The Money Monster is Loose (And Richard Rohr Has Something to Say About It)
Taming Your Money Monster: Nine Paths To Money Master released this week!
After years of wrestling with personality monsters and financial demons, my book Taming Your Money Monster: Nine Paths to Money Mastery has officially escaped into the wild and is now prowling bookstore shelves everywhere—including Amazon.
Look, I know what you're thinking: "Another book about money? How thrilling." But here's the thing—this isn't about compound interest and portfolio allocation. This book is about why Enneagram Type Fours keep buying artisanal everything while Type Fives tend to hoard money like a squirrel preparing for the apocalypse.
As a little taste of what's inside, I'm sharing Richard Rohr's foreword below. Fair warning: it might just convince you that even "filthy lucre" can be redeemed.
If this resonates with your soul (and your wallet), grab the book. Your future self—and your bank account—will thank you.
Does Money Need Redeeming? (by Richard Rohr)
People who present us with profound answers are the same people who first hear the profundity and the necessity of good questions! Doug Lynam is such a man and such a writer. Get ready to be thrilled by the kind of wisdom that transcends easy categories or agendas.
If you think this book is only about money, prepare to be surprised. If you think it is about personality typologies, look forward to having your imagination stretched. Of course, it is about both, but overlapping and mutually informing, interwoven with spiritual insight! That is the way wise souls write.
For most of my adult life, I tried to define mystery in a way that I hoped others could value. In childhood, I was taught that you could not understand mystery, so you should not even try—just trust and believe. I know my Irish nuns meant well and were fully half right, but that attitude set many of us on an anti-intellectual path that has not served us well. We got educated in a secular Western culture, and without knowing it, we became dualistic thinkers.
Over time, I learned that mystery is not unintelligible but something that never stops unfolding and revealing itself. Mystery offers us endless understanding of things like God, the universe, love, the soul—and now even the Enneagram. These have all shown them- selves to be true mysteries unfolding before our eyes.
Mystery always invites us into something greater. It does not leave us smug and certain, as far too much religion has done, but it leaves us constantly searching for more. Thus, it also keeps us humble. Life shows us that there is always more on the horizon. Knowing always contains the search for more knowing.
A surrender to mystery probably marks the line between mere utilitarian knowledge and transformative wisdom. It is what Albert Einstein was referring to when he said, “Problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking that was used when we created them.” We must leap into a new arena where truth is allowed to unfold over time and slowly show itself to any sincere searcher. This is non-dualistic thinking, which resists creating false opposites.
If you will allow me to quote Albert a second time, he said of himself, “It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” The wisdom tradition of all great world religions called this deeper mind contemplation, something beyond and better than just information. Doug Lynam is a contemplative knower, and you are about to enjoy the fruits of his labor.
I have been with Doug in his studio many times, a space in his home dedicated to contemplation, with a massive whiteboard installed from wall to wall. I have watched him race back and forth with endless enthusiasm as he developed an idea he was sharing with me. Further, he was continually open to anything I might question or add to his analysis. Or is it synthesis? At any rate, I have given him the happy nickname “Greyhound,” in homage to my father, who raised and raced greyhounds in Kansas, and also because I cannot keep up with Doug’s speed and agility!
This brilliant opus now in your hands was generated during a time of great personal trial for Doug, and the book is better, perhaps, because of it. While writing, he allowed at least three things to remain mysteries for him: money, spirituality, and the ever-unfolding schema called the Enneagram.
I was first taught the Enneagram in 1972–73 by some Cincinnati Jesuits who had just brought it back from the Arica Institute in Chile. They rightly saw it as a very helpful tool in their Ignatian work of the “discernment of spirits” (1 Corinthians 12:10). Thank God I followed their cautionary advice not to write it down until I had lengthy and living knowledge of its use in practical settings—which I could not claim until the late 1980s. Since this wisdom first hit the scene, it has continued to unfold more and more in every decade, moving beyond the early spiritual direction and retreat world to psychology, education, business, and even athletic and executive coaching. It is very generative.
You cannot limit or put artificial boundaries on true wisdom. Wisdom is a word that points to the common domain, where knowledge flourishes in, through, and with the collective unconscious. No one owns or copyrights wisdom. It is too big, and is always self-revealing and self-unfolding. Here, you will see it even includes what some, myself included, foolishly called “filthy lucre.” You will discover that even money and its uses are multifaceted and redeemable. Money better be redeemable, or we are all in serious trouble!
True mystery just keeps growing, showing, and connecting. This is the sign that something is a mystery in the truest sense and not just another passing thought or trend. As you are about to see, a truly holy idea will keep coming around for another orbit and further enlightenment. Here it comes again!
Richard Rohr, O.F.M.
