"The highest products of human achievement, such as language, law, civilization, religion, and ethical development, are the results of social growth, and not of individual attainment."

This affirms my belief that wealth is not what you have and what you can get, rather it is what you can live without. Real freedom lies not in desiring things and experiences, and having the riches to get them. Rather, it is in not desiring them in the first place.Real wealth is what each of us carries inside. It is obscured by desiring things in the material world that only provide temporary, hollow relief to our ongoing inner struggle. Contentment brings peace and a calm, unhurried state; a secure feeling of having enough. Since consumerism is based on cultivating unending need and desire, contentment provides a vaccination against it.Those who experience contentment, balance, and inner peace have true wealth.Our money, stuff, and pace of life are preventing us from realizing this wealth. But we can sacrifice our negative habits and addictions to the forces of evolution that are constantly urging us to grow beyond our current incarnation. We can give up the distractions in our lives. We don't need them.There is poverty in desire and riches. We are waking up to the wealth of contentment and enough, and we are evolving together. W. H. Channing said,Real wealth accumulation, like evolution, is a cooperative activity; we are all on the same team.