This piece explores how deeply capitalism has shaped our inner lives — not just our work or our wallets, but our values, identity, and sense of purpose. It asks what remains when we strip away the inherited stories and return to our original essence, our unconditioned knowing. It’s an invitation to question the structures that have defined us, and to rediscover the freedom we unknowingly traded along the way.
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Where, when, and how often have we oriented our lives, often unconsciously, toward trading inner freedom for external reward? This can be difficult to recognize because many in our world have come to attach their value to the god we’ve made of money, or of capitalism itself. Capitalism, in reality, is an ancient, perfected, and all-pervasive system that allows the matrix we inhabit to continually find new ways to siphon our creativity, potential, passion, and capacities. If we aren’t careful, conscious, and aware, the balance tilts toward the machine rather than serving our soul’s purpose. At every step along the way, we have choice.
The plain and painful truth is that the world we live in is dependent on, hardwired to, and fueled by money, currency, trade, and commerce. All of it sits beneath the umbrella of capitalism. Yet the influence goes well beyond the material. It is emotional, psychological, philosophical, and even spiritual. It becomes a learned behavior, an ideology, an indelible imprint on our worldly identity that is inculcated, indoctrinated, mentored, and modeled into us from our earliest days, as all malignant and lasting deceptions tend to be. Belief systems override and overrule our inherent knowing, our intuitive pulse, and our creative spark. What is pure, free, and original ends up deferring to the superficial and artificially elevated. Do you believe, or do you know?
Consider for a moment the sheer reach of capitalism’s influence. It infects the innocence of “What do you want to be when you grow up?” It shapes the trajectory of generation after generation, regardless of their stated aims. Every political structure and public institution is derived from and shaped by it. Every war has been fabricated around it, and both “sides” are funded by it. Every major religion is shaped and constrained by it. Every transaction, large or small, is touched by it, because we have turned nearly everything in our lives into some form of transaction. Sit with this for a moment and you’ll struggle to find any part of your life that isn’t adhering to some principle of the monied mindset.
If it has always been this way, we don’t question it. Doing so appears stupid, selfish, childish, or a waste of our limited time. Questioning it feels isolating, destabilizing, and disruptive to our daily functioning.
So we carry on selling, trading, and giving away our time and energy without much contemplation, acting the slave the system prefers us to be. We do the “responsible and acceptable thing” because it’s normal, expected, and what everyone around us is doing. Yet waking up to this truth and challenging the status quo naturally stirs an existential crisis from time to time. Most of what we value, the priorities we think are our own, the careers and activities we pursue, and the ways we occupy our days often round back to the nearest dollar, rather than to anything that truly reflects fulfillment, satisfaction, happiness, or thriving.
Your worth does not, and must not, come from the metrics created by this false god of capitalism. It functions as a parasitic mind contagion, an occultic overlay, a distortion of reality, and an effective mechanism for suppressing, subverting, and encoding your spirit if you allow it to shape your sense of meaning and purpose.
Instead, remember. Remove the veil and return to your original essence — not to hide from the world, but to reorient your power, presence, consciousness, and creativity toward truer aims. Reconsider your most treasured priorities and dig down to your real and authentic desires, the ones that may resemble what capitalism has obscured, yet still exist free of its grip.
I’ve often written about reclaiming authority, agency, and self-awareness. Beneath these elements lie ontology and epistemology: the ways we understand our being and the nature of the world we inhabit — core aspects of our lives that are under constant assault and are routinely weaponized against us.
This particular writing, once again, delves into those same recurring themes, though my hope is that it reaches toward what I’d call a first principle. When we arrive there, we begin to work with the raw ingredients of reality, philosophy, identity, spirituality, and metaphysics. From that place, our perceptions mature and we see beyond the filters imposed by ourselves or by the system. One would think that looking into the brightness of what should be pure white light would be inviting and empowering. Yet, for many of us, the instinct is to look away or even run. It feels unfamiliar, overwhelming, almost alien. Our resistance reveals just how deeply we are attached to the accepted story.
Sit with these ideas and notice where something lands differently. Regarding money and capitalism, I’ve found them to be at times revealing, amusing, and infuriating — depending on the context. But, as with any form of elemental truth, once you see it, your whole frame of reality shifts. It’s one less disguise the controllers, those to pray to the god of this world, can use against you. What’s left is to decide how to integrate it so as to avoid using it as further evidence to support your philosophical bias, whether positive or negative.
It’s one thing to feel righteous indignation and the need to scream this newfound revelation across the mountains every morning. It’s another to remember that preaching has never changed anything about the world for the better. The authentic and the real resonate and arise from within. Life is an organic process, and becomes more so with every step we take toward unearthing and revealing to ourselves these elemental truths. Never doubt your capacity, nor your courage, to do so.
This “capitalism” one is a particularly insidious and powerful one, I’ll grant you. But remember, there are ways to live outside the matrix that overlays modern life, though they are not necessarily easy to access. For most of us, it would require a paradigm shift, and it may be a bridge too far. Amenities, conveniences, privileges, and benefits aren’t so easy to simply set aside. Many have convinced themselves they’re entirely dependent upon the state, an institution, or their handouts, gifts, welfare offers, and seemingly unconditional support. Just sign here… Most have never considered the small print, and how much of it flies in the face of all things natural and lawful.
I certainly haven’t made the full leap myself, but the spiritual rumblings remain. Having my own piece of open land, free of any nonsensical bureaucratic menacing or influence, liberated from capitalistic parasitism, surrounded by others of a like-minded spirit and presence, would certainly shift my paradigm, alter my trajectory, and influence my deepest values and priorities.
When I look honestly at the things I thought I always wanted, or at the emotions certain ideas bring up, it becomes obvious how much of it is coded with illusions of power, freedom, activism, or control that do not reflect the true purpose. Beneath the learned and ingrained values we all engender, there may still be an ember of the original spark. Many of us may run out of time before we uncover it, and that, too, is part of the human story. It’s easy to judge how others live, but what matters is how we identify and discern within ourselves: how we move through our days, whether we’re walking our true path or simply falling in line out of guilt, habit, or unexamined belief.
The days will pass either way. Is it better to be aware or unaware? I can’t say with certainty. None of the paths are easy; awareness simply changes the terrain.
But if your life orbits too closely around the gold coin, you might miss something far more satisfying and fulfilling. Strip it of its god-status. Reclaim your own.
Solvitur ambulando.