I have to respond to Dick Wolff's comment. Dick replied:
> The reason it is dangerous is because it sets material wealth up as
> an indicator of "success" in Personal Mastery. The "Personal
> Mastery", in this case, means nothing more than personal mastery of
> the market capitalist system.
I'd rather not touch very much on religion, but I will point out that
one of the very wealthy in the world is Mother Theresa! Although not
personally wealthy, she commands alot of wealth in this materialistic
world. The Christian church itself is very wealthy!
If we are talking total personal mastery, doesn't that include all
aspects of this life on earth? Spiritual, physical, emotional, and
the material marketplace? If you only focus on one aspect, whether
that is money, physical, or spiritual, could we be missing the other
parts of this life experience?
> The personal mastery *I* seek is that which enables us to overcome
> the dangerous inadequacies of this System, not one that enables me
> to profit from it!
I'm reminded of Sidhartha, who to truly reach enlightenment, had to
fully indulge all the different aspects of life. Only then could he
'become one with the river' (if my memory serves me right).
Only from within can we transform ourselves. Likewise, to transform
'the dangerous inadequacies of this System' we can only do that if we
truly understand, can master the system, and then, we can start to
transform it! Imagine what would happen if people focused on personal
mastery of the current 'System' and personal mastery of their own
spiritual self at the same time!
Gary Scherling
Helping people help themselves
--GSCHERL@fed.ism.ca (GSCHERL)
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>