Table of Contents

Money, the key to privilege

Love or money. Why not both? That's Leela's answer, from what I can gather. I just have to keep my priorities straight. My life has always been dedicated to making progress with love. Whenever I've had the choice I've chosen the spiritual quest over getting rich, or even comfortably middle class like my parents. Over the decades I've come to recognize an underlying principle. If I dedicate my life to love money will not be a problem. I'll have all I need and then some. I've also discovered that if I get greedy, money can't get away from me fast enough. I've taken the hint. From what I can see, lives spent in pursuit of money are not happy lives at any level of success. Take for instance the gobsmacking misery of Elon Musk.

Money is easy. Whenever I ask about money Leela gives me the equivalent of an eyeroll. Money is easy, don't ask me about money. Leela has nothing to say about money. It took a while for me to get it. I had to work it out on my own, though Leela was happy to confirm or deny my gropings. When I actually need it, the money will be there. Money's not a problem. Any time spent worrying or scheming about money is time better spent making progress with love. I've wasted an awful lot of time worrying and scheming about money. I'm grateful she hasn't fired me. It wasn't always easy. Before I connected with Leela, money was a legitimate concern. Money is the key to privilege. I learned some deep lessons about privilege when I went very briefly homeless because of my own deluded stubbornness. On the count of seven…

Abdication. Money and privilege are mental constructs: social conventions we all abide by because they've been imaginary cornerstones of human culture since the Neolithic Revolution, more or less. Money has no real value. It doesn't matter if it's in the form of a gold bar, cash, or credit in a bank. Those are all symbols of wealth, not the real wealth of food, shelter, security and so on up Maslow's hierarchy. I can give money away but no one gives privilege away: it can't be received. No one accumulates privilege except by having money and not spending it all. Privilege relies on having plenty of money in the bank and keeping it there. That's why winning the lottery is rarely if ever beneficial to the winner. If I move suddenly into a whole new zone with money I don't have the habits of saving and managing money that rich people have, the habits that helped them get rich and/or stay rich. But I did abdicate privilege: I started sleeping in my car parked on the street. Like some homeless dude, which I was. I did it because I was psychologically paralyzed, but now I can see it was an adventure Leela arranged for me so I could learn some valuable lessons. Two nights were enough to send me running for shelter. It became clear that even one more night would end me up in the system, courtesy of the police. I would have been forced to flag them down for help; there was no one else to turn to. Their options would not have been good even if they'd had the best of intentions.

Betrayed privilege. I abdicated privilege willingly when I joined TH and his crew. I relinquished my own personal sovereign power to choose for myself. That's standard operating procedure for spiritual teachers and a good reason not to have one. But I had good reason to: moving to Boulder saved my life. I gave up control of my life because I believed TH could make better choices. The key element was my willingness: it was my idea to give up control of my life. TH betrayed that sacred trust twice. The first betrayal damaged me physically but it was no big deal. TH backed off; I made a full recovery. The second betrayal was more serious. It damaged me psychologically, causing me to have episodes of uncontrollable trembling whenever I relived it for decades. TH betrayed me by delegating the right I had willingly granted him to one of his disciples, a hapless guy who had an assignment: conduct unannounced raids on households in The Community and make everyone sit in a circle while he told them what was wrong with them. I was in bed with my girlfriend when he barged in, waking us at dawn on a Sunday. Neither of us could make out what his incoherent shouting was about. Then he was back with a big jar of water he dumped on us in bed, shouting I had to join the circle. I'm sorry to say I did. I was that brainwashed. For decades I had episodes of uncontrollable rage at that betrayal. That memory no longer provokes rage. It doesn't bother me anymore because Leela healed the psychological damage after I surrendered to her. She tranformed a painful scar into a valuable lesson about privilege and betrayal.

Kids' stuff. Money was dreamed up by early farmers. The people who gave us the rest of human culture. Direct barter was awkward and inconvenient, and some genius came up with the notion of symbolic representation of value. Simply assigning value to something with no inherent value to make barter work more fluidly. Money is and always has always been a mental projection. As such, it's absurdly ripe for manipulation by Leela (aka the world). Money is child's play.