I am currently reading a new book by the following author. Titled The Soul of Money, I highly recommend it. The following two essays are reposted from Yes! Magazine. The first was written in 1997, the second in 1999.
Gifts of Self
Lynne Twist
We far too often look at life from a perspective of scarcity. We go through each day feeling that there isn’t enough, and that we aren’t enough.
When you wake up in the morning, the first thought you may have is “I didn’t get enough sleep,” or “I won’t have enough time to get to work on time.” Later in the day you may think “We don’t have enough money to do the things we want,” or, if you’re running a volunteer organization, “there aren’t enough volunteers,” or if you’re running a profit-making organization, “We aren’t making enough money.”
Over-consumption is the flip side of scarcity. We are bombarded with messages telling us that we’re not whole until we buy this product, that we’re not beautiful until we use this on our hair – we’re not complete, we’re not sufficient. When we acquire things we don’t need in an attempt to feel more whole, we end up devoting considerable time to maintaining, storing, upgrading, and protecting these belongings. We begin to believe that we are our home or our car. Caught up in the vicious cycle of time and money scarcity, over-consumption, and emptiness, we feel incomplete while driving the whole planet down an unsustainable track.
I have found that this cycle of wealth and over-consumption is as intractable as the cycle of poverty. Yet we have the opportunity to live in a place of sufficiency – that is to have exactly what we need; to have and to be enough.
I’ve noticed that if we let go of trying to get more of what we don’t really need, we free up oceans of energy to make a difference with what we already have. And when we do that, what we already have expands – it means more. This not only frees up our personal energy, it frees up the resources of the planet to be used where they’re really needed. In a time of unprecedented challenges to our living environment and to our sense of wholeness and well-being, a great many people are beginning to create a context of sufficiency and integrity.
One way of expressing this value is to use our time and money to reflect our highest ideals. When we invest in things that will leave the planet better than we found it, we are no longer simply spending time or money. We are, in fact, discovering our own wealth and wholeness through our gifts.
One of my goals as a fund-raiser is to enable people to assign their money (and their time) as a way to fulfill their highest commitments to change, to transformation, and to a more loving, peaceful, and sustainable world.
Find a Place to Stand
Lynne Twist
Over two thousand years ago, the mathematician Archimedes said, “Give me a place to stand, and I’ll move the world.” Taking a stand is a way of living and being that draws on a place within yourself that is at the very heart of who you are. When you take a stand, you find your place in the universe, and you have the capacity to move the world.
Stand-takers have lived in every era of history. Many of them never held public office, but they changed history through the sheer power, integrity, and authenticity of who they became as a result of the stand they took. Remarkable human beings such as Mother Theresa, Dr. Jane Goodall, Marion Wright Edelman, President Nelson Mandela, and President Vaclav Havel lived their lives from stands they took that transcended their identities or their personal opinions.
Anyone who has the courage to take a stand with their life joins these remarkable figures. You may not become famous or win the Nobel Prize. Your work may be centered on raising children or any of the other tasks that contribute to the evolution of humanity. Whatever you do, your stand gives you a kind of authenticity, power, and clarity.
I had the privilege to be in South Africa during the final days of apartheid. It was clear that apartheid was composed of a multitude of “positions.” When people take a position, it immediately creates an opposition, just as left creates right, up creates down, right creates wrong, bad creates good. That positionality itself can create a strained environment flooded with force, opinions, anger, resentment, prejudice, and even hatred.
In South Africa, the environment was shut down almost intractable. Then, while he was still in prison, Nelson Mandela took a stand; he came to the realization that in any liberation movement, it is as important to liberate the oppressors as it is to liberate the oppressed. The oppressors have to shut down their hearts, their access to their own spirit, and their own humanity in order to hate. And because of that, they are as much in prison as the oppressed.
At a luncheon, following his inauguration as president, Mandela said that he came to understand that his jailers were also trapped. He took a stand for the liberation of all races, all people.
When Mandela took this stand, he created an environment that elevated everyone’s thinking and action. Even President F.W. De Klerk, his former enemy, opened up to profound dialogue. This shift from an environment caught up in “positions” to one inspired by a “stand” was central to the miracle of the end of apartheid.
A stand such as Mandela’s is almost like a magnetic field for greatness and for truth. In the presence of someone who has taken a powerful stand with their life, new qualities, new visions, and new clarity become accessible to everyone.
When you have taken a stand with your life, you see the world as the remarkable, unlimited, boundless possibility that it is. And people see themselves through your eyes in new ways; they become more authentic in your presence because they know you see them for who they really are. The negativity, the dysfunction, the positionality begin to fall away and they feel “gotten,” heard, or known.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu speaks about the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which he chaired. During the commission’s sessions, people had the courage to forgive the person who murdered their daughter, or amputated the arms and legs of their son. They forgave horrible atrocities and rose above the sea of hatred and entered a new place where they could take a stand for life. In the presence of a stand such as we witnessed in South Africa, positionality dissolves and people find a place in their hearts and souls for forgiveness.
Buckminster Fuller once said, “When you discover the truth, it is always beautiful, and beautiful for everyone with no one left out.” This is also true of taking a stand.
Taking a position does not create an environment of inclusiveness and tolerance; instead, it creates even greater levels of entrenchment, often by insisting that for me to be right, you must be wrong.
Taking a stand does not preclude you from taking a position. One needs to take a position from time to time to get things done or to make a point. But when a stand is taken it inspires everyone. It elevates the quality of the dialogue and engenders integrity, alignment, and deep trust. Taking a stand can shape a person’s life and actions and give them access to profound truths that can empower the emergence of new paradigms and a shift in the course of history
Lynne Twist, global activist, fundraiser, speaker, author, teacher, mentor and counselor, has devoted her life to service in support of global sustainability and security, human rights, economic integrity and spiritual authenticity. Lynne has raised millions of dollars, and trained other fundraisers to be more effective in their work, for organizations that serve the best instincts of all of us – to end world hunger, empower women, nurture children and youth, and preserve the natural heritage of our planet.
Ms. Twist, an original staff member of The Hunger Project in 1977, served as a leader of that international initiative for 20 years, including responsibility for raising the money necessary to support it and its programs. In that capacity, Lynne traveled the world, developing a keen understanding of the relationship of people to money, the psychology of scarcity and the psychology of sufficiency. Lynne Twist shares compelling stories and insights from those experiences in The Soul of Money: Transforming your Relationship with Money and Life.