How do I get rid of all greed in my life? I always hear of organizations and politicians/etc. being greedy, but how do I myself get rid of it? Is it as simple as giving things away, or does it go a lot deeper?
Although giving all things away would help you understand the experience of loss, there are other ways to do it. There are also ways that are not acceptable. In this day and age to even have food and shelter you need at least some amount of money. It’s not like you can produce your own food and provide your own shelter, unless you move away from civilization, which is an option but I’m assuming off the table of considerations. I mention it in case some other application by you or others would actually call for that.
So I’m saying you don’t have to give everything away. IMO that is questionable strategy because you’d just have to turn around and beg, borrow or steal to have a few necessities at least.
Here’s the issue: anything you need, controls you.
Anything you don’t need, you have free will decision whether to do it or not, without influence unfairly by your need. So that’s what you want:
to have it and like it and even want it is perfectly OK, but train yourself to believe you don’t need it.
This way everything you own is by definition surplus, which is OK because Jesus said He came so that we can live our lives in abundance.
So the real issue isn’t exactly to get rid of something, but to get rid of your attachment to those things. Attachment is a need. Certainly one can get rid of both the item and the attachment to it, but these often don’t happen at the same time. So getting rid of the physical object it optional. Anything you do in your imagination, affects you spiritually just as if it actually were according to your thoughts. This is how prayer works; spirits don’t necessarily distinguish between physical and mental.
Grieving is the process of severing an attachment and dealing with the loose end of the tie that flags around annoyingly and keeps you focused on the loss. When you let go of something, even a dream or plan, there is grieving at the severance. Grieving is grieving; it’s getting over a loss, even imaginary. Expect it, and that may influence its severity or flavor.
Like you can live your whole life grieving over something you haven’t even lost yet, but might in the future. Like an IRA you’ve built up over the years that’s doing fine just now. That’s because in the spiritual world, time is not a factor so something that happens tomorrow can interfere with, or at least influence, something that happened yesterday. This is nothing new for God. Decades ago I studied the famous
Double Slit Experiment in quantum physics class. For example, Jesus made use of this for benefit of His mother. When He died, He erased her original sin before she was conceived.
Greed and gluttony are a lot alike, so anything you know about one field you can try to abstract the major concepts and apply knowledge and experience with one, to the other.
Ah well I feel like I’m just prattling on …
Hope something there is useful. I wish you well in your progress.
Peace and joy,
Alan
