“But shouldn’t a real psychic or spiritual coach offer their gifts for free?”

I hear this a lot, and mostly from religious folks.

Let’s talk about money. Very few want to, but money is necessary in our lives. It’s interwoven with happiness, safety, opportunity, personal growth, business, charity, etc.

This idea that psychics, whether we’re talking to your guides, or those who have passed, or helping you gain clarity on your life choices, should do what we do for free because it’s a gift from God, is all too common.

And it’s wrong. Here’s why.

We are all psychic. We all have this gift, even though not everyone is as practiced as others. It’s not a gift that some special people have and others don’t. It’s literally your birthright. This is why I teach my clients how to develop their own relationships with their guides. Eventually, they won’t need me. They’ll connect with their guides on their own.

Perhaps you’re familiar with the adage, “Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” (Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie, loosely quoted from Mrs. Dymond, 1885.) In this, I’m not offering my clients fish to eat. I’m teaching them how to fish on their own.

Money is simply a tool we use to exchange life energy. You’re not paying a real psychic for their gifts. You’re paying them for their time and effort—their life energy. For every hour that I spend on a Zoom call with a client, I put in an additional 30-60 minutes prepping for that call. And that doesn’t even touch on things like overhead and the work I need to do on myself so that I can be open and present and connected for my clients.

[bctt tweet=”Money is simply a tool we use to exchange life energy. You’re not paying a psychic for their gifts. You’re paying them for their time and effort—their life energy.” username=”soulguidesllc”]

Some may want to argue that you’re paying for a psychic’s time, energy, and their experience and expertise channeling guides or spirits, and therefore paying them for a talent that not everyone can use at the moment. To them, I offer this: every other expression of expertise and experience, or even talent, is something we pay for without questioning it. We pay for medical advice, legal services, personal care services, financial services. We pay for the opportunity to see talented athletes play sports. We pay (through advertising or subscriptions or tickets) to watch actors portray characters in fictional stories on screens or stages. We pay clergy for their spiritual services. We pay musicians for the opportunity to listen to their music. Real psychics (and I’ll get to that real part in a moment) are no different.

When people bring God into the argument

But, Sheyna, some say, this is a gift from God, so it should be given freely!

No. Not any more than what some would also call a God-given gift for math or athleticism or law or medicine or engineering or music or art. Those are also gifts.

But, Sheyna, some add, one shouldn’t make money off of a spiritual gift! God doesn’t want that!

First, with all due respect, they don’t speak for God. The Christian Bible is not my religious text. And the Hebrew bible (the Tanakh) is not the final say in Judaism, either. We have all sorts of interpretations and laws developed over the past few thousand years.

Second, for those who insist on bringing God into this, why would God want me to starve? Or lose my home? Because the reality is, if I’m spending a lot of my time teaching others how to connect with their guides, that’s time I don’t have to do any other work for which I ought to be paid. It’s time I don’t have to write my books.

Remember, this is an exchange of life energy. It’s not so much about gift or talent or religious rules about how we’re supposed to use these abilities (that we all have).

Now, back to that issue of real psychics. There are, unfortunately, people out there who want to make a quick buck, and who prey on others who are grieving or are feeling hopeless and looking for some way out of the pain. I’ll write more in another post specifically about how to tell the difference between these people and those who are authentically wanting to help and heal, but in a nutshell, you need to pay attention to two things in particular:

1. What is their intention? Are they providing a service you want, or are they telling you what you need and then compelling you to pay for it? Are they taking advantage of pain in your life? Are they pressuring you?
2.  What’s your gut feeling? Your own intuition? Even if you think their intention is authentic, they may not be the right fit for you. Trust your own inner knowing before you trust what someone else tells you, even if they say (or especially if they say) they can see something you can’t that needs to be fixed for a cost.

This post may make some people angry, and they’ll be unequivocally certain that psychics should not be compensated for the life energy they’re giving their clients. My response to those who are angry? Don’t hire one. Don’t exchange your life energy for theirs. And let everyone else make their own decisions, trusting their own intuition and guidance.