Episode 2 Transcript

Episode 2:  "The Inner World of Money" 

Mentioned in this episode: 

James Allen “As a Man Thinketh”. https://amzn.to/3NI7dC7

Welcome back as we continue our search for Utopia.  If you want to talk about enlightenment or you just want to add enlightened thoughts to your daily routine, please join the conversation – go to www.utopiauniversity.org the discussion is free and open to all.

In this episode we’re going to address head on the issue of money.  It’s never far from people’s minds, and it plays a really important role in our lives, and in fact, people spend the majority of their time pursuing money.  Let’s tackle this topic right up front.

In the outer world we need money to live and be happy.  We also need air to live, but it’s abundant all around us.  We need water to live, but it falls from the sky, 70% of our planet is water.  We need food to live, but almost everything around us is food.  In other words, nature provides for us abundantly – everything we need to live.  

But money is different.  We need money to live, but nature does not provide it for us.  Each of us, individually, must figure out on our own – how to create our own supply money – what I call our Personal Economy.  Of course, if we don’t have money – our lives are much more difficult.  Just like an abundant supply of air, water and food make life more enjoyable – clearly an abundance of money makes life more enjoyable. 

Money is an unenlightened concept – because it separates us into groups who have and control money, and the larger group of those who don’t have enough. 

The unhappy reality is that billions of people on the planet – billions - suffer from high levels of stress and worry, all because of the lack of money.  

So let’s see what we can learn from the Enlightened King because he used enlightened principles of abundance to grow the small economy of his kingdom into a wealthy hub of global trade.  Far from suffering, the people of his nation were prospering, and if enlightened principles created prosperity for his nation, then those enlightened principles will also work for you. 

Do you want to know what really separates people who have money from everyone else who struggles with money? 

People who are rich think about money differently – now I’m not saying how they got rich, or if it’s good or bad to be rich – but people who have money, think about money differently than people who don’t have money.  

Specifically, wealthy people see money in bigger chunks.  They think about money in terms of multiple income streams, dividends, and company stock, gold, and real estate.  

Poor people have a very limited view of money – they don’t think beyond their rent, the cell phone bill, or Christmas presents – it seems like the price of everything keeps going up, and most people are in a constant state of lack when it comes to money. 

Here is the truth.  Money – or more precisely your relationship with money – is a mindset – nothing more than an inner attitude.  We chase money in the outer world, but we have never been taught the truth, that it is our inner beliefs about money that draw money to us or repel it away from us. 

It sounds counter-intuitive, but you will get more money by changing your beliefs about money from within, than by chasing money in the outer world. 

Take a few slow, relaxing breaths and clear your mind. 

The way you think about money now – just erase that.  Unless you have a few hundred thousand or a million or two in the bank – you’re not thinking about money the right way – so just erase what you think about money right now.  Your first mission is to start thinking about money in bigger chunks. 

I want you to adapt your understanding of how money really works, and then mentally climb the ladder to start thinking about money in  bigger and bigger chunks.  The essential first step is to create a new and bigger mindset about money, and as you succeed in the mental effort – more money will flow to you – because people who have money think about money in bigger chunks, and people who think about money in bigger chunks have money. 

But there is one more thing that needs to happen – a second step.  It’s not enough to just change your inner mindset about money.  You still need a vehicle – in the outer world – to manifest that money.  

For example, if you think about a million dollars, it will not appear on the kitchen table.  You must conduct some type of business or transaction, some outer vehicle that will manifest the money. 

For most people that outer vehicle is a job, or a career, or their own business.  But for the average person their job or even their business does not give them the wealth they desire.  For example, the company you work for is designed to create wealth for a small group of owners and shareholders, but the company is not designed to make you financially secure above and beyond your weekly paycheck.  

There’s no shame in struggling with money, you just haven’t gotten in with the right group yet – a group that will build your mindset about money and create prosperity for you.  You’ve been with people who themselves have a limited view of money and working for organizations that aren’t designed to help you. 

Only 5% of the people on the planet are financially comfortable – while 95% are not, and a good 30% of the global population is in day-to-day poverty.  If you’re already financially comfortable, then the system works great.  If you don’t already have a comfortable amount of money, the system is not built to lift you up, in fact, the system is not designed to help you at all.  The economic system is not designed for the average person to succeed. 

Because of this disparity in power, and there is a disparity in power, the vehicle you create – or the vehicle you connect with - cannot be dependent on people in power to help you – you must become self-empowered, you must create and manage your own personal economy because the people who have money aren’t giving you any of theirs.  

Maybe you’ve been working for a great company and you’ve been stashing money away, and maybe that company is going to pay you a retirement income, maybe you have been blessed with a generous boss, or a great mentor, but for most people – nobody is really helping them.  The system is not made to lift them up. 

So that’s the two-step formula for financial success.  Change your thinking about money, then create or connect with an outer vehicle to manifest the money.  

I don’t want to make it sound like it’s impossible to change your financial status and become wealthy.  It’s very common for people to transition from lack to abundance, and it will happen to you.  If you surf the internet for a few minutes, you’ll find hundreds, even thousands of websites of people who have become financially successful – telling us how they did it.   And it always boils down to the two things I just said – first, they completely changed the way they think about money, and second they figured out a way to make the system work for them – they created or connected with an outer vehicle to channel money to themselves.  They changed their thinking and they found an outer vehicle - to make money. 

In this episode, I’m going to show you how the Enlightened King put that two-step process into action for his people, and we’re going to borrow his ideas.  First, he completely changed the thinking of his people.  He took them into their inner world and changed their perception of money, he showed them how to think about money in bigger chunks. 

Then he provided a vehicle through which every member of the kingdom prospered.  He created a dividend system to share the profits of the kingdom.  All you had to do was be a part of the kingdom, and the money would flow to you.  I want to be historically accurate – not everyone received an equal share, but the volume of trade and wealth that flowed through this kingdom was so high, that even those with the smallest share became wealthy. 

Relax again and take a few deep breaths.  We’re going to widen our conversation beyond just money for a minute.  Let’s talk about this idea of thinking in bigger chunks. 

I said that if you want to change your financial future you will need to start thinking in bigger chunks, and that if you change your inner beliefs, and if you have the right vehicle, the outer will manifest.   

This idea of up-leveling your thinking applies to every area of your life.  If you want more, better, happier, healthier, anything you want in life – you have to up-level your thinking in order to get it – you have to think about every area of your life in bigger chunks.  Change your inner thinking, and the outer will follow. 

Abundant thinking goes far beyond money – abundance applies to every area of your life – your health, your relationships, your happiness. 

Most people think in terms of lack – not just lack of money, but lack of happiness.  And you can see for yourself how hard it is for most people to let go of those beliefs – because they really don’t believe this stuff about the power of their thoughts.  And so, for whatever reason they don’t want to start thinking about money in bigger chunks.  So their thinking never changes, and they are very comfortable in their mindset of lack – complaining about money has become a comfortable habit for them. 

Everyone who’s struggling with money says the same thing:  “I want something better in life, I deserve something better in life, I pray for something better in life,” but they do not make the effort to change their thinking from within.  They never change their thinking about money from the inside.  All they see around them is lack, and so they stay within that pattern of lack – hoping for something better, like someone is going to come along and fix everything for them. 

You can wish, hope and pray all you want, but if you don’t change your inner beliefs and attitudes, the outer world will never change.  

I can’t think of anyone who has explained this better than James Allen when in 1903, he wrote the famous little book  As a Man Thinketh.  Everyone should read that book because it covers this very topic of up-leveling your thinking.  Here’s one of my favorite quotes from the book: 

“Men live in spheres high or low according to the nature of their thoughts.  Their world is as dark and narrow as they conceive it to be, or as expansive and glorious as their imagination allows.”
~ James Allen

That’s the truth, isn’t it?  You can’t be any happier, healthier or wealthier than you allow yourself to be.  Every area of your life is limited by your imagination.  As James Allen says - Your life is as dark and narrow as you conceive it to be, or as expansive and glorious as your imagination allows.  The only way to change your outer circumstances in life is to change the way you think. 

So that’s our job – to help you recognize the limitations you’re carrying – in all aspects of your life - and start releasing those limitations by imagining a future that is expansive and glorious.  Because if you can release these limitations in your inner world – if your inner world is expansive and glorious, then you will always be successful in the outer world. 

Most people struggle with the idea, but you have to understand that your thoughts, attitudes and beliefs are causing your experiences – and this is the hardest part for most people.  The truth is, it’s not the circumstances that are limiting you, it’s you who is creating the limiting circumstances. 

People really believe that the world happens to them, so it takes time to see the role that you play in your own experiences.  And when you see it, it’s as if a curtain is lifted and you can see behind the scenes. 

So the first step is to become aware that your thoughts and your deepest subconscious self-beliefs really are driving your experiences – you need to see this with your own eyes.  And we’ll do small thought experiments and if you repeat these exercises for just a few days you’ll see how the outer world actually responds to your thinking.  You’ll see how the outer world is not fixed in stone, it is actually changing – and your thoughts are driving that change.  

And as your self-awareness grows in time, you see how this has always been happening.  The outer world has always been molding itself to your inner beliefs – and you’ll see that it’s true in every area of your life – happiness, relationships, money, and health – you have been driving your experiences, but you’ve been on auto-pilot, unaware of your own habits and beliefs, unaware that it’s been you who have been the limiting factor.  So you believe that things happen to you – but the truth is that things happen because of you. 

So let’s get back to talking about money.  If you struggle with money, it’s important that you have money, just like air and water you need money to live an abundant life.  

Most people listening to this right now don’t have a significant amount of financial capital right now, and if you don’t already have capital, the economic systems in place are rigged against you.  The system is designed for the wealthy, so that a small number of people have economic power over the majority – and with this control, they are able to draw vast wealth from the economy, leaving millions and millions of people to fight over the scraps.  

No matter how grand and glorious your thoughts about money may be, the economic system is not designed to elevate people without money.  And I haven’t even talked about the endless number of people and companies who are trying to take your money by charging high prices, or promising you something that isn’t true, or outright cheating you out of your money. 

So you need to gradually, over time build up what I call - your personal economy. 

To build your personal economy, you’re going to follow that two-step formula.  First you’re going to change the way you think about money – see how it actually flows and start to climb the mental ladder to think about money in bigger chunks.  And second – you’re going to create or connect with an outer vehicle to manifest that money – a vehicle that builds its own economy independent of existing outer systems. 

That’s an important part of our mission at Utopia University – to create a flowing personal economy for our members, to change the way our members think about and understand money.  There are several ways that we create money for our members, most notably our NFT mint, and our members dividend which we explain on the website.  This is exactly what the King did for his nation – he created a system where the abundance of the kingdom did not go exclusively to the royal treasury.  He distributed the lion’s share of the abundant wealth to the people of the kingdom. 

Developing your own personal economy is like taking control of your own power.  You see, when you rely on other people to give you money, then you are always chasing money in the outer world which means the outer world holds power over you – you have to follow their rules in order to get paid.  

You can’t change the economic system that’s in place, but with your own personal economy, you can start to wean yourself off your dependence on the outer system for money.  And when you reach the happy day when you no longer need the money – when you have enough money coming in every month - you can disconnect yourself from that system.  Eventually you will start developing your own wealth, independent of others.  This will take time – most people listening to this have no capital to start with right now, but when your personal economy is flowing, you will be in a position to define your own economic value.  All this is coming for you. 

The Enlightened King understood both of these issues – thinking in bigger chunks, and creating a vehicle for his people to manifest their abundance.  He created a dividend system to share the profits of the kingdom with all his people.  Over a period of years as the economy multiplied and multiplied again – even people with only a small share of the profits became prosperous.  

It’s really important to understand that the Enlightened King didn’t build wealth in his kingdom by taxing his people, by taking something from them.  Quite the opposite, he built wealth by building an outer vehicle of fair trade and business and then distributing that wealth to his people. 

Early in his life, because of his travels with his father – the Enlightened King developed a global understanding of how money flowed - he saw the entirety of global trade in his mind.  Because of the way he was raised and the trips his father took him on it would be unlikely that anyone else could have seen the flow of trade in the same way. 

From China to the east and Africa to the west, he had been to these places – he had met merchants and kings, and could picture ports and cities in his Mind.  He had seen ships loaded with rugs and linens and gold.  He had met these people and understood their economies and their cultures.  

He understood the big picture of global trade and global production – in a way that nobody else could have understood.  He understood that every nation was blessed with some resources, but desperately needed other resources, and based on this insight he created trade solutions that allowed goods to flow back and forth, and because he was able to build trust - he made his kingdom the central trading partner to nations and kings around the world.  

Shiploads of goods would come to port and he immediately understood what to exchange that would be the most valuable.  And because he was trusted and he practiced fair and enlightened trade practices, his kingdom became the central trading hub where global orders were placed and fulfilled.

Talk about up-leveling your thinking, this young king saw a global picture of trade that nobody else could have understood.  I want to be historically clear about this king so you don’t think I’m making this up.  The trade routes and businesses that he developed and nurtured during his 40 year reign lasted hundreds of years after his death – continuing to flow wealth and abundance into the kingdom.  In the two hundred years after his death – being totally honest – most, if not all of the subsequent kings were completely unenlightened, but wealth continued to flow to them because of the trade systems put in place by the Enlightened King.  Hundreds of years of abundance – all based on the enlightened business principles, alliances, and trade opportunities this young king created and nurtured.  And we’ll talk more about this in time.

You are not a king, you don’t have ships loaded with gold coming into your port, but you do not have to think in lack – your Mind is not limited - you don’t have to think in small pieces – you don’t have to think the same way you’ve always been thinking.  You can use your Mind to think bigger thoughts. 

The money you have, the career you have, the relationships you have, the health you have, the happiness you have – all of these outer experiences are governed by your inner thoughts.  In other words, you can’t be happier than you allow yourself to be.  You can’t be healthier than you choose to be.  You can’t be more abundant than your imagination.  

Let me say it in a different way.  Who and what you are today at the present moment is of far less importance than who and what you are becoming.  

Changing yourself from within, up-leveling your thoughts in all areas of your life, freeing yourself from the limitations you have been carrying your whole life – that is the work that must now begin.  Whatever limitations you hold, whatever is holding you back – it’s not your fault – you were raised in a culture of limitation and lack. 

Let’s do the experiment right now.  Relax and take a breath.  Take happiness as an example.  Imagine there’s a dial in front of you – your Happiness is at 4 – now turn the dial up to six, seven, eight.  Can you feel the chemistry in your body shift?  Can you feel – at least for the moment – an unlimited happiness?   All by choosing a new thought and opening yourself to more.  Turn the dial all the way up to 10.  When you open yourself to inner happiness, when you give yourself inner permission to be happier in bigger and bigger chunks – your outer experience of happiness expands, and it’s the same with every area of your life.  You have to unclog every area of your life – every part of your life is blocked by limited thinking. 

I want you to also see clearly that the people you spend time with affect your thinking – much more than you realize.  A positive group – like Utopia University - will always push you to open yourself to higher possibilities, but there are others around you who limit your thinking, and if you’re not aware of it – those limitations now belong to you. 

Every aspect of your life is determined by your attitude toward that part of your life.  To change the outer experience, you have to change your inner attitude.  As James Allen said, your world is as dark and narrow as you conceive it to be, or as expansive and glorious as your imagination allows.  When you deepen your connection to the inner world, enlightenment comes much closer. 

Some people take the opposite approach to being happy – rather than expand their vision of life, they shrink down their world and live off the grid, grow their own food and live a minimalist lifestyle without the need for money – and for a lot of people that works perfectly for them. 

But if our goal is to bring enlightenment to a broader part of the population, let’s be honest – you can’t live off the grid – so you need a personal economy.  

It doesn’t help you if I make money, or he makes money, or she makes money.  You have to create your own personal economy so that the outer world no longer holds power over you. 

In the past, in order to study enlightenment, you had to create a life that did not require money.  Live on a mountain, live in a monastery, become a traveling beggar following your teacher from town to town.  Enlightenment was not for the lay person who had to work all day and feed a family.  

Unfortunately, this has led to the idea – the erroneous idea - that money is a deterrent to enlightenment.  But if we want to expose large numbers of people to enlightenment – we can’t ask them to disconnect from their relationships and obligations.  They have jobs, they have families, they have to shop and cook and clean – they have responsibilities to themselves and to their families who depend on them.  So it again comes back to helping people develop their own personal economy. 

This is exactly the starting point of the Enlightened King’s system of enlightenment.  He designed a dividend system that distributed wealth and abundant supply to his people.  He knew that when his people are struggling, they are unhappy, so all citizens in his kingdom – even people that were considered at the time servants - received a share of the dividend, but it was not an equal distribution.  The kingdom itself took its share, the ministers and advisors received generous shares, and so on – but the vast majority of the wealth was returned to the people until every person in the kingdom got a share – as I said, even people who were servants received a share. 

As trade grew, everyone enjoyed the benefits.  Over a period of a decade, and then two decades, and three decades and four decades of growth – the population became extremely wealthy, and the wealth of the kingdom and the people lasted for generations. 

The higher purpose of this dividend system was to create a vehicle of enlightened cooperation.  The genius of his cooperative system is obvious – by distributing the lion’s share of the wealth to his people, he was able to gain their full participation in expanding the opportunities for the kingdom.  

He understood that the only way he could realize his much bigger vision of global prosperity was to include everyone in on the game – to align their best interests with the best interests of the kingdom, and he succeeded in creating trade systems, internal businesses, and wealth that lasted for centuries. 

Let’s talk a bit more about the idea of enlightened cooperation – because that’s very important to the work we have ahead of us.  Cooperation is an inner skill, but we live and operate in the outer world which means that the general population is driven by self-interest – they cooperate to the extent they believe they will benefit, and so we live in a world of self-interest, essentially separate from others.  

In our society, when we do cooperate – it is a situational cooperation.  I’ll cooperate with you as long as my own self-interests are met, and as soon as I feel that I’m being taken advantage, or I see a better opportunity somewhere else, I withdraw my cooperation. 

We perceive ourselves as separate in the outer world, we hold on to our power, and we hold on to our self-interest.  All we see are differences – we look different, we speak different, we have different priorities and we bring different experiences and backgrounds.  Well if we want to cooperate, we must look past our outer differences.  Only by letting go of our self-interest can we create something better, more meaningful, and far more abundant than we could ever create ourselves. 

The Enlightened King taught this idea of intrinsic value and he tied it to the need for cooperation. 

“Each of you is an essential part of our kingdom.
Each child is a precious part of our future.
This is the way of our nation.
This is unbreakable.”
~ The Enlightened King 

He was saying to everyone – we need you.  You are important, you are valuable because our power comes from cooperation, and cooperation comes from our inner commonality.  And most importantly, he understood the value of children.  He was thinking about the kingdom centuries into the future – and he knew that children aren’t a drag on the economy, he knew that in just a few short years – they would be the economy.  Children were a precious part of the future. 

His father, the elder king, spent a great deal of energy during his reign to create connections and alliances that would benefit his nation, and when his son rose to the throne, he used these connections and friendships to literally re-activate world trade – to once again connect nations in peaceful trade – not as it had been before, but far better and far more prosperous than it had ever been.  As you’ll hear about in the next episode, he saw with his own eyes giant ports and cities that had once been golden centers of trade, now closed off and abandoned, their people struggling and fighting over the scraps of money that remained. 

He imagined life flowing through those ports again, he imagined abundant trade flowing freely around the world, and he made his own nation the central trading hub to connect vast kingdoms east and west.  His nation did not have anything of particular value, but through enlightened cooperation he primed the pump of trade by becoming the favorite port of all travelers around the world – renowned for hospitality and fair business practices.

Year after year, the hospitality of this kingdom created legends that made their way around the world, and with each year, for 40 years, the volume of trade flowing through this nation multiplied and multiplied and multiplied again.  The City of Gold.  The Enlightened King, and the Kingdom of Light.  All started with the principle of enlightened cooperation.

I call it Utopia.  

He imagined the flow of money in global chunks, that’s how I want you to start thinking about money.  He created an outer vehicle with a dividend system to manifest the wealth and developed the idea of enlightened cooperation and so gave all his people a share of the nation’s wealth.  Within the first seven years of his reign, he had completely transformed his kingdom, re-opened channels of world trade, and began a fountain of abundance for his people that would flow for generations – hundreds of years after his death. 

People!  We can do the same.  We can come together in the inner world, help one another, choose a common purpose, and despite our outer differences, we can learn to trust one another and work together for a higher good.  We can free ourselves from outdated limitations of selfishness, cast aside our reliance on economic models that have limited us, think in bigger chunks and achieve things together we never thought possible, and – this is the most important thing - we will include people that have never been included before, that have never gotten a break or an advantage, that have never been given a hand up.  

This is the power of enlightened cooperation, this is Utopia, and it holds a place for you.  

In the next episode we will follow the 11-year old prince and his father on a journey to Africa in pursuit of a lost but extremely important teaching of ancient wisdom.   

Be part of the conversation about enlightenment – go to www.utopiauniversity.org to get started.