The 3 Great Spiritual Lies About Money

TOPANGA, Calif. - May 29, 2019 - PRLog -- Money is a problem, because it seems both very important and also a little nasty.

Abundance simply means a large amount — a more-than-enoughness. But the term in connection to mindset was originally popularized in the late 80's, by Stephen Covey in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

An abundance mindset in Covey's original sense is one in which the goods of the world, especially "successes," are seen as not scarce. Covey's contention is that people who succeed at a high level often transcend the experience of competition for finite resources and rewards.

The popular meaning of "abundance mindset" today is a little different than that. It's the lovechild of Covey's term and the Law of Attraction teachings exemplified in Rhonda Byrne's book The Secret. Law of Attraction teachings are based in the belief that the mind creates reality, and thus that positive thoughts create positive realities; and so the "abundance mindset" born of these two frameworks is one in which success is attained through a relentless commitment to thoughts about one's success — ideally with the line between future and present success being blurred as a result of actively perceiving the unlimited bounty of reality.

This kind of abundance mindset doesn't sound like that terrible a thing. Thinking positively, perceiving bounty — what could be wrong with that?

Well, a lot of things. The two most important are that (a) it's half of the truth and (b) it's appallingly rude to the subconscious.

(a) It's half of the truth
Things are finite. Perceived lack isn't merely a delusion; it's grounded in a very real aspect of existence. There are currently a finite number of dollars in your bank account. There are a finite number of square feet in your house. There are a finite number of breaths in a human life.

All great art and beauty is born partly from this finitude, and the sense of limit that accompanies it. Love owes its urgency to death. Innovation is inspired by insufficiency. Songs derive their sweetness from the longing born of brevity.

Read a single Shakespeare sonnet and try to maintain a pure abundance mindset. To focus entirely on the bounty of life is to either ignore or deny half of it — the half perhaps most responsible for its breathtaking beauty.

(b) It's appallingly rude to the subconscious
It may be true that the mind in some way creates reality. Whether you're a cognitive-behavioral therapist, a scientist observing that all of perceived reality is a kind of brain-born hologram, or a hermetic witch crafting your world by crafting your soul, the idea carries some real weight.

But thoughts are conscious. And the conscious mind is a tiny sliver of the mind. To use conscious brute-force to try to will the world into a new shape that your subconscious disagrees with — and it mustdisagree, if your mind creates your reality and your reality is diverging from your conscious desires — is incredibly disrespectful to your subconscious.

And, given the kind of power that the subconscious mind seems to have, you may want to think twice before aggressively bossing it around.

Spiritual Lie #3: "You need to ________"
I used to spend money as soon as I made it. As a result, I would oscillate between lavish living and literally eating out of trash cans.

I have friends and clients who have never experienced anything like this. They were raised to budget, to save, and to maximize financial security at all costs.

It's a good thing that there are mentors in the world trying to heal people's relationship with money. But doing so by suggesting the exact same path of healing to each person is insane.

A woman who has compulsively saved since she was 12 will not have her financial life significantly improve by taking on a rigorous budget-setting system. And a man who has always compulsively spent everything he's made will not benefit by being told to "spend as if you had your dream income."

One's relationship to receiving, to generosity, to debt, to risk, to planning, to work, to love — all of these things, and many more, are woven into the practical and psychological financial system of a person's soul.

And that means that any truly useful prescription for practice needs to take at least some of these things into account. "You need to just appreciate what you have"; "you need to follow your desire and buy everything you want"; "you need to make a vision board with all your hopes and dreams" — each of these suggestions may have some wisdom in it. But to simply practice one blindly as a cure-all is like eating the mysterious pills from your grandmother's medicine cabinet every time you get any kind of sick.

So how do we treat money instead?
Well, that depends on exactly who you are and exactly what you want.

But whatever the answers to those two questions, the most effective approach is guaranteed to be an honest one.

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