It’s a common belief that money and spirituality don’t mix: That if you’re spiritual, you shouldn’t want money. Or a notion that if you are a healer or spiritual worker, you should give your gifts to the world for free.

Here’s my take on this narrative and why you SHOULD charge for your spiritual work.

 

The Juxtaposition of Money & Spirituality

There is a notion that money and spirituality don’t mix that if you are someone who desires spiritual enlightenment or if you’re a spiritual individual, you should not desire or have wants around money.

If you are a healer or you’re a mindset coach, or you’re working in the spiritual space,  if you have a gift, this idea is especially prolific. One that you should be giving it away to the world for free.

To illustrate why this belief is preventing expansion, I’m going to ask you a question:

Do you think it is a fair statement to make to say that when you are in deprivation, when you’re in scarcity, when you are financially anxious, that you are showing up differently in your business, in your work with your clients? Do you think that’s a fair statement to make? I think most people would say yes. It’s just common sense.

If you’re in sales, if that’s what you do, you know just how true this is. If you’re desperate for cash and you really, really want someone to close because you really need the money because you need to pay your bills, it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work. You could say the same sales script, the same lines have the same exact offer, and your close rate is going to tank. Why? Because the energy, the vibration, which you’re showing up on these calls with is completely different than if you were not in this space, not in deprivation.

So by that same, let me ask you this: Do you think it’s a fair statement to make that when your needs are met, when you’re in abundance, when you are in the vibration of more than enough, that you also show up very differently in your work with your clients at your job, whatever it might be? Yes or yes. I’m not even going to give you the option of no. Again, I think most people would say yes to this. It’s just common sense.

Now, here’s the thing. If you have a business, and even if you’re an employee and you have a job, you show up for these things because you’re engaging in a value exchange. You wouldn’t show up to your job if they didn’t pay you.  You wouldn’t volunteer your time at a charity if it didn’t give you something in return.

Value exchange is called an exchange for a reason. It’s not a one-way street. It’s not: I give, give, give, give, and I get nothing back.  Value exchange goes both ways. Both cups must be filled.

If you’re constantly giving and giving and giving and giving and taking from your own cup and yours is not getting filled up in the process, you’re going to hit a wall so fast and burn out. And here’s the thing, value exchange. What we value is always an expansion of our greens. Everything we buy, barter and trade is because we’re trying to feel a little bit better. The greens is what we value. This is an exchange of energy. So if you’re showing up in deprivation, in scarcity, in lack through obligation or guilt, that’s the vibrational exchange that you are giving your clients or your employer.

And here’s the kicker, vibrations are contagious. We pass them to each other. Think about this. When somebody flicks you, the bird and yells at you on the street and cuts you off, what normally happens after that? You now angry. You’ve now got the red that they passed to you and you pass it on to the barista or the people you work with or your children. This is especially true if you’re an empath, you’re just going to absorb other people’s energies. So it’s actually extremely detrimental to show up vibrationally from a space of lack or scarcity or deprivation, whether it’s in your business or if you have a job, it doesn’t matter. It’s the same thing. It’s not going to benefit anybody. First of all, you’re going to burn out. You’re going to hit a wall. That’s what happens when there’s not a fair value exchange. You give, give, give, give. You’re going to deplete yourself. That’s the math. There’s no other equation to that one. Not only that, you’re going to pass that on to your clients or the people you engage with. So they’re going to start vibrationally operating from a space of deprivation, scarcity, lack, obligation, guilt.

 

When Value Exchange Doesn’t Involve Money

An exchange of value, a fair exchange of value doesn’t always necessarily involve money.

So let me give you an example of this. Before I started flow protocols, I decided I wanted to put myself back out there, and I really wanted to have the conversation of mindset because this was something deeply compelling to my soul.

And just through the experience I’d been in my last business, it was something that I knew had been fundamental that I really wanted to talk to people about. Now, prior to this, I had never really coached people on mindset on my own for sure. The topic of mindset was huge. In my last business, we spoke about it to clients. It was a big, big point, but normally I would bring in outside coaches to do that. So I would outsource those conversations. So when I decided that I wanted to talk about this topic, I felt like a massive imposter because I was like, I just had a mental breakdown. Who’s going to take me seriously? No one’s going to want to listen to what I say. I don’t even know if I’m good at it. So my confidence was like zero. Now, what I did was I put a post that on Facebook and one of the groups that I run and I said, Hey, I’m offering these free one-on-ones to get on a call with me, and I’m going to help you work through whatever mindset things you have going on.

And I ended up booking lots of calls. Now, these calls were free. I was not charging for this. But what was happening on these calls was that every time I would speak to somebody, my confidence grew. So even though there was no money trading hands, there was a fair value exchange. I got to cut my teeth with minimal risk because if I sucked at it, well don’t come complaining to me. You didn’t pay for it, basically that. So it was a great way for me to expand a green in myself. Pretty low risk, and it was high value for them as well. They got a free one-on-one. So there are a lot of examples and instances where giving things for free does work out.

There is a fair value exchange and often there’s no money involved with that. When we’re trading commodities, for example, when we’re trading testimonials, there’s many, many instances where value exchange doesn’t necessarily mean you’re charging a dollar amount. This podcast, for example, is free to listen to. And the reason it’s free, and the reason this works for me and for you is because, well, first of all, it’s really scalable. So even though I love podcasts, they have this intimate feel to them where you’re listening to my audio like I’m talking to you, but it’s really scalable. I’m reaching many, many people across the world. I’m getting new eyeballs and ears on my work, and I get to promote my workshops and my work and my books. So there’s a fair value exchange.

Sometimes we donate blood or our time for free to causes we support, we do this because it’s expanding our greens, we get a fair value exchange.

 

How Giving From Obligation or Depravation Creates Contraction

I was speaking to someone a month or two ago, and she’s a healer, and she has had these gifts since she was a young girl, and she has so many people come to her all the time asking for healing sessions, and she’s never charged for it.

And she was telling me how she goes through these cycles where she feels really behind what she does. She really wants to help the world, help people, and she feels really excited about this skill that she has this gift essentially, and then she’ll just crash. She doesn’t want to talk about it. She doesn’t want to do it. She shuts herself off completely. And I was explaining to her, well, yeah, that’s going to happen when there’s no fair value exchange. When you give give from your own cup, but you are not getting anything back, your cup is not getting filled in return.

Same amount of energy in the input and output When there’s an in equilibrium, oh, that’s a big word occurring. That’s what happens. You burn out, you deplete yourself, you hit a wall, and then you shut yourself off. You shut your gifts off from the world. So tell me who benefits from that actually who benefits when we operate in this way? No one, not you, and definitely not the rest of the world because you’re not going to help people when you shut yourself off. Expansion can only take place when both cups are being filled, and so there must be a fair value exchange if one is giving and giving and giving and not filling their own cup in return. Everyone pays the price of that. It doesn’t help anyone. And so it is extremely spiritual to desire a vibration of abundance of more than enough of surplus, of peace of mind because the impact that you have, whether it’s through your spiritual work or a job that you have or a product or a service that you’re selling, it doesn’t matter, is actually going to create a positive, expansive impact on others for the greatest good of all.

When you’re in scarcity and deprivation and lack and anxiety and fear about how you’re going to pay your bills, you help no one not long-term anyways. And like it or not, we live in a world where we have collectively agreed that money is the easiest way for us to create value exchanges between especially strangers. It’s highly unlikely that my power company or my electricity bill that I can pay those things with Macron hangings and clay snake figurines that I’m making. Even though I quite value those things myself, I think they’re great. My power company is not going to accept that as a fair form of value. They don’t want that. So we live in a world in a physical reality where we’ve all agreed that this imagined resource of money is a great representation to create these exchanges of value and to deny money or renounce it or say that it’s not important or say that if you’re spiritual, you shouldn’t want this thing is to completely negate the physical reality that you’re in.

 

Conclusion

We are at conflict with this desire for money. We think it’s not noble. There’s this massive juxtaposition that humanity finds itself in where we want to be good people, but then we shame ourselves for our financial desires, and that really prevents so many of us from receiving this beautiful imagined resource that fills our bloody cups. Exchanges are both ways. Your cup needs to be filled, my friend, and if you’re depleting it any way, I suggest you immediately pattern interrupt that. Either start charging, start charging more, or figure out a way where there will be a fair value exchange or just stop doing it altogether. If there’s no way, then don’t do it. It’s not going to help anyone to do it, to show up with that. It will not help anyone. It’s going to have the opposite impact.

And so I encourage all of us to revisit this idea that spirituality and money are not compatible. Money is an imagined resource. It does not exist in nature. It’s a human construct. It comes from the imagination. The imagination is the seat of the divine feminine. I mean, that’s the freaking cauldron of spirituality, guys. It is completely spiritual in all the ways, and to say that it is evil or unknowable or unspiritual to desire this resource is to completely, completely be an ignorance of the physical reality that we are in.

To learn more about this subject, check out my other post on Overcoming Money Blocks or grab your copy of Money Magic.