Do You Suffer From Dead Sea Financial Syndrome?

Do you believe there’s a universal flow in which we can choose to stand? Do you believe a life that only takes is destined to be less successful than one that’s also always giving? Do you think people spend too much time worrying about this sort of nonsense and not enough time actually creating, working, playing and benefiting from what they have?

This is a post of questions rather than answers, so let me ask you this: Do you think you suffer from Dead Sea Financial Syndrome?

If you’ve spent much time around any kind of spiritual community, you’ve probably heard a speaker or preacher mention some of the Dead Sea’s unique properties.

The Dead Sea, as you probably know, supports only a narrow and very specific band of life because it’s very salty. For most life forms, it’s too salty. One of the reasons it’s so harsh is that no streams flow out of it. Water comes into it from the Jordan River and from a few streams and springs, but the Dead Sea only takes. Nothing flows out of it.

You can see how the Dead Sea — located in a land that’s holy for many people, no less — fits nicely into a sermon. The Dead Sea is dead (figuratively, although not exactly literally) because it’s a taker, not a giver.

Are you a taker and not a giver? If so, you may suffer from Dead Sea Financial Syndrome.

Those who prefer to place life’s big issues in metaphysical terms talk about a universal flow. There’s a flow of good things available to everyone, they say, but we sometimes step out of it or cause it to grind to a halt. If we take actions that aren’t consistent with the good, we step out of the flow. If we take but don’t give, we constrict it.

Do you believe that? Or is it just a bunch of nonsense?

Could those new billionaires who made the news recently really be standing in the flow? Could that old real estate mogul with that funny thing about him really understand one of life’s most powerful metaphysical principles? Or do these people have money and things because they worked hard and got lucky? Would they be even luckier if they’d found simple, deliberate living before they found billions?

I wonder something: Do you suffer from Dead Sea Financial Syndrome? Have you stepped out of the flow?

This is a post of questions rather than answers, but I can tell you this: I’ve sometimes basked in the principles of poverty rather than standing in the flow of life’s good things.

Sure, good things want so desperately to find me that a few spring forth even when I’m not participating in the flow, but how many more are waiting for me when I step onto a better path?

2 comments

  1. I’ve always liked to believe that we need to give to receive, , what goes around, comes around, and other variations of that basic karmic theory.

    Sometimes I wonder, though, when I see people as well a giant corporations get rich and powerful by practising great greed, trampling everyone and everything in their path to domination. When will they get what they deserve? When will we see them crash and burn?

    Still, I don’t think it will ever make a greedy pig out of me. I’ll cling to my fragile belief system, as that is what separates me, as a real human, from the rest of the people.
    Mike | Homeless On Wheels recently posted The Crescent Sun – Annular Solar Eclipse Photos

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