Shake your money maker

So I was over on Slade Roberson's blog Shift Your Spirits and came across a blog titled: If money were a person, who would money be?

For someone prone to standing on mountain tops and yelling out "I am god!" (whatever happened to Shirley McClain? I owe her a lot.) -- that was a really interesting question. I signed up for the task:

My imagination supplied me with everything from Daddy Warbucks to Curella DeVille. My mind flitted from image to image, dissatisfied. I tried to come up with something more serviceable: a verdant goddess with fat breasts, or Baccas in a jolly drunken orgy of plenty. But Money felt different: He was a slippery fellow. Sly. Sinister. Miserly in spirit and not even generous enough to step forward when I asked him to. He was hidden and just wasn't coming out of the shadows. He was standing me up. Again.

So I took a different tack. I decided to write down, 'How does Money make me feel?” and “What do I believe about Money?”

My list had over 50 entries. Most of them demoralizing and just sad. I'll spare you the list. No need to give those bad ideas any more cosmic juice. I'm done with them anyway. 

Just making this list depressed me. I started to ask myself the question again: “If money were a person...” but it no longer mattered what he or she looked like. What mattered was the relationship I had with money. Money was a sneak theif: Untrustworthy. Holding out. Making me feel guilty and ashamed and inadequate and stupid and... well. 

I saw I'm like one of those women who stay in an abusive marriage because I felt I deserved no better, and those one or two positive ideas about money made up for all the bad ones.

Screw that. There is no amount of positive thinking hearts and flowers and affirming statements that were going to reconcile these differences. It was clear. I needed a divorce.

So I looked money in the eye and I said: I divorce thee. I divorce thee. I divorce thee.

It was time to find myself a new Money paradigm (Oh god. I said paradigm). But I needed something more than ideas and context. I needed a new relationship. A Sugar-daddy. An angel. One with body armor. One that could kick ass. One that was on my side for a change. I began interviewing in meditation.

If that were the end of it, this would be a very short blog. A pamphlet really: but valuable. One you could print out and tape to your bathroom mirror and rehearse each morning when you brush your teeth. It would go something like this:

• Rewrite your list to all positive statements.
• Imagine money is an ally with the personality to nurture you and supply all your needs.
• Assign your ally to make all of those statements true for you.
• Visualize your ally as your companion, your imaginary friend, your spirit guide. Your angel. Your avatar. Whatever works.
• Let your ally do your bidding.
• Do what your ally advises.

Simple really, if you are into formulaic self-help exercises. Except the plot thickens. Deliciously, as it turns out.

It was then I learned about Chakras.

Okay, I've known about Chakras for like, forever. But I never got into them (or they into me, as it turns out)

As much as I groove on meditation, Chakras didn't do it for me. They seemed as nebulous as auras, and I've starred at people until I was cross eyed and auras just weren't there for me. I've starred until halos of after-images danced in front of my eyes... was that it? No. I stood my indulgent friends and innocent family in front of white walls and or dark curtains and once tried a paisley bed sheet. I've carefully watched my children sleeping, and even though they glowed mightily with love... Nada. No auras for me.

Long after I accepted that spirit just didn't show up in the material world for business as usual, I was still expecting to develop super-man-eyes and x-ray-vision. I wanted to SEE something, for crysakes. With my actual eyeballs. Didn't. Maybe some people do. I'll allow that. But not me.

Then finally: Hey Sweetcheeks, look with your third eye. Oh. Yeah. Why should auras be different?

Or Chakras either for that matter. For all I know auras are the result of Chakratic energy. (if it's not a word, it should be). Chakras are wheels, I'm told. Churning away on your energetic spine, emitting colors, like auras do. I visualized chakras like those fourth of July pinwheels with rockets attached that you nail to your fence. Light and run. Little paper tag on the back reads: Warning. Emits sparks. Yeah baby. Aural sparks.

Change gears: (This is going somewhere, I promise) I once bought a box of polished stones I was told corresponded to my Chakras. They were lovely. I keep them in a small cedar casket laid out in order on black velvet. I admired them. They are as valuable to me as gemstones. But not because they have anything remotely to do with my own energy centers. I'm just crazy about rocks. I collect rocks like some people collect figurines or matchbook cars or exboyfriends. I'm a compulsive rock-stacker. Give me a patch of landscaping filled with river stones and I'm in heaven.

So what is my point? I admit to a special attraction to the second stone from the bottom. A bloody-orange Carnelian with a dark spot sulking like a malignancy within. Like the veined orange yolk of an egg that stayed in the hen's nest too long. Bloody, and alive with it's embryo speck. It has always seemed alluring in a flawed and mysterious sort of way.

Stay with me here. Synchronicity. It's all about how it comes together.

That stone alone finds its way into my pocket now and then. It seems, well, sexually charged. It has a certain animal magnetism. I stroke it a lot. I hold it up to my lips.

It turns out the Sacral Charkra (number two: the one just below the navel. You know. There.) that one is all about sex. And you know what else? Money. Both in their own way juicy, liquid, flowing energy. Energy in, energy out.

Oh my.

Sex and money together. How about that?

I'll let you run the analogies.

After you are done snickering, I've got another one for you. Creativity. It's there too. Had any juicy ideas lately? Sex is all about creativity. At least when it's good, it is. You know what I mean: the creative and courageous leap two people make to land happily in bed and make something together that doesn't exist otherwise. Not just babies, my friend, but equally something with a life of its own.

This is where the adrenaline rush seized my gut. Orgasms? Forgetaboutit.

And what about books and poetry and symphonies and paintings and gingersnaps and that song you wrote in the shower this morning? Inspiration flows in, wells up, and I can point to where the seed is planted and it gestates. Where it flows out.

As above, so below.

Now, PUSH.

So my job description expanded. I was looking for an ally that embodied more than just my relationship with money. I needed one who knew the juice. Who ran the river, who turns on the current and adjusts the spray. Aqua-Man, maybe.

But wait, there's more.

And you'll have to forgive me here. I stopped watching TV for just this reason. I just got sick sick sick (and sadly I mean that literally) of those insidious commercials that reprogram your brain to fully expect and accept the disease de jour.-- Which I also will give no energy to here except for the one which I am about to vanquish:  Stubborn belly fat.

Yeah. Show me a woman with stubborn belly fat and I'll show you a woman who hasn't shaken her money maker for a little while. At least not like she means it. And I'll bet she hordes her money as well. Or wishes she could. Desperately wishes she could hang onto it and keep it secure and not let go. No flow. The opposite of flow.

Creatively blocked. Energetically constipated. Maybe really constipated too.

Am I being cruel and indulging in stereotyping? No. Just looking in the mirror and describing what I see.

Flow is flow, sweetheart. Now let it go.

The universe is my storehouse. Hording up energy in any form creates a blockade you trap yourself behind. Some of them you can see. Most you cannot.

So did I ever fill that position? Find my new ally?

Yes.

Are Chakras supposed to be personified as guides? I don't know about 'supposed to be', but this one is.

Is it kosher to fire a guide and hire another one?

Why not? Although 'firing' is, like everything else a metaphor. Now that I'm getting to know this ally, I find evidences he's been around trying to get my attention for quite some time. Maybe he's always been there and all I fired was my own misconceptions (oh lordy, do you see the significance of that word?).

Do what works. Sort it out later.

That's where I am right now. That's what this blog is about. One journey in the autoverse.

One big blue google marker: YOU ARE HERE.

What's next? I'll betcha my other Charkras are looking really busy right now, and they'd better. Job performance evals are long overdue.