MONEY AS AN EVOLUTIONARY ENERGY
An article about therapeutic and spiritual businesses:
THE AYAHUSCA SHAMANIC MARKET (3RD PART)
About interests, money, profits and sacredness
When we speak about a market we are talking about business, money, the possibility of earning and improving one’s economic position. The human anxiety of exceeding themselves, prospering, progressing, being better, having more, comes from our origins and will probably accompany us through until the end. There is no way to stop humanity’s need for growth and possession. Although it often becomes sick or something exacerbated it doesn’t mean that one should override or judge it, either. That is why I suggest that, to address this issue of therapeutic and spiritual businesses, we clarify some fundamental aspects.
- Any search, whatever is its nature, is based on a more or less unconscious ambitious impulse. Even the will to become enlightened is an ambitious act. From those who want to save a species from extinction, to those who volunteer to offer to help the poor and sick, there is some kind of interest towards their own benefit (self-satisfaction is the biggest benefit)
- All the benefits looked for by any ambitious act are not exactly cheap. Most people offering something for personal overcoming or growth want to get recognition, fame, prestige or acceptance. And that is not money, it is a more refined ambition than the mere fact of wanting to do business or have more money.
- People who do something and want to get money in return are probably the most direct and sincere, even if they are forgetting that what is most important is dedication and commitment far above the profits they generate. Working or doing something for money yet coming from the essence of love is necessary so anything done produces true satisfaction.
- In any work or organization one can prioritize vocational or ideological motivation above money and economic convenience without having to discard it or give it up. Anything that is done, can be done by the deep will to do it, without shelving the interest held for getting results, even though this may be secondary.
- When any project or work, driven by the feeling of love and by the acceptation of a vocation or talent, is developed, an enriching personal development happens for the individual giving himself totally to it, it enables him to excel remarkably over others doing it for mere economic interest.
Historically the great global business is and has been consciousness. Business will never be created neither for ants nor monkeys. Tigers never created a business or accepted that humans create a business for them. Many circuses set up a business using animals by sacrificing their freedom and sacred savagery. Animals do not do business because they do not have humans’ level of consciousness. Consciousness can foresee, plan and organize, among many other things related to progress.
Having the ability to realize, enjoy, accumulate, have a more comfortable and pleasant life is the heart of why we created all kinds of businesses, including the Amazonian shamanic market.
There are shamans who, many years ago, started to sell their medicines to people around the world generating significant income for themselves, although that is not what matters most to them, but the fact that a powerful and natural medicine reaches the whole world. Doing what they like and knowing how to do it does not keep them from having economic interests. It is true that many of them only do it for money, but that’s up to each one; each shaman does it from where he feels. They are free. And that does not mean that what they are doing is not important.
There are organizations asking to be paid a percentage of what is collected at each Ayahuasca ceremony to send it to a centre which takes care of planting, harvesting and producing the Ayahuasca that is taken; like a franchise. Others buy and sell Ayahuasca, supplying it where it is needed, assisting thousands of buyers who cannot go to the forest or do not want to take it with a group and who buy it to take it at home. Others buy Ayahuasca to have it as a main tool for the therapeutic work they do, although Ayahuasca is not the main purpose: they use it as an enhancer, which supports and accompanies transformation processes.
Wherein lies the problem with the fact that all of these options exist and that this indigenous traditional medicine is reaching thousands of people around the world generating revenue for shamans, their families and all those who are part of the same business?
Is there anything that is not a business in this world? Even purists who defend traditions to death, claiming they respect all which is sacred and related to spirituality or nature, are running their own businesses with the ideology they handle and defend. Even if a person is anti-money and anti-business, he is making his own business with it, as he is seeking to convince others of what he thinks, and that is a great personal business.
It is very satisfying to see how jungle shamans come first to big cities and within a few day can earn the money they need to live for a year in the jungle. Others save money to build their houses, others decide to plant thousands of seeds in the jungle and others help their entire family.
This is the case of Peruvian, Ecuadorian and Colombian shamans who are coming to Europe, proud to bring their traditional medicines and their wisdom to share with us; sparing us from having to go to the jungle to meet them, and bringing what cannot be described with words and cannot be paid with money.
For this reason, the organisation Ayahuasca International brings shamans from the jungle 2 or 3 times a year to take them to different countries, on the one hand because we feel it is essential to be supported and driven by them in our work, on the other hand because they teach us and we support them financially in exchange for their services; and of course also because we generate profit enabling us to generate revenue for many purposes, from the possibility to maintaining a multinational company dedicated to the expansion of consciousness, to growing this very valuable work in most parts of a world needing and requesting it. It is what we love to do, working for people’s inner development. Starting with ours.
All those who cannot integrate spirituality and money, business with shamanism, or earnings with sacred medicines, have not yet been able to understand the close relationship between money and healing. Because they have not integrated yet the energetic meaning money has in the human evolution process. Money is an energy and should be treated as such. It is not an element that contaminates. It is not a reason that dirties spiritual or humanitarian activities. What is polluting and dirtying is human attitude towards money. Let us not accuse money of our low intentions or misinterpretations.
Money is the means humans created for all kinds of exchanges. It is true that having money means power, but the real power lies within those who healed their relationship with money, who can use it consciously for personal needs and fulfil their dreams without being attached or stuck to avarice and greed.
Money is as sacred as ancient medicine, they both come from the same source, they should therefore be respected and treated with the same dignity all things and people deserve.
One can work, save, invest and spend from implication and gratitude, from the awareness that everything comes and goes, money is a perfect excuse to test humans, so they see themselves in the highest evolutionary attitude there is, the one of giving and receiving.
Alberto José Varela
Ayahuasca International holds Inner Evolution retreats with therapeutic use of Ayahuasca in several countries in Europe and overseas. Click here for a complete listing of information of all the 2018 Ayahuasca International Retreats Calendar. It includes links to information, prices and booking procedure for each retreat.
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