037 Money is Not Energy: Physics Lesson, Manifestation, and Creating Value

On this episode of Money Through Ease, host Regan Bashara walks you through what money is and isn’t, what energy is and isn’t, and how these two things are not the same. The metaphysical world, the Law of Attraction, and manifesting money through positive thinking, all gaslight people who are living in a system of subjugation that actively harms them by hoarding money (and other resources) at the top.

So let’s do away with that BS and talk about what money and currency are, how we can create value in our businesses and our lives, and get a little physics/science lesson in while we’re at it!

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Hey y'all, welcome to another episode of money through ease. I'm your host, Regan Bashara, and I've been thinking a lot about this topic lately. I've been making a lot of content about it. I've been contemplating talking to other people about it, sharing my thoughts, getting feedback from folks, and so I think now is a good time to have this conversation on a podcast episode. This episode is about how money is not energy. I'm going to give you a little physics lesson; don't worry you will understand what I'm talking about. We're going to talk about manifestation and the law of attraction and all those sorts of things, and then we're going to talk about creating value instead of focusing on money as energy, because it's not. And we're going to talk about where I think this, this all comes from. All of the woo things that I see people sharing and especially when it comes to money. I feel like a lot of folks are gaslighting other people into thinking that money is just abundant. And if you don't have money then that means you're not thinking positively enough. And this is all you know, kind of wild when we live in a white supremacist, patriarchal society that built financial systems to literally subjugate other people, to extract labor and profit from people from human beings. And then to be told that if you just don't think positively enough, then that's why you don't have enough money to like house and feed and clothe yourself. I really wanted to talk about it because I feel like I live in this intersection of money and then like, physics and science. And there is so much pseudoscience out there, especially with metaphysics, because they think that they know about like quantum energy and quantum physics and that is just simply not the case. I mean, science is a system by which we describe our world. The scientific method is based on you coming up with a hypothesis and then testing it to determine whether or not your hypothesis is correct. But so much of the new age or new thought kind of spiritualism has bled into science terms and I think that they co-opt and misrepresent scientific terms to sound smart and to sound like they're speaking the truth whenever they're not. So anyways, that's basically what this episode is going to be about, and let's go ahead and get started. My hypothesis, my conclusion that I've come to, is that money is not energy and we need to stop exchanging money and energy when we're talking about anything. Like, just stop switching those words around. Stop saying that. They're the same thing. So why do I feel called to talk about this topic? As most of you know, I have a math and physics degree. It's really a math degree with some physics classes that I took to get my math degree. I have a concentration in math. I know what energy is. I've studied the science of physics, which is really the study of energy, and physical matter and energy, and how those two things relate. And I'm also an accountant: I know a lot about money. I know a lot about finances. I know a lot about taxes. I know a lot and have done a lot of research and have a lot of experience in the financial systems in the United States specifically. But really this is like, globally, pretty much how it works. Money does not require you to have a lot of it to understand these systems. And in fact, the people that don't have a lot of money probably understand the financial systems that we live in. Better than people that have a lot of it because it is so tied to our intrinsic worth in a capitalist society, and it is so intrinsically tied to our survival. Whenever you need to have money to have housing, to have food, to receive health care. All of that good stuff. So I kind of live at the intersection of these two topics: physics and science, and then accounting and finance. If there is a Venn diagram and one circle is physics and the other circle is finance, I live at the intersection of those two circles on that Venn diagram. And I am just really annoyed at people telling you that all you need to do to make money is to manifest it and to pray for it, and to believe that money is abundant, and then all of those things are how you get money. Like, that's all you have to do. Money may be abundant. Like that may be true and we can kind of see that that's the case, right? Like in our society we see other people that have so much money, whether or not they're lying to us. The proof is in the pudding. You're driving cars that cost a lot of money. You have houses that cost a lot of money. You have yachts. Boats. People going on vacation. Like we know that there's a lot of money in the world and that it is abundant. It exists out there in the world. We can see evidence that there is a lot of money, but that doesn't actually make money accessible to us. Money’s abundance isn't inherently making it just available and accessible for us to just have. There are financial systems that were built on white supremacist patriarchal rules, and these financial systems were intentionally designed to exclude certain people, to subjugate certain people, and to extract labor and profit from those folks. So no, money is not abundant if someone is working against you having access to it. Money is not abundant if someone is working against you and working against your access to money. So, money is not energy. Let's talk about what energy is. Energy is a description of what is happening with matter or mass, like tangible objects at any moment in time. We have a couple of different types of energy that I'm going to go over here. This is your warning that this is the physics lesson. We have potential energy. Potential energy describes an object having the potential to move. So, for instance, in the case of gravity if I hold a ball in the air in my hand, like above my head, and I'm standing on Earth. That ball has the potential to move back towards Earth due to gravity. If I let go of the ball, it's going to move towards the floor or towards the ground where I'm standing because of gravity. That ball has potential energy when I'm holding it up in the air, it has the potential to move. Kinetic energy is the description of an object or mass in motion. So, when I let go of the ball and it's falling to earth from some height and that's due to gravity, that ball when it's moving towards the ground has kinetic energy because it is in motion. So, energy is the description of what's happening with matter and mass. So, if the ball is being held above me, but I'm holding it still, it has potential energy because it has the potential to move towards the ground. And then when I let go of it, it has kinetic energy because it is moving, it's in motion. Then we have light or radiation energy. Light particles, did you know that light was made-up of particles? Yep, just like water, just like all the other mass and things. Light is a particle, and light is usually a lot of particles. Light particles can move through things, so we have light moving through the molecules in the air. We have light that can move through water or liquid. If you think about like an underwater submersible that has been on, you know the recent news like, they have lights so that they can see underwater. Light can move through things, water, liquid, air. And these light molecules, light particles bounce off of the molecules of that substance. So the light is coming through the air. It's bouncing off the molecules in the air. It bounces off of the molecule. And the liquid that it's in the water and when light is bouncing off of these molecules, when it's moving through that substance. Those molecules that it bounces off of heat. So that means that the molecules and the atoms start moving and vibrating faster when the light bounces off of it. So, a real life example of this. If you have a pot of water and you put it on the stove and you turn the stove on, energy is being pushed into the contents of the pot. So the, and the water, this energy coming into it that causes it to change its physical state. So, if you put ice in a pot on the stove, turn the stove on, the ice melts into water, the water boils, and then once the water boils, it evaporates into gas. So, we're changing the physical state of the water in the pot by applying light or radiation energy to it. If you put sugar in a pot on the stove, which is how you make caramel, by the way. That sugar caramelizes, the compounds, the molecules in that sugar start to change their chemical structure. It breaks down into carbon. That is why it turns brown. So, we apply energy to sugar in the pot on the stove. It changes its chemical structure. If you turn on the light switch in your room, electricity then gets to flow into the matter in the light bulb, into the filament, and that light bulb, you put energy into that filament. It's going to cause it to glow. And so the energy from the electricity goes in. The light bulb, the light bulb emits light or radiation basically. So energy is a description of what is happening with matter, mass, or tangible objects at any moment in time. If you turn on the light switch, if you put a pot on the stove, if you hold the ball up in the air, if you drop the ball, energy is just the description of what's happening with that matter, and it's the capacity of that matter to do some sort of work. Whether that's to move, whether it's to heat up, whether that's to reflect light, energy is the capacity and the description of matter when it's doing work. So that's what energy is. Now let's talk about money. Money is a thing that has value that everybody agrees on. In the United States, we can exchange dollars, U.S. dollars for food, housing, healthcare, vacations, access to something. We're exchanging dollars for something that has value that we've all agreed on. So, we hold dollars and if somebody else is holding something that we want, we take our dollars, we have something that has value. Somebody else has something that has value to us and we both consensually agree to exchange our things. Whether that's money, whether it's rocks, doesn't matter. We exchange things because both parties or however many parties are involved, consensually agree that the money, the things that we're holding, have value. Money is constructed in this way: everybody involved in an exchange has to agree to the value of the money. You have people out there who don't think money has value and they won't give up whatever they have consensually for money. If they don't think money has value or whatever, your money you have doesn't have enough value for them to exchange what they've got. So, money doesn't even have to be exchanged, right? It doesn't have to be "I give you money, and you give me something back." Money can be donated, and people do that all the time. If you think about when you were a kid and your parents or grandparents gave you a birthday card and they had money or a check in it, right? They put money in that envelope for you, they gave you money, and you didn't necessarily give them anything in return. There wasn't really an exchange. However, this is based on your relationship with them, whether you have a good relationship, whether you're a good daughter or son, or a good grandkid, it doesn't matter. They believe that they have a relationship with you that's valuable to them, and therefore, they give you money for it. So, it doesn't necessarily have to be you giving up something to receive money, right? It can just come to you. But it's not some magical manifestation thing. It's a relationship between you and that other person that they have thoughts about the value of that relationship. You can also donate money to charitable organizations and not receive anything in return. You don't have an expectation of receiving something in return. You don't get a receipt. Or if you do get a receipt for a taxable or tax-deductible donation, they may give you a receipt that says you didn't receive anything of value in return. So you're literally donating money and receiving nothing in return, but this is still based on what you want to give to an organization that is doing work about a cause that you care about. You may think that that organization is doing work that is valuable to the community, there is that word again, and you give them money in exchange for their continued support of that community and their efforts in that community. You're not necessarily receiving their support or their efforts, but you recognize that what they do has value, and you give them money. You're not receiving anything in return. However, you do get a little tax break. Maybe you may be able to claim that on your taxes and get a deduction for it. So technically you do receive something in return, or maybe it just gives you a good feeling to contribute to a cause that you care about. Or maybe you recognize that supporting the causes that are doing the good work that you want to see in your community does benefit you because you are in that community, and the rising tide lifts all ships. So now we're going to take a quick break, and then we're going to come back and talk about why money and energy are not the same thing. I've given you a definition for energy. I've given you a definition for money. We're going to come back in a minute and talk about why they're not the same thing. Welcome back. Let's dive right in. We know what energy is. We know what money is, and we know now that these are not the same thing. Let's talk about it. Money is not energy. We've defined what money and energy are and aren't. They are not placeholders for each other, and they cannot stand in for the other. So let's talk about these folks that want to say the money is energy, and if you have good energy, if you have a positive energy, then that means that you get more money and manifest. And that law of attraction. All of these schools of thought focus on manifesting things, believing in the law of attraction, which is that what you focus on multiplies and what you speak into existence will come to you. And that like attracts like, let's start off with that phrase. Right there, because it pisses me off. Like attracts like in terms of magnetism, this doesn't even follow the laws of physics. Your opposite ends of magnets attract each other. So, like attracts like right out the window. That is not true. Why do people say that? I don't know. Manifestation is whenever people tell you to meditate. And what you want in your life? Create a vision board so that you constantly see images of what you want your life to be like. Visualize what you want your life to be like, because then if you think it, then you can be it. Let's talk about cognitive bias, right? We have brains or humans. Some of us have brains. We all filter information from our senses so that it's sight, smell, taste, touch and sound. Our brain is taking in information from our senses, and we filter that through our brain. Which already has made assumptions about the world when our brain filters this information from our sense. It's looking for evidence that our assumptions that we've already made about the world are true, because if our assumptions about the world are true, then we can stay safe, right? I did an episode a couple of weeks ago about why people should on accountants all the time, and that was me filtering. Information that I had seen or heard online or on podcasts, and then I got invited to speak as a guest on a money podcast, and the host told me that she had recently been talking about bookkeepers and. And now she finally has one on her podcast to set the record straight. I had no idea talking about accountants and bookkeepers. All this stuff and that having me on and our discussion helped her realize why it's so important to have a bookkeeper in your business or an accountant. And I didn't manifest that right. So, this episode recording happened a few weeks after I had made the episode about people talking about accountants, and I had been telling folks that I was tired of accountants being kind of the punching bag, right? I had been talking about this, and then I had made an episode about it. Did I manifest that or is my brain just more likely to focus on the fact that she told me she had been talking about accountants recently? Because that means that I was right about what everybody's talking about. So, did I manifest that podcast interview, or am I just clinging to that as more evidence that I was right in my assumption? So, when we played the money games that I taught you a few weeks back, we weren't manifesting money. In our lives. We were just choosing to direct our brains to focus on how much money we have. Around us. And that when we spend it, it comes back. And these aren't universal truths, but we can almost delude ourselves and trick ourselves into finding evidence that supports these beliefs. These delusions are not harmful to us or to anyone else. So why wouldn't you want to be deluded into seeing that you have money and that you get it back when you spend it? Now let's talk about the law of attraction. So, the Law of Attraction says that if you think positively or negatively, then you'll create that experience. And I'm just like, well, duh. We as humans with our human brains are preprogrammed for negativity biases because that kept us safe when we were cave dwellers. Always remember that this mushroom will kill you and focus on that so that you don't eat it and die. You cannot be all positive all the time. There are things. In life that are truly harmful, and this is the flaw and the law of attraction that I see, there are things in life that are truly harmful. Us and if you force nothing but positive thoughts that gaslights people who have been harmed into taking ownership of how they've been harmed and to accept harmful behavior as something that is just somehow good for them, somehow positive in trying to find silver lining for things that they may not actually want to happen to them in this way. Force positivity relies on the white supremacist right to comfort fear of conflict. And the fact is that there are systems that were built to subjugate certain people so that power and access to resources could be hoarded, and there's nothing to think positively about that. Right. Here's what I think that we can focus on instead of saying that money is energy because. It's not, I hope you agree with me by this time. Now, here's what we can focus on: value, and I've said that a couple of times for a reason in this podcast. People conflate money and value. People conflate value and worth. People conflate money and energy. These are not the same things. I believe that value is infinite and abundant. We can create value just by thinking, just by using our brains when we're innovating and when we're inventing. We're creating value, and it's like we're creating it out of thin air from nothing, right? You have an idea and then you create, the fruition of that idea you make it happen, that's creating value. Money may not be abundant, it may not be accessible to everyone, but I think that everybody has the ability to create value in the world. Value is also not our worth, and let's not conflate those things either. Every human being, no matter what, is worth respect and dignity, and every human being deserves access to having their basic needs met. Value is you creating something and then someone else deciding that yes, it does in fact hold value. Value is something that we have to agree on, right? But you can create it and then there are there are 7 billion people in the world. There's going to be somebody out there that thinks what you created is actually valuable. They agree that it has value and therefore they're willing to exchange something with you to get that. Value and that's what creates a currency or an exchange of money. So to conclude, I think that all these concepts and ideas are connected, but they're not interchangeable and I want to be so clear about that, not just because I have a science degree. But it is so important in accounting too, to use the right terminology, the right verbiage we want to use the correct words to describe our lives and experiences so that we can all do what we need to do and what we want to do when we start to use words like energy instead of money. Or instead of value, that's where we get into this metaphysical talk that is harmful. It is emotional bypassing at its worst. I call myself a numbers witch because I can do some serious. Magic with people’s bookkeeping and business finances by highlighting areas for them to pay attention to. But you probably already know that I'm not a super spiritual woo person. I'm just woo enough to keep things interesting and to be balanced. With my super analytical, scientific, logical side. If you like this episode, please leave me a rating or review, and come to my social media accounts to share with me what you took from this. I'll talk to you next week.