A Life That is Well-Pleasing

Even a brief glance at the news is enough to make us think about our money on some level. Whether it’s rising food, education or gas costs, health care or housing, the recent stock market roller coaster or inflation, there’s something there to make anybody think twice. In such times becoming ever more mindful of our spiritual and material priorities, and realities, is fundamental to both our financial and spiritual health.

In the Spring ’08 issue we talked about how important it is to figure out the difference between what we want and what we need, particularly as an element of marriage. One next step that is becoming increasingly common, for a variety of reasons, some of them financial some philosophical, is to downsize/downshift/conserve/voluntarily simplify our resources.

At the heart of this movement (let’s use the term downshifting) is a profound awareness of the role money plays in our life, our priorities, the role of material things and desire for them, the things we do to earn money and how we spend it. In a Baha'i context it need not be a modern version of asceticism, nor disengagement with the world. Baha’u’llah tells us, “Let them act with moderation and not impose hardship upon themselves. We would like them both to enjoy a life that is well-pleasing.” But there is a balance. Shoghi Effendi wrote that, “It is therefore imperative for the individual American believer, and particularly for the affluent, the independent, the comfort-loving and those obsessed by material pursuits, to step forward, and dedicate their resources, their time, their very lives to a Cause of such transcendence that no human eye can even dimly perceive its glory.” What might it look like to lead a life that is “well-pleasing”, financially and spiritually speaking.

It might start by figuring out our goals—whether it’s to work less during the week so as to have time for other pursuits, pay off a credit card, or even things like making sure you or your spouse can stay home with the kids, increasing our monthly fund contributions, or saving for pilgrimage. If you’ve already figured out what’s a ‘want’ and a ‘need’ in your life this process can inform those distinctions. Then once we have that done we need to think about the ways we earn and spend money. Here’s where the water gets a little deeper.

So many of our choices in this part of life are social and have subtly become a part of what we think our ‘identity’ to be and have become the norm in our lives. Material things are fraught with meanings, from the way we dress to the car we drive to which iPod we have. Downshifting, going from a Beemer to a Honda (or from a Honda to a bus), leaving the high paying job we hated for a low-paying job we love, being content with last year’s iPod (or clothes, or computer, or etc.), almost seems to go against our cultural instincts. It means not keeping up with the Jones’. It means being able to say, to ourselves and to the people in our lives, “I can’t afford that.” It means, essentially, taking control of our resources and placing them at the disposal of our soul’s promptings and not in the hands of others.

As with all questions about material things there is a material and a spiritual element. Many of us spend, for example, for all kinds of reasons, more than we actually bring in. What often ends up happening is that we either have debt to pay off or we don’t have enough to put into savings. Not only is this pattern unsustainable personally, but also for our families and for the Baha'i community as well. Scaling back what we spend whenever possible is the only way to ensure financial sustainability and stability.

Spiritually, enjoying a “life that is well-pleasing” implies a life infused with balance, harmony, and virtue, and, for Baha'is, fully aware of our “fundamental spiritual obligation” to contribute to the funds of the Faith.

Check out this clip from the film Lifeblood: Young Baha'is and the Fund to hear the Treasurer of the National Spiritual Assembly of the US and others talk about the relationship between the material and the spiritual, and how participation in the Baha'i Funds shapes that relationship.

Comments

[Farah E.]

There is also so much personal satisfaction that comes from knowing that we make informed decisions about the way spend, give etc. and that we are not subject to the whims of big business or society...