Teal Swan

[Kenazis]

Thanks for your replies and insights. The money question is a big one for sure. I'm also very easily put off by people asking for money for spiritual services, but I think a big part of it is my Christian upbringing.

I'm more "against" the selling of stuff blaming they have something to do with spirituality than people asking money for spiritual services (I don't like this either, but maybe the councelling or something similar actually can help). this Teal for example sells tens of different kind of bikinis titled "enlightenment bikikis" and so forth.

[Heith]

For me it is always a problem when there is a teacher -so a person who places themselves in a position of authority, above others- and the conversation flows to one direction only, so the spiritual teaching "comes from above". It is a very different thing to have a circle than to have a pyramid.

This talk of "ritual satanic abuse" and "alien roots" certainly makes me raise my eyebrows, and I am extremely skeptic about both claims. I absolutely do not belittle abuse which is a huge problem around the world and something that should actively be solved. But in the US the Satanic craze was stupidly large phenomenon, and I think it is all linked to the sort of collective illness that seems to vex that country at large. Things seem to be only surface deep in American culture, and this emptiness really bothers me. And I guess that spiritual leaders who collect money via shoes and bikinis fit into that picture really well. But in my eyes this is not spiritual evolution or even ethical -this is just the same story all over again that has happened so many times before.

I don't have a problem with money per se. But we can be sure that when someone sells bikinis and has large youtube channels, they are doing, or aiming towards a profitable business. One could ask themselves, how much is necessary and actually related to the spiritual path at hand? Does it relate to one's spiritual ascension have a large house? I think not.

We sometimes get applications from people who want to get into Satanism because they want to become rich. So far these applications have all been rejected.

[Soror O]

Enlightment bikinis, haha! As Heith pointed out, Teal Swans actions can be interpreted using this context of consumer-capitalism. People buy stuff also in order to appear spiritual and they are building spiritual egos. But it's up to the individual himself to weight his true spiritual "state"... I mean it's impossible to read one's spiritual awakenness from his appearance.

It's funny how this materialism-debate leaked into my personal life, shortly put: my companion blames me of not taking the material realm seriously enough (I'm too careless about money, I'm too "up-in-the-clouds" etc.) He has a personality of an accountant, he loves to calculate his finances and is involved in investing (btw I think mainstream investing is immoral, haha.) Financial security has been his main source of security and meaning. And I can't help but thinking that this person is spiritually quite immature, he seems to be stuck in the basic/materialistic survival state. (He has always been well payed, so he hasn't experience any concrete scarcity.) So it seems that unconsciously I'm prone to think that spirituality and money-mindedness exclude each other. And I don't know why, because in a way all is holy.