From the section- CREATING TRUE WEALTH

Wealth Through Conversation, Peter Block

If you want to change the world—or the culture—all you have to do is change the conversation. In the beginning was the word—that was how the Bible started. Asking this question of what is true wealth invites people to have a conversation they may never had before. That itself is a measure a wealth! The value of our coming together can be measured by whether or not we are able to have a conversation we have not had before. A conversation is an action.

The Quest for Gold , Michael Lindfield

It is our nature to search for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Perhaps the gold we seek is already within us, and like Solomon’s gold, is not an earthly metal or medal, but a state of higher consciousness. Maybe we have been looking in the wrong places for our mythical Eldorado. The signs of this “quest for gold” show up in the lives of people everywhere today. The eternal journey takes on different forms in different ages. The images screaming out at us from billboards and television screens – that purport to tell us how to fill our empty lives – are possibly distorted and garbled versions of those ancient messages that have pulsed from the depth of our soul to the struggling and bewildered personality, throughout the long pageant of our human journey. The soul is ever waging a campaign – urging us onwards and upwards along the path of self-fulfillment.

For some, the quest today has taken on a desperate search for fame and fortune, where money and position are seen as the only indicators of success. As a bumper-sticker on a car in front of me once exclaimed, “Who ever dies with the most toys, wins”. This is an unfortunate but somewhat accurate articulation of our present predicament and problem as a society. However, thankfully more people each day are seeing through the hollow message of materialism and are beginning to discover that no amount of money or fame can satiate the deep inner hunger felt by the human soul. In the biblical sense, “We cannot live by bread alone”. We are beginning to change the conversation and there are hopeful signs of a switch occurring in our society. The search for success is slowly changing to the search for significance – where living a meaningful life is valued over material and emotional possessions.

I firmly believe that the nature of the soul is to give of itself. The soul is an inner place of great bounty and spiritual wealth that does not need to acquire anything from the outside to prove its worth to anyone. The soul is like the sun – its role is to shine upon the world as a blessing. Maybe we need to stop, reflect and redefine what we mean by, “the pursuit of happiness” and how we measure and evaluate wealth. It could be that the real measure of our true wealth is in how much we are able to give instead of how much we can take.

I invite each of us to pause and re-imagine what we want out of life. This is not only an individual assignment: it is also a collective calling. Do we as a society have the courage and insight to stop the “gold rush” that is depleting our global resources and to sit down together in dialogue and discover what it will take to create a “commonwealth of nations”? Do we dare let go of the fear that says that, “I must possess in order to feel secure.”?

In many spiritual disciplines, real daring is an act of surrender – the giving of one’s total wealth (both inner and outer) for the good of others. This is the true noble quest that brings happiness. Maybe the elusive secret to attaining inner happiness – the quest for gold – lies in the notion that true wealth is the result of giving from our hearts.