All profound and lasting transformation requires a sacrificial component.
A useful analogy for demonstrating why this is so, may be employed through the use of the three philosophical principles of alchemy.
All manifested life is comprised of three philosophical principles or essentials – sulfur, salt, and mercury. The principles are philosophical because they are symbolic – sulfur represents spirit, salt represents matter, and mercury represents the mediator between sulfur and salt, or spirit and matter. Another way of looking at the essentials is through the correspondences of heaven, earth, and humanity. Visually, the three philosophical principles are displayed as a triangle.
Recently I had discovered something interesting in my healing work.
I have been exploring various pricing models to include free, lower cost, and premium pricing. Without fail the premium priced offerings have delivered the most profound and lasting results. It’s not that the free and lower cost offerings did not produce results, but they paled in comparison when compared to the premium offerings.
I wondered…why is this so?
One conclusion that I discovered early on is that people generally need to have skin in the game. They need to have put something forward to honor their commitment. Without skin in the game it’s very easy and tempting to blow something off. Especially when it’s something that is really going to shift your life, which can be really scary.
But I had found that it actually goes much deeper than this.
Having skin in the game has a deeper sacrificial component which relates directly to the three essentials. In order to manifest something on the physical plane we require sulfur, salt, and mercury, the same is true for lasting transformation.
The three essentials in this instance are the coach (sulfur), the client (salt), and the sacrificial component (mercury).
I have discovered that the sacrificial component can be anything of value – it just must be something that you are giving up or sacrificing for the sake of accelerating your growth or transformation.
The greater the sacrifice, the greater the result.
On the low end is time. You will need to sacrifice a great deal of time in order to accomplish a transformation that lasts over time if it isn’t augmented by money.
A little higher on the scale, but not much higher is an exchange of value such as bartering. This can work, but I have found in my experience that bartering doesn’t really do much. I have found it more effective to actually send money to another person and have them deliver their service. Then when it is time for me to deliver on the exchange they purchase the corresponding service and then I deliver on my end. This creates the flow of money, or energy. The flow of money is very powerful in and of itself.
It’s also interesting to note that when I decided to no longer barter services that things really picked up in my business. It was literally like a switch flipped.
This now leads us to money.
Money is a powerful catalyst for transformation. Adding money to the mix is akin to adding an accelerant or fuel to the fire. Everything speeds up. I have experienced situations where the moment I have paid for a service that the change happens nearly instantly. I have had clients communicate this to me as well. Once intent is set and the sacrifice has been made, the work itself is practically redundant.
I have also discovered that the higher the amount of money, the greater the acceleration and transformation.
When adding a sacrificial component to the mix such as money, it’s like declaring to the Universe that you are ready for the next stage of evolution. You have learned the lessons needed at the present stage and are ready for the next level.