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Are Money and Spirituality at Odds?

I recently left an 18-year six-figure income career in real estate to follow my dream of being an author, teacher, and speaker of spiritual concepts.

Nobody warned me that starting my own business was the ultimate spiritual journey, not for the faint of heart, especially when assessing my income expectations in this new spiritual paradigm.

I began feeling fear and constriction rise in my awareness around money and how I would create a sustainable income again. Questions around value and worth circled in my head during the day and even haunted my dreams at night. Was I cut out for this path? Would I succeed? Wouldn’t it be easier to stay in the familiar and lucrative real estate world?

My anxious and practical inner voice sounded like this: “So now how do you think you’re going to be able to support the lifestyle you’ve been accustomed to? Where will the money come from now that you are out of real estate? Maybe you need to downsize to survive.”

I even dreamt that I was trying to save my commission on a real estate deal that was in jeopardy of being stolen from another agent. In my dream, I screamed into the telephone: “This commission belongs to me!” I felt an anxiety course through my body, even as I slept. When I woke, I began wondering if maybe I was blocked in the area of wealth? Then I began to draw a connection between money and God, my idea of value, spirituality, and my beliefs about my inherent worth.

The following day, I wrote the sincere question as a prayer in my journal: show me where I am blocked in my beliefs around money and help me to shift them.

Within moments came the download, and it looked like this:

1. You have Been Looking in the Wrong Place for Your Source

You see, as I pulled back from real estate over the past year, I started running the story that now it was time for my husband to take over paying the bills. I didn’t know how he would do so since losing his job, but I knew I was tired of carrying the responsibility both emotionally and physically.

Wrapped in this belief were little resentments that I held. A part of me blamed my husband for the extra stress I felt as the breadwinner and the physical crash that came later. I wanted him to pick up the slack, feel the pressure I felt, and provide for us by taking care of me. Instead of creating healthy work boundaries and implementing some self-care, I used physical stress and a health crisis as an excuse to stop working in real estate myself.

The message came through clearly: “He is not your source. I am.”

2. You Believe that You Need to Bust Your Ass to be Successful

Right. I still held to the old masculine paradigm that helped me build a successful real estate business. This model said I needed to work like a dog, run myself ragged, be there for everyone, any time, all the time. I thought that my level of stress equaled my level of success.

I had indeed been struggling with resisting the pull to start “building my business.” To start doing all the things it requires, like growing my platform, teaching classes, creating digital guides, building a new website, and working with new counseling clients. Instead, I had chosen to follow my inner guidance and focus on finishing my memoir, which I’d been judging as a bit self-indulgent and possibly a tremendous waste of time if it’s not a massive genre-breaking bestseller. Such pressure!

When I opened to the connection between money and God, the advice was powerful and true. I heard loud and clear, “Stop grasping for the shore and surrender to the flow. I’ve got you.”

3. Stop Seeing Others’ Success as Taking Something Away From You

Recently my sister told me that she was planning a trip to Paris next summer. Although happy for her, I also felt awash with envy. Traveling around the world had always been a passion of mine and something that, until recently, had been in my reach. Now that neither my husband nor I were making a steady income, I wondered if this desire would die unfulfilled in me?

My answer was clear: “That which you see outside yourself is a reflection of an aspect of your reality. When one in your circle succeeds, celebrate with abandon as this means that it is closer to being made manifest in yours.”

4. If I Follow My Dreams, I will be Abandoned by God and Live in Poverty

When I was a child, my parents drastically changed our lifestyle and moved from the city to the woods, where we homesteaded and lived off the land. They were following an inner directive that they experienced as the “Voice of God.” They trusted divine guidance to make this lifestyle shift. In return, my dad lost his job, and we struggled financially, alone in the woods, where I hated living.

As a child, I created a negative correlation between money and God. I began investing in the false belief that if I followed my dreams, I too would be left to struggle on my own. Now here I was, following my own inner guidance and dreams and dramatically shifting my own life. Would I suffer the same end as my parents?

This was the subconscious root of my issues around money. Yet, somehow, simply shining the light of my awareness on this old misguided belief freed it up inside, and I let go of that fear.

I heard my own Divine Guidance say: “You can trust me. I will never punish you for following your dreams. Your fulfillment lies in your ability to listen to divine guidance and follow it. I will never lead you astray.”

Money and God: Asking the Deeper Questions

No matter how aligned we think our lives are, we will continue to create the same situations we knew as children or manifest our deepest fears if we’re not aligned on the inside. We cannot heal that which is unconscious. And trying to manifest our dreams while running outdated stories and limiting beliefs in our minds will only take us so far—mainly to more learning opportunities that teach us our value or how to increase our self-worth. These can come from stressful jobs where we’re underpaid and not appreciated, unexpected bills, or other financial hardships.

The ancient hermetic texts say: “as within, so without.” In other words, we don’t attract what we want; we attract what we are.

When we address our inner beliefs and get into right-relationship with Source, we manifest from our most abundant true nature. If you want to be wealthy and live a full life, clear your inner clutter, and get into alignment with the true Source of all abundance—God.

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