LifeGrid Magazine September 2017 | Page 62

Spiritualising Your Money by Deborah Seaton ur financial and spiritual budgets are two sides of the same coin. Together they provide strategies that empower us to make new choices rekindling our values by embracing simple qualities, which bring more balance and authenticity to our lives. In this way we re-educate ourselves to what is truly valuable. In society today there is a definite stigma about people who are in financial difficulties. The repercussions of this stigma can be feelings of failure and embarrassment. Some suffer and worry in private trying to figure out how to resolve the situation. Some try to avoid and deny it by not opening bills or even hiding them. Financial difficulties can cause many problems. We can feel helpless and not know where to turn to next. Money is just an energy we exchange to fulfil our wants and needs. It’s quite sad that life seems to be mostly about wanting and nothing is ever enough “If I have that new TV or new car, I will be happy, I will feel better, I will feel excepted.“ This is totally learnt behaviour based on our distorted beliefs that we have taken on from the want, want, wants of society. Absolutely nothing away from us will fill the hole within. That feeling of contentment can only be found by self-discovery of the truth of who we really are. Can you see how complicated and hard life becomes when everything is about what others think, what we want and what we must have to fit in and be the same as others? When this happens, the gift of who we truly are is denied and forgotten. What are we truly looking for? Filling that hole within will never truly happen when we are constantly looking away from self. What we are looking for is our Self. Nothing we can ever buy or want away from self will fill that longing to know and discover who we truly are. We find this by following our path on our own journey of self-discovery Just as we spend and use the energy we call money we also spend our energy our life force. If our energy is scat- tered and we are giving it away, we can quickly become depleted just the same as our bank balance an example of this could be giving our personal power away or com- promising ourselves There is no difference between a spiritual and financial