Money and Spirituality

  I support Ken Wilber's vision of "Money and the Spiritual Path."  I presently view money as a (metaphorical) form of condensed energy, since energy is the ability to do work and money can get work done!  Just as a certain level of cognitive development is necessary but not sufficient for progress in other lines of development, as a general rule, I think a certain level of economic stability is also necessary but not sufficient for most people, especially families, to make developmental progress.  Not everyone, as there are many ascetics who have high spiritual accomplishments, but I also wonder if they are attached to poverty or not.  Only the shadow knows...(just a little shadow humor, please bear with me)

  This reminds me of a Zen story in which two monks came upon a woman trying unsuccessfully to cross a swollen stream.  The monks had taken a vow of sexual fidelity, so when she asked them if they could carry her across the stream, it created quite a quandry for the monks.  Finally, without saying anything, the older monk picked her up and carried her across the stream and put her down.  The two monks continued upon their journey, but an hour later the younger monk spoke up and remonstrated the older one for breaking his vow of fidelity.  The older monk replied, saying: "I put her down after I carried her across the stream, but you're still carrying her." 

  Anyway, the older I get, the more I realize that money can be a tremendous help in many ways, spiritual and otherwise, and in our present system that I call the "market-mentality", money is usually a necessity to make significant changes.  That or being willing to expend huge amounts of time and energy.  Ghandi is a good example of the latter, but it doesn't work for me, as I still have my day job.  Thus, I'm glad to see Ken put this video on IntegralLife, as one of my main concerns for IntegralLife is its financial viability, since I see it as an upraising cultural force and thus want it to succeed.

  I see IntegralLife not only as a cultural/social website that I enjoy reading and contributing to, but in the future as a potential help in freeing amber religious groups from the orange pressure cooker.  Please see Wilber's "Integral Spiruality", page 182 for details, as well as Dr. Robert Moore's "Facing the Dragon" for Jungian fans.  But to help succeed in this, IntegralLife and related Integral sites will need to be financial viable and generate a "profit" so that it can be used for creative projects in this and other troubled areas.  I put "profits" in quotes, since there is quite a long comment discussion about "profits and creating scarcity" following Kevin Bowman's fascinating "Integral Economics" presentation.  In the IntegralLife case, I see profits as a necessity since they can be reinvested in projects that won't necessarily create a financial profit (that can be measured), however, the potential "profits" in reduced suffering would be immeasureable.  I would see this as an example of Integral Capitalism administered at perhaps a turquoise level of development.  However, I'm not an expert in this area, so please let me know if anyone else has any further ideas relating to this.

Yours,

MB