Day 34 - A Year of Spiritual Awakening - Money
/Lesson 34: You can look at money...
Saturday’s lesson takes on a view of money. Rather than thinking it’s paper/plastic and in a computer, can we see it as energy flowing. This is a very foreign concept to me – thinking about money like it is moving energy. If we can see it as energy, then we will lose the desire to worry how much we have.
I’m to think about how I view money, think about how much I need to have enough and if I’m sure about it. I’ll comment on this before meditating on it.
I view money as essential… especially growing up in western society. I’ll go as far to say it controls us. It truly does. I can’t eat or have a roof over my head without it. I used to be an over indulgent consumerist, over spending money I didn’t have and creating debt. In fact, I’m still reeling from this but taking more of a control on my financial future. At the moment, I don’t think I have enough because of the debt I created myself. It will take time, but I will get through it with some steps I’ve learned recently. Sometimes I worry that I won’t get through but I have to power through. I think like everyone else, it’d be nice to have more or in an ideal world, money wouldn’t exist and we could trade in skills, but those are just thoughts. I think I am quite fortunate over some people for sure, but it’s about breaking old habits for me and then I’ll feel comfortable in my own circumstance.
I got too relaxed in my meditation and fell asleep. Whoops! Anyway, I could see myself just throwing money away – quite literally, cash in my hand and I was just throwing it. Pretty much who I can be if not in check. In my meditation, I was walking through a city where everyone looked like mindless drones: we go to work, we work for money and it’s a forced daily routine. The visual was very much robotic. It was like we are so caught up in our routine that we forget to interact with each other, but it’s essential to our livelihood at the same time. I was also reminded the one thing money does for me that brings me joy, and that is travelling. Without money, I wouldn’t be able to see how other cultures live so that’s the upside. It’d be nice if somehow we could travel without spending so much to get there but that’s more a fantasy than anything.
I think I need work on viewing money as energy. I need to clear my debts to feel comfortable and my meditation seemed more like a warning to stop throwing it away. I don’t think we should just carelessly waste money on things we don’t need and that’s the message I have taken. Money is always going to be flowing of the sense of it comes in and goes out but we should still take control of how we manage it.