©2003 - 2007 Conscious
Bookkeeping
More and more of us are looking at many areas of our lives through a conscious lens. The area that seems to be the last frontier is the arena of money and bookkeeping. Conscious Bookkeeping is a way to address this last frontier. It sees bookkeeping and one's relationship with money a direct way to learn about oneself and to assist oneself in manifesting a vision.
Conscious Bookkeeping is for anyone that would like to integrate their relationship with money with the rest of their life and the values that they live by. It is for anyone that has been afraid of bookkeeping or simply goes unconscious when the word is mentioned. It is for those that would like to become more financially literate and it is for those who would like to align their intentions with a financial practice for personal and business finances. And lastly, it is for those that would like to understand where they have come from in regards to their money history and to see what particular patterns have been passed down so they can know themselves more and make better choices in the future.Come join us if you are one of those.
In our modern lives, there are hardly any aspects that are not affected by money. How we work with money, how we relate to it, what kind of attitudes and beliefs we have about it, how much or how little we have of it, what type of work we engage in to receive ‘money’ – all of these things affect the very course of our lives. Indeed, money is a fundamental element in daily life. Thus, the more conscious awareness we bring to our multifaceted relationship with money, the better chance we will have of using money as fuel for a fulfilling life. The more we are able to pull back the veils on our relationship with money and truly see how we relate from an objective stance the better we will be able to make clear decisions on how we would like to proceed in all areas that money potentially affects.
Towards this end, Conscious Bookkeeping seeks to open up new possibilities for basing the practice of bookkeeping on your passionate values as a means to manifest the dreams that you hold in the depth of your soul. As the name implies, a foundational theme that Conscious Bookkeeping students tend to walk away with is that a much higher level of consciousness is brought to the many areas of life that money touches. By bringing a greater sense of awareness to these sometimes troubling areas of life, a Conscious Bookkeeping practitioner has the opportunity to be freed from the self-imposed limitations that stem from being averse to the world of money. In other words, bringing a greater sense of consciousness to one’s relationship with money most often tends to free people in ways that bring a greater vitality and excitement about living – a freedom that helps you live a life where you can engage with your soul work and make a comfortable amount of money doing it.
The method of Conscious Bookkeeping accomplishes this, in part, by integrating the pragmatic skills of setting up and maintaining a bookkeeping system with the more psychological and esoteric aspects of our relationship with money. Looking a bit deeper, there are "Three Domains" and "Eleven Elements" that form the structure of the Conscious Bookkeeping philosophy. Have a look below at a brief outline of this structure…
Three Doorways - Gateways
Financial Therapy —
exploring your relationship to money
on a practical, emotional, psychological
and spiritual level
Bookkeeping Training
— learning to set up & maintain
a bookkeeping system for personal &
business- creating a practice!
Life Visioning —
visioning/ taking all the data and creating
and living into a values-based Map of
Intention (aka budget)
Conscious Bookkeeping
Eleven Elements
(These elements/components are what allow us to add the Conscious to the Bookkeeping.)
Looking Back – This is a desire and willingness to honestly look at your money history. This is done with a simple clarity and gentleness for the decisions that have already been made.
Completing Incompletes – Let’s take a deep look at what needs to be forgiven or completed from our past regarding our money exchanges and see how we can best go about that process.
Getting Current – Let’s gather the data to see, truly, what your current assets and your current liabilities are at this time. Also, let’s gather the data to see what you current bottom line/basic needs monthly #’s are so you know your current reality. And, let’s take a deep breath here.
Sacred Vessel – This is an image that I offer people to work with. A conscious bookkeeping system is potentially a sacred vessel, a sacred organizational system/foundation that can assist in bringing down your dreams and visions that hang out in the heavenly spheres. Bookkeeping is a way to merge heaven with earth. It is a way to manifest your dreams in physical form and give them a body/vessel to hold them in.
Values – You create a bookkeeping system based on your deepest values. You actually name your income and expense categories based on what is of true meaning to you so that you can begin integrating your money and the rest of your life. Bookkeeping is potentially a political and spiritual practice. We can create the world we envision by bringing in and spending our money in accordance with our values. That is how we make a political statement and vote for the world we want to create.
Intention – You use bookkeeping as a means to set intentions and goals for yourself. In Conscious Bookkeeping, this process is called creating "Maps of Intention," (these are similar to "budgets" yet they add a profound sense of dimension to an otherwise flat process.)
Practice – This is an ongoing practice (daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly) that keeps you in touch with every aspect of where your life touches money and allows you to stay committed to a path of intention based in financial awareness and literacy and clear life visioning.
Self Inquiry – This bookkeeping system is used as a mirror, which can show you hidden aspects of your self, or personality, in all areas of your life.
Financial Transparency – The first task is to be willing to be transparent to ourselves regarding our numbers and our current financial situation. Our second task, when appropriate, is to begin to share with each other our financial statements so that we can reveal how we receive and spend our money, which ultimately reveals what our values are and what type of world we are attempting to create. Imagine if the whole world shared true financial statements with each other. By the way, in Conscious Bookkeeping, the teacher always shares her numbers (her P&L) as a teaching tool and as self-modeling.
Stay in the Body – We will do our best to stay in our body, be present and feel our sensations and feelings as we engage in our bookkeeping/finances and all areas of our life.
Chocolate! – Homeopathic doses of chocolate when engaging with your bookkeeping. We are joking here, somewhat. Chocolate is whatever your version of celebration is, in moderation of course. It is good to pause and celebrate the practice of life itself and the places along the way…
Updated June 18, 2007
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