The Illusion of Money by Kyle Cease

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DIGEST THIS! THE ESSENTIAL IDEA:

You are not your bank balance! Money does not create your value – it’s the result of your connection to your true value – your passion, creativity and contribution to the world.

TOP 5 TAKEAWAYS

Money is an illusion because it does not create your value. It can be the external result of how connected you are to your true value. I am not rich because I have $X dollars, I am rich in my connection to my authentic self, my passion and value to the world, and as a result I attract $X dollars.
Going directly into our deepest fears and accepting all of ourselves, both light and dark – is the gateway to freedom.
You raise your value by making your time more valuable, by only doing things that expand you beyond today.
Being broke is just a mental concept. Yes you may be in debt and need to pay bills, but money is just one part of abundance. The true source of money – our passion, creativity, connection, and contribution – is the real value we offer the world.
People like Oprah are VALUABLE – which is much more than being rich – if they were to lose money they can recreate wealth again and again and again through being who they are.

MONEY

Money is one of the biggest excuses we use for not following our highest calling.
Life wants you to grow and learn and connect and love and create and play – it doesn’t care about your bank balance.
Your relationship to money is just a mirror of your relationship to yourself. In fact, you don’t really have a relationship to money; you only have a relationship to your concepts about money.
So if you’re feeling fear around money, what you’re actually feeling is a reflection of the fear and insecurity that is living inside of you; you just happen to be noticing it externally through money. Money isn’t causing or creating your fear; it’s just bringing it to surface.
The exact same fear can exist inside of you no matter how much money you have. You can have fear and stress when in debt and can have fear of losing money when having a million pounds.
This is the same reason lottery winners often go broke very quickly—even though the amount of money they have has changed, they still haven’t created an internal sense of abundance and worthiness to match that level of external abundance. So the same internal fear that was keeping them from being able to create money is the same fear that they are trying to cover up by buying private jets once they finally have money in the bank.
We often have a belief that money equals security. Money has nothing to do with security. Yes we may have rent to pay, but seeing money as your only source of security is also what is cutting you off from the infinite, creative, inventive being that you are—which would probably make paying rent a lot easier.
You will never be able to change your feeling of insecurity by having more money. Money is never the cause of the way you feel; it’s an effect. If you’re broke it’s likely because you have a deeply held belief that you are unsafe that may cause you to feel, think, and act in ways that create circumstances which mirror that belief.
Being broke is just an idea, a mental concept. If you’re not okay with the idea of going broke, you’re at war with something inside your body that you’ve created. When you can fully accept the possibility of going broke, money stops owning you and you can start to make decisions based on inspiration rather than fear.
Welcome to the 3 Yous. You all inherit $1 million.
- You 1 spends on something to distract yourself from your emotions and gain something external to prove your worth providing a quick but unsustainable high e.g. fast food, alcohol, renting luxury apartments and throwing parties to impress.
- You 2 invests in assets that provide monetary return e.g. stock but doesn’t expand you.
- You 3 instead invests in long term growth, experiences or things that expand you and take you higher than your current self towards your highest self.
- Now which of the Yous would be doing the best if the money system were to collapse and bank accounts were wiped out … You 1 would be screwed, You 2 would be back to square 1, but You 3 would still have something – a new level of confidence, connection and value in yourself – that can continue to generate wealth despite current circumstances.
Don’t look for money – look for 10s – experiences that feel exciting and expansive to you.
Abundance is living from your heart as you know you have an abundant supply of what you need and naturally want to share it with others e.g. an apple tree isn’t afraid of running out of apples, it creates them and lets them go.
Your ability to receive is your ability to give and vice versa but giving just to receive is energetically saying you are in lack and giving should be an answering of a calling that is moving you towards growth.
EXERCISE: Belief Relief Write down 20 different beliefs that you’ve had about money in the past. Examples: “Money equals freedom” or “Money equals stress” or “I’m not good with money.” Notice them as they show up throughout the next few days.

LIMITING BELIEFS

Most people have no idea how great they really are – they cannot see beyond their limited perspective.
Every person has the exact same level of unique brilliance in them, we are just accessing it in different amounts depending on how attached we are to our limited stories.
Living within our limited stories we spend our lives stressing about things that would be completely taken care of if we stepped into the greatness of who we really are.
If you stand under a light and close your eyes, that doesn’t mean the light isn’t there. Even if you can’t feel a sense of security inside of yourself right now, that doesn’t mean it’s not there. You can trick yourself into believing it doesn’t exist, but it will never go away. True security is constant—your beliefs are just blocking it.

YOU ARE THE RESULT YOU SEEK

You don’t need results – you are the result – you don’t need to do anything to prove yourself. Your job is to stay connected to the inner source of these results, rather then the results themselves.
What you are looking for is you.
The more you let go of the idea of making money, the faster it comes.
Remove everything from your life that doesn’t support and inspire the highest you.
Listen to the little callings that tell you to quit your job or move elsewhere to move into alignment and work from a higher paradigm that has an easier path for you.
Passively reading the content of this book and making sense intellectually is not enough – you need to put in the work to completely rewire your nervous system and change lifelong habits of chasing external results and instead experience true abundance from within ourselves.
Read in a way that allows you to feel more than you think.
Real change won’t happen without consistency.

INNER ACCEPTANCE V EXTERNAL GOALS

Stop allowing external circumstances determine your inner state – discover who you truly are and bring that into the world.
When we are chasing some thing, we are chasing the feeling of what that thing will give us. Instead, realise we are the real source of those feelings we are looking for externally. Those things are just a way of giving us permission to experience those feelings already inside of us.
Imagining the thing you want happening … how do you feel? e.g. winning the lottery. Without that external thing happening, just through imagining it you experienced excitement, freedom and abundance. Winning the lotto is just your excuse to allow you to access these feelings inside of you all along.
So you can feel abundance now even if you are broke, you can feel love right now even if you are not in a relationship.
When we think of trying to get something external, what we’re looking for is internal expansion – external goals can give us expansion but only if they take us beyond ourselves.
As you understand that you are the source of what you’re looking for – not the external, life will begin to bring the things we used to chase back to us as a by-product. When you move from freedom, you will create a life of freedom. When you move from joy, life becomes joyful.
If you’re not connected to yourself first, you’ll have no foundation and will become attached to the external, temporary thing more than to your internal source of actual abundance. A huge business and income can still show up, but that lack of foundation inside yourself will likely cause the external – your business and finances – to collapse because your business and income will almost always match what you are feeling inside.
We create actual freedom by finally seeing yourself fully and accepting every single part of you first to create the foundation to sustain the external result you want.
Security is inside not outside – the internal feeling of insecurity can still show up regardless of what the circumstances are. For example, there are many extremely rich people on the planet who, deep down, feel very insecure reflected in the need to have bodyguards and crazy security.
Jim Carey once said, “I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.” No one’s pain goes away once they reach that external goal. Achieving high levels of external success with the belief that it will heal your internal wounds is false.
Instead of chasing an external goal as a way to create an illusion of safety and ignoring the part of ourselves that is feeling incomplete, let’s stop for a second, take a breath, and learn to give space to the thoughts and beliefs that are telling us that we need something outside of us to feel safe. Allow everything to be there exactly as it is and notice that you are the awareness that it’s all happening in. Become the safe space for yourself to feel everything you are feeling without judgment.
Inner intentions lead to growth more than external goals. e.g. if you have a goal to write a book but don’t have an inner intention (e.g. to express your creativity) for why you are doing it then you may become victim to the need for external results e.g. popularity of the book or X number of sales.
The joy you experience from achieving an external goal may only last a few hours however your inner intention (your purpose) can always be practiced.
In any situation that is challenging, connect to your intention instead of the situation, you’ll experience a new level of strength. You are not your external circumstances or results e.g. you are not your bank balance, relationship, achievements. These are the source of our pain when we believe we are those things and the business falls apart of you lose your job. We instead are the intention/purpose beneath this e.g. discovery, freedom, love, joy, peace, courage, patience….
Use nature to mirror your intention back to you e.g. if your intention is patience, experience the way trees are embodying patience in every moment.

THE GATEWAY TO FREEDOM

True freedom is something that naturally shows up when you stop addictively reaching for things outside of yourself to feel safe.
This is the gateway to your true freedom and creativity and to the true you. Fully meet your fearful emotions, experience the momentary pain of your illusion dissolving. You’re in the process of moving from what you used to be into what you are about to become. You’re going through labor—birthing an entire new you. Could you imagine if a mother giving birth decided that it was too difficult and went to go watch Netflix instead? That’s what we’re doing when we deny what we’re feeling and try to fix it with something external. We’re stifling our growth and choosing to allow the pain of our past to determine our future.
There are so many feelings we have that just need to be seen. Think about all of the ways that you bury your feelings and chase some other type of experience as a distraction. It’s time to let ourselves experience what is really coming up. Getting out of this type of addictive cycle and finding actual security is as simple as sitting and paying attention to what’s going on inside of you. When pain or fear shows up, followed by an impulse to do some addictive or distractive thing, notice that impulse and choose to be with the fear or pain instead. .
By being with yourself fully and becoming a space of acceptance for all your repressed emotions, regrets, fears, and guilt, you prove to yourself that you are bigger than all of it. You stop being owned by it. You stop needing to chase money or achievement or fame or status in order to overcome your internal sense of insecurity. You become secure in your surrender to your insecurity.
Your addictions aren’t you – they are covering up your greatness.
It’s your resistance to something that creates your fear – instead accept all parts of you including the parts of you that you believe are afraid of being broke or that you judge and love them until they are able to leave – your circumstances will begin to mirror you as you step into the perfection that you already are,
It’s this practice of constant acceptance and emotional release that allows us to move into a new vibrational dimension where higher ideas and collaborative creativity allow us to bring more value into the world and create real abundance.
There is a completely different dimension of you that is free of unworthy stories and limitations. There’s a level that your mind might hear this at, but it’s not until you let go of heavy things, release the results, and accept all of yourself that it starts to become real for you. There is literally an experience of seeing a completely different world, where each moment has so many more possibilities than it does problems, where inspired ideas are happening constantly, where abundance is a natural way of being. Money is a part of that abundance, but so is passion, fulfillment, connection, and contribution.
When we’re able to accept and transcend our fears with acceptance and love instead of obsessing over them, we connect to this higher dimension that allows us to access both internal security and external abundance at the same time.
Expand past the fear of going broke and open up to higher-level solutions.
Your expansion can be scary to others because it forces them to look at how they are not living up to their own potential.
Under the deep ocean of difficult emotions of hurt and sadness is love and all the magic that life has to offer.
Going directly into our deepest fears is the gateway to freedom.

EXERCISE: Think about losing everything you have – your job, savings, home etc. How would you feel? Mentally and emotionally experience it and feel what it would be like to have nothing and be completely homeless with no one to help you? Did you feel intense fear? Panic? Vulnerability? Now,what would it take to feel completely safe in the middle of all of those emotions, and with no external safety? If you were able to have nothing and still experience a feeling of peace and internal security, you would have found what every person is looking for. In that place of freedom and connection you would be able to create on a level never experienced before and receive true inspiration and create external abundance matching your internal state.
This is not saying you need to sabotage your current situation and deliberately make your life fall apart to transcend your attention to money. It’s to get you to a state where you would feel free to go beyond your fears of being broke to answer a true calling that is exciting and expansive.

ACCEPTANCE OF NOW

Acceptance of where you are now is what creates the internal abundance that will allow you to receive external abundance in a sustainable way.
Non-acceptance of now e.g. a concept of not having enough money – creates an internal war which cuts you off from infinite creativity coming through.
The universe doesn’t make mistakes – you have the perfect amount of money right now to help you learn whatever lesson you need to learn. You have the perfect relationships to help you discover exactly what you need to discover about yourself.
If you have beliefs about yourself that you judge and you truly love them and accept them, they cannot exist.
The amount of light you emit is about the amount of darkness you can accept.
Acceptance is a skill – imagine spending as much time practicing acceptance as you do engaging in the external circumstances of your life, every problem you think you have would completely dissolve.
If you’re in a situation where you think you need more money, first accept and surrender to where you are without judgement and become a space for any painful emotions that may arise. This creates space for your judgement to leave and creates room for a new level of possibility to show up.
For anything that is hard for you to accept – say the thing out loud and then say “…and I love that” e.g. “I’m afraid of being broke, and I love that”.
You go from trying to control the external world through manipulation and force into first becoming aware of your reactions to the external world.

YOUR TRUE VALUE

Your true value is based on how much access you have to your infinite creativity – to your true calling, to doing things that feel like a “hell yes”.
Meditation and sitting in silence with whatever emotions arise is one way to connect to your true self.
Money does not create your value – it’s the result of your connection to your true value.
People like Oprah are valuable – which is much more than being rich – if they were to lose everything their true value will be able to generate it again. Oprah’s true value is her ability to talk with people, share their stories, connect with herself and others – these are all assets she has created.
We can raise our value by seeing ourselves as more valuable and feeling this internally, rather than waiting for external validation.
Release yourself from things in your life that lower your internal value, that reinforce your old small vision of a limited self and prevent you from growing – move in a direction that is different and more expansive than yesterday.
You raise your value by making your time more valuable – your time is made more valuable by doing only the things that will expand you beyond what you used to be e.g. you decide you are more valuable than watching 3 hours of YouTube videos that don’t expand you and instead start writing a book or even create your own You Tube channel.
Your value will skyrocket the more you more you work on yourself, more than you work for other people.
Money is not a calling, a job is not a calling. A calling is letting life do the work through you, so what you do becomes effortless and the results show up naturally. You are not what you do or produce, it’s the love of what you do evident through the product that attracts others.
When you are so in love with being you, no amount of money could ever convince you to do anything other than your heart’s calling.
Yes there have been people who have made money by manipulating and hurting others, but in doing so, they are constantly sacrificing their connection to their soul and joy. They will eventually feel less and less happy doing things out of fear and ego and this often makes the money they’ve earned unsustainable.
It’s not about quitting a job or relationship that you feel is lowering you without first examining the fear you are not facing that is causing you to lower your value and stay stuck. Why are you holding on to these things? Quitting without first shining a light on the underlying emotions and limiting beliefs may mean you create a new job with the same circumstances or the fear of not paying bills or finding new income distracts you from the true work of facing and transcending your unworthiness and pain.
Leaping from one heavy thing to another without an internal shift and insight into what is truly blocking you is not true transformation.
In this space of self-connection, people will want to work with you, they will be drawn to your obvious joy and will trust you because you are not trying to get something from them.
Your expansion is your life force – if you are not expanding you are contracting, constricting – you are dying.
Sometimes you need to leap into something bigger then yourself – a leap is something that feels scary to your mind but exciting to your soul.
EXERCISE: Write down 100 possibilities of things that could go exceedingly well in the next 24 hours.

EVERYTHING IS TEMPORARY

You stop holding on to things as much and go for experiences that can expand you and move you into new world, when you realise that everything is temporary. Your car is a tool, your phone is a tool.
When we believe we own things e.g. that we own $2000 in your bank account, we become more vulnerable to believing someone wants to take it from us and we become more protective and enforce the belief that the other trillions of dollars in the world are not theirs. It’s similar to wanting to own all of the sand on a beach rather than just enjoying the sand around you. You start shovelling sand in your backpack until it becomes so heavy you can’t even move. Is this the same way you become attached to owning other things, limiting you from growth because you spend more time protecting it than enjoying it? e.g. are you too afraid of having a relationship because you are too afraid of losing it? Only by owning the fact that you can lose something can you enjoy the real freedom and love within it.
This can apply to feeling unnecessary ownership of others opinions – how many times have you taken an external opinion in and changed your behaviour based on the opinion or judgement of someone else. If you think it’s your responsibility to change someone else’s opinion of you, you are owned by their opinion which cuts us off from our own expression of ourselves.
Yes we may have debt, but debt is not who we are. Yes you need to be responsible for it but you do not have to let the vibration of debt be inside of you – just see it as something temporary passing through you.
Real love doesn’t control, hoard, own, judge, fix or argue, A person who truly loves you wants you to be free and experience the best in life even if not with them. True love expands, frees, releases. You don’t need anybody’s love to be fully you.

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