Why Money is DEAD!

There have been a few occasions in my somewhat turbulent relationship with money when I’ve literally had a substantial amount of it dangled in front of my nose.

One such occasion took place at the birthing point of the digital revolution. Way back in 1995, along with my then business partner I had established one of the first ‘Multimedia’ companies in the UK.

Back then ‘Multimedia’ was a strange, enticing and sexy new breed of company.

We were young, dynamic and embodied a kind of ‘visionary’ approach to delivering images and words to an audience. This translated into us producing graphics work that could open people’s minds to an entirely new way of seeing and interacting with information and ultimately life in general.

Anyway, that’s what we thought back then.

As it turned out, we were so naive and wrong when it came to the greater aspects of human nature.

And we were so naive and mostly right in our belief that something very significant was taking place around how we see ourselves through the eyes of technology.

However back then, this enticing, sexy new breed had not quite learnt how to sell itself. In other words, we didn’t quite know how to fend for ourselves in the big world.

One day I was sitting in my ‘arty’ office wondering how all this visionary thinking was going to pay the rent when I received a call from a large and very prominent entertainment company.

On the end of the line was a woman with a very charming voice. She explained that she had caught sight of our work and would be extremely interested in speaking to us about various possibilities.

I almost fell out of my credit card-funded designer chair (which on their interest terms would take me literally years to pay off).

Two days later I was sitting across from the same woman who was flanked by several men in expensive suits.

“Firstly we want to thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to come here today,” said the woman.

Little did she know I was heading for Skid Row and I had nothing else that looked financially promising to do. At least they had promised me lunch, I thought.

So… to cut to the chase…after several more meetings with the woman and the suits, it was established that they had a high profile project for us to look at.

And… and…. if this project should work out well … there was a bigger conversation on the table regarding them acquiring my company, where in due course it would morph into a groundbreaking ‘Multimedia’ division.

I remember going home that night with a cash register ringing in ears. And within the month we had climbed into bed with this corporation.

The following six months turned into something I’m certainly not proud of.

I would find myself compromising practically every value I held dear just to keep myself close to this Cash Cow.

I increasingly saw myself as someone who didn’t believe in what I was doing.

After all, I was someone who was willing to sacrifice what was most creative – what was best – so that a product could squeeze a bit more money out of people it was supposedly there to serve and improve the lives of.

To this day I don’t know why it took me six months to wake up and pull the plug on this rather abusive relationship.

That said, maybe I had to go that long to really get a taste of what it was like to compromise my highest values to the point where I was willing to end up with only one value – MONEY!

In short I was deeply unhappy and spent most of the money I made on trying to fix my lack of inspiration.

Why do I share this story, and why is what happened back then significant for this New Year 2012?

It wasn’t that anything I was doing was illegal, and in this I was different from the MP’s who claimed fraudulent expenses as our health system crumbled through lack of funds, or the rogue traders and financial people who took tax payers for a ride and were happy to break the rules to ensure they came out on top.

I don’t know those people and yet I know what has happened to them.

It’s no mystery; we can all clearly see what happens when our personal and collective values are shrunken down to just one value – MONEY.

Instead of a vibrant collection of values that light up our being, we end up accepting and existing on just this one value.

This one value gives rise to a kind of ugliness – even if it’s dressed up in glitz and drives around in a car that costs more than most people make in years of hard work. It’s really very ugly when this one value defines everything.

In many ways, we are being shown the way by those of us who are most trapped in this powerful trance.

And in many ways this is the death of money, as we know it.

It’s the death because this single – once seemingly solid – value is now being systematically exposed as a fraud. It is indeed hollow and cannot sustain us in the times ahead. And I believe this exposure will keep going until everything that doesn’t serve us is naked in the light of our awareness.

So I invite you to allow your true values to shine out brightly in 2012 and beyond.

Allow the things that add real value to your life and others to be the gatekeepers of your life in 2012.

Money is nothing more than an idea… but now it’s got nothing to back it up any more: no gold or anything that we can touch.

And in this there sits an opportunity for us all to redefine what money is – to literally turn money into something that can serve us all in yet unimagined ways.

I don’t believe we need to do away with money – we simply need to do away with it being the way we define the value of a human being.

There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with having a system of value and exchange as long as we remember that that is basically all it is.

Money needs to serve us instead of us serving money and the few who have a disproportionate amount of it!

If the one-value system predictions are correct then 2012 could be a tempestuous year: a bad year, a year of gloom and scarcity.

And yet if you place the things that actually give meaning to your life – be it creativity, courage, integrity or whatever you choose – this year has the potential to be the real turning point that many wise beings have signaled.

We allow our values to be compromised at the cost of being truly alive and present for each miraculous moment.

Every single one of us is a Money Shaman in the sense that this is a collective opportunity to contemplate and take part in creating another kind of world: a world where caring for each other and the beautiful world we have been gifted rises above all else.

A world in which WE determine what this idea of money is and how it will serve us.

Wishing you a miraculous and abundant 2012.

Davide

Image courtesy of mseckington