Spirituality And Making Money

“I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor. Rich is better.”—Sophie Tucke
n Your wildest dreams come true: you pick the winning numbers in the lottery and suddenly you are a millionaire! What do you do first?

There was a study done years ago that determined the top three things that most lotto winners did immediately upon winning their fortunes—and nearly 90% of them did all of these three things. I will give them to you in reverse order, a la David Letterman:nn #3. They bought a new car.nn #2. They took a trip. (If they were married with children, they went to Walt Disney World in Florida. If they were married without children or single, they went to Hawaii.)n n #1. They said, “This isn’t going to change me.”

That one fearful statement, “This isn’t going to change me,” rang in my consciousness like a clarion call. To me, this is stark evidence that most people have a negative picture of what having money will do to them. Many people in our society grow up with the idea that “dirty money” or “filthy lucre” will somehow corrupt them—that it would somehow make them arrogant, miserly or exploit others and lose all their friends.

Doesn’t it make sense that if you thought money was a powerful force for good and that having an abundance of money would mean you could make large contributions to worthy causes, that a lottery winner would say instead, “This is really going to change me for the better”?

After years spent as a “starving actor”, I decided it was time to start making money. I went into business for myself with a bookkeeping service. But when I started thinking about becoming a prosperous person, I hit a stumbling block. There was a quote from the Bible that worried me for a long time: “It’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than for a rich man to get into heaven.” (I quibbled for awhile that it said nothing about a rich woman, but ultimately, I knew it meant me, too.) I wanted to be a rich person, but I wanted to be a good person and hopefully go to heaven, too. How was I going to do both? I knew that, as a spiritual person, if I felt that money would corrupt me, I wasn’t going to allow it into my life. I needed to change my attitude about having money if I wanted more abundance in my life.

One evening, I happened across a television program that featured several religious scholars examining some Biblical statements, taking into account the geographical and cultural era in which it was written. I heard one scholar mention the above quotation and comment that most people misunderstood it. He said that people thought that the needle mentioned was a common sewing needle and therefore, of course, it was impossible for a camel to get through it’s eye. But he laughed and said that “The Eye of the Needle” was the name of a gate in the wall of Jerusalem. And that a camel could easily get through it—a moderately laden camel, that is, not a heavily laden camel. This changes the entire message. To me, this suggests that the lesson was only an admonishment to be balanced about wealth, and not overdo it to the point of overburdening your camel!

Leo J. Fishbeck, in his book Sing Your Song For All You’re Worth states “A careful study of the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, reveals that the people who were considered to be the most spiritual, those who were the great contributors to enlightened thinking, the most highly regarded, were usually very wealthy people—millionaires by our standards. As we read about their many accomplishments we find that, usually, the account ends with the statement, ‘And he was favored by God.’ According to the ancient authors of the Scriptures, there must be a connection between prosperity and Spirituality.”

Money is a neutral. It will not corrupt you—only your use of it will. The choice to use money for good is always available to you. It is the wealthy who set up charitable foundations, endow hospitals, establish scholarships, promote art, literature, theater, etc. Ted Turner donated one billion dollars to the United Nations. Bill and Melinda Gates have funded their foundation with more than twenty billion dollars. You can’t do things like that if you’re broke. You can’t help the poor and starving if you are the poor and starving.

As I built my business management firm, I worked with many different clients to help them manage their money. I began to notice patterns of behavior and places where people got stuck. If someone’s unconscious behavior with money was spending more than they made, it wouldn’t matter how much they made—they would find a way to spend more than whatever amount of money they had. I noticed that the wealthy people often were missing out on spiritual values, and the spiritual people were broke. Why were spirit and money disconnected? Why shouldn’t people be prosperous both inside and outside? I created the Financial Stress Reduction Workshop to help guide people to do both—to help them make more money, have more time off for fun, and be both spiritually and materially rich. As I marketed the program, I was fascinated by the responses I received.

“Oh, I really don’t want to focus on money,” said the woman on the phone. A mid-level executive who worked in training and development for a major corporation, we had met at a networking meeting. She was very interested in my course, but balked at the idea of taking a class centered on money. Her main goal was to help people and do meaningful work, she said.

Many people I’ve talked with have this same idea—that the pursuit of money for it’s own sake is inappropriate, and maybe even bad. They say, “I don’t care about the money” or “The money isn’t important to me.” What they are trying to make clear is that they have a larger objective, a goal of helping others or doing work they love that transcends their need for money. They don’t want anyone to think they’re “just in it for the money.”

Unfortunately, that is not what they say. Words are powerful. When they speak their word that they “don’t care about money” what they are inadvertently doing is telling their creative mind, God and the universal power of supply not to send money. Their need to state it this way is indicative that they have a fear-based mentality about money—they are afraid that somehow, if they make a lot of money, it will corrupt them, pull them off course, make them a slave to material things, etc. But the universal power of supply that is directed by our creative minds is just a “Yes” machine. Tell it you want money—it says “Yes.” Tell it you don’t want money—it says “Yes.” Your choice.

Why not declare instead that “I really want to help and serve people, and making a lot of money will help me do that even better!” You have the power to decide to use the money that flows into your possession for good: donate to charity, expand your work to help more people, beautify your surroundings, give to the arts, invest in worthy businesses doing socially responsible work. Do care about the money! I believe that all the truly spiritual, wonderful people should have the most money, because they are the ones who will use it most positively.

We are spiritual beings having a material existence. The task is to master both—not to deny either. We create our own reality from our attitudes, beliefs, thoughts and feelings. What you focus on expands—focus on fear and you will become more afraid. Focus on love and acceptance and you will get more of that. If you want evidence for what you believe in, look around you. What you have created is a reflection of your thoughts. If you want the outer reality to change, you must start with your interior reality. As you concentrate on and believe in your ability to create internal and exte
al abundance in your life, you will begin to receive it: believing is seeing, not vice versa.

When I work with groups, I always ask if anyone ever took a class on making and managing money in grade school or high school. Very few hands go up. Without any official training in this subject, people are left to formulate their own ideas based on what they heard, read or saw others do. What did you hear about money when you were growing up? What did your parents say to you when you asked for money? What did you read about money? What did your teachers, friends, neighbors tell you? What were the old cliches you heard? These thoughts became your “money mantras” and they resound in your mind whether or not you are conscious of them. And they create your financial reality. Try completing the following sentences:
“Money doesn’t grow ______”; “The love of money is the root _____”; “The rich get richer and _____”; “Money can’t buy ______.”n n You can call out the answers immediately, can’t you? To change your experience with money, you have to change your mind about money. The practice of positive affirmations, at the very least, can put you in a more positive frame of mind. You will look and feel happier, more content—and that’s the look of successful people. The more successful you look and feel, the more people will be drawn to you. Who do you want working with you—the person who’s perpetually frowning, who complains about everything, who moans about not having enough money? Or the smiling, friendly soul who greets you warmly with cheer and confidence? Saying prosperity affirmations daily will help you act your way into prosperity.

Prosperity affirmations aren’t new. But I ask you: Are you doing them? Consistently? Every day? Because you are thinking about money every day, and I know from experience, what most people are thinking about money is neither prosperous nor affirmative. What do you think when you receive bills in the mail? Do your teeth clench? Do you shudder when you hear the word “taxes?” How do you feel about the status of your savings account? Your credit card balance? Do you respond with envy and sour grapes whenever a wealthy person is mentioned to you? If so, you need to start reprogramming your consciousness to develop a healthier attitude towards money so that you can attract it into your life.

Here are some prosperity affirmations for you to use to begin changing your mind about money. These are some of my own personal favorites collected over the years: “People love to give me money!”; “I am now earning a great big income doing what makes me happy”; “All my bills are paid up in full and I still have all this money”; “A lot more money is coming to me today—and I deserve it!”; “I now receive large sums of money just for being me!” For the skeptics, I suggest saying “All my affirmations work for me, whether I believe they will or not!” Financial professionals are always harping on budgeting and saving and paying off debt. Not very much fun—no wonder few people become motivated to get control of their money. I say we should focus on the joy of money—the freedom and fun you have after you budget and save. Affirmations help you focus on the goal.

Please note that just saying affirmations every day is not enough to make you prosperous. A lot of people repeat their positive money affirmations every day, but they don’t get a job or start a business. They sit crossed-legged in their room, close their eyes and chant, “Ohmmm, I’m making lots of money, ohmmm...” They are not affirming—they are wishing. Affirmations aren’t magic words. They don’t conjure money out of the air. You use them to build your positive energy to the point where you start feeling and believing in your success—and with enough repetition, it becomes real to you, physically and emotionally in your body. From there you start feeling yourself motivated to take action and go to work to serve others, for which they pay you. It’s the work, backed up by the positive beliefs, that creates the money.

Studies have shown that, once above subsistence level, having more money and material success won’t make you any happier. You have to already be happy. If you haven’t learned how to be a happy person, how to take pleasure in the daily gifts the world offers to all of us, material goods will not satisfy you. Everyone can point to rich people who were lonely, bored, angry or depressed. Having money just made them comfortable in their misery. The single-minded pursuit of money can distract them from their despair for awhile, but in the end, if they are curled up in their castle alone with no friends, all their millions will be cold comfort.

Some people are afraid to have a lot of money, because they think the money will make them like that proverbial rich person—selfish, uncaring, lonely and miserable. But money doesn’t do that. It’s what is done with the money that is either good or evil. If you would do evil if you had money, then you are evil now—just without power. Money does provide power. The more money you have, the more you can manifest your material desires. The downside is that you can get distracted by all the material manifestations and neglect the spiritual ones. But of course, being poor can keep you focused on the lack of material success, and that can keep you from manifesting your spiritual desires.

So what is the answer? Balance. Learn to live rich, inside and out. There is internal wealth and exte
al wealth—and they are not mutually exclusive. Focus on joy, happiness, your relationship with God, your relationships with other people, the meaning of life, and the mission of your life. Rich or poor, you can meditate and pray and make these your priorities. When you are joyful and grateful for what you have, you create the space for more to be added unto you. When you sense that there is a purpose to life and a mission within it for you to fulfill, then you act in harmony with God and the Universe. Then you open yourself to manifesting abundance in all areas of life, including financial success, and know that you will use it honorably and with wisdom for the good of all around you. nn©Copyright Chellie Campbell. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.n n