Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you
is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it.
W. Somerset Maugham
My cousin Hella turned 60 and I congratulated her, wishing her another 60 years of health and happiness. I couldn't have offended her more. Never had I seen her this angry with me. Obviously, she was doing time. Her birthday meant she could scratch one sour year off her to-do list instead of gratefully celebrating the beginning of a brand new year of bliss. That's how it can look when a devout Catholic, a no-nonsense and down-to-earth person, displays covert suicidal desires. If and when she succeeds, she and her family will blame God for the sad result.
People jealously defend their own death and other individuals' certain demise as if their boring lives depended on it. Numerous times I have heard someone argue, "Yeah well, everybody dies!" Sounds like a child who whistles in the dark because she is afraid. People reassure themselves of the death guarantee that they believe they are somehow owed. Are they scared somebody might cheat them out of the death option when they crave the grave? Worse, what if some individuals refused to follow them to hell, heaven, and oblivion? I can hear my dear mother shout from the beyond, "What if everybody did that?"
So far, the lemmings run into the opposite direction. Care for a sampler?
"Tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable disease and death in the United States, resulting in more than 480,000 premature deaths ... each year." (CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, November 28th, 2014)
"The CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report said the annual suicide rate jumped 28.4% from 1999-2010 ... citing 'the recent economic downturn' as one of the 'possible contributing factors' for the increase. 'Historically, suicide rates tend to correlate with business cycles, with higher rates observed during times of economic hardship', the report said."
"Around 35,000 Americans kill themselves each year (38,364 in 2010; and more American soldiers die by suicide than combat; the number of veterans committing suicide is astronomical and under-reported). So you’re 2,059 times more likely to kill yourself than die at the hand of a terrorist." (source: GlobalResearch.ca)
People jealously defend their own death and other individuals' certain demise as if their boring lives depended on it. Numerous times I have heard someone argue, "Yeah well, everybody dies!" Sounds like a child who whistles in the dark because she is afraid. People reassure themselves of the death guarantee that they believe they are somehow owed. Are they scared somebody might cheat them out of the death option when they crave the grave? Worse, what if some individuals refused to follow them to hell, heaven, and oblivion? I can hear my dear mother shout from the beyond, "What if everybody did that?"
So far, the lemmings run into the opposite direction. Care for a sampler?
"Tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable disease and death in the United States, resulting in more than 480,000 premature deaths ... each year." (CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, November 28th, 2014)
"The CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report said the annual suicide rate jumped 28.4% from 1999-2010 ... citing 'the recent economic downturn' as one of the 'possible contributing factors' for the increase. 'Historically, suicide rates tend to correlate with business cycles, with higher rates observed during times of economic hardship', the report said."
"Around 35,000 Americans kill themselves each year (38,364 in 2010; and more American soldiers die by suicide than combat; the number of veterans committing suicide is astronomical and under-reported). So you’re 2,059 times more likely to kill yourself than die at the hand of a terrorist." (source: GlobalResearch.ca)
Those numbers are not remotely realistic, of course. The mountain of corpses piling up annually and voluntarily is higher: causing a fatal car accident while texting is suicide also. Death by smoking is a form of suicide and so are poor diet, cases of drug overdose, and countless other creative expressions of self-sabotaging stupidity. Could it be that all deaths are remarkably cloaked suicides?
150 years ago, life expectancy was approximately half of what it it is today. Does that mean God is twice as generous today dispensing lifespans or are all individuals 90 years of age and older guilty of heresy automatically, selfishly benefiting from a pact with the devil?
"The nation's 90-and-older population nearly tripled over the past three decades, reaching 1.9 million in 2010, according to a report released today by the U.S. Census Bureau and supported by the National Institute on Aging. Over the next four decades, this population is projected to more than quadruple.
Because of increases in life expectancy at older ages, people 90 and older now comprise 4.7 percent of the older population (age 65 and older), as compared with only 2.8 percent in 1980. By 2050, this share is likely to reach 10 percent." (U.S. Census Bureau, November 17th, 2011)
About 3,000 individuals died on September 11th, 2001 and we started two wars connected with and triggered by those horrific deaths. Every 4 weeks the same number of people die in traffic accidents but we don't go to two additional wars every month. Not necessary because every 5 months more than 3,000 U.S. soldiers blow their own brains out all by themselves and not a single new war begins over that heartbreaking tragedy.
If the disgusting practice of death would truly upset us to the degree of gathering collective interest in fighting this savage tendency, we would have to declare at least 17-24 new wars against somebody or something every single year.
The fact that we do not lift a finger and that the media can't be bothered reporting gruesome details of the bloody progress that our civilized society is making, means we have tacitly settled for our murderous lifestyle. Genocide is no longer a German or Turkish or Rwandan privilege (remember the Hutu and the Tutsi?), geographically and historically limited. Everybody appears to be cool with handing down death sentences to everybody else these days. What are you getting out of it?
Plenty of people are more irritated about being inundated with "all this negativity" that I am exposing than by the reality that our way of life is a calamity: a sick society is blaming God for putting His children on death row at birth. Perhaps you are an atheist or agnostic. What the hell is the damned difference? Blaming nature for our investment in continued savagery is equally sick.
Since most people claim to act rationally, the dark picture I painted must be intended and therefore a perverted success of sorts. People are invested in death and, when it happens, it's considered a payoff. Where is yours?
If you are convinced that life is fatal by definition, then why bother stating the obvious? Peeps get easily miffed when their expected payoff is delayed or--God forbid--canceled altogether. Death promises extraordinary gains, materially and otherwise. It is legitimate to remind yourself that your investment strategy and, most importantly, your exit strategy are still valid. I get that.
Perhaps I am wrong and death doesn't promise anything. Death is only a concept and intangible. Dead bodies, in comparison, are quite tangible but death can neither be seen nor touched. It has taken the medical profession centuries to define this phenomenon and even longer to agree on a definition. Ask surgeons who deal with organ transplants: the diagnosis of death is not as easy as it appears. Isn't it interesting how cocksure people are about as elusive a mysterium as death?
Does that mean banking on death is a rather high risk investment option? Not at all, there doesn't seem to be any risk. As long as individuals obediently die on schedule, as is custom, where is the risk?
How heavily are you invested in death? Have you considered alternative strategies and business models?
The 'Greatest Generation'--a term Tom Brokaw coined--is busy dying while transferring its considerable wealth to the Baby Boomer generation. $12 Trillion dollars are going to change hands in this process. Even some of the boomers love their parents and yet, don't you think a few of them have a wandering eye and a keen awareness of what's hibernating in that bulky plastic bag under dear ol' mom's stinky mattress?
The baby boomers, in turn, have begun transferring their financial and non-financial assets to the Gen Xers and Millennials. Alive, baby boomers will be worth $12 Trillion eventually. By the time the last boomers will drop dead, the mind boggling number of $30 Trillion dollars, with a capital 'T', will have dropped into their kiddies' laps. At the peak of this historical wealth transfer, between 2031 and 2045, dead cold hands will lavish ten percent of America's total wealth upon more or less deserving brats every five years.
Collectively, a bunch of people expect to receive approximately $42 Trillion dollars any time in the not so distant future and all they have to do to be eligible is refrain from alienating mom and pops too much. If you care for the dough, don't let your parents see this newsletter or they may change their senile minds! Well, of course it's crucial for these old timers to croak. The idea and especially the practice of physical immortality would screw this up.
People are trained by well-meaning parents and preachers to defend death as if killing folks were exclusively God's domain and His merciful decision. "In 2010 alone 8,030 veterans committed suicide, the VA has reported--more in just one year than the total estimated number of US military deaths in both Iraq and Afghanistan since those conflicts began. Every day, an average of 22 veterans commit suicide."
God's work?
Last time I checked, people's (self)-judgment was more vile, vicious, and violent than the Last Judgment of any half decent God could ever be. In case your God is more barbaric than you are, representing a latent and lifelong death threat, you may want to shop for a more graceful upgrade.
That's heresy? See for yourself:
20% of homicides in Seattle and 15% of all homicides in Utah are committed by police. Some Utah residents were murdered by gang members, others by drug dealers, or Oops! by their own parents (note, that some parents have a greater interest in their children's early demise than candy carrying strangers). Utah police beats the combined efficiency of gangs, drug dealers, and parents. Spouses and dating partners can't be outdone easily, however.
If in Utah, beware of those who love you to death. At any rate, drug dealers and gangs have less of an investment in your corpsification than the UT police. Even lovers are bound to lose this bloody competition with cops eventually.
If in Utah, beware of those who love you to death. At any rate, drug dealers and gangs have less of an investment in your corpsification than the UT police. Even lovers are bound to lose this bloody competition with cops eventually.
I don't suggest that contacting your neighborhood drug dealer is safer than calling 911 but since your life is at stake, a minimum of rationality demands you contemplate who may be invested in your ascension to heaven with expedited urgency. By the way, what better place than earth is there to create heaven? What's heaven without Harleys?
In Tennessee, overdose fatalities totaled 1,166 in 2013. "More Tennesseans died from drug overdoses than in motor vehicle accidents, homicides or suicides."
In Tennessee, overdose fatalities totaled 1,166 in 2013. "More Tennesseans died from drug overdoses than in motor vehicle accidents, homicides or suicides."
Obviously, Tennessee residents ought to be more afraid of having a good time than of potential murderers lurking in the dark. Finding a greater enemy than yourself comes close to performing a miracle.
C'mon, you can't possibly blame God for homespun tragedy, can you? People have an investment in their own and their loved ones' death. In some unwholesome fashion they think they'll benefit from death, one way or another.
Guess why your representatives can't get that estate tax idea out of their heads? The fiscal survival of government rests on the death of its citizens. Social Security, the only truly legal Ponzi scheme around, appears to be working only because people tend to die relatively soon after retiring. Please tell me, what's the big difference between retirement and capital punishment? This ghastly concept of retirement--time released and government assisted suicide--is financed by people who die faster than the government pays them back what they're owed. That's not difficult and should be a safe bet, except notorious incompetence ensures disaster nevertheless:
The federal unfunded liabilities are catastrophic for future taxpayers and economic growth. At usdebtclock.org, federal unfunded liabilities are estimated at near $127 trillion, which is roughly $1.1 million per taxpayer and nearly double 2012’s total world output.
Laurence Kotlikoff and Scott Burns’ book entitled The Coming Generational Storm: What You Need to Know About America’s Future argue federal unfunded liabilities are primarily from a generational accounting problem, in which the dependency ratio of retirees to taxpayers is declining from an aging population.
The authors state, “today there are about 4 payees for every 1 beneficiary, but by the year 2030 there will only be 2 payees for every 1 beneficiary. Simple arithmetic will note that this is not sustainable over the long run.” (source: Forbes.com)
Again, this calculation is correct only if people remain steadfast in their relentless worship of the Grim Reaper, as they have been taught for the sake of making everybody happy. "Simple arithmetic will note" that continued liquidity of your government is based on you kicking the bucket. In case you insist on being altruistic, you better get to it sooner rather than later.
Laurence Kotlikoff and Scott Burns’ book entitled The Coming Generational Storm: What You Need to Know About America’s Future argue federal unfunded liabilities are primarily from a generational accounting problem, in which the dependency ratio of retirees to taxpayers is declining from an aging population.
The authors state, “today there are about 4 payees for every 1 beneficiary, but by the year 2030 there will only be 2 payees for every 1 beneficiary. Simple arithmetic will note that this is not sustainable over the long run.” (source: Forbes.com)
Again, this calculation is correct only if people remain steadfast in their relentless worship of the Grim Reaper, as they have been taught for the sake of making everybody happy. "Simple arithmetic will note" that continued liquidity of your government is based on you kicking the bucket. In case you insist on being altruistic, you better get to it sooner rather than later.
There's a flower shop in my town and its owner, a sweet lady, told me a couple of months ago that she was looking forward to "the season." Puzzled, I asked her what she meant. Florists appreciate Valentine's Day and individuals who express their love for a living breathing human being with a bouquet of roses. But who can thrive on love for the living? Six feet under, people happen to be more profitable for flower shops than above ground. Without ample and guaranteed supply of corpses popping up for a timely harvest during the flu season, stay out of the flower business.
"Based on an average annual count of 74,363 for all pneumonia and influenza deaths, and an average annual estimate of 6,309 deaths associated with influenza in this category, 8.5% of all pneumonia and influenza deaths were influenza associated." (source: cdc.gov)
Who needs cancer when you can make a decent living off the flu? Nearly 75,000 funerals from pneumonia and the flu make indeed for a worthwhile crop for flower girls among other professions, attorneys who establish living trusts, and for hundreds of thousands of eBay sellers who auction off precious loot they acquire cheap at estate sales.
Don't get me wrong: I am not judging you for profiting from people's collective or individual death wish. In a variety of ways I have made healthy looking sums of money from dead people too. It appears to be working, until you realize that monies earned this way tend to descend to money hell fast. Dead people's money hurries to follow its previous owners. I do not scoff at the flower shops in the world, nor do I look down on funeral directors but dead people's money may come with unpleasant appurtenances that unlucky heirs don't realize they'll have to live with.
Pecunia non olet? Emperor Vespasian was correct: money doesn't stink, even when it's collected as urine tax. What people think and feel about money, however, may very well stink to the heavens and set consequences in motion that are anything but pretty. Do whatever you want but stay alert. Ignore the Unconscious Death Urge at your own peril.
Pecunia non olet? Emperor Vespasian was correct: money doesn't stink, even when it's collected as urine tax. What people think and feel about money, however, may very well stink to the heavens and set consequences in motion that are anything but pretty. Do whatever you want but stay alert. Ignore the Unconscious Death Urge at your own peril.
This newsletter peddles awareness. I shan't tell you what to do or what not to do. My intention is to raise eyebrows and tickle your brain cells. Perhaps you can use these ideas as an edge, permitting you to invent spectacular opportunities where others see nothing but a blur.
I don't answer questions and certainly not yours. My answers are worthless for you. I bombard you with a plethora of potentially disquieting questions. It is your job to find your own individual answers every day anew.
What are your alternatives to investing in mortality? How can you bank on people who plan to stick around?
For example, while the life insurance companies bet that you will live longer than you think, your government bets on you resting in peace sooner than you think. Social Security is a neat death insurance of sorts. Life insurers aren't known for praying to God so He kills their clientele a few years later than He had originally planned. Instead, insurers ask their clients to drop a few pounds around their waistlines. God doesn't sneakily lure people into gobbling up extra donuts, so He has an additional justification for their hastened involuntary ascension. Insurance companies are aware of God's indifference toward dead people and life insurance agents have noticed that the stuff people stick into their mouths is deadlier than all Gods and the Utah police combined.
God kills people and you, too, are in His crosshairs? The Pope's Swiss guard doesn't make sense if that were true, or does it? If your God likes feeding worms with your rotting remains and you're cool with that, why be frightened of Ebola, the ‛Ndrangheta, or the dating circuit in Utah? I suggest you take a hard look at your beliefs. Has death become a convenient substitute for your God? People are addicted to pain and death. Their pain is hallowed ground and death, so they claim, gives their otherwise mediocre lives meaning and hope (and, let's not forget, potentially oodles of money).
Why do we need the medical profession, then? Is the work of hospitals at odds with God's will? Why isn't everybody jumping up and down in delight at funerals, laughing arm in arm with the morticians over yet another cadaver that gives life meaning while generously providing fun and profit? If a human being's annihilation is God's will and the goal of life (the "Final Solution?"), awesome: driver's licences could become optional, daily drug and alcohol consumption ought to be mandatory, people's manic obsession with peace deserves to be ridiculed, and your kids would be better off trading the silly safety of sandlots for obvious benefits of playing in traffic.
Now, if you don't find carcasses pleasing to the eye and fit for your children to dance around, it may not be God's will for you or anybody else to perish or your faith is kind of selective and in need of after-hours tutoring. Please take note: meeting your maker doesn't require for you to show up maimed and mutilated on His doorstep. When you're looking good, feeling good, and smelling good you may be more desirable company.
I digress. How could I get so lost?!
Why do we need the medical profession, then? Is the work of hospitals at odds with God's will? Why isn't everybody jumping up and down in delight at funerals, laughing arm in arm with the morticians over yet another cadaver that gives life meaning while generously providing fun and profit? If a human being's annihilation is God's will and the goal of life (the "Final Solution?"), awesome: driver's licences could become optional, daily drug and alcohol consumption ought to be mandatory, people's manic obsession with peace deserves to be ridiculed, and your kids would be better off trading the silly safety of sandlots for obvious benefits of playing in traffic.
Now, if you don't find carcasses pleasing to the eye and fit for your children to dance around, it may not be God's will for you or anybody else to perish or your faith is kind of selective and in need of after-hours tutoring. Please take note: meeting your maker doesn't require for you to show up maimed and mutilated on His doorstep. When you're looking good, feeling good, and smelling good you may be more desirable company.
I digress. How could I get so lost?!
Hoping to take over the money of a stiff is the worst form of poverty consciousness and an expression of moral bankruptcy. People utterly enjoy playing with their grandchildren. Suddenly though, they may realize that these cute little guys will discover math some day, along with money and moronic beliefs about such countable matter. Henceforth they'll consciously or unconsciously join the vultures that are already circling around granny's house, making Utah gang members and drug dealers look like saints.
Apropos 'hope': hope is synonymous with hate.
When you are in love with the present moment, hope has no purpose. Bliss and hope are mutually exclusive. The appearance of hope is your personal quality control department's stamp of disapproval for your status quo, the crappy current moment. You hate what is, therefore you hope for something better to occur.
Hope is the death sentence for the present moment. If you find yourself waiting for something to happen, you are banking on death. Yours. Hopeful waiting rejects reality and negates life as you perceive it right now. Hope is a dangerously suicidal tool and a common application of self-sabotage. Talk to individuals throughout your day and you'll meet people who wait and hope for something better to kill their current experience. They hope for ...
... their shift to be over
... the winter to end
... time to go by faster
... their lives to be longer
... the rain to stop
... their weight to drop
... their faces to be lifted
... the economy to recover
... their wedding day to be nice
... their divorce to be final
... the children to grow up
... their parents to understand
... prices to go down
... being older already
... being younger again
... their ship to come in
... the times to get better
The belief that death of the present moment increases the probability of an improved quality of life is grossly fallacious. Hope is perhaps people's most common investment in death. The idea that grass must be greener on the other side of the fence kicks people out of their paradise. It is the root of self-destruction and destruction. Many a sucker's marriage, wealth, and life has ended in the trap of hope.
Those $42 Trillion boomer bucks are cursed ..... by the "lucky" ones who expect to receive that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and by their dreadful beliefs, hopes, and fears about the money tsunami at the horizon. It's blood money. Sorrow and guilt are bound to come with it in the sack and an urge to pass it on or to pass on. You are certainly not worse off if you don't have well-to-do parents. In case your parents are losers, you may be luckier than you think.
Taking money and monetary issues serious, is another considerable investment in death. Money or the lack thereof are not causes of your emotional state. Your money situation may be a symptom, a material display of an energetic-emotional state that you have maintained for a long time. Pleasant or unpleasant, your thoughts and feelings about money describe a phantom but, artificially generated as they are, your beliefs may become quite realistic fences that you erected between money and yourself. Give money meaning and it'll be more difficult to come by. When you bring yourself to perceive money as almost meaningless and you detach yourself emotionally from money matters, your acquisition of something that meaningless will become nearly effortless.
You have the inherent ability to be as happy as you wish to be, anywhere, any time, under any circumstances. Objectively and certifiably positive events are maxed out as potential resources for the desire of ever expanding happiness. Where is the challenge and joy in that? Being happy when life goes your way is cheap enjoyment for dullards and the equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel. Adverse circumstances are the new frontier for people who have the gumption to explore happiness beyond grammar school level.
Artificial fences? What am I referring to?
Worries, hopes, fears, expectations, emotions, beliefs, thoughts ..... anything you project on or attach to a dollar bill in particular and to your thoughts about money in general, is such a 'fence', a monetary barrier between you and the money you say you want. Unconsciously or consciously, you believe that the grass is greener on one side than on the other.
Further, you believe that individuals who have the power to dispense amount X to you or withhold it from you have power over your emotions and over the quality of your life. Unfortunate individuals who kill themselves over the loss of money or with the excuse of being unemployed, believe that money and people who supposedly "control" it, exert power over life and death.
ABC News points out: “Joblessness is a risk factor for suicide,” said Nadine Kaslow, professor of psychology in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Emory University in Atlanta. “The stress is just overwhelming. … People are freaked out.”
Bloomberg reports: “The suicide rate started accelerating in 2008, 2009 and 2010 — someone might still be working, but their house is underwater, or they’re working but they’re working part-time,” Eric Caine, the director of the CDC’s Injury Control Research Center for Suicide Prevention, said by telephone. “These things ripple into families. There’s an economic stress.”
NY Daily News writes: “Most people who commit suicide tend to suffer from major depression, and this vulnerability tends to be brought forth by very stressful situations like losing one’s home or job,” [Dr. Dan Iosifescu, director of mood and anxiety disorders program at Mount Sinai Hospita] said." (source: GlobalResearch.ca)
Call me callous but this is a direct result of people thinking that money must be more than ink on paper. These people die of sheer superstition. The fatality of superstition may be higher today than during the dark ages and perhaps it never varied. Human beings are a gullible species. You may sneer at people who throw salt over their shoulder to prevent bad luck, like Tom Sawyer's aunt Polly (if I recall correctly), but the tall tales we believe about money's consistency and what determines its appearance or disappearance are hysterical. The idiocies people believe about money and the manic acts they perform based on such preposterous beliefs are vivid expressions of the neurotic cats we are.
If you believe that more money will "make" you happier, for instance, you are in the business of threatening everybody who refuses to give you more money by promising them you will maintain your miserable state because they did not buy you out of it. The common superstition that money can make you happy is covert emotional blackmail. Your belief that more money will make you happier than you are right now is an aggressive act toward your potential clients and customers. If they are smart and if they have a choice--people usually do--they will stay out of your way and so will their money make a wide berth around you.
Those who are convinced that money makes them happy will have a harder time earning money than those who don't believe such rubbish. Why? Magic Money with fantastic and impossible powers doesn't exist in our reality. The employers and clients you can meet on earth don't have happy-making money and therefore they can't give it to you. They only have simple money that can do nothing good or bad without you. If you are happy with that, you can have plenty. If you crave money with superhuman powers, good luck.
Naturally, the same holds true for money that is feared as a potential danger, maligned as filthy, vilified as corrupting, or perceived as a sinister tool of depravity. Whatever you think that money supposedly is or is not, will be an obstacle in your way of its acquisition.
So, if you believe 'money makes people happy', you are busy building an unnecessary yet powerful "fence" between you and (people who may otherwise be very willing to give you) money. If you believe money is dirty filthy lucre but you are forced to get some of that nasty stuff so you can pay your bills, you are making your life artificially difficult.
That fence kills your options. Weirdly enough, you expect to gain something from a self-inflicted loss of options. Doesn't it sound familiar, that the death of your options may be an investment strategy you are pursuing? Your thoughts and beliefs about money are imaginary walls between you and unrestricted cash flow between you and other individuals. The more serious you think money is, the tighter the restrictions that minimize its free flow to and fro.
People are less frightened of loss and failure than of the possible discovery of their own power. Every nasty remark they have made about power and the so-called powerful would fall back on them. They'd watch themselves become the evil filthy capitalists they have warned their children about at the dinner table. Life, freedom, and power of the individual are endangered properties. Frozen in regressed fight or flight mode, people disregard their own (lives, freedom, and power) and fight each other's. It's ugly. It leads to death, as the CDC reports weekly. And, geez, the only real money you'll shake loose this way is dead people's money.
Boundless pecuniary success requires for you to become the rightful target of every money related accusation, insult, and condemnation any fool has ever thought up. Can you handle to be accused of being rich and greedy, with an angry mob pointing fingers at you while the worst crime you have ever committed is making more money than Jane and Joe? Meeting anti-money Nazis is always lively, I promise. If you have no interest in that, forget real money, real life, and stick to a real job.
True ease of gracefully receiving money that others feel the pleasure of giving to you demands of you the acknowledgement that you yourself are the wellspring that you may have hoped to find elsewhere, on the other side of cliches like fame, success, or lottery jackpots.
Link yourself to Infinite Intelligence, to the divine, and instantly you are one with the source of freedom that others hope in futility to access through money. Act and do what others believe only money can do. Give others, or at least offer them what they may expect that only money can give them.
Money is the result of your freedom to live as you please. Money won't ever be the source of freedom.
When you assume the characteristics that people attribute to money and when you wisely use the unlimited freedom others so desperately and tragically try to find in money, you'll have stopped investing in death and begun your investment in your life and that of others. Money will be optional, as you have become its source. Death will be optional because you are the change agent others hope for death to be. It's not intelligent to die, so you can improve your lot. It's not the brightest idea to break your back for money, so that money can then buy you a better life for the few remaining months or years between retirement and death.
End all compromise. Invest in your life and enjoy the payoff today. How so? It's your turn to fill in the blank. How do you really want to live?
Egbert
Apropos 'hope': hope is synonymous with hate.
When you are in love with the present moment, hope has no purpose. Bliss and hope are mutually exclusive. The appearance of hope is your personal quality control department's stamp of disapproval for your status quo, the crappy current moment. You hate what is, therefore you hope for something better to occur.
Hope is the death sentence for the present moment. If you find yourself waiting for something to happen, you are banking on death. Yours. Hopeful waiting rejects reality and negates life as you perceive it right now. Hope is a dangerously suicidal tool and a common application of self-sabotage. Talk to individuals throughout your day and you'll meet people who wait and hope for something better to kill their current experience. They hope for ...
... their shift to be over
... the winter to end
... time to go by faster
... their lives to be longer
... the rain to stop
... their weight to drop
... their faces to be lifted
... the economy to recover
... their wedding day to be nice
... their divorce to be final
... the children to grow up
... their parents to understand
... prices to go down
... being older already
... being younger again
... their ship to come in
... the times to get better
The belief that death of the present moment increases the probability of an improved quality of life is grossly fallacious. Hope is perhaps people's most common investment in death. The idea that grass must be greener on the other side of the fence kicks people out of their paradise. It is the root of self-destruction and destruction. Many a sucker's marriage, wealth, and life has ended in the trap of hope.
Those $42 Trillion boomer bucks are cursed ..... by the "lucky" ones who expect to receive that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and by their dreadful beliefs, hopes, and fears about the money tsunami at the horizon. It's blood money. Sorrow and guilt are bound to come with it in the sack and an urge to pass it on or to pass on. You are certainly not worse off if you don't have well-to-do parents. In case your parents are losers, you may be luckier than you think.
Taking money and monetary issues serious, is another considerable investment in death. Money or the lack thereof are not causes of your emotional state. Your money situation may be a symptom, a material display of an energetic-emotional state that you have maintained for a long time. Pleasant or unpleasant, your thoughts and feelings about money describe a phantom but, artificially generated as they are, your beliefs may become quite realistic fences that you erected between money and yourself. Give money meaning and it'll be more difficult to come by. When you bring yourself to perceive money as almost meaningless and you detach yourself emotionally from money matters, your acquisition of something that meaningless will become nearly effortless.
You have the inherent ability to be as happy as you wish to be, anywhere, any time, under any circumstances. Objectively and certifiably positive events are maxed out as potential resources for the desire of ever expanding happiness. Where is the challenge and joy in that? Being happy when life goes your way is cheap enjoyment for dullards and the equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel. Adverse circumstances are the new frontier for people who have the gumption to explore happiness beyond grammar school level.
Artificial fences? What am I referring to?
Worries, hopes, fears, expectations, emotions, beliefs, thoughts ..... anything you project on or attach to a dollar bill in particular and to your thoughts about money in general, is such a 'fence', a monetary barrier between you and the money you say you want. Unconsciously or consciously, you believe that the grass is greener on one side than on the other.
Further, you believe that individuals who have the power to dispense amount X to you or withhold it from you have power over your emotions and over the quality of your life. Unfortunate individuals who kill themselves over the loss of money or with the excuse of being unemployed, believe that money and people who supposedly "control" it, exert power over life and death.
ABC News points out: “Joblessness is a risk factor for suicide,” said Nadine Kaslow, professor of psychology in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Emory University in Atlanta. “The stress is just overwhelming. … People are freaked out.”
Bloomberg reports: “The suicide rate started accelerating in 2008, 2009 and 2010 — someone might still be working, but their house is underwater, or they’re working but they’re working part-time,” Eric Caine, the director of the CDC’s Injury Control Research Center for Suicide Prevention, said by telephone. “These things ripple into families. There’s an economic stress.”
NY Daily News writes: “Most people who commit suicide tend to suffer from major depression, and this vulnerability tends to be brought forth by very stressful situations like losing one’s home or job,” [Dr. Dan Iosifescu, director of mood and anxiety disorders program at Mount Sinai Hospita] said." (source: GlobalResearch.ca)
Call me callous but this is a direct result of people thinking that money must be more than ink on paper. These people die of sheer superstition. The fatality of superstition may be higher today than during the dark ages and perhaps it never varied. Human beings are a gullible species. You may sneer at people who throw salt over their shoulder to prevent bad luck, like Tom Sawyer's aunt Polly (if I recall correctly), but the tall tales we believe about money's consistency and what determines its appearance or disappearance are hysterical. The idiocies people believe about money and the manic acts they perform based on such preposterous beliefs are vivid expressions of the neurotic cats we are.
If you believe that more money will "make" you happier, for instance, you are in the business of threatening everybody who refuses to give you more money by promising them you will maintain your miserable state because they did not buy you out of it. The common superstition that money can make you happy is covert emotional blackmail. Your belief that more money will make you happier than you are right now is an aggressive act toward your potential clients and customers. If they are smart and if they have a choice--people usually do--they will stay out of your way and so will their money make a wide berth around you.
Those who are convinced that money makes them happy will have a harder time earning money than those who don't believe such rubbish. Why? Magic Money with fantastic and impossible powers doesn't exist in our reality. The employers and clients you can meet on earth don't have happy-making money and therefore they can't give it to you. They only have simple money that can do nothing good or bad without you. If you are happy with that, you can have plenty. If you crave money with superhuman powers, good luck.
Naturally, the same holds true for money that is feared as a potential danger, maligned as filthy, vilified as corrupting, or perceived as a sinister tool of depravity. Whatever you think that money supposedly is or is not, will be an obstacle in your way of its acquisition.
So, if you believe 'money makes people happy', you are busy building an unnecessary yet powerful "fence" between you and (people who may otherwise be very willing to give you) money. If you believe money is dirty filthy lucre but you are forced to get some of that nasty stuff so you can pay your bills, you are making your life artificially difficult.
That fence kills your options. Weirdly enough, you expect to gain something from a self-inflicted loss of options. Doesn't it sound familiar, that the death of your options may be an investment strategy you are pursuing? Your thoughts and beliefs about money are imaginary walls between you and unrestricted cash flow between you and other individuals. The more serious you think money is, the tighter the restrictions that minimize its free flow to and fro.
People are less frightened of loss and failure than of the possible discovery of their own power. Every nasty remark they have made about power and the so-called powerful would fall back on them. They'd watch themselves become the evil filthy capitalists they have warned their children about at the dinner table. Life, freedom, and power of the individual are endangered properties. Frozen in regressed fight or flight mode, people disregard their own (lives, freedom, and power) and fight each other's. It's ugly. It leads to death, as the CDC reports weekly. And, geez, the only real money you'll shake loose this way is dead people's money.
Boundless pecuniary success requires for you to become the rightful target of every money related accusation, insult, and condemnation any fool has ever thought up. Can you handle to be accused of being rich and greedy, with an angry mob pointing fingers at you while the worst crime you have ever committed is making more money than Jane and Joe? Meeting anti-money Nazis is always lively, I promise. If you have no interest in that, forget real money, real life, and stick to a real job.
True ease of gracefully receiving money that others feel the pleasure of giving to you demands of you the acknowledgement that you yourself are the wellspring that you may have hoped to find elsewhere, on the other side of cliches like fame, success, or lottery jackpots.
Link yourself to Infinite Intelligence, to the divine, and instantly you are one with the source of freedom that others hope in futility to access through money. Act and do what others believe only money can do. Give others, or at least offer them what they may expect that only money can give them.
Money is the result of your freedom to live as you please. Money won't ever be the source of freedom.
When you assume the characteristics that people attribute to money and when you wisely use the unlimited freedom others so desperately and tragically try to find in money, you'll have stopped investing in death and begun your investment in your life and that of others. Money will be optional, as you have become its source. Death will be optional because you are the change agent others hope for death to be. It's not intelligent to die, so you can improve your lot. It's not the brightest idea to break your back for money, so that money can then buy you a better life for the few remaining months or years between retirement and death.
End all compromise. Invest in your life and enjoy the payoff today. How so? It's your turn to fill in the blank. How do you really want to live?
Egbert
P.S.: Cetero censeo, jobs are coffins of individuality. Hourly wages ought to be eliminated. The crude practice of time based compensation insults human intelligence, suffocates our economy's productivity, and is embarrassing for a society that considers itself civilized. On Amazon.com you'll find Paperback and Kindle editions of my book 'How to Better Hate Your Job'. Of course it's also available for the Nook and on iTunes.
For seminars and speaking engagements, please contact me via email.
For seminars and speaking engagements, please contact me via email.
'Tis very certain the desire of life prolongs it.
Lord Byron
