Have you every thought of spiritual business? What do you think it is? How does it feel to you? Do you feel like spirituality should be taught and learned for free? Can or should people make business out of it? These are some of the questions that have been around for a while. Some people believe that if you're gifted, you should use your gift to help others, free of charge. "Look at priests and monks! They don't sell their services!", some might say. "God's gifts are meant for the benefit of the whole humanity, not personal gain", say others.
Well, to be honest, someone somewhere 'pays' or donate enough so that priests and monks have a place to sleep and food to eat so that they can pay it forward by focusing on spiritual teachings and teach the rest of us. It's just not in the form of selling services as in business. Besides, energy needs to flow, get exchanged, there has to be a balance between giving and receiving. And while it's true that if you are gifted, you can and probably should use it to help others, when you can, you can't just go around giving until you have nothing left to give. Again, the balance is needed. Should you always offer help for free then? Well, it's up to you, do you have the time and energy?
Most of us need to pay bills and eat, unless you are already well off and have zero needs to make money, bills are paid for then you can do charity. Otherwise, if someone asks for help and you still have to do your day job to pay your bills, do you have the time and energy to give freely? I'm not saying that you should never help anyone out of kindness, far from it. What I'm trying to say is energy exchange is needed, so if you offer your services and charge for them, then it's ok. It still takes your time, effort and work. Some of us actually have to take courses, spend on books, retreats, training, coaching and even go through some rough stuff to get to where we are, so energy exchange would be very much appreciated in many cases. This is also very healthy because then people learn to give, and not just demand, feeling entitled to everything they desire. This forces people to give appreciation. Besides, most people don't value what comes for free or cheaply. It's just how humans are wired, I guess.
So if we can offer 'spiritual services' and charge for the services, then should we treat them just like any other products people buy and sell? This is where I have an issue. People have the right to receive something back, some kind of energy exchange, and the easiest form of exchange is money, I agree. If you don't advertise, if you don't let anyone know of your existence, then it's hard for anyone to find you and ask you for help, that is also true. But how far should one go with the marketing and treating spiritual services as just another product for sale? I mean, I have seen ads like a package of ready-made things to post for spiritual business owners. Isn't the point, missed? If someone's a spiritual teacher, shouldn't that person say something from their point of view, from their own experiences and with the wisdom gain through those experiences? Shouldn't they be teaching from 'them' and their higher self? Isn't that how one shines their light, by showing who they are and what they have to offer? Isn't that also how one stands out from the crowd, by being their unique self and attracting those who resonate with them so they can share? Or did I get it wrong?
Also the other thing I have an issue with is 'respect'. Sacred, esoteric knowledge and many skills were passed down from masters to their students. These are valuable knowledge and skills. It takes years to learn to master something, even longer to really understand oneself, life in general and grow as a soul. That whole spiritual development is a process and the wisdom gained from it is precious. Then I got to see that there are people who pay for the course and instead of learning, experiencing, practicing or living it, they spend the money, chuck it away with everything else they've bought, waiting to have time to even look. They have the attitude of 'I paid for it like I paid for other junk'. So it's just another product they can hoard. Not all of the consumers are the same, luckily, and some service providers really don't help the case.
On the other extreme end, there are also people who just got started on their spiritual path, try one thing and then turns that into business as if spirituality is just another business trend. They lack experience, they don't understand the depth of knowledge and they don't care as long as they can sell, some of them sell it cheap so they can attract more people, as long as they can make money, it's all good! For example, I have seen an online Reiki course for 7 dollars or so. You get a few videos and I don't even know how they give you the attunement and Voila! You're a Reiki healer! Reiki was originally intended as a tool for spiritual development, the physical healing part was/is the side effect of developing your mind and spirit, and it's being reduced to this... Call me old-schooled, but I see no sacredness in this way of doing spritual business at all. Where's the respect in the knowledge, in the wisdom and experiences from past generations? Where's the connection and guidance from the master to apprentices?
I do give my attunement over a distance and teach online, which is bad enough for many traditional Reiki teachers, but my Zoom sessions aren't pre-recorded, we have discussions, Q&A and followup time with my students. I'm always accessible for them so they can contact me and ask anything personally. Some do that, some don't, but I'm here to guide them as long as they need. In fact, I don't teach Reiki in the traditional sense, I teach energy healing with focus on Reiki. I make my students meditate for months before I gave them their first Reiki attunement. In this time and age when everything has to be done in an instant, my way of teaching really isn't good for business. Not a lot of people have the patience, dedication or commitment these days.
My honesty might also be another thing that is bad for business. Take this for an example. Just a couple of days ago someone contacted me and asked whether they should book a session with me. After hearing the situation, I told the person honestly that if they were looking for a way to avoid what they needed to do then I'm afraid I can't help. Healing helps resolve dense energy and issues, energy healing helps heal situations. Energy healing supports you through recovery and even helps you recover faster. Healing can even bring in new opportunities after some old energy is dissolved. But healing will not and cannot replace you taking action and living your life! Healing can show you the way but it will not take the first step for you. If you think you can have a session with me and then suddenly you don't have to deal with people in your life and they just somehow disappear into thin air, you're wrong. Healing does make it easier for you on many levels but there are still things you need to do. Needless to say, the person didn't book a session with me. I'm not going to lie, but I will not interfere with people's life choices, at least not consciously. I won't make someone choose to get married or divorce, they have to choose what they feel is best for them, by themselves. All I can do is help support them, give them clarity, energy, help them heal and recover, but there are things I can't do for them.
Seriously, if a divorce is pending, sooner or later, you're just going to have to talk to your spouse. You can't really skip that part, wake up the next day and 'Poof!', you're divorced and you no longer have to see your ex! That's not how healing works. Believe me, at some point I wished it would work like that, I've been through that, too, but I learned that I still had to take action and go through things in life, that's how the soul grows. Of course, I gave myself healing during and after the whole process, something like that can leave a big mark on you and you need to heal from it, so healing helps but it doesn't replace you taking action in your life. If you want healing to avoid your life, then you only want magic without allowing your soul growth to take place. But even if you consciously want to use magic without spiritual growth, would it work though? Let's say, it's this same divorce scenario, could you use magic to make it happen?
In my personal experience, if you use magic for a breakup or, in this case, a divorce, you still won't wake up the next day with divorce paper ready and your partner gone. What magic spell or ritual you use would do, is to create situations that makes the breakup unavoidable. You'd still have to say the word to your partner, calmly or in a fight. In fact, love magic is probably one of the most popular magical services people seek, at least in Thailand. Growing up I always heard stories about someone wanting some else to break up with their partner so they could be with that person, or someone wanting to attract someone else, etc., etc. This is common enough in Thailand that I'm pretty sure that most people in most normal Thai families would have heard about these stories as well.
So for example, let's say you're in Thailand and you visit someone who offers magic services, you tell that mage that you want a guy but he's in a relationship so you want to break that relationship. I know, this is an awful example, it's unethical, cruel, the type of magic and witchcraft religions condemn, but unfortunately, both this type of services providers and consumers exist and they tend to find one another. So let's say that this is the case and the mage agrees. He or she performs a ritual and what (usually) happens after such ritual is that the couple start having a fight. It can escalate to the point that they may break up. They may not, but the situation that can induce the desired breakup is created. If they get to the point of breaking up, they will still have to bring up the topic and go through it. So in this case, what magic does is to created that perfect situation that can allow the desired effect to happen. The couple still have to say they want to break up and go through the process, no skipping it. Again, this is just an example, an awful one and I hope I'm not giving anyone the wrong idea about how to use magic or what magic is about because magic is a tool, how you use it is up to you, but expect to pay back the price if you use it to harm others. Just like with anything in life, there's always causes and consequences, you create your own karma.
Back to my situation, I told the person honestly, they didn't book the session and I don't regret it. I wasn't going to lie, get paid, do the healing for the person to find out they still have to face their spouse to say the D word. I wasn't going to use magic in an unethical way to create the situation so that divorces is inevitable, either, it's so wrong, unethical and that is black magic when you interfere with people's will to get what you want. The spouse also deserves an honest conversation, too, they deserve to know. I still recommended that person to take healing to help them otherwise, because this is a big energy shift, a life changing situation with a lot to heal from and if left un attended it can take toll on health or future relationships. How often have we seen people who are not fully in their relationship because their energy is still stuck in the previous breakup. Energy healing can help them back on track much faster, but since I wasn't going to make their spouse magically disappear, they didn't book the session. So from the sales point of view, I suck. I'm terrible at advertising and selling my services. But one thing I know is, when I do the work, I do it properly!
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