This applies to more than money, but let’s focus on money. It has taken me ages to grasp that the behavior most people have around money stems from fear. The fear can have certain flavors – insecurity, greed, worry, compulsion, anger, stinginess – but I am discovering that the core driver of all these states is fear.

There are a million, billion justifications for this fear. I get it. I get how scary this subject feels. But none of the justifications are real. If you still your mind and question just one of the many beliefs you have about money, anchored in a (very) specific situation in your life, you will find that the issue is fear, not the money.

We think, “No! It is true. Look how much money I lost. Look how much other people have. Look how much I don’t have. What if I lose it all like ______? What if I end up on the streets?!!”
Yup. The ego is a trickster. On the issue of money, it will give you very real-seeming, terrifying scenarios. It will give you them in your mind’s eye over and over and over. Then you’ll hear more of the same on media. Then your spouse will echo them. Then your community. It all seems so real.

I grew up in what I describe as a Fear-Around-Money bootcamp. My home, my community. The conditioning was so intense. It seemed like everyone around me voiced the same beliefs and acted out the same behaviors, more or less. All were saturated with fear. Again, to one degree or another. My family was particularly fearful. Still, it can seem complicated because fear is what the society calls “common sense.”

It is still a fact in this world – for however long – that money or something of value to the buyer is what gets you necessities. Even if you live in the wilderness, as I do, unless you have free year-round food, water and heat, you still would need to be in perfect health your whole life and have no interests in anything that cost money to live something close to an effective money-free life. I could talk for hours about my thoughts on that subject, but the point for now is what is the consciousness you have towards money?

It is easy, easy, easy, easy to fool yourself. You have to have great courage and a willingness to face some icky, jagged, vulnerable-feeling states of mind and emotion without projecting them (onto other people, onto money, onto society) to uncover how you really regard it. You will face your true beliefs about what powers your life (hint: it is not God). You will question the nature of this Universe.