Optimization

When I was at business school, the professor gave us an important pointer about optimization problems. The statement "maximizing our revenues while minimizing our costs" is non-sensical, he said. You can maximize your revenues while keeping your costs at a certain level, or you can minimize your costs while keeping revenues at a certain level, but it always has to be an optimization subject to a certain constraint.

I was reminded of this insight when I reflected on my spiritual path. What is it what you want, and how important is it to you in the greater scheme of things? I would say that you can only be a spiritual aspirant if you are willing to put everything else in the subject to category. Your career, your material aspirations, etc. You can aim high, why should God mind if you are a multi-millionaire? It is only if this desire of yours happens to be an all-consuming goal in itself, well, that's ok too, but why don't you get that done first and return to your spiritual journey afterwards.