Worth their Weight

The stones often visit me in my dreams. Sometimes as themselves and sometimes they come disguised as an animal or something else. A group of Mochi Balls showed up in my dream the other day and reminded me about the way that we value the crystals and other things in our world. They inspired this light log post.

The bigger, the better

In this world we’ve constructed, we have collectively decided that bigger is better and therefore worth more. We value things by their size. The bigger they are, the more they cost.

It is like this with the crystals as well. The bigger the crystal, the more it costs. Of course, rarity plays a part in their value but even then, they are priced by weight and the higher the number is on the scale, the higher their price.

Let’s take Quartz for example. It is one of the more abundant minerals of our earth. However, the crystals that have a watery clarity or which are perfectly in tact without so much as a tiny ding are rarer to find. Those crystals are more highly coveted and thus come with a bigger price tag. Even then, in addition to the higher price of these clearest crystals, the is an added premium which is calculated according to their size.

A new way

I used to price crystals by their weight, like every other crystal dealer. I separated them into small, medium and large sizes on my website and there was never any questions about my method of pricing. You still might find remnants of this old system of valuing crystals on my website. Those few that I haven’t yet found and fixed. But I do things differently now.

I feel comfortable with the way I offer the stone beings now, but it was not always so easy for me. I once struggled with pricing crystals. In truth it was not the pricing that had me feeling stuck––it was selling them at all. It took me a while before I could fully understand what was bothering me. It was that I see crystals as living, conscious creations and putting prices on them just didn't feel right to me.

This is not me judging anyone who sells crystals or other sentient beings. I let go of such narrow opinions many years ago when I realized that plants were also living, conscious beings. Let me explain what I mean.

It's not all black and white

I have always gravitated towards being a vegan and after going back and forth a few times between eating meat and a plant based diet, I chose plant based. Full disclosure — I judged meat eaters from here to Saturday when I first became vegetarian, which was when I was around 8. Things were much more black and white for me back them.

Once I realized where meat was coming from I was appalled. The decision to become vegetarian was pretty simple. I loved animals. I didn’t want to be responsible for the suffering or their death. So I just wouldn’t eat meat. I also had no qualms about letting people know why I was vegetarian. As I grew up, I realized that the world was not so cut and dry. Not by any means.

The Secret life of Plants

I eventually grew out of my critical days of championing for animal rights through sarcastic comments to meat eaters. Especially when I came to terms with my own hypocrisy. My spiritual path helped me to release much of my judgements, and the remnants I carried silently. Things really shifted for me when I began to awaken to the vast, expansiveness of consciousness and I let go of what I’d believed about sentience. (That is a whole blog post by itself. I could fill many pages with what I learned from ants alone.) How can I judge another for eating a sentient being, when the plants that I was eating had feelings too. (See the “Secret Life of Plants”).

My epiphany helped me to be clearer in my choices, but also to let go of any judgements I had about the decisions others make. I definitely have strong beliefs which guide how I live my life and run my business but I also honour and respect the rights of others to follow their own beliefs. I have come to see that there are many other perspectives besides my own. So when I talk about how I work with the stone beings, it is without prejudice for how others choose to do so.

All my crystals are free

So back to how I set my prices. In the spirit of honouring the stone beings as conscious co-creators, the crystals on my website are offered freely as a gift. The costs are for service in fair trade. It may sound like we’re playing semantics but this simple shift in perspective and intention when sending and receiving the crystals makes a powerful difference in their energy.

When you honour the crystals as living beings rather than as healing tools, you change your relationship with them and thus your experience with them will transform. Don’t take my word for it, though. If you’re open to it, I invite you to get to know the crystals as conscious co-creators and notice if that affects what you get out of the connection.

I had always felt the healing energy of the stone beings and at some level I have always known them to be alive. However, once I gave myself permission to accept this as truth and speak openly about it with my community, the crystals have shown me even more of their magic. They really are lovely, generous beings and will meet us wherever we are in relationship to them.