What Role Does Money Play in Our Awakening? | Eckhart Tolle Teachings

So, for example, St. Francis of Assisi, he was born as the son of a fairly wealthy merchant in Italy. And he was so disgusted by his father's wealth and consumption and that he. There were very few spiritual who rejected all material things so completely. He was the ultimate hippie before a hippie. So he didn't. He would always go barefoot, have no possessions whatsoever. I don't want anything, no, nothing material. And so he. And many people joined him. Young men, often some women. They joined him and wanted to live like him. It seemed a wonderful thing. And then gradually his teaching spread and more people joined the order and then they had to. The church was becoming suspicious. He had to go and visit the Pope and ask to have permission to have an order and so on. And he had to do that. There's a wonderful scene in a movie, Brother Son, sister Moon, where St Francis visits the Pope. A beautiful scene. And then as the movement grew and Francis got older, the order started to have possessions. They had. Beginning to have buildings and lands. And he was so disgusted by this, he didn't want to have much to do with. He let. Let other people run it. I don't want it anymore. He didn't like. But if that had not happened, the entire Franciscan moon would have evaporated after his death. It needed to be somehow rooted in the materiality, the physicality of things. Jesus lived by was supported by women mostly. Strangely enough, many people don't know that. And it's only said in one line in the New Testament where many women followed him and served him with their possessions, with their money. And then how would some, let's say a publication, a Western publication, where Jesus lived nowadays, a Western publication would say, he's exploiting this. Look at this spiritual teacher. He's exploiting these women. He's taking all their money. This would be the headline if some of them have left their families and she just. Dreadful charlatan. Look what he's doing. So there's no clear. Everybody has to decide for themselves what they feel comfortable with. If you are a spiritual teacher, what is it that you feel comfortable with? Do you charge? Do you say donation? Whatever you do, somehow you need some money. And if you go to a spiritual teaching also you can see, do you feel comfortable with paying something or not? If you don't feel comfortable, go somewhere else where you don't pay. You can go to a Buddhist monastery and for a while you don't pay. If you go there a few times, they're going to look at you and say, well, where's your donation. I mean, you need. It wouldn't make so. But there was a time when, after my shift in consciousness, when I explored, I had this need to explore all kinds of spiritual traditions. And I tried everything because I didn't understand what had happened to me. Eventually, the understanding came through Buddhist teachings. And then I understood, oh, this is what it is about. It's a cessation of thinking. When the Buddhist Zen monk said to me, well, Zen is about not thinking. And I said, that was a revelation to me, not thinking. And then I realized that I was doing very little thinking. But I only experienced the not thinking as inner peace. I didn't know it was not thinking. But anyway, I explored other things. Cause in miracles. There were workshops. I wanted to know, what's the cause in miracles. I read very interesting. I went to Scientology. I never became a member. I did one test. I just wanted to, but they were so. The guy who was doing it was so stupid that I didn't even want to know his interpretation of my test. But then I went to other workshops. There were some workshops charged money, and occasionally I was so interested that, okay, this one charges £500 for the weekend. Well, I don't have £500. And I remember, okay, I need to get a job. I need to make. I was really interested. I can't remember what it was. There are so many things. I need 500 pounds. Okay, I remember what job I got to get the £500 for two weeks. I got a job at the kennel club in London registering dogs on little cards. What's the name of the dog? They were all coming in. Every day they were coming in. I had to open the envelope register with the breed, name, age, gender. There were no computers then. And after two weeks, I had enough money to join the workshop. It wasn't very good, but at least. But at least I knew that wasn't for me. And I never felt, oh, these people are terrible. If they want that money and people do it, perhaps it's worth it. Perhaps it's a wonderful thing. It happened not to be a wonderful thing. So generally speaking, you're very right. Money can make people very unconscious. Even just some people even. Just beginning to talk about money. Especially people who have had an experience of scarcity in their childhood and whose parents were fearful around money. And money was always discussed in their family with negative emotions. There was never enough, and so on. So I know I've met people who were relatively conscious in most of their lives, except the moment when money was mentioned, then immediately it pulled them into unconscious reactivity. And not just necessarily huge amounts of money. It could just be, he charged me too much, was $10 too much? The entire bill was 200. But the $10, it's terrible. Just mention money and they become unconscious. For some people, there are other triggers that still make it. There may be. Some of you have certain triggers that make you unconscious whenever you think about it or talk about it. It could be, for example, your ex spouse. Whenever you think or talk about him or her, you go, awful. Or it could be money or it could be something else, some other. Your pet subject, that you feel something in politics, that the moment it's mentioned you go become reactive. But for many people, it's money. So you need to observe that money is only one could see, symbolic energy. It symbolizes energy and in itself is not problematic. But for many people, it becomes associated with fear. Often the fear of not enough. And also ego. It becomes associated with ego. So how much money you have determines your worth? How much. This is a weird expression. How much is he worth? That's ridiculous. So what's your relationship with money? It's one which has evolved over time and now it's a place where I see it as symbolic energy. And that's what I'm going and teaching the world about. Yeah, yeah, good. That's good. I'm doing good with the money. Not everybody, almost nobody knows what exactly I do with it. I feel like Jesus advice, when you give something, don't let the left hand know what the right hand is doing or something like that. So nobody knows because it can so easily become ego. I met some somebody last year, Lovely, wonderful man. He's doing such good in the world and he's very wealthy, but he's not here. So I'm just saying it. Maybe he probably won't even know I'm referring to him. But. But soon after meeting him, he gave me a list. He pronounced, well, I'm engaged in the following charities. This one, I've been supporting this charity for 15 years. And this is what is then I'm supporting this. And then I created that charity and that. It's wonderful work. But I could see he was already spiritually awakening, but his ego was clinging to his charity. So he's doing good, but it's not doing him much good, not his ego. So it's better to give anonymously, as I often do, to give anonymously. People don't even know where it's coming from. It's a lovely way of g. It.