Dearest readers,
Many people say that money is but a form of energy. That everything is energy. Yet in our current paradigm, money seems to rule our lives and holds for many the energy of fear. Fear of not having enough, fear of not being able to live out our true talents, desires, dreams. Money is, more often than not, the currency of bondage. We allow ourselves to be controlled by a system that does not hold our best interests, both individual and collective, at heart.
Ursula K. Le Guin, the science fiction author, essayist, poet, and feminist questions our entire economic system of unlimited growth in her book No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters in an essay entitled “Clinging Desperately to a Metaphor”. At the head of the essay, she quotes Richard Falk from an article in Al Jazeera published February 22nd 2011: “Unless the people benefit, economic growth is a subsidy for the rich.”
Le Guin questions unlimited growth as a model for a society: “Capitalist growth, probably for at least a century and certainly from the turn of the millennium on, has been growth in the wrong sense. Not only endless, but uncontrolled – random. Growth as in tumor. Growth as in cancer.”
She continues to express that our economy and planet are deathly ill, as we have deeply disturbed the natural harmonies of our bodies, our ability to live in harmony with ourselves and one another, as well as with nature. When money, the currency of exchange, becomes a source of terminal illness, when do we do to release ourselves from the bondage of a system which makes us all sick, stressed, unhappy, and which endangers our collective survival and well-being?
Personally, I have always valued freedom over wealth. Intuitively, I always knew I couldn’t handle working a conventional job more than two or three days a week, and that the rest of my time had to be devoted to being creative and living on my own timeline. When I began to work full-time, I felt incredibly unhappy, stressed, and out of balance. I have always preferred to have less stuff and more free time. Freedom is the currency of happiness for me.
Nature offers us her abundance every day. If we slow down and choose simplicity, we find (I have found) that we need much less than we have been conditioned to require as necessity. Simplicity is the way to freedom. And freedom is the pathway to happiness, health, and to a life well-lived.
Advanced civilizations have no need for money. But more importantly, freedom requires a higher level of consciousness. Before we can all enjoy equality, the free expression of our talents, and to value all life forms, including the consciousness of the planet, we must raise our own awareness and release all aspects of the old, conditioned thought patterns that hold us enslaved in the old paradigm of duality.
Our current system values money, power, and masculinity above all. It allows these concepts to dominate our lives. It refuses to acknowledge the rightful place of the divine feminine, and so we drudge through a life of uniformity with never enough time to dream, relax, play. Our lives are too structured. And the power that money brings us is not freedom. It is enslavement. We worry about what others have or what we don’t have. The system has created a system of debt, and we can never catch up. Pay it all off. We are never free. We can’t breathe.
More and more people want to step off that train of endless debt and meaningless needs and desires. Yet there are still some huge obstacles to confront. Why must we pay for our homes, for a place to live, rest, sleep? Why must we pay taxes to a government which wages endless war and whose immoral imperatives protect only the very wealthy and rarely the common good of people, animals, and the planet? Why must someone more powerful than we own pieces of the Earth, who belongs to no one but herself? Is this not a form of slavery? Why must we do work for, more often than not, self-serving corporations, giving away our most precious commodity – our energy and our personal power – in exchange for the necessities of life – food, shelter, healthcare?
Our basic freedoms were hijacked many thousands of years ago when the money system was created. All of humanity was enslaved, and our consciousness was carefully conditioned. We have willingly passed down this conditioning from generation to generation. We have listened to and believed in the propaganda that we are all fed every moment of the day, no matter what culture, religious, or governmental system we have been raised in. Every human being on the planet is a slave until we awaken and reclaim our freedom, which is the birthright we have all unconsciously renounced.
All artists speak for the right to be free. All indigenous peoples retain the somewhat distant memory of freedom, of what it was like to live free from the bondage of debt and duality. To know that being a part of nature requires a balance of masculine and feminine energies. To know that we are all connected to the consciousness of the planet and to the infinite wisdom of the source of all life. That all of this power and wisdom is contained within each of us, sleeping in our DNA.
As we begin to awaken from the deepest slumber, from thousands of years of domination by a handful of clever and very manipulative beings, we will begin to understand that our life and well-being belong only to us. We will begin to refuse to live as slaves, going to jobs that we hate, in exchange for food and shelter. The system of serfdom and destruction of the planet is about to collapse. Awakening means remembering. Remembering that the plants and animals are our family members, and that we owe them so much love and gratitude. Remembering our own power to create realities that we wish to experience and which make us feel happy and fulfilled.
Freedom is not something that someone outside of self gives to you. It is something that we each must claim, by reaching deep within our self. Striving to remember from the deepest reaches of the collective history of humanity, stored in our genetic structure. Freedom is what we each crave to experience. To wake up each morning when our body says “I have slept enough.” To play and dream, to create with pure intentions. To love self and others. To know that fear is a choice, and that we are each responsible for our creations.
Money will pass away from humanity as we ascend to a higher level of consciousness as a collective. It may take some time. It is a form of energy, a construct that was designed to keep us in line. To preserve the lineages, luxuries, and privileges of ruling classes. When we realize that we no longer need it, we will create a new way of living together that will honor the individuality, the gifts, and abilities of every human being as well as every living being on the planet and beyond. Once we learn to love and honor ourselves and remember our own power and responsibility to self and others, money will slip away and be forgotten. We will wonder why we spent so much time and energy worrying about not having enough of it to live. At that time, we will be free.
adamevenevenadam 