You chase the rabbit your whole life, it seems a long and hard race but you persevere, until one day, you catch the little blighter. What a relief and how rewarding! The rabbit is the fruit of your life long hard labour and satisfies your every need. Of course, the rabbit here is just a metaphor; you could also be chasing gold - what next then after you've made your fortune, or you've reached that financially comfortable stage and can fund the life you've always wanted? The answer? You should already know! If you don't already know by that moment after your long and painful journey then it's either too late or you wouldn't have actually gotten there in the first place. There is no point in acquiring wealth if it doesn't benefit anybody or anything - it's not wealth and prosperity then - it's just figures and lumps of materials gathered up in some kind of disorganised pile. Wealth should be benefiting you, your family, your friends, your community, your fellow human beings - your planet.

This brings me to an idea that has been about since the beginnings of civilised time - tithing. It's an old-fashioned term meaning 'tenthing', John D Rockefeller obsessively tithed, as many people have done over time and do today. Basically the idea states that you give away minimum one tenth of your daily, monthly or yearly gross income to spiritual causes close to your heart. That could be charity, your religious centre, a community cause, whatever really, it's up to you. It's a cause or causes that are of some benefit other than purely material.

It's a great way of training what is an essentially a selfish entity: the human mind. If you think about it, it is much easier to give away smaller amounts when you don't actually have much money. Many of us have debts on credit cards and loans and don't actually have a 'positive' penny - our debts are larger than our income - but most people in this situation would happily drop a pound or a dollar into a charity box without much thought.

The problem with humans is that with wealth we can become a bit stingy. Take a look at this example: A 'tithing' guy who only had $10 to his name would give away $1 to his non-material cause. This doesn't sound too difficult. Similarly when

the same guy has $100, he would tithe $10. OK, simple so far? However, if he had $100,000 he would tithe $10,000 and if he had $1,000,000 he would tithe $100,000 and so on…,

…"hang on, hang on, hold your horses here” mutters Scrooge. "If I had $1,000,000 then I would have to tithe $100,000? Surely not”, Scrooge bemoans. "Can't I get away with giving $10,000? It's still a lot of money and my cause still gets great benefit from it!”

You see here 'Mr Scrooge' has lost the meaning of tithing, or giving or the simple fact of why he is here acquiring all that wealth and being prosperous in the first place. Tithing trains us not to hold on too tight to money or material items, if 10% of our income is $1 then we give it away, if 10% of our income is $1,000,000 then we still give it away. As we become wealthier, society benefits along the way. Equally this can be applied to nations' governments in regards to their promises to the international community. One or two European nations, whom I won't mention, have suddenly come over all 'Scrooge like' in regards to their aid budgets. After agreeing to the UN Millennium Development goals of making sure 0.7% of GDP was allocated to help alleviate poverty in the Third World, certain European nations, after experiencing unpredicted phenomenal economic growth, suddenly deemed 0.7% of GDP 'too much' and tried to fudge the figures down one or two decimal places. How interesting.

Now back to my original point, tithing could be a very useful tool in the training process for our inherently selfish and greedy minds. If you hold on to something too much you've already lost it - that can be a lesson to paupers and rich folk alike. If we all practiced tithing, then I wonder what kind of world we would be living in today?

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