Two BIG Reasons why Money Doesn't Buy Happiness

We've all heard the old saying that "money doesn't buy happiness."

But WHY not? I mean, what's the real problem here?

The real problem here has nothing -- at all -- to do with money. That's why we should totally leave money out of this old saying; what has money done? Money is not even alive. Why blame money? The problem is with people, not with money.

Really, the saying should be "people with money can't buy happiness" -- because, if nothing else, this puts the root of the problem where it, in reality, is: with people.

When people have excessive money -- or, at least, try to live like they do -- they start to do two things simultaneously; and unconsciously, too:

1. They start trying to solve problems with money when those problems would otherwise compel an increase in consciousness;

2. They start to view people as commodities -- "things" to be bought and sold, like anything else in a store.

Both of these things are simply against anything remotely connected to spirituality (and I'm not saying religion -- I mean spirituality, which is your intimate, divine relationship with your interiority).

Life will always give you challenges, regardless of how much money you have. That's the nature of life: to give you challenges to teach you different things. People with excessive amounts of money, however, unconsciously and automatically start solving almost EVERY problem with money -- and this is really, in many cases, a short-cut. Instead of solving the problem and deeply facing it, money can help numb the pain and in many ways avoid it entirely. It's like alcohol; except excessive spending is (rather absurdly, really) seen as a "good thing" that more people should do, whereas excessive drinking is seen as a real problem that needs treatment (and it is, and does).

That's why rich people are stunned -- truly, they're amazed -- at how problematic their life becomes after they "get rich." One core reason is simply that they stop looking at their real problems and just avoid them through money. If a job is frustrating, for example, instead of looking at it and seeing the subtle fact that problems "out there" in the world are often reflections of problems "inside," a person who has the financial means can just quit and get another job. Or another spouse. Or another house.

The problems, however, never go away because they're never dealt with. At even the merest sign of frustration or what would be called "depression," a wealthy person will almost always just spend their way to happiness; because they can -- and because other wealthy people expect them too live life that way.

The other aspect of the money-misery problem is just as real: a love of money becomes a lens of money, and that means human beings are reduced to inputs and outputs; to their value, in financial terms. That's why people really, deeply, dislike rich people -- it's not about their money, it's about the fact that rich people have a knack of making non-rich people feel dehumanized; about being nothing more than useful to a rich person's ongoing quest for wealth, or useless. If they're useful, then they are valued. If useless, they are not.

I'm not against wealth AT ALL. Wealth is fantastic. But it should be enjoyed consciously -- and not to simply avoid reality and live in a temporarily problem-free bubble, or just as destructively, to reduce people into mere commodities; into robots that serve a financial purpose or not.