💡 Money series For the full picture of why guilt follows earning — and where the exit lies — start with the cluster pillar. → The True Nature of the Guilt Around Earning
Introduction: The Two Voices That Look Opposite
To be swung about by money is unseemly. To wish for little and live modestly keeps the heart richer — the phrase honest poverty has that calm ring.
At its opposite pole is the talk hold an abundance mindset, you may receive more. At a glance the two look exactly opposed: the side that reveres not holding, and the side that affirms holding.
What this article treats is not which is right. It is why both of these talks fail, alike, to untie anxiety about money — its reason.
Let me give the conclusion first. Because both are talk of attitude. And the guilt you have felt vanishes by neither attitude. But it was not mistaken, either.
📖 Contents
Both Aim the Object of Manipulation at “the Interior”
First, set the two talks side by side.
Wish for little, live modestly. This works on the interior — the manner of desire. Nurture an abundance mindset, give permission to receive. This works on the interior — the way of grasping money.
The direction they face is opposite, but both, alike, try to remake the inner side of the heart. Meanwhile, neither talk lays a hand on the structure the person stands on — by what mechanism money comes in, who decides the price of value.
Why, then, does it not work? Because the true source of anxiety and guilt lies not in the interior but on the side of structure.
Even if you fiddle with attitude and suppress the unease, as long as the structure is the same, the unease wells up again in another scene, in another form. Natural, since the source is untouched. A prescription for attitude merely tries to hold down, by hand at the exit, what gushes from the source.
Water leaks upstairs, and however much you wipe the downstairs ceiling, the water does not stop. It is not a problem of your wiping skill but of which floor you look at.
Block One Exit, and It Gushes From Another
This structure becomes clear when you follow the actual course.
A person who worked the let go of guilt prescription can indeed cease, for a while, to feel guilt. But at that time nothing has happened to the source, the structure. As ever, your value is measured by another’s standard, and income rises and falls at another’s convenience. The source keeps welling as before, and only one of the exits is blocked.
Blocked water does not vanish. Water that has lost its way seeks another exit and flows out.
That other exit is restlessness. The feeling whose guilt-exit is blocked gushes out changed into the impatience I must earn more. The person may feel they overcame guilt, but in fact only the output of the same-source feeling has switched.
On the honest-poverty side, the same thing occurs. Shrinking your wishes may ease the immediate impatience. But as long as the structure in which income is decided at another’s convenience remains, that instability appears in another form — say, a vague anxiety about the future.
This swapping does not end after one round. Beat one down and the next rises. This never-endingness is the very reason a person who wanders among prescriptions for attitude never reaches a land of settling.
That Guilt Was Not Mistaken
Here I state the reinterpretation at the centre of this article.
Until now, guilt over money has consistently been treated as something to erase. A mind block. A habit of heart. A weakness to overcome. A bug, as it were, that slipped into the heart.
But there is another possibility. It may be not a malfunction but working correctly.
Guilt often accompanies a vague something is off. There is somewhere a resistance to measuring value by money itself. Cashing this out in this form feels somehow wrong. These feelings may have been sensing something accurately.
When a home fire alarm sounds, pull the battery because it is noisy and the sound stops. But the fire has not gone out. Rather, you have robbed yourself of the means to notice the fire.
If so, guilt should be called not a bug but a sensor. The problem lies in our having mistaken that alarm for a malfunction of the device and tried to stop it.
This reinterpretation looks like a small swap of words but changes everything. As long as you see it as a bug, what to do is erase. See it as a sensor and what to do becomes read what it is detecting.
But let me draw a line. I do not mean that all guilt is a correct sensor. Sometimes a merely vague anxiety wears that face. What I mean is: before erasing, first read.
▸ The concrete of this reading is treated in what the fear of looking money-grubbing tells you.
Move the Goal From Interior to Structure
If so, what to aim at changes too.
As long as you set a heart level and unmoved by money as the goal, you keep surveilling your feelings and grading still moved. Set flattening your feelings as the goal and, each time you feel something, a docking of points fires. The goal itself becomes the source of suffering.
What, then, should be set as the goal? A state in which the sensor need not issue a warning.
The alarm sounds because there is smoke. Erase the smoke and the alarm stops of its own accord. Likewise, guilt sounds because there is an unmeshing structure. Change that structure and guilt quiets naturally.
This re-setting means moving the placement of the goal from the interior to the structure. The former could not be attained however much you chased it and wore you down. The latter is an attainable goal — because structure, unlike attitude, can actually be recomposed.
Here, some may feel their shoulders relax. You may be moved. You may be disturbed. You may feel guilt. Because that is not proof the heart is broken but proof the sensor is working correctly.
Conclusion: Neither Modesty Nor the Abundance Mindset Is Denied
Let me make it clear, to be safe: I am denying neither living modestly nor receiving money affirmatively.
If you choose modesty from your own values, it is the exercise of sovereignty. Likewise, there is no problem at all in receiving payment matching the value you generated. The problem arises not in the act itself but when it is gripped as an attitude-adjustment to quiet anxiety.
One question to tell it apart. Did that choice rise from your own values? Or has it become work to silence a sounding alarm?
If the latter, quiet will not arrive however much you order your attitude. Because a command to attitude can change the form of a feeling but cannot cut off its source.
So the place to head is decided: toward the source, the structure. And structure, unlike attitude, can be redesigned. If the suffering were an inborn character, there would be no changing it. But it was not character but structure. What was made by human hands can be recomposed by human hands.
There is no need to change it in a single leap. Keep your present income and, alongside it, shift the ratio little by little. What was surrendered can be taken back. Receive the overall blueprint as your next step. This whole structure is gathered in the true nature of the guilt around earning.
References
Academic papers and theory
- Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior (1985) Plenum Press
- Marx, K. Capital, Volume I (1867)
