Why I'm Not Rich

This is the indication I got while watching one of the financial cable channels recently. “Do you have enough money for retirement?” “Are you using your money to its best advantage?” “Don’t be left behind while others are becoming wealthy!”

I am certainly not ready for retirement, and what little money I do have is definitely not being used to its full advantage. And I will be surely left behind, since everyone else is apparently becoming rich!

But instead of running out and hiring a twenty-four year old financial advisor who is pulling down six big figures, I reflected on exactly why I wasn’t rich, and what I discovered was that I was never afraid enough to become rich.

Not that being rich is a bad thing; it can be a wonderful thing if the rich person uses his or her money to ease the burdens of society, but I never really had a keen interest in money. Even when I was a kid, I tended to give everything away and always felt freer for it.

Not that I don’t save a little for a rainy day, or that I spend money foolishly, I just never had much fear about being down and out. I know that when I am broke (it has happened quite a few times), I end up trying to help somebody who has less than I. I just could never get myself too worked up about money.

During those times when I was penniless, I experienced so much spontaneity in being in an insecure situation that I made my greatest spiritual progress then — penniless in a commune, in various monasteries all over the world, and more importantly, penniless in my heart.

The heart is the crucial vault. If the heart is filled with treasure, you had better have a strong lock. Conversely, if the heart is empty, there is nothing left to lose, and the heart needs no locks at all. The trick is having a heart emptied of existence and all that the world and existence has to offer, yet brimming with something so much greater.

This “something else” is not merely images. My religion, my ideals — these are all my images — things that I hear or read and then imagine in my mind as if they are real. This is not what I am speaking about, this “something else” lies beyond my images, my thoughts, beyond the ego consciousness, self-image, persona, subconscious memories, psychic material, collective unconscious and universal and archetypal processes of Jung. This “something else” can never be known. But it can be touched, and it can fill one’s heart.

This is what really changes a person as his or her actions become harmonious with others. This is what contributes to the perfection of one’s being, and this is what I have always been interested in, never money. Unfortunately it took me the better part of a lifetime to realize this, during which time I agonizingly questioned my own motives — why I did things so out of synch with society, and why everything I tried left me flat — except one thing.

Looking back at my Catholic upbringing, my religion didn’t help me. I was indoctrinated into the religion as a child, and although I embraced it as any child is sure to do when his mother tells him that this is the truth, the Church’s teachings never stuck with me. I never fell for it completely, and later in life I began questioning it, and eventually no longer feared the Catholic threat of hell if I left the Church. After that, the religion became nothing but a stumbling block, not what my heart yearned for at all. The emotionalism, the miracles, the mystery, and the authority of the Church didn’t work with my particular heart.

Money and security did not work either. Family, career, possessions — things that are very important to normal people — never meant what they should to me. I needed something else, and was determined to find it.

I did this by looking carefully at myself and seeing whether or not I was actually becoming different internally, and not merely thinking that I was making improvements. Was I actually changing and becoming more peaceful, less judgmental of people not in my particular group? Were my annoyances and my wanting reducing, and was my confused picture of the world and my own mind becoming clearer? Or was I merely remaining what I was, and pretending to change?

I searched and searched, read all the books, and still no answers. It was only after unusual circumstances forced me to go deep inside during meditation that a fundamental change began to take place. This was the first real thing that had ever made a difference for me.

So I guess it has never been in my heart to get rich, because I knew intuitively that money would never make me happy, and that the pursuit of it would only be a waste of time. I knew that I could never get enough, because money could not offer me ultimate security. My ideal instead became a peaceful world, where how we be with our neighbors makes more difference than what we have.

Idealistic? Perhaps, but if it is possible for an initially undisciplined individual like myself to become peaceful, it is surely possible for a society. It might even change a world . . . that is on the verge of destruction.

E. Raymond Rock of Fort Myers, Florida is cofounder and principal teacher at the Southwest Florida Insight Center, http://www.SouthwestFloridaInsightCenter.com His twenty-eight years of meditation experience has taken him across four continents, including two stopovers in Thailand where he practiced in the remote northeast forests as an ordained Theravada Buddhist monk. His book, A Year to Enlightenment (Career Press/New Page Books) is now available at major bookstores and online retailers. Visit http://www.AYearToEnlightenment.com