When Money is Your God

Who is your God?

I remember Sovereign Ipsissimus Dave Lanyon, Lineage Holder of the Lineage of King Salomon, asking our class this question.

It sounds like a religious question.

But it is much more interesting than that.

Because the answer reveals something about the way we live.

What receives your attention?
What directs your decisions?
What are you ultimately serving?

Whatever sits at the top of that hierarchy has enormous influence over your life.

And lately, I've been wondering:

Has money become our God?

Not necessarily consciously.

Most people aren't walking around thinking, Money is my God.

But look at the world around us.

Success is often measured by financial wealth, influence, status, property, followers and power. We are surrounded by people telling us how to make more, grow more, achieve more and become more successful.

And there is nothing inherently wrong with any of that.

Money is wonderful.

It can create freedom. It can support families. It can build businesses, fund ideas, provide opportunities and allow people to create things that would otherwise never exist.

Money is not the problem.

But what happens when money moves from being a tool to becoming the measure of everything?

When the financial outcome becomes more important than the people involved?

When growth becomes more important than integrity?

When a relationship, project, business or even a person's time is valued primarily according to its financial return?

When we are willing to sacrifice almost anything in order to achieve the number?

At what point does the thing we are using to build our lives begin to dictate how we live them?

Who is directing your life?

This is why So. IPs. Dave's question has stayed with me.

Who is your God?

Because perhaps it isn't about what we say we believe.

Perhaps we can discover the answer by looking at where we place our attention.

What do we pursue?

What do we protect?

What are we willing to sacrifice for?

What determines our decisions when there is a choice between what is financially advantageous and what is right for us?

These questions become particularly interesting in business.

Because business gives us endless opportunities to choose what we will prioritise.

Profit matters.

Of course it does.

A business that cannot generate money cannot sustain itself.

But perhaps there is a difference between creating wealth and making wealth the highest purpose of creation.

What if money is meant to be one of the fruits of what we create — rather than the God directing what we create?

What does success actually mean?

This has made me think about the future of humanity.

What happens when our definition of success evolves?

Perhaps the next evolution isn't about rejecting money, wealth or ambition.

Perhaps it is about putting them back into their proper place.

The Path of Know Thyself offers a radically different starting point.

Rather than beginning with:

What can I get?

We begin with:

Who am I?

And as we come to know ourselves, we begin to understand something deeper about our nature.

The Hermetic Understanding speaks of Good and Beauty.

We learn that the Divine is not something separate from us, somewhere outside of ourselves that we must eventually reach.

We learn to recognise the Divine within ourselves — and then to endeavour to live from that understanding.

To express our own Good and Beauty through the way we live.

And that changes the question.

If I am building a business, perhaps the question isn't simply:

How much money can this make?

Perhaps I also ask:

What am I here to create?

What am I here to express?

Does the way I conduct this business reflect my Good and Beauty?

Does the way I treat people reflect the person I am becoming?

Is the money I receive a fruit of what I have created — or has the pursuit of money become the thing creating me?

Business as an expression of Good and Beauty

Imagine what business could become if this were the foundation.

Not less successful.

Not less ambitious.

But more conscious.

A business where financial success is welcomed, but isn't the highest authority.

Where growth doesn't require us to abandon ourselves.

Where people aren't simply resources.

Where leadership isn't about power over others, but about the quality of what we bring into the world.

Where the business itself becomes an expression of the person creating it.

This doesn't mean every decision will be easy.

It doesn't mean there won't be compromises, difficult conversations or financial realities to navigate.

It simply means that money doesn't get the final word.

You do.

Or perhaps more accurately:

the highest expression of who you are does.

And this is where I think the Path of Know Thyself becomes so relevant to our future.

Because the more deeply we know ourselves, the less we need the world to tell us what success looks like.

We become less interested in simply accumulating.

And more interested in manifesting.

There is a profound difference.

Accumulation asks:

How much can I have?

Manifestation asks:

What can I bring into existence?

And when what we bring into existence is aligned with our own Good and Beauty, the money that comes from it can become something very different.

Not the God.

Not the master.

But the fruit.

So, who is your God?

I don't think this is a question that can be answered once.

It is something worth asking ourselves again and again.

Because our priorities can quietly change.

We can begin with one intention and, somewhere along the way, become consumed by the outcome.

We can start a business because we love what we do, and eventually find ourselves working only for the numbers.

We can seek freedom through money and accidentally create another kind of imprisonment.

So perhaps the question is worth asking:

Who is your God?

What sits at the top of your hierarchy?

What directs your life?

And if the answer is money, perhaps there is another question worth considering:

What would change if money became the fruit of your expression rather than the purpose of it?

Because perhaps the future of business isn't about making less money.

Perhaps it is about making money mean something different.

Perhaps success is not simply measured by what we accumulate.

Perhaps it is measured by how much Good and Beauty we are able to express into the world.

And perhaps that is what it means to truly Know Thyself.