What a fabulous Thursday morning this past week with the Money, Work and Business teleclass group. This particular class, the third session, is the one directly on MONEY.
I have spent hours and hours doing The Work on Money, and it fascinates me as an entity, energy, thing, exchange. Money is wonderful! I love playing with it, having it, spending it, not having it, understanding it. Like life.
There was a time once when I woke up at night quite often, thinking about money with a sick stomach, spinning mind, anxious, nervous, imagining the scenario of losing my house, of packing up my stuff in boxes and driving it to my mother’s house to put in her basement.
Nowhere to live of my own! A failure! A terrible parent! An idiot!
Fear enters in whenever we feel scared, threatened, uncertain. When the images our mind is coming up with are frightening, we get very tense, very stressed…it feels like there is an anvil on our chest and we can’t breathe.
This does not have to be about money. It can be about a person. It can be about your boss, a lover, a child.
Here comes the fear, here comes the obsessive, repetitive thinking.
If all was well, if we really felt it was a friendly universe and we could trust this at a core level, right in the middle of this situation, then we would not wake up at night.
I knew back then already that my own thinking was the actual “thing” that was out of control. My thinking was panicked. The key was identifying what thoughts I was having very specifically that created such fear.
I wrote down what I believed Money would give me, if I had it, if it was mine. You can do this with anything. Substitute your target of desire! Sometimes it’s a person, sometimes it’s a new job, sometimes it’s youth, health.
Ooooh, if I just HAD THAT….then I would be peaceful, happy, content, OK, relaxed.
For some people, the great object of desire is spiritual enlightenment. Once I have that, I’ll be fine.
Are you sure?
“It’s not reality that matters, but what you’re saying to yourself about it.”~Anthony De Mello
I found that I could not be sure that having money would make me happy. In fact, I was quite sure I knew people with lots of money who were not. Could I skip the middleman, as Katie says, and be happy right from here, right now?
If you think you can’t….good. Welcome to exploring the amazing mind. Welcome to seeing where you argue with reality.
So, write down what you believe would make you happy, if you had it. Why would it make you happy? What would you really have, if you had that thing?
If I had money, I would be secure, safe, comfortable, calm, peaceful, generous, entertained, proud. I cannot have these things without the money.
If my father were alive, if my house were bigger, if I drove a better car, if I had a life partner, if my children were successful…THEN I would be excited, ecstatic, spacious, powerful, satisfied, satiated, adventurous. And not before!!
You see that from where you stand, right here in this present moment, you believe it is not good enough, it could be better….later.
Is that absolutely true?
The mind creates these images of how it will be in the future….soon, we hope, when it will be better. Right now, I am reading a book in the evening and then *PING* this imaginary picture enters that suggests eating some food would make things even better.
That little thought can grow into a torrential thunderstorm of longing, hoping, anger, fury, rage, despair. This life right here, right now, is not good enough, not full enough, not big enough, not fun enough, not rich enough.
This moment needs improvement. Something is wrong.
As soon as I stopped believing that I needed more money the minute I had that thought, my mind started to slow down. The images seemed to dissolve away.
The way the fear dissolved? I did the Work, I asked myself if my thinking was real and true. Was the impending disaster that I conjured in a split second of imagining actually going to happen?
Who would I be without the thought that I needed more money in order to be safe, successful, stable, or proud?
And if I turned the thought around to the opposite….in this world of duality….how would that idea fit? I DO NOT NEED MORE MONEY. Can I find ways that this is genuinely, actively true in this moment?
Am I safe, secure, generous, calm, peaceful right now? Could it be that there is enough of anything I thought there was NOT enough of?
Suddenly, or sometimes more slowly, that moment of waking up in the night that felt like a nightmare looked simple, quiet, non-eventful. Yes, I was safe. Yes, I was breathing. Yes, I was secure and stable. Yes, I was up to the challenge of living without lots of stuff (in fact it was incredibly fun).
In fact, there were amazing benefits. I had more free time. No going out for dinners, movies, workshops. I read. I spent whole days alone. I began to love my own company like I never had before.
Trusting in the flow of life….the Universe appeared to be friendly. Wow.
“We’re all looking for love, in our confusion, until we find our way back to the realization that love is what we already are. That’s all. We’re looking for what we already have.”~ Byron Katie
If you don’t get it and this doesn’t make sense….if it just DOES NOT seem like you already have what you’re looking for….write down why you are so unhappy, write down what is missing, and begin to inquire.
This pain you feel may be your gateway to freedom.
Love, Grace