Debt & Commitment

This is really a corollary to my previous post, 'The Shadow of Money'.

In Peter Koenig's book, '30 Lies About Money' lie no.3 is 'Debt is Bad'. How many of us who are in debt or who have been in debt have judged ourselves harshly for being in that situation? Equally, how many of us have sought to avoid such self-judgment by making the whole economic system wrong and laying the blame at money's door - 'root of all evil' etc, etc.

As I've shared in my own story, I have made the economic system wrong, made myself weak, powerless and brought upon myself situations in my life that have been humiliating to reinforce that. While I had the confidence to borrow freely and go into debt, I did not take on the responsibility of being in debt. I did not really take on the full implications that a debt is a commitment. Or at least, if I did, then I was manifesting my terrible fear of commitment, that being committed might take away my freedom. (I now realise, in a much more embodied way, that commitment is freedom!)

In the LETS (Local Exchange Trading Scheme) system, which uses local, non monetary currency as a medium of exchange, the concept of 'debt' is reframed as 'commitment'. Basically if you have extracted more benefit from other people's services than you have offered, then you are in a relationship not of debt, but of commitment.

Whereas in LETS systems, this commitment tends to be honoured as such, with money it often does not. Perhaps this is because the participants recognise the value of the exchange and the value of the people offering the services, whereas money has become something onto which we individually and collectively project our shadow. So we either demonise it, worship it, disrespect it, over-respect it and so on.

But I like this idea of debt being aligned to commitment. Certainly in my own case, when I went bankrupt, I was not committed to the debt that I had and thus at some fundamental level I was not committed to my own empowerment. Basically, when I discovered the bankruptcy option I saw a way out - I saw away of avoiding facing my shadow. Actually it was a way of me avoiding stepping into my power. I didn't respect money and I didn't trust myself to be in relationship with it. Actually in a material sense, I felt worthless, impotent, incapable. I wanted to deny the energy that I had generated by going into debt - I suppressed that energy when I could have drawn from it. I'm not making myself wrong here, because I've definitely got the lesson. And the way I have responded to the debt I accumulated for my MA course is testimony to that.

Perhaps we can begin to relate to debt as an energetic charge that commits us in relationship to the world around us. That might be a good way for us to move beyond this idea that debt is bad or wrong.

I welcome your thoughts on this...

love John x