Money is Dying to Be Loved, Literally

Last Friday I was invited to present in a conference titled “The Cosmology of Love” at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Being my alma mater, I was thrilled to participate. I knew I wanted to bring a little nugget of my work with Inner Economics to the group, but for the longest time I couldn’t quite figure out how.

Then it hit me. I asked money what it wanted to say. What did it want to communicate to this particular group in this particular moment in time? The response: “Money is dying to be loved. Literally.” Whoa! Radical statement! What did it mean?

Well, in a nutshell what money was trying to say is that it is dying to be loved (and respected) for who and what it really is, and not for what we make it out to be.  Pretty simple- it’s the same thing that we, human beings, also want- we just to be loved for who we are and not for what other people want us to be. We want to be seen, respected and cherished and supported in our goals.

Unfortunately our relationship with money is often the opposite. We tend to project our greatest fears, deepest anxiety and unhealed wounds on money because unlike people, we think that money doesn’t respond or talk back, and because of this, money becomes our scapegoat for our wounds of un-love.  We’ve lost a sense of security in our-selves and try to find that security primarily in the material world, generally at the expense of also feeling it inside of our being. We walk around wanting to be consumed by Life, and yet don’t quite how, and so we lavishly consume the world around us, like a ferocious wild animal gone astray.

Now, make no mistake, I’m all for the wild, vital expression of our being. And being consummated by does not exclude consuming what we need to maintain life. But when all we do is consume the outer world and then blame money for going so deeply into debt, there is something “off” in this picture.

Knowing what makes you come alive is an acquired skill. It requires slowing down, paying attention and being still. It means taking risks, not the financial ones, but taking the risk to put down your defenses, open your hearts and expose your vulnerability to the world.

Why on earth do this? Because underneath our protective shell there is a deep, pulsating desire to be loved. And when we don’t truly experience this in our life, the resentment grows, the skin thickens, the sarcasm masks what’s really going on, and from this place we often do three things: 1) we project the anger and frustration that has built up outward (hence the charged relationship with money and the material world), 2) we try to control our outer environment to hide the inner chaos that is eating us up inside, or 3) we stick our heads in the ground.

None of these go to the heart of the problem- that is that we are dying to be loved, fully, for who we are, and that we just don’t always know how (hey, isn’t this what money wants too?). We don’t know how to do this, how to ask for this, and better yet, how to receive or even believe that this is possible. We don’t trust that we are this worthy.

“But yes”, whispers money into my ear, “you are. ALL of you.”

If we begin to embrace our mood of un-love (termed coined by John Welwood in his book Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships), and take responsibility for having placed this hurt on money we can begin to heal our own humanness and our relationship to the material world. We can begin to ask for and receive what we really want- conscious, reciprocated love. For me this is the new cosmology of love.

And then we can also then help money become less disembodied, less abstract, more present and more local. We can take a more active, less charged role in creating the economies and expressions of exchange that better align with our values and visions. We can help money land once again in this material world and play its due role.

As the saying goes- “if you love something let it go, if it comes back it was meant to be”. Recently our relationship with money has been estranged and beaten. It’s like a lover who’s tired of the abuse and leaves. Without getting lost in the discussion of who abused who, without getting caught up in the blame, if we accept that we are in relationship with money everyday, we can choose to “stay in it” and heal. The beloved in both parties will thrive as we heal our mood of un-love and we will begin to experience a basic human right- we are worthy and loved, just for who we are.