In our spiritual darkness class, I like to encourage people to speak freely, but it is not a venue for bashing on anyone or criticizing how they deal with things. I will try to offer only constructive advice and will try to keep it relevant/asked for. Unlike many other spiritual groups, we do not discourage discussion of the darker aspects of the spiritual life and life in general. I will open the floor to someone if they would like to share. Anyone care to share?

I will. I’m going to talk a little about money. Let me start by saying that I feel like a financial fool. Hindsight truly is 20/20. Specifically, I am referring to student loans. I find the hindrance they do to me to be horribly draining. The amount I owe really doesn’t matter as much as the way they hinder what I want to do, which primarily is to learn more. I have experienced similar frustrations perhaps.

I have only been out of college for a few years, but the frustrations I have found in my field have me looking in other directions. Essentially, I need more training to create the vocation I want, and in paying back my loans I am stuck in my current employment a bit because I make enough to handle the payment. But not enough to handle the payments, maintain living expenses, and get the training I desire. I feel quite chained and cheated in a sense. That feeling of being without leeway to direct things is very stressful. Breeds a feeling of a generalized disgust?

Yes, very. I feel like a tool of the financial institutions. It can be challenging to get beyond that, and a lot of pop psychology/spirituality isn’t much help is it?

Not in the least, but there is hope. I am rewriting my personal economic paradigms. Challenging the ideas that have brought me here and searching for a better way. Housing for example. I recently bought my first home while I took advantage of the government tax refund. The disasters keep piling up, and now I question the wisdom of buying the home. Hard decision, especially when it’s challenged. Issues of home make us feel challenged in our sense of place. I feel truly “at home” only now at age 36, and it’s because I now live with my wife. So what other issues complicate your experience right now?

More than the expenses, I saw a selfishness in myself. Most people wouldn’t connect selfishness with your situation.

I have always respected cultures where extended families live together. I have considered moving back in with my parents to help with their expenses. Looking honestly at myself, I don’t need a lot of space right now. My expenses would be reduced, even though I am helping them with theirs and I could work on the further training I want. Yes, families with some functionality tend to truly share resources, at least within reason.

Don’t get me wrong, I like my home now. I’m proud of how I found it and set up the deal, but the greater good of everyone seems more important to me. I think that if I do this, we all have a real chance for some prosperity.

I would offer a caution if you welcome it. Aspiring to aid the greater good is uplifting. It can be described as “just right”. I don’t debate this, but often people aren’t mindful of how much they loose in sacrifices made in the name of the greater good and with noble aspirations bring both themselves and those they would aid low. It’s actually pretty common. I find the greater good is best served when you have your own desires met, and then as you do for them you will do so without any extenuating considerations. No “complications.”

Now, I’m not bashing sacrifice either. Desires have priorities, so surrendering your current home to share expenses with your parents might serve your personal greater good. I offer that serving your personal greater good is what stands the best chance of serving anyone else’s.

Often there is a third option. It is always good to look for it. Rent your home out? This would keep you on the track of owning that home. In my observation, nature favours a “common ground”. It‘s easy to think “my way” or “the other way”, but this doesn’t work into natures way at all. It tends to work more holistically. Is this not our perceptions? So often we think we must choose this or that, or that we must sacrifice this for that. Life doesn’t operate on a minimalizing pattern. Sacrifice might not even be required. We feel cheated when we think in the context that allows “cheating”, but has nature itself cheated you in any way, ever?

It’s not its way. We have a life and we have a dream. Regrettably, we are taught that these are separate. We have been taught a very shallow way to dream, but ultimately we must dream. This is our nature and how our minds function, but we can change the “rules” of that dream. In fact, as children we already had the rules.

Do you find that your heart goes to your parents more than to your ambition? Yes. For all they have given to me, it would feel very good and right to help them. I would say that must be respected. Most of our best way of being we already knew how to be. What does your inner child say? By that I mean the primal self. The first instinct we have that often gets buried in moralism or “reason.”

The primal self says that helping them is the right thing to do. Then I feel in your situation it’s best to trust that. How do you feel?

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~