Courage and Greed

857 Days To Complete 101 Dreams Come True

"One's life shrinks or expands according to one's courage." Anais Nin

So if you want an XL-life, with XL-spirit-expanding pleasure, you first and foremost need XL-courage. The 7 Lively Sins

I woke this morning thinking about courage and greed. I know these two things may seem like they have nothing in common. Courage is about being bigger than our fear. Greed is considered a sin - an emotion that leads to pain and suffering and a sign of the soul's weakness.

Hmmm, let's start with greed. When we want a bigger life: more love, more happiness, more adventures, more excitement, more money, more sex and lust then we have greed. And what's wrong with wanting more from our lives? When I look at the earth and the natural beauty of this world I don't think a higher power wanted us to live the mundane. You can't look at the Yosemite Valley for the first time and feel ho hum or bored unless your spirit is dead. In springtime, when you look at the thousands of flowers blooming you don't see a God that said, well you only deserve so much beauty so I'm going to give you just one flower. Instead, there are seeds flying everywhere and bees pollinating so that next year there will be even more flowers. Nature is abundant. Left alone it grows in wild crazy patterns that overflow.

So why do we think that being greedy is a bad thing?

Because greed can be dangerous when it's based in anger, power, and the future. When greed begins with anger there is lack within the spirit. You want more because you're angry with the hand you've been dealt. Your going to acquire more to fulfill the hurt within. It's a childish tantrum that places a future event as the salvation to your problems; when you have more you will be happy. When greed comes with the need to be powerful over another, once again the present moment isn't the starting point, and this greed is trying to fill a hole within the spirit.

When you look at your life with gratitude and excitement for what already is and you begin to desire all the wonderful things this life can bring you, then greed is a spirit-enlivening energy that catapults you to great things. Once you feel this kind of greed and let it fill your body, then you expand the idea of what your life can be. Then all it takes is that XL courage to go after it.