Thoughts on wealth and addiction

In the name of Allah the most merciful the most
forgiving

My brain became loud yesterday, louder than normal. So loud that it even overpowered the noise of my heart, although I was sitting at a Tafseer lesson (interpretation of the holy Quran) which I thought would challenge mostly the heart. But indeed one needs the intellect and the heart, and both of them are intertwined for eternity. One can not come to use its full potential without the other.

And yesterday my intellect interrupted the noise of my heart. And I started to think about wealth.

I hope to have gained a little bit more of understanding, a little bit more of insight into the endless wisdom of the holy Quran. If there is anything beneficial in my thoughts I should share them, so here –after again a long period of abstinence – I am about to share a fraction of them with everyone whos willing to connect with them and take them in with a clean heart.

The Quran teaches us about dozens of civilisations which come and go , come and go endlessly . With patience the Allmighty tells us the very similar story of many civilisations which got doomed because of very similar crimes. One of the many parallels you see between the doomed civilisations of this earth is that they are almost never poor. On quite the opposite they were rich in every aspect to be thought of in a materialistic sense, often times had mastered difficult disciplines like architecture and were prospering in means of culture and wealth.

At the same time the downward spiral sets in almost everytime  with rising wealth. Greed comes into the hearts. But why is it that those who have more than enough become stingy in spending ? Why do those who have every reason to be grateful become ungrateful? What is it, that comes into the human heart with wealth ? And what is it that happens in the human mind?

It is surely connected to the illusion of humankind to gain power through wealth. The one who makes continously the experience of achieving all they want for this world with money attribute power to it and fail to see its limits. If money means power and power corrupts, man becomes arrogant through is money.

But this is not what I want to focus on as it seems to me that this is common sense. Today I’d like to go a little further and take also into consideration what the almighty has given us as a cure.

''O you who have believed, indeed many of the scholars and the monks devour the wealth of people unjustly and avert [them] from the way of Allah . And those who hoard gold and silver and spend it not in the way of Allah - give them tidings of a painful punishment.''
 (9:34)

Allah commands to spend money on his path and not hoard it. Now we know that money itself is not a problem if it comes and goes, but becomes problematic if its kept for the hearts of its temporary owners.

There must be a crucial difference in the value of wealth between those who dont have it in masses and those who do.

For the wealthy money becomes the means of an addiction. The hoarder is addicted.  From a specific limit on there are no basic needs one could fullfill with wealth anymore. All material/physical needs are fullfilled at that point, so that money itself becomes useless to raise ones levels of contentment. But at that point man is already the victim of his own operant  conditioning , because until that point came, he always experienced the fullfillment of his needs with money. Staying true to that schema he tries to comprimise mental or social needs through wealth, money now gets an intrinsic value. It becomes good in and in it self, making the gain of it a positive thing. It is no longer the means to anything. It becomes a purpose.

And as we know from experience the inhibition becomes higher and higher everytime to achieve some level of contentment through material goods. We can see an addictional behavior. Wealth is the narcotic and seperation from narcotics is hard.

How wise becomes the recommendation of my Lord now in the context of these thoughts and modern psychology. How endlessly wise is He ,who has given the cure with the disease and how ignorant would we be to not follow the commandments of the one, who has created us and knows our own souls better than ourself.

Lets give away what we have and spend on the path of the most merciful, so that our hearts remain poor in matters of the physical world and have space for real wealth, the wealth of knowing and loving our rabb. 

 Subhanaallah <3