What Comes After Money

by Daniel Pinchbeck

  Sufficiency is a spiritual issue; a sufficient consciousness is in a state of gratitude. Many of us are blaming the capitalist bankers and system for the demise of our society, but haven’t we as consumers also collectively bought into the hallucinatory orgy of the market? How many of us have harbored secret fantasies to be like the crazy guy in the infomercials with his yachts, beautiful women, and real estate Ponzi schemes? How many of my deepest spiritual allies have bought into those sleazy pyramid schemes or network marketing plots to sell new age happiness that turn friendships into marketing opportunities? Like the ideology of the capitalist system, are we always aspiring to a better, utopian future rather than being grateful for what we have?

  I once participated in a “prosperity group,” which was a weekly gathering of friends (mostly folks from my yoga class) who wanted to read a “channeled” book, Creating Money, and to do the chapter exercises together (it’s a great book, by the way). I realized rather quickly that most people in the group would never transcend their state of “poverty,” because they were mentally impoverished. That is, they believed that their lives lacked sufficient resources in that moment; they would always be trapped on the treadmill of negative thinking about their present state of being, postponing happiness to the future. I don’t mean this in The Secret kind of way, in which positive thinking is the panacea for all of life’s inner conflicts, but in the sense that we are constantly projecting into the world like a waking dream the innermost challenges at the core of our being. We relentlessly seek healing, and oftentimes we externalize from our inner depths that which cannot be articulated by the egocentric (and protective) mind. Consider how we attract substitutes for our parental figures in both our work and romantic relationships. Is money any different? Maybe some would consider Secrets of the Millionaire Mind a silly and exploitative airport self-help book, but I believe T. Harv Eker is onto something when he can detect whether or not someone has the capacity for “wealth.” “We’ve confused attention with love,” he argues. Joseph Jaworski in Synchronicity puts the problem this way: we mistake “having” with “being.” Are we always putting the cart before the horse?

  Again, returning to the metaphor of the glass of water with salt, can we really contain our true desires, or more to the point, our self-destructive thoughts? It’s important to distinguish desire—something Buddhists say inevitably leads to suffering—from nourishment. Along these lines, after closely reading Creating Money I discovered something quite useful. The book asks us to imagine what our life would be like if we suddenly received a million dollars (or any large lump sum)—not to visualize the material goods we would accumulate, but to focus on the feeling. What emotion or sensation would it be? What state of consciousness am I aspiring to? At the time I was a struggling freelance writer, so my simple goal was that I wanted to be able to write without the stress of having to query editors and to pen BS articles to pay the rent. The exercise forced me to deconstruct my yearning and to discover why I wanted to write in the first place. I realized that it was because it allowed me to connect with a higher, creative force than what I normally experience in the routines of daily life; that I like to solve puzzles and explore ideas; and that I love to lose myself in the process of discovery. To put it in more intangible, esoteric terms, writing allows me to connect with the cosmos, which is this expansive architecture of creativity I keep alluding to. By the end of Creating Money’s visualization I learned something very important: I didn’t need a million dollars to achieve my wish. All I had to do was to sit down and write. Problem solved. The money would come later. Or not. But at least I would be happy doing what I love.

  In retrospect, I was probably also grasping for something precious that we adults tend to lose when we “grow up.” For a countercultural type like myself it will probably sound funny to say that my most precious moments in childhood involved building model airplanes and listening to Dodgers baseball games on the radio. In many ways we have not integrated these childhood experiences of exploration into our adult lives because we suffer from so much pressure, either from the material economy itself (let us remember that the recent stock market and financial crisis was not news to most of us who have been two paychecks from homelessness most of our lives), or from our wounded psyches still trying to prove our worth to disapproving parents. When I write, I feel like that kid solving problems while roaming a dream world.

  All of this has to be put into some context. I’m well aware that everything I believe and say is benefited by my “cultural capital.” That is, I’m the product of an investment of both my family and society in terms of education and opportunity. I’m self-conscious that what I say reeks of privilege. I have lived in a relatively affluent capitalist setting in which these experiences of inner exploration are permitted and encouraged. Still, I think it’s OK to talk about achieving happiness within the realm of my given reality, even though I empathize with the person running from rockets and take a certain responsibility for being part of the problem (as my taxes paid for the missiles being fired at innocent civilians who live in the periphery of our walled electronic castle). In my world travels, I’ve been lucky to do so from the vantage of exploration and personal growth rather than as a migrant worker. But in the process I have encountered economically disadvantaged people who still maintain positive feelings about their reality because they have strong relationships with their community, family, and nature. Many have not been spiritually colonized by Western ideology. For example, I recall a story I heard while living with a Hopi family. They reminisced about a time when government officials had come to tell them they were poor and that they needed help. In recalling the story, they laughed about the reaction of government agents when they said no thanks. To this day there is a brand new tractor sitting in the yard that was given to the family by well-meaning German philanthropists. It remains unused, and will do little good when the oil dries up, anyway. Many Hopi still plant corn with a stick and finger, and can harvest with the desert’s morning dew. There is something highly advanced about that kind of simplicity.

  The truth is that we all operate from the means that are available us. I just want to give thanks that I have lived a “sufficient” life and I hope that I can share whatever wisdom this life has afforded me. As it stands, by blogging I write for fun and generosity. I am fulfilled by the reciprocal relationship that media and communications of the Web 2.0 offer. Meanwhile, I can make money for my “services,” which is teaching. For those of us with the means, the internet uniquely positions us to engage in service leadership, which means we help solve each other’s problems. After all, we are just on loan to each other. In the midst of this richly unfolding economic crisis we can discover how the power of flower and song will sustain anyone with an alternate vision of our place in the world.

  11

  TIME BANKING IN SANTA FE

  STELLA OSOROJOS

  In January 2010, a group of Santa Fe volunteers excited about the opportunity to help their city transition through the economic shift and reweave community in the process launched a Time Bank. In a town known for its mañana attitude, the response has been phenomenal. Could this be the beginning of a new way of life?

  Time Banks are the brainchild of Edgar Cahn, a Yale-trained lawyer who cofounded the National Legal Services Program and founded the Antioch School of Law. In 1980, while recuperating from a heart attack, Cahn thought up the concept of Time Dollars as a way to redress the chronic lack of funds available to solve important social problems. If money was getting in the way of fulfilling needs, he reasoned, why not just make up a new currency?

  Time Dollars are based on the idea that everybody’s hour is equal. When I do one hour’s worth of work for Joy, I earn one Time Dollar to spend with Bob or Adrienne or Genevieve. What can be exchanged within a Time Bank is only limited by the services its members offer. It’s similar to barter, except that I don’t have to find an immediate match for my exchange. (Time Dollars are held in trust by the software th
at engines the whole thing.) And it’s different from barter in that it’s based on time and not cash value, which is why the IRS doesn’t tax Time Bank exchanges. Additionally, Time Banks can be broad or narrow in their scope. There are examples of Time Banks that service specific populations, like people with disabilities, as well as specific missions, like church groups.

  As we help people learn about Time Banking, the idea that seems to trip them up the most is that everybody’s hour is equal. I can’t tell you how many times people have asked me how many Time Dollars they should “charge” for their service, even when they understand the simple agreement that one hour equals one time dollar. Sometimes that equation doesn’t feel like enough, especially if they have a clear understanding of what their service could earn within the cash economy. It’s not a problem if a plumber or dentist or accountant doesn’t feel comfortable offering their particularly valuable job skill on the Time Bank; we simply encourage them to offer different services.

  Equally often, many people’s instinct is to undervalue their work. In one case, a woman was asked to make a prom dress and determined that it would take forty hours to do so, but felt uncomfortable with what seemed to her to be such a “high price.” It could be that she had an underlying inferiority complex that disallowed her from equating her time and talents with another person’s, but I’m sure there were other forces at work as well, not least of which is the way that we value goods and services in this country. In an economy flush with cheap labor from oversees, the prices of prom dresses, out-of-season strawberries, etc., are kept artificially low. We simply don’t understand the real value of things anymore. Time Banking helps remind us of what our goods and services costs us in human terms.

  Time Banks also do a good job of reweaving community ties. Because our Time Bank exists alongside a cash economy, where we pay money for our plumbers, dentists, and accountants, people turn to the Time Bank for the smaller interactions that make us neighbors, friends, and ultimately communities—things like picking up the mail, walking the dog, showing up with a pot of chicken soup when someone’s sick. These types of trades used to happen all the time and they forged bonds that were valuable because they were necessary to get along. Nowadays, when Whole Foods does our cooking, canine day care operations take over pet exercising, and the internet solves the rest, we’re hard-pressed to find time to introduce ourselves to the neighbors, let alone exchange anything with them. Time Banking becomes a set of training wheels that helps to reknit cohesive communities.

  In The Ascent of Humanity, Charles Eisenstein talks about how our ideas about separation have contributed to this culture of isolation as well as how to heal it. He argues that we remember and embrace a “gift culture,” in which our personal gifts are expressed and shared freely. Basically, gift culture says that if we do what our hearts long to do and everybody else does too, the rest will take care of itself. Reciprocity is ensured by our trust in the inherently generous nature of the universe. While I subscribe to this idea, I think that Time Banks and organizations like it help people transition to that level of trust.

  Why might it be hard to trust in the generous nature of the universe? Another way to say that a culture is organized around separation to say that it is traumatized. According to trauma author Peter Levine, of Waking the Tiger fame, one of trauma’s major characteristics is freezing, or immobility and numbness. It’s not that much of a stretch to view the typical suburban American household in this way, where each family is sequestered in their own locked house, afraid to let their children go outside to play or to interact with their neighbors. Breaking trauma patterns isn’t easy, but organizations that provide relatively safe arenas for interaction can surely help.

  Of course, Time Banks can also serve economic functions, especially in times of crisis. By reducing the need to pay for every little service we need, money is freed up for things that operate exclusively within the cash economy. In Santa Fe, New Mexico, we’re also hoping to enroll businesses in the Time Bank. We’re not there yet, but we envision member restaurants offering a percentage off of their prices for Time Bankers in exchange for helping with inventory or whatever else they might need. The same goes for beloved venues like the Lensic Performing Arts Center, the Santa Fe Opera, and any other business that might like to lower its own costs and participate more closely with its community.

  In Portland, Maine, where the Portland Hour Exchange (PHE) is fifteen years old and six hundred plus members strong, health care is the most utilized service, presumably helping to make up at least some of the insurance gap. They’ve also embraced their role as an incubator for small businesses, providing the introductions for scores of massage therapists, interior decorators, handymen, etc., to develop crucial client lists as they first start out. We see these models as being a great fit for Santa Fe or any town where the entrepreneurial spirit is strong.

  In one fascinating case study, the PHE received a grant to weatherize one home. Thinking ahead, they used the opportunity to train a coordinator in weatherization instead, who then trained a weatherization team, which then began to offer weatherization services for Hour Exchangers. Members have to pay for materials, but may use Hours for the rest. At least one team member has gone on to be hired as skilled labor by an outside weatherization business. It’s a great example of how Time Banking can help cushion the fall during bleaker economic times and grease the wheels of change in the meanwhile.

  In less than a year, Santa Fe’s Time Bank has since grown to have over one hundred members—and more sign up every week. People’s eyes simply light up when they hear about Time Banking—and I know why. The truth is, we’re hungry for new ways of living and relating to each other. We want to know each other and share in each other’s lives. We feel our interconnectedness. And the organizations that help us to realize it are welcome.

  12

  YOGA AND MONEY

  SHARON GANNON

  What would it take to be wild, free, and independently wealthy?

  I’m sitting in a small, dirt-floor restaurant in Bombay just finishing a meal of yellow dhal, chapatti, mango pickle, and a bottle of Duke club soda. I get up from the wooden bench to walk over and pay my bill. On the brightly painted, plastered, turquoise-blue wall, above the man with the cash box waiting to take my rupees, is an elaborately framed poster of a young woman. Around the picture are small flashing Christmas lights. Draped across the glass are strands of pearls. Like Botticelli’s Venus, this alluringly divine being comes into view emerging from the water, her body gracefully curvaceous, her hair and clothes flowing unrestrictedly around her like intoxicated devotees imbibing nectar wafting from the scent of her skin. She stands upon the water perfectly balanced, floating in an open pink lotus flower “boat” with outstretched arms, gesturing toward me. From the palms of her delicate hands flow masses of tinkling golden coins. It all looks surreal as I stand here in this dirt-floor restaurant, flies buzzing around us all. With a huge smile and enraptured eyes, the man enthusiastically tells me, “She is my Ishtadevita—Lakshmi—the goddess who is making the money for us!”

  This was my first introduction to the Hindu goddess of wealth. After that, throughout my travels in India, I began to notice many similar posters of Lakshmi (pronounced “lukshmee”), mostly in restaurants and shops; in fact, wherever business was being conducted you would likely find Lakshmi with her generous hands lavishly pouring money upon her devotees. I was never sure if the message of the goddess was supposed to inspire the customers to be more generous, or if the shopkeepers hoped that Lakshmi herself would be generous to them and bestow them with wealth, or if they keep her picture to remind them to be generous to their customers and others and not to steal or cheat.

  The Indian sages tell us that we become whom we worship. So if to become rich is your ambition, then to be more like Lakshmi—generous to others—would help you realize your goal. Central to the teachings of yoga is the concept that in essence our true identity is divine. To be divine is to be
whole, to be holy—not separate from reality. My teacher, Shri Brahmananda Sarasvati, described yoga as that state where you are missing nothing—you know yourself as holy, as whole and complete, connected to all that is.

  Whatever joy there is in this world all comes from desiring others to be happy, and whatever suffering there is in this world all comes from desiring myself to be happy at the expense of others.

  —Shantideva, A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life

  We live in a slave culture. Our present economy is based on the domestication and exploitation of animals and nature. We perceive all animals, as well as land and water, in terms of usefulness to us, as slaves or potential slaves—property to be owned. Our money comes to us as stolen wealth from the lives of the animals we buy and sell and from the natural resources we are exhausting. Without so much as a thank you we have come to feel entitled to use the earth and all living beings as if they had no purpose other than to be used by us. We are quickly removing all traces of wildness from the planet as we gun down mustangs from helicopters and dam “wild” rivers. If our culture had a mission statement, it might very well read, “The Earth Belongs to Us.”