From Intersection To Crossroads: An Invitation to Inquiry into Money and Spirit
March 16, 2009
By John Bloom
No productive inquiry begins without disclosing assumptions, even the assumptions behind the assumptions, for the sake of transparency. If you found this blog via the RSF website, you probably noticed three questions on the homepage: Can money nurture your spirit? Can money heal the planet? Are you inspired to learn more? These are not casual questions. They are meant to invite dialogue with us and across a growing community of investors, donors, and borrowers who know that change is needed in how we work with money and in the financial system. What the new ways will look like, how they will evolve is a matter of co-creating them with sensitivity to real social needs, spiritual and ecological integrity, and the full dimensions of interdependence in our economic life. Certainly, our work here at RSF Social Finance is directed toward evolving answers to these questions.
We would not ask the question about money nurturing your spirit if we didn’t have 25 years of experiencing that it can. But, as one who has led many conversations on money, this positive view is not commonplace at the outset, and changing that perception is not simple. Instead, the inner personal world of money is opaque, and attempts to explore it feel more like trespassing than discovery of what is already owned. So the question is a challenge to explore the intersection of money and spirit as it is situated in your life. How, for example, do your deepest values and beliefs currently play out in your financial practices? Withhold judgment. Instead consider each transaction a moment of intersection, a moment to engage in reflection and inquiry. When the inquiry surfaces insights, the intersection will likely become more of a crossroads connecting to your broader map of experience. I am not suggesting that this is easy, but it is a place to begin transforming how you connect your spirit with your financial practices. One of our assumptions is that systemic transformation begins with personal transformation. So sharing your experiences at this crossroad will further nurture your spirit and help others with whom you work, trade, invest, or give.
Can money heal the planet? This second question is not as much about nurture as it is about the nature of nature. There are numerous assumptions within the framework of the question itself—some of them controversial. The planet includes all the physical or material aspects of nature, all the living beings that inhabit it, and then the larger cosmic or spiritual forces at work on and in it including human nature. So the challenge here is to develop an ecological imagination of interdependent systems. Money is an invention of human nature. Thus, in its circulation and other uses, it is inseparable from any of the other systems. Given this set of assumptions, our attitudes toward nature and our economic practices with natural resources are likely to be reflected in our financial practices. And, how we work with money, the energy and intention that flow through it will also influence and be expressed in how we treat nature as the source of economic activity. If one looks at our current state of affairs, should it come as a surprise that our extractive and non-restorative approach to natural resources is mirrored in our extractive and non-restorative financial drive for wealth accumulation? This observation is in some ways an oversimplification, but to make a point—that by working to heal the planet we can work with money in a healthier way, and also heal ourselves. As money follows the paths of our intentions, it will also be a partner in this powerful reciprocal relationship. I believe this is a living picture of interdependence.
I am sure there are many more perspectives on the questions of money, spirit and the planet. This is why we ask the question: Are you inspired to learn more? We certainly are, and hope you will join us in using conversation and dialogue as powerful tools for transformation and building community.
John Bloom is the Director of Organizational Culture at RSF Social Finance.
- Published by John Bloom
- Categories: Money, Social Finance
hi, I feel very intrested in this subject since I have discovered the relationship/equivalence between PRANA (energy) and money… and would like to deeply change my point of view about money, blessing it as a way of reaching enormous ammounts of people.
Comment by mainjuri — March 18, 2009 @ 3:19 pm
John,
I think your exposee above is quite encouraging. There is a lot of guilt that goes with money and the drive for excess when in fact money is truly an exchange of energy that can be used for incredible positive beneficial purposes.
I find this to be true in my work with silk fabrics, infusing them completely with color, it is a energy of healing by way of color and the exchange of it for money is indeed a very end-point interdependence that is exactly this healthy spirit. The close relationships as the artist to the end users with minimal insertions in the distribution keeps the relationships genuine.
I see my company grow and my ability to affect others also grows. This great big earth becomes intimately smaller as I touch more of it through my interactions of business and sourcing materials and shipping my silks to peoples of the world that use them as the basic materials of their lives – decor, clothing, dance, events and education.
I look to organizations such as RSF Social Finance to light the way, having grown in their ability to shape their world. There is so much I need to learn as I find myself here in the treetops, there is freedom through this good thing….
Thank you for your encouragement.
Meagan
Comment by Meagan K Maloney — April 7, 2009 @ 11:16 am