I was wrong about money – how wisdom taught me to heal financially

Wisdom Dialogues with Colleen-Joy

The childhood message from my family was clear: “Money is not important – only love matters.”

My parents and grandparents lived humble, loving, dignified lives, with just enough to get by. Ruby Rose, my great-grandmother, who lived to 99, kept a little blue birthday envelope for each of six grandchildren, saving a few coins each month. Mom bought my sister, brother and me second-hand school uniforms and caravan holidays were our getaways.

I’m grateful for these beginnings, love is still central for me, but a second family money message soon became a painful block: “Wealthy people are either snobs or thieves.”

After dedicating my life to the pursuit of wisdom at the age of 13, I planted a flag firmly in the ground of my mind. To honour my family and spirituality, I would not focus on money. What I never expected was that, slowly, wisdom would show me that I was wrong about everything, including money.

By the time I was in my 20s, trying to build a spiritual training and coaching business, I lived with financial stress.

Like an apple tree saying to the rain clouds: “Don’t rain on me, I’m spiritual,” wisdom showed me I was chasing away money because I had built a wall between spirituality and materialism. And worse, I had formed an identity at my ‘I am spiritual’ flag.

Isn’t it funny how the mind always plants two flags in opposition. This flag-planting duality is the seed of suffering.

Today, at 53, love and wisdom are central to my life, but I’m as surprised as anyone to find myself being the custodian of an international coaching training brand, able to sign million-plus client deals – when, at the start of my career (I was asked to teach at 17), I struggled to charge anything.

Here are some of insights I found by building my Wisdom Well (my self-coaching meditation method). These teachings helped me heal the divide between material and spiritual so that my apple tree, purpose-filled self could be a custodian for the rain of abundance.

Perhaps you or someone you know needs these insights today.

Billboards and being like a flower

A neighbour had a billboard in his front yard advertising his tax and bookkeeping services. Every time I drove past, I mumbled under my breath, judging this person, whom I’d never met.

After building my first website, way back in the early 2000s, I was disappointed that, working till two in the morning for over a week, came to nothing – no traffic, no work.

So I did a Wisdom Well meditation to ask for guidance.

“Why is my website not working?” I asked and waited to be still enough to translate intuitive knowing into words.

“Your name and face are not on your website,” came the reply.

I noticed my resistance to this. So I defended, “But it’s not about me; it’s about my message, it’s about the teachings.”

In my mind’s eye, I saw my neighbour’s billboard and felt the same resistance.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“You are seeing your spiritual arrogance,” was the loving but firm reply.

Spiritual arrogance?

“You believe that, because you are doing spiritual work, you don’t need to market yourself. You believe that people must just find you. That life must make extra effort for you and not your neighbour. That’s arrogance.”

I felt ashamed. Wisdom opened my heart and mind, I saw the truth – I was not superior, I was equal to my neighbour. His bookkeeping work was just as sacred as mine. He was doing his duty for his family. And he was willing to tell people about his work so they could find him.

“How do I market myself, then?” I resigned. “I don’t want to be an infomercial.”

Wisdom replied with a few clear words, “Be like a flower.”

Be like a flower?

Clarity arose. “A flower doesn’t hide under a rock in the shadows. A flower opens itself, is visible in the world and gives colour and fragrance so that the bees can find it. Be like a flower.”

I felt the contracted resistance dissolve and open. Openness has always been my way of knowing when my bucket has hit the water of wisdom.

With this clear seeing, I rebuilt my website and put my face and name on the home page. I started being like a flower. For the first time in my life, I began reading books on marketing, learning about SEO, copywriting and email marketing.

What worked was not to play the ego game of trying to be plus more or minus less but, instead, just being like a flower with – ‘I am this’. Being visible and offering what I have to share with honesty.

Soon I wrote for magazines, gave talks and built an email database of over 3 000. When I promoted a new two-year course, hoping for 20 students, over 90 enrolled.

By my early 30s, I was teaching 60 to 120 people a week, signing my first book deal, saying yes to regular TV expert guest appearances and speaking on stages around the world.

So being like a flower worked, but – and it’s a painful but – I still couldn’t pay for my kids’ school fees.

Your bucket has holes in it

At this time I was going through the end of my marriage. Also, a friend had lied to me and stolen my student database to build, essentially, a clone of my successful training business (similar topics, poaching my trainers and students) with the backing of multimillion investors in a fancy upmarket venue.

Within months I had lost nearly half of my monthly income.

“What’s your debtor book look like?” my new love asked me.

“What’s a debtor book?” I replied.

He looked shocked. “It’s how much people owe you.”

“Oh, people don’t owe me anything,” I answered confidently. But his questions stuck.

I’m embarrassed to say that I’d never looked at my business’s financials with more than a glance. After all, I was running on love and light. A call to my accountant left me feeling sick. We were owed the equivalent of more than two months’ turnove

For example, one student had been attending weekly classes for over a year without paying a cent. The same student would frequently brag about his golf games and I knew a round of golf was at least three times more expensive than a whole month of classes with me.

I asked wisdom, “How do I get more money?”

Wisdom’s reply was, “It’s no good putting more water into a bucket with holes.”

I needed to first heal my relationship with money, urgently. For the next few months, I tried everything I could to save my business, but the loss of students to my friend’s clone, a massive tax debt and my too-little-too-late stepping into the full role of business owner, all came crashing down.

Added to this, crime in the area had escalated. I’d already been in an armed robbery and my friend and neighbour who had been in that robbery was shot seven times a few months later by the same gang. People were understandably afraid to come to my business property, which was on a dirt road on a four-acre plot.

When I asked wisdom what the deeper truth was, I saw that it was time to give up the spiritual teacher identity, sell my property, own my mistakes and close my business.

This was insanely difficult. At the time my second daughter was also still enduring ongoing health challenges and I was wrapping up a painful divorce.

It took me four years to pay back the business tax bills (I chose not to liquidate) and five years to sell the property, because I refused to sell it to families – I didn’t believe it was safe enough for a family to live there.

All the while I worked to close the holes in my bucket. Wisdom taught me how to see the truth about finances, cash flow, liquidity and business growth.

Money became practical, not personal – like rain for my apple tree, it could serve me to serve others. Everything in nature gives to grow and grows to give.

“But isn’t it spiritually right, to be unattached to my possessions?” I once asked.

Wisdom replied, “Which is true nonattachment? To be custodian of properties and businesses and still not be attached – not form an identity from this – or to be attached to the idea of nonattachment and reject possessions?”

My job, as I saw it, was to be custodian. Not to make an identity out of my bank balance or my spiritual path.

It took a few years to build a new brand on the ashes of the old. It was difficult to step into the landscape of business, transforming my wisdom teachings into mainstream language. But it turned out people are people whether in offices or temples and seeking is still seeking, whether it’s a spiritual or material Pacman, it’s still Pacman. Wisdom helped me find freedom from all seeking.

And so the first part of my life appeared mystical and spiritual; the second part of my life appeared very practical and material. And now in my 50s, like placing my left hand and my right hand together in mindful, prayerful gratitude, I live both.

Wisdom belongs everywhere.

So I’ll leave you with one last teaching that helped me.

The valley and summit

Picture a mountain where the valley represents having less and the summit represents having more. I used to believe that the only spiritual place was in the valley. I thought that only snobs and thieves lived at the summit. But I was a valley snob. I was attached to nonattachment. Wisdom showed me that this was spiritual arrogance.

Life has taught me to walk with freedom, to be ‘equal-to’ no matter where I stand on the mountain, to be equal to people who live in the valley and on the summit. To be an honest rainmaker, to call the rain that serves my ‘apple tree’ purpose and those that I serve.

The flags of spiritual vs. material are gone. With only love in service as custodian to my businesses, bringing wisdom to the temples of the heart and boardrooms of the mind.