I am going to be traveling a lot in the next 6 weeks – to the Integral Theory Conference in Oakland, then a week with Mike Jay in Las Vegas (see below), and then Burning Man – and reporting on all these events – so I am leading off with a long piece on entrepreneurship, happiness and success, followed by an offer / invitation. You can skip the narcissistic ramblings and head directly to the invitation below, if you want, which is a pretty good one.
The ups and the downs of being an entrepreneur
I got a mixed response to the Entrepreneur test piece, with people asking me “is this really you”? Well, in many respects, sadly, it has been. I am actually not a natural entrepreneur, yet I have spent a large chunk of my life looking for some way to support myself that would also feed my happiness and allow me to do the things that have been most important and vital to me (my adventures in relationship and community and “experiments in consciousness”). I became an entrepreneur by default – I couldn’t think of any other career that would give me the freedom that I needed. When I met Rebekah, after a lifetime of seeking in both the relational and business arenas, I became happy for perhaps the first time in my life, because I had found a path to sustained sexual intimacy with a person of the female persuasion (don’t laugh – it’s actually not an easy thing).
With this triumph, and flush with excitement, I then created or participated in 4 different businesses over the next 6 years – all of which failed, and two of them spectacularly so (the first web business and Trellis). My current business, WordPress Academy, is the first one that is successful. Maybe because it’s more related to an area of desire (or intrinsic motivation), for me: WordPress Academy is a type of conversation for transformation, which is the thing for which I live.
And yet I continue to struggle with this – either sacrificing happiness in the pursuit of success, or, as of lately, sacrificing success in the pursuit of happiness. This, I have come to learn, is very common.
Continue reading Entrepreneurship, success, and happiness: lessons learned, and an invitation
 I will be attending Burning Man 2010 this year with a group of friends from Shalom Mountain. We are staying at a wonderful camp, Sacred Spaces Village (http://www.sacredspacesvillage.org/), who just informed me they have some spaces left.
Burning Man (http://www.burningman.com/) is a weeklong festival that takes in the desert near Reno, NV, every year the week before Labor day. I am flying into Reno on Sunday August 29 and flying out on Sunday September 5.
If you don’t know much about Burning Man, it’s difficult to describe. To me it’s an experimental community, an alternative reality, a great aesthetic, relational and intellectual adventure. Plus, I will be there, so you know the company will be good  . The camp supplies delicious food (raw entree choices!), yoga twice a day, the installations/rituals and the community at a very reasonable price. Total cost with air, camp and Burning Man ticket is currently about $1000.
Write to me if you would like to come.
Cheers,
Marc
- I am willing to lose everything.
- I embrace failure.
- I am always willing to do tedious work.
- I can handle watching my dreams fall apart.
- Even if I am puking my guts out with the flu and my mother passed away last week, there is nothing that will keep me from being ready to work.
- My relationship/marriage is so strong, nothing work related could ever damage it.
- My family doesn’t need an income.
- This is a connected world and I don’t need alone time. I want to be reachable 24/7 by my employees, customers, and business partners.
- I like instability and I live for uncertainty.
- I don’t need a vacation for years at a time.
- I accept that not everyone likes my ideas and that it’s quite likely that many of my ideas are garbage.
- If I go into business with friends or family, I am OK with losing that relationship forever if things end badly.
- I don’t have existing anxiety issues and I handle stress with ease.
- I am willing to fire or layoff anyone no matter what how good of a friend they are, if they are my own sibling, if they just had a baby, if they have worked with me for 20 years, if their spouse also just lost their job, if I know they might end up homeless, if they have cancer but no outside medical insurance, or any other horrible scenario millions of bosses and HR people have faced countless times.
- I am OK with being socially cut-off and walking away from my friends when work beckons.
- I love naysayers and I won’t explode or give-up when a family member, friend, customer, business associate, partner, or anyone for that matter tells me my idea, product, or service is a terrible idea, a waste of time, will never work, or that I must be a moron.
- I accept the fact that I can do everything right, can work 70 hours a week for years, can hire all the right people, can arrange amazing business deals, and still lose everything in a flash because of something out of my control.
- I accept that I may hire people that are much better at my job than I am and I will get out of their way.
- I realize and accept that I am wrong ten times more than I am right.
- I am willing to walk away if it doesn’t work out.
Courtesy of Seth Kravitz.
I am in part reluctant to write today, as I have so much to share, as my life has taken a definite turning point, a crystallization and falling-into-place and making-whole of all the experiences, triumphs and tragedies, joys and sorrows of my 3 years with Trellis, 6 years with Rebekah, and indeed the entire stream of my life to this day. I am half-reluctant to share because although there are some very exciting external events, which I will share momentarily, and upcoming adventures (I live for adventures), the essence of this transformation is still internal and in-process, and may therefore be difficult to convey in writing.
I am encouraged to write by a beautiful book I am reading, My years with the Qutb by Sharon Marcus, about her time with the great Sufi saint Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, who spent the last 16 years of his life in Philadelphia (!). I must be a natural Sufi because every time I read anything on Sufism (previously Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee’s fascinating lectures Love is a fire and I am wood) something inside me responds with a powerful “Yes”; and Sharon Marcus’s book is no exception, I start to cry on every second page (tears of recognition and tears of relief). Sufism is about the primacy of love, and the burning away of everything that is not-love, and the everyday ecstasy that can be had from the intimate meeting with God and all of God’s creatures, including oneself and one’s fellows. This is the experience that was at the core of the design of Trellis (and the design of Morehouse as well, that is Trellis’s spiritual parent), it is the same as Jerry Jud’s Love is an intention and “more than anything else, we seek to love and be loved”, it is what happens most weekends (predictably) at Shalom Mountain Retreat Center. It is an experience that has always been with me and called me, that has expressed itself most potently for me in intimate relationships of all kinds, and sexual/romantic attractions; and it’s an experience that is growing deeper and stronger with me every year.
Aside from this brief (rambling?) digression, I do have some news. I have found my dream job, which is social media director and affiliate manager for a new program called Flawless Living, that is being developed by visionary coach, entrepreneur and internet marketer Mike Jay, which I wrote about in my previous article. Flawless Living cannot be described in a paragraph, as it’s the result of Mike’s 20 years of research into business coaching, Western psychology and human development (with a smattering of the world’s wisdom literature thrown in), but I can say that it’s a seminar series, a school of consciousness, a community/movement, an integrally-inspired business network, and a training program in internet marketing and business development all at once. The program is still in development but there is a beta launch in Las Vegas in August and an official launch in Philadelphia in November. What it’s about for me is the unification of the two fundamental strands, or major impulses of my life, which are the drive for happiness and the drive for “success” (recognition and contribution). These two major impulses, which I also describe as the masculine and feminine polarities of life, have been at war with each other for 40-odd years. What is so meaningful to me about this assignment, and so magical, is that it’s a recognition and validation of what I have been doing already for a couple of decades, for free—networking for transformation—and so this recognition has been profoundly calming and settling for me. The fundamental idea of Flawless Living is similar to—but much more complex and layered—than “do what you love and the money will follow”, because many of us have tried doing what we love and the money has not followed, and this is at it should, because the idea is good but a bit naive, and Mike has helped me to understand why.
Flawless Living is for now just a very part-time job for me, which is just as well, because of my next major piece of news: I am selling an interest in WordPress Academy, for a little cash and some help, to facilitate a big product development effort that will culminate in November with a product I am creating, which is a book/DVD on WordPress web design and internet marketing for small business. This is my major project for the next 4-5 months, that is going to force me into a kind of focus and self-discipline that I resist and yet I know I need in order to become the person that I want to be (i.e., happy and successful . The reason I am seeking partners is that I have realized that I don’t want to do this alone, I am not motivated, it’s a fundamental part of my design that I can’t bring myself to do something unless it’s fun, and it’s a fundamental principle of Flawless Living that just because we can do something (like, exercise or meditate every morning) it doesn’t mean that we will, and therefore we need to find workarounds (such as, in my case, finding a partner, even at the cost of giving up some equity).
Because of all this, I have a very ambitious travel schedule over the next 4 months: in addition to a week-long retreat that Rebekah and I are doing at Shalom Mountain called Sexuality and Spirituality, I have four trips out West scheduled: I am attending the Integral Theory in Action Conference in Pleasant Hill CA (near Oakland) end of July, the Flawless Living immersion in Vegas mid-August, I am going to Burning Man 2010 with a group from Shalom Mountain that I put together, and then back to Vegas again in October for Blogworld where I will be promoting WordPress Academy. I haven’t travelled much for the last 6 years, so this also is a big change. The Flawless Living launch is in Philadelphia, thank God—I love traveling for the excitement and all, but I also find it physically challenging.
So stay tuned for more interesting reports over the course of the summer and fall, hopefully less rambling (although I don’t promise anything
Much love,
Marc
PS: If you like this, please comment
Rebekah and the kids are away for most of the weekend, and so I am enjoying “that blissful solitude, that was so painful in my youth” [Einstein]. Truthfully, the events of the last 6 weeks (starting with the book I am writing and on to extremely exciting events at WordPress Academy, that I haven’t shared yet) have been so intoxicating that I had resolved to spend the entire weekend in bed reading paperback novels and listening to inspirational audios. But I need to share with y’all what happened yesterday.
Mike Jay is a business coach and developmentalist that I have been connected with loosely for a number of years. I had actually started his coach training program 5-6 years ago, before deciding that being a business coach probably wasn’t for me. He’s been pretty quiet for the last few years but has recently surfaced with a coaching / business development program that is so compelling I joined right away. I will be doing this program over the course of the summer, culminating in an intensive in Las Vegas in late August. It turns that he has been traveling a lot for the last few years, coaching billionaires and major third-world banks. I think he is one of the most brilliant people I have ever met, and his ideas on development are both very practical and timely. The intro call for this program occurred yesterday, and it blew my mind. I will post the audio to this call when I get permission, but let me summarize some of the key ideas here, and their impact on me.
Continue reading Mike Jay on performance management and personal effectiveness
Last weekend Rebekah and I spent a day with sensuality educators Monica Day and Sam Gedal, exploring desire, connection, attachment, fear (you know – all the things that matter) and, yes… orgasm. The experience was unexpectedly profound for me, and has caused a ripple through my life which is both subtle and undeniable. One of the fundamental premises of the work is that of orgasm as a metaphor for life. This conversation, as the Quakers put it, “spoke to my condition”: how can I stay in the flow of life, immersed in both sensation and powerful ideas, riding the waves and the crests of pleasure, of connection and disconnection, fear and excitement, expression and receptivity, playing with the energies of attraction and revulsion; and still function in the world, run a business and manage my sometimes chaotic energies and the conflicting needs and demands on my time and attention.
Here is how Monica describes the results of this inquiry for her, on her blog:
At some point, you fully own and take responsibility — for everything. The practice, your life, your desires, your orgasm. Your part in your relationships, your choices, your suffering. There is no more blaming, there is no more victim status. There is just you. Your physical, emotional and spiritual being. And of course, your orgasm — which exists on all of these levels. And how all of these parts of you collide with the world around you. And what you do with every moment of that collision.
My biggest surprise: Freedom is not what I expected. It’s much, much better. Much more subtle. Nothing changes in some ways. And then, everything does.
The fundamental shift I had was to understand that in my borderline-compulsive need to live full-out, I was losing the most important thing: Me. I have been getting a lot done, I have been highly functioning in most areas of life, but I wasn’t enjoying myself. So it was game-over from the beginning, I never had a chance and this was the reason I was behaving in self-destructive ways around caffeine, for example. It was a sweet insight because when I honored my need and desire to "drink life from a fire-hose" as it were, I forgave myself for my excesses as I saw them as coming fundamentally from an inspired place. Since getting that, I have dropped my negative internal dialogue around this, which has actually freed me to take better care of myself — previously, shame and blame had me stuck, which are very ineffective agents of change. Failure to take care of myself is actually a very selfish act because in addition to me not enjoying life, everyone in my sphere of influence is affected negatively. I have, essentially, been pretending that I don’t have a body.
Funnily, when one of my friends first heard me talk about the idea of life as orgasm, he said right away: that fits very well for you, Marc!
Another interesting feedback came from another friend and course participant, who told me that in my rushing in all directions at once, I came across as out-of-integrity and not believable (not “walking my talk”). To which I could only agree. There is a difference between “getting a lot done” and being effective. Being effective is getting a lot done while staying connected to others and to oneself.
This brings up another question: this current stage of life I am in now, which is the passionate, possibly even manic pursuit of experiences and connection, exploring the world and my possible fit, seems to me more typical and appropriate to someone in their 20s, or early 30s. Well I turned 50 in March, and I have started thinking of the nature of my legacy and of my gift. I told Sam that I had no interest in being a sexual or sensual educator, since I feel that I have no particular gift in any of these areas: sexuality, sensuality or education (well, I am a pretty good WordPress educator, but that hardly counts ). Sam challenged me to write a letter to my list, declaring that I was opening an orgasmic education practice and would start teaching. I am not willing to go that far yet, however I can certainly declare that I am opening an orgasmic inquiry group! A life-orgasm inquiry group, to be precise (you are a part of it .
When I haven’t checked-in for such an eternity, it’s hard to know where to begin.
I will start with practical things. The WordPress webinar business has taken off. I am generating as much service business as I can handle right now just from my eBook and web traffic. The webinar has gone through two full cycles, with the third cycle launching in early May (let me know if you are interested, the usual discounts are available to people on my personal list). I am also finishing teaching a 6-week course at Drexel’s Baiada Center for Entrepreneurship that has been very successful, and they want me back. Recently one of the leading software and technology review sites on the web, MakeUseOf.com, adopted my eBook and sent it out to its 200,000 subscribers. That same day, Google upped my page rank from 0 to 3. I I feel that I have been struggling all my life to find a line of work that wouldn’t make me crazy, and I may have finally succeeded. We are also regaining our financial footing for the first time since starting the commune 3 years ago, as Rebekah is working too (she’s taken a job at California Pizza Kitchen near here). Kids are happy, all is well.
In addition to this, I am writing a book, which is provisionally titled “My rise to fame and fortune in 180 days by reading, writing and sleeping: a bipolar memoir”. It’s due out in the fall. It’s part memoir, part critique and spoof of the self-help industry, and part reality-show of my life. It is based on the premise that “self-improvement” doesn’t work. Instead, I have adopted a new “definite major purpose” [from Napoleon Hill’s famous “Think and Grow Rich”] which is to awaken to non-dual consciousness and make a pile of money in the next 180 days by doing more of the things that bring me joy: reading, writing and sleeping. The awakening to non-dual consciousness is “scheduled” to happen at about the time I will be at Burning Man 2010 (I am hoping to take a small group there this year). So that should be interesting. The book is also about the power of agreement within a sexually polarized relationship, and integrates a lot of what I have learned in Morehouse and from David Deida.
Writing the book is a lot of work, and I can only do it in spurts because of my other obligations, but it has been a very joyful thing. I have discovered that writing for personal transformation, as in this blog, and writing for publication, are very different things. I have joined a memoir-writer’s group where I am learning the craft of writing for publication. However, the personal impact of the project on me is nothing less than cataclysmic. My life has taken on a vividness, immediacy and sense of purpose that it was lacking before. I feel this book to be my unique contribution, the thing that my whole life has been preparing me for, the “essence of Marc”. I have lost my envy of people who are successful in business: I only desire to be me and to write. Which is a fortunate desire to have, as it happens to be my reality.
Anyway – this is just my “initial broadside”. I will be writing more in the coming weeks as the adventure unfolds. If are you interested in my ideas on development, you may want to subscribe to Integral Evolutionary blog as well, where I post more frequently.
Love,
Marc
 I have been quiet on this list for some time. As public a person as I am, and as much as I enjoy baring my soul all over the internet and to anyone who will listen, there are many aspects of my recent experience that are not useful to share – and some others that involve other people as well, whose story is not mine to tell. But it is time for me to speak out again. If you are looking for my usual “blood and guts” storyline you probably won’t be disappointed, but this story does have a happy ending  .
Continue reading On yoga, bipolarity, mood disorders and religious experience
Well, I have lived a couple of lifetimes since Trellis House was shut-down by the Norristown zoning department 5 weeks ago. Quite a few miracles have occurred, and many angels have showed-up, but the scene is still a bit too “raw” for full-disclosure. Maybe I will write the full story one day. However there are a few things I can say about it now.
First of all: in retrospect, it seems clear that this was one of those cases where the Universe gave a kick-in-the-pants in a direction that was initially unwelcome, but that in the end served everyone. The bottom-line, I think, is that we were all ready to end this particular experiment. Some more than others, of course. It’s not up to me to share other people’s story, but for myself I will say this: running a commune is just about the most fulfilling thing that I have ever done in my life; and yet, it was time for me to take back some attention from my “hobbies” (i.e. running a commune) and put more energy into business. Which business, my new Website development and internet marketing training company, is one of the great miracles of this debacle. I sold 13 seats in my first webinar through my personal network alone, and teaching it has been just about the most fun I have ever had in a business context (“the most fun to be had while vertical”, a friend of mine used to say). Everyone I talk to thinks it’s a winner, there is a book possibility, I have an appointment at Drexel’s Baiada Center for Entrepreneurship to talk about teaching it there, etc. etc.
The second thing I realized is this: there is no shame in a spectacular business failure. And especially so, when this was an attempt to serve a beautiful dream: that “all would live as lovers do” (Peggy Seeger in her beautiful song Thoughts of time). I believe that Jesus had a similar idea as well.
So much for that. What will happen next with the house etc., is anybody’s guess. We haven’t given up the fight yet. Also the non-residential community is continuing.
 In an attempt to get some clarity on all this, I did spend a long weekend at the Shivananda Yoga Ashram in the Catskill very recently. I am very familiar with Shivananda yoga from my previous life in the early 90s. I used to go on personal retreats in their Val Morin center (north of Montreal) and I had discovered that no matter what a mess I was going in, within two days of doing their program, I was good-as-rain. Miraculous really. I wanted to see if it still worked.
It did. Imagine this: 4 hours a day of yoga, 2-3 hours of meditation and chanting, long walks in the country, eating delicious vegetarian food, and sleeping the rest of the time. The yoga is much more meditative than other forms of yoga I have tried – there are many rest periods and lots of breathing exercises – without losing any of the intensity. It’s also a longer workout, about 2 hours. I totally dig it, and aside from feeling pretty sore, it was something blissful. In many ways I feel like I am starting a new life now, and very eager to see how much I can do at home. But I am pretty psyched about the idea of going back-and-forth between here and Shivananda until I get it right. They have wireless internet there too, so I can work. A major benefit of having an internet-based business, of course.
I really appreciate everyone’s support during this difficult transition. I am feeling very loved right now.
To be continued…
Marc
 The news is official: The Trellis residential program has been shut down by the Norristown zoning department effective this Friday. While one may argue about the application of the judgment (we have 3 days to move all tenants and housemates out!), I feel it to be a righteous decision. And also inevitable – I lead a very public life, for better or for worse (the Trellis website has been up for some time, I may even ask the code inspector for feedback on my narcissistic ramblings, haha). So from Friday, Rebekah and I and the children will be returning to the lifestyle of your average happy, healthy, normal American family .
The outpouring of love and support from our community has been overwhelming. Our feelings in this situation are, of course, complex.
First and foremost: we want our response to be indicative of the values by which we live: finding people right wherever they are; the importance of friendship and community; and the ability to enjoy ourselves in every situation. We have no animosity toward the zoning department, or even to the unidentified neighbor who called in the complaint; and we are having a major moving party over the next two days, and have asked for help from the community.
Secondly: it is easy to go into fear (even terror – how are Rebekah and I going to support ourselves?), anger, sadness (is this the end of our dream?), etc, and it is important to feel these feelings. At the same time, the situation does have a “silver lining” – several, actually. This is not mere positive thinking, this is the truth: this is an opportunity for us to gather as a community, and as a family, and think through what we’re doing here, and make sure that everyone is in agreement before we attempt this again (including the city planning department). Life here has been stressful lately, it’s been a struggle, and I’ve been trying to push things through too long and too hard, trying to get everyone “on the program” as it were. I am done with that, and it’s a rather freeing realization. This community does represent my life’s work, in many ways, but it needs more agreement if it’s going to work (and I need to slow down and take other people’s opinion into account).
Thirdly… this may seem strange to say, but I will say it. If you ask if I am upset, I will say YES, of course I am upset, at a certain level. And yet, at another level, I am not. There is the aforementioned “silver lining” for one. There is also the fact that we are all Ok today – one day at a time, and I feel that this is a great testimonial to the resilience of the human spirit. If we can survive this, we can survive anything. But at a deeper level – a level of ultimate spiritual reality – there is a dimension of who I am, for better or for worse, that to me this is all the “play of consciousness” (this is the title of Muktananda’s autobiography). All of this is for my growth, and serving me in more ways than I can even be aware of. As I get older, I feel more and more surrendered to “what is so”, and grateful for the opportunity of learning more about myself and other people, and creating deeper connections, in the conversation that has ensued. To me, this is what life is about – connections between people – everything else is just “fluff”. “Love bears all things” [Corinthians 13:7]
|
Quotes "If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
But if I am only for myself, who am I?
If not now, when?"
-- Hillel
"We can choose to make the success of all
humanity our personal business. We can choose to be audacious enough to take responsibility for the entire human family. We can choose to make our
love for the World what our lives are really about. Each of us now has the opportunity, the privilege to make a difference in creating a World that works for all of us. It will require courage, audacity and heart. It is much more radical
than a revolution, it is the beginning of a transformation in the quality of life on our planet. You have the power to fire a shot heard around the World.
If not you, who? If not here, where? If not
now, when?"
-- Werner Erhard, 1979
"The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet."
-- Frederich Buechner
"Describe the steps you would take,
the gifts you would buy,
the generosity you would bestow,
the kindness you would offer,
the enthusiasm you would have,
the attention you would give,
and anything else that appeals to you,
if you were able to give yourself the things you want someone else to give to you.
NONE OF US WANTS TO GROW UP"
-- Cheri Huber
“This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one...being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap, being a force of nature, instead of a feverish selfish clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy…
I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as i live it, it is a privilege to do whatever i can. i rejoice in life for its own sake…
Life is no brief candle to me, but sort of a bright torch that i got hold of for a moment and i want to make it burn as brightly as possible, before handing it on to future generations"
-- George Bernard Shaw “Bright Torch”
"Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy."
-- Joseph Campbell
"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."
-- Steve Chandler
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!" -- Hafiz
"You don't need to get what you want if you can express what you want"
-- Strephon Kaplan-Williams
"The heart has its reasons that Reason knows not of." -- Blaise Pascal |
