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 [...]
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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 [...]
Serfdom in the Global Economy
Obama Bailing Out the Banks In my last post, I talked about debt from the point of view of the individual getting off the wheel of bondage. Today I want to talk about debt again, but from the point of view of the Macro. Why? Because we can’t talk intelligently about our own money actions without talking about the canvass upon which these money actions are being played. Also, because we can’t really be conscious with money without this knowledge. And finally, we won’t really know what right action is. With respect to what is going on, both in our country, and in the bigger field of the world, I have run into two very powerful articles this recently. One was entitled ” Financial War Against Iceland” by Michael Hudson. Michael is a Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri. He is also a Wall Street analyst and president of the Institute for the Study of Long-term Economic Trends. So he knows what he is talking about. I have been reading his articles for years about the true effects of the US Treasury policies and the resulting inevitable current financial crisis. His is a voice of intelligence, true intelligence, not just intellectual analysis, in a sea of self- serving rhetoric. The other article was “Resist Or Become Serfs” by Chris Hedges. Both of these articles talk about the bondage of our creditor society. The real issue in this economic crisis should be overall the health of [...]