Money & the Meaning of Life

As a spiritual healer I have been recommending this book to clients for about ten years. The differences in their lives and their attitude to money have been simply amazing. Most of them have reported that they couldn't read this book quickly; their head would spin and they'd have to put the book down for several days while they thought about what they'd read. Soon after reading this book they began to make better choices in jobs and investments. It's not a logical change, it's a perception shift. Sometimes a book isn't just a book...sometimes it's a portal.

I have been on a never-ending search for a higher-paying, more satisfying job/career my entire life believing totally that this would be the answer to many of my life's challenges and problems. Further, I believed that all of these challenges and problems were for the most part being driven by external factors. After reading this book, I appreciate that my search surely was and is about more than making money. The structure of the book is somewhat like a quilt pieced together of various subject matter, ideas and reflections about money. I had to make an effort to stay with the flow when I couldn't see where it was going. Perhaps this was a strategy the author choose to use and the one that kept me reading to the end.It's not a book I was able to rush through because as I read the truth of what he was saying presented me with quite an accurate and painful reflection of my own behavior and beliefs about money. I could only read a little bit of the truth at a time because as I recall hearing once, the truth will set you free but first it's going to just about kill you. I had to let it kill me a little bit at a time.An excellent companion piece to this book and one that Needleman cites is by Lewis Hyde entitled, "The Gift."

I found Needleman's book inspiring and profound. Not only did I learn a great deal about the history of money, but it helped me see how it affects my life. I have recommended it to many friends.

The great challenge of a real philosopher is to bring philosophy into everyday life. This is synonymous to helping people attain a state of incresed awareness. Money is a subject which tends to blur our awareness of our private lives, our professional careers and social problems as well. For instance, here, in Brasil, the government rates money as the most important national problem. Maybe this is how it should be, maybe not... When I lecture, teach or write about business management, I try to show people that money is something that has to be dealt with, but is not everything. It is not easy, because there is a tendency to radicalism: some people (the so called materialists) think money is everything, while others think money is secondary. Needleman's book performs an alchemical transformation, showing how money can be changed into a means to human development. This miracle can be performed if we increase our awareness of its role in our lives. This book is everything a good philosophy book should be: it is pleasat to read and maintains the reader curious until the last page. It is clearly written, but faces the difficult questions, for which there are no easy answers. It contains references for peole who want to go further into the ideas it presents. This is one of Needleman's best accomplished books!

Could there be a subject more charged with the drama of human life? Each of us lives in some private, personal struggle with money that to a great extent dictates the course of our dreams, our search for meaning, and our compromises with deep Self. If you read nothing else about money, give yourself the great treat of opening the pages of this book. You may finally begin to comprehend why, if you have ever attempted to make money conscious, make it work for you rather than against you, take it into the domain of spirit, you have not succeeded. Not succeeded in finding deep or lasting satisfaction with it: as it squeezes you this way, frightens you that way, appears, disappears, plays with your hidden shame, seduces you to give up your heart's desire for more of it, etc. Beginning to understand why, you may also begin to have compassion for yourself in the midst of this journey, this search for The Way, in and through money. Needleman is fluent, wise, humble, and provocative as he lays out the foundation of a timely and really comprehensible thesis about the power of the most ubiquitous of elements fueling our lives and fantasies, money.