The secret to healing our relationship with money

Yesterday I blogged about pebble dashing buildings and how some people do a similar thing to different aspects of their lives – in particular their finances. We think of money as something that in itself has value; however money is just a medium of exchange. It has no value or energy unless we give it to it by virtue of our beliefs and attitudes to it. Even when currencies were backed by a gold standard, it was a matter of trust that you would be able to present the piece of paper to the bank and they would exchange it for an equivalent amount of gold. Now that money really isn't worth the paper it is printed on, we experience a collective confusion about its power over us and while we desire it so much.

Throughout history money has come and gone. You might be surprised to learn that after the fall of the Roman Empire in the fourth century C.E. money all but disappeared from Western Europe for nearly 1000 years. Our history with money is so littered with examples of rulers seeking to possess it at all costs and the collateral damage caused by their excessive greed; the collective human psyche now bears the scars. According to Carl Jung’s theory of analytical psychology, the entire human experience is shared in the collective unconscious and is manifest in our lives through archetypes. Jung believed that the archetypes were inherited unconscious patterns of thought which affect our actions, motives and behaviours. Therefore, our relationship with money is made up of all of our individual experiences of money throughout history.

Perhaps you find this difficult to believe, that's fine, it's just a theory to explain what we experience. Even if you aren't a follower of Jung, your own experience will tell you that your feelings and attitudes towards money run far deeper than what you have individually experienced in your own life.

Although we aren't able to rewrite history, we are limitless in our ability and power to write the future. We have the ability to expand our conscious awareness and from that new awareness to remodel the reality we experience.

If we are to individually and collectively heal our relationship with money we need to first except that something needs to change and then develop a better understanding of our collective history and experience with money.

I will go into more detail about the history of money in a future blog post. In the meantime you may wish to commence this journey into expanded awareness by pondering the following question.

What if you were to describe your relationship with money as if you were telling someone about your relationship with a close friend or partner: what would you say?

Please share your thoughts, I love to read them.