I’ve been doing a lot of work around money lately. With my wanting to move out and actually make enough money to support myself, it’s in the forefront of my mind. But so is all of it’s ickyness.

Places of Stuck

When I think about what I associate with money, again and again, I think scary, dangerous, powerful. And what I’ve been taught is that things that are powerful should be avoided. In fact, you should outright run away from them. See something powerful? Run in the opposite direction. Immediately. Hiding is what’s best.

Except that’s not really serving me anymore. And by “really not serving me” I actually mean, “doing me crazy amounts of harm.”

An Idea

While I was journaling about it this morning, an idea hit me. When working with Havi’s stuff, like her Emergency Calming Techniques, or really, anything that Havi teaches you about working with your emotions, she talks about meeting yourself where you are and being unimpressed by your emotions and problems. Not dismissing them, but not letting them define you either. (Really, if you want a better explanation of this, go to her. She is much smarter.)

But what I thought was – what if I could be unimpressed by money? Not just my money stuck, but money in and of itself? What if I could remind myself that it’s a tool?

I’m probably not going to start worrying if I’ve got enough rakes to last the rest of my lifetime. So why should I be constantly worrying about money?

Now obviously, money is slightly different from rakes, or your power saw. Money does mean whether you have a roof over your head or not. But couldn’t remembering that it’s a tool give you just a little bit of a distance to it?

With a little bit of a distance, you can separate all of your fears and worries and associations from the actual money itself. And then you can go off and work on that stuck, without necessarily bogging down the physical thing itself.

This could be a terrible idea. But something about it appeals to me.

Being Open

Another thought occurred to me while writing – I was talking about how I really wanted my sudden inflow of money to continue, and that I liked it.

And suddenly this voice came up and asked, “But are you even open to it continuing?” and I thought…Oh lord. No. I’m not.

I’ll have these times when I’m suddenly flush with money – I’ll have like a billion commissions all at once, I’ll sell a bunch of paintings, whatever, and I’ll have money. It’s nuts.

And then I’ll spend it all – not on crazy stuff, but on the things I need to build my business, or paying off debt, or maybe a little treat to myself because, hey, I freaking sold stuff.

Then it’s gone. And all I can think is, “Oh, well there goes my money. Don’t know when I’ll be seeing that again. Won’t be around for a while.”

I don’t expect the flow to continue. I don’t expect more to come in.

I kind of see it like this:

I’m standing in a river. Every once in a while, I relax enough to realize that I’m standing in a river, and turn to welcome the flow into my life.

Then I spend all my “flow”, forget that I’m in a river, and start doing something silly like stare at the sky. It never occurs to me that if I stayed relaxed and open to the flow of the river that the flow would just keep on coming.

It doesn’t have to happen and then stop for 6 months. It could continue, again and again.

This kind of baffles my mind. It thinks that anything good has to end (we could go for hours about how that kind of thinking came to be) and that if I get something good for a while, tomorrow, it’ll be gone.

But what if?

What if that’s wrong? What if I’m standing in a virtual river of money all the time, but I just choose not to see it? What if I’m standing in a virtual river of anything all the time and I just never see it?

I’m not trying to get all preachy, or go into Law of Attraction mode. It just makes me wonder how many opportunities I’ve missed because I just decided that, “Oh well, that’s all my good luck and abundance for the year, maybe next year I’ll get some more.”

Maybe I’m allowed more than that.

Maybe I can be more than that.

Welcome to one artist's odyssey

On May 21st, I'm going on a quest. A quest for art, for meaning, for beauty, for truth. I'm picking up my life, packing up a suitcase and heading to rural France to live, paint and study art for the next 18 months.

Click here to find out how you can stowaway in my suitcase and join in the adventure!