What are you Investing in? Wealth Pt.2

Picture by Gregory Colbert from the Ashes and Snow series

How do we price goods and services if the metric is no longer scarcity and uniqueness?  Can we still seek to thrive through short-cuts?  Will we have to be more conscious of everything involved in an exchange at an awareness capacity beyond mere industrial 1950's linear rationalization?  Are we willing to be as clear and grounded as that type of economy would require for fluidity and mutual benefit to all involved?

These are just handful of the many questions coming up for me as I study the money system alongside my exploration of Self-Love and Exchange.  As I write this last line, it's just fallen dark outside and a hummingbird is poking his beak through the screen at my window repeatedly, and buzzing in his characteristically George-Jetson-car-like way.

After my last blog piece on Wealth, my Mom emailed me, commented, "Losing our way with financial discipline does not get resolved by bartering, as we still must deal with the history of making financial choices that hurt us." 


I let her know that I wholeheartedly agree.  One of my biggest concerns with the various local currency systems and barter groups that are proliferating is with the repetition of the same dysfunctional self-images re-creating similar patterns around exchange.  Rules can only do so much to guide the unfolding of a project.  The awareness of all the people involved intimately shapes the emergence from and through the group.


Number one ~  I must know myself.  Not just my address, or my favorite kind of cheese, but who and what I really am; independent of thoughts and emotions.  Who and what am I?  I if I don't know myself, I'm liable to be unconscious at the wheel of life and make blind decisions detached from their impact on the world I am integrally a part of.


Number two ~ I must honestly value myself as a beingness.  This is where the self-love comes in.  Self-Love stems from true Self-Knowledge.  Self-love doesn't come from a number of standing ovations from large crowds (though it can help break up a person's distorted negative self-image by having his gifts witnessed and appreciated).  Self-love comes from intimately knowing that I am not my past, I am not my psychological wounds, I am not the thoughts in my mind.....moving into the realm of knowing ~ I am Nothing, and I am Everything, and I am right here.  I am perfect, whole, and complete in every moment.  Nothing I can do, say, think, or feel can change what I truly and already Am (though these things can hide it from my conscious awareness).


Number three ~ I must value You!  And see that you also are Nothing, Everything, Perfect, Whole, and Complete.  I can't do number three fully without first deeply engaging with numbers one and two.  If I try to value you without knowing and valuing me, my perception of you is only a projection.  As soon as you do something I don't like, I'll withdraw my valuing of you.  What about that makes sense?  Either you're valuable, or you're not.  


Number four ~ I must consider the impact of every footstep I take on the whole of which I am a part.  I'm not suggesting shredding your mind with a infinite number of new thoughts for policing your actions.  I'm suggesting that when you begin to know yourSelf as you Are, you won't have to go to the mind for that kind of Awareness.  It'll arise spontaneously in the moment, fed by your intent and willingness.


In a competitive paradigm driven by scarcity and uniqueness, someone must lose.  Someone goes hungry and without clean water.  We have the resources on this planet, for every human to have enough to eat and clean water to drink.  In an "accumulation" paradigm, the competitors have no time to look out for the welfare of anything outside their sphere, unless it's a public relations attempt at throwing a "glamour" over their image to gain more resources through a short-cut.


It's time for what Buckminster Fuller calls a You AND Me world....a world where everyone matters.  But if this paradigm is imposed it won't last long.  Resistance will buck that like a mechanical bull on rocket fuel.  For a real and grounded You AND Me world to emerge, awakening must dawn in more humans.  A powerful pathway?  Self-Love.  It's only a matter of time and focus before Self-Love reveals Awareness of One-Self....even if it's like a flower fluttering open and closed throughout the day, a little goes a long way.