Chapter 27 - Money, Worry & Love - Strength for the Journey
Modern society is focused on physical & temporal concerns, giving them preference over spiritual & eternal matters. Everyone is at least marginally aware of this fact. Why is this so? What is the root reason for our obsessive tendency?
We enter this world and immediately start an educational process that leads us down the path of developing a materialistic value system. We begin by genuinely seeking stability and security, what we come to believe to be the basis of Love. It is not completely necessary to abandon this search, merely to refine our end goals, with a further understanding of the situation.
What is Money? Money is a thought-form that we collectively use to represent value. In and of itself, Money is not evil, nor is it especially righteous. As with all temporal things, our thoughts, emotions & actions pertaining to Money are what cause us all the problems. We are conditioned to believe that Money equals Love, dropping the symbolic aspect entirely. This is largely a subconscious feeling. Without passing judgement, let us explore the deeper impacts of this realization.
Often, whenever we wish to show Love to someone, Money quickly enters the mental scene. Whenever we desire Love, or attempt to evaluate & determine whether we are Loved, again, Money asserts itself as a dominant factor in our minds. Money is also tied to Self-Love, for if we feel we are worthwhile, we primarily use money to demonstrate this to ourselves, accepting larger salaries, asking higher prices, and spending on ourselves. The converse is likewise True. If we feel worthless (or worth less than others), we reinforce this by refusing financial abundance, and shower others with unlimited 'Love' ($$$).
Due to our conditioning, we feel this whole focus on Money is entirely unavailable while living in our society, what are we to do about this greater situation? This is because Money has obscured from us the True laws & procedures of Nature & Divinity. Obscured, hidden, and distorted, but not obliterated or replaced. Money is indeed a form of Magic, but Love is a Deeper Magic. To cure our Money hangups, both individually & collectively, it is vital we gain a Truer understanding of the power of Love over circumstance.
If we stop spending so much time & effort (energy) on Money, we will begin to see how irrelevant it can become in our own lives. Think of times of disaster, when power goes out and ATMs stop working. Humans tend to come together and even thrive, leaving financial concerns for brighter days. This has the potential to become a permanent state of society.
We worry endlessly about ensuring our own personal security & stability, clutching desperately to our 'hard-earned' cash. This procedure prevents us from investing ourselves in others, who may in reality represent our own future security, stability and measure of comfort. We might also become so preoccupied with maintaining our financial status (present or future) that we ignore opportunities & relationships. In the pursuit of Money, we abandon actual Love, the very object of our ultimate desire!
Our continued activity, that we feel we have insufficient time to waste in pausing, will eventually crash. We do not have the energy to sustain independent stability without community, when we are so consumed by actions that drain rather than produce energy.
Money must be transmuted & transformed back into Love for it to be stabilizing to us. Otherwise, it is a worthless temporal object, and this is just as true of hard currency as paper money. Money has no Soul value, unless we use it wisely. We dangerously choose a symbol of energy, while leaving our True energy to be manipulated & misused by others, often against us directly! Money must become mere numbers to us, and we must achieve the removal of all remaining emotional attachment to these symbols.
Rich, poor, it matters not to our Soul. Not Loving others, not Loving ourselves, in striving after things in order to bring us Money, such as education, certifications, networking with financially valuable persons, marketing ourselves, leaves our Souls weary, tired, and devoid of spiritual energy. This can even lead to an inability to generate the wealth we seek. It can end our lives prematurely, and it will certainly complicate our growth processes, leaving us with little to speak of spiritually at our moment of death.
We must be gambling that there is no reincarnation, for we are wasting entire lifetimes, placing Money and other symbols ahead of our Souls. Let us work to gain a more balanced approach to finances, and decrease our constant focus upon it in society. Everything has a certain value to us, and everything seems to have a price now. However, prices no longer even attempt to reflect intrinsic value, and this is causing a great many major cultural consequences.
Do as your Soul directs you, without unduly burdening others, working with them towards harmonious ends, and True wealth (Love, relationships, community), and even perhaps Money, will flow into your life.