Money is a tool for agreement building. We share words, sentences, and concepts, to be able to co-ordinate. You cannot just reject money altogether. The fact is that the world works in a certain way now. Wu Wei means “action through inaction”. Start with acceptance. Before you can say what you want the world to be like, see what the world is like. Every journey starts from the start. Where you are. If you do not understand where you are, how are you supposed to make decisions? It is not giving up. It may feel like giving up. It may look like giving up. When someone stops fighting. But you start by learning the vocabulary.
You can change the meaning of the words. Eventually, you can change things. If you start at a point of acceptance. Build a sense of deep pragmatism. Look at the situation and be able to make decisions about the best next step. That is not giving up. It is detachment. You are not defined by each decision. They are merely steps on the path.
I used to think of detachment as ending up as a monk in a cave somewhere. I did not want to detach, because I love the world. And yes, it is an illusion. It is a controlled hallucination. In yoga, they call it Maya. The way we interpret the world is an illusion that separates us from reality. But it is a beautiful separation. There is so much beauty in the world. It is okay to love the beauty. That is the way you understand the world. It is okay that your worldview is not the same as my worldview. That we work hard to find overlaps, and through all the chemicals involved in building agreement together.
We cannot just understand everyone through prejudice. Through assuming from what we see, that we understand how others see. Put the time in to see what they see. That is okay. It is okay that it takes time. It is okay that you cannot just have an open conversation by saying what is in your mind, and call that honesty. Honesty is not simply vomiting on someone.
Honesty is commitment. Honesty is meeting today, and tomorrow, and the next day, and the next month, and the next year. It is deciding that you are connected to someone and that you are going to do the work that requires. We have all these escape hatches. We start building, but every time something gets hot, we run to the door. That does not mean that you do not have boundaries, and you do not have selfcare. You can create spaces that have acceptance, and learn about what is going on, and detach from things. You can engage with them without just rejecting them completely.
Detachment is not the absence of waves of anxiety. You want these waves of anxiety. These waves of thoughts. These waves of stress. That is what creates the beauty in the world. That is what we want. You do not want them to go away. The idea with meditating is not that you stop thought. Thoughts come from a mind. It is a mind. That is its job. Thoughts come through. Meditation is practising dealing with our word and sentence generator. If a word appears, sticks, and does not know when to leave.
Waves are not a problem. Stress is not a problem. If a life stops moving altogether, that is dangerous. They died, or someone is manipulating and selecting the truth.
You are never going to fully understand money. It is complicated. It is abstract. There are not secrets that someone is hiding from you. Most of the knowledge around money is available. Books have been written. Do the reading.
Do not get the impression when you are sitting at a table with someone that they know everything, and you do not. That you are the odd one out. Nobody knows everything. As you get older, you realise everyone is just doing the best they can. But some of us build this doubt into our identity. Money is not about you.
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