I reject martyrdom as a valid spiritual path. I reject the idea that it is sacrifice that makes us inherently more spiritual. I rebuke poverty as a more genuine gateway to Divine. I evoke the wealth of my ancestral mothers. I invoke the liberated abundance of those whose ideas of themselves were unfettered by exploitation. I step fully into my own rich inheritance.
It doesn't matter how many zeros you have in the bank, wealth is not an external condition. Now I'm not gonna sit here and be like money doesn't make you happy mainly because people are tired of hearing that shit from people with money. But when I'm talking about deprivation & wealth, I'm not only talking about money. I'm also talking about people depriving themselves of joy, of ease, of rest, of comfort, of love and of connection, and those are qualities that so-called 'rich' people tend to deprive themselves of more often than others, and then hold up those ways of being as some sort of aspirational values.
I know some "rich allies" that think their job is to be as miserable as possible so that other people can be happy. Those people tend to be horrible to be around, because they drain the life out of everybody else with their constant manipulations for everybody else to make them feel better about themselves.
I know some mothers who are constantly self-sacrificing but are miserable to be around because they are so worn out without replenishment that the resentment oozes from them (*past me raises hand*).
I know some romantic partners who are great on paper but constantly assassinating the joy of their loved ones because they've reduced themselves to concerning themselves more with the happiness of others than the well being of themselves (*past me also raises hand).
When we deprive ourselves of goodness, pleasure and joy, when we smother and suppress our desire, they don't die, they just start to suck the life out of everybody around us. They don't die, they manipulate.
