At Wisdom & Money, we engage our relationship with money as a doorway to spiritual awareness and transformation. Our Transformative Money Practices help us bring greater consciousness, honesty, creativity, and freedom to the ways money moves through our lives and communities. Each of these practices is described below, along with invitations to explore it more deeply.
Living in Gift
Our organizational approach to giving and receiving, rooted in sacred reciprocity and spiritual discernment
A central mystery at the heart of Wisdom & Money’s work is the sacred flow of giving and receiving. We recognize moments of sacred exchange where distinctions between giver and receiver collapse and all are brought together in the mystery of grace. One way that we embody this sacred reality is by operating this ministry as an experiment in gift economy; offering all of our programs as a gift. We embody this mystery also in our practice of fundraising, which is sourced in prayer, community and grace. We ask for gifts in a manner that is transparent, respectful and honest. We recognize discernment around giving as a place for spiritual transformation, and we honor one another’s clear yes’s and no’s. Recognizing that we are all donors and receivers, we invite one another to enter more deeply into the flow of gift. We hold the hope that the needs of our organization will be abundantly supplied through the generosity of our members.
Financial Transparency
Financial Transparency invites us to bring both the facts of our financial lives and our inner responses to money into clearer view. Through preparing a personal Financial Summary and, when we are ready, sharing in trusted community, we practice meeting money with honesty, compassion, and spiritual presence. Sharing is always invitational: what arises as we consider whether, when, and how much to share is itself part of the practice.
Explore the steps below to learn more about how we practice Financial Transparency.
1. Build awareness
Our Financial Transparency Practice starts with the preparation of a personal Financial Summary: we write out our financial assets, liabilities, and net financial balance. By creating a summary, we begin by reflecting on our own relationship with money and being aware of what we are working with when it comes to money. This helps us to build awareness.
2. Invitation is key
We then invite circle members to share our Financial Summary with fellow Circle members—as well as anything that such preparation or invitation to share brings up. Each person is free to decide whether, when and how much to share, as they are ready. In this way, we engage in Financial Transparency both with ourselves and in a group setting. We find this a powerful practice and thus invite all into it AND we honor people’s readiness to step into the practice in community. A key part of the practice is welcoming the thoughts and emotions connected to financial transparency, knowing that whatever arises can be revelatory and offer possibilities for transformation. Some of these responses can point to where things are already aligned with Spirit. Some might reveal areas where we are in need of transformation.
Understanding our money story
Each of us carries a money story: the experiences, messages, emotions, and beliefs that have shaped our relationship with money. Our stories are formed through our families and personal histories, as well as through the cultures, communities, and social realities in which we live. Much of this story may operate outside our conscious awareness, influencing how we earn, spend, save, give, receive, and relate to ourselves and others.
Read more about the practice of understanding your money story
Bringing compassionate awareness to our money story can help us recognize what we have inherited and learned, where our relationship with money is already aligned with Spirit, and where greater freedom and transformation may be possible. We explore our money stories in many ways—including through conversation, reflection, writing, and creative practice.
One of our favorite ways to begin is the Money Triptych, a creative exercise that can surface dimensions of our relationship with money that might not emerge through thinking or talking alone.
The Money Triptych comes to us through our Board Buddy John Bloom and was developed in collaboration with Leah Walker, a biography worker, as part of workshops exploring money and life story. We often use it at our retreats as an entry point into telling and exploring our money stories.
The practice is offered in a spirit of creativity—so there’s no need to worry if you don’t consider yourself “artistic.” This is not about creating a “work of art,” but about gently opening space to see more of your story.
Try the Money Triptych
Whether you’ve engaged this practice at a Wisdom & Money retreat or it’s your first time, we invite you to try it today.
Follow along as Rose guides you through the Money Triptych in the video below.
Prefer written guidance? You can also follow the full written instructions here.
Continue the Reflection
As you reflect, we invite you to keep our Spiritual Companionship offering in mind. A one-to-one conversation with a Wisdom & Money spiritual companion can offer a meaningful space to stay with and explore whatever arises through the Money Triptych process.
Money Experiments
Within our circles, we have engaged in collective experiments with money to stir up issues we desire to explore and to open up new possibilities for how money can flow through our lives and into the world.