We are about to embark on the month of February and we will not be talking about love and valentines. We will be focusing on the spiritual idea called “money.” Yes, money! We would like to take all the stigma off the word, embrace it as good and increase the flow in our life and the life of others who would have it.

There is nothing wrong with money and yet, many of us have ideas about it that are less than favorable. I have witnessed people looking at an expensive car with disdain. I have witnessed others saying things to me, like “why do you need that big house? Are you and your husband the only ones who live here?” Also, I’ve noted many undercurrents in conversations about spirituality and money being two separate entities and not at all compatible.

I’ve been through a lot in the area of money and prosperity. There was a time when I was used as the loss on taxes. When I was a child and began babysitting, my own father would not let me charge friends. I was supposed to do it for free. As I grew older, my relationship with money continued down this road, until I began to realize that I was worth more than my weight in gold and I wasn’t allowing myself to accept that gold in my life. I was warding money off through feelings of shame, guilt and unworthiness.

Some of you know this story, but one day, I was at Starbucks buying a $20 gift certificate for a friend. I looked over at one of their bananas that cost $2. I was hungry but wouldn’t buy it for myself because of the price. In that moment, everything began to change. I saw the lie I was living. I was willing to give, but I wasn’t willing to receive my good. Very slowly, I dug myself out of the hole of poverty, and today, at the age of 65, for the first time in my life, I am living a life of prosperity. And, still at times, I feel that shame creep in surrounding my ability to create wealth in my life. The subconscious mind is powerful and what was laid in there in our formative years has a way of surfacing if we are not conscious of it.

So, do you like money? Do you enjoy using it? Do you like to be able to pay your bills and have something to spare to save and invest and enjoy? I do, and I am claiming this as the Truth of my life. Money is good. Money is here for us to use. I believe in giving and receiving in huge quantities. I am proud to say I believe in tithing and practice it fully. It’s not about getting back, it’s about tithing because I can. Ever since I began tithing, I have never worried about money. I’ve always known there was plenty. And, I began tithing when I had very little money. It’s not about how much we give, but that we give.

Yesterday, as we began to prepare to teach this new series called “We’re in the Money,” I felt inspired to watch Madonna’s old video, “Material Girl.” I caught myself back in that old trap of thinking of money as material and shallow. However, I turned it around immediately. Changing our consciousness about money and having it in our lives takes a leap into understanding and accepting that everything is spiritual. We live on this earth plane in a material universe that is backed totally by Spirit. That includes every physical thing, including money. Money is consciousness. Money is not evil. How can anything spiritual be evil. The only way I can think of that would make money a negative is if it is ruling your consciousness. Whether it is an excess of money or a lack of it, is it ruling how you show up in the world, or are you its master. An old French proverb states, “Money is a taskmaster to the unwise and a servant to the wise.” We get to choose. If we choose not to have money, let’s own that as a choice. If we choose to have it, let’s own that choice, too.

Money is neither good or bad, but thinking makes it so. Bob Proctor is quoted as saying, “Many of us tiptoe through life, hoping to make it safely to death.” My feet are too big to tiptoe through anything. I am walking proudly as a person of loving consciousness who loves money.

Love and Aloha,

Rev. Rita