Learning to Assess information…

I have journal with prompts, whose purpose is to help with inner reflection. Recently, I opened it to a random page and it provided a quote and asked me how I could internalize this quote. The problem was that the quote completely rankled me. The quote was ” The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away”- David Viscott

Now this quote fits in with a lot of the New Age mystical/ spiritual movement’s messaging. Something I have heard regularly in different groups that if it’s spiritual their shouldn’t be a charge for it.

Here is why this quote truly bugs me and just sets my hair on end… This is some captialistic industrialized colonial bullshit! It completely expresses a point of view that crouches an individual’s worth in what they can do for someone else and negates the priniciple of a fair exchange. Fair exchange is a major spiritual priniciple within my own personal path. It is not necessarily financial, a fair exchange can be swapping services and barter economies. But to say that our purpose is to give away our unique value is disempowering to me.

Statements like this devalues the individual and convinces us that to ask that to ask for any fair exchange for services, energy expended or materials used or provided as les than holy. Instead of encouraging us to understand our inherent worth and respect the value of our contribution to the world. It encourages us to belive that others our entitled to our contribution but we must give it away.

Now, I am not saying that we shouldn’t hold compassion and kindness and help those that need it; however, we shouldn’t be made to feel that everyone is entitled to what we have for free. Each individual has needs that should be met. Through out the spiritual movements we are told to focus on attaining a “higher frequency”, To me moving into a “higher frequency” means learning and acceptance of my own worth, learning to value myself and others for our contributions and having a sense of reciprocity in the ebb and flow of energy.

I bring this up to talk about this point. NO MATTER where spiritual guidance comes from you should always assess the information, analyze how it fits into our world view, what the truly deep message is behind the message before taking it to heart, I don’t care if it comes from the Bible, a sacred text, a guru, a pastor, a life coach always question it. before taking it to heart.