Have Your Spirit Call My Spirit & We’ll Do Lunch

Last Sunday, I was sitting at my church, which is a metaphysical, New Thought church. 
It came time to pass the collection bag around, and for some reason, I had a thought about how many people I've come across that have argued with
me that Spiritual work should not cost anything…that to charge for
helping people with Spiritually oriented issues seemed Un-Spiritual and inconsistent with Spiritual principles.  I've heard people question why a church needs to have donations/offerings.  I have also heard this argument in regards to why certain workshops, classes, or coaching that is oriented to helping people transform their lives are charging, either at all or "way too much."  Well, as dangerous a proposition as it can be for me to think, this got me to thinkin'.

On October 2 (two days before the church service I'm referring to), noted Social Media expert Chris Brogan posted a blog called The Audacity Of Free that I really enjoyed a lot. It spoke of the problem that some in our society have in understanding why services with intangible value should cost anything.  While we understand that we have to pay for food, plumbers, and colonoscopies, it gets a bit dicey when we're being asked to pay for workshops, seminars, or donations to churches, for example.  [A disclaimer here: I lead workshops and provide coaching for which the "value" is not fully predictable (until the end of the workshops or sessions), so I have an affinity for this subject.]  I wrestle with it all the time.  Now, to complicate matters further, my "value" that I provide is not only largely intangible, but I traffic in work and coaching that is unabashedly spiritually oriented; that is, I do all I do to basically assist people in being able to develop a deeper connection to their Spirit and to whatever Divine Presence they may believe in and long to be more connected to.  When you start bringing Spirituality into the picture, things can get pretty interesting pretty quickly with this "Shouldn't Spirit stuff be free, or at least cheap?" kind of thinking.

Well, as I was listening to the Minister give his talk about the critical role that imagination plays in Spiritual development and deepening, mine started running a bit amok.  My mental wanderings went from this topic of "Why do people expect something for nothing in the personal development realm?" to how often people unconsciously apply this same line of thinking  and sense of entitlement towards Spirit Itself. 

How many of you reading this have had thoughts along the lines of "Well, Spirit sure hasn't answered my prayers yet; I asked for a new Weber, and so far all I've gotten is more problems and dissatisfaction," or "Jeez, I've been studying and practicing Spirituality for years, and yet I've still not gotten the answers I'm looking for…nor have I had direct audiences with Spirit in between fast-forwarding through the commercials on the ole Tivo?"  I imagine there are many who have wondered why a Spiritual life or Spiritual Path devotedly pursued has not yet yielded a sense of enlightenment, peace, greater riches of money and contentment, and a noticeable reduction in bad stuff happening.  I know that I've wondered that many times in my Spiritual Path youth and even last week. 

Well, here's a take on what's up with all this, and why any of us could trend towards wanting our healing, our Enlightenment, and our Spiritual Path to eventually get us to Nirvana and states of more frequent bliss, and RIGHT NOW, thank you very much: because we've become complacent, culturally narcissistic, and spiritually lazy.  My friend David has often said, in effect, "Westerners don't have any idea what real Spiritual Practice or discipline really is, particularly compared with Eastern-oriented metaphysicists and Spiritual pilgrims."  I remember bristling at that when I first heard it, not realizing I was unconsciously getting into an internally voiced "My Path is Bigger & Better Than Your Path" brouhaha.  Yet, I submit to you all reading this that it might be a good idea to really take a look at what it is that you're expecting from Spirit and a "Spiritual Path."  If you haven't in awhile, really take a gander at why you're even ON a Spiritual Path, if you consider yourself to be on one (a clue that you are: thoughts like "I'm more Spiritual than he/she/them," or "I'm not being Spiritual enough"). 

Where are you trying to get to?  Do you have thoughts or expectations that reaching a certain stage of "enlightenment" or consciousness will bring you more happiness, ease, and better-ness?  Do you find yourself taking issue with tithing your Spiritual church/Source, or paying for "Spiritual Work?"  If you are, or find yourself going there more often than you'd have imagined you would, then I invite you to consider that your Spirit – and the Divine – don't look at things as a price-tagged commodity and value-added destination.  In all Spiritual Traditions that I'm aware of, there is sacrifice and surrender involved in getting closer to Spirit, along with practice, discipline, devotion, faith, and a healthy dose of egoic humility.  Notice where you resist that, check in with your heart, and see if you're really trying to get "somewhere" as proof of being "Spiritual" enough…or, if you're truly willing to do the work that you may need/want to do to simply surrender into a reality that I believe in…that being "Spiritual" is a state, not a dot on a map.

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5 Comments

  1. Selene Vega says:
    October 9, 2009 at 4:25 am

    Geoff, really appreciated this piece! This is a topic I’ve pondered over the years, and more pertinent to me than ever, as I move more towards coaching and counseling (and away from more clinical psychotherapy). My general tendency is to just want to give and connect without money coming into the equation at all – but that does not acknowledge the realities of the world we live in. One way to think about paying for spiritual teaching or coaching is that you are not paying for the spiritual teaching, you are paying for the teacher/coach’s time – time that they are spending with you (and preparing what they have to offer) rather than out at a job that would pay for their home and food and whatever else they need.

  2. Geoff Laughton says:
    October 10, 2009 at 11:12 pm

    Thanks for both reading and commenting Selene. I appreciate your perspective, and agree with it 100%.

  3. Alexander McDonell says:
    October 27, 2009 at 3:47 am

    I am also grappling with this issue. Currently this is where I am with it:
    It is important for a spiritual workshop to have a spiritual way of dealing with cost. One simple way that is attractive to a lot of people is to not ask for money. Another way that the buddhists tend to do is to only accept donations. I believe that it is possible to find a spiritually deep way of working that is closer to the common way of running a business and therefore easier to operate in our society.
    There is a sense of exchange that people have – when one person receives something they feel they want to give something in return – this operates well beyond formal commerce. It is the same if someone does the dishes too often then it feels unfair, but if they know that others are doing other work, then maybe they feel ok about it etc.
    So if i apply this sense of exchange and fairness to money then there is an intuitive sense of what the right amount to charge for something is. If I ask exactly the right amount then everyone feels comfortable and love and harmony are possible.
    The bit that gets me lost and confused is marketing myself. It seems that we are supposed to go out and blow our own trumpets, and there is something that feels really bad about that. One answer is to have someone else do it, or do it for someone else – one market, and the other provide the goods, but as i have failed to find a business manager, I am looking for a way of advertising that doesn’t feel like i am arrogantly claiming to be the greatest.
    Alexander

  4. David Burson says:
    November 23, 2009 at 1:25 am

    If we don’t pay you how would you be able to sustain yourselves to help the rest of us? To me the real challenge would be that some can afford to pay for the help and some can not. Of course the poor are just as deserving, but it doesn’t mean they are more deserving than someone who can afford to pay for help. Exchange for services in the form of money is certainly justified, but it does make me wonder about those who don’t have the money in the first place.

  5. Connie Lewis says:
    December 9, 2009 at 8:02 pm

    Thank you David, I agree. In the current paradigm we operate on a commercial basis. We need to support our teachers so that they may continue to share their messages. It can be as simple as an appreciation in words, a gift of time or even coin of the realm.
    It’s clunky to say that we only value what we pay for.
    Don’t you think the current concepts of money and time are ridiculous? They hold far too much power for constructs of the human mind.

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