“Spiritual Marketing”: Manipulation, or a Net to Catch Souls?

It is not about you!

(Second of the Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz)

Yoshua was a carpenter, but he mostly hung out with fishermen. To articulate his mission to his followers, he invented the metaphor of throwing a net to capture others, “I am going out to catch Souls, do you want to follow?”, he asked one fine day, and his disciples joined his mission to help others in their journey to find GOD.

I told a friend the other day who is writing a book that he needs to have a hook in the beginning to capture his audience. In his case, he has a beautiful one of an impressive guy he once met on his Asia trip. When he asked him where he was from, only responded, “does it matter?” Well, it didn’t, as synchronicity had it, they met in a grocery store back in the US.

My friend didn’t want to hook anyone, so he asked, “Doesn’t marketing stand for manipulation?” “Well”, I replied, “think of a struggling potential reader of your book, beaten up by life at that moment. Say, she picked up the book randomly, and would put it down as quickly, but maybe that little story captures her so much that she keeps reading, and is transformed by it.”

Marketing, manipulation or a guided tour to consume a worthwhile product or service? There is no telling, only you can tell on a case by case basis. While spiritual service it is not about you, you might write something that makes you happy as well as GOD. To paraphrase the greatest fisherman of all time a little, “Give the ego what is his, and give GOD what is HERS.”