We can use our money to support the life that we want to live

As a result of the current economic crisis, we are being given the opportunity to figure out who we are and how to use our money to support the life that we want to live. The failing of our economic system is a direct reflection on a collective level of the degree of disconnect that we perpetuate in regard to money in our personal lives. The choices that we make now can change everything and we can choose to see what is happening as an opportunity or a crisis. It is our choice.

 

The economy has not fully hit bottom yet, although we are getting close. The final collapse is going to be sometime between the middle of May and the end of June and it will be primarily due to the banks failing. It is really straight forward if you think about it. The reason that the banks are still functioning is because they were loaned money by our government so that they could loan more money which temporarily stabilized the economy.

 

To put this into perspective, if you are having trouble with your personal finances and you re-finance your house that allows you to get caught up for a short time, but if whatever situation that caused you to get behind in the first place has not been resolved, then it is only a matter of time until you fall behind again. The same thing is what is going to happen with the banking system because the banks have been loaned money to make loans to people who are losing their jobs and cannot pay the money back.

 

So while has taken a few months for this to play out, the inevitable result is that the money that needs to be paid back to the banks is not there and that will further weaken the economy. It is really very obvious and logical from an economic standpoint and essentially there is no way that further destabilization of the economy will not occur based on what has already been set into motion.

 

We have all of the information that we need

We have to acknowledge the situation that we are currently in economically on an individual level as well as accepting the overall economic situation at face value. At this point, we pretty much have all of the information that we need to make informed choices and take appropriate action. You know personally what your financial situation is. You may not like it, but continuing to hope that the economy will improve before taking any action will only further disempower you and allow you to continue to be disengaged from the reality of your money as an extension of your energy.

 

It is really important to understand is that it is not only about you as an individual or simply about what the government needs to do; it is about the whole system being fundamentally flawed. While you may not be able to have a significant effect on the overall economic system at this point as an individual, is important that you take responsibility for what you are doing with your finances and how you deal with what is happening within the failing system in ways that you do have control over.

 

At the governmental level, many of the people responsible for implementing the needed changes to stabilize the economy are in denial and are looking for stop-gap measures rather than actual long term solutions. In meantime, crucial decisions required to avert the economy from de-stabilizing further are being discussed and debated instead of important decisions being made and action being taken to implement those decisions.

 

What can you do?

So with the situation as it is, what can you do? You can begin by honestly assessing your personal situation and taking action to be prepared for what might or might not happen to your finances. Trust what you see right in front of you. The key here is to truly be in the present moment and to take responsibility for your financial situation and to take the appropriate actions required for you to be financially stable.

 

From a spiritual or metaphysical perspective, this is what we have been preparing for all along. How many of you have been working with the concept of staying in the present moment? Has it occurred to you that the reason that you don’t like the present moment is that it is really uncomfortable? Right now most of you are mentally, physically, emotionally and financially uncomfortable in your lives.

 

The key is to put your life in order in a systematic way and preferably to begin with the issues that are making you most uncomfortable and for many of you those are your issues around money which are being triggered by the collective experience of an economic collapse. Many of you are also experiencing physical discomfort in your body and/or health issues as well as emotional discomfort in your relationships.

 

For many of you, your physical and emotional discomfort has been in evidence for awhile and by choosing to not adequately resolve and move through these issues prior to this point, you now have to deal with the economic stress on top of the other areas which are out of balance in your life.

 

Do not imagine that this is the most uncomfortable that you can get, because it isn’t. If you continue to refuse to take responsibility for the circumstances in your life which are simply a result of your own choices and actions, then the unresolved issues will continue to pile up until you do get uncomfortable enough to take responsibility. There is no one who can address and resolve your personal conflicts and challenges except you and there is no way that you are going to be able to stay in the present moment until you become comfortable in your own life.

 

Be accountable, not critical

So basically what you can do is to take responsibility for the choices that you have made up until this point and decide what you need to do next. Now we say take responsibility and you hear judge yourself. We mean be accountable, not critical. At the time that you made each of the choices you did to get to this point in your life, it was the best choice you could make at the time. You don’t get to go back and make those choices again. But you are not in that moment now, you are in brand new moment where you have never been before and you get to choose again.

 

The other part to this is that there is a tendency to tell yourself that since you obviously didn’t make such a good choice last time you are not sure that you can be trusted to make a good choice this time, so then you simply refuse to choose. Right now many of you find yourself in the situation where you don’t like what has happened; you don’t like your options; and you don’t trust yourself to make good decisions; and so you are no longer making proactive choices. You need to acknowledge that not making a decision is a choice itself and at this point that is going to be the most uncomfortable one that you can make.

 

This is your life and it is up to you how you choose to live it. The beauty of it is that you got here by making choices, good bad or otherwise and that is how you go on from here. So begin by telling yourself the truth about where you are right now. Seeing the situation as it is is crucial to being able to make accurate and effective choices about what to do next.

 

Another important aspect to consider in regard to the economic situation is that many of you have residual judgment towards the Bush administration and hold them responsible for the current state of the economy. Many of you also believe that it is up to the Obama administration to fix things. Both of those perspectives are disempowering on the individual level. President Bush did not get us into this predicament and President Obama cannot save us.

 

We are responsible for the choices that our government makes

We allowed the choices to be made that weakened our economy and we were informed each step of the way by the media. This is our country and we are responsible for the choices that our government makes. Where we currently find ourselves from an economic standpoint evolved over a long period of time and we let it happen right in front of our eyes. We need to let the governmental entities off the hook and not expect to be saved because this is not something that happened to us; this is something that we are part of.

 

Now granted, the economy is a big system and you are not likely to see any direct correlation with what you are doing on an individual level have any immediate effect at the governmental level right away, but you will be surprised at how quickly things change. All that you have control over is what you chose to do individually. Being responsible for ourselves financially is as important as being responsible for ourselves physically, emotionally and mentally. It is simply a part of being human.

 

Money is not going anywhere. Many of you would like to believe that eventually we will evolve out of the need for a financial system and we won’t have money anymore and then everything will be okay. That is not going to happen anytime soon and definitely not in this lifetime. While we are in physicality we require a way to exchange energy and money is a fine way to do that. There is nothing wrong with money. Money itself is neutral. It is our beliefs and fears around money that create the problems that we experience.

 

Money is simply a way to tangibly work with the exchange of energy

Money is simply a way to tangibly work with the exchange of energy. If we took money out of the equation and used bartering instead, we would simply transfer the issues that we have about money and project them onto the bartering system. The down side of that is that bartering is a much more personal exchange of energy and if we didn’t take responsibility for our personal issues with money we would have all kinds of new challenges when we removed the neutrality of money.

 

Money is simply a physical form of energy. It  is energy that we can tangibly touch. Many of you have said at one point or another, I wish I could see energy. I wish I could touch it. I wish that I could know it is real. You can! It’s called money. Once you acknowledge and resolve your issues around money, it will take the charge off of many of the financial challenges that you face.

 

To identify your beliefs and issues around money you don’t have to look too deeply because they are the challenges that you are struggling with right now in your life and which are being triggered by the current economic situation. You may believe that you don’t have enough or that you don’t want to have more than the people that you care about, or that you make bad decisions with money and it is these beliefs that are at issue, not money itself.

 

Make some different choices

You don’t need to spend a lot of time analyzing what your issues are. You don’t even really need to identify the issues per se, but you do have to recognize the patterns and the habits that you are repeatedly playing out in regard to money as a result of your beliefs and make some different choices.

 

Rather than spending a lot of time analyzing and examining your issues, you can simply change how you spend your money and allow your belief systems to change that way. For a lot of us, it is just that we spend more money than we have coming in and we have to cut back our spending in a few places. Now, there are things that we believe that we can’t live without and there are things we actually can’t live without. Learn to recognize the difference.

 

Give some thought to what it is that you are attached to in regard to the things that you can’t live without. This doesn’t mean that you can’t have them or can’t spend your money on them, just make sure that you are spending your money on what is really important to you; not what used to be important or what is important to someone else. For many of you there is a co-dependent factor in regard to how you choose to spend your money and for others of you choosing to spend your time taking care of someone else instead of yourself is literally costing you money.

 

It is up to you to choose how you will navigate through the current economic crisis and to recognize that you can be part of the solution and participate in the growth as we begin to rebuild our economy.

 

 

This information is excerpted from the first 10 minutes

of the Owning Our Economy Group Reading.

To order the full hour long CD of this reading visit the Order CDs page.