“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only”.

– Charles Dickens

That pretty well sums it up ;). 

Life has been pretty tumultuous around here since Trellis House was shut down by the Norristown zoning board last November (2009).  It’s been a struggle for me and Rebekah to regain our footing, build our businesses, re-establish our relationship on the basis of something other than owning and operating a commune, a “community of fun love and transformation”.  Time to focus on ourselves, on our family, on our relationship to Spirit and to the larger community.  Time for me, in particular, to explore a range of developmental systems and philosophies, leading to a deep engagement with integral philosophy and to Mike Jay’s Flawless Living movement, as is told in detail on my personal blog. 

As always, life has healed itself.  How easy it is to forget, in the midst of trouble and crisis, that is the natural way of things.  It happens every time.

“Whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger”.

– Nietzsche

(Another of my favorite quotes).

Last week we had our first big event at the house in 8 months.  We donated the space to host a group called Be Present, a consciousness-raising organization that started as a black women’s empowerment thing a while back, and filled our house with delightful people, of all colors and persuasions, talking about life, play, self-expression and making a difference.  It was a wonderful day.  They told us of another intentional community movement called Common Fire, which is focused on sustainability, individual support, social change and empowerment, and the gears in my head started turning.  Is it time to start living communally again?  What is next for us, as a family? 

I know for myself that living communally is the most fun thing I ever did.  I see clearly though, that one mistake I made – that I often make – is rushing through things.  In the clarity of my vision and the force of my passion, I have a tendency to stomp over everyone else, ignoring points of view that don’t fit with my own.  I am not necessarily very good at playing win-win. 

“Sometimes you have to take into account the crazy ideas of your collaborators.”

– Victor Baranco

Rebekah and I are alive and well.  It’s actually a tremendously exciting time for us, many doors are opening.  I feel very blessed, very lucky to be alive.

"[William James] believed, with many another religious thinker, that the sinner is closer to God than the conventionally good man, because life is given us as a passion; it is, as Keats said, a vale of soul-making.  What is characteristic of life is the thing that antedates and denies convention. Convention trims, distorts, and suppresses, for good reasons that we all acknowledge.  But social discipline also weakens and disables, leaving  no merit for the virtuous man who is such only because his spirit is too weak to be tempted.  This is no doubt why saints and apostles more often consort with thieves and prostitutes than with bankers and aldermen”

– Jacques Barzum, from the preface to William James’ Varieties of Religious Experience

Throw away
Your begging bowls at God’s door

For I have heard the Beloved
Prefers sweet threatening shouts,

Something on the order of:

Hey, Beloved,
My heart is a raging volcano
of love for you!

You better start kissing me –
Or else!"

I research, review and publish resources that help people live richer, fuller, more loving lives

More than anything in the world, I love to write

I show people how to grow their web business and traffic

I know that the choice to be happy is available to me in every situation

I know that learning how to be happy and learning how to love are the same thing.  “Love bears all things” [Corinthians 13:7]

I know that  there is no difference between the lover and the beloved.  Neither is better or worse since neither would exist without the other.

I believe that 90% of human upset and suffering has one cause: lack of empathy (failure to understand how another person thinks and feels).  Fortunately for me, empathy is a skill that can be learned.

I believe that loneliness is the greatest scourge of Western civilization (and the cause of most other problems).  I try and reduce loneliness, one person at a time.

I take what is offered to me and I give what is pleasurable for me to give, regardless of what other people think I should do (and sometimes even what I myself think)

I never apologize for my truth

I know that my wife Rebekah is the greatest thing that ever happened to me as a human being

I know the past has no power over me

I live a life knowing that everything I want is within me now

I realize that intelligence is not just in the mind

I believe it is possible to be spiritually aligned and wealthy

I strive for the impossible so I can call on a strength greater than myself

I believe I was put on the planet to experience joy and to teach it to others

I am intense and focused

Learning new things is as important to me as eating

Give me this every day and I am happy: a walk, a dance, a song, a visit with a friend, a new idea, and a big plate of steamed greens :)

– With gratitude and inspiration to Brooke Castillo

How did I shift my energy?  I really focussed on what I needed to feel taken care of and happy.  I started exercising more, saying no when I needed to to requests, and singing along with You Tube voice lessons.  Then when I got a little surplus going, I started to look for how I could contribute to the other people in the house.  Some of it was anonymous, cleaning a person’s room, sneaking cookies into someone’s food cupboard. Other things were obvious, like going lingerie shopping with a housemate prior to her Advanced Sensuality course.  Before I knew it, people were doing nice things for me too, the whole house was having fun again.  Lately, we’ve had house meals almost every day.  Yesterday, Wade and I gardened, and hopefully next spring we will have beautiful tulips in the front yard.  Our charity, Stone Soup Collective, has gotten a new donor, and we are now getting tons of food to give away in the neighborhood.  (Side note – I highly recommending giving away food.  It never fails to raise my spirits and help me feel more deserving of my great life.)

I’m investing in my life and my business  by writing to this blog, which has been sadly neglected since its inception.  No re-frame. . . My blog which has been patiently waiting for me  to show up and radiate out to the world.   Here’s another tip that I was recently reminded of — find things right  how they are now.  There’s always up from here, and it’s a lot easier to go from good to better than trying to fix the bad.

In closing, another Vic quote — “The better it gets, the better it gets.”

“What is gradually emerging is that the leading edge of my own development is deepening and clarifying my relationship with my wife, Rebekah.  This is an awesome yet shocking realization – awesome in terms of the possibilities, and shocking in that this had not been obvious to me before.  In my usual masculine, goal-oriented, single-pointed consciousness, bulldozer style of being, I have been speeding forward without great awareness or concern for the people around me and their needs.  Perhaps this was developmentally appropriate and timely – and I can hardly complain about the results – but the time has come to get this handled.  It may also be possible that “getting this handled” is a masculine problem-solving approach towards a situation that is likely to be a lifetime of work – oh lucky me to have such an interesting problem to solve, as the problem of relating lovingly and deeply and powerfully all the time to the person with whom I have chosen to share my life (and my business!).”

This is classic Morehouse philosophy.  Interesting how I’ve come full-circle here.

In addition I want to report some very big wins:

• We have two trial residents at Trellis right now, with a third expected next weekend.  All of them very cool people.  This is pretty wild, and it gets intense as we try and put on a good show for trial residents.  It’s a major production, but well worth it – having new people here generally ups everyone’s level of fun and attention.  I also just completed a major upgrade to  the Trellis House website.  We are on the map now and we aren’t going away.
• I wrote the skeleton website for my new internet marketing and social media consulting company over the weekend, Everyman Marketing, including two good articles – check out the lead article Why traditional website publishing is dead (and why you should use Wordpress or similar CMS instead).  Also my Project Mojave group (internet business development group) has started in earnest and I have two very committed members (PS: It’s not too late to join!)
• I am coaching one-on-one with Saniel Bonder, who is an effin’ genius
• And, I have two other high-power developmental groups going, plus one in formation:  I have a half-hour weekday Mastermind call with two friends that has been amazing; I have a group of friends from Shalom Mountain exploring awakening within Waking Down in Mutuality; and we are starting a 4-part course here at Trellis in a few weeks called Conscious Eating that I am very excited about.  I am also very excited about Mark Hyman’s book The Ultramind Solution, which is about how nutrition and self-care affects our cognitive capacity and resilience.  This is so right-on for me right now.

And yet I continue to be challenged by my caffeine addiction, relationship with Rebekah, juggling time and money, worries and anxieties about the future, etc…  Same old, same old. Why is life so complicated?

But my situation is by no means unusual.  Half the people I know are in some kind of major crisis or life transition right now…

Half the people that I am working with these days are struggling in some way – to support their families, find their passion, relate creatively and compassionately to their partners, deal with health issues… Situations that are almost surreal abound, magical encounters and synchronicities are commonplace, many of us can’t even tell which is up and which is down, and virtually all of us are worried about something or other.  Literally, life as we know it is getting turned upside down.

By comparison with what I am seeing all around me, in fact, my own life occurs as “a walk through the tulips” :).  I am living my dream and I have my Beloved, after all… what could be better?

“Love and work… work and love, that’s all there is.”

– Sigmund Freud

So here is my inspirational quote for the day:

“Don’t worry, you are going to be alright.”

– Marc Beneteau

I know that of which I speak.

“If your mind is on the right path, it doesn’t matter how fast you go. If you’re on the right path, you’ll get there. Commitment keeps you on the path.”

And then:

“The hardest thing for people in western culture to unlearn is the short attention span that’s encouraged by television, entertainment,  letting the kids rule the roost, and by letting untrue victim thoughts  become our belief systems.  And this inability to be quiet and real is really just the inability to return the mind to the most important thing it can be thinking about in any given moment. It leads to a very confused life full of much unfinished business. The unfinished business then leads to drama. The drama leads to self-dramatization including wild stories about how other people are making us unhappy. This self-dramatization replaces the committed life.”

Man I relate to this (short attention span, me???  Self-dramatization???).

Steve Chandler, incidentally, is one of America’s highest-paid coaches, writers and consultants.  He charges $50k for an internship, which I believe is worth every penny.  I am saving up for it :).

As I was reading this quote yesterday my life changed irrevocably.  It finally dawned on me that since my life purpose – the thing that I love to do, that I was born to do, that I would do even if I never earned a dime from it - is creating communities of transformation, and nurturing transformational relationships, all that I need to do is to commit to earning my primary livelihood in that way.  Nothing more and nothing less.  That is the solution to the work-life income problem that I have been debating inside for 4 months and more.

Within less than 24 hours of this realization, by strange coincidence, all kinds of powerful business ideas and opportunities opened up around Trellis, the transformational community where I live, which I will share later.  The end result was to realize that I need to take on the Trellis business on a much larger scale than I had previously contemplated.  Along with this, I need to change both my presentation and my self-image around that – to start treating it like a business rather than a hobby – a business of personal transformation, which is what it is.

Later, a friend of mine wrote to me that she was having a hard-time, that nothing seemed to be working out, she was discouraged and depressed.  I replied (among other things) as follows: State what you want and decide that nothing less will be acceptable.  Period.  And I said it too, aloud, and a strange thrill went down my spine.

I have frequently quoted the mountaineer W.H. Murray on this same topic, but it is well-worth repeating:

“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, the providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.”

More to follow…

It really proves the old saying, “the more the merrier.”  I like it when there are lots of people around to play with.  Sure it sometimes gets noisy, and messy.  Definitely, you have to constantly take into account “the insane ideas of your collaborators” (a Vic Baranco saying).  But the reason I live with a group is that I like the stimulation that lots of people provide.  Last month we had lots of people here for a Basic Sensuality course taught by Lafayette Morehouse members.  Next weekend, dozens of people are coming to experience Waking Down founders Saniel and Linda Bonder.

That’s the comings, and now the goings.  In the last couple of months, two of our housemembers moved out.  It’s been pretty quiet around here. This happens, and it is always like losing a member of the family.  You want them to pursue their life dreams and the path that is laid out for them, and at the same time, you miss them.  We also miss them financially, and no new house members were immediately apparent, so we advertised for renters.  And none have come.  I think this is righteous.  We want to live in a house that is full of committed community members, not renters.  Right now, I’m waiting for the vaccum to suck in the new folks.  I know they’re out there, and they are probably not the people I think are coming.  I experienced this when I lived in Yonkers.  You stick out the lean time, and it passes.  The answers seems to me to be “Party on,”  and “if you build it, they will come.”  My plan is to keep making my life and my house look like I envision it.  I am putting more attention on my personal gratification, and less on what I think I should be doing.  I am planning to leave my job in the next few weeks, so that I can put all my attention on the things I love. . .my family, my community, my growth as a spiritual being, my creativity.  I’m confident that this is where my joy will come from, and as a natural outflow of that, the money.

Here is my vision:  Trellis is thriving with 12 – 15 housemembers.  We are so full, we buy the house next door to keep growing as a community.  At least once a month we host a major workshop or course, with several other groups running on a weekly or monthly basis.  Marc and I have ten or more coaching clients for either our relationship coaching, my diet coaching/healing practice etc.  I have lots of time to write, travel, sing and dance, talk on the phone, and watch Angel re-runs with Ariana.  Marc is in his passion too, and all our financial needs are abundantly taken care of.  We travel and study, and have a juicy romantic relationship that is the source of all our power.  Everyone around us is going for their visions, and we all live in an awareness of the continuous presence of love.

We are always either coming or going in life.  I’m coming into my power and going after my dreams.  How about you?

• Part 1 (this mail) is about my developmental journey over the past 7 months, which has involved a chain of events, both internal and external, for which I feel deeply blessed and grateful.
• Part 2 is going to be about Saniel Bonder and his developmental philosophy (that is called Waking Down), that has completely swept me away and created a kind of coagulation of all the different facets of my thinking around issues of development, and clarified the nature of my being-in-the-world and my work. I will describe the basic concepts of Waking Down and the impact they have had on me.
• Part 3 is about the changes that have occurred in me, particularly in how I am bringing this work into the world and also taking myself back into the “marketplace”, or the real-world exchange of goods, services and ideas. In other words, it’s about how I am able to hold onto an experience of “awakening” (of sorts) and still pay the bills.

Part 1: My Story

Over the past 7 months (since September  of last year) I have been on the most exciting developmental journey of my whole life. It began with a virtual “explosion” of my writing (the blogs: Adventures in Relationship and Community, Lifestyle Design School and Polyphasic Sleep Blog),  and research on various spiritual teachers (Andrew Cohen, Swami Rudrananda, Swami Kecharanatha / Michael Ott), and then continued with getting laid-off from my job last December, and embarking on a series of  lifestyle experiments including polyphasic sleep, juicing and raw foods.  We successfully produced our first Morehouse course (Basic Sensuality) just under three weeks ago, and took three extremely transformational trips to Shalom Mountain. Plus there are all the usual tasks of “riding” a commune and keeping three women happy (a big one and two little ones).

Some of you were quite worried about me, as I haven’t appeared to be overly concerned about paying our mortgage (which is actually a misperception – I am extremely concerned, just not panicking about it; and am thinking more strategically about the situation than is apparent from my writing). Others have let me know that they thought I had “gone off the deep end,” that my writing was showing signs of hypomania, and that, essentially, I needed professional help.

I shared my reaction to this in a previous post, which is that I am always deeply grateful and appreciative of negative feedback, since it makes me listen more to other people (always a good thing in my case) and, even when I feel it’s “off,” it will tend to nudge me in the direction that I should be going in anyway. Hypomania, narcissism, and grandiosity / ego-inflation are tendencies that I need to keep a close watch on.

Of course many of you thought it was all wonderful. Positive feedback is good too :-).

Despite everything, I was very clear about several things…

Despite the wildness of the “ride,” I was always very clear on one thing: that this ecstatic creative process that I was going through was for real, and that it was going to give some result as yet unseen but far beyond anything I could imagine. There was a pre-rational, instinctive kind of “knowing” about this. I was feeling throughout the whole experience (and continuing now) that I was living an acceleration of my own personal development and evolution, a kind of coming into my own and into my power, perhaps even a “spiritual awakening.” And I felt hugely grateful. It was truly a tremendous gift, an unexpected grace, a variety of “divine madness.” It was very, very cool.

The second thing that I was clear on, was that my own “shadow side,” or psychopathology (which is hypomania and narcissism), was involved, and was obvious for all to see. I am nothing if not transparent, and by some good fortune (for which I blame my parents) I don’t seem to have much in the way of shame or embarrassment about who I am and how I occur. I was pretty upfront about all this, too: to the extent that the central drive of my life is the exploration of consciousness and of pathways to enhanced states of being, feeling and perception, the chief subject of my research is myself. And therefore I will be scientifically rigorous in sharing the results of my investigation, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Third thing I knew is that all work-life and financial issues were going to resolve themselves. This is the really the crux of the matter: where is the money coming from? How do I take an “awakening” experience and ground it in the marketplace? Given my (and human being’s in general) infinite capacity for self-deception, it’s a very legitimate question. I cannot fully answer that question yet, but there has been much progress and I am satisfied with the answers I am getting so far. Please understand, I am not at all a “woo woo, Law of attraction / think positive thoughts and everything will be alright” kind of guy. I am a computer scientist and a Physicist by training. At the same time, I have made (and lost) hundreds of thousands of dollars at different times in my life, and I know by now that money is a manifestation of consciousness. Meaning that, to paraphrase one of Murphy’s laws, “Money expands or contracts to fill the need that created it” (Ok to quote me on that :-). Failure of this communal experiment is not an option. Money is bound to come.  And come it has from unexpected places like new couples coaching clients, Yoga Transformational Bootcamp and a variety of workshop leaders approaching us to use our space.

I also believe (and I give part-credit for this to Timothy Ferriss The 4-hour workweek) that almost all of us are very confused about money. We tend to pursue money as the gateway (or required access) to certain experiences (ie love, freedom and adventure). But the truth is that love, freedom and adventure are much cheaper than we imagine, once we start to think seriously and creatively about having those things. I have found in my case that it is much better to pursue the underlying needs first, and once that comes clear to find the way to fund the vision. I have written an entire website about this, Lifestyle Design School, in case you are interested.

Into this fertile soil, Saniel Bonder comes into my life…

While at a Shalom Couples retreat, our friend Pat Parisi says, “I”ve started working with these really cool people, Saniel and Linda Bonder.  They are looking to expand their community when they come East this Spring, and I thought of you guys.”  First Rebekah checks out their website and says “These folks are right up our alley, let’s do it.”  I check them out and am blown away.  Next thing I know, Saniel Bonder called us to talk actual plans. Before I can say “shakti,” we are hosting Saniel and Linda Bonder for 3 of their 4 Philadelphia events. This is an awakened master who is going to be spending 2 days in my living room!

Saniel and Linda Bonder are actually going to be in Philadelphia for four events in early April (Thur 4/2, Fri 4/3, Sat 4/4, Sun 4/5) and also in New York City (Mon 3/30 and Wed 4/1) and Albany (4/10). If you are anywhere in the neighborhood (and even if not – this is worth traveling for) I hope you will join us. For details click here.

Waking Down is the most practical, effective, revolutionary information I have ever come across for anyone on the spiritual path – or for anyone who wants to have love in their life while engaging joyfully and passionately with the world. It’s also not some woo-woo spiritual teaching. Saniel was a founding member of Ken Wilber’s integral institute, has been teaching for 17 years, and there are hundreds of documented cases of spiritual awakenings through contact with him and with this work. I know him personally now, along with his life-partner Linda, and I have found him extremely down-to-earth, practical and humble. He also answers email and can be booked for sessions at a reasonable cost, which makes him attractive as a teacher of enlightenment :-).

Stay tuned for the next article in this series: Awakening into Relationship and Community, Part 2: Saniel Bonder and Waking Down.

I expect this year to be full of growth, joy, happiness, good health, financial abundance and prosperity. That’s no change at all, because that happens every year. The problem is, we never know what it is going to look like.

In 2008, I lost fifty pounds, stood up to my abusive ex-husband in two law suits, successfully worked outside the house half-time, grew our community from a bunch of renters to a handful of committed members, and watched my oldest daughter start high school and become a young woman with a (gasp!) serious boyfriend. My husband Marc left the safe niche of a company he had freelanced with off and on for years, and became an independent contractor. For a while, he worked full time outside the house too, and now he is looking for contracts that will allow him to work from home. We started making financial amends to a slew of creditors left behind after we sold our web business. Marc started juicing. Marc quit coffee, started drinking coffee, quit coffee again. In the new year, he is planning a sleep experiment that turns the traditional clock on its head.

There are lots of changes but they are subtle and gradual. I have a new five sizes smaller wardrobe and more housemates. I go to work, and now Marc stays home. I discovered that I really enjoy chauffeuring my youngest daughter to gymnastics and watching her work out (as much as 5 days a week). But the changes are really incremental, and life goes on as it always has, except a little more vividly. I have a deeper relationship to my daughters (it is amazing how having something be put in jeopardy leads to cherishing it). I have had to wrestle with demons of fear, anxiety, depression and surrender, leading in turn to new life skills. I have experienced my relationship with Marc as getting more real, more challenging, and also more intimate. Some days I felt so overwhelmed that all I could do was put one foot in front of the other towards the next right thing; which might have been as simple as eating breakfast, or taking a shower. I am realizing that control is an illusion, and sometimes the only thing left to do is let everything you thought you knew go, to make room for something new.

You might be thinking, “good health happens every year? This was the year I got a scary diagnosis.” Well, what did you decide to do with that news? Did you start a new health regimen, or really look at the stressors in your life and eliminate them, or stop taking your days for granted because they were numbered? Financial prosperity? That has nothing to do with how much money you have, but how you feel about it. This year, I spent less on holiday presents because I had other uses for the money, and yet enjoyed the experience more. I’m a prosperous woman, because I look at everything that comes to me as a gift, waiting to be revealed. My dad always used to say “Rebekah, you could look at a room full of shit and you’d go looking for the pony.” That isn’t always my first reaction when surprise comes down the pike, but it is my last.

I’m looking forward to 2009. I hope you are too, and that you always find the pony.