To wrap up this first exploration of the confusion around what gives life and what takes life, here’s something I sometimes hear:

‘Money is very earthly.’

I almost never understand what people mean by this, if only because they, too, almost never understand what they mean by this. To me, the deal we call ‘money’ is as unearthly as can be. Money neither rots nor diminishes in usefulness when you sit on it. I know of nothing else on our planet that behaves like this. Except for gold, perhaps.

Another thing I hear people say is that money is energy.

This rings more true to me, even though money in and by itself cannot ‘be’ anything. ‘Money becomes wrong or right by what you do with it,’ the Dutch ASN Bank once advertised. In my words: no matter how crooked, unjust or idiotic money might be birthed and used, we determine how positively and creatively we let it flow.

This brings us closer to the patterns that determine our dealings with money.

Because what do we allow ourselves to be determined by? 

And what does this determining do to us—not only mentally and spiritually, but physically?