Money Matters - How It Helps and Hinders - Centre For Peaceful Solutions

Maria Arpa

28 November 2017

Maria’s Midweek Mindfulness Moments

No one knows for sure who first invented money, though the general idea is that it was a simple system to make it easier for traders to compare values and exchange it for goods and services.

In it’s digital form, it is an invisible force that steers, drives and divides. It doesn’t resemble nature because it does not come into being, grow, blossom, decay and return to the earth. It is here by design, a commodity, it’s everlasting.

So often people believe that if they have enough money they will be safe and indestructible. “If only I had more money, I could be free.”

It’s easy to see how pursuing money can become a distorted displacement of the pursuit of fulfilment instead of pursuing wellbeing. (In a world where the practices that are most likely to bring inner peace are viewed with a cynical suspicion or considered to be ‘New Age’ claptrap). A person will pursue money in the misguided belief that it is a safer bet because, firstly, it is more acceptable to practice getting money and secondly, attaining it will bring about wellbeing.

Of course, in a world where money is the number one strategy for meeting basic needs such as food and shelter as well as more social needs such as adventure and creativity, it seems sensible to acquire as much money as one can. The difficulties show themselves when a person believes that money will create a security blanket that will shield them from fear, anxiety, disappointment, ageing, and death. But money doesn’t help when they feel rejection and abandonment, or isolation and loneliness. Having money can mask these feelings which actually inhibits growth, therefore it is also the hindrance.

So I’m reflecting on the money. I am certainly more well off than when I was growing up and I appreciate that it helps to have some resources I can call on when needed. At the same time, I know that money didn’t help me to confront issues and traumas that have hung around me for years.

Where money has been helpful is that by having enough to pay my bills has allowed me the space to attend to my issues, grow personally and then give back.

How is money helping or hindering you?

With love, light, and gratitude. Maria Arpa -x-

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