Spiritual and Material can go hand in hand, should go hand in hand. I have never understood why people felt they were mutually exclusive. Poverty and celibacy make you cranky, not spiritual! God wants you to have a good time! To have Joy. He is the Ultimate Joy!

Connecting with God is not just a Sunday morning exercise. Connecting with God is an unceasing, practical thing.

The important distinction is perspective. Seek Beauty, seek Joy, seek Love. You are seeking and bonding with God. You are walking in light and allowing God to be your partner. Things manifest, but as byproducts of your seeking, your bonded partnership.

If you seek things, first, you are on your own. Put things ahead of first connecting with God and you are on your own. If you get yourself in the perspective that things can make you happy, you will wind up in darkness, alone. Incomplete.

God is always giving. God is always loving. God is always speaking directly to us, but He does not speak to our mind, He speaks to our heart. We need to listen. We listen best by finding our joy, seeing God's creations with joy, Then and ONLY then are we co-creators.

If you consistently practice seeing God -- you can begin by seeing the beauty of the world that is, right now, around you, you can begin seeing with the Eyes of God.

What I am stating is a practical viewpoint. Do you feel the difference? Alone? One with God? Which one feels better to you?

EDITED 4/23/12 Perhaps you might call connecting with God, connecting with intuition. Being in the ZONE. When you are connected, it just flows. Everything is easy. Simple. No resistance.

When you are not connected, you have an uphill battle with almost everything. It appears that you are very, very lucky. In the right place at the right time.

What is flesh is flesh and what is spirit is spirit. So to only accumulate money and stuff from ego is the complete opposite to the spirit. If you want to do stuff from the spirit stay in Truth with love do not judge. Meditate, remove the darkness from you to be in peace with your self and others. Help people around you when you can do not go in extremes. Be wise as a serpent and simple as doves.

Experience and enjoy life and learn what you can from the experience be the light that you can be.

The important thing to remember about life and your journey is that it is exclusive to you. You are the only one who can ever find yourself and no one else can really get you any closer.

You don't have to give up anything anyone else says you do. There aren't any standards in this, so think of these things as simply advice, because it isn't right or wrong which way you choose to go and how you choose to get there.

You should ask yourself what it is you're seeking and what you feel you need to do to find or achieve that. Would giving up some other things, like electronics or fast food (just as examples), help you?

Just know there's nothing you have to do. You don't have to meditate or become a vegan or give up all your posessions. But why do people suggest things like this? Because it helps you focus more on you, and not everything else happening. TV for example, you are usually engrossed in what you're seeing for hours, not on yourself.

Its not a bad thing, or a required thing. But giving up things like TV time can help. Meditating and eating better can help. It just depends on you and what it is you're trying to do.

Abundance is abundance, I am very happy in my spiritual life and I believe money is evil, but it is because how money has affected me and many around me. But there are many who have abundance and are ok. See, either way you want to look at it happiness and financial do not go hand in hand and one has very little to do with each other as we all know.

But the fact remains that those who place huge amounts of their life and energy on being financially well are, those who do in spirituality, do well in that. Most have been accustomed to living in a certain financial state and anything less would seem to them to be bad. These are my personal opinions on the subject.

But now to answer your question specifically. Money is only a symbol and it has the value we all place on it so in reality this answer will be as individual as the person is who is viewing it, and if you put more value on spirituality you will have it. Same with money, we get what we put out and if one is more important it will show, so I ask you, what is more important ?

love and light.

rob

Anything that makes you feel "genuinely" good,great is valid, be it spiritual or materialistic.Everything else is man-made ego based beliefs we impose on ourselves.

antinomic characters
may it be said
where one is weakest
the other strongest

without placing value,
would the middle road
ever be known without
the antinomic parents

I follow along the mainstream answer as Dollar Bill- spirituality and materialism go hand in hand. I think what you are really asking be this: the word you are after in substitute of materialism is consumerism, economically just a term describing a style of nature where people want more, more, more, more. In other words, I think consumerism is the economical definition of the forever hungry nature of the ego- where there is never, ever a stage of "enough" or, more philosophically, you'll never arrive at your destination and be able to "be there" or "make it" it in the world.

So answering your question on a different angle, the nature of consumerism (or adopting the perception of it) and spirituality do not blend together well...

When ego plays the game, God will appear insane.

"God will appear insane" goes to show that when ego is in control of your mind, praying to God for a better situaiton, things, or help will just feed your illusion of God; you shall recieve nothing. No insights, no help...

I'm using God or Higher Consciousness to address the element of spirituality here, that's all.

To get onto the path of spirituality as a means to assist with your achievment of material and non material items in the world, you need to hear God first via silencing the internal newspaper in your head. Hence, another pro for meditation.

You don't need to abandon worldy desires to recieve enlightenment. You don't need to exclude in order to include. Include what? How about some good feelings and some realisation that you and God are One. Likewise, you are God! There is quite strictly no seperation whatsoever.

Law of Attraction Guru James Arthur Ray puts it humurously, "you can wear white robes to be spiritual. Or you can wear Armani."