Tuesday, May 20, 2014

The demise of gratitude ~ Religion/sprituality, credit & electronics ~ my personal observation


In my personal observation I see three main things fueling the ego and
thus destroying the spirit and making us completely ungrateful over
the centuries and in very recent times.
     Religion and spirituality. What?! yes. It is the one thing telling us
we are not good enough, in need of fixing and in need another human to
tell us what we need and to fix us. It is the sole reason for most
people's despair and total lack of gratitude as they are not good
enough the way they are for their God, so what they own is not enough
either. (note we often pray for what we think we need or want, rather
than being grateful for what is already there)
     Credit. Yup. Financial credit. Originally no one could get credit
unless they could afford to pay it back. This required the population
to prioritize their funds earned and purchase what they felt they
required. This created a great sense of pride and gratitude as people
saw their hard work created the life style they had as well as
everything in it. Now, thanks to credit, people aren't grateful for
what they have as they always want more or better. There is a full
disconnect now between what we earn and what we own due to mainly
credit as well as no longer touching our money (direct deposits and
then debit cards don't give us the tactile experience of seeing the
actual money we have earned, so it might be an idea to use cash to
purchase so you can see and give yourself credit for what you have
earned, saved for and are now buying). If we figure we can't afford it
we buy it anyway thinking we will pay for it later not realizing how
much we end up paying then feeling we are working for nothing. Credit
is really a lose lose, where as earning, saving and living within our
means results in pride and gratitude, if we can ourselves believe it
is enough. Greed, easy credit and the ego is one heck of a spending
combination.
And finally, we think electronic communication is excellent and for
some things it really is, but within all this ability of computers and
smart phones, work never stops and communication has been limited to
key strokes, again, good as in supposed productivity and really good
for being able to speak to those you want to more regularity via tx
and email, however, we now have an entire generation who looks down,
literally. Their gratitude for their simple existence seems dissolved.
Look up? put down the device, go for a walk? talk face to face. Be
grateful we still can see, hear, touch, smell? I don't know, maybe I'm
missing the mark, but this is what I see.....
Thanks to this combination, of old religion, new spirituality, credit
and electronics, we now hear constantly of people who don't think life
itself is enough, don't wish to work for their money which pays for
their life and everything in it. We hear people saying do what you
love for work, enjoy your life, yolo, it's not about the money, and so
on while multimedia spread this message at light speed. I hate to tell
you but it is about the money, and the gratitude we have for it, and
even though you only live once, what is life without the gratitude for
every small moment in it?
Life in a first world country is no different than life in a
developing country except the fact not only do we have the means to
earn money, the access to purchase items and the downfall, we have
access to credit. In a developing country, they are forced to live
within what ever financial means they can get. In our first world
existence we don't seem grateful for the simple fact we can earn our
money in the first place, nope, we decide we don't want to earn it and
then further, we want more and aren't grateful at all for what our
earned means can afford to buy because for some unknown reason we have
already decided it is not enough.
I honestly do not know how our society will bring back or ever develop
true gratitude. I will just wait and firmly believe, one day people
will pray to a God they know accepts them as perfect and enough, and
people will know their God supports and believes in them, and always
gives them exactly what they need, not want they want, and the masses
will be grateful. That people will stop incurring debt and decide to
be proud and grateful for their hard work and what they purchased with
their hard earned money, and I firmly believe we will learn again to
be grateful to look up, put down a device that has become an
addiction, returning to the gratitude for the sounds of nature, each
other and the beauty of this world.
AuKeeRa Rayne
www.aukeera.com

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