40 – Breaking the Money Spell: A Fresh Look at Wealth and Happiness

0:01Lea WernliHello and welcome to Time for You. I love this time for us. I'm with my friend and colleague, Shelia Stevens.

0:13Shailia StephensHello, hello, hello, hello.

0:16Lea WernliAnd I'm Lea Wernle. And I know it is a bit strange, but we really, really do enjoy the time together. And but always we, we want to make it a good time for you too. So thank you that you're listening, that you're spending time with us and time for you. So welcome.

0:40Shailia StephensOh, Lea, that was such a good welcome. She's so good at welcoming. Lea, you can do that all the time.

0:49Lea WernliYeah.

0:49Shailia StephensSo Lea is still in Switzerland. We, because we were doing a couple episodes in a row on the same day. So I'm seeing the reflection of the mountains on her. her face in her little podcast studio still, and I'm near Frankfurt am Main in Germany. So, Leah, I told you I had a topic that I'm a little bit nervous to talk about. Like, I don't know why I'm so nervous about it, but I don't like talking about money. And I'm a business coach. Like, I talk about literally money every, at least once a week with my clients, like putting together their business model, looking at their revenue and profit, looking at how they can create more income, looking at all of the things that hold us back from having like sort of a fulfilling financial life when it comes to being a coach in our business.

1:39And so it's so weird that I don't like to talk about this in public, but I'm going to do it today. And the reason is I— we have an upcoming webinar, not me myself, but, you know, I'm involved in the 3P in Africa initiative. And right now, every second Tuesday of the month, we have an African Educator Series. which is the idea, the simple idea that not the white people are speaking to the Africans and telling them about the Three Principles, but rather the Africans are telling the Africans about the Three Principles.

2:15And they choose their own topics, they choose their own guests, they try to find things that are relevant for the people who are following them, which are like— we have sometimes up to 500 people live on Facebook that are in Africa listening. So it's Makes sense, right? To have topics that are relevant. And go figure, even in the villages of a refugee camp in Africa, money is a huge topic. So this week on Tuesday, so that's tomorrow as we're speaking today, the topic is 3P and money.

2:54Lea WernliHmm.

2:55Shailia StephensAnd I've been preparing in the background a little bit with Phillips, who's, um, he's, he hosts the show with, uh, Salivia. And I like to help him get prepared by just asking him some questions that he can reflect on. And so when he goes to the call, he's had a, you know, already a thought about some stuff. And we kind of act as colleagues in that way. And he sent over some thoughts that he was having, and I said, well, what do you think about this or that? And so I thought it'd be interesting today to kind of explore the same questions that I asked Philip today, but I wanted to give it some context, if it's okay with you, Leah, I might talk a bit.

3:37Lea WernliYeah.

3:39Shailia StephensSo, well, one of the things that I really— and this is going to sound totally naive, like I lived on this planet for 50 years before I recognized this, but when we talk about money in the Western world, we are coming from a completely different standard, right? Like Leah, you're over in the Swiss Alps having a family vacation in a, like you said, a millionaire apartment. Leah's always like attracting these beautiful places to stay. She's like, look at this, it's amazing.

4:14We have, we have a high level of, of availability to resources and money and material wealth, hedonism, right? We have like all of these things. And despite the fact that we have more food than we can eat. And that's why we're all on Ozempic these days, like, you know, the weight loss drug. Or despite the fact that we all have— I don't know, literally, this is going to sound terrible, but I don't know any single person in Germany or Switzerland that doesn't have a cleaning help to come into their house once a week.

4:49Lea WernliMe too.

4:50Shailia StephensYeah. And watching myself and my friends and my colleagues and my clients get into a tizzy about money, despite our luxury vacations, despite our cleaning household help, and all of the things. It's crazy. And yeah, do you want to say anything about that, Leah?

5:13Lea WernliDon't— No, no.

5:15Shailia StephensYeah. And then when you go to a refugee camp, um, which I do right now, like virtually about once a week, latest once every 2 weeks, to teach there, you know, I've got people in this third world situation, and they're not just in a third world situation where there's kind of a lack of food, a lack of employment across the countries of places like Uganda or Kenya. I think Kenya has an unemployment rate right now of 64%, which is just unbelievable for us in the Western world.

5:52There's such a big gap between how we are living and what's available to us and how they're living and what's available to them. But then if you take it to the next level, and you're in a refugee camp where there is super minimal amounts of food available. A lot of the people that we speak with every week or every other week are starving. I mean, they have many days where they're not eating food. They do get allotment of money somehow. I still haven't figured out how that allotment of money takes place, but they do get some sort of resources because there are markets where trade happens and where they do exchange money for, you know, goods, whether it's soap, whether it's eggs or vegetables.

6:33vegetables or things like that. Um, the firewood they usually collect, and a lot of stuff they can just get out of nature as well. But money is on everyone's mind. Um, it's this idea that if we had it, we would be happier.

6:57Lea WernliMm-hmm.

6:58Shailia StephensRight? Yeah, go ahead.

7:01Lea WernliThat's the idea that has led us to have this situation on this planet right now, because it's this false idea that every person, 97% probably, who is living on this Earth has indoctrinated And it's crazy. It's crazy. That's the one thing that we are so afraid to get rid of as an idea.

7:38Shailia StephensYeah.

7:41Lea WernliAnd it's the one thing that catches almost every person that I know.

7:50Shailia StephensYeah. Yeah, yeah. It's like a sort of god. It's like a deity. It's this, it's this incredibly powerful thought.

8:03Lea WernliYes, it's like a spell. I was reflecting on that, Julia, and I really felt the spell. I mean, you know, I'm a witch in a way. I have been. I love my name as a coach because I can do whatever the heck I do inside the coaching container. And I loved it that I didn't have to speak about all the other stuff. But I could feel the spell of if you have it, then you're happy. If you have it, then you're secure. If you have more, then it's better. And I mean, when my head gets involved, I even can't speak about it.

9:09I only can speak about it from my heart, because who am I? to speak about that if there are people who haven't got enough and can't eat. And what the F, that's just insane. And of course, everyone on this planet should be fed and having a decent life as a human being or an animal or like a living creature on, on planet Earth. But it's that spell that causes the— that there are people who don't have the necessities. It's that spell that causes insanely rich people thinking that that's not enough and that they need more.

10:03And That's why this understanding is still and always a ground for me to stand on and to speak from there, because it's not true. And I just love to hear from you because I know that they've seen like nuggets of, it's not true. I can be happy no matter what. I can be peaceful no matter what.

10:40Shailia StephensYeah.

10:42Lea WernliAnd that truth opens up something, and it's not fair, and it's not enough, and it's systemic shit going on, and it's just— that's all putting on the side. I'm totally aware of that part, but that you can start to see it for yourself, no matter how rich or poor or how much you have available resources available for you, that if you're able to start to see that opens you up To choose to create more resources, to, to being able to, to, to nourish yourself or whatever is at stake for you.

11:40And it's also hopeful that everyone who sees that becomes a, a kinder person in a way. To themselves and, and for the Earth. And it's like me too, I couldn't talk about it, Celia, because it was just a feeling. It was just something I saw. And I'm, I'm quite bad at certain aspects of money still. I was really bad before the principle principles. And I was— I'm still quite bad in, in the skill department and the systems who help to have it, like, for your pension or whatever.

12:29I'm learning. That's not, that's not what I mean. I mean, if you really start to see that no matter what, the safety, the love, the being happy is available to you without the money, you get more resilient to the capitalism and the marketing and you need more and that and whatever to be. And I mean, I would never dare to speak what it could do to people in the refugee, refugee camps, do you say?

13:12Shailia StephensYeah.

13:13Lea WernliBut what I see is you get more creative, and there is a space that opens up to find solutions for everyone. And that's just so hopeful for me that that's available for them to start to see. And it doesn't— that's not the solution for the problem that we have, but it is a possibility that we can start to find solutions.

13:48Shailia StephensYeah.

13:51Lea WernliSo what did come to mind for you? And what did you hear when Philip was talking about it?

14:01Shailia StephensYeah, yeah. Well, first, thank you for sharing your thoughts and your feelings with me, Leah. I love that, what you said. And yeah, let me just try. I don't even— I'm just going to attempt. It's my first time to talk about it, so I'm just going to attempt to talk about what I'm seeing there and what I feel about it. And I'm not there every day, you know. I'm not on the ground like Phillips and the team. I'm not living there with the people. So sometimes also a lot of things that that I see are romanticized in a way, right?

14:38Because I go into these spaces where I'm teaching the 3 Principles and Phillips is translating and Harry and the team have been there for, you know, 2 years now going— this is our 3rd year in 3P in Africa altogether. And they've already been learning a lot. They've been seeing a lot, you know, and the love, the appreciation, the presence of the people that that also what comes in my direction is so overwhelmingly positive that it's sometimes easy to romanticize the situation that's going on there.

15:11I don't know if I'd survive a day in their shoes, you know. But what I think is so interesting about this conversation, when we look at the situation that they're in, is there's probably not anyone coming to help them. And what I mean by that is, I don't mean from the Three Principles perspective, like our team is there on the ground with them. I mean, we can't get to everybody. It's 130,000 people in the refugee camps right now. We've reduced from 9 villages to 5 just because the team was spread so thin and to keep the understanding strong in the places where it's most accepted and where the people are growing the most.

15:51So you can't get to everybody. But it's the oldest refugee camp, or one of the oldest refugee camps in the world. People sometimes were born there in the '50s or '60s, and they're living there in 3rd, 4th, 5th generation, you know. Some of them are not getting out, Leah. Some, some, maybe there's nobody coming. Maybe the, maybe the resources are always going to be minimal. Maybe there's, maybe there's no, there's no money coming. And maybe there's not even any amount of creativity that they could have to open themselves up to finding a way to get it.

16:31Lea WernliMm-hmm.

16:32Shailia StephensAnd so literally, you're looking at a situation where how you understand that life is lived from the inside out, it is the one and most powerful thing that you have to change your circumstance. And it is watching them come up after I've had a teaching and sit in the blue chair and say, I was at the market yesterday, like whatever, whatever the market is that they have. And I looked at the money in my hand and I, and I thought of my 8 children at home.

17:11Lea WernliMm-hmm.

17:12Shailia StephensAnd I, I barely have anything to, to get. what they need. And I was up in my head about it. And Leah, that is humbling to hear someone say. That is humbling to hear someone say. I was up in my head about the change I had in my hand, knowing I can't get much here at this market for my 8 kids at home. Like, this is reality. This is no joke, you know? And to hear that person say, Oh, and I realized in that moment, living in that worry isn't helpful.

17:50Lea WernliHmm.

17:52Shailia StephensIt's using, it's using my thought against myself. And hearing them say, I let that go and I came back to the now and I was living happy. Leah, do you hear what I'm saying? I came back to the now. And I was living happy, you see. And that's, that's what I wanted to talk about today was like, in the Western world, we have this sort of thing that we talk about in the 3 principles, and I do it too. And which is, we know that the right direction to go is to be in the now.

18:30We know it's to come into a quiet mind. And then our next thought is, well, when I'm in a quiet mind, I'll be connected with my wisdom. And I'll see what there is to do to create money and resources. That's how we think about it, right?

18:44Lea WernliIt's conditioned thinking. It is.

18:49Shailia StephensYeah. And they can be in the most quiet mind ever. That doesn't mean they're gonna— anything they can do is gonna create any, any sort of other resources than they already have. But what I saw was When that thinking about money or lack of it, and that thinking about resources, the lack of it, when that falls away and when they come into the now, so many other beautiful feelings come up. Like we were talking on Thursday last week, I had a class there about self-love, and I was sharing with them what I'd seen about that.

19:28And one man came to the chair and he said, Thank you for making time for us. Thank you for loving us. Your sharing with us is an act of love. It is an expression of love. It is love in the form. We feel it. And he was there, probably not being able to feed his 10 kids. He told me he had 10 kids. And he, all he was feeling in that moment was love for me, appreciation that I was sharing. You see, these other feelings, these other dimensions of richness are on offer. And they, they have nowhere else to look but there. And that's this, um, That's this level of richness that I think we haven't really tapped into, that I learned, that I learned from them.

20:32Lea WernliYeah, thank you for sharing, Shelia. It's beyond words. It's— there is also an experience that we can't even understand.

21:11Shailia StephensYeah.

21:13Lea WernliAnd no matter how hard we would try or how how connected we are or how much we, we have, uh, Mitgefühl, like compassion. It's, it's an experience beyond my imagination. And you did point to the universal part of it. There is something, and the words are, are crap and made up and not true, whatever comes out of my mouth, but what stuck was nobody's coming Nothing is happening, nothing changes, and still—

22:15Shailia StephensYeah.

22:15Lea WernliYou are alive and love. And you, you did point in the direction of the richness of all of the human experience. And we don't want to have that. We don't want to see that. We even don't want to be part of that. That's very scary. That's very away. And what if it's in a way true for all of us? You're doing beautiful, beautiful work, Shelia. And I don't know, at the end it's always the word hope that comes to mind still. Even if it's true, in acceptance or in seeing or in being a part of that or in just listening, in, in seeing this person deeply, there is hope.

23:51Shailia Stephens100%. And I feel lucky, Leah. I feel lucky to even get to be there. I get— I feel lucky to even witness even a teeny tiny, tiny part of so someone's day at their— the refugee camp or at the orphanage or wherever it is. And it is very hopeful for me. It is beyond hopeful. Um, I feel nothing but hope every time I have an encounter with these beautiful souls going through what looks like this enormous amount of hardship, but they're not suffering so much anymore, you know.

24:27And, and that is the power of this understanding. That is the power of their spiritual beingness. And I've noticed, and why I wanted to have the conversation also a little bit on the podcast, is I've really noticed in working with my coaching clients, because I share a lot with them about, you know, what I'm seeing in my work there, it raises our feeling of gratitude. Like a lot of my clients, they can't be in the complaining mode that they were in about their life and all the the first world problems that they were having.

25:02You know, I let them listen to teachings in the refugee camps, which you can find on my YouTube channel, by the way. Or I, I let them listen to Martha talk, um, about, you know, getting raped, having a child, thinking she was gonna have to kill herself because she was so lost, and coming to the understanding. And there's something there that— and I loved, I loved how you spoke about it at the beginning when we started talking about this conversation.

25:28There's something about this collective spell that we're in. And there's something about this connection between the Western world and the African world that is sort of breaking for me. For me, I can only speak for myself. It's breaking that spell. I can only see myself as rich, rich, rich. Like, I feel like a very rich lady. I mean, I open the refrigerator and there's literally food in there, more than I can eat. I'm going to be throwing probably some of it away during the week.

26:02I am rich, rich, rich. I have more than enough. Like, I have a very warm bed. The roof is not leaking on my head. I have a roof, you know. And I love anything we can do in our conversations about money to break that collective spell of What we really need, everything that we already have. And even if we were to lose it all, like the entire spectrum of richness that is available, that was always available before the concept of money, before the collective brainwashing of money, before this global spell of money. And if there's any way that someone could just hear that today, that other richness of life that's on offer, that's hopeful for me. That's super hopeful for me. Yeah.

27:22Lea WernliYes, thank you. So I think it's round. What do you think?

27:31Shailia StephensI agree, Leah.

27:32Lea WernliGo and watch the videos on Celia's YouTube channel. Feel it, see it, be a part of it. Give if you have to give. Really just have a look and let yourself be touched by it.

27:53Shailia StephensYeah.

27:56Lea WernliAnd thank you, whatever you've heard for yourself, and even if it was just a little time for yourself. Um, we are beyond grateful that you're with us. We are babbling, we are sharing, we are pointing, and to be honest, we don't have a clue.

28:25Shailia StephensHmm.

28:27Lea WernliOr anything, but Still in not knowing and just trying to look in the direction and share whatever little we've seen. There is magic in that. And maybe just that, that could be an invitation for you to share whatever little you've seen, you felt, because this understanding has a potential to really reduce, like, the suffering. And maybe it could be for your kids or your husband or your neighbor or yourself. Let Let yourself off the leash, for God's sake.

29:29Please just live your life. When you hear that, then you are in a position of this richness that Shelia was just pointing out. If you hear that you have a phone, you have a computer, you have everything that, that you need. And more. And maybe there is a possibility that we— possibility that we could just lift the curtain a tiny, tiny little bit to that. And let's be in life together and love even more and not chase that, that spell and not being doomed by that spell, but, but being curious about life and love and hope and the richness of this experience, that, that's a gift. No, I rumbled even at the end.

30:37Shailia StephensI love it, Leah. I love it.

30:39Lea WernliAnd, and share our podcast if You, you're drawn to that. And see you next time. Thank you.

30:49Shailia StephensBye.