Nearly 20 years ago, I was walking down Madison Avenue in Manhattan, New York,
and a idea popped in my head, a title of a new book,
'How To Make One Hell of a Profit and Still Get to Heaven'.
It popped in my head because I had consistently seen people have struggles
financially.
I saw that many people were having these moral issues and psychological and
spiritual issues dealing with money.
Possibly because they had been programmed by religious idealisms that somehow
money's the root of all evil or somehow it's more blessed to give than to
receive,
or some of those types of thinkings that actually caused a conflict.
So if people ended up with money they felt like I need to get rid of it,
otherwise I'm not spiritual or something. Anyway,
I wrote the book for that purpose,
to try to solve that concern and address something about spirituality and
materiality or financial materiality at least.
And so I'd like to share that with you on this blog,
because I think it just might have meaning to you and help you receive more.
There is a study that you've heard me mention before in various topics and
titles that I've presented, on axiology.
And this axiology is the study of values and worth.
And this one discipline or ology or study actually goes into both
spirituality and human value systems, and also into economics.
It's a common thread because the cornerstone of both of these concerns are
human values.
And so I'd like to address that and the way I'll address that is by saying that
if you are,
in your life you have moments when you exaggerate yourself and puff yourself up
and inflate yourself, have a superiority complex and feel self righteous,
and you exaggerate yourself.
And there's other times when you deflate yourself and minimize yourself and feel
maybe an inferiority complex or a self- wrongeous state, I made up that term,
and we exaggerate or minimize ourselves.
And there's other times when we actually come back into self-governance and
center ourselves and become authentic. When we exaggerate ourselves,
we're not ourselves, when we minimize ourselves, we're not ourselves.
But when we're balanced and poised and present and purposeful,
we're centered.
In that centered state where we're not exaggerating ourself or minimizing
ourself,
we have the highest probability of actually having fair exchange with people.
We have a state of equanimity and we have a state of equity between ourselves
and others.
If we puff ourselves up we tend to look at people and look down at them.
If we minimize ourselves, we tend to look up to people.
When we exaggerate ourselves, we tend to go narcissistic.
We think people owe us. We minimize ourselves, we tend to go altruistic,
we tend to think we need to owe them. When we center ourselves,
we look for sustainable fair exchange.
So therefore our own centered state,
which is a spiritual state of equanimity, gratitude, love,
presence,
which has been considered part of the spiritual traditions as the state of
enlightenment,iIf you will, that state is not only an inspired state,
but it's also the state that allows us to have sustainable,
fair exchange with people. If we exaggerate ourselves into pride,
we attract humbling circumstances. If we lower ourselves into shame,
we attract uplifting circumstances to get us back into the center.
Nature's trying to get us into the authentic state. The moment we're authentic,
we are now no longer exaggerating ourselves to others or minimizing ourselves to
others, but we're actually seeing ourselves equal to others. And we have equity.
Even the term equity is used in shares and equities in the stock market today
because it's a trading term of having equanimity and equity.
The second we have equity between ourselves and others,
we care about what they value as much as we care about what we value.
And we make sure we care enough to communicate what we've have as an offering,
a product, service, or idea, in terms of their values.
In the process of doing that, they're more likely to receive and buy,
and we're more likely to receive the rewards from that.
As we provide a service or product, we receive a reward, we have a transaction.
If we have equity and equanimity,
we have the highest probability of sustainable transaction.
If we exaggerate ourselves and get narcissistic and look down on people and then
project our values onto people and expect them to buy what we have,
eventually they are not interested. They don't feel it's a win-win for them.
And they ask what's in it for them and they're not getting anything and they
don't buy. So we don't have any income. If we minimize ourselves,
we tend to altruistically,
sacrifice our profits and give deals away in order to get the deal because we're
minimizing ourselves to people.
But if we are basically being ourselves and we're having equity between other
people, we care about ourselves,
we care about them and we make sure we have a win-win,
fair exchange relationship.
That allows them to be present and allows us to be present.
See if we go in there and we try to give something for nothing,
we feel that we've been shortchanged and they feel obligated.
If we try to get something for nothing,
they feel shortchanged and we feel obligated.
But if we give something for something that's a fair exchange,
both have peace of mind, both have a centered state, both have gratitude.
They love what the transaction is. They're inspired to do business with us.
We have a spiritual outcome because we've had a material fair exchange.
So true spirituality, which is equanimity and the grace state,
the gratitude state, and true materiality, money exchange,
allows us literally expressing axiology, the study of values to the fullest.
What's interesting is when we live by our highest value and live congruently
with what's most important to us, we have the most objectivity,
the most balanced state. When we live by lower values,
we have the highest probability of going into this exaggerated or minimized
state.
So you might say that nature and in our own economic transactions are
helping us become authentic, helping us become inspired, et cetera.
I think that's why human beings were also necessitating business
transactions. You know at one time there was few people,
there were nomads around and there was no need for any sort of business
transactions or any money exchanges.
But as we eventually got into an agricultural society and we started to be
stationary and we started building cities,
we had differences with different skills, different classes started developing,
you needed economic exchanges to make fair trades,
and this is what led to equanimity and equity and the terms,
equity and equanimity in the markets.
So what I'm basically summarizing is that spirituality,
which is basically being an inspired, centered poised, present, purposeful,
equilibrated state and materiality are inseparable.
Spirit without matter's expressionless, matter without spirit is motionless.
They're actually inseparable states.
So if for some reason you think that it's more blessed to give than to receive,
just know that the people that are receiving are now cursed because they don't
get to give, they get to receive. And so it's not true,
the real truth is that maintaining fair exchange with people is the thing that
sustains. If you feel that you got short changed in a relationship,
you don't wanna do business with them.
If you feel that you gave more than you expect,
you eventually don't want to do business also. But when you give fair exchange,
you both want to do business again.
So maintaining fair exchange is the most inspired as well as the most
economically viable and material exchanging systems.
Money was developed for maintaining fair exchange.
Money was developed to make sure,
if you didn't have money in its form of some sort of currency or trading
mechanism, you would end up, somebody would say, 'Well, I make tomatoes.
I grow tomatoes.' 'Well, I make chairs.' Well,
if you don't need a chair paying somebody with a chair doesn't mean anything to
them, or if you don't need tomatoes, it doesn't mean anything.
But if you go and buy,
trade your tomatoes in for money and trade your chairs in for money,
and then have exchanges based on what the real value of the services is,
this is exactly what allowed money to develop.
So the reason why money was there is to help people maintain fair exchange,
sustainable relationships,
and sustainable relationships is part of spirituality. You know,
if we had only 24 hours to live with our life, we would say,
we'd go to the people who've made a difference in our life that we've had fair
transactions in and we'd say, 'Thank you, I love you'. In other words,
we'd have a spiritual experience with them,
but also because they've been in fair exchange with us and we would not want to
do that if we've had out of fair exchanges.
So nature is attempting to maintain the sustainable fair exchange,
this equity in the transactions,
so we can have gratitude and love and the spiritual experience
that most people are defining.
And I don't want to basically say that spirituality and religion are necessarily
associated. They could be. Spirituality is what inspires you as an individual,
according to your highest values.
And the reason why you're inspired doing your highest values,
is because that's where you have the most fair exchange.
That's when you're most balanced and most objective and most reasonable.
And you end up with the most sustainable fair exchange.
So I just wanted to share that insight,
because many people have somehow confused those two and blocked themselves from
receiving. And the moment you have fair exchange, look,
there's no limit on how many people you can serve, therefore,
there's no limit on the income you can have in your life.
If you get creative and caring about humanity and serve more people,
you have the opportunity to receive more wealth in life.
And if you save a portion of it, because you value yourself,
see if you value others,
you'll offer a service and you'll have a source of income.
If you value yourself, you'll keep some of the income.
True self worth is necessary in order to have a net worth.
So I just wanted to share that insight on the blog,
just in case you have had some challenges doing it.
And if for some reason you feel ashamed or too proud,
you know how to use the Demartini Method to bring those back into balance.
And also on my online programs, Building Inspiring Wealth,
there's some great insights there on how to start from fair exchange and build
the fortune that you desire.
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