The Spiritual Opportunity Of Our Money Pain I really like this guy , Matt Taibbi, who writes for the Rolling Stone magazine. He again has a great article this month on the continued betrayal of the American people. The article is called “Wall Street Strikes Back” and the table of contents description on Page 5 tells a lot of the story: “Congress looked serious about financial reform until the country’s biggest banks unleashed an army of 2000 paid lobbyists”. In the body of the article, Matt talks about the watering down of the Restoring American Financial Stability Act and ends with a few points that In feel are important to mention here. On the positive side, the bill will curb some of the predatory lending I have spoken a lot about. But the more important issues the bill was supposed to address, like breaking up large risky banks, requiring financial giants to set up a fund to pay for their own bailouts, and probably most importantly, forcing the derivatives market to be more transparent, won’t happen in any meaningful way. So the $600 trillion derivatives market will continue to work without the light of day, and that in my mind is criminal. Matt’s conclusion foretells the continuing impact on the American people- “a war the once looked winnable will continue to drag on for years, creating more havoc and destroying more lives before it is over”. So the results of the financial fiasco keep getting put back onto the shoulders of [...]
money
Concentric Circles of Recession
We Are Not Out of the Falling Bubble Woods Yet. I heard a joke the other day, that might have been funny if it weren’t so close to the truth. “The last will and testament of the Icelandic financial sector requested their ashes be spread over Europe”. I loved what my husband’s friend said in response to hearing that: There was a special bequest to England who replied “We said cash not ash”. But this is what is happening not just around Iceland debt, but debt in general all over the world. The debtors are being blamed, and the creditors have been given cash. The US government bailed out the banks- who were responsible for making bad loans, but gave nothing to the debtors. In effect, the bankers have been paid for their bad loans. As our economy is shrinking, these same creditors are grabbing as much as they can and in the process making the debtors feel guilty. The creditors are more guilty. They supported predatory lending- lending knowing that the debts could never be paid. It is another chapter in the wealth grab. The 10,000,000 Americans who are probably going to lose their homes didn’t cause the problems, but they and the American people whose taxes funded the bailouts are going to be left holding the bag. The economist Michael Hudson has likened the American democracy at the moment to an Oligarchy. He said that 25 years ago, 1% of the American public owned 27% of equity income, [...]
The Money Split
The Spiritualization of Money At the core of all great spiritual teachings is the recognition that as human beings we have two natures. In Hindu, this is talked about in terms of Shiva and Shakti. In Buddhsit Mahamudra, it is the union of luminous clarity and emptiness (Shiva) and Phenomenon. In Dzogchen, it is the union of awareness and phenomenon. In Tantra it is the Masculine (Emptiness) and Feminine (Form). In Christianity, it is the Father and Holy Ghost (Shiva) and the Son. In The Diamond Approach, it is the Absolute and the Logos or Realization/actualization. The shakti/phenomenon, form, the Son and actualization all point to us as human beings incarnate, as embodiment. So what is implied is that human life has meaning only insofar that we consciously and intentionally occupy two worlds, the spiritual and the human, at the same time. And that meaning appears at the place where these two worlds meet these two worlds- in the relationship between the two worlds. In our secular world, where we have not recently (I mean in terms of a few centuries) by and large not paid attention to that relationship, that meaning has largely been lost. I thought this was a good subject to cover today, because we have just passed Easter, where we have been reminded of the divinity of Jesus and hopefully also, of our own spiritual nature. So, let’s begin by looking at the symbolism of the cross. We have a horizontal and vertical segments meeting at the [...]
The Wall Street Hustle
Opting Out of the Big Bank Fiasco and Moving Toward Self Sufficiency The Rolling Stone March 2009 issue had an article by Matt Taibbi called Wall Street’s Bailout Hustle in which he likens the financial crisis bailout to a street con and makes a very good case of it, taking us step by step through the con game led by Goldman Sachs. In the article he makes a case that the big banks aren’t just pocketing the trillions that were given them to rescue the economy, but that they are engineering another crash so that they can continue to feed at the trough. There is one paragraph that is such a concise summary, it is worth quoting: “Take massive sums of money from the government, sit on it until the government starts printing trillions of dollars in a desperate attempt to restart the economy, buy even more toxic assets to sell back to the government at even more inflated prices,- and then, when all else fails, start driving toward the cliff again with a frank and open endorsement of bubble economies”. He goes on to say, that” con artists have a word for the inability of victims to accept that they have been scammed. The call it the “true believer” syndrome.” It is time to quit believing that someone else- the government, the banks- are going to take care of you and will have your best interests at heart. It is time to wake up, smell the coffee and take [...]
Money and Inquiry
Applying the Spiritual Method of Inquiry to Money One of the themes that I have continued to talk about is taking responsibility? It seems like an easy concept, but it is actually something very difficult to do. Mostly we like to blame- our mates, our parents, our investment advisor, the government, the economy, Bernie Madoff etc. etc. What responsibility means is taking the 180 degree turn- instead of looking at the other, we begin to look at ourselves. This is the turn talked about in the spiritual journey- you can’t start until you begin to turn inwards. But it is not just those on the spiritual journey who need to take responsibility- we all do. It is required if the planet is going to survive- the argument about that has moved from “if” to “when”. There is no “other” that is going to do that for us. It is necessary that each one of us take responsibility for how we are living our lives and what we are contributing to the planet. If you confront yourself truthfully, you can know for yourself. Of course, we are influenced by the culture we live in. One measurement of the mean responsibility (average) in your culture is the carbon footprint, which you, as an individual, are contributing to. And the carbon footprint in the US is the second largest in the world. The only country higher is Australia, and that is because of the exportation of their natural resources, not because of their [...]
The Future is Now
Are Being Spiritual and Not Debting for the Future Contradictory? I received this email last week: “In an excellent post last April on credit card debt, you stated bluntly, ‘Debt steals from the future.’ I’m in full agreement, but I fear this line of reasoning falls on deaf ears to many debt-laden people who’ve imbibed spiritual literature over the years that emphasizes “present-moment awareness.” They don’t want to hear about the future, don’t want to think about it. For them, that 60s song by The Grass Roots, ‘Let’s Live for Today’ has been a lifelong mantra. Do you have any thoughts on how to overcome this resistance to the notion of focusing on the future? You hint at this when you write, ‘You will become more present, and not living in the bondage of your future’ by avoiding debt… but what exactly should someone tell himself or herself while climbing out of debt to ‘become more present’?” This is an excellent question, but not a simple one to answer. There are many levels on which to answer this question. I am going to approach it for the purposes of this post from two perspectives. Firstly from the perspective of Right Action. We are where spirit has materialized, so you cannot separate yourself from that which is physical or material. So being in the moment, in the now of our experience, does not negate the laws of relative reality, of physical manifestation. And there are patterns that manifest regarding money just [...]
Money and the Patriarchy
The Challenge to the Old Masculine Mentality The masculine is what turns the soul outward to affect the world. But in order for it to help us through the global crisis, which is really a wake-up all to humanity, it must escape the defining cultural influences to which it has been subjected for centuries. The forces of the old masculine approach ( what I call the patriarchy) are being challenged by a the arising of the feminine and a new masculinity that uses its strength to support and empower the community. What I call the patriarchy is really a magnification and distortion of the true masculine qualities. True masculinity is about achievement in the world, but not cut off from consciousness and in partnership with the feminine. The old patriarch loves the rigidity of the law, the power of the hierarchy, and the tyranny of oppression. The difficulty is that old ways die hard and our institutions including banks, government, church, and corporations are still easily controlled by this mentality. People who are in these institutions are not objective, because their own interests are being served- so whether consciously or unconsciously, they are enmeshed in this mindset. You just need to look at the bonuses Wall Street keeps paying out to see the truth of this. These people have not reflected on their inner lives, and the values that would flow from such a reflection. Instead, they act through layers of rationalization, manipulation, greed, and hidden agendas which (I hope for [...]
Money and Fear
The Survival Instinct and Money One of the opposing forces in addition to the usual resistances and psychodynamic issues we have to contend with on our journey of realization are the animal instincts. They are powerful drives underneath our consciousness that want to preserve life on an animal level and are not concerned as consciousness is with the mysteries. But they often run us. And often without us knowing it. I am talking about the survival, social and sexual instincts. And all of them affect our relationship to money. For example, the social instinct can play out on the ego level as superficiality of relating, need for dominance and control, social climbing, status, image, the need for fame, or a dependency need. The sexual instinct can play out on the ego level as pleasure and compulsion. And fear, aggression, terror, worrying and obsessions are part of the survival drive. This last is the most primitive of the drives. Everyone wants to survive and live in some level of creature comfort. In fact, the majority of the world is dominated by this. You can easily see how our money is tied up in these. We don’t want to suppress the instincts as they are our life force- the expression of creative dynamism and not just the animal. We can’t be free of them, but rather want to free them to become a support and a protection for our spiritual journey. We do that by clarifiying them, liberating them from their [...]
Facing Limitation Is Being Human
The Economic Crisis as Human Growth in Conciousness As I spoke about in my last blog, the chase for more is better has been a defining characteristic of our culture for some time. One of the hallmarks of this is the resulting “ubiquitous frenzy , arising from the almost universal discomfort of being with oneself. Everyone involved in this chase has been exploiting the present moment as a stepping stone to new experiences or pleasures that will keep them from having to feel our discomfort. We have become attached to our escapes from ourselves. This has become such an expectation of our culture, that Obama and the present government administration has been trying to bail out the centralized money system in an attempt to let us keep the “American Way”. It’s failing. It was doomed to fail. And not just becuase of the economics involved. I do follow those. I have made reference before to those I trust on that front, for example Michael Hudson who wrote “The Financial War Against Iceland” and many other articles over the years of great insight and wisdom and also Catherine Austin Fitts of Solari.com. But the economics is not my job. My job is one of consciousness, and to bring that to our money. From my perspective, the bailout was doomed to fail because a new consciousness is necessary for the survival of the planet, and us. That means we can no longer run from our discomfort. If we had chosen a [...]
The Answer To Our Credit Crisis
The Antidote to Greed in the Economic Downturn In my last post I talked about leaving the chase for more is better and a sense of deprivation which fueled that chase and start living in a sense of sufficiency. I also said this would take a shift in consciousness. In the November 10 Newsweek, in the Article, A Darker Future For Us, by Robert Samuelson, he talked about how Americans have been “progress junkies”. That is part of what I believe allowed us to be asleep at the wheel around the greed, miscalculation and the subsequent economic ruin of many Americans, and maybe America itself. The recession will end, but it won’t be a recovery to previous rates of growth. People are going to feel poorer, because their “sluggish income gains (will) get siphoned off into higher taxes, energy costs, and health spending.He says the we are about to begin a time of what he calls “affluent deprivation” which he says is a state of mind. I believe that we can, and need to move from a sense that without growth we will be in deprivation. It’s costly to consume out of a sense of deprivation. We get caught up in wanting more-bigger-faster stuff and then have to go back to earn the money to pay for it. And we are not really satisfied. What we really want is rest, time., money and connection. Jacob Needleman talks about how our capitalist society creates ever new desires. And the ease of [...]