Ram Dass

Working Through our Attachment to Money
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by Ram Dass

I have met people who seem to be happy with very little, and I’ve met people who seem very unhappy with an awful lot.

The whole concept that more is better is a very deep sickness in this culture.

Some people come through life with a lot of anxiety about starvation and hunger, passed on from their grandfathers two generations back. And so they need a certain security before they’re free enough of their neurosis, or that panic or that fear to be able to be free to do inner work and be productive. Other people can go right along the edge with no savings whatsoever and seem to ride along with it, there’s no general rule.

When people see money as energy and they see that there are karmic effects to holding onto energy and they also see that those karmic effects backfire, then they start to see that part of the responsibility of having energy is learning how to pass it through, learning how to trust, and to keep giving it away.

I have the sense that as your faith gets stronger, you keep needing less and less, and when your faith is flickering, you keep wanting more security. You want to keep hedging your bets against life. But as your faith gets stronger, you just keep letting it go and letting it go.



-Ram Dass