The Soul of Money

By: Lynne Twist

Presented by: Angel McCormack

Lynne Twist
Lynne Twist has had four decades of
fund-raising experience having led 4
major global initiatives:
• End World Hunger,
• Protect the Rain Forests,
• Improve Health, Economic, & Political
Conditions for Women,
• To Advance The Scientific
Understanding of Human
Consciousness.
Lynne Twist’s contributions
• Trained more than 20,000 fund-
raisers from 47 countries.
• Raised more that 150 million dollars
from individuals working intimately
with people at the intersection~
where the lives of those with
money meet the lives of those with
little or no money…
Work with both Rich & Poor
• Resource-poor people in Sahel
Desert in Northern Senegal, villages
in India, the Rift Valley of Ethopia,
Ecuador and Guatemala, as well
as portions of the US….
• Resource-rich people from affluent
countries such as Sweden, France,
Germany, Japan, Canada, United
Kingdom, Australia, and the US.
People’s Relationships with Money

Lynne has been deeply engaged in

many different cultures, which has
enabled her to see not only the
cultural differences but the striking
commonalities in people’s basic
relationship with money… and the
way that relationship governs,
dominates and stresses people’s
lives…
The Power of Money
She has seen the powerful grip
money has on people’s lives; both
the wounds and hardships it can
impose, as well as the immense
healing power of even the smallest
amount of money… when we use
it to express our humanity, our
highest ideals, and our most soulful
commitments and values.
The Soul of Money
The Soul of Money offers a way to realign
our relationship with money, enabling us
to live a life of integrity that is consistent
with our deepest core values no matter
what our financial circumstances are.
It is not a book about simplifying
expenditures, doing budgets or
financial planning, it is about living
consciously, fully and joyfully in our
relationship with money, and learning to
understand and embrace it’s flow.
The History of Money
Money is not a product of nature, it is a
distinctly human invention. It has
appeared in many different forms in it’s
2,500-3,500 year history, from shells or
stones, to precious metals, to paper
bills, to a blip on a computer screen.
It was invented to facilitate the sharing &
exchanging of goods or services
among individuals and groups of
people.
Money’s Role
Somewhere along the way, the power we
gave money outstripped its original
utilitarian role. Money, massed
produced bills with no more inherent
value than a notepad or box of
kleenex, has become the single most
controlling force in people’s lives.
People have killed for money, enslaved
other people for it, and even have
enslaved themselves to joyless lives, in
the pursuit of it.
Destructive nature of Money
In the name of money, human kind has
done immense damage to the Earth:
destroyed rain forests, dammed and
decimated rivers, clear-cut redwoods,
over-fished rivers, lakes & oceans,
poisoned our soil with chemical waste
from industry & agriculture, not to
mentions having marginalized entire
segments of our society, forced poor
into housing projects, and have
exploited whole nations for cheaper
labor… just to name a few.
The Money Culture
We are born into a culture defined by
money. Popular culture encourages an
insatiable appetite for spending and
acquiring without regard to personal
and environmental consequences.
Money has become a playing field where
we measure our competence and
worth as people. If we are not gaining
ground we feel that we are losing it.
We all have an identifiable relationship
with money- though it remains largely
unconscious or unexamined.
Keeping up with the Jones’
Not even the wealthy find the peace and
freedom that you would think comes
with having so much. You can be a
CEO who earned 7 million last year, but
if your golfing partner just turned a deal
for 10 million, it puts you behind in the
money game. As financial stakes get
higher, the more money there is to lose,
and the more demanding the game
becomes to stay ahead.
Nobody, rich or poor, escapes the
powerful push and pull of money.
People’s inherent values
Lynne believes the money culture has
shaped us in ways that we would not
choose in a conscious, more soulful
process.
Lynne believes that people inherently
desire to express their own divinity, their
own connectedness with all of life, and
partake in the mystery of something
greater than themselves and greater
than comprehension.
Lynne’s Turning Point
Lynne’s Hunger Project involvement was
her wake-up call to address her own
inauthentic and inappropriate ways she
and her husband and family were living.
It was then that they purposefully began
to turn their resources (time, energy &
money) toward their desire to make a
difference in the world. She felt it was a
call from her soul so deep and
profound, she couldn’t deny it.
Lynne’s Relationship with Money
This change of heart brought about a
change in their relationship with money.
Once they began to align their money
decisions with their deeper core values
and highest commitments, they
experienced a dramatic shift in not only
how they used their money, but how
they felt about their money, about their
lives and about themselves.
 Act from a Domain of
Soul vs. Money
• Act with integrity • Selfish
• Thoughtful • Greedy
• Generous • Petty
• Courageous • Fearful
• Committed • Controlling
• Trusting of others • Confused
• Trustworthy • Conflicted
• At peace • Guilty
Money itself isn’t the problem
Money in itself isn’t bad or good, it
doesn’t have power or not have power,
it is our interpretation with money and
our interaction with it where the real
mischief lies.
When people come from a viewpoint
that there is never enough (scarcity) as
opposed to a viewpoint that there is
plenty to go around (sufficiency), the
trouble begins.
 Acting from a viewpoint of
Scarcity vs. Sufficiency
Never enough, Gratitude, fulfillment,
emptiness, fear, love, trust, respect,
mistrust, envy, greed, contributing, faith,
hoarding, compassion,
competition, integration,
fragmentation, wholeness,
separateness, commitment,
judgment, striving, acceptance,
entitlement, control, partnership,
busy, survival, responsibility,
outer riches resilience, inner riches
Abundance Theory
Abundance is a fundamental law of
nature, that there is enough …
although is finite.
Its finiteness is no threat, it creates a
more accurate relationship that
commands respect, reverence
and the managing of those
resources with the knowledge that
they are precious.
How we make our money…
Vicki Robin, in Your Money or Your Life, writes
about people who instead of making a
living at their work are more accurately
making a dying or making a killing.
The work they are doing is unfulfilling,
perhaps even detrimental to their own or
other’s wellbeing. Some hate their work but
pretend that it doesn’t matter, but in truth
their spirit (or someone else’s) is being killed
off.
The money made this way will prove to be
nothing but toxic to yourself & others.
How we spend our money…
We have much more power than we
realize to direct our financial resources
in ways that support, empower and
express what we believe in. We can
consciously choose, for instance, to
spend our money on products or
entertainment that are violent and
destructive to the psyche of our
children, or to invest in activities that
enrich their experience of life and
deepen their appreciation of it…
How we spend our money
We can choose to spend our money at
companies whose products and people
support the well being of the
environment and the community, or we
can choose to get caught up in
spending simply because we can,
finding ourselves accumulating things
that eventually burden us with excess,
clutter our homes, and end up in a
landfill.
Stewards of Money
If we learn to be stewards of money,
rather than gatherers of money, it
teaches us to bring quality and
intelligence to our use of financial
resources in ways that reflect our
inner wealth.
Money Analogy
Blood in the body must flow to all parts of the
body for health to be maintained. When
blood slows down and begins to stop or
clot, the body becomes sick. When water
is moving and flowing, it cleanses, it
purifies, it makes things green, it creates
growth. When water slows down, it starts to
sludge, and becomes toxic. This is also true
of money. Accumulating and holding
large amounts of money can have the
same toxic effect on our lives.
Money is most useful when it is moving &
flowing, contributed & shared, directed &
invested in that which is life affirming.
Your relationship with money
Your relationship with money can be
a place where you bring your
strengths and skills, your highest
aspirations, and your deepest and
most profound qualities.
Whether you are a millionaire or just
scraping by, you can be great with
your money and be great in your
relationship with it.
Strengths of the Book
The Soul of Money is full of amazing real
life examples from Lynne’s journey in her
philanthropic endeavors…from meeting
Mother Theresa to the Dali Lama.
I highly recommend reading the book in
its entirety as the true stories are
absolutely riveting and provide a
deeper understanding to all of the
concepts herein.