Energy Of Money
(This is an excerpt from a University Of Metaphysical Sciences course at www.umsonline.org,
please feel free to visit the school website)
Introduction
Aligning With Money
Discussion
Conclusion
Written by Jamie Winn, M.S.W.
Introduction
We have all heard the adage that money is the root of all evil. That money can't buy us love, but it can corner the market on happiness. We look up to people who make a lot of money and look askance to those who are down on their luck. We ogle rock stars and watch reruns of The Lifestyle Of The Rich And Famous while perusing the tabloids for the next celebrity who takes an emotional or financial tumble. Yet most of us have had checkered histories with money. We've loved it and hated it. Saved it or squandered it. Felt desperate to possess it or confused about it. There's no real denying our tumultuous relationship with money.
What really is money? Is it only a piece of paper upon which we have bestowed special significance—a totem of sorts? Or is it something more? According to John Randolph Price in The Abundance Book (1987), "You must think of money and any other material desire or possession simply as an outer symbol of the inner supply." Is money good or is it evil? Or is it merely a form of energy that is neither good nor bad, that is neutral. To quote Jonathan Robinson in Real Wealth: A Spiritual Approach To Money And Work (1998), "Money can even be the root of all the good you do. It all depends on how you use money and what your relationship to it is. If you want, you can use money to buy an ounce of cocaine and fry your brain. On the other hand, you can use money to take spiritual-growth workshops and contribute to people in great need. Money is simply a magnifier of you and what you find truly meaningful."
We can look at successful people in our society and what they do with their money. Certainly, many of them aggrandize themselves and live lavish lives, but there are those who use their money to create good in the lives of others. To name a few; Paul Newman has created a company, Newman's Own, that gives 100% of its profits, after taxes, to charity. Dolly Parton has been active since 1995 in helping children become and stay interested in school. Barbara Streisand champions environmental projects and is a dedicated Democratic fund-raiser, giving away large sums of her own wealth. Ted Turner has created the United Nations Foundation with a commitment of up to $1 billion. This foundation works to promote a more peaceful, prosperous, and just world through support of the United Nations and its Charter. And let us not forget Bill Gates, who gives to global health, education, libraries and other projects through his foundation. We can create great good in the world or cause great harm with our money. Ultimately, it's not our money making the decisions. Since what we do with our money is a reflection of who we are, it's imperative that we take the time to explore ourselves and our values if we ever hope to be truly abundant, successful and responsible.
Not only do individual people behave either malevolently or benevolently with money, the same holds true for corporations. Even though corporations are usually seen as malevolent in their willingness to do anything to make money, including using slave labor, cruel animal experimentation, air and water pollution, they can act in benevolent ways if they so choose. Take the case of Interface Inc, a large carpet manufacturing company run by Ray C. Anderson as seen in the movie, The Corporation (2004). Ray describes his vision for corporate benevolence as, "If we're successful, we'll spend the rest of our days harvesting yesteryears' carpets and other petrochemically derived products, and recycling them into new materials; and converting sunlight into energy; with zero scrap going to the landfill and zero emissions into the ecosystem. And we'll be doing well...very well...by doing good." Not surprising, Ray is recognized as one of the world's most environmentally progressive CEO, has won numerous awards and has gone on to train other CEO's in corporate responsibility.
On the opposite hand, there are plenty of wealthy people and corporations who are bad examples of how to use money. Many people put their entire fortune in huge mansions and toys while forgetting to give any to people and causes that need help. And how about the Fortune 500 companies who pay Third World laborers a dollar a day and then turn around and sell what these people produce in affluent countries for top dollar, only to pocket the profits. In my opinion, the majority of wars, even those disguised as religious wars, are fundamentally economic. If everyone in the world were paid a fair wage, there would be no real reason for war. With a fair and equal distribution of wages and the freedom to make choices with our money and our lives, war would soon become an unpleasant cultural memory.
If I were to approach people on the street and ask them what they want most in their lives, how many do you suppose would place financial freedom close to the top of their list? Besides health, happiness and loving relationships, can you imagine anything most of us desire more than money? Money has come to represent not only energy and liberation, but also a life without worry. And who among us wouldn't wish for that? But is that really what we have? In Your Money Or Your Life: Transforming Your Relationship With Money And Achieving Financial Independence (1992) by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin they say, "A Harris Pole of 1,255 adults conducted in November 1990 showed that 54 percent of Americans believe they have less free time than five years ago." They go on to point out that, "Even if you aren't any happier, you'd think that we'd at least have the traditional symbol of success: money in the bank. Not so. Our savings rate has gone down." And to make matters worse, "Our affluent life-styles are having an increasingly devastating effect on our planet. We are depleting the earth's resources, clogging its arteries (rivers and roads), and polluting the air, water and soil."
There is nothing inherently wrong with claiming your natural inheritance of abundance or as John Randolf Price says in The Abundance Book (1987), "Your self thinks, sees and knows only abundance, and the creative energy of this Mind-Of-Abundance is eternally flowing, radiating, expressing, seeking to appear as abundance on the physical plane." Therefore, how can it be evil to create what is natural, but it is important to be responsible. In Your Money Or Your Life: Transforming Your Relationship With Money And Achieving Financial Independence (1992), Joe Dominquez and Vicki Robin speak of the pleasures of frugality and say, "Frugality is enjoying the virtue of getting good value for every minute of your life energy and from everything you have the use of..." Rather than being slaves of an economic system in which we feel we must slave away to keep a roof over our heads, there has to be a more proactive and creative way to abundance that also is environmentally sane and politically conscious.
The value of money, or some form of exchange, goes back to our earliest ancestors and their first attempts to barter for the food and tools they needed to exist. Survival meant finding something someone else valued to secure what was needed. Money became a means of trade. In The Abundance Book (1987) John Randolph Price tells us, "The Ancients taught that to understand one's self was to understand God, and through the process of meditation, one could release the divine energy from within and transmute discord into harmony, ignorance into wisdom, fear into love, and lack into abundance." Although there has existed a moneyed class as far back as antiquity, where the people in power and the religious leaders had a concentration of wealth with peasant labor to support it, the Industrial Revolution brought the means of mass production. Before this, there was a fairly stagnant and stable upper class and a small merchant class. Since the Industrial Revolution, more people have been able to benefit from industry. While a few still controlled the wealth, a large middle class of blue and white-collar workers flourished in mid-management and labor. Along with the principles of democracy and capitalism, the prevailing ethos suggested anyone could make money if they just did the right thing, got the right education, and worked hard. However, in the richest nation the world has ever known, many jobs are being outsourced overseas to low paid workers, and homelessness is an epidemic in our city streets. The top one percent of the population has more wealth than the entire lowest 95%. There are enough resources on the planet for every man, woman and child to have a million dollars apiece. Many live their lives as robots, doing the same thing year after year without any real change, struggling for money.
However, we do not need to be frightened by these "facts." We can transcend beliefs in scarcity if we stay focused on the fact that abundance comes form within. Sanaya Roman and Duane Packer say in Creating Money: Keys To Abundance (1988), "You do not need to be affected by the economy or manmade conditions. You can create your own economic environment of prosperity." Perhaps it's as Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin say in Your Money or Your Life: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence (1992), "...we cling to our affluence—even though it isn't working for us or the planet—because of the very nature of our relationship to money. We project onto money the capacity to fulfill our fantasies, allay our fears, soothe our pain and send us soaring to the heights."
It is especially important for the metaphysician to seriously consider the spiritual principles affecting money and abundance; the principles of attraction, listening to inner guidance, manifesting goals and transforming stultifying beliefs. There is a movement afoot today toward earth friendly and socially conscious business and investing. In Your Money Or Your Life: Transforming Your Relationship With Money And Achieving Financial Independence (1992), Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin suggest, "This shift from an ethic of growth to an ethic of sustainability will certainly require each one of us to transform our relationship with money and the material world." They go on to say, "Part of the secret of life, it would seem, comes from identifying for yourself that point of maximum fulfillment. The word is 'enough'."
In Richard Carlson's book Don't Worry, Make Money: Spiritual And Practical Ways To Create Abundance And More Fun In Your Life (1998), he says, "Try not to attach too much significance to money or success. Being non attached, however, creates emotional freedom. It suggests trying hard, really caring, but at the same time being completely willing to let go of the outcome." In support of this, John Randolph Price says that The Abundance Book is, "to be used as a reminder throughout the day that you are the wealth of the universe individualized—that the only limitations you have are the ones you have imposed upon yourself." (1987)
For his book The 7 Habits Of Effective People (1990), Stephen Covey studied the last 200 years of writings about success in America and found that "...much of the success literature of the last 50 years was superficial. It was filled with social image consciousness, techniques and quick fixes...In sharp contrast, almost all the literature in the first 150 years or so focused on what could be called the Character Ethic as the foundation of success—things like integrity, humility, fidelity, temperance, courage, justice, patience, industry, simplicity, modesty, and the Golden Rule. The Character Ethic taught that there are basic principles of effective living and that people can only experience true success and enduring happiness as they integrate these principles into their basic character."
Aligning With Money
The literature on aligning oneself with the energy of money is, to a greater or lesser degree, in agreement over the basic principles of attracting and maintaining abundance. While Stephen Covey is the most conservative or traditional in his views of the Character Ethic and attaining success, all the experts in the field agree that the individual's fundamental set of beliefs and perceptions influence their relationship to money and abundance. Even Stephen Covey in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (1990) says that, "Anytime we think the problem is ‘out there,' that thought is the problem. We empower what's out there to control us." He goes on to say, "What I have seen result from the outside, in paradigm, is unhappy people who feel victimized and immobilized, who focus on the weaknesses of other people and the circumstances they feel are responsible for their own stagnant situation."
How does Dr. Covey suggest we rectify the situation? His program is comprised of the 7 Steps mentioned in his title. These are:
Habit 1: Be Proactive
Change starts from within, and highly effective people make the Decision to improve their lives through the things that they can influence rather than by simply reaching to external forces.
Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind
Develop a principle-centered personal mission statement. Extend the statement into long-term goals based on personal principles.
Habit 3: Put First Things First
Spend time doing what fits into your personal mission, observing the proper balance between production and building production capacity. Identify the key roles that you take on in life, and make time for each of them.
Habit 4: Think Win/Win
Seek agreements and relationships that are mutually beneficial. In cases where a "win/win" deal cannot be achieved, accept the fact that agreeing to make "no deal" may be the best alternative. In developing an organizational culture, be sure to reward win/win behavior among employees and avoid inadvertently rewarding selfish behavior.
Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood
First seek to understand the other person, and only then try to be understood. Stephen Covey presents this habit as the most important principle of interpersonal relations. Effective listening is not simply echoing what the other person has said through the lens of one's own experience. Rather, it is putting oneself in the perspective of the other person, listening empathetically for both feeling and meaning.
Habit 6: Synergize
Through trustful communication, find ways to leverage individual differences to create a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts. Through mutual trust and understanding, one often can solve conflict and find a better solution than would have been obtained through either person's own solution.
Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw
Take time out from production to build production capacity through personal renewal of the physical, mental, social/emotional and spiritual dimensions. Maintain a balance among these dimensions.
Orin and DaBen, speaking through Sanaya Roman and Duane Packer in Creating Money: Keys To Abundance (1988), advise a slightly different approach. They believe the fundamental to creating money and abundance in life is the ability to define one's life's work. "As they got clear on what they wanted, they were able to draw it to them easily." Once you know your life's calling, "Your spiritual growth will increase your ability to manifest abundance and your ability to manifest will assist you in getting your spiritual work out to the world."
Suze Orman concurs in The Courage to Be Rich (1999), "What's keeping you from being rich? In most cases it is simply a lack of belief...you must believe that you can do it, and you must take the actions necessary to achieve your goal." In her opinion, it is early childhood experiences with money that shape the way we relate to it today. She says, "The only way to determine if your feelings about money are holding you back is to take a walk down memory lane to discover any unresolved money issue lurking there." Roman and Packer in Creating Money: Keys to Abundance (1988) go even further when they say, "Take a moment and look at your childhood messages. You can create a new personal history for yourself...and stop limiting what you manifest by what you believe." You can use the exercise provided later in the book to help identify any blockages in yourself and your clients. Once you define the experiences and feelings that are getting in your way of abundance and success, "The only way to get beyond the emotional obstacles standing between you and your money is to let them go."
Since money is energy it must ultimately flow freely to be effective. If you come from a mind-set of scarcity rather than a belief in abundance, you will have a tendency to clutch onto money when you have it. By doing this, you stop the flow of money out of and into your life. Orman, in The Courage to Be Rich (1999) says, "The idea, of course, is that in order to rise up, materially and spiritually, we have to free ourselves by making offerings, by allowing some of the money we're holding to pour back into the world. An unwillingness to give stagnates the flow, obscuring richness."
If we are clinging to every last dime and feel insecure about where the next one is coming from, Suze Orman suggests we give away as much as we can every month to a charity of our choice. "We have all been taught to clutch our money as tightly as we can, as if our money is the perch of our safety and security...The more afraid we are, the tighter we hold on, and the more we have trapped ourselves." In The 9 Steps To Financial Freedom (1997), she goes on to say, "The better people felt about themselves, and the more they kept their hands open to receive by relinquishing money, the more their financial situation improved." Not only does this open the channel for us to receive more money, but it also reinforces our good feelings about ourselves and what we are accomplishing in the world. "We experience prosperity, true financial freedom, when our actions with respect to money are dharmic, or righteous actions—that is, actions of generosity, actions of offering."
Suze Orman's 9 Steps to Financial Freedom include:
Step 1: Seeing how your past hold the keys to your financial future
Step 2: Facing your fears and creating new truths
Step 3; Being honest with yourself
Step 4: Being responsible to those you love
Step 5: Being respectful of yourself and your money
Step 6: Trusting yourself more than you trust others
Step 7: Being open to receive all that you're meant to have
Step 8: Understanding the ebb and flow of the money cycle
Step 9: Recognizing true wealth
In Mindlessness And Money: The Buddhist Path Of Abundance (2002), Kulananda and Dominic Houlder suggest five steps to abundance:
Step 1: Cultivate loving kindness in how we create and spend money in our lives
Step 2: Develop generosity in giving and receiving
Step 3: Cultivate contentment with what you have and how you spend it
Step 4: Be honest. Do not lie, exaggerate or minimize just to get what you want
Step 5: Be more aware: Refrain from intoxication and cultivate mindfulness
You don't always have to actively work for the money you earn. Residual Income is a way to generate money without working for it. Examples of this are publishing a book or recording a CD, where the artist receives income from sales long after the work is finished. Another way to generate money without actively working is by making investments, making your money work for you. Real estate is often an excellent long term investment, if you have the initial down payment on a property. Whether you live on the property or rent it out to tenants, there is a good chance over time it will grow in value. Other people choose to invest in the stock or bond markets. While the stock market means putting your money in large corporations, there are ways to insure that your money is invested in socially and environmentally conscious corporations. Two websites that have information on these investments are http://www.sociallyresponsible.com/html and http://www.redjellyfish.com/html.
I want to mention Non-Profits here, because many of you will be working for the public good and may choose to structure your practice or business this way. A non-profit is a corporation formed to carry out a charitable, religious, educational, literary or scientific service. Non-profits are specially structured businesses that do not pay State or Federal Income Taxes because all their profits go back into the business or go into public services. The people who run a non-profit merely draw a salary from the business like any other employee and do not pocket the profits. One webpage to refer to if you are interested in learning about non-profits is http://www.NOLO.com/html, and there are many others that will tell you what you need to know to establish a non-profit organization. This is a great structure for running a corporation with integrity.
Suze Orman says in The 9 Steps To Financial Freedom (1997), "Money is a living entity, and it responds to energy exactly the same way you do. It is drawn to those who welcome it, those who respect it. Wouldn't you rather be with people who respect you and who don't want you to be something you're not? Your money feels the same way." Or, as Suzan Hilton says in The Feng Shui Of Abundance: A Practical And Spiritual Guide To Attracting Wealth Into Your Life (2001), "Money is about more: more freedom, more challenges, opportunities and energy. Feng Shui is the key to using this (money) energy I the most harmonious way.
Discussion
One of the primary spiritual principles is that there are no coincidences. When I was recruited to write the course on money and energy, I knew there was something I needed to look at and learn as well as teach. Not long ago, I was a struggling, single mother with a private practice in psychotherapy in a place where there were more psychotherapists per capita than almost anywhere else on the planet. My income was barely covering my expenses. The economy had been depressed for a couple of years and my son had special needs that took money to address. I lived on every cent I brought home and was in a chronic state of anxiety regarding money.
I can recall visiting my parents in Florida twelve years ago. I sat them down and asked directly if they would be able and willing to bail me out if the occasion arose. I had to know I wouldn't disappear down the rabbit hole of poverty and homelessness.
A mere ten years later, I and my partner had created enough money in our lives that I could discontinue my private practice and start what I laughingly refer to as a nonprofit writing career and pay others to work for me. Today I have friends in the same sinking ship I was once in and I suspect they envy me, but if they were to ask how I succeeded, I wouldn't have known what to tell them—until now. Let's explore this together.
According to Roman and Packer in Creating Money: Keys To Abundance (1988), "Money is energy, and energy exists in all realms. The spiritual laws of money are universal energy laws that create abundance: the principles of ebb and flow, unlimited thinking, giving to receive, appreciation, honoring your worth, clear agreements, magnetism and more." But what exactly does all this mean in concrete terms? To explore this, I asked my partner how he thought we had altered our economic destiny so much in such a relatively short period of time. He thought about my question for a moment and then said he attributed our success to our willingness to take risks. Not roll of the dice risks, but rather a willingness to put everything we had on the line. Yes, desperation was strong motivation, but so was our ability to put aside all the egoic thoughts of glamour and quick fixes, as well as our egos' fears of failure and humiliation. We just rolled up our sleeves, did the hard work and waited for the rewards.
We had to abandon any ideas of impressing our friends and family, who as soon as they were told what we intended to do, immediately went into fear mode and told us all we had planned could go awry. We had to set aside our own reservations about scarcity and tell ourselves we could afford to put all our savings into this venture. We would attract more money. We would survive. We put aside our fearful thoughts and took the leap of faith. Did we immediately see the benefits? No way. The change was gradual and cumulative, but it happened.
To validate what we did, the literature on creating money and wealth supports much of our experience. According to Stephen Covey in The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People (1990), "You always reap what you sow; there is no shortcut." He goes on to delineate qualities necessary for effectiveness in the world, "I am referring, for example, to the principles of fairness...integrity and honesty. Patience, nurturance and encouragement." He points out that these, "Principles are guidelines for human conduct that are proven to have enduring, permanent value. The glitter of the Personality Ethic...is that there is some quick and easy way to achieve quality of life...The Personality Ethic is illusory and deceptive."
While Covey addresses the hard work we had to do and the tolerance we had to posses, Roman and Packer in Creating Money: Keys To Abundance speak more to our spiritual experience. Without a deep understanding of what it is we wanted to do, discovered after much research, we would never have been able to make and execute plans when the opportunity arose. And plan we did. My partner and I decided to parlay my life's work into a larger venture, a treatment program for people in recovery. We had managed to put away a few dollars between us and when a fixer-upper property came on the market six months later, we purchased it. It took months of scrubbing, painting, sanding and constructing followed by designing a treatment program, printing materials and marketing before we began to turn a small profit. We persevered and slowly our efforts began to pay off. Roman and Packer in Creating Money: Keys To Abundance (1988) tell us, "The path to lasting wealth and abundance is to do your life's work, follow the spiritual laws of money, work with energy and magnetism before you take actions and live a life that is loving and joyful to you."
At that point, if I had squandered the little money that was beginning to trickle in, on fancy cars or more expensive clothes or anything else my heart desired, I would not have gotten ahead. Instead, even though we had done without for a long time, I chose to let the money accumulate in safe investments. In Mindfulness And Money: The Buddhist Path Of Abundance (2002), Kulananda and Dominic Houlder point out that, "Craving is the desire to possess things that you like, and to include them in your ego-identity in the hope of getting a sense of security from having them as part of you." Although I did crave material things, I had learned frugality from my family and it worked well for me at the time. It was only by saving the money I was beginning to make that I could advance to the next step. As Joe Dominquez and Vicki Robin say in Your Money Or Your Life: Transforming Your Relationship With Money And Achieving Financial Independence (1992), "Financial freedom is the experience of having enough—and then some." For the first time in a long time, I was closer to that condition.
Eventually, my partner and I had enough clients to expand to a second home. A few years ago we decided to move on. We sold the business and transferred the money we made into income property that someone manages for us. My partner is free to follow his dreams and I have been able to invest my time in what I love best, writing. Even after we had turned out lives around financially, I still suffered from feelings of scarcity and a fear that there would never be enough money, as crazy as that may sound. I decided to reprogram my ancient thinking. By reciting affirmations whenever I found myself thinking in a negative way, I changed the way I perceived money. Out of this, I realized it did not matter how much I had in the bank, I would always feel anxious and poor unless I made a conscious effort to change my mind-set from one of scarcity to one of abundance. Otherwise, even with enough money, I would be miserable and miserly and would never enjoy all I had earned. Suze Orman says in A Courage to Be Rich (1999), "This is not to say that there aren't people with a lot of money who feel shame, fear or anger...Although they may have a good amount of money, they're not rich in the sense of living a full, expansive, and contented life. And often such people are unable to hold on to their money." I am sure you have all heard about the person who struck it rich on the lottery, but managed to lose all the money within a few months or a year. The statistics say that the majority of people who win money end up squandering it or losing it down the road. Have you ever wondered why? I believe it's because they never changed their beliefs and feelings about money and wealth. Without doing the fundamental work on ourselves, money can literally and figuratively slip through our fingers.
After doing my homework, I finally saw that the only way to keep the channel open to feel better about having money, and therefore to receive it, was to give some of my money away to causes I supported. "The better people felt about themselves, and the more they kept their hands open to receive by relinquishing money, the more their financial situation improved." Suze Orman suggestsing The Courage To Be Rich (1999) that giving money to something you support, even if you don't have an abundance of money, not only benefits you, but also the planet. What could be more affirming to our integrity and grace? And it's that sense of our own power and worth that will attract money into our lives. What Suzan Hilton says in The Feng Shui Of Abundance: A Practical And Spiritual Guide To Attracting Wealth Into Your Life (2001) echos my own experience: "Personal finances rarely seem fun and creative, yet trust me when I tell you that money is one of the most creative energies we have! Unfortunately, many of us equate money with cruel and unfriendly experiences, and we unconsciously resist abundance...if you step back and look at money as creative energy that will flow easily toward you, it's much more interesting, and a lot less intimidating."
Conclusion
In summary, abundance comes to us from a number of sources working in concert; strength of character, clarity of purpose and willingness to look deeply into ourselves and clear out the blockages in our beliefs and perceptions to allow money into our lives. Sanaya Roman and Duane Packer say in Creating Money: Keys To Abundance (1988), "If your parents were generous and giving, you will probably see the Universe as abundant and generous. If your parents denied you what you wanted, you may still see the Universe as a place of scarcity and be denying yourself the things you want. Be the parent that would now be appropriate for you to have, giving yourself permission to have whatever you want."
Part of the process of connecting with ourselves is identifying our life's work. Armed with this knowledge and a trust that things will work out the way they're supposed to, that the Universe is working in our favor, even if we can't always see that, we can begin to manifest the tools and resources we need to do this work. According to Suze Orman in The 9 Steps To Financial Freedom (1997), once we attract money into our lives, it is equally important that we allow that money to flow through us, "...understanding and accepting the natural cycle of money as it ebbs and flows through our lives, sometimes in harmony (abundance), sometimes in discord, much like the cycles of our planet..." Even the ultimate spiritual process of forgiveness was originally a monetary concept. One would forgive a debt. If we can forgive our debts, ourselves and each other, we can open up to the experience of abundance.
Finally, as Roman and Packer say in Creating Money: Keys To Abundance (1988), "Creating abundance will require that you let go of any remaining belief that money and objects are hard to create, because they aren't." And remember, Suze Orman says in The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom (1997), "Money itself cannot make you financially free. Only you can make yourself financially free, and you can do it and so much more. You have the power."