Money -- Nobody Wants to Talk About it
by Owl B. Hooten

Winter is a time when I like to look back over the previous year and evaluate my life and what has happened. I ask a lot of whys. Why did this happen? Why did I react in that way? Why do I believe that?

A major concern we have been having here at ZMS over the past year has been money, or to be more precise our lack of it.

Well, why? Why are we always short of money? What are we doing that is blocking our prosperity? How do I feel about money? I believe that a person's beliefs affect their actions more than any other factors, so I asked a better question. What do I believe about money that is keeping it away?

I started looking at some of my actions concerning money. I must admit that when we first selected money to be the theme for this [issue of] Gnomad I cringed. I thought "Why would we, who consider ourselves a spiritual community, write about money?" That was my first clue. Why can't a spiritual community write about money? When I talked to some of the other stewards here about what they were writing for this issue, I was told that they were uninspired because of the subject matter. It seemed as though nobody wanted to talk about it. Why? I think our beliefs are influenced by some of the old clichés we have about money such as "Money is the root of all evil" or "If you're a rich man you made your money at the expense of others." These clichés are telling us that you can't have money and be spiritual at the same time. I must disagree. Money is not the root of all evil, greed is. Money is just a medium for exchange.

I have a good friend who has made big money off a computer program. He is a good person. He's not greedy, in fact he's very generous. {I'm writing this on the computer he donated us.} He didn't make his money at the expense of others. The customers who bought his program were happy to buy it and received joy from it, so you can't say he took advantage of them so obviously these clichés are not correct.

We must acknowledge the fact that money is not inherently evil. You can be spiritual and have money. There's an old saying I just made up. "Money is like alcohol. The only time it is bad for you is when you abuse it." It is my firm belief that as long as you hold negative beliefs about money your subconscious will sabotage your conscious efforts to acquire money. This also holds true on a group level. I feel that we here at ZMS need to look at our beliefs about prosperity and make sure that we are not subconsciously sabotaging ourselves. I know I have a new appreciation of money.