Wealth & Consciousness Are Compatible?

[SimpleGuy]

Is it really possible to become wealthy and still stay truthful to yourself and conscious?

What does it really takes to do that?

 

[LordFall]

Of course. Most business is about solving people's problems. The profit motive can corrupt that but if you're in general a high quality thinker and problem solver there are endless ways to money through that skillset. 

[Leo Gura]

Possible but unusual.

[Bjorn K Holmstrom]

This is one of the hardest questions. I think it's possible, but not in the way people usually think. I just contemplated this a few days ago, as a what-if, if I would start earning money, what would I do.

A trap might be believing our own willpower is enough. Money can change your nervous system, it can make you risk-averse and starts bending your decisions toward protecting wealth instead of purpose. 

A way I developed that could work is to build external structures before you have the wealth:

Automate giving (do 40% off the top of any big inflow)

Create a 'pod' of people who can veto your financial decisions

Legally pre-commit that 90%+ goes back to commons when you die

It's not about being a 'good person' with money. It's about building the plumbing so the money can flow through you instead of pooling and poisoning you. The goal shifts from 'being wealthy' to 'being a useful conduit.' Otherwise, you end up contributing to the very inequality you probably wanted to solve, just by following the default logic of the system.

The might be other ways but, yeah... it's unusually hard. The system is designed to capture you.

Edited 2 hours ago by Bjorn K Holmstrom

[aurum]

3 hours ago, SimpleGuy said:

What does it really takes to do that?

Insane vision, ambition, patience, leadership and consciousness.

Almost no one will truly do it.

[Leo Gura]

How wealthy are you talking about?

And really the biggest thing it takes is caring about truth in the first place.

[UnbornTao]

If by "wealthy" you mean extremely rich, I'd say not really. Culture as a whole doesn't stand in favor of "consciousness," and appealing to the masses tends to water the spirit of the work down. Because, for the most part, no one gives a hoot about what's true. You could draw a correlation between poverty and consciousnes.

[LordFall]

@UnbornTao Absolutely untrue and this is a huge stage green shadow IMO.

Poverty is not a virtue. Nor is weakness nor lack of competence. If you agree on my premise that wealth is made by providing scalable solutions to people's problems then of course you can do that in a conscious or unconscious way but glorifying piety is a massive spiritual trap. 

How can you sell to me that you being unable to help your fellow humans is you having an unusually high level of consciousness? Laughable concept. 

Tony Robins talks a lot about this concept where poor people use their lack of success as virtue signaling but usually is a shadow that hides if anything lower levels of development. 

[Schizophonia]

People are more likely to be mentally ill, or more simply impulsive and antisocial when they are socially disadvantaged.

[UnbornTao]

33 minutes ago, LordFall said:

@UnbornTao Absolutely untrue and this is a huge stage green shadow IMO.

Poverty is not a virtue. Nor is weakness nor lack of competence. If you agree on my premise that wealth is made by providing scalable solutions to people's problems then of course you can do that in a conscious or unconscious way but glorifying piety is a massive spiritual trap. 

How can you sell to me that you being unable to help your fellow humans is you having an unusually high level of consciousness? Laughable concept. 

Tony Robins talks a lot about this concept where poor people use their lack of success as virtue signaling but usually is a shadow that hides if anything lower levels of development. 

It was said semi-jokingly, but pay attention. What are rich people actually up to?

What people are up to is survival - fulfilling their own self-agenda, usually by making others feel good or validated, in this "spiritual" context. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that, but it's fundamentally different from the pursuit of what's true, which is often seen as worthless or useless, and frequently threatening to one's current sense of self and reality. But I agree to a degree, since I'm talking about teaching or facilitating people. You could be the CEO of Whole Foods, for example, and that would be fine as far as "conscious business" goes. But that's not what I mean. It's far harder to facilitate consciousness than to sell a bill of goods, because the former isn't subject to fantasy. That alone already excludes most people from participating.

Consider why the more profound Leo's episodes are, the fewer views they tend to get. A video on getting laid gets far more views than a video that genuinely contemplates what reality is without any fuss. I claim this isn't a random dynamic. People don't give a hoot about honest communication. They'd rather have their fantasies and beliefs validated.

It's a bit like comparing McDonald's with a local place that values craft over convenience.

Maybe Jesus's quote attempts to shine a light on this condition - what I suspect he's really pointing to is greed: "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven." Not to get moralistic about it, though. Money!