*Note all posts unedited and just written first time in true Jess form. Excuse any rah rah ness*
Perhaps one of my most poignant and beautiful lessons from Egypt, which is why it deserves a whole post on its own. After 3 weeks in Egypt, whenever I think of my lessons, this one springs to my head, no… my heart, first. I spent time in Egypt with all sorts of people. I always do. The Egyptians taught me the most from anyone.. Through all of the personal development, spiritual development I do, which is a lot, the Egyptians are my greatest teachers. Everyone can teach, everyone can lead, and everyone can show and everyone can preach.. But the Egyptians embody. Every atom of them speaks the messages of the divine- Their smiles. Fuck. Their smiles. I felt like a creep at one point taking photos of their smiles. They smile with their eyes and when they smile, they are gifting. It’s an exchange. They KNOW that love is the only currency.. They KNOW what people all over the world are trying so hard to discover and what people all over the world are yearrrrning to feel. LOVE. Just love. Love is THE only currency. They are consciously gifting you what we are seeking the most, love and joy. And they do it so, so simply.
Stop and think about that. A smile. An intention. A thought. An action. All of these ‘free’ things and ‘free’ ways we can gift to other beings the EXACT feeling we’re seeking when we spend money. Really. Everything we do.. EVERYTHING… we are seeking the same thing. Every time. Happiness. Abundance. Fullfilment. Joy. It all comes under the banner of love. There is a short cut to what we want most and the Egyptians have found it. Actions. Intentions. Thoughts. Through their simple being… And through their smiles.
I compliment them on their smiles all the time and tell them how much I love that they all smile all the time… Even the shop owners at the souks at 5:30am, knee deep in grease having slept very little, and after making some mint tea in the morning, are smiling and singing.. I mean, why wouldn’t they? They’ve just woken up to a brand new day on planet earth. They are in nature, and they woke up with their family around them in their village. They then spend their day contributing to the world and helping it spin around. What on earth is there to NOT smile about? Where have we gone so wrong in the western world that we think all of this other ‘stuff’ is needed to make us smile? They just say to me “Why wouldn’t we smile Jess? Smiling is how you give to others and to the world.” Yeeeup. Right to the heart.. Love is the ONLY currency. I am ALL for wealth. To me, time freedom is essential. In 2023, monetary wealth to me is important to the extent that it allows you to live without bounds. But money is just for that- It is for ensuring you can live a life without limits. And then, once you have created financial freedom for yourself, don’t check your bank account, just get BUSY LIVING AND LOVING!!! That is why it’s so important to me. Financial freedom to me is about living in such a place of internal and external abundance that you are NOT having to check your bank so that you can simply live to your heart and souls desires. It’s all relative to where you live. For me wealth is just not factoring money into your decisions, it doesn’t at all take away from internal abundance and the #1 currency exchange… Love. Let’s clear that up before I love on.
Money is NOT the currency that is most important to exchange. Love is the only real currency. Money is just a pretend currency. A necessary one yes, but not the most real. Every single encounter with an Egyptian person left me feeling richer than ever. Isn’t this funny? I am very generous with the Egyptians (actually everyone). I love to spoil them. With money and with gifts. Because I know that they can always use more. I know it makes a difference for them. I love giving and I believe we should all give over the top. But whether I give them anything or not doesn’t affect their happiness because they can fill themselves up just chilling with their family. Smiling. Hugging. Loving. All they want from another human is presence. But every time I do gift them anything, the hug that follows, or the eye contact that lasts 30 seconds, the big smile on their face, the holding hands- their two hands around mine- that exchange is what matters. The money doesn’t. The money and the gesture is still beautiful but it is NOTHING without exchanging love. Every smile I felt, at any time of day, left me feeling SO much richer than any other time of my life. Think about how many people in life forego exchanging or giving love because they think they’re giving enough in other areas. Like the parents who work so much that they give their chidren and partners money, and clothes, and food… but the exchange of the most powerful currency in the world, isnt there. Humans work HARDER to get MORE MONEY, and LESS TIME so they can buy MORE THINGS so that they can try to attempt to buy things so that they can feel GOOD! When really, the feeling good comes from the stripping back of the complexities, and staring into the eyes of someone you love and just loving. Smiling. Hugging for wayyyyyy longer than usual. Time with them. Listening to them. Singing with them. Just BEING present with them. THAT is the currency. I just sat on the road side with some Egyptian friends and laughed, and held hands, and hugged… Or sometimes I just spoke with them in their own language, laughed, told jokes, asked about their families, sang…. Exchanged love. Exchanged presence. So that we could both leave that encounter feeling richer. This is where financial freedom is beautiful and important in the western world.. because it buys you the TIME to exchange more love with the world and those you love.. But money can never be exchanged INSTEAD of love. The richest we EVER feel is when we feel true, real, expectation-less, here you go have it all LOVE.
Yet we DETOUR SO MUCH!! Just take the short cut to what is real. Keep doing whatever you wanna do in the physical world but cut straight to the juice. People spend so much time working a job, so they can earn money, so they can buy things, so they can feel happy. The same outcome and the same feeling of love, joy and happiness can be felt if we just look for it… In the smiles of people like the Egyptians. All day every day we are taking a big detour around what is already right here. Love. Sincere, from the heart love. They say sometimes that the most conscious people don’t know they’re conscious. This is so true and the most beautiful example is the Egyptians. They live love. They live connection. They live joy. They live family. They live calm. They LIVE connection to the divine, connection to mother nature, and connection to each other. They teach me so much about this too- Their religion is love of people, love of mother nature and love of God. No matter WHICH God, they unite all religions..
Imagine if the world followed suite with this sort of oneness, acceptance and collaboration? A local friend told me a story about how one time a church burned down in his city and the Muslim community donated part of their mosque for the Christians could use until they rebuilt. What a beautiful story of inclusion and ‘Unity in Diversity’.. This is how acceptance and love would move them forward. And this has remained in the Egypt. Ask them and they tell you about their religion (they are all very spiritual), but they ALWAYS refer back to the oneness of all religions and the one religion being the joint, connected love of the divine, nature and the people.
They have let go of all that doesn’t matter because they already know that even if they had all of the money in the world, It means nothing without the inner abundance that let’s face it.. everyone is seeking. Everyone wants the inner abundance that the Egyptians have… or else they wouldn’t want too many ‘things’ and they wouldn’t be wanting others to fill them up through relationships of all sorts. Everything comes second to love. Love is ALL that’s real (more on this coming soon). I remember one of the first principles of Islam I ever learned was that every human being is seeking the same thing- Happiness. Pure happiness. The ways we go about it are different obviously, but the Egyptians have found it. They don’t want a lot of money. They want enough so that they can live a life that short cuts right to the peace and happiness that so many are spending SO much time, energy, effort looking for. They’ve taken the short cut. They live simply because they are full as long as they have family, spirituality, each other and mother nature. They balance each so beautifully, and they get it. They just so get it. I also learned this lesson hard and fast from reading Heaven Speaks, interviews with illuminated souls early in my time in Egypt. All those who’d passed said the same thing. ALL that they had with them in the spirit world was love. And connection. It’s ALL that’s real. All you can take with you is encounters and love and meaningful relationships and LOVE. Yes, money buys us freedom, and choice, but make sure it’s buying you TIME to love and connect more. Not time to move further away from love and connection. Love is the ONLY currency. It’s all that’s real. Everything else is just filling in the gaps. It’s ok to have money and lot’s of it… But you can’t buy yourself meaning and you can’t buy yourself connection. You can buy yourself time, but spend the time loving. Inner Abundance should never ever be forgone for the sake of outer abundance. But what a beautiful thing that we can choose both huh? I am SO grateful for my external abundance which gives me the freedom to spend extended periods of time learning and exchanging love with people like the Egyptians. But I choose both. And I have learned that no matter how much money you have, unless you are exchanging love, you really don’t have anything.
I just want to leave you with this…. My new questions for myself. With every encounter with Mother Earth. Am I leaving her richer? With every encounter with another being. Am I leaving them richer? And with every encounter with ourselves. Am I helping myself to become richer?
-J
