Soul Over Matter. Zhi Gang Sha
easy way to think of this process is “the roots create the fruits”— what’s below the ground, or invisible, creates what is above the ground, or visible. When an apple seed below the ground germinates and sends roots out, it creates an apple tree above the ground and eventually, apples.
This idea is one that we take for granted in nature when we see a tree grow, but to truly accept that this is a universal law, one that is at work not just in the woods and fields, but also in our own lives, is often challenging. We accept that apples in the present come from apple tree roots set down in the past, but we can find it surprisingly difficult to see how money (or lack of it) now might be related to roots set down in months or years prior.
The essence of this philosophy, and what matters most for your life, is the idea of cause and effect. Right now, the “fruits” you’re receiving in life, from your income to your health to the quality of your relationships, exist because of seeds you planted in the past. Those seeds began as thoughts—things you were taught about money, for example, or beliefs you had about genetics and health—and eventually flourished into the fruits you see now in your life in the form of money, energy, and good health. Your thoughts were the cause. What you have in your life now is the effect.
From here, it’s not hard to see where we need to go to change our results in life. If you want to see new financial fruits—greater income, a nicer home, more security—then you need to set new roots. You need to start thinking differently so that you feel differently, act differently, and eventually, receive differently.
What Master Sha brings to this equation is something much deeper. From his study of ancient wisdom and teaching, we know that the roots are deeper and further back than just your childhood or your thinking from a few months or years ago. It begins before your thoughts. It begins with your soul.
Yes, you can create dramatic results in your life by changing your thinking. You can, in effect, learn to understand and master the idea of “mind over matter.”
But there’s a deeper truth. Your soul is what controls the outcome. It’s the original root of all the results. It’s not mind over matter so much as soul over matter. Deeper roots bring sweeter fruits.
Your Money Roots
If you accept the cause-and-effect equation for your financial life, you might well wonder exactly how your financial roots were planted. If money—the fruit—is a scarce resource in your life today, where and when were the roots set?
While the money you spent on your credit card last month is an easy culprit to point to, your true money roots were planted much deeper and much longer ago. For most people, the seeds of their figurative “money tree” were first sowed in childhood, by their parents and early money experiences.
Like many of us, you likely have some very disempowering opinions and conclusions about money planted in that early, fertile soil. Read the following sentences and see if you can fill in the missing words:
“Money is the root of all_________.”
“Money doesn’t grow on_________.”
“It takes money to_________.”
“The rich just get_________.”
Most of us can fill in these blanks with hardly a thought. They’re expressions—seeds—that landed early in our soil and germinated almost immediately. They were then watered and nourished by our family, peers, teachers, and colleagues for years until they delivered the fruits we see today.
Like everything, however, these early seeds and their fruits have a front and back all their own. For all we’ve learned about the negative influence of money, we’ve also spent much of our time and energy in pursuit of it. We’ve been raised and taught to abhor and fear money, yet we devote much of our lives pursuing it. We’ve been trained to try to attract it and avoid it at the same time!
The result is that most of us have a confusing view of money. Whether you realize it consciously or not, there’s a good chance the money seeds you planted early on in your life are conflicting with your current needs. You have mixed thoughts and emotions about money. On the one hand, money is important, helpful, and desirable. On the other hand, money is for the lucky few or for the extraordinary. You might believe money is for those who have done something wrong to receive it, or only for those who receive it as a family legacy. It’s a confusing message, and the outcome is that although you desire abundance, your trees are bearing scarcity.
When we’re young, the “soil” where we plant our first roots is very fertile. What we plant then tends to grow robustly, and the roots are stubborn. It’s not impossible to change those roots, but they’re well entrenched. The result is that when it comes to money, we’ve got one foot on the gas pedal and one on the brake. We’re pursuing it and running away from it at the same time. We feel proud of our income and ashamed of it in the same instant.
And that leads us to financial trouble, every time.
Self-Sabotage: How Your Early Financial Roots Can Trip You Up
My dad was a civil servant. My mom worked a part-time job. While we weren’t poor, money was never abundant, and I certainly never heard from my father that money was important. Instead, I heard things like “The rich get richer and the poor stay poor.” He would speak, from time to time, about successful people as being greedy. About how it was hard to get ahead without already being wealthy or taking advantage of someone.
As a result, I grew up resenting wealthy people. In my mind, there was something unethical or immoral about wealth. But at the same time, I pursued money. After all, life seemed easier with money, and my family always seemed to have less of it than we needed. As a hardworking guy who made it to law school and into legal practice, I eventually got my wish and made a bunch of money early in my life.
So there I was. A young man programmed to feel that wealthy people were somehow flawed, but on the road to becoming one of those very people. What did I do? Naturally, my subconscious found some excellent ways to ensure that I got rid of that money. By lending it inappropriately and investing it poorly, I was easily able to ensure that I didn’t become one of the “greedy rich.”
This type of self-sabotage is exceedingly common. It happens below the level of our awareness and is a direct result of a disconnect between the roots we’ve planted and the fruits we seek. Until we change our money roots, we’ll experience all the symptoms of a “root-fruit” disconnect, such as:
• an inability to attract more money
• poor or disastrous results in investments
• a near-constant sense of financial lack
• financial conflict with partners and loved ones
Anywhere you find conflict, stress, or anxiety about money, you’ll find a disconnect between the roots of your past and your wishes for the future.
Planting New Roots: Financial Literacy
Not only are many of us not born into money, none of us were born to do money either—to understand it, attract it, nurture it, and spend it wisely. We’re not taught how to manage money, and we’re rarely even given a healthy view of it. If anything, what we’re taught is counterproductive to financial abundance. We’ve been taught, in large part, by people who either didn’t have any financial abundance or who had been taught their own negative, conflicted money message.
The current state of our financial literacy is one that plants seeds of scarcity. The good news is that we can change this. We can learn to see money differently. We can reinterpret the teachings and the experiences of our parents and grandparents.
When I started my process of creating new roots, I began with reading. I consumed books of all types but, in the financial arena, there were several that jarred my thinking so much that it was as if I could feel new roots spreading their first early tendrils into the soil of my mind.
Secrets