Over the years, since beginning my work as a healer, I have addressed many of the beliefs surrounding healing work and money – watch this video here for a quick overview. As always, with healing work, there are many layers to unpeel.
Lately, I have been working on healing energetic blockages that have been carried through my lineage, my ancestry, with the main focus on business and money. My money story comes with beliefs like “self-worth” and “being seen”. Looking through my family history, I can see where my great-grandparents, who were landowners in China, fled the Communist regime to arrive in Malaysia, starting again from nothing. Key themes were “sacrifice” and “hard work”, and these are themes that are strong in my Chinese culture too.
That has been my biggest one – the belief that I need to work hard to earn money, and make a living. I was working hard and long hours just to pay bills and feed my family, there wasn’t enough to buy new clothes for me – my “sacrifice” to my family.
This pair of shoes is how bad it got at one stage – these are the pair of shoes I wear daily, on the farm and even to work sometimes.
I live in a First-World country…. What Unconscious messages am I sending out to the Universe?? What belief was I living in terms of self-worth and self-care?
So we have “getting paid money for healing work”, “self-worth”, “being seen”, “hard work” and “sacrifice” as dominant themes in my money story.
Let’s dig deeper. One of the issues I have with money is creditors – people who owe me money in unpaid invoices or they have products on hold but won’t come and pick them up, and this thread links ALL my businesses, including the one I share with my husband. I would feel bad about chasing creditors, or I could see that they are struggling too. So in my world, I have to work hard to have money, and I have people who work hard to chase money too.
I often ask this question when issues like these come up: “Who is the common denominator?”
In this situation, *me*. So I look within, and ask the question, “Why do I struggle with creditors?”
An answer came up recently, and it is so bizarre and weird, but oddly enough, it fits.
My father came from a wealthy family in Johor, a state in Malaysia. His great-grandfather started a business, worked hard, got rich. His son worked in the family business too, and made it even wealthier. And then my grandfather spent it all and mismanaged the business, combined with pressure from “greedy” cousins (so the story goes), so in my mother’s words, “an empire rises and falls in three generations”. Many nuggets of learning here, many beliefs to address!
Anyway, my grandfather passed away when I was 16 years-old, and in clearing his estate, we discovered that my enterprising grandfather, in his later years, was loaning out money with interest. The word “ceti” was used – it’s a Malaysian word for “loan shark”.
I will state it clearly – my grandfather was born into privilege, and in his later years, he used his privilege to make money. I don’t know who he loaned money to, but picture this: my grandfather drove a red sports car, had a “mistress”, and gambled. Did he enable others’ gambling addiction? Perhaps. Did he foster poor money-managing habits? What was his money habits like?
I don’t have those answers. I don’t even know the full picture. My grandfather also gave to charities throughout his life, but the people he loaned money to probably never knew that. That wouldn’t be their thought when he came collecting monies owed.
Shamanic teachings say that thoughts of anger and hatred can turn into curses, and create karmic ties. Is the karma my grandfather created playing out on some level in my own life? I have to say yes, simply because in the past two days, questions of responsible business ownership have been on my mind, in particular offering payment options to customers – do I promote responsible consumerism or consumerism based on fears? Do my products contribute to waste and the landfill, or are they eco-friendly and sustainable? I also see other parallels, including being in position of chasing creditors every month and the relationships that play out in my life.
Why me? Why not either of my brothers or my sister or my cousins?
I don’t know. It has been 5 years since I started looking at healing ancestral blocks, and helping clients heal ancestral ties and karma (see this article I wrote in 2012). If I had a dollar for each time we asked this question, I would be rich 😀
Maybe we simply choose to. And now I choose to heal this karmic patterning so my child(ren) will not carry this pattern in their life.
And I can happily pay for a new pair of shoes for myself without the second-guessing or guilt.
