I was pointed to David Cate's Unconditional Money (1995) by an excerpt printed in the local alternative newspaper. I sent my check off to the little publishing company and duly read the book. (By the way, it's self-published by Buffalo Press, P. O. Box 40, Willamina, Oregon 97396, and it felt good knowing that my payment wasn't enriching companies who didn't need it.) Its message was exciting, but, as with many messages that I get via books and articles, I didn't quite have a handle on how to make it work for me.

It's been on my bookcase since last October, and it's the one book that my 3-year-old granddaughter likes to pull off the shelf. She brings over to me, and points to the coins on the cover and says "money." (She may get the picture before I do.) After she had done that several times recently, I started rereading it from wherever it happened to fall open. I soon realized that the last half of the book echoed the messages I've been hearing consistently over this past year through my Conversations with God group and several self-actualization tapes.

Cate was looking for the secret of wealth as he worked as a butler in a high-priced resort in Hawaii. He got acquainted with many financially wealthy people, and he decided to ask each one to share a nugget of wisdom about wealth that each had learned. Being a spiritually-seeking kind of guy, he also visited the local lore- and wisdom-keepers in his search for his perfect life.

He had a good friend who wholeheartedly supported his wealth-ferreting and offered to support him while he wrote his findings into a book. So they left Hawaii and landed in wintery, wet Oregon, where Cate did indeed start writing the book. It wasn't easy, though. He noted toward the end of the book that the problems and the changes that occurred were, however, essential to his learning the truth about unconditional money.

An exercise he devised was to decide what monetary value a particular piece of work or action had for him-whether or not he received actual money. By putting a monetary value on, say, an hour of chopping wood, he could tote up a day's work and see how much he "earned." He also valued his items by their difficulty, which wasn't assessed in terms of physical labor. The difficulty was strictly personal. If one has trouble giving a speech because of fear, but does give speeches, then that work has much higher value than something that is a breeze to do. Monetarily valuing these accomplishments raises one's acceptance of the self.

What is the truth that he learned? The secret to unconditional money is unconditional love! First of all, it is love for one's self, I would say in the meaning of agape, not ego-driven. What follows second is love for everyone and everything else, also agape. As love flows from you, love returns and brings with it the things you envision for yourself. Remember that nature abhors a vacuum?

I lent the book to one of my "Conversation" buddies, who loved it and has been on a rush since he read it recently. I wish I could say that it did the same for me, but my problem is inertia - fear - hmmm. I just realized how much the fear of rejection still plays a strong role in my mind.

One thing that the "Conversations" group has remarked on is a noticeable decrease in fear since reading Conversations with God. And I concur. If you look at all life experiences as teachings, then what is the need for fear? But in just writing these sentences, I now see that I still hold a strong fear of rejection, in both relationship and the business world.

Right now, I am seeking a different kind of employment. I've been a year without a regular paycheck of a known amount, while I've earned comparatively small sums by taking care of my granddaughter and doing bookkeeping for a small company. The two, however, don't quite pay my now modest living expenses. In this job search, though, I'm torn by what I don't want to experience: a dressy office, a long and/or lousy commute, rote work in a field that I have absolutely no interest in. But it's hard to figure out what I would love to do, much less make income from it.

I enjoy photographing natural landscape, but my experience of photography here in Colorado has been less than great. With a few exceptions, it feels like I haven't gotten the knack of the western light. I've been labeling this past year's photos, and they are on the mediocre side except for some spectacularly sunrises and sets and storm clearings. I do know how to get the drama. But nine rolls languish undeveloped.

Shakti Gawain in Creative Visualization (Second Edition, New World Library, 1995) says to keep saying the affirmation that I have sufficient money and other phrases to that effect, so that the positive thoughts create the reality. Well, I've come to believe that thought does create reality during this past year, in fact, just experienced it the other day. I interviewed for a job which met many of my criteria. After a couple of hours of thinking after the interview about the owner's line of work, I had the thought that I hoped he would offer it to the other candidate that he liked equally as well. He did. Would that my wealth visualization worked so quickly! But there was also a strike on the rejection chord in that action.

I would also like to creatively visualize weighing 150 pounds, as I did 25 years ago. I've been photographed recently, and I find it hard to reconcile the person in the photo with the person I feel in my mind. I've always felt thinner than what I actually am. Looking at the photos, I realize how much I look like my even more overweight sister. No, I don't want to go there! In the background is also a consciousness of having contented myself with a non-relationship state because of my weight. Of course, part of the contentment comes from having a wonderful sense of freedom. With no one whom I must check in with, I have only myself to mind.

So what does unconditional money have to do with my weight? It's that requirement for unconditional love for one's self. I don't have it, and it doesn't just automatically come because I've been reading books that talk about it. I think there is an internal critic from way, way back that I haven't gotten rid of. It encourages me not to take the time to work hard on changing myself through all the systems I have discovered in the past year.

It is Cate, I believe, who refers to a poverty consciousness. Certainly I grew up in such an atmosphere, and it has been extremely difficult to change to a consciousness of wealth in all spheres. Expressing gratitude has also been difficult to do all my life, and that, it seems, is also part of the wealth consciousness. That recognition has come within the past couple of months, and I must say that it has been easier to incorporate gratitude into my life then total love of self. There are many things that I'm thankful for, and I won't bore you with listing them. But the most important is that I am thankful for my life. I am thankful that I was born. I hold no judgment on my parents for any lacks that I experienced under their care; they only practiced what they knew. It has been up to me to learn differently.

With that, I close with a thought from Creative Visualization:

Every moment is a moment of creation, and each moment of creation contains infinite possibilities. I can do things the way I've always done them, or I can look at all the different alternatives, and try something new and different and potentially more rewarding. Every moment presents a new opportunity and a new decision.

I wish you joy of the new moment,
Cherie Staples

(Copyright 1998 by Cherie Staples - No reproduction without express permission from the author)