The Soul of Money By: Lynne Twist
Presented by: Angel McCormack
Lynne Twist Lynne Twist has had four decades of fund-raising experience experience having led 4 major global initiatives: • End World Hunger, • Protect the Rain Forests, • Improve Health, Health, Economic, & Political Conditions for Women, • To Advance The Scientific Understanding of Human Consciousness.
Lynne Twist’s contributions • Trained more than 20,000 fundraisers from 47 countries. • Raised more that 150 million dollars from individuals working intimately with people at the intersection~ where the lives of those with money meet the lives of those with little or no money…
Work with both Rich & Poor • Resource-poor people in Sahel Desert in Northern Senegal, villages in India, the Rift Valley of Ethopia, Ecuador and Guatemala, as well as portions of the US…. • Resource-rich people from affluent countries such as Sweden, France, Germany, Japan, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, and the US.
People’s Relationships with Money Lynne has been deeply engaged in many different cultures, which has enabled her to see not only the cultural differences but the striking commonalities in people’s basic relationship with money… and the way that relationship governs, dominates and stresses people’s lives…
The Power of Money She has seen the powerful grip money has on people’s lives; both the wounds and hardships it can impose, as well as the immense healing power of even the smallest amount of money… when we use it to express our humanity, our highest ideals, and our most soulful commitments and values.
The Soul of Money The Soul of Money offers a way to realign our relationship with money, enabling us to live a life of integrity that is consistent with our deepest core values no matter what our financial circumstances are. It is not a book about simplifying expenditures, doing budgets or financial planning, it is about living consciously, fully and joyfully in our relationship with money, and learning to understand and embrace it’s flow.
The History of Money Money is not a product of nature, it is a distinctly human invention. It has appeared in many different forms in it’s 2,500-3,500 year history, from shells or stones, to precious metals, to paper bills, to a blip on a computer screen. It was invented to facilitate the sharing & exchanging of goods or services among individuals and groups of people.
Money’s Role Somewhere along the way, the power we gave money outstripped its original utilitarian role. Money, massed produced bills with no more inherent value than a notepad or box of kleenex, has become the single most controlling force in people’s lives. People have killed for money, enslaved other people for it, and even have enslaved themselves to joyless lives, in the pursuit of it.
Destructive nature of Money In the name of money, human kind has done immense damage to the Earth: destroyed rain forests, dammed and decimated rivers, clear-cut redwoods, over-fished rivers, lakes & oceans, poisoned our soil with chemical waste from industry & agriculture, not to mentions having marginalized entire segments of our society, forced poor into housing projects, and have exploited whole nations for cheaper labor… just to name a few.
The Money Culture We are born into a culture defined by money. Popular culture encourages an insatiable appetite for spending and acquiring without regard to personal and environmental consequences. Money has become a playing field where we measure our competence and worth as people. If we are not gaining ground we feel that we are losing it. We all have an identifiable relationship with money- though it remains largely unconscious or unexamined.
Keeping up with the Jones’ Not even the wealthy find the peace and freedom that you would think comes with having so much. You can be a CEO who earned 7 million last year, but if your golfing partner just turned a deal for 10 million, it puts you behind in the money game. As financial stakes get higher, the more money there is to lose, and the more demanding the game becomes to stay ahead. Nobody, rich or poor, escapes the powerful push and pull of money.
People’s inherent values Lynne believes the money culture has shaped us in ways that we would not choose in a conscious, more soulful process. Lynne believes that people inherently desire to express their own divinity, their own connectedness with all of life, and partake in the mystery of something greater than themselves and greater than comprehension.
Lynne’s Turning Point Lynne’s Hunger Project involvement was her wake-up call to address her own inauthentic and inappropriate ways she and her husband and family were living. It was then that they purposefully began to turn their resources (time, energy & money) toward their desire to make a difference in the world. She felt it was a call from her soul so deep and profound, she couldn’t deny it.
Lynne’s Relationship with Money This change of heart brought about a change in their relationship with money. Once they began to align their money decisions with their deeper core values and highest commitments, they experienced a dramatic shift in not only how they used their money, but how they felt about their money, about their lives and about themselves.
Act from a Domain of Soul vs. Money • Act with integrity • Thoughtful
• Selfish • Greedy
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Generous Courageous Committed Trusting of others Trustworthy At peace
Petty Fearful Controlling Confused Conflicted Guilty
Money itself isn’t the problem Money in itself isn’t bad or good, it doesn’t have power or not have power, it is our interpretation with money and our interaction with it where the real mischief lies. When people come from a viewpoint that there is never enough (scarcity) as opposed to a viewpoint that there is plenty to go around (sufficiency), the trouble begins.
Acting from a viewpoint of Scarcity vs. Sufficiency Never enough, emptiness, fear, mistrust, envy, greed, hoarding, competition, fragmentation, separateness, judgment, striving, entitlement, control, busy, survival, outer riches
Gratitude, fulfillment, love, trust, respect, contributing, faith, compassion, integration, wholeness, commitment, acceptance, partnership, responsibility, resilience, inner riches
Abundance Theory Abundance is a fundamental law of nature, that there is enough … although is finite. Its finiteness is no threat, it creates a more accurate relationship that commands respect, reverence and the managing of those resources with the knowledge that they are precious.
How we make our money… Vicki Robin, in Your Money or Your Life, writes about people who instead of making a living at their work are more accurately making a dying or making a killing. The work they are doing is unfulfilling, perhaps even detrimental to their own or other’s wellbeing. Some hate their work but pretend that it doesn’t matter, but in truth their spirit (or someone else’s) is being killed off. The money made this way will prove to be nothing but toxic to yourself & others.
How we spend our money… We have much more power than we realize to direct our financial resources in ways that support, empower and express what we believe in. We can consciously choose, for instance, to spend our money on products or entertainment that are violent and destructive to the psyche of our children, or to invest in activities that enrich their experience of life and deepen their appreciation of it…
How we spend our money We can choose to spend our money at companies whose products and people support the well being of the environment and the community, or we can choose to get caught up in spending simply because we can, finding ourselves accumulating things that eventually burden us with excess, clutter our homes, and end up in a landfill.
Stewards of Money If we learn to be stewards of money, rather than gatherers of money, it teaches us to bring quality and intelligence to our use of financial resources in ways that reflect our inner wealth.
Money Analogy Blood in the body must flow to all parts of the body for health to be maintained. When blood slows down and begins to stop or clot, the body becomes sick. When water is moving and flowing, it cleanses, it purifies, it makes things green, it creates growth. When water slows down, it starts to sludge, and becomes toxic. This is also true of money. Accumulating and holding large amounts of money can have the same toxic effect on our lives. Money is most useful when it is moving & flowing, contributed & shared, directed & invested in that which is life affirming.
Your relationship with money Your relationship with money can be a place where you bring your strengths and skills, your highest aspirations, and your deepest and most profound qualities. Whether you are a millionaire or just scraping by, you can be great with your money and be great in your relationship with it.
Strengths of the Book The Soul of Money is full of amazing real life examples from Lynne’s journey in her philanthropic endeavors…from meeting Mother Theresa to the Dali Lama. I highly recommend reading the book in its entirety as the true stories are absolutely riveting and provide a deeper understanding to all of the concepts herein.
