I have seen a lot of spiritual influencer-teacher types within my extended orbit reinventing themselves as business coaches, abundance gurus and wealth mentors lately. And beyond my circle of acquaintances, I notice there are tons of ads for manifestation courses and wealth masterminds coming to me these days. As I’m reading and receiving some (not all) of these offers, I have had a growing sense of unease, so I decided to look into why this trend feels so icky to me. What I am seeing makes me wary that we proceed with caution.

If you are thinking about paying someone to help you build a business, “manifest abundance”, or generate more income, here are five things you might want to consider:

You are another me (well, sort of)

Yes, we are all emanations from the same Source energy and we are all One. But you, the uniquely human you, the one who came here to experience the journey of Life, with your specific challenges, gifts, limitations and opportunities within the 3D realm… you are the ultimate authority on your in-bodied truth. You cannot replicate someone else’s success. You can try to model the design of your life or business after that of a leader that you admire/respect/envy. But the fabric of that garment will hang differently on you. It might not fit as well or flow as effortlessly. 

You can learn self-leadership methods from a coach, or be inspired by an experienced teacher. Just watch out if they’re spinning a narrative of knowing the pain you’re in because they’ve “been there, done that” and claiming to have fixes for all your problems from the position of having “made it.” If it sounds like you’re being offered an easy button for ecstatic success by taking the path that someone else has laid out for you, be mindful that you are still on your path.

An authentic business coach will offer something more nuanced than the formula to follow in their footsteps. They are honest about not knowing the best way for you. They will help you find your own way, even if your way is different than theirs. That process of way-finding isn’t always scalable, because it’s personal.

The Insta(gram) success effect

You know the adage of “what you see is what you get”? Well that may be true, but with social media being the main window we have into distant others’ realities these days, there’s usually a lot more that goes unseen. It’s obvious, but we can quickly forget: what people show us is what they want us to see. We can know this to be true simply by examining our own self-presentation. We all like to be seen in our best light. Nothing wrong with that. It’s a normal tendency shared by all ego-bearers (umm, that’s all of us here).

It’s something to keep in mind when you look at that coach, healer, teacher or leader who’s already living the dream life that you want to create for yourself. Try to remember that it’s not as easy as they make it look on Instagram. Remember that the social media celebrities who are flooding your feed have all had struggles. They have all made sacrifices. The headlines scream about 7-figure success stories. But there’s a whole process to getting there that happens mostly behind the scenes. Over the years, there have probably been sleepless nights staring at a screen, a lot of inner and outer work, many painful cycles of personal revolution. 

Where there is a benefit, there is also a cost. Often, the cost is hidden. Coaches who are operating in integrity are honest about what it takes, and not just showcasing what you can get if you sign up for their program.

Abundance, the spiritual name for money

With the proliferation of new age hype around wealth, abundance, and manifestation, we’ve gotten sidetracked from the core essence of these teachings. Now in the mainstream, the word abundance is commonly used as the spiritually-acceptable name for money. But money and abundance are not the same thing. And there’s a lot of distortion that comes from conflating them. Abundance is an essential quality of reality that we can access at any time, regardless of our bank balance.

Ironically, when making money is our main focus, it can take us away from the self-nourishment and meaningful connection that actually contribute to an inner sourced sense of abundance. To borrow a line from my book Regenerative Purpose, “abundance is the space that exists between what-you-think-you-have and what-you-think-you-need.” The word think is the operative word here. In other words, the lived experience of abundance is limited by two mind-created concepts. It’s not linearly tied to our profits and earnings.

That doesn’t mean we should shame ourselves (or anyone else) for wanting to be more effective at generating income. A huge part of the transition that we find ourselves in has to do with shifting what we value, and the ways we exchange value, collectively. That is needed, but… the paradigm shift from an extraction economy to an attraction economy isn’t supported by us using the same old sales and marketing tricks and painting them with a spiritual-naming brush. 

Is your business coach really embodying the new paradigm economy or are they teaching old-school extraction with some new age branding? Notice whether they speak only about getting more (money). Or do they also share about giving more (time, energy) and being happy living with less (stuff)?

The disease of limitless growth

We’re in a pretty big mess now because of humanity’s long-held obsession with perpetual growth. Holding growth as the only metric that matters is toxic. In nature, unchecked growth is a disease. And it is the same with business building and wealth accumulation. To live a better quality of life, we need to get much more skilled at gracefully dying — or rather, elegantly retiring the forms of our creation that have honestly expired. Having a growth-only focus will leave us exhausted and completely used up, both individually and collectively. Sometimes more is not better. Sometimes more is just more.

The race to the top, if we examine it a little more closely, is really a race to the bottom. And yes, it’s a race to the bottom of a pyramid. We need to be careful not to repeat the same mistakes. When we treat other humans as mines for money extraction, instead of as gardens for energy investment, the end that we will reach in the end, is resource (we-source) depletion. In the long run, no one wins when someone loses.

Check to see if your coach repeats “growth” as a mantra, without mentioning anything about balance or integrity. Do they say “no” to money or opportunities if it’s out of alignment with their values? Or does everything fall at the feet of the goddess of growth?

Individual gain and economic ecosystems

We are in a massive transition now, as more people are waking up, saying no to oppressive power structures, and refusing to feed outdated systems. We’re tired of seeing corporations continuing to widen the wealth gap between elites and everyone else, by consuming human potential and crushing human creativity. En masse, we are taking on so much greater self-responsibility and self-leadership in creating the lives and the world we want to live in. Financial liberation is a huge part of that. It’s essential and foundational to everything we’re creating.

But yet, as we learn to sustain ourselves without selling our souls, we don’t want to keep playing the same old zero-sum games. A lot of what passes for financial freedom and empowerment work is just egging on the egocentric game of individual gain… only now the game has a spiritual face and spiritual name.

The way forward has interdependence baked in as a fundamental operating assumption. If you are learning new ways to get ahead, it’s time to take a hard look at who is falling behind. Is your gain taking place at someone else’s expense? Or is everything and everyone that you touch on the way being lifted up with you?

Be curious about whether your business coach walks their talk. If they present themselves as a spiritually guided teacher or mentor, then see if those values are lived in their 3D reality. How do they play within the local economic ecosystem that they’re part of? Are the people they work with/for, actively flourishing? If they’re already wealthy, do they give back to those with less?

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There is a lot more that can potentially be explored around this topic, and each of the sub-topics within it. I am wondering whether this is the beginning of a new mini-book… working title would be something along the lines of: “Enlightened Ecosystems: Wealth, Abundance, and the Spiritual Economy.” What do you think? Should I write that book? Vote yes at PayPal.me/heywendymay