What is more important in this life, to achieve spiritual liberation (enlightenment) or acquire fame, status, wealth, degrees, etc.? Why?

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Ultimately, none of it is important. What you do with your life will imprint on your soul and in your next life, you’ll have resolved whatever it is that caused you to do what had happened in the previous life, and so you’ll be ready for something new.

What you do is important insofar as it comes from your soul, but not in that there’s better benefits from a life of spiritual liberation as opposed to having fame and status. If your soul demands fame and status, then you’ll keep subconsciously seeking out fame and status even as you achieve spiritual liberation because that’s what you thought you wanted. And rather than really enjoying liberation, you’ll subconsciously try to turn liberation into worldly success. And that’s not really liberation at all, is it?

Nothing is really important in life. Everything is illusion, even your self. Nothing you build sticks around after you die. Your parenting efforts have borne all the fruit they can by the time your kids are teenagers and they stop listening to you.

All of it has consequences. In that things happen as a result of your choices and you can’t take them back. So ethics are useful insofar as it means you’ll do fewer things you’ll regret later in life. But even if your ethics suck, join the club. You’re not the first person to sell your morals to the highest bidder and you won’t be the last.

God made a promise to all, to provide eternal life so that a person can be as happy and fulfilled as they can possibly be without overrunning their free will. You choose how and why and what to do, and those choices will make your own life harder or easier over the long term, and then sometime in the distant future, long after your physical body dies, your spiritual essence will stop caring about existing and you’ll reincarnate to do it all over it, all of its experiences written onto your eternal soul so you can carry on with the business of spiritual growth in the next go-around.

You’ll experience eternity, and you’ll be able to have it for as long as you want it. Enlightenment will happen in this life or the next. So will fame, wealth, status, and knowledge.

It’s just a matter of what order. And when you’ve experienced them in one order, next time, you’ll experience them in a different one. Most people have to learn about enlightenment before becoming enlightened. I got to be enlightened then learn about it later. It’s really cool and fascinating and wonderful.

This life, the best thing you can do with it is exactly what you want to do with it, right now. Grapple with the big questions. Or get addicted to drugs and forget about it all. Or think you’re grappling with the big questions while you’re just addicted. (I have weird friends)