Something
Interesting is Brewing
It’s 9:30 AM. I’m in Barnes and Noble. I have 5 cents- which is in the bank- and no food. I have less than a quarter of a tank of gas (and I live in my car, I should add). And I feel kinda dirty.
For some reason, I don’t feel fear at all.
I don’t feel notably attached to money. I feel like if someone gave me $20 right now it’d be like, OK. I’d appreciate it. I’d be glad to go buy food with it. But it wouldn’t be like, “Wow-wee gee, this is amazing!”
It seems like, yeah, of course someone can give me $20. It’s normal.
I feel much safer and more cared for by the world now.
Everything seems so different now. I seem so clear.
Maybe I just woke up.
The End of Delusion
Perhaps I feel calmer about money now because I feel more comfortable with receiving it—not as a moocher, but as a genuine contributor.
At the very least, I’m getting there. I might not be at the front door, but I’m on the way.
In turn, receiving money feels more realistic because it makes sense that I would receive it if I am making a valuable contribution.
Ah. I feel like I just stepped into a level of greater understanding.
And that’s why I didn’t need a job, all that time. Because I didn’t want to do work that didn’t feel like a genuine contribution. I wouldn’t feel good about receiving that money. I wouldn’t really feel like I was being enabled to extract value in return. I would have felt like a moocher.
It’s all so clear now-- so clear.
The only way to make money continually as a moocher is to lower your consciousness. You have to blind yourself to the consequences and realities of your method of making money.
When you mooch, you can’t have wealth and high awareness together. You can only choose one.
That’s why I felt so conflicted.
All that time- all my life- I thought I was in touch with some larger reality about money… I was really just experiencing an inner conflict which was capable of being entirely changed.
My goodness. How blinded I was.
I feel like I have stepped into a new reality. I can feel good about myself all around. I can be aware and I can enjoy the material pleasures of life. There doesn’t have to be ANY guilt involved in doing so. I can genuinely feel like I deserve this.
My god. All those years I thought excess was so dirty and evil and unnecessary…
Now I see that a number of people who are wealthy genuinely deserve it. I am glad for them. I’m thankful for what they do. I’m glad they have earned a lot of money. They should. They can enjoy life freely, being highly-aware and self-loving and self-respecting all the while.
It is possible. In fact, it makes perfect sense.
I’m glad I sat for a while with the idea that I don’t deserve more money. If I tried to use positive self-talk on myself and run away from it, I wouldn’t have been able to come to this insight. Instead, I would still be trapped in self-delusion.
Now I feel like I really don’t need anything from anyone. I don’t need to try to get things out of people. I don’t have to look around anxiously and hope that maybe someone will hand me a dollar or a piece of fruit or something.
I just feel so chill now.
Goodness, I came to this level of understanding much more quickly than expected. When did I say that I was committed to taking care of myself and not taking from my parents anymore (with the exception of car payments, for the present)—like, yesterday? Maybe two nights ago at best?
Consciousness moves fast.
Commit to Humanness
The reason why this all is the way it is: money makes you more of who you already are.
If you’re evil, then you will use money to do evil. If you’re a programmer, you will likely use money to invest in your programming skills and projects. If you’re a competitive runner, you’ll use money to buy the best food and equipment you can (i.e. shoes, running clothes, a multitude of other things if you’re an ultrarunner) and to register for races.
It follows, then, that if you don’t particularly like or respect who you are, you won’t feel good about making money, and you will subconsciously sabotage your efforts to do so. The more discontent you are with aspects of yourself, the more you will hold yourself back from earning more money.
As suggested above, the solution to feeling unhappy or anxious about yourself isn’t necessarily to dispel those thoughts and then keep plowing ahead. If such thoughts are chronic, maybe they’re trying to tell you something.
Maybe they’re trying to tell you that you will feel better about yourself if you change—if you become a person you can respect.
Such change doesn’t happen all at once overnight. But you can get on a path that you deem respectable, and you can commit to staying on that path no matter what.
Please circle, highlight, and build a shrine around the no matter what. Don’t EVER lower your consciousness in order to make money.
EVER.
Why have I so long avoided getting a job? Because I haven’t been able to do that in a way that I can respect. Both times that I had a job, I felt like I was leeching off society. I was basically just twiddling my thumbs long enough for someone to send small amounts of money to my bank account. I was squandering my potential. I was wasting my time.
Whenever I received the paycheck, I didn’t feel good about it.
You know what I said the first time I got a paycheck? I don’t even want this.
I didn’t want that dirty money. I didn’t feel like I deserved it. Working harder at the same job wouldn’t have made me feel better about it. There was just no way to make those circumstances functional. The only way to fix that situation was to leave.
Jobs aren’t necessarily secure, either. I actually lost more money at my second (and last) job than I made.
So much for job security.
Even if that hadn’t happened, I’d still have no desire to get a job. I can’t say I’ve ever really wanted to—there merely were times when I thought I had to.
Anyway, do you see the positive feedback loop here? If you lower your consciousness to make money by trying to justify actions you would rather not take (i.e. work at a smelly job), you will limit your ability to earn a higher income, because you do not want to give more money to a person who wastes their life (i.e. you).
It matters how you make your money. For example, if you work for a company that sells unhealthy food and beverages, you ultimately make money by harming people’s health. With a reality like that constantly looming over you, why would you possibly want to make more money doing that?
The only way you can maintain and raise your income doing work you find useless or despicable is to blind yourself to the reality. You have to shut off your brain. You have to go dark. You have to rationalize—to make up any good-enough sounding reason, no matter how fluffy it is, to continue doing what you’re doing. You’ll say that you have to support your family. You’ll say you have to survive. You’ll attest that you don’t have a choice—that this is the only way.
You’re either a fool or a criminal. You’re a shell of a man. I could knock you over by poking you.
I could try reasoning with you, but there would be no point. You want to stay trapped in your boxed-in reality.
In that state of mind you won’t be able to figure out how to make a genuine contribution anyway. It’s not that you’re ultimately incapable. You have potential. In fact, you probably have skills, knowledge, and character traits that you can leverage right now. But you’ll be blind to the possibilities because your current fear-based way of doing things is keeping your awareness limited, and your brain foggy.
The people around you want you to think that you have to keep doing things this one, rigid way. They’ve gotten so used to you doing things the way you do, they want you to perpetuate that situation. So much do they want you to stay the same that they barely regard you as a person anymore. If they don’t see you as a slave, they regard you as a piece of furniture.
You don’t have to be reduced to the status of an old, mildewy couch. But if you want to be human, you must vow to step into the shoes of a human. You must take back your integrity. You must stand up for yourself, and cultivate self-respect.
There isn’t a particular way this looks. You have to decide on the path you’ll take for yourself. Don’t try to do the same things that I or anyone else does. You have to do what you do, in the ways that only you can do them.
You’ll have to continually listen to your gut instinct and consciously reassess your current path. You have to take a look at your inclinations, desires, and values. You have to deliberately become clear about what it is that you live for. All in all, you have to create a life that you enjoy and respect.
This requires an unbreakable commitment. If you really want to open yourself to the luxuries and beauties of life, you will have to do your best as a human being. Indeed, discipline equals freedom.
Obviously the point isn’t to spend all your time working so hard that your veins are about to pop. That’s probably what you’re doing right now. How well is that working out for you?
At the same time, it isn’t work in itself that’s wretched. The problem is never too much. It’s too much that you don’t want.
When you love and respect your work, it becomes just a thing you do—and gladly so. It isn’t a burden you shoulder or a constant dread hanging over you. Instead, work is a part of a beautiful life.
You can have all this- all that you want- but you have to mean it. You can’t merely try. You have to do, continuously.
You have to be a real human being. Leave robot land. Be you, or be doomed to a life of bitterness and hatred—a life which ultimately you will want to end.
Honor Thy Life
Money doesn’t have to be a “necessary evil.” Money will only feel evil as long as you choose to work for or embody evil. If you commit to doing work that your conscience agrees with, that you respect, and that brings you to life, then you will feel it is perfectly sensible for you to earn money. You won’t have to feel guilty about doing so. You’ll know that you deserve it—and we’ll all agree.
Work with honor. Honor the beautiful, human life that you have been given. Live consciously.
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