You might find what I say disappointing, because I’m not going to give “practical” survivalist advice. Let me simply say that you must first desire a spiritual base.
I’ve learned a lot since first starting to live moneyless, especially after having folks trying to live moneyless with me. People sometimes think all their problems will go away if they give up money and join me, that I or some savior will whisk them away to a life of freedom and bliss.
Giving up money is like giving up drugs
Giving up money can hurt you if you go cold turkey, and it might get you even more discouraged and disillusioned than before! It’s not like everything magically becomes easy and blissful. It can be a magical transformation, however, if you first have a spiritual base, if you first have even a desire for a spiritual base!
Money is an addiction, and giving up addictions isn’t necessarily the answer. You will notice that one who tries to give up an addiction usually replaces it with other addictions! You might give up alcohol and then turn to eating massive amounts of sugar or becoming a control freak. Why? Because the problem isn’t the addictive substance, the problem is your emptiness inside.
If you have no emptiness inside, you aren’t going to want more stuff. You will be content exactly with what you have, here and now.
So, I’d recommend first facing and exposing your empty hole inside, which will then be like a negative magnetic charge attracting its Positive Charge. Your empty hole will scream to be filled by that Positive Charge, and the Positive Charge will come to fill it. In Christianity, that Positive Charge is called the Pearl of Great Price. In Jesus’ parable, a man finds this Pearl and gives up everything he owns to buy it. If there’s no Pearl, the man can try to give up everything he owns and be empty and lost both inside and outside!
The world thinks I’m totally wacko living like I do. They don’t see the Pearl.
I guarantee you would have no problem living without money if I gave you this offer!
So let’s use what the world can understand. What if I told most any person in the world that I’d give him three million dollars after a year if he gave up his possessions to the poor and lived without money for that entire year? I guarantee you he would find a way to do it, even without me even telling him how! And most people in the world looking on would not think him crazy, because people of the world love money! However, even if there was a stipulation that he couldn’t tell people about that three-million-dollar prize, he would still gladly live without money for that year, because the money is more important to him than people’s opinions!
Yes, if there’s a will, there’s a way. First, find that will, the Pearl of Great Price.
Three million dollars is a passing vapor of illusion. Yet it can motivate most people in the world to do anything, even sacrifice their own health and their own families!
How much more, then, can Infinite Wealth, that Pearl of Great Price, which never passes away, motivate people? If people can’t see it, they can’t be motivated.
Here’s one last point to think about. The Buddhist sutras speak of how a person doesn’t hide something valuable in a valuable box. He hides it in some thing or some place that looks trashy. He knows the world judges that which looks poor to be poor.
Love is the Pearl of Great Price
Here's another way of understanding this concept. Everybody, I mean everybody in the world needs and craves love. A prostitute has relations with somebody to get money, even if she is only presenting the illusion of love. She knows people need and crave love. But if she finds love for her client, she can no longer receive money for her services to him, and if he loves her, he can no longer pay money to love her.
Find love, and all the rest will fall into place. This is discussed more in-depth in Love and Possession - Sex and Money.