"Perhaps you are being called upon right now to hold a strong center in your life. The situation into which you are stepping, or feel that you have been thrust, may seem too much for you.  You may know what you are able to do, or you may not.  Perhaps you are being called upon to awaken in yourself some practical ability, to direct the divine power you have felt in a focused, embodied way." From The Sufi Book of Life by Neil Douglas-Klotz

Where does an insight begin?  You know, those 'mega insights' that have the power to transform your life.  Recently, I had such an insight. It sounded like this as it sprang from my mind:

"Your relationship with money is the last bastion."

Now, shortly after that sprang forth, I realized that 'last' might really be 'next' but that's OK either way.  What it meant to me is this.  As I look over my life I realize I've taken a lot of ground in my personal development and spiritual path.


I now know what it take to be in a loving relationship with a woman — not necessarily with all women, mind you, but with a woman — my wife, Ann.  It's taken a LOT to get to this point.  Two failed marriages and a long line of other failed relationships.  Hopefully though, I learned a little bit from each one.

I also have taken tremendous ground in creating work that I love, that nurtures my soul, and allows me to contribute to others.  Oh sure, always more ground to cover with this area as with all of them, but great strides have been made.

I also love where I live, I love the relationship I have with my daughter, Amber, I love my ever evolving relationship with the Divine and with mySelf.

Yes, plenty of great ground has been claimed in my close to 60 years on planet Earth.

And then there's MONEY.  And yes, I've taken some ground there as well, and yet….it really does feel like the 'last/next' bastion…the next castle to take.

Even as I write this I feel….exposed and vulnerable.  After all, I'm a Life On Purpose Coach, the founder of Life On Purpose Institute. People pay me big bucks to help them transform their own life, and for several of those people that has included the area of money, finance and other related matters like running profitable enterprises. 

So, in sharing this I feel like I may be exposing myself as a fraud.  Will those people come back and ask for a refund?  And as I write this, I'm freed up a bit to realize that is unlikely. Maybe instead, they'll send me a donation. Even funnier.

So back to the insight.  It hit and hit hard. So much so that I decided to devote my next coaching session to this one area, even though I had 3 other topics I'd planned to address.  The insight was just too strong to ignore.  After all, what would my life be like if or when I took major ground in this area?

It was a good decision on my part because the session with my coach, Mark Silvers, was just what I needed to move from insight into action. I won't try to recreate the whole session but just give you the most salient points.

I prepared for the coaching session by going through a process in Mark's book, Unveiling the Heart of Your Business. In the process, I realized that part of the snarly 'misbelief' I had around money involved 'power.'

A big part of my relationship to money is that money equals power and freedom.  Now, while I don't have a problem with the 'freedom' part, I do have something to work through with 'power.'  You see, in my world, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. 

Of course, I didn't think in those highfalutin words growing up — the time when all this stuff was formed.  No, I heard: "We may be poor but we're good Christian folk."  And my mind equated that poor = good (Christian), and therefore rich/wealthy = bad/evil/corrupt.

So my relationship to money as been that it's a "necessary evil."  Yes, in today's world it's pretty hard to make it in life without money, so it's necessary, but at the same time it's really evil/bad/corrupting.

Wow, it's a wonder I've ever attracted a dime with that mindset. <G>

And that brings us to the above quote.

Mark pointed out in his gentle way that 'power' is a quality of the Divine. Believe it or not, that was a HUGE revelation for me.  If I made a list of the qualities of the Divine, it would go like this:  love, wisdom, creativity, compassion, joy, contentment, purpose, passion, peace-of-mind, etc.

It would be a long list before I'd get to consider 'power' as a Divine quality.  I'm not sure it would have even made it on the list. After all, power corrupts, or at least that's how it has occurred for most of my life.

So, my coaching assignment was to explore "power" as a quality of the Divine, which led me to The Sufi Book of Life (Mark's a sufi and gave me a copy of this book while I was on retreat with him.)  I looked up the sufi quality of Al-Qadir, and as I've read over the passage over the last several days, this part resonated most strongly:

"Perhaps you are being called upon right now to hold a strong center in your life. The situation into which you are stepping, or feel that you have been thrust, may seem too much for you.  You may know what you are able to do, or you may not.  Perhaps you are being called upon to awaken in yourself some practical ability, to direct the divine power you have felt in a focused, embodied way."

And I've saved the best for now:

"In all cases, this pathway helps us to remember that it is really the One Being working through us that accomplishes what needs to be done."

Is it any surprise that I've experienced one of the most powerful and empowering weeks in recent memory.  I've taken all of this into my meditation time as I've continued the 40-Day Prosperity Plan of John Randolph Price.  The two mesh well together, which just goes to prove that truth is truth no matter who it comes through.

So, I now give myself permission to love money, knowing that I can also be trusted to not 'worship' it or misidentify it as the source of my life, just one of the nice perks of living on purpose. 

There may be more to share about this at a latter date.  For now, I'll just leave it with a few questions and an invitation to anyone who reads this to ponder upon them:

1.  When you're caught up in fear and a sense of lack (what I term having your life shaped by your Inherited Purpose), what is your relationship to money and finance?

2. What relationship could you create with money and finance if you came from a place of Universal Love, a sense of abundance, and a willingness to flow with life?

3. And what would such a shift in perspective make possible in your life?