We had a wonderful long chat in the tent last night before sleeping, with the orange moon rising slowly above the mountains in front of us. 
@vincentnijman and I unfolded some of our fears and vision around money, wealth, savings - and the potential future projects that we hope will flourish as the fiat currencies collapse...
It felt liberating for me, to speak so deeply and with all the feeling like this, as there have been swirling loopholes of thought for some time, for both of us actually, around how to proceed - whilst banks and surveillance agecies (try to) demand to intrude further (and more aggressively). Day to day transactions are very different to how they used to be, and from how they purport to function!
Though we are not (yet) fully debanked, we are close to it, as both our miniscule 'incomes' and our minor crypto 'investments' are distributed in a truly decentralised fashion - pending a righteously-aligned system that doesn't work absolutely contrary to our values. Even trying to link our Patreon account to a valid card or bank account is getting laborious, and trying to pay my phone top-up each month is literally farsical.
For my part, I have a handful of accounts/ platforms that I am Gifted on:
- Patreon - The Goed Life
- Hive - clareartista
- Italian Post Office account (for the Patreon monthly income, which I withdraw in cash as soon as it arrives there)
- cash in hand from art, clothing and sewing jobs
For saving and for spending - I save and spend very little! - I have been using Wirex crypto-fiat exchange and visa card. It is problematic on so many levels that we both often feel like literally abandoning it with our few hundred 鈧瑂 in! Recently, it works so so slowly, that the authenticator process moves on quicker than the Wirex App can accept the code 馃槨 - so effectively this means that I cannot access funds.
Wirex used to have an immediate BTC - EUR transactional capacity; when we bought in Euros or withdrew from a cash machine in Euros, our BTC (we were using Wirex for day-to-day transactions) would automatically translate into Euros. BUT NOW the new Wirex One account stores our BTC as a investmentand we must first convert it into Euros within the Wirex App (with the problem above making this impossible), before making any payment.
Suffice to say, this is one of the major reasons that I use money so little: if I were paying a lot of conventional bills, this would command too many of my waking hours, and I would rather be creative. I am not here in this lifetime to spend 10 hours a day in front of a screen, jumping through hoops for the entertainment and convenience of these devilish corporations!!
Spending in cash is ideal, and so much easier, in rural Italy. Our local bank machine seems to run out of money regularly, or to crash whenever it rains 馃ス so fortunately the locals are very accomodating of this; we often leave a shop with a promise to pay the following day/ week, or when the cash machine is working again!
We're expanding on this healthy(er) way of flowing resources and recompense, by participating expansively into Gifting exchange locally and regionally; non-transactional gifting: an infinite flow of mutually-beneficial giving, which helps us (e.g. finding a new home for our old roof tiles, used fabrics, excess kilos of figs) and helps the other party (sharing knowledge about useful plants, taking care of their kids, giving us a lift to avoid the use of 2 vehicles for the same trip).
The complexity of a local-regional web of exchange can quickly develop into a solid, sustainable fabric of interconnectedness: all it requires is Relaxed Generosity, a focussed awareness of others' needs and wants, and a willingness to reach out or to accept, all in Right Timing.
An example; for a women's circle that meet monthly - a gorgeous collective of wise, conscious and ecclectic interculture of womb-ones - we have a Telegram group to organise the time, place and topic of each circle. We all also share occasional links and offers or requests to this collective. I responded enthusiastically to a call for anyone interested in natural raw sheep wool: a neighbour of the woman offering it, had asked her to help find it a better home, rather than them having to get rid of it. It still has to be carded and/ or spun, and I am overjoyed to have the basis of a new natural mattress. Wow! And no effort or money involved, bar the 30 minute or so drive to meet the friend's neighbour and pick it all up 馃槏馃槏馃槏
Things like this are an integral, natural economy; a healthy organic flow of life force through resources, which grounds us in both Heaven and Earth: it is a means of us returning to symbiotic complexity of relationship on the horizontal - rather than everything being purely, coldly transactional, oppositional, contractural, surveyed and taxed. Our natural wealth; what we grow, nurture, harvest, is Ours: it cannot be taxed or stolen from us, if we comprehend what Right Living and Truly Living In The Fabric Of Divinity As A Divine Thread is.
Of course, coming back to the conventional commercial structure: today Vincent went out to hunt for protein. He returned with a magnificent 'catch' of bread, cheese and wurstel from the local bakery, paid for by our bank card, hopefully not dipping into the store of Euros that we have for the sale of the (new) house and land that we're currently working on. AND he also came across elderly neighbours making passata - accepting their spontaneous gifting of tomatoes and a tub of freshly-cooked pulp. 馃槏馃構馃
We are temporarily rich in terms of a set of 4 digits that the bank is holding (not so benignly) for us. We're waiting for the elderly gentleman with whom we shook hands on it, to offer his preferred method of exchange for the land and 'animal cottage'. In the meantime, we are repairing, adjusting, subsisting and cultivating, and hoping that at some point the Arthouse will find a new owner, too. The latter which would free up a relatively immense amount of fiat affluence, that we can transfer asap into something that more directly reflects right values, riches, resources-that-will-expand.
Realistically, we have a few, almost-perfectly-formed solutions, and we aim to half leap, half tentatively dip our humble toes into. I'm most excited about the New X Earth exchange, crypto coin and Ghost Wallet, as they envision being The appropriate sacred bridge from our current subjugation under commercial currencies and systemic hierarchies (all a means of harvesting time, energy, attention and all the natural wealth of our collective resources ownership, as divine consciousness incarnate) to a sacred-aligned system that values regeneration, healing, creativity and symbiosis (rather than ego, competition, destruction, death).
In this moment, Beloved Vincent and I spend all of our waking energy (and probably a lot of our dreamtime, too!) working towards the solution and antidoting of all of this orchestrated chaos. We seek solutions for ourselves as much as for everyone around us. We do not live in isolation, even if society, culture (and even family and old friends, at times) and systems are pushing us further and further to the edges. All of our sweat equity is for us All: this integral Kingdom of Inter-Being-ness.
In the next months we hope to slowly transition out of the fiat world, if we still can maintain links with the conventional commercial 'reality' (via the card that the New X Earth exchange have in development). Their aim is to provide a completely sovereign solution, whereby every transaction is not linked in any way to our name, I.D. or online 'presence'. We get the convenience of making payments ease-fully AND we do not have to surrender our Freedoms, Rights, Privacy or Security.
This is the least we should expect from our banking services!!
It has been A FECKING HARD TIME, these past 7 + years of financial hardship, since being ostricised for maintaining a Truth-full stance, whilst the world went pazzissimo under the wicked spells of pharmaceutical totalitarianism and the kamikazi jab-taking psychosis. It has been terrifying, losing almost every patron, ally, community, income and outlet just for speaking about how the immune system actually works, what is really in a jibjab/ 'vacccccccccine', and what an Inalienable Right Is. It is disgusting how language has been both weaponised and legislated, to exile people like us who can think, who can feel, and who are great at communicating passionately. It is truly awe-full that mature, long-standing artists like myself - who should be resting into their stabilised reputation and social standing, and harvesting relatively effortlessly from having built visibility and deep respect from the public over multiple decades of creative genius and efforts in output of their craft - are instead kicked to the side, made invisible, left to live off of the crumbs that society patronises us with. And I'm not talking about the kind of blessed patronising by my beautiful and generous patrons via Patreon and other, private support channels: I mean the patronising (in the most cynical negative sense) crumbs of the pennies and cents and 'exposure' and 'complements' that we are tossed, by a general public that has chosen to purge Real Art and Human Genius from its hearth, from the heart of its fabric.
In one swift fell swoop in 2019, the 'govern-ment' shut down the economy and ruined my only steady income from paying guests at the Arthouse, algorithms (and folks' choices on what to consume with their eyes) locked me and other Real Artists out of 'social' 'media', and my so-called 'supporters' clicked off (just like that: click!) the vital monthly income that was sustaining my electricity and water supplies, buying my groceries and art materials, keeping my car 'legal', running my internet subscription, etc, etc, etc.
It was not a choice to leave the system: I - alongside hoards of non-commercial creatives, truth tellers, hosts and small business owners - was systematically, unceremoniously, force-fully evicted from the system by a (conscious or unconscious) veritable collective conspiracy.
We have made the Right Choice to remove our creative outpourings from this inverted 'mainstream', to release our attachment to that which is false and distorted, and to patiently await the right moment to step into The New. We are well aware of our place in the Real fabric of the Cosmos, and of the Cosmic Fact that the truly Meek Will Inherit The Earth: we already are claiming it as Our Own, and simply wait for the rest of the world to catch up with that.
Our needs continue, asides from the challenging discomforts of extreme weather versus incomplete housing and food systems, to be met by The Benign Universe and A Benevolent God Hierarchy. We are safe and secure, rich and powerful - even if we still look backwards occasionally at the old world (i.e. 'contemporary' commercial systems still in operation) and have a bit of a panic at how 'poor' and 'vulnerable' we are, through the eyes of others. But they are the ones striving and straining for Ceasar's coin, doing work that doesn't rouse fire in their souls (or under their butts!!), and cowering in fear whilst paying tyrannical forces (who are intent on destroying them) to be able to afford a fresh organic fig or two at 拢15 - 拢20 per kilo, whilst we eat around a kilo each per day FOR FREE, are drying jars and jars of them for when this glut is over for the season, and are literally mulching the garden with them. This is NOT to gloat! It is simply a fact of illustrating the very natural phenomenon of the meek inheriting the Earth, in real time. We can give myriad examples of this fact in our every sacred day.
We have gone from being the poorest folks we know, to the richest: we have ALL of our time, our movement, our health and happiness, our relationship plus friendships and working relationships, our attention and our resources Liberated and liberating us. Life is super hard, super-super rewarding, and we are becoming the change that we want to see in the world. Our rapport with money, currency, spending, earning, is also liberated, and I am very excited and inspired at where we are cocreatively taking it.
The wise amongst us are taking similar routes to freedom, away from codependency to the superficial 'wealth' of conventional currency. We look forward to sharing our riches and merit gained with e v e r y o n e, not to hoarding it!!