What Does It Profit A Man?

The complete quote is found in the New Testament of the Bible in Mark 8:36. Depending on what version of the Bible you use, the words might read “How is a man the better for it, if he gains the whole world at the expense of losing his own soul?” It must be an important lesson for Christians, since a similar saying is also found in the gospels of Matthew and Luke.

I interpret one’s own soul as the unique connection each one of us has to unconditional love, or consciousness, the force that animates and heals the body. Why would someone ignore that connection to concentrate only on materiality? It’s not healthy. Well-being depends on the coordination of spirit/mind/body according to holistic health philosophy: spirit is life, mind is builder, and physical is the result. If one is only using the mind for acquisition of material things without involving loving consciousness, it is a goal with a dead-end destination. Pun intended.

Life on Earth has a beginning and an end. There is overwhelming evidence that an “afterlife” exists. I would refer you to Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove’s Essay, “Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death”, which won the $500,000 first prize in the Life After Death Essay Contest held by the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies as a research example.

I can only think that early in life, some people were taught either fear and self-loathing in a toxic patriarchal culture, or they were convinced that they were part of the genius apex of creation to the exclusion of all others. Either teaching, or variation of them, is detrimental to the health and well-being of humans, because they encourage separation and competition, when the lesson is unity and cooperation.

I explore unlearning erroneous childhood indoctrination in Chapter Two of my book, “The Art of Radical Self Love: The First Steps to Healing and Well-Being”. Any mental conditioning that reinforces the illusion that anyone is better or lesser than anyone else is incorrect. Everyone is equally deserving of unconditional love. Love is the only eternal. We are eternal beings temporarily having a brief physical experience. The use of one’s earthly accumulation of material wealth and power brings mirrored responsibility along with privilege.

It’s fun to have stuff, but not health promoting to parlay its possession into a reason for living. You can’t take it with you. Perhaps when the time comes, we can answer like poet Raymond Carver in his poem, “Late Fragment – And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.”

Be grateful and generous. Be well. Love the world back to health, beginning with yourself. You are beloved on the earth.