The Wealth of Souls

Two hundred fifty years ago Adam Smith was anything but original when he entitled his opus on economy The Wealth of Nations. Those words from the 8th century B.C. prophet Isaiah were a call to the king and nation of Israel.

Written after the Babylonian exile by the students of Isaiah’s prophetic school, the point was to invite the people of Israel to a new and greater alliance with their Creator. Not to make another mistake in futile alliances with other nations against their joint earthly enemies.

You and I are called by prophets of every country, language and time to that same spirited alliance with the Great Spirit. It is the Great Spirit that, when we pay attention to our lives and their genuine meaning, is the spirit of greatness.

It can be very annoying — even upsetting — to reflect upon the fact that all of our early lives are spent hearing how we must have the right job, live in the right place, associate with the right people. And if we don’t, we are failures.

That is the point of my life. I am quite determinedly a failure. I have spent a lifetime working at being a failure in earthly pursuits.

In spiritual pursuits I consider myself a world class success.

My introduction to Adam Smith fifty years ago was merely a continuation of the same old thing. No new ideas. No new spiritual depths to plumb. Nothing exciting at all.

I was raised in a business family. Watching a manager manage was all I knew. Day after day it was drummed into me that I was expected to be the same. I found to be it to be a horribly boring and misbegotten notion.

How exactly did that fit with my daily sightings of God, angels and souls?

How did it improve the spiritual life I was so hungry to expand?

Economics classes taught me about how humans viewed their theories of what the world could or ought to be from the viewpoint of being owned by goods and chattels. Their ideas, their theories, were sadly lacking in my experience.

At no time in my chats with God has It ever mentioned that I ought to strive to become CEO of some large firm. I was never told who were supposed to be my friends. Nor whom I ought to date or marry. Neither was I ever directed to work at any particular concern, only informed when the people did not seem to be healthy for my spiritual life. And when God needed me to work for It.

In material terms, I am one massive failure.

Then there is reality. My reality. The world which actually matters as opposed to the world of business, politics and how high can I climb on the economic and financial totem pole.

The world of the Spirit.

This is where my heart sings. I love reading not only Isaiah and the other Hebrew prophets. There are also the spiritual writings of other women and men from around the world.

My introduction to the ancient Chinese opus The Book of Odes was a revelation. It has been largely lost or suppressed in China since the fall of the Qing dynasty in the early twentieth century. Scholars I’ve met from China have never heard of it. I benefited by studying with a renowned Sinologist who introduced me to it and then let me loose.

There is such joy in discovering the enormous depths of wisdom of my fellow peasants of three thousand or more years ago. Like Isaiah and most other ancient texts, they are derived from even earlier teachings.

The spiritual basis underpinning the poems both speaks to earthly rulers as to their duties to the people — thus the reason Maoist China suppressed the work — and to the daily lives of farmers and others. It was wonderful to find that the Stockholm Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities has released the masterful translation and transliteration of Bernhard Karlgren online.

It is in simple things like this that we enter more into who we truly are. It is in taking a walk, looking quietly out the window, giving ourselves the pleasures of momentary reflections, that we enter into the depths of our own souls.

Our greatest wealth is in our souls.

Whether we are living in a maelstrom or a calm peaceful day, the wealth that Isaiah wrote about is the same as writers across all times and places.

Our wealth lies deep within us.