Une monnaie en argent, un gros compagnon ou gros au lion, de Louis II de Mâle (1346-1384), comte de Flandre, de Nevers et de Rethel, non datée mais émise entre 1346 et 1364.

Understanding money: Pay Yourself First

Beginning in the 1700’s, the first Big Daddy of money was Mayer Amchel Rothschild: his famous remark you will relate to: Let me control the money, I care not who makes the laws.  Then, just before she died at an age well over 90, his wife who produced 5 daughters and the 5 sons who became the banks of England, France, Italy, Spain and Germany gave us this gem: “If my sons did not want war, there would be none.”

Well, my dear friends, we live in a world controlled from the shadows by that familiar mechanism, and it is a very big heartless game. Yup, it’s called money. Never minding the global stranglehold exerted on the whole of humanity, when we really examine our personal relationship with money it is fraught with ignorance and fear.

And our throw away phrase says a lot, “I need money to live!”

This article and the next ones coming will begin to dispel the fear along with an opening to understanding what money really is and how you yourself can actually command the money that comes into your life. Here are some simple understandings and a couple of interesting methods that will raise your consciousness concerning our major nemesis.

I had to begin somewhere myself. Here is the story.

There was a great day sometime in the early summer of 1979 when I lived in Santa Monica, CA. I went to the local organic coop near where I lived to find just the right thing for dinner. When I took a look at the bulletin board as was my habit, I saw immediately a colourful flyer with the catchy word: ‘Prosperity’ emblazoned on its 8 1/2 by 11 dimensions.

“Prosperity, huh! I need that. I am always talking about what I do not have.”

The flyer told me that a good teacher of the times named John Roger was giving a seminar that very evening in a church down in Redondo Beach to take place in about 2 hours. There was just enough time to grab a bite and drive southward to the shore side town.

When I got into the room, John Roger was about to begin. This is what he said.

“Pay yourself first! Ten percent of everything you earn is yours to keep. What this really means is that you will begin a sacred tithe to God that lives within you. All you need to do is separate 10% of everything that comes to you and keep it in a sacred stash near you. It never goes back in the bank which already has plenty of money. You are the one needing money!”

“Go home tonight, count all the money that you have and separate 10%, turn it into folding cash and wear it on your body preferably next to the center just below the belly button.”

He explained further that we are threefold Beings: Be, Do and Have. In those days we were learning meditations to increase our experience of our innate Being. We are already human doings as we are scurrying and doing; doing and scurrying without any seeming end. What we have very little experience of is the quality of “having something” which he called ‘havingness’.

By wearing that sacred money separated from the rest of the currencies we earn, we are increasing our own experience of having something.

He further explained that it was important to make a distinction between the money we were going to use for our bills and to feed ourselves etc. and the money which we declare is now sacred.

So what are we going to use this accumulating money for? It is to be used for spiritual development, books, seminars, certain essential items that show up as necessary for our lives along the way.

Fair enough. I went home that evening and counted out $600 as my total wealth. I acknowledge that just counting it showed me there was more than I imagined. I placed three $20 dollar bills in a small cotton bag and the next day when I got dressed, I placed it beneath the zipper in the front of my jeans over the center of my body as he had instructed us.

This is what happened next: that very day, a friend to whom I had given $20 over a year ago, came and paid me back. Thanks for the loan! Imagine my surprise!

Over the next couple of days at least 3 other people found me to return various sums that I had given to them. And as well as enjoying these windfall pay backs, my free lancing services were more in demand. Over the next two weeks my income increased considerably. And because I was separating that 10%, I noticed that I was earning about three times as much as I had previously thought! Nice perk, huh?

The fourth result of all this was that from that day until the day when I went broke traveling in my van in Panama in 2015, (that’s 36 years later) I had never been broke! I was able to provide both small and larger needs completely from the cash that I had in my sacred stash: a set of tires for the van, an engine overhaul, brakes, a set of spiritual books that I knew would be a of great value to me, the price of some seminars, some generous gifts to worthy people I met along the way.

My little story illustrates what Paying Yourself First can do to set you free from that one major stumbling block in your life.

Let us enumerate them clearly:

  1. 10 % of everything you earn is yours to keep.
  2. Separate that tithe to the God within yourself and keep it in a sacred place where its presence will increase your own sense of wealth as well as the actual stuff itself that will enable your life at critical times.
  3. As you increase the sense of havingness people will gift you and will continue to support you with even more money.
  4. You will never again be broke.

This is the start of a new era. Just begin, okay! Your action itself will teach you along the way. It is a great sense of freedom that when I blew a tire out on the van, I could take myself to the dealer and pay the $500 and change to buy a new set and then drive away in the space of a few hours. You will enjoy this new discipline that grows in you. If you are of low or modest income, you will be able very tidily to live on the 90% that remains. Trust me, you can! If your income is larger, you will discover even more how to accumulate ongoing investment capital using the same method and your own discipline

Now we can learn why we need currencies or a measure of value to transact our economic lives but we do not need the banks.

Give this blog away! Copy and print it and give it to all your friends. Send it on by email and by any kind of social media that you are using. Start something by beginning your own freedom from the control of money. This is a radical idea. It is useless without action!

Much Love and many Blessings, Amraah