Shadow Work: Understand your relationship with Money | Robert Augustus Masters

Robert Augustus Masters, Ph.D., is an integral psychotherapist, relationship expert, and spiritual teacher whose work blends the psychological and physical with the spiritual. Emphasizing embodiment, emotional literacy, and the development of relational maturity. 

 The interview revolves around how our relationship with money affects our attitude towards it. Robert and his wife also conduct group workshops for men and women, on how to deal with shadows and how facing them changes our relationship with money.

To know more, watch the interview. The transcript is provided below if you prefer reading.

Cleona: Hi Robert. It's lovely to see you again

Robert: Yeah. You too. 

Cleona: I spent some time with you in the women's group doing some shadow work. I want to introduce you to my audience. My audience who watch my little Conscious Money YouTube channel.

You are an integral psychotherapist. You've written 13 books. You are quite a big deal, and you've said yes to me interviewing you. So, I'm truly grateful. I wanted to start off by asking you, have you, in your shadow work, identified how money shows up in people's stuff? 

Robert: It shows up in many ways. I mean, it shows up around emotions like fear, shame, and aggression. it's like to me money itself is neutral but what we do with it is not

necessarily neutral, there's so much we can do with it. How much do we have? We can take a quantitative approach, which many people do, was enough. 

My approach is more qualitative. I'm looking at the quality of it. I could like, for example, be doing poorly financially and being happy. I could be doing well, great financially and be miserable. I've seen many wealthy people be miserable. There are more people who are much worse off, handling it better. So, there's so much to be said about how we relate to it. My whole focus is the relationship to it. Not just the nuts and bolts and the amount. What does it mean to you?  What is enough? It’s a good question. What is enough?

Cleona: You wouldn't need people like me if people use this process. 

Robert: Yeah. It's crazy. I mean, it's interesting, we can be in a certain mood around money and feel like “oh! my god! we're shaky” or “we're insecure.” Our mood shifts, we feel happy about something else. We look at money goals and say, “That's okay! I trust maybe things are a little low now I'm an entrepreneur, ”I got a windfall” or “I got a huge disappointment,” and “huge tax bill.” What do I do? How do I deal with how this makes me feel? That's so important. 

Cleona: I like what you said also about relationships because you stress that in your work. It's not good enough to become very conscious and become very aware. You also have to focus on the connections and intimacy in your intimate relationships. Just describing money as a relationship, some people have this avoidance.

Robert: I look at what couples have the hardest time talking about.

Cleona: Yeah! Yeah! 

Robert: Yeah. Some couples with the topic about sex can be difficult to work with, but that's workable. Religion, spirituality, and God more so. But money is often the most uncomfortable topic, many couples don’t have a clue what the other person's income is or where their money's going.

I say if you're going to get closer, you have to also bring your financial considerations into the picture too. Look at how it makes you feel and look, what it brings up in you, and not use it as a bone of contention between you. Here's an opportunity to grow further by examining each of our relationships to money, like when you're children. Now, if you grew up impoverished, it's a very different life than if you grew up taken care of that way. Like many people whose parents grew up in the great depression, they could have millions now, and they're still penny-pinching in a way that's not healthy whatsoever because it's like the depression is still lurking around the corner of their minds somewhere.

Cleona: Yeah, and there's so much focus on epigenetic research, and maybe it's there in the body. In the field of the family. How much can shadow work move the relationship with money to a more functional relationship with just the individual, or do you think more work needs to be done? 

Robert: Hugely! Hugely! If the person does real shadow work, that doesn't mean reading about it only, studying archetypes, and keeping it intellectual but getting down into it. Because real shadow work has to do with our conditioning. Our shadow is a kind of internal container for all the things in ourselves we've repressed. Saying that's not me or disowned. So, there's a lot there. What's mainly there is our unresolved conditioning. We all have conditioning. So, are you facing it? Are we awakening to it? Are we bringing it out of the dark? 

Money is just one of many things that if brought out of the dark will change our relationship to everything. Moreover, in this implicitness is collective shadow. We're affected by, not just what we're doing with money, but by our family, our friends, our culture, and our country. Even by how's it going in the world. It's obviously pretty shaky right now in plenty of ways, like the markets and everything. 

There's always inherent insecurity around money, that's what I found. There's always inherent insecurity, but if we work with that insecurity to the point where we realize that life itself is inherently insecure. Suddenly, money is not such a big deal. It's just part of the dance.  If we're secure in our insecurity, that means we're embracing our insecurity and taking care of it.

It's not a problem. We adopt a non-problematic orientation toward our insecurity, then it doesn't really matter how much or how little money we have. It does in a certain sense, I know. But in a bigger sense, it doesn't matter. It's what are we doing with it? How are we handling 100 bucks or a million dollars? What are we doing with it? 

Cleona: And the collective shadow? What you said, do you think it has quite a lot to do with the disintegration of the earth that we're witnessing? 

Robert: Yeah. We also have to do it together. The individual shadow works essential. It's also important to have some sense of we're in it together. We're in a crisis as a species, what are we doing? Burying our heads in the sand? Distracting ourselves? Making excuses to our children as to why we haven't taken a stronger stand on what's going on with the planet right now? There's a lot to be said.

Cleona: Eckhart Tolle talks about, not collective shadows, but because you also talk about spiritual bypassing. There's a teacher I like, a spiritual teacher, called Jack O'Keefe. She did a talk at sand the Sand Conference. I think it's a spirituality science and non-duality conference. She used a phrase called financial bypassing. I think sometimes spiritual teachers may not completely do their shadow work. They might be awakened, had an awakening experience, or a series of them. But you can still see the clinging and the attachment, or some sort of.

Robert: Yes. Most haven't done the work because many spiritual paths downplay the importance of psychotherapy, making anger wrong, getting angry phobic, indulging in what I call blind compassion, and where we don't take a firm stance. They're basically escaping life in the raw. Emotional problems, relationship hassles, and if that's going on, of course they'll be bypassing in many of these: intellectual bypassing, financial bypassing.

It is basically an avoidance of what's right here. So, the really hard work, this is hard work you saw in the group with me, is everyone has pain and suffering. The question is what are we doing with it? My considerable intuition for the last two to three decades is that we need to turn toward what's painful. Not too fast, or it'll be too much for us. But we turn toward what's could a stubbed toe, could be of some jealousy, it could be a loss of a relationship, it could be someone's death we turn toward the pain of it. We feel it. Then we can metabolize it. We can digest it. It can move through us. But if we can't metabolize like that, if we're distracting ourselves from it.

So, it's a basic first step, there's pain to turn toward. It seems counterintuitive at first, then you move toward it. The closer you are to it, the more clearly you can see it. You can bring it into focus then you can work with it, but if you're running away from it, you won't. This is an act of great courage for every one of us because we're afraid to do it, and it's scary. But if we take tiny baby steps toward it, we go “oh my god it's not that bad.” 

Then the fear mutates, it expands, and it shifts into anger, maybe lust. It's like some sort of expansion. We realize fear does not have to be taken as some sort of demon or dragon. It's unpleasant. The part of our work is to be okay with being with things that are unpleasant, like being okay with the sensation of not being okay.

You saw in your group, the women's group, that the women turned toward what was painful with me guiding them and them doing their part. Usually, it was a good result they go, “ah there's more freedom,” ”there's a healthier catharsis,” ”there's a release,” and at that point, if they were to look at their money situation they probably would not be freaking out. Even if their income was low like, “Ah I'm alive, I'm here, I'm grateful to still be here. Yeah! I could use more money, but I'm not.” 

That attitude is so important to cultivate not as a way of bypassing our feelings, but just to reach into ourselves where we're fine with not being okay. We're fine with being mortal. We're not saying it’s okay, awful things are going on. Of course, we take stands over that. We take stands against abuse etc. Different types of violence. But we don't do it from a righteous, aggressive place. We do it from a cleaner place in ourselves where we still have some compassion for everyone. Even if we have to kick ass. 

Because there's such a thing as fierce compassion, where we don't just politely try to be kind to someone. We may challenge them strongly, but we haven't forgotten they're human. We haven't dehumanized them. 

A lot of the problems with how people handle and deal with money, there's dehumanization. People just assume their self-worth. They equate their self-worth with their net financial worth. You know what, they're so different, but they get conflated easily. 

Cleona: They conflate success with material numbers. Then, again, that insecurity trigger can keep people constantly holding or becoming workaholics or compulsive workers. 

How does one look for where one needs to shadow work? In the wounds of our childhood? How does one find clues? It's shadow. I can't see what I'm avoiding.

Robert: Well, here's one big clue: reactivity. Which I define as activated shadow material. In any one of us you, me, everyone, when your reactive shadow materials surfacing, but of course, we don't recognize it as such, we just think we're right. But if someone asked us how old do you feel right now we were honest we probably say four years old five, six, seven, maybe ten, eleven. Much younger than we are now, that's the old wound kicking in. 

So, it's critical to know one's history not just intellectually but to be able to feel like here's what happened. We're not blaming our parents for where we're at now, but we're seeing the impact that sloppy parenting or even bad parenting had on us, trouble with siblings or teachers or other kids, and different events. 

We're all conditioned. Some people have very pleasant childhoods, but they're conditioned to be nice. They're out of touch with their anger, their raw feeling, they're a little numb. Others of us have really terrible childhoods which are more obviously bad, and the good news is it's all workable.

Instead of trying to get more money, so we feel better, we become more in touch with who we are, then the money is handled. It's ironically those times that money flows more easily for people who are not worried about it. Even if they can justify the worry, you know, say for a single mother who doesn't have enough food on the table. I get that. I have compassion for that there's a way to be with it that makes her life less stressful. 

Cleona: Feeling relaxed, trusting life to take care of us, of course doing our part. Sometimes I see resilience. A sense of buoyancy. A sense of like confidence about you know “I'll be okay,” like “I'll figure it out,” and “I don't want to trivialize it.” 

Robert: Yeah.

Cleona: Yeah. I feel that strongly. I feel like I'll be okay no matter what. Life takes care of me and always has. Doesn't mean everything goes my way, things still go dramatically wrong, but there's this strong trust and faith.  

Robert: Well, there's a radical acceptance implicit in that. Not where you say it's okay that terrible things are happening, but you accept that here's the situation, here's my response there's an acceptance of that then you can act. Otherwise, we get paralysed with fear we get numb we get cut off, and we make having more money too important. 

Cleona: Because one thing I admired working with you Robert was how you held boundaries like you were very intimate with us in the group space, but everybody got a certain amount of time, and you managed to keep yourself not too immersed so that you could stay present but not losing yourself. It felt like you were very stable and centred in yourself.

Robert: Yeah, what you're pointing at is the shadow side of empathy. Let me say again what you're pointing at, the shadow side of empathy. We get too involved in another person emotionally, and then we're of no use to them or ourselves because we're lost in their reality we've lost touch with them. 

I teach in training. I do specially the cultivation of what I call lucid empathy where you feel the other person. You're in close. You're quite intimate with the details of what they're sharing. But you keep a subtle distance. You keep them in focus. This is also personal work where we look at our fear, our anger, and our shame up close but not so close that we get swamped by it. We can still operate skilfully.

There's a very subtle boundary implicit in that is this is a permeable membrane of source, a psychospiritual membrane. It's there. It's there for me all the time. I've been doing this for so many decades.

Every therapist I train has to learn how to stand apart from what they're doing with a person without being too far back. We're too far back, we're lost in objectivity, apparent objectivity. We can't see what's going on. We're in too close, we sympathize. We feel the person, but we overdo it. Then we get invested in a certain outcome. Maybe it's not right for that person to have to cry hard or do some catharsis, other times it is. If we're too close, we'll lose our sense of perspective. 

This goes back to the money game. It’s so easy to lose one's perspective because suddenly, you've got a couple of weeks with no work. Something happens, you can't do this, you can't do that. There's a sense then of no one's going to take care of me. Maybe no one will but even that you can take care of yourself.

The extreme for me, I remember being in India in the early 70s. I was in Varanasi seeing people's bodies burning, the gods, the whole thing. I saw a lot of joy according to people who had leprosy. They were rotting and they were dying. No one knew who they were. They weren't famous, haven’t written books or anything, but they had something in their eyes that was very touching. Not all of them, but a lot of them because they were looking forward to their death. They had a religious faith about that, but they were at ease, which struck me. I was a young man then I thought, “Wow! This is really touching, and here I am worrying about not having quite enough money to make my exit from India to another country.” A problem, but a very tiny one compared to what I was seeing.

Cleona: What advice would you give to people to have healthier boundaries with money, like, you know some people just can't say no? A family person asks them for money, and they just want to be nice. 

Robert: It shifts from I can't say no to I won't say no. In that, you have to have your anger on tap. If I have good boundaries, I have to have my anger on tap to enforce them. Don't do it frequently, but I have to enforce the boundaries and say no it doesn't work for me. Stop. There's that. We have to have boundaries. If our boundaries are trashed or disrespected as children, we’ll be drawn to situations that mimic that. Where we are with a partner, lover, or some business thing where our boundaries aren't being respected. That's familiar to us, and we tend to play the child again. We may complain, but we put up with it.

A good relationship always has good boundaries, both partners have clear boundaries. They're not rigid. They can open their boundaries and let the other one come in, but it's conscious. It's conscious. It's done with full awareness. I'd say part of what's important here is to understand what your boundaries are, where they're weak, where they're not, and deepen them. Realize that your anger is the emotional guardian of boundaries.

If we don't have anger on tap, we can't say stop or know with enough force to stop the person. We may go we may say it very nicely, “Oh no we would rather not hurt their feelings.” and they can hear our ambivalence, right? They will then take advantage of us. So many people have terrible boundaries. Weak, weak, weak boundaries. Other people have rounders that are too rigid, they're too hard, they're thick, and they're too defensive. They have to be dismantled, skilfully, but dismantled, so boundaries are important here too. 

Not treating anger is a problem. There's unhealthy anger and there's healthy anger. I'm talking here about healthy anger. The anger that doesn't shame, blame, or dehumanize it. It simply says no with enough emphasis that it gets heard.

It's interesting as we discuss money, there are so many other elements that come into it.

Cleona: Yes. Yes. Yes. It's connected to everything in our lives. I really like Jacob Needleman's books. I don't know if you've read “Money and the Meaning of Life” but he says you know you've got to deal with money… 

Robert: No

Cleona: Okay. Yeah, he considers it essential in the journey of becoming aware you know within yourself, but at an early-stage awareness. It's not usual for people to look at their relationship with money. It seems like there is an awakening happening now, more and more people want to become aware. It's being discussed a lot, which is wonderful. Because you do separate groups: men's groups and women's groups. As a woman, I must say it felt very safe, you know you're being a man, talking about sometimes intimate and traumatic things. It felt very safe.

How would you say that there are different themes because we are culturally conditioned differently between men and women when it comes to money? For example, one of the stereotypes is that the male has to be the provider the women must the woman must provide more of the um emotional labour or the care you know for family members, and I wondered if there are like some particular themes that you see that need more work.

Robert: Well, I think women's groups tend to have more focus on finding a voice, finding power, and treating anger as a resource. Men too, but men have a lot more work than women's group. Men have a lot of shame because they tie their shame to their competence. That includes how much money they make or don't make. Plenty of men have enormous shame around that, and they're not working with the shame. They're just trying to avoid it by making more or distracting themselves in different ways. Once a man has faced his shame, sat in it, and cleaned it up a little bit, he's less likely to turn the shame into aggression or emotional dissociation. He'll stay more present and, yes, there's a lot of cultural pressure, perhaps more on men. Be the provider and make the money, but that's shifting a lot. I see a lot of women who are in the provider position more than the man they're with. It's just increasing over the last decade or so. 

Cleona: Yeah, and more women stepping into their power. Not being afraid of that power and more women liberating their voices. Yes, I also like how you focus on the sensitivity of men because it feels like there are fewer spaces for men to feel their full range of feelings and not have any reaction from other people.

Robert: When I see the men in my men's groups, they're usually extremely relieved after the first hour or so because it's a very safe space. Not because I say so, it just is. It becomes like that in your women's group. They can unburden themselves, I've seen men cry just as much as the women, including the tough guys. Once they crack, and they go, “I can talk about this,” or “I can talk.” 

Another topic we have in the men's groups, women don't have to hear, is a lot of porn. Men have very heavy porn habits or had them. We talked about that. We explore it. We explore the wounding that first drove them to it in the first place. There's such a sense of brotherhood after a while they say, “Ah! I can talk. I can be free.” 

So, there are more spaces, but there are fewer men going for it. It’s interesting in the last couple of months I had so many women coming for work and so few men. A few times before, it's been more men than women. Just that men are shyer about it. There's a little bit more pride. They say, “I don't need therapy.” That's just their shame talking. They needed it just as much as women, or more.

Cleona: Well, I hope people come to one of your group works. I really like group work for shadow work because there's so much that you get from the experience of being in a group than when you're one-on-one in therapy. I don't know, sometimes it's a bit intense, and you can learn from other people's stuff or when you get triggered by other people's stuff, and you're like, “What's that about?” 

Robert: Well, I saw that. Once you've got every group, after a while everyone is genuinely interested in everyone else's work. It's not like I was boring, I have to wait my turn.  No, it’s more, “That's me I'm in there too.” It's different but, “Oh! Ah! You did that for me, you spoke for me.” It's shared, it's like a little community that forms for three days or a week if it's training. Then it dissipates like I don't know if you're staying in touch with the other women.

Cleona: Yeah. 

Robert: Yeah! But some groups do, the other groups don't. But there's a sense, “Look what we did together in three days, we formed a little community. We saw each other's rawest wounds, saw the edge being played, we can now have the freedom to talk, we can share it doesn't always be deep, but we can do that now. When there's more of that sense of community, then money becomes less of a worry, I think. Because there’s a sense that we're in it together, Not that we have to give each other our money, but there's a sense we're in it together. It's just one part, one aspect of our being that's been neglected or kept in the dark a little bit. 

Cleona: Wow! I'm really touched to hear about your work, especially the men's work. I think shadow work is so important with people's relationship with money. I hope people don't just read their books, but pay attention to their triggers and find a workshop. If not yours, then someone's workshop. Either a money workshop or a shadow workshop. 

Robert: I'm still doing individual work.

Cleona: Yes.

Robert: I quit it five years ago. I restarted it again when COVID-19 kicked in. I'm still doing this, My preference is group training. I love that, and I am still doing individual work, so people want to see me, it's 45 minutes. We can cover a lot of ground in a short time. 

Cleona: We'll keep up the good work, Robert. I might see you in one of your groups, thank you so much for your time.