It’s the 2nd month of Sagely Living, in which our focus shifts to business and strategy. For previous posts about this topic, click on the category, Sagely Living, on the right and you’ll arrive at a page with my previous posts, or check in with Eric Grey at Deepest Health.

Before I lay out my approach to Sagely Living: Strategy and Business, let’s talk money. I know I’m not the only one who had to shift psychological gears in order to get to a place of peaceful welcome around money (which had always seemed little more than “hard, cold cash” to me). For many years I thought money was a shallow, materialistic pursuit, which caused people to act badly even if they weren’t bad people. Good people did bad things merely because it was profitable, either for themselves or for their chosen few. As an observer of human nature I was confused by this seeming duplicity. As a child who often fell outside the ranks of my father’s financially chosen few, I felt hurt and rejected, which engendered a significant psychic connection within me between money and shame.

If you’re shaking your head and feeling that vibe because you’ve been there too, my heart goes out to you. If you haven’t already excavated that negative attachment–do it, now. You’re worth it. For me it’s been a long process, helped no doubt, by the fact of simple necessity–it was OK to have money-ambivalence when I was just supporting myself, but when I had a family to support it was critical to excavate the demons and come to terms with my absolute, God-given right to abundance and prosperity.

I’d like to thank my friends in the ‘Money and Spirit’ Life Circle hosted by the faith community at the United Church of Christ in Bath, Maine. Over the course of 40 days last winter we each committed ourselves to daily meditation and writing about the spiritual aspect of money. For me, it deeply resonated with the central theme of Judaism, exemplified by the daily prayer, the Shema, that God is One. To me, God is One doesn’t mean God is one dude (or deity). It means God is everything. There is nothing that is not God. Nothing, not even money!

The group met once a week to individually and collectively affirm our intention to change our relationship with money to one based on a belief in abundance, not scarcity. It was a phenomenal experience, which I recommend to anyone. We used a book called The Abundance Book by John Randolph Pierce as a focus point for our meditation. Many people in the group took issue with the book, and for different reasons: some found it too religious, others found it too hokey (I was somewhat in that camp), others found it strayed too far from the Christian bible. If you get the book, remember, it’s just a tool. The measure of any tool is in what you do with it.

If it hadn’t been for the shift in my consciousness about money, I would never have begun to explore ways to make more of it. But that is exactly what I have been doing, and feeling good about it, too. In this month of Sagely Living I’ll be creating a bare-bones beginner’s business plan for an income-producing project which has been stewing in my consciousness (and literally baking in my oven) for some time now. If I’m ever going to get my awesome gluten-free, dairy-free chocolate cake out of my kitchen and into yours, it’s going to take some serious strategy. Stay tuned.