I have invented a service (SWEDA) for others that is difficult to identify the benefits of without first experiencing it. Since, ostensibly, all it entails is interaction via forum and skype ~ WORDS ~ the initial assumption seems to be that this is something that ought to be free. It's not costing me anything (besides my time), after all, and the Internet is all about the free traffic of information. Even the fact that I have started a private forum pushes a lot of peoples buttons. That's just what I am up against: consensus reality, and specifically, that pocket of CR that has formed a new consensus about how to break the old consensus, complete with rules and assumptions about how private forums are elitist, and so on (the 2nd matrix).
But this is all besides the point, regarding why so many people react with suspicion, and even hostility, to my charging to provide an existential detection service.
The penny finally dropped after talking to Joe. It's really very simple: I enjoy what I do.
This fact communicates to my audience. How could it not? Enjoyment is unmistakable. My audience (that's you), then, sees that I enjoy doing what I do, and they hear me asking for money to carry on doing it. The conscious question people are asking is: "Why should I pay for something when I don't know what I'm getting?" But, underneath that, the real question (I now suspect) is: "Why should I pay this guy to do something he obviously likes doing?"
We are programmed from very early on to accept that whatever we do to earn a living will not be for our enjoyment. It will be from sheer necessity. We learn to accept this "reality," and to compromise our natures and our desires so as to submit to society's decree. In order to live within the system, we have to become slaves to that system, and wind up doing things that we really don't want to do in order to have the money to do the things we do want to do. That's "reality." Right?
But what if someone did exactly what they wanted to be doing, what they most enjoyed, and got paid for it? Within the frame of reference of our social mandates, this is anathema, unthinkable, a fantasy. What's more, it is an affront to all those hard-working people who have sacrificed their time and compromised their beings in order to get along. It's insulting!
If I'm right, the reason people question me for charging money for what I do is less about their doubting the value of what I am doing, and more to do with an unconscious resentment that someone might actually be able to earn a living doing what they love. People are thinking to themselves: "I have to work for a living; why shouldn't he?"
(Sure, there are people who enjoy their work; but there's still the assumption that they wouldn't be doing it if they didn't have to, and that they just learned to enjoy it by getting good at it. And even these people are fairly exceptional, and probably especially in my audience, which seems to consist of a lot of slackers who, like me, are trying to avoid work altogether.)
The irony of this is that, in work as much as sex, enjoyment is above all what improves our performance at it. The more I enjoy what I do, the better I am at doing it, and vice versa. Enjoyment is the essential factor in anything we do, most of all what we do "for a living."
What I do for a living is to facilitate awakening, by enhancing individuals' intelligence and self-awareness. In a nut-shell.
But beyond the content, there is also the form. What I am doing with SWEDA is pioneer work. It's never been attempted before. It is opening up new possibilities, not only for myself and for anyone who comes aboard, but also for anyone out there who is paying close attention.
People don't like that. To see new possibilities means to question the validity of the old possibilities, to recognize them as limited and limiting, and worse, to see themselves that way too: limited and limiting.
So if what I do fails, you can tell yourselves that you had it right all along. Nothing to worry about here. You're living as wage-slaves because, hell, that's the only choice we got, right? But if it succeeds, then you get to question all that time and energy you've been putting into drudgery. Because you too could have tried something entirely new, taken that chance, and also succeeded. That would really suck, right?
If I'm right about this, many of you out their are unconsciously invested in seeing me fail, because you are consciously invested in the old way of doing (and seeing) things. It's the way that says enjoyment and necessity have nothing to do with each other. It's the way you tell yourselves that, first you need to do what's necessary, and then, once that's done, and your future is secured, then you get to enjoy your "down-time." Doing what you love is all very well, but first you have to do what you hate. That's the program. And if you don't hate what you're doing, you aren't doing it right.
Me, I don't have much leisure time at all. Couple of hours in the evening watching Lost & Mad Men. But then, I enjoy my work day so much it sometimes goes on into the night. There are days when I don't facilitate anyone's awakening, but that's not by choice. I'm not doing this for money. I'm doing it for love of being. Which is exactly why I get paid for doing it.
This is a new way of doing business. Those who support me now, will be investing in that new way, and I suspect, they will find themselves supported by it further on down the line. I may even be paying your wages some day. ; )
On the other hand, I could fail. That's okay too. Which way it goes, is largely up to you.
How's that for an awesome response-ability?
13 comments:
The issue for me in regards to possibly participating in SWEDA has never been one of money, but one of trust... and also ability.
I think what you're doing is mostly about your own journey... which is cool.
It's fascinating to follow and useful to myself in many ways, but anyone who appears to claim they have the "answer" or the "solution" sets the alarm bells off for me.
But that's just my opinion.
*Have* I claimed somewhere to have "the solution"? Pls quote me.
Your comment smacks of contradiction, & it sounds to me like you are being evasive rather than honest. If it's been useful for you to follow from afar, why wouldn't it be that much more useful up close and personal?
How is there a difference between my own journey and those who come along for the ride? If this *wasn't* part of my own journey, would that make it more trustworthy? Your comment makes no sense.
I suspect what you are really reacting to/against is the idea of trusting in someone else's greater experience and the authority that comes from it. In other words, the old "I can do this alone" insistence of the sovereign ego to awaken on its own terms.
If so, then maybe the alarm bells have little to do with what you think, or claim to think, about what I am doing?
Maybe people hesitate to pay because we have been informed by many of our previous spiritual leaders that you cannot pay for your own awakening and those that would charge you for what little "help" they may be able to offer [if any, a lot of the time] should be avoided. "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you." "The greatest gift is to give people your enlightenment, to share it. It has to be the greatest." There are a billion other phrases like that. Maybe they exist for good reasons.
It makes me curious that you wrote so much about that, and that you wrote how you did about it. Kind of like emotional blackmail, you know. Why do you need to convince anyone that they should pay anything? If what you think you have is worth paying for then people will pay for it.
And there are millions of people that do what they love for a living and get paid to do it. Ski-instructors and actors, cops, athletes, movie stars, musicians, authors, cooks. And people love those people, as well as dislike them. But they still go watch movies and concerts and learn how to ski or play instruments or sing. Right? Did I miss something?
JK, I think ur reaching a little.
Just let the people come as they come: "if you build it they will come." You know?
Theres too many ways to interpret this stuff and when anyone tries to put it all into one way or chalk it all up to one thing or something like that it starts to feel---false.
The first anonymous had a good point though: what incentive is there to pay when no one knows what theyre paying for? How does anyone know you can actually do anything with them? Maybe youre totally unequipped to handle certain types or levels of experience that you yourself haven't had. Maybe some people dont think your experience is 'greater' than their own. In amount or depth or length. plus your reaction was really defensive. and if you dont have answers how can you unplug anyone? getting unplugged sounds like an answer, even more if you use it in the context of the matrix movie. morpheus said "It is the answer to the question youve been asking all your life." or somthing like that! Anyway, just some thoughts because after I read your letter it made me feel like because I have doubts and see loose ends and things like that then I'm supposed to be hiding from myself that I really want to see you fail? I didn't agree with that. I dont wanna see people fail just because i might not wanna pay for their movie or music. i hope I make sense, not the best with english!
maybe i want to see myself fail and need your help to do it?
; )
Lol, are you assuming that i'm a woman? I assure you that i'm not :-)
Nah, i didn't think you were really offering unplugging. I've forwarded a link to your blog to some friends who struggle with the issue of earning a living following their passions, as i thought the points you make would be helpful to them.
cheers,
Brooke
Set your worth Jason. You're the only one who can. There are all kinds of smut being peddled by the tons; landfill for our children. I also see tons of, what I consider, crappy paintings selling for hundreds of dollars. With that in mind, it may be a difficult service to sell to those with certain expectations in mind. People can discover their own weaknesses and buried issues. Who knows?
Maybe some community feedback would ease people's minds some. Then again, it could be a let down if everyone else had a good experience and one person didn't.
I have had accupuncture and some somatic bodywork to deal with a spinal injury from a snowboarding accident. The accupuncture was good for some things but not all. The somatic work helped my muscles reprogram a bit better and suits my case a bit better. But I had to try it first, there were no guarantees, and it didn't demerit or devalue the accupuncture.
Good luck to all.
Hey Jason, just to let you know, I have always rooted for your success. If for no other reason than that you are examining the issue of personal identity and its deconstruction.
I have been happily unemployed for a year and a half, but I recently found work and am now quite happy to be working (at half my previous wage). I have seldom self-identified as being what I do during working hours, preferring to call myself a guerrilla ontologist. So my strategy is opposite to yours in that my vocation is different than my avocation. But that is only FYI because your strategy is what is right for you.
Anyway my plan, now that I have work, has been to send a monetary vote of confidence your way, but I’m not a joiner (can’t help this) so any benefit I might derive will have to be from a distance.
Any monies sent are not in response to this post.
Thanks Sounder.
Don't take any of what follows as personal; it's not.
What does it really mean to say "I'm not a joiner"? It means that anyone who joins sweda would have to be a joiner, otherwise they wouldn't join. People who say they aren't joiners always feel superior to people who they think are joiners. Their refusal to be joiners is meant to be an indication of their independent spirits. I know, because I was never "a joiner" either.
What's at base of the insistence on not being a joiner is this: I am going to do this *my way,* and I don't need anyone else to show me how. It is the death-whine of personal sovereignty.
It's a symptom of a culture that propagates individualism over tribalism, and it is an enormous and extremely sophisticated form of brainwash.
We are all joiners, and like cells in the body, if we don't surrender our self-wills and start finding and bonding with our collective, then we are going to wind up becoming bonded with the cancer instead.
So better to say not, "I'm not a joiner," but, I haven't found my collective yet.
Don't stop looking, sounder.
A lot of assumptions...(not a critique as such, but observations) For instance, I am not a 'joiner' but this fact has also frequently left me feeling inferior to others who CAN join, where I usually CANNOT. Any tribe or collective I would be ABLE to join (fully) would have to switch so often and so drastically as to not resemble a tribe or collective at all anymore. Where you say what is at the heart is 'doing things my way' I have for much time seen that what is at it's heart is not defiance but awareness that no one way is possible. Infinite possibilities abound, and occur simultaneously. I have always felt that.
And the best part is that you still get to NOT be a joiner, since this is your thing and people join YOU!
So while you might see the death-whine of personal sovereignty, it would be informative to recall that in many cases this is actually the birth-pangs of infinity. Perhaps in all cases this is so. For at every moment the infinite stretches out infinitely.
Poetic but evasive. Lotta fancy talk and tap-dancing, but that doesn't engage at the personal level. Can see why you're not for sweda. People who identify with the infinite get cut down to size pretty quickly. ; )
Or is that just what you tell yourself? ;) I'd be interested to know how many people actually agree with that, especially among those who get 'cut down to size'. And it's not that I identify with the infinite, it is that the infinite tears identity away, exposing even tribes and collectives as false ego shells (even, or possibly especially, when they think otherwise). And as for as being 'cut down to size', if it all resembles you calling something evasive fancy talk and tap dancing that doesn't connect on a personal level, then perhaps that is why :I am: not for SWEDA. Because everything you said in the post before mine can be seen also as poetic and fancy, not supposed to be taken personally, and everything you said after can also be seen as evasive! What you did there was first to exclude me, and then to exclude the infinite. I am not sure on what grounds you are doing this though.
And lastly, I do not see this culture as propagating 'individualism over tribalism' in any real sense. Perhaps your perception is a remnant of your 'non-joiner' days? I see a superficial hint of this, but the trail dies once I pick up the scent of corporations, and to a slightly lesser extent governments, intent on fostering the tribalism you seem to think we lack. I'd just like to explore the idea further before settling.
you sound defensive.
Or is that just what you tell yourself? I was attempting to explore further. I have nothing to prove, but would like to say that calling me defensive seems evasive! A pattern emerges...accuse someone of fancy talk and tap-dancing and when they respond, call them defensive! That's an effective method of deflecting any further open and intelligent discussion. I surrender. Perhaps I should just end this. You are superior to me and your way is better than mine! ;) All the best to you!
(I forgot to mention, I'm not the first anonymous, only the last two posts belong to me. Perhaps that is why you formed the idea that SWEDA isn't for me? You assumed I was the first anonymous? That would clarify things a bit. The first post I made was on 19 June.)
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