Eat! – Drink! – Be Merry!
The trek from the monastery to the village was a long one. The sun had risen immediately overhead, it’s heat bearing down on the two travelers. The pair was composed of the elder monk Aaron and novice Micah. Not far up ahead was a lone tree. “There is a small spring at the base of that tree. We will stop for a rest,” the old man announced.
As they approached, Micah noticed several larger rocks that had been situated next to the small pool of water that was shaded by the tree. After cupping several mouthfuls of water, the two men sat down. Micah sat silent with Aaron. It was the first time he had ventured out alone with the elder. Not sure of what to expect from the elder, he chose to refrain from the plethora of questions he normally asked other elders he was better acquainted with. Aaron could sense the novice’s reluctance to ask questions as he had been warned to expect as much from the young man.
St. Anthony’s Greek Orthodox Monastery, Florence, Arizona
As Aaron gazed down the path from where they came, then, turning his head, gazed toward their destination, Micah noticed a gold coin glinting from beneath a shallow brushing of sand. He leaned down and picked up the coin. As he proceeded to brush it off, hoping to please his elder, Aaron noticed the coin in Micah’s hand. “Why, son, do you pick up what you did not put down?”
Startled at the old man’s inquisition, Micah stuttered, “I, well… That is, Father, I thought it good fortune that this coin was here to add to our purse for buying supplies in the village.”
“When we embarked on this journey, did we not trust that the Lord had provided for our needs?”
“Yes, of course Father.”
“Why then, son, would you suppose it not sufficient with the sight of that coin lying here in the sand? Has God perhaps changed His mind and now desires to add to our purse because He might have been incorrect before we embarked?”
“No, of course not, Father. I only …”
“God has promised to provide for our needs. He has allowed that coin to rest here beside this water hole for two reasons. He has allowed you to test yourself and to what degree your desires and doubts loom over your better sense.”
“A test?”
“Yes. A test of sorts. He has provided this for your benefit. We should seek only what we need in life, little else. However our desires tempt us to grab for more with the false promise of greater satisfaction out of life. More than you need is a burden – even when such abundance brings pleasure. Do you understand, Micah?”
Micah, feeling embarrassed at his lack of discernment over the reason for the coin, gently replaced it where he found it, sprinkling a bit of sand over it. Realizing Father Aaron had indicated two reasons, Micah asked, “Father, you mentioned two reasons. What is the second reason that I may learn?”
As the old man stood and brushed himself off to resume their walk, Aaron said, “In a few minutes there will be another traveler that will seek refreshment at this same spring. He has nothing and is hungry. The coin is God’s way of providing for him.”
Smiling, Micah walked beside Aaron with his head bowed in thought. “As He has promised.”
There is a saying that was common in my younger days, one I would see regularly on stickers on the back of cars and pickup trucks. It went like this:
The one who dies with the most toys wins!
I performed a quick look to see how the “internet” defines this saying. In general it portrays it as the antithesis of motivational or inspirational sayings. However, an image search of the same query paints a different “picture”. Looking at the image results one might think that this is not a funny saying but more of a motivational slogan for buying as much “stuff” as you can so you will both “beat the other guy” and “enjoy life more.”
Then I looked up the “proverb” (?) on the free dictionary, “you can’t take it with you” and found two seemingly dichotomous meanings.
One states, “A warning against materialism that alludes to the fact that you can’t keep your money or possessions when you die.”
The other says, “Enjoy material things while you’re alive, as in Go ahead and buy the fancier car; you can’t take it with you.”
The second meaning is a sentiment expressed in the 1938 film of the same name:
While I am not adverse to finding humor in life, I often find it troubling when humor is mistaken for life. Whether the justification for “shopping ’til you drop” is fueled by some sense of competitive, overbearing need to have more or experience more, or simply enjoy it while you can ’cause yer gonna die, then there’s no more fun to be had – this wreaks of what the first meaning expounds – a warning against materialism. But there’s a slight glitch in that reasoning as well i.e. avoid materialism simply because you can’t keep it after you die. Or can you? Do you? I’ll answer those questions in a moment. First let’s look at another (Biblical) warning regarding materialism:
16 Then He spoke a parable to them, saying: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded plentifully. 17 And he thought within himself, saying, ‘What shall I do, since I have no room to store my crops?’ 18 So he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build greater, and there I will store all my crops and my goods. 19 And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years; take your ease; eat, drink, and be merry.”‘ 20 But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul will be required of you; then whose will those things be which you have provided?’
21 “So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.”
Luke 16-21
I understand there are many layered meanings in the above passage. Not the least of which is the morality of sharing your abundance instead of hoarding it. The rich man produced abundance and desired to keep it for himself so he might for many years kick back, be lazy, and satisfy his every whim. God essentially informed him you can’t take it with you. Aside from the fact that the man was a miser, was there perhaps another hidden (occult) lesson here?
I’ll ask the question again – can you take your abundance, or anything of your possessions with you when you die? The answer? Yes, you can. And you do. Okay, misleading I know. You obviously can’t take physical possessions with you into the spiritual realm. So, then, what?
Everything we obtain in the physical world begins with some sense of need or desire of the sense organs. We desire to taste sweet ice cream, or listen to our favorite music. Without going further on my own thought train, I’ll let Rudolf Steiner make the point I am heading toward:
The convenience of food, the taste of the dishes, the palatal pleasure is mental. The palate itself is physical. If the human being did not have the physical, he could not get the mental pleasure. If he had no physical ear, he could not hear, had he no physical eye, he could not see. We perceive everything that we perceive with the physical senses at first. The modern human being can perceive nothing without his physical senses. He is used to them. He is used to satisfying such wishes that can be satisfied by the sense organs. The habit to have wishes, to have pleasures, remains (after death), the means by which he can satisfy them disappear; tongue, eyes and ears disappear. He does no longer have them. Now he misses them after death.
He is still thirsting for the pleasure, which can only be satisfied by the sense organ. The result is that the human being comes to a state of consciousness after death, which consists in breaking the habit of being satisfied only by the sense organs. The soul must stop asking for sensuous satisfaction, has to purify itself beyond that which satisfied it on earth and can be satisfied only by sensuous, physical means. That is kamaloka in the anthroposophical worldview. We know it as the purgatory.
One can compare that not improperly, which the human being experiences there, to a feeling of burning thirst, to a kind of burning privation. This is the state after death. The suitable means is not there sensuous-physical after death; the organ is not there by which the thirsting soul can be satisfied. If a soul has finished this connection with the physical in the course of years in the kamaloka, it lives in the spiritual world, to which it belongs as soul. It takes that along into the spiritual world. The spiritual-scientific worldview calls this spiritual world devachan or spirit land.
Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 54 – Riddles of the World: Lecture XII: Reincarnation and Karma – Berlin, 15th February 1906
The desire for the things you cannot “live” without, you take with you in death. Such desires chain you to the physical realm and cause you much confusion, even pain (“burning desire”) after you die. I share more about this on my Life and Death post. Here is the section titled “The Desire World”:
If a man dies leaving all worldly desires behind, the time spent in the desire world, working to shed the Astral body, would be greatly reduced. Desires live in the Astral body and desires, or ties to the physical world, are often augmented by a very intense longing to return. This actually binds the individual to to Desire world. Before the individual is able to move on to higher realms, he must be purified of such desires – ties and longings left behind in the physical world.
This process of purification takes on a type of suffering, the intensity of which is determined by many factors, both from an internal standpoint such as personal longing and the observance of circumstances post death. The desire world exists not separate from the physical world but integrated into it whereby the dead person, in the desire world, is able to see what continues in the physical world after they are gone. This is the “belief” expressed by the view of a person being able to go “where they want to” for “40 day’s”. Instead this is a period of purification from earthly desires before one can move on [7].
It is not an avenging Deity that makes purgatory or hell for us, but or own addictions to earthly life. According to the intensity of our desires will be the time and suffering entailed in their purging.
This is the law that is symbolized by the scythe of the reaper, Death; the law that says “whatsoever a man soweth, so shall he reap.” It is the law of cause and effect, which rules all things in the three worlds (Physical, Etheric, Astral), in every realm of nature – physical, moral and mental. Everywhere it works inexorably, adjusting all things, restoring the equilibrium wherever even the slightest action has brought about a disturbance, as all action must (as in Steiner’s Necessity and Freedom). The result may be manifested immediately or it may be delayed for years or for lives. Of note is the fact that this process is absolutely impersonal. There is in the universe neither reward nor punishment. This is the Law of Consequence.
Take my advice. Strip yourself of desires that bind you to this earthly life – it is temporal. The spiritual life is forever. This does not mean “sell all you have” (necessarily). It’s not the stripping away of the possessions we are talking about here, but rather the deep seeded desire we mistakenly characterize as “needs”. I have found in my personal life that the less I desired my “stuff”, the less I eventually wound up having to cart around. Erin and I once lived (alone) in a four bedroom, three bedroom house with a family room, a large “great room” and two car garage. Every room had furniture, the garage with a work bench and two vehicles. Each time we moved from there we decreased the amount of our possessions by a third – that an accurate estimate. Of course, we’ve acquired a thing or two along the way, but we are now living in a small basement flat after giving away another third of our furniture and storing the rest (which is mostly small things like tools and books) in a 10×20 storage unit (with room to spare). Yes, there are some things we want to make the trip to get out of storage, but, by and large, we don’t “miss” our “stuff.”
Life is a process, a learning process. I worked as an underground cable television foreman many moons ago. My partner on the job once told me, “My pappy used to say if you fill up the back of the shovel, the front of the shovel will take care of itself.” Your efforts in life are like that. Work to control and minimize your desires and you will find one day you wake up and you have far less material burden on your back – now and after you leave this life.