he first married fifty years ago. He says it’s all he needs.

He doesn’t have a driver or security people -- he drives himself everywhere.

He never travels by private jet, although he owns the world’s largest private jet company.

He doesn’t socialize with the world’s high-flying celebrities. After he gets home from work, he likes to make himself some popcorn and watch television.

He didn’t have a cell phone until recently, and he still doesn’t have email.

In 2006, his yearly salary was only $100,000 -- peanuts compared to the salaries of other corporate executives.

He’s decided to give most of his fortune to charity, with over eighty percent going to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Here’s one of the world’s most successful people, on almost every level. And yet he’s chosen to live a simple life -- a life uncomplicated by too much of the stuff most of us allow to clutter our lives.

And now here’s Chief Joseph.

Chief Joseph

Simplicity is not for everyone. The simple life would bore some of you to death.

But most of you live lives too complicated for you to comfortably handle. And you feel the results of that every day. As your great philosopher, Henry David Thoreau (one of John’s favorites), said, "The masses of men live lives of quiet desperation."

We’re not talking only about the material world stuff you bring into your lives. We’re talking about everything you bring into your lives. Some of you, especially those on a conscious, deliberate spiritual path, allow yourselves to be overwhelmed by everything spiritual available to you -- all the courses, seminars, gurus, retreats, etc. etc.

Much of this is due to all the wonderful technology you have today -- all the information you have literally at your fingertips as you sit at your computers. It’s a double-edged sword. Some call this "information overload." And that is indeed what it is.

But there is also another type of overload -- or perhaps several. You clutter your lives with things you don’t always need, and for various motives.

Maybe you have to have the biggest, most beautiful house in your neighborhood. Maybe you have to have the sexiest partner. Maybe you need the biggest bank account, the fanciest car, the most stylish clothing.

Now there is absolutely nothing wrong with any of those things. What is wrong -- or, more accurately, out of balance -- here is this: many of those things, activities, people bring you no joy. They just clutter up your life, stress you out, and bring you no peace.

Friends, we are not here today to tell you worldly or spiritual abundance is a "bad" thing. Abundance is your birthright as children of the Universe, children of God/Goddess.

But it would behoove you to be more selective about what abundance you allow into your lives. The best way to do that is to examine everything and everyone in your current lives.

Take a little time to do this self-examination. Look at the areas of your lives where you are feeling stressed out, where you find yourselves dragging and worn to a frazzle.

Obviously, those areas are bringing you little or no joy. Remember -- joy is your purpose in this lifetime. To be joyful creators. And you’re all powerful creators. It’s just that you often create what you don’t want -- what brings you no joy. The only criterion of your success and value is the amount of joy you feel.

Deciding to simplify your lives -- ridding yourselves of all that no longer serves you -- is one of the most powerfully loving things you can do for yourselves.

That decision will bring you far more joy than you ever imagined possible. It will prepare you for the life you, at the soul level, intended to live -- a life of joyous abandon, living every moment of every day in the bliss and ecstasy your higher selves exist in eternally.