Money, Desire, and Abundance | Healing through Jewish Wisdom

The conversation

You look at your balance and feel that something is off. Not only the number, but the sense that you're not supposed to ask for more. According to Gili, that block usually isn't really about money at all. It's about worthiness, and the way she sees it, it starts back in the relationship with your mother. As she reads it, the Hebrew word for money, kesef, is connected to kisufim, longing and wanting, and she suggests looking at money blocks through one more question: how much do we allow ourselves to ask, to receive and to enjoy? Instead of abundance mantras she offers something simpler. Look at your balance even when it hurts, and turn every expense into an insight about what you got in return.

The truth

The Hebrew word for money, kesef, is connected to kisufim, longing and desire, which is why she sees money as the energy of wanting and not only as something material.

A block around money is a block in the inner belief that you're allowed to ask, to receive and to enjoy.

The way Gili sees it, our inner relationship with money matters just as much as how hard we work. Some people work extremely hard and still struggle, and for others it's the other way around.

In her words, there's no point repeating abundance mantras if you actually feel terrible every time you spend money. The gap between the words and the inner feeling cancels them out.

The tool she offers: look at your balance even when it hurts, and shift your focus from what's missing to gratitude for what each expense got you.

Many money blocks are worthiness blocks that go back to the first relationship with your mother, the first person who ever fed you.

Questions and answers

Why is the Hebrew word for money kesef and not "gold" or something like that? Is there a deeper meaning to it?

The word kesef comes from kisufim: intense longing, yearning and desire for something or someone. That's where the spiritual meaning comes from. Money is the energy of wanting, the expression of your desire to receive, to give, to create and to make things happen. Gili suggests that a block around money usually points to a block in that wanting, or in the belief that you're allowed to ask and to receive.

I say abundance mantras every morning, so why isn't it working?

Because there's a gap between the words and what you actually feel. There's no point declaring "I live in abundance" if every time you buy yourself something you feel guilty. Real abundance isn't repeating beautiful sentences, it's knowing at any given moment how much you really have in your account, without running away from it.

I'm genuinely afraid to open my banking app. What do I do about that?

You open it. That's exactly the point. If it hurts, that's exactly the sign that you need to do it again and again. Gili offers a small practice: instead of focusing on what went out, look for what you got in return for each expense, and be grateful for it. This isn't only psychology, she says: it builds new pathways in the brain.

Why do I freeze every time I have to ask for money, and what does that have to do with my mother?

Usually the block isn't really about money, it's about your sense of worthiness: how much you feel you deserve to receive. Gili describes a mother as the first person who ever feeds us, and says that if you didn't feel you got love from her without having to fight for it, that can stay in the subconscious and affect your ability to receive financial abundance as an adult too.

Gili's original episode description

Everything in our world has a higher root. The Hebrew word for money, kesef, comes from kisufim: intense longing, yearning, desire for something or someone. That is where the spiritual meaning of money comes from too. Money is the energy of desire. Money expresses your own desire to receive, to give, to create and to make things real, and when there's a block around money, it usually points to a block in desire, in the belief that I'm allowed to ask, to receive or to enjoy.

So what's the deal? Why are there people who do very little and always have enough money for everything, and others who work themselves to the bone and are always coming up short? Because money isn't matter, money is energy. Money isn't a product of hard work, money is a product of who you are! The universe doesn't respond to the effort you put in. The fact that you're sweating doesn't mean the money will come. Abundance isn't something you achieve, it's a state of mind, and the good news is that it exists in all of us! The question is whether you're tuned to the right frequency.

Your nervous system and your subconscious are responsible for 95 percent of the amount of money in your bank account, the number of clients you have, and the clarity you feel about your business. Before you start muttering "I'm in abundance consciousness" or "I am abundance" or any other pretty mantra you heard online, let me say that they have their place, but there's no point in saying mantras about money and declaring that you're a millionaire if you feel bad every time you spend something on yourself. You can't say you're in abundance consciousness and be afraid to ask for a raise. You aren't abundance if you're still undercharging.

Money blocks aren't about money, they're about your worth, about how much you feel you're worth, about how much you feel you deserve to receive life's abundance. Many of our ideas about money are born in that first relationship with our mother, for the simple reason that a mother is the first person who ever feeds us. So if you didn't get the love you wanted from her, it's possible that you don't feel worthy enough of love, and as a result, worthy of abundance, of money.

There is always abundance, in abundance. Your abundance is the fulfillment of the stories you tell yourself, which are really the limiting beliefs you carry in your subconscious about money. Heal the part of you that believes wealth will cost you something. Real abundance costs nothing. It isn't one thing at the expense of another. Just the opposite: it multiplies!

In the spiritual world, money is considered the energy that lets spirit take form in matter. When a person learns to manage money from a clean consciousness, not out of fear but out of faith, they connect heaven and earth. That's why the sages said, "There is no poverty except poverty of the mind." This isn't only an intellectual understanding, it's an inner recognition that when I'm connected to the source of abundance, to the Creator, there is no real lack.