Most importantly, you need to ‘believe’ you have potential, as most people do. Lack of believe is that corners people.
To quote the spiritual giant and founder of the Jesuits, St. Ignatius of Loyola:
The First Principle and Foundation of Life
"Man is created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save his soul.
The other things on the face of the earth are created for man to help him in attaining the end for which he is created.
Hence, man is to make use of them in as far as they help him in the attainment of his end, and he must rid himself of them in as far as they prove a hindrance to him.
Therefore, we must make ourselves indifferent to all created things, as far as we are allowed free choice and are not under any prohibition. Consequently, as far as we are concerned, we should not prefer health to sickness, riches to poverty, honor to dishonor, a long life to a short life. The same holds for all other things.
Our one desire and choice should be what is more conducive to the end for which we are created."
I can’t disagree with that. 'The Power of Positive Thinking" is a great book on that subject.
I fear poverty. I’ve been to food shelves, I’ve pawned things, I’ve sold plasma. I’ve taken second jobs assembling boxes, sweeping bars and cutting grass. I’ve kited checks, told countess lies to creditors, become a thrift shop regular and taken far more liberties with friendly generosity than any proud person should ever have to. None of this makes me unique, and in fact my poverty could always have been cured with a phone call to my parents, though my pride would never allow that. But the constant anxiety, the crippled self esteem, the perpetual doubt, the shame and the general sense of failure and dread that accompanied each new day are things I don’t want my children to experience. And the fucked up part? My wife and I were making around $40k back when we experienced these things. In 2009, the poverty line for a family of four was barely half that. So I fear poverty. Ive never been within $15k of poverty, but the thought scares me.
I think a fear of poverty is more about missing expectations than the actual experience. It is more the idea of poverty and classification of being in poverty (and the shame that comes with, usually) that is scary. This is especially true for upper middle and upper class folks who are expected to stay that way or further advance. Nobody really cares whether they eat Ramen or eat at Dorsia but they do care about what others think and if they can live a grand life in general. Sometimes we put this pressure on ourselves. Our society glorifies material gain. It is hard to truly be a contrarian without being a monk. You can believe you have potential all you want but the day will come when you fall short of expectations you have created for yourself and you no longer have no time to match expectations. The key is how much you care about meeting those expectations. Some folks are very hard on themselves. Others have other priorities.
As a result, I disagree that “experiencing” poverty voluntarily is possible.
This nails it IMO… and it’s what my fears are based in when I have them.
so many misdirected fears coming out of people. While I wouldnt use this language ACE’s passage is truth. Ultimate freedom is non-attachment. If you can survive, occupy yourself with something useful, and maintain loving relationships, you are rich in happiness. The key is to disintegrate your egoic self. When you do that, you lose all worry and experience life directly. When you experience life directly, your list of needs becomes very small.
This is not some crazy misguided idea. There are many studies that show some of the happiest societies on earth are poor by most standards. These societies can provide for themselves by working with their hands and they have very close knit families and a high spiritual IQ.
What prompted this thread and the associated thoughts? Or has it been lingering ?
Yea, this is a little unfounded. Some buddhist monks only can eat what they are given by villagers. Completely reliant on the means of others and not themselves. I’m sure this isn’t a uniquely Buddhist occurance, I am just not well versed in many of the World’s monastic practices.
While I’m all about this stuff (as you know Turd), don’t you find it strange to discuss the merits of nonattachment and then talk about loving relationships and occupy yourself with something useful? I am not sure if you are fully parsing the important issues here. Not sure what you are trying to convey
I wonder if this guy fears poverty. Interesting that he has returned to religion.
baby steps bro.
I understand that point of view, but my values, and I think the values of most people here are different. Most people find importance and relevance with their role in society (which I guess is an extended form of relationships), and in achieving some kind of productive means while we are here.
Anyway, I’ve posted this before, but it’s a useful tool that I use to ballpark my long term financial situation. Maybe there is some relevance to this thread:
http://www.marketwatch.com/retirement/tools/retirement-planning-calculator?showsmscrim=true
Some people will always live in fear. If one fear is overcome (winning a lottery and not having to worry to live in poverty) they move on to another one. And the cycle continues. I don’t understand how someone who is gainfully employed and healthy wakes up in the middle of the night fearing poverty. I can understand having that fear if circumstances change. It’s not a sin to enjoy life. Asking people on their death beds what their biggest regrets are will put things into perspective.
i don’t think these two points of view are necessarily mutually exclusive. learning how to interact with the world in a non-egoic manner can be extremely beneficial financially. I haven’t read it yet, but Ryan Holiday recently wrote a book called Ego is the Enemy. Guessing by the title it deals with outward success and ego. Intuitively it makes sense that your thinking and reactions to information becomes clearer when you don’t filter that information through your ego. Instead of worrying about how it affects your self-preservation, self-pity, regret, self-aggrandizement, etc, you can react in a pure manner that is more closely conducive to reality. That certainly helps achieve outward success. I’m not saying outward success is bad, just that it’s not a necessary condition to happiness.
I’m not scared of living in poverty (in the US), more afraid of being the head of household making $55k a year with multiple mouths to feed.
Currently rely on my employer, general economic conditions so I may retire at a decent age, my own health and the government to not overly tax and burden me financially.
All it takes is a failure of one of the above factors to really make life miserable.
Oftentimes life situations are precarious but we convince ourselves that they are not. We continue on as if our tanks are always more than half full, not daring for a second to consider whether that is true or not. We continue to believe that we will always have the same drive, the same ability and clarity of mind, the same upward surge. We keep upping the expectation of what “young” means – when I was in my early 20’s, being in my 30’s seemed old. Now that I am, I justify that, well, you know, if I’m in my 40’s, I’m still young. I “still have time.” I look at people getting promoted to CIO positions or similar, in their 40’s and 50’s and say, see, I can still do that. I look to even people in their 60’s, still active on boards, consulting, and so forth, and I say, see, there is still hope for fun, making coin and relevance in life even when you get up in years. But deep down I know that these are tricks I use to feel better about the alarming decay of sand in the hourglass, a cheap mental shortcut to avoid thinking about the sad truth… (to paraphrase Dino Buzzati in his masterpiece, The Tartar Steppe), that as we go about our days, blissfully unaware, we at some points turn ourselves around to notice that a gate has been bolted behind us with lightning speed, and the days appear to fly by faster…
I think KMD mentioned earlier some kind of fear of “losing energy,” which I greatly identify with as I get older. It’s like a game of musical chairs and you hope you can collect a critical mass of shekels up so that when you hit the theoretical point of “no more gas,” your can still live a life that is interesting/fulfilling/entertaining or what have you.
The fear for me is the fear of having no autonomy in life. I want to go where I want to go, hang out with the people I want to hang out with, be relevant in an area that I enjoy, and not worry that I won’t have the resources available to me to be able to make that choice.
maybe i’m some sort of monster (my wife certainly thinks so in this respect) but i don’t worry about what might happen. this pisses her off to no end because i say things like i don’t worry about one of us getting sick or the kids not turning out perfect. she thinks i must be a robot not to think about those things. i honestly don’t. am i an idiot hiding in blissful ignorance?
Depends, are you giving it 100% to ensure the outcome you want? I found fear to be a good motivator, yet it really hampers your risk taking and can impact your decision making that can ultimately negatively affect end results (thus the post of how to overcome this mental barrier)
I’ve noticed that personality type is very important for entrepreneurs. So there are pros/cons
Yes, I fear. I’ve got a job, a secretary, a mother, two ex-wives, and several bartenders who depend upon me…
Alright, I have to ask.
A few months ago you treated us to daily updates from 9/11-truther websites demonizing Hillary Clinton. I knew quite a few #NeverHillary people during the election but you easily were the leader in the clubhouse of nuttiness. This was a situation completely out of your control and yet you obsessed over it to seemingly no end.
Two months later you’re the leading public figure on mindfulness? Your posts the last few weeks are laugh out loud funny when compared to psycho-TF from October.
Where did you manage to touch the face of God? Because I need to get me some of that.