How To Find A Healthy Balance Between Materialism And Spirituality

Heaven should not be thought of as a place you’ll ultimately arrive at once you leave this earthly existence. Rather, it seems to me, that you’d want to experience Heaven right here on Earth. As a poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning says, Earth itself is crammed with Heaven. But do you see Heaven in your daily life? Do you feel as if you’re in a Heavenly world? If the answer is no, then you’re out of balance. You’ve probably made your physical world the primary focus of your life, with little or no attention given to the Heavenly part of your earthly existence. When you’re overly involved with the physical, to the exclusion of the spiritual, you place a heavy emphasis on winning, becoming number one, and comparing yourself to others. A preoccupation with the material aspects of life leads to looking at life in a superficial way, where appearance is viewed as more important than substance. In fact, how it looks supersedes how it feels. What others think is the most important measuring device, and how you stack up to externally imposed standards becomes all-important. A devastating aspect of spiritual/material imbalance is the amount of time and mental energy spent on monetary considerations. Money becomes the single most important standard for evaluating everything, including your happiness, inner peace, and feelings about your value as a human being. Everything is measured on a grid of monetary price or cost: How much is it worth? How much does it cost? Can I afford it? Will it hold its value? Should I insure it? What if someone stole it? Could I afford to replace it? Your inner world is crammed with thoughts of costs and cash value. On your imaginary balance scale, the heaviest side is weighted down with thoughts that emerge from a consciousness where appearance, performance, and acquisitions are all that you notice. This consciousness prevents you from recognizing that right here, right now, wherever you reside is crammed with Heaven. Rather than looking for Heaven on Earth, you’re condemned by your thinking process to live with the consequences of this disproportionate view of life. Equalizing the Balance Scale Heaven is a state of mind, not a location, since Spirit is everywhere and in everything. You can begin equalizing your material and spiritual life by making a conscious decision to look for the unfolding of Spirit in everything and everyone that you encounter. I personally do this by making an effort to look upon my world as if I were observing it through lenses that filter out the form and all of the material aspects of what I’m seeing, and I can only view the spiritual energy that allows what I’m noticing to exist. Try putting on these imaginary magical lenses and see how different everything appears. The natural world is a pleasant place to begin this experiment. — Nature. When you look at a tree without these imaginary, form-filtering lenses, you may see branches, blossoms, leaves, and perhaps mangoes or plums. With your enchanting new lenses, the lines that form tree boundaries dissolve, and there’s an energy vibrating so fast that it gives a whole new perspective of the tree. You see the spaces between the leaves and notice the silence of the now-defunct acorn or mango pit out of which the first sprout of creation emerged, jump-starting the whole process that eventually became the tree you’re looking at. You see the continuation of this life-giving process residing deep within the tree that lets it sleep in the winter and blossom in the spring, on into infinity (or at least for the duration of its life). You realize that new mangoes are producing not only new fruit, but an infinity of mango trees as well. You see this life force in just one tree, extending backward and forward in a never-ending stream of creation. Begin looking at all of nature with this new vision—birds, ants, lakes, mountains, clouds, stars—all of it. Deepen your vision so that you no longer see only form and boundaries. Appreciate the miracle that is your environment… as you do so, you’re getting into balance. — People. These new lenses allow you to see everyone in a fresh perspective. You’re no longer seeing tall and short, dark and light, male and female, old and young, beautiful and homely. Your lenses blur the lines that categorize people by cultural or religious differences, and you don’t see others as only their attire or physical appearance or the language they speak. All appearances dissolve through filters in your lenses and your thoughts, so you now see the unfolding of the spiritual energy in every person you encounter. What you notice is pure love vibrating right before your eyes. You see kindness personified; you see and feel the same vulnerabilities in all others that you feel within yourself; you see enormous strands of peaceful, glimmering energy connecting each of us. Your new outlook invites you to playfully imagine that two people created you, and four people created the two people who created you, and eight people created the four people who created the two people who created you. As we go back a few more generations to the time of Abraham Lincoln, there are 16,000 people you’re related to who had to come together to create you! We can imagine going back to the time of Socrates, and puzzle over the apparent math we come up with. Trillions of people were needed to create one of us, but trillions of people haven’t existed, so somehow, in some mathematically puzzling way, we’re all related to each other. These are the kinds of fascinating connections that you can begin to observe with your imaginary lenses transforming your thoughts. You discover that there’s no one to judge, no one to hate, and no one to harm, because you see clearly that we’re related. In fact, we’re all one. From here, you can extend your perspective to include more of life. — Events. Where you once viewed the comings and goings of people as pure happenstance in current time, shaping the events of your life and the lives of everyone else, your new filtering lenses allow you to see how all of these things are connected energetically. Now you see an infinite network of laser-like energies emanating from the thoughts of everyone, blending the events in everyone’s life in energetic perfection. You see some people with very fast vibrations of energy matching up perfectly with the energy of the Source of creation. You see how they attune with the all-creating, all-knowing Source of life, and how events are perfectly attracted in a vibrational match. You also see what appear to be accidents, tragedies, and horrors, and how they, too, are vibrational matches that collide in what you’ve called “mistakes,” but are really the result of two or more energies meeting in a larger picture that you couldn’t previously see. You witness the connection between the expectations of individuals and what they attract into their lives. With these amazing lenses, you note that all events and all “accidental” encounters are really incredibly compatible vibrational matches, rather than randomly occurring situations. With this awareness, you’re attaining a level of balance between Spirit and form.