 Money. What's the first thing you think of or feel when you hear that word? Is it grief? Joy? Anger? Really, think about it. Does the word money inspire positive or negative feelings? Or maybe you're that one person in the bunch who's just like, meh. I recently did a survey with people who subscribed to the Spirit Science email list and asked a wide number of questions, one of which was, what do you struggle most with in life? The number one highest response was, you guessed it, finances. This told me it was time, at long last, that we have a candid, spiritual discussion about money. See if we can't change our relationship with physical resources. I mean, think about it. What would happen if there were like 100,000 benevolent spiritual millionaires all using their wealth to make massive and beautiful change in the world? Hmm, well let's talk about it. Allow me to begin today by asking you a question. What would you do with a million dollars? If you're anything like me, you might go to work putting those resources to use benefiting humanity in some way. For me personally, I want to work with a big animation team and video production studio and make an amazing stream of content for YouTube and Spirit Mysteries and maybe even one day launch a worldwide theatrical release of something really special. But hold on, we can't even do that at all yet. There's a big money blockage in the way. But what is this block you might ask? Well, it's a pretty big one and it's existed for thousands of years in the relationship between money and spirituality within the human consciousness. I discovered this blockage for myself nearly nine years ago when I created this little cartoon series. You might have heard of it. It's called Spirit Science. Sorry. Of course, there's a lot of praise on this series but a lot of people also warned me with grave and fear. Spirituality and money don't go together. If you make money doing something spiritual, you are a sell-out. Now, I very often take all the comments to heart. Even these ones. And for the last nine years I struggled with this whole money and spirituality thing. I chose to avoid looking at the conversation in general sometimes because I didn't want to upset my audience, you guys. But what I found was that choosing that paradigm forced me into a very limited box of reality. As Spirit Science grew, I had more and more responsibilities. But I didn't usually have much in the way of resources to delegate tasks. So I just had less time to spend on making videos as a result. The next thing you know, people were mad at me for not making more videos. Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place. The reason I'm telling you this story is because I know that I'm not the only one who is, has, or will one day struggle with this problem. But I have good news for you. We can transform the entire dynamic and it all comes down to the relationship that we have with money and our spiritual selves. This applies to anything really. Literally any problem can be healed and transformed if we understand it fully. If you are someone who has ever struggled financially, you've come to the right place. Today, everything begins to change. Understanding money actually begins with a conversation not about money, but with God. You could call it spirit, the all, the source field, the energy that makes up all of the particles and wave forms of reality. Whatever floats your boat. You see, spirit is found in all things. There is nothing separate from the eternal oneness. We have this conditioned idea in society that God and the heavens are always above us and beyond us in some way. But what about inward? What about outward? What about even downward? Oh, no, no, sorry. Don't think of downward. That's the devil's lair, right? Well, even the devil is not separate from the supreme oneness. At the deepest level, we have to understand that everything is spiritual because all things are connected through this infinite field that makes up reality. That goes for money too. Now, I understand that it may be difficult to comprehend the idea of God or spirit and that's often the point. The Hermetic philosophies describe God to be unknowable and indescribable because the imperfect and impermanent cannot easily apprehend the eternally perfected. But fear not, because with every day, every moment, each of us has the opportunity to explore deeper the mysteries of life and the connection we have to this underlying substance behind reality. Substance is a very key word here. It will be critical in bridging the gap between this cosmic discussion and money. You see, there is a substance underlying all things. We understand scientifically that when you zoom in close enough to the bits of reality, we find a seemingly never-ending field of energy, continuous field of energy that is never depleted or empty. So even if we are experiencing lack in our lives, the energy substance that makes up everything is never lacking in anything. The lesson here is that through the awareness that energy is everywhere and constantly permeating all things, we come to know that there is this foundational, abundant stability at the basis of everything. In a very spiritual perspective, we can perceive this as if the whole of God is present at every moment through all of space and time. Limitation as we know it does not actually exist. What does exist, however, is the consciousness of limitation. There are pockets of poverty. There are victims of deprivation. Absolutely. And simultaneously, there is an infinite and universal energy from which all things descend. We exist within this energetic field just as a fish exists in water. With that mindset, can you ever truly run out of ideas and opportunities for health, love, and prosperity? The key then to limitless wealth is that this endless substance can move through you if you open yourself to being a conduit for it. And it can take so many different forms. It can take the form of creating happiness, health, food, money, or any other kind of experience that you want. Generally speaking, we open ourselves to experiencing this abundance through our creative ideas, ingenuity, and will to do good work with a loving heart. So, with all of that as a primer, what specifically is money? Well, the simplest way to look at it is energy, a reflection of a value exchange that you can create in the world with others. As you create value, others are willing to exchange their own energy for it. And money is the physical reflection of that energy. But be warned, not all money is created equal. Money can be created in a positive or a negative way. You can have a thousand dollars of selling heroin to addicts, which is, well, pretty dirty money actually. Or a thousand dollars of supporting people and creating deep, personal transformation in their lives. Much cleaner money. The biggest lesson I've learned about money lately has been that in order to start creating it, we have to be willing to shift our mindset, change our belief system about it, and look at it differently. Doing this, we open ourselves up to a new paradigm where we exist with a spiritual fullness that creates wealth as well. You have to be willing to love money just as much as you love other aspects of life. Not that you're making money into, like, the thing that you're all about, but honoring it as another foundational aspect of life, along with other things like food or growing a garden or, I don't know, going to the gym or watching a movie. Now, not to get super biblical, but there is an interesting quote that I want to share from Jesus who says, For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. We must remember not to base our security on that which is physically manifested, but on the inner energy within you. When spiritually rooted, making money is not the end goal, but happens as a result of one's good works in the world, and supports you in continuing the good work at greater levels. Now, the conversation of money is actually a really big one, and my intention is to keep this flow going with new episodes more regularly. So I'm gonna call this one right here for now, and we'll see you again very soon with yet another exploration into the wonderful world of money. If you want to get more into this in the meantime, please check out the book, Spiritual Economics. Much of this conversation today was based on chapter one. It's absolutely brilliant, and a wonderful way to start shifting your money mindset right now. You can find a link to that book in the author comments below. Have a beautiful week, and we'll see you again soon.