I woke up this morning remembering what the Angels said to me about money when I was disinherited by my mother. But before I get to this, I want to go back to something the Angels told me years before I was disinherited.
Sometime in my early thirties, seemingly out of the blue, the Angels told me, that I would inherit nothing from my family of origin. Some messages can feel sort of vague as if I could have imagined them. This message was not like that. It was clear, carrying weight and force. It felt like Truth with a capital T.
When the Angels told me this, I was still deeply involved with my family of origin. I could not fathom how this could happen, yet there it was. This unequivocal message. To try and wrap my head around this message, I came up with all kinds of implausible scenarios. I finally settled on the notion that maybe my parents’ home would be destroyed in a flood. Their home was neither near a river nor the ocean.
The Angels don’t tell me much about the future. Sometimes they share generalities as in the case of their constant reassurance that humanity will make it through this time. However they rarely offer up such a specific piece of information as this one. I have often wondered why they shared this. Like so much in life, their reasons remain a mystery, but at least one reason may be that it softened the blow when I was disinherited.
What followed this unexpected message were many years in which my husband, my kids and I experienced death threats from my tragically troubled younger brother and my family of origin reacted by distancing themselves completely from us and this “unsavory” situation. Many times during these years, I recalled what the Angels said and somehow it eased my sorrow if not always my worry.
My brother remained a threat until he died of a drug overdose. By then the rest of my family of origin was gone completely from our lives. There seemed to be a fated quality to all that unfolded. My husband made many efforts to change the trajectory, and all of them failed. The situation devolved and never recovered. And so there came the actual moment when my father then my mother died and I learned in the deafening silence afterwards that my mother had legally cut me out.
The biggest blow in this was the loss of the place in the Adirondacks we loved so much. For my husband, Jim, this was a bitter pill to swallow as he spent two summers building a four bedroom cabin on the property for the extended family and all those summers that lay ahead. How we loved this place and how we miss it still.
There was also money involved. Wasps are generally very secretive about money, so I am not sure how much money I would have inherited, but I guess several million. We’ve done fine without this money. My mother always kept the money tight so from the beginning of our life together, Jim and I depended on our own efforts to pay our bills. Sometimes, especially during the college tuition years, that money would have helped, but we got through those years without it.
Being disinherited is a physical blow. It’s casually talked about on screen and in books, but there is nothing casual in what it feels like. It’s someone’s last word, someone’s final judgment about you and in this case the someone was my mother. Over time, I could hear the Angels’ words of comfort above the din of my own reaction. This was when the Angels talked to me about money, specifically that I had been spared by being disinherited.
The Angels explained that money has karma depending on how it was earned and how it has been used. They noted that inherited money is often more of a burden than a blessing. The unfortunate ways money has been earned and used piles up in inherited money. The more generations the money has passed through, the bigger the karmic pile up. To bring this home to me, they had me look into the origins of the money I would have inherited. They wanted me to understand that receiving any of this money would have been a very heavy energetic burden.
Avatar Meher Baba explained money in similar terms. He noted that if we could really see money’s energy we would see that collecting money was like collecting excrement. To receive someone’s money in a big way is to take on the giver’s bindings, sanskaras, their baggage and their personal spiritual excrement.
With these ideas swirling in my head, I looked into this money I did not receive. The money came down through my maternal grandmother’s lineage. She was my favorite person in the world with a sparkling sense of humor, but I do not think she was a happy woman. The Angels told me that none of the people who have inherited this money have been happy. The money is a millstone of significant proportions.
The money came from my grandmother’s grandfather. His name was Charles Jackson Smith. He was a bigwig in the building of many railroads that would form the second more northern transcontinental railroad route across America. After a childhood in Kentucky he worked from 1871 until the 1920’s in the financial and management departments of many railroads. His early career saw him involved in every railroad running through Kansas City. At one point, he left Kansas City to become general land commissioner of the Union Pacific. Eventually he became the joint manager of the Oregon Railroad & Navigation Company, part of a group of railroads creating lines from California to Seattle as well as linking an east west route across to Lake Superior. The city of Seattle is where he settled his family and fortune. At one point, he was one of the richest men in America. Most of this money was lost in the stock market crash of 1929.
I learned none of this from my family of origin. Growing up I heard occasional vague references to the Smith money, but I did not learn anything about it from any family member. I searched on my own for information about Charles Jackson Smith. No one discussed this fortune let alone the shoulders upon which this fortune was made. There were stories of going down to the Seattle docks to buy valuables for cheap from immigrants arriving from China and Russia. Yet, there was no awareness that these were people that would go on to get exploited by Charles Jackson Smith and the railroads after their “warm welcome” to America with American capitalism at work in the “fair” marketplace of the docks.
There are so many disconnects. A couple blogs back I wrote about each person’s life force energy as their true wealth. Here was a situation in which a group of robber barons, Charles Jackson Smith included, used other people’s life force to accrue vast fortunes for themselves while robbing the land, native people and all railroad workers.
What had Seattle meant to my grandmother, coming of age with this legacy? I don’t think she had anything but conventional thoughts about her family or their money. Hers was a gilded cage. She told me she loved Seattle’s frontier roots. However, instead of getting to savor the expansive feelings of a new city, she herself was trapped in the ironclad social expectations laid on her by the social circle her rich family moved in. Pictures of her in the Seattle society page often show someone struggling to look pleased that going to tea every afternoon was a requirement not a choice. She married a man from out east, maybe to escape, but his own brilliant career left her stuck in the same role she had played in Seattle as social hostess.
The spiritual heaviness of the money must also have been there for her but as an entirely unknown factor in her depression. Additionally, there was complete silence when I was growing up about my grandmother having the money not my grandfather. We heard again and again about Grandpa’s financial prowess but there was only one shaming tale told about Grandma and money. This oft repeated story was that my grandmother snuck out to an auction during the depression and bought a Spanish sea chest for $25. Even though she is a grown woman when this happens, she is described as naughty and extravagant but also smart enough to buy something priceless for no money. I understood this story to be about her spending my grandfather’s money without his permission and in a reckless manner, yet actually it was her money.
Not that this money could bring a lightness to her being. The Angels explained to me that money with this kind of heavy karma is best used in philanthropic endeavors in order to be cleaned. My grandmother had a big but wounded heart. In many conversations with me she revealed a deep interest in spiritual matters that she had to keep hidden in her confining social world. Had she known the karma of the money, I hope she would have given away the money with creativity and courage. Without this information, she continued to plan cocktail parties with the butler.
Modern robber barons following in Charles Jackson Smith’s footstep join him in being like the emperor with no clothes. Because they do not acknowledge the life force energy of those they use in their quest for big fortunes, they gather piles of excrement. Others around them may say, “Oh how amazing!” but this is not the case. The money is energetic crap when it is earned through an unequal exchange and when those doing the actual work are not paid fairly for their contribution of life force energy.
The Angels note that in making and using money, it helps to think about the fairness of the transaction. This helps keep the money as clean as possible. If someone is making an enormous profit, someone is not being fairly compensated and the money will accrue negative karma.
Some final thoughts on the difference between money and wealth. Not only is true wealth our life force energy, but true wealth is what goes with us when us when we die. It’s the energy of love, brother and sisterhood, the integrity we’ve shown and our generosity . It’s how we’ve experienced and expressed ourselves as beloveds in a sea of beloveds, part of cosmic oneness but sovereign unto ourselves.
After I finished this blog, I debated whether to post it or not. Was this all TMI? Then I stumbled on one of Anastasia’s insights from the Ringing Cedars of Russia series by Vladmir Meagre. Anastasia says that money distracts people from their true purpose. This thought encouraged me to share this blog. Anastasia’s remark also felt like a continuing message from the Angels that I was spared a great burden by being disinherited.
