Money and sex are two of the most taboo subjects in our society, which means that few people are willing to go deep into a conversation around their money, their worth, how much they do or do not have, how good they are with money, their earning capacity, money stories, money shame….spending habits…
Our relationship with money is pre-loaded with cultural conditioning, ancestral stories, parental overtones…plus our own relationship with our worth and value.
To form a clean and clear relationship with money may be a life’s work…and..in truth, it is exceedingly rare. People with great sums of money are usually as equally unreconciled as people with little.
Because we live in a society that reduces all value to the metric of money, money has been elevated to a God like status. It is to the alter of money that leaders of business and industry bow in worship. Money has become the central organising principle around so much of our life, from politics to education to fame, worth, love…people stay in really bad relationships because of money, or really bad jobs. We think a leader who has more money has somehow earned a greater right than someone with lesser money. We have allowed politics to be brought by the highest bidder. And we give those with money magical powers. They can avoid tax, make their own rules, and to a large extent, live completely separate lives to those who do not have so very much.
Yet money is only an exchange of value, and not value itself. We have been literally worshiping an illusory God.
Because of my own personal commitment to my own wholeness, and because I have had such a troubled relationship with money, I set out to understand money and my relationship to it. This journey has taken a concentrated 27 plus years. You can read my ideas on money in the 5 part series, here and on debt, here.
Using the powerful tool of Integral Accounting, we do consider money, but only as one dimension of six.
Money is great. It is useful, it is required. But it is not the whole story.
Integral Accounting in its application teaches us that there are rich ‘other’ dimensions of value. And that often when we think we need more money, the truth is we do not. What we need is right there, existing in other dimensions of value, often completely unrecognised because we have been so highly conditioned to only see money.
When we do the Integral Accounting audit for money, we include all forms of money. Cash, debt, bonds, contracts, trade credits, futures, equity.
After 27 years I can say I have a wonderful relationship with money. Money and I are partners. I neither fear its lack, or its abundance. It does not define or identify me. While I still have much to learn, I do so from a place of curiosity, adventure and love.
Can you say that about money?
To read Part 2. What is a commodity?
To read Part 4. Knowledge, gnosis and the pain of being discounted for your knowledge
To go to Part 6. Technology= the systemic treatment of art and craft into reason and words.
For the Source on Money as viewed through the Integral Accounting lens.
Photo credit:
Jeremy Schultz via Compfight
