​You don't Have to Choose Between Spirituality and Success

​Many of us were taught to believe that success, in particular, material success, and spirituality don't mix. Amongst these false beliefs are that If you're spiritual, you shouldn't want money or material possessions or that people who want money are greedy and materialistic. Being spiritual and having success are not mutually exclusive. This is a false belief created by some religions and our culture. The fact is that we want what we want, and money and material things that are obtained and used with integrity and in harmony with other universal laws such as the Law of Giving and the Law of Gratitude can be a spiritual asset.

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​Western philosophies tend to be dualistic. Therefore, see materialism as opposite of spiritualism and believe that money is only connected with pleasure, comfort, and desire, while spirituality is a world set apart. On the other hand, Eastern philosophies such as Buddhism, believe in the oneness of the spirit-mind and the body and they encourage a person to follow what Buddha calls the Middle Path. This path can help a person understand how spiritual can become material and vice versa. Buddha advocated, to embrace both spiritualism as well as materialism and avoid extremes. 

​Money and other material possessions cannot make a person bad, good, happy, sad, or anything else. It is the quality of our thoughts that the determine who we are and how we act. Furthermore, it is our unhealthy attachment to material things that cause pain and suffering, not "things" themselves. Non-attachment means that you don’t look to things to find comfort or happiness from them. To realize that true peace and happiness comes from healthy thoughts and from appreciating the wonders of life. “The key to joy is an unconditional kindness to all life, including one’s own, which refers to as compassion. Without compassion, little if any significance is far-reaching” (Hawkings, 1995, p. 73). True non-attachment involves living amongst everything in life such as your emotions, your relationships, and your material possessions and being able to exist without holding onto things with a sense of dependency or trying to control and make things happen. Hence, kindness does not come from renouncing material things, instead, is about your intention, expectation, and beliefs. 

​Money is a form of energy. A neutral, a convenient and practical instrument used for measuring exchange based on a community agreement. It is a vehicle for getting what you want in life. It provides flexibility, and a choice of what you can and can’t do.  It offers the opportunity to achieve any dream. Likewise, the more money you have, the easier it will be to help your friends and family, and charities, or important world causes. Money is not the root of all evil, is what you do with money that matters. Are you hoarding it? or wasting it? or are you using it to help others and to contribute to the health of the planet and everything in it?

It doesn’t help anyone if we hold ourselves back from living a full life. If you have financial stress or you are not happy with your life, it can affect your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors negatively. “If we don’t pursue happiness then we end up in other places; places that aren’t happy, places that cause us misery and suffering,” says Robert Puff Ph.D. Moreover, the energy generated by your emotions whether they are positive or negative have an impact on the people around you. Research from the Heart Math Institute demonstrated that individual’s thoughts, attitudes, and emotions emit energetic fields that can influence their social environments, even if they are merely in the same room with other people.  According to this research, radiating love into the environment increases positive energy, making it easier for the planet to shift and transmute the accumulated negative energy. This research implies that the better we feel, the more positive impact we have on our friends, family and the planet. 

​Therefore, be happy, meditate on sending peace and love to the world, commune with nature, reach for your dreams, enjoy your success and share it with others, do not let materials things be more important than people and you not only will live a happy and fulling life, but you will also radiate this happy, joyful energy towards the planet that will contribute to the shift from instability and discord to balance, cooperation and peace.

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