Money and Spirituality
Online Courses with Karen McAllister
Why Money and Spirituality
Our Money and Spirituality courses aim to finally heal what is often taboo in spiritual circles: The split we feel between money and spirituality.
What does that split often look like?
Spiritually-focused people may think financial matters are, ‘unspiritual’. We may even hold feelings of guilt or distrust, or an attitude of distaste about money. As with any shadow aspect, this will appear in our lives in many ways through our unconscious views and behaviors, such as unsustainably giving our energy to other people or to good causes.
And, our issues around money will surely affect the very heart of our spiritual life; our generosity.
Generosity vs Tightness
Yes, our tightness around money shows up in our spiritual life, too. Toward our teachers and their invaluable teachings, and our community of friends. We see the tightness, yet we turn away from it and hope it will sort itself out.
So, though we light up at a teacher’s words and presence, we may bounce when we see a course fee attached to spending time with them. And we may nickel and dime each other on shared meals or small expenses, instead of seizing the chance to be generous. Though we see it, we keep putting it off, allowing other people to pay and ignoring our feelings and thoughts about the situation.
So, we start to see why working through our relationship to money is as much a part of the spiritual work as anything in our lives.
When we integrate our views about money into our spiritual lives, we’re also better placed to integrate our spiritual aspirations into our working lives. Through this course, you will come to a place of peace, power, and care in your heart in your relationship with money.
Money and spirituality: Healing the split
Money is not evil – we project that onto money. Money is just a piece of paper. So our views about money are a projection of our shadow.
The money and spirituality course aims to bring this money shadow into the light, and heal the split it creates in us.
We all start from where we are, in terms of our relationship with money and spirituality.
You may see it as learning to
- integrate the spiritual with the material – to embrace your earning power so you can do retreats and have interesting experiences in the world, and live with a sense of abundance in all areas
- integrate the material with the spiritual – being ok with having money, and beautiful objects in your home, while not being attached to them. Remembering to keep the inner work above all of this.
Loosening our knots around money
When looking at the relationship between our money and spirituality, in fact we touch more than our patterns and behaviours around money.
All of us have some sort of knot around money. By loosening that knot, we loosen all the related shadow aspects in our daily lives, relationships, and around our ability to earn money. From there, we release energy for what’s important to us. We free up energy to work on our dreams, vision, values, priorities, and awakening.
We invite you to join us and begin releasing these layered knots around money and spirituality. To allow yourself to let go the dam of resistance, shame, guilt, superiority, privilege, and fear. To have the courage to look at your projections onto money and be on your way to a place of integration between the material and the spiritual.
We want you to be lighter, brighter and to give and attract the amount of money you need to manifest your purpose.
Money and Spirituality
Who these courses are for
Do any of these 8 knots sound like you?
- You might be very passionate about your work as an artist, teacher, healer, businessperson, or a change agent. Yet, you seem to repel the very resources you need. Somehow, embracing the money thing feels inauthentic to your values or even evil on some level. Ask yourself: Is it truly noble to be a starving artist or martyr?
- Perhaps you feel money is elusive and you never seem to have it. Or when it does come in, it leaves very quickly. You might be looking for that Prince Charming to show up and save you. Or feel that money should just come because you’re devoting your life to a worthy cause or to your awakening. “Shouldn’t I just trust in the universe that the money comes?” Yet, it doesn’t.
- Perhaps you over give, undervalue yourself in your organization or relationships. You might expect others to read your mind and know how to support you, and they don’t. You might experience feeling unseen, burnt out, with health and money issues calling for your attention.
- Your family may have money but you don’t, giving you mixed experiences of privilege and scarcity. You may try to help others enjoy more abundance and feel your efforts are rejected; or your giving may leave you feeling taken advantage of or dismissed.
- You might be a person with wealth or worldly success. Yet, you may feel ostracized by the very people you want to help. You might not feel as cared for or even made to feel like an outsider by those in the spiritual or mission-based worlds. What is that about?
- You may have mixed feelings about having money, as a spiritual explorer. Perhaps you have come into money before knowing how to handle it skillfully, either practically or psychologically.
- Or perhaps you feel overwhelmed with fear of losing money, despite having enough. Your fear of loss might keep you paralyzed and unable to makedecisions more in alignment with your heart and your own awakening.
- You might feel guilty about having money and find trusting yourselves and others an ongoing challenge. You might not like the distance that money creates between you and others.
What are some of the main patterns that spiritual types have around money?
Dissociation and overgiving are two examples.
In this video the course teacher, Karen McAllister, Certified Money Coach and Board Chair of Clear Sky Meditation Centre, shares some of her insights.
Karen speaks to the main money patterns experienced by spiritual seekers, artists, and those in the non-profit sector.
Online Courses on Money and Spirituality
with Karen McAllister, the mindful money coach
Click here to view upcoming programs
What to Expect:
The course structures itself according to Clear Sky’s Five Principles, which name the qualities of a supportive space for human flourishing. We apply these principles to help you come to a place of peace, ease and clarity around your relationship with money. This course falls under the Fourth Principle, which is, “Cleaning up big areas of your life frees up energy.” The course structure follows each of the other four principles.
Session #1: Honor your space. Metaphorically speaking, we open the door and take a look inside your financial room. For many of us, it is a room full of cobwebs, things not in their place, and dust bunnies running amok. The curtains are closed, and there is a stale, musty smell in the room. How did this room get this way? By applying principle #1, we honor your space, we face the mess and start cleaning it up. We start revisiting the past to see what was not acknowledged and owned around money in the family system and culture.
Session #2: Structure and routine are your friends. We look at the money habits that you currently have and write them all down. What do you need to let go of, and what new habits do you need to take on? How are you going to build them into your structure and routine? We will use the cue, routine and reward from “The Power of Habit” to help you work new routines around your money life. We will share all the apps, budget tools, and a ton of resources for you to guide you in finding the right tool for you around your finances.
Session #3: Communication shapes the space where we meet. We look at building gratitude and generosity practices to help you overcome the fear and scarcity mentality that takes root in our beings because it is the very water of capitalism that we swim in. A model that promotes a chronic sense of not-enoughness in the being. We will learn to become very mindful of the scarcity we feed ourselves and get really good at cutting these dialogues off skillfully and kindly, with fierce discernment.
Session #4: It’s easier with others. What are your relationships with money like with your spouse, your colleagues, and your friends? Do you end up feeling betrayed or tight around money with others, or do you stick your head in the sand and not take responsibility? We will study money and relationships through the lens of the eight money archetypes. Archetypes are powerful teachers and allies, since they inform us of where we need to grow.
Meet your Teacher
Karen McAllister
Karen has worked with clients to transform their money issues, helping them become more effective, professional, and satisfied with their financial situation, and growing a sense of abundance. She brings knowledge and experience of financial issues from the practical, behavioral, and emotional perspectives. Her real magic and superpowers come from studying with her spiritual teachers, Acariya Doug Duncan and Catherine Pawasarat Sensei, for over 20 years. Her teachers specialize in helping their students transcend their issues around money, sex, and power. And she is a beautiful example of the fruits of this work, known in Buddhist philosophy as the bodhisattva path.
Karen holds a degree in Economics and has been certified by Deborah Price of the The Money Coaching Institute as a Certified Money Coach, a Couples Money Coach, and a Business Archetype Coach. She studied with Lynne Twist from the Soul of Money Institute, including Mastering your Money and Transforming your Life, and Lynne’s Fundraising from the Heart program.
Further, Karen has made use of that training through her own role as a founding member at Clear Sky, which operates with a quadruple bottom line. Karen has been Board Chair since 2014 and is leader of Fund Development. Her passion for this arises out of her deep desire to awaken more fully and make the world a better place. She’s seen many amazing spiritual explorers and transformational change agents who want to make a difference yet don’t have the funds they need to truly fulfill their missions–despite the millions of dollars floating around in the economy. And she has also seen the other side. Many spiritual explorers with money who have tried to help others experience more abundance and feel that their efforts have been rejected; or their efforts to be generous have left them feeling taken advantage of or dismissed. Karen’s work is designed to change this.
Karen wants you to show up as an integrated and whole human being. She’ll help you direct and attract financial resources in meaningful ways, steering away from greed and fear and towards love, generosity, collaboration, and reciprocity.