I recently had a meeting with an unrelated man named Spencer Sherman. He’s 16 years older than me, but we were both born and raised in the same New York City borough, and both moved to California later in life. We share similar values and interests, not to mention a name-very uncommon.

Yes, I was curious about another human being with the same name, but the bigger reason for our meeting was to offer him money for his website and its domain: www.SpencerSherman.com.  I brought up my interest and joked that my business partner was afraid I’d pay him $1 million for the site, and Spencer Sherman stopped, thought and said, “I might consider a million dollars, but just for a moment. Money doesn’t mean much to me and I’m enjoying my website.”

How unusual to find someone who doesn’t equate self-worth with net worth, who isn’t willing to sell his joy for money and who isn’t obedient to the call of money as a well-trained dog to its master.

I recall so many instances when I sold enjoyable, precious private time just to make an extra buck. I believed then that, as long as the price was right, you were supposed to sell your joy for money. I let my money madness override the true value of happiness.

I’ve gotten much better at keeping my money monster from running the show, but it’s still a practice.  With practice, each of us can dissolve the money madness and see the value of life beyond money.  The other Spencer Sherman’s peaceful connection to his own happiness over riches inspired a deeper inquiry into my own money madness, and how I can continue to transcend it. Indeed, sometimes we can see in others exactly what we want to cultivate in ourselves.

Many of us operate on the principle that money is somehow antithetical to peace. We talk about having jobs that are well-paying or ethical, companies that are “corporate” and therefore bad. We seek guidance from spiritual leaders who took vows of poverty and religious verses condemning the lust for money. We focus on finding tranquility by releasing our attachment to the material world, in which money plays a starring role.

But what if the truth—money vs. peace, profit vs. ethics—just isn’t that black and white?

Consider MoveOn.org. With 3.3 million members, MoveOn.org has used Internet-based, grassroots community organizing to raise many millions of dollars. Those funds have paid for things like Viacom billboards reading “Inspections Work. War Won’t.” in major cities across the country, thousands of phone calls to Congress in advance of votes on torture and the war in Iraq, and DC rallies with tens of thousands of attendees exhorting the government to take action against genocide in Darfur.

From Patagonia to the Peace Corps to The Desmond Tutu Peace Foundation, there are thousands of organizations creating and supporting peace using not just volunteers and vision, but money. Cold, hard cash. Lean, mean green. (By the way—just look at the words we use to talk about money: cold, hard, and mean!)

The fact of the matter is that money is powerful, but it’s neither good nor bad—it’s neutral. As neutral as a spoon, a wheelbarrow, a paperclip. It’s simply a tool, and like all tools, it can be used for good or ill. A hammer can crash down on your finger or build a house. Fire can burn down your garden or cook your meals. Money can generate suffering, or it can generate peace and progress; and rejecting money because it can cause suffering is like refusing a hammer while building your house because you might accidentally hit your finger.

Rather than struggle to reject money because it’s bad, embrace money as a neutral tool, only as constructive or destructive as our intentions. The nature and scope of its power directly depend on how we use it.

In our progressive communities, many of us have a negative knee-jerk reaction to money. That reaction keeps us from seeing that money creates opportunities to improve the world. When we don’t see the benevolent, constructive side of money, we reject it, and those opportunities are lost.

Get clear on the neutrality of money, and you’ll create possibilities. Possibilities lead to opportunities. Opportunities lead to change. And in the hands of the progressive community, change leads to peace.