness, seeking the promised land.

extract from The MapMaker coming soon