Money shapes our experience of the world. It is a necessary and important part of our lives. For all practical purposes, money is as essential to our existence as the air we breathe and the water we drink. We spend most of our lives working to earn a living and spending what we have to live. Each of us has an intimate and daily connection to money. The fundamental truth is that each of us must deal with our money matters.

This connection is a pervasive concept because it cuts across virtually all racial, religious and socioeconomic levels, and it applies to everyone, everywhere. In order to survive in our society we require money. As a result, for most of us, money occupies a prominent place in our everyday thoughts. Whether it be how to get it, how to spend it or how to invest it, we are a people who focus a lot of attention on money.

Despite the attention we devote to it, many of us have mixed feelings about money. We seem to have a love-hate relationship with it. This relationship leads to a seemingly insurmountable dichotomy in which thoughts of money produce feelings of angst and anxiety. For example, we seek wealth, but many feel that the love of money is the root of all evil. Money brings us status and power, but common wisdom says that power corrupts. Because we have these ambivalent feelings surrounding money, we may have the tendency to separate our thoughts about it from the rest of our lives and especially from our views, philosophy and approach to spirituality. When this happens, we compartmentalize our life and divide different aspects of a single organism yourself.

Why do we often separate our financial and spiritual lives? Why is it so natural to create boundaries separating our secular (that which is worldly and temporal) from our spiritual and religious beliefs? James Hillman, the psychologist and author, has observed that human history is a series of images, dreams, tales, geographies, stories, figures, and lessons learned, not historical fact but imaginative thinking. He concludes that we live with a world view consisting of myths. We have created a whole series of myths that surround our financial lives. These social conventions limit our view of ourselves and our relationship with money. This division we create between our secular and religious lives creates a potential battle line. How can we deal with this internal conflict? How can we realistically focus on financial planning when our concept of wealth may carry mixed messages or even negative connotations?

Spirituality is a another fundamental part of our human existence. Spirituality, as the term is used in this book, encompasses our philosophy of life, religion, mysticism, our values and morality. There is a universality in it as it crosses over culture, time period or geography. It is an essential element in the human experience. In this book, the terms religion, faith, belief, spirituality and philosophy are all used interchangeably.

The objective of this book is to relate the somewhat broad concepts of spirituality and finance. Is there a conflict between these concepts? Are the two modes of thinking completely dichotomous? Is the conflict between the two real or imagined, and if real, is i t non-resolvable? Must the two be separated or are there similarities we can draw upon to see how they overlap and connect?

The economist Julian Simon believed that the greatest advantage we have as human beings is our ability to use the accumulated knowledge from those who have preceded us. He believed that human beings produce a stock of useful knowledge and that our ability to build on this stock is a fundamental characteristic of our evolution. Mankind advances because we have the ability to create more than we use.

The premise of Spiritual Finance is that it is our obligation to continue the process of accumulating knowledge by seeking it wherever it might be found, seeking wisdom no matter what the source and searching for truth wherever it surfaces. Our destiny is to accumulate the lessons learned, to retell these stories and then make our own changes and twists. We are a creative species. I use comparative religious philosophy and wisdom to make this point because it is a gold mine for the mind. Where else can we find a greater store of accumulated knowledge than in the world’s great religions? This is an awesome resource that must be tapped and applied to modern living.

The view of Spiritual Finance is that our financial and spiritual lives are intertwined and that separating them is an illusion. The distinctions we draw between our tangible earthly desires and our intangible spiritual needs are really stories, myths that we have accepted. If we look closely, we will see many fundamental connections between the two. They can be integrated by examining and applying religious teachings to modern financial planning practice and principles.

In this way, our illusions and myths separating financial and spiritual thought will disintegrate because the divisions never really existed in the first place. If we fail to connect the two, we compartmentalize ourselves and our lives. We become two separate identities instead of one unified being. If we are to be truly successful, we must be genuine and consistent in our beliefs about money matters and spirituality. That is the purpose of this book: to uncover how the two are interrelated. The interconnectedness of outward actions and inward strivings must be realized before we can live a balanced life. If we are to be truly successful at living, we must be genuine and consistent in our beliefs about financial planning, money and spirituality. That is the purpose of this book: to examine feelings about money and spiritual concepts and to uncover how the two are interrelated.

Spiritual Finance considers many of the basic financial planning principles, but it is not intended as a 'how to do it' course on financial planning. Throughout the book, the terms personal finance, financial planning, money management and money matters are used interchangeably. While there may be distinctions between these terms, the objective is not to distinguish minor differences. It is more important to see the grand interconnectedness and philosophical unity between them and the underlying ideas that they embody. These are the ideas that I teach my financial planning clients so that they are better prepared to make informed financial decisions on their own. The beauty here is that everyone is capable of understanding these financial planning precepts because they exist naturally within us. We already know them. The difficulty involves learning how to integrate these behaviors into our lives.

This text will not give you all the tools necessary to create and implement a financial plan. It is, however, about philosophy and approach, about your purpose and intent and what they mean in the larger scheme of your life. The financial planning process often starts with a list of goals and objectives. This first step should be the focus of much reflection, thought, contemplation and meditation. Our goals are intrinsically related to our outlook on life, our philosophy, and in the end, our spirituality. Because this is so fundamental, we must consider the spiritual nature of our lives before we can discover our financial goals. It is then and only then that financial planning can provide us with true satisfaction in our quest for a life worth living and a legacy for our existence.

Quantity: