We have to first reorient our minds to see this, and our brain cells have that capacity. But we want to tread on in the same lethargic way, slide on the same rails, and that will remain boring. That bored one does not want to change. “X is wrong . . . Y is wrong . . . Z is wrong . . . My father did this to me . . . my mother did this to me . . . my brother did this to me . . . I could have done this . . . I went to school but I wish I had gone to a different school.” Or: “The honeymoon was very bright but as the days pass by I don’t think I made a right choice.”
     People do not want to change themselves. That is the dark side of materialism. Now when I am saying this, please don’t take it that I see material life as dark. If it were, I would not be here. To me it is a totally different picture. We have to change our outlook and values so that we do not remain materialistic. If we want freedom from boredom, pain, misery, heaviness, worries, anxieties, fears, then the only solution is to change ourselves. Make God first again.
      It may sound like an old religious adjunct but it is perfect. After you make your focus or goal God, Spirit, your values change. You become charitable, forgiving, magnanimous, looking to the brighter side of being and never getting icky and weary and weird. You look upward, like a bird to the sky, to the Spirit, to God within. And that is your goal: to feel lighter, freer, joyful and peaceful, to attain higher liberation of the soul.

VEN WITHIN MATERIALISM, don’t we choose these values? We wish for peace, joy, happiness, satisfaction and freedom. So these are higher values rather than material values in themselves, simply reflections of our own desires on the material plane, but we get stuck there wanting peace, joy and liberation on that dimension. Unfortunately we are missing the whole game. God, the Spirit, and the spiritual values for which we acquire materialism—we miss them in the same process. This is called ignorance or self-deception. And this ignorance eventually becomes thick and heavy, so much so that we are totally at a loss how to come out of it. We think intellectually, rationally: “I don’t want heaviness, I don’t want confusion, I don’t want worries.”  We dwell upon this material plane but not on how to come out of it. We are thinking: how to come out of my worries, anxiety, heaviness, fear and so on, but still dwelling upon the same dimension.
     To focus higher, we bring in God, Spirit. The material is to be used and lived within but not the goal of life. It has never given peace and joy. Material values are born out of desires that are personal, individual, and therefore selfish. They are not connected to dharma, spiritual law, which is for the higher good of many. If we think of dharma and the good of many, then we will act and live according to the dharma, not according to our individual desires and wants. We will be lighter because the principle is higher. It pulls us upward.