Lessons

Lesson Info

Our Relationship to Money & Creativity

What about money? God, money is such a great topic. What a neurotic topic this is a lot of our you know, come confusion is around money and also what we even think it is is actually sometimes not really that clear. We know what we think it is when we get a big check in the mail but that's not really money money's a flow of energy and its product if you want to look at it from a yoga dallas kind of point of view, money is energy. And when energy is good, like I study with a wonderful taoist teacher in new york, she gonna touch his name it's much too sad. Hahn and he says if somebody has good spiritual training, they should have no problem with money. So interesting that's not the conventional notion that's, not a convention motion. Um, in other words, managing your world should not should not. If you know how to manage energy and know how to work with your own energy the world the activity should should be aligned and you can turn it up, turn it down. Maybe what goes away is greed, and ...

I think we're not really promoting greed here, and if anybody is like just desperate to make a hole, a boatload of money and no matter what is there work another workshop yeah, I might maybe you know, maybe I'll be curious what they would say and you do hear that point of view of like, you know yeah money rape, pillage and plunder that's how you get money, you know, but I'm not from that school and I don't think it's a cutting edge school anymore because I think people like like the entire city of san francisco, for example, I think you'd find six people who buy into that logic. Um we're going someplace else a cz, uh, human race and so but money is a very interesting mirror and you know how we handle it, even what your wallet looks like, you know, even your bank accounts even how you tend to the money that you do have, um even how you spend money, your credit card, uh, situation, you know, are you tapped out on your credit cards? You know, um, even if you are tapped out on your credit cards, how you handling that, like, for example, did you know you can refinance them at zero percent interest a lot of times, you know, so money is like, savvy and it's it suffers no fools and it's just it's just a very realistic measurement of something, um I've had a kind of a pretty good relationship to money most of my life and in a way somebody part of it is sort of relaxing about it somewhat on paying attention at the same time so when we do the meditation practice we really going to be talking about how to how to relax and pay attention at the same time normally think if we relax it's like you know you're off duty and if we think of paying attention it's like but there's a middle ground that we're looking for here which is a kind of relaxed attention so money can be like that you take care of it but there's no real need to panic like panic doesn't really help um and there's no need to grasp so we look at those things is, um in this context how could we have a sort of sane of sane relationship to money and that's uh I would say part of our spiritual practice having the same relationship to money so that's a deep topic I mean, I think we could have some we will have time to really look into that what are we really talking about, what we're talking about our relationship to money? Um so I said somewhere between grasping and ignoring money looms as a precise and challenging barometer of our state of mind and our relationship to the world big words uh tomorrow morning we're going to specialize on this topic so if you really willing to stick around we're going to get into the into the the nuts and bolts of money how it reflects our state of mind so the one thing we haven't covered yet is um creativity right cause his creativity spiritually making but now I almost feel like going out there in the audience and just turning your head around three hundred sixty degrees and now look forward again creativity is a wild card it's one third of what we're talking about here and when I've done this workshop alive it's been so interesting to watch the energy in the room shift when you start talking about creativity it's almost like rainbow start coming out of people you know and kind of like they become irrational and kind of study dancing and singing and one guy the workshop just did a little beat box thing so when you're invited to be creative throw away everything else that we're talking about that's that's the thing is there's a sort of it's like a river it's gonna flow you know and your job is just get out of the way on dh stop blocking the river and I think many creative people and I definitely would say this myself you almost feel you have nothing to do with it it's just coming through and also that's when it is best you know so um creativity can feel more like play than work it may be hard to quantify creativity but it's impossible to overestimate its value so this is like such an amazing part like when you look at people everybody has their clothes and what they chose to wear their earrings and what kind of glasses they chose and you know, it's a living is fundamentally creative and people say I'm not creative I said well, you chose that tied and you you chose that suit it's uh pouring out of us we're actually kind of we think we're a solid but we'll really were a liquid and creativity is pouring out of us out of every pore in our body and just to just to live and just to get through a day even if that's hard um even if you're panhandling there's a creativity to it you know? So um this is something that we're going to really talk about I wanted to just share one thing in terms of one experience how eccentric or how powerful this source of energy is in terms of making a buck you know and the topic that we're talking about so it's a little personal but you know I did I did write this one song that was like called midnight at the oasis which was like I had a life of its own once it came out and the people who are creative live or singing it and they did a video the last time we're here of everybody in the office singing it and all these sort of kind of stayed people are now jumping around the office and singing and, you know, and everybody's laughing and feeling happy and, you know, it just creates a different kind of energy, so that song, you know, that song is probably I've I've had a lively that it made money in all of three areas that we're talking about so that's kind of interesting part of my own, why I'm talking about these things together, but in the creative zone, that song took twenty minutes to write twenty minutes and the occasion wass um, just pure enjoyment and just a share that I was it was back in the day when waterbeds existed and what happened? Waterbeds. I don't really know what happened to the maybe some people drowned or something. I don't know landlords, but they were big in a certain point, so I was on one with a friend let's just put it that way without any cory details. And and then, uh, she had a little martin triple of twenty eight guitar by the side of the bed, and then we were eating some grape leaves and little middle eastern specialties, and I just reached over and picked up the guitar on the night of the oasis send your camel to bed, you know? And then the rest of it kind of just was filling it in. That was that was the burst from the muse, and then the rest is feeling yourself in. Now, if you ask me the time that sound probably made me personally two million dollars over the years, I never handed it up, but honestly, it's supported I at a certain point, I went back teo warner brothers later on in my life, and I visited lenny waronker, who is the president of warner brothers, then who was the producer of that record, and I bought him exquisite sort of handmade sake set, and I wrote a little haiku on a little poem on the card I said past, present and future in a drop of sake. Thank you for financing my buddhist education, because that money allowed me to study and have a whole kind of freedom. And was it me doing everything I'm talking about here and sort of thinking through I gotta make a post strategic plan, and there was nothing like that at all. So creativity is the wild card that's what we're talking about here, all of you are creatives, and otherwise he wouldn't be here some part of you needs to be unleashed permanently unleashed one of your dogs has the off the leash. Rescue dogs we're going to talk about good leash you know about one of your dogs have to be out there roaming around in dreamland and freedom really? So creativity has to do with freedom and joy spending time in the sand box er I don't even know they have sandboxes anymore I think I might be dating myself did you have a sandbox where you grew up? He did okay sandpit and remember what you did there um spread casals how did you feel? Yeah fun right pre so this is something that, uh you know, we're often not allowing ourselves anymore we'll become grown ups you know, we don't play in the sandbox anymore and if we're gonna be creative that's okay if you know if you don't think you need it but if you're going to be creative and have that be your livelihood your hobby you got to spend time that sandbox and as a group like I would you know, when I have run several businesses even very serious businesses you have to get everybody together in the sandbox and I indicated ok, when the sandbox now you know, nothing you can say is gonna be held against you there's no such thing as a stupid idea we're not running out of time let's get to it because none of that energy around just playing right so um I wantto um I encourage all of us to remember that feeling and just like I might have been a sandbox alerts on a waterbed that's okay too you can spend time on a waterbed we need to not forget about that part of ourselves uh andi um often it's the most productive part the most genuine creativity and productive when it comes out of like having no agenda whatsoever all right play you know as I said as I say they call it playing music not working playing music so it has to be that sense uh to us to me it's summarize stun a certain feeling and I in one project that I did I made a record with my old friend christopher guest on cj vansen and we did it record called memories of summer as a child and I had a picture christopher and I grew up together and had a picture of us at eight on a beach and shelter island which is was to me was bliss that time I don't know maybe every didn't have that experience but we could just roam around on our bikes I remember driving into a uh they had an orchard there that I guess nobody owned I don't know how it came to be there you could just walk in and pick fruit off the tree was like being back and eaten you know he's just walking picked fruit off the tree and eat it I don't know if like my parents were paying a certain fee for me to go do that or he was just open but then we go down to the beach so that image of summertime beach uh sandbox youth ese wept happen, you know, to do this part for this workshop some of the time this tabby and, uh I believe most of us have forgotten where it is sadly er so creative people are nuts, you know, if you look at every every organization that revolves around creativity, you got the what? What? My friend, but chris calls the grownups and kids the kids are the ones having all the fun, you know, like actors and musicians stuff and then there's the managers and the business people and stuff like that. So, um, if we're going to be a kid, we've got to remember what it feels like and it is, uh, if you look at it, for example, any of the arts business is the people her hugely successful are the most kid like, you know, it's weird. I mean, they might have some savvy, but, you know, they're kind of like the ones everybody else is trying to keep up with, um, you know, uh, steve jobs comes to mind, you know, I didn't know him, but you know, it's just like let's do this so that we could have it this way that way and everybody's running around like a maniac trying to catch up with them. So some of the people I've worked with her really, um I had the privilege of working with stevie wonder at one point and he's just stays up for two or three days at a time, just wildly creative and everybody's running around just trying to make, you know, make it orderly around them. So some part of our energy has to be kind of, uh uh, working that way. Uh, and then finally, last point that we have for before our break, but dave, I should support said, but dave in there, but dave, often we have to create with an agenda, a timeline and a budget and that's the grown ups coming in, and they're right. So, uh, how we gonna integrate that sense of freedom and play with something really practical and, uh, productive, fruitful? How we going to do that? The next segment would be talking about meditation practice would just be right into that, um, and how to tune our mind up a cz we approach the rest of these topics, had to learn to pay attention and focus on dumb, so I hope that, uh we'll have a chance to keep talking I'm getting a feeling, you know, from people here on dh online, we'll be talking to you a lot more if you have a lot of chance to chip in, but I'm just trying to lay some basic ground work here, so get started so thank you very much for tuning in and I hope we see you in fifteen minutes, stick around everybody have a cup of coffee or something and we'll be back. We're going back now when we come back, david, we're gonna be talking about a meditation of the day that I think sounds intriguing taking our mind and heart to the gym will tell us a little bit more about that, you know, people will get into that, but people somehow always acknowledged the body train, you know, we're sort of in way saturated with the ideal body, but, you know, I've said it before, like, if somebody is driving towards you in a vehicle eighty miles an hour um and you're standing there and you you want to communicate, do you want to communicate with the car other driver? So the idea, the mind is the driver of the vehicle of the body and having that much potency power, so we're going to talk about tapping into the power of the mind, creative power of the mind and also particularly focusing and training it, thinking that it is actually something you could work with, as opposed to just whatever you know. There's. A thousand year old tradition about howto work with our state of mind and, you know, bring it, bring it to its sort of optimal state, just like turning the body.