It complicates matters having in recent years become a complete "believer" in the law of attraction. When you know that focusing on the negative will only bring more negativity into your life, the old tendency to analyze, assess problems, and write histories has to be, itself, re-assessed. Every time I sit down to write a blog about money, I sink into the mire. This past weekend, I even thought I had come up with an "aha" that might explain (even more than the umpteen other "perfect storm" reasons) why my life in this regard has been so gut-wrenching, and yet (of course!) when I went back to read the essay, I felt that yucky feeling. And when I analyze or criticize "the system," the same thing happens. Ah well, at least I'm proud that I am beginning to register what I am feeling.
Perhaps I can say this without attracting too much negativity...my whole life, I have felt like a being from another planet, plopped down into an environment where this strange form of payment is used, and that they "didn't use that where I came from" and I don't get it. It's actually rather humorous, when I can laugh about it, how very foreign, almost archaic, the whole construct feels. I know that there must be people out there to whom it all makes sense, and at least some to whom money comes easily. There must be people who can spend money, even a dollar or two, without inner turmoil. I know that for some people, money is a positive thing, but try as I might, it hasn't felt like a net "love" construct to me.
Thanks to all the work I've done the last few months, I feel increasingly focused and confident about who I am and what gifts I wish to use moving forward, and yet I can't seem to bear the thought of "charging money," per se, and putting others through the pain I have experienced. And to return to the paradigm of doing 40-hour-a-week work inappropriate to my skills only for the sake of money seems absolutely contrary to my calling at this late stage of the game. Be myself, or make money. This is the seemingly impossible crossroad I have encountered over and over on my path, pockets empty and spirits flagging. Is there a third way?
Well, yesterday, I came as close as I ever have to that third way, a potential compromise. At least for me, right now. It would make me so happy if it helps you at all in your relationship with money.
I'm making the following commitments for Act II of my life.
- I commit this Act to love.
- I commit myself to loving the people I love, and at the very least, blessing the people I cannot fully love.
- I commit myself to doing, as much as possible, only activities that I truly love.
- I commit myself to being in a place that I love.
- I commit myself to welcoming "pay" or support of any kind given out of love or genuine appreciation of who I am and what I do from a place of love.
- I commit myself to start loving "things," and embracing being a physical being on this planet who wants to be surrounded by beautiful things, who wants a home. I commit myself to accepting the role of money, at this time in history, in the modest acquisition of beautiful things.
- I commit myself, as much as possible, to spending money only on things I love, and loving the things I spend money on.
- I commit myself to supporting the people and causes I love.
- I commit myself to expanding my heart enough so that I don't dread or fear spending money. I commit myself to being thankful for the goods or services I have bought, and for the people who brought them to me.
- I commit myself to genuinely greeting and loving the guy or girl behind the cash register. I have been there. They are me.
- I commit myself to leadership, when it becomes clear how I was meant to lead. I commit to remembering, when I do become a leader, what it was like to be on the "bottom."
- I commit myself to everyone's following of their path of love, so that eventually, there will be no "bottom."
- I commit myself to knowing that I can't see all the ways that the Universe may choose to share abundance with me. I commit to gratitude and open-hearted awe at the possibilities.
- Most of all, I commit to loving myself and this amazing river of life energy that I am a part of. Maybe I was ahead of my time or "onto something" about money, and maybe I wasn't. Either way, I am here in a society that uses the stuff, I believe I chose to be here at this time and place, and I commit to loving my path, and to never giving up!
