Above Photo: From kosmosjournal.org
At one time, Dariel Garner was worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Over his life, he started and owned over 40 businesses on four continents with thousands of employees. His enterprises included the second largest agribusiness exporter in Mexico, a tech company that created software for banks, and companies as diverse as golf courses, ski parks and natural health care products.
A decade ago, he was the developer and co-owner with his former wife of a vast resort in the California Sierra Mountains with projects underway that had projected profits of $750 million. Then he had a change of heart.
Today, Dariel has none of this wealth. At the age of 67, he lives on a modest $900 a month from a Social Security check.
“I’ve never been happier,” he smiles. “Today I am penniless and have far more than I could ever imagine existed. Each day I am awakened to the joy of being connected and part of all of life around me. I am able to be with other people and with nature in a way that was impossible for me when I was wealthy.”
In 2004, Garner was at the pinnacle of wealth and accomplishment. “My perspective on wealth kept shifting,” Garner chuckles. “At first I thought $5 million was wealthy. And then I couldn’t tell how much I was worth within $5 million. Another time, I thought ‘wealth is when you have more than your weight in gold.’ I did a calculation and realized I was really wealthy.”
One day Garner’s physician said, “Dariel, I really envy you because I can imagine you up on top of the veranda of your resort having a cocktail with your beautiful wife. The only problem is you won’t live to see it.”
Garner thought to himself, “Well, that’s fine with me.” He was deeply depressed. He weighed 365 pounds and was, in his words, “committing suicide by eating.”
He kept eating and feeling numb. Then one day he was entering the private dining room at his resort. The hostess touched him gently, as she steered him to a table. “I hadn’t been touched by anyone other than my wife for years. Because people don’t touch rich people.” That gesture moved him and shook him. “It was like the touch of God. I realized that I could love and be loved. I was floored.”
The next day, Garner stopped eating. He went on a long lemon juice fast, losing weight.
“I decided to live.
His demeanor shifted. He felt lighter and friendlier. A few months later he overheard a comment that wasn’t meant for his ears. The wife of his comptroller said, “You would hardly know Dariel anymore. He has a heart.”
“I thought I had always had a heart,” Garner says. “People were seeing a change. I’d lost 180 pounds and some people couldn’t recognize me, but more importantly I was becoming human again. My heart was growing.”
Garner was connecting with people, enjoying life more. “I had lost track that people were people –not just part of the production process: employees, customers, homeowners. I was very disconnected.
I remember sitting at my desk and signing paychecks for people who would make in a year what I made in an hour. And these were people making $20,000 a year. I began to recognize the vast difference of income and wealth.
“I turned my back on the money. I felt there was something wrong with one person having so much more than others. At a certain point I felt the money was ill-gotten, taken from someone else.”
Through several years of giving, spending, divorce, and loss, the money went away. He and his former wife gave away millions through a family foundation. Garner donated a huge development project to a small California city, after creating the infrastructure. His ex-wife took over the Tahoe resort.
Garner moved down from the Sierras to coastal Big Sur. He started reading more and reconnecting with his body and reconciling his interests in spirit and science.
“Then I met Rivera,” Garner says. “We met in a tea house and together we have learned a tremendous amount about wealth, social change, and spirit. I met so many people from very different circumstances, people I would never have met if I had been buffered and suffocated by my wealth.”
Garner objects to the misnomer, “self-made.” “I got a lot of help along the way. I got a free education at the University of California, in the days when school was virtually free. Governor Ronald Reagan’s signature is on my diploma!”
“Wealth is the fruit of a culture, of an economic system,” he came to realize. “If someone says they are ‘self made,’ they are being disingenuous. There are roads, technological infrastructure, rules and structures –all the goods of the entire system. The problem is just that a few people have been able to benefit from the system and keep most of the fruit.”
Once he was among the keepers of that fruit, Garner says, the game was rigged in his favor–“from tax breaks and doors opening to financing.” In the process of creating a golf club, he discovered a loophole provision in the 76,000 page federal tax code that allowed private golf club developers to treat membership sales as non-taxable income. “I thought, wow, I’m going to make $15 million and I don’t have to declare the income! Someone had come before me and lobbied for that perk.” And that is just one of many examples.
Says Garner, “The system is designed for someone like me to succeed. The first million is the hardest to make. But then the doors fly open. A whole “wealth defense” industry rises up -lawyers, lobbyists, politicians –that enable the already advantaged to rise and stay on top. The tax laws are written by the wealthy for the wealthy. At the other end of the spectrum –for the poor and disadvantaged –the doors are closing.”
When Garner was in business school back in the late 1960s, he read a case study of General Electric and how they hadn’t paid federal corporate income tax in decades. “Well here we are, 50 years later, and G.E. still doesn’t contribute to federal tax obligations.”
We have a culture of wealth, separation, extraction –which is the foundation for most of wealth of this country. We are living a myth that needs to be pierced through scrutiny –to look at the truth of our interconnection. As Gandhi said, ‘There is enough for everyone’s need, but not for everyone’s greed.’”