This is Part Two of a two-part blog. You can find Part One here…

Let’s start with the basic energetics of money…

Money is a form of power. A good working definition of “power” is agency; when we have agency we can make conscious decisions regarding our own lives.

There are many different forms of power we can develop. For example, we can do deep internal work until we move on from our childhood wounding patterns into conscious adulthood. This means healing trauma, repairing the nervous system and its responses, and releasing beliefs from that time. 

This type of power moves us from unconsciously repeating patterns and feeling powerless to our emotions to making consciously considered decisions about how we want to respond to any given situation.

Money is a more concrete form of power. It gives us agency, time, and stability. If we do not have a certain amount of money (and what this amount is will vary based on where we live) we will continually be in survival mode.

This is a disempowered state, in which others (bosses, people with more money than us, society, etc) tells us who we need to be and what we need to do in order to have enough money to provide our basic hierarchy of needs (food, shelter, etc). 

The energetic history of money is curious. We started with bartering– directly trading services or goods for services. We then moved to objects such as spices, weapons, and animal skins, and eventually to metal, gold, and silver coins. All of these items had inherent worth, but even thousands of years ago there might be some discrepancy between the worth of salt bartered for farmed goods.

We then evolved to paper, credit cards, stock market/bonds, and bitcoin. It is too simplistic to say that our financial legacy has becoming increasingly ephemeral, but it is not too far off to suggest that that something like bitcoin and the movement away from physical money shows an increasing separation of money from grounded reality. 

While this has many nuances, we live in a world where one out of four children in the United States goes hungry each day and the average CEO earns 398.8 times the annual salary of his workers (as of 2021). This gap has widened substantially over time.

Historically many rulers and individuals have always hoarded wealth while the common people starved, but the widening income gap and the worsening inequalities that are present in our society reflect our energetic separation from money, and the nature of money itself energetically becoming increasingly untethered from grounded reality. 

The glut of television shows and social media that we consume showing excessive wealth reveal a significant cultural shadow. We are increasingly viewing money as something that very few people can have– something out there, rather than achievable in any way by the “average” person.

The energetics of money get even more complicated when we discuss methods like the “Secret”, or chanting specific mantras for wealth, and how they do work for certain individuals.

If you do bring a lot of focus and intention to something, your ability to achieve it certainly heightens. The complexity here is that if all you have between you and achieving wealth is your beliefs in yourself and your capacities, spiritual and energetic assistance can certainly help. 

It will help those much more who do not have significant cultural, educational, class, and societal barriers in place. 

It will also help those much more who have “wind in their sails”– generational wealth, opportunities, and the free time to be able to put mental effort into focusing on what financial desires they care to manifest. 

It will also help those much more who are physically and mentally ready and able to put in substantial work to reap a reward.

An important practicality in discussing finances and manifestation is understanding the nature of money and how to work with it. A person who cannot balance a checkbook is at a distinct disadvantage to someone who grew up understanding what a Roth IRA is and how to diversify a portfolio. This is something that is not covered much in the energetics of money, but it should be. 

Understanding the practicalities of money (how it functions) always needs to come before the energetics. Otherwise even if you do manifest money, it will quickly leave (as is the case for plenty of lottery winners or people who receive an inheritance or lawsuit of some kind).

One of the things that energetically confines individuals the most to a specific income is the income of their family and neighborhood growing up. This sets an energetic precedent within us, it becomes ingrained, until it is what we expect because it is what we see.

On an energetic level there will be a mindset of what we can achieve based on the household and community we grew up in that can be difficult to break through.

We can then add onto that a deep spiritual need to belong and the energetics of “crabs in a bucket”. If a crab notices another crab climbing out of a bucket, it will pull it back down. As humans we do this as well. If someone is achieving better health or wealth there will be those that celebrate us but there will also be quite a few people who are envious– who want to pull us back down to their level. 

We can also be our own “crab” and pull ourselves down– subconsciously sabotage ourselves and our opportunities so that we “belong” to a family and community that has a specific income level.  

Energy follows momentum. It also follows intention. What we financially hope and dream for ourselves can be too small (or no thought at all), too large, or right sized (yes, the Goldilocks method of manifesting)

If we dream “too big” what happens is that we cannot actually see ourselves achieving what we dream of. There will be no pathway there, beyond grandiose dreams that cannot be broken down into practical steps.

If we have no thought of money at all, or are lacking in basic confidence or presence (have patterns of invisibility), we will also have difficulties with money. To manifest requires very practical steps (for example, working, learning about money, etc) as well as having enough confidence to “plant out flag”– to say here I am, and this is what I deserve.

If we do not do this, the world will show us our lack of faith in ourselves.

When we do know what we are worth, we can recognize what opportunities and people are worth our time, and we can stop attempting to prove ourselves to those who do not respect or regard our worth.

When we “right size” our financial hopes, what happens is that practicality and energetics come into line. We can see the next step, and the step after that. This has the effect of “road opening”– of releasing blockages and opening up financial flow.

If you study spirituality and religion, you will find plenty of methods geared towards financial prosperity. From right thinking and prayers to mantras to feng shui, sigils to pacts with varying spirits, calling on ancestors to understandings of chakras and the energy body, there are many different practices and understandings focused on financial prosperity.

If you have your business, or home, set up correctly with a good amount of flow to it (things in the correct corners, open space, a feeling of the home or business being inviting) the chances of success will certainly increase. If we energetically take care of our home, our body, or our business, it will bring in good energy… and that does, in part, include financially.

At its deepest level what many of these teachings are pointing to is an idea of “flow”. If we do not have barriers within ourselves, we will have more flow. We will have more power (capacity/agency over our bodies and our lives).

This “flow” would mean an openness to everything in this world, a radical acceptance of reality. This would include money. 

So many of us suffer under the weighty beliefs that we have inherited from our families and society regarding money. We place such significance on it (as discussed, often for very good reason), but spiritually, we can get to a point where whether we have a million dollars or two dollars, it doesn’t really matter.

It is hard to express this point while at the same point discussing that we need a certain amount of money to live and the amount of suffering the money brings as a form of power. But both are true simultaneously, and we can grasp as much onto the idea of living in “minimalism” (without objects/material possessions) as we can a closet full of sneakers and purses.

Both would indicate unhealthy grasping, and a need to release substantial blockages (beliefs, patterns of living) regarding money.

Energetically money has to do with the first (genital) and third (solar plexus) chakras. Our first chakra, when unhealthy, will be greedy and materialistic in its emptiness. It will desire to take without giving, to have immediacy, and lacks connection to the world and the people in it. It is only concerned with itself and its own selfishness. It grasps toward material objects to fill a significant spiritual void. 

The “piecemeal effect” of taking prosperity or financial success and separating it from an entire spirituality or religious path is ineffective, disingenuous, and doesn’t represent what most of those teachings have to offer. 

A somewhat competent spiritual teacher will help any students focused on material acquisition to look towards the underlying reasons towards this grasping and help gear them to deeper matters of soul (and to the perspective of higher chakras). 

Money is neither good nor evil in a spiritual sense, it is simply a tool, and stripping ourselves of considerable beliefs/dogmas regarding money can have a large impact on us achieving greater “flow”.  

When we heal within, our need for “stuff” lessens, as we no longer seek the societal, familial, or personal approval that we once did. During spiritual awakening our projection onto objects, money, and acquisition lessens as what is meaningful to us in life significantly shifts.

A healthy first chakra still recognizes that our vessel, our physical body, and the physical world, is of primary importance. We have such a short time in our human form, such a short time with our senses. We should have a form of “healthy selfishness” in which we tend to ourselves first (before taking care of others), including financially. 

But in health we are connected to the world, to one another, to reality, in such a way that we can see this dual nature of money. On the one hand, we need it to live, and on the other, it is just money. There are other matters of soul that are much more significant.

The third chakra is the last of the “personal” chakras. It is the “me” chakra– the chakra in which we individuate from our childhood pain and can see the world and what we have to offer with confidence. If this chakra is unhealthy, we continually desire approval and acceptance from others to validate ourselves.

Part of this approval is having financial success, and through objects to show that we belong, who we are, and that we matter. 

When this chakra is healthy, we take all of that energy we have placed externally– onto others, onto money, onto objects– and bring it back within ourselves.

What is of primary importance is what we think of ourselves, what we want for ourselves, and how we care to live.

A good way to tell if the third chakra is healthy is that the person will have healed their childhood pain to the extent that they desire to be of service to others. Instead of being selfishly focused, healing the first three chakras will give someone the time, insight, and agency to focus on others. It is a substantial relief to release the energetic weight we carry to the point that we can stop being so inwardly focused.

Healing the first three chakras also means healing the family and ancestral line, which also contains considerable beliefs regarding money, experiences of poverty, famine, wealth gone wrong, etc (to do this, see my book, The Body Deva) which can have a considerable impact on our own finances.

There is plenty that can be done regarding financial health, stability, and even wealth from a spiritual perspective. It simply is different than is often portrayed, and comes with very practical understandings of the nature of money and reality. 

Bringing focus to our financial health is not bad or good, it is simply a part of us. We should look towards all of the parts of ourselves that lack flow and openness, that require healing. By being empathetic towards the significant barriers that we (and others in our world) have, we can move out of the bubble that those who look towards this topic frequently remain in, and question how personally and collectively we can move towards a greater state of health (including financially) overall.

mary mueller shutan is a spiritual teacher and author of several books, including The Spiritual Awakening Guide and The Body Deva

© mary mueller shutan 2023