Part of this is from the comment section in the last entry, but it’s so awesome it deserves its own spot in the blog. There are also a number of subscribers who don’t read the comments as frequently, only what arrives in their email inbox, and I want to make sure they don’t miss out on anything super-cool.
Sweetie says:
A got a bit of a lesson in money from this guy last night/this morning. (Yesterday he’s said to me, "Your relationship with money is f*cked up. I’m gonna help you sort it out".
So first of all he calls up this book:
http://spiritualeconomicsnow.net/
"DON’T reread it. Just think about what it says".
I think he’s saying "don’t reread it" because she’s basically got it right but the angry energy, conspiracy theories and focus on debt ruins it.
"Right. Also you’ve learned what you need to learn from it".
Ok. So what the author is saying is that we’re sovereign spiritual beings. We can’t hold debts, only corporations can. Our birth certificates and other documents are "incorporation" documents that create a fictional "us" or straw man, and these straw men are the ones that hold debts. We confuse these creations for the real us, but they’re actually corporations that share our name.
(He thinks I’m still thinking about debt too much…)
Anyway, her other assertion is that all the money that is, is created through our signatures. WE create it. That’s why banks make you sign so much paper.
Now he’s telling me to forget all that, and just remember 2 things: 1) You are a sovereign spiritual being. YOU decide who you are. 2) YOU create your wealth. You create it out of nothing.
Okay. I get that.
"Now burn that book. It makes you angry".
It got more abstract after that. I was just waking up so that’s how it goes sometimes. He shows me a jewel-encrusted goblet. I recognize it from art history slide lectures, it belonged to St. Thomas Aquinas. (Of course I can’t find a picture of it). He’s like, "That guy had it right". I’m like, "In that beautiful objects help you contemplate God?". Him: "Yeah, I don’t know why people make a virtue out of poverty. (Shows me the Franciscan monk robe — maybe why he took exception to the Little John thing).
He explains that when you don’t have enough money you act out of fear. When your needs are met, you can act out of love. When you have more than you need you can act out of charity, you can be generous. Self-sacrifice isn’t a virtue.
He says, "It all goes back to Aristotle". He directed me to this article:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substance_theory
I’m going to have to tackle that later, though. Like after coffee.
Kate Replies:
Yesterday, when I was driving home, Biggie pops into the car. I feel this “What are you doing?” disbelief vibe and he says, “This car is F*cked up!” (I’m censoring for the sake of email filters.)
I just started to laugh. We do have the most messed up car I’ve ever seen. It’s a 1989 toyota tercel hatchback, 330,000 km and counting. The paint is all faded like it’s never seen wax. It’s tiny, it’s rusted all to hell. When I go over speed bumps, I worry something important will fall off. One day the rear bumper started to shift and I just punched it back on. The locks don’t work. It leaks so much oil I have to refill the oil almost as often as I fill the gas tank. There’s a crack in the windshield. The electrical’s messed up and the left turn signal won’t work.
I explained this to Biggie as I made three right hand turns to get home instead of one left hand turn. He goes, WHAT?? You drive a car that you can’t TURN LEFT? That is ridiculous, why you drivin’ this piece of sh*t?”
He then made it quite plain that we could be driving a better car. The poorest people in his home neighbourhood wouldn’t be caught dead driving a car like ours, even if it was given to them for free – they wouldn’t touch it. There’s this pride thing, like, if you drive a car like that you’re making yourself look worse off than you are, and the point of cars is to show off, have fun and have some pride!
I’d never owned a car before we moved out west – I always used public transit and rented cars for road trips. But somewhere along the way, I decided I was going to drive crappy cars to show other people how much we were struggling.
It was a stupid move, actually. I remember the day I made that decision; I was angry, and having a moment of ill-advised self pity. Kind of like the heroin addict decides to stick it to their loved ones by choosing to live on the street, I was going to be pissed off and as ugly-poor as I could look. When our first crappy car broke down in less than a year of driving it, our friends gave us their even crappier car, which we’ve been repairing and driving ever since.
Biggie says, When you not sure your car is gonna start, it’s time to get a new car. When you pray every damn time you drive it, it’s time to get a new car. WHEN YOU CAN’T MAKE A LEGAL LEFT HAND TURN – TIME TO GET A NEW CAR! Why you hangin’ on to this piece of sh*t?? Girl it’s not even funny, it’s just sad! You have the saddest car I ever seen! If this was a horse you’d have shot it a long time ago – you got to put this damn thing out of its misery. Put me out of my misery, riding around with you in this rusty coffin, what are you thinking about? Do you think you don’t deserve better? Do you think people goin’ look at you in a new car and think, “Damn, bitch be hidin’ money!” NO! They’ll be thinkin’ “BOUT DAMN TIME!”
An since when do you give a sh*t what other people think of you? You think I gave a sh*t what homies (back home) thought of me? HELL NO! I was showin’ them How To Be, showin them what it’s like for (a man) to hold money in his hand. (he’s laughing at me for what I just changed, dude I’m not writing that, then he’s like, “Dude, who am I, MC Hammer?” Well you do both wear big pants.)
So, Biggie, I promise you I am going to buy a new car. I will make you a deal – you help me find the money, I promise you I will buy that car. I know I already have the money – it’s just not in my bank account at the moment. But it’s coming, I can pull it in with my heart, like you showed me, and my mantra will help too.
I actually feel it’s important for me to pay my own money for this car, in order to feel proud about it. That fun car that I’ve been wanting for three years – an AWD Subaru hatchback wagon. (He thinks this choice is hysterically funny, and when I tell him it’s so we can go car-camping he laughs even more and says camping is a ghetto holiday, which, now that I think about it, it is a funny thing to do. Yeah, I’m going to go back into the woods and cook food over a fire and sleep in my car. Biggie shows me street people warming their hands over a fire in a steel drum; we’re doing the same thing, but in the woods. That’s a very weird thing to do for fun, for Biggie. If you sleepin’ in your car, you’ve got Problems, then he says, even the craziest homeless (guy) wouldn’t be caught dead in your car. He could get shot in your car and drag his ass out of there so he don’t die in your f*cked up car.)
Sweetie and I also realized last night that, in our hearts, we’ve been wanting very different vehicles. The car we’ve been attempting to manifest is really a compromise car that neither of us wants. She wants a standard, I want an automatic. She hates wagons, I love them. She wants something old, cute and ironic, like – I am not even exaggerating here – a tiny Shriners car or a vintage firebird convertible. I want something practical that can hold a lot of crap and drive really far. Really, we each want our own car, so we’re going to see who can get their car first. Ha!
Kate Sitka 
Oh my god, I laughed my ass off at this! We *did* manifest this car, I remember that. We made a friggin’ LIST! Wtf, what did we do that for??
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Yeah, I know. I remember and I thought it would be funny / fun / ironic to have a crappy car?
And for a while it was, as evidenced by the photoseries I took of the tercel parked beside all the expensive tourist cars like the porche, Ferrari, the beamer convertible, the corvette. I *was* funny, but I’m over it now. Time for a real car. I’m making a new list.
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Kinda want one of these weird El Camino things. Just like this one, black and chrome. Looks like an open-bed hearse.
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I love you, and you are so weird.
That is awesome. It doesn’t have the seating or storage of a car, you can’t cap the open back and it rains from Oct – Jun here, and it can’t go offroad or do the heavy work of a pickup! Sweet!
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Yeah, but they’re still cool. :0)
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Yeah, they are.
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That was really funny. Biggie seems like a highly humorous fellow and I love that he taught you that it’s ok to want something decent and actually ask for a material possession (I’ve gone back and forth before with that too, not wanting to seem greedy or ask for too much) and give you a spiritual lesson but be still hilarious at the same time. That’s great teaching.
I think it really is the intent behind the desire for something. If you pray for money because you swear to God that you’ll give a hefty donation to starving orphans but have your fingers crossed behind your back and secretly dream of gold hubcaps and diamonds the size of ostrich eggs, God can see that you’re full of it and the cash may end up coming about in a horrible way, like getting into a terrible accident, suing someone and becoming wealthy but paralyzed (I guess you could still pimp out your wheelchair…) in a full on “careful what you wish for” scenario.
Anyhoo, I feel much better knowing I can ask for things because truly, I would be generous and not hoard my treasure like a Scrooge-like dragon and am relieved I can ask without guilt. I hope you manifest an awesome car that goes above and beyond your desires, to compensate for years of driving around in a “rusty coffin”, something Biggie (& your other musical angel pals) would be proud to be seen in 😀
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Yeah, it’s interesting Sweetie mentioned that Biggie said to her this worry about having too much money or being greedy is really a white-person culture.
Sweetie, do you remember what he said? I know you told me but I forget exactly.
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Yeah sort of. It’s like there’s not really this concern with “selling out” in rap culture. He never knew anyone who was concerned about making too much money. You make a lot of money and you’re greatful for it. It’s a measure of success.
Contrast Kurt, who was always concerned about “selling out”, or being perceived as having sold out. Because in punk culture when you make too much money people start to question your sincerity. There’s really a lot more I could say about it but that’s the main difference I see.
(Biggie sees another difference: doesn’t understand this phenomenon of breaking things onstage — guitars, drum kits, amps, etc. “Your OWN equipment!” *shakes head*)
I found sort of a connection between these cultures today though (this might only be interesting to me… I dunno). I watched a Biggie documentary called Rap Phenomenon. He’s performing, and something about his delivery at one point makes me say, “Oh, this reminds me of dancehall”. (As in dancehall reggae, which was popular in Jamaica in the 70s). And then Biggie’s like, “…how do you know about dancehall??”. And then I remembered that I’d learned in that other documentary that Biggie had family ties to Jamaica and went there a lot as a kid, which would’ve been the late 70s or early 80s, dancehall’s heyday. And then I realized that I couldn’t actually *remember* why I knew what dancehall was, I apparently just knew it when I heard it. Then Kurt pops in to explain to Biggie/remind me that punk bands in London in the 70s were really into reggae, that there were a lot of Jamaican musicians that had immigrated there, and that that started the whole ska thing, bands like Madness and the Specials. (Except this was explained instantly, like showing the path of energy from Jamaica, to London). Maybe interesting or nerdy. I don’t know.
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Um. That’s super-interesting and very cool. Maybe it’s nerdy, but it’s music so it’s consequently a lot cooler than the usual nerdy stuff I’m into…
And speaking of nerdy, did you ever write about that stuff you and Albie were talking about the other night?
(Sweetie was watching Ancient Aliens and talking about time travel, and apparently they were butchering one of Einstein’s theories because he popped in to explain it to Sweetie so she could hear it “Correctly, the first time.”)
If you email me I’ll post it in an entry – that’s cool stuff we need to document.
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Oh, no I never did type that out.
You know what I noticed these guys like to do, when they’re trying to explain thing to me? Go into my brain and pull up the most relevant thing, whatever it is, *regardless* of how often I use this information or how well I understand it. Them: “Oh, remember that book you read when you were 18? Or that side note from that university lecture?”. Me: “Uh, kind of. No, not really?”. Them: “Oh well. Y’know… what *he* said. Go look it up. I’ll get back to you”.
Gawd.
Me: “I’m really not as smart as you think”.
Them: “We know you’re a lot smarter than *you* think. Now go read Plato and Aristotle. These guys really said it best”.
…Are you serious?
Anyway yeah Albie, who I guess assumed that I already thoroughally understood his General Theory of Relativity, proceeded to correct it for me as it related to theories about time travel, *while* I was watching a show about the topic. “Pause this! Go get a pen!”. Uh, okay.
Still not sure I understand, but I wrote it down. Maybe it will make more sense later.
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All of that is interesting and really cool. You’re getting lessons on the history of music and genius revelations from the actual sources themselves, and you seem to be shown in a magical, seemingly instantaneous way. Sounds like stuff straight outta The Matrix. It’s also quite cool and fascinating that these entities have the ability to peruse your mind and the knowledge contained within as if it were a library, which I guess it is. So cool.
Also, very fitting about the cultural issues of feeling guilty about making it big or making too much money. I imagine I’d feel like Kurt if suddenly I was bombarded with an absurd amount of fame & money being tossed my way. “Oh The Guilt” indeed. But then again, I’m just as white as him, so there you go…I’m not so down with the idea of smashing equipment, though. I think a lot of instruments have souls and I’d feel terrible smashing up a beautiful guitar that I just channeled music & connected with. But I guess I’m just not as punk rock as Kurt Cobain ;]
I’m going to have to read Plato & Aristotle now too. I love nerding out on such things. I wish I was as connected as you two gals! I’m in the ballpark, but nowhere near the homeplate (sorry about the lameness of that metaphor, but I don’t know s*#t about sports–hence the artsy-fartsy, nerdy & spiritual pursuits instead)
Love your blog and comments, ladies! Makes me feel like my own bizarre, twisted fairy tale of a life is (slightly) less insane…:D
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