Winning the Lottery
For years, I remember dreaming about winning the lottery, having a boatload of money to do what I wanted with. Easy money. Buy a ticket, win, and coast the rest of my life. Sounded great at the time…
What people never consider is that although money can buy us a certain level of financial comfort in our lives, it can never buy us the peace of mind that all of us are really seeking. In other words, wherever we go, rich or poor, we take ourselves with us.
Why?
Because we all carry psychological karmic debt that no amount of money can reconcile. The more we resist unwanted moments, the more in psychological karmic debt we become. Plain and simple.
I remember a conversation with my cousin approximately 10 years ago. He said “Everyone in this world is pretty messed up, so having money just makes it easier to deal with.”
Translation - Having money makes it easier for me to forget my own dysfunction. I can cover it up with places to go, things to buy, experiences to have so I never have to look at the fact that I still remain a volatile, insensitive, self-centered human being that can erupt at the snap of a finger.
So perhaps we have all been misled to believe that our true happiness and peace of mind can be found by changing our exterior circumstances.
What if we were to find out that our exterior circumstances are, in truth, a manifestation of what is taking place in our inner world and where our attention is being placed moment to moment, and in that understanding we see how karmic debt is accrued.
If we knew and understood that truth, wouldn’t we be holding the real lottery ticket in our hands?
What good is having money without real peace of mind? But conversely, if we have real peace of mind and little money, it would matter not. So, we could say that the real winning lottery ticket would be to have the understanding of real peace of mind and how to enter into it.
To enter into real peace of mind, we have to first understand what disrupts our natural state of peace. It’s not “others” that disrupts this peace. It’s not anything in the world that disrupts this peace. It’s not events that take place that disrupts this peace. It is our own personal interpreter of life’s unfolding events that disrupts it.
I have referred to this personal interpreter in many of my past blogs. It is the part of us that speaks to us in each and every moment that tells us what everything means, why the person said what they said, what the end result of the unwanted event means, and what action we should take from what just transpired, etc.
When we listen and take action from that interpreter, we add another “layer of agitation” over our natural state of peace.
How do we avoid adding that layer of agitation you ask?
The answer, as always, is to work to be present in each and every moment the best we are able to. Through presence, we step into an unhindered peaceful state of mind. The layer of agitation comes in when our attention is co-opted from the present moment by thought (the agitator) that draws us into its dialogue.
We simply see that we have been pulled away from our natural peace of mind once again, and work to be present. We start over and over and over again.
That is our life’s work.
Nothing in the world is worth anything without effort. Winning the lottery and having a million dollars handed to you isn’t the gift or answer that it appears to be.
Anything that is real and true requires effort. Working at being present moment to moment requires effort. Being present means that we are sacrificing those old layers of agitation that want to bid for our attention. Through those sacrifices, we enter into our natural God-given peace of mind.
I don’t know about you, but I would take that over winning the lottery any day.
Image courtesy of: Photo by Fabian Blank on Unsplash
Exercise for the Week: See if you can catch your personal interpreter interpreting an unwanted event for you. Don’t act on it’s prompting. Wait. Watch the turmoil taking place inside you. If you are able to suffer that turmoil, your true interpreter will be there to show you what you need to know….
