So here we are, with a clear vision and a determination to bring it into reality. Some people call that manifesting.
It feels like the right term, because in my mind's eye Terrealuma is thriving already, looking just as I painted it into existence on the map. Though in fact the vast majority of buildings on the map aren't there yet. Manifesting theories state that the necessary resources flow from this sense of plenty, rather than a sense of lack. The magic works, not on a transactional level, and not in a way which can be organised. Faith and trust are required, and that inner feeling of plenty in the heart, of having it all already.
It seems to me that the natural state of abundance, which is an absolute truth, has been hi-jacked by capitalism.
The feeling of inner plenty, of love, of rejoicing in being alive, is entirely independent of money.
But tell that to someone who does not have enough money to cover basic needs, shelter, food, medical care. Your body sensitively and sensibly registers whether it is safe or not. It would be inappropriate to relax. Here the ideology of abundance steps in and all too often induces shame. Its logic suggests that people are poor because they aren't loving or valuing themselves enough. This puts people in a catch 22 situation.
In essence money is a circulating form of energy and potential power like any other. By dispelling shame and stories about our worthiness, we can certainly stop putting up blocks and limits within our own mindset. Many spectacular stories of successful individuals who were born with everything against them bear this out. There are many other stories, of people with inspirational attitudes who get ground down. Ill health and trauma shouldn't be correlated with poverty, but they are.
Abusive structures of power, fed by money, have grown up like mushrooms in the rain.
We don't all want to be spectacular entrepreneurial successes. What about, to take just one example, people who work in nursing, teaching, social services, people who get satisfaction from helping others. This genuine satisfaction does not seem to be transforming into riches. They're exhausted and squeezed to burnout and back, as their workplaces are taken over, indirectly yet effectively, by the profit motive. Are nurses all supposed to give up their jobs and retrain as life coaches?
Do we just need more enlightened millionaires to sort this out?
We have come to a place in which 'offering your gifts to the world' is pretty much synonymous with providing services to customers at a profit. This is what 'exchange' and fulfilment of needs have come to mean. The very possibility that people might get together and live in a state of abundance without being reliant on a capitalist system in which one person makes a profit from another, seems to have been completely repressed.
What if the conditions for maintaining the state of feeling loved and safe, for most people, most of the time, actually require a completely different system? Where caring for each other is the basic currency - at the centre of the world rather than on the periphery? I can imagine a world less transactional, in which people understand that everyone is trying to survive, that everyone at the root has the same needs as we do, and give to each other for no other reason.
I'm going to carry on manifesting my vision and enjoying the feeling of plenty I have in my heart, as well as feeling the real insecurity of our position right now, and asking for support to get the road and the buildings I painted on the map actually built on the land. To be of use to exhausted and traumatised people.
And while I experience money as love, energy, time, support, safety and freedom, my vision includes seeing the abusive power structures that have got hold of it crumble, as we evolve a little further.
Sarah Luczaj, PhD
therapist, writer, artist, reiki master, creative regenerator and co-founder of terrealuma.
offers online reiki healing/chanting sessions, here