Today's
Meditation:
I
don't think Jean Paul really wants bad things for other
people. At least, I don't read this passage that
way. It's like the line "Tonight thank God it's
them instead of you" in "Do They Know It's
Christmas"-- it's not saying that we should be thankful
that other people are starving, but that we're not. In
this case, it's important that we know whether or not we're
enslaved by our material possessions because if we are,
it's time to give them to someone who doesn't mind allowing
material objects to define who they are, who doesn't see any
problem with the idea of letting their happiness or level of
contentedness depend on how many or what type of things they
own.
Unfortunately,
many people live their lives this way. It's
unfortunate because the "happiness" that comes
from material things is more like a sense of satisfaction
that affects the ego only, and not our deeper selves.
If I buy a new large-screen TV, it doesn't say a thing about
what I am as a person; it says only that I have enough money
(or credit) to buy such a television. And when the new
TV leads us to buy a new home theater system, and then new
movies, and then a new living room set, then we start to see
how we can be ruled by things.
If
you've lost a particular material object and the loss is making you
miserable, then that object had a hold on you. Sure, it
might have reminded you of something or someone special, but
you still have those memories whether you have the thing or
not. It might have made you feel special in some way,
but you're special whether you have the object or not.
In
theory, we're free from our objects on the day we can give
them all up with no problem--when we know that a fire that
destroys our home and everything in it while we're at work really won't matter,
because all the fire destroyed were things, and our lives aren't
defined by the things we own-- we're no slaves to our
objects.
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