Squeeze Points

Where is the world whose people don’t prefer a comfortable, warm, and well-worn belief, however illogical, to the chilly winds of uncertainty?     -Isaac Asimov

         Have you ever felt the squeeze of running low on money? I doubt you would have found my school if you hadn’t. I call these times in life squeeze points because you feel like the walls are closing in. I also call them squeeze points because of what comes out of me in reaction to the squeeze point. The scarcity inside freaks out and I get to play with it like a pet.

         Anytime money runs low it seems uncertainty follows. What is fascinating about scarcity is that it projects into the uncertain future a nightmare that you will run out and die. Or that you will run out of money and your entire life will be flipped upside down in some way. Scarcity always projects the worst-case scenarios in the imagination which make people react in very different and sometimes dangerous ways.

         In my experience, it is hard to feel taken care of by God when you are almost out of money. It is very difficult to remember there is always enough money because scarcity makes you forget all the times when you came close to running out but something happened to help you eat. There is a list of things that people can point to as ‘evidence’ that there is no God and scarcity or squeeze points are on that list. It sounds preposterous to someone who is hungry with no food and no money when I say that this is an unconditionally loving and supportive Universe.

         The other things on the list of ‘evidence’ that there is no God are pain, bad things happening to good people, no one getting what they want when they want it, and loneliness. It is easy for the mind of a human to look at that list that also includes scarcity and think, “How could there be an Infinite Intelligence at work here when all these problems exist?” Just because you don’t see how something is FOR your evolution and growth doesn’t mean it is not. Vacuums can teach a lot but only after you accept them as perfection.

         Scarcity made me an abundance master. The vacuum of money that I grew up in and have been trying to escape all my life eventually made me enlightened. It was a sparring partner or warrior trainer that helped me grow strong. Said differently, manifesting money was a subject I could focus on while learning to heal myself through emotional intelligence. Scarcity was a bully in my mind until I learned how to fight back. Studying scarcity eventually brought me to understand how to defeat fear altogether.

         Scarcity is a form of fear. It is to be afraid there is not enough or afraid that what you need to survive will run out. Scarcity corrupts perception so that you see not enough where there in fact is always enough. It is a magician’s trick because you have never run out of anything you needed to get here. You have always had the exact right amount of money, food, water, sleep, and shelter to get to this moment reading these words. Every living creature you will ever encounter had their basic needs met from birth to now. So how can you be afraid of something that has never happened before?

         This is the question that kept coming to the surface every time I went through a squeeze point. How could I run out if I have never run out before? When I was seventeen, I lived on my own. I was working a sales job and ran out of money. It was the first time I was forced to fast or skip meals for a few days due to a lack of money. Since that time in my life, the fear that it would happen again was lurking in my subconscious mind. For me scarcity wasn’t the fear of running out but rather the fear of extreme hunger.

         Since I was seventeen, I have been attempting to avoid extreme hunger by winning the game of money using The Accumulation Theory in order to put as much distance between me and running out of money as possible. But nothing ever worked and even when I had plenty of money the fear of running out was still there guiding my decisions. Before the spiritual journey of unbrainwashing poverty, I didn’t know that hunger was my enemy.

Hidden Enemies

         I consider an enemy someone or something that pushes you to be the best version of yourself in order to compete with it or defeat it. But when an enemy is hidden from your awareness what ends up happening is you find yourself in a cage that you cannot see, taste, or smell. You feel trapped but you do not know by whom or why. You keep searching for an exit through an endless maze that you can never find because you can’t leave until you defeat your enemy.

         The problem I found with Accumulation Theory is that it attempts to defeat the enemy of scarcity through physical action or in the physical world. It makes you believe that if you stockpile enough money outside of you that scarcity will die inside, but that is not what happens to anyone. I dare you to spend time around rich people and see if they are afraid of running out of money. You cannot defeat an inner enemy outside of yourself. But go ahead and keep trying if you disagree with me.

         Scarcity makes you believe there is never enough and simultaneously makes you believe you are not enough. A person’s mind that has been infected by scarcity sees it everywhere through their lens of perception. Here is what I mean. Let’s say your paycheck comes up short or you have an unexpected expense this month leaving you with very little money for food. The fear that you will run out makes you believe you are not smart enough to get through it. Said differently, would you fear running out of money if you believed in yourself?

         Let’s take a step back. Do you remember squeeze points from your childhood? Do you remember a time when money was tight in your home growing up? What did your parents do to handle the squeeze point? Did they get an extra job, ask you to give up a hobby, or go on public assistance? Do you use any of the same tactics when handling your own squeeze points?

         Growing up poor, it seems like you are always in a squeeze point. I never wore name-brand clothing, I didn’t even know what it was until high school. I never went out for sports because we couldn’t afford the equipment. I stopped asking my mother for money after the few negative reactions I received and began working at the age of eleven to help out.

         My mother’s way of handling squeeze points was to remove all luxury and buy the cheapest basic needs possible. A tactic she learned from my grandparents who lived through the Great Depression. When I see the ‘prevailing financial wisdom’ that says to save money by buying a nice coffee maker instead of going to a coffee shop every day, I wonder how much of it comes from our ancestors. To me, the real hidden enemy behind scarcity are the stories and the beliefs our ancestors passed down to us to protect us from running out.

         Another popular option for handling squeeze points is to work more, get a side hustle, put in overtime, etc. However, this option is limited by time itself because there are only so many hours in a day that you can work. What do you think will happen when someone is a workaholic who lives very frugally and runs into a squeeze point?

         Let’s turn this around by asking, what if a squeeze point is supposed to come into your life to expose your limiting beliefs around money? I can honestly say I would not be a financial shaman today if I hadn’t lived through dozens of squeeze points. They helped me understand scarcity through experience. They helped me map the mind of someone in poverty and the thought process that leads to decision making which keeps someone stuck in scarcity.

         A person who grew up in scarcity and poverty will typically try to solve a squeeze point with action that will keep them stuck. Slashing budgets or working more does nothing to address the culprit of scarcity in the mind. Solutions that require physical actions are diversions leading you away from the hidden enemy.

         Ask yourself this question, “If I run out of money what happens?” List everything that you fear will happen if you were completely flat broke with no stream of income. Next, go through the list and ask yourself if anything on it has happened to you in the past. Meaning have you ever experienced any of those fears in life before now? If not then they are illogical. If so, then can you see that you persevered and will again if the same thing happens?

A leap of faith is not faith that the Universe will provide or protect you but rather a leap over the fear of trusting yourself -The Lucky One

There Is Always Uncertainty

         The fear of uncertainty is fascinating to me. Not just because of the fear, which is simply imagining the worst-case scenario and believing it will happen, no. What is fascinating is the idea of certainty. There is no certainty, but your ego likes to make you believe that there is. The ego craves safety from the hostile universe it perceives and uses fear to trap you. If you are drowning in monotony then you have certainty of the future, right?

         The future will always be unknown to you and yet you can be fooled into believing there is certainty. How many things have there been in your life that you knew for sure would go a certain way but didn’t? A better question would be how many times have you tried to control the future to get a certain outcome you wanted? How did it work out for you?

         How much time do you spend protecting yourself from uncertainty? How safe or secure is your job right now? I love this question because it is one-sided. When you think about how safe your job is many people tend to think about the security of the paycheck, the stability of the company, or how essential your job is to your employer. But if you are employed and you are still running into squeeze points, how likely are you to keep a lookout for another higher-paying job? Meaning, how safe is your employer from you leaving for more money to avoid squeeze points in the future?

         Is it your employer’s fault that you are running into a squeeze point? What if it is no one’s fault, and the squeeze point is there to help you grow by revealing your own self-sabotage? When you have been infected by scarcity and poverty one of the things your ego loves to do is make you overspend so that you can remain feeling in poverty and loathe yourself. Ever feel abundant on payday, like you can spend however you wish? Ever had overspending help you run low on money before your next payday and force you to tighten up and become frugal? What if there was a part of your mind whose job it was to make you run out of money, so you feel like a failure?

         If you had been brainwashed for poverty like I was growing up, wouldn’t terrible spending habits be a pretty good indicator? Wouldn’t living paycheck to paycheck be a good indicator too? How come I came across so many people in my financial career who made well above the average income that were still running into squeeze points each month?

         Many people believe that making more money in income will protect them from running out. But then they just increase their expenses so they can satisfy the need to feel scared of running out. When you grow up always in fear of running out do you honestly believe that making more money will take that fear away? How could money slay your dragon for you? You have to face your own fears to overcome them, money cannot do it for you. That is why the Universe comes along and knocks down your house of cards so that you can face your fear of running out enough times to laugh at it the next time it comes along.

Trust the wait. Embrace the uncertainty. Enjoy the beauty of becoming. When nothing is certain, anything is possible -Mandy Hale

Making Rules For Yourself

         One of the things the mind does when you run into a squeeze point is it makes rules for you in the future. “Next payday I’m making a budget so I can stay on top of things and not run low again. The first thing I’m going to do is pay the bills then I’m going to stock groceries so I know I’ll eat no matter how much I spend.” You attempt to protect yourself from yourself. But really you are trying to protect yourself from the fear of running out.

         A squeeze point is painful when you think the Universe doesn’t have your back. When you believe you’re being punished for your own stupidity or carelessness it can feel as if you will never get ahead. You feel like a loser or a failure. This pain makes you want to correct the problem and become a success. But then you have to watch out for the trap of believing that ‘better money habits’ will save you from yourself.

         If you believe better money management can save you from your destructive habits, I bet you also believe that a better diet will make your body a flawless specimen. Personally, I believe that money habits, as well as eating habits, are a direct reflection of the subconscious mind. The mind is where all these rules you have made for yourself are housed. This is where you judge yourself as a loser and a failure because you should know better by now right?

         Pain always makes you take steps to avoid the same pain in the future, even if you are unaware that this is what your mind is doing. It isn’t until after you fall in love with pain that you can see the mind is attempting to protect you from growth. There is always growth in emotional pain when you know how to process it. How do you fall in love with squeeze points? By watching yourself become a badass that always gets through them.

         Is there a part of you that craves adventure, or has it been smothered by the safe serenity of certainty? Is there a part of you that wants to break free, or has it succumbed to the monotony of a cage? How can you have an adventure when you crave certainty? How can you have freedom when you crave safety?

         The need for safety is what keeps people afraid. If you weren’t afraid, why would you crave safety? Far better to throw off the shackles of rules for yourself and plunge headlong into uncertainty to reveal your true enemy. Your ego is the one who makes you believe you cannot break free from fear. If I were fear, it would be a pretty good trick to make you afraid to get rid of me.

         I would never have gotten as far as I have down the spiritual path if I hadn’t consented to face my worst fears and live through more squeeze points than I can count. Scarcity is an old friend now. An enemy that has become a friend through Unconditional Love. It made me stronger than I ever thought possible for myself. I am grateful for my time with it.

         But all darkness must die and give way to the light of abundance eventually. It is time to end my battle with scarcity and leave it to the next generation. This will be my last blog on the subject of spiritual money. For me, I’ve finished the challenge of eliminating scarcity within my mind. Now my mind is free and I’m excited to let it chew on new things. I will always be at my workshop on Wednesdays to help you end scarcity in your life, that is how I plan to serve humanity with my mastery.

         There was a time when the idea of ending all fear in my mind sounded so absurd I might as well of thought about learning to fly like Superman. But fear is an illusion, a smokescreen hiding the truth. Pain gives you something to fear but pain always has something to teach when you process it. Unconditional Love is the light, it is the truth. You must unconditionally love yourself and everything that is not yourself to realize the truth. My Unconditional Love to you, good journey my friends. I’ll see you on Wednesdays!!!!

         When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things              -The Apostle Paul