Why the spiritual community needs to stop criticizing those who charge money for their services. Money is not the root of all evil, greed is. And greed does not discriminate. One that is greedy with one’s money would also likely be greedy with something else, if it not be for money. They would be greedy with whatever asset they believe is the most valuable to them and society as a whole if it wasn’t for money. Greed happens with or without money, but many times people do not see this distinction.
Some people in the broader spiritual community tend to see and view money as a negative thing, as something that we should not be using especially when it comes to a spiritual service. As if the simple non-greedy want to accumulate wealth in any amount is somehow bad. They compare and equate money with the ego (and usually also have the viewpoint that the ego is inherently bad, which is also false – read more here on that topic: https://pursueyou.org/2020/12/23/why-your-ego-is-not-bad-and-why-you-shouldnt-try-and-get-rid-of-your-ego/ ) .
Let me tell you why this is not the case and why some in the spiritual community need to start seeing money in a different light. Obviously people are likely going to point out my bias here if they choose to criticize this post, but it was a social media post that I came across that prompted me to look deeper into this subject and take a look at what money really is and what it does within our society. The post essentially stated that it was funny how humans were extremely intelligent, yet we are the only species to use money for food and shelter. Whether or not this is an actual fact or not and if other animals use similar things in a similar-ish type of system is not what I intend to write about, it was only the inspiration behind this blog post. Someone commented on it stating that all animals pay an energy price for their food, and I agree.
What is money anyways? Where does it come from i.e. how do we get it? Excluding some of the ways that people just end up getting money like the lottery, the most common way people get money is through work. You work and you get money for that work. The energy that you expended is exchanged for money. The energy that you used:
- Creates something to be consumed by someone else, either a product or a service.
- Gets exchanged back to you in the form of money as a sort of “store of value” – a “store of energy”
Even in situations like welfare, the money that someone else receives is still a result of someone else’s expungement of energy. In this sense, taxpayers are providing a service to the recipients, willingly or not, they are still providing help to someone else in the form of a contribution to a fund/system that is set up to help those in need.
For example, you assist in the creation of a product that will be for sale, you get money for the energy you spent in creating that product. You use that money to buy something that you need, that something which is the product of someone else’s energy that they receive money in exchange for as well. Money is essentially the “middle man” that “holds” the energy that you spend providing something. You may not necessarily need or want your own product/service, but someone else will. So, instead of you spending your time and energy to go out hunting for food, you use the money that you got in exchange for your time and energy to create furniture to buy food. Money allows for the broader benefit of the expungement of energy.
Rather than you producing clothing for someone else to wear and exchanging those clothes with someone else who produces food a direct mutual exchange of something you make for something you need and something they make for something they need, or rather than you producing everything that you need for yourself, we use money as a way to get compensated for the energy we spend on something so that we can buy the product of someone else’s energy.
To illustrate this further, “I work making alcohol, but I do not drink alcohol. Although I am spending my time and energy making something that I do not need and do not want, I get money in exchange for that time and energy and I can spend that money on buying something that I do need and want.” Instead of, “I make clothes and I need and use my own clothing, my time and energy is spent on making something that I need and want and that others need and want too, so I exchange that clothing for food with the local hunter, it’s a win win.” In both situations people are still spending time and energy to create something and that something that they create is still a store of energy that they use to acquire other things that they need and/or want. The only difference is that the store of value that we use is money over actual raw goods. Rather than keeping the “fruits of our labor” to use in exchange for others’ “fruits of their labor” we do not keep the fruits of our labor and get money instead to buy the fruits of others’ labor, and the same applies to them as well.
It’s either do it yourself or pay someone else to do it for you, whether it is a direct exchange with money or other type of exchange. Now-a-days it takes more than just energy to do certain things (it also takes skill) so not only are we paying for the raw energy of another, but also the mental energy in the knowledge that one possesses to be able to do that skill. It’s still an exchange regardless, you expunge your own energy for the store of energy that is the money that you use to buy the product of someone else’s energy.
If someone wants to live their life normally, they must make money and this is no exception for people with spiritual businesses unless they choose to do it as a hobby rather than a job and if they are passionate about doing it, what is so wrong about them receiving money for the service that they provide so they can do what they enjoy doing full-time? Not to mention the fact that when someone is doing something full-time it allows for more people to benefit from the service that want to benefit from it. Exchanges of energy are a part of nature, and everything comes from something. Remember the whole “energy is never created nor destroyed” thing you learned about in school?
Could it be that the viewpoint that proclaims a higher morality for their negative view on money especially money in spiritual businesses comes not from a place of spirituality, but a place of ego? A place in ego that says, “I am better than [more spiritual than] this other person because I think this way about money.” Could this be just a projection of spiritual ego in the form of a perceived moral superiority?
Being completely self-less and not having a care in the world about providing for our own needs is just as bad as being selfish. It is time that we stop viewing money in such a negative light and start seeing money for what it truly is as a store of energy. Something that is only bad when combined with greed. Everything is energy and nothing is free, everything costs energy in one form or another, even the rain.
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