MIDAS

You will doubtless remember that everything King Midas touched turned to gold because of an agreement he reached with the Devil to feed his greed for that metal. This meant that he was unable to touch anything that needed to remain in its original state in order for it to be useful; neither could he touch food or drink and elaborate means had to be devised so that he could keep body and soul together

Of course it is a fable or a parable, written to bring home to people the strange consequences if greed for gold is carried to its logical conclusion. The fact that it was written so very long ago illustrates that the greed to possess as much of one of this world´s scarcer resources has been evident almost since time immemorial. Is it not ironic that with the vast majority of gold in the world, we go to enormous trouble to dig it out from the bowels of the earth, spend a lot of time separating it from the dross and then refining it until it becomes the beautiful golden metal we know and admire. We do all this and what do we do then? We proceed to bury it in the bowels of the earth again in some vast bank vault! Amazing isn´t it? We take so much time and trouble to make the gold pure and beautiful and then hide it away!

It was not always so of course. Because gold is the most beautiful of all metals and the easiest to work, many of the ancients used it lavishly to decorate their holy places and to make the most incredibly beautiful jewellery. Both were of breathtaking beauty! Of course we still make beautiful jewellery with it today and it is the metal used, because of the significance of its scarcity and beauty, for wedding rings. It was a sorry day in many ways when the first human being persuaded his leader that money as a means of exchange was a much more sensible way of carrying out business than barter. Once leaders were persuaded of that it was not long before it was realized, that for it to be considered of any value, money had to be backed by one or other of the Earth´s scarce resources. Gold was chosen, not because it was the scarcest but because it was relatively scarce yet in plentiful enough supply to be used by every advanced country. So the lure of gold became even greater. Once sort for its beauty and malleability, it was now a means of obtaining great personal wealth.

Despite bringing many benefits in its train, the monetary system is the anchor of materialism if you think about it. Money enables all manner of goods and services to be traded simply and effectively and it has fuelled our consumer society in no uncertain way. Unfortunately, it has also made it easier for a relatively few people to become immensely wealthy and to use their wealth, not only to give themselves an opulent life-style but also to exercise enormous power and control over their fellow humans. Money has been of immense benefit to humanity and if we still used barter as a means of exchange, we should all have much lower standards of living. However, there is an old song that runs, ``Money is the root of all evil.`` It is not money but the love of money that causes the problems, because the love of money and the love of gold has fanned the most base of our negative characteristics: Greed and Megalomania! They have donemuch to delay the spiritual and mental growth of humanity I believe.

The way gold has come to be used in the materialist system, is the perfect example of all that is wrong with the system from the point of view of our eternal souls. In order to prop up a system that does everything possible to deny humanity its true heritage as eternal spirit beings, it has hidden away a source of great beauty, when it is used as a decorative material. Not only that but removing a source of such beauty means we have less opportunity to admire the glory of this beautiful metal when it is worked upon by skilled craftsmen. Every time we are drawn to marvel at the beauty of some aspect of the Earth, be it nature, art, music, sculpture, literature or architecture, we draw closer to our inner, spiritual self and thus to the Creator. Where gold is concerned, we can only do this now in museums and a handful of ancient buildings. Our life has been impoverished as a consequence.

It seems contradictory that gold should be the colour of wisdom and of high spirituality but it is; hence the use of gold in the old paintings to depict the halos around the heads of saints. Perhaps it is God´s little joke, in the hope that eventually we will see how ridiculous we are behaving and come to our collective senses?


Maybe, when we have learned to accept that our differences are what make us interesting and give life its special flavour, we will agree to differ in our opinions too, live in peace everywhere and adopt a more enlightened attitude towards the use of gold.