Money Rapport

Everybody wants money and lots of it, even if their definition of lots is enough money to live debt free and take two family holidays per year. As a nation we have created many get rich quick strategies. The national lottery and the Euro millions are possibly the most notorious examples. Many of us all dream, even if we don't play, of how we would share and spent the four-time rollover jackpot of silly money, typically in the hundreds of millions. Then we have the shortcut to fame and riches strategies deployed by the media industry. These convince us that if only we could be noticed for a microsecond we would have access to limitless opportunities to make money. No one in the West can live without money. Indeed there very few societies in the world today where one can live without money -those that exist are typically either religious communes or small tribes in uncharted forests where it possible to exist as a subsistence farmer or hunter gatherers.

We all want money yet we all “hate” money. Money seems to be the root of all evil and so outwardly we display love for it and inwardly we feel shame and anxiety and even fear because of the control it has over us. In the West we know that without money we would quickly slide into poverty and state dependence. A life of living hand to mouth at the mercy of government programs and policies designed to give you barely enough. The unfortunates who find themselves in this position are forced to hustle for spare pennies and/or engage in illegal activities in order to have access to what they see other members of the pack enjoying. The workhouse attitude (i.e. an intolerance of those who taking handouts from the state) still remains and being supported by the state is still seen by many as being the lowest of the low irrespective of how they came to be in that situation. The state- dependent are continually derided by the tabloid press for daring to make the best of a terrible situation. Sadly those on the other side of the equation often join the condemnation. Perhaps this is out of fear or shame that we have not been able to create a fairer community, one without the huge disparities in financial resources despite the technological advances of the 21st-century.

Money plays such a significant part in our lives that we measure our potential for greatness according to the amount of money we have access to. Not only that rather than living the life we desire we only fantasize about it in our dreams, longing for all the great things we could accomplish if we only had money. As a result many people put their lives on hold because they don't have the money to live the life of their imagination.

We are taught to believe that money is limited and scarce and therefore we developed a schizophrenic relationship with it. In other words we have internalised a sense of grasping; that is feeling that you have to take what you need for yourself from another in order to have enough rather than believing, as it is true, that there is more than enough wealth for everybody to have more than enough.

Becoming wealthy starts with the heart, although we often think that it starts with constructing strategies by which to make money. Wealth starts in the heart because this is the part of the soul that we identify with passion, connection and love. Creating wealth in the mind without the heart connection creates wealth that is predominantly external. Such wealth, history has shown, benefits a small minority at the expense of the majority. However, wealth created in the heart seeks to be good for the many. It transfers not only value but also compassion, understanding and love. This wealth engenders a real sense of doing good for all; doing no harm and serving not only the wealth creators but others too at a deeper spiritual level. Wealth created in the heart begins by healing our relationship to money so that we truly understand the extent as well of the limits of its power over us to determine our future.

What is your relationship to money and do you believe that money and wealth are the same thing? Please share your views I look forward to reading them.