Is it feeding your soul or your wallet? (2min read)
The more you give, the more you get—right?
Have you ever heard this expression?
The more you give, the more you get.
Why then, does it often feel like we give more than we get back?
Like the demands of daily life, relationships, family, work, friends, etc. leave us feeling drained at the end of the day?
The answer becomes apparent when we examine the true value of that which is being given and that which is being received in the exchange.
Last issue [here] we discussed the idea of having enough, and the ephemeral nature of stuff as compared to the infinite nature of bliss.
Stuff makes us happy for a minute, and then that happiness wears off, and we need to acquire more stuff. Bliss keeps us supremely contented, and is always increasingly available to us from within, as we maintain a twice-daily meditation practice.
Similarly, the true test of whether or not a given exchange, activity, relationship, or expenditure of energy has real value is if the more we give, the more we get in return.
Sharing our inner bliss with someone should beget more bliss (unless of course that person is what we call a soma bandit; someone who is out only for themselves, to rob us of our energy without reciprocating the exchange), but sharing our stuff with someone isn’t going to create more stuff.
We can assess the true value of our relationship with someone based on the degree to which the energy (or soma in Sanskrit) we give to them comes back to us.
When we have dinner with that person and exchange life updates and anecdotes, do we come away feeling heard and seen? Or does it feel like they were using us for their own gratification?
What about the activities we are investing our time and money in?
Let’s take the way we eat.
How do we feel after scarfing down a quick and cheap burger from the nearest meat outpost, as compared to after enjoying a sumptuous meal we’ve prepared for ourselves?
Both efforts require us to input a certain amount of time and money and output a meal for us, but which meal is nourishing us?
What about entertainment?
Scrolling Instagram is a quick and cheap way to entertain ourselves—we invest 30 minutes, and we get a short-lived dopamine rush to occupy our time.
But what if that same 30 minutes were invested in watching an enriching program with a friend?
The “give” on our part is the same—30 minutes.
But whereas the former will leave us feeling drained, empty, and somehow more alone than when we started, the latter contains the unity value of a shared experience with a friend. Provided that friend isn’t the soma bandit from the earlier example, we’ll probably come away feeling more whole from the bonding experience.
And the big one—our work.
We spend the overwhelming majority of our time engaged in some form of work.
Is the work enriching our bank account only, or is it enriching our soul?
Modern society has conditioned us to think about our bank accounts when choosing what kind of work we want to dedicate our lives to, but I’m here to tell you that we’ve been sold a big fat lie.
How do we feel when we finish up for the day? Do we feel rejuvenated and ready to rest easily, knowing we spent our day on something we care about, or something that we know helps others? Or do we feel eager to switch off and fill the void created by our soul-sucking job with some junk food and Netflix?
If any of this rings true, it may be time to re-evaluate where we are investing our precious energy and what the true return on that investment is.
Maybe we’re one of the lucky few who has managed to find a line of work that enriches the bank account and the soul.
But chances are, you know exactly which areas of your life are stealing your soul.
So what can we do about it?
Simply quitting a job isn’t usually a realistic possibility.
Change won’t happen overnight.
But as we continue to practice Vedic Meditation twice daily, we continually deepen our awareness, and begin to see things in new ways.
Maybe we realize we’d be better off taking a pay cut in order to pursue our dream, or work with children, or just get home earlier so we can paint in the evenings.
Or maybe we realize our really cool friend who gets us into all the hip parties doesn’t reciprocate our investment in the relationship, and we’re better off investing time in that dorky friend who does.
That’s because along with deepened awareness, we start to realize what really matters.
We’ll discuss these ideas and others during Collective Effervescence, our online group meditation series, this Sunday January 8 at 8am LA / 11am MIA / 5pm EU. Drop in for meditation only (first 30 min) or stay for discussion + Q&A on this and other life topics from the Vedic perspective.
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Music today is—you guessed it. I don’t believe an introduction is necessary…