How Can We Find a Balance between Spirituality and Marketing
Today my heart wants to talk about a delicate topic when it comes to spiritual schools: marketing!
In ancient times the masters of yoga, tantrics and mystics gained students by sitting on the banks of the Ganges waiting, after they had received a vision of the student who would arrive.
Today things are different!
If you feel you have a gift to offer the world or, like us, you have received thousand years old knowledge and feel that it is your duty to share it with others, you must utilize the language of the modern world in order to convey your message: marketing, advertising , the web and social media. Otherwise no one will see you, even if what you have to offer is really something important and evolutionary.
So goes the world!
So how Can We Find a Balance between Spirituality and Marketing?
Ethical Marketing: The Attitude of Consecration
Despite this, if what you do and how you do it are aligned with your inner truth and your ethical, moral and spiritual integrity, even if you have to give in to the rules of marketing, you will never be a seller, but rather a channel of transmission, even if it is through facebook or youtube.
It is the intention that counts, and the attitude of consecration of your work to something higher, to the Divine, that matters.
However, if this inner attitude is not well developed, it is very easy to fall into the trap of modern commercialism and lose that purity of intent.
Let us then look at some important elements to take into consideration when we want to find a balance between Spirituality and Marketing:
1. A certain detachment from money
In the new age world of yoga and modern tantra, we are now witnessing a true supermarket of spirituality. The superficial values that predominate modern culture have created a demand for something to fill an inner void. People spend for this reason. As a result, yoga has become a real gold mine and tantra even more so. On the other hand, teaching requires a lot of energy, growing a school is a full-time job and it makes sense that the universe responds with a certain economic abundance.
Be careful!
When you begin to see your students in terms of earnings and lose the profound mission of being a channel of transmission of spiritual knowledge, then the risk of moving from teacher to seller is very high. Especially in the world of Tantra, where money, by the very nature of matter, flows in abundance.
2. Avoid improvising without adequate knowledge or training
This is perhaps the thing most noticeable in spiritual (or false spiritual) environments. These days you can become a healer in a 3 days course and a shaman in 5. Especially in digital nomad communities where you are exempt from the controls of government laws, it is increasingly common to meet teachers or healers, without a real background of in-depth knowledge and practice. Often they don’t even know how to take care of their energy, are lost in emotions, internally fragile and not prepared to lead groups or heal other people. This is really dangerous! Especially in the case of healers, who approach people in a vulnerable situation to offer support of dubious effectiveness.
3. The ego of the facilitator, shaman, or healer
Embodying the position of teacher, one who leads the lesson or the course, or feeling like Jesus on earth in the guise of the healer, can really pump the ego to the stars.
A true guide is at the service of the other, they are not there to feel cool in the guise of a master or a shaman.
There is no trace of ego, no credit is taken. It is in the service of something greater, it is only a channel and must be as pure and transparent as possible. Only in this way can the transmission of knowledge take place in a complete way. Only in this way does one become a vehicle of that light, connected with all the lineage of teachers and healers and enlightened beings who have come before them. This leads to an ability beyond one’s limits, it is no longer just one’s strength, one connects to a universal strength. So yes, miracles can happen.
4. The envy of other teachers or healers
When a spiritual school begins to have a certain following, as in our case (I must admit, after 10 years of constant effort) it is easy to notice a whole series of people who want to take advantage of the community you have created. It’s called unfair competition!
Like sharks they prowl around your school with dubious intent, to make contacts in order to sell something to an already established audience.
Almost always behind these behaviors we find the previous points, attachment to economic profits or a need to be noticed and seen as teachers. There is a real race to catch students and contacts.
Phew! How pathetic in a spiritual environment!
We’ve seen this around our teachers’ schools when we were just pupils, and now that it’s our community that’s growing floridly, it’s the same around us.
Real Values in Ethical Marketing
• This article intends to lead to a deep reflection for all of us, masters of esoteric disciplines and holistic healers of the modern world, to check if our behaviors are in line with our inner values and with what we teach (we for first, being human).
• Are we trying to attract people in a healthy and ethical way? Are we respecting the work of other people, other schools, or other professionals?
We hope in this way to make our contribution.
AumTantraYoga teacher training courses are centered on consecration and transmission.
In addition to technical and spiritual teachings, our Tantra Teacher Training Course aims to train new facilitators with strong ethical and moral values, both in terms of economics and sexual behavior.
If you want to know more about our courses check our online curriculum.
Our promise is to create a safe and morally healthy container in which to finally immerse yourself in the study and practice of Tantra and share it to the world keeping an aligned ethical marketing.