People’s attitude to money is always very emotionally charged and causes a lot of tension. If we talk about such difficulties, they are associated with such feelings as fear, shame, anxiety, anger, which often a person tries to avoid, without understanding the causes and effects. Often even the conversation about it is considered improper, low and unseemly, because it is customary to talk about higher matters, so in psychology and therapy, this topic also remains undervalued, and is usually repressed, accompanied by a sense of shame. But what is there behind money? After all, definitely not a decrease in its significance. All of us perfectly understand how much freedom and pleasure it is possible to receive from life with the help of money, and how much more chances one gets to fulfill himself with it then without.

Money is called energy. It is the energy that is based on human arousal in the broadest sense of the word, as its presence in a person’s life involves coming into contact with other people. And since energy is not a fixed concept, but a movement, often because of it we are forced to move, to accept the laws of life processes and resources that they open. Therefore, the feeling of shame and fear, a sense of aggression towards money which excites us, is not related to the materiality of money, but to the interaction with people around us.

Therefore, we can talk about the existing paradox of human perception of money, which states that the attitude to it as only to material values, while denying the existance of a spiritual component, limits us from spiritual values, driving us into material dependence.

In modern studies of the psychology of money there is the so-called effect of the illusion of materiality of money.

It is believed that the need for money is a material need, the same as its value, because with the help of money you can easily meet the basic needs associated with food and comfort. Then why can the perception of money as an exclusively material value be an illusion? Because there is no need for money specifically, it is only a way to meet needs – just a means. And as a means, it also helps to satisfy social and even spiritual needs for self-realization and self-actualization, the only question is that to achieve this, in addition to depersonalized money, we must also use personal resources, projecting our knowledge of who and what we are into the activity, in other words – by expressing ourselves.

In this case, money becomes not just a material value, it goes beyond the limits of objective reality and into an idealistic space of meanings, where meaning is not money, but a sense of freedom to be oneself.

If the person’s perception and understanding of money is limited to only the material aspect, and he feels a lot of tension about this, perhaps even indignation, then you should pay attention to what level in the hierarchy of needs he is in now, most likely he has already learned to satisfy the primary needs associated with physiology (he is well-fed), safety (lives in quite comfortable conditions) and social affiliation (he has family and loving people), but he still does not project his personality into his activities, does not realize his talents and abilities in the profession, perhaps, does not understand what his calling and growth zone are.

This is what is meant when they mention the concept of going beyond the comfort zone, and for this it is necessary for the person to realize what he is and what he wants to be in order to expand consciousness from the material vision of the world to the ideal, i.e. from possession – to being, and to balance between them.

At this crisis (transition) stage of personal growth there are a lot of temptations offered to us by the modern world consumer culture, screaming with numerous advertisements and offers to buy things as a way of self-expression. I don’t watch TV, but I watch movies on the internet, often accompanied by commercials, and recently one of them said: “I ordered myself … (something) and felt like a rock star!” This is the most trivial example of how you can replace the need for self-expression by the acquisition of things, and this game of substitution occurs as a result of the perception of money as only a material need, thereby limiting the possibility of growth by devaluing its ideal properties.

People with a keen sense of reality, prone to ideas of materialism, are at risk of developing excessive criticism towards themselves, which can lead to depleted imagination and loss of the ability to see many opportunities. For example, when a person has a certain amount of money, and he looks at it too realistically, for him the priority will be saving (for a rainy day) or spending exclusively on necessities. But he will not be able to see the opportunity ti multiply, and as Plato said, the property of money is continuous growth.

But as usual, there is the flip side, which suggests that people with great imagination are subject to great temptation to enjoy the very idea of having a lot of opportunities. This, of course, is very romantic, because there is an illusion of a bright future, when everything is still ahead, even when you are over 30 and you are lying on the couch like Oblomov, so this approach is fraught with the risk of freezing at such a point of pleasure and not making a choice in favor of one of them.

Imbalances occur often, because there is a thin line between idealism and materialism, and to feel this line is an art of being on the contact boundary according to the Gestalt theory principle of “here” and “now”.

Abundance is the ability to use the bounty of the universe. The bounty, which was given to us by the Creator, the bounty, intended for us, which serves man, and which begins as the very material, something one can feel and see in the space of flora and fauna, then continues in the space of things created by man (this is where money belongs), and ends in an invisible ideal space of meanings.

These are the meanings of human existence on earth, and if the space of things is synchronized with them, then life itself will become brighter and more complete. After all, money is only a metaphor, one of the ways of communication, interaction with people, the ability to be grateful and create something for others, as well as to accept recognition for one’s activities, gratitude from the world for the work, and enrich each other.