HOW DO YOU BE TRULY HELPFUL?
ACIM: "I am here only to be truly helpful.
I am here to represent Him Who sent me.
I do not have to worry about what to say or what to do,
because He Who sent me will direct me.
I am content to be wherever He wishes, knowing He goes there with me.
I will be healed as I let Him teach me to heal."
1. "I am here only to be truly helpful"... ONLY to be truly helpful, meaning I do not have other agenda and am not attempting to let my ego control things. What is truly helpful other than the Will of God, which you share and act upon. You can be truly helpful if you are forgiving, aligned with Holy Spirit. Then you will have the clarity with which to identify a call for love when you see one, knowing that the only truly helpful response to it is love in return.
2. "I am here to represent Him Who sent me."... You are to be a representative of Christ. By representation, that means that you share His authority and power and are able to speak in His name, similar to how the Holy Spirit is a devoted Voice for God. You can speak on His behalf, or rather, have Him speak through you. He will inspire you and move you and you will be a conduit for His expression of loving miracles.
3. "I do not have to worry about what to say or what to do, because He Who sent me will direct me"... And so by aligning your mind with His, the two become One, His thoughts become your thoughts, and His perspective becomes your perspective. He will either speak directly through your body or will inspire you supernaturally what to say. You need not worry because you are trusting Him 100% to guide you and He knows the way and what to do. You let Him decide everything for you and are glad to extend God's love.
4. "I am content to be wherever He wishes, knowing He goes there with me."... Truly committed and trusting Holy Spirit, you would have no basis for fear and would be in supreme confidence, relaxed, empowered and certain. He will orchestrate all events and encounters and send the appropriate people to you or you to them. Knowing that He goes there with you, and in awareness of His presence, gives you no reason for fear. This means you have developed trust and depend on God for everything. Having surrendered your personal agenda, you are content to do your Father's business.
5. "I will be healed as I let Him teach me to heal"... miracles are for you and for everyone. You will heal (yourself) and heal others at the same time. Healing means resurrection. It means restoration and correction. It means the blessing of forgiveness. And it means the demonstration of God's truth. As you allow Him to teach you and work through you, you will learn what healing is and you will experience it yourself. As you heal yourself, you become able to heal others. It is the privilege of the forgive to forgive and the healed to heal. Accepting miracles for yourself gives you the willingness to provide them to others.
You think your life is your own life. It is not. Your life is belongs to God.
It is God's life, living through you. You are His extension, created by His Will, for His Purpose. Not that you are some kind of slave or unwilling servant - you are free, and you SHARE in life, but it's not really 'your life'.
The life that you are, comes from God, and is shared with God. It's His as much as yours.
That which flows through you or extends love through you, that's God's love, which you can share in, but you cannot possess it. It's not your love. It's not exclusive to you. You don't get to control it.
You could spend your whole 'life' in control and believing that you own this life, that you own yourself, that you own all rights to decide and to live as you please. That you 'have' rights. It's not your life to own. God owns you.
God shares His love with you, He provides you with everything you need in total abundance, He extends everything He has to you, as you, and you do not need anything else. You are completely sustained by the love of God. You are not sustained by yourself or the things in your life.
Without God you would not exist, not just in the sense that He gave birth and therefore you owe Him, but in the sense that you exist because He is permanently creating you. You are as God created you and nothing else. You cannot add to yourself or remove from yourself against His will, but in a fairytale.
The ego is the device which you have made to seem to take over ownership of life, to possess it, to control it, to direct it, to decide about it, to make it how you think it should be, to manipulate it, to build it and rearrange it, to judge it, to reject it, and to do with and to it whatever you seem to want. But it's not your life. Your ego has stolen it from God.
You belong to God. Your life belongs to God. You can share it fully, abundantly and freely, but you cannot make it your private property.
Where is there room in your life for God? Where are you allowing God to live in you? Where are you sharing in God's love? Where are you extending God's love and doing your Father's business? Where are you allowing and accepting the Authority that God has as your Creator? Where are you standing in the way of God trying to be a separate authority that stands against His and opposes His will?
If you are against God you are against love. And since God created you, being against God is being against yourself. So while you try to be a separate self with a separate will in a separate world having a separate life, you are actually against your life. And you then think your life is yours, but it isn't... this farce of a life you own actually means you have disowned your real life. You've disowned your life with God. You've passed off ownership as a substitute for being owned by God. You think you'd rather be the one who owns God, but you can't. Not even if you try. But you try.
God loves you, always has, always will. You are His to love forever.
Separation from God follows a perfectly logical sequence of consequences. The Holy Spirit's thought system is perfectly logically consistent, and so is the ego's. Everything which arises in the ego's thought system is a completely logical progression based on the dynamics of being separate from the truth.
It is possible to derive from the separation an entire metaphysical structure which puts into context everything which MUST happen and DID happen as a result of it. This includes the proper recognition of what the physical universe is, what the other dimensions/universes are, where it all fits into the picture, why bodies were made, and why there is death.
Regardless of whether you are an ACIM student or not, if you understand precise irrefutable logic, it is possible to see the true metaphysics behind the Course. What has happened in the ego split mind MUST happen in any split mind.
There is essentially nothing "special" about the ego's dream and nothing special or unusual about what has happened in it. There is nothing special about ACIM's metaphysics and there is nothing unusual or exceptional or out of place. There is only one way to separate from God, and there is only one outcome that results from it.
You do not need to go on a quote-fest, or nit-pick individual words, or dwell on whether Jesus said it in the course or not, in order to figure this out and be clear about it. In fact, if you can grasp the metaphysical background of existence then it will even clarify for you what Jesus meant in the Course when he said certain things, rather than having to rely on your own "best skills" at trying to grasp what it means.
There is nothing out of place in the ego's dream. Everything which has happened in it has been a completely logical progression of consequences and is perfectly consistent. There are no loopholes. There is nothing which just so happens to have happened for "some reason". What has happened is ONLY what had to happen and nothing else. The ego's dream is a closed system. It is entirely predictable.
There doesn't really need to be debate about what the Course does or doesn't say or who has authority to say it or what Jesus meant or what the quotes seem to suggest. Jesus wrote the Course FROM a mind which understands with perfect clarity a metaphysical context which ANYONE can access and understand and express from. If you don't grasp that metaphysical structure, then you will fall back to relying on "the words" of the Course or what was expressed based on that metaphysical structure. And then you will become lost, because you're once removed from it.
Without seeing the perfect metaphysics you will have to lapse into personal opinion. We shouldn't really be in the business of expressing personal opinion. We should be open to learning directly from the truth itself, or the source of truth/Holy Spirit etc, what the truth is. If we do not know what the truth is, we need to be able to admit this, and be open to learning. We should not be in a constant state of arguing and debating who is right. Either we're willing to accept the truth from the horse's mouth or we're just going to get into a big fight about whose version of it is the best. This is completely unnecessary once you can see the metaphysics behind everything.
Another ego trap with forgiveness is believing that you need to be at peace regardless of what's going on in life. While this might ultimately be the goal, meanwhile the things that happen in life are there because they are lessons.
They're not just happening at random. Each of us has a curriculum. That means, whatever point you are at right now in your spiritual path, which is extremely unique to you, and whatever you are experiencing now, there are certain things you are going to have to learn or discover in order to move forward.
And the way that you learn those things is that you have learning experiences, ie lessons. And usually these lessons are things that you seem to NOT WANT. And so a great big steaming SHIT comes along in your life and dumps itself on your foot and you just go about trying to shake it off, but it's really trying to help you wake up.
There is something involved in your interaction with the shit and how you deal with it and look at it and experience it, which is going to bring stuff up for you, trigger you, and cause you to have certain kinds of perceptions and thoughts and ideas. And you might not have had those if it were not for this stimuli. But before you just try to get rid of the shit for coming along to disturb you, realize that this is actually an opportunity to grow and heal and become more awake spiritually.
So you don't necessarily want to be in the business of making life SEEM to be like it doesn't have anything upsetting happening, or that it's just one big smooth ride, because that can be a form of denial, avoidance, and disassociation. And it can keep you stuck. Not saying you have to suffer willingly, but willingly is better than unwillingly, lol
Anyway... so ... forgiveness isn't about avoiding bad stuff. And it isn't just about transcending it and being at peace about it. The bad stuff is there FOR A REASON, because its a lesson in the curriculum, and you not only need it but have asked for it. And that's why it's come. Because you are ready for it. And now you need to learn a lesson from it. And if you don't learn it this time, it will come back again. You don't have a choice in that.
Be aware that the ego, especially the persona part of the ego, wants to get rid of all bad stuff and create an ILLUSION OF BLISS, which really plays into the idea that "ignorance is bliss", because in ignorance ie unconsciousness, you think you don't have any issues because you're in incredible denial. You don't want that. You don't really want a life of total ease and an easy ride, at least not until you genuinely have woken up all the way and don't have any curriculum left. Then it's truly plain sailing.
So 'doing forgiveness' should not be about making bad stuff go away, even though that's what most of us use it for most of the time. It's really to help you learn lessons and to undo what you have taught yourself already, which is mistaken. It is unlearning, which is how lessons are completed - the question is unlearned to reveal the answer. There was no problem until the answer became obscured by the separation, see.
"I am not a body I am free, for I am still as God created me."
You cannot define yourself. God created you. You had no say in this because you didn't exist at the time. You came into being by his will alone, and per his design. Whatever you are, is given by him, and cannot be changed.
Some would possibly interpret this as imprisoning, as though grounds for rebellion. As if you want to change yourself but are not allowed. At best, you can deny what you are, as God created you, and pretend to be something you are not . But you can't actually remove what you are deep down.
You are free to do this. You can pretend to be anything you want. You can pretend to have authority over him and to have created yourself. You can redefine your images of what you are till the cows come home. But still you cannot replace what God has created.
This means really that no matter how you define yourself, you will never be wholly satisfied. This is because God has already laid claim to the perfect definition of you. The definition which results in you being at your happiest, most satisfied, most joyful and creative, and most accepting of yourself. To reject a perfect identity is to settle for less.
So if you are in the business of having to be the gatekeeper with an authority problem who wants to tell God what they are, you can go right ahead. But it will not ultimately satisfy you. Nor will it bring you total happiness or creative power or love or joy or peace or meaning. It can't, because there is only one perfection and that's the one God has chosen you to be.
You can own up to accepting a kind of "off the shelf" identity from God, accepting that you are as God created you and have never changed. Or you can deny that and go into a kind of nightmare of confusion about who and what you are, endlessly searching for the self you lost, and trying to replace it with make-believe fiction. But only accepting God's definition of you will truly fulfill you.
You can "try on" all manner of bodies. You can wrap yourself in wardrobes of clothing. You can put on masks and dress up and role play and pretend to be various things. But they ultimately are all empty because they lack the wholeness of God's definition of you. You can't find love and wholeness anywhere else. He has the monopoly on that.
Some rebel against God because they don't like this sense of not being free to deifne who and what they are. They think they have the right to redefine themselves in their own image and likeness, to whatever whim they please. Indeed they ARE free to do this. But that does not mean they can ACTUALLY accomplish it, or that it can make them happy. You can deny your reality, but you cannot extinguish it.
Somewhere deep down you know that only the self that God created you to be is the one you can fully accept and be true to. It's the only definition of you that is sane, and the only one that works. You are part of the functioning of the machinery of heaven. You have been given a function and a role to play, assigned by God's will. If you do not want to fit into that and fulfill that function, then you will rebel and try to invent other functions.
Only the function God gave you can work. Only God's will for you can make you happy. Only God's mind can keep you alive forever. And only accepting yourself as you really are can bring you peace. But you have to want it.
Pretty simple huh.
The ego persona wants to seek because seeking means, you do not already have. Seeking takes you away from what you have.
So let's say, you have a home to live in. You know that you HAVE it. It's yours. You don't need to find a home. You've got one.
You go out the front door and leave the home, exclaiming, "I don't have anywhere to live!".
You've rejected the home that you already have, and so now you seem to be homeless.
So now you have to go off SOMEWHERE ELSE, seeking, to try to find the very same home that's right behind you, which you are sure is not there.
But you can see, plainly, that this is nuts. You do not need to go and find a home, you already have one. But you've shut it out of your awareness and turned your back on it.
You could quite easily lift this 'block to awareness' from your mind and remember, oh wait, I actually do have a home to live in already! And this would cause you to STOP SEEKING.
Instead of seeking, you would ACCEPT what is already yours. Then you'd embrace your home again and be at peace, knowing you already have everything you need.
So really, the whole problem is a) the block to the AWARENESS of the pre-existing PRESENCE of everything you need (God/True Self), and b) you then go off on those 'seeking' activity trying to find it ELSEWHERE. And the problem is, it does not exist elsewhere. It's not outside of you, separate from you, or separate from the place where it already is - where God put it, where God is, within.
So because your pre-existing home, which is already yours, only exists where it is, and if you turn your back on it and go off seeking for a home anywhere but where it is, you WILL NOT FIND IT.
"Seek and do not find" - the ego's motto.
You literally are looking for what you already have, believing that you do not already have it, in every place that is SEPARATE from where it already is, hoping to find it there. And that means, it absolutely IS NOT THERE, and that you absolutely will FAIL to find it.
So the ego is very much into seeking. But seeking only comes about after you've put a block on your awareness. Some kind of sense of separation or shutting out or rejection of, what already is in you - God - your True Self - love etc.
That means, if you lift the block to awareness from your mind, you will become AWARE that the car keys are already in your pocket, i.e. you already have everything you need. You have NO needs. Because God has ALREADY given you everything you could possibly need.
So this has to mean, becoming open to ACCEPT that God has already a) given you absolutely all of Himself, b) you do not need anything other than total dependence on God, c) you have no lack and no needs, d) you share God's power and can manifest anything you could possible want or need instantly, e) you will live forever in perfect peace and satisfaction.
You already have a natural inheritance of unconditional love, absolute abundance, total safety and complete peace. It's already been shared with you by God. You just are in the business of not accepting, allowing, admitting, or seemingly wanting it. You've shut it out. So all you need to do, is open up to receiving, allowing, accepting and knowing it again. Reclaim your inheritance!
God is already here with you now!
"Dreams show you that you HAVE the power to make a world as you would have it, and that, BECAUSE you want it, you SEE it. And WHILE you see it, you do NOT doubt that it is real. Yet here is a world, clearly WITHIN your mind, that SEEMS to be outside. You do NOT respond to it as though you made it, nor do you realize that the emotions which the dream produces MUST come from you."
The key part here is, "a world, clearly WITHIN your mind, that SEEMS to be outside. You do not respond to it as though you made it."
So Jesus is saying, both at night and in the waking world, you are dreaming, and you MAKE A WORLD. Your mind has the power to make an ENTIRE environment. AND THEN... you pretend that you didn't make it!
You do not respond to it as if you made it. You see it as separate from you. You DISASSOCIATE yourself from it, and pretend to be a little figure in the dream, just one body among a vast landscape, and pretend that you have control over only this one PART, and NOT the whole thing.
Yet who makes the worlds that show up when you dream at night? Who puts the buildings and the people into the dream? YOU DO. Yet in your dream you pretend and convince yourself that you are nothing but a little figure going about your business in some world that was "there on its own".
Think about it.
This world is the same. This physical world, planet Earth. IT IS ALSO A DREAM WORLD THAT YOU ARE MAKING UP WITH YOUR MIND.
AND YOU ARE ALSO HAVING DISASSOCIATION FROM IT.
AND YOU ARE ALSO PRETENDING NOT TO BE THE ONE WHO PUTS IT THERE.
AND YOU ARE ALSO PRETENDING TO BE A LITTLE BODY AMONG MANY THINGS SO THAT IT DOESN'T SEEM LIKE YOU HAVE ANY CONTROL OVER THE REST.
It's exactly the same dynamic in waking and nighttime dreams. You are dreaming of planet Earth. You are making up environments and people and events. AND THEN you are pretending to HIDE in your OWN DREAM, to pull off a stunt of making it look like you're JUST this one little part of it.
THAT IS A HUGE DECEPTION. It is the illusion.
You MADE THIS WORLD. God did not create it. You are dreaming of the entire universe. And without you dreaming of cars and houses and mountains and forests, THEY WOULD NOT EXIST.
To not OWN that, is DISASSOCIATION. It is the belief that what's OUTSIDE of you is NOT WHAT YOU PUT THERE. That it is not PART OF YOU. Or it is not yours.
That is the VAST LIE that we are telling ourselves here, in bodies. We're huge, vast, universe-sized beings of light and power, who are manifesting WORLDS, and pretending to be tiny little insects running around on the surface suffering against our will. UTTER BULLSHIT LIE.
YOU made the Earth. Not God.
If you start with "I'm defective, I need to improve", you will end up with an ego.
If you start with "I'm perfect, I need not change", you will end up with a perfect self.
Most of us start with the approach that we're defective, full of guilt, unhappy, broken, lost, etc.... and then we start seeking on the basis of this premise.
But when you do that, there is huge risk of not questioning the premise itself, which is false. The premise says "there's something wrong with me, I need to improve myself." That's NOT true. But if you believe it, you'll start the "seek and do not find" spiritual journey.
Then you'll be trying to make yourself better, be more loving, have more wakefulness, gain more growth etc. The trouble is, this will cause you to AVOID the real problem. The real problem is your belief that you are defective in the first place.
If you start with "I'm not defective, I only need to accept I am already perfect", then you're starting out on the right foot. And it results in you questioning any belief that says otherwise, without you going off on a tangent based on a false premise.
So it's another sort of paradoxical thing. You have to start out as you mean to finish. You have to start as though you're already at the end, and sort of work backwards to accepting a pre-existing God-created condition of perfection.
If you do it the other way around, starting with lack and guilt and not good enough and all that, thinking this is true, and reacting to it, and feeling compelled to do something based on it, you'll be led astray by the ego. And then you'll become a spiritualised ego.
We've all fallen for this trap. Believing we even NEED to seek for a perfection, or to make it happen, or to construct a better self, when in fact God has already done the hard work.
If we adopt the ego's view that we need to perfect ourselves, then we avoid looking at the fact that we are IN DENIAL. We have DENIED that we are perfect, and this denial is the problem. We have DENIED happiness and peace and love, and the removal of the denial is necessary in order to become AWARE OF it again.
If we are in the business of trying to focus on the positives and the being more loving and more kindness and all these sort of non-denial happy-go-lucky perspectives, then we may inadvertently NOT LOOK at the DENIAL that we have. We may not look at the actual problem - the block to awareness - the barriers that we have built against a PRE-EXISTING perfection.
So in general we have it all backwards. We are looking for something in the wrong place and in the wrong way. The spiritual path is actually back to front. We need to be melting within, going within, finding the truth that God has already put there, finding the solution God has already established, accepting, recognizing, rather than going out of our minds trying to make it, build it, change it, author it, transform into it.
If you can't look at and question the ASSUMPTION of the belief "I'm not perfect", "there's something wrong with me", then you're not really making any headway. The trick is not to answer the question of what you have done wrong, it's to question WHETHER OR NOT you have done anything wrong.
There is nothing wrong with you. You're just pretending, and you don't really need fixing. But your belief that you need fixing needs fixing.
"We will but be making perfect TO you, what is ALREADY perfect IN you."
"To repeat an earlier statement, and also to extend it somewhat, the Soul is already perfect, and therefore does not require correction."
"Whatever is true and real is eternal, and CANNOT change or be changed. The Soul is therefore unalterable because it is ALREADY perfect, but the mind can elect the level it chooses to serve. The only limit which is put on its choice is that it CANNOT serve two masters."
In ACIM the idea of evil is defined as 'ego', more or less. Not just individual egos but also a collective one.
The ego uses temptation to distract you from the truth. It is capable of creating scenarios in which it seems like you want and enjoy things which you would normally not want or enjoy.
It is also very cunning in that it can use your very own weaknesses against you. If you think that some person or project or activity might be 'the answer' and that it will save you, even though it's not true, the ego will encourage you to pursue it. And it knows you are likely going to go along with it because you yourself are the one who is believing it will work, or is what you want.
I have only recently discovered that my own ego has been 'playing me', using my own self deceptions to lure me away from the truth. It's particularly bad if I am very mistaken about something, like I think I'm onto some kind of solution or really great thing, but really it's another ego bullshit wild goose chase which will have me 'seek and do not find' for a long time.
In other words, if I choose to believe in an illusion and I give it faith and am convinced of its supposed value, this becomes a blind spot in my awareness. My ego comes along and says "why don't you do that thing, you know you want to, you know you like it, you know how appealing it is". And then I'll be all gooey eyed with hypnotic spirals spinning in my eyeballs while I salivate over this very appealing, attractive opportunity. All the while, my mind is completely distracted from God.
Notice though that the ego thus really has no power of its own. It can only use the things I have agreed to as a way to tempt me away from the truth. If it weren't for me getting gooey eyed over some new piece of technology or some amazing movie or some pathway that seemed really enticing, the ego would have no way to deceive me. I have deceived myself, willingly, and that is all the ego needs.
It can trigger off a memory of these tempting offers just at the right moment, knowing that their allure will particularly hurl my awareness off in a different direction, like some rat in a maze that just caught a glimpse of a big chunk of delicious cheese. Suddenly all my senses are ignited and the unfinished business I have with this 'promising savior' has captivated/captured my attention. I fall for my own traps.
It's good to be aware the ego is actively tempting us in this way, using our own mistakes against us, and trying to get us to reinvest in anything other that what we really are. There is nothing guilty or bad or wrong with enjoying life, but if we are psychologically using it as a false savior, then we will fall for temptation - the temptation to believe the truth is not true and God does not deserve our attention.
Watch out ... for yourself :-) You are the one who gives the ego the fuel it needs, and you thus hire it to serve your false interests. It is merely a reflection of your own self deception. It is not against you but for you. You want it. But you need to want God instead.
You can't sell God, because God is not tangible. So what's the dam issue with supposedly being guilty for selling spirituality?
You can't really sell spirituality because you can't sell Spirit. You can't hoard and deny spirit to someone and then charge for it, because spirit is free.
Love is the only reality which can be shared, and love is the only "thing" which can be exchanged, being present everywhere already and open to all. Anyone can have access to it already, for free. You can't get it from anyone else, and nobody can take it away either. It's available to you right now freely. Because it is freedom.
Everything else is an illusion. Everything in this dream world, all of the ways that people do stuff. Whether they are selling objects or services or time or effort or information or therapy or whatever, it's all the same illusion.
It is the spiritual ego that has come up with this idea that "spirituality within a real dream" would be a sin. That first and foremost, the dream is real, and secondly, if you try to do anything spiritual for ego purposes within the real dream, that's a sin. Fuck that stupid logic. It's nothing more than the ego's attempt to spiritualize the dream while simultaneously repressing that spirituality behind a wall of sin.
So now this behavior over here, you know, selling knock-off goods for a huge markup and making tons of evil profit... that's ok and acceptable. But, if you try to sell someone a loving service or some healing or spiritual education or something that really helps them in a worthwhile way, then, you know.... SIN BE UPON YOU!
This is all because of the ego's back-ass claptrap system of logic. Bad and evil and terrible nasty things are okay to charge an arm and a leg for, but truly helpful beautiful love and spiritual inspiration which might get you out of the dream - NOooooooo... not allowed to mix that with the nasty evil money. No way.
It's bullshit. It's basically the ego's split mind, in which it has created a persona and a shadow. All of the stuff the ego approves of and wants to keep it puts into the persona, and all of the guilty sinful stuff it shoves into the shadow to get rid of it. The ego has a huge interest in getting rid of any real spirituality. So it shoves it into the guilty shadow department.
So it now divides up the world into "good and bad" and "right and wrong", and firmly puts any kind of spirituality into the "wrong" camp and anything that symbolizes much more "egotism" into the right camp. And now it's okay that the right stuff be acceptable and paid for, but you dare to charge money for the wrong stuff, suddenly it's a sin.
ITS ALL THE SAME! You especially should charge money for your spiritual services and products and you perhaps should be getting even MORE money for that than you would get for selling a pile of doughnuts. Why is it LESS VALUABLE?
I've seen so many well intentioned, good-hearted, spiritual people, develop a spiritualized ego version of value, where they try to symbolically implement spiritual concepts into their behaviors in the illusion. This is LEVEL CONFUSION! It does not work. And in almost every single example, these people's endeavors either never barely get off the ground, they flounder and struggle and then die, or they just flat out die before they get started.
This world is not READY to function on a basis of never-ending generosity and gratitude and freedom and selfless giving. To expect it to do so is to set up a tiny tent in an unnoticed corner and be basically ignored. The system will not acknowledge you. People have LEARNED that money symbolizes value, so why is it not okay to align money with what is truly VALUABLE? Why can we charge for guns and wars, but not for peace and love? SINNNNNNNN!!!!!
And then there will be this super-selfless symbolic notion of "money is evil" and "profit isn't spiritual" and .. you know, you should not have any more at all if you are spiritual because money is "real ego" and illusory spirituality within the dream is "not ego". So... only charge for the parts of the dream that you deem as ego and don't charge for the spiritual parts. It's bullshit. Self deception.
So many potential "spiritual businesses", or services, or people trying to create a community, or people opening up retreat centers, or creating courses, or spending hours and hours writing books, or putting their heart and soul into healing practices, just basically FLOP because they have fallen for the ego's trick of a level-confusion based model of what's the right thing to do. ie... ALWAYS, do not earn money from your "spirituality" in the dream, otherwise you are SINFUL.
i.e., if it doesn't LOOK LIKE it's spiritual, and if there isn't a lot of SACRIFICE happening, then you better say some hail Mary's. And heaven forbid you might actually value yourself and your time and effort enough to ask for money and make some profit. I mean, okay, let's all start a non-profit organization and have the absolute bare minimum of income to get by and barely be able to expand the business at all, it can't possibly grow because there isn't enough cash flow, and it just sits there shriveling up.
Imagine just how amazingly helpful a "spiritual business" could be if it actually were profitable and made some money and not only supported the people who were providing the service, allowing them to enjoy abundance, but also produced enough funds to expand and produce far more materials, goods, services, and helpful support, than could have been possible on a bare-minimum income. Why not?
Why do we have to grovel for donations and suffer in the gutter of hell trying to scrape by just because we're being all spiritual and "good" and buying into the ego persona of people-pleasing, self sacrifice and loss? Like, what is actually going to happen if you strike a profit? Will there be a lightning bolt? Is God going to judge you? Will you be a SINNER? How about some healthy guilt?
It's one thing to let Spirit guide you and be all lovely and everything is free and "don't mind me", but ... IS IT EFFECTIVE? Is it working? Not really. It's a matter of playing small and having false humility. Just make some goddam money and get on with it. Then use that extra money to be even more effective at helping people with even more products and goods and services.
Sure money isn't that important, really. It's just an illusion. It's not meaningful. It's not something you want to keep accumulating for some ego desire. So don't do it for that reason. Do it because IN THIS WORLD, according to the stupid rules of this society, you need to function based on money in order to find success and be effective. It's the rules of the game. It's the system that we're immersed in.
Try to go outside of this and unless you have really, really strong faith and miracle-working power, you're going to find yourself poor. I've seen it happen to many people who deserve better. There is nothing wrong with making money and enjoying it. Is it real? Is it a real sin? Does it prove you are really a sinner? Can you do it without believing that it is sinful or guilty whatsoever? Wouldn't that be SPIRITUAL?!
Don't be yet another heartfelt wannabe trying to be of service to God and not using any of the tools that are possible when you can afford it. Don't set up shop and be all.. you know, I won't charge anything, I'll just barely even mention that I would ... maybe accept donations, if you shoot me first. And .. maybe I should pay YOU to take this stuff off my hands? Wouldn't that be truly selfless.
This is all just symbolism. Trying to make the dream spiritual and trying to behave in a certain way within it in order to "be" spiritual or seen as spiritual. Don't do that. It's an egotistical belief in sacrifice and limitation. That's not the abundance God has planned for you and its not the abundance God wants you to experience. Why can't you be RICH AND SPIRITUAL? What does it matter if your spirituality is going to override any sense of sin or guilt relating to the riches anyway? Then you can REALLY make an impact on this crazy world.
The only reason people do all this is because of the belief that the WORLD IS REAL, and therefore if you are "being spiritual" inside a real world, you must SACRIFICE in order to not associate yourself with the parts of this real world that are clearly the realm of the ego. And so this is nothing more than the age-old attitude of believing the world is real and that it contains some good parts and bad parts. That's NOT SPIRITUAL AT ALL.
If the world is not real, and sin is not real, and you can't be guilty, and there's nothing to fear, then WHY THE FUCK NOT make some money and enjoy it and get yourself into a situation where you actually CAN make a big difference because you have the FUNDS to pull it off? Many things in this world you simply cannot do without money. You can't run a website without costs. You can't create books without a cost. You can't provide a training course without some costs. You can't heal people without it costing some time. That's just how it works here. Accept it. It's okay to require money.
Are you comfortable only with a donation? Then that shows you how much you believe in sin. Are you able to move past donations to maybe an optional, soft-sell? Hmm.. okay... you still believe in sin. Can you go all out and make TONS OF MONEY from your enterprise? hmm... totally and utterly sinful right? NO! It's hilarious to think this can prove sin or make separation real or that God would blink an eye and be pissed at you. Wake up.
Knock yourself out. You can't sin anyway.