- Nov 12, 2022
- 36 min read

#9 - Money and the Economy of Self | The Initiates Podcast with Natalie Grace

Join Natalie as she dives deep into the contentious topics of money and economy, while proposing a new value system - the economy of self.

In this episode, I explore the definition and history of money and economy, so that we can better understand it's origins, and the reasons why I see money as a spell that limits our creativity, resourcefulness and connection with community, and keeps us entranced by the idea that "to feel happy/safe/accomplished/fulfilled/successful, I need to have more money".

I share my feelings of misalignment around the way money is valued within the industry of spirituality, and I supply some simple yet powerful advice to help you redefine the economy of self, so that you can feel less attachment to the misaligned money narratives that we are all so entranced by, and empowered to define your own unique system of value.

Enjoy the show :)

PS. If you enjoy this episode, return the love with a rate and subscribe :)

Listen to The Initiates Episode #9 "Money and the Economy of Self" on:

Spotify // Apple Podcasts // Google Podcasts // YouTube // Amazon Music // iHeartRadio // Stitcher // Tune In // Pocket Casts // Player FM // Deezer

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

0:00 [Music]

This is the Initiates podcast.

Here we create spa e to explore the path of initiation as we reawaken the forgotten wisdom that resides within us all.

I am your host and guide Natalie. Join me every Thursday for an enlightening exploration of contemporary spirituality.

It's my honor to journey with you.

0:55 [Natalie Grace]

Money and economy is something I've been wanting to talk about for a while. I've been thinking about how to present my feelings and perspective on this topic, and it just wasn't landing. I've been trying to create this episode for a few weeks now and I think it was the energy wasn't quite right. But in the past week or so, I've really felt more intensity around prophecies to do with financial collapse and financial instability…I wanna say high strangeness in the news reporting around money and finance at the moment.

On the one hand, there's all this kind of predictive programming and propaganda about housing market collapse, about financial instability, yet not declaring recession. Planting these seeds of expectation that some huge financial events are going to be happening very soon, that it's inevitable. And then on the other hand, strange stories recommending people do really weird high risk investments.

It's very bizarre if you look at the news and the kind of conflicting stories that are happening at the moment, at least where I am in Australia. So I think now that the energies have aligned and the way I want to speak about this is gonna come out a bit more easily. I found I was feeling a lot of resistance when I first started to record what I'd planned to record.

And the reason I want to share my perspective on money is because, to be really honest, I don't hear enough people talking about money as a spell and how entranced we are by this spell. I'm actually quite surprised being in the spiritual community how much people talk about money, to be honest.

The reason I say that is because it seems out of alignment with the other messages that we receive from people who speak about where we're heading - this new world, the fifth dimension, escaping the matrix. It's interesting to me, just in as observer, witnessing, taking in this information because on the one hand we are so multidimensional, but on the other hand, this spell that money has over us is keeping us incredibly tethered to the 3D.

And I'll be honest with you, I'm not even sure how much I believe in this shift to fifth dimension at this stage. I'm open to anything. I'm open to being one of the people who is stuck here on this planet. I might save my perspective on the 3D and the 5D thing for another episode, but I did want to acknowledge that is a pretty big influencing factor.

And I don't like using the word hypocrisy because it's so polarized, but it does seem like the focus on having money, making money, allowing money to define your value and other people's value is out of balance with other stuff so many people are preaching, so it's something I will touch on. All I know is that we're here to expand, that we are here at an important time, that we are here to progress and evolve as spiritual beings to break those dense tethers, those chains, the bondage that keeps us feeling trapped and keeps us feeling disconnected from our authenticity, from our truest selves, from our truest desires, from our deepest truths and money's the biggest mechanism, and we know this.

It's the way the system controls. Through cost of living, through taxes, all these reasons why we have to all work. And if we don't work, we're un unproductive citizens, we're worthless, we're useless, we're troublesome. And I feel like it's part of my mission to help people at least consider the fact that they don't have to care so much about money. And I understand this is probably gonna sound different to what a lot of other spiritual guides and teachers say, at least in the industry of spirituality, in the industry of spiritual business.

So before we get stuck in, I just wanna preface this episode with a few different points. I accept that I am in a very privileged position to have very little financial pressure on me right now, and this position has allowed me the freedom to explore my own relationship with money without the usual life stresses that can cause so much angst and worry and heightened emotion around this particular subject. However, I wanna say that this position has also come with a lot of sacrifice on my part, as well as a lot of support from those around me and a lot of intentional decision making around things like family, mortgage and lifestyle.

For me, I acknowledge that it's a very different situation for people with families to support or big mortgages to pay, expensive bills or for those who struggle with low wages. So from that perspective, I can understand that my view comparatively is probably quite simplistic. And it's not my intention at all to minimize the real, actual stress and suffering and pain having less money can cause in this real world.

I acknowledge that the very basic premise that money is simply energy is entirely true. However, from my perspective, there are many ways to understand and work with this energy of money. And my specific, unique perspective is just one of many. It doesn't mean that mine is more accurate or correct than others. It doesn't mean that mine is right and others are wrong. It's just one of many perspectives that you can choose to take on board, and it's one that I think challenges a lot of deeply held beliefs, which I think is a good thing. And that's definitely one of my. Intentions with this podcast.

And I wanna be clear that I don't think money is bad, nor do I think that wanting money or having money, attracting money in any way is bad or evil. I am just increasingly becoming more and more suspicious of our energetic attachment to money, especially emotional energy and the control that it has over so many of us. How incredibly influential it is on our decision making and our value systems. And my main intention here is to explore that attachment and share the understanding that I've gained through the process of exploring that in my own life.

I want to share that. Of course, like you all, I have bills. I too need money to pay for things, and I need to make money to live the way I wish. I have a business. I'll be completely upfront with you. Because of my value system, by regular corporate financial standards, my business would not appear successful.

However, I believe in what I'm doing. I am working on my sacred service, and I have a plan that's going to evolve over time, and I refuse to allow myself to feel pressured right now as I birth what I'm here to share with the world. I don't feel pressured to apply normal business metrics to what I'm doing right now, and I also have a true, deep belief that abundance will come at the right time.

And what's right for me right now is to be exploring, exploring what I'm here to do, exploring the role of money in my life, exploring how I feel in a space without much, honestly. And it's actually been a beautiful experience, quite a cleansing experience, and one that I feel quite honored to share with you right now.

What it comes down to is basically that I personally choose to assign money a different value than what we have been programmed to do. And that is really the perspective that I will share with you. So having said all that, let's journey.

10:57 [Natalie Grace]

So there's a lot to discuss on this subject of money, and where I wanna start is with things that I've been hearing and have witnessed, have observed that have really triggered me to think about money and its role, especially in a spiritual context, and especially in talking about the Matrix and moving into a 5D reality.

I really feel like money is the greatest spell of the matrix. And so for anyone who's talking about breaking the matrix, taking the red pill, yet is still bragging about how much money they make or feeling like they're not doing a good enough job on their mission because they're not making either $10,000 months as healers or guides or they're not operating a six figure dollar business, I'm just here to call bullshit on that. it's absolute BS. I want you all to start thinking about who placed those figures in our heads as those universal aspirations. Do we even know? There's so much else that is planted within us that we just reject, but part of entrancement is the act of spelling.

And for me, the spell is the repetition of words. And I'm just tired of hearing these same words repeated that we should revere someone because not of what they do, but how much money they've made in a month or how many figures are attached to their business. I don't give a shit. I do not care about that.

And at first, I was kind of ashamed to say that because it makes me look or feel like I don't care about success. And this is the whole theme of this episode that for me, my success, the success factors in my life are not determined by money. They are not attached to numerical figures.

They have been in my past. I have gone through the cycles of lack. I have gone through the cycles of manifesting a dream job. I have gone through the cycles of having a six figure salary. And what I've come out of having gone through those cycles of experience is that it doesn't matter to me. That I can be making that many zeros and still be absolutely miserable.

And I have been, and it's only since I've worked through this in entrancement energy, it's not even the energy of money, ot's the energy of the entrancement attached to money and the control that spell has over our emotions and the way we value ourselves and others. It wasn't until I did *that* shadow work - not the abundance block removals, not the deprogramming of lack narratives. That's what's made a difference to me in truly understanding my value as a person, as a soul, as a spirit, and also how I perceive value in others.

And this is people and also stuff. And the way that alchemized for me was at the point of having nothing. And when I say nothing, I mean the last $100 to my name. That isn't nothing. That's just money. And that's what I came to realize, that despite the little amount of money I had, and despite all the stress that was causing me about how I was going to live, all that I was left with was the things I already had, but more importantly, myself.

And so even if I had no money in my bank account, did that make me a worthless person? Did that mean I had no value? No, I have worth, I have value. And was that journey to that point scary? Absolutely. I had to face so many fears, getting to the point where I got to that little amount of money because so much of my identity was tied to my lifestyle and that's what the money was funding.

Even though it wasn't the first time I'd been poor, it wasn't the first time that I had spent all my savings and had to live paycheck to paycheck. But this time around, I thought I'd made it. I'd created a lifestyle for myself that had become my identity. I didn't think that I'd be going backwards to a point where I'd have to start again from scratch, and lots of things contributed to that, and it was terrifying, even though I did have some support from the people around me to make sure that I would be okay, basic living wise, it was still a terrifying because through the process of making money and getting comfortable, I had assigned a dollar value to my safety in order for me to feel safe, secure, okay.

I needed to have a certain dollar amount in my savings, and as soon as I went under that amount, I felt extremely vulnerable and it got worse and worse and worse until I basically had nothing. But then, I could breathe. Then, there was nothing left to worry about because what I feared, that inevitable, happened.

And so my situation is a little bit different to when your fears are probably much more valid if you have more important responsibilities, family to look after. You know, I didn't have those pressures and so on the one hand that makes me incredibly, incredibly privileged which I acknowledge. But on the other, it actually meant that I was just able to see things for what they were, that I got to the point of what I was terrified of and I was okay.

I was still me. I didn't have all the flashy surroundings that I once thought were important. And I guess it was the process of sacrifice. That's what that process taught me, that I didn't need those extra layers of “stuffing” of my identity, if that makes sense. Of dressing up who I am. What that did was kind of release that pressure to just let me focus on what was important, and that was really looking after myself the best I could with very little.

And it was actually a really cleansing time because I was able, through that process, to cleanse so much of my fear around not having enough to either look successful or to be able to take care of myself and I kind of see it as a gift now because so much of the really silly stuff I used to care about, I don't care about it all anymore, and I was able to experience so much generosity.

I was able to have growth spurts in my own spiritual journey because of what was offered to me, both from a family perspective and loved one perspective, but also from community at that point where I couldn't afford any kind of monetary or formal investment in myself. From that perspective, I received such generous offers from other people who I see as angels on my path, to work with them for free which was absolutely beautiful.

It's something that we don't often get to experience because we're so gung ho about making sure we can provide for ourselves, which is extremely important. I'm not downplaying that at all, but the gift of times of humility where you get to see what's possible in regards to generosity from others, they're truly valuable experiences and experiences that I'm incredibly grateful for.

And so I'm not suggesting that to learn these lessons, we all need to throw all our money away. But what I am saying is that if it got to the point where you were to lose everything, you still have yourself. And it is a very scary process to be left with yourself and not have those safety blankets of not just the money, but the layers of identity that the money provides.

Even with those gone, you can find a way to be okay.

21:37 [Natalie Grace]

So let's talk about the history of money, and why I think it's such an obvious spell and how it evolved to have us also entranced.

So earlier in our history, there was a market, there was a village market. We would meet in community at the market or we'd go travelling and we would visit people that had something we wanted or needed. And in these places of market, these marketplaces, we would do physical trades. We would have something that we value, that we thought someone else would value. We would use that item, whatever it is, to trade for something that we want or need from someone else. And so what was unique about this time is that each individual determined the value of the item they held and the person they were trading with also defined the value of what they had.

And the value was driven by what someone was willing to pay for it. So, as an example, I grow fruit, let's say, and I have a bag of oranges. And I know that there's not many other orange farmers in the area and that lots of people like oranges cuz they're delicious. And so I take my oranges to the market and there's some other things I need. I need some flour, some cotton, and I'm going to seek out those traders, providing those goods and make an offer to trade my goods for the goods that I am seeking.

Now, in this time it was between myself and the person I was trading with to decide the value of the items that we were trading and how much someone really wanted my oranges. Depending on how much fabric or flour I would receive. You know, what I'm trying to get at here is that there wasn't an external market that set the prices for things; that it was defined on an individual basis, depending on how important the need was or the desire to have something.

So it wasn't just food and clothing that we were trading. You could be trading trinkets, you could be trading art, you could be trading tools. There's lots of things that we would trade back in the day. But the key here is that we each defined the value of what we were trading. And so this trading of stuff is a form of money. We describe this as commodity money.

So we were trading commodities, which are physical, actual material items that hold intrinsic value. They are not symbolic in any way or representative.

Now, there became a need for a representative form of money, of currency by way of IOUs. So if you knew you had a crop that wasn't quite ready for harvest, but it would be very soon, but you really needed some of that flour, you could trade for an iou. And at some point in the IOU evolved from IOU to IOU “one of one unit of something”. And at this point, money became representative and representative money is money that is legal tender or is able to be exchanged for something with intrinsic value, but holds no intrinsic value itself. It's completely symbolic. That is the money we have today. So the definition of representative money is any medium of exchange printed or digital that represents something of value, but has little or no value of its own.

Fiat money is a form of representative money. It's completely symbolic. It has no intrinsic value of its own. It's essentially just pieces of tin and paper. And depending on where you are, plastic that is almost worthless on its own. But because of this spell of this entrancement that we all consent to, that we all willingly give our energy to, representative money, fiat money, is agreed to hold value. And this value is assigned by decree.

And this is where the tra gets really interesting. Fiat money or fiat currency is something that gets spoken about a lot, and you may be familiar with that term. It's talked about within the conspiracy arena a fair bit, and it's really interesting to research fiat money. If you've listened to a couple of my other episodes where I've explained societal concepts, I often like to go into the etymology of the word, which is the historical evolution of the word. Where did the word originate? What was the original meaning and how did it evolve over time? And fiat is a very interesting word, and I was actually really shocked to read the definition of the word fiat because it is just so obviously a spell. Like so often, our entrancement is not even hidden in plain sight. It's bleedingly obvious if we care to do any basic investigation.

So fiat money, fiat is a Latin word and translated to English via means, “let it be done”. Now, does that not sound like a spell? It is done. It is done. It is done. Fiat money is typically declared by a decree from the government or the sovereign to be legal tender. So the head of power, decrees, puts out into the universe, it is a spell, sets the intention, and we all go along with it, that this worthless piece of paper equals $1, $100, $50, whatever, whatever is written on the note. And so doesn't that blow your mind? This was the first time I'd come across the meaning and I was like, Wow - Fiat literally is a spell, It is done is how we close out spells and make them real.

So even though, if we actually use our logical brains to look at these pieces of paper, We can see that they are worthless, but through our belief that this worthless paper actually equals something really valuable, we create the power of the spell. We create that third entity that is the energy of money we are opting into. We are collectively agreeing to the terms of this legal tender set by the government. Is this not a spell? We know it's a spell. It's very obvious. We just don't think about it enough.

And maybe this comes from the origin of coins that were minted from precious metal.

Originally, this money did hold value and it was something worthwhile to hold. Our money has evolved beyond even worthless pieces of paper, tangible items that we can physically hold. It's pretty much all done digitally now. It's all the numbers in our bank account. Totally representative. Not even representative of the money that we have, but of the ones in zeros.

The binary code that makes up the representation of the money. Layers and layers of representation are happening now. Multiple layers of deception, multiple layers of illusion, and now we're creating alternate systems of the same illusion, the same deception such as the share market such as cryptocurrency.

I'm afraid of going on a tangent if I start talking about cryptocurrency, so I'll just leave that one there and it might be a subject I pick up in a future episode. Anyway, so we need to accept, if we're going to be real about it, that the value of our money isn't actually real. And if we understand that, it makes so much sense why, at any point, the money we hold can be devalued. It can be devalued through high inflation. It can be devalued through the printing of money, so that there's way more in circulation. It can be devalued through a financial crash where our money or our assets lose the value they once held. We've seen all this happen in the past, but in the current day, this is going to become, I suspect, easier and more frequent for this instability and devaluation to occur through hacking and cyber warfare, for instance, and the system does that. The system devalues and values the money, but what stops us from devaluing the money or redefining the value it holds so that it could hold greater meaning and purpose in our lives?

In our recent history, this actually happened at a point where people lost faith in the value of money. And this is where the gold standard kicks in, that governments felt the need to basically guarantee the value of the currency by anchoring it to objects that hold commodity value. So gold and silver for instance. So the gold standard was literally an agreement between the government and the people that at any point they could go to a bank and trade the money they had for the equivalent in gold. This was to reestablish value in the currency, and at this point in history, the actual gold was held in the government banks. I don't wanna get too deep into finance cuz I'm not that good at this subject, but also into conspiracy cuz that's not the point of this. I just wanted to give you a sense of how the system has actually responded to the collective not holding as great a belief in their decree as they did previously. And their response is to actually provide greater security to reestablish the value of what we've stopped believing in.

And so the gold standard was effectively ended in the seventies when Nixon created a whole bunch of economic reform and financial reform, basically by untethering the value of the dollar, the US dollar to gold prices. This had international effects because this was an international kind of guarantee that was in place and that was ended. So that effectively ended the gold standard system internationally. And so, like I said, that gold standard is what we often hark back to as the good old days. When it comes to money, it really was a very, very short period of history. And you can kind of see with hindsight that that time was quite fraught with instability, I would say around war times and also around the time that we moved to a post-industrial, post-modern society.

And I will just note, again, I'm not a financial expert or any kind of historian. There are lots of reasons why the gold standard was introduced and then also abolished. But this is one take from my unique perhaps more spiritual perspective, from my more conspiratorial perspective. I can also see how the introduction and abolishment of the gold standard is yet another psy-op, and yet another form of manipulation taking in action to gain trust and to reestablish value only for the same forces to then take that level of security away after the goal has been achieved, to support a new goal of an untethered global financial system.

34:45 [Natalie Grace]

Now we have a better understanding of money. But what about the economy? The economy is really interesting for me because this is where I feel like we can reclaim a lot of our power. We still have to live in a world where we need to make and spend money. I'm completely realistic about that. But we do have opportunities to evolve that. So I'll talk about that at the end. But for now, I think it's super important to talk about the economy because from my perspective, the key to freedom, to peace, creativity, contentment, self-acceptance, joy, the key is to design your own economy. And I'm going to explain how simple that is because all we need to do is reclaim the original meaning of economy.

So the term economy originally popped up in our lexicon as early as the 16th century, and it described household management. The original definition of economy was the management of the household. Now knowing that, how freeing is it? I had a sense that this economy had been subverted, and I was so thrilled to discover that original meaning in my research because it's kind of what I felt. I had deep distrust of what we are told the economy is, and how we are told how best to measure the economy. I just don't agree with it at all. It doesn't resonate with me. There's so much missing from the management of our national household, if you want to call it that.

So it wasn't until the mid 17th century that it was used in a political sense to describe the wealth and resources of a country. So for a good hundred or so years, the economy was a powerful force of individual management of one's household. And obviously anything that is taken by the systems of control to be used against us is incredibly powerful. So it's very clear that the original ‘economy’ held power. And it's my belief, it's my sense, it's my knowing that many of us are here now to redesign the economy. And it starts with redesigning the economies of our own individual microcosms of our households.

Okay…but how do we do that? Well, let's look at the formal economy, the economy of the state. A good starting point is to study the official economic indicators.

So economic indicators, let's look at those.

There's GDP, which is a gross domestic product, which looks at exports.

There's foreign debt, there's consumption. So that's how much we're spending.

Investments, production. So what are we manufacturing? What is that we’re bringing in? Price indexes, like consumer and wage price indexes, demographics such as population growth, immigration rates, that sort of thing.

And also measurements of the labor market, such as employment and unemployment rates.

And if we look at all these things, all these indicators, they're all about money. And we say, Yeah so, the economy *is* about money. But actually, the original definition of the economy was about managing the household.

And so, yeah, when we are managing our households, we do wanna look at the income and expenditure. We wanna know what money's coming in and going out for sure. We wanna know what investments we have, what our assets are, We wanna know what debt we're carrying. All those things are important in the functioning of the household, but there are so many other things that will determine the successful management of the household.

And this doesn't matter whether it's just you and your house, or you've got a big family in there, or it's you and a bunch of housemates. If we're talking about the successful management of a household, we're also having to look at indicators such as:

Are we rested?

Are we fed?

Are we clean?

Are we safe?

Are we happy?

Are we fulfilling our responsibilities to our spouse, our children, our housemates?

Are we comfortable?

Is it peaceful? Is it a peaceful environment?

Is it a happy environment?

Do we have fun in our house?

Do we feel supported?

Do we feel loved?

Do we have what we need?

Are we achieving what we set out to achieve?

Do we feel connected with our community?

Is it a welcoming place?

All of these things are so important to the harmonious functioning of a household. And I think harmonious is a really good word to call out here because I don't think that the economy is structured to ever be harmonious. So this list that I've just reeled off, there's so many more things I could say, but it's just to give you an example that the state economy doesn't value the stuff that humans value in their households. In their economies. And why doesn't it? I think this is very intentional when, when we're talking about the success of an economy, all those indicators need to suggest growth. They need to be pointing to growth. And this is a requirement of capitalism, of our capitalist financial system. It requires perpetual growth.

And if you've worked in any kind of corporation and have had to do stuff with numbers, you would know that the success measurements there are year on year growth. But how unnatural is it to think that every year you are just going to keep compounding growth? It's not a natural state and nothing in nature. Growth forever. The natural cycle is growth and decline, birth and death, expansion and contraction, and the economy definitely allows for expansion and contraction, but there's no success in decline, even though decline is a natural season of life, right? We experience it every year, the decline, and then the growth.

Why does this system deny natural law? Why doesn't our economy place value on the contraction phases? Why is contraction less valuable than growth?

Now I do wanna acknowledge that there are people within the financial system that do value declines. In fact, that's when they choose to make their investments. And again, I don't wanna get too deep into the conspiratorial thinking around this, even though for me it's the glaring obvious that those decline phases of the economy are designed as opportunities for massive wealth transfer. I just wanna say that I get that bit. But just at a base level as a system and how we, the common people perceive the system to work, we don't win generally in times of decline. Times of decline aren't valuable to most people from a monetary perspective.

From a spiritual perspective, times of decline are often when we learn how to be our most resilient, our most self-sufficient. When we are challenged to overcome hardship, which in the experience of a life is incredibly valuable, but our monetary economy of the state doesn't really value the human experiences that we get to live through in times of economic decline.

Now, if you're into finance, you might be thinking, I'm looking at this quite simply, and you are right. Actually, I am thinking of it in an extremely simplified manner. But it's really just to prove the point that the economy, the state's economy, the national economy, no matter which country you're from, doesn't actually value human traits. It doesn't value humanity. It only values money and it goes against the original meaning of economy to manage the household cuz the household has people in it. And any head of a household knows that emotional states of the inhabitants of the household are extremely important in the management of the household and every, and that every household is different. Every household would define their economy in a different way. Every household would have slightly different values, and that is each household's.

44:34 [Natalie Grace]

Okay, so now that I've gotten the history and definitions out of the way, let's talk about some of the more common narratives we hear around money. In the spiritual world, we hear that money is just energy to be worked with and understood that energetic abundance blocks exist, that these are within our fields, within our energy bodies, and that these blocks are what keep us from receiving or attracting the money we desire. That we all contain lack programs, narratives we tell ourselves or that we've been told, especially growing up as children. Hearing things like money doesn't grow on trees or observing the struggle that our parents experience working so hard to provide a quality of life for the family that we inherit these programs, that money is hard to come by. That wealth is generational.

We hear that money can be manifested using the law of attraction. So by learning that process, we were able to perhaps move some of those energetic blocks and attract more money to us.

So there are some of the more common narratives you've probably heard, and I've heard a lot of these too. I've worked with a lot of these. I've worked on my own energetic abundance blocks. I have worked on my lack programs. I understand that money is energy. I definitely don't think I've mastered all of these, these aspects others have, and I have a lot of respect for them. But even though all these things are real and correct, and definitely things we can do, and if we work on them, they can have the result of allowing us to attract and receive more money and build up our quality of life, we have to accept that when we talk about money in this way, we're focusing solely on accepting this unspoken rule that less money is bad and more money is good. And where has this come from? Why do we think this way? Do we really think that people who are poor are bad? I don't think we do. Yet. When we talk about money and the reality of having or lacking money, we do talk about it in that way.

So this is where I feel this disconnection, this misalignment is occurring and is part of this spell. Because we all talk and think this way. No one wants to be poor. Well, sometimes people who have everything go through the process of giving it up because they aren't happy with what they have, and they want to truly understand whether happiness can be attained at all, you know? But generally, no one aspires to be poor. They aspire to be rich because poor is bad. And I understand what this comes from. I think about it constantly with myself.

We hear, especially within spiritual community, that having money, it's not a bad thing to want money. It's not it's not greedy. It's not sinful. It's great because having money provides you freedom. But I kind of feel like this is a cop out and it's what the system wants us to believe that, to access freedom, to access comfort and safety, it requires money, and with a certain amount of money, we can access greater freedom, more comfort, more safety, the more money we have.

I feel like this is the crux of the spell, and this is actually what we're also fearful of. If we don't have the money, if we are poor, then we won't feel free. We won't be comfortable. We will lack safety and let's be real, part of that is true because this world revolves around money, but that's also the crux of the spell, that this world we live in can't exist without it.

And I don't believe in that. I actually believe in an experience beyond money, and I'm perplexed by the fact that we don't talk about this enough in this so-called shift to 5D. We're so happy and desperate sometimes to leave behind all the density of 3D systems of government organized religion, medicine specific financial systems, yet we're also receiving this propaganda that we need to have more, we all need to aspire to have more. We need to be aiming for these targets, like I keep saying,the $10,000 months and six figure businesses. So at the risk of sounding triggered myself by these numbers, I have meditated a lot because I've run my own businesses and I really have had to think about what my metrics for success look like, who I am targeting, what I'm here to do.

And I myself have had to detach from those targets because I feel like they're a spell. I can't actually tell you where the targets of a six figure annual revenue or multi six figure or seven figure or whatever people are spruiking and celebrating, or a $10,000 month actually came from. They definitely didn't come from my business plan, right? My business plan says something else. And so why then am I allowing myself to feel like I'm failing some way at my business? Because I'm not meeting these arbitrary benchmarks that are so commonly spoken about in the spiritual community with people who were in the business.

And what I think about that bit, where this leads me is the fact that even that is a spell.

The act if spelling has to do with repetition, casting spells, receiving spells, becoming entranced, right? And so it's really important we're aware of the stuff we are repeating, and does it come from us? Is it coming from our deepest truths or is, is it something we've picked up, an external narrative that because people we respect and trust are saying it, we immediately assign a belief that it's good and true, even though it hasn't necessarily come from us?

And there's no problem with aligning with that. If you have done that little truth check with yourself, if those numbers sound good to you and they align with your act of service, then fantastic. But I'm suspicious that they don't actually line up with most people's. And so that's where thinking about this has led me reflecting on my own business. So I thought that might be helpful to share.

And so what is it that I define as success? Then? What are my success benchmarks? What are my targets and goals? This is something that I've had to evolve for myself, and I literally define it as my own economy, my economy of self, the economy of my life, of my household.

And as we learned earlier, that was always the original meaning of the economy. It was the management of one's household.

And so if you think about going back to that original meaning, how do you define success in your life, in your household? That's your economy. This is so empowering. All of a sudden, instead of feeling trapped by this external economy, this controlled economy, you actually have the freedom to create your own economy, to define your own value metrics and success metrics when it comes to how you live your life, how you spend your time, how you provide value to the world.

I just find this so powerful and it's such a good way to break that tether to that very 3D spell that money has over us. And so how do I define my economy? What are my economic indicators? What do I measure to understand whether my economy is functioning healthily and as I desire?

I'm going to list it all for you.

Peace. I value peace.

I value mental spaciousness and emotional calmness in my day to day life. And I know when these out of balance because when I don't have this state of peace, and this is something that I aspire to attain as frequently as possible, but as always a challenge, it manifests illness in my body. I got to that point of burnout. So the most important indicator of my economy running healthily is feelings of peace, harmony.

I desire to be in harmonic balance with all that is around me. That is really valuable to me. That's people, That's the pets and animals that I share this land with. It is nature.

It's everything. and also the energy of the space.

Abundance. And this isn't just an abundance of money or food or fun or whatever that might be. This is more about an abundance of spaciousness that I create for myself in my life. An abundance of free time. So I have the freedom to choose what I want to do when, so that I can honor my desires and also being in alignment as often as possible.

Access to nature is super important and valuable to me, and this isn't just a hike on the weekend. This is immersive experience of nature. This is making connection with the plants and animals around my home, the insects, the birds, getting to know their calls, their presence. And it's such a beautiful thing that's enriched my life so much. Having time to get to know cows and chickens. It's just been such a beautiful thing and I can't imagine my life another way. This, this particular experience has provided me with so much value in my life that I will never not value this immersive experience in nature as part of my home life, my day-to-day life, I have the opportunity to observe and be immersed in the natural cycles of the earth. This is incredibly important to me and something that the national economy and corporate economies don't value at all.

I value vitality. And so obviously basic health and wellness is an important part of that, but it's more about having spirited energy. This is something I've lacked when I've been really burnt out from my job when I've been so focused on money. So this is, again, something I can measure very easily within my own body, within my own being, within my own spirit. Am I feeling apathetic? Am I feeling lackluster or am I feeling vital? And when I'm out of balance in my vitality I can prioritize doing what I need to do to spark that flame accomplishment is really important.

Am I accomplishing my goals? Am I realizing my dreams? Any aspect of that. It doesn't have to be in the fullness or completion, but am I on the right path? And am I experiencing feelings of accomplishment? Cuz I feel like these are super important to growth.

Am I in alignment, in alignment with my soul mission basically?

Because I know, again, when I'm out of alignment with what I'm here to do, with what I've ultimately come here to do, I can feel it in every aspect of my body, my mind, my emotions. I know what that feels like. So being in alignment is important. It's very valuable.

Creativity, prioritizing creativity is super valuable. And this goes beyond just arts and crafts. This is the experience of creative thinking, of creative problem solving, having the time and space to be able to, to use those aspects of our creativity, and also to not feel pressured by just getting stuff done because I have to work to some crazy corporate schedule or just even one that I've designed myself that's not corporate at all. Putting too much pressure on myself isn't aligned with creativity for me because it takes away the time I have for creativity and the opportunity for creativity. So I really like in my economy to prioritize creativity in all its forms.

Energetic flow. This is super important. I know when I feel stagnant.

And this isn't just to do with energetic flow in my energetic system, in my energy bodies, This is also energetic flow of the household. Are we all flowing together? Is there an imbalance of energy? How can we harmonize the energy if that's the case? Energetic cleansing, all of those things to stimulate healthy, energetic flow.

Intellectual stimulation. This is super important for me. Even though I left my consultancy career, I still, I can't explain why, but I get an immense amount of intellectual stimulation through the act of creating business…I wanna say creating products and even just sitting down and creating content for the internet, like making websites. I've always loved, since I was a child, making websites. It's part of my creative output, which sounds a bit strange, especially when it's to do with like, there's a crossover between work and and play. But in addition to that being weirdly fun for me, it's also incredibly stimulating.

And also time to read books and develop my intellectual understanding of the world and how it works. And that's so aligned now with my spiritual development and my spiritual evolution and my spiritual understanding and knowing, deep knowing of what this world is and why I'm here.

And then one last one, there's probably more, I could probably go on for quite a while, but the last one I have here is self devotion. My economy values devotional practices, acts of ritual, and my own spiritual development. Sometimes this costs money, sometimes it doesn't.

And then just basic stuff as well. Basic kind of like household sort of hygiene. Obviously keeping the house at a good enough standard of cleanliness and that kind of thing is important too. Obviously making sure that the house is safe for all those people living in it, They're just stating the obvious.

But what I wanna really share here is when I was putting together my list of what my economy valued, money wasn't on my list. And it doesn't mean I don't care about having money. It doesn't mean that I don't care about money coming in. It doesn't mean that I don't want any money or I think I can live without it. It's, it's just not that valuable to me compared with everything else. And you know what, If it is more valuable to you, that's totally okay. This is all about you defining your own economy. Your economy is going to look different to mine.

But I just wanted to share with you that process that I've gone through to really understand the role that money plays in my life. And it's allowed me to detach those extreme emotions from the having or not having of money because, in my lived experience, money comes and goes, money flows, it's cyclical. I experience ups and downs. But I've also never just had sustained growth. And perhaps that's because it doesn't resonate with me because I don't find it natural. And it doesn't mean that other people who have that real lived experience that that's bad or unnatural.

I don't wanna say that at all. All I'm trying to say is that we are all different and we are all here to experience something different. And for some of us, it is our destiny to create immense amounts of wealth. For others, it's not, it's not actually why we are here. And it's just part of living in this 3D realm.

So that's my kind of sharing of my practice, of defining my own economy. I hope that's helpful to you and has given you another, an alternative perspective on how to view money in economy.

1:03:11 [Natalie Grace]

Before I wrap up, I just want to remind people who are in a financial position right now that could be described as poor or experiencing the feeling of not having enough to meet certain expectations around what your lifestyle should look like or even what your spiritual development should look like, there's so much pressurized selling online, especially on social media for coaching programs, development programs, and so many of them cost so much money.

And I just want to make it clear that your development doesn't need to cost a cent. That the higher wisdom that you desire to access already resides in you. Now, working with others, whether they're paid or not, can definitely facilitate ease of access. through the building up of confidence. I don't even think it's necessarily other people always activating awakening in you, although that can sometimes happen. It's more about the belief, gaining the belief that you can actually access, access that within yourself.

And sometimes that's so hard for you to fathom, that you are willing to pay money to have someone help you develop that belief. And sometimes you'll pay a lot of money to develop that belief and there's nothing wrong with that. But if that is outside of your means, please don't feel guilty or shameful or negative about that. Please don't feel less than. You don't actually need it. If you have the money to afford these programs, fantastic, go for it. But if you don't, it's not the only way. Please don't feel pressure to sign up for something you can't afford it.

There are so many ways to gain access to wisdom. So much of the wisdom I have gained access to has been through free trades. That has been just as helpful for my development as my paid business has been. Honestly, The connections I've actually made through bartering with people by offering a trade of my service for their service, it's resulted in some really deep connections with people to the point where I wanna say that I think a lot of the people that I've met that way have actually been my soul family, and it's really powerful and really special.

So I encourage you, firstly, to not feel negatively if you can't afford some of the programs that are spruiked in this sphere. Some of these programs are veering on extortion, honestly, so don't feel bad about that. Maybe I can share some tips about accessing different resources because there's lots of free, esoteric libraries online. I've come across many of them and these are very powerful because so much of what these more expensive programs teach all can be traced back to the same source material. So there is power in going to the source material, seeking that yourself. And so often you can actually do that.

Consulting your own guides, consulting your own higher self, consulting your Akashic records. All of these things are things that you can do to access a higher wisdom that resides within yourself, that comes from yourself, or is channeled through yourself.

And while it might be useful or worthwhile to invest in a program to teach you how to do that, once you've done that, you can do that for free forever. So that's an incredibly worthwhile investment. And how much that costs you varies. You can easily read it for free in a book or you can do a more extensive course that someone's prepared that's within your budget.

Whatever you choose, just know that there is always going to be a way to access spiritual wisdom, spiritual guidance at a price that you can afford. And in my experience, at least, almost all the best advice that I've received has been free and has led me to seek wisdom within myself. So that's the first thing I wanna say before I wrap up.

The second thing is that I wanna encourage us to have a more vivid imagination when it comes to re-imagining what's possible when it comes to the new world. Do we really wanna carry this spell into the new earth? Because as long as we are clamoring with this often desperate energy to have as much money as we possibly can, we are going to be carrying that spell there.

And many people would say that those kinds of programs would actually be holding us back from realizing the true, immense beauty of the new Earth. So just be mindful of that. Ways to counter that I think are obviously defining your own economy, but also practicing self sufficiency. Considering how your values are informed by money and practicing bartering as often as possible. Giving things away for free, receiving things from people for free, exchanging your services with other service providers.

And consciously thinking about this, If you are a service provider, and I've been doing this a lot myself since I started recording this episode, really consciously thinking about who you might be excluding when setting your prices. That is a 5D practice from my perspective, and it's actually inspired me to create a whole other episode in the future, specifically about spiritual business and spiritual service providing and coaching.

So to wrap up, I have a quote for you. This quote comes from John C. Calhoun, who was an American senator and a prominent political leader. He was at one point the vice president of the United States. This quote comes from a speech he made in the US Senate on December 29th, 1841. And it's highly relevant to what we've discussed today.

Here it is:

“It had been justly stated by a British writer that the power to make a small piece of paper not worth 1 cent by inscribing a few names to be worth a thousand dollars was a power too high to be entrusted to the hands of mortal man.”

1:11:07 [Natalie Grace]

And on that note, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for your time and attention. If you enjoyed this episode, please share with your friends, share to your socials. And don't forget to leave me a rating or review on your podcast player.

To learn more about me or my services or this podcast, check the links in the show notes or go and visit theinitiatespodcast.com.

Thanks again, and until next week, I wish you peace.

1:11:50 [Music]

Music by

Adi Goldstein + REDproductions

About The Initiates Podcast

The Initiates Podcast is an Australian Spirituality Podcast. A weekly journey of discovery, remembering and expansion for those on the spiritual path. It's a space to explore inner truths, share stories of awakening, and expand our perceptions of reality. It is my goal that together, we can explore esoteric, spiritual, mystical and philosophical concepts in an accessible and supportive space, so that we can help walk each other through doorways of initiation.