Is money the lover you know or the stranger you love?

My intention is to deepen my understanding of my relationship with money, which is like getting to know a lover when the relationship is only sexual.

You see, to me, when any intimacy has the idea that we keep emotion out of it as a foundation, I find it illusory. And I find money is the lover I sleep with as if I only wanted sex.

But something is always missing.

I mean I love having money, right? I love spending money. I love making money. But I never have enough. I don’t understand my relationship to it. And it feels like I am getting it on with someone I don’t love without any integrity. I say I love money but I don’t know money or understand myself in relationship to it, which ultimately any meaningful relationship demands. We learn as we get to know the other. In my case, the other of money satisfies a lust and a need but gives me little of anything that holds meaning because I honestly don’t give meaning to how I use money.

Therefore I remain used.

But I am changing that by looking into it. I am changing that by changing my attitude and knocking on the door of my desire. I mean who truly desires sex for the sake of sex? [Don’t answer that because my guess is there are many who would say yes.]

But to me sex for the sake of sex does not satisfy. Anyone can have sex—animals do it all the time.

How many times have you made yourself completely vulnerable? How many times have you truly made love with a beloved? My guess is those times are few and far between because to do that we have to be 100 percent present in our body, mind, heart and spirit and know how to make the offering to another.

That is what I hope to learn. I hope to learn how to be so present I can honestly love.

And to be so present in myself in relationship to money that I am not merely using it or letting money use me. I am seeing money for what it is: an illusion.

Money is not real. Money is a medium. Money trades one value for another.

For me, money has a lot to do with love because I understood I was loved through money as a child. That was not the only way I understood I was loved but it was one way money was used.

Not giving me what I think I need in any given moment hurts because then I feel like I am not loved, in general. But if I could go deeper into the moment beyond addiction I might feel what I truly need which might be something more like a few deep breaths and a hug.

My goal today is to acquaint myself with how I relate to money. In an effort to do this, I am reading Money: A Love Story and The Dynamic Laws of Prosperity.

I have been rather poor for a long time but I never give up and I don’t think I have to be poor the rest of my life. In fact, I think I can change my fortune. I am not sure why I think that beyond knowing change is the only sure deal around and my life has had many chapters. The only reason anyone would know the chapters are in the same book is that I am the link that connects the plot.

And from what I have read, lack and abundance is not all that different. As someone I knew better than I’d care to admit to, used to always say: it’s all a point of view.

So I am looking at hybrids. I am planning on taking a teacher training next year at a local studio in the town I moved to last September. I am thinking I won’t declare bankruptcy.

Life is full of surprises and this time I am going to surprise myself. This time I am going to go from the land of lack to the land of plenty. I am going to pay my taxes and get manicures. I am going to help the family I have who need help. I am going to thrive.

This is my year. And all this was born on the cusp of the new moon.

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Editor: Bryonie Wise

Photo: ( Flickr)