I don’t spend a lot of money on myself. I’ve prided myself on this. I have nice clothes with pretty good style,
but I spend very little on clothes for myself.
I drive the same car I’ve owned for over ten years. I rarely go out to eat and I own very little “stuff.” I have some crystals (okay a lot), but they
cost almost nothing. I don’t own the
tech “stuff.” Occasionally I’ll spend
for some training or something educational, and if I spend money for pleasure
it’s generally on travel or experiences.
As I’ve been clearing out that “holding on” energy, I
realize I’ve probably taken this too far and actually gone too cheap on myself,
which instead of being frugal and life-nourishing is actually stifling my
energy. This weekend I spent a small
amount to get some Bluetooth stereo equipment.
Some of it I kind of need for the car, because of the new laws (cheaper
than one ticket, so kind of a no-brainer), and some just makes obvious sense.
I realized immediately a few things in doing that. First, as I’m going deeper into Natural
Grounding resources, I notice a huge difference in the quality of the
experience with the higher-quality equipment.
When the sound is more rich and clear and surrounding, it deepens the
level of experience. Even lying on the
couch at home listening to NG music feels different now, my body would absorb
the experience instead of listening more passively.
It’s not like I splurged – the whole investment was
considerably less than the cost of a usual long-weekend vacation. But the payoff was immense.
I had songs in my phone I thought I was “sick” of and couldn’t
listen to anymore. But I was inspired to
create another playlist with these long-forgotten songs and listened to them
through the new speaker – it was like listening to them for the first
time.
I also bought a few pieces of furniture – one of which I
still need to assemble. It makes a
difference, it frees up the energy and brings some order to the chaos that develops
in the apartment.
Because my value is on the experiential and not the
physical, I tend to overlook the value that the physical can bring to the
experience. This weekend was a reminder
that the physical can play a valuable role in enhancing the energy of the
experience. Being too frugal on the “stuff”
could actually be short-changing yourself and the full value of the
experience.
I should add also that the process of obtaining those “things,”
and assembling the furniture, were valuable experiences in themselves. The
entertainment value of the experience of waiting for my car stereo to be
installed was worth a good fraction of the money I spent for the item, to say
nothing of the listening and driving experience. So maybe it isn’t a “things” vs “experience”
duality as much as a challenge to be mindful of what “things” to bring into my
life and how to integrate them with the experiential in a way that best serves.
