“It’s my Precious !”

Obsession with the Ring of Power by Golem, Character in Lord of the Rings 

Symbols & Color

• Star: The Sage Set
• Border Color: Blue – Sage Set
• Dragon: Chief Feature Group
• Pharaoh: Exalted Orientation – Impersonal – Abstracted
• Diamond: Expression Axis

Implication of the Upright Position or Positive Pole

Ah, the good life: wine, women (or men), and song, sex, smoking, food, and riches! There is no place on Earth that can appeal to this Chief Feature quite like Las Vegas. With all the sinful indulgences capable of being slaked in a single spree of hedonism, anything one’s Ego’s appetite desires can be filled, as long as one has enough cash to pay for it all. In the positive pole, some familiar with the Buddhist adage, “Desire is the source of all suffering”, it is appropriate to differentiate this idea, which in part is the magnetic force of attraction for creation and opening oneself to diverse realities, as in the teachings of Abraham. Artist Paul Vernon Buser acknowledges “Desire, like the atom, is explosive with creative force.” Yet, a discussion of the Chief Feature of Greed has at its root a psychology of scarcity, a feeling of lack, and unrelenting craving. It is a hunger-driven by the notion that everything is in short supply and must be acquired or consumed as much as possible one feels the deprivation of not having enough. Not only does this apply to items, but also to intangibles like love, respect, or fame, making a person possessive or controlling. This puts that person in a constant state of ‘want’, one of two of Dickens’ warnings to Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol (a story about Greed) the other ignorance, and can do nothing but be fixated on filling the emptiness left by a feeling of constant dissatisfaction or desolation. Ambition is often one of the drives that originates from this Chief Feature and is a favorite of Young Souls. The problem befalling either side of this CF has to do with sharing what is gained or hoarded in a selfish frenzy of avarice.

Card messages in the Illuminated position.

+ Desire

(Appetite, egoism, egocentric, lavish, gratification, abundant, ambition, aspiring, eager, bounteous, prosperous)

1. Appetite for life’s finer things can foster a sense of reverie and desire. Selfish is raised to the status of virtue in the game of acquisition. Consider your desires and whether you have them or they have you?
2. Desire, according to the Buddha is “the source of all suffering.” Yet, it is also the fuel that captures our focus and motivates eventual action. Savor your desire and use it to achieve something that will fulfill you. Once you get it, fully utilize it.
3. Don’t confuse genuine desire and aspiration for ambition and greed. The first is done for the love of it and cannot be altered. The second is for the love of power and money and can be bribed, bought and sold. Is the motivation clearer now?
4. Go after what you desire. Learn: What is enough?
5. Sometimes a lavish treat sparks a feeling of abundance and recharges motivation. Need one? Get one!
6. You are being asked to consider your desires and whether they exist because of shortfall or genuine aspiration; a feeling of hunger or of being nourished? There is no moral wrong with the desire to experience bounty but it could weigh you down if you consume it all at once. 
7. Expressing egotistical ideas, pleasures, or indulgences can make one feel powerful, elite, and luxurious. Is your Ego getting what it really needs or is there a substitution of quantity for quality?
8. “Greed is good” said Ronald Reagan. Did it get you what you wanted? Now, measure your satisfaction. Was it worth it?
9. Gratification is the reinforcement of a habit or attitude that keeps an organism seeking and surviving. Don’t neglect your needs by delaying it too long. Develop a regular schedule of rewards and you will really see your productivity increase. But no cheating! Give only after you’ve fulfilled!

Quotes signifying the quality of the Overleaf in this pole

• “Desire is the starting point of all achievement.” Napoleon Hill – Think and Grow Rich
• “Desire, like the atom, is explosive with creative force.” Paul Vernon Buser
• “Desire animates the world. It is present in the baby crying for milk, the girl struggling to solve a math problem, the woman running to meet her lover and later deciding to have children, and the old woman, hunched over her walker, moving down the hall of the nursing home at a glacial pace to pick up her mail. Banish desire from the world, and you get a world of frozen beings who have no reason to live and no reason to die.” WILLIAM BRAXTON IRVINE, On Desire
• “A person, who gives up all material desires and lives free from a sense of greed, proprietorship, and egoism, attains perfect peace.” [2.71] – Shree Krishna – Bhagavata Gita

Implications of the Reversed Position or Negative Pole

Following the last sentence, is why this image of the hogs at the feeding trough is used for the negative pole. Corporate pigs and fat cats both hang out at places where they can consume hardily; whether the resources belong to them or not. If you have a shortage of cash, gambling with someone else’s money seems like the best way to fatten up the wallet. Wall(et) Street provides gluttons and miscreants a buffet of money making opportunity before heading out to indulge in their excess. Gordon Gecko, the main character in the movie, “Wall Street”, declared the iconic phrase “Greed is Good”. Later President Ronald
Reagan, and more recently Donald Trump, followed suit rolling back environmental and consumer protections. Greed never creates anything but it certainly inflates in price whatever it possesses. The motto of this image is simply: MORE is never enough. Greed is that “rapacious creditor” and feels a craving to be filled, but is soon revisited with a sense of emptiness.

Card messages in the Shadow position.

– Gluttony

(voracity, insatiable, hoarding, addiction, craving, avarice, covetous, rapacious, predatory, excessive, hungry, extravagant, prodigal, profligate, obsessive, penurious )

1. Gluttony and hoarding are two sides of the same Greed coin; Ego fearing lack and shortfall. This shadow may be obvious or not, but it suggests that you are suffering because you are voracious for something you don’t have. What is really missing?
2. If you find you can’t get enough and you being to take what others have to gain a moment of fleeting pleasure, your addictions are showing. What really is not being satisfied?
3. Greed is the fear of lack, of scarcity; the feeling that you cannot feel whole until you have something. Yet, it is a hole in your psyche demanding to be filled. Are you starving or stuffing yourself in order to experience satisfaction?
4. Gluttony is one of the 7 Deadly Sins. Why? Well, it has compelled people to act for immediate gratification when delay was advised. It has coaxed persons into believing that they have a “right” to take from others. And, it is a starting place for emotional neurosis which can lead to antisocial psychosis. Anything ringing a bell here? Who is afflicted?
5. In the game of acquisition, selfishness is twisted from a vice into a virtue. Consider your tastes? Do you have them or do they have you? The former is incentive, the latter is obsession.
6. What are you really hungry for? Are you wanting to gnaw on something because something is gnawing on you? Take a breath, not a bite.
7. Perhaps EXCESS will give you securing? But most often it gives you new headaches to manage: more storage, greater need for oversight, concern for people’s motives, and yes, an obsession about what you possess because it possesses you in return. Fulfill a need don’t drown it. 
8. Greed is voracious appetite trying to get sated. It’s not working. 
9. Don’t confuse gambling as calculated risk. The first is looking for the rush of a long-shot coming from instant win. The second is planning a sustained campaign to gain ground on a long-run victory. Neither or both can succeed, but the odds are definitely with the long-run approach rather than the short-term bet.
10. In modern economics the term “greedflation’ is a newly minted terms where those in power increase prices for nothing more than additional profit. Cost have not increased but the empty ache of avarice has. Whoever wants more deserves none of it. 
11. In Overeaters Anonymous, addressing one of the primary ways that Greed in the negative pole reveals itself, compulsive eating, they say “it is not what you are eating, it’s what’s eating you.” That is the best question to ask if you gaining clarity around feeling unending cravings.
12. In his book, The End of the Affair, Graham Greene’s main character noted “I measured love by the extent of my jealousy”. Don’t confuse loving someone with owning them.
13. You are being asked to consider your desires. Are they motivated because of shortfall or aspiration? The answer is crucial to your energy expenditure.
14. Desire, according to the Buddha, is “the source of all suffering.” If you are obsessed, if feels like hell.

Quotes signifying the quality of the Overleaf in this pole

• “For greed, all nature is too little. Seneca – Roman Philosopher
• “Hell has three gates: lust, anger, and greed” Bhaghavad Gita
• “That’s the funny thing about knowing you can’t have something. It makes you desperate.” Stephanie Meyer, Breaking Dawn
• “There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart’s desire. The other is to get it”. GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Man and Superman
•  “Avarice plunges a man deep into the mire of this world, so that he makes it to be his god”. Henry Edward Manning
• “Curst greed of gold what crimes thy tyrant power has caused.” Virgil
• “Take from the Needy and give to the Greedy.” Mantra of the Modern Corporate Capitalist – As said by Joe Bates
• “Greed is to ethics as prostitution is to love making, a proposition to be bargained for when someone gets screwed and someone else pays for it.” Stephen Cocconi

Relevance within the Michael Teaching (Exalted Expression)

Greed informs us of the need to want. Serving as a propellant for experience and thus to include or acquire new things, people, and events into one’s life for the purpose of expanding ones sphere of knowledge. This of course is how evolution occurs. But when a Personality has encountered scarcity, lack, or shortage; Essence knows that this state of want may give rise to the use of lying, deceit, self deception, and betrayal to acquire what it obsesses. On the other hand, it can build high havingness and confidence for the person who does not fear going after what they want. When the stakes are large enough, and inclusive of the needs of many, history may provide an outcome like Augustus Caesar who raised Rome to the pinnacle of civilization and prosperity during his reign.

Like all of the Exalted Chief Features, Greed is outwardly focused on the gaining of resources. And since he/she tends to believe that it is a “dog-eat-dog” world out there, then they’d better be ready to do whatever it takes to get the goods. As a result, Greed is also expansive in that acquiring things to fulfill the emptiness of its early life may well be a wonderful source of both Karma creation and Self-Karma fulfillment. Essence may have orchestrated a life to make-up for one or several lives where restriction or limitation was present. Hence the new Personality, imbued with those memories, is predisposed to Greed as a CF.

In the negative pole, the “what’s in this for me” motive is clear. One might say, it is one of the few honest stances this pole will show you. After that, they are untrustworthy. The character of Lucifer (the Devil) is always the deal maker but like everyone in the gluttony, envy and obsession drive them to want what you have more so than the need to follow through on their side of the bargain. As you might surmise it is a very fertile ground to plant the seeds of karma or revenge.

Many people with eating, drinking, and sex issues often have greed lurking somewhere behind the scenes. Somewhat direct in the inference, Greed is about never getting enough. Addiction to these substances may indeed numb the person to the fear of not having enough or that scarcity will catch up with them; but at the same time packing away as much in the “larder” as one’s capacity might hold. This is where Greed can slide over to Self Destruction and cause a person to collapse under the weight of their own indulgences.

Goblin Mode is a modern slang term referring to “a type of behavior which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations.” It is evident in many who feel entitled, privileged, and justify it as being deserved and superior to those they take from or resent.

Famous Examples

Arnold Swarzenneger. Ebenezer Scrooge, Richard Branson, Dolly Parton, Count Dracula, Porky Pig, Carly Simon, Kathleen Turner, Richard Nixon, Imelda Marcos, Henry Kissinger, Tim Leary, Howard Hughes, Mae West, Puff Daddy – Sean Combs, Ice Tee, Snoop Dog, Miss Piggy, Jack the Ripper, Adolph Hitler, Rashjneesh, Bette Midler, Howard Hughes, Whoopi Goldberg, Pablo Picasso, Joan Collins, Barbara Walters

Cultural Relevance

Desire is at the top of most people’s drive for a “higher standard of living.” A healthy appetite is important for getting the nourishment one needs, but it is easy to forget the adage “your eyes are bigger than your stomach.” The object of ones desires focuses the mind and creates a yearning for acquiring it. Yet does one enjoy what they’ve won, or earned, or fought for, or conquered? When the answer is yes a person is filled with a sense of accomplishment that gives life a sense of value, even if that value is measured in material items or monetary worth. But if the answer is no, then the amount or quality of consumables is irrelevant for we are trying to fill a spiritual emptiness, rather than a material or biological one. It seems that the world has become voracious and insatiable. Is it any wonder why obesity has become epidemic in developed countries?

Consumption is the life lipids of Capitalism. Without the continuous and ongoing buy and sell transactions process, how will and economy grow? Thus, there is never enough activity to satisfy the demands of marketers whose sole demand is profit! And by definition, profit is excess! Balance is always sustainable. Waist in nature is biodegraded and used in other ways. In the modern landscape of the industrial world, waste is pawned off to whatever entity seems the most convenient, least capable or protecting itself, and has the fewest defenders: the poor, then the third world, then Nature itself.

Greed stands as one of the seven “deadly” sins for good reason. It acquires at all costs, and will take what it wants from whomever it wants. Greed also denies the possibility of sharing and holds people hostage whenever the opportunity presents itself. The character Mr. Potter the banker, exemplifies not great lavish self indulgence but the desire to own, possess, exclude others, and lord over them. These people consume power in the form of commodities and gain self importance in the name of wealth.

At the other end, so called efficiency is achieved by those ravishing the lust for money and power diminishes the means of those around them. The decline of Unionism across the Western World after creating a middle class that sustained the post war economic engine, has happened concurrently with the narrow but concentrated centralization of wealth in the hands of a few. When people have more than they can possibly assume then waste is inevitable. It is the Earth bearing this legacy now. It is being called the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” or “Plastic Island” the remnants of human consumption and disposal are testament to the way that Greed is not efficient, it just shifts the costs to someone, or in the case of this flotilla of garbage, the ocean itself.

What if we could desire more to have our clean air, water, and happiness for our neighbors and not just ourselves? If so, sharing and generosity would render a feeling of fulfillment even more enriching than the newest car, the bigger house, or the grander dinner. It is not desire that is at issue when it nurtures aspiration and hope, it is myopic drive to acquire rather than come to an understanding of enough.

Greed compels you as Chief Feature if…

1. Food or drink or something to smoke is very comforting.
2. Just about anything I want, I deserve it.
3. People should give me what I want from them.
4. Until I reach my goal or acquire what I need I can’t stop or truly be happy.
5.  Life is for the taking and I’m going to get what’s mine.
6. I can’t stand it when someone has what I wanted.
7. Giving myself a treat always makes me feel better.
8. When I am upset, I go shopping or out to party.
9. Buying stuff is fun. It makes me feel happy.

by Stephen Cocconi © 2011, Updated 2024

For a Motivations Card Reading or Channeled Consultation call: 209.768-4956 or email Stephen at channeling@themichaelteaching.com