Why Hoarding by the Few is Death One of the principles of money is that it is fluid and dynamic.. It’s purpose is to go on moving from hand to hand, and that is why it is called currency. Greed and hoarding, destroys its whole purpose and the current becomes stagnant. The more money flows the richer a society, as it supports the unfolding of human potential of all of it’s citizens rather than for just a few. When it flows, money can be a servant of all rather than a master by a few. When there is only fiscal liberty for a few, it creates a hierarchy in society from which follows competition, ambition, dependence, helplessness, possessiveness, power over others, oppression and even tyranny. In our current society, money has stopped circulating. If we liken it to blood, we can see that when blood is circulating it is life. But when blood has stopped, it is death. It is the same with money. Money stopped is death. The more money circultaes the more there is. The more money is used the more it circulates, and the richer the society is. The fact that almost all of the money has been hoarded by a few- and it is getting worse not better- is leading to a death. Our money system, our society, and there are some who say even our species and/or planet earth cannot continue without the death of the organism. This is at the macro level. Now lets [...]
social collapse
The Rubber Is Meeting The Road
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 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 [...]
Money and Enlightenment
How I See What Spiritual Teacher Jed McKenna Has To Say and the Economic Crisis Are Related I have been reading Jed Mckenna’s Notebook which is the newest from Spiritual Teacher, although he would hate that title. I have read his other three books in what he calls his Enlightenment Trilogy: Spiritual Enlightenment The Damnedest Thing, Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment, and Spiritual Warfare. I have read and reread them all and loved them, even if he would regard me as someone waking up within the dream and not waking up from the dream. You can’t find him in Wikipedia; there is no picture of him on the website for Wisefool Press, his publisher (I would guess he is self-published); there is no mail or email address for the publisher- he does not want to be contacted it seems. But he definitely has something to say, that is necessary if you are at all serious about waking up. In his latest book, he also has some great things to say that is relevant to money and the spiritual journey, so I am dedicating today’s blog to quoting Jed’s book. Please enjoy. If you are intrigued, then by all means, order his books. they are the least thought provoking, and if you are open, life-changing. “Somehow everything has become flipped upside down. Not knowing of anything better, we have elevated the banalities of physical survival to the summit of human experience- eating, drinking, sensual pleasures, sex, mating, gathering- what pathetic consolations they are! [...]
Opting Out of Serfdom
Day to Day Living in the New Paradigm In my last two blogs I talked at length about predatory lending and the debt economy getting us into trouble as a nation and as individuals. We need to step out of the culture of easy money and magical thinking that allowed Ponzi schemes like Bernie Madoff- but not just him. If you look at the whole bubble created by the debt system, you could say the whole of the state of Florida was a Ponzi scheme (look at the details of their real estate bubble). You could say all hedgefunds and therefore the fund managers were a Ponzi scheme. You could say the whole country (supported by Greenspan and the Bush Administration) has been living a national Ponzi scheme. Maybe ( and I believe) the whole world economy has been a Ponzi scheme. Bernie Madoff was just the starting bell in this horserace. I have an acquaintance here in Marin County who thought he was a multimillionaire. He had a thriving tax preparation business. Then he got into the investment business so his tax clients could invest in pension plans. And then he invested his own earnings in Florida real estate. The whole thing (except his tax practice- as taxes, like death, are inevitable) has fallen like a deck of cards. Now he is deeply suffering from his delusion and is having great difficulty in accepting that. There are many people who are in the same boat and they are [...]