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Today's
Meditation:
Why
are we so caught up in materialistic desires in our
societies of today? It's really rather simple--it's
mostly because many people want to profit off of our
desires, so they spend tons of money convincing us that we
want material goods that we don't necessarily need.
Our world of today is more inundated with advertising that
is incredibly intrusive, and our materialism is worse today
than it ever has been. Instead of moving towards
enlightenment and things like world peace and compassion,
we're being convinced that we need more things and that we
need more money to buy more things, and we're becoming less
and less happy and fulfilled as we're convinced to want more
and more.
So
one of our goals as we live on this planet in this day and
age must be to come to grips with our materialism, and to
make sure that we don't allow it to consume us, to get us so
caught up in having certain things that we miss out on what
the world has to offer us in other ways, especially in ways
that nurture our spirits. It's important that we ask
ourselves constantly whether a certain desire is a need or a
wish, and whether the true cost of that new car is worth the
price we'll pay when we have to work more to afford it, thus
losing valuable time with our families. We're taught
to come up with ways to justify spending and justify the
sacrifice of quality family and friend time, but that
teaching is simply rationalization, and not necessarily
truth.
The
things of the earth are fleeting, while the things of the
spirit are lasting. It's important that we recognize
this and give ourselves the chance to escape the chains of
materialism that keep us working too hard and too long, and
sacrificing things that we wouldn't think about sacrificing
if we thought long and hard about the long-term effects they
have on us.
Material
goods aren't inherently bad or evil, but the effects of the
desire for material goods can definitely hurt us and make us
unhappy in our spirits, which is a very important part of
ourselves that we should be nurturing, not harming.
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