Bilaam is seen in our Parasha, in his interactions with the emissaries of King Balak, as an arrogant man with an insatiable need for honor and riches.
Our sages convey in the Midrash that a person who owns $100 will naturally want $200 and if he has $200 he will desire $400 in an ever-expanding circle.
Sometimes our appetites are insatiable, or more accurately, we act as though they are insatiable. In reality, our bodies and their physical needs are in reality finite and their needs limited. Therefore, the endless pursuit for more of everything is like chasing the elusive end of the rainbow, which is never satisfying.
The irony is that there is a part of everyone which is indeed limitless, our intellect and our Neshama, our spiritual self, which is a part of the Divine and thus has no limits. The more it is nurtured the greater it becomes.
How strange that we tend to give the body much more than it can possibly handle and our Spiritual self so much less than it needs.
~Rabbi Shaul
