You have the power to become rich. But is that all you're gonna do?

Today I received a video by Robert Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, a book that I actually enjoyed reading many years ago. Robert is now running a YouTube ad campaign to show people how it is in their own hands the decision between being poor or rich.

That's a new trend that I've been finding very interesting. Sam Ovens from Consulting.com is another one who sells a pretty interesting online training in marketing that makes use of the very same understanding Robert is trying to propagate: that you are the creator of your own reality. And a reality creator indeed you are. We all are. I'm happy to see that understanding spreading. We can all be rich. In many ways, we already are.

What concerns me, though, is how people are going to use that "newly" discovered power (that knowledge is actually ancient, but now is becoming mainstream, which is great). The power can be used to get rich, as well as to improve our lives in many other ways. It's most of all a power to create a reality we like living in. It could mean wealth, but also health, love, a sustainable planet, piece, exploration, reflection or, why not, even deeper understanding. Likewise, you can choose to create a bad reality, with violence, hatred, wars, lack and all that we've been proving ourselves to be so good at over and over again. If we're capable of creating a bad reality, we're certainly equally capable of creating a good one. It's just a matter of will.

But my concern is not about how bad of a world we can build. We've done plenty of that already and I'm pretty optimistic about our collective future. My concern is for those who decided to use that power to simply build wealth. There's nothing wrong with building wealth, but that shouldn't be a goal per se, and I'll try to explain why.

The power to create reality comes, naturally, not from reality, for that's what is being created. Philosophically and religiously, the source of that power has had many names. Actually, most people would have written "source" with a capital "S". More scientifically speaking, though, one of the names that have been used a lot to designate the origin of that power is "consciousness". Put simply, consciousness is that essence of ours that experiences all of those things we go through in life, including the experience of being rich and poor, tall or short, funny and boring and so forth. Your body might be tall or short, but it is your consciousness that experiences and attributes value to being tall or short. Not only does consciousness feel reality but it actually creates it. It is your consciousness that decides, for example, if being tall or short is going to be associated with a (very much real) experience of felling content or frustrated about your body height. It's your choice.

You create reality on multiple levels. You create reality when you associate a physical reality to a specific experiential reality (your sentiment regarding your physical body, for instance) but you also are a driving force changing and creating physical realities. Maybe changing their actual height would be reserved to the most powerful masters of consciousness, but we are ourselves pretty good creators of physical realities. I won't delve into that here, but I should notice that placebo and nocebo effects, which demonstrate our own ability do heal and get sick on our own, are pretty well documented. Comparing to making yourself healthy or sick, getting rich is really not such an amazing feat.

What really concerns me about using this knowledge for the sole sake of getting rich is that wealth is a metric in creation, not in creator. Let me explain. We are creators of our own reality, which logically means reality is but a creation of ours. Literally. Many renowned scientists are currently coming to a conclusion that space-time is not fundamental and quite a few renowned philosophers and scientists are seriously considering that reality as we know it is but a creation of consciousness. That also has a profound implication: reality is an illusion. If reality is created by consciousness and is experienced in consciousness, it's really not that different from imagining or dreaming up.

Therefore, when people set goals of simply getting rich, they're simply defining a tangible attribute of their creation that can be assessed and measured by other consciousnesses. Instead of getting rich, that goal could as well be growing the longest hair ever, for example. It's your creation, you decide what is important in it for you. All those beloved metrics in creation are just attributes of our creation that serve the purpose of showing other consciousnesses our capacity of creating reality (since our joint manifested reality seems to be, above all, a framework for interacting with other consciousnesses that share more or less the same level of conscious understanding). But a metric in physical reality (be it a packed wallet or a very long hair) is just that: a metric in the physical. Your actual experience of it happens in consciousness. You are not the metric. You are never rich. At most you have the experience of feeling rich, which may or may not relate to the actual amount of money you have. Rich people might feel poor and poor people might feel rich. That happens all the time. What you really are is what you experience. And experience is something you have a direct control upon regardless of the actual metric you or others use to measure it. Achieving a goal in the physical would not necessarily improve your actual, real, conscious experience of living through that goal.

The world is full of people who are measurably rich but miserable within. There's no news here. We've known that all along. But there are also a great many people who are wealthy and rich within. What really makes a difference is how you decide to experience wealth and everything else in your life. While you certainly have the power to make those decisions, you might not know how to do it. For example, many people get rich by obsessing about it. They've just decided to get rich, no matter the cost they may need to pay in other dimensions of reality. They might get rich and miserable. The real challenge is not getting rich per se. It's not achieving a given goal in the physical. The real challenge is learning how to create a fulfilling and uplifting experience for you, whatever that is, while you build your physical reality. Most likely, a fulfilling experience will require you to create some money, but money itself is just a number. You can't experience a number.

There are no secrets in consciousness knowledge. You can use it to get rich, happy, miserable, anxious, whatever you decide to create. It is always your choice what to do with your power. Many people have already said it, but I'll say it again: do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life. Follow your passion. Create goals for yourself in consciousness. Invest your energy creating a fulfilling conscious experience. Grow, improve and get rich within. Nobody needs to see it. And if your passion leads you to get rich in the physical, by all means, enjoy the fruits of your creation. But there is no point in pursuing a goal in the physical for its own sake. That's not that different from a dog chasing its own tail. It might be fun for a while, but it's quite pointless. The only thing that matters is you as a creator. The creation itself can always be recreated and reinvented. By growing in consciousness, you grow your power to create. And as you become a better creator, you automatically start creating realities worth sharing with others. Your creation in consciousness is the only thing you'll ever be able to take with you. It's the only thing that is you.