True Wealth & Healthy Money

Today’s post is about true wealth, an essential conversation for our times. Satish Kumar, editor of Resurgence and a pioneer in this field, spoke to this subject today in a live webcast in the “Healthly Money Summit” (see www.healthymoneysummit.com His biggest point was that true wealth is more than money.

In Satish’s view wealth is a good forest, clean stream, strong community, human imagination & ingenuity, and all other aspects that positively contribute to a steady state of wellbeing. It does requires the presence and  exchange of money but at the service of the wealth and wellbeing of the human community and the natural world, not the other way around. When we disconnect wealth from wellbeing and focus only on money-production we shift from healthy money to unhealthy money.

So when did this all change? When the meaning of economics changed.

For example today economics in the United States is generally understood as the change of levels of money supply. More money from more growth = healthy economy. Less money, less growth = depression and unhealthy economy. Or as I was taught in Econ 101, economics means the allocation of scarce resources. In both cases we are trying to grow more money and more than that, make sure it is ours to own.

Satish offers a different perspective, one that is actually much more ancient than the one we currently use. He reminds economics comes from the latin word “oikos-nemien”. It’s original meaning then is “management or taking care of the household”. This is not just the house in which we eat and sleep but rather the entire planet earth. This is the well-being that we are resopnsible for and in which we can create new healthier forms of money.

But the question that then gets asked is: How do we reconcile need to get by and the desire to participate in creating a new world? His response: yes, make money and support your family but be very aware of what you are making money for and the purpose behind your actions. Is it to have greater status? Fulfill life-deadening obligations? Or making money for the sake of making money? If so you are creating a foundation based on (quick) sand instead of rock. As the soul-weaver and author Bill Plotkin would say in his book Nature and the Human Soul, there exists a sacred dance and a survival dance in our relationship to money and the material world. Both are essential to the development of a human being but one is not exclusive of the other.

Oftentimes we are our biggest opponents. When it comes to money we experience an inner battle between fear & trust. Our fears keep us paralzyed and abort our ability to take risks for a truer, moe fulfilling life. So how to move towards trust? Satish gives these 4 points of advice:

1. PRACTICE TRUST- trusting yourself, the universe, nature is abundant. When you plant one apple tree seed it becomes a tree and produces thousands and thousands of apples for over 20 years. Gifts of nature remind us that sufficiency always exists around us. 
2. BUILD YOUR FAMILIES & LOCAL COMMUNITIES- when you are isolated and feel no one supports you, you become dependent on unhealthy money. When we help each other no creature goes hungry.
3. CREATE LOCAL MONEY- local communities become real bedrock of true wealth.
4. FREE YOURSELVES- from the illusion that there is a shortage of money. Money is only an exchange and we as a society determine the rules at play.

And one last point, trust requires embodiment, a change in consciousness and work. TRUE TRUST is not thinking that I will get money if I follow my soul’s path (there is still a grapsing that occurs here). True trust comes when we follow or soul’s path without attachment to the outcome, whether we make or not make money from our soul’s purpose is to be left to providence. You have trust that you will in ways that you may not have even expected. His example: where does breast milk come from? Who put it there? Each one of us came built in with trust. On the first day of birth there was no milk. Then the moment the baby was born milk burst first from the mother. This process never changes. When you plant the seed of the apple tree, the apple tree grows. Sometimes natures changes and we change climate, but nature has its rthythm and patterns and the universe will provide everything. The process of provision remains in place.

We need to trust in nature again, in other humans, in our ancestors, in our friends. If we don’t trust we are lost and we re in-secure. True security is your trust in the process of the universe and we can transform the world by transforming our consciousness, one step at a time.

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