Money, or in general wealth!!!! Many would wonder what this topic is doing in a blog called Sacred Duality, whose very spirit is an invitation towards meditation and love. It is natural that this creates a bit of doubt, even resistance. Money doesn’t seem to belong here. For a long time, even I saw it that way.
A thousand years of spirituality, and it is rare to see money being looked at deeply. It is almost as if money is silently assigned to a different category of life – something for businessmen, for practical people, for those who are concerned with survival and societal success. And everything subtle – art, music, love, relationships, knowledge- is placed on the other side. So, naturally, most people who are drawn towards the subtle begin to ignore money. They assume it is for materialistic people. And spiritual people, they believe, must rise above this pursuit of wealth.
I used to think exactly like this. For a long time, I discarded money without even properly looking at it. I had already concluded that it could not possibly give me what I was truly seeking. It felt superficial, almost beneath the kind of life I wanted to explore. So I ignored it, both externally and internally.
But something kept bugging me always. Whenever money came up in conversation (investment, saving, wealth), I would feel a strange discomfort. Sometimes subtle and sometimes strong. A kind of fear, anxiety. As if I were simply trying to avoid the entire topic. I remained dismissive of wealth; at the same time, I carried a quiet fantasy: if I had enough money, I would never have to think about it again. If I never had to think about money, I could finally focus on real things – love, relationships, knowledge and inner exploration. So I continued my exploration, which led me to encounter my own avoidance around wealth. What I saw was the inner conflict; I was avoiding looking into my relationship with wealth, and at the same time, I was fantasising about having a lot of money.
Today, my view on money is very different from what it was even a few years ago. Not because I studied finance or became interested in wealth in a conventional sense, but because I started to see that my inner journey and my relationship with money are not separate. I see how deeply my search for truth, love or life, whatever you name it, is entangled with wealth.
So, in this blog post, let me bring awareness to you around wealth, something that you can look into within you, outside of you, and meditate upon.
The Myth: Money is not spiritual
There is a deeply rooted idea that money, wealth, and material life are not spiritual. And if you look closely, this idea is not as ancient as we assume, especially in the context of the Indian subcontinent. The popularisation of the monkhood as the only way to truth, God, was done by two prominent figures in history. Adi Shankaracharya and Buddha. The monkhood – leaving behind material pursuits – money, wealth and pleasure become closely associated with the search for truth.
Because of this, over the last 800–1000 years in India, a deep-seated unconscious belief has formed that spirituality is somehow against wealth.
Another thing that came along with this was that men and women started pursuing spirituality separately, not together. Monkhood focused on an individual pursuit of truth, often through celibacy or abstaining from sexual pleasure. And this deep-seated rejection of sexuality is perhaps manifested in Indian society as the unconscious idea that materialistic pleasure, wealth, marriage, and relationships between men and women are all against the pursuit of truth.
However, if we go back to the roots of Hindu philosophy, something very different you find. The Tri-dev, which we call, can be loosely translated as the Trinity Gods. The three Gods were couples, actually. Trinity is actually one man and one woman. They are always together.
The first is Brahma and his wife Saraswati. Brahma is the creator of the universe; he creates everything we see around us. But to create, he needs his woman. Saraswati is the Goddess of knowledge. You can only create when there is knowledge. That is why Brahma is with Saraswati; with her, creation becomes possible.
The second is Vishnu and his wife, Lakshmi. His function is to maintain the universe created by Brahma. It is his responsibility to ensure that what has been created is sustained in a balanced way. And to do this, he needs his wife, Lakshmi. Lakshmi is the Goddess of wealth and prosperity. To maintain and sustain anything, you need wealth. So Vishnu is capable of maintaining this vast universe by using Lakshmi.
The third is Shiva and his wife Parvati or Shakti. Shiva is the god of destruction and annihilation. He destroys the universe that was created by Brahma and maintained by Vishnu when the time is right. It is his function. And to do this, he needs his wife, Shakti – pure energy. So Shiva uses the infinite energy source, Shakti, to destroy the universe.
All things that are created must be maintained, and when the time comes, they must be destroyed when the creation has served its purpose. That is the philosophy behind the three functions of the Tri-dev.
Now, the surprising thing is that all the gods are inherently a couple.
The function is given to the masculine, and the energy is the feminine. Think of a man as a hollow shape of a specific function, but what fills that space and brings that function into actual manifested reality is the woman.
To create in life, you need, and you will use knowledge.
To maintain and prosper in life, you need, and you will use wealth.
To destroy and remove what is no longer necessary, you need and you will use shakti.
So the first understanding here is to see wealth as energy, and it is feminine.
And to truly have a healthy relationship with money or wealth, you have to first look into your own relationship with your energy. That means your relationship with your body, your emotions, and your mind. From this, you can start an inner exploration of wealth and slowly start walking on the path of love.
But before that, we must first understand how human society, in general, looks at money and wealth.
The Half View of Society on Wealth
The Poor – Rich
You can say that the whole human society runs on money. It is deeply tied to our sense of safety, status, and power. That is why there is this great, never-ending race, a race to win at wealth. Almost everyone, in some way, is part of this race, either consciously or unconsciously. And here is where the real problem lies, or rather, it is born out of this half-understanding of wealth itself.
Have you ever wondered why, even today, there are people still suffering in poverty? Why do some beg on the streets for money? Why do some people literally get down on their knees and ask for help because they have to pay the next bill? Why do some work for the whole day just to earn one or two dollars a day in developing countries? Why, with all our scientific development and technological progress, are people still dying of hunger and malnutrition? Why do some lose their lives simply because they could not afford a surgery?
These are the poor people, as society defines them.
Now look at the other side: the rich. There are people whose children’s school fees for a single day are higher than most poor people’s entire monthly income. Why do some spend money so carelessly, as if it does not matter at all? Why do they waste it on building huge, huge buildings with swimming pools, fancy everything, and yet barely ever enjoy or live in them? Why do some stuff their homes with dozens of cars and yet rarely ever drive most of them?
Why this massive disparity? Why do the rich keep getting richer while the poor keep getting poorer?
Many financial experts, intellectuals, and ordinary people naively believe it is just a practical problem, something that can be solved with better policies, more jobs, or smarter economics. But here we are, after more than a thousand years of human civilisation, and it has not been solved.
And the truth is, it can never be solved that way.
Because let me show you clearly: this is not a practical problem at all. It is an emotional distortion, a wrong understanding of life itself.
The whole relationship between the poor and the rich is not just about money. It is actually a very subtle and deeply rooted power play. It is about power. You see, the rich can only truly feel rich when there are poor people around them to compare themselves with. And the poor can only feel poor when there are rich people around them to remind them of their place.
Think about it carefully.
What does a rich person actually feel when they see poverty? There is often a deep sense of pride and superiority. A quiet inner feeling that says, “Look how much better I am.” A sense of being above, of being more powerful. And whether they admit it or not, there is a part of them that wants to keep feeling this way. On the other side, poor people feel guilt, shame, and helplessness when they are near the rich.
It becomes a toxic relationship because both sides are feeding off each other emotionally, even if they are not aware of it.
How does this toxicity keep growing?
The rich keep trying to get richer and richer because there is always a higher level of wealth to chase, something that will make them feel even more powerful. For example, imagine a millionaire at a party who suddenly finds himself surrounded by billionaires. In that moment, he instantly feels helpless, powerless, and poor again. So he rushes back into the race to get even richer. Poor people are caught in the exact same race. They want to get rich because they believe it will make them feel a little less helpless, a little less worthless.
From an emotional standpoint, both the rich and the poor are not so different at all. Both are desperately trying to win this race because they think that if they don’t win, they will feel weak and helpless forever. So this whole race is actually a power race, not a money race. The relationship between the poor and the rich stays toxic because the only way a rich person can feel truly powerful is by doing everything possible to make others feel how little they have. And poor people, having already accepted that they are “below” in this race, assume they are worthless. To keep proving this painful assumption to themselves, they keep looking at rich people as superior to them who make them feel even more worthless and helpless.
In fact, the whole society is built and maintained in this way, to keep everyone living inside this toxic relationship, generation after generation.
Money: Men and Women
There is a hidden and sometimes not-so-hidden rule in society that, as a man, if you have money, you can have women. It is because money is tied to status, power and safety. It is not just about money itself, but what money represents in the eyes of others: a sign of capability, control, and security. This is something most people understand at some level, even if they don’t consciously admit it.
In today’s era of feminism, political correctness, and cancel culture, most men and women won’t admit this openly just to appear nice and evolved. There is a strong tendency to deny such patterns because they don’t sound right socially. But if you look deeper, without trying to appear good or correct, you will realise this is still a living truth buried in the unconscious mind of most men and women when it comes to money. In many cultures, it is rarely shown openly and is often masked under more refined behaviours, while in some other cultures, it is much more visible and direct. Yet the underlying pattern remains the same.
There is a deep reason why the entire societal race of men around money, status, and power exists. It is not just about survival or comfort. Somewhere, consciously or unconsciously, there is this belief that once you have money, you will have women, that money will bring attraction, validation, and access. This belief may not always be spoken, but it operates quietly in the background and drives a lot of behaviour.
Here is another truth: most women will never admit this to your face, but they, too, carry this conditioning deep in their unconscious. It is because money, for many women, equals a feeling of safety. It represents stability, protection, and the assurance that life will be taken care of. So this dynamic is not one-sided. It exists on both sides, even if it shows up differently.
This is why you start to see that men are running this race for money because they want more women and more sex, and women, consciously or unconsciously, enable this behaviour by responding more favourably to men who have money and status. Both men and women contribute to the existence of this race, even while criticising it. Both are, in a way, trapped in the same unconscious pattern.
Men run after wealth, thinking it will bring them women. Women complain about the race and the materialistic men it creates, yet they continue to respond more favourably to men who have money and status. So both sides keep feeding the same distortion without really seeing their own role in it.
The whole work of spirituality and meditation is to break these societal patterns around money. It is about breaking this toxic relational pattern of poor and rich that lives in your unconscious mind, and also breaking this unconscious chase where the pursuit of money is not really about money, but about something deeper that is driving it. In this deprogramming of these societal patterns, you arrive at something completely different, something that is not driven by fear, comparison, or unconscious desire. This deprogramming is the real work. It is something to be experienced, not just understood as an idea. I will explore this in the next section.
Awareness: The Work
Most people who try to change their view on money, or life in general, try to find a philosophy, idea, technique, or some form of strategy to improve. However, what I am suggesting is something very different, dropping all philosophy, all ideas, and simply coming to a mind that is empty, a mind that has no fixed philosophy to follow. And that is precisely what deprogramming is about: arriving at a mind that has no fixed idea about life. One might ask why they should deprogram themselves, and by the end of this blog post, I hope it will be clear.
The only way to deprogram your own mind of any pattern is to simply start watching and paying attention. So the practice is simple: keep paying attention to your thoughts, emotions, and actions in life, continuously, all the time. No thought, no emotion, no action should happen without you knowing that it is happening. That is awareness, or watchfulness.
And when this awareness or watchfulness starts to turn towards your own patterns around money, a transformation begins to happen in your relationship with money. I am writing a few things from my own journey and experience to show you how this works.
Breaking the Poor-Rich Emotional Structure
You will understand how awareness works to dissolve this societal pattern and the harmful relational patterns between the poor and the rich.
If you are a poor person, whenever you meet or interact with rich people, you might start feeling less inferior or ashamed. And if you look a bit deeper, you will see that this is an automatic response of your mind or nervous system. It is happening unconsciously in you, without your control.
Now the work is simple: keep watching and experiencing these emotions within.
Slowly, you will start to realise that you don’t have to feel this way all the time. Yes, sometimes you may feel less, because there are things you cannot have. But that does not mean you must carry this sense of inferiority all the time. The more and more you become aware of these emotions, the more they start to lose their unconscious grip over you. Try experimenting with this. Stay with it. And slowly, you will see how it actually works within you.
Now, what really happens when this toxic relationship pattern of rich and poor starts to dissolve within you is very interesting. Suppose you are a poor person. Once you stop feeling guilty, ashamed, or inferior about it, something changes. You start to take more responsibility. You start making more relaxed and clear decisions regarding whatever money you have. There is less internal struggle, less emotional noise. And that clarity itself feels good; it has its own strength.
With this, people who are richer than you won’t be able to derive the same pleasure or pride in your presence. Because their pride, dominance, and even happiness were partly coming from the emotional response of poor people around them feeling inferior, ashamed, and less. When that response is no longer there, something shifts. This emotional silence of a deprogrammed poor person makes the rich person feel a bit strange, even uncomfortable, because they don’t feel the usual sense of being “bigger” anymore. And slowly, they start to realise that they are in the presence of someone who is not participating in this game.
In a way, it invites them to deprogram as well.
Similarly, when a rich person starts to deprogram his own emotional responses, his pride and sense of dominance around poor people start to disappear. And when this happens, poor people who interact with him don’t feel inferior anymore. They feel more relaxed. They sense that even though this person is rich, he is seeing them as equals. That itself creates a different kind of space. It invites them to drop their own shame, guilt, and inferiority around money.
This is the real revolution of awareness.
If you are poor, rich people can no longer emotionally dominate you or make you feel inferior. And if you are rich and deprogrammed, poor people no longer feel small in your presence; they feel they are in front of someone who sees them as an equal.
And this is where something deeper is realised. That we humans are beyond this societal game of money. That our existence itself is something to be valued, regardless of how much we have or how much we don’t have.
However, I want to be clear here, I am not suggesting that you simply accept this as a good or morally right idea, by assuming that every human being is valuable just by their existence. That would again just be another belief. What I am pointing towards is something else. I want you to look into your own unconscious mind and start becoming aware of what is actually happening within you. And out of this awareness, a day will come when you don’t just believe this, you see it. You experience it as something real, something alive. Not as an assumption, but as a direct experience.
Flow of Money and Energy
When someone comes from a poor background, we usually assume that if I save enough money, I will feel safe. And I think most people, when they operate unconsciously from poor backgrounds, operate with this mindset that I have to save money. It comes from the old pain of not having enough money, so when you start to have money, you feel a bit safe. And from that, a belief slowly forms that if I keep saving, I will always feel safe. This fear of becoming poor again leads to saving money or putting money in a bank account, where it just stays idle. Over time, your attention gets stuck there, you keep looking at how much you are saving, how much you have, how much you will need in the future. The behaviour comes from a fundamental assumption that money is scarce and that safety comes only from holding on to it.
I did this for a while, but slowly I started observing something. Even if I saved money consistently, I did not feel safe in my body or mind around money. That expected feeling of security was not really there. This made me realise that I must be missing something. And that awareness led me to look deeper into the fear in this area. Slowly, I began to see that I was not letting money flow. I was not allowing this energy, this feminine nature, to move. I was keeping it stuck in a bank account out of fear. And once I started seeing this fear clearly, something shifted; money slowly started to feel like something that can flow, rather than something that must be held all the time tightly.
Now I am realising that a portion of our wealth should be used for safety, that is, saving. That part is necessary and has its place. But another portion of our wealth must be out in the world, doing something, being used, creating something, supporting life. In practice, what that means is that a portion of money must be out in the world as investment, or moving in the world to create something out of it. So the fundamental learning for me is that a portion of our wealth and money must flow in life. And from this flow, there is a different kind of feeling, a sense of both safety and aliveness, even a quiet excitement that all the money parked in bank accounts cannot give.
So we have to look within our own mind and ask: what fear is keeping my own feminine energy, which is manifested as wealth in my life, stuck? And once you start becoming aware of this fear, something natural happens. The fear does not have to be forced away; it slowly starts to loosen. It begins to dissolve into something more alive and flowing. At the same time, it is important to understand that the fear is not completely wrong. It is very legitimate; it comes from real experiences. But the work of awareness is to loosen this grip of fear, so that money as energy can become a bit more alive in our life, not just something we hold, but something that can move and participate in life.
The beauty of inner work is that I am not suggesting or giving any financial advice on how you should move your money in the outside world. What I am suggesting is that you look within you, what fears in your mind are keeping your energy stuck. Once that fear dissolves, the money or your energy starts flowing naturally without any tricks or financial advice, effortlessly.
Respecting the energy, feminine and money
Amount of Money
There is a general assumption that the amount of money is the only important measure of how wealthy you are. Although it is partly true, it is not totally true. Along with how much money you have, it is also very important how you are spending or managing your money. In society, you will easily find lists of the top 10 richest people, rankings based purely on how much money they have. But you will never find a list of the top 10 people who manage money properly, who truly understand how to use it, respect it, and extract the right value from it.
That itself shows what society values, only the amount, not the relationship with money. And because the whole society is attached to this idea that only the amount of money defines your wealth, most people fall into this trap without even realising it.
For example, take a poor person and a rich person. Both go to buy a small bag from a roadside shop. The shopkeeper tells both of them that it will cost 10 dollars. But the poor person negotiates because he feels the bag is not worth 10 dollars, and he manages to buy it for 8 dollars. On the other hand, the rich person, without negotiating, simply gives 10 dollars and buys the bag.
Now imagine both of them meet later and talk about the price they paid. I can guarantee you that even if the rich person has a lot of money, he will still feel bad that he paid 2 dollars extra for the same bag. Why?
Because as much as the amount of money matters, it also matters whether you are truly getting the right value for what you are spending. This is something very basic, but most people overlook it. When you start seeing this in your own life, it brings a shift in how you relate to money.
If you are spending money and consistently getting proper value out of it, wherever you go, you feel safer and more relaxed. There is a quiet confidence that, whatever amount of money you have, you will be able to use it properly. That you won’t be cheated, and that you won’t misuse your own wealth.
But if you are not able to do this, if you are not able to extract the right value from the money you spend, then something feels off. It feels like your money, your energy, is being disrespected.
So wealth is not just about how much you have, but also about how consciously and respectfully you are using what you have.
Boundaries
You can only truly use your own money and wealth when you have healthy boundaries. Without boundaries, you can’t really do this properly. Because if you don’t have boundaries, your decisions around money are not coming from clarity; they are coming from pressure, comparison, or guilt.
For example, suppose you are not very rich, and your friends are a bit richer than you. In such situations, you need to have the clarity and strength to tell your friends that you cannot afford to go to a certain restaurant or trip, and say it without feeling guilty or ashamed. This is very important. Because if you don’t have that boundary, two things usually happen: either you spend more than you should just to fit in, or you don’t spend, and then you sit with guilt and shame for not having enough. In both cases, there is no peace in your relationship with money.
The other day, I was having lunch with my family in a restaurant, and I was going to pay for the food. Someone ordered a salad that would only cost around 30 cents or 30 INR, which, if you compare, is negligible compared to the final bill. Still, I told them not to order it, because they had already ordered two of them, and I knew they were not going to finish it. And I was right, they didn’t even finish the first two salads. For me, it was not about 30 cents. It was not about saving money in that moment. It mattered more that the food and the money would go to waste. That did not feel right to me. So I said no.
This is where boundaries come in. Boundaries are not just about saying no to big expenses. They are also about having clarity in small decisions. It is about knowing what feels right and what doesn’t, and acting on it without being influenced by others.
So boundaries are a kind of revolution in managing money. We have to have clarity within to say no to what does not feel right, what is not a correct expenditure, what feels like a misuse or disrespect of our money. At the same time, we should also have the capacity to say no to things we cannot afford, without shame or guilt.
And equally important, we should have the clarity to say yes, yes to what we can actually afford, spend, enjoy, and fully utilise. Because respecting money is not only about restricting yourself, it is also about allowing yourself to use your money properly, where it makes sense.
So boundaries create balance. Without them, money either controls you or you misuse it. With them, you start to have a more conscious and respectful relationship with your own money and energy.
Again, my point is not that you should learn boundaries or memorise a few tricks on how to have them. My suggestion is that you start becoming aware of your inner mindsets and emotions that are actually holding you back from having boundaries. In a way, you already have a natural sense of what is right for you. You are already healthy in your silence. It is your conditioning, your programming, that has distorted your boundaries. So everything I have written here is not something I learned from books or techniques, but simply from becoming aware of my own thoughts and emotions.
Underspending and Overspending
The people who are poor, when they start to get a bit of money, tend to underspend. Because they are afraid of losing their corpus or the total amount of savings they have. This comes out of fear. The old memory of not having enough money is still active, so even when money comes, there is a tendency to hold on to it very tightly and not use it fully.
And when someone becomes rich, the opposite starts to happen. They begin to spend money as if they are throwing it around, without any real value attached to it. This, too, comes out of fear. Because most people who overspend recklessly are almost always trying to show others that they are rich. And this comes from a deeper fear, that without money, they are worthless or have no value.
So both behaviours, underspending and overspending, come from fear, just in different forms. And both are actually disrespectful to money and to your own energy.
If you underspend, you are not using your money and energy to their full potential. You are holding it back out of fear, not allowing it to participate in your life. And if you overspend carelessly, you are almost abusing your money and energy, using it to show off or to compensate for something within you.
In both cases, the energy feels disrespected. It is not fully valued, not fully used, not fully appreciated or respected. Something always feels off, either too tight or too loose.
So the real problem of life becomes this:
How can I manage my money in such a way that I neither underspend it nor save it purely out of fear, not utilising it fully? And at the same time, how can I manage my money so that I don’t abuse it, misuse it, but instead value it and respect it?
And in trying to solve this problem, you will come to see that you can’t solve this using your head. You can’t solve this with your mind. You have to come to your heart – to the space of love.
The Space of Heart
The reason for extreme ideas, philosophies, and behaviours that you see in yourself or in society is that most of us live in our heads, not in our hearts. We live through concepts, beliefs, and rigid ways of thinking, rather than through a deeper, more direct experience of life.
That is why everything becomes extreme.
We either overspend money or we underspend it.
We either abuse and disrespect money, or we don’t use it at all.
We either believe money brings women, love, and everything, or we rigidly say it should not be this way.
We either think money is power, or we think money is completely worthless.
We keep moving between these extremes.
And all of these extremes are pointing towards a deeper problem in our lives that we are living too much in our ideas, and not enough in our hearts.
The heart is a very different space. It is the space where extremes don’t fight each other, but come together. It is the space where life, energy and feminine can flow fully within you. It is not rigid, it is not divided, and you naturally move towards balance. In this space, your wealth, feminine and energy feel different. It feels used, but not misused. It feels expressed, but not abused. It gives you a certain sense of power, but at the same time, you are not dependent on it for your sense of self. It flows without blockage.
And in this space, you also start to see something clearly: that society is not completely wrong, but it is not completely right either. It is half right. And because we take it as absolute, we fall into extremes.
You cannot truly understand this just by reading. Because reading is still happening in your mind. It becomes another idea, another concept. But the work of awareness is to slowly deprogram this mind itself, so that you can relax into your heart.
And for that, you have to start experimenting within yourself. You have to look at your own patterns, your emotions, your thought processes around money and wealth in your own life. Not theoretically, but directly, as they happen within you.
And slowly, you will begin to realise that the whole work is not really about money at all. It is about awakening to a deeper relationship with your own energy, your own feminine, and learning to live in that space of the heart where you can meet life as a whole.
From here, two paths become visible.
You can use money or wealth to continue playing the games of society, chasing, comparing, proving, and accumulating.
Or you can use money as a doorway into meditation, into something much more alive, much more intimate, much more real.
This is something I am still experimenting with. I am still looking into it. But slowly, over time, I can see that my relationship with money is changing. I feel safer, more relaxed, and more at ease with wealth than I did before.
If something in you feels stirred, don’t just read it. Try it. Live it. Start becoming aware of yourself. Let it disturb your old patterns.
That is where the real revolution begins.
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