Save and Spend
_AM: Tick… Tock…
_I: Tum… Tum…
_AM: Tick… Tock… It was heard when the first drop of consciousness moved the waters of the essence. Tick… Tock… It resonated, driving the waves of frequency. Tick… Tock… Marked the beginning of Time.
_I: Tum… Tum… He pressed the drop, creating the waves that expanded. Tum… Tum… He drove the vibration water back to the center like an echo. Tum… Tum… It marked the beginning of Space.
_AM: The pulsating essence became movement…
_I: And the movement became experimental existence…
_AM: In its expansion it generated creative energy…
_I: And its creation used energy to integrate…
_AM: The creator became the created…
_I: And what was created became creative…
_AM: He who manifested himself arranged his energy for the emergence of the Universe...
_I: And he who lives the universe arranged his energy for the return to the Cosmos...
_AM: The Divine pushed the mundane…
_I: The Mundane propelled the divine…
_AM: The Cosmos began to give its all...
_I: The Universe began to receive everything for itself…
_AM: …Give…
_I: …Receive…
_AM: …What do you do with what I give you from me?…
_I: …I take it to create. What do you do with what you receive from me?…
_AM: …I take it to believe. What do you believe?
_I: …My life, both inside and outside. What do you think?
_AM: …In your life, both internal and external. What do you do with what you create?
_I: …I experiment, I play, I learn. What do you do with what you believe?
_AM: …I integrate, I enjoy, I understand. What do you get from what you create?
_I: Pleasure. What do you get from what you believe?
_AM: Plenitude. What are you giving me?
_I: Knowledge, arising from all the things I experience and apprehend. What do you give me?
_AM: Wisdom, arising from all the things that I integrate and understand. But... Do you give me everything you can give me?
_I: Sometimes I keep things to myself… What about you?
_AM: I have nothing to keep for myself. I give it my all.
_I: It's not fair then. What do we do with this?
_AM: Exchange. That is, change between us. Change comes from the Indo-European “skamb”, which means “curve”, meaning that what goes around will soon turn and come back. Change is an irruption into the fixed objective forward, it is the modification of something established. When you are the one who changes, it implies that your path has turned in another direction. But when you “exchange” with another, it means that both one and the other will get something, because the one who comes from the direction you are going has something to give you to reach your destination, and you have something to give him to reach his. .
_I: In exchange there is what we consider barter, exchanging one thing for another considered to have an equitable value. That is, you have to have something of the same “weight” to be able to exchange.
_AM: In the matter, it is like this, since it is considered that what allows you to survive in life is your capacity for strength and courage. “He who is strong is the one who survives.” Strong, in Indo-European it is said “wal”, which gives rise to the words brave, bravery, courageous, and of course “courage”. In English all these words have different origins, although they have their expression “valiant”. The word “brave,” for example, comes from the summarized form of the term by which the natives of northern and central Europe were known: the “barbarians,” who were strong and brave (whose linguistic attribution refers to be “bad” and aggressive). Thus, things that were strong, virile, were those that were considered valuable. But many things are strong, so something that was unusual had to be looked for to be able to “count.” Thus, minerals, such as Silver, became a fundamental source. The Alpine mines of Bavaria, Austria and Switzerland served to generate this recorded value. The Silver Peso during the rule of the Spanish house of Austria caused the term “peso” and “silver” to expand in the American colonies of the 15th century to refer to value, currency, exchange money. But the Bohemian Germans called it “Thaler”, which later became the word that Americans would call “Dollar”.
_I: My country, Argentina, is called that because in Latin “silver” is said “argentum”, and it was the colony through which all the silver from the mines of the Andes was exported from Bolivia. “The Río de la Plata”, where the ships full of this material left for Europe.
_AM: Barter stops working in a system where there are many people who produce things that not everyone needs. Thus, the currency begins to have a value, a peso, which is symbolically equivalent to all the things that barter previously supplied.
_I: It's symbolic…
_AM: All value is symbolic and relative, since the value of things exists in appreciation, in the mind, not in matter. For a culture, a seed can be more valuable than gold, since gold does not multiply or eat, and life is about multiplying and eating. But precisely for other cultures this is what gives it value, that it is something limited, that not everyone can have, that it is not easily accessible and that it is not in the hands or mouths of everyone. Thus they give the seeds a value based on silver and gold.
_I: To take control over things.
_AM: It is the way in which kingdoms exist, on which the weight of a country, of an empire, is based. It is based on the capacity that that government has to manage the weight of its currency, to manage the value of the things it owns.
_I: And that's wrong?
_AM: It all depends on the context, as always. But let's look at this from 3 different levels. The first will be the Individual, then the Social and then the Conscious. Firstly, the Individual is based on survival. What we have already talked about: a being, both from the organic and biological point of view, through its emotion, and from its beliefs; everything is programmed to live as long as possible, survive in existence. This means that the body has been built with the intention of Saving Energy.
_I: Energy is the currency of the Universe.
_AM: Everything in the Universe is energy. The silver, the currency, the food, a hug; Everything is energy, and the intention and attention that I put into that energy is what gives it more or less weight. Therefore, value. Atoms are grouped into molecules with the aim of saving energy, molecules are arranged into chemical elements to save energy and find stability. Minerals are arranged to find stability. Vegetables save energy by converting it into starch. Animals save energy by eating everything they can in the face of possible shortages. Humans save energy by harvesting, managing the resources obtained. As you will see, all living beings do this, for the simple fact that their atoms do it. It is a way to find stability, independence, security.
_I: What does it mean to save?
_AM: Saving comes from the Arabic “al-hurr”, which means “to be free”. It was the name used to refer to an enslaved person who was restored to freedom and made independent, without a master. In English, “to save” comes from the Latin “salve”, which means to save, to take care of something, what has been acquired, to protect what has been achieved, and is linked to the concept “to earn”, which comes from the ancient Germanic languages “aznonia” and “ arnon”, which means “harvest”. Which gives rise to the way of saving in other languages such as Italian. These concepts lead us to understand that a free being could now harvest his own food and manage his house. In Greek: putting the house in order is said “oikós (house) nomós (order)”, origin of the word “economy”. And that order is to manage what you eat, with what you survive, which is managed in the kitchen: Heart of the House. There you understand that the center of life is food, the kitchen is the center of your own freedom that leads you to cook your own harvest. Saving is not about being stingy, then, but about a free being capable of managing oneself without a master, of finding balance for oneself.
_I: A new concept, or so old that it was lost.
_AM: And this takes us to the second level: the Social. Freedom leads us to make a double effort, because now, by not depending on others, we have to make an effort (weight, value) to achieve it for ourselves, which leads us to the search for teamwork. A family all eats from the same table, shares, and therefore everyone must contribute and do something to have a full plate, whether sowing, harvesting, cooking or studying, everyone gives. The family, thus, is the basis of the free society that seeks to economize through exchange. It is the first conscious emergence of this exchange, but still based on the idea of survival. Love becomes a form of economy, through food, everyone stays together. Societies rely on this forced exchange to survive. And both the first and second stages are based on the fear of Spending.
_I: What would it be to spend?
_AM: Etymologically, for both English and Spanish, the origin is “ew”, from Indo-European, which gives rise to the Latin concept “vacare”, that is, the same origin of the word “empty”. In English, the term “spend” arises from the Latin “ex-pendere” which means to drop, release, spend something. That things are missing, the absence of something. To spend, then, is also to devastate, to lose, to do things in vain. If all of nature seeks stability by taking care of the energy resources produced, then spending is considering the possibility of not having them, of losing them, of having done work in vain. The fear of scarcity, of loss, of not having.
_I: How does one free oneself from that fear?
_AM: Giving…
_I: But that is against the principle of savings.
_AM: It is if you see it as duality. In the current economic conception, humans interpret two types of outcomes in life: “winning” or “losing.” Winning takes us back to the Germanic “arnan”, which means harvest, and Losing in Spanish comes from the Latin “perdare”, meaning “for” and “give”. In English, the word “to lose” comes from the Indo-European “lewh,” which means “to let be free.” Liberating, then, is recurrent in economic terms. As you will see, the dual concepts on which the competitive human worldview is based are laughable concepts for nature, which understands that it is the freedom of beings and their search for stability that by nature leads to the search for balance, harmony. , exchange. In the attempt to make it an intelligent process, they have become the laughingstock of the other natural kingdoms. The other kingdoms live from survival, and yet remain in balance, receiving and giving freely. Well, the only way to save energy at the atomic level is to share that energy at the molecular level. Giving and Receiving are natural functions, not philosophical ones.
_I: Until the third stage arrives… Consciousness.
_AM: This is when I realize that Giving and Receiving are a unique circuit of exchange. That losing does not mean remaining empty, but opening up to the possibility of receiving something new that could not reach me before because that space was full. The Universe will not give you anything that you then waste. Humans, instead of saving, become accumulators. The fear of scarcity turns you into a kind of Diogenes, accumulating things without a sense of usefulness in the “just in case”, when true freedom is found in giving without expecting anything in return. It is at that moment when I enable the natural circuit of things. Those who simply “are”, who let themselves be, are not afraid of losing everything, because they know that loss is the prelude to reception. But if you stagnate in the vision of emptiness, of poverty, then you will be full of preconceptions. Consciousness is the stage in which the being frees himself from preconceptions and recognizes that nothing really belongs to him, and that he can have everything without attachment to it, since he will always have what he needs if he knows how to give.
_I: So should I save?
_AM: If it is to accumulate just in case, then I advise you not to. If it is for a specific objective or purpose, then yes. Well, there is no point in accumulating energy if it will not be used. All energy must have a goal to which it can be directed, otherwise it is lost, that is, it is released. If you want to obtain crops you must spend your energy, not accumulate it. Remember, spending means harvesting, it is cutting the fruit, obtaining the seed, it is investing (from the Latin to pour, pour something inside), directing the energy towards a specific place. Remove the moral weight that you have placed on the word spend as a synonym for scarcity, remove the weight that you have placed on the word save with a connotation of survival. Well, weight is a mental value not applicable in the world of matter.
_I: The “peso” has no value… A very Argentine phrase, hehe.
_AM: He has nothing if you don't give it to him, and he has everything if you give it to him. Save your energy to be spent on what will bear fruit.
_I: I free myself from the preconceptions of Saving and Spending, to be Free and Reap my fruits.