“To be truly spiritual, I will have to be poor and renounce the world.”

Then the ego thinks spirituality is about renouncing the world. So it fears giving up its home, its clothes, etc… all the things it clings to for security and approval. The ego thinks that it will have to be poor in order to be spiritual. Again, influenced by the beliefs of the new age marketplace, and the image of Indian yogis and wandering hermits meditating on the mountaintop, it worries that “spirituality has nothing to do with me or my life, with my own business, a wife, a network of friends and 3 kids, etc.” Of course, none of this is true. Again, as Kabir says, renunciation is only in the mind. As you let go of wanting and clinging, the Universe takes care of you, far far better than you could possibly do when you are trying to control and manipulate and struggle to make things happen. You don’t give up anything, except your ignorance, your clinging, your ego. You give up the whole struggle that goes with believing you are an individual separate from the Totality, and you discover something greater and more marvelous than you could have imagined. As you attune more and more to the subtle realm of Beingness, you discover that Beingness responds and begins to guide your life, and that the less you struggle and resist, the easier things are, and the more they work out by themselves.

Aversion to money is just as much a block to Freedom as the clinging to money. When you go beyond both, you see that life provides everything you could possibly need, all the time. All by itself. There is a saying in India that wherever Narayan goes, Lakshmi will always follow. This means that wherever God is, there too is always abundance. (Narayan is a name for God, and Lakshmi is the goddess of wealth). All the greatest masters have spoken this same realization. That when you seek God /Truth/ Freedom first, God Himself (or Beingness) takes care of all your other needs, just like that, and all worries are eliminated from your being. Realization is the real jewel. In this state, one cannot possibly feel unloved or unsafe. Realization is the ultimate state of abundance, because it is the end of all fear, forever. Your life becomes unlimited. As one great Master once said, “Maya (the veil of illusion that shrouds the Truth) keeps all egos prisoner, but to the enlightened one, she becomes a servant.”