Integral Theory study group in Portland, Oregon

This morning I woke up feeling both profound sadness and joy: Sadness around my inability to heal others and joy at the richness of blessings in my life. Realizing that these feelings are a spiral, and that, like the ocean, they come and go, kissing the shore and leaving their mark. The sadness felt like a wave, the joy like the ocean, and tho' they appear to be separate, they are not.

The workshop today was about gender healing within each of us. Anyaa led the workshop, which consisted of us pairing off in gender pairs, each holding space for the other as we travelled through the process.
We each brought a crystal that was anointed with spikenard, the purest of essence oil, which is said to be used by Mary of Magdalene to wash and anoint Jesus' feet. Using the crystal to pass through the chakras, beginning at the crown chakra, each of us passed through both the masculine and feminine essence of our selves, as Anyaa led us through an amazing healing process that allowed us to let go of all of the gender wounding that has haunted us through the ages. The end result was as if a huge weight of guilt, sadness, and pain had been lifted from each of us. I highly recommend the process if you ever have an opportunity to experience it. That night we each did a presentation on our gift to the world. I have discovered that I am a gifted stand-up comic, as I became, in costume, Swami Goji, who was berry, berry happy to be there. The group of 16 cracked up as I explained that I was so enlightened that instead of an aura, I had a Corona. I then channeled the enlightened spirituality of Gomer Pyle and Jimmy Stewart, who proclaimed that it was A Wonderful After Life.....After taking some questions about spirituality (some of the dumbest questions I ever heard). In the future, I'll wrap it up channeling Louie Armstrong singing "What a Wonderful World. Like so many groups I've been in during the past few years, the connections with the others are fast and deep, and I've made some wonderful new friends.
We have Thursday off and the actual conference begins on Friday.

I’ve written a lot about the mindset behind becoming a lightworker (or darkworker), but what do lightworkers actually do? What does the business of lightworking look like?

First, it’s important to understand that the ultimate goal of a lightworker is basically the expansion and elevation of consciousness. Darkworkers have essentially the same primary aim, but lightworkers pursue a very different path to get there.

It’s helpful to understand the lightworker path by contrasting it with the darkworker path.

Keep in mind that the vast majority of people aren’t polarized one way or the other, so chances are you’ll recognize some shades of yourself in both paths, but their pure forms will likely seem too extreme to you. However, you can greatly accelerate your path of growth by consciously choosing one path or the other instead of mixing the two (incompatible) approaches.

The Darkworker Path

For a darkworker the elevation of one’s own consciousness is all that matters. Usually this is achieved via the pursuit of greater power and control of one’s life. Darkworkers ultimately want to be the kings and queens of their own universes. If you don’t deeply desire some form of dominance and control over your reality, you aren’t a darkworker.

Since the consciousness of others is viewed as either nonexistent or irrelevant, darkworkers are willing to do things that lower the consciousness of others, acting like energy vampires. They believe it’s possible to create a net gain for themselves at the expense of others.

With respect to the list in 10 Ways to Become More Conscious, a darkworker will often employ the exact opposite strategies in dealing with others if s/he finds it personally advantageous to do so. This includes lying, using fear and intimidation tactics, being cruel, squashing others’ dreams, keeping secrets, and manipulating others. It’s a very competitive mindset. Darkworkers often make the people around them more fearful, more apathetic, and less conscious. Treating others this way isn’t their goal; for darkworkers it’s only a means to an end. Socially it may be important for a darkworker to avoid being caught doing such things, but they don’t suffer serious inner resistance to such a path.

You can often detect the presence of a darkworker by the effect they have on your consciousness. For example, if you work for a company run by darkworkers, you may perceive that going to work at your job actually lowers your consciousness compared to if you just stayed home. Going to work is like entering an awareness-lowering cloud, inviting you to resonate with lower states of consciousness such as fear, greed, apathy, depression, and worry. When you leave work, you feel like you’re coming out of that dark cloud; it’s like you can finally breathe and be yourself again. If you recognize that you’re in such a situation and continue to allow yourself to be vamped because you feel too powerless to do otherwise, then you have first-hand knowledge of how effective darkworking can be. The weaker your independent will becomes, the more you empower the darkworker that’s using you. Think of this as energetic slavery.

The Lightworker Path

Lightworkers believe that everyone is part of a conscious whole, and lightworkers identify with that collective consciousness. They still have their own egos, but they regard their individuality as an avatar of that collective consciousness. So the expansion of individual consciousness is a tool of a greater consciousness rather than an end unto itself.

For a lightworker the notion of trying to get ahead at someone else’s expense makes no sense. It’s like your left hand is competing with your right. There can be no winners and losers in life. We’re all in this together. We’re all part of the same whole.

Lightworkers feel very connected to other people. They regard others as extensions of themselves. The basis for that sense of connection is unconditional love. This includes love and acceptance of darkworkers as well. Lightworkers recognize that darkworkers are also aspects of the greater unfolding consciousness.

A lightworker uses the ideas in 10 Ways to Become More Conscious internally as well as externally. This includes discovering and sharing truth, being courageous and encouraging others to do the same, and favoring compassion over cruelty. Lightworkers strive to raise the consciousness of those around them. They don’t intentionally vamp off other people.

If you work for a company or organization run by lightworkers, you can expect it to be a consciousness-raising experience. Going to work is like entering a cloud of light. You look forward to it and almost hate to leave. You know you’re performing a valuable service that helps others. At the end of the day you feel great about your job and the people you work with. You may even want to extend the work into your personal time. Going to work gives you feelings of peace, joy, love, contribution, compassion, and connection. Working feels like breathing love — an energizing experience.

One of the interesting ways in which darkworkers and lightworkers can get into a bit of competition with each other arises from how they treat other people. Lightworkers are constantly trying to raise the consciousness of others, especially by sharing ideas, truth, attention, and positive intentions. When lightworkers do this to pawns of darkworkers, it can threaten the darkworker’s power base. Darkworkers don’t like it when their slaves are made aware of their slavery and offered the choice to be free. It’s like stealing their food.

Conscious Lightworking

Now let’s get into the details of lightworking. What does the path actually look like?

In order to raise the consciousness of others, a lightworker must commit to living consciously. A lightworker serves as an example of conscious living. This doesn’t necessarily mean becoming a teacher. It means that a lightworker makes very conscientious and deliberate choices about how to live.

Lightworking requires that you accept full and complete responsibility for your life. You have to wean yourself off socially conditioned habits that don’t serve you and replace them with deliberate, conscious choices.

Living Honestly

Lightworkers embrace the truth and live honestly. Lightworkers often spend a lot of time on introspection, always looking for deeper truths. They’re very considerate of the meaning behind their actions.

Lightworking requires that you rid your life of falsehood and inauthenticity. This is one of the first activities new lightworkers undertake. It’s a process of shedding lower energies that are incongruent with the new path. This may include quitting jobs, leaving relationships, dropping friends, or moving to new places. The lightworker looks to get rid of anything that would likely lead him/her astray.

In truth this process can be very difficult. It may even feel like a part of you is dying. But it’s important to realize that inauthentic attachments aren’t the real you and can’t help you on the path of lightworking.

A good mantra for lightworkers during this time is: Simplify.

My personal experience of this process was challenging but not nearly as bad as some people have had it. I came to this path very gradually over a period of many years. What I still find challenging is keeping the lower energies from coming back into my life and getting re-attached to them. Due to the nature of my work, I have a lot of people and ideas swirling through my life — feedback from readers, business opportunities, products to review, phone calls to return – all at varying levels of consciousness. Some of these ideas are very authentic; others are clearly coming from a place of fear or greed. It’s tough to keep some of the lower energies from sticking to me. What actually helps me most is writing about them and sharing these challenges. That serves as a way for me to loosen those attachments and raise my thoughts back up again.

Incidentally, if you think the word energy is too new-agey, don’t get hung up on it. I use the term to refer to anything in that has a consciousness-altering effect on your thinking, including people, places, experiences, objects, and activities. If spending time with one person makes you feel depressed, while another person makes you happy, we would say that the first person is of a lower energy than the second. The word energy is just a way of describing how people, places, and circumstances affect your thinking.

Once the lightworker has shed enough of the old energies, new energies can be invited in. This means making new friends, pursuing new work, and basically creating a different type of life. It’s also possible to shed lower energies while adding higher energies at the same time (like dropping negative friends while replacing them with positive ones). I think it’s a bit harder to do this, however, since the lower energies often prevent you from attracting the higher energies (i.e. bad relationships repel positive new relationships, a stressful job prevents you from committing to a more empowering career).

If you find yourself going through this process, try not to get stuck. If you feel that your life is filled with incompatible energies that are dragging you down, consciously shed them. Even if you have to drop down to a pretty bare bones lifestyle, it’s worth it. Once you’ve shed the old energies, you’ll probably feel better, but you’ll have a desire to crank up the volume again on the other side. That’s when you need to reach out and start adding new elements to your life that resonate with lightworking.

If you’re intimidated by how overwhelming this process of change can be, take baby steps. One of the first things I did was to box up all the old books on my bookshelf and replace them with new books that were more consistent with my new path. At first my bookshelf was mostly empty. Now it’s overflowing. A few small steps like this can help reinforce your new direction.

Do something each day to shed lower energies and replace them with higher energies. Change the posters or pictures on your walls to ones that really inspire you. Attend a new club meeting as a guest. Restock your kitchen with more conscious food choices. If you make some small change each day in the direction of lightworking, it starts to add up, and soon you’ll find yourself in a very positive environment that reinforces your new path.

Staying Connected

Since a lightworker sees everyone as being part of the same whole, sharing is an integral component of that path. Share the lessons you learn to help others make more conscious choices. Share encouragement and appreciation for others. Give yourself away.

I notice than when I draw back and don’t share as much, I feel disconnected from other people. When I start to open up and share again, that feeling of connected oneness with others returns.

It takes a certain mindset to connect openly and honestly with people. Communication can serve many purposes, but for a lightworker the primary purpose of communication is to elevate consciousness. Communication creates connection, and connection can be used to elevate consciousness. Connection brings a sense of wholeness and unity. For lightworkers this is a very blissful state.

Lightworkers really thrive in the presence of other lightworkers. They function well as a team. For example, Erin is a key member of my lightworker team. She and I both encourage the heck out of each other. We also help keep each other honest, and our relationship has a certain energy to it that attracts other lightworkers to us. If she feels down, she knows she can count on me to help bring her back up again, and vice versa.

The doing part of connection is to consciously reach out to others. On the one hand, lightworkers like to build a support structure around them to help them stay centered and energized. On the other hand, they also reach out to help and inspire others, either directly or indirectly.

Empowering Others

When you polarize on the side of light, you’re taking on a big responsibility. Your consistency will eventually drive a lot of energy into your life. Helping others is inspiring and motivating, at least once you’re actually doing it consistently and seeing results. It’s hard not to go big on this path if you really commit yourself to it.

Going big doesn’t mean building a huge enterprise, although it could manifest as one. Going big is an internal sensation. You start feeling really, really good, and your motivation to help people soars. Your connectedness becomes a key source of strength. Since you’re so motivated, taking action becomes much easier. You don’t have to drag yourself out of bed in the morning.

Interestingly, I find that when I’m writing or speaking or just conversing about personal growth one-on-one, I feel absolutely incredible. I love this kind of work so much, and it’s self perpetuating. The more I write, the more I want to write. But by doing something I enjoy, I also help other people. Today it’s hard to say whether my primary motivation is to feel good or to help others — they’ve essentially become the same thing.

A big issue for many lightworkers is being willing to embrace what I’d call a higher state of being. Lightworking is like taking a quantum leap to a new experience of living. Life takes on a very different quality than it does pre-polarization. When you follow the path of lightworking, it feels like your life’s tempo increases quite a bit. On one level life gets easier, so it isn’t hard to survive. But you compensate by taking on bigger challenges. The unwillingness to face those challenges often keeps would-be lightworkers from fully committing themselves. They allow fear to hold them back.

If you really want to engage in lightworking, you must be willing to upgrade the level of challenges you’re willing to face. This means taking on tasks and projects that go beyond your personal goals. You have to start plugging into bigger goals that will positively impact others. If all of your goals are personal, your motivation will be weak. When you tap into goals that affect lots of other people, your motivation will increase dramatically. Of course this only works if you stay connected to the people you want to help; if you disconnect from them, you’ll lose the sense of caring that would have deepened your motivation.

The Work of Lightworking

What does lightworking look like once you’ve gotten through the initial transition period and you’re now humming along?

The actual work can take many different forms. Basically you’re committing to a path of raising and expanding consciousness in yourself and others. Your motivation and drive come from your sense of connectedness, so it makes sense that your work involves other people.

The aim of your work is basically to raise everyone’s consciousness. This means helping people shift to higher states such as joy, love, compassion, and peace and away from lower states such as guilt, anger, depression, fear, apathy, and shame.

I can’t tell you what to do specifically because the path of lightworking requires that you make this decision for yourself. What can you do to raise consciousness?

Here are some examples of how you might physically express the path of lightworking:

• Communicating a message of conscious living through writing, speaking, music, video, and/or other media (this is essentially my approach)
• Building a business that performs a consciousness-raising service (even feeding people is helpful at shifting people away from lower states, so they needn’t worry so much about survival)
• Working for a lightworker-driven organization or enterprise (you don’t have to run the show to contribute)
• Helping to create more freedom in the world and ensure human rights (perhaps by volunteering or participating in government)
• Creating art, music, or other expressive forms that inspire and uplift people
• Teaching and educating people (as long as you’re teaching truth)
• Healing people (such as via modern or alternative medicine)
• Counseling or coaching people (lots of different forms of this)
• Raising highly conscious children
• Being a scientist or researcher and sharing your results (truth elevates consciousness)
• Being an explorer (discovering and sharing new truths)
• Being a whistleblower (exposing falsehood and corruption and raising awareness of problems, thereby bringing light to darkness)
• Conscious investing (investing in lightworking is also lightworking)

The above list is far from complete. There are countless ways to express lightworking on earth.

Your intention is important, but so is your effectiveness. If you have great intentions, but your work isn’t making much of a difference, you’ve probably chosen a poor medium for your message. Feel free to experiment with different outlets until you’re feeling a strong flow of energy going through your life.

For example, suppose you decide to express lightworking by creating beautiful handmade jewelry for people. If this is really the right path for you, your operation will do well. People will be inspired by your jewelry, feeling empowered when they wear it, and you’ll see a strong flow of referrals. But if you find that you’re struggling month after month, can’t pay your bills, and no one seems to care about your creations but you, then perhaps you’ve picked the wrong medium. Maybe you’re playing it safe instead of living consciously and courageously.

Courage

You’ll never succeed as a lightworker if you don’t build your courage. Courage is an essential part of this path.

Without sufficient courage there’s a tendency to fall back to a position that’s too timid for you. Perhaps you opt to work at a New Age bookstore when deep down you feel called to be an actor. Or maybe you start blogging because you’re afraid to start writing your novel. Give yourself a solid gut check. Have you been playing it safe? Or are you following the heart-centered path and pushing through your fears?

I know it’s hard to be brave. It’s hard to speak your truth when everyone seems to disagree with you. It’s hard to choose the path of conscious living when the world seems intent on seeing you live as a zombie (or as vampire bait). Every lightworker has to deal with such issues.

What helped me push through this resistance was facing the fact that my physical body will die someday, and for all I know, it could be today. A million people die on this planet every week. One of those weeks will be mine. One will be yours. I realized that if I wanted to live consciously, I had to live in such a way that I was ready to die each and every day. If I don’t feel ready to die, I know I’m doing something wrong. Specifically, that wrongness is the act of pushing my dreams and desires into the future, thereby stealing power from the present and driving myself into a lower state of consciousness. If I consider that today may be my last day on earth, I can’t give in to fear. I have to summon my courage to push through that fear.

Lightworking is a very challenging path. You can’t stumble into it by accident. It must be chosen consciously. Every day you must renew your commitment to raising consciousness instead of lowering it. Lightworking isn’t a perfect path. There will be plenty of obstacles, mistakes, and setbacks. What makes you a lightworker isn’t some external measure of success. What makes you a lightworker is your inner recognition that you have a choice to make and that you’re choosing this particular path deliberately, including its potential hardships.

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We began today by spending an sometime in the Watsu pool at the beautiful Sedona Temple. This is a magnificent house with beautiful gardens, pools, and rock streams surrounded by towering red rocks.

After shopping for some groceries, and finishing settling in, the pre-conference group of 14 had a catered lunch together before kicking off the afternoon session, the beginning of the pre-conference. A lot of the other attendees are apprenticing with Baba Dez, Anyaa's co-facilitator in this process.We began the afternoon session with some movement and ecstatic dance that was sensuous and altering. After that, Anyaa and Baba Dez led about an hour long "puja," a lovely heart-to-heart sacred intimacy building guided meditation process, with people moving from person to person, about claiming our inner masculine and feminine selves. We then had a sharing circle about who we are and why we're here. Why I'm Here Well, first I'm here because my partner, Anyaa, is one of the major presenters at the conference, and I'm here to support her in that process, and to enjoy her and our time together. But more, I'm here because I believe that healing between the masculine and the feminine is one of the most important issues facing humanity. Again, the wounds on both are so massive and they affect every aspect of our lives. For my part, healing the masculine, and moving men from David Deida's second stage to third stage, is the work I am choosing to do. A huge portion of that healing has to do with our sexuality. After dinner, we gathered in separate circles, men and women. I can't speak to what happened in the women's circle, but we began by talking about our experiences of the afternoon. My sense was that this part was pretty lightweight work, but then I'm usually facilitating this work. The best part of the evening was the experiential process of healing our father wounds by being able to lie with each other and just be safely held by the masculine with no agenda. To do this, all six of us "spooned" in a line, holding each other and allowing ourselves. The importance of this work, besides the healing of our wounds, allows us to hold our children, our loved ones, and each other, just being present, and amazing gift that so many of us cannot do. Tomorrow we're supposed to go much deeper with Anyaa facilitating the day.

We interrupt this silence with an actual report - although we shall probably go silent again.

From MicroPersuasion:

Deliberate practice - at least as a concept - is relatively new to me. However, little did I know it's something I have been at for years. Perhaps the same is true for you. Regardless of your passion, it's something that - when applied - is surefire road to success.

The basic idea isn't rocket science. Basically, anyone with just even a little bit of natural talent in a given domain can master it in about 10 years by methodically practicing the essence of their craft two hours daily (including weekends) and measuring their progress from one day to the next.

The concept was developed by Dr. K. Anders Ericsson at Florida State University. It's becoming popular in sports and business. It's a big reason why Tiger Woods, Alex Rodriguez and Warren Buffet continually get better. They practice on building their strengths every day in a meticulous way. (The links on their names cite relevant stories. The best piece I have read on the subject is this one from Fortune.)

This is still very much, my guiding principle.  Of course, I'm not an "expert" per se, in anything.  The integral concept here, is to apply one's effort, focus, and perception, on a daily basis, to different areas of one's life - from spirit, to community, to health, to love, to yes, one's chosen vocation of expertise. 

I've been silent now, as really, as I envision the next steps of Integral Practice to be the following:

Report on one's chosen practices, in various areas of life.  Making sure to be "doing the work", of course.

Create a group, who joins in, at least one of the practices, and also create a transparent mode of reporting results, in the chosen practice - be it weighlifting, diet, meditation, or a breakthrough weekend.

Since I can be somewhat lazy, there is a gap between the vision, and the execution, no matter how motivating the speaker, or how smart the "personal growth for smart people" articles are, from various...erm...smart people!

Given this, the daily blogging on what's happening in the world, simply holds very little interest for me, unless it's focused around corroborated results and reporting, based on good feedback and evaluation principles. 

I'm still working on that problem.  It's taking up a lot of my spare time, contemplating and working on this challenge.  A community driven site centered around "deliberate practice reporting" - thus separating the wheat from the chaff in change techniques.

This now ends this service announcement.  This blog will now return to it's regularly scheduled silence, until further interruptions are warranted.

Monday, May 05, 2008

On Monday, Anyaa and flew to Sedona, Arizona, to attend what will be my first Daka/Dakini conference. What’s a Daka/Dakini conference? This one, consisting of 10 days with pre and post events, is one of the largest in the US, and will consist of about 185 sexual healers and practioners from around the world.

The conference is hosted by Anyaa’s long time friend, and sometimes teaching partner, Baba Dez, at the beautiful Sedona Temple, his home. Anyaa will be one of the major presenters and will be speaking on the Stages of Healing the Wounded Feminine, based on an article of the same name she wrote especially for this conference.

While here, I’ll be body painting for the attendees for donations. I brought a small compressor, my body paints, brushes, and my airbrush. Hopefully, we’ll have some photos, too.

Since I’ve never attended a conference quite like this, I’m not completely sure what to expect, in spite of reading the schedule of presenters, and being told some of what it will be like.

There are some things happening at the conference that I won’t be participating in. For instance, there’s Naked Yoga every morning, but Anyaa and I have our own practices that we’ll be adhering to. At one point in my life, I would probably have participated, but not today, even though I’m really in the bestr shape I’ve been in years. It’s not about that.

I’ll write some about it every day, including how I feel about it from an integral perspective. Given the number of sexually wounded people in this world, to a degree that I’ve only realized since my relationship with Anyaa began a year and a half ago, I expect there will be some really important work and learning going on, but I also expect some new-age fluff….and a lot of narcissism. No surprise….it happens in “integral” communities and gatherings, as well.

Every week I receive emails from people who tell me their ideas for new websites, businesses, or organizations they’d like to build. Usually they ask me for feedback on their ideas, implying that their ideas have some intrinsic value. Occasionally they want me to invest in their ideas, either financially or by putting in some of my time and effort.

I recall a similar experience while running my computer games business. People would send me their ideas for new games, asking me what I thought the ideas were worth. Some wanted me to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) just to hear the idea because they were worried I might steal it. I still get a few NDA requests today. I simply disregard such requests. If people are paranoid I might steal their ideas, it’s best they keep the secret to themselves.

I generally tell people that their ideas are worthless. Good ideas are a dime a dozen, and even that price is too high.

Generating Good Ideas

Coming up with good ideas is easy. This includes ideas for new websites or businesses. Anybody can generate good ideas.

One technique you can use is to simply brainstorm a list. If you write down 20, 50, or 200 ideas for anything, chances are you’ll come up with a few gems. You probably have a decent flow of good ideas popping up at random times too, such as while showering or exercising. You certainly don’t have to be a genius to come up with good ideas.

Do you honestly suffer from a shortage of good ideas in your life? It’s more likely you have the opposite problem. If you had to decide between gaining 5 great new ideas vs. successfully implementing 5 ideas you already have, which would you choose? I’d much rather have the implementation.

If you truly feel deprived of ideas, you can get as many as you want for free. Just ask other people. Post some requests in the forums, and you should get plenty. In January I asked for suggestions for future 30-day trials and got more than 100 suggestions, far more than I could possibly implement. If you want more ideas, just ask around. A small percentage of those ideas will be useful.

The Value of Implementation

The real value of any creation is in the implementation, not the idea.

Do you really bemoan the fact that you didn’t think of some great idea before someone else did? Would it have made any difference if you did? You’re probably sitting on lots of great ideas that someone else is already implementing.

In the gaming industry, I saw several companies do quite well with ideas that were totally unoriginal. They succeeded because they had great implementation of those ideas. There are a lot of Galaga and Tetris clones on the market. I remember that many developers were disturbed by the success of these cloners.

I had an original game idea that I thought was pretty good, but it didn’t generate any income by itself. It just sat there on paper. It took months to turn it into an actual game, and the final product sold quite well. Some people assumed it was the idea that caused the game to sell well. No, it was the implementation of that idea.

Ideas are easy. Implementing ideas is hard because that’s where things get complicated. The devil is in the details. Turning something mental into something physical is often quite a challenge.

Sure there are exceptions, but even when people value ideas, solid implementation is still required to extract the value.

Making Ideas Concrete

Part of implementing an idea is making it more concrete, such as by creating a design doc or business plan. A structured document is more than an idea — it’s part of the implementation process. This is where you begin working out the practical details. If you do it correctly, this kind of work can really make you pull your hair out. But it also creates a lot of value.

For example, writing a 25-word, high-concept description for a new movie is pretty easy. Erin recently took a screenwriting class at UNLV, and she and I had fun cranking out several high-concept movie ideas in a matter of minutes. Even her instructor (an accomplished screenwriter) liked some of our ideas. But those ideas aren’t worth much by themselves. Turning an idea into a complete script is hard. Getting an agent is hard. Selling the script is hard. Revising the script is hard. Filming the movie is hard. Cashing the six-figure check is easy.

I usually have at least 100 good ideas on my “to blog” list. I add ideas to the list from time to time, and people send me more ideas every week, so the list never gets depleted. Keeping a good bank of ideas is trivially easy. Turning those ideas into helpful articles is the hard part. In the time it takes me to actually write one article, I could generate at least 200 new article ideas. It would take me about a year to implement the article ideas I could generate in a single hour. If these were books or computer games instead of articles, one hour of idea generation could occupy me with a lifetime of implementation.

Even when you’re dealing with flexible content like, software, music, or video, it still takes a lot of work to turn a high concept into something you can actually implement. A general idea for a new web service is largely worthless. But a few documents that include the technical requirements, market analysis, and high-level software and database design do have some value.

The more concrete your ideas become, the more valuable they are. The ultimate value, however, isn’t delivered until your idea is in some kind of physical form that can be shared. You might be able to find an intermediary who will carry your implementation the rest of the way, but you still need to take a few steps beyond the idea phase before such people will want to listen to you.

Focusing on Implementation

It’s easy to get stuck on the treadmill of idea generation (i.e. analysis paralysis), mistakenly assuming that ideas themselves have value. I often get caught in this trap myself. I keep trying to find more optimal solutions to problems when it would be faster and easier to just implement a mediocre solution and deal with the consequences. I have to remind myself that getting some value is better than none.

There are some situations where advance planning is critical, such as the $8 billion City Center project being built on the Las Vegas Strip (the most expensive private construction project in the world). If they screw up the construction, that’s a pretty costly mistake. For that kind of project, you have to make sure your plan is very concrete before you start pouring real concrete.

In many situations, however, mistakes can be easily corrected. If you make a mistake in building a website, you can reprogram it to fix the mistake. If you move to a neighborhood you don’t like, you can move again. If you get in a bad relationship, you can break up. If you quit a job and later regret your decision, you can find employment again. If you write a bad draft of your book, you can rewrite it. Sure there are consequences, but in many cases it’s not the end of the world if you jump to implement a half-baked idea. At least your implementation will still provide some value, and sometimes that’s good enough.

If perfectionism and obsessing over finding the right idea or the right approach keeps you paralyzed indefinitely, but you have a mediocre idea you could implement right now and start enjoying the results, that’s basically a no-brainer, isn’t it?

If you’re not sure if you’re stuck in the idea phase, give yourself a deadline to start implementing your idea, regardless of how good it is. Deadlines are a necessary evil in many creative fields like movies and game development. Creative people typically hate deadlines, but without deadlines they’d rarely finish anything. They’d remain stuck in an endless loop of pondering new alternatives. What you release may not be the perfect implementation, but at least you’ll get it out the door.

For example, my website has a fairly basic design. I put together something simple and functional in order to get the site launched without worrying about perfecting it. If I were starting from scratch today, I would have done a few things differently. That’s okay though. At least I got the site launched, and I was able to adjust course along the way. The value is being delivered. Lots of people will look at my site and say, “I’m sure I can create a better-looking site than Steve has.” I’m sure they could, but did they already do it, or are they stuck in the idea phase? Are they already enjoying good results?

If an idea doesn’t quickly lead to its own implementation, maybe it’s not such a great idea after all. Maybe you’re overcomplicating the idea to the point where it actually becomes demotivating. Can you define the idea in simpler terms, so simple that you can actually start working on it today?

If you implement a lot of so-so ideas that aren’t perfect, you’ll gain experience. You’ll probably learn a lot more than you would if you spent all your time perfecting ideas instead of taking action.

Action Time

If you find yourself lost in a sea of ideas while lagging behind on the implementation side, work to shift yourself to the action side and see what happens. One of my favorite techniques for doing this is to have Action Hours or Action Days. I set aside a block of time such as an hour or a day to do nothing but implementation.

To kick off this period of action, I create a quick Action List. An Action List is a specific type of to-do list. It doesn’t include any items that involve planning, high-level decision-making, communication, or discussion. Every item on the list must be geared towards moving some project forward to the point of value delivery. This means each item on the list must shift a task or project further along the spectrum from mental idea to physical action.

Once I begin working, I tackle tasks in order, and I don’t stop to second-guess myself. I trust that the decisions I made earlier are good enough. If things don’t work out so well, I can hopefully fix them later.

What good ideas are you sitting on right now? What can you do to shift one of those ideas from your imagination into physical reality? Do you realize that your very best ideas are worth less than a single mediocre idea you actually implemented?

In the forum discussion, consider sharing your best methods for moving from idea to action. How do you get yourself to implement your ideas? How do you know when you’re ready to move beyond the incubation period and start taking action?

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Here's a link to an interview with Ken on Salon.com, giving a great overview of who he is, and what "integral" is.

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2008/04/28/ken_wilber/index1.html

PS: at some point, I expect this to be removed by Salon.com, so I've saved a copy in my files

I received the joke email posted below from a friend, and promptly passed it around to some of my friends, initially thinking it was pretty funny:

Dear friends and family,

The federal government is sending each of us a $600 rebate. If we spend that money at Wal-Mart, the money will go to China .
If we spend it on gasoline it will go to the Arabs. If we purchase a computer it will go to India. If we purchase fruit and vegetables it will go to Mexico , Honduras , and Guatemala. If we purchase a good car it will go to Japan. If we purchase useless crap it will go to Taiwan and none of it will help the American economy.

The only way to keep that money here at home is to buy prostitutes, beer and cigarettes, since these are the only products still produced in the US . Or you can send it all to me and I will be sure to put it back into our economy.

Thank you for your help.

But the more I thought about it, the more seriously I began taking it. It represents so much that is wrong with the U.S. today.

One of the first things I thought of is the Chinese proverb, "give a man a fish and you feed him for a day...teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." That this is "feeding" those of us who will receive rebate checks for a day, surely cannot be disputed. Worse, it's buying us off. it's a short-term feel-good sugar placebo that does nothing for us in the the long run, except put us further in debt.
Oh, you thought it really is a rebate, that we're being refunded money we sent in to the IRS? Silly you! Every cent we pay in taxes goes toward interest on the federal debt! We're making minimum payments on a maxed out credit card.That bring us to the next problem with the rebate.

If it's not a refund of tax dollars, then where's the money coming from? remember that Chinese proverb above? Well, proverbs aren't the only thing we're borrowing from the Chinese....Our government is taking us further into debt. Worse, as the email points out, most of us will probably spend it on electronics, or clothing, made in ....you guessed it: China.

But, you're gonna get it, whether you agree with it philosophically, or not.

So.....what's a good way to spend the mastur.....oops, rebate that you're going to get, that doesn't include prostitutes, beer, and cigarettes? I'm glad you asked....

• Buy local produce and food stuffs from a farmer's market in your area. After all, all economies will soon be local (what's left?), might as well support them now so they'll be there when your really need them;


• Better still, rip up that worthless water guzzling lawn abomination and invest in a garden and start growing your own organic fruits and vegetables;


• Put a down payment on a tankless on-demand hot water heater, so that when energy prices climb out of your reach, you'll still have hot water;]


• If you don't already own one, buy a bike...maybe an American made motorized bike (okay, the engines aren't homegrown).....but how can you argue with 250 miles to the gallon?


• Consciously choose to spend your dollars locally and in the US. Search out and find websites like www.madeinusa.com/ - "There are 293 million people living in the United States. If each one would shift $20 a month in spending from foreign made products to American made products, that would create 5 million new jobs."


• Want to save your rebate? Stashing your cash in a locally owned bank is one more great way to keep money circulating in your local economy and to support your local businesses and community endeavors.


• In the new home Anyaa and I are building, we're going to put in greywater systems and composting toilets that turn human waste into an organic compost and usable soil,. Yeah, I know, but read about 'em, first...it's a crime to use drinking water to flush waste when people are dying because they don't have clean water.

My list took less than half an hour to develop. Perhaps you can turn me on to some of your ideas. Phew! I feel so much better!

As a follow-up to the previous article Rise of the Lightworker, let me clarify about darkworkers being construed as bad or evil. There are two perspectives to consider. 

First, from a spiritual perspective, darkworking and lightworking are both paths to greater awareness, greater motivation, and greater power. Darkworkers and lightworkers are similar in many ways, their main difference being how they direct their focus and energy. Darkworkers direct the flow of energy inward, while lightworkers direct it outward. A darkworker consumes; a lightworker creates. Both are in alignment with forces of nature: push and pull, action and reaction.

However, from a physical, earthbound perspective, darkworkers can indeed have a destructive effect. They build their power by draining it from others. To a darkworker this form of destruction is a good and natural act. Harming another person is morally no different than eating a meal.

The Darkworker Mindset

Here’s another way of looking at it. What do you think about eating animal flesh? Does your conscience nag at you while your teeth rip into the flesh? Do you concern yourself with the animal that had to suffer and die for your gustatory pleasure?

To some people eating animals is viewed as a completely immoral act. It cannot be justified except perhaps when one’s own survival is truly threatened. To rob an animal of its life in order give yourself some momentary pleasure is an act of pure, unadulterated evil.

To other people eating animals is viewed as something completely natural. Animals are a lower species, so their needs are of no real consequence. Man is smarter and can easily turn animals into food, so therefore he might as well enjoy it. If a few billion animals suffer every year as a result, who cares? The point isn’t to torture the animals — just to gain pleasure by feasting on their tasty flesh. If an animal tastes good enough to be turned into food, it’s fair game. If it can’t defend itself, too bad.

Most people can probably relate to these different attitudes towards animals, regardless of which side they lean towards.

Now if you take those attitudes towards animals and apply them towards human beings, you basically get the lightworker and darkworker polarities.

To a true darkworker, the life of another human being is as inconsequential as the life of a food animal. The energy of other people is nothing more than a meal or a snack. If the darkworker drains or harms other people on the path to his goals, it’s considered no big deal. The darkworker has to eat, right? Other people are valued only in terms of their ability to bring the darkworker pleasure.

I realize that some people have a hard time imagining that anyone could think like this. The same lack of understanding comes up regarding people’s attitudes towards animals. Some people find it unfathomable that anyone could be so cruel as to reduce a chicken to a drumstick. Others have a hard time understanding how anyone could have feelings for an animal.

Most people aren’t polarized when it comes to animals, so they fall somewhere between the extremes. They’ll happily wolf down cows, pigs, chickens, and fish while regarding cats and dogs as beloved pets. If you ask them if they oppose animal cruelty, they might say yes… at the same time willingly funding the slaughterhouse as long as it brings them pleasure. They simply play follow the follower without really thinking through to a consistent philosophical position either way.

Most people aren’t polarized when it comes to human beings either. They’ll be kind to some people and apathetic towards others. They’ll verbally support one ideal while contributing to its opposite through their actions. They’ll claim to believe something is wrong (lying, cheating, hurting people, etc) and then do it anyway. They’ve never taken the time to push through to a consistent philosophy about how other human beings should be treated, or if they’ve tried, they don’t believe it strongly enough to actually implement it.

Lightworkers and darkworkers are people who’ve consciously chosen the extremes in their attitudes towards other people. The lightworker chooses one extreme. The darkworker chooses the other. Because the extreme philosophies are the simplest and most consistent, this choice gives both lightworkers and darkworkers a lot of power to generate results, more than most people are capable of. The notion that power increases with consistency is basically common sense if you give it a little thought. By power I’m not referring to power over other people; I’m talking about power over self here, including self-control and self-mastery.

Since most people aren’t polarized, they experience a mixed morality. That mixture reduces their power because the two polarities are incompatible. If you’re selfish but hold back because your conscience tells you to, you limit yourself. If you’re selfless but succumb to greed now and then, you also limit yourself. The purer you can be one way or the other, the greater the flow of power through your life. The most powerful people on earth are those who can express either fear or love as purely as possible, but not both.

The Darkworker Conscience

Most of us have been socially conditioned to believe that harming others for personal gain is evil. But to a true darkworker, whether others are harmed or not is largely irrelevant. Hurting others isn’t seen as a sacrifice. The conscience of a darkworker is very different from the conscience of a lightworker. To a darkworker, passing up the opportunity for personal gain would be regarded as evil or negligent. It’s like turning down a delicious meal.

The main frustration for darkworkers is that darkworking isn’t regarded as socially acceptable, so darkworkers must overcome a lot of social resistance to achieve their goals. Consequently, most would choose to keep their polarity secret, just as a hunter doesn’t advertise to all the animals in the forest that he’s coming to eat them. While honest with themselves, darkworkers are generally not open and honest with others about their attitudes towards people. Being honest just creates resistance in others and makes it harder for the darkworker to advance.

Are there really people on earth who think like this? Absolutely. Many of them are in positions of great power. Occasionally we see one of them fall from grace, taken down by whistleblowers with lightworker tendencies or perhaps undone by Darkworker Syndrome. Then we ask incredulously, “How could someone do such a thing?”

Do you really think scandals like Enron, the manufactured War in Iraq, or the sub-prime collapse are just the result of a few people exercising poor judgment? Hardly. Such occurrences are the modus operandi of darkworkers. To a darkworker the greatest good is to seek power at any cost. The only thing that holds them back is the fear of losing what they’ve gained. Darkworkers seldom regret what they’ve done, even after a major downfall. They do regret being caught. If they’re really committed, however, they’ll get back in the game and try again, this time more cautiously. Often the biggest problem for a powerful darkworker is being publicly exposed as such. Darkworkers aren’t ashamed of who they are, but they can get pretty upset when other people get in their way. Usually it isn’t lightworkers that expose darkworkers but rather other darkworkers.

Even though darkworkers tend to be a competitive lot, they often team up to achieve their goals when it makes sense, but they’ll turn on each other when it’s advantageous to do so. The perceived benefits must outweigh the bad blood they’ll create, however.

Sometimes darkworkers find themselves in a field where they have some freedom to express their true selves. They won’t do this to the general public, but they can be themselves with their darkworker buddies. For example, they may tell stories about the suckers they scammed in order to get ahead.

Are Darkworkers Evil?

Is a darkworker evil? From the perspective of a lightworker or from non-polarized people, you could say yes. From the darkworker’s perspective, there are basically two possibilities.

First, the darkworker might say, “No, I’m not evil. I’m pursuing my own good, which is the highest good there is.” Darkworkers are Machiavellian and expedient. They recognize that running over people is often more efficient than working with them. If you have to treat a human being like a slice of bacon now and then, so be it.

The second possibility is that the darkworker identifies with evil and consciously embraces that role: “I’ve decided to be evil, and I like it.” (See For Love of Evil.) In this case the darkworker identifies with the social consensus about evil and recognizes himself as having those qualities. However, he doesn’t see this as anything bad or problematic. Evil is equated with freedom and power. The darkworker views non-evil people as weak and sometimes stupid. If the darkworker identifies with the role of the villain, it’s because the villain is the smartest character in the game.

Either way the result is the same. The darkworker’s conscience is aligned with self-service as the highest possible good. Physical reality is a playground for the darkworker’s personal pleasure, and other people are merely tools to be used.

Making the Choice: Hero or Villain

Darkworking is a choice. It’s not a choice I’m willing to make for myself. Nevertheless, it remains an option for conscious growth. Most people never make the decision to polarize as a lightworker or darkworker in their entire lives… not with a real 100% commitment. But it’s only when this commitment is made one way or the other that real power begins to flow through one’s life.

In your life story, you can choose to be the hero, the villain, or an NPC (i.e. non-player character, someone passive who watches the story unfold from the sidelines). Most people live like NPCs, but the hero and the villain have far more power to direct how the story unfolds. There are lots of heroes and lots of villains in this story, but there are orders of magnitude more NPCs.

In the Rise of the Lightworker article, the main point was that an increase in the number of villains actually induces more NPCs to become heroes. In case you haven’t noticed, this planet is becoming increasingly polarized, meaning that more NPCs than ever are giving serious consideration to choosing sides.

If you don’t choose to be a hero, and you don’t choose to be a villain, then you’re an NPC by default. There’s nothing inherently wrong with being an NPC. Just be aware that if you’re an NPC, your fate is largely at the mercy of the heroes and villains. NPCs end up spending their lives riding the waves created by the heroes and villains, often serving one side or the other without realizing it. When you act from love, you help the heroes in this tale. When you act from fear, you serve the villains.

Discuss this article in the forums.
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© 2008 by Steve Pavlina.

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I'm posting a response I got from my blog of a few days ago, "An Experiential Realization of the Non-Dual." My new friends, Chuck and Thea, own the property next door and are also building a Deltec, and we plan on sharing geothermal heating and cooling and a well to reduce costs.

Thea wrote this beautiful response to my post, and then gave me permission to post it. The words speak for themselves, Gary
************************************************
Dear Gary,

I Read your blog and have had the experience of weeping after sex from the feeling of being in total ONENESS. Of Opening to a love so big (you know that one!) that it just cracked me open.

I have also experienced the presence of a "third." I have equated this to the souls of future children approaching or coming close, attracted by the energy of lovemaking, who would be being conceived were they coming into body at this (or that particular) time. I believe that evolved souls who are not in physical form can be conceived and birthed within our consciousness.

In other words, they are our children (ie: souls of our creations) walking with us on the other side.As a parent I know how powerful it is to conceive a child (especially consciously) and how much they have to teach us. Perhaps these more evolved souls don't need to take on a form to teach us about our evolution into the other dimensions. And obviously we are teaching them as well -- perhaps we hold the piece of readiness to co-create with them so we can all move on. It feels very compassionate to me to co-create with these beings without having the need to bring them into physical form.

As we ascend up the Chakras we conceive on higher and higher levels, and the form changes. The feelings of ONENESS and LOVE are what are guiding us there. Our physical children are fragmented parts, or extensions, of ourselves, and now the tables are turning -- we are returning. WE have loved each other so many times before, and now we get to go home -- back to the light of which we are made of at our core. The light of LOVE.

Thank you for allowing yourself this opening.

XOXO

Thea

I'm now listening to the new Dave Barnes album from iTunes, "Me & You & The World". I like it - some of the best mixed stuff I've heard in a while. He's got depth and energy coming thru, with an amalgom of musical styles that's like a great meal from an Iron Chef. For some reason, it's a nice callback feeling for me to music of the 80's. It's different music, of course, and different style, but it has that exploring yet confident, authentic yet polite, structured yet varied quality to it. Varied instruments, low on repetition. Great Sunday morning stuff.
Thought I'd pass on the info to other Gen-Xer's looking for some fresh music.  :)
And a hello to all my friends from Caledon!  :)  Tally ho!

Almost two years ago, as my partner, Anyaa, was starting to seriously consider calling in a Beloved, she was gifted a Grilling ceremony by two of her closest friends.

Knowing Anyaa was frustrated at not being able to find a life partner, her friends, Dennis and Judith – mostly Dennis, who apparently devised the ceremony – came up with an idea: They bought and assembled a barbeque grill for her, and created the “grilling ceremony.”

While visiting Anyaa at Isis Cove – they bought the lot directly behind Anyaa’s current property, and will be building next year right next door to our new property – Dennis set up the grill and instructed Anyaa to create a list of everything she wanted to bring forth in a man.

Inviting Brad and Star Wolf, the founders of Isis Cove, the five of them added and threw out qualities and items to Anyaa’s list, until she had just what she wanted, the ideal man to call in.

As the charcoals reached the ready point, they had Anyaa throw the list into the coal fire, sending the intentions on the list out to the universe, and then proceeded to cook the evening’s meal on it, including meat.

2700 miles away, my nose hit the air and thought, “what is that?” I’d like to think it was about the same time I wrote this blog, finally getting serious about finding my own Beloved.

Since meeting Dennis, he’s become my new best friend, and I love his wife, Judith, as well!

So now it’s my turn to pay it forward for another. So, next month, I’ll be doing a grilling ceremony for another single woman at Isis Cove, Sarah Jane, who is an extraordinary cook. She’s already started her list, and a bunch of us will gather at her house overlooking Isis Cove, add to her list, burn it on the new grill, and call her beloved in…..

I’ll be calling in the upper left quadrant for the sweetest, most thoughtful and compassionate man, the upper right quadrant for the strong physical attributes she’s looking for, the lower right for the systems to all be in place and in good working order to enable them to connect, and the lower left that will help them further develop the kind of community they’ll both want to be a part of.

We’ll be honoring a universe that wants us to happy and of service, and that thrives on life’s abundance.

Oh, by the way….we will be cooking meat……unless she wants a vegetarian.

I’ve long understood, like David Deida and Robert Augustus Masters before me, that relationship has the potential to be a powerful tool toward self-actualization , or increased consciousness, but it wasn’t until I read Jenny Wade’s book, Transcendent Sex, that I first became aware of the possibility of a non-dual experience through relationship and sex.

Note: I'm often surprised, when I use the term, "non dual," that many people don't know what I'm talking about. Non dual simply means not apart from, not separate.

Wikipedia: Nondualism may be viewed as the understanding or belief that dualism or dichotomy are illusory phenomena. It is accessible as a belief, theory, condition, as part of a tradition, as a practice, or as the quality of union with reality, and is sometimes referred to as the ultimate understanding.I also understand that relationship, whether successful or not, tells us exactly where we are consciously and unconsciously in our lives, if we have the capacity to listen to what our inner voices tell us about ourselves. If you want to know the depth of your own actualization, it is in your relationships….especially romantic relationship, but certainly all relationships.

A fascinating read, Jenny Wade writes about people’s sometimes shattering experiences with non-dual realization during, or immediately after, sex. Sometimes characterized as the feeling of an overwhelming presence in the room, the “oneness” of everything, and even the presence of a “third.”

Some of the interesting things about these experiences are that they usually happen to only one partner, that the sex can sometimes just be casual – that is, not with a significant other – and that almost always, the person who has the experience, cannot find a way to tell the other person about their experience. Some who experienced the phenomena were religious, or spiritual, but just as many were not. There seems to be no rhyme or reason about whom this can happen to.

Fascinating, yes, and I felt jealousy for never having experienced this amazing phenomena.

Until last week.

Lying in bed after a particularly tender Sunday afternoon love making with my Beloved, I was suddenly overwhelmed with a presence all around us. This “presence,” or “feeling,” was that that of a third being, not separate, but rather a part of us, and yet not a part of us…the feeling was that of pure love…..as if we were enveloped in some sort of divine caress, loving us, and allowing me to not to just experience this, but to be the experience itself!

As it continued to caress us, surround us, and encompass us, I told Anyaa what was happening, and while she did not personally experience it, except through my description as to what was holding us, I began to weep out of pure joy and the realization that I was being offered the most amazing gift! Plus, I had the extra benefit of being able to share it with my partner as it was happening! While she had not experienced it, she understood what was happening and provided a completely safe container for me share my experience as it was unfolding.

It lasted, I guess, five or ten minutes, and then softly released us, leaving a lingering presence and awareness behind. It took, maybe, another fifteen minutes for me to regain my composure and come fully back into the physical room, and yet I still hold the awareness of the experience in my consciousness.

Why was this gift bestowed upon me? Is it because of the work I’ve been doing around conscious relationship? My own amazing relationship with an incredible and conscious woman? The Big Mind/Big Heart meditations I’ve been facilitating? All of it? None of it?

I may never know the answer to that, and I feel no need to search it out, or to understand it. I only know it happened, that I felt it, I experienced it, and I can relive it….and that’s enough.

Body Painting image by an unknown artist

It's been three weeks since I arrived in North Carolina to be with my Beloved, Anyaa, and four since I last posted. it's been an incredibly busy four weeks!

Leaving Seattle

First, I spent the last week in Seattle, getting what I was taking packed into a Pod, getting my car transported back here, and cleaning up the house I'd been living in for the last 8 months. Ah, that house served Anyaa and I well, what with her running a circle of women doing the Shamanic Priestess Process over those months, and I kicking off my men's groups. And while that house blessed us, we also blessed the house, creating sacred space that will linger far after we're gone.

The house will be occupied by the new renters in May, and I wonder if they will feel the indelible presence we left behind? The house deserves no less.

The Arrival

I arrived in Atlanta on Friday night, March 21st, Spring Equinox, and Anyaa picked me, and another friend of hers, up at the airport. On our journey of 2-1/2 hours from Atlanta to Western North Carolina, I watched the full moon racing behind passing trees, still bare from winter, as if in the opening scenes of a movie, keeping pace with us as we traveled north toward our destination, and my new home.

Since Anyaa lives in a 600 square foot cabin, with a 600 square foot deck, looking southwest, there was no room for an office for me. Hell, there's barely enough room for me! Anticipating this, we bought a 16'x10' barn and had it delivered to the lower pad on her property a couple of days before. I'd also ordered some tools and materials I'd need to to insulate it, build a closet and a loft for storage, and paneling and trim to finish it out for my office. That took over week! We also had satellite internet installed as the only other available internet option was dial-up,a situation Anyaa had been living with for the past three years. Not great, but better than dial-up.

I don't recommend satellite unless it's your only option. A far cry from the 100mbps speeds I was used to in Seattle. Paradise ain't perfect.

Every morning we walk to the top of the mountain, say our prayers to the universe, come back and do an hour of yoga and weights. it's the perfect ITP practice.

Wise Wolf Men's Council

My labor was interrupted on the second weekend, as there was an event here at Isis Cove, the community we live in. This was the third year that Venus Rising, the organization that developed Isis Cove, sponsored a free event called "Wise Wolf Women's Council," and about 108 women attended this conscious and spiritual event this year. New this year, Venus Rising added a men's council, and 25 men attended the fist annual 3-day weekend event.

In addition to attending, I got to present, and facilitated a 45-minute long Big Mind meditation, which offers a state (temporary) experience of non-dual realization.

During the weekend, men got a taste of stepping into conscious men's work, and many had not done any transformative work on themselves before, but came at the urge of their feminine partners who were attending the WWWC event.

Some highlights of the weekend were a firewalk (yes, I walked over the 15' long burning coals in my barefeet about a dozen times with no ill effects....what power our minds and intentions hold!), breaking a metal-tipped arrow with the soft spot of my neck by pushing on it (very scary!), and a 3-hour sweat lodge that we, the 25 men, built from scratch using native saplings and heating local rocks with fire we built.

One of the biggest highlights of the weekend for me was knowing that there were 25 men who were coming together, consciously, putting their egos aside, and connecting with one another in a way that some of them had never experienced before. These are men that I'm proud to call brother. The other was being welcomed by the Divine Feminine at the end of the weekend in a ceremony that represented the Sacred Union of the Divine Feminine and the Divine Masculine.....beautiful, and included a short 30-minute Shamanic Breathwork, where I clearly saw my path laid out before me.

The Asheville Integral Warriors Group

Anyaa leads a group of 7-8 women in Asheville every other Thursday night, and we thought that me leading a men's group, like the ones I've facilitated in Seattle based on the work of David Deida, on the the same night, would be a natural. To make this happen, I marketed the local Ken Wilber Meetup group, consisting of 19 members, and men in relationship with local women who have done Anyaa's work who want their partners to step into conscious work, as well.

To do a men's group, I need a minimum of 5 men to get the juices flowing in the group process. I only had four men show up for the intr0ductory evening, two of whom were already in Mankind Project (MKP) groups, one who spent 30 years in the marines and who won't really interested in developing deeper bonds with other men, and one who wanted to do the work, but in group setting. No men's group just yet.

I later found out that the local MKP group consists of about 100 men, a remarkable number considering Asheville only has a population of 60,000, and that there's already a David Deida group here, consisting of about 12-15 men: a wealth of existing men's groups.

The Local Ken Wilber Meetup

Not to be discouraged, I decided to further market the local Ken Wilber Meetup group of 19 people, contacted the local leadership to offer a presentation at the next meetup. It meets the last Sunday of the month on Sunday morning from 9am to 1pm....4 hours! Meditation, Integral Life Practice, a DVD of Wilber, and discussion....but only 2-3 people show up.

A new plan is needed.

So I'm working on that, hoping to eventually have enough men to do the Integral Warriors group. Meanwhile, I'm going to offer a series of different offerings every other Thursday night and see what happens.

A Personal Note

I am absolutely loving it here! I am in a life-partner relationship with a woman I love and admire deeply, and feel that my life purpose is unfolding before my eyes. Anyaa and I are developing a deeper relationship than was possible in our long-distance stage, no matter how much time we spent together. As I build my soul work and my freelance graphic and illustration business, I'm able to contribute around this beautiful property and Anyaa's life that allows her to relax into doing what she does best. A beautiful partnership that serves us and the people we come in contact with.

The Future

Anyaa and I, in partnership with Brad and Star Wolf, principals of Venus Rising, are in the process of developing a couples workshop where we'll take 10-20 couples to Costa Rica early in 2009 to do a week on intimate relationship and transformation. I'll be writing more about that in the next few weeks.

Meanwhile, I know I've made the right decision to move from Seattle to North Carolina, in spite of leaving so many great friends and a great community that I helped found and build.

Consider for a moment that you’re an individual cell in the larger body of humanity. What kind of cell are you? Do you strive to achieve your individual health and comfort? Do you work for the betterment of your nearby family cells? Do you have a sense of devotion to the improvement of the entire body?

I’m going to use the cell-in-a-body analogy to clarify the difference between two different kinds of people: lightworkers and darkworkers.

Both lightworkers and darkworkers are highly conscious. They each recognize the existence of the larger body of humanity, and they know their actions affect others for good or ill. Those who act without much awareness of how their actions affect the larger body (i.e. the vast majority of people) are neither darkworkers nor lightworkers. If you aren’t sure which one you are, it’s safe to say that you’re neither.

Lightworkers

A lightworker is a cell that believes its primary role is to serve the greater good of the body. It considers this task so important that it would even sacrifice its own life in such a pursuit if it thought it was necessary. This is because a lightworker identifies more with the larger body than with the individual cell it controls. Lightworkers see themselves as avatars of humanity (or spirit); the individual ego identity isn’t as important.

In order to be effective in its role, a lightworker cell must pay attention to its own health and survival to the degree that its continued existence benefits the body. It does what’s necessary to protect itself from anything that might disrupt its mission. It tries to preserve its well-being without harming the other cells, but when a lightworker encounters other cells that actively work against the good of the body, conflict can certainly occur.

Your own physical body works via a similar mechanism. If certain disease-producing cells get out of control and threaten the health of your body, your body responds by attacking those cells.

The lightworker’s duty is to serve the health of the body. Lightworkers strive for a healthy, sane humanity. They’re like white blood cells fighting diseases such as cruelty, apathy, depression, disempowerment, dishonesty, and cowardice. Such diseases damage the health of the body. The #1 disease lightworkers battle is fear. Wherever there is fear in the body of humanity, lightworkers are driven to respond.

One goal of many lightworkers is to stimulate the creation of more lightworker cells. This may happen directly, but more often it occurs by cultivating the conditions under which more lightworkers will be created. Because of the influence of lightworker cells, other cells become lightworkers as well.

It isn’t necessary for every cell in the body to become lightworkers. The body only needs enough lightworkers to counteract current threats to its health. You could say that collectively the lightworkers are humanity’s immune system.

Lightworkers are active cells, not passive ones. These aren’t people who sit around and meditate all day, although meditation may be part of their practice, especially during the transition period when the lightworker role is gradually accepted. Generally speaking, lightworkers aren’t people who spend their lives dressing in flowery robes and selling handmade jewelry. Lightworkers are people who make it their personal duty to get humanity back on track by countering fear, falsehood, and cruelty wherever they find it. They do this by bringing light to dark situations. They empower other people to shed fear and to be strong once again because strong, empowered cells yield a strong, healthy body.

A passive or inactive lightworker is an oxymoron — that would be equivalent to a white blood cell that ignores disease, saying to itself, “Not my problem.”

Darkworkers

A darkworker is a cell that denies all responsibility for the health of the body. The darkworker says, “I’m responsible for my individual life alone, and the rest of the body is merely a tool for achieving my own pleasure.” Darkworkers are essentially cancer cells. They have no qualms about damaging the body to further their own aims since the health of the body is of little consequence to them.

To a darkworker, most other cells are expendable. The other cells and the body as a whole are merely pawns of the darkworker’s pleasure. The darkworker’s rights and privileges are paramount, and human rights in the broader sense are irrelevant. A darkworker cares only for personal gain. The consequences to other cells are of little or no concern. Darkworkers have no empathy for what other cells experience. If others must suffer for the darkworker’s pleasure, so be it.

Darkworkers love power. Increasing their power is their primary aim, since that is the means through which they achieve more pleasure for themselves. Darkworkers commonly create and utilize methods that exploit others for personal gain. The suffering of others is meaningless. As long as the darkworker gets ahead, that’s all that matters. Darkworkers are very competitive. Winning for themselves is far more important than helping someone else. A darkworker only helps others to the extent that it furthers their personal agenda.

There are primarily two ways a darkworker will manipulate others: fear and greed. For example, if you work in a company that conditions and controls your behavior with fear-based incentives (threat of punishment or disciplinary action) or greed-based incentives (more money, power, authority), it’s a safe bet you’re a pawn of one or more darkworkers somewhere upstream. If such systems seem normal to you, you’ve been effectively brainwashed as a slave. You probably aren’t even aware of the high-level agenda you serve, since an intelligent darkworker won’t reveal it publicly. If you work for a darkworker, your real agenda is to increase the darkworker’s power, despite any flowery speeches or mission statements to the contrary.

Dishonesty and deception are popular tools of darkworkers. These enable the darkworker to build power while supposedly embracing other values. Most cells don’t question authority much, so darkworkers generally have an easy time building power if they’re semi-intelligent. If you don’t care what happens to other people, you can gobble up a lot of power, since most cells readily yield their power to any perceived authority. Darkworkers exploit this fact for personal gain.

By their actions darkworkers toxify the body of humanity, creating the conditions that give rise to more darkworkers. Darkworkers thrive in a climate of fear. Fear is the tool of their trade. The more fear they can create, the more powerful they can become. Fear creates willing and obedient slaves who submit to the will of the darkworker. Crafty darkworkers use deception to make submission seem like an intelligent choice. This approach can be quite effective. When fear is ineffective, darkworkers use greed instead.

The best darkworkers are often surrounded by armies of slaves who willingly sacrifice their freedom for a paycheck and a false sense of security. Fear and greed can’t control or motivate highly conscious people, but such methods work extremely well with those who’ve been conditioned to be slaves.

Darkworkers love obedience. In their fantasies they wish they could control or dominate other people. If you work in an organization where obedience is rewarded more than honesty, you’ve got a darkworker at the helm. It’s been said that obedience is the first milestone on the road to freedom. The person who said that was Adolf Hitler. Those who obeyed him gained greater control for a while but certainly not freedom.

While I personally would never choose to become a darkworker, there are human beings who have chosen this path deliberately. They’re well aware that their actions are destructive to the body, but they simply don’t care. They believe that self-service is the highest expression of their identity. They don’t identify with the larger body of humanity. It’s merely a tool to be manipulated at will.

I’m not quite doing darkworkers justice here because I’m admittedly lightworker biased. From the darkworker perspective, looking out for number one is seen as a common sense lifestyle choice. The world is viewed as a competitive place, so to a darkworker the strategy of self-above-others doesn’t create much of a moral dilemma.

The benefit of darkworkers is that they gradually help the body become stronger, just as getting sick can strengthen your immune system over time. Consequently, darkworkers can indirectly serve the greater good, as long as they don’t kill the body in the process.

The Body of Humanity

In the body of humanity right now, there is an unhealthy excess of darkworkers. The body’s health has been declining for a while, largely due to the influence of too many darkworkers in positions of power. The compromised health of the body is also damaging the health of individuals, causing many of them to feel disempowered, weakened, fearful, and depressed. Other times darkworkers directly kill off otherwise healthy cells.

Presently the political leadership of the USA consists largely of darkworkers. Simply listen to their words. They use lies and deception to push their agendas and to cultivate a climate of fear. This causes many people to feel disconnected from the larger body of humanity. Then those people drop into survival mode. Instead of focusing on service to the greater good, they fear for their own security. This is exactly what the darkworkers want. The more fear that’s generated, the more powerful the darkworkers become. When fear isn’t effective enough, greed is used as a control mechanism instead.

When someone opposes those powerful darkworkers, the darkworkers often respond with violent force to silence them to the degree they can get away with it. They use fear and intimidation to get new laws passed in order to increase their ability to silence opposition and to increase their power. This is not accidental. It’s very much deliberate. This is simply the modus operandi of darkworkers.

These darkworkers are not real leaders. A better word would be controllers. They’re only able to lead slaves who submit to control by fear. Highly conscious people see such darkworkers as agents of disease, not as genuine leaders.

In this climate of fear, more darkworkers are being created. More people are concluding, “Screw the rest of humanity. I’m going to live entirely for myself and get ahead as much as possible.” This further enriches the soil of fear and greed.

A protracted war, a down economy, and manufactured threats are great conditions for darkworkers to increase their power… not unlike the conditions in Germany when Adolf Hitler came on the scene. 9/11 was basically a modern day incarnation of the Reichstag fire, an excuse to curtail human rights with the promise of greater security. It’s unreasonable to expect such a situation to improve as long as darkworkers remain in power. Asking a darkworker to relax such controls is like a white blood cell asking, “Mr. Cancer Cell, would you kindly stop multiplying?” All you’ll get is a deflecting response at best.

So the basic problem we have right now is that darkworkers have been getting out of control. This problem hasn’t gone unnoticed by the larger body of humanity, and the immune system is kicking in rather strongly.

The Rise of the Lightworker

The collective consciousness of humanity is well aware of its condition. It knows the body is unhealthy and is headed downhill. It knows that left unchecked, the darkworker threat will take the body down with it. While this climate gives rise to more darkworkers, there’s also a strong counter-reaction on the rise. The presence of disease is triggering the body’s immune system to increase the white blood cell count. Those white blood cells are lightworkers.

The result is that many people are now hearing this call. It actually began decades ago, but it’s particularly strong today. The body of humanity is acting in its own defense by calling more and more lightworkers into action. Some people are born with this inclination, some have had it for many years, and others are currently waking up to it.

This call creates a feeling like, “Whoa… we’ve really gotten off track here. This isn’t how the world is supposed to be. Someone needs to do something about it. Damn… I think that someone is me. How the heck am I going to take on something so big?”

I suspect only a small percentage of readers will resonate with the statement, I think that someone is me. If you have a lot of fear and/or greed in you (which unfortunately most people do), you won’t likely hear this calling since it isn’t broadcast on those channels. But if you endeavor to move beyond the consciousness of fear and greed, eventually you’ll start feeling a vague inclination to do something “good” that helps the world in some small way. Over time that feeling will become stronger and more specific.

If you do hear such a calling, your first inclination will probably be to suppress it. I’d rather live in the matrix — life outside will be too hard. Go ahead and try if you must, but once you get the call, it’s too late for you. You’ll never be content living as a slave again, no matter how hard you try. You’ll feel more and more disconnected from other people who live like slaves. You’ll feel a strong desire to find your tribe (i.e. other people who can see what you are now seeing). The tugging of your conscience is the collective consciousness of humanity summoning you to act in its defense. Your duty is to be part of the solution. That duty cannot be ignored except to the extent you drown yourself in fear. The bright side is that you aren’t alone.

Do you have any sense of humanity’s call for help? How do you feel about the War in Iraq? How do you feel about China’s decision to systematically wipe out the Tibetan culture? How do you feel about a country governed by leaders who are caught lying repeatedly and who boast about their violent supremacy over those who oppose them? Do you feel this planet has gotten just a wee bit off course? Do you feel a sense of personal responsibility to do something about it?

If you don’t hear any special calling and have no real concern for the larger body of humanity, or if you don’t feel personally compelled to do anything about it, then just keep diligently working on your own personal growth. The body will summon you when it has need of your services. If it summons you, it knows you’re strong enough to contribute, even if you have serious doubts.

It’s been very exciting to see more lightworkers awakening to the sense of global responsibility. The transition can be very challenging, since it requires shedding so much of the past. It can be painful for people to watch their previous dreams implode, but this is necessary to make room for the much larger purpose ahead. The upside is that working on the goals of the larger body of humanity is much more rewarding than working on the goals of an individual cell.

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Life coaching (or personal coaching) is fairly popular these days. Many people have asked me what I think of life coaching, so I’ll share my thoughts on this subject.

A life coach is someone you hire to help assist you with your personal development, especially in the area of setting and achieving specific goals. Typically this involves paying a few hundred dollars per month to speak with a trained coach by phone for 30-60 minutes per week. Pricing and service offerings vary tremendously. Your life coach may share advice, offer guidance, help you make plans, and hold you accountable for taking action. You can hire a health coach to help you with health and fitness goals (like a virtual personal trainer). You can hire a business coach to help you build or grow a business. You can hire a productivity coach to help you get organized and increase your productivity. Every life coaching situation is unique, so there’s a great deal of flexibility here.

At two different times in my life, I hired a life coach, each time for about six months. The first time was in 1993 while I was in college. The second time was around 2001 when I was running my games business.

Life coaching experience #1

When I hired my first life coach, I thought it might be useful in helping to increase my productivity. This coaching program began with a very thorough personality assessment test, so ostensibly the coach could use this info to make the coaching more personal.

My results with this particular coach were mixed. I hired him during the time I was going through college in 3 semesters, and I liked that he helped hold me accountable to getting certain things done. Unfortunately he decided to use my test results to try to improve what he considered some of my personality flaws, so he would sometimes coach me to work on his goals for me instead of my goals for me. Today this practice is largely considered unethical by the coaching community. Most coaches now know they must work on their clients’ goals, not their own goals for their clients. Some coach training and referral organizations have written standards of ethics to clarify this.

This particular coach wasn’t a great fit for me. He wanted to mold me into a more well-rounded person, whereas my goal was to become sharper in a few key areas. For example, he determined that I needed to improve my social skills, so he gave me assignments like, “Smile at 10 people today.” As a computer science and math major, I thought that was a stupid assignment, so I didn’t do it. I think his heart was in the right place, and later in life I did put some serious effort into developing my social skills, but as a coach it really wasn’t his place to set goals for me. This caused me to lose respect for him, and it made our relationship less productive than it could have been.

This coach worked as part of a larger coaching operation, and they had a very generous money-back guarantee. I paid about $900 for six months of weekly 30-minute phone coaching sessions. The guarantee was such that if you weren’t satisfied for any reason, you could get a full refund on your entire six months of coaching. That guarantee was one of the reasons I signed up; I figured I had nothing to lose. In the end I did ask for the refund, and to their credit they promptly refunded the full fee. I was excited about the coaching at first, and even at the halfway point it seemed like it was going somewhere, but in the end I realized it didn’t meet my expectations. I felt bad asking for the refund, but I would have felt worse if I didn’t. I did get some value from the six months of coaching, but it wasn’t worth $900 to me, and the terms of the guarantee made it clear that I should have been delighted, not disappointed. On a scale of 1-10, I’d rate this coaching experience a 4.

Life coaching experience #2

The second time I hired a coach was during a period when my games business, Dexterity Software, was growing nicely. I thought it would be good to have a coach to help me sort through all the projects on my plate and to solve some tricky problems.

This time I hired an independent coach instead of going with a larger organization. Most independent coaches offer a free session (try before you buy), so you can decide if they’re a good fit for you. I tried 3-4 different coaches and picked the one I liked best. I paid $70 per 60-minute weekly phone call. I also had the opportunity to do simple follow-up emails with this coach throughout the week.

I liked this coach, and I was happy with the service he provided. He was an experienced programmer like me, but he was also a very right-brained person. He taught me some creative problem-solving and visualization techniques. He was also very intuitive, so he would often detect the unspoken problems behind my spoken words. This made our conversations very efficient because he was able to get to the core issues quickly. We worked mostly on business challenges but also on some personal goals. My sales increased during this coaching period, so that was certainly nice.

This coach especially helped me understand the importance of intuition in business. When I first came to him, I was extremely left-brained, and he helped me integrate more right-brained qualities into my decision making. In the long run, this was very beneficial to me.

After about six months, I decided to discontinue our coaching, not because it failed but because it succeeded. This coach helped me achieve a higher level of performance, but after a while I was so familiar with his style that I didn’t need the weekly phone calls anymore. Eventually the law of diminishing returns kicked in.

On a scale of 1-10, I’d rate this coaching experience an 8.

I should also mention that this second personal coach was in the same time zone as me, but the first one wasn’t. Being in the same time zone made it easier to schedule appointments. Usually we’d speak at the same time every week, but that wasn’t always the case.

Life coaching lessons

Life coaching can work nicely. The skills and ideas you gain from your life coach may endure well beyond the paid coaching period, so you aren’t just paying for your time on the phone or for short-term benefits. Ideally you’re paying for a permanent shift to a higher level of performance. For example, if a life coach can help train you to become an early riser, that gain is yours for life. Even though good life coaching isn’t cheap, the results can easily make it worthwhile.

When it comes to selecting a life coach, it’s important to shop around to find someone compatible. You want a coach you like and respect. You want a coach that is knowledgeable and experienced. And you especially want a coach that will help you achieve the results you desire. This doesn’t necessarily mean hiring a coach who’s just like you, only better. It may mean hiring someone who’s very different from you.

When you identify some coaches that seem like a good fit for your needs and your budget, request a free trial session. I don’t recommend hiring a coach who doesn’t offer a free trial session — it’s too much of a gamble. Try several different coaches until you find one you feel confident will help you. If the free trial leaves you feeling doubtful or hesitant, definitely pass.

After the free trial session, ask yourself, What do I honestly expect will happen if I hire this coach for several months? Pay attention to your honest predictions. If you don’t think you’ll achieve your desired results, you probably won’t. If you’re excited that this coach can surely help you succeed, that’s a good sign.

Understand that a coach is your helper, not your boss. You must be the one to decide what you want out of each session. You’re always in command. My coaches began their sessions by asking, “What would you like to work on today, Steve?” It was up to me to share my goals, challenges, and problems and to request help where I felt I needed it.

If you aren’t clear about what you want to work on, a good coach can help you gain clarity and set new goals. Just be sure that the emerging goals are your goals, not your coach’s goals for you.

Life coaching relationships are usually short-term. Partly this happens due to saturation. Eventually you become so familiar with your coach’s style that your coach isn’t challenging you as much, or perhaps you’ve achieved the major goals you wanted to achieve, such as losing a certain amount of weight or starting a business. On the other hand, greater familiarity can also create a stronger bond that increases accountability. You’re less willing to disappoint your coach by dropping the ball. You’ll have to decide if your coaching is generating sufficient results to justify the ongoing costs.

If I were to work with a life coach again, 6-12 months would probably be my limit with any one person, and 12 months really seems like a stretch. The exception would be if that person was growing and improving very rapidly, always learning fresh ideas and techniques that could be applied to our coaching sessions. Otherwise it’s like taking classes with the same teacher year after year — you eventually reach the point where you’ll grow faster by learning from someone new.

Life coaching can be especially fruitful for self-employed people and independent professionals. When your income is performance-based, a good coach may be able to help you boost your performance at least enough to pay for the coaching. I’d say that was true for my second coaching experience. I paid about $300/month for the coaching, but I ended up boosting my income by many times more than that.

If you have your own business, and you hire a coach to help improve your business’ bottom line like I did, you can deduct your coaching fees as a business expense. I was able to do this with my second coach but not my first. If you generate income from blogging, you should be able to justify deducting personal coaching if you blog about the experience as a service for your visitors or if your coaching experience benefits your business.

My first life coaching experience involved 30-minute sessions, but with my second coach they were 50-60 minutes each. I preferred the longer sessions. A 30-minute session would probably be okay for most people, but I had a lot of complex business issues that took a while to work through. Longer sessions are generally more expensive though.

How to find a life coach

Finding a decent life coach is fairly easy. Lots of independent coaches who’ve gone through formal training programs can be found online. One good site is FindACoach.com. That’s where I found my second coach. I don’t have any financial interest in whether or not you decide to hire a coach from there.

You can also find a coach via personal referral, but you’ll still want to get a free trial session. You need to determine if the coach’s style is compatible with your goals.

Many coaches specialize, so if you have a specific area you want to work on, consider hiring a specialized coach just for that area. For example, if you want to build or grow a business, you can hire an experienced business coach. Often these are people who worked in business for decades and then retired, later starting a coaching practice to share their hard-earned wisdom with others.

Why life coaching works

The main reason life coaching works is that you’re hiring someone with greater experience than you in a certain area. Your coach can quickly identify patterns that may not be clear to you. Then your coach can help you devise and implement solutions. When this works well, it’s a very high-leverage relationship. It’s one of the fastest ways to solve challenging problems. Businesses often hire outside consultants to help solve important problems, and life coaching is basically the individual equivalent of business consulting.

While I’ve never done any formal paid coaching myself, I’ve done plenty of informal coaching sessions with friends and family members and also online with visitors to this site. In addition to my own growth experiences, I’ve read about 1,000 personal development books, I’ve communicated with thousands of people regarding their growth challenges, and I’ve talked with many others who work in this field. Consequently, I have a lot of experience recognizing patterns. There are many problems people are working on that I’ve (1) already solved, or (2) know how to solve in a variety of different ways.

Similarly, a good life coach will have superior knowledge and experience in the area(s) in which you want to improve. A coach can use all of this expertise to help you solve specific problems efficiently. This is essentially a variation on the principle of overwhelming force. A problem that may seem daunting to you might be a fairly simple matter for an experienced coach.

The real challenge of life coaching is for your coach to help you implement the solutions to your problems. Coming up with solutions is easy. Your coach will probably identify some good solutions during your free trial session. Implementing those solutions is the hard part. That’s where good life coaching really shines. Your coach can work as a guide to help you stay on track, leading you safely through the quagmire of mistakes, blind alleys, and delays.

When you work with a life coach, your coach’s mindset will gradually rub off on you. This is a great thing when you find a coach whose mindset already contains the solution to your problem. For example, this year I decided to become a raw foodist, and one thing that helped me achieve this goal was to communicate with other raw foodists, some of whom are professional raw food coaches. Through osmosis I gradually adopted enough of the raw food mindset to make the change.

When to hire a life coach

A good time to hire a life coach is when you have a fair idea of what you want to be doing, but you’re having an unusually hard time getting it done. Perhaps it seems like you’re getting bogged down in obstacles instead of making steady forward progress. Also, you can imagine that there exist other people who’ve already solved your problem or at least know how to solve it. Would it be worthwhile to pay someone a few hundred dollars to help you solve this problem once and for all? Consider the lifetime benefits before you decide.

Perhaps the most important factor in successful life coaching is the willingness to change. If you aren’t willing to change, a life coach can’t force you to grow. You need some motivation and drive to work with a coach, something you care about deeply enough. Think about how the coach of a professional sports team would respond to an unmotivated, underperforming player. The coach might try some pep talks and motivational techniques, but if those don’t work, the player will likely be cut from the team, replaced by someone else who’s more motivated and driven to succeed. You must provide the drive, and your coach can help you steer toward your goals.

I don’t think it’s necessary (or wise) to use the same life coach indefinitely, but something in the range of 3-6 months can certainly generate some positive results. With a good coach, I’d say you should be getting noticeable results within the first month. If you’ve gone a whole month and have nothing to show for it, cut your losses.

Since I know people are going to ask me, I’m not personally interested in offering life coaching services. I enjoy doing occasional sessions with people I know, but formal one-on-one coaching doesn’t appeal to me right now. I think I can have a more positive impact through other media. While blogging isn’t as deep and personal, I know the articles on this site are effective at helping people, and I can reach a lot more people via blogging than I could ever reach via coaching.

If you think life coaching could be helpful to you, give it a try and see how it goes. If it doesn’t work out, you can always quit and try someone else.

Discuss this article in the forums.
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Site Build It! - Build an income-generating website
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© 2008 by Steve Pavlina.

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