Hello everyone and welcome back to Spirit School. I'm excited to be here for another episode on a topic I have been wanting to talk about for the past year. Now, when I first approached this podcast topic to Andrea, who's @concreteandcrystals, who does my podcast editing, she was so excited because she sees it all the time in the spiritual space because she helps manage my dms. She is my community manager. She is involved in many communities herself.
I think it's something that a lot of light workers will resonate with that have an audience, and it's about free spiritual labor. Now this could be a little bit of a hot topic, and I'm not meaning to be controversial, or to bring up any shame in anyone, or have anyone feel anything other than informed by talking about this topic, but it is something I've wanted to talk about for a while. And we'll see where it takes me.
I have a couple notes I wrote like a year ago, and I've just been thinking about it a lot lately, as I, myself, as an online business owner who is expanding to be online and offline, looking at all the different kind of tugs and pulls I feel all over the interwebs, between Facebook, Instagram, between my own platform, my own Spirit School platform, my communities, the people who come into the programs, the people who want readings, the people who've had
readings, the people who have readings upcoming, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And one thing that we can become aware of when we are managing all these different spaces and places to show up, because that's just the nature of having an online business, it doesn't matter what type of business you have, you can't escape marketing. You can't escape the need to grow your audience so that you can survive and take care of yourself by doing the work that you're very passionate about doing.
And with that, there is a certain amount of free spiritual labor that comes with it. Now I'm gonna talk about this from a couple different lenses. I'm gonna talk about it from my perspective as somebody who offers, spiritual services. I'm going to talk about it from, you know, what I think my members might encounter, the people who are in my communities.
So I'm gonna talk about it from a couple different vantage and viewpoints, and also just wanting to open up the discussion more widely because there may be perspectives and, you know, ways of looking at this that I'm always open to having reframes around. And the truth is that my energy around this is very cyclic. There are certain times where I have an abundance of energy, an abundance of inner resources, and I'm happy to be of service in all the different places and spaces, free or paid.
And you know, I don't hold back. Like when I do free things, they're just as impactful as my paid things because I don't know how to do less, and I dunno how to give less. And so everything I do has the same standard to it. It's hard to like scale back in certain areas.
And then there's certain times in the cycles where maybe I haven't been taking proper care of myself, and I haven't been giving myself some of that same consideration and energy and, you know, resourcing that I often offer other people because you wanna be of service. And we all wanna be of service. And so many of us who lean into the service field are also doing it from a place of what we hope to receive and what we hope that other people will offer us as well.
But that's not always the case, is kind of what I'm gonna be getting to today. So let's just go into this from, you know, an Indigenous lens. I'll start there. Now I am, you know, First Nations. Obviously I'm mixed. I've always identified as First Nations. I have always, in some level, been learning about my culture, working for my people, doing what I can to honor my lineage and my heritage.
And one of the ways that I serve as somebody who really lives in both worlds is, I don't withstand any racism online. Right. I promise you this is getting somewhere.
So, couple years ago when I was really immersed in the First Nations culture, because I was working in First Nations healthcare for almost a decade, I was very immersed in the culture, in the advocacy for bettering the health system and bettering health disparities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in Canada, and I was very passionate about the work and I loved it.
And for a long time when I started developing my mediumship, I never in a million years thought I would've left that line of work because I was that passionate about it. And my grandmother actually passed away as an full Indigenous woman who suffered really severe health issues. There was a lot of confusion about her passing and if there was malpractice and, you know, did she receive the best care possible because she was a First Nations person?
I remember last year when my brother almost died and went to the hospital, that was one thing we were really worried about, was like, how is he gonna be treated? Is he gonna be treated, you know, with equal value as somebody who is like non-indigenous, non-identified as Indigenous, et cetera, et cetera? Those are the things that we have to think about when we live in this world.
And so one of the ways that I try my best, especially a couple years ago, to show up and be a voice for my ancestors, and for my people, was to shut down any racism against Indigenous people that I see online. And in Squamish, we have a newspaper called the Squamish Chief, and I was shocked a couple years ago, and it still happens today. My assistant, Danielle, actually wrote them a couple weeks ago because one thing they do is they don't upstand any racism. They don't check it.
They don't block it. They don't shut it down. Everyone just bystands and lets racism fester and grow. And people who make really ignorant, and that's all it is is just ignorant comments, it goes completely unchecked. So I took it upon myself quite a few years ago to not leave any racism that I saw online against Indigenous people unchecked. I would check it. I would educate as much as possible.
I may be a little bit snarky, for sure, but also offering a resource or a different perspective, of course, which when somebody wants to be ignorant, they will be ignorant, right? But I started to notice that a lot of people who were born in community, who identify more as like full First Nations or you know, more First Nations than me because I am mixed, wouldn't be participating in some of that dialogue in that conversation.
And I didn't think too much about it until a couple years had passed and I started to find myself drained. I started to find myself looking at some of these posts and realizing, what's the point? Like am I gonna jack up my nervous system and like relive this anger, and the oppression that like my family and that people still face today for the color of their skin, and where they are born, and the circumstances that Canada has created for them? And I started to notice that it felt very laborous.
And so I found myself wondering and getting curious, like, why am I not as active in this as I once was? And I started to realize how much emotional and spiritual and just physical labor was involved in checking racism on the daily. It was complete compassion fatigue.
And that took me a couple years to get to that point, and I started to understand why so many people choose to preserve their energy rather than, I used to see the perspective as like, we're just letting racism be unchecked, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Right? But then I started to understand the labor behind it that it takes emotionally, spiritually, physically, to check racism at the door. And I started to not be as active in that space and not check out the spaces that that even existed.
And I was actually shocked a couple weeks ago to see just the worst comment. I won't even read it to you. I did take screenshots of it because I sent it to my assistant. I said, how can this happen this day and age? 2023? How is this still going on in the online space? It's just mind boggling. And she reached out to the publisher, the Squamish chief, and said, look, you have a responsibility. We are not safe, and you are leaving this completely unchecked.
Like, do your job, or turn off the comments. And they did. They went and they deleted the comments. But you know the fact that you have to go to that much labor, that people who are creating these spaces are not doing diligence to make sure that things are run in a way that is not harming a certain sector of people.
And it's so sad that in 2023, it's up to us as audience members to do that labor to make sure these spaces that these people are benefiting from, the communication, the engagement, all that stuff, like why we have to check them, right? Check your own stuff. Check your own space. But people just aren't doing that work. So this is where I started to see originally, like the first eye-opening moments of like, wow, yeah, there is a lot of labor here.
And then when I started getting on TikTok in 2020, and I don't create on TikTok, I still have an account so people can't scam me or whatever, but they still do. But I started going on TikTok and scrolling during the pandemic, like I think so many of us.
And it was such an eye-opening experience for me because, and I was so interested in it, because there were people from all different cultures and backgrounds sharing their wisdom, their knowledge, their history, their perspectives, their ideas, their ideologies, their reactions to world events from different perspectives. And that was kind of new for me. I think TikTok really does educate us in a lot of ways.
And I was so grateful for these social justice warriors that were using, everything that they have experienced and everything that they have researched, and consolidated, and synthesized in a way that is digestible for other people to learn from. And I learned more from TikTok in two years than I learned in 15 years I went to school. It was so educational for me.
But I started to see how laborous it was for people to educate on, you know, what it's like to be a person of color and a Black person during, you know, June, 2020, when the Black Lives Matter movement started. And you remember the Rachel Hollis fiasco where she talked about her Latina house cleaner in a very derogative way when it comes to her role in her house, which is like scrubbing toilets. And she had, she got canceled for that, like she had to sell her company.
And the fascinating thing when I was on TikTok is that there was people of color and people not of color who were, you know, I was very surprised to see people not of color coming out and saying, you know, I actually didn't think there's anything wrong with that. But thanks to TikTok, thanks to people who are speaking up about this, I can now see why this would be harmful and why this would be offensive to people of like the Latina community.
And so, I felt like, TikTok really provided a space for a lot of us to like grow and expand as humanity and see each other in different lights.
But then I started seeing stories on TikTok about people of color who would, you know, enter the post-secondary education space and you know, enter the workforce, and enter the corporation, and then the corporation would simply assume that they would be free educators for the workforce on equal rights, on the resurgence of racism that is coming up that is just deplorable to watch, and it's really hard to watch.
And I started seeing how different sectors in the world, the workspace, the education system, the judicial system, were relying on people of color, and people who have been oppressed, to then now educate the rest of the world on why it's wrong and why it's a problem. And how much free labor was expected, like literally expected of them. And people were saying, I'm not doing it. Like I'm just not doing it. Like it's not up to me to educate you. It's up to you to educate yourself.
This day and age with the Google machine, we all have resources and knowledge and wisdom at our fingertips. Right? So I'm just saying this because this is kind of where it all started was more in the social justice space, more involved around racism. I started really opening up my eyes to it and I started looking at different experiences I had even.
I'm not gonna say too much because I don't wanna like expose things because, you know, I really do love my last workplace, but I was in a department that was not primarily Indigenous. And I remember the feeling of them walking around, they had an interview panel they had to prepare and it's like, they're like scanning the room for First Nations people so they can tick a box. You know what I mean? Like, I gotta tick this box, we gotta say that we did this. And it's like super bare minimum.
Just absolutely bare minimum. And even from an Indigenous perspective, it's like, when we have these cultural acknowledgements and these like land acknowledgements and if you're in a big group, they will look to the Indigenous person to say, Hey, can you welcome us to the land? Can you open this up in a culturally safe way, et cetera, et cetera?
without like an honorarium, or without any kind of compensation, and just wanting to do the bare minimum to combat racism and be inclusive, but expecting free labor of Indigenous people to educate them and open up the space in a cultural way, again, without any kind of honorarium or financial acknowledgement. So this is kind of where it started and then I started looking around at the spiritual space. And I'm just gonna use like my space, not MySpace. We're not going way back.
We're not going back to 1999 here, but you know, my spaces. So I'm gonna talk about Spirit School platform and I'm gonna talk about Instagram, cause those are really the only two spaces I hang out online, mostly Spirit School though. Come to Spirit School because my presence on Instagram is going to be dwindling. I'm gonna be moving a little bit away from social media a bit more than even before. Totally different episode on that.
But, um, I started looking at what I was up against with Instagram. I'm gonna use that as like a first example. And I started seeing about all the free labor that Instagram was really asking of us as people who are on the platform, right? So we look at different trends. We look at different hashtags. We look at things that they're prioritizing and pushing through, and they're basically saying, we want this to be the most engaging app. We don't want people to turn it off.
The more accounts that are on here, the more people who are scrolling, how many hours they're scrolling, the more money we make. So they started asking a lot of labor of us creators. And then when reels came out, they were like, oh, we're only doing reels. Well, guess what? Not everyone has the capacity, and not everyone is a visual creator.
Not everyone, you know, has the time to put together some of these reels, which for some people it can take like a whole day to like create like a day in the life kind of vlog. But when Instagram's saying like, that's all we're gonna push, that then puts the labor on us to like keep up with the moving trends and whatever it is that they are pushing. So, okay, for some people that's totally worth it. And for other people it's complete fine. They're like, oh my God, I love this.
This is like the best thing. And in truth, like, I've never hit Instagram reels, I've never surfed them. I've never scrolled them. But of course I did scroll TikTok and I was very appreciative of the people who were taking time to create some of the content, and I was very, very entertained by it. But TikTok has a creator fund, right? So these people were being compensated for their virality, and for the content that they're creating, and getting like brand deals.
And not just like the pretty and the privileged, like on Instagram, but like the every day person, like the most average people were like making it big and it was just so refreshing to see. And I also wanna go back just a little bit about the social justice people and the people who I learned from. If you knew how much money I donated, how many people I have hired from that space because of the labor that they did.
Here's some examples, okay, and then I'll promise I'll come back to the spiritual space and Instagram. It's a little bit jumbled, but this is what happens when I'm just riffing and on the fly. So I would come across someone who would talk about their, you know, negative experiences in the spiritual space and how they felt like taken advantage of, how they felt like they were maybe scammed or overcharged or it was a bit culty.
And, you know, they're sharing their experiences and they're being very critical of the space.
There were three of these kind of advocates that we're speaking out against some of the toxicity that they see in the space, and I actually hired them, all three of them, over the course of three years, to audit my business, to audit my classes, to audit my body of work, to make sure it wasn't of the same energy and experiences that they personally had, and had them critique it and offer me maybe other ways of phrasing things.
As an example, there was one person who escaped two cults and was in the spiritual space, and very critical of the spiritual space, and they noticed that I said, I love you, a lot to people. They're like, but do you love them? Like, is that true? Is it, could it be considered love bombing? Could it be considered manipulative? So I actually almost fully stopped saying that in my classes because I wanted to have that perspective.
And the last thing I want to create is anything kind of culty, right? Or that could be harmful in some way. So that is how I have given back to some of the people who I felt really educated me, and moved me along as a spiritual entrepreneur, and helped inform me on how I wanna run my business. And I really will continue to do that.
And basically I just approach people who I feel inspired by, who I learned from, and I just offer them, you know, I don't know what your hourly consultation rate is, but if I can hire you for like four hours to review a few of my classes, provide me with a bit of feedback. And they were more than happy to do that.
And for many of them, they ended up offering consultation work in the future for that because they enjoyed it so much and they were happy that people were willing to be critiqued in that way, and have their work analyzed in that way. The other thing that I do is I donate money to a lot of these people who are spending time, energy, resources to educate a lot of us as well. So that's that sidetrack. Now going back to Instagram.
So when Reels first kind of came out, I tried to make a couple and like they were kind of fun and like cutesy and stuff like that, but they did take me a long time. They took me like two or three hours. As a mom of two little ones that can really only work during school hours, plus I have a dog I have to walk like three times a day, and all this stuff, like I just didn't have time. And I could see myself really stretching myself too much if I were to try to make that work.
So I kind of had to make a conscious decision around that. So that was just like the reels. I'm gonna move on to these fake impersonation accounts. Okay. And that's why I decided to hit record on this episode today, because this morning I went on a little bit of a rant on Instagram because, to give you just a very brief summary, for the past four years, I have had at least four to seven, at any given time, impersonation accounts pretend to be me.
They somehow have a script that can mirror my account. And so anytime I post a story, anytime I make a post, it automatically shows on their account as well, and they scam a lot of money. They approach people and the name looks just like me, and the account looks just like me and they will tell people like, oh, I have a reading available. Here's a PayPal link if you want in. And I have received some of the nastiest messages from people demanding money from me, demanding refunds.
I had somebody who was very influential in my town, who I thought was reaching out to me to like be friends or something, and I was so heartbroken when they messaged me to say, you scammed my friend. You didn't show up. What's the deal? And then when I tried to explain, like it just went unread. So it's like they're just walking around with this belief that I'm like a scammer. Can't even like defend myself with it or anything, you know, it's just exhausting.
And this has been going on for four years. And so I came to a point where last year I had to ask one of my assistants, Andrea, to come in and help me with my dms because what happens is every time there's a fake account, which again, there's at least four at any given time, at least four. Go look up Squamish Medium on Instagram and tell me how many there are. There's so many. They're relentless, and they're nonstop, and they're daily.
And I would get, I don't know, anywhere from 20 to 80 messages a day letting me know that there's impersonation accounts against me, which again, is so well intended, so sweet, and from a really good place, but really overwhelming for me because I'm a Virgo. I mean, I don't like notifications.
Even right now I'm looking at my computer and like my blood pressure goes up, because I have 40 unread emails, 13 unread text messages, and like these little alerts come up and the little numbers next to the icons. And I actually have this turned off on my phone because it's like chasing notifications. So every time I log on to Instagram, it's like, 118 unread messages, 230 unread messages, and like 80% of them are just like, Hey, do you know that there's an impersonation account?
And they're screenshotting. And you know, the truth of the matter is with Instagram, and this is where the free labor is, is that I have to go through a process of, these fake accounts block me, so I can't like link them. I have to set up a fake account just to keep my eye on them so I can get the URL for their profile. And then go to a form in Meta, complete this whole form. What's your name? What's your account URL? What's your account name? What's the impersonation account URL?
What's the impersonation account name? Upload a picture of you holding your driver's license to validate it's you. Okay? So that's the process. I have done that process, I'm not even lying to you, over 250 times at least, and I'm here to tell you that Instagram has never taken down an impersonation account, ever. And I stopped doing that because all of a sudden Meta started saying that my identity did not match my account, out of nowhere.
They're like, oh, sorry, your driver's license, your picture, doesn't look like you. It's not you. I'm like, come on. Right? So I stopped doing that labor, going through that form. So I started just reporting the account directly from my fake account and I would just go hit report, and 10 times outta 10, within two minutes, I would get a response back from Instagram saying, this account does not break community guidelines. It stays up. So all these fake accounts just stay up.
It doesn't matter how much you report them. Even if you upload your driver's license, they just stay up. And so I started looking at the labor and averaging out the cost and it cost me about $180 a month, just in what I pay admin fees, to manage the DM load, and to manage the impersonation account reportings. And I just stopped one day. I just had a moment last year in 2022 where I started looking at all the labor around the world.
You know, like I was saying at the very beginning, all the things that I was learning, what I was seeing other people were experiencing in different spaces, and looking at it from my space and Instagram, and I was like, I'm not doing it anymore. I'm not doing this labor anymore. So I started telling people, just block 'em. Just block 'em. If you gave anyone money, just reach out to PayPal, get your money back. But don't go through the labor of reporting them.
Instagram's not gonna do anything about it. And so I started really paring back my presence on Instagram. I don't really create anything for Instagram. I just post my spiritual meme Roundup Mondays, which will always continue. I love doing them. And if I do ever scroll on Instagram, which is very little, it's mostly memes that I follow, and mostly memes that are shown to me. So plus one for the algorithms working. I'm holding up my thumb right now as if you guys can see me.
So I started looking at the free labor that I was doing on these platforms. So I was like, you know, I'm gonna create my own platform. I'm like, I'm gonna create over there. And just so you know too, there's so much more coming to Spirit School, coming May. I'll talk about that in the May Spirit messages. So I won't talk about that here. So, I started seeing that before I came to that point last year in 2022, where I'm like, you know what? Meta doesn't care about us.
Truthfully, every single account on Meta, whether it's a fake account or a real account, is dollars to them. So they have no incentive to actually shut down any of these accounts. So I started, you know, just resisting and telling people, just, block 'em. I'm not gonna ask you to do that labor. Thank you for everything you have done already so far. And I still wanna say I love private messages. I love talking to you guys. Like please still message me.
Just know it's not necessary to message me about impersonation accounts because I know and there's nothing I can do, and there's nothing you can do. So let's just talk about interesting things now. Fun things like what's going on in your life? Was there anything in the podcast that you loved? Did you have an experience recently? Like these are the kind of conversations I hope to have in my private messages.
So yeah, I started looking at the labor that was involved in the social space as a spiritual entrepreneur. I also started experiencing, I felt like people were expecting a lot out of me, even through Instagram. I felt like people were expecting a lot of labor out of me that, again, sometimes I have more than enough capacity for, and other times I just don't. And so I started just responding to certain things that could easily be Googled.
You know, I remember one time I had somebody messaging me that I had already talked to about my personal boundaries, that's how come I'm using this one as an example, cause this happens every day. But this one is an example. It was already someone who I talked to, I said, you know, I wanna still talk to you and I still wanna receive your messages, not dread getting them, but I feel like you cross my boundaries sometimes, and I gave solid examples of that. And this person just continued.
And I remember posting something about, you know, a Word document and I was like, did you know that you can dictate to Word? And this person was messaging back saying, oh, where's that button? Right, and I just didn't have time to respond. And I'm like, well just go find it, right? Like in my head I'm like, just go open up a doc and find it. It should be pretty obvious. Search dictate, go to Google. I don't know.
So I just didn't respond because I was busy and there were other things that were on my plate. And then this person just continued to message me. Hello, are you gonna respond? Hello? Over the course of weeks, like three or four times. Hello. I'm wondering about the above, like, will you respond X, Y, Z? And I just started getting like annoyed. I just started saying like, I'm a medium, like I'm a teacher, I'm a medium, I'm a spiritual teacher. I'm a community host, I'm a podcaster.
Like if you wanna know how to find dictate on Word, like hit up Google or like do some work, right? But I've started to realize the expectations that were on me to like be a Google machine for a lot of people, and that to me started weighing a little bit heavy as well. And so, I started looking at how I engage with other people, and how I interact with other people who I'm consuming their content, and I'm learning a lot from. And I wanna use Chris Corsini as an example.
If you're on Instagram, I'm more than sure you know about Chris Corsini. And if you don't know, just go look him up. He's amazing. And he's a tarot reader. He works on accessibility. He works with hearing impaired, so if he's not signing himself, he has somebody there helping to make sure that people who are hearing impaired can still engage and consume some of his content. And he does a ton of free content every single month.
Sign by sign, he does a 15 minute reading for the first of every single month. Well, sometimes it could be between the first and the 15th of every single month. He's incredibly accurate and it's a lot of free labor. And what I love about him, and it's such a good example of this, is like he'll actually mention that. He's like, you know, I'm doing all this for free. I hope you enjoyed it. Please go over and support me. Go sign up for my newsletter. Go take my moon class. Go purchase this.
And because his audience is so large, like he's got, you know, more than half a million followers, he can charge like $19, $20 or pay what you can because his volume is so, so high. So even if only one person, I think he says he averages like 20,000 purchases per thing he does. And it's to pay what you can. So you can pay a dollar, you could pay a hundred dollars. Even if everyone only paid $1, that's 20 grand per like moon workshop, et cetera, et cetera.
But he is somebody who is really good at subtly letting people know, I'm doing this for free for you as an offering, and I'm offering this accessible way to support me in my work if this is something that you love consuming. And so I make sure, because I do, I mean, on the first of the month, I'm refreshing my page all the time. Like, where's Virgo? Where's Virgo? Because it's always dead accurate for me.
And I do make sure I purchase at least once a month, like his moon course or you know, his yearly forecast or whatnot, as a way to show my appreciation and my support. Right? And there are other ways that you can support some of your favorite creators that are not financially driven at all.
Even engaging, even commenting, or if you see a comment, whether it's in Spirit school or it's in Instagram or whatnot, if you're loving all the free content, you know, which is pretty much just this podcast and whatever I put out in Spirit School right now. But that's gonna be shifting too. There's gonna be a lot more free content coming because I'm building my team.
I'm bringing some people on board and I'm gonna have a lot more space to be able to do that, cause I've been so in the back end of my business building Spirit School, the physical school. It's been wild. But there's gonna be a lot more coming. But that is a way that you can give back to some of your favorite creators, is like just engaging.
And if you see someone asking a question in the comments, like helping respond, because a lot of us who have, you know, I don't have as nearly as large an audience as Chris Corsini. I think mine's at like 40,000 between all the different platforms. It can be busy to see things and I can't respond to every single comment, every person. So that's just another way that you can support some of your favorite creators who are doing a lot of free spiritual labor as well.
Another thing that I think is really helpful and something that I was guilty of before, that I know a bit better now, is I would like private message some of my favorite creators and ask them questions about their work, or ask them questions about like, oh, what about this da da da da da. And you know, very rarely would I ever get a response, but I started asking it publicly. So I started asking in the comments section or in their platform or on their group pages.
And the reason why that is so beneficial is because if I'm asking that, and I'm curious about that, I know other people are gonna be curious about that as well. So if I post it publicly and then they can respond publicly, more people are going to get that wisdom and that knowledge. So one of the things I do for The Initiation is I tell people like, I'm happy you are all here. I'm so happy to be in this space with you.
But if you have any questions at all, don't private message me them, because if you have a question, other people are gonna have a very similar question. So it's more abundant if we post it in the group so that other people can respond with their experience and perspectives. And then I can respond in a way that more people can benefit from the wisdom and the knowledge as well. Right? So that's just like abundant and it's thoughtful and it's courteous.
So that's another way that you can really support some of your favorite creators and teachers as well. There are some teachers and creators who have a buy me a coffee sign. So it's like, you know, buy me a cup of coffee just like five bucks. It's just a way to kinda like, donate and show appreciation for people who are, creating some stuff that you're getting some good knowledge out of.
And then another thing too is like if you do reach out to someone and you ask a question and you receive that knowledge, respond back, just saying thank you. Just the most simple like, Hey, thanks for your time. Thanks for your energy. And that's something that I say a lot to people who message me. I get people, and I love these messages, and I hate to come across as like needing other people's validation of any kind.
But I get messages and I'm very lucky, they're are diamonds in the rough though, in the sense where they're not as common as like, you have an impersonation account messages. But I do get a few a week from people who are genuinely grateful for some of the topics I talk about, and some of the conversations I start, and some of the epiphanies that they've had from listening to me. And they take their time to message me how it impacted them.
And my response is always, and it's from a very genuine place, thank you for your time and energy to send that to me. Because I'm very aware of how valuable our time and energy and light is that I'm grateful for every single person who takes their time and energy to message me these types of things. And I wanna show my gratitude. And people really feel that and they feel connected to that. And so I do it in hopes that other people will do something very similar.
Even in Spirit School, when people, you know, take time to like make a post, like one of the most generous things you can do is just respond. Just let them be seen and heard. And I also just wanna be aware that that is also asking labor of you guys. And that is something that, you know, again, going from the perspective of the people who choose to be in my communities, I know that it's an ask and it's asking labor of people to post, or engage, or respond.
And typically people will just kind of pop in when they need something or if they wanna share something. And just one of the most simple and generous things we can do is respond because the basic human need that we all share is to be seen and heard. And I do find that in community spaces, for whatever reason, there's not a lot of that. And that always really surprises me.
But again, I can't say to my audience, like, you know, post five days a week, or respond to everybody who posts to make sure that they're seen and heard, because that's unfair. It's asking free labor of all of you too. So I'm not going to do that. But what I am going to offer is maybe just considering how can we be more reciprocal in the spaces that we occupy, in the spaces that we choose to be? How can we show up in the energy of reciprocity, generosity, consideration, expansion?
Just something to think about. Just something to think about. As creators, I was in the Trauma of Money community, who is also on Mighty, and I just love it. And I know how much work Chantel, who runs the Trauma of Money program, it's her program essentially. I know how much work that woman is putting towards everything that she does. I mean, what I do is nothing in comparison to what she does when it comes to how she runs that program. It's the best program I've ever taken.
If you have troubles with money, go check it out. And she will make all these posts and like all this effort to educate and inform and nothing, like not a heart, not a comment. And so just knowing that, I will go out of my way to make sure I heart and engage and just say, thank you. I know how much work it was to put this together. I really, really appreciate it. And it's the most simple thing to do that only takes a second.
And if you knew the life force that gives somebody who's creating something, it's just generous, and it's just abundant, and it's expansive. So it's just something to consider as you are in community with other people. You know, you wouldn't sit in a circle with people, and they pour their heart out or they share something intimate. And then just like look at them blankly like, well, what are you gonna do next? Do you have another trick? Is there something else you can offer?
It's just shocking that we do that in the online space as well. But what do I know? What do I know? This is just a rant. This is just something I've wanted to talk about for a while. You know, I tell people when they're in The Initiation that, you know, one of the biggest currencies that I get is like, your energy. It's like your experiences. It's hearing what's going on in your world, hearing what happened in your session, hearing what happened well, and what didn't happen well.
All of that information, all of that energy that you put into sharing your experiences fuels me. If I could charge for my sessions just to get feedback, just to get what you are experiencing, and if I could pay my mortgage and buy my groceries off the energy that I get from seeing what's going on in your world when you are consuming my teachings, that would be the exchange. That would a hundred percent be the exchange that would keep me feeling fulfilled every time.
But society has declared we need money. We need money, money, money, money, money to survive, to even like thrive in any way. So that unfortunately is one of the currencies that we are currently exchanging. But for me, I get more fulfillment from knowing what my people are going through. I. And what they're experiencing. The good, the bad, the ugly, the celebratory. That to me is enough to keep me going and fueling me. And I wish money did that to me.
I would probably, you know, be a bit of a better business person if it did, but it's not. It's the engagement, it's the understanding what's happening in people's world. So, you know, again, I don't wanna put it on people who are listening to this being like, come engage and like, do this labor so that I feel good. It's not about that. It's just about considering all of this, and just maybe taking an audit for yourself of how you're showing up in community and spaces.
Are you showing up just to extract what you can, and continue to extract? Or are you there to change the game? Are you there to change the landscape of how we engage with each other in online spaces? Are you here to create a culture that you are proud to be a part of and you know, doing whatever effort it takes to create that culture that can only be created by the people involved in it, right?
Like Spirit School has me as like a head, and has me as kind of like this guiding force, but the people in the community are the culture, right? So, what role do you want to have in the building of this culture, in the building of a spiritual community that is not just extracting free labor where we can and trying to get like the most out of every single person we encounter, but like offering some sort of reciprocity so that there's a mutual exchange of energy?
And I'm telling you right now, for me, and I don't know how other people feel about this, you have to ask them, but for me it's like, what's going on in your world? What have you tried recently? How did it go? Did you get any feedback? Have you gotten a tip yet? Did you have to give a refund? And did you get back into work? These are the things I'm dead curious about. Are you feeling the full moon energy? Like what's happening? Like it's a genuine curiosity.
And sometimes as creators, and I know people who create on social media as well, who get like no comments and like four likes feel like that too. It's like, is my baby ugly? Like, what's happening? And then what goes on in people's minds that they just can't drop a heart, or they just can't drop a comment and like give a little bit of energy to somebody who took so much time to just create something?
And to me it's just the most simplest way of engaging with each other, and just showing any kind of resemblance of reciprocity, which I think is one of the major reasons why we're suffering as a society right now. We have forgotten who we are. We have forgotten how we be in community with one another. We are not reciprocal in nature. We are in a phase of our humanity where it's every person for themselves.
And you gotta do what you do to survive, and only, you know, bring up the people in the closest of proximity to you. And when we look at, and I'm gonna end this from the Indigenous perspective again, when we talk about things like land back, right. We talk about reparations around giving the land back, to Indigenous people, it's not about, you know, get your house off my land. This is mine now. It's about that reciprocity that was lost.
It's about the stewardship that the Indigenous people were awarded by Mother Earth well before colonization because they understood the laws of reciprocity, what Mother Earth needed because she gives us so much. She gives us everything. We could not survive without Mother Earth, and here we are just extracting, continuously extracting without replenishing. And sooner or later we're not going to be surviving on this planet.
She's gonna have enough and she's gonna shake us off her back and be like, screw you all. You messed it up. Right? And so when we look at the old traditional ways of living, it was because it was revolved around the law of reciprocity, and we have lost that. So what I offer today as part of this conversation, which I hope you don't feel offended, I hope you don't feel ashamed. I hope nothing comes up for you that's negative in any way. Feel free to reach out to me if something comes up.
But it's like, where can we add more reciprocity in our day to day with bare minimum energy, and start normalizing that exchange? And then maybe we'll be different with one another. Maybe collectively we'll take better care of our planet, and we'll take better care of our communities, and we'll be more involved, and we'll stand up to racism, and we won't let racism go unchecked. And we won't expect Indigenous people or people of color to do all the educating.
And maybe we will learn about some of this ourselves so that we can be allies and accomplices. And maybe we can all lean into the reciprocity of Mother Earth and tend to her a little bit better too, which is gonna be a huge focus of the Sacred Spirit Retreat coming up in 10 days. So by the time you listen to this, it'll probably be passed. But this is my rant. This is something that has been weighing on my heart for over a year.
Didn't know how it fit into Spirit School, so I hope you enjoyed it. I hope it gives you a little bit of food for thought. Just know I am not the most knowledgeable person to be speaking on this topic. I don't know everything about it. I just am curious about it. I'm inspired by it. I'm grateful for every creator who puts themselves out there to talk about this topic. And if I can use my platform to share a little bit more knowledge on this topic, then I'm going to use it.
So thank you for listening. Let me know in Spirit School. Come talk about this episode. My assistant, Andrea, posts every single episode for conversation, which we do get one or two responses to, which is amazing, and let us know what you think about it. And maybe if there's a little mini commitment you can make to yourself, in how you show up to community and thinking about like, what would I like to receive?
How would I like to be embraced when I show up and put myself out there, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I'll leave it there, my friends, and I will see you on the next episode of Spirit School.