Why is Vedic meditation so expensive?
Compared to other techniques, courses, classes, books and apps, Vedic meditation can seem pretty steep. Indeed, it took me a year of grappling with the fee before I finally took the plunge – and then spent the next 12 months kicking myself for not diving in sooner!
Since it’s a question most students have before committing to the practice, I thought I’d break it down.
Money is energy = Monergy
One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is that everything in life is energy. Money is no different. The money in your pocket was given to you in exchange for your energy – most likely your profession. You made that money by going to work and doing your job. Therefore, money has value. In our society, money is one of the most valuable incarnations of energy, so much so that we base our entire social systems and lives around it (whether this is right or wrong is a conversation for another time!).
The theory that meditation should be free comes from an antiquated idea of meditation as a monastic practice. Once upon a time, a student would give up their worldly existence and take up temple life. But that didn’t mean they learned for free. Instead, they paid for their tuition with another form of energy. They would cook, clean the temple and assist in any way needed, every single day. Immense amounts of energy were exchanged on a daily basis, it just wasn’t financial energy.
Another big truth I’ve come to know is that human beings typically don’t value that which they haven’t had to invest in, or make a sacrifice for. If there hasn’t been an exchange of some sort, we are less likely to value what we have received. For meditation, this means that we don’t practice what we’ve learned. How many free apps have you downloaded and barely/rarely used? What about the many how-to books that sit on your shelf, hardly touched, their contents left un-actioned? How many $20 drop-in classes have resulted in a daily practice? That’s not to say that these things have no value or that they don’t work, but when there is no significant investment, it becomes very easy for us to say, “Oh, I can’t be bothered doing that. It didn’t cost much anyway, so no big loss if I let it slip.” Let me tell you, when you’ve spent $800 on a meditation course, that voice stops. I know for myself, I became committed in the early days because there was no way I’d let that money go to waste. Then, once the benefits started to show, it was easy to keep up the practice. Now, I’d happily pay triple, knowing the incredible results that come from a daily practice.
Simply put, we need to have skin in the game.
It’s also important to note that you’re not really paying for the meditation itself. You’re paying for your teacher’s experience, expertise, knowledge and support. If none of these things mattered, everyone could learn from a book and be done with it. But that’s a little like learning to swim by reading an instruction manual. You might be able to do it yourself, but how would you ever really know you’re getting it right? How would you fine tune it so that you were practising in the best possible way? You need a swim coach with experience on teaching people how to swim safely and effectively. Meditation is the same. All students need a teacher to share their experiences with, to discuss and refine whenever they might be a little off track. This means having access to a teacher whenever needed, and why Vedic meditation teachers make themselves available to their students after the course through regular group meditations and private catch ups when needed.
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