THERE’S BEING RICH – AND THEN THERE’S BEING WEALTHY
- July 7, 2020
- Posted by: admin
- Category: Great Wealth
“What greater wealth is there than to own your life and to spend it on growing? Every living thing must grow. It cannot stand still. It must grow or perish.”
—Ayn Rand
For ages, humanity has struggled with the question of who is wealthy. What constitutes true wealth? In addition, how do we know whether we have found it? Today I will talk not just about Great Wealth in the Mahatman sense but the difference between being just rich and being Wealthy.
Therefore, what is Great Wealth and how is it different from riches?
Great Wealth is the ability to experience life while being rich merely owns a fat bank account. You might say that these billions of dollars will help the rich person to live large – like, moving around in an Italian sports car, buying gold watches, partying in private islands. In this case, the person is merely a big spender. Where is the stretching of body and mind, the pushing of physical and mental boundaries that make one life fully? Has the rich person learnt the centeredness that comes from mindfulness or the adrenaline that rushes through the bloodstream that skydiving brings? Is he able to achieve the insane mental focus that comes with perfecting the Pungu Mayurasana or attained the golden mean of non-attachment that rises above the painful extremes of attachment and detachment?
All these are just some of the many examples of living a full life – and each of these takes much more than dollars to experience. You have to own a certain mind-set to be able to live fully – the mind-set of Mahatman that encourages expansiveness, exploration and eventually leads to Self-Actualization. My point is that wealthy people have this mind-set but the merely rich people do not.
Now that we are talking about the mindset, let me explain in a little more detail what it involves. Any dream or goal worth reaching involves two conditions: the necessary and the favourable.
The necessary condition is that without which the first step to the dream just would not happen. For example, consider my dream of travelling to Japan to see its ethereal temples and shrines. I have to have the passion, nay the OBSESSION, to put this in motion – in other words, I have to be fired by the love of travel, be in the necessary physical shape to make the trip and the mental calm to cope with the many ups and downs that come with travelling to a foreign country.
The favourable condition is that which aids my action – in other words, money. However, as I have said in the blog on Mahatman Philosophy of Money, if your goal or dream is driven on the waves of your obsession, money will happen. You may not know yet from where and from whom, but it will come.
Absolute Financial Freedom
The pinnacle of Great Wealth according to Mahatman is achieving Absolute Financial Freedom. This though does not mean that you hit the jackpot at Powerball or that you look for an heir to marry. Financial freedom is the state where you do not have to work for money or indeed for anyone else. It is when all your daily necessities are taken care of and you are able to afford your desired standard of living. After this stage is reached, you are able to make your money work for you while you work towards your own Self Actualization. How to achieve this and then go beyond that is explained in the Great Wealth section of The Mahatman Book as well as in Mahatman Philosophy of Money.
Tony Robbins in his best-selling book, Money: Master the Game similarly outlines a 7-step journey to Absolute Financial Freedom. This starts with the stage of Financial Security, which is when you build your critical mass or portfolio that pays for all your basic needs. The next important phase is Financial Independence, which is when your passive income can support your current lifestyle. Finally, Absolute Financial Freedom happens when your dream lifestyle is supported by your investment income. While Robbin’s insight is highly useful, Mahatman goes a step further to claim that it is this stage of Absolute Financial Freedom that defines the wealthy from the merely rich. At this ultimate level, freedom is not just not having to slog at a nine to five job and not having to worry about meeting daily needs – the real freedom is from the compulsion to earn a living which frees up the wealthy people to do other things for a Mahatman life – reinvesting in enterprise, in relationships and the community. While the Wealthy is doing all this, the rich are putting in even more hours in a paid job, succumbing deeper to the whims of a boss from hell and still worrying about how they will finance their next vacation. Therefore, while the rich live a life of financial worries and anxieties, the wealthy live a life of Absolute Financial Freedom.
The Practice of Giving
Finally, what makes the wealthy people stand apart from people with just a fat bank balance is the practice of Giving. This too is explained at length in the Mahatman Book as one of the four fundamentals of the Great Wealth Pillar. The truly wealthy people do not stop making money but ensure that the fruits of their efforts are distributed to the community. They give funds to worthy non-profits, volunteer their time for important causes as well as share their knowledge and experience in the form of mentoring or coaching. The merely rich guys on the other hand will still be grasping and talking like it’s their last day on earth – they will take and take from their relationships, businesses, the environment – in effect their entire ecosystem without putting back a dime or an act worthy of a blessing. Such people, despite their private jets and luxury yachts are the real paupers of society since they suffer from the poverty of vision and intent.
Indeed, there are many ways to give and you do not need a billion dollars in your bank to put this essential Mahatman Great Wealth tenet into practice. You can give your time and effort to your community or the less privileged. You can coach a poor student to pass his exams or mentor a subordinate to overcome a professional crisis. What’s more, acts of generosity have been repeatedly linked to better mental and physical health in scientific studies.
There is one danger though – that of sentimentalizing the act of Giving. Doing or bestowing something for someone should not be thought of as a sign of weakness or an excuse to stay poor. You can give only when you have enough yourself. You have so much love, resources, and knowledge within your own self, that it flows out of you to others – in this way Giving becomes a form of Power for you hold within your hands – the power to change the lives of others and achieve your own Self Actualization. In addition, this is power available only to the Wealthy since they know how and why to give. Therefore, whether you are a billionaire already or in the making, follow the Mahatman Great Wealth practices – not just to achieve Absolute Financial Freedom but also to rise above the crowd of the rich and ascend to the peak of the truly wealthy.