We can still work for free for those in needs. In the meantime we got to pay the bills to make a living. Doctors do not work for free either and they could chooes to do so just as much. I am a Bodyworker and massage therapist. I think everybody deserves a free massage but who takes care of my bills? If I am not well what can I give?

People pay us for the time really and not for the healing. I always work for some people for free, including my family. That is about all I can take for free. Sometimes people want me to work for free for them even though they can afford to pay. I had a student driving a BMW who wanted a discount because he is a poor student. I refused. I rather work with singles mom's for free.

I do however think that when you give unconditional love as a service, and that is part of a healing session, that it is really impossible to compensate for this. A business transaction is a business transaction, and giving sometimes is just giving. Yet, got to pay the bills. That is the bottom line. Other than that one could choose to do volunteer work, why not?
That is the truth. We need to be respected enough to be able to pay those bills.

Are you supporting yourself? Do you have any dependents? If you don't work do you eat? If you have no money for rent/mortgage do you have a place to live? If you give full time and don't accept the exchange of energy via money, how do you sustain your activities.

These are questions that all of us who trully are motivated by the desire to be in service have to answer. Are you in service? If so what are your answers?


REAL healers serve their community because they have a responsibility to. your belief is RIDICULOUS


Are you a Healer? Or is all this just something that you are thinking about. I see from your profile that you are 20, how can you ridicule anyone else's beliefs? Please be a little more respectful.

I struggled with the idea of charging for what I do for a little while. But just like Shanti and Al said, I have to be able to support myself and pay bills.

In traditional villages healers do serve the community, but the community feeds them and clothes them and takes care of their survival needs. Receiving payment for our work is allowing the community to support us. Our communities are simply set up differently and we must learn how to work within them.

I've also noticed that people who pay for a service feel it is valuable. Unfortunately we live in a society that equates value with money. It even seems like the people who charge more are "better".

A friend of mine told me that he had been doing past life work with people for 14 years without being paid because he felt it was his "duty". He started charging after a woman said to him "do you know what you're doing by not charging? you are creating karma with every single person. They now owe you."

Receiving money, or any other sort of exchange clears any "debt" karmically or energetically.

Why bother to join a tribe just to make one nasty comment, refuse to engage in discussion, and then drop out? I guess that I will never understand what goes through some people's mind. I guess that Lalataksha felt that we didn't have anything to offer him, and that we were so ridiculous that we were beneath him. Oh well.

Do our creditors not expect to be paid because we provide healing services? Mine certainly do. Each of us has a gift whether it be as a teacher, a carpenter, an artist, an accountant or a healer. We have the choice at any time whether to provide service gratis or receive money or some other type of exhange. I'm an interfaith minister, creative guide, reiki and massage practitioner, writer and have provided my services for free or at a lower cost when the situation warranted it. Those to whom I offer service are reaping the benefit of the years I spent in college, grad school, seminary, bodywork classes....etc. If I'm able to provide for my own needs, then I am in a better position to be of service to others. There is nothing inherently spiritual about poverty.

When you go to a restaurant, you receive what is referred to as 'service'. Do you expect to pay for what is served to you and to tip the server who provided this service to you?

In your profile, you don't indicate what you do professionally. I'm wondering if you get paid to do what you do?

I welcome ongoing dialogue.

Namaste

Edie

Any service is also an EXCHANGE.

Sometimes you may exchange some activity or information for money.
Sometimes you may exchange some activity for another activity.
Sometimes you may exchange some activity for "karma points", and give it over to "GUS" (God, Universe, Spirit, or whatever). When you do this, there is no expectation of any kind of "payment" or reciprocation from the other person. Lawyers call this kind of exchange "pro bono" (for the good). Most everyone else calls it "charity".

When an activity has no cost, it is perceived as having no "value". "Free" may be a very good price, but it's difficult or impossible to attach a value to something that is "free". People are this way, also. My self-worth is different from my value. My value may be low (if I'm not making much money), but that doesn't need to affect my "worth", to either myself, or to others. Thus, no matter what the circumstances, I am NEVER "worthless" ("worth-LESS"). Therefore, to myself, I always have value, and so do my "services".

Just my $0.02

--- Patrick

REAL communities have always honored their healers with a living, offering food, tools, household goods in exchange for services. The community recognized the value of services, and that the one giving service also needed to live. There was an exchange.
In this society we can not even beg as they can in the Asian countries, or we are often arrested as panhandlers!
I have given so many free Reiki Attunments I can not keep count anymore. I council for free. I give free healings. I offer these to those who need them no matter their bank accounts. When someone offers me an exchange, I take whatever they offer me. Most people honor my time and energy with something. However, I can not support myself in my community being of service to Spirit anymore, so I keep my day job.
If someone were dying, and asked for my services, I would give them as I have committed to Spirit to do. In a REAL community, their relatives would honor me wtih an exchange of something. At least my transportation money and room and board. Their sofa and a chair at their table, sharing whatever humble meal they were eating. Unfortunatly, thereare not that many REAL communities left in our society.
I don't wish to get wealthy and greedy being of service, but it would be nice to be able to make a living using the gifts given to me to use. So I keep doing my work for whatever is offered, and know what goes around comes around.
Blessings of Love and Light,,
Suzi

Howdy.
Thought I would throw my two cents in for what they are worth. I am a Professional Tarot Reader, been doing it for 40 years. The term Professional means I do this for money or trades of equal value. As a Professional I have a code of ethics that I work by.I give hundreds of readings away each year to those who have no money but need a reading.
Blessings
Rev T.

Over the years I have taught and attuned hundreds of people for free. I also answered questions and offered insight whenever it was requested and I did not charge for that either. I enjoyed helping people but after a while I had no income and I began to feel resentful of the people I was trying to help.

I have learned that it is not "spiritual" to overextend myself and that spirituality requires a balance of giving and receiving. Everyone has a responsibility for self care in order to be able to exist and help others. I have also learned that I am deserving of love and of having my needs met. This is as true for me as it is for someone who is dying but does not have enough money for a session. Responsibility begins with the self and everyone has to be responsible for their own well being before they can truly help others.

I mentor someone, I put out a monthly e mail to clients and students with how to information and free attunements, and I even have a blog here on tribe with articles, attunements and a section to ask questions if someone is learning and wants assistance. However, I have learned to say no and I often say no when I need to take care of myself.

Also, when I work, I am not responsible to others (or to the community at large), everyone has to be responsible for themselves. I can offer whatever assistance I can, but what they do with that is their responsibility, not mine. If I cannot even take responsibility for my own financial needs, how can I expect my clients to be responsible for their lives!

Hmm.

My roommate works as a call girl occasionally.

She want some love from me.

I wasn't interested. Not because I don't like her, she is my friend, but she equates her "box" and her joy and her sexuality with a dollar value.
That's useless to me, I might as well just jerk off into a sock or go jogging. You can't entwine with a spirit chained to that dollar value.

It completely corrupts the "WILL". Magick is will.


That's extreme, I don't think it's wrong to charge for mixing up teas, or similiar stuff, but if someone is reading tarot because they are hungry and broke, it's the wrong reason. That hunger or need slithers it's way into your workings.

Are there spiritual practices you shouldn't do for money?

Sorry, being a devils advocate.

Doctors, nurses, herbologist, chinese doctors, accupunturist, therapist, massage therapist...etc all get paid for doing "healing" work. Why can't folks who do alternative medicine get paid as well?

Why is it wrong to charge when you are using your time and energy to help others? isn't your time valueable?

Many other professions charge....

And don't tell me because its a natural talent...cause so is art, understanding herbs, as well as other areas that require talents...

If you are in a car accident or have a cardiac condition; either of which threaten your life you will seek medical attention. Depending upon the acuteness of your condition you require the services of specialists. The medical profession is shaped like a pyramid with practitioners of the most difficult specialties further and further up toward the top. For every 10,000 GPs there are maybe 2 or 3 Pediatric Neurosurgeons, and about the same or even fewer Pre-Natal Vascular Surgeons. And believe me their services are incredibly costly. This is not because they are venal or money grubbing, but because they have had to make sacrifices to learn their specialties; far beyond the sacrifices that every doctor makes to become a doctor. Their services are also so costly because of the price of the incredibly expensive tools they work with. Things like micro-manipulating Waldos, microscopic fiber-optic cameras, computer assisted blood gas analyzers, etc. cost staggering amounts of money. Yet no one objects to the cost of their services when they are required.

Looking at all the expense connected with saving a life or even the quality of life; why do we have such an issue connected with the cost of receiving treatment for spiritual ailments? If I spend months working with someone on a challenge to their life and soul, why shouldn't I get paid for my time, training, tools, physical facility I work in? If I charge someone with the ability to pay sufficiently to offset the cost of treatment of someone who cannot pay; why should I not.

Another vital part of the process of healing is the belief of the person receiving treatment in the Healer's ability to help them. PEOPLE HAVE VERY LITTLE CONFIDENCE IN HEALERS WHO LIVE IN THEIR CAR AND ARE FORCED TO LIVE ON HANDOUTS AND BARTER ONLY!!! A well appointed office, with modern facilities instills confidence in those you will work with.

We who are called to serve the Light and Heal our brothers and sisters and the world, have often been brainwashed by our materialistic society. In a society which pays someone like Michael Vick $30,000,000.00 a year to play football; why shouldn't a Medical Intuitive, Shaman, Hypnotherapist, EFT Practitioner, Reiki Practitioner, et al receive 1% of Michael Vick's payrate? That would be $300,000.00 a year. In reality any of those Healers contribute a great deal more than an athelete, and require a much greater investment to become prepared to offer their services. Yet we are told that something is wrong with us to expect to be compensated for our work.

The cause and source of this inversion of values is that the capitalist mechanism that support Professional Sports is controlled by people driven by profit who know that the monies they earn are based in this artificial inversion of values. They know that you or I or anyone else who serves; give more than any member of the NFL, MLB, NBA, PGA, WWE, NHL, ect. Yet if the idea of fair compensation for those in the serving professions became the paradigm which ran our society; Teachers, Healers, Poets, Shamans, and other Lightworkers, would become the heroes and rolemodels for us all. In such a society truth will become the watchword and virtue the ultimate test. We would be so connected to each other and so responsible for each other that no one could divide us into opposing camps and factions. We would be spending the money we now spend on War and NASCAR on Healing and Education.

My take on this is that it's mainly a question of numbers. If one does healing for "free" then they have to work at some other job. They may be able to give healing to a couple of people, at most, each day. If they are are being paid a fair amount for their healing work & and can do it "full-time" how many more people will be healed? Even allowing for adequate rest (which is very necessary to healers) they will be able to see 6 people a day. If we phoned for a dental appointment and were told the dentist was busy at her "other job" working in a shop and we'd have to wait a few weeks, we'd think something was wrong. Wouldn't we?
-H