Question: Do I concentrate too hard when I am shopping?

Sri Chinmoy: According to Sebastian the Great, you are oblivious of the world around you. You are either fixed on the world on which you are focusing your attention, or you are in your own world of fantasies and phantasmagoria. In your case, no matter what you do, you use your concentration power beyond necessity. When you use your power of concentration beyond necessity on mundane things, you are misusing it. It is like buying something at a higher price when you know that you can get it at a lower price. If you spend your money unnecessarily while buying one object, then naturally you will be short of money when you want to buy something else that is more important and more significant for your life.

While you are walking along the street, you need a certain kind of power of concentration; otherwise, you will not be able to walk properly and you will have an accident. But if your concentration expands and extends unnecessarily, if you are at one place and you are concentrating on the cars that are one or two blocks away, then you are misusing your power of concentration. For those cars are not going to come at you; they are quite far away.

When you are deeply absorbed in buying material things, you are not concentrating on the objects themselves. Here only you are lost. Your mind is lost in the material world. The material world we need, true. But everything has its own importance, and the material world is not so important that it should completely absorb your attention. Concentration is like money-power. It is not advisable to pay too much attention to the material world, for then you are squandering your money.