The Marriage of Desire and Greed

Where the Marriage of Desire and Greed Begins

The collaboration of desire and greed begins when we decide we want something we don’t have. By focusing intensely on what we want, we soon find that we can’t bear to live without it. What we don’t have consumes us, and our desire for what we don’t have incites our greed to go and get it. What we want becomes what we must have. When something enters our “must have” zone, we will do almost anything to get it. The mixture of greed and desire exacerbates our neediness and adds an ele- ment of unhappiness and desperation to an already volatile combination of negative motivations. The conjunction of desire, greed, need, and un- happiness can easily overwhelm our common sense and cause our undoing. Greed and desire flourish when we do not know who we really are and are not centered in our true identity. It is only when we are centered in our true identity that we are relieved of greed’s temptations.

When greed and desire dominate our conscious minds, short-term, selfish thinking dominates our lives. When we lose sight of the big picture, focusing solely on our own gratification, we are primed to cause repetitive injury to the web of life and create karmic repercussions in our own lives. When greed and desire are in the ascendant in our lives we will be unhappy and out of balance. When they are the dominant forces in the world, the world will be full of suffering. If the level of imbalance in the world continues to grow, how can we possibly protect the future and build a better world?

greed & pollution

The Most Insidious Epidemic of Our Time

The most insidious epidemic of our time is the lack of inner balance that exists in nearly all of us and is reflected in the world around us. When the population of the planet was much less than it is today, when the available technology was much cruder, the damage done to the web of life was repairable by nature. That is no longer the case. There are now too many of us with too much internal toxicity and too much technology to continue on in the same way as before. Personal toxicity and advanced technology present a frightening combination of unpredictable factors that threaten the future of this planet. There is too little margin of error in our endeavors to tolerate much more thoughtless greed.

While we cannot legislate consciousness, we can choose to rectify our own lack of balance and find our true center. When we are centered we are better positioned to deal with the challenges of life and the particular stresses of our time. If enough of us become centered and clear, together we will create a clear and radiant energy field that will help the world overcome the negative trends now dominating it. There can be no balance in the world until there is more balance in each of us. In order to find the balance we need we must overcome our attachments to greed and desire.