Perhaps you earn quite a decent living, and yet money slips through your fingers. Perhaps you feel uncomfortable asking the price your work deserves, or every bill fills you with an unease out of proportion to the actual balance in your account. When patterns like these keep repeating despite good decisions and effort, it is worth asking whether they are really yours alone.
From a systemic point of view, our relationship with money does not begin with our first salary. It begins much earlier, in the family we come from, in the experiences of our parents and grandparents, and even in the history of the land where we were born. What they lived through around money, property, loss and security, we often carry forward without being aware of it.
In this article we look at how these unconscious patterns are passed on, how you can recognise them, and how systemic constellations and systemic self-exploration help you become aware of them.
Money is not only a means of payment
From the standpoint of our usual, dual understanding, money is an instrument with which we measure, exchange and store value. In the book Codes of Success, Dr Jelena Đorđević goes a step further: from the standpoint of the whole mind, money is a projection of well-being, conditioned by the contents of our familial unconscious, the collective unconscious of the land in which we live, and the collective unconscious of humanity.
This means that we manifest in our lives what is part of our unconscious contents. The question of money therefore has its own particular dynamic in the familial unconscious, and it shows itself directly in our careers, through professional success or failure.
Through money, a family system passes on not only material values but also emotional burdens, expectations, obligations and guilt. (from the book Decoding the Soul)
How money patterns are passed down through generations
A fear of poverty or a fear of loss may have roots in the experiences of previous generations, in wars, economic crises or personal financial collapse. When a family has gone through periods in which basic needs were under threat, a descendant may carry an excessive worry about whether there will be enough, even when there is no real reason for it. The book Soul Codes describes this as an unconscious loyalty to family fears and to a sense of insecurity.
There is also the opposite dynamic. If one generation acquired wealth through exploitation or at the expense of others, the descendants may carry an unconscious guilt and an obligation to "repay the debt". They then find it hard to earn, avoid keeping anything, or face constant losses, without connecting this to family history. The seizing of property among brothers, sisters or spouses works in a similar way: descendants may feel that they do not belong, or that they do not deserve the money they earn.
Some signs that you are carrying an inherited pattern may be:
- a constant worry about money that is out of proportion to your actual income
- difficulty asking for or accepting fair payment for your work
- recurring debts or losses, or being unable to save anything
- a feeling that the money you earn does not really belong to you
- taking on too much responsibility for others, at work and in the family
Money and the mother: the feminine principle within us
In Dr Jelena Đorđević's books, money is described as a manifestation of the feminine principle: the energy of life, fertility and abundance. According to the theory of the familial unconscious, the origin of money is directly connected with the archetype of the mother, or the primal mother, as the source of fertility and well-being. This is why, in family constellations, when the subject is money, the relationship with the mother and with the female members of the family is often explored.
If this relationship is disturbed, or if there is an unconscious guilt or obligation towards the mother, it may express itself through economic difficulties. This applies to both women and men, because each of us carries both the feminine and the masculine principle, and our ability to manifest abundance depends on how far we have integrated them within ourselves.
The balance of giving and receiving begins with our parents
Bert Hellinger, the creator of the systemic constellations method, stressed that receiving comes before giving. The first thing we receive from our parents is life itself. In the book Decoding the Soul, gratitude to our parents for life is described as the foundation of all other forms of receiving, including money, love and attention.
When this gratitude is missing, a blockage may arise in the ability to receive anything else. When the balance of giving and receiving is disturbed, a person may keep giving more than they receive, or keep putting themselves in situations where they cannot properly ask for or accept payment for their work.
How to begin becoming aware of your patterns
Resolving these patterns, as the book The Path of Knowledge says, calls for honest introspection and work in systemic constellations, but also for personal work through systemic self-exploration and presence exercises. In a constellation, the field can show where the energy of money has stalled in the family system: with ancestors who lost property, with an injustice that has not been acknowledged, in the relationship with the mother. A central part of the resolution is often acknowledging and forgiving the ancestors who took part in seizing or losing property, and giving back the burden that is not yours.
In your everyday work, the systemic self-exploration sentences from the book Decoding the Soul can help you, such as "I want to become aware of the suffering and pain connected with financial difficulties that has been deposited at my mental address" or "I want to eliminate destructive concepts and beliefs about money". Say each one silently to yourself and, for a few minutes, follow what happens in your body, without hurrying and without judging.
If your worry about money grows into constant anxiety, bear in mind that systemic work does not replace professional psychological or medical help when it is needed.
Unconscious money patterns are not a verdict. They are information about what your family lived through. When you see them, honour them and give back what does not belong to you, a space opens for money to flow in your life in keeping with your true worth.