Redisovering the Ordinary

   During our group meditation tonight, one of the participants had remarked that he felt the meditation to be somewhat antithetical to daily practice, which often emphasizes "impressing others and making money". I was thinking about this idea, because I believe it can go in different ways. On the one hand, I have known people to say that they use meditative practice to make more money, in the sense that the practice tends to calm their minds and allow them to be more efficient and make better decisions. On the other hand, there are those who are determined to use meditation to 'escape' or transcend the world of money and riches. These people might even develop an aversion toward the materialist views of success. I wonder, is there a middle ground between using meditation as an instrument for worldly values, and using meditation to transcend values.
     I often think that meditation does not offer anything more or less than what a person has or is. But the key is to know what a person has or is. If I ascribe only to the view that I am limited by my wealth or body health, then I limit the meaning of who I can be. It's similar to people who get caught up in particular mood states. Because the mood feels so powerful, a person will then conclude that they must be this kind of mood, or even genetically predisposed to it. When I don't take the thoughts so personally as myself, the 'ordinary', unpretentious me becomes 'extraordinary'. This is because there is no longer any ideal or conceptual self to compare my states of being to. In that state of mind, it's like having questions on a test where the options are 'all the above' or 'none of the above' and both happen to be correct. The reason they are correct is that for everyday mind, everything is possible but nothing is absolutely necessary. I can use rules to get through social rituals and meet the requirements for a social life, but I am not chained to those rules or identify them with a self.
    In this way, I don't think that a person necessarily need to strive to transcend the world via meditation or, conversely, try to prove the value of meditation through worldly practices. It is letting go of the need to prove oneself period, by dissolving the necessity of the ego. Even when ego is trying to meet its self-image, it is always doing so tyrannically, with hidden shoulds or musts. For instance, if I think that the only acceptable way to be is according to an image of myself as 'intellectual', I will insist to myself that everything I do or say conform to that image. And the same goes with any image one holds up to oneself. Though we start out using those images to feel confident and secure, sooner or later they become imprisoning, because they dictate what makes a person 'okay' to the society. It's best to learn not to operate with too much image operating in the background.