Does Money Corrupt or Connect?

 

Have you ever created something so connected to the essence of your heart that to exchange it for money would feel like somehow cheapening it? But then you find yourself looking longingly at concert tickets, a beautiful scarf or organic produce – and you don’t have the money?


This is what happened with my client, "Alice." Alice came from a family with a successful small business, and she has been able to work there part time, earning just what was needed to financially support herself and her daughter. However, her real work, the work she considers her true contribution to this beautiful world, is energy body work.


Alice puts her whole Self into her energy work and recognizes the inestimable value her clients receive when their bodies come into energetic balance. There is purity in her work, coming from deep within Alice and impacting the wells of depth in her clients, that she is committed to upholding.


In contrast, Alice came to me with a deeply held money story saying that money is a necessary evil, sole materialistic, corrupting all that it touches. This meant that the act of accepting money for her body healing energy work was incompatible with her devotion to its purity. Yet when an opportunity to take her daughter to Jamaica on a soul replenishing whale watching adventure came along, Alice didn’t have the money.


Alice and I had already had a few sessions when the Jamaica trip showed up and she had recently discovered her limiting money stories. We were able to unpack the root of these stories, and Alice realized they applied to time in her childhood when dishonesty, drama and hurt surrounded the family business and the money it made. Her separation between pureness and money was a way of protecting her pure inner being from the pain and corruption she witnessed around money.


As an adult, Alice was able to take another look at money and see it more accurately. She recognized that money is often used for great good, and she released her moral condemnation. Still, she had trouble understanding a personal relationship with money in which she earned it and used it in ways that create good. It was time to turn our attention away from what money isn’t (limiting beliefs/stories), and explore what money is.


Alice and I turned to her Wheel of Money to understand what was going on and how she can move forward to cultivate connection and balance in her money life. Starting with Alice’s relationship to her two sources of earning potential, a job with the family biz, or her own body energy work. The first was something most anyone could do, required her time and energy, produced something she considered mundane, and paid enough for the basics but had few non-financial benefits.


The second taps into Alice’s unique gift for energy work, also takes her time and energy, has a profound impact on her clients, and gives Alice a powerful experience through engaging and delivering her gift – but she doesn’t charge enough to earn what she needs. This means she can’t afford Jamaica or her life, unless she begins accepting money for her work.

 

Going to Jamaica on a whale watching trip called to Alice – and her soul felt hungry for the experience. She realized that her energy work had the potential to effectively create this invaluable trip to Jamaica, if only she would exchange it for money – because she could then exchange the money for the trip. Money was a way to turn her gift and her work into a soul satisfying trip to Jamaica.

 

She started to look at it differently. Going to Jamaica on a whale watching trip was about feeding her soul, and her work is about giving her soul. She realized that if she simply exchanged her body-work for money, she could turn the money into this soul food. Money was a way to convert her gift and her work into soul-satisfaction.


Alice now earns money for her body energy work, and after returning from the Jamaican whale watching adventure, she told me how her relationship with money has transformed. Now, rather than feeling like it corrupts the authentic value of her work, she feels like money empowers her work to reach its full value potential. By exchanging it for money, the work that is deeply connected to the essence of her heart not only brings profound value to others, but it has become the financial energy supporting her and her daughter as well as her means to priceless experiences like the Jamaica trip.


What could you buy that would bring soul satisfying value into your life? How cool would it be use something created from the essence of your heart to bring this into your life? So the next time you feel like money could lessen the authenticity of something you’ve created, try flipping it around. How could money create more value, more good?


Natalie Wagner, CFRCSM, Finologist