Financial Freedom

Lesson 9: An eye to the future

1. Everything Is Changing
2. Technology
3. Responding to Change
4. Ambiguity and Decision Making
5. It's a Different World
6. The Downward Cycle
7. Conscience and Consciousness
8. Major Trends
9. Being Free
10. Living Without Attachment
Exercise One

1. Everything Is Changing

The world around you is changing, as are you. These can change over time, so reconsider once in a while:

your goals, including your financial goals
your net worth, your income, and your cash flow
where you want to live or work
the work you actually want to be doing
the amount of time you wish to spend on different areas of your life
what is expected of you at work, or what new things you need to learn
what matters to you, how you wish to make a difference in your life
your preparation for the unexpected, including insurance and job loss
the jobs that have a future in the US, and those being outsourced or done elsewhere
how changes in technology may affect your future livelihood or financial security.

It is a rapidly changing world, and not all of the change is for the better. Before you consider how you might be benefited by a changing world and financial environment, be sure to do what you can to prevent yourself from being greatly disadvantaged by it; protect yourself. Millions of Americans have been through bankruptcy, unable to deal with their daily lives, let alone secure their financial future; and, unfortunately, neither government nor private industry is really there to protect you, financially.

The things we need to protect ourselves from today were inconceivable a decade ago. Minefields abound on the Internet, including so-called "phishing," in which con artists send legitimate-looking emails to people, pretending to be a certain company, asking for personal information, and then steal their identity and/or financial assets. They take your life, and it is hard to recover it.

Tens of millions of people in the US have already been victims of identity theft; their financial lives have been torn apart or ruined, merely because someone gained access to their personal identifying information. It typically takes hundreds of hours of a person's time and energy to try to straighten out an identity theft, or to try to establish their credit again, and the results are often less than satisfactory. Do not be one of the fifteen million people that this may happen to this year. Practice safeguarding — and, when you dispose of it, properly destroying — identifying financial information, especially anything that has your social security number on it. In states which allow you to freeze your credit, so that no one can apply for credit in your name, this can be an important step to take. Otherwise, you might consider paying for a credit protection and reporting service, but do research to find one that is really honest. It is unfortunate that the credit system itself has been so lax in protecting people — the system has created its own need for high-priced protection services, and in many ways encouraged identity theft. Banks throw credit offers at consumers, including blank checks on their credit cards — and used to mail new credit cards to people without them even asking for them. Their safeguards were lax or nonexistent, because they were more interested in issuing plastic in the hope of making more money than in really protecting anyone.

The more rapidly things change, the harder it is to rely upon what you already know. You have to learn to pay attention to future trends and changing directions — especially those which can greatly affect your life. Find some web sites that deal with money, personal finance, and financial trends, and learn what is happening financially, globally. There was a time not too long ago, when a person could have a job, stay there for many years, and expect the world to keep being pretty much the same for the foreseeable future. Those days are long past.

We are not saying to adopt new trends as readily as new fashions. That is a superficial and unthinking way of adapting to change. Rather, understand change, and learn to rely not solely upon external trends that keep changing, but your inner wisdom, inner guidance, and self-directedness.

It is more important to learn to deal with change, to make good decisions, to be self-directed and responsible, than it is to seek some get-rich-quick idea. Use what you can, outside you, to support what you know within you, but do not become overly dependent upon externals to determine your inner direction, or your sense of what is right or most progressive for you.

Take time to stand back from your life, and see if you are experiencing the quality of life — and well-being — that you want most. Separate that from all the things outside you which cannot produce a true state of fulfillment within you. And do not devalue who you are, what you know, and what you can know within you, in favor of external information technology, or formal education. The more confidently you practice self-referral, and the more self-aware you are, the more you will be able to realize the true value of things outside you — and use them to your advantage rather than your disadvantage.

2. Technology

The idea with technology is to make use of it, and be sure that it is not getting the best of you. Have you ever felt that you have become an extension of your cell phone, social media, text messaging, or your Internet surfing, Facebook, video games or the five hundred channels on satellite or cable TV? If so, you need to stand back and restore your balance.

Money can get you deeply into living a techno-life with techno-relationships, techno-entertainment, and an entire virtual life. Today, it is becoming increasingly popular for young people especially to inhabit virtual worlds on the Internet, commonly called having a "second life." From the earliest age, children are being trained to live in a virtual world, to create a false identity, to populate their world with things they buy in virtual stores, and to interact with others — they have no idea who they really are — in cyberspace. One parent says, at least her young children are learning how to shop online, as if that were a really good benefit of living in a world of illusions and being trained to be a totally conditioned, materialistic, mindless consumer at the earliest age.

Society increasingly produces things that entertain people in their illusions, cultivating consumers to charge for living in a state of delusion. There is a lot of money to be made in making people more materialistic and less spiritual, more mental and less heart-full, more entertained and less purposeful in their existence. It's big business.

There is a huge difference between navigating the Internet and navigating life — real life. The more people live via technology, the less idea they have who they truly are. And the less likely they will ever realize: their true purpose in living, where to find true fulfillment, what true love is, what it means to have a relationship that really works, how to solve their problems, how to get out of the consumer mindset and debt, or how to live from a place of inner wisdom rather than the dominant social programming.

Do you think the world is getting better, the more technology there is? Is it truly serving us, solving our problems, or is it something we turn to after we make all the wrong decisions in our lives, for a quick "fix"?

We see endless advertisements showing people being "helped" with surgery for epilepsy, inhalers for asthma, mastectomies, artificial hip and knee replacements, powered "mobility" carts, endless new drugs for a growing list of diseases, and so on. Somewhere along the way, we, as a society, have lost sight of all the things we are doing wrong; denial is epidemic, and rather than solving the problems we have in our lives, we literally dis-integrate. Then we seek a quick techno-fix. Hasn't something really important been lost in this process? Wouldn't it be better to learn how to deal with our lives, to make better choices, to not get into all of that suffering in the first place? Or, possibly, to seek more natural solutions, things as simple as dieting and exercise? Are science and technology really the answer to everything?

One future technologist sees the solution to all of our problems as being able to download our minds into indestructible robot bodies, so we could "live forever"? Wouldn't something be lost in the process of making us perfect robots — like our soul or spirit?. Is our soul just an ancient artifact, a useless organ like the appendix, easily replaced by technology, along with various parts of our anatomy?

If you seek freedom in life, whether financial freedom or spiritual freedom, be very aware of what you may be dependent upon, addicted to, or attached to, especially the "gifts" of science and technology, which are as likely to entrap you as to free you.

The growth of technology is proportional to our society's failing to live in harmony with nature — outside of us, and within us. Technology cannot replace what we fail to find or know within us. Today, people say they couldn't live without text messaging on their cell phones, and they really feel that way.

Technology will continue to grow, because it has become a (false) "need" in our ever more complex and fragmented lives. In a time when people no longer have meals with their family, but eat fast food on the run while dashing off text messages to their close "friends"; and have sex via the Internet with complete strangers — because it is not "real — the trend is one of diminishing conscience and consciousness in our society.

3. Responding to Change

The way to deal with change is to act, proactively — anticipating changes that are yet to come — rather than merely reacting to changes that have already occurred. This is especially important in business and investing. Of course, emotion and ego are unnecessary in this process, only awareness, perspective, insight, and understanding.

The more a person relies on everything outside them for direction in their life, including financially, the more likely they are to react to change with fear. The less control they have, or feel they have, over their finances, business, or investment, the more likely they are to react with fear, too. Fear should not replace awareness or understanding. Similarly, expectations and denial should not replace a clear vision of the future. And, yes, it is possible to have a fairly clear vision of the future.

Realize, many things can be predicted, if you are aware and informed. The way something is, will either continue the way it is, get worse, or get better. Discernment is necessary, rather than a mindless attitude that "it is all good." Losing money, losing financial security, losing your home, or losing everything you have, is not necessarily "good"; you might rationalize it that way, or prefer to think of it as "a learning experience," but the loss is real. Suffering is real. It is better to avoid suffering yet to come, by making better choices now.

What can you see coming, in your own life? What changes? What, specifically, may continue to remain the same; what may get worse, and what may get better? Can you see the factors or forces at play, which would cause things to change in your life? Clearly, we all face some of the same factors, such as aging, health issues, family changes, job or career changes, and so on. Learn to discern clearly; see what you think and feel. You can predict the future state of many things currently in your life; see if you can also anticipate what may be new or "unexpected." What would cause an increase in your income or net worth; what will diminish it? Every time you spend money — or plan to spend money in the future — have this larger view of where your choices are leading you. And see your choices in the context of a changing world.

The majority of investors react to changing market conditions, news and financial reports, and waves of emotion — whether fear or excitement — sweep the markets. One of the ways in which investors try to minimize the risk of great losses is to have a stop order in place, which automatically trades their stocks if the price goes below a certain amount. That way they may not need to pay attention to how the stocks are doing each day. Although this is generally a workable technique, it does not replace awareness, perspective, or a clear understanding of what is really happening.

Too often fear rules investment decisions: the fear of losing money, and the fear of not making enough (missing some exciting opportunity). Even though the markets — or individual stocks — can rise or fall drastically due to emotion, emotion is not the basis for making the best decisions. The exchanges realized the volatility of human emotion as soon as it became possible for investors to follow stock prices on their computers, in real time, daily. And they set in place failsafe mechanisms for computer control of trading, to limit declines in the market that could occur on any given day. In other words, they try to compensate for — or remove the extreme liability of — fear in investors.

That is something the individual needs to do, too. The market as a whole may not crash on any given day, but individual stock holdings can drop precipitously. Institutional investors and traders try to leverage the slightest bit of advantage they find in deciding which direction a stock is going to move, with very precarious mathematical techniques, including derivatives. Basically, that means they could make a very large profit, or suffer a very large loss, which is far greater in value than the actual change in value of a stock.

Things change, sometimes a lot. You may not be ahead of change if you count on the news to inform you. And, if you do come upon some financial news that you think you can use, the chances are that the analysts and large institutional investors already know about it, and have acted on it. You would need to keep up on financial changes all day, to pick up early on trends. Which brings us to so-called "day traders," individuals who believe they can tell which way a stock will go on a given day, from minute to minute or hour to hour, and who buy and sell at a moment's notice, hoping to make a large profit. Most day traders lose a lot of money; some lose everything they have.

So, where does this leave the ordinary individual? How are you supposed to do better than that? Realize, you need to understand your investments and their expected return, and minimize the possibility of losing your money, to reach your goals. You really don't need to predict the future, but rather understand the value of investments — how that can change in a changing economy.

Ironically, the financial health of the economy is not a reliable measure of how well stocks are going to do, on any given day, or during any given year. Stocks do not necessarily do better when the economy is doing well, or the government is spending within its means. On the contrary, it has been seen that years in which the federal deficit (debt) is very great, stocks tend to do well. It seems that debt has the result of encouraging consumer confidence and spending, along with the higher prices that investors are willing to pay for their stocks. And, people sometimes make a lot of money in a bad economy, when deals and pricing are favorable.

4. Ambiguity and Decision Making

The more things change, the more our decisions today no longer reflect the way things were yesterday. They involve a lot more ambiguity, as we may be uncertain as to the direction in which things are changing, or whether the changes are really significant or lasting. Does what we already know still apply, or does a different set of rules apply? This is especially the case in financial matters; one person may see "up" when another sees "down." Financial decisions, and investments, have this inherent ambiguity and opposing interpretations.

It is a common fallacy that the best decisions, including financial ones, are purely analytical and rational, or a result of technical analysis. Human decision making always comes down to how we deal with what we don't know. If we really knew everything in advance, decision making would always produce the results we expected — and, although it is good to know as much as we need to, as much as is relevant to our making a decision, we rarely have "all the information" in advance.

Even we we have a great deal of information, much of it will be conflicting. We need to sort out what we feel we can rely upon, and what we choose to discard or ignore. Actually, we engage in precisely this operation all the time in our daily lives — our very process of perception, and interpretation and understanding, relies upon the way in which we accept some things in our environment and reject others, accept some thoughts and reject others, accept some possibilities and reject others. This is how we recognize — or develop — opportunities, and resolve ambiguity.

Opportunity is simply discerning what may serve us as opposed to what may not. It is not guaranteed, because we don't know everything, things change, other factors come into play, and things are sometimes not what they appear to be — our perception is shaped by what we believe, and what we believe is shaped by our perception, often in a rather closed loop.

In order to build wealth, you need to be comfortable with what you know, and comfortable with what you don't know. And you need to discern the difference. Ambiguity is okay. You are seldom going to be able to remove all ambiguity — nor do you have to. You simply have to learn to make the most progressive decisions with what you know.

Intuition, or an ability to rely upon what you know and feel within you, is essential in making decisions in the face of ambiguity. Also, you need to understand the nature of the risk involved. If there is a chance that you may not get the results you hope for, what do you stand to lose? What is the worst-case scenario? Can you justify the risk, in terms of the likely gains?

Anything is possible, but be realistic, practical, and in touch with what you feel to be the way things are or will be, in reality. Wishful thinking — also known as positive thinking — is a poor way to deal with uncertainty. So is waiting until you are "certain" about everything. Opportunities will pass you by. You have to be prepared to make a decision and act.

Opportunities arise in the transition from one phase or set pattern to another; it is at these change points, when more subtle influences can produce greater effects, that you can maximize your efforts and your returns. When you have a decision to make, or an opportunity arises, it is often better to do something, rather than doing nothing at all. If you need more information, get it. If you have as much information and understanding as you are going to have — except for hindsight — then make the best decision you can. We almost always can see things better at some later point, with greater awareness or perspective, but the task is to learn to move forward with what we know now. Remember, financial decisions — especially investments, because they all involve risk — need sufficient information, understanding of trends, and assessment of what you might lose, before jumping into any decision.

The more complex life becomes, daily, the harder it is to identify causes and effects in many areas of life, especially in the economy, business, the stock market, and other financial areas. And the more important it becomes to learn to be a confident and skilled decision maker. Time itself is one of the biggest factors in ambiguity — things change so quickly that we often cannot tell if something is for the better or the worse. Short-term changes can throw us, especially if they are not indicative of the overall direction, especially in terms of investments.

It may be easier to understand how things are now, or what the trends are, if you spread out your vision over time.

5. It's a Different World

Sure, you can tell yourself life is good, and everything is wonderful, and live in denial. But, if you want to have any idea how to have well-being and a higher quality of life, you need to understand how the world is changing in the most significant ways — and how those changes impact you, your loved ones, your life, and the future.

When you think about it, it's a different world today than it was in the 1950s. Back then, people left their doors unlocked, they left the keys in the ignition of their car, they left their children unattended, they took a job and had job security, and they got married as a means to have companionship for life, on life's journey.

Today, people have five locks on their door; car theft is common; unattended children are abducted, raped, and killed; people change jobs frequently and expect to have two to four different careers in their life; people get married out of selfishness, illusions, and ambition, and the majority get divorced, and they do it over again, and again.

Back in the 50s, rape and murder and robbery were uncommon. Today, they are so common they hardly make the news; you have to kill dozens of people to grab people's attention. Today there are at least 500 serial killers stalking the innocent across the US. Back in the 50s a person who couldn't cope with life's problems turned to alcohol. Today, they can't get enough crack, cocaine, crank, Ecstasy, heroin, LSD, marijuana, and so on. Back in the 50s there were romantic crooners, pop music was light-hearted, lyrics were about a simpler kind of life. Nowadays, pop icons like Michael Jackson, Madonna, and the rest grab their crotches as they sing, and their lives are filled with perversity; the lyrics of songs including gangster rap music are violent, obscene, and denigrating in the extreme; the sounds of shrieking and screaming that pass for "music" in popular heavy-metal music, and groups such as Megadeath, could only come straight from hell. And they do.

Over the decades, life on Earth has been moving steadily towards life in Hell. A pin-up calendar of a pretty girl, showing her legs, was considered very racy back in the 50s. Today, every form of perversity and pornography is readily available — even to children — on the Internet; it is the biggest business on the Internet. Pornography is a multi-billion dollar business. Illicit drugs are a multi-billion dollar business, and so on.

It's a different world, and not all for the better. Back in the 50s a lot of food was grown naturally, organically. Cancer was uncommon. Today, food is heavily chemically treated, and genetically modified, to cause allergic reactions and attack the human body's immune system. The water and air are filled with toxic chemicals. Cancer is epidemic, and we are faced with emerging diseases such as AIDS, Gulf War Syndrome, Ebola, Mad Cow Disease, and so on. Diseases opportunistically take advantage of our greatly weakened immune systems.

Something is different in today's world. Something has happened. But, for those who are born into the present time, all of this is taken as "normal." It's just the way things are, now. It's kind of like obesity. As more and more children and adults are grossly overweight — and destined to experience the consequences of overeating in greatly increased disease, pain, and suffering — the measure of obesity keeps shifting. In other words, the more people who are obese (right now that means one third of the adult population), the more the "normal" or average weight rises on the medical chart. And so obesity — and its consequent suffering — has become normal, and is even felt to be right, good, and proper by many people, now. The endless promotion of junk food has had a major effect. That's just one agenda we are being sold, which destroys us; and it is happening in every area of society.

Someone decides what sells: corporate America. What is the erroneous pursuit of money costing us as a society, and as a nation?

When you see a slutty music video, or its pop idol star in the "news," ask yourself why they are even there in front of your face, to be seen by millions, to shape the thinking and behavior of the masses? Who decides that the proper angle for viewing a woman, even on television shows, is looking down her breasts or up her crotch? What is the thinking behind this? Who decides what images and behavior to parade before our eyes in the media? Who is trying to reduce this world to the lowest common denominator? Who thought up television programming that features people putting their heads into a tank of maggots, to try to retrieve raw chicken legs with their mouths, to try to win some money? How can the debasement of human life be good for anyone? The "dumbing down" of America is quite real. If you compare life on this Earth, today, with the not so distant past, you are forced to the conclusion that something has changed, and the change keeps accelerating. And people cannot see that something has changed, something is grossly different. Consciousness is dimming, darkening. This world is being brought down to the lowest level of greed, lust, corruption, perversity, abuse, exploitation, and wrong. If that isn't hell, what is? This is the background, the context, for viewing life in the present time. Unless you have this larger perspective, you might imagine things are just fine here, and "it's all good." Unfortunately, those born into the present and coming hell take it all for granted, and seem to enjoy it. They walk around with the most demonic tattoos carved in blood on their bodies, and have made Halloween and their celebration of darkness and evil almost as popular, today, as Christmas and the celebration of light.

6. The Downward Cycle

People lack perspective on life, and on themselves. Clearly, the present generation does not have any perspective on itself. Little girls now try to dress like whores at the earliest age, having been conditioned and trained by their society and all its pop icons — such as Madonna, Britney Spears, Janet Jackson, and Christina Aguilera — to be that way. Young males, calling each other "dog" and all females "ho's" (whores), live their lives precisely that way. They are, if you see the music videos they watch, obsessed with "butts," a lot like dogs. No, this is not some "new," "creative," "modern" way of thinking and behaving. It is not progressive. It is not benign. It is not innocent. It is not good. This world is overflowing with demons from Hell, as it welcomes, embraces, and accepts all wrong, all falsehood, all illusions, all perversity, and all evil. Nearly seventy million Americans watch television shows, nightly that feature the most gruesome deaths, mutilated and decaying dead bodies, and autopsies in disgusting detail. People enjoy this. Somehow, this morbidity and darkness has infected their consciousness, and they can see nothing wrong with it, or themselves.

There is a reason why horror stories fill the best seller charts. And there is a reason why such stories flow so easily from recent authors, such as Anne Rice, Stephen King, Clive Cussler, and others. They are, in a way, autobiographies; they are stories that come from where they come from — where their consciousness is from and where it dwells, even while they are in this world. There is a reason why a movie such as The Lord of the Rings, or Hannibal, or The Ring, with their obscene images of evil — which are embedded in the mind — are so popular. They are a means of implanting and stirring evil in people's souls, on the deepest level. And, today, nothing sells quite as well as evil.

There was a Star Trek movie in which a probe is sent out into space, and it comes back centuries late, having somehow seen the universe and had its consciousness expanded. With this greater perspective and awareness, it comes back to Earth, seeking its "creator." And it immediately perceives mankind as some sort of disease on the face of the Earth. The question is, what would this world look like to someone looking at it from a distance? Someone receiving our music videos, pornography channels and news reports, broadcast into space. Would a True God look back on this and say, "It is good"? Only Evil would be happy with all of the evil, suffering, and sickness that infects mankind in this world. Only demons from hell — incarnating here by the millions — are happy about being able to manifest or create every sort of perversity, pain, suffering, exploitation, and abuse on this Earth.

Is there something, some little voice in the back of your head, that says, "Hey, wait a minute, just a minute. What the hell is going on here?" Well, that's exactly it: hell is going on here.

It would be a gratuitous act to itemize all of the evils of this world. Suffice it to say, you have no idea what darkness lurks in the hearts and souls of man. And, it is in the most ordinary looking people as well, young and old alike. Until you can see the evil that lurks in a child, some little demon who is already hell bent on torturing little animals or other little children — anything that it feels is smaller, weaker, vulnerable, or more innocent — you haven't truly looked evil in the face. If you imagine all people are good, or all children are sweetness and light, you haven't faced Reality yet. And, the more you live in denial, especially the denial of evil, the more you wish to keep yourself unaware, the more likely you are to have a close encounter of the worst kind with Evil.

You need to understand that Evil is predatory in the extreme. It is single-minded. All it wants to do is: get to you, violate you, abuse you, trap you, exploit you, use you, and destroy you. Evil is very real in this world. It is very much a spiritual infection or disease. And, the way it works is by getting inside you. This is why you are bombarded by so many things that assault your senses or your conscience. It is how evil gets inside you. This is why you are encouraged by your society to cater to ego, emotion, blind ambition, greed, lust, and gluttony. It is how evil gets inside of you. Realize, when you refuse to see what is wrong, when you live in denial, when you accept wrong ... you become wrong. If you can see nothing wrong with what is wrong, it is because you have become wrong. If you can see no evil in this world, like the New Agers, it is because you have become that way yourself. It has infected your thinking, your perceptions, and your behavior. Evil does that. Evil, basically, sees nothing wrong with what is wrong.

Given that there is so much evil in this world, it would be good to practice seeing it for what it is. That is the only way you will ever be able to discern the difference between good and evil for your self. So, for example, look at people you see in the media, entertainers, politicians, and practice seeing the illusions and lies they are promoting. Whenever an election year comes around, campaign ads point out the incredibly deceitful, lying, dishonest, and corrupt behavior of the other candidate. Opposing candidates give you that perspective on each other. But, you might want to practice seeing through their lies the rest of the year, the rest of the time you see them. Their lies and corruption do not magically disappear after election day. They have the same lying, deceptive, corrupt nature. They are just very well practiced at concealing it. You need to be at least as practiced at seeing it.

Do you think everything is getting better? Do you think your leaders have been solving all your problems for you during the last fifty years; do you imagine that they are solving all your problems for you now? More often than not, they reflect the corruption, perversity, delusions, arrogance, ignorance, lies, and wrong-mindedness of their times. They are elected precisely because they fit in with society's thinking. Think about that. If there were a "plan" or conspiracy to turn life in this world into a living hell, it could not be working better. The general population is distracted by and finds meaning in sports, movies, music videos, pornography, violent video games, gambling, drugs and alcohol, promiscuity and adultery, televangelism, junk food, shopping, and every sort of addiction imaginable. Any higher spiritual purpose or meaning in life has been rapidly disappearing from sight. And all of this is intentional. It makes money.

7. Conscience and Consciousness

If you want to know what the American consciousness really is, go to a popular video store and look at all of the movies on the shelves. Really look at them. Look at the images, and look what they promote. They are, literally, filled with unspeakable horror, violence, and abuse. And, Americans can't seem to get enough of it. It literally infects their consciousness.

Conscience and consciousness are both on the decline in our society. We cannot merely follow the trends in our society, go along with the herd, and imagine that everything is okay — not if we wish to live with conscience.

Clearly, billions of dollars are being made in tobacco, alcohol, drugs, pornography, crime, gambling, corrupt businesses, movies, and all sorts of activities that cater to the lowest quality of human life, not the highest. Many people — and entire industries — consciously choose to make money by perpetuating suffering.

The world promotes, sells, and perpetuates every sort of behavior that makes people less. And, people buy it. That does not mean that you need to sell it or buy into it. You have a choice to make, and it has very far-reaching consequences in your life and in the lives of others: will you do anything that hurts people, that caters to their addictions, dependencies, self-destructiveness, or delusions? Will you sell or support or invest in products or services or companies or industries or entities that do? Or will you answer to your own conscience, what you know to be right, good, and true, within you?

Making money isn't just about making money. It is about the influence you have in the world at large. It is about personal responsibility, integrity, respect, and conscience, or at least it should be.

Of course, many billionaires are invested in the greater suffering of humanity. They have little if any conscience, and prefer to believe that as long as they make a lot of money, then everything is okay. It is not okay. And, we don't care how many casinos they have, or alcoholic beverage companies, or companies that destroy the environment, or whatever.

Many American companies have shifted manufacturing operations down to Mexico or to other countries, because they can get away with unlimited toxic pollution of the water, air, and earth. They are literally killing people, and creating disease, so they can make more profit on the goods they sell in the US.

Making money is not an excuse for doing anything.

Do you see the world around you clearly? Are you aware? Are you conscious in your choices and actions, mindful of the consequences?

It is not good enough to do what you are permitted to do, what others do, what you can get away with. We are answerable to others for our choices and actions, and we are answerable to our selves. Ignorance is no excuse. Having a mutual fund portfolio that is invested in alcoholic beverages, tobacco companies, drug companies, casinos, toxic polluters, and the military-industrial complex, and failing to realize exactly what you are supporting with your money, is no excuse.

There is a difference between opportunity and exploitation, although they are defined the same in the business world.

Business has no conscience, it is not a living entity, it has no consciousness, it has no inherent sense of what is right and wrong. That is where you come in. You have the necessary consciousness, conscience, and ability to discern the difference between what is right and wrong. Maybe no one else cares, but that doesn't mean you can't. Conscience isn't "old fashioned." Consciousness may be disappearing from life on this planet, but that doesn't have to determine your fate or fortune.

It is a challenge to clearly see the way the world is going — the way of the world — and to choose to live a more conscious, true, and spiritual life. It can be hard to step out of the incessant pressure and expectations to be just like everyone else, to be a consumer, to maximize your debt, to minimize your future. Financial challenges do not occur in isolation; they have a great impact on relationships, marriage partner, children, parents. It takes an act of will — a conscious choice and commitment to a progressive future — to live each day with the right motivation, intent, focus, choices, and consequences for the future.

There are ever increasing numbers of people, young and old, who are unable to live in the "real world." This includes epidemic attention deficit disorder, autism, and Alzheimer's disease. Diseases of consciousness itself are growing. Many people walk around in a perpetual state of unconsciousness, with little awareness of their inner self, lost in a data stream of music and information and sensory stimulation. And the less conscious people are — regardless of whether they label it attention deficit or multi-tasking — the less consciousness, caring, and conscience we see in our world.

8. Major Trends

Changes that occur gradually — or which we live through — are often less obvious or visible to us. The world we live in is changing a lot, but is it all "progress"? What kind of progress comes from not doing the right things? Is business progressing, in what way? Is the economy progressing, in what way? Are you able to see trends over a period of time, rather than being too narrowly focused on today?

Any of these trends in our society could have an impact on your life or your financial situation, now and in the future:

increasing stress in daily life; one third of Americans living with severe stress in their lives, and growing
increasing addictiveness, and promotion of alcohol, drugs, sex, gambling, and spending as the things that promise joy, hope, and satisfaction in life; endless businesses selling more alcoholic beverages, caffeinated energy drinks, junk food, pornography, and horror to our unaware society
increasing disease, obesity, and lack of fitness and well-being
more people on more daily medications, at all ages
decreasing consciousness and conscience in our society; the election of the most conscienceless, stupid, immoral, evil, liars as our leaders
decreasing intelligence, creativity, morality, ethics, and understanding in society as a whole; the corresponding irrelevance of a typical education
more and more people being in debt for their entire lives; less financial independence, and a longer life with more suffering and stress
debt increasing to a level that is not sustainable in the consumer economy, in the financial sector, or in government
the political incorrectness of ever calling a problem a problem, individually and as a society
the effects of global warming, making some areas less and others more livable; the increasingly destructive transference of insects, animals, and plant life to different areas via land, sea, and air
very high energy, water, and natural resource costs; future conflicts and wars fought over drinking water
the effects of natural disasters including more devastating hurricanes and earthquakes
fewer families staying together; more children having sex at an ever younger age
more students dropping out before completing high school; fewer students willing or able to pay for college expenses
the increasing lack of personal freedom and safety of personal identity
less workable relationships; fewer families having a father and mother
fewer people obeying the laws, including such simple ones as stopping at a red light
the rich getting much richer, and the poor getting poorer.

The world around you is changing; it is moving in a given direction. If you do not live in accordance with your own inner-directedness, inner guidance, and inner wisdom, you may be swept along with the changes. If you do what everyone else does, your life may not work out very well, or take you where you hope to be, in the end.

Do you imagine that life is so much better today, than in the past? People may earn ten times as much today as back in the 1950s, but everything costs at least ten times as much — food, housing, cars, college, medical care, ... everything. This illusion of prosperity comes as a result of inflation: our money today is worth ten times less than it was then. Of course, the media promote endless illusions of prosperity, showing the lives of the rich and famous. The rich do keep getting richer, but the poor get poorer and the middle class lives enslaved to debt all their lives. It is not getting better. The US dollar is now worth less in relation to all other currencies around the world, and it keeps dropping.

The illusion of everything being well has never been stronger, while the quality of American life keeps getting worse. People have negative savings, and little or no financial future or health future to look forward to. Government spends trillions of dollars it does not have, on things that are worthless, and on killing innocent people in unnecessary wars. And, you pay that bill. If debt keeps increasing — and the negative keeps growing — how can anyone interpret that as something positive? It makes no sense at all, but it goes way over the heads of people educated in our society.

Today, there are graduation ceremonies for pre-schoolers. They have not even entered kindergarten, and they are celebrating graduation. Yet, forty percent of children drop out of school before they finish high school. What they are "learning" is little more than society's attempt to make them just another cog in the wheel. They do not learn how to think for themselves; they are programmed to think like others. By the time a young person graduates from high school, after more than twelve years of "education," many cannot even read a bus schedule to figure out how to get to a job.

More of the same "education" — which is little more than creating mindless consumers, who will be in debt their entire lives — is not the solution to anyone's problems. If you truly wish to succeed in life, in all areas including financially, you have to learn to think and act differently from the majority, and your own little clique, peer group, or society.

You have to dare to be different.

9. Being Free

Being free means the same thing, whether it relates to finances or any other aspect of life. It is finding a way to be who you truly are, and to live in a way that is most true to who you are. Lack of money or wealth never kept anyone from being who they really are. Freedom is ultimately a spiritual quality, and often, money or the pursuit of money keeps us from knowing true freedom.

Freedom is a right. It is not only an abstract right, but the very real practice of not thinking like everyone else, and instead thinking for your self. Sure, most people would say they are free to think whatever they want, but do they, really? Most people have a process of thinking, and a way of acting, that is within very narrow constraints, and they do not realize it.

Freedom does not come from spending. You are not given more freedom by being given more choices as to how to spend your money. You are not granted more freedom by being given more credit or credit cards. Most people imagine they are getting free the more credit they have and use, and do not realize that is precisely how they become enslaved to debt in their lives.

Freedom is not doing what everyone else does. It is easier to just do what everyone else does, or to find friends who do whatever it is that you want to do. Sure, you can find support for any behavior in our society, whether that means being a sports fan, following a particular player or team, sitting around drinking beer or wine or cocktails, or whatever. But that isn't freedom. It is succumbing to the narrow confines of popular programming, without daring to step out of it.

Freedom does not mean having the money to cater to addiction. Sure, that is what people do, whether it is shopping, alcohol, drugs, gambling, tattoos, pornography, or whatever. But having the means to keep yourself in bondage to self-limiting behavior is not freeing. It is what destroys you. The question to ask yourself is, what exactly is "free" in you, when you engage in any addictive behavior?

Freedom is not an adrenaline rush from risky behavior or excitement. Again, that is what many people imagine it to be, whether they engage in extreme sports, promiscuity, gambling, or whatever. That feeling of excitement is an ego-emotional high, and it has nothing at all to do with simply being your true self. In fact, the more you seek ego-emotional highs, the less likely you are to have any idea whatsoever who you truly are, as a spiritual being of inner peace, inner wisdom, inner fulfillment, and inner freedom. Those things do not come from anything outside you.

Freedom is not living in your illusions or fantasies. The more illusions you have, about your self, about life, about money, the less likely you are to ever have real fulfillment in life. It is simply not possible to quench your thirst at a mirage oasis, no matter how pretty it may seem. Freedom is a choice, based on true discernment, to reject everything that deludes you, misleads you, traps you, limits you, or ultimately destroys you.

Freedom is not the same as money. People with a lot of money may go and do whatever they want, whenever they want, wherever they want; they buy what they want, and if it isn't to be found they have it custom made for them. They imagine that buying what they want or doing what they want, to gratify themselves, has any real value at all. It does not. There is no purpose in that, no meaning, no higher good. A rich person can be as empty, shallow, and devoid of purpose in their life as anyone else. Their money doesn't make them free; it helps them to avoid any real meaning in life.

10. Living Without Attachment

Attachment is the opposite of freedom. The more attached you are, the more you live in bondage, and the harder it is for you to live freely. Many people mistake the process of filling up their lives, their homes, their work, their time, with everything they can fit in — that is not the definition of a full life. It is just a busy one, or a materialistic one, or a hedonistic one.

The truth is, you generally lose your self in all the things you have.

Regardless of what you have in your life, you need to learn to live free from it. You need to learn to live without having an undue ego-emotional attachment to things, because everything that you are attached to has taken a little piece of you. Have a large enough attachment to something, or enough smaller attachments, and you may find that who you are gets lost in or defined by all the things you have. You have disappeared, only to be replaced by the things you have.

Detachment is an attitude, perception, understanding, or experience of the True self as distinct from everything else you experience in life. It is the true and proper separation of the inner being or self from the outer world. In reality, they are already separate. It is only the nature of programming, consensus reality, indoctrination, or social conditioning that causes one to mistake one's self for one's experience in life. Regardless of whether you may interpret your life experiences or your world as "positive" or "negative," those experiences tend to overshadow who you are, within you. The world acts through you, and you get lost.

The result of living a life dictated by every possible influence outside you, is that you never know who you truly are within you, and you seldom if ever act in a way that is right, good, and true for you. No matter what role you play in this life, your social position, your apparent successes or failures, if you do not learn to go beyond what you do, what you have done, or what is done to you, you will not come to know who you are.

To truly resolve problems, you first have to detach from them. You have to let go of any ego-emotional investment you have in the problem or the outcome. It is sufficient to simply align yourself with what you know to be right, good, and true, and do it. Expectations come from the ego, which often seeks praise or pride as a result of choices made and actions taken. This is a false measure of right action or success.

Exercise One: Relax, close your eyes, take a deep breath and let it out slowly. Think of everything you couldn't possibly let go of, and let go of it, mentally. Allow your self to separate from the outer world. Let your inner self be free. If you have gotten to the point where you feel you are holding the tiger by the tail, and problems seem threatening, then you may fear letting go. Nothing bad is going to happen by letting go of problems, things that trouble you, worries or fears that you have, even for a moment. Relax, breathe, let go of all your worries and cares on each exhale, almost like you are sighing. They will leave you. When you feel you are done, you can open your eyes.

You will take none of your problems with you when you leave this world, so why not set them aside for now, mentally and spiritually, and put down that baggage you've been carrying around with you. Learn what it means to be calm, free, and clear, and to live that way. You will find that your True self can let go of and go beyond anything of this world or this life. Let it do so.

Courage is the willingness and the choice to do what you know to be right, good, and true, regardless of the consequences. It requires focus, determination, evenness, and detachment. Ego and emotion can only motivate one's lower instincts, and cause one to mindlessly do wrong. They have no part in true courage.

The way you deal with problems in this world is not outside you, but within you, first.

Courage is required in life if you have any desire to overcome the myriad problems you face. It is all too easy to give in to problems, to accept them, to be shaped by them, or adapt yourself to them, rather than overcome them. There are many people who appear to face no problems, who do not challenge the status quo, who accept everything as it is as the way it must be — they have become the problem. They have no problem with anything or anyone, just as long as they get what they want. They are creatures of the lower nature, ego and emotion, materialism, hedonism, and social climbers in the rat race. Their achievement is to become the biggest rat in the rat race, to be one of the haves, and to keep the have-nots down and out.

It takes a great deal of courage to question things. It takes even more courage to live by higher principle, and do what you know to be right, good, and true. This is very often not what others would like you to do; it may not be what they approve of; it may not be what earns you place or position; it may not be what others would judge to be exciting enough, risky enough, bad enough, or good enough. Who cares what everyone else thinks? Don't act to try to thumb your nose at others, or egotistically challenge them or their beliefs. But, do be honest with yourself; do learn who you truly are, and act that way. This is true success.

Your success in life will not be measured by anything of the outer world; it is measured only in spiritual terms. If you have not been true to your self, if you have not sought to know and express the highest Good, then what value does the endless stream of thoughts and actions in your life truly have? What is the purpose served by a life that accepted everything as it is, challenged nothing, changed nothing, contributed nothing, overcame nothing? It is the life that most people live. And, that is why they reject, condemn, criticize, and disapprove of anyone else having the courage to truly find out what life is.

It takes courage to hold on to the highest Good, no matter what. And, it takes the greatest courage to let go of everything else, no matter how much you might have once valued it. It has been said, what does it profit someone to gain everything of the world, and lose their soul. Be sure that you are making the most wise and true choice in every thing you pursue, especially in the life choices that you finance with money.

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