My hands are shaking as I write this column.
I’ve just watched myself almost succumb to a tendency we have in our society to look upon those who gift money to us, or are planning to do so, with unusual or special deference. I think we call it, at its worst, kowtowing.
In this current exploration of financial wayshowing that I’m doing, I’m seeing issues being magnified by wealth. All the dysfunctional ways we have with money are right here, inside me, as well as in others. And they’re all coming out.
I handled the situation. It isn’t about that. It’s about the craziness that having money (or the prospect thereof) induces in us all.
I need to do something to emerge from the last vestiges of any susceptibility to being controlled by a love of money. I need to commit myself, declare myself, and take a stand. So please hear this as an act of emergence and not as applying to anyone.
That having been said, it’s also a very large cautionary note to those who want to deal financially with me in future. I need you to know this about me and I need to say it publicly:
I cannot be bought.
In my mind’s eye, I’m looking at all the misery my grandfather caused our family by dangling wealth in front of us if we’d do his bidding. (1) Then when my Mother said “No,” he equally made a show out of denying our family that wealth. “You had a pot of diamonds in your backyard,” he wrote my Mother, “and you traded it for a hill of beans.” (2)
Well, that hill of beans was my religious freedom. (3) For all that I’ve been able to write on the purpose of life and the cross-cultural nature of the Trinity, which I wouldn’t have been able to write otherwise, thank you, Mom.
I’ve seen how much damage ill-used wealth can do. Ill-used, it undermines relationships. It will not undermine me or mine. (4)
So I’m putting everyone on public notice. If you deal with me around wealth, your integrity better be in. No kidding.
You’d best be over your lack mentality because that causes all kinds of problems for others who have to deal with you.
You’d best be past manipulating with wealth, seeking deference, or expressing entitlement. (5)
Let’s all save ourselves embarrassment. Let’s all grow up and mature – together. We’ll be handling large sums of money. It’s time to let all the old issues go and get that we’re responsible stewards of the Mother’s wealth now and that that means something. We’re not kids with cap guns any more, scaring everyone.
That’s it. That’s all I wanted to say.
I will not now or ever allow myself to be swayed by money. I will not now or ever allow money to come between me and a friend.
I am independent of money, which I use for the necessities of life and for the delight it brings. And, yes, as anyone who knows me can testify, my chief delight lies in giving.
Footnotes
(1) This is called a vasana (VAH-sah-nah). Let me trace the vasana for you here as its expression develops.
(2) The perceived injustice, the snapping point, the traumatic event that bent the twig and inclined the tree.
(3) My Grandfather insisted I be bar mitzvahed and dangled money in front of my parents. I didn’t want it or the commitment that it represented and so my Mother turned him down. He denied us wealth, disinherited us, etc. Had I been drawn into the narrowness of my religion in those days, I don’t think my intellect would have survived. I was allowed religious freedom.
The reaction to the original traumatic incident is defiance. I have a vasana of defiance of wealth. This vasana would be filed in the mind’s memory banks under “Defiance.”
(4) As a result of a vasana going off, we reach a conclusion: Ill-used money undermines relationships. And we make a decision that will govern our future conduct, even though we won’t remember it: I will not allow it to undermine mine.
I’m laying bare the structure of a vasana here, in the moment.
What you’re seeing happen in this article we used to call “having a stack attack,” “going Vesuvius,” or “going nuclear.” This is the eruption of a vasana in real time.
Archangel Michael once said that not all anger was bad. There was what he called righteous anger:
“There is a place for righteous anger, my friend. When you show those around you how to do that in a way that is balanced and not hysterical, you are teaching very well.” (Archangel Michael in a personal reading with Steve Beckow, through Linda Dillon, May 16, 2011.)
I hope he’s right.
(5) The vasana has two silver linings: (1) I’m not afraid to set boundaries around wealth, and (2) I’m not afraid to defy or reject wealth. Its downside is that it’s still very much a live volcano.