Intro: The Heart of Money Transformational Journey is Available
A quick reminder that the upcoming Heart of Money Transformational Journey teleclass is enrolling right now.
You can read all the details here: The Heart of Money Transformational Journey
And… the course is offered at “Pay from the Heart” pricing – this means you can pay whatever works for you! Come check it out!
Article: The War Between Love and Money
Your business needs money to live. So do you. Yet focusing on financial goals can seem so heart-depleting and shallow. You wonder, is it better to focus on love?
Feels better, but focusing on love hasn’t gotten you where you need to be. You’ve given lots of love, and the money ain’t there. You need to eat. So you end up focusing on money again… back to shallow and depleted.
This tug-of-war between love and money has got to stop. Surely there’s plenty of both for everyone?
What IS Money And Why Is It So Painful At Times?
There are all kinds of theories about money, that it’s only energy, or that it’s love in disguise, or other similar things. But let’s take a closer look.
In “Backwards”, I explain the layers of reality in depth, but let me cut to the chase. There’s Source, and all the related divine qualities, like love, strength, peace, mercy, compassion, wisdom, etc. Then there’s the physical world.
Money belongs to the physical world. Even if it’s been reduced to 1’s and 0’s in a computer bank somewhere, money is a physical thing. You can tell it’s physical because it’s useless anywhere else except in the 3-D world. The Beatles said it well, “Money can’t buy me love.”
However, everything in the physical world came from a spiritual source. The spiritual building blocks for the physical world are those Divine qualities I mentioned above.
Here’s the thing: each individual physical thing has the potential to be a vessel for any of the qualities. And when I say each individual thing, I mean each individual object, like this one dollar bill or that check.
This is why it can be a little confusing talking about what money is. It’s a kaleidoscope, with each bit of money showing a different spiritual face in different situations.
The painful part comes in because of the way Divine qualities are cloaked. For most of us, most of the time, our physical senses and surface emotions grab our attention. Money comes in or goes out, it’s not enough or too much, and we get all focused on the surface. Our emotions go higgledy-piggledy (that’s a technical term meaning “gitchy-wah-wah”), and the screen of inner wisdom goes dark.
In an attempt to soothe the pain and to re-center ourselves, sometimes the question gets asked, “Why does money bug me so much?”
The trouble is, the lens is too wide. From a distance, the kaleidoscope we call money goes blurry. To get some clarity here, you just need to tighten up the lens a bit.
What’s Up With This Bit of Money?
Some money you have a fine relationship with, and some you don’t. An interesting exercise is to identify some particular bit of money in your life that you are having some struggles with, perhaps the amount in your bank account right now, or an amount of money a client owes you who hasn’t paid yet, and look more closely at that part of the kaleidoscope.
Since that money is built from the spiritual building blocks I mentioned before, asking yourself these three questions can help elicit some clarity for you:
1. What emotions are coming up for me around this bit of money?
Identifying the emotions, whether anger, sadness, grief, irritation, fear, can help you get some distance from them. Instead of being inside fear, you can recognize, “Oh yeah, I’m feeling fear.”
Take a breath, ask to connect in your heart (you can use this “Guided Remembrance Audio” if you like).
2. What Divine qualities is this bit of money a vessel for?
Or, What deeper qualities is this money carrying for me? Or, What qualities are being nurtured, developed in me through my experience with this particular bit of money?
Ask not knowing the answer, with a willingness to be surprised.
For instance, “Wow, I would’ve guessed that the quality of patience was being developed, but actually I see that love and strength are wanting to be combined within me through this experience.”
Let your heart drink in these qualities. What does it feel like to allow love and strength, or whatever qualities you saw for yourself, to fill you up?
3. What next steps does my heart show me?
Once your heart is tasting these qualities that are being nurtured within you through this experience, it’s time to anchor them in through action. What next steps does your heart show you?
If your heart is tasting those qualities, you can trust the impulses your heart feels. Again, ask with a willingness to be surprised. Don’t force yourself to take too big a step or jump to conclusions.
For example, “I would’ve guessed that I needed to get all up in my client’s face and demand payment. But my heart surprised me—the mingling of strength and love allows me to know I’m okay, and it gives me the space to use empathy to ask my client first if anything is upsetting their routine.”
The War Is Over
The war only seemed to be between love and money. Our experiences with the world around us are helping to develop and nourish our strengths and gifts. Money is not a mono-crop.
Like everything in creation, each bit of money carries a unique relationship to the Divine and an ability to connect us to our deepest selves, if we can see past the surface.
My question for you today: if you have a particular bit of money that is making you higgledy-piggledy, what is being developed within your heart through that experience?
p.s. Worry about money getting you up at night?
The teaching in this article is a nugget from the Heart of Money Transformational Journey. I’ll be sharing a number of nuggets like this on how to have a peaceful, open-hearted and effective relationship with money during this program.
I encourage you to take a look at the program and start considering whether the Heart of Money Transformational Journey would be a good course for you to take. I’ve taught it over 20 times to hundreds of participants, and it’s had consistently fantastic results.
Enrollment is open now and the program starts mid-January. Last year the 700 people who joined us gave it rave reviews.
Don’t go into a panic. Just open your heart to considering ahead of time, so you don’t have to decide later in a rush. Here’s the link to the sales page, even though it’s not live yet.
8 Responses
Mark,
Good info.
Interesting that often we have no problem “spending” money, yet “making” it send us into emotional disarray. As far as I can tell, most of it’s conditioning from our early years. We’re taught from the get go that it’s scarce and something you fight over …
Thanks. See you on the call.
Giulietta
.-= Giulietta the Muse’s lastest post: What Are You Waiting For? =-.
Indeed! Although I find that many times people are in emotional disarray when spending as well. I’ve noticed in my own personal dynamic that when I’m feeling powerless in a situation, going and buying something gives my ego a small sense of control and power, which is, I think, one aspect of what “retail therapy” is about.
Beautifully written, I’m so enjoying your perspective on money, life and spirituality. The kaleidoscope metaphor is very helpful and illuminating. Keep shining Mark!
Yeah, I love it when these metaphors just drop in. Thank you for your kind words!
I am finding your articles and especially the workbook “Backwards” just spot on. So much “business” advice seems to be confrontational and viciously competitive. It truly does my heart good to begin working with someone who shares my Buddhist commitment to right livelihood –
bows,
sue
Ahh, a cousin Buddhist! One of my best friends is a Buddhist priest….
Happy to be on the path with you, and thank you for your kind words.
Giulietta – I actually do find the spending money piece challenging. I love spending money with organic food stores, people like Mark, giving to charities etc as all this feels like supporting people and organisations I believe in and channelling money in wonderful ways. However, when it comes to ‘needing’ to buy something from a supermarket or chain store, I physically contract – I have so much resistance to it and sometimes can’t even do it. So whether it’s a toothbrush or jar of Marmite, it feels very hard to let go of that money because it feels I’m funding an organisation whose ethics I don’t believe in.
So I noticed an unconscious resistance to earning more money because then I’d have more money available to spend on these ‘bad’ corporations.
It’s all very black and white and how I’ve healed this (to an extent) is by seeing that the more money I have, the more I can give to the great organisations (organic food being more expensive than non, of course!) But Mark – if you can empathise or shed any light on this, I’d be grateful! Or if anyone else has this same feeling I’d love to hear that because sometimes I wonder if I’m the only one who feels virtually paralysed in supermarkets or big shopping centres…!
Corrina
.-= Corrina Gordon-Barnes’s lastest post: I Feel Too Cluttered To Declutter! =-.
First of all, I’d just like to say that if anyone feels paralyzed at the prospect of spending money on marmite or vegemite, I’m with them. 🙂
More seriously, I think that is one way of understanding having money- that you get to spend it more on things you believe in. However, the reason I don’t think that sticks so well very often is because it’s an intellectual rationalization.
I think there might be something deeper if you get paralyzed in those situations. I think the issue might be very similar or related, and has to do with your core values. But why paralyzed instead of just clear that you don’t want to support that?
Do you have an unexpressed grief over something?
Do you feel helpless or attacked in some way?
And if those feelings come up, bring Remembrance in to see what your heart is needing. I’d be curious to hear what comes from those explorations.