Thanks to my guys from yesterday who really helped bring this out. Hopefully our experience will be of some use to others who may also be searching.
As an Integrationist, I'm naturally curious about how multiple disciplines can illuminate The Path to Happy. No single entity seems to have THE answer. So, I've become a professional curator of sorts, selecting important ideas, bits of Wisdom, and all kinds of fun stuff from all over the human experience.
Two of my favorite concepts are Investment, and Alignment. Investment is a powerful concept from the Money Realm. It refers to what we get back in by putting something out. It's actually very similar to our breath work in that way, and our sense of Flow. Alignment comes from an ancient notion of our healing, and is explained best by the Chiropractic Wizards. Simply put, Alignment refers to our ability to align ourselves with our purpose. A healthy spine is an aligned spine. If a disc is out of place, we will experience a world of hurt physically, emotionally, and sometimes even spiritually. The same is true in our bodies as in our lives; if something is out of place, misaligned, we're probably gonna hurt. The Path to Happy requires us, whenever possible to align ourselves in the strongest possible fashion. Namely, we want to align our behaviors with our values, our time with our energy, and even align our money with our values, our time, our behaviors, and our full energetic output. When these "discs" are stacked up nicely, and in alignment with one another, we tend to feel much better than when any one or perhaps all of those "discs" are out of whack.
This brings us to the concept of Money. In Eastern Medicine, they say that there are two things in life: Money and Love. Money is everything in the material world: money, job, carreer, finance, possession, etc. Love is all our relationships: family, friends, romance, partnership, etc. (I usually add a third Realm, the Realm of Self, but thats for another blog) For pretty much 100% of all the people I've met ever, "Money" is never about money. Money is usually misunderstood by the elders, and passed down accordingly. What we "inherit" from our family life is not their money, but rather their money issues. The most pervasive money issue seems to be the problem of vagueness.
Whatever we may have learned from our families about the value of money, how to be moral, responsible, good people, is likely to be passed down non-verbally. We just watch our parents interact and do their adult business, and we surmise vaguely how to do it ourselves. In many cases, the lessons we learned from our parents cause us to react or rebel in such a way that we end up doing whatever the opposite of their way was. This is about as far as many of our individuation/differentiation processes go. We just do either as we're shown, or we rebel and do the opposite of what we were shown. It's very rare that I talk with people who have spent a serious amount of energy, effort, time, and money healing this rift. As such, our Money Realm stays largely in the Shadows, and is often the source of our psychic pain, as it represents a substantial 'disc' thats out of alignment with ourselves.
This seems to be especially relevant in the work I do these days. Certainly, I am not the first to notice the intersection of the horrible economy with a newfound need for re-evaluating our Money Realm. Millions of people are finding out what is really important to them through this Depression. Notice how the word 'depression' refers to both the Emotional Realm and the Money Realm. Sufficed to say, Money is never just about money. The emotional components are essential to our sense of Wellness. Stay tuned for more to come on Investment and Alignment.
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