
From the Family Vault of Shanti-Baba
“Seems more than strange to grow up as a child and see how important my parents and their peers viewed providing for us and having enough money to make our lives comfortable – yet the most valued memories of my childhood were the free ones. ” – Shanti-Baba
I mean the love, good health, laughter and respect we all had as a family meant more than having the new bike or where we went for holiday, as long as we were together, it all felt right.
As I entered the world of adulthood, I soon learnt nothing is free or no one waits for you or really cares, unless you pay your bills and do what you say you do.
Actually, I saw relationships crumble and marriages decay all because of the money situations people got themselves into!
The problems of greed and self importance lead to a lot of these issues and ultimately to the irreparable situations that expired.

Like most people at some stage of their life, the questioning of all you do and for what began to unbalance my thinking?
I mean running so hard for the almighty dollar meant losing sight of my kids growing up or precious moments that came and went while I ran around working to pay a mortgage. It seemed to me that most, who allow themselves to get caught in to believing the lies and dreams of others and how money will solve all, are really the ones who never had the experience of having money, to know.
I woke up one day to myself and the lies I had sublimi-nally been sucked into just by being a part of society, and trying to do it like all the rest. So I began to ask myself a few basic questions to try and change my situation and slowly my future became clear. `What would I be doing if it was not for money?`….and `Am I doing it?`.
Funnily enough for me these two little questions were able to weed out the things in my life that did nothing to enhance my world but bring in money.
In a short time I was heading down a road that showed me my work was what I would be doing anyway if I did not have to worry about money. It revealed to me that with a little discipline and a few monetary sacrifices for the good of one’s soul, that pathway to being happy was not rated by the amount of money something paid but what it brought to me and how it made me feel!

On the road to good you always have trying times and moments of crisis. Do not be fooled, the money god and capitalism will not be our only salvation…!
In fact once I stopped to view things rated in the monetary world, I began to see how important little things were to me and how the big things were not. It sculpted my future without intention or expectations. I began to separate money things clearly from the important things that were not related to financial gain.
For example I was always restricted by how many plants I could crack from seed in making selections of a special mother plant.
As soon as I decided that 500 seeds was a realistic and fair amount for me to make a good selection of a mother, my quality of work increased dramatically. Until that moment I did 20 or 50 seeds for selection and quite often did not find anything after a 6 month search and a lot of physical work.
To be harsh, I felt I ceased prostituting myself and my skills solely for a bank balance.
Considering I chose to work with plants and loved to work outside and in greenhouses, the money it brought o me and my family that allowed us to live, also felt fine in the scheme of things. I loved to plant seeds and nur-ture plants to flowers and fruits and vegetables. I still do and will never be bored of this with or without money so it is something that makes me tick.
Over the years the choices I have made determined my place in the world, but if you would have asked me as a kid what it is I want to be when I grew up, well it would simply have been what I thought I wanted to be. The most revealing part of asking me these two questions throughout my life has been the fact that I slowly evolve into my real job and one that suited me and fulfilled me, rather than does something because it paid me. So as a consequence I have become good at what I do whilst enjoying what I do…hardly what you would call work!
However I have not seen this to be the case around me. I have lost friends and friendships changed as people`s frustrations and money problems dominated their lives. I watched people in the Cannabis industry swop jobs thinking the grass was greener on the other side but to find they were wrong when they got there. Or else they sacrificed friends along the way in the lure that more money was what they wanted. I have been partners with people who never needed to work as they had sufficient money, but it made them unhappy and they lost sight of all things except ones that made money. I saw people with good ideas and innovations loose out while imitations flourished. I saw telling false stories in the name of advertising made more money than telling the truths for some. I saw a lot of things that did not make sense or seemed fair. In fact I would go so far to say that money has smoked screened our visions and tainted our goals at times.
However since we live now in a world that has become dominated by commercialism and rates success with a monetary value, it is not good enough to discredit the value money has brought to many lives. Using money responsibly is a talent and can set in motion many ideas that could not have been conceived prior to having a budget to do them. Money should be viewed more like a tool or utensil, rather than given the god-like status it has reached in this modern day. One practical application in the Cannabis industry that money has begun to make a difference is research and development. Being involved in a joint venture between Resin Seeds and Mr. Nice Seedbank to define the first real medical strain of cannabis from its chemo type is one such positive element money has enabled. Testing strains, F1 lines, inbreed lines and numerous progeny generations of seed combinations by gas chromatography and chemical tests for cannabinoids has advanced our guesses into realities.

Technology has played a major role as too have the lonely researchers who do the testing in laboratories for a fee. Whereas before this was not even con-sidered because we did not have the money nor were allowed to do such things, now we can breed with security and with a defined goal from the start which has reduced wasting our time and made things more precise from a sci-entific point of view. In fact we now have a way to see what was invisible before, and this too is due in part to the financial backing and development of machinery to see what we did not know existed before. In some ways it has acted like an eye glass in to the microscopic world and in doing so revealed recipes and building blocks.
To think most people go about their day in the event to win enough money to survive and feed them-selves, is difficult. But in the same day others with enough financial power can also advance the way we see the world and try to explain and improve it for all! Without making an opinion, it would seem the responsible use of money or any-thing that acts like it has improved the life of Mankind on Earth.
Money and what it brings to the world has been both positive and negative. Other species do not use it so it is unique to man. Some would argue that it has made Mankind unnatural to some extent, while others would counter this by stating it has acted as a tool to make us the dominant species on Earth. Whichever camp you are in there is little doubt that in the last few thou-sand years; financial systems have changed the course of our existence as a species in the scheme of Nature.
In fact we reached higher highs and lower lows than ever before in the history of man the past 100 years and since industrialization.
This is a fact not an opinion.
Whether our future on Earth will rely on money is debatable for me, but if you were to judge it from the point we have reached, it seems that responsible use of money in society has enhanced and projected us from Ape to Spaceman in a short time frame.
So next time you are having that moment of doubt about what you do and why you do it, remember with money we buy time and the freedom to choose our ways, with-out it we are laboring the fields to survive and feed our families.