Over the
last few weeks, I’ve learned about some intriguing alternative authors and
concepts on money. The first is a writer
named Charles Eisenstein, whose book, Sacred
Economics, I haven’t yet read, but I love the title. Reading his online biography was like reading
my own. He speaks of how in his late
twenties, he entered a crisis because “it became excruciating to do work I didn’t
care about.” Yes. It is.
And then
last Thursday on NPR’s “On Point,” the Basic Income movement was discussed, something
I had never heard of. Basically, this
is a proposal that every adult be provided with a small income, free from work
expectations. I don’t know about the
political or economic implications of this and have just barely begun to read
about it. No one concept is “the
answer” to everything going on in the world, economically. But spiritually, it appears to resonate with
what I believe – that every human being is “worth-y” just by virtue of being on
the planet. At the very least, a basic
income could revolutionize the lives of writers, musicians, artists, mystics,
dancers and poets and free them up to do their real work. It could give
everyone a minimal safety net/starting point as institutions and technologies
change radically, literally faster than ever before in history, faster than
most people can keep up with. (I look at job postings now, and it’s like
reading Greek. I don’t even understand
what most of the jobs are.) Evidently,
what was a really fringe idea not long ago has begun to be given more and more
serious consideration worldwide.
Gosh, what
would the last few years have been like if I had had such a “basic income” in
the midst of trying to realign with my calling?
On the one hand, it sounds literally heavenly; perhaps I could even have
kept a tiny studio apartment as a home base.
But on the other hand, I might have missed out on learning that there is
an even bigger support system out there – our Source – and that many of my
friends are literally angels in disguise.
I might have missed out on becoming nearly fearless. On some deep level, I chose to learn these
important lessons, and my life unfolded in an untidily perfect way.
It makes me
happy to think that we may be starting to tilt in the direction of a more love-
(rather than fear-) centered economy and society. There’s a lot of noisy pushback, but if many
of us hold on to our integrity in the midst of it all, the paradigm will
continue to change. And the great thing
is we don’t have to “fight” the old constructs, just “be” a new one as best we
can.
