Is Money a Psychedelic?
If you’re a free-thinking visionary, you may have already had the tickle of a notion that the invisible but valuable current of money has some deeper mystery stitched into it. (A $100 bill is a symbol of a quantity of money. Symbols are abstractions pointing towards something more difficult to apprehend. And in these increasingly cashless days, money's invisibility is all the more visible.)
As is the nature of mysteries - especially invisible ones - trying to neatly fit them into boxes labeled this or that will be ever-elusive.
Rather, mysteries prefer to play in the realm of subjective experience - which usually turn out to be some expression of this and that and everything in between.
A while ago, I was tickled by the notion that money has the qualities of a psychedelic - a substance that has the potential to take us on a wild magical, mystery tour which isn’t guaranteed to be fun or relaxing, but when worked with in right relationship, ends up being a path to cycles of awakening and evolution.
This strange tickle of a notion was then affirmed by two different teachers I’ve worked with - without me asking them about it. As I’ve gone through my own journey of exploration + digestion of this, it’s become clear that yes, money does have some strikingly similar qualities to psychedelic medicine.
Food of the Gods by Real Fun. Wow!
(Before we go on, no promises that this is going to be a neat and linear read. Take what resonates, leave the rest.)
Perhaps the most obvious of these similarities is the way in which money, like psychedelics, amplifies what’s strongest in a person - or in a collective.
If a person has a lot of greed (which arises from the systemic colonialist belief that scarcity is the baseline of existence), when they have money, their greed will be predominant, from which an experience of never feeling fulfilled will manifest.
Similarly, if someone has a lot of natural generosity, money will highlight that generosity (and when necessary, teach some spiky lessons around holding healthy boundaries.)
Collectively, we operate under the patriarchal-colonialist systems of scarcity-as-the-baseline-of-existence, which are most firmly in place around money. From this systemic delusion of not-enoughness arises the monolith of greed which keeps the world spinning to the mantra of more more more. And from this, arises a reality where 1% of the world’s population are the wealthiest - some with so much money that a small fraction of their wealth could bring about monumental change in the world.
And let’s not even get started on corporatism - which simultaneously feeds and consumes from the insatiable machine of more, all while poisoning the Earth and our bodies.
Could it be that as a psychedelic, money is reflecting back to us what’s rotten and needs to dissolve, resolve and evolve in systems built on scarcity within + without?
And yet, psychedelics don’t make assessments based on the relativism of human morality - on who or what is good and deserves wealth and who or what isn’t and doesn’t. They’re in service to Nature’s evolutionary current and part of their healing involves shining a light on what’s out of balance - which can often feel like a confusing and terrifying trip.
Scarcity-as-the-baseline-of existence is anti-evolutionary. On a macro level, the greed that it births is at the foundation of the military industrial complex that’s currently feeding off the genocidal war in Palestine.
On a micro level, it shows up as the generational legacy of constriction and numbness/disassociation in our bodies when it comes to money, which we become identified with and act out in myriad distorted ways - whether we have money or not.
In my experience with psychedelics, the more we can remain present and embodied with them, the more we can benefit and learn from their medicine. The more flexibility, capacity + integrity (integration) we can cultivate in our nervous systems, the more we’re able to come into the safety of right relationship with them, the more they’re able to act as agents of evolutionary change through us and with us.
This is true for money also.
If scarcity-as-the-baseline-of-existence is anti-evolutionary, and the psychedelic current of money is showing us this in all its gory glory, what would abundance-as-the-baseline-of-existence feel and look like in our bodies, our lives and in the world?
Perhaps true abundance is feeling and knowing what enough is for us, through our own enoughness, and stewarding the overflow from there.