24 May Working with the Wider Unfolding for Wealth
.jpg "What is so confusing about working with the wider unfolding for wealth? There are good reasons we get confused. Here we are RAISING CLARITY about what is and isn't working with the wider unfolding, which you can see in this juicy image of red petals unfolding in a brown husk by agronomist Tom Rulkens.")
There are good reasons we get confused about working with the wider unfolding for wealth. Here we are RAISING CLARITY about what is and isn’t working with the wider unfolding, which you can see juicily represented in this image, “Unfolding petals,” by agronomist Tom Rulkens, taken in Mozambique.
Working with the Wider Unfolding for Wealth
RAISING CLARITY will in this post clarify what is and isn’t working with the wider unfolding for wealth–your own and others’. We will clarify what’s not working–in the sense of functional–about most people’s conceptions–and also what “counts” as working with the wider unfolding. This post is in answer to a reader’s question.* The question has two parts. Here’s the simple part:
Is selling (as in naming a price, or even a price range for your services) an inherent form of subtle coercion, as in dictating a worth to someone else?
And the simple answer is “no.”
The Wider Unfolding Isn’t the Property of One Person
What your work is worth to you is what’s important. I consider it poor personal boundaries to let someone else dictate the price of your work. If they can afford your work, great. If they can’t afford it, great. You’re free to negotiate a lower rate or exchange. But I’m just not that interested in what my work is worth to other people. I don’t think you should be either. You should care that you feel you are giving good value for money.
Duality’s a Problem
Now here’s the more complex part of our reader’s question, about
…asking for what you really want. At what point is that tapping into a beneficial emergence, serving a greater good, and at what point does it become trying to manipulate a wider unfolding to one’s own will?
One of the best things I know to do for my clients is help them quit it when they get into this groove of separating this important thing from that important thing
Quit creating dilemmas by noticing when you pit something important against something else important. (Hint: you can tell you are doing this with something important if you are doing it at all. Otherwise, you wouldn’t bother worrying about it. Cheese taco or bean taco is not a dilemma anyone worries about. I rest my case). These are usually two halves of your own wholeness.
Resolving a dilemma feels productive–but it’s not. Don’t trust that productive feeling. Get over it. Just don’t create them in the first place. Go both/and, don’t go either/or. Refuse to pit two things that are both important to you against each other. Frame the problem with wholeness.
But Duality’s Not The Problem
Life doesn’t suddenly become perfect once you reframe your money and work problem with wholeness. (How boring would that be?) It just suddenly makes it much easier to be peaceful & ethical with money, that’s all.
So you likely still have a problem. But you have a much better problem. You have a healthier, whole-r question to resolve. Take this reader’s question. We have, on one side,
tapping into a beneficial emergence, serving a greater good,
and on the other side, we have
trying to manipulate a wider unfolding to one’s own will.
What’s going on here is an imagined contradiction.
Your Will Is The Greater Good
There are a lot of dilemmas we create with money: me vs. the world. Good vs. evil. What is good for me vs. what is good for the planet. So first of all, I don’t think we can manipulate the wider unfolding. I think we can try–but we’re not outside it so how could trying work?
OK, you say: think of people and corporations who do horrible things in the name of their own wealth–but that concept violates the actual meaning of wealth, which is well-being.
I don’t just think those things backfire on them (although I do think that). I think they are a total waste of time. Given the way I look at time, that’s the opposite of wealth.
Too, the way I look at time is also called “the long view” (although it’s only about a hundred years long). If you build “wealth”-building of doing horrible things to humans or nature, you have clearly forgotten it is yourself you are doing them to:
You decide that you want to get rid of the by-products of human life and that Lake Erie will be a good place to put them. You forget that the eco-mental system called Lake Erie is a part of your wider eco-mental system–and that if Lake Erie is driven insane, its insanity is incorporated in the larger system of your thought and experience. (Gregory Bateson)
Do What You Will & Harm None
So if it’s impossible to manipulate the greater good, beneficial emergency, wider unfolding–go for it! Just “do what you will and harm none,” as the Wiccans say. And figuring that out may be the subject of another blog post. We aren’t used to thinking about wealth-building as good for us and good for Nature. Learning how to do it is worthy work.
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