Here are three points I consider to be critical:

1. The fee and the scope of the service is clearly posted and available to all upfront.
2. The provider promotes the clients to own their power and responsibility of their lives rather than promoting fear and manipulating them to purchase more services.
3. The service is offered with good business sense to keep it sustainable.

Let’s examine each point into details…

The issue of money

Being clear and upfront about the money issue is basic to any businesses. Who wants to be surprised by a bill that lists low entry fee with dozens of additional hidden charges?

But I’m afraid this is the case with many psychic services. Here is a story.

The other day, I decided to have my palms read. I have the basic understanding of palm reading (quite popular in Asia) but wanted to see what an American palmist had to say. There aren’t many palmists around to begin with, but I found one in Portland area.

Her fee was $20 and she said it would take about 30 minutes. She started to explain by pointing out some of the lines.

Palmist (P): It’s good overall. But in love life, you are still dragging your past pains. Have you been married or in a long-term relationship before?

Me: Yes. (It would be rather unusual if I never had a relationship at this age — of 49. And because I am not wearing a ring, it’s obvious I am not married.)

P: I see there is a man who likes you but you are putting up a wall around yourself. Would you be interested in learning how to remove it?

Me: No. I’m happy to be single right now.

P: But there is a man . . . (realizes she failed to push my button and moves on) Are you worried about your work? You work long hours, I guess?

Me: Not really. And I love what I do. I work for myself.

P: . . Oh, here is the thing. Someone is cursing you. Someone is burning candles against you. You need to clear this.

Me: . .

P: The clearing is $400. Would you like to do it today?

Me: No.

P: Why not? Do you realize someone is . . .

Me: Who is that?

P: I don’t know.

She looked quite tired at this point. No wonder. How can she make a living by charging $20 for 30 minutes? And obviously, her day is not filled — no one was waiting after me. So her real income source is the additional clearing work.

I looked around and there was no posting about the fees, regular or additional work. Later, I checked her website, too. Again, no mention of fee structure.

Should spiritual service be free?

I’ve often heard people say, “Spiritual services should be offered free. Or at least really cheap.”

If the service is free or really cheap, the service provider needs another reliable source of income obviously. There are several ways to do this:

1. By charging high hidden fees, like the palmist above
2. By having passive income source, like reliable rental properties or a supportive spouse
3. By having another job (so-called “day job”)

Option 1 is out of the question for the reason we will discuss further. Option 2 is nice if you can secure it.

Option 3 is tricky. If I had a full-time job, I will have much less time to do my spiritual work. This doesn’t just mean I can fill fewer number of orders. It will affect the quality of my work.

Any reasonably-good professional knows there is a significant difference between a professional work and even a high-quality amateur work. Quantity yields quality.

By doing hundreds of readings a year, I accumulate knowledge, insights, and experiences that I can utilize for the new clients. This is also how I got to write the Starseeds series.

If I had a full-time job and had to do the Akashic Record Reading on the side, this flow is interrupted. The difference may be subtle and I hope I can maintain the level of quality I like, but it will be difficult. So I choose to charge a fair fee for my service. Of course, there is no hidden fees, so the upfront fee is reasonable high. (Just to let you know — I occasionally introduce my clients to other services I offer, but I also explain the first reading is complete by itself. Often, I even talk them out from getting additional readings too soon.)

For those of you considering to have spiritual services, I suggest to be very cautious with free or cheap services. They may cost you a lot. (The aforementioned palmist is likely to introduce yet another of her hidden service after getting $400 from you.)

The objective is self-empowerment

Another issue I had with this palmist is that she was promoting fear and trying to get me reliant on her. That is darkwork.

A good spiritual service provider helps you to empower yourself. In other words, they graduate their clients. They offer different perspective to look at your problems, they suggest new ways to handle them, but they make it clear that it’s YOU who deals with your problem.

So, the clients are expected to do their own footwork. You can’t just expect your problem to evaporate by having a spiritual service. Some people are more than happy to do this, but I also find there are some people who really don’t want to change anything about themselves — so they actually prefer manipulative service providers.

Is the spiritual business there for the long haul?

The third point is something you may not have considered much if you are a consumer. Perhaps you just want one-time service and you don’t care if the provider is there next year. That is fine.

But if you think carefully, you can see the benefits of any business that is structured to be stable on a long term basis. Most importantly, if the service provider doesn’t have to worry excessively about the sustaining nature of her business, she can focus more on what she does.

Unique attributes of spiritual work

And here is a unique aspect of spiritual services. I know there are various types of spiritual services out there, so this may not be true to all, but I guess it’s true to many of them.

And that is, you really cannot work 8 hours a day, not to mention more than 8 hours a day, doing spiritual work. That is suicidal and you will burn out.

When I was a corporate employee, I had no problem working 8 hours a day, and I know many people put in even more hours. Fine.

But I cannot be doing Akashic Record Reading from 8 am to 5 pm. I’ll go crazy and my energy will be so exhausted that I might die soon. Like Edgar Cayce did when he did 8 readings a day. Until the media made a big fuss, he was doing 2 readings a day for many years, which was already quite a workload. He died two years after his media appearance.

I usually do 1 to 2 readings a day. And I use the rest of my day meditating, grounding my energy, reading books related to my work, and writing. I think this is a good work schedule that support my health and the quality of my work.

If you are a spiritual service provider, take good care of yourself. It’s the foundation of our work. (Here is a good article by Steve Pavlina on this.)

Many spiritual service providers are exhausted and sick. We have fallen to the manipulative voice such as “Spiritual workers should sacrifice themselves.” I know quite a few have quit offering their service. This is no good for the potential clients, either.

The future of spiritual service

The spiritual service industry is largely unregulated. So there are under-qualified practitioners. To make things even more complicated, the quality of a spiritual service provider cannot be measured by certification or even by the length of their experience. There are also service providers whose business practices are fraudulent, like that palmist.

This has led the general public to mistrust this industry. I think it’s such a shame because spiritual development is the ultimate personal development. Spiritual work also holds the clue to some missing links in healing and well-being.

I ask the wise readers to be the change of these problems. Here are my suggested action plans:

If you offer spiritual service, such as psychic readings or spiritual healing:

• Be clear about your fee structure.
• Charge a good amount so that you don’t need to rely on hidden fees nor you need to exhaust yourself unreasonably.
• Help the clients to be empowered — it’s okay, you don’t need THAT client to see you regularly because there are many people out there who need your service.
• Be clear about your specialty. Don’t try to be everything. As the spiritual service becomes more popular, people will learn there are specialists in this industry.
• Have the time and energy for yourself. Be the role model of self love by taking care of yourself first.
• Learn business savvy or have a great business coach / adviser to help you be in the business in a sustainable manner.

If you are seeking spiritual service:

• Do some homework and check the reputation, testimonials, and the business practice of the service provider you are considering to hire.
• Don’t be cheap.
• Be willing to own your own power and responsibility. When you go to a doctor, you want to be an informed patient and you do yourself a service if you are willing to improve your lifestyle. Same thing with spiritual service.
• Support the spiritual workers who offer good service in a good business manner by spreading the words about them. Words of mouth is strong.

Did I miss anything? I hope I covered the basics although some points, such as the fee structure issue, is an ongoing concern. (For example, some people asked if I can offer sliding scale fee. I guess I can, but that means I need to review their income tax forms and evaluate it, which is a lot of administrative work for me, which may mean I have to increase the overall fee to compensate. Plus my clients are all over the world and I am not sure how to fairly evaluate the income values in various countries. So, right now, I am not interested in doing this.)

Let’s discuss this in the comment to make it even better!

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Is it astral projection or out-of-body experience?

First, the issue of name. Often, the New Age people use the word “astral projection” while the more science-oriented people call it “out-of-body experience”. And when the phenomena is involuntarily induced with severe physical trauma, it’s called “near-death experience”.

They are basically the same experience. However, I recently read a book called “Soul Traveler: A Guide to Out-of-Body Experiences and the Wonders Beyond”, which shed some light to this confusion.

The author of this book, a NASA engineer with a doctorate degree, says his “soul travels” (the name he chooses to use) started with his astral body separating from his physical body. At some point, however, he realized he wasn’t using his astral body any longer — he realized he was just a “pinpoint of consciousness”. Further, he maintains that the astral body is only useful in the astral plane and, to fly higher than the astral plane into the causal, mental, and etheric plane, he needs to be this pinpoint of consciousness.

• Astral projection – The astral body is “projected”, voluntarily or involuntarily, from the physical body. Technically, it’s scope is limited to the astral plane.
• Out-of-body experience – A catchall term that includes astral projection.
• Near-death experience – Specific cases of out-of-body experience caused by physical trauma.

I am going to use the term “out-of-body experience (OBE)” from here on because it is more neutral and it covers wider range of experiences.

Is this for real?

Before some of you start thinking this article is too “occult”, let me assure you that many people who have had out-of-body experiences are ordinary people, with or without specific faith. The author of the aforementioned book, Albert Taylor, is one of them.

Another thing to consider is, those who had OBE come back with the knowledge they could not have known in the usual way. This seems to provide validity to their claim of having OBE. For example, Albert Taylor says he could visit his friend’s residence, where he had never visited, and provide details of the room later.

Another example is the one in Wikipedia’s “Out-of Body Experience“, in which the person has OBE “during brain surgery and described a surgical instrument she had not seen previously, as well as conversation that occurred while she was under anesthesia”.

The purpose of out-of-body experience

Some people practice the voluntary induction of out-of-body experience to have firsthand spiritual experience. Reading about spirituality is one thing — experiencing yourself as pure spirit (soul) is quite another.

When you are out of the body, you definitely know you are not just your body. This liberates you from the restrictive ideas and patterns of our daily life.

OBE also helps you to overcome the fear of death. If you are keeping consciousness while you are out of your body, what is so scary about losing the body upon death? Plus, you may even get a glimpse of the “other side” while you are having OBE.

My purpose of OBE

My purpose, however, is a little different. As Akashic Record Reader, I already know we are spiritual beings having human experiences, not the other way around. There is something that connects us all and this is why I get to read the Akashic Records of my clients who may be thousands of miles away and whom I have never met.

I also know our souls have been reincarnating many times. The past life memories are still kept in our soul and sometimes affect us in unexpected ways. This is another thing I have known and verified many times through my Akashic Record Reading practice.

Then why am I interested in OBE?

I used to think OBE as a kind of spiritual gymnastics. It’s certainly interesting and impressive, but why invest the time and effort to achieve it? I’m not interested in show biz.

I now think it a little differently. Here are my two objectives of OBE:

1. OBE serves as a practice of conscious dying
That is, dying while fully aware of the transition from this world to the other side. There are many ways to exit this world. Most of the time, we exit by the old-fashioned death, by losing consciousness (temporarily). But I think it is possible to make the transition while I am aware.

In voluntary OBE, you practice putting your physical body to sleep while you stay conscious. Once the body is asleep, you can get out and have all kinds of fun.

And conscious transition to the other side is basically about moving further in OBE and not returning to the physical body. So OBE is the first step of conscious dying. Practice this, get familiar with the in-out transition, explore the nearby astrals, so that eventually I’ll be ready to move on further.

(Not surprisingly, initial OBEs come with fear of the unknown. Consider this as warning if you, too, want to practice.)

2. OBE may help explore the details of soul’s mystery
There are many unanswered questions about the soul. For example,

“Can we live without a soul?”
My guess is no because we ARE the soul. However, if the “pinpoint of consciousness” is the soul itself, the body seems to be able to at least sleep and survive until we return to it. So then, how much life function does the body have without the soul?  Is this about the body energy and the soul energy? Or is it not the soul that leaves the body?

“Do animals and plants have souls, too?”
This is related to the first question. If animals don’t have souls, when did we as humans start to have souls? Where is the line? If animals do have souls, do we reincarnate as animals and plants? I haven’t seen that in the Akashic Records so far.

(By the way, here is the article, an interview, in which personal development blogger Hunter Nuttall grilled me with so many great questions about the Akashic Records and the soul. This is one of the questions I could not answer back then — and therefore has been sitting on the back-burner since, for two years.)

“What are the true nature of spirit guides?”
I have working knowledge about spirit guides. I can even communicate with them. But who are they, really? When I get out of my body, is there a significant difference between me and them? Do I get to know them better in that form?

“What is the nature of dreams?”
There are many types of dreams. Some dreams are just our mind reviewing our awake life and seeking solutions. But there are some dreams that are so real. Often, flying dreams are one of them.

I have the feeling we are getting outside of the body while we are sleeping, but we just don’t remember it or we think it was a dream.

So I am checking to practice OBE. (Just started reading “Mastering Astral Projection: 90-day Guide to Out-of-Body Experience“)
I hope to have fun with this!

Have you had OBE? Do you have any questions? Let me know in the comment. Thank you.

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When I wrote “We are all causing evils”, you may have felt uncomfortable. Some of you may reacted thinking, “No way. I am a good person. I don’t do bad things. Plus, how could I possibly have caused the starvation in Africa or debilitating diseases to innocent children?”

Well, even though it may not be so apparent, we all have caused the evils in this world. You, me, everyone. And this is a great news. Because if we have caused them, then we can cease to cause them.

I have a few tips how to. . .

What you focus on expands

The Law of Attraction says what you focus on expands. It doesn’t matter if your focus is a positive one (“I love this! I want more of this!”) or a negative one (“I hate this! I don’t want any of this!”)

And this is how so many sick people unwittingly aggravate their situation and how we increase bad news such as crimes and social injustice.

Let’s say you get sick. The original cause may have been some kind of infection or nutritional imbalance or stress, etc. The problem is, once you acknowledge you have the health problem, you keep thinking and worrying about it so much. This way, you energetically feed the disease. Eventually, you may even start identifying with the disease.

Focus on health and joy, not on health problem

Let me use myself as a humble example. So I had some problems with sugar. The original cause may have been hormonal imbalance with my age or yin yang imbalance or something else or all of the above.

Strange things happen when I start worrying about my eating habit. The more I try NOT to eat sugary foods, the more cravings I get. And things get worse and worse.

The solution is to direct my attention to something I want. If you have the same problem, make a basic plan of what you eat in a day, perhaps with a plan for physical activities, too. And more importantly, focus on doing something you enjoy (hopefully, this includes your work as well as your hobby).

When you have the craving, just observe it like you observe passing thoughts in meditation. It will pass if you don’t feed it by reacting to it (that is, arguing against it or reasoning things out to it or forcing yourself to ignore it, etc) We are incapable of holding one thought for a long time. Know you are more than the thought or the thinking mind, and just observe it.

Even when you end up eating that forbidden food, don’t punish yourself. Just take care of yourself (you may be feeling sick, so take a rest, take some supplements like vitamin C). Don’t dwell on it but instead re-direct your attention on the things you enjoy.

I am not going into details with other health issues but I hope you get the idea. Make a plan of your recovery and healing with conventional and/or alternative healthcare professionals, follow it, but don’t worry about your disease. And definitely don’t identify with your disease. When fear and anger arise, release them by simply observing them. Direct your energy to what you can do and enjoy.

Bad news sell

The same energetic dynamics is at play with evils such as social injustice. The more we focus on the bad news, the more bad news we create. And the media loves it — after all, they know bad news sell.

So the solution is to direct our attention to love, peace, compassion, harmony, and joy. Any small act of love helps. Actually, not just the actions to promote peace and compassion, any loving thoughts help.

As I wrote in the last post, there is no significant difference between me getting frustrated in the traffic jam and someone starting a war. So rather than worrying about the bad things happening, live your life with love.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give to good causes or do other activities to promote peace and justice. But worrying about evil really is counterproductive. (And reduce the time you watch the news. It reduces the bad news and helps your health.)

100th monkey

“But how can I, in the little corner of my town, affect the end of war that is happening thousands of miles away?”, you may ask.

Because the energy moves across space. Have you heard about the 100th monkey effect? From Wikipedia:

“(The scientist observed that) some of these monkeys (in the island) learned to wash sweet potatoes, and gradually this new behavior spread through the younger generation of monkeys—in the usual fashion, through observation and repetition. Watson then claimed that the researchers observed that once a critical number of monkeys was reached — the so-called hundredth monkey — this previously learned behavior instantly spread across the water to monkeys on nearby islands.”

So the monkeys in group B, who never met the potato-washing monkeys (group A), somehow figured to wash their potatoes. Not by direct communication. How could this happen?

I believe this is the effect of energetic communication.

The same thing can happen with you practicing kind acts in your humble life — once we reach the critical number, that kindness can spread even if you don’t directly teach it. (Note: The 100th monkey effect is disputed, like many psychic phenomena.)

You may also have noticed multiple people in different areas of the world seem to come up with very similar ideas almost at the same time. Like Edison and Bell conceiving the idea of the telephone. It’s like they both received the idea from — heaven?

It’s another sign that energy travels across space with no problem.

Conscious creation

Before, we didn’t fully know how powerful we really are, that we are creating our reality. So we became victims. But now, we know.

Are ALL evils created by us entertaining negative thoughts? I am not sure. For example, small children seem to take up the negativity in the collective consciousness and manifest it as their health problems. They also seem to come with certain health challenges as a way of learning — after all, we are all here to learn our life lessons, and why is it so wrong to learn it through health challenges (or financial problems or relationship difficulties)?

I am confident that the answer to the world’s seemingly overwhelming and complicated problems is quite simple. Change comes with one person choosing love and peace. And another person. And another. Join us!

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