Money is useful, not valuable

Free prize inside

Take courage; the human race is divine.—Pythagoras

Rick Rubin has produced a wide range of musicians: Adele, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Beastie Boys, Slayer, Kanye West, The Strokes. He’s won nine Grammys. I’m reading his book The Creative Act: A Way of Being, a collection of short, koan-like essays about artistic life, which according to him, is indistinguishable from spiritual life.

In the book he writes about the inner world of an artist as an ultimate source of inspiration:

“It’s common to believe that life is a series of external experiences. And that we must live an outwardly extraordinary life in order to have something to share. The experience of our inner world is often completely overlooked. If we focus on what’s going on inside ourselves—sensations, emotions, the patterns of our thoughts—a wealth of material can be found.” — Rick Rubin

In modern life, we seek external experiences and forget that the real thing is happening inside. Karen Armstrong wrote, “One of the reasons religion seems irrelevant today is that many of us no longer have the sense that we are surrounded by the unseen.” Comparative 20th century religion scholar Mircea Eliade made a distinction between sacred space and profane space. He identified sacred space with an inbreaking of divine reality, and that modern people have uneasy and weak connections to sacred space.

Our inner experience is a necessary part of sacred space. In fact all sacred space does is allow you to access the inner experience of divine reality. As Enlightenment emphasized understanding the outer world, it’s de-mystified our inner experience of it. 20th century mystic and minister Howard Thurman stressed the need for coming face to face with God:'

The central fact in religious experience is the awareness of meeting God. The descriptive words are varied: sometimes it is called an encounter; sometimes, a confrontation; and sometimes, a sense of Presence… the individual is seen as being exposed to direct knowledge of ultimate meaning —the experience is beyond or inclusive of the discursive…. The individual in the experience seems to come into possession of what he has known as being true all along. The thing that is new is the realization. And this is of profound importance.

Useful, not valuable

I read this quote that really struck me:

“A corkscrew is useful, a hug from your mother is valuable. A door is useful, watching a sunset is valuable. A car is useful, a good friendship is valuable. Having hobbies is useful, having faith and praying is valuable. The useful is almost always more expensive than the valuable. In fact, what is valuable rarely costs money. This occurs because money is useful but not valuable. The valuable generates much more happiness in the long term than the useful, yet we often value the useful more than the valuable.”  — Joaquin Dulitzky

In the modern world, we value the outside over the inside, and because of it, we’re working literally ourselves to death. We’re eating this planet alive. We’re projecting conflict onto others, when the conflict is always with ourselves.

We keep thinking that what will solve our not-enoughness is more things, more experiences. The external life. But the only solution to our not-enoughness is the very thing we avoid: our internal life.

But the journey into inner space is only thing that’s really valuable. It’s the only place you find wisdom and perspective. It’s the only place will you really find Presence, come face to face with God, and experience what Timothy “Speed” Levitch calls the “ongoing wow of now.” It’s the only place your life gets transformed.

What is valuable rarely costs money. Money is useful but not valuable.

The prize is inside. And it’s free.