Unspoken Riches Truth #1: You will be rich only if it is in your destiny to be rich.

This is the absolute first reality of wealth. No matter how smart we are, how educated, how gifted, how sincere, how hard we work, how much we study the lives of those who are rich, we will simply never be rich unless it is in our destiny to be rich. That’s the honest bottom line. If we are to be rich, we will naturally be placed in the right circumstances with the right tools, the right resources, the right advantages, the right opportunities with the right people that allow us to be rich, wealthy or millionaires.

To reiterate, being rich is a matter of personal destiny. As Saint Jagat Singh states: What destiny has planned for you will come to pass without any planning on your part. Your destiny will cause you to act and make effort according to its plan. Old age, health, poverty, richness, sickness, disease, wealth, learning, honor, dishonor and time of death are all preordained while a man is in the womb of his mother, so a wise man never worries, or frets, or regrets anything.

There are many rich and wealthy individuals with millionaire status who teach, preach and profess that if we do what they do, we too will be rich. This does not reflect the law of destiny. Such souls who teach this philosophy, although perhaps well-intentioned, lack the facts of life. If people do follow their teachings and become rich, it is in their destiny to do so but not otherwise. As Guru Amardas, a 15th and 16th Century Mystic, declares: God himself forces his creatures into destined paths of karmas (fruits of previous actions) over which they have no control and which cannot be effaced. Whatever is destined to take place must take place. By inverse, what is not destined to take place will never take place.

Unspoken Riches Truth #2: The richest man in the world is not the one who has the most but the one who needs the least.

True contentment is reflected in a state of peace, not riches. How many rich people are truly at peace with themselves? All one has to do is look at a sampling of individuals whose lives are drenched in wealth, power, money and riches but also in whom there is a lack of peace and contentment. This is not to say that having enough wealth to lead a comfortable life is negative. It’s not. What it is to say is that the higher ideals of peace and contentment cannot be purchased for any amount of money and that monetary riches do not create peace. True peace comes from within, and being rich is not the way to get there. Being grateful to God for what we have – no matter the amount – is the way to gain peace. Wise men do not judge their lives on their bank accounts. Rather, wise men judge their worth on more substantive principles and concerns, peace and contentment among them. Therefore, the richest man in the world is not the one who has the most but the one who needs the least.

Unspoken Riches Truth #3: God looks at the clean hands, not the full ones.

This quote was voiced by Publilius Syrus, a Latin Philosopher of the 1st Century, BC in his “Moral Sayings.” Throughout history (past and present) there have been people whose riches were impressive – kings, queens, pharaohs, entrepreneurs, investors, politicians, industry tycoons, media moguls, etc., but do their riches reflect a status of cleanliness and Godliness? How many atrocious acts have been created by people in the pursuit of riches and the creation of material, monetary wealth? How many wars throughout the history of earth have been fought over wealth? How many people, countries and entire cultures have been decimated by other people, countries and cultures who killed them for their riches? How many lies, deceits and crimes of all kinds have been perpetrated in the name of being rich? How can anyone have clean hands when those hands are covered with the blood of their slaughtered victims?

Additionally, when people become rich, what real, positive, universally enduring impact do they have on the lives of others? Do their legacies reach beyond the grave to uplift and give peace and contentment to the multitudes of souls who follow them in subsequent times and ages? Who are the people who are universally remembered throughout history? Were they the ones whose pockets and purses overflowed with money and millions? Christ, Buddha, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Saints Ravidas and Kabir, Guru Nanak and a lofty litany of spiritual icons throughout the history of the world were not rich but they had timeless, priceless, positive and precious life-changing impact not just on people of their time and place but on those souls who came later and will continue to be born. Truly, it is not full hands that merit God’s attention, but full hearts. This is something for every sentient person to consider in planning life beyond the grave and perhaps leaving a legacy that endures with substantive merit beyond monetary wealth and worldly riches.

Arguably, the greatest driving force of accumulating riches is greed, but contrary to a very popular cinematic opinion, greed is not good. It destroys the life of the greed monger and negatively engages the lives the greed monger impacts. Greed is a vicious monster whose thirst cannot be quenched. When Buddha comments that if a man is given a mountain of gold he’ll want two, he was right. Where is the end of man’s greed? How much money does a man need to lead a peaceful, contented life? How much food, let alone good, nutritious and healthy food can one man eat in a day? How many cars can he drive? How many houses can he live in? How many shirts can he wear? Where is the need for riches beyond need? Life is full of people’s lives that have been destroyed because they had too much wealth. Life is also full of people whose lives have been drastically and negatively affected by those whose greed denied them ample food, clothing, shelter and medical care. Excess creates access and access to many of the world’s allurements is not necessarily a good thing. For the spiritually-focused soul, need must come before greed and the lustful greed for riches and wealth at the expense of others must be kept in check.

It must also be remembered that the law of cause and effect is relentlessly working in this creation, and those whose greed is out of control will eventually be enveloped, consumed and incinerated by its very flames. In effect, the sower of the greed ultimately becomes engulfed by it. It is impossible to escape it.

Unspoken Riches Truth #4: We can’t take our riches with us when we go.

When this body dies, our spirit will continue its journey, but the worldly riches we work so hard to accumulate, for which we often sacrifice our ethical, moral and spiritual values to acquire, will not go with us when we move into the Great Beyond. As Guru Nanak states: Ranks of this world will not be recognized in the next. Certainly the same can be said for wealth and riches. To be sure, this is not to say that riches are a bad thing. They are only bad if they’re used for bad things – things that defile the soul of man, his nobility, self-respect, dignity, honor, honesty, worth. They are also bad if they serve to attach us to this world, which Mystics tell us is of the very lowest order in the hierarchy of spiritual regions.

Therefore, in consideration of not being able to take our riches with us when we exit this world, how bad an investment is it to spend one’s life solely in pursuit of that which does not serve our highest and best good or our future beyond the demise of the physical form? It is, indeed, a blind and foolish investment that staggers the imagination — sacrificing the future of our soul for temporal worldly wealth.

Unspoken Riches Truth #5: Riches can’t buy us one more breath when our time comes to expend our last breath.

Think of the richest person on the planet. A listing in Forbes of the richest people in the world is an excellent resource to research these individuals. Yet, think of this — that for all their wealth, riches, millions and billions, when it comes time for them to expend their last breath in their priceless human body, for all their wealth and power they will not be able to purchase one… more… simple… single… little… breath. The reality of their wealth will then be magnified as it never has before, and the illusion of riches, wealth, millions and billions will be shattered like a water bubble on the ocean. What a waste to learn the true value of money in this way — at the end when it’s too late to change. Therefore, what does this say about the price of a single breath, something we take for granted every day? More importantly, what does it say about worldly riches and the time, effort and work it takes to generate them? When a million dollars, even a billion dollars cannot buy a single breath, what does this say not only about the price of one breath but the empty value of monetary riches?

Summary

Money and riches are not a bad thing. Like nuclear energy, they have positive and negative ramifications. Still, even when used for good, they have spiritual limitations and confinements to this world. First of all, destiny will determine whether a person has money and riches. Second, wealth cannot buy contentment or personal peace. Third, often creating great wealth incurs actions which dirty the hands, making them unclean. Fourth, it’s impossible to take our worldly treasures with us when we go, when we depart this world. Fifth, all the money in the world cannot purchase a single breath when it is time of us to die. Thus, how much importance should we place on the creation of wealth in this life, in being a millionaire or even a billionaire? In consideration of the Great Plan of our life’s future, how wise is such an investment, and what will its ultimate cost be? We only have so much time on this earth, so many breaths in this human body. How will we spend the quickly passing time we have left — myopically and foolishly in satiating our material greed, worldly indulgence, and sensual gratification, or clearly and wisely in the pursuit of higher ideals and behaviors that insure our forward and upward progress on the Great Ladder of Life when our final breath is released and the soul journeys on?

~finis

© Richard Andrew King 2011