2011-08-17-Opportunity Cost

Session

Lesson

Thought Adjuster: “A good way to determine the validity of any activity is by what you expect to learn from that activity and how this will help you beyond this life. If you dedicate the major part of your time to entertainment — pleasures, distractions — what would you be learning? If you dedicate most of your time to the procurement of money, what would you be learning? If you set aside the chief part of your time to vanity and ego, to the achievement of power, what other things could you be neglecting?

“You should evaluate the opportunity cost of each task that consumes your time and your resources in order to determine if it is worthwhile. Each of the activities mentioned earlier is not inherently bad on its own. The issue is to strike a balance with the length of time you dedicate to them. Ideally you should dedicate most of your time to the things that you feel in your heart are most important, while leaving some time to other things that could be explored as well and that are somehow necessary, but not indispensable. Work should be balanced with rest and entertainment, with study, with material improvement and spiritual progress.

“Those who know God progressively acquire the same value scale as their Father and with increasing certainty learn to discern what is truly important. To the Father, the most important thing is us, His children, and therefore to us the first priority should be to better know this Father and our neighbors, because the Father can also be discovered through each and every one of us. Everything else is secondary.

“If you organize your priorities with this idea in mind, all your intentions would be in harmony with love — the will of the Father — and would be an expression of truth, beauty and goodness. If everyone in this world would have these priorities, things would be much better. You would not be making up laws and policies for the benefit of a few, excluding the vast majority of your brothers and sisters in this world. You would not be promoting products that have the potential to hurt your siblings. You would not use fear to manipulate others.

Closing

“A civilization in which the search for God and the well-being of human beings are the priority for a progressive civilization that possesses eternal value. This is what you should aspire to, as well as the challenge of the current age on this sphere.”