There are many people in countries in our world today who love to talk about the standard of living statistics or the ‘best place in the world to live’ because their country ranks at No. 1 in the world.
I know I have bragged to others about how great it is living in my country, the luxury of it, the beautiful countryside and mountains of Norway. This is not just appreciating the beauty of our country but gloating and supremacy; of both deserving the luxury we live in and being better than other countries further down the list.
I am here considering this and realising how this attitude may be arrogant, indulgent, individualistic and inconsiderate. The focus becomes less and less about community and working together for the common good of all, instead shifting more and more to how good a life an individual can attain, or the individual family, or just smaller groups, no longer caring for the whole, just about the self and one’s closest.
With these values, greed, self-image and materialism can take over.
We call it ‘the good life,’ a high standard of living, but is this truly living or is it just an existence, one in comfort? For instance, becoming more disengaged from one’s true inner values, thinking that material wealth collates to happiness and that happiness is the ultimate goal in life, instead of realising that life can be about true love, joy and harmony.
In my experience, no true joy has been found in material wealth, only fleeting moments of happiness never sustained, always followed by a come down, a dip or a depression.
With true love for oneself and all of humanity, comes joy and harmony with no need or craving for the next hit of happiness, just living life in a constant flow of contentment.
It would seem that many of us thirst after material possessions: to own at least one house, maybe more, a winter cabin in the mountains, a luxury yacht, cabin cruiser or chalet by the sea, or all of the above – a Mediterranean villa, new cars and motorcycles, several holiday trips per year, the latest technologically advanced computer equipment, this season’s latest fashion in skiing gear, bicycles worth $1000’s, expensive wines, whiskeys, cigars and cognacs.
In this, are we not then teaching our children the same material values and the same excessive lifestyle – actually teaching them to be exactly who they are not, spoiling them completely?
We are not supporting them to hold their kind, loving, considerate, harmonious, joyful and generous nature, often leaving them alone in their rooms to be parented by TV, Internet, on-line gaming, Facebook, App this and App that, death metal, gangster rap, etc. Is this type of lifestyle a responsible way for us to support our younger generations?
The race to attain material wealth can lead to the fact that we are no longer listening to what our own bodies are communicating to us as we go into competition and stress, living trapped in our minds instead of a truly healthy, loving and joyful life.
Given that we are living in so much comfort, then why is illness and disease on the increase?
Consider what is happening to the ageing population in Norway. By the time we get to our 50’s – or 40’s and even younger – we are getting sicker, with more and more cases of mental illness, cancer, diabetes, stress, burnout, etc. If we take a moment to consider a few examples:
- New cases of cancer in Norway are climbing through the roof. Between 1954 and 2013, the number of new cancer diagnoses in men has more than quadrupled and in women the number of new cases has more than tripled. There are no signs of a slowdown in this trend. [1]
- Diabetes cases in Norway are increasing at an alarming rate. In 2014 roughly 4% of the population were taking diabetes medication and it is conservatively estimated that there may be somewhere between 2% and 4% more cases undiagnosed. [2]
- Mental illness affects between 30% and 50% of the adult population in Norway, at some time during their lives. [2]
This begs me to ask the question, “What is it about the way we are living that is giving rise to this upsurge in ill health?”
Is it that we don’t seem to think it can happen to us, until it does?
People are more afraid of being killed by terrorists than the real killers listed above.
What I’m talking about here is not just the abuse we submit our bodies to, with our overeating and alcohol consumption, but also our disregard for our bodies – how we use them as an instrument for our own pleasure and self-indulgent habits. These irresponsible habits are our lifestyle choices that are causing the rise in ill-health.
The fact is that this tsunami of ill-health flooding over us is bankrupting health services around the world, causing even more ill-health for those working within these overloaded systems.
If we consider this along with the comforts that are being sought by some, e.g. luxury lifestyles with yachts and holiday homes being prioritised over and above personal health and wellbeing, are we not collectively out of balance?
Moreover, in our comfortable way of choosing to live, I observe little effort is being focused on our own responsibility for the prevention of the tide of illness and disease.
The simple act of taking a moment to ponder on how we are living our lives, considering how we can best care for ourselves and others, could help us all to live in harmony together, in a greater state of true health and feeling the joy of life. And if we truly consider this, we might come to the conclusion that every person on the planet is the same as we are, no matter their colour, religion, nationality, gender, age or size.
We might also conclude that material wealth is not our true happiness, as happiness is always temporary until we get the next fix, be that a new car, a glass of wine, a great film, a sporting event, a sugary delight – they are all forms of temporary happiness.
Living a privileged life in a beautiful place may make us feel better and more deserving than others, but while we bathe in comfort we are detaching ourselves from humanity, taking part in material competition with each other, isolating ourselves instead of living together in harmony with everyone.
Ignoring the true messages our bodies are giving to us is compounding in its effects to produce an ever-sickening global population that none of us can escape, in spite of our wealth.
Inspired by the presentations of Serge Benhayon, which I feel offer a genuine way out of these worldwide health issues that are embedded in the lives of all of us.
By Christopher Murphy, Kindergarten Assistant and Universal Medicine student, Norway
[1] Kreftregisteret (Institution of Population Based Cancer Research) (2014) Cancer in Norway 2014. http://www.kreftregisteret.no/Global/Cancer%20in%20Norway/2014/cin2014-Special_issue.pdf
[2] Folkehelseinstituttet (2014) Folkehelserapporten 2014. (The health of the population report 2014, The Norwegian institute of public health). http://www.fhi.no/dokumenter/4313e1cf39.pdf
Further Reading:
Why We Should Not Hide In Comfort
A Comfortable Life Versus A True Life
Comparing Myself To Others
The Truth about Serge Benhayon 
‘the good life,’ The illusion of the ‘good life’ is thinking that it is better than someone else. Comparison and competition sets one against another. Living a true life is to live in harmony with yourself, those around you and in equalness with all.
It’s a great point that when we live in a comfortable country without civil, political or other unrest, we can be lulled into a comfort that excludes being aware of and responsive to what is happening for other people, including people in other countries. Also material wealth and comfort can divert us away from the very real reality that we ourselves are not living as we truly are, and are disconnected from our innate love and joy.
Focusing on emotions and material objects completely cuts us off from understanding that life is energy first. Comfort to me is anything where I can kick back and seemingly ignore the energetic factor of life. Being aware of energy isn’t without tension, far from, but it does come with a whole lot more freedom, joy and aliveness than being comfortable does.
Part of the bigger picture here is to look at how the current system of education forms a foundation for materialism, happiness and comfort. During schooling we are encouraged to compete and compare with each other and place value in what we can learn so we can ‘be something’ in terms of job and career. This can only lead to the never ending chase for happiness and material comforts, because the true richness of our being has been negated and we have become separated to it, and this, our being, is the only source of true contentment.
Making life about the external, the outside, and forgetting our inner being does not lead to contentment, ‘becoming more disengaged from one’s true inner values, thinking that material wealth collates to happiness and that happiness is the ultimate goal in life, instead of realising that life can be about true love, joy and harmony.’
I have just spent 2 days at a place where people go on holiday thinking it’s a holiday but its just another place to check out and over indulge in whatever it is they fancy. There are massive changes taking place energetically but because we seemingly refuse to feel life from a purely energetic level we are killing ourselves literally through illness and disease because we do not want to admit that we are so sensitive to the energy that we actually cannot stop feeling that we bludgeon ourselves to death rather than admit we can feel energy and actually the energy we are feeling most of the time feels awful and that we actually don’t like the mess we are in.
Thank you Christopher, when we feel we are privileged, deserving and “ how this attitude may be arrogant, indulgent, individualistic and inconsiderate,” as all are judging others to be a lesser version or not as eligible and this type of judgement or comparison is not evolutionary and thus these disease statistics as you have shared.
It’s true Christopher, we need to get real about the outcomes of how we are living life, the only issue is that when everyone else is doing the same we can see it as normal. That is why it’s so important to have these conversations, and to live in a loving and self caring way to show a new kind of normal to people. I know in my community I’m considered a bit weird because I don’t drink alcohol, but I’m also showing people that it’s not ‘just how life is’ or how life has to be.
On reading this I reflected just how much things have changed. How much I have changed and also how much the world has changed. My belief or mind set growing up was predominately about getting ‘there’, you know, the steps … good job, nice car, nice home, great partner, able to go away on holidays etc. This was my mind set because this was what was reflected to me by many around me. I am so glad this has changed and even though now I have a nice car, beautiful home and job I absolutely love I know this is not it, on the contrary this is not it at all but is the reflection of how much I am loving me. The world however has got worse. There is more poverty, more stress, more ill mental health, more domestic violence, more violence, more abuse, more illness and dis-ease, more corruption, more greed, more wars … the list goes on. So is it now not the time to see that ‘better’ does not work and that instead we take it right back to the very basics and make it about love, people and how we live? I am not going to wait for an answer here as I know the truth and the answer is Yes we very much should be doing this and I deeply appreciate that now the many I know do reflect this not only back to me but inspire me to live my truth and be all that I am in order to support those around me 💫
‘Better’ this, or that, does not work, ‘The race to attain material wealth can lead to the fact that we are no longer listening to what our own bodies are communicating to us as we go into competition and stress, living trapped in our minds instead of a truly healthy, loving and joyful life.’
Just as “money can’t buy you happiness” it can’t buy contentment and settlement. Nor can having no money at all. I’m finding that nothing physical or material can bring me contentment or a well-being, only connecting to my essence can bring that.
We have a connection to our place of birth, to the place where we live too. I get so touched when visiting the mountains in Bulgaria – their majesty and beauty is truly out of this world. For a while I used to deny this connection because I thought it’s not a good thing to feel that way about a country, I thought that feeling this way enforces separatism and therefore it is a bad thing. But what I have come to realise is that I am not enforcing separatism by appreciating what’s around me, the connections I have in given countries and loving the atmosphere. What endorses separatism is thinking that this country is better than that country, that because I am Bulgarian I am somehow a better woman than all other women, that because I am Bulgarian I ought to marry a Bulgarian man and have Bulgarian children – and this can apply to any country because these are the beliefs ingrained in us from little. We are taught that our country is the best one, better than all the rest & therefore other countries are worth less, other people who come from those countries are worthless. There are wars between countries today because of something that happened hundreds, if not thousands of years ago. I know in the Bulgarian education system we were taught that Turkey is the reason behind our suffering, that because of their unfair rule & force at the time Bulgarians were brought down on their knees and all of the goods of the country were taken. This happened almost a thousand years ago, yet many still hold a grudge, still despise people who have Turkish origins. This is only bringing separation between two cultures who are so similar and have have a very harmonious living. I have met Turkish people whilst living in the UK, some of them were my neighbours. Their warmth and care was undeniable, they embraced my family and my family embraced them – it was beautiful to have neighbors who care for you, share meals together and always have their door open just in case you forgot your keys (like I used to do sometimes) or wanted to play (like I did always). Identifying with a country of origin is so old, yep let’s appreciate what’s on offer but never use the good sides of our land of birth to bring down another or a group of people.
Viktoria this is beautiful, it could easily be a blog or an article somewhere – delightful to read and get to know more about how you feel in life and your experiences.
Thank you Melinda, you’re right – this might as well have been a blog haha
Perhaps what we perceive to be a ‘good’ life is not so good after all. To have a certain standard of living doesn’t build true joy. Clearly looking at our population we have higher rates of mental ill health and general higher rates of illness and disease than ever before…. clearly how we are living is not matching up to our beliefs about what a good life entails.
Reading this makes me consider how much more people are living in ill mental health because just making it about luxury and more and more possessions isn’t this also possibly to be seen as ill mental health? The illness of wanting more than we truly need to care for ourselves and the others around us.
Caring and loving oneself is a great start, ‘With true love for oneself and all of humanity, comes joy and harmony with no need or craving for the next hit of happiness, just living life in a constant flow of contentment.’
The true riches in the world will only ever be found in connection to our Soul, nothing is needed when we connect to this divine truth and love.
I really love your sense of humanity here Chris – yeh our lives can be amazing, we can live in amazing places but what is going on for everyone else – from close neighbours to people in countries where their lives are at risk. It doesn’t seem right to live with our eyes closed to the reality of what is actually going on.
We all are the same regardless of our physical appearance, beliefs we hold or where we live on this planet we call our world.
When we could look to the earth from heaven, which in a way is our origin, we sure would say that all this comfort is only a distraction of the true work we should be doing as a human species on this planet earth.
‘People are more afraid of being killed by terrorists than the real killers listed above.’ such is the power of the abuse of the media – that loves to stir up emotion rather than report on true and healthy ways to be with ourselves and one another.
That which is given to us is not given to us for self gain but to give back to everybody else and neither can we contain our love just for ourselves and a selected few. We are part of a grand whole, the universe, and not an individual hermetically sealed blob that can do whatever it wants.
If we only thirst for things to have and try to get them we will never understand the true value of ourself and the importance of the work we do working in a society and therefore being in service for humanity. We can want so many things but they won’t fulfil us if we do not know, appreciate and bring in full to the world our whole worth.
I find his really is the only way to realise and appreciate our worth.
Esther I know someone who constantly wants something is never satisfied or appreciative of what they have, it is just not enough. But as you say we can want so many things but that doesn’t fulfil us as my friend is a great example of dissatisfaction of life. They have no understanding that true wealth comes from within because they have not experienced that in life. This fulfilment cannot be given it is something that is within us that we have to reconnect to, as it is the wealth of the universe.
And when we are crowing about how good we have it, we are very subtly flexing our indifference to others and our small picture. The world is so much more than this great town, or this great country. Its about individual people making up a 7 billion person humanity where all have the same potential, and our equal responsibility is to encourage everyone to be everything we are.
Living in the perceived comfort of individual wealth of possessions we have to face the uncomfortable truth that others are living less to provide the illusion of having more.
“In my experience, no true joy has been found in material wealth”. I agree I have found that those with material wealth often lack the warmth and humility that many with limited means so warmly cherish.
You describe a society choking on ostentatious material wealth while its inhabitants are starving themselves of what truly counts in the pursuit of fickle happiness.
Doing well, and living a “good” life, will not ever be truly good unless everybody will that same quality of life. And quality of life is not based on materialism, but on the fact if there is love, harmony and true brotherhood. Everything else will leave an unsettlement in the body.
The unsettlement in the human body you mention can be clearly observed in all the wayward behaviours of people but too in all the illness and diseases, people develop.
The statistics for illnesses and diseases continue to rise, it may be worth asking ourselves, ‘What is it about the way we are living that is giving rise to this upsurge in ill health?’
I live in HK where materialism is king and a big chunk of life is omitted and ignored when money and materialistic seek is all we devote our commitment to. The actual act of this choice causes immense tension because by nature we are multidimensional and we are a whole not in compartments.
It’s true Christopher… The world is broken, no Band-Aids will fix it, until there is a fundamental paradigms shift of awareness … Enter… The Way of the Livingness.
Could it be our lifestyle choices, the way we are living, that are causing the rise in ill-health?
I live in Australia and we just had an unexpected change of Prime Minister due to internal fighting within the Liberal Party, and a lot of the public sentiment was around ‘stop looking after yourselves, and start doing your job by looking after the country’. And I could not help but notice that we often ‘just look after ourselves’ (and not very well I might add with those alarming rising rates of illness and disease) and dont look out for others. Are our politicians reflecting back what we are living in our own way in our own lives?
We deserve the politicians that get elected and thus, we elect those who are also self-interested and look no further than their own party and the next election.
Your spot on Chris when you say more people are afraid of being killed by terrorists than the real killers like diabetes.
We see that with how people continually abuse their bodies, even at times after being diagnosed with a serious illness, ‘the abuse we submit our bodies to, with our overeating and alcohol consumption, but also our disregard for our bodies – how we use them as an instrument for our own pleasure and self-indulgent habits. ‘
Reading this, what I can feel is an endless arrays of conditions we cast before we say yes to life and commit to it, how we lock ourselves in a world of material and physicality, keeping our eyes shut to anything beyond our arm’s reach, whilst we do know it is right here. Comparing the level of comfort is like comparing who has got the longest arm.
Comfort has to do with familiarity and its influence over our own movement confirming what is familiar. Our familiarity may be related to ‘good’ things as much as with ‘bad’ ones. Although what comforts us is different, comfort applies equally to us, if we are bought by a consciousness.
This is a great observation that the more we gloat about standard of living, the more we fall for individual comfort and forget about anyone who is not living with the same quality of life. It also takes us into the human life and what we can get out of this one life, rather than living the soul on earth. That should be our focus and how we rate our standard of living.
“In my experience, no true joy has been found in material wealth”. So true Christopher. Money does not buy love or happiness. In fact I have seen that is often brings the opposite.
While it can assist with great change and opportunities, more often than not money is used as a differentiator and also adds complexity. Its hardly ever used for its true purpose which simply as an enabler. More often it is wielded for a personal agenda that keeps us separate.
I am sure that if you spoke these powerful words to most people it would be a real wake up call for them; they were for me. “People are more afraid of being killed by terrorists than the real killers listed above.” And these ‘killers’ we live with every day and consider them to be a normal part of our lives. There is nothing normal about them at all, but issues in our lives that we really need to take a long honest look at before we end up ‘killing’ ourselves with comfort.
“People are more afraid of being killed by terrorists than the real killers listed above.” This is a very sober point, showing us how disconnected we are from ourselves, the effect of our behaviour and each other. It’s the same in Australia. Becoming paranoid of each other is never a way to build community and assist anyone who may be wayward to return. Also sinking into our ways of comfort is having disastrous affects on our health and yet we want others to fix us, when we are the only ones to get ourselves out of the mess we ourselves have created.
If we were all living responsibly we wouldn’t let comfort get so out of control, one only needs to look at the rise in illness and disease to feel that the current model is not working or supporting people.
We seek our material comforts to escape the fact we live disconnected from each other and from ourselves in the hope this will give us some relief of all that we do not want to feel. But as we do so this only exacerbates our predicament further.
Comfort is just so comfortable that it leaves you lazy, inert and then that touch of arrogance just keeps you there kind of stagnating. That is why a part of us likes it, we are not challenged to get out of our comfort zone to grow and learn which is actually what the whole premise of human life is about.
This way, of having only a concern for oneself or immediate friends/family is truly destructive and adds to the global phenomena of greed that is so gripping our cities, towns and villages. True living is living in brotherhood, which does not mean sacrifice or pity, but it does mean responsibility to contribute to the whole in a way that supports everyone to evolve – from which ever point we are all at and along which ever journey we all must travel.
Perhaps we need reminding that life is not about self, we do have a responsibility to contribute to the whole in a way that supports everyone to evolve.
This blog also exposes the ridiculousness of the newest professions like ‘happiness coaches’ and the pursuit of more and more material wealth. True joy and harmony come from connecting to the bigger picture, to humanity and taking each and everyone in consideration with every move we make.
Yes if we consider that there is a purpose to life and we are all in it together so to speak then being in comfort with the focus on self and family is exclusive and isolating and inhibits our journey back to soul
“realising that life can be about true love, joy and harmony.”The subversive terrorist that is so feared is in fact ourselves when we value material possessions above true love, joy and harmony.
I had (day) surgery for the first time last year and when one of the medical staff was talking to me, he said you should recover well as I was relatively healthy and of a good weight. In that moment, I was appreciative of the way I had chosen to care for my body and the responsibility I had taken with my own health. Things will still ‘breakdown’ but it is up to us to take the best ‘vehicle’ we can when a part needs fixing.
The expression ‘what comes up, must come down’ comes to mind reading this today. If we, as a human race, keep spiking ourselves up with our searches for material wealth, happiness, comfortable lives etc… it eventually needs to come down. And that down, from the alarming stats you shared with us, has a lot of illness and disease associated with it.
Where as living with true love, joy and harmony, it is constant and steady. It is our bodies natural state and far less disruptive than the highs and lows of seeking outside ourselves for material wealth, happiness etc….
Beautiful point Sarah.
The lure of comfort is something we need to be ever watchful with. It is such a seductive substitute for true beauty, true truth, and true glory, that we can lose our way back home to Soul-ful-ness.
Most people want to be “comfortable” and to have an easy life but we have to be careful about what we are asking for because when we get stuck in comfort we believe that it is about making life better when in fact it is not about making life better but about seeing though the falseness of life here on earth so that we can bring truth and love to the world.
Yes, and comfort can be our biggest hurdle to not return on our path back to our origin. Letting go of comfort asks for a deep love for humanity.
There is nothing wrong with living in a beautiful home, but this beauty depends upon the quality of living that goes on under that roof. It is when we ‘think’ from the outside rather than live emanating from the Love within that we can get attached to the outer gradings and comparisons with other countries or homes and hence get into division.
I love what you share, Lyndy. It’s true there is nothing wrong with a beautiful home, but how we live in that beautiful home is the key point. I know living in my share of comfort, I have used my surroundings to numb, bury, and hide from the world using the ‘beauty’ as a comfort and a retreat. But the side-effect is that my body is impacted with a dullness and an inertia. Now I am changing this age-old pattern and learning that it’s the love within and its emanation out that changes everything.
I can really relate to what you have said here Rachel, as I too have used the beauty of my surroundings to numb myself and comfort myself. I was forever looking outside to find that magic something that would alleviate the unease of not living from my essence. Now in my new home the beauty and grace of it all is coming together from the inside out. I am going with colours and toning and even fabrics which were not on my list before!
As soon as we look for our outside environment to confirm us in some way or bring contentment in our lives, we are lost. For the only enduring settlement we can gain must come from connecting with our inner stillness and essence first. The Gentle Breath Meditation has been the key for me in this way of living.
When the focus becomes self, or one’s own family we can fly below the radar thinking we are ‘doing the right thing’ and being caring for ourselves and family, however the moment that we stop considering the whole, we have left behind the truth of why we are here and instead chosen the comfortable life to grab for ourselves whilst others out there are suffering a world that lies in a deep seated disharmony.
Living with a certain standard of living does come with a protection of those so called ‘assets’ and hence also an arrogance as you have so well descibed Christopher. Once you have achieved a certain level of comfort it is like there is an entitlement that kicks in and it is very hard to let go of something that we ‘like’ in terms of comfort in our lives. When this comfort is taken away from us in any way we can kick up a stink and be upset, no different to spoiled child complaining about having to eat one food instead of another. Comfort breeds tension in terms of wanting to hold on more and more to what one has and this is where the trade off can become so entrenched that we leave behind what we know to be true whilst thinking we are living it.
Imagine that, if we choose to live without listening to our bodies, eating and drinking what we like the taste of regardless of the bodies ability to process it, if we live pushing the boundaries regardless of how our bodies are coping with it, we cannot then escape our own worsening health by throwing money at it. When you make me consider our way of living in that way it seems so illogical – we just want a quick fix solution to an arrogant and irresponsible way of living.
The drug of happiness. This is something that I can relate to. Waiting for our next fix. We can become so dependant on it. Having our little moment of happiness will get us through to the next one. But we need to have the next one in the wings waiting. Things to look forward to events, purchases etc. Something that I have been observing when we begin the ask questions on is this true? is that if in a discussion about happiness as an example, if we start to question this, what is presented is “well what else is there?”, “If I am not working on happiness then the only other option is the opposite”. But we each do need the opportunity to step this back gradually for ourselves so that we see the whole picture and in our own timing.
Pride in nationality, culture, achievements, customs, tradition, heritage, food etc etc are identification and comfort that tend to blind us for seeing the whole picture, to relativise the wrongs and not so good things in a society/country, idealizing one´s country or nation to make up for the hurts and emptiness within we otherwise would need to face.
“Living a privileged life in a beautiful place may make us feel better and more deserving than others, but while we bathe in comfort we are detaching ourselves from humanity, taking part in material competition with each other, isolating ourselves instead of living together in harmony with everyone.” Until we get out of our comfort and actually see that it is the most harming thing we can do to the body, illness and disease will continue to rise.
The borders we use to divide us are the very walls that prevent us from accessing the true riches found deep within us.
Pearls again Liane – the moment we put up any form of barrier or any form of isolation even as form of protection, then we shut ourselves out from our deepest recess within, the Soul. The Soul cannot and does not work with conditions and can only work with the whole, inclusive of all.
There is definitely a simplicity missing from life, early to bed and early to rise has been replaced with increasingly stressful busy lives that are crammed with “doing”, and simple, nourishing food has been replaced with supermarket aisles heaving with processed and junk foods. The simplicity of connecting with one another has been replaced with the convoluted world of social media where we ‘connect’ through carefully edited words and images from behind screens. And we live in a world that values what we produce, achieve and do, not the person and their being. Without a connection to our being, to the love, joy and natural harmony within, to the essence of who we are, life can be so unbearable we may turn to food and other activities which aren’t great for our wellbeing, hence the escalating rates of lifestyle related illness and disease. And around and around we all go in these cycles until a truth teller or philosopher like Serge Benhayon presents the truth so we may all have an opportunity to stop, wake up, and begin living differently.
Micro and macro do not have an easy, straight relationship. There are countries that look great at the macro level, but not so great when you look at the micro one. These countries, though, allow people to get access to what they need to compensate the fact that they are not doing so great. So, they are allowed to stay in the comfort of a way of doing that is hurting them.
Great you raise our awareness of this rather alarming and largely ignored reality Christoper. I would like to point out that even in poverty there is comfort. The comfort to not commit to life and remain in the small and familiar reality of being poor and less well off.
I have had to recently re-read ‘The Hobbit’ for a tutorial with a student. I hadn’t read it for 40 or so years, and, wow, my eyes were opened up when I realised that it was all about comfort and the evolving beyond that! Like most of us, Bilbo Baggins lived ‘ in a hobbit hole. And that means comfort’. Not just the luxury of wealth, but a life of double breakfasts, a singing kettle and multiple cakes for afternoon teas, a life of the status quo where nothing new is said (all circulation energy) and in which nobody goes on adventures because they are ‘nasty disturbing things’ and would ‘make you late for tea’! When multi-dimensionality in the form of Gandalf comes a-knocking at Bilbo’s door, he reluctantly begins to stir awake to go on an adventure, a quest, which reignites a re-connection to his inner-heart and wisdom and initiates a huge growth in his awareness and courage to face the trolls, goblins,wars, wolves, and dragons in the world – all those things he was avoiding when he hid away in his hobbit hole and stuffed himself with food. Hobbiton was certainly a ‘country in comfort’.
The statistics you quote are shocking and show how detrimental to our health living in comfort can be – in fact it ought to come with a warning “Can seriously damage your health and wellbeing”!
‘In my experience, no true joy has been found in material wealth, only fleeting moments of happiness never sustained, always followed by a come down, a dip or a depression.’ This is very apt reading this at Christmas, a time when most families feel pressure to buy presents their children will like, even if they can’t afford it.
I can remember one Christmas feeling very depressed as a child. It was soon after the opening of the presents and I went upstairs to play but felt deflated – like all the excitement of new toys couldn’t hide that what I really wanted was to feel loved and special and secure in that no crazy, alcohol infused drama would erupt and people would start teasing you or saying weird stuff. I felt bad because I knew how much my parents had tried to show their love in buying these gifts when they’d not much money and my presents wouldn’t be as fancy as my more well off cousins. Rather than keep this all to myself as I did, I could have easily have gone to my mum and given her a hug. Love is simple.
Thank you for sharing K and it is so true that ‘Love is simple’ and there is no need to strive for material wealth to prove it – all that is needed is to share your love with everyone and in that your have wealth beyond measure.
It is only until we re-connect to the richness of our bodies, that we understand that real wealth has nothing to do with temporal material possessions, but it is something that comes as a result of us saying yes to the call of evolution- being more loving, understanding with each other regardless of where we live and supporting us in our return to the love we once lived in true brotherhood.
I am wondering, though, whether people in many poor or very poor countries also live in comfort – a different kind of comfort that is expressed in an attitude rather than material values but still a comfort.
The key may be less what we own or what we are interested in but how we own and how we live when we act on what we are interested in.
I can clearly remember the moment in my life when I realised material things were not the goal. I was 17ish and could feel that the boy I was dating was not the one for me, but he bought a stereo that I loved, fleetingly I thought maybe this could work, but it was only fleetingly, as I knew deep within it wouldn’t have mattered if he had won the lotto, it would not have been right to continue the relationship. However even with this feeling, I still got trapped into the security and material needs of life. It is such a known way of life, that it takes a deep dedication to truth to begin to properly break the hold it has on humanity.
Yes and marketing knows it! It sells you a picture and more often than not we buy into it.
A great question to ponder, what is it about the way we are living that is contributing to escalating levels of illness and disease, ‘“What is it about the way we are living that is giving rise to this upsurge in ill health?”
We have increasing levels of comfort in our lives, so why is illness and disease on the increase, what important factor or factors are we choosing to ignore?
It is interesting to ponder that many of the most favoured destinations that are named in the world are ones where people can get away from their everyday lives and be entertained and avoid for a brief while what we have created for ourselves back home.
‘The good life’ was one we were brought up to aspire to but it certainly doesn’t cut it any more. Life with no true purpose is empty and meaningless – and that is about people, relationships, connection and brotherhood…. and working is a complete joy. There is no ‘time off’ from life.
Comfort can creep in under the radar, and stops evolution. We forever need to be alert that there is not comfort in our lives, the world is a mess and needs true love.
The important thing to understand is that if any country has it better than another , then its the responsibility of that country (better country ) to inspire and share its wisdom with the other country and in doing this a sense of equalness will be achieved , a simple example of this is the european union which is working to that process as best as it can with the systems in place.
It’s way past time for humanity to return to living in community, in brotherhood, as it is very evident from the current state of the world that the more we live in isolated groups and as individuals that greater the problems that we face, and will continue to face
Having researched suicide rates world wide recently, for an article, it is interesting to note that the highest suicide rates are in the wealthier, more ‘comfortable’ countries. Supposedly these countries are happier places with better education, healthcare and social support. There is an anomaly here to look into and the question to ask is comfort what we are all truly seeking, or is there something else that we are missing?
Living in comfort seems to not be recommended since many countries and the world are in a dire mess.
Any form of comparison has a lethal long term effect on our bodies – whether it is of another or a country,
There is a comfort in misery and in a lacklustre existence and the perverse but very real desire to sustain it – propped up by the illusion of culture, nationality, borders and the many other separation props that have been invented along the way.
Comparison between countries is the same as comparison between people – it is rather toxic and only cements separation.
Absolutely Nikki, and if everyone stopped the comparison between each other we then would stop the same harming energy between countries.
“People are more afraid of being killed by terrorists than the real killers listed above.” This is especially true in the UK this week. Yet despite the press writing more about how lifestyle contributes to serious disease, many people continue with their ‘comfort’ – until something dire happens to them. Then, when a serious illness is averted we continue to want to go back to our old way of living – even though this has contributed to the illness in the first place, Comfort can be very addictive.
Comfort has never cured an illness. Comfort can convince you everything is okay, but what it does is support you in ignoring the issues in front of you.
“disengaged from one’s true inner values, thinking that material wealth collates to happiness and that happiness is the ultimate goal in life” – Nowadays it seems that just ‘getting by’ is a goal that a lot of people aspire to achieve, and many of us have adopted a mindset that we are one of 7.5 billion on a conveyer belt being dealt whatever comes next by the world, but dropping those important inner values that bring true joy, personality and feeling content is always a choice which we can change at any time.
Money and material wealth have become king, even over our own health and well being. We certainly do have things topsy-turvy, because while standards of living may be high in many countries, our illness, disease and suicide rates continue to climb at alarming rates.
What’s also usually connected to material competition but is in a league of its own too, is intellectual competition, career success and basically putting one life style above another – all create conflict within oneself (got to be better, do better, achieve more) and against one another. I’ve very much been caught up in gaining social standing through profession and it’s felt so ugly and dismissing of my true qualities. For, in order to succeed in the way that I wished I put my true knowing aside and people pleased to get recognition.
Everyone loses out this way because here is yet another person discarding the gold within themselves and not shining forth but getting sicker. Where are people going to be inspired unless we live the beauty we all hold within and let go of the empty ideals of accumulating more accolades or material possessions? The love we are that is the true gold is not something to be coveted but shared.
I live in New Zealand, a country that is always up in the top few of the most popular countries to visit and considered to be very beautiful geographically, which it is. We succeed very highly in many sporting codes, especially rugby, but we have one area that we really to not want to be in the top few. That is for our mental health statistics, with our youth suicide rates amongst the highest in the world and I am sure that our physical health statistics are way up there too. I feel that we focus so much on some of our achievements that we lose sight of the truth of what’s truly going on behind those glorious scenes.
“Given that we are living in so much comfort, then why is illness and disease on the increase?” Great question Christopher, there is so much that we are in comfort about and a lot of the time, the ‘so called do gooders’ who are just the masses in society are the ones who are in the most comfort and creating the most harm, because they are sitting back looking at others and judging those who are not living how they are.
The increasing illness and disease rates show us clearly that a comfortable life is not it, but how much are we able to be honest with ourselves and expose collectively the truth that this reality is presenting to us?
If they tried to conduct the same surveys of the most joyous nations, I’m not sure there would be the tools to measure such a thing nor is there a preparedness to look at what a joyful life looks like. The focus is on material wealth, success and progress.
We need to look beneath the facades of countries doing ‘well’ and see a) what the quality of living is like for the people who live there, e.g. how is mental health, obesity and wellbeing? Are people living vital lives? And b) the relationship between that country and all others. An ‘amazing’ country where revolutionary laws might be in place or the people are genuinely joyful and vibrant should share this inspiration with all 196 others so that we can globally bring back vitality, love and responsibility.
Comfort has been really in my face over the last little while, so it is great re-look at this blog. There are so many threads to pull with this subject. There is nothing wrong with living in a beautiful home and driving a luxury car – it is simply the vibrational quality in which we drive that car or live in the house that matters. I know that this has been said before but it bears re-iteration. The ‘comfort’ that is destroying us is the use of matter or energy to numb and console ourselves from not having lived in a connection. religious way – i.e. not even yet living what Jeshua taught a couple of thousand years ago.
A great blog to raise the point of balance. Yes it seems we strive for betterment and for the individual. Yet in truth we are actually making for a sicker population. And I also feel that we don’t think it can happen to us until it does. A real opportunity for change.
When kids withdraw to their bedroom they are actually crying out to be loved.
Recently I walked down a beautiful leafy suburban street in a ”sought after area’. There was a time when I would have wished to live there, seemingly away from the more obvious areas of poverty and blatant disregard that can be seen in some of these areas. I wanted a haven away from the suffering that many are just more upfront about and not hiding behind the niceties of life.
But in my job I have the privilege to see behind closed doors and so often those who are living a seemingly easy life are also feeling empty and joyless, disconnected with themselves, suffering relationships for the convenience of wealth. And I realise that there is no haven on this world. Knowing another is suffering, if I am honest, means I cannot rest easy in any kind of glib self-content. There is no separation between us and trying to pretend otherwise means I am not walking ahead to inspire others to follow.