When you are walking and see a shiny coin on the ground, do you bother to bend down and pick it up? I used to on occasion, but I remember always wondering why I bothered. But then two things came into my life that caused a shift toward a seemingly inconsequential act. First, I came across a charming little book called Abundance Consciousness. This is a concept that has been written about by hundreds of people over the years, and I wish I could find the author of the specific book I read, but I gave it away to someone else a long time ago. Anyway, the basic idea of abundance consciousness is to open your self up to receiving whatever you need in life. There are deep, spiritual aspects of this, but there are also very down-to-earth, practical ones as well. One only need consider the opposite concept, poverty consciousness, to understand the practical benefits of simply working to orient oneself toward whatever wealth they desire. When it comes to money, we are often our own worst enemy, with all sorts of negative thoughts about our worth, ability, or right to enjoy it.

So I had this concept firmly in my own consciousness, but hadn't necessarily worked out all the ways I defeated my own ability to receive whatever wealth might be begging to land in my pockets, and then the second "thing" came into my life; my wife. My wife is the most frugal person I ever met, literally. When we were dating I wondered if she was from some other planet where everyone acted in such strange ways. She did things like pick up every penny that crossed her path.

I didn't have to ask my wife why she picked up pennies. I knew. She is frugal. She saves every penny she can by doing things like cutting coupons with religious fervor, so she's not about to take a negative hit on her financial strategy by not picking up a penny! On one hand, her behavior was persuasive, as is just about anything a person does when you are actually falling in love with them. But ultimately, I am not a coupon clipper, and it wasn't her attitude toward those pennies that made me a penny picker upper.

The ah-hah moment for me came when my prior meditation on abundance consciousness suddenly overlapped with my wife's impressive discipline and curious behavior. It hit me like a ton of bricks, or pennies from heaven, that to brazenly, arrogantly, stroll over a penny on the sidewalk is probably the single clearest way to tell the Universe to fuck off with all its, "Here, have some free money," bullshit.

Don't get me wrong, I am actually more of a down-to-earth pragmatist than a spiritual monk type. I mean, I am spiritual, and lean toward agnostic while appreciating my atheist friends' opinions, but I certainly believe the Universe is up to something, and I am not about to get in its way, especially when it involves providing me with whatever I need to be happy and healthy.

So what does blockchain have to do with any of this?

Its one thing if you really can't be bothered to pick up a penny. I get it; that penny is worth next to nothing, and in another year it will be worth even less. Some people just are not into the whole the Universe is providing me with everything I totally freaking need bs.

But what if that penny on the ground was worth 10 cents in another year?

Or what if it was worth a dollar in a year?!

Welcome to blockchain, pennies, and an entirely new way of looking at abundance consciousness. Think about this. Whether your are spiritual about these things or pragmatic, you just need to start bending over and grabbing all these pennies! You, the pragmatist know you have a tiny little worry that maybe all the yoga freaks are right, and all your atheist arguments might be wrong. But wait, that doesn't even matter, because in this new scenario, whether you believe in the Mystery of it All, or not, there is this crazy potential for pennies that are free today increasing in value tomorrow. And on top of that, if you start collecting the free pennies that are available, then you are one more person agreeing that those pennies have value in the first place, and thus are helping to make their value increase.

I am kind of amazed how often I hear people on Steemit say they don't know anything about blockchain or cryptoeconomics. I mean, I am not surprised that people find their way here through other avenues, but I came to Steemit after spending many months studying blockchain, so that is just my perspective. But my point is that this lack of awareness of how all this stuff works is interesting, because clearly, anyone investing time and energy in Steemit understands, on some level, the basic concepts of abundance consciousness and compound interest, whether or not they realize it. Blockchain has provided a way for the almost anyone to jump into the investment game in a way that previously only wealthy people had access. For example, I just heard about automobile subscription services, and thought, "Wow, I should buy some stock in one of those companies." But the problem is I would have to be rich to get in on the ground level of a new venture, or wait until an IPO. Blockchain allows anyone with any disposable income at all to back a new idea. Obviously someone living paycheck to paycheck should gamble their next paycheck on some stupid shitcoin, but wealth is certainly a very relative concept, and I would recommend that anyone consider putting 1% of their income into crypto.

But that is a little tangential to my original idea here. Yes, if you can put some income into viable investment that is great (but really, if you're new to this, just set up a Roth IRA to start), but don't let your poverty consciousness prevent you from tapping into the free money that is being offered all over the place.

I recently posts about Sweatcoin, a newish concept that pays you a cryptocurrency for every step you take outside.

Today I want to highlight Mannabase, a Universal Basic Income project that will give you free Manna every week just for signing up. Manna is currently worth 0.0103 USD, and you can collect about 10 Manna every week. Soon you will be able to transfer Manna to anyone else who is signed up, and someday you will likely be able to donate Manna to people or projects anywhere in the world.

The main reason I would encourage anyone to sign up to receive Manna is simply to support the notion of Universal Basic Income. UBI could be the single biggest potential disruptive force of blockchain; allowing anyone to earn real income that can help alleviate the harshest forms of poverty around the world. This is why I also support #SolarCoin. The value of SolarCoin is not super high at the moment, but someday I believe it will have serious impact on the global energy transition. At the same time, it might help my retirement. So I have mentioned three forms of "free" money in this post, and I know there are many more. If you want to support cool initiatives, develop your own practice of abundance consciousness, and potentially make a lot of money, then start signing up for these programs!

Manabase offers a pretty sweet referral bonus. For anyone you sign up, you receive a 100% base UBI bonus for 52 weeks, meaning that if you sing up 10 people in a week, and the UBI for that week is 10 Manna, you then receive 10+100 Manna that week. In addition, anyone that sign up via your referral link also earns a 50% base UBI bonus for 52 weeks.