FREE READINGS – MYTHS AND REALITY

By Lubomir Dimitrov MSc,

Professional Astrologer, Australia

Part 1   Part 2     Part 3                            

In part 1 and 2 of this article we outlined some of the major arguments, raised by the supporters of the so called “free readings”. After that we took a journey through history in order to see clearly the differences between the present Age of Aquarius and the completely different social and economic situation in the previous Great Ages and we made the following observations:

• The new Age of Aquarius simply demands from us to become more and more spiritually aware. On the basis of this, spiritual services cannot any longer be regarded as a luxury or something what we can or cannot afford every now and then. They become simply an integral part of our everyday life and it is more and more evident that they are a need, just as any other need we have on the material plane. As we need clothes, food, house etc. in order to sustain our physical bodies, so in the Age of Aquarius we need spiritual services in order to sustain our soul and spirit.
• It is not the actual dollar figure which we put on the spiritual services that matters, but it is the acknowledging of our needs and putting them in the correct order of priorities. For example, a person who has his priorities reversed will regard $60 for a spiritual reading a high price to pay, but may think for instance that shoes for $200 is a low price to pay. For a strongly materialistic person any price for spiritual services will seem high and for a spiritual person any price will seem low.
• In contrast to the previous Great Ages, in the Age of Aquarius everything is revolving around money, including spiritual services. Thus, if we need them (and it is evident that we really do) we have to support them. Every successful business depends on its customers and thus we have to vote with our dollars in order to sustain the good and positive spiritual workers.

Let us elaborate a little on the last sentence and try to understand what it exactly means. We already mentioned that today everything is controlled by the power of money and we simply cannot disregard this powerful force. Whoever states that he is so spiritual that he can rise above the pressing need to sustain and support the physical body is simply not facing reality. Thus, instead of trying to hide away from reality and deny the overwhelming power of money that rules most aspects of our everyday lives, it is much better to study how the market operates and what it requires us to do in order to abide by its laws on one side and at the same time remain spiritual on the other.

The problem is that reconciling these two energies is sometimes extremely difficult. It is like reconciling the black and white or the day and night. And yet, it is possible to do precisely that. By mixing the black and white we can obtain a new colour – i.e. the gray with all its different shades, and by combining the day and night we can witness beautiful dawns or sunsets with their splendour of stunning colours. We are living in an epoch where we have no other choice any more, but to do exactly that – reconciling the opposites.

The market operates on the principle of satisfying people’s needs. When a need for something arises, almost immediately a new business will appear which will promote a satisfaction of this need. When enough number of people purchases the product supplied by the business, it becomes profitable and thrives. If there are not enough people to support the business, it is either forced to raise its prices or it eventually dies out. Unfortunately, any big mechanism that takes into account only the dollar figure and the profit, without taking into account the moral side of the social life is destined to bring to humanity great disasters. The reason for this is that people are often driven at large by their dark side and order services that are disastrous as for themselves as individuals, but also for the environment and to the humanity as a whole. From a marketing point of view, however, only the dollar figures are taken into account and thus often the most insidious businesses are regarded as good.

There are many examples for that – cutting of rain forests, polluting the air, water and soil, inhumane killing of animals and so on just to mention a few. All this happens because the big businesses involved in such practices are not concerned by the moral implications of their actions, but are driven only by the profit figures. If we happen to have a society, where there would be strict moral codes behind every action, this wouldn’t be the case and we can see that many years ago people managed to live under such norms. The power of money back then was not so strong to override the moral and spiritual principles that ruled people’s lives. However, today since money is almost totally ruling all spheres of human relationships and the whole social life, this is something very difficult to do. So what can we do as individuals to counteract this?

One way of improving the current situation is by voting with our dollars for businesses that are beneficial, useful and do not harm the environment. We may not be able as individuals to change the current social-economic structure, but we can start supporting only the businesses that are beneficial and we may choose not to support businesses that are damaging. For example, we can go and buy a cheap body lotion or face cream from Coles or Woolworths that is full of chemicals and animal products, or we can spend a little bit more money in order to obtain a product from a healthy shop, which contains only natural products. By doing this we will support the right business for the right cause. When eventually enough number of people recognises this fact, the companies producing the cheap, but harmful and unhealthy products will shrink their profits to a level, where they will simply cease to exist, while the company producing healthy and natural products will thrive and increase its production.

This tactic applies to absolutely every area of our lives. We have to start thinking very carefully where we spend our money and for what cause. Buying the cheapest stuff on the shelf does not mean that you will be actually better off. By doing this, very often we are perpetuating bad production practices and are ultimately putting our health at risk. Think about every purchase you make as an investment in your future and well-being. Do we need to buy cheap tomatoes, which are pumped up with pesticides and chemicals (in order to grow fast and look good), or can we better invest in our health by buying organic ones? Do we need a cheap meal in a fast food outlet, which contributes to the appalling state in which millions of animals are kept and slaughtered, or we can spend few extra dollars for a healthy lunch? Do we need to take this extra trip with the car, which will take its little toll on the global pollution, or can we better walk, take the bus or maybe cycle? These are the questions which every single person on this planet should ask him- or herself before reaching for the wallet and make the next purchase. This is especially true for people who call themselves spiritual and who purchase and read magazines for spiritual enlightenment such as “Universal Mind”.

The same approach of careful selection should be adopted, when selecting what spiritual services we are ready to pay for. It is a well known fact that the spiritual market is flooded with all sorts of people, some of whom are really spiritual, some of whom are even not remotely so. This area of the market is still highly unregulated and thus almost anyone who wants to portray himself as a new prophet, or Messiah, or anything of this kind is free to do so. All that is needed is some good imagination, pleasant personality and good marketing techniques. Those who possess these qualities can develop and push to the rapidly developing spiritual market almost any “spiritual” product imaginable. In recent times we are witnessing that there is such a variety of spiritual services and some of them are marketed with such an amazing turn of phrase that one becomes really suspicious about what these people are actually doing on a spiritual level. Are they actually doing anything or are they simply finding nice, catching phrases that sell?

Just listing briefly through NOVA magazine (I picked this one at random, but the same applies for many others) we can see people advertising services ranging from TFT, EFT, PLT, Energetic Science, henna art, shadurshan kriya, Luxor Light, Aura Sprays and so on, just to mention a few. More fancy names of spiritual services are also emerging every day. Maybe some of them are quite legitimate, but how can we see the difference? As a general guide, services that need to be described in such an elaborative and impressive manner imply that they need some sort of boosting for the real lack of meaning behind the words or they simply want to increase their sales on the expense of the fancy name.

The beautiful words do not always describe something of real value. Sometimes, this is simply another marketing technique. The person who wishes to obtain quality spiritual services should learn how to distinguish between what sounds nice and beautiful and what is of a real value. As an example I was quite puzzled one day when I visited one of Perth’s famous restaurants and read their menu. One of the items was listed as “Cappuccino of forest mushrooms concoction”. I called the waiter and asked him to forgive me for my ignorance, but to explain what exactly this item on the menu was. The waiter was pretty straightforward to me and said that this was basically a mushroom soup, but it was described in the menu in this fancy way because it assumed that people’s interests would be ignited and this would boost the sales. Needless to say the fancy name of this otherwise quite simple product was coupled with a double price as well!

It is very important that the reader learns how to select the spiritual services that are of real value and how to avoid those that are intended for high profit without much actual result (or even worse – which are outright harmful). As we said earlier, it is very important that we give a good thought each time before we reach to our wallets in order to support the right services and eliminate the mumbo jumbo. As a secretary of the Psychic Development Association I frequently receive phone calls from people who want to know precisely this – the phone numbers of spiritual workers who are worthy and genuine, because of the many bad experiences that they had before. I know no other better source of wisdom than the Bible when it comes to difficult questions like this. Let us see what it says in this regard:

Be wary of the false prophets who come to you in the guise of sheep while at heart they are voracious wolves. You will know them by the deeds they do. Do people gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles? So every healthy tree bears good fruit, but a rotten tree bears defective fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that fails to bear good fruit is felled and thrown into the fire. Similarly you will know people by the deeds they do. Not every one who says to Me, “Lord, Lord!” will enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me on that Day, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name and in Your name cast out demons and in Your name do many wonderful works?” Then I will frankly say to them, “I never knew you. Get away from Me, you evil workers.” (Mathew, 15-23).

The Bible once again is giving us the exact answer to the pending questions that we have today in our lives. Not only that, but it gives us also a practical advice on how to distinguish between the good spiritual workers from the malevolent ones. It tells us that we can recognise them by their deeds or the fruits they bear. To translate this into a modern language we have to look at the results that the spiritual workers produce in the souls of people in which they come into contact. Because their work is spiritual, the fruits that the Bible is talking about are also of a spiritual nature. These are the actual changes that happen in the souls of the clients, which obtained one spiritual service or another. If a spiritual worker is simply driven by making a profit he cannot bear a good fruit (he cannot produce favourable changes in the souls of his clients), because inevitably he will have to make so many compromises in his work that he will end up doing evil. Conversely, the one who is assisting in promoting the will of the Father in Heaven will find the correct path. In modern language doing the will of the Father in Heaven is nothing else but assisting in the positive development of the human Higher Self, because this is the primary task for all of us in the Age of Aquarius.

Ultimately, only the individual can help himself on his spiritual path: the spiritual worker is simply assisting in this process. People who believe that they can be miraculously cured from diseases or who believe that they will find easy solutions through ordering one kind of magical service or another, will inevitably fall pray into the paws of the evil spiritual workers. Only through real hard work on the self can one achieve real spiritual growth and redemption. Benevolent spiritual workers acknowledge this fact and inform their clients about it; malevolent spiritual workers on the other hand are interested simply in their profits and will try to hold on to their clients for as long as possible, making them pay on a regular basis. Ultimately, the one who orders the service has to recognize that the real strength lies only from within. It is quite OK to order the services of spiritual workers for assistance, because they have more experience and can guide the individuals on their path. However, if the client simply expects miracles or easy answers without any hard spiritual labour on the self, then they are only perpetuating evil spiritual works and ultimately wasting their money (if not even paying for the harm that has been done to them). And what happens at the end with these people is also well described in the passage, which we cited from the Bible.

To end up my article on a more positive note I would like to say that doing the work on the self is not so hard a task, once a person embarks on a really spiritual road. All assistance will be given to her or to him. All that is needed is for the person to say “I am in!” and then in a really mysterious way the good spirits will ensure that he or she meets up with the right spiritual workers and at the right time (and hopefully at the right price, of course). Always when we seek, we are given the answer. Problems arise only for those who do not have enough faith, who are too scared to look squarely and honestly at themselves and who are not prepared to put some real effort on their road for spiritual growth. These are the ones who are inclined to seek easy solutions to their problems in life. The bad news for them, however, regardless of the amount of money that they are prepared to pay to all sorts of spiritual workers who promise anything for money, the road to a real spiritual growth lies only from within.

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