Читать книгу Nine Insights For a Successful and Happy Life - Mitchell LPN Gibson - Страница 5

Gambling is one of the oldest known pursuits of mankind. Archeological evidence suggests that even the earliest caveman was a gambler. Dice-like objects made from the ankle bone of a sheep or dog, called Astragali, dating back 40,000 years, have been found. Cave drawings depicting gambling offer further proof of the existence of early gamblers. Pairs of dice have even turned up in the ruins of Pompeii; some of them “loaded” to fall a certain way.

Around 2,300 B.C., the Chinese invented a game of chance using tiles, and 1,100 years later, Greek soldiers amused themselves with dice games, though, in ancient Greece, gambling was illegal. In Egypt, a pair of ivory dice was found in Thebes dating back to 1,500 B.C., and ancient gambling artifacts have been unearthed in China, Japan, India, and Rome.

In ancient Rome, Claudius redesigned his carriage so that he would have more room to throw dice. Caligula confiscated knights' property to cover his gambling debts, and Roman soldiers gambled for the robes of Christ after his crucifixion. At the height of the Roman Empire, lawmakers decreed that all children were to be taught to gamble and throw dice.

During the 14th century, and in spite of being an inveterate gambler himself, King Henry VIII outlawed gambling when he discovered that his soldiers spent more time gambling than improving their battle skills. When Henry's wife, Anne Boleyn, and her brother were tried for treason and incest, the odds were 10-to-1 on acquittal.

In the New World, Native Americans, believing that the gods themselves invented games of chance, played dice with plum stones painted white or black. In addition to wagering possessions, Native Americans also played to predict future harvests, and in hopes of curing seriously ill tribal members.

During the Revolutionary War, lotteries bankrolled the Continental Army. Washington himself bought the first ticket for a federal lottery in 1793, sponsored to finance improvements in the District of Columbia, and nearly all state governments sanctioned lotteries. By the 1830s, more than 420 lotteries nationwide offered prizes. Lotteries remained a popular fundraising method throughout the 18th and 19th centuries.

Riverboats and frontier towns in the New World emerged, providing new gambling venues, sometimes legal, sometimes not. And one risked much more than a few gold pieces when gambling in the frontier days. Card cheats and conmen were often lynched, denoting the public's attitude toward professional gamblers, or “sharpers” as they were often known.

In the 1830s, refugee sharpers from the South moved to Cincinnati and opened the nation's first “Wolf-Traps” or “10 Percent Houses”, named for the house's cut of the action. Cincinnati was also the birthplace of the “Horse-Hair game”, a method for cheating in cards by which a player, aided by an accomplice's distractions, manipulated cards and chips by the use of a horse hair attached to a vest button.

After the Civil War, evangelical reform wiped out most of the lotteries. In the 1890s, the flagrant fraud of the nationally marketed Louisiana lottery led Congress to outlaw the remaining games, creating public disdain for lotteries, and in 1910, Nevada made it a felony to operate a gambling game.

Prohibition sent drinking and gambling underground. But it didn't stay down for long. In the 1930s, restrictions eased up and legalized betting on horse racing became popular. In 1931, Nevada legalized gambling again, and casinos literally sprouted from the sands of the desert. Atlantic City followed suit in 1978 and, since then, other states have legalized various forms of gambling.

Today, when a casino counts money, it often does so by weighing it. The energy of gambling has affected the wealth of this world for thousands of years. Each and every act of gambling issues more of this energy into the world's money supply.

1. War

War is a constant in human society. War can be seen as a growth of economic competition in a competitive international system. Based on this view, wars begin as a pursuit of markets for natural resources and wealth. While this theory has been applied to many conflicts, such counter arguments become less valid as the increasing mobility of capital and information level the distributions of wealth worldwide, or when considering that it is relative, not absolute, wealth differences that may fuel wars. Once a war has ended, the losing nations are sometimes required to pay war reparations to the victorious nations. In certain cases, land is ceded to the victorious nations. For example, the territory of Alsace-Lorraine has been traded between France and Germany on three different occasions.

Typically speaking, war becomes very intertwined with the economy, and many wars are partially or entirely based on economic reasons, such as the American Civil War. In some cases, war has stimulated a country's economy (World War II is often credited with bringing America out of the Great Depression), but in many cases, such as the wars of Louis XIV, the Franco-Prussian War, and World War I, warfare serves only to damage the economy of the countries involved. For example, Russia's involvement in World War I took such a toll on the Russian economy that it almost collapsed, and this greatly contributed to the start of the Russian Revolution of 1917.

One of the starkest illustrations of the effect of war upon economies is the Second World War. The Great Depression of the 1930s ended as nations increased their production of war materials to serve the war effort. The financial cost of World War II is estimated at about U.S.1,944 billion dollars worldwide, making it the most costly war in capital as well as lives.

In the Soviet Union, property damage inflicted by the Axis invasion was estimated at a value of 679 billion rubles. The combined damage consisted of complete or partial destruction of 1,710 cities and towns, 70,000 villages/hamlets, 2,508 church buildings, 31,850 industrial establishments, 40,000 miles of railroad, 4,100 railroad stations, 40,000 hospitals, 84,000 schools, and 43,000 public libraries.

When one examines the economic cost of war, the physical cost must also be examined. War spreads disease and suffering on an untold scale. Every dollar that is spent on war extracts an enormous amount of chaotic energy that affects the wealth of the world.

War, gambling, sex, slavery, and the drug trade dwarf all other wealth-making enterprises on this planet. Unfortunately, each of these endeavors creates a tremendous amount of suffering, pain, and chaos in its wake. This energy then becomes part of every dollar that is created.

Now, let us examine the effect that this energy might have on each of us on a personal level. If you place a bowl of fruit on the counter, the fruit will sit undisturbed for some time. The fruit will last longer, however, if there are no rotten or diseased pieces in the bowl. If you deliberately introduce a rotten piece into the bowl, the rot will spread throughout the bowl and cause the other pieces to spoil more quickly.

This same principle applies to every dollar that you earn. Examine the list of wealth-making enterprises that we outlined earlier. All of these enterprises have tainted the energy of the wealth of this world in a negative way.

In other words, the energy of every dollar that you receive has the stain of drugs, slavery, sex, gambling, and war.

Each and every time we receive money in this world, we also accept a small part of this energy stain into our lives. The energy of chaos, disease, suffering, and pain that is part of the wealth of this world is spread through our contact with wealth. To be sure, one needs money and wealth in order to live and conduct many affairs in our world. This brings us to the first insight:

Regularly giving away a small portion of your wealth helps to prevent the energy of chaos from building up in your life.

One theory regarding the origin of suffering, chaos, and pain in this world is that it enters into our lives through our decisions and actions. The theory simply states that good and constructive actions and decisions bring beneficial results into your life. Destructive acts and decisions theoretically bring destructive energy into your life. Some people call this karma. In this sense, money becomes one of the mediums through which the energy of karma is spread from one person to another.

By holding on to all of the energy that money brings into our lives, we may inadvertently be holding on to the negative karmic energy that comes with it. Mind you, only a small amount of this energy is necessary in order for it to affect your life. Chaotic karmic energy has power. Remember the bowl of fruit. Imagine that your life is the bowl. Now, add a bit of the chaotic force from wealth into that bowl.

Think about it for a moment; what would the energy of war, drugs, or gambling look like if it manifested in your life? Would it become an illness? A car accident? Loss of a job? Family tensions? Chaos in a relationship? Bankruptcy?

Many religions teach that giving away a small portion of your wealth through a process known as tithing is important for spiritual and emotional reasons. However, most religions never fully explain why we should follow this rule. Perhaps one reason that we should consider this principle relates to the first insight. Regularly giving away a small portion of your wealth can help to prevent the buildup of negative chaotic energy in your life.

Remember the bowl of fruit. If you notice a rotting piece of fruit in the bowl and remove it from the others, the rest last longer. The same may be said to be true of our lives. If we regularly give away the energy of chaos, that has the potential to spoil our lives, we can then prevent the good energy in life from being affected by the bad energy.

Some spiritual teachers maintain that by donating 10-15% of your wealth to others, you will clear the energy of your life from the influence of negative forces. They caution that holding on to wealth too tightly causes these forces to build and make us sick. To be fair, there are many people who cannot afford to give that much to others. There are many people who live from one paycheck to the next. What can they do to avoid this energy?

Money is not the only commodity of value that we own. Each of us in our own way possesses something of value that we can share and give to others. For some of us, that might be time. Donating a portion of our time on a regular basis for the benefit of others is one way of giving of your wealth. Working at a shelter, visiting the sick and shut in, or volunteering at a daycare center are all ways that one may share one's wealth without spending money. Donating a possession or a service is another way of sharing your wealth.

Allowing the negative chaotic energy to be removed from your life also has another unexpected benefit. Nature abhors a vacuum. If one removes negative energy from a system, this leaves room for positive energy to reenter the system. Instead of fighting off disease, chaos, and suffering related to negative energy, the system would then have more time and energy to process the power of blessings. In this way, giving to others is a powerful method of creating blessings in your own life.