Shattering the Myth

Financial Wealth as a Catalyst for Good

Seeing Wealth as Energy, Impact, and a Reflection of the Goddess

There are moments when I tell myself I don’t care about money. That it isn’t important. I try not to think about it too much.

And yet, the thoughts lurk in the background. Always present… always full of tension between wanting more and not having enough. I imagine what it would be like to have more than enough. Not just enough to get by, but enough to breathe, to create, to actually do what I feel called to do.

But somewhere along the way, I learned that wanting money wasn’t acceptable. That it meant I was less spiritual, less grounded, less aligned with what really matters. It felt like wanting money made me less of a spiritual woman. I embraced the beliefs about money that society and my family taught me, without questioning their truth. Along the way, it led me to doubt not only the value of money but also my own value and worth. Beliefs like money is scarce, it’s obscene to have wealth, or it changes people that I inherited strangled my dreams.

And yet, at the same time, I can feel there is more to money, wealth, and abundance than I was led to believe. I started looking deeper into my negative beliefs about money, until finally, I began seeing the myths within them.

Inherited Beliefs About Money

For some, just the thought of money raises their anxiety levels. We don’t like to think about money. We may even hold some significant negative beliefs about it, such as, “money is evil,” or “money is the root of all evil”, or “money corrupts.” As a spiritual woman, you may have even heard the one, “You can’t be spiritual and be wealthy.” I used to think about money this way until I started questioning those beliefs instead of just carrying them.

However, the more I work with abundance and the Goddess Lakshmi, I’ve realized money is simply an energy. It’s a way to fairly and equitably exchange something of value for goods and services. Frankly, I like money. It’s so much easier to carry around a debit card or cash to exchange for items I purchase than, say, a pig, or chickens, or other barter items. Even barter is a form of money. It is exchanging the value of one thing, say a chicken, for the value of another. For example, a healing remedy or a Reiki session. And when I viewed it this way, something else came into focus for me.

Wealth and Capacity to Give

The wealth money brings allows us to wield a greater impact on the world. If we’re in scarcity or poverty, we have trouble helping ourselves, let alone anyone else. When we possess an excess of funds, then we have the capacity to care for ourselves, our families, and to give to others. Just like anything else, we can’t give from an empty cup or well. We must fill our well first. Otherwise, we have nothing to give—whether that is energy, time, resources, or money. The more I sat with that, I found myself looking at it from a wider lens. I started to recognize another pattern.

I’ve noticed—over and over—that the people able to create large-scale change are wealthy. Their wealth gives them reach, stability, and the ability to follow through on what they’re here to do. Without funds, it’s nearly impossible to have the type of impact to make lasting change. At the same time, I could feel where the resistance to that idea came from.

Quite often, when we consider money as evil or nonspiritual, we’re reacting to how wealth has been used in the old paradigm, especially recently. Those in power, mostly men, hoard their money, holding it tightly to maintain their power. It’s common to see resources used for personal gain rather than investing in their communities.

Women and Community Impact

And yet, that isn’t the whole story. As more women gain access to resources and money, I’ve seen a different pattern emerge. When women gain wealth, it often ripples outward into their communities. Even with small amounts such as micro-loans, like in developing countries, when women receive micro-loans, they most always help the community grow and prosper. However, most often, if men receive a micro-loan, they generally spend the funds on personal items, and the community didn’t change. This wasn’t theoretical for me. For me, this isn’t something I just observed, but something I had lived.

Moving from Scarcity to Sacred Prosperity

As a spiritual woman, who wants to make a big impact on the world and influence change, I need money to do it the way I want. I’ve been in poverty. I’ve been in a place where I barely had enough for bills and necessities. No matter how much I wanted to help other women, to inspire them, or to empower them, I couldn’t. I didn’t possess the energy, resources, or funds to accomplish what I dreamed of doing.

When I’ve been in a place of lack, I couldn’t do anything but survive. It consumed all my energy. I didn’t have the space for visioning and dreaming, or creating, or doing anything beyond getting through the day. The worry about not having enough money consumed my thoughts. This locked me into a cycle of poverty and lack consciousness that’s difficult to break. When you’re in that cycle, it’s hard to even imagine anything beyond it.

When I changed that mindset, things shifted for me and money started flowing to me. I found myself in a place of thriving and abundance. I can do the things I dream of doing, start the business I want, and possess the funds to reach the people I’m here to serve. Living this, I’ve come to understand that you can help more people from a place of wealth and abundance than you can from poverty and lack.

Money in Business and Growth

I saw this reflected not only in my life but also in the many small businesses I worked with during my years as a Certified Public Accountant. I learned that money is the lifeblood of a business. When money flowed, their business could grow and thrive. However, when it didn’t, they had to pull back, constrict, or even discontinue doing business.

As a business owner, I can have a positive effect on more than myself. Hiring employees and buying goods and services for our business helps our communities to thrive, especially when we do so following the Goddess’s principles of fairness, respect, and equity. The growth of our communities depends on healthy, prosperous businesses—including ours. Once I began to understand this, I started noticing what had shaped my relationship with money in the first place.

Scarcity Conditioning and Patriarchy

This also helped me understand more deeply that money and wealth are important. Not only for meeting our basic needs but also for us to thrive and live the life we’re meant to live. The conditioning instilled under patriarchy has made us undervalue ourselves and believe abundance is a limited, finite resource.

This causes a scarcity mindset around money—the belief that there isn’t enough for everyone. It’s the kind of thinking that makes you question whether it’s safe to have more—or whether wanting more means you’ve lost your way. When that belief takes hold, it changes how we relate to money entirely. And so we grasp it tightly to us, afraid to let any go, and stifling the flow of abundance to us.

Returning to Sacred Abundance

But underneath the systems, the patterns, and beliefs that we’ve inherited, there lies a deeper truth.

The Goddess is abundant!

Money, wealth, and riches are all forms of energy that spring from the Goddess and the bounty of this earth. This is very different way of seeing it than how most of us were taught to think about it. Abundance is our birthright. The Hindu Goddess Lakshmi is a good example of this. She is the goddess of abundance AND wealth. Her realm of influence includes the abundance of home, family, and friends, AND money, wealth, and leadership. The images of Lakshmi show her with an urn full of golden coins or coins flowing from her hands.

As she freely, joyfully gives us the abundance of the earth, she becomes a mirror for us to also share our bounty generously. When we understand abundance is an endless, renewable resource rather than limited, we no longer hold a death-grip onto money. Instead, we can allow it to flow to us and through us. In that flow, something opens—not just in our lives, but in what we’re able to give.

From that place, the way we relate to money begins to change. And what we believe possible also shifts, and we can move through the world differently. This more positive mindset about money and financial wealth allows us to do more good things in the world and have a greater impact. In living this, my relationship with money shifted.

A Different Relationship With Money

I gradually came to a place where I can look at money and abundance from a different perspective. Like all change, it didn’t happen all at once, and it’s something I’m still working on. But it’s been enough that I can feel the difference.

Money no longer feels like something I must push away in order to stay aligned with what I believe is true. I didn’t realize how often I had been pushing it away until I stopped. It doesn’t feel like it draws me away from what matters; rather, I feel it can support me.

I can see more clearly where those beliefs came from and how they’ve shaped the way I’ve moved through my life. I haven’t shattered all the myths I carried about money, but enough have broken to open a new understanding within me. One grounded in Lakshmi’s sacred abundance, where prosperity flows. I can now feel the deeper truth about money.

There is enough… and I’m allowed to have more than enough.

There’s a lot here that you may not resolve all at once. Some of these patterns you’ve carried for a long time, woven through beliefs, experiences, and the way you’ve learned to move through the world. You don’t have to figure anything out right now. You can simply notice what this brought up for you, what felt familiar, and what might be asking for a closer look.
1. When you imagine having more than enough—not just for survival, but for your life to expand—what’s the first reaction that comes up in you?

2. What beliefs about money have you carried for so long that they feel like truth?

3. If you had wealth, how would you use it?

Continue Exploring with Lakshmi

If something in this essay resonated with you, Lakshmi’s Sacred Abundance offers a way to continue the exploration through relationship and devotional practice.

Through spending time with Lakshmi, the Guide invites you to explore abundance beyond simply having more. You’ll discover the relationship between receiving and giving, prosperity and generosity, support, Sacred Reciprocity, and what it might mean to recognize yourself as part of that flow.

There isn’t one right answer or a particular place you need to arrive. The Guide offers different ways to spend time with Lakshmi, reflect on your own experience, and discover what becomes visible for you.

I invite you to join the conversation on my Substack, Lunar Ink & Alchemy, to share your experience and insights from reading this essay.