Everyday Enlightenment, page 10
Like love or fear, it can serve you or bind you, depending upon how you manage it.
By clarifying your goalsand using your gifts, you can make good money, doing what you enjoy, while servingthe highest calling of your soul.
Using money wisely, and well, you increase the material and spiritual wealth with your world.
Sufficiency and Spiritual Practice
There's a certain Buddhistic calm that comes from having…money in the bank.
—Tom Robbins
Road Map: The Flow of Money
With the arrows of worth, will, and energy in your quiver, you are better prepared to meet the challenge of managing your money. Self-worth tends to improve net worth. Self-discipline provides the power to apply the principles herein. Free-flowing energy in your body increases the flow of money in your life. Of course, reading the first three gateways is not the same as mastering these arenas in daily life, but it does provide a beginning, a foundation, and a map.
Before you proceed further, let's explore the meaning of money. In the context of personal growth, money is more than a means of exchange or ready cash. Your relationship to money reflects your relationship to energy and service and spirit, your ability to function in society, your openness to pleasure and abundance, your reality check. Money mirrors the quality of your interactions with other people, your ability to receive and to give. Money represents survival, security, safety, shelter, food, family, livelihood.
More complex, it turns out, than balancing your checkbook.
If spiritual life begins on the ground, money forms a foundation on which to build. Shivapuri Baba, an Indian saint and yogi who walked around the world on a pilgrimage when he was over 100 years old, was once asked about the best way to begin a spiritual life. He advised, “First build a foundation—manage your money.” (Through hard work and simple living, he had acquired a small bag of gems in his younger years; he drew upon these gems as needed.)
Money in Everyday Life
Pam, a friend who read an early version of this manuscript, thought Manage Your Money should come later in the book. “Surely,” she said, “money can't be more important than taming your mind or facing your fears or some of the other gateways—” Abruptly she looked at her watch. “Oh, my gosh, look what time it is! The bank's closing in ten minutes!” Wondering about why money was so important, Pam had to run to the bank.
Yet her question was a good one, so I answer it here: No gateway is more important than any other, although some may seem more relevant to different people at different times. But just as you need to crawl before you walk, and learn the alphabet before you read or write, each gateway prepares you for those that follow.
on the way to the bank, Pam later told me that she realized how much of her time, thoughts, and attention revolved around money—paying the bills, balancing checkbooks, discussing costs of the room addition for their growing family. After the bank, she went food shopping, then stopped by the furniture store to check prices on a new bed for one of her children—all activities dealing with money. Like Pam, most of us have money concerns of one kind or another: striving to make more or make do with less, learning to live simply, comfortably, spiritually.
Poor people may be forced to think about money a lot of the time, related to food, shelter, subsistence, and survival. Rich people may also think about money a lot of the time, related to status, travel, freedom, influence, and options. But managing your money does not depend upon becoming wealthy or declaring vows of poverty. Rather, it is about creating stability and sufficiency—a balanced flow of monetary energy through your life. This kind of management liberates you from survival issues, so that money concerns no longer occupy your mind or monopolize your attention. When money flows in, you spend it in a matter-of-fact way where it needs to go, where it will do the most good. You pay bills gladly, knowing that your money helps to support other people who in turn provide services for you. If something breaks, you write a check and get it fixed without further concern. Free from cycles of scarcity, your attention can ascend to higher levels of awareness and experience.
Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex, you thought of nothing else if you didn't have it and thought of other things if you did.
—James Baldwin
Managing your money begins by examining limiting beliefs and negative programming, then exploring such topics as your hidden relationship to money, how your perspectives and beliefs can suddenly shift, money as energy, money and spirituality in the East and West, keys to career success, and five simple principles for sufficiency.
Programming and Prejudice: Freeing Your Mind
Spiritual illumination necessarily involves the expansion of awareness—letting its light penetrate your body, mind, and emotions. Our unexamined (subconscious) beliefs are like minefields of conflicting ideas, desires, and aversions—especially in the realm of money and spirit.
While you may consciously desire to increase your wealth, unexamined beliefs can stand in your way. Thus you benefit from the following material only to the degree that you have overcome such mixed emotions and self-defeating attitudes. As in the other gateways, the purpose of this one is to make such beliefs conscious, releasing their power over you.
An Attitude Assessment
This inventory clarifies your current attitudes and circumstances in the arena of money, providing a chance for self-reflection:
• Do money issues periodically monopolize your attention?
• How much time and energy do you spend struggling to balance income and expenditures?
• Do you believe money makes you happy?
• Do you believe money makes you unhappy?
• How much money would you like to earn each year? Why not more?
• Does money seem very hard to come by or burn a hole in your pocket?
• Does your financial life swing between feast and famine?
• How do you feel about wealthy people?
• How do you feel about wealthy spiritual teachers?
• Do you believe that seeking or having wealth hinders your spiritual life?
• What do you spend more time thinking about—money or love?
• Do you tend to spend more than you make? Are you in debt?
• If you are in debt, is it the result of insufficient income or overspending?
• Are the best things in life free?
As in other self-assessments, there are no right or wrong answers here, only a chance to shed light on your beliefs about money, especially as they relate to spirituality.
Another direct and practical way to assess your priorities and values is to read your financial journals—your checkbook registers and monthly credit card reports—for the past year. These are clear and objective records of the priorities, needs, values, and spending habits that paint a telling portrait of your life.
Your beliefs about money are the key determinant—more than education or talent or even opportunity—of your level of financial stability. There are plenty of stories of well-educated and talented people who suffer in poverty, consciously seeking financial support while unconsciously avoiding it—and an equal number of others with less education who seem to attract money like magnets.
The irony of negative beliefs about money is that we did not choose them, but were programmed by religious and cultural assumptions, and by mass media imagery in films and literature, about the relationships of money and spirituality.
Spiritual Stereotypes
You can probably conjure up images of pure and holy people quite easily—monks with begging bowls, Indian ascetics, priests and nuns from every tradition who have renounced money in order to live a more spiritual life free of worldly distractions. Images of Jesus expelling money changers from the temple and quotations about money being the root of all evil and rich men having a tough time entering heaven are quite familiar. Such images and ideas help create stereotypes that equate poverty and spirituality in the minds of many.
I don't like money, actually, but it quiets my nerves.
—Joe Louis
Managing your money begins by acknowledging any mixed feelings, guilt, or negativity you may have about money and about those who possess it in abundance. If you associate voluntary poverty with humility, goodness, and spirituality, then with what do you associate wealth? It is worth pondering, because what you believe about money will determine in large part your effectiveness in acquiring it.
Money, Movies, and Mass Beliefs
For centuries, literature, theater, and more recently film have depicted the rich as villains and the poor as everyday heroes, as if wealth were a sin and poverty a virtue. Take, for example, “A Christmas Carol,” which contrasts the misery of the frugal, hardworking, but humorless Ebenezer Scrooge with the poor, loving, but happy Cratchit family. Or take George Bailey, the eternally poor and struggling family man in It's a Wonderful Life, who embodies the spirit of sacrifice, duty, and love, while the rich Mr. Potter, who owns the bank and most of the town, is the epitome of evil and greed. Film and literature do, of course, portray kind, industrious, generous, and moral wealthy people, but such imagery is more the exception than the rule.
Popular entertainment themes associating poverty with spirituality create unexamined assumptions that take on the power of hypnotic suggestions. Simple awareness of such beliefs can help to clear them. When you know you have a negative belief about money, you are free to examine it and discard it if you choose. No such choice exists for unconscious beliefs or unexamined attitudes.
A Financial Wake-up Call
over the years I've had to deal with my own money issues—to overcome profound money aversion, fear, and negative beliefs. Several years ago, while channel surfing, I paused to watch Barbra Streisand on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Ms. Streisand was graciously giving the viewing audience a tour of her home. She stopped in one room to show a very thick, intricately designed, custom-made wool carpet that Would cover the entire bottom floor of my house—and probably cost as much. She lifted the corner of the carpet to reveal a marble floor beneath with exactly the same design as the carpet, so that when the rug was sent out to be cleaned, she could still enjoy the beautiful design. I found this display of wealth ostentatious and offensive; I righteously calculated how many people could have eaten for a year for the cost of the marble floor alone.
I was, at that moment, unaware of my own negative associations, prejudice, and naive judgments. I might have then turned away and gone about my business, but in an instant of self-reflection I realized that I didn't know Barbra Streisand at all. In fact, all I knew about her for certain was that she had earned her money through years of hard work, talent, and creativity. Later I learned that she had raised and donated more money to charities in one year than most people give in a lifetime.
I also realized that if I felt so negatively about her just because she had a lot of money, then I certainly wasn't going to attract much of it. As a matter of fact, during this period of my life I was working two jobs to support my family, earning about $7 an hour. I had to work eleven-hour days just to get by and was going deeper into debt with no light on the horizon.
That night, when I saw my beliefs clearly and realized that I had created my own obstacles, a door opened up inside me. And with the goal of creating stability and sufficiency for my family (and the dream of one day starting a philanthropic foundation), I began to direct myself with the full force of my being to make good money, creating fulfilling work, providing a valuable service.
Unless you are independently wealthy or dependent on others, you will need to earn money to live in this world. And your needs will be determined by the choices you make—where you choose to live and whether you are single or supporting a family, for example. Some of us choose a life that requires a higher income, and others of us choose voluntary simplicity.
Mohandas Gandhi, a wise and courageous man who inspired millions of people in India and around the world—and who is often associated with voluntary poverty and simplicity—is often reported to have advised people to live simply, so that others may simply live. This sentiment is far better known than a comment attributed to a wealthy industrialist who supported Gandhi's cause: “It cost me a fortune to keep Gandhi simple.”
Managing your money doesn't require magic or miracles, but it does require an honest examination of the values, beliefs, and inner hurdles that may stand between you and sufficiency or abundance.
Reflections on Money
This gateway now leads through a long tunnel, like a hidden mine where random, multifaceted gems, reflections on money, sparkle from the crevices. (But watch your step!)
On Money and Worth
Before you ask for a raise, before a potential client asks, “How much do you charge for your service?” you should ask yourself, “How much is my time, my service, my talent, worth?” And you should come up with a clear and realistic answer that reflects the realities of the marketplace as well as a clear sense of your value, talent, and energy.
As your actions begin to flow from an expanded sense of innate worth, you accept, attract, and receive more from the world—not just money, but friendship, love, and attention. As you become aware that you have been actively declining such blessings, you put out a welcome mat where before you had a “Not Home” sign. You become willing to accept and to work for every kind of abundance and respect; more important, you are willing to enjoy it. And since our subconscious minds communicate with one another through body language and other subtle cues not yet fully understood, other people begin to support you in new ways as they begin to get “Yes, call me, my star is rising” messages instead of “No, I don't see myself doing that” signals from you. As you manage your money, you manage your life.
It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.
—Oscar Wilde
Money forces you to confront your sense of self-worth. It takes courage—because of the fear of rejection—to place a fair but generous price on your time and accept only those clients who value your service. Of course it has to be a realistic fee that the market will bear. Yet in any service field, some will charge more and some will charge less.
Don't Charge Less—Give More
In my own seminars and trainings, I have always worked toward the goal of giving participants more than their money's worth. When you dedicate yourself to raising the top (quality) rather than lowering the bottom (cost), everybody wins. If you charge very little (and give back in kind), everybody loses. Bump up the energy level! Ask a fee that says, “I value what I offer.” (If you don't, why should anyone else?)
Larry, who had a small tax accounting firm, kept his fees low “in order to be competitive,” he told me. Indeed, he did attract those customers looking for low-end fees. He confided that he had received many complaints about his fees nevertheless. One day, after studying the fees of other accountants in the area, Larry raised his fee toward the mid- to upper range. At the same time, he upgraded his services, moved to a nice office nearby, redecorated, and hired another assistant.
He lost nearly half of his clients—nearly all of the complainers, he noticed. Within a year their spaces were filled with clients who appreciated people who value their work. Since then his client base has doubled with a different kind of clientele. And he rarely receives a complaint about his fees.
Don't charge less. Give more.
Be wary of the idea “I don't want to charge so much that people of limited means can't afford me.” Charge enough so that you can afford, if you choose, to subsidize those of limited means. During the fifteen-year period I taught the Courage Training, I charged enough so that I would attract stable, energetic people from all walks of life. The price turned away the vaguely curious or uncommitted. (One young man saved a dollar a day for three years to attend.)
Money as Energy
I can use my physical energy to tune up my car, or I can take some currency or a piece of plastic out of my wallet and use that energy to get the job done. Money can get the lawn mowed, the house cleaned; it can create Christmas presents, pay school tuition, or provide food for children in Africa and around the world. It can also create a stable foundation from which to climb out and extend yourself in the spirit of creativity and service in the world.
However, as with any form of energy, money needs to move, to be channeled wisely and well. Like any form of energy, money is morally neutral. It can serve the highest and the lowest. Money doesn't care who has it; it has no prejudices. As energy, money only amplifies whoever and whatever you are.
Guilt and the Dollar Dynamic
Some wealthy people feel guilty when they think of others who live below the poverty line. Since money is energy, do you also feel guilty if you have more energy than your neighbor? Does having more energy make you a bad person? It's commendable to feel compassion for less fortunate people in the world. But are you not to eat until all the world is fed? Will you help others by remaining poor? Suffering is a fact of life. Even if we are able to end chronic hunger in the world, there will always be people who, for any number of reasons, have less than others.
By first creating sufficiency for yourself, you can better assist others and be a force of light in the world. When you pay a bill you are supporting hardworking employees of that business; when you pay a gardener or, babysitter, or generously tip a server at a restaurant, you are offering support, trust, and appreciation.
The Eastern Solution: Escape from the Material World
While the Western solution to managing money is to pursue it, the Eastern solution is to avoid it. Disillusioned with the outward drives of the Western world, some of us turn to Eastern spiritual philosophies and practices, confusing the idea of letting go of attachments with giving away all earthly goods.
Detachment is much more challenging than simply divesting yourself of all external possessions, because it means giving up your internal possessions, preferences, and points of view. The practice of detachment means seeing things as they truly are, in proper perspective. Giving everything up doesn't mean giving everything away. Rather, it involves living a simple, functional, ordinary life without clinging, craving, or holding on.
