You Shouldn't Be Charging for Spiritual Gifts You Haven’t Trained for Yet
I’m going to say something that will make some folks uncomfortable….
Having a spiritual gift isn’t the same as being qualified to offer it to others for compensation. The two things are related but they aren’t identical and the gap between them is where a significant amount of harm in the spiritual healing space is quietly happening.
This post isn’t a critique of anyone specific, but rather a conversation about ethics, accountability, and what genuine spiritual development actually requires, and it’s also, a story about my own journey through that process, because I don’t think I have standing to talk about this without also naming what I have invested in my own development.
What I Did Before I Called Myself a Medium Publicly
In October 2019, I attended the Arthur Findlay College in Stansted, England for Advanced Mediumship training.
https://youtu.be/Ymbck7yoTK4?si=rQMBbZO4yuB1fRSR
Watch my 2019 vlog of attending the Arthur Findlay College.
If you aren’t familiar with the Arthur Findlay College, it’s widely considered one of the most rigorous institutions in the world for mediumship development and spiritual education, and it’s not a weekend workshop or an online certification, but an intensive residential training environment with a long history of serious spiritual education, where working with the evidence and with the ethics of mediumship is treated with the same rigor that clinical training applies to therapy.
I documented that experience on my vlog, up above. I want you to know that this type of training exists. I want you to understand that when I talk about the ethics of training, I’m not talking abstractly. I’m talking about something I invested in and continue to invest in within real time, real money, real vulnerability, and real surrender into before I offered mediumship professionally.
That training at Arthur Findlay wasn’t the beginning of my development. It was a milestone within a longer journey that included ongoing work with experienced mediums, continued mentorship, consistent practice with ethical accountability, and the sustained commitment to developing the gift rather than simply expressing it.
I still train and develop, because the learning doesn’t end when the practice has begun, and if anything, the deeper the practice goes, the clearer I become. I understand how much there is still to learn and how important it is to keep learning it.
The Arthur Findlay College isn’t the only organization to develop with. We cannot forget about ancestral practitioners in which practices are passed down through cultural trainings. Those are just as important too.
What Ethical Spiritual Development Actually Requires
I want to be specific here because vague calls to “do the work” are easy to dismiss. Here is what I mean concretely.
Mentorship with someone who’s more developed than you, not a peer accountability group or a community of people at the same level of development all confirming each other’s experiences, but someone who has been doing this longer, who can see what you can’t yet see about your own practice, and who will tell you the truth about where your discernment is unclear or your ego is interfering or your gift is not yet ready for a specific kind of work.
Structured training in the specific modality you intend to offer, because mediumship has a body of practice, a set of ethical guidelines, and a tradition of development that has been refined over generations, just as tarot has its own depth of study, and energy healing modalities have their own requirements. Innate abilities open the door while training is what teaches you to walk through it without causing harm.
Ethical accountability for what you offer and how, which means being honest about what you can and can’t do, giving accurate disclaimers before readings (Just like this transparent blog I recently wrote) knowing the difference between what you genuinely received and what you wanted to receive or what the client needed to hear, knowing when a situation requires clinical support rather than or alongside spiritual support, and knowing when to refer out.
Continued development even after you have begun practicing, because the practitioner who stopped developing the moment they started charging isn’t a practitioner who’s honoring the gift and development isn’t a precondition for practice that you complete and then move past, nope, it’s a lifelong commitment that is part of what makes the practice what it is.
Honest self-assessment, which is the hardest of all, because it requires you to ask regularly and without defensiveness whether what you’re offering is actually coming from your clearest channel or from something less clear. It’s also very important to know whether your discernment is reliable, knowing if you’re operating inside your actual scope, and asking yourself whether your clients are being served or being harmed by what you offer.
Why This Matters for the People Who Sit Across From You
Every person who sits across from a medium or a spiritual healer is in some form of vulnerability, having come because something in their life has broken open, whether that it’s a death, a loss, a spiritual crisis, or a question about who they are or what their life means, or whether the person they loved still exists somewhere they can reach.
That vulnerability isn’t something to be exploited, even unintentionally. This is easily exploited by practitioners who haven’t done enough development to know the difference between what they’re genuinely receiving and what they are projecting. Who have not developed enough discernment to know when a client needs to be referred to clinical support. Who have not built enough ethical infrastructure around their practice to hold themselves accountable for the impact of what they offer.
The harm that comes from an underdeveloped spiritual practice that’s often invisible looks like this:
The client who received an inaccurate reading about her deceased mother and organized her grief around it.
The person who was told something specific about their health that was not true and made decisions based on it.
The woman who was kept in an emotionally dependent relationship with a practitioner because the practitioner’s unresolved need for significance was being met through the dynamic.
These things happen, and they happen less when practitioners take their development seriously.
The Spiritual Community’s Resistance to This Conversation
I know this conversation is uncomfortable because I have watched it make people uncomfortable when I’ve approached it before.
There’s a framework in some spiritual communities that suggests that the gift, because it comes from Spirit, is inherently ethical in its expression and that if the intention is love, the outcome will be love. Some believe that requiring training or accountability is somehow a Western, institutional imposition on a natural spiritual capacity.
I disagree with that framework, and I disagree with it specifically because I have seen the harm it produces and it’s bullshit.
The gift is real and the love behind the offering is real, but neither of those things are sufficient protection against the harm that comes from underdeveloped discernment, poor ethical boundaries, and/or practice offered before the practitioner is ready, because love and good intention are the beginning of ethical spiritual practice, not the entirety of it.
What I Offer and Why I Believe I’m Ready to Offer It
I offer mediumship readings not because the gift arrived and I began offering it. I offer them because I have invested 16 years of structured development, rigorous training at the Arthur Findlay College, ongoing work with experienced mediums, and consistent ethical accountability into developing the gift before and alongside offering it.
I offer spiritual development mentoring not because I have arrived somewhere perfect but because I have walked the specific path of developing these gifts with integrity and I know what that path requires and where its difficulties live.
I offer grief counseling not because mediumship and clinical work feel naturally connected but because I have done the specific work of integrating them, ethically, rigorously, and with full accountability to both the clinical and the spiritual standards that govern each.
I’m telling you this because I think you deserve to know what’s behind the offer before you accept it.
Book With Someone Who Has Done the Work
🕊️ Mediumship Reading with Amber 30 minutes or 1 hour. Evidential, ethical, grounded in years of rigorous development including training at the Arthur Findlay College and continued mentorship with experienced mediums. Available worldwide. [Book at www.healingwithamber.co]
🔮 Free Spiritual Consultation if you’re navigating spiritual experiences, developing your own gifts, or exploring what spiritual development mentoring could look like for you, the consultation is where we start. [Book at www.healingwithamber.co]
🌿 The Grief Sanctuary is ongoing space and monthly practices for women at the intersection of grief and spiritual development. [Join at $27/month at upgrade here]
✨ The Inner Circle is for women who are ready for deeper, more personalized ongoing support and access. [Upgrade Subscription]
With care and intention,
Amber Choisella
