A healer that I knew was once was asked a question about money and spirituality that went something like this: “How can you, a spiritual healer charge money for spiritual healing?”

The healer replied: “Because my creditors still charge me even though I’m a spiritual healer!”

This notion that spirituality and money should not mix has been an odd one. Spiritual people and teachers still eat, they often live in houses, pay bills and live in the world – and the last time I checked these things cost money.

So why do some people believe that spirituality and money should not mix?

Now let’s see…the church is not poor, so it can’t be as a result of one of the leading religious groups setting the example.

Perhaps it is because these people believe that spirituality is not important enough…but if this was the case then why would they care at all?

It could be the opposite…it could be that spirituality is too important and so it becomes priceless…but being undercharged would hardly be a reason for complaint so that doesn’t make sense either.

This is something that I’ve had trouble understanding ever since I began studying the healing and spiritual arts. My only conclusion is that many people still believe that money is wrong or evil and so it shouldn’t be associated with spirituality. But once again this begs the question: “How are healers and spiritual teachers supposed to eat and live?”

When friends found out that I needed to pay for my spiritual learning a few exclaimed indignantly: “But if your teachers are truly spiritual then they wouldn’t be charging you!!”

When I asked them “Why?” no one could come up with an explanation other than: “Well true spiritual people aren’t interested in money.”

It gets more and more intriguing.

I pointed out: “Money is a means to create opportunities. Some of those opportunities include things like eating, having shelter and paying the bills. So why wouldn’t true spiritual people be interested in those things?”

Blank stares.

So I continued: “We pay pretty much everyone else a wage, actors get paid enormous amounts to make movies that are not so important to us…so why do you think that spiritual people should starve?”

More blank stares as my friends began to look at me a bit weird.

To this day I still can’t understand this mentality…I mean if people weren’t allowed to receive money for spiritual healings and teachings then this would mean that they would need to get work doing something non-spiritual. Which would mean that they spent a lot less time doing spiritual work and practice, which would mean that they may well know less about spiritual matters and would probably have less time to teach also – which would end up meaning that their overall spiritual contribution to the world could quite possibly be a lot less!
How can this be a good thing?

Beats me!

Simone Simpson