Money, Consciousness, & Breaking The Spell Of Association

This lecture begins with a wonderful, centering breathing that stills and anchors one in the present. It then proceeds to discuss money, the power of authority we unwittingly ascribe to it, and how we use money as an excuse to limit us from digging deep into our creative nature.

Transcript

Before we start,

Let's begin in this way.

One of the most underestimated practices probably is the practice of just stilling in daily life.

Stilling,

Anchoring within,

Pausing and then carrying on with whatever we're doing.

Would you agree?

Does anyone here say before an important,

So-called important meeting or decision or call to make,

You take a moment to just stop,

Pause,

Still,

Tune inwards,

Anchor in,

I call it,

Center,

Allow something new,

Something higher to come into the moment before setting out to do that thing.

Does anyone here do that?

On occasion maybe?

I think it's an amazingly powerful practice,

As small as it seems to be,

Because it doesn't really take very long.

It's not a question of sitting for an hour before that thing that we have to do.

It can just take 30 seconds just to still and recognition of this act that we have to do,

Anchor inward,

To attune inward.

How do we do that?

How do we attune inward?

It can begin by simply recognizing the fact of my being.

I take myself for granted.

I take the fact of my existence,

My beingness,

My isness for granted.

Don't we all take it for granted?

Sometimes we go a whole week,

And in some cases for some people even longer,

Without actually consciously acknowledging,

Consciously recognizing our being,

Our beingness.

So we take that for granted.

So in stilling,

What we're actually doing is we're going against this default way of being.

We're going against this unconscious momentum of ourselves,

This unconscious habituated way of being in the world,

Which does not consciously recognize or acknowledge the beingness of myself.

So to still means to stop for a moment,

To actually tune in.

And by tune in,

We can simply mean by feeling in,

Feeling into my being,

Feeling the being of myself.

And it doesn't have to be anything complicated.

It doesn't have to be anything theoretical.

And to ensure that we can begin or activate that by taking a deep breath.

So we can just action this idea of recognizing or acknowledging myself.

The action part of that is a simple deep breath that I stop and I breathe into myself.

And in that breath,

A dimension of presence is momentarily at least allowed to enter into the moment.

And what that means is that I just become a little bit more conscious than I was a moment before.

We can see that,

Right?

It's not anything abstract.

It's not anything ambiguous that we're talking about.

So similarly,

Let's begin this important discussion with a deep breath.

And then with a deep breath,

We will follow into introduction.

We've shared it before of a simple 30 second breathing technique that's quite powerful and it's quite effective in not only beginning this process of stilling,

But also internally actually changing what I call the internal weather,

The internal climate of my being,

Which I'm usually not at all aware of,

Right?

We usually say I feel good,

I feel bad.

And that's really a crime when it comes to our vocabulary,

Emotional vocabulary.

I feel good,

I feel bad.

Generally,

That's the extent of it unless we're experiencing some extreme negative emotion.

So let's start then by just all of us taking a deep breath.

So let's breathe out first completely and then inhaling.

And letting the exhale to completely fall out of it.

And then after this deep breath,

Letting a pause be there.

Before we begin this 30,

20 second,

In fact,

Breathing technique that is called conscious connected breathing,

And it's 20 breaths in total that are taken through the nose in and out,

Not through the mouth.

And that are breathed quite high up towards the clavicle,

Not the belly,

So it's not a yoga breath.

And it's 20 breaths that are divided into four cycles of five each.

And each cycle,

There's five breaths.

The first four are fast and shallow,

High through the nose,

And the fifth is long and deep.

And there's no pauses between the cycles.

So what all of that looks like is this.

So I'll show you.

I'm going to do one or two cycles.

I'm looking at both of you because all of us have done it a few times in the past.

And it just looks like this in and out through the nose,

High up into the clavicles.

I'll do one or two cycles.

That was four fast and shallow,

And the fifth is.

.

.

That was one cycle,

One of four.

So without animation,

I'll do two cycles without any of this,

And it looks like this.

It's as simple as that.

That was two of the total four cycles.

So let's do those four together,

After which we'll allow a pause for us to feel into the changing or the changed inner weather.

And then we'll begin our talk about money,

The importance of money,

Where our distortions perhaps about money lie,

And the unnecessary power that we freely ascribe to money unwittingly.

Are we even aware that we do that?

So I've said that in case I forget.

Please remind me if anybody remembers.

So let's go ahead and just let the eyes close just for the breathing technique,

And then we'll open them again.

So let the eyes close,

And let yourself recognize your being in this room,

In this chair,

The volume and weight of yourself.

Feel the beingness of you.

And at once,

I'm going to start my 20 connected breaths for myself.

Please go ahead and join in at your own time.

Don't worry about noise.

Don't worry about getting it right.

Don't worry about getting it wrong.

I will do it quite loud to serve as a sort of reminder of how.

So I'm going to start for myself.

Please go ahead and join in at your own time.

Liauda.

Hm.

Now,

Letting your breathing be natural again.

You don't do more than four cycles,

It's just the four.

Letting your breath come back to normal.

Tuning into your internal weather,

Your internal climate.

If you are not in the habit of breathing,

And the majority of people are not,

Chances are you'll feel,

After this 20 breaths,

A little giddy,

Even a little flushed,

Overheated.

This is a sign that you need to breathe more.

So allow your breath to become natural again.

Feeling into your being,

Let your eyes open.

As we begin our discussion,

Our talk about money,

About its influence in our lives,

About the illusory power of money,

And how we unwittingly,

Unconsciously give money this power that itself actually doesn't really have,

Does it?

Does money have a power of itself?

What do we know about money,

First of all?

It's a medium of exchange.

That's the first thing we know about it.

That it's a medium of exchange.

It seems to allow us to access things that we believe we need for our fulfillment,

For our happiness,

For our survival.

And somehow,

Historically,

We've ascribed this sort of power of attorney to money.

We've given money this power in order to access those things that we believe we want and we need for our fulfillment.

So it seems to me that it's this conviction,

This belief that I need things that has allowed money to have this power of attorney,

This power ultimately.

Because it's not just a question that money is a utility,

A functional utility,

Medium of exchange that is entirely functional.

In other words,

I need food.

I don't want to carry a bag of beans to go and exchange it for a couple of tomatoes.

So we decide on this medium of exchange that we agree has a currency value.

I give you this much and you give me this much.

It's a convenient thing.

Money itself is quite convenient,

Medium of exchange.

There was a time when I'll carry my chickens and exchange them with your goat and then you give me your harvest and I'll give you my eggs or whatever it is.

There was a much more convenient way of doing that.

That's where gold came in and finally money as a medium of exchange that was a little bit more convenient or certainly not as heavy to carry around.

And now it's plastic and we're even going into digital currency as a mode of exchange that you don't even need banks to store your cash or your credit card or whatever it is.

So we see that money itself is just a means of facilitating our lifestyle,

Making it a little bit easier for us to do what we need to do.

So if it were just a question of being a functional thing,

Then money would not have that degree of power that it does.

There's something else to it,

It seems to me.

And that something is that we've also ascribed to money the ability to get those things that we believe we must have not only to survive but also to be happy,

To be fulfilled,

Whatever that means for the individual.

And today it's given even more abstract because of late there is this thing called living the dream.

And of course we all know that in order to live the dream you've got to have money,

Right?

But is that true?

You've got these convictions that are unexamined.

In any case for me as far as I'm concerned dreaming is for the sleeping.

I'm more interested in vision.

Vision is for the waking.

Dreams are for the sleeping.

I don't want to live a life of dreaming.

I don't want to live the life of my dreams although I know what is intended by that and what's meant by that.

I want to live a purposeful life of vision,

Dedicated purpose and vision.

But that's not the point of our conversation here.

The point of our conversation is it seems to me that the reason money has become our master is not only because it's a functional medium of exchange that I need in order to you know I'll get I'll take that t-shirt from you and I'll give you a pair of shoes and exchange carrying around of stuff if you have to go shopping is really not the most convenient way of doing it today,

Right?

So it's pretty simple to see that.

That's one thing however that is that we have ascribed to money also the ability in order for it to fulfill our more abstract needs like fulfillment,

Like happiness and getting even more abstract today in terms of living the life of your dreams and for that we need money and we're willing to sacrifice our lives in order to accrue this stuff.

Some of us are willing to even sell their souls so to speak to get money.

But is it money that really has this power?

No.

We can see that right?

Does money have a power in itself?

No.

And yet the site of a hundred dollar bill or the site of a check with a few zeros on it,

Preferably a one at the front or whatever is enough to blind us.

Why is that?

What happens when we think or see or entertain the idea of money?

What happens?

What happens to us?

And now we need to take this conversation into a practical dimension,

To a mechanistic dimension.

We need to know what happens to you right here.

What now?

When you think money,

When you see money,

Currency,

When you entertain the prospect of losing money,

When you think of the prospect of gaining money,

What happens to you?

What happens in the mind?

What associations specifically take place in the mind when you see a hundred dollar bill?

Because it's all visual isn't it?

If you could not envision,

If you could not make a certain association around money,

Money would have absolutely no power.

For example,

You see a hundred dollar bill and your mind is,

Let's say it's just gone to sleep for a second or it's forgotten what to do with that thing you're looking at.

It doesn't know what to associate.

It doesn't know what pictures to conjure.

It doesn't know what images to envision or to create for you.

So what I'm trying to say here is that the hundred dollar bill acts on your mind like a finger acts on a keyboard.

It presses a certain button and it appears on the screen of your consciousness.

So the sight just looking triggers certain associations,

Certain pictures,

Certain images.

Do we see that?

I don't know about you actually.

I just know that that's what happens with me.

Maybe it's a picture of a holiday.

Maybe it's a picture of a meal.

Maybe it's just a euphoric feeling of acquisition that tells me I'm now safer.

I'm one hundred dollars safer.

Or I'm a thousand dollars safer.

Say that again.

Money provides a choice.

Society is choice.

Yes.

But let's take it into the practical.

Yes.

That's right.

For you the association is that money allows me to make different choices.

That's absolutely true for me too.

Is it true for anybody else?

Yes.

So I've given money the power of attorney even over my choices.

So in other words,

Money allows me to make different choices.

I'm not questioning any of these yet,

But we must examine and we must look.

We must take a deeper look if any of this is true.

Because I have an actually I believe a relevant example of this.

But the point here before we go looking at this example is we need to see that without the ability or without this associations that my mind makes about money,

It could be about anything else.

It could be,

Let's say,

Well,

Men and women.

We see a woman and my mind makes certain associations.

We see a man.

The mind makes certain associations.

We see a red car that makes certain associations.

I see a dog.

I love dogs,

But yet this fear arises because of an association.

I don't want to be afraid of dogs,

But it's in spite of me.

Why is that?

There's a programming there.

There's an imprint.

There's a particular experience relevant to this particular thing.

And for us,

Most of us from very early on,

We're programmed to associate a certain way about money,

Which you may have guessed,

Liza,

Since you've just come.

That's the topic of our conversation tonight.

The important part of this is that without these associations that go on in the mind,

Money itself does not have a power.

Can we see that?

I see a dog in the street.

I'm talking about dogs because I remember my mother.

So afraid of dogs.

So afraid of dogs.

It doesn't matter how cute they are.

And she literally used to go into a fit of terror when she saw a dog.

She would start to cringe.

It didn't matter how much you reasoned with her.

It didn't matter how much you rationalized the madness of this.

Look at this little fluffy thing.

It's just a bundle of love.

So right?

It's the same thing with money.

It's in spite of ourselves that we associate that way.

So the very first thing that we need to understand is that there is a certain association by default,

Mechanically,

Unconsciously,

That is happening.

That is happening in the absence of what?

Of my presence.

The absence of my consciousness.

I'm not here,

Therefore these associations,

These algorithms are necessary.

But the minute I come alive,

The minute I enter into the moment as a presence,

As a consciousness,

I can begin to see what is going on inside me.

I can begin to see the unconscious associations,

Images.

It's all pictures.

It's all images.

It's all images.

Our fear is due to an image.

Our desire is due to an image.

Without an image,

There's no fear,

There's no desire.

It's just pictures.

It's a picture show going on in the mind that triggers those deep emotions or those superficial feelings.

Oh,

I don't really care about that.

No,

You don't care about that because you don't have a profound enough image.

But you can certainly have one.

You can create one.

So that's the first thing.

We have to see that these associations are taking place 24-7.

These impressions,

Impressions,

I am being impressed upon by this image and it is calling forth in me these feelings that make me long or want,

This is so important for me.

You don't understand.

I think I do,

Right?

So we need to see these associations that are happening mechanically,

Automatically,

Unconsciously.

The second thing we need to see and understand or we need to get that these associations are taking place automatically,

Mechanically,

Continuously because I'm not present.

I'm asleep.

I think I'm awake.

I'm not.

So in the absence of consciousness,

A higher level of consciousness,

In the absence of presence,

These associations are happening continuously.

The teacher,

Gurdjieff,

I don't know who,

Some of us are familiar with this name,

Put it this way.

He says there are certain processes in you that can only take place in the dark.

What he meant by dark is the absence of light.

And what he meant by light or what I'm meaning by light is the absence of presence.

And what I'm meaning by presence is just a higher degree of consciousness.

Consciousness is the light of awareness.

So in the absence of my presence,

There are certain processes that are taking place within me that are demeaning me,

Diminishing me,

Lessening me,

That are having an adverse effect on me that I cannot rationalize my way out of.

So the first thing is these associations.

The second thing we need to really note is that it is only in the absence of presence or a higher degree of consciousness that I'm operating at that these associations can take place.

Is this clear?

Somewhat clear?

All we've said is that there is this commodity,

This thing,

It could be anything,

It could be money,

It could be dogs,

It could be women,

It could be men,

It could be whatever.

That causes,

Triggers certain images of my mind,

We call this association.

So thoughts by association,

Which just means association that are being triggered out of my memory bank.

That's all.

Money,

The mind immediately brings up an image out of my memory bank.

There's a memory bank and something has to trigger this image to the surface.

And that something is the dog or the money or the red car or blue car if you prefer or whatever.

So there's a stimulus,

The trigger that causes by association us to dig out of our memory bank what happened to us in this lifetime.

Could be personal memory,

Could be collective memory,

A national memory,

A past life memory,

It could be God knows what.

So if you're working with yourself at the level of memory,

There's no end to it.

There's a much more effective way to wake into the moment and take a look at the stuff that's taken place behind the scenes.

In the absence of my consciousness,

In the absence of a greater degree of consciousness,

More presence,

This is happening.

While I'm sleeping,

This is what's going on in my house.

This is what who and what I've been permitting.

These are the guests that I've been permitting to come into my home,

Making a mess of things,

Eating my food,

Drinking my booze and then,

You know,

Filthy in the place and then leaving me to take care of the business of cleaning up and replacing all the stuff.

That's really what's happening.

In the absence of my consciousness,

In the absence of my presence,

That's what's going on.

Are we seeing this?

So it's obvious that first thing that needs to happen if I cannot totally wake up,

Because generally it is a gradual process that life is helping me to realize.

It rarely happens suddenly.

If I cannot totally wake up then what I need to do is just to begin to think of consciousness as something that I can have a higher degree of in the moment.

I need to think of consciousness,

In other words,

Practically.

I need to think of consciousness then in a way that I can form an association in my mind,

That I can have a picture of.

Einstein said you cannot solve a problem,

In this case it's money,

Let's say,

A love for or hatred of.

He said you cannot solve a problem at the level in which the problem was created.

Level of what?

Level of consciousness.

It is our level of consciousness that determines our behavior,

Our thinking,

Our feeling,

Our actions,

Whether we react in life or whether we respond.

It's the level of our consciousness.

The higher the level of consciousness is the higher the quality of our thinking,

The higher quality of our feeling,

The higher quality of our behavior.

It's a matter of consciousness.

This is the new science of healing.

This is the new science of effective personal work.

Working at the level of mind is tedious and boring.

Working at the level of emotions is even more boring and painful.

We know that working at the level of the physical is like,

Who's got time?

Nice to get a massage,

But then.

.

.

So we're talking about working at the level of consciousness.

And Einstein himself said,

You cannot solve a problem at the level in which the problem was created.

You've got to access,

You've got to leverage a higher level of consciousness.

Fair enough,

Right?

If you want to see more you've got to go up more,

Go higher,

So to speak.

Some will say,

Yeah,

But if you go too high you can't see.

Great.

The problem is gone.

You can't even see the problem anymore.

So who cares?

Go as high as you want.

So consciousness then,

How can we look at it in a way that we can practically wrap our minds around?

Well,

How I think of consciousness is this.

I think of consciousness as a light with a dimmer switch.

If I turn it up,

A little bit more light comes into the room.

If I turn it right up,

I can see everything more clearly.

Without light,

I stumble,

I fall over things.

Without light,

If it's completely dark,

Without consciousness,

In other words,

I need systems.

I need regulations.

I need laws.

I need rules.

I need to count.

It's completely dark in this room.

I need to count how many steps between this chair and that chair.

I need to count how many steps to the wall.

Otherwise,

I'm going to be smacking into things.

And if I meet someone who is also living in that room or is going into that room,

Total darkness,

Who is also living in total darkness,

Then I'm going to tell them,

Listen,

This is the theory.

This is how to do it.

This is how to navigate your life in that space.

You take six steps forward,

Seven to the left,

12 to the right,

Et cetera,

Et cetera,

Et cetera.

And you better remember that because if you don't,

Life will tell you.

Of course,

It's going to happen.

You need systems.

You need rules.

You need laws.

You need regulations.

In the absence of presence,

Laws,

Rules,

Regulations,

Plans,

Agendas apply.

For example,

There's a lot of talk about giving freedom to the people in this time.

Oh my God.

At this level of consciousness,

We kill each other.

We're already doing that,

Even with restriction.

I'm not talking about war.

That's something entirely different.

And I know that this is a hard pill to swallow.

And I'm not an advocate of control.

I'm not an advocate of that.

But I understand the necessity of it.

Because the level of consciousness that most of us operate on is no higher than a machine,

An automatic machine.

It's by stimulus,

Response and stimulus.

See this picture,

I behave and act.

I'm willing to go and kill.

I will just,

If you can be persuasive and convincing enough,

I will go and get a gun and shoot something.

Right?

Again,

I'm not advocating control.

I'm not a big fan of authority.

Far from it.

But what I am trying to say is that freedom is a byproduct of consciousness.

The higher quality of consciousness.

And seeing consciousness as a light,

I get to have a sort of convenient way of understanding this abstract word.

Turning up consciousness.

I won't need all these systems.

I won't need all these rules.

I won't need to count my steps.

I'll be able to see the chair.

I'll be able to see the wall.

I'll be able to navigate with awareness the space.

Does that seem fair?

Okay.

My own practical experience with this idea of money,

That it is a capacitator of choice or ability,

Is this.

Because that's an excuse I used,

I still use on occasion because it's convenient.

Seven years ago,

As some of you know,

I lost everything.

I basically ended up more or less on the street.

I lost my home.

I lost my girlfriend.

I lost this,

That,

That,

That,

That,

With something like 75 bucks in my pocket.

Won't go into the detail,

But sitting in a cafe somewhere,

Typing,

Getting email from a friend of mine in England,

Zeff,

Says,

Come for my 40th birthday.

Sorry,

Dude,

I don't have 75 bucks in my pocket.

I don't want to go into the details.

But I wanted to tell him I can't.

Instead,

I said,

I didn't have a home,

Literally.

I didn't have money.

I was too overwhelmed to continue with what I was doing,

Work,

Et cetera,

Et cetera.

Just the whole thing fell apart.

I wanted to tell him to use the same excuse.

I don't have money.

Instead,

I said,

I found myself in the email writing,

How can we make this happen?

And amazingly,

That simple question opened up a whole course of events that I'm the recipient of today,

Six,

Seven years later.

He said,

Well,

I'll buy you the ticket.

And you can pay me later.

There is a rebirth here,

A breathwork therapist that you recommended to me.

She may be interested in having you come to do some workshops.

Would that be interesting to you?

Let me see.

I'm too busy doing absolutely nothing but sort of grieving.

Yeah,

OK,

Let's do it.

A talk was organized.

He bought my ticket.

Three weeks later,

I'm in London,

And I'm running this workshop.

One workshop became two.

Two became three.

Six years later,

I did over 250 workshops and retreats,

20 countries.

And it all came out of a simple question,

Which intuitively came to me to question my power of authority that I'd given to money.

I decided to ask a question.

How can we make this happen?

Money is not the issue.

There's got to be other ways.

And so suddenly,

We creatively solved the issue of limit.

So my question to us tonight is,

To what level is money being used by us as an excuse to live in,

To limit our creative response?

I'm not saying that it is for you.

I'm saying that it was for me.

It stopped me from asking those questions.

How can I make this happen?

Well,

Of course,

Now I can be lazy.

I can be apathetic.

I have to be creative.

I have to actually consciously think.

How can I make this happen?

Opens doors,

Does it not?

So my question also is,

Might it do the same for others?

I don't know.

It did for me.

And I can apply that not just to money,

To anything.

This group,

For example,

I can't expect something different to happen if I don't do something different.

Might the same principle apply if I ask myself the same question that I asked about money?

If we want to reach more people,

Might I just simply ask,

How can I make that happen?

Might I have some answers?

But then,

Of course,

I'll have to carry out those actions necessary.

Do I want to be active,

Proactive about that,

Or do I want to continue being lazy?

But I certainly cannot expect things to continue being what they are without asking the right questions.

I think that we've talked about this in a way which maybe was useful rather than philosophical.

So I want to stop now and want to give you the ball in your hand and see what your thoughts are.

So I'm going to take a break.

Reviews

How can we make it happen? I love that. Thank you. ❤️

Great practical information into how we allow our emotions and state of consciousness affect our relationship with money. Thank you!

So inspiring, Bassam 🙏
How can I make this happen? 🥰

Appreciate the shift in thinking about how we allow money to affect our emotions by not being conscious of the connections we make.

Need to listen again. I feel some resistance to this which needs to be explored. Thank you 😊

This changed my perspective completely. Thank you

THIS WORKS BASSAM✨
To my shame (or to my increasing aware awareness) I totally have a relationship with money as you describe so well here!

I now find myself applying the ‘how can ‘we’ make this happen’ to every work, relationship or other dilemma I find myself in when I become aware my ego wants nothing more than for me to give up on being present to what conscious can really create 🙏🏽💫✨

Excellent points made! Thank you!

So informative and helpful-I am were you were 7 years ago, having “lost what I thought was my life” I know I will be able to create a new reality for myself, and even if these last years have been the most difficult in my life, they were probably as I see it, totally necessary to make me wake up, finally. Of course this is not a fixed state but a process, namaste 🐴🤩🙏