You Can’t Eat Money

Money does not exist. On some level we all know this to be true – and the thought scares us to death.

The essential problem of money – the lesson we have set ourselves up to learn – is to be able to differentiate between abundance and wealth.

Abundance is absolute. Wealth is relative.

I have two anecdotes to share, to illustrate how common it is for humans to confuse wealth with abundance:

For my first year of University, I had to commute daily by car. My University was plagued by a shortage of parking spaces so students would arrivie early for classes and and line up in front of B-lot waiting for other people to leave. One day I was stuck so long that I missed the exam I had come to write. When I finally got to the front of the line, I vented my frustration to the parking attendant.

Unsympathetic, she said to me: Perhaps you should have come a little earlier.

But if I had been earlier, someone else would have had to wait longer for their spot. Her solution to the problem did not address the shortage of available parking spaces. Her solution addressed my problem – but only by shifting it onto somebody else.

On another occasion, I saw a TV commercial in which a police officer was endorsing “the club” – a device which reduces the likelihood that one’s car will be stolen. I wondered – why would a police officer be enthusiastic about the club? The club does nothing to address the issue of car theft. The club is effective only because most people don’t have one. Let those people lose their cars first.

Most humans on this planet spend much time “making” money. But money does not contribute to abundance. We all have more and more money, but this money is worth less and less.

When we feel constricted, we always seem to believe that the solution is to make more money. But this attitude is responsible for our woes in the first place. We have become so adept at making money that we are literally drowning in it. The only problem is that all this money is not really worth anything.

This subject is never far from my mind. I firmly believe that the days of money are numbered. Soon we will stop using money and marvel at how easy it was to break the habit. It will seem easy when we look back on it, but it doesn’t feel that way from our current perspective. We are in a stuck moment – the last gasp of money.

I have often tried to inspire people to imagine a world without money. I wanted to illustrate that such a world is easily possible. What’s more difficult, is convincing people that money is not something we really want. After all, we all have money and it makes us feel rich. Doesn’t it?

Actually money does not make us feel good about ourselves at all. Predominantly, if you ask people, they would tell you that they do not have enough money. If you asked them about food to eat, clothes to wear or gasoline for the car, they would reply that all their most urgent needs are met. But when we turn the focus to money, the feeling immediately shifts from abundance to lack.

Money makes us feel poor because we always wish we had more. Is it really so strange to suggest that the time has come to give up our obsession with money?

I don’t think that money was always a bad idea. The problem is that money no longer functions the way it was originally conceived. Nor are we the same humans who invented money. We are the same beings, perhaps, but we have evolved. It is likely that at some point in our history, money served humanity. Perhaps it even served us well, but this time has now passed. Not only will money longer be able to serve us in the future – it will literally not survive our current shift into a higher state of being. Therefore it has to either disappear, or else transform itself into something new – something that may resemble money in some ways but functions very differently.

In this moment, we are still buying lottery tickets, (mistakenly) believing that we seek wealth. Wealth can serve us only if we believe ourselves to be separate from everyone else. As we re-awaken to our connection to spirit, we can’t help but become aware of some form of universal oneness. As this shift continues to unfold we are realizing that the time has come to relinquish wealth in favour of abundance.

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