Présentation	Foreword	Lie No 1

Foreword

So here you are, standing in the bookshop and you’ve just picked out this book “30 Lies about Money”. Have a look around. Where are you? In the business and finance section? In philosophy and psychology? In self-help? In the children’s section?

Dear Reader, this book will make you think. I want to take you on a journey through the Garden of Money, full of its allures, potential, realities and illusions. Paradise is at hand but only reached through accurately distinguishing what is what! As I start to write I picture this book being placed on its own golden stand, in its own category at the front of the bookstore. Booksellers please note. Other books may join it with time. The category is “short, simple books that are really useful”. Literature, poetry and prose that contain key information for realising your soul’s journey. A perennial script that makes you go AHA, from somewhere in the depths of your being!

Money and Soul.

Money and Soul. That is what this book is about. What a strange combination. Money may sound at first too trivial for a matter of soul. And why “Lies” in the book title you may ask. What do they have to do with either money or soul? Let me thread the explanation with a little personal biography.

From as early as I can remember I have been fascinated with matters of achievement, success and happiness. But what is success? My definition is simple. Success is identity of outcome with intention. Most of the time and in most things we do each day we are so successful we barely notice. In a sense we are magicians. We picture what we want, when we want it and then go about doing it and getting it. It’s no big deal. Money plays its role in this in a way we don’t give a second thought. A trivial example: we picture that we need detergent, go to the store and buy it. Success! And though we don’t tend to think of it this way, the process between our thought of detergent and its physical arrival on our kitchen table, with all the infrastructure that is involved, is in reality much more sophisticated than we tend to give credit for.

Once we have - as children - observed the role money plays in successfully buying/obtaining the things we want, it is natural to abstract that this same process will succeed forever with everything we desire. However with more complex outcomes and qualities, our simple success strategies for obtaining detergent are likely be found wanting. Why Lies? The language of money we speak with each other may contain the greatest self-deceptions of our time. “Money can’t buy you love” sang the Beatles. This may sound obvious but we may well be trying to buy love, repeating the attempt over and over again if we can’t imagine anything better to do - for a lifetime. And if it’s not love then it may be other things. It is the uncovering of the Lies underlying this kind of repetition that this book will focus on. With each revelation a little freeing takes place in two ways — a freeing of yourself and a freeing of money.

My own personal study of money started in 1984 at the age of 37. Up to this point my life had been a success story defined in normal money and career terms. As a young man from a Jewish industrial family, wartime refugees to England, I was already ambitious as a youngster. A good salesman, I worked hard, made money easily, did well as a professional in the property business, had a responsible position in a large US concern, obtained an MBA and in the early 80s was partner in a small training business and consultancy. At this point I was however confronted with two challenges beyond my understanding. A persistent shortage of money in my own organisation, the first time I had experienced this phenomenon. And a creeping recognition that top manager clients were generally weak in holding to the carefully sculpted commitments made during my consulting processes, especially when faced with financial challenges.

Challenged by these practical situations I sought professional advice and support — only to fail in finding any! I came across no one who had yet performed comprehensive research to offer understanding on how the relationship to money affects people and organisations - let alone society and civilisation - and how this relation leads towards or against materialisation of goals, success and happiness. I began what I thought would be a short period of “Action Research” (credit for this term goes I believe to Kurt Lewin), experimenting first on my own with my own relation to money, then with small groups. This was revelationary in showing up first the emotional explosiveness inherent in the relation to money and then in the profusion of definitions, concepts and ideas surrounding the topic. The latter often seemed to make intelligent discussion impossible and I started to suspect that the workings of the money system I had been taught as “economics” in university and business school might be little more than a convenient and simplifying “indoctrination”, disguising the fact that the economic and financial systems were now of such global complexity and so out of hand that nobody could really explain in truth how they function… or fail to!

It took almost a decade to crystallise out an intelligent approach to researching these questions. One which would enable self-examination, learning and development to take place and which would answer not just my own questions but be of practical use to any individual, group or organisation. And - very important - also be neutral to the starting point from which any examiner/student was approaching the topic.

Since 1994 this approach has been applied successfully within money seminars for individuals wishing to learn from their own relationship to money and since 1999 within conferences on Money & Business Partnership for those wishing to apply this learning within an organisational or global context. This book is an endeavour to make this same approach easily available in simple written form. And is where we come full circle to the question of soul in the heading of “Money and Soul”. The objective here will have been met if in reflecting on your relation to money with the help of this book you feel freer to realise your soul journey. The criterion for success is the degree to which the information given yields a “freeing” experience, both for the person studying it and for the flow of money under his or her control.

This may sound like heavy, complicated stuff - but

This original research and development took far longer than anticipated - and remains an open subject -because once into it I found myself dealing with an enormous field and a need not just to review how the relationship to money affects us as individuals but also to study the workings of the monetary systems in which we all play a part; along with the relation of our relationship to money to the design of these systems. At this point it may sound complicated but please don’t be overwhelmed by this. I just want to give you a sense of the scope of the approach - it is all encompassing - yet still be true to the promise to keep this book essentially simple.

Money is important, no it isn’t, yes it is, no it isn’t …

Over the years it became clear that money does indeed, as thought by many, play a central role in the success of our endeavours; but - and here’s the nub - in a very different way than is generally conceived. I will not explain here what I mean by this but promise you that you will be surprised by what you find in this book, and if you are a financial expert you will probably be among the most surprised of all! “The Lies” are the quintessence of 17 years research. What they will do is remove some of the common misconceptions about money or the monetary system, each one of which has been unwittingly adopted by many. It is important to stress that no judgements are made in the book concerning the content of these Lies. They are not seen as “bad”. Why they may be important however is that the faulty conceptions contained in some or all of them may just be standing in the way of your realising some of the things you most dearly care about.

How to read this book ?

Like the child’s adoption of the premise that money can buy you anything - through an observation and logical yet insufficient deduction of the detergent transaction - many of these conceptions and illusions were probably picked up early in life and have never been questioned. Together they form a coherent, resilient, self-reinforcing, interlocking “web”. With each misconception revealed you may notice a little AHA shock of recognition and a freeing in your inner space. As this occurs the web starts to disentangle and liberation/relaxation starts to accelerate.

The text is in the form of dialogue and contains a complete process, designed to be read from beginning to end. To get the full essence of the content you are strongly recommended to follow this sequence. And to “pace” your reading. It is purposely in short sections to encourage pauses for reflection and integration. Some of the pages are left white for journal note taking.]

This book is being authored in November 2001 in Polignano, Southern Italy on the Eastern coast 33 kilometers south of the ancient city of Bari. As I sit here in the approaching dusk, typing into my laptop and looking over a misty gray Adriatic sea, not yet knowing exactly what is going to fill these pages, I am honored, humbled and also excited at the thought of our travels as we embark on this personal journey and adventure together.

	Présentation	Foreword	Lie No 1