CHAPTER

Bari Tessler:
36
Three Gateways
to Money Initiation

I
t’s a bit odd, don’t you think, that our daily lives as adults are
tightly interwoven with the reality of money, and yet the major-
ity of us are never taught how to work with it—much less have a
conscious relationship with it? No, it’s more than a bit odd. It’s crazy. As
crazy as it would be to do away with driver’s training requirements.
Imagine if our parents simply bought us a car at age 16, handed us the
keys, and said, “Hop in and just figure it out as you go.” Though it is
often unspoken, we unfortunately get this same message with respect
to money. That, to me, is insane; and because collective insanity on a
widespread scale undermines our true potential as humans, I felt a
pull from deep within my heart to do something about our relation-
ship with money.
Do you remember your formal initiation ceremony into
adulthood? How the candles and firelight flickered on everyone’s
faces, lighting them with a warm reddish glow during the part where
the leader of the ceremony presented you with challenges that would
teach and test you about the ways of money? Well, I definitely do not
have any memories of a rite of passage into relationship with money,
and from what I am seeing in my work, almost no one else in our
culture does, either—because such an event is simply not a part of
our cultural fabric. For the most part, the whole realm of money is
very much a shadow, a taboo of sorts, and seems to be one of the last
unexplored frontiers in our lives. Fortunately, however, a noticeable
shift is beginning to occur.

Bari Tessler has a Masters in Somatic Psychology from Naropa University. She
is a teacher, therapist, and speaker, and founder of Conscious Bookkeeping.
After many years in the Psychology Field, Bari jumped careers and moved
into financial and bookkeeping services. The Conscious Bookkeeping
organization is an integration of these two fields, providing a financial
support team for individuals, couples, families, and businesses. The Conscious
Bookkeeping team consists of financial therapists, financial coaches, and
bookkeeping trainers who offer services and education to help people
transform their relationship with money on a practical, psychological, and
spiritual level. Visit Bari online at www.consciousbookkeeping.com.


Chapter Thirty-Six n Three Gateways
In the history of humanity, when something has held a place of
great importance in the daily life of people in a given culture, it has
often been directly taught and addressed during initiations or rites
of passage that function to provide support during awkward but
natural periods of transition into new life roles. They facilitate the
completion of one cycle and the beginning of another. In addition,
initiation rituals offer the chance to learn how to live in society and
can help infuse mundane day-to-day activities with a sense of the
sacred.
While pursuing my master’s degree in Somatic Psychotherapy, I
did my thesis work on creating space for young women to go through
an initiation regarding their relationship with body image. Then, after
several years of work as a counselor and psychotherapist, I began
going through my own rite of passage: an unscheduled, unexpected
initiation into the reality of money. There was a large, ominous,
$60,000 dark cloud of a school loan that I had ignored while in school.
The payments were about to begin, and the loan ultimately became
the catalyst for my awakening within the realm of money. Until then,
I had been the kind of person who threw away every bank statement
that came in the mail. I never even opened them, and never reconciled
my bank account. Feeling the weight of the school loan on my back,
I realized that I would never successfully continue onward unless I
learned how to work with and relate to money.
The Meanings of Initiation
When you think about initiation, what comes to mind? For some
people, it can be a grand turning point in life that involves going
through some kind of challenge or test—a gateway, if you will—
leading to a profound transformation into a higher level of awareness,
action, and consciousness. For some, this test is uncomfortable and
feels like a trial by fire. In a sense, this is true—they’re burning
through old layers of beliefs, behaviors, stories, and experiences. For
others, an initiation is a coming of age. I’ve heard people as young
as 18 and as old as 70 say that they would like to become adults in
terms of their relationship with money. For others still, initiation is
defined as a shedding of old ways and parts of ourselves that are no
longer serving us. Conscious Bookkeeping, the work I created with
my mentor, Tamara Slayton, incorporates qualities of each of these
to guide people through an intentional initiation regarding their
relationship to money, finances, and economics.
The path of Conscious Bookkeeping has been intentionally and
carefully designed to lead people into challenges at the edge of their
 
to Money Initiation Bari Tessler
comfort zone—the kind of challenges that can lead to profound
transformation. This transformation often results in five valuable gifts
within people’s experience of life: They walk away with more clarity,
intimacy, knowledge, ease, and success.
The Three Gateways
On this path, the process of initiation into conscious relationship
with money begins by passing through three gateways: financial
therapy, values-based bookkeeping, and life visioning. It doesn’t
matter which gateway a person enters through first, as each of them
lead naturally into the others. The three gateways are interrelated
in such a way that each supports the others in a dynamic, symbiotic
process. For example, though it is a unique way to do one’s books,
just using a values-based bookkeeping system alone could never
produce the greatest potential results without being part of a dance
that includes a process of inquiry into our innermost beliefs, wounds,
and hopes around the concept of money. And it would be a nearly
lifeless and mechanical process without being wedded to the process
of life visioning, in which goals, plans, and passionate life dreams are
clarified and outlined. In this way, each of the gateways works with
and supports the others. When clients and students of Conscious
Bookkeeping are presented with our framework, it’s up to them to
choose the gateway they feel most drawn to walk through first.
Financial Therapy
Many people have done some form of inner healing work, be it
psychotherapy, coaching, or individual self-inquiry. Often, however,
even people who have done significant self-exploration have never
directly faced their relationship with money. In a sense, they have
never shared their money story.
Because money plays such a key role in day-to-day living,
it is often closely entangled with our core psychological issues,
challenges, and wounds. To free ourselves of constraints in relation to
money, then, is to seek healing for these core wounds in our psyche.
And to heal these core wounds, we must inquire into their nature
with gentle courage.
At the gateway of financial therapy, our challenges, frustrations,
fears, and joys around money are like a red tab on the wrapper of a
gift package within our mind. When we pull the tab, the packaging
unravels to reveal what lies within: the real issues beneath our surface
emotions around money. When we see what’s really driving our
Chapter Thirty-Six n Three Gateways
frustrations, fears, and struggles with money, however, it certainly
doesn’t look like a gift. In fact, it looks more like an old, black, tangled
ball of psychological yuck. For most of us, it isn’t until we have gone
through the process of psychological and emotional healing that we
can see the reward. It can be challenging work, this process—but
then, most initiations involve inherent challenge. In the end, we come
out with skills that allow us to begin polishing up not only the yucky
mess of our limitations around money, but other recurring tangles, as
well. This is because the way we relate with money is often the way
we relate with most everything in life. If you heal your relationship
with money, you will very likely heal other parts of your life, also.
Within the Conscious Bookkeeping method, this process of
bringing awareness and understanding to our inner relationship
with money is the central focus of the gateway of financial therapy.
It begins with inquiring into your past experiences with money,
starting with what you learned from your parents and grandparents.
For example, when you look back on your memories of when your
mom or dad paid bills, do you remember them as being calm, joyful,
and happy, or stressed out, frustrated, or even angry? Oftentimes,
the most powerful lessons about money are taught through behavior
and emotion, rather than words. These unspoken, often unconscious
lessons then guide us in how we earn, spend, save, borrow, and invest
money. And because they are unconsciously delivered, integrated,
and put into action in our own lives, they are also unconsciously
passed along to our intimate partners, children, friends, and co-
workers. Financial therapy is one way to end this perpetual cycle of
unconsciousness around money.
This unconsciousness can show up in another area of our inner
realm as well, as the secrets we hide around our money issues. From
borrowing money that we never pay back, to inheriting large sums
of money, to never tracking our spending and never reconciling our
bank statements, there are plenty of stories about money hidden in
the basement of our mind. When the stories, beliefs, and feelings
we have about money are brought into the light of consciousness,
however, we see that we can edit them. And that is the essence of the
goal in financial therapy: to transform our unconscious stories about
money into conscious tales that illuminate our path to a greater sense
of freedom and happiness.
Values-Based Bookkeeping
There is a myth out there that bookkeeping and accounting are
dry and boring, but this is far from true! Bookkeeping is actually a fun
 
to Money Initiation Bari Tessler
and very dynamic system. You just have to use it in a way that makes
it more enjoyable.
The first step in passing through the gateway of creating
a values-based bookkeeping system is learning the language of
accounting. This important step can empower anyone and everyone
who ever believed that they were incapable, that it wasn’t creative,
or even simply that they should already know this stuff but for
one reason or another hadn’t yet learned it. And all it requires
is a willingness to come face to face with things you may have
heard of in passing, but avoided learning anything about: a chart
of accounts, which includes reports on assets, liabilities, equity,
income, and expenses; financial statements, like a profit and loss
or balance sheet; and that stale cracker of bookkeeping—budgets.
In order to teach people about how to use these reports and
statements, we change some of the names, and, more importantly,
invite students to name categories within the reports themselves, so
they more clearly resonate with a deeper sense of personal meaning.
The act of renaming engages us in a process of first becoming intimate
with our intentions and passions in life—our deeply held values—
and then expressing those intentions, passions, and values right in the
very structure of our bookkeeping system.
For example, when most people hear the word “budget,” the
feeling that arises in their body is one of constriction. I don’t know
many people who love the word budget so much that they find
themselves running home to do one. The resistance most of us feel
is directly related to the unconscious lessons we learned about what
budgeting is: scrimping, clamping down, and generally holding
tightly onto our money while we let small, precise amounts of it
squeeze out into predefined categories such as rent, utilities, credit
card bills, entertainment, and so on. The word budget, and the
concept it traditionally represents, tends to induce an often-unnoticed
attitude of fear and constriction.
We can, however, take another perspective on budgeting. We can
look more deeply into this aspect of bookkeeping and ask, “What’s
really going on here?” What we find is that—though most people
don’t use it consciously in this way—a budget is a tool designed to
help us align our spending patterns with our intention. The second
thing we notice about budgeting is that it tries to help us map out
a future plan for spending patterns that are supposed to be an
expression of our intentions. From this perspective, we can see that
budgeting involves a map and some intentions. So why don’t we call
it a “Map of Intention”? Much better, yes?
Chapter Thirty-Six n Three Gateways
Creating a Map of Intention is more than just assigning a new
name to an existing model. It is a new approach to planning how
we’ll spend our money in the future—an approach that is based
not in fear and constriction, but in excitement and joy. Through this
process, we discover where our values are being met and expressed—
or unmet and unexpressed—through both our spending and making
of money.
We begin by looking deeply inside and coming up with a list of
all of the things that feel important to us. This can include anything
that we feel is of value, such as keeping our body healthy by eating
organic food and practicing yoga, donating money to a nonprofit,
or going on a meditation retreat once a year. The list of values is
then compared with the categories in our Map of Intention. We see
immediately if all of our values are being represented in the Map,
and if not, we can add categories or rename ones that are already
there. For example, when one of our clients was going through this
process, she asked herself: “Okay, Rent, what is that really? Rent feels
like a bag of bricks tied around each of my feet. What is that money
really providing me? Home…safety...love shack…a sanctuary. Ahh,
much better. I’ll call this category Sanctuary.” For her, the word
“sanctuary” reminds her of the deeper meaning of what that money
brings her each month: a feeling of home, of safety. She realized the
value in having a home that is a safe sanctuary, and that value is now
expressed in her Map of Intention. Rather than sending off a big check
each month to her landlord with fear, constriction, and some sadness
that all that money is going for nothing, she shifted her perspective
on what this check brings into her life. She actually began to notice
as sense of happiness and gratitude when she sent it off each month.
The rent check became a sanctuary check.
The value-expressing categories that are created in the Map of
Intention then appear across the board in all of the other reports and
financial statements. In this way, the path of Conscious Bookkeeping
leads us to create an entire bookkeeping system based on our values.
That just makes sense, doesn’t it? But the first time people see
what were once boring, dry financial reports now filled with their
personally meaningful categories, they feel unexpectedly excited.
These reports actually become rather fun to look at. Such a system
truly empowers us in the areas where we touch the world, where we
meet life and have the chance to share our gifts. This is because our
values are represented directly in the system. When we use a values-
based bookkeeping system to look at our current financial situation,
or to plan for future saving and spending, we get direct, immediate
feedback on whether or not we’re spending our money in ways that
align with our values and goals.
 
to Money Initiation Bari Tessler
This system supports us in living true to our own highest vision
for our life—but it can’t work unless we use it, and use it often, which
is why we invite everyone to engage with this type of bookkeeping
every few days, or at least once a week. Making this into a practice
involves continually cycling through a number of simple stages that
turn this into a working, dynamic, life-giving system that generates
frequent financial feedback. This is what the practice looks like: When
we go out into the world and purchase things, we put the receipts
in a little accoutrement, or wallet, or bring them home and file them
in a special box. Then, every few days we enter the receipts into our
Quicken or QuickBooks register. Afterward, the receipts are stored
in folders that have the same names as the expense categories in our
Map of Intention. This process is repeated often so that it becomes a
habitual practice. When we get our bank statement each month, we
reconcile the statement, print out reports, and look through them
to see how well our spending behavior matches up with our Map
of Intention. This is essentially a check-in process to see how well
we’re doing in terms of spending our money in ways that express
our values.
Along the way, different people will tend to “fall asleep” at
different steps. Some people check out at the grocery store and don’t
bring home receipts. Others fall asleep when they get to the step of
printing out the reports because they’re terrified to see the reality
of their spending patterns. Whenever we lose awareness of what
we’re doing in relationship to our money, we have an opportunity
to begin the process of self-inquiry into the underlying thoughts and
feelings. If we’re having strong feelings around seeing our reports, for
example, we place our attention on the sensations and feelings that
arise in our body, seeking to gain insight into what may lie beneath
them, or what their true nature really is.
This cycle of steps is repeated every month, and once a year we
review all of our financial information for the past year. The intention
in creating a dynamic bookkeeping system like this is to help us
become aware of where we go unconscious in relation to money, and
to help us remain awake and aware throughout the entire cycle.
Sometimes people feel resistance when they imagine bookkeeping
as a regular, ongoing practice. When this comes up, I ask them
to imagine what they would feel like if they didn’t exercise every
couple of days, but waited, instead, to do the entire month’s worth of
exercise all in one day. Or if they waited until the end of the month
to do a whole 30 days’ worth of brushing their teeth. The consensus
is always that they wouldn’t feel very good at all. Unfortunately,
many people wait until the end of the month to take care of all their
Chapter Thirty-Six n Three Gateways
financial business, such as gathering receipts, entering them into
their register, and reconciling. Others don’t even do that, choosing
to wait for several months, or even an entire year, letting all of this
bookkeeping work build up as they go about their lives in a state of
financial unconsciousness.
Many people find that creating a little ritual helps them make
conscious bookkeeping a practice. One client, for example, lights a
candle, eats some chocolate, puts on her favorite music, and takes a
deep breath to slow down a bit. Just stay present and in your body,
and you will find the right way to make the practice special and
enjoyable for you. Often, people who initially have some resistance
to making bookkeeping into a regular practice end up telling us that,
while it took a little time for them to adjust, the process soon started
to be fun. They find themselves continuing with the system out of
their own natural desire.
to Money Initiation Bari Tessler
replied, “Know what you’re doing.” To me, that’s another way of
saying, “Be fully conscious and awake in relationship to all aspects
of reality.” Conscious Bookkeeping helps us to begin that process
by initiating us into conscious relationship to money. Like any good
initiation, this process can be both challenging and rewarding. We are
brought face to face with our shadows around money, and in the end
emerge into greater clarity, intimacy, knowledge, ease, and success.
Through this financial rite of passage, we can begin to relate to all of
life with the same kind of awareness.

Life Visioning
Why are you here on this planet? What is the real purpose of your
life? What burns in your heart with a passionate glow? What things
must your soul absolutely do before facing the inevitable reality of
death? These are big questions, which we humans have been asking
ourselves for tens of thousands of years. This is why they are a
foundation to the initiation process of the Conscious Bookkeeping
path. In fact, the ultimate goal of this practice is to discover and
live true to the answers to these questions. Each of the elements of
Conscious Bookkeeping is intended to help us create a life in which
the dream answers to these questions become the lived experience of
our day-to-day life.
So, why the “conscious” in Conscious Bookkeeping? Simply
put, each aspect of the path is intended to help us raise our level
of consciousness in relationship to money, so that we can use the
positive power of money to realize our highest aspirations. And when
we raise our level of consciousness in relationship to money, it is
almost inevitable that we will naturally become more conscious and
awake in relationship to other aspects of reality. The limitations of the
system are defined only by your own investment.
While visiting India, a friend of mine was introduced to three
Buddhist monks. During their conversation, my friend learned that
each of the monks had memorized the entire Pali Canon, which
contains hundreds of discourses, or teachings, given by the Buddha.
My friend asked the monks, “What is the essence of the Pali Canon?”
One of the monks leaned slightly forward for emphasis and calmly