In my life, much of my fear has been centered around money, and that is true of so many people I meet and talk to and hear from. In the Kabbalah, God warns the prophets that a world driven by money will be bereft of love and purpose. Lives will be fearful and meaningless,  humans enslaved by the blind pursuit of greed and terror. This was not, he said, why he created the world.

Money is a means of exchange, the prophets wrote, not the point of existence. In our culture, money is the truth faith for many people, especially in a culture that increasingly equates it with success, security and health. Our society makes financial misfortune a social crime, a thing of shame. No wonder so many people are frightened about money. This is the triumph of the corporate ethos, which puts profit above all other considerations, human, work, environment,  social or civic. In our political system, the candidates talk mostly about money, the economy, never the quality of our lives.

Joseph Campbell shared God’s perspective. Money does not make people happy or secure, he wrote. In fact, he wrote, “people without money very often have the courage to risk a life of their own, and they can do it. Money doesn’t count, it’s not that important in our culture, it really isn’t.” That’s a shocking idea in our time when people are obsessed with worry about money and scramble to get money and keep it, to pay and pay for their software updates, IRA’s, health care plans, consumer protection plans, credit card fees,  weather alerts, political arguments,  even for bad news messaged to them every hour of every day.

Would Campbell say the same thing today? I think so. None of the great religious leaders or thinkers of our history – Jesus, Gandhi, Dr. King, Merton,  Thoreau,  Mohammed, Buddha – had money or believed in money as a form of safety and security. None of them sought security, they sought a meaningful life. Perhaps this is why there are no poor people in Congress.

People who seek a truly spiritual life often let go of money as the central pursuit of their lives, understanding it is often a barrier to a spiritual life, not a gateway. Campbell wrote that the students and other people he had met in his life with money were often the “least fortunate because there’s nothing to drive them.” This rings especially true in my life. Some of the best and most creative things I have ever done – my e-book, coming to the farm, changing careers, my photography, my blog, moving to the country – all came about in part because I was driven to change my life.

If you are wealthy, wrote Campbell of his students with a lot of money, “as soon as what they are doing gets difficult, as soon as it begins to get to the crunch, he or she moves over into another pursuit, and another, and another. They just splash their lives all over.” Very often, he wrote, people without the margin to do that make the intelligent or courageous decision and follows it through.

I am struck by how many people tell me that once they give up on money, or lose it, or let go of the idea of it, they are happier, at peace, more fulfilled. I used to jeer at this idea, oh-sure, easy-to-say, but I believe this now. I often feel surrounded by messages about money – ads about health, savings, retirement – and to me, so many of them just seem to be lies. You are lying to me, I think. I can’t listen to them any more.

This is not what drives me. This is not what leads me to think of new things, to change my life, to be a better, less fearful and more creatively driven person. Money will not make me more secure.