To wrap up 2011 and transition to 2012, Rachelle and I went to Phoenix for Raw Spirit Fest, and then yesterday we took a side trip to Sedona to meditate in one of our favorite spots. This retreat gave me time to reflect on the past year and to understand what I want to experience next.

During the past few years, I’ve been very active in the social circles surrounding my work, including connecting with people in the forums, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, email, talking face to face, doing consultations, holding workshops, hosting meet-ups in various cities, and so on. I maintained a strong community-oriented focus for much of this time.

For a while it was my conscious choice to immerse myself in all this social energy and to bring people together in various ways. I enjoyed it.

Eventually I began to feel a bit trapped though. Instead of choosing all this social interaction, it became an ever-present part of my life, whether I wanted to engage with it or not. It no longer felt like a choice. I’d engage in social networking simply because I’d been doing so for years. It became unconscious and very routine. Consequently, I developed quite a love-hate relationship with it. When I freely chose it, I loved it. When I felt like I was being sucked into it, I resisted it. I’m well aware that this influenced my interactions with people as well.

I now understand that it’s time for me to move on from this community-centered focus. It was a nice thing to experience, and it stimulated a lot of growth for myself and others, but I know it’s not the best choice going forward. If I keep doing it, it will only hold me back, and it will also suck others into more unconscious socializing.

Getting wrapped up in other people’s energies (thoughts, feelings, beliefs, etc) on a daily basis can be stimulating and rewarding, but the endless repetition can lead to resentment. That isn’t how I wish to feel about my social life, nor do I wish to serve as that kind of model for others.

If I continue actively immersing myself in the social community surrounding my work, I’ll become a victim of my own past. People are typically drawn to my work based on what I’ve written about in the past, but that isn’t who I am today, and it doesn’t accurately reflect where I’m going. When I keep connecting with people who are interested in discussing ideas that I explored years ago, it means I’m not keeping pace with my own path of growth. It’s like trying to drive while looking in the rear view mirror — after a while you begin to hate driving, even if you’d otherwise enjoy it when looking forward.

I’m delighted that so many people resonate with my work. Last month my web traffic hit a new all-time high: 12.4 million page views. Yet all of those pages contain content that was created in the past.

Essentially I’m faced with a question of priorities. Do I continue to actively engage with the social community surrounding my work and allow myself to keep getting re-immersed in past ideas, past energies, etc? Or do I let it go and focus on my own present and future path of growth?

For quite a while, I tried to do both and strike a balance. My efforts along those lines thus far have failed. Maybe a balance is possible, but I can see now that this balancing point isn’t going to be on the side that invites daily social connections that tie me to the past, such as emails, article feedback, private messages, questions, etc.

All this social energy has been acting like an anchor. When I try to move forward, it keeps tugging me back to old ideas I’ve already explored. It re-introduces old problems I’ve already solved but that other people are just beginning to solve. It tempts me to engage in old discussions that have no growth value for me today.

This month is my 15-year anniversary of being vegan, for instance. Is there any value in having the “why vegan” discussion with someone who hasn’t even done a 30-day trial of it yet? Will it be helpful to do more interviews on polyphasic sleep? Do I care to engage with people who think organized religion is the path to salvation? No… that’s looking to the past. I’d rather connect with people who can inspire me to keep growing. To make room for empowering connections, I’m consciously cutting connections that encourage me to keep looking backwards.

I love helping people grow, but I’m not willing to do that at the expense of my own growth.

So in 2012 I want to recenter my life on my path of conscious growth. I want to disengage from all the discussion surrounding my past work and free myself to explore life on my own terms once again.

The forums are closed. My online contact form is closed. I deleted my Facebook page a few months ago. I follow zero people on Twitter, so no one can send me a direct message there. My Google+ page is now closed to comments. If you wish to discuss my work, you remain free to do so; just don’t try to involve me in such discussions.

Socially I’m only keeping open the doors that I consciously choose to keep open, such as my workshops. But I’m closing the doors that encourage too much unconscious communication, such as feedback and questions related to past articles.

Part of this shift involved preparing for the upcoming Conscious Success Workshop, which starts in 11 days. One reason I enjoy creating workshops is that they push me to keep raising my standards. My vision of success involves consciously pursuing my own path of growth, and I want to know that I’m solidly living that vision before delivering this workshop.

As I clear out the mental and social clutter, I’m feeling much lighter and more enthusiastic about this coming year. I’m anticipating new experiments and experiences. I especially love this fresh opportunity to fully engage in what captivates me without regard to other people’s feedback.

In some ways I feel like I’ve been assimilated by the Borg collective for the past few years. There were so many voices in my mind that it was difficult to stay connected to my own desires. Now that those voices are quieting down, I’m enjoying the bliss and peace of reconnecting with what I love most — conscious growth experiences.

Disconnecting from the social elements that didn’t serve me doesn’t mean I’m disconnecting from the world. I love to write and expect to continue doing so. Reading people’s feedback on my writing, however, is something I can live without. I feel I’ve digested enough feedback about my writing to last me a few lifetimes, so I’m cashing in some of those credits to opt out for a lifetime or two.

In addition to refocusing on my own path of growth in 2012 and closing the door on daily social networking, I’d like to reorient my social life to spend more time connecting with others who have similar priorities when it comes to pursuing growth experiences. I had hoped I might meet such people through the social networks surrounding my work, but that didn’t happen. One reason is that such people would rather engage in growth experiences than in discussions about growth. They’d rather travel than talk about travel… would rather speak than discuss speaking… and would rather start a business than talk about starting one.

I don’t want to connect with such people in order to have more discussions about growth. I’d rather connect with people who are up for pursuing some growth experiences together — like traveling together, conducting experiments together, or tackling projects together. We can always talk to each other in the car, on the plane, etc.

Most importantly, when I connect with people, I want to do so from a place of conscious choice, not from a sense of habit, obligation, or routine. What’s most important to me in life is pursuing my path of growth. That comes first. But when this path meshes nicely with another’s path for a while, then why not explore our paths together if it’s something we both enjoy?

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

In addition to Adsense, I also sold some ads direct, and I earned income from other ad networks too, although Adsense was by far the best one I tested.

Then one day in October 2008, I decided to stop hosting third-party ads altogether, including Adsense, as I explained in a blog post about dropping Adsense at that time.

The consequences were predictable. Overnight my income dropped significantly.

If I’d kept those ads running, it’s fair to say I’d have received at least an extra $300K in ad revenue since then — probably significantly more since my web traffic has gone up during the past 3 years. Google has undoubtedly continued to refine the Adsense program as well.

If I ever feel the urge to do so, I could easily restore these ads to my website. It wouldn’t take long — a few hours at most. And it would probably start bringing in an extra $10-15K per month.

Many people would consider my decision a foolish one. Some have told me as much.

But my vision of success is my own to nurture. It’s not for anyone else to decide. I intend to grow in the ways that matter most to me, not the ways that society tells me I’m supposed to care about.

Letting go of that $300K bought me a different path of growth than I would have otherwise experienced. It started with asking myself What kind of man do I really wish to be? and How far am I willing to go to become that man?

This soul-searching led to a cascade of other choices, including ending my marriage after being together for 15 years and making some significant lifestyle changes.

Of course I can never be sure what would have happened if I made different decisions — we only get to experience the results of the paths we take, not the ones we don’t — but I’m still pleased with the path I chose. In this case the ad-dropping decision remains easily reversible, but I don’t see cause to reverse it.

Life includes many tests that help us clarify our values. I could have come up with all kinds of reasons to justify why I should have kept taking the ad money and what I could have done on that path, but based on what I knew about myself and what I was already experiencing on that path, I concluded that a different path would be more authentic and empowering for me — but also more difficult.

One side effect of dropping advertising is that I finally started doing live workshops. I’ve done seven of them now, and I have two more coming up. But workshops produce active income, whereas advertising was passive income. I’d previously believed that passive income is always superior to income I have to keep actively earning. But I learned that having to earn income actively can help me grow faster, especially when I have to exercise my creativity to earn it; active income is more challenging, and challenge encourages growth.

When my life gets too easy, I like making things harder on myself because it stimulates more growth. I like getting up early. I like writing deep and insightful articles. I like pushing myself. I like having some pressure to take action. I like being challenged. I don’t want a life of ease and comfort.

I made the choices that I felt were best for me, and I balanced that decision with what I felt was best for others. I think my website is more usable and provides more value to people without all those ads. I also know that the workshops I’ve been doing are providing a lot of value to those who attend. I really like the business model I’m using today, even though it’s more challenging than other business models I’ve tried. Designing and delivering 3-day workshops stimulates a lot more growth in my life than watching ad revenue automatically plop into my bank account.

Society may nudge you to adopt certain values, but at the end of the day, you still have a choice. You can decide which values you’ll hold as sacred and which aren’t nearly as important to you.

Exploring different ways to make money can be an interesting challenge, but I hold my path of growth and how it affects others on a much higher plane.

Conscious success requires making choices to mold your character as you desire to be molded.

Sometimes your choices will receive the approval of others. Sometimes they won’t. Regardless of others’ reactions, do your best to stay true to yourself. Make the choices that allow you to look in the mirror and feel good about the person gazing back at you.

I’ve been thinking more deeply about what it means to succeed consciously as I prep for the Conscious Success Workshop in January. I see a lot of people struggling with fuzzy notions of success that are overly infected by assumptions that society has drilled into them. I know that many people feel pressured to improve their finances, and they worry that they may be sabotaging their success with limiting beliefs about money.

I’d like to suggest that perhaps it isn’t self-sabotage or laziness that’s getting in the way, but it could be a need to develop more clarity about your true values.

There are a lot of ways to potentially earn more money that I wouldn’t feel good about, so I don’t do them. Perhaps you’re in a similar situation.

On the other hand, there are ways to make money that I do feel good about. I feel great about selling workshop registrations, so I can be pretty shameless about that. When someone signs up for a workshop, it’s good for me, and it’s good for those who attend.

There’s a temptation to sacrifice your values to buy into someone else’s definition of success, but again you have the power to choose. At many personal growth seminars, for instance, there’s a big push to get you to spend more money on products in the back of the room. Some people earn more on product sales than they do on seminar registrations. In fact, BOR sales (BOR = back of room) is a common topic for pro speakers to discuss in organizations like the National Speakers Association. Speakers frequently share tips with each other on how to maximize BOR sales.

I don’t buy into this model though. It often creeps me out when speakers push for BOR sales so hard. It feels like they’re just trying to squeeze more money out of people who already paid to be there. Behind the scenes I know that speakers often calculate and track their BOR sales per attendee. Then they try to increase that number over time.

The only products I have for sale at my workshops are my books and Erin’s CDs, and they’re discounted. The main reason we do this is because some people want us to sign copies for them or to buy them as gifts. We don’t sell very much at all though. At the October workshop we did $100 total in product sales, just to give you an idea. In fact, one of those sales was to a conference center employee who was walking down the hall, saw our sign and got curious, and ended up buying one of my books.

It took me many years to figure out what conscious success means to me, and it’s still very much an ongoing process of discovery. I gradually learned that much of what is taught about success, achievement, and wealth just doesn’t resonate with me.

It’s nice to make money, but I prefer to earn it on my terms, even when it means earning less. I like making money from exercising my creativity, such as by writing and speaking. I like making money in ways that feel congruent to me, where more income equates to more value being provided to others. I feel better about earning money from workshop sign-ups than I do from seeing more clicks on third-party ads, for instance.

If you’re able to attend the Conscious Success Workshop next month, I think you’ll find it a very unique experience because it’s about understanding and achieving your own vision of success, not someone else’s.

As anyone who’s been to one of my previous workshops can attest, we create a special vibe at these events that you’re unlikely to see elsewhere. At the October workshop, for instance, I’d estimate that the average attendee received at least 5 hugs before they even made it to their seat at the start of Day 1 — from me, from Erin, from Rachelle, from KB, and from Shae. This doesn’t even include the hugs attendees often gave each other.

No one is going to force you to be hugged if you’d rather not be hugged, but I actually instruct our staff members to greet everyone by offering hugs. This isn’t for any manipulative purposes whatsoever. We do it because virtually everyone likes to be greeted in this way, and it feels good to us. It helps people feel very welcome and fosters an intimate, family-like atmosphere. I don’t know of any other success workshops where you can expect to be showered with warm hugs as soon as you arrive.

I share this because it’s another example of how we can define success on our own terms. Just because other people’s success seminars tend to have a vibe that’s more cold and calculating doesn’t mean we have to buy into that model. Whatever you don’t like about how society seems to be conditioning you to behave, you can say no to that. Then go do your own thing. I for one think American society is cold and disconnected enough already, and I want to help warm it up. I think we’re all better served by relating to each other as family as opposed to acting like strangers.

There’s a tendency to think of success in competitive terms, as if the point is to outperform other people. But that isn’t a very effective model. I think most people will experience far greater long-term success through cooperation, mutual support, and encouragement than they will through hard-hearted solo determination.

One tricky thing for me to figure out was how to create sales pages for my workshops that feel really good and congruent to me. I don’t like hard-sell tactics when someone tries to use them on me, nor do I like feeling that I’m being manipulated to buy something I don’t need. On the other hand, it doesn’t feel good to me to be shy about telling people about these workshops either. I know they help people, and so it would be lame not to encourage people to sign up.

In the summer when I launched some new workshops, I created very basic web pages for each of them. An example is the current page for the February Conscious Relationships Workshop. It’s a pretty simple page that’s mostly just a description of what people can expect to learn there.

My thinking in creating these pages wasn’t to try to sell people on new workshops but actually to get out of the way as much as possible. I wanted to give people a sense of what each workshop was about, but I didn’t want them basing their decision to attend on how persuasive I could be. I figured that it would be better for them to base their decision on whether or not they resonate with my work in general and if the topic appeals to them. That way we’d end up with a really good group of attendees who truly wanted to be there.

I was pleased to discover that these simple pages actually work just fine. Plenty of people have already signed up for each of the new workshops. And by and large, the people who’ve been signing up have been the right ones to attend.

But I still made some mistakes, and I’m continuing to calibrate my approach to feel more congruent to me.

For one, I used to offer a money-back guarantee on all my workshops. I discontinued that guarantee weeks ago. Of course it’s still going to be honored for anyone who signed up while it was in effect, but it isn’t something I’m willing to offer anymore.

I didn’t stop offering the guarantee for business reasons. Refund requests have always been minimal, so that wasn’t the issue. I don’t know if having a guarantee increased registrations overall. I didn’t have a guarantee for the first two workshops I did, and those were very well attended.

I realized that the way I was phrasing the guarantee was a mismatch for the kinds of people I wanted to attract. It was too far in the direction of trying to convince people to attend. My guarantee was based on my assuming 100% responsibility for people’s results, which in practice doesn’t make sense. Each workshop is a co-creative experience, and if people are showing up with less commitment because of that guarantee, that’s no good. I’m going to bring my A game to each event, but I also want other people to be fully committed as well.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was when I received a refund request from someone who didn’t claim to have a problem with the workshop at all. He just needed more money for rent, so he requested a refund as a convenient way to acquire some quick cash. I still honored his request, but it seriously creeped me out. That incident combined with a few other questionable requests convinced me to re-evaluate the decision to offer a money-back guarantee. I let the emotions of that incident subside, so I could make a clear-minded decision, and ultimately I concluded that it was the wrong approach for me.

Another thing I used to do was offer workshop scholarships to some people. I haven’t been advertising that fact because I don’t want to be inundated with freebie requests, but when I felt someone would benefit from the workshop and I knew that were very unlikely to attend due to financial issues, I’d offer them a free registration. Almost always when I made such offers, people took advantage of them.

In practice, however, this has been a mixed bag. Some people who were given free passes really appreciated it, put a lot of effort into the workshop, and got a lot of value out of it. That was nice to see. Unfortunately others utilized the freebies in ways I felt were hugely disrespectful. They’d show up late, skip out on key exercises, and not really take it seriously. They came to play.

So I’ve backed off from doing scholarships except in very rare cases, like with people I know very well and can absolutely trust to do their part. I don’t take freebie requests, so please don’t bother to ask.

My current approach to selling can be described as testing for resonance. This means that I seek to find the best matches for my workshops. As I see it, some people are really meant to be there. These people really resonate with the message of conscious growth, and they’re willing to put some effort into accelerating that process. Those are the people I want to work with.

Most of the material I’ve read about selling treats the process as one of persuading and convincing people to buy. But who actually likes to be convinced of anything they don’t already believe?

Testing for resonance makes a lot more sense to me. So I’ve been pondering how to do this with my workshop pages. I figured a good approach would be to simply write about the topic and share more thoughts about it, just like I do when writing new articles.

So a few weeks ago I rewrote the CSW web page to see how that approach felt to me. I wrote it to be more like a new article on success and achievement, not a sales page. I don’t think the workshop is even mentioned till about 2/3 of the way through. I mainly shared some personal stories about success and failure from my own life. My aim was to give you a better sense of my thinking about success and to see if that resonates with you. It’s only a small slice into the big picture, but I think it was a good slice to share. The page is much longer than the original version, but that’s because it’s long on content, not salesmanship.

On that page I also added some pics that I’ve never shared online before, namely copies of some of my college report cards.

Even if you know that you’re not going to attend CSW, I still encourage you to read that page if you’re interested in success since I do believe you’ll get some value from the content, especially if you’ve liked some of my other articles on the subject. If you don’t already resonate with the idea of coming to a workshop of mine, I don’t think you’ll need to worry about that page convincing you to attend.

Yet another area where I’ve been re-assessing the notion of conscious success is our discussion forums. I realized that I’ve been a bit lax as admin this year, and the standards for our community have been slipping a bit. Our rules haven’t changed, but our enforcement of those rules hasn’t been as consistent as it could be. Consequently we’ve been seeing a rise in problems like trolling, thread derailment, and members taking disrespectful jabs at each other. Some members have racked up a half-dozen warnings or more, when they really should have been banned months ago.

So recently I’ve been working with the mods to raise our standards when it comes to cutting members who can’t follow the rules as they agreed to do when they joined. Suffice it to say we’re going to be much more strict about it. Otherwise the community is at risk of drifting towards a juvenile stomping ground like so many other online forums. So if you’re active in that community and you sense a tightening of our standards, it’s not because our moderation team is ganging up on people. You can lay the blame for that on me. I want our community to continue to serve as a place where people come together to help each other grow and to offer positive support, and I want to our signal-to-noise ratio to stay high. For everyone else, there’s Facebook.

This article itself could serve as an example of resonance testing. If the ideas I’ve shared here feel good to you, you’ll probably get a lot of value from one of my workshops, and you’re likely to make lots of new friends there who share a similar resonance.

On the other hand, if you’ve read this and think “meh… you’re an idiot for not taking the ad money,” then you’re probably less likely to be a good match for my workshops. So you can also label me an idiot for not wanting your money either. You probably wouldn’t be a good match for the other attendees either.

A key lesson I learned about success is: Sometimes we have to say no to the paths that don’t resonate with us, clearing them out of the way first, and only after that will the more congruent paths come forward and make themselves known. In other words, you may continue to attract mismatched approaches to success as long as you’re still tempted to pursue them. When you finally muster the strength to say no to those paths, then you can gain access to much better ones.

And yes, I really do feel good about shamelessly plugging my workshops… as long as I’m doing it in ways that align with my values. Convincing you to go isn’t the right approach. Testing to see if you’re the kind of person who totally belongs there does feel good, however.

Incidentally, the $100 early bird discount for CSW is still good for one more week. I’m not going to extend it beyond that since we already have enough people signed up to guarantee a vibrant weekend, and from past experience I know that a lot of people sign up in the final week before the discount expires.

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

The Golden Motorcycle Gang

Jack imagines that before he incarnated as a human being, he was part of a gang of spiritual beings speeding through the cosmos on their merry way, and they happened upon a blue planet and decided to take a closer look. What did they see? A planet at war with serious troubles. The year was 1943.

This planet was heading towards a crucial point. If it continued on its old ways, it could soon destroy itself, either with increasingly destructive weaponry, by gradually destroying the planet’s ability to sustain human life, or perhaps by descending into chaos when unsustainable systems ultimately collapsed.

Acting somewhat impulsively the Golden Motorcycle Gang decided to incarnate as human beings. They wanted to help earth move in a more positive direction. Initially they forgot that they were part of this gang, but later in life the memories of their spiritual identities gradually returned, and they were able to reconnect with other members of the gang… and then to begin coordinating their efforts.

The story works whether you regard this as a real soul group or simply as a metaphor for discovering one’s calling. Just consider how it might affect your life and your actions if you believed that you were a part of something like this and that you had previously agreed to fulfill a larger purpose.

In Jack’s case the call to making a difference is well established. Among his many achievements, he co-authored the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, which are filled with inspirational stories. This series has spawned more than 200 books that have collectively sold more than 500 million copies. If you visit one of the remaining brick and mortar bookstores, you’ll frequently see entire sections dedicated to these books.

I have a special connection to this book since I’ve been involved with the Golden Motorcycle Gang since 2009. For that reason my name is listed in one of the book’s appendices.

I have a golden motorcycle coin (a symbolic token of initiation that was given to me by Jack) tacked up to my vision board in my home office. I use this board to post words, phrases, symbols, photos, drawings, and artistic creations from my kids — anything that reminds me of my life purpose, goals, and dreams.

Cracking Systems

If you get most of your news from fear-based media outlets, you may worry that the planet is going downhill. The economy is tanking. Wars are being fought with no end in sight. Money is corrupting everything. World leaders trash-talk each other behind the scenes.

Yes, the planet has its problems, but there’s also a rising counter-reaction to these problems. More and more people are progressively waking up, and many are committing themselves to work on solutions to our greatest challenges. Our global challenges are too big for any one person to solve, so collective coordination is necessary.

As many people are well aware, our economic and political systems are showing lots of cracks lately. One problem is that many elements of these systems are unsustainable. For example, we can’t achieve infinite growth from systems that rely on ever-increasing consumption of finite resources. Eventually the simple mathematics will win out. It’s just a matter of time.

On the other hand, there are elements of these existing systems that actually work quite well. We don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We want to keep what works and re-engineer the parts that aren’t working. I for one feel grateful for just how well systems of business and government work in the USA. There are numerous problems of course — these systems are far from perfect — but they do accomplish quite a lot.

Anarchy isn’t the answer. Even the most unconstrained parts of the Internet has shown that self-governance is a failure. Where free will is present, it just takes a few deliberate wrongdoers to wreck the whole system for everyone else. As much as we’d like to believe it isn’t necessary, at this time in our evolution we still require the foundation of force-backed coercive power to maintain a reasonable level of order, whether that power is wielded by governments or businesses. Where there’s no rule of law backed by the threat of force, things break down.

Government and business systems add significant value to our lives, and life without them would be far worse. Without those systems you and I probably wouldn’t even be able to communicate. What we need is to intelligently replace the unsustainable elements with more sustainable ones. By itself that’s an achievable goal. The tricky part is keeping everything running during the transition process. We can’t simply shut everything down and replace it with something new. If we lose the structure provided by our current systems before new ones can be established, we could potentially descend into chaos, and it could take us a very long time to recover from that.

We can also continue to upgrade the systems that are working poorly. Education is a good example. Many best practices are known, but they aren’t yet being implemented on a large scale. This creates rippling problems since an uneducated society cannot produce enough educated individuals to perform vital functions, particularly when it comes to leadership.

Gathering the Gang

There was a time when these GMG group members acted mainly as individuals — writing books, doing seminars, coaching people, and running their own independent businesses. Then they began coalescing into groups, helping to inspire, motivate, and support each other in doing transformational work. Now those groups are beginning to connect in order to coordinate their efforts on a larger scale. This is a very interesting development to witness.

Group cohesion is a challenging thing to accomplish in this case — almost like herding cats. I’m especially curious to see if these groups will be able to find enough common ground to work on bigger projects that require significant cooperation.

My interpretation of the GMG and similar groups and that one of their desired functions is to help us transition from the old, dying systems to new, more sustainable ones. There’s a sense of optimism as well as urgency arising within these groups. On the one hand, we have a lot of smart people now agreeing to coordinate their efforts, doing their best to keep their egos in check as they work together for the common good. On the other hand, the clock is ticking. The old systems only have so much life left in them before they can no longer be maintained.

Some of these people are working on education. Others are tackling environmental issues. Some are working on basic needs. Still others work to raise awareness and teach oneness and compassion. One woman I know works with prisons. They’re making progress on the important fronts. The main question is whether progress is happening quickly enough.

Birth 2012

One thing that’s being coordinated, as explained in Jack’s book, is to have a planetary birthday party on Dec 22, 2012, which is 1 year, 1 month, and 11 days from now. This is yet another step in the direction of helping people come together, set aside their differences, and embrace that we all share a common destiny on this planet. In the grand scheme it may be a small step, but it will help raise awareness of bigger issues and draw more people into the transition process. You can learn more about this birthday celebration and sign up to participate at birth2012.com.

Expanding Your Life Purpose by Finding Your Tribe

Instead of regarding your life purpose as your individual mission, you may find it more empowering to interpret your purpose as part of a team effort. You’re not acting alone. Your actions can be coordinated with others to have more impact.

This doesn’t mean surrendering your will to a group. It means noticing where your individual strengths could contribute greater results by coordinating your efforts with others.

Most members of the GMG are much older than I am, belonging to my parents’ generation. I resonate with their values, philosophies, and projects, but I can see that their paths and my path are a bit different. We’re all working on similar challenges, just from different angles.

I can see how great the level of mutual support is within this group. Many GMG members have been friends for decades. Sometimes they support each other from a distance. Sometimes they work together directly. Either way they’re bound by common values and a common cause.

Whereas members of the GMG often have their values rooted in the 60s, molded by such experiences as the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War, my past was shaped by different events, such as the massive expansion of communications technology, the fall of the Soviet Union, the Gulf Wars, and 9/11. I was also strongly influenced by West Coast values since I grew up in California, which is where many members of the GMG currently live.

I like riding with the GMG, I share a lot of love and support with them, and I can see that their missions combine nicely with my own, but energetically and soulfully, the people I resonate with most strongly wouldn’t think of themselves as members of this group. The GMG feels like family to me, but on the level of aunts, uncles, and some cousins. Lately, however, I’ve been feeling drawn to connect with the people who’d be on the level of brothers and sisters.

The Next Generation

Many of the problems the GMG is tackling won’t be solved within their lifetimes. It will be up to the next generation to receive the torch and carry it further downfield.

Reading Jack’s book got me thinking about the people who might be part of this next generation, people who are currently in their 30s and 40s (and perhaps mature 20-somethings) and who want to help shift the planet in a more positive direction.

I’ve met many of these people, but I feel we’re still in the phase of working primarily as individuals, mostly doing our own things while connecting socially from time to time, like many GMG members were doing a decade ago.

Due to the age difference, our careers aren’t as well developed as those of the GMG. On average we don’t have as many resources at our disposal, and our networks aren’t as powerful. But we do have some key advantages. For starters we understand and can utilize technology a lot better than the previous generation. This is a generalization of course, but I don’t think it’s an unreasonable one.

I’ve encountered a few networking groups for people close to my age, but they’re usually very business-centered. Often they just want to help promote each other’s products and become more successful in business. There’s nothing wrong with that per se, but such groups don’t usually resonate with me. That isn’t the kind of vibe I’m looking for.

I’d rather connect with people who can direct their ambition towards making a positive difference in the world, especially people with strong service-oriented values.

For many years I’ve been hearing the frustrations of this next generation. Many of them see that the world needs help, and they’d like to contribute somehow, but they see no practical way of doing this. Meanwhile they’re being influenced to play it safe, to go into the corporate world and get a job. When they do this, however, they often wind up in empty, soulless positions — if they can find work at all. They do work that just doesn’t matter that much (according to their values, not mine), but they do it because they feel it’s necessary to support themselves. Consequently, they’re never all that motivated to do their best work or to advance their career skills, so they naturally stunt their career development. Years pass, and they feel they’re falling behind, but they don’t know what to do about it. They often blame themselves and assume the problem is their lack of drive, discipline, or motivation. And they try to hold out hope that something will change for them.

I think the real issue though is that our systems of business and government haven’t kept pace with our evolving consciousness. Many of these people are just too conscious to get sucked into the belief that says moving up the corporate ladder is important. They see through such shallow structures and avoid these dead-end paths, but they lack good practical alternatives.

On the other hand, this generation is more connected than ever, thanks to the Internet, social networking, and powerful portable devices. Quite often these people invest more time and energy in their social lives than in their career development.

Overall these people feel very pressured. There’s pressure to get something going career-wise, but the motivation isn’t there to do it. So the time gets devoted to the Internet and online socializing, and the career path gets drained of life and meaning to feed the social life.

The Need for Better Solutions

I avoided this fate by starting my own business, which is a solution I’ve recommend to others, but I understand that entrepreneurship isn’t a viable path for everyone. Many people would much rather work for someone else, and they’d love to do meaningful work that inspires them — and pays the bills.

Also, starting a new business often involves spending a lot of time working alone, and younger people are so well networked with their peers that it’s harder for them to go that route. It would make more sense for them to work together in groups to do creative work as a team.

Another problem with entrepreneurship is that many people get sucked into soulless business models. They gradually fall into a money-first focus that’s out of alignment with oneness, which leads to long-term unhappiness and stress. It’s sad to see the life drain out of such people when they go that route. They can’t even hug properly after a while.

I love how the community around my work has grown and how people help and support each other and stay connected socially. But many of these same people (perhaps even most of them) are experiencing significant challenges in their career and financial lives. They feel stuck.

Even when they do start their own businesses, long-term success is difficult. I didn’t make my first business profitable till its 6th year, for instance. This isn’t unusual for entrepreneurs. But how to pay the bills in the meantime?

If we want to move away from the soulless corporate job trap as the primary career path that people of this generation settle for in order to cover their expenses, we’ll need to create more and better alternatives.

Getting Stronger

Many members of the GMG are very well off financially. In most cases it took them decades to get there, but it does make service easier when you have a steady stream of royalties from bestselling books coming in, your Rolodex includes lots of influential friends, and Oprah likes you.

When I look at people around my age or younger who have a service-orientated mindset, many of them are struggling in one way or another. Either they’re struggling financially while maintain a strong heart-centeredness, or they’re doing well financially and struggling in their connectedness.

As I’ve seen with the GMG, it isn’t necessary to go it alone. We can help each other grow stronger, which puts us in positions to have a greater positive impact.

At this time in my life, I’ve been encountering a number of people who seem like they could be pieces to a bigger puzzle. Individually they have some interesting strengths and talents, but it’s difficult for them to leverage their strengths on their own. Increasingly I’m sensing that it’s important to help connect the dots between them, whereby some of them could work together in small teams to do some interesting and beneficial work.

Earlier this year I decided to grow my business by hiring more people, but I think that mindset has been too limiting. Most of the people that have been showing up haven’t been the right fit for my current business needs, but I can see that some of them might be able to work well with each other in a more flexible context.

I think it would be beneficial to bring some of these people together in person and help them connect with each other. They could keep in touch online, but for the best possible connection I think a face to face meet-up would be essential.

Most members of the GMG already have their own businesses, but this isn’t as common in the next generation. The next generation, however, has a major social advantage — by and large they’re really good at communicating with each other. In fact, I think many of them would crave the opportunity to work with very conscious people their own age as part of a team. It sure beats getting a mindless corporate job, and for many people it also beats working alone on their own.

Service Orientation

The key is to bring people together who are truly interested in serving the greater good in some fashion, people who have compatible values and similar mindsets regarding service — and people who are willing to work hard to become really good at what they do, so they can increase their ability to contribute over time.

For many years I’ve had a vision of bringing service-oriented people together and helping to provide the support structures that would enable them to do what they came here to do. I think what’s been holding me up was trying to figure out the right business structure for that — by expanding my current business, forming a non-profit, etc. I realize now that the underlying structure isn’t that important. That’s putting the cart before the horse. I think if we can just get some of these people in the same place talking to each other and discussing ideas, the structural issues will sort themselves out.

At this point the idea isn’t fully formed, so I’m tossing this out there to see where it leads. Who are these next generation people? What have they done so far that demonstrates their commitment to service? Would they be interested in connecting regularly with other “family members” who share their values?

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

This CGW’s group energy was delightful to behold as it evolved from Day 1 to Day 3, and I’m happy to see the CGW friendship network continue to expand. As with all CGWs, this was a potent growth experience for me as well. It’s going to take me a while to process all the new realizations I had this weekend.

I plan to take a few days off now for some much needed R&R, and then I’ll start gearing up for the Subjective Reality Workshop (SRW), which is less than 5 weeks away.

About the Subjective Reality Workshop

For those who are considering going to SRW and haven’t signed up for it yet, I just want to remind you that the $100 early bird discount expires at midnight on Wednesday, September 21st. You’ll still be able to sign up after that, but the price will be $100 higher. I don’t intend to extend this discount since we already have more than enough people signed up to conduct a fabulous workshop. This one sure has been generating a lot of buzz.

Most likely you were raised to subscribe to an objective belief system, and you probably relate to reality through that lens without even realizing that it’s not the only useful lens available to you. Yet the subjective perspective remains an equally viable, internally consistent alternative.

Objectivity and subjectivity are both assumptions about the nature of reality, so neither systemis falsifiable. Hence it makes no sense to say that one is more valid than the other. That would be like saying that a set of wrenches is true and but a screwdriver collection is false. Similarly objectivity and subjectivity are best seen as toolset for interacting with reality, not as truths unto themselves.

To only have one perspective at your disposal throughout your entire life is unnecessarily limiting and perhaps a bit naive. That would be like only having wrenches but no screwdrivers in your toolbox. Perhaps you could turn a screw with the right wrench, but there are better tools for that kind of job.

At SRW our aim is to help correct this imbalance in your upbringing by educating and immersing you on the subjective perspective. This is meant to complement the objective perspective, not to replace it.

Anything that can be created or explained subjectively also has an objective analog, and vice versa. Both system are equally valid, just as a wrench and a screwdriver are both valid tools. But as with hardware tools, the objective and subjective toolsets each have their particular strengths and weaknesses. They’re more useful together than they are separately. You can accomplish more with a richer set of tools.

The aim of SRW isn’t to try to convince you that reality is subjective — that’s impossible for us to know for certain. Instead SRW is your opportunity to experience the subjective side in a rich and lively 3-day weekend. This will give you another complete toolset which you can use to further your personal growth.

Examples of useful objective tools include the Scientific Method, predictive reasoning, the laws of physics as we currently understand them. By using such tools, we can achieve a great many things.

What are the most powerful subjective tools? The Law of Attraction is one. The others will be taught at the Subjective Reality Workshop next month. I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise.

Some problems are easier to solve using the objective tools. Others are far simpler to handle with subjective tools. And many problems are best solved using tools from both toolsets, such as creating financial abundance, overcoming fear, or attracting loving relationships.

Neither system is superior to the other. But since each system has different strengths, by learning both you can effectively became a lot more capable than you’d otherwise be if you were limited to using just one of these potent toolsets.

If you’re curious to learn more about Subjective Reality before deciding whether to attend SRW, you can find many articles on that topic in the Archives. A good place to start would be with the Subjective Reality Simplified article, which will give you a basic overview of it.

Even though I’m a bit spent from facilitating CGW this past weekend, I’m really looking forward to the Subjective Reality Workshop next month. I’ve been enjoying the mental challenge of figuring out how to define, structure, and interactively teach the subjective toolbox. If you’ve read my book Personal Development for Smart People, then you know how much I love to take abstract ideas and search within them for hidden structure and relationships in an almost mathematical way.

Make Your Tropicana Hotel Reservations Today

If you’re attending SRW, please make your hotel reservations at the Tropicana ASAP. A few CGW attendees waiting too long and then tried to get a hotel room the week before the event, discovering that a number of hotels, including the Tropicana, were fully booked. They had to scramble to find other places within their budgets, ending up miles away from the venue. It’s very common for hotel rates in Las Vegas to double or triple if you wait till the week before an event to register, so please avoid this situation and make your reservation now. It only takes minutes.

Please note that the cutoff date for our group discount rate for the Subjective Reality Workshop is September 23, so that’s only 4 days away. After that you may still be able to book a room there, but you could end up paying a lot more. So use the link below to book your room now.

Subjective Reality Workshop (Oct 21-23, 2011) – Tropicana Hotel Reservations (Group Code SSP1011)

Here are the links for booking your Tropicana rooms for the other two upcoming workshops:

Conscious Success Workshop (Jan 13-15, 2012) – Tropicana Hotel Reservations (Group Code SSP112)

Conscious Relationships Workshop (Feb 17-19, 2012) – Tropicana Hotel Reservations (Group Code SSP212)

If you miss the group rate cutoff deadline, you can still reserve a room through the Tropicana’s main website, but again, you could up paying significantly more.

You can also reserve your hotel room by calling the Tropicana directly at 1-800-634-4000 (or 1-702-739-2645 if calling from outside the USA). Just give the the appropriate group code as listed above.

The Tropicana recently underwent a $200 million renovation, so the hotel property and guest rooms are all nicely upgraded. I’m sure you’ll enjoy staying there.

Are you ready to start wielding conscious control over your current dream reality? If so, come to the Subjective Reality Workshop in October, and meet people who will finally admit that they’re characters in your dream world.

Otherwise, choose the blue pill instead, and you’ll wake up in your bed the next morning, forget all about Subjective Reality, and go on about your day within the matrix as usual.

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

Acknowledge Recurring Ideas

I find it helpful to verbally acknowledge when an idea keeps popping up, even if I don’t feel ready to act on it — and even if I’m not sure I ever will act on it. I still feel it’s a significant step forward to give those ideas a nod, as if I’m saying to the universe, “Okay, I hear you. I don’t know what, if anything, I’ll do about this yet, but I hear and acknowledge this idea.”

This may seem like an overly simplistic step, maybe even a pointless thing to do. But for me it’s an important and empowering step to elevate some ideas to the level of conscious awareness.

When you consciously acknowledge an idea, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to act on it, but it’s a good first step towards making sense of the idea and preparing yourself to make a real decision. It’s also easy since it only takes a few seconds to verbally acknowledge an idea. If you prefer, you can acknowledge an idea by writing it down or by sharing it with someone too.

Which potential actions do you keep thinking about from time to time? Can you name one or two of those ideas now? Can you consciously acknowledge what’s arising for you, even if it’s very underdeveloped?

Maybe you feel certain it’s a really bad idea, but go ahead and consciously acknowledge it anyway. If it keeps coming up, perhaps there’s a good reason. Acknowledging an idea doesn’t commit you to act on it.

Many times when I acknowledge an idea, it fizzles and never comes up again. It was just information, and I didn’t need to act on it. This routinely happens every week.

People who frequently hang out with me in person can attest that I come up with crazy ideas all the time. I never act on most of them, but I like sharing them anyway — first, because it’s fun to scare people, and second, because I’m able to let go of an idea more easily once I’ve verbally acknowledged it. Then I can move on to something even scarier.

Sometimes after I acknowledge an idea, it continues to make its presence known. Every few days, weeks, or months, the idea comes up again. Sometimes it arises in different packages, but I can see that it’s essentially the same core idea each time.

For instance, you may have an idea to start a certain type of business. You acknowledge it, and for a while it fizzles. But a few weeks later, you get another idea to start a different type of business. This may seem like a new idea, but recognize that the core element is essentially the same — to start your own business.

Make a Starter Decision

When an idea keeps coming up for you, even after you’ve consciously acknowledged its presence, it can have a variety of emotional effects on you. Sometimes you may find it motivating, other times confusing, and other times annoying or distracting or even stressful to think about. If you don’t move the idea forward, these patterns can keep cycling. The same idea will keep visiting you until you take the next step to process it.

To move the idea forward another step, make a starter decision. This doesn’t need to be a final committed decision to act on the idea. It’s just a commitment to do something with the decision to take it beyond the idea stage, to move it forward in some small way.

A good way to make a starter decision is to set aside some time in your schedule to explore the idea more thoroughly. For many new ideas, you may not have enough information to make a real decision either way, but you can commit yourself to further exploration.

Do you need to research the idea? Ponder the consequences? Journal about it? Talk it over with someone? Hang out with people who are already doing something similar? Test it in some fashion to see if you like it?

Make a starter decision to take those first investigative steps.

If you don’t make a starter decision, the idea may fade, but it could just as easily keep recurring, in which case it becomes an ongoing distraction. If you avoid moving these ideas forward, then many of your mental patterns will become cyclical — you’ll keep dwelling on the same thoughts you had a month ago. This is a mental dead end, so don’t get stuck here. Move those thoughts forward with decent starter decisions.

Once you investigate your idea a little more thoroughly, you may decide to keep moving it forward, or you may realize it’s not such a great idea after all and drop it. Either outcome is beneficial since you’ve freed your mind to release the idea, either through action or conscious dismissal.

If you do a summary investigation and reject the idea, but it still keeps popping into your mind, then some part of you still thinks it’s reasonable. That part of you doesn’t agree with your initial conclusions; it thinks you’re overlooking something important. In such cases I recommend that you commit to another round of investigation. Ultimately you may need to go through many more rounds before a real decision sticks, just as a startup company might go through multiple rounds of fundraising. Maybe there are hidden merits to the idea that your emotional brain is picking up, but your logical brain isn’t quite seeing. In many cases your emotional brain will be correct — it may be more primitive, but it’s also been refined over a much longer evolutionary period than your logical brain.

Some ideas may give you a twinge of fear when you think about them, like potentially quitting your job to start a new business, transitioning out of a long-term relationship, or adopting a major lifestyle change. Simply investigating these possibilities will often reduce or eliminate the fear. For more on this, see Education Kills Fear.

A single starter decision can get you moving down a delightful new path. It’s not just the initial decision you’re facing. Consider that this one baby step may unlock an exciting chain of future events.

For years I had the recurring thought that I should get into public speaking, but I kept pushing it aside. I was a game developer, not a speaker. When I finally volunteered to speak at some tech conferences, I found that I enjoyed it very much. It was thrilling and rewarding to share ideas with groups of people that could benefit from them. That baby step sparked a long chain of events that led to our 3-day Conscious Growth Workshops. Now there are 4 different workshops available, so this path is still unfolding. But if I hadn’t made that starter decision to try out public speaking, I might still be regarding that original idea as a cyclical distraction… along with other ideas like “this marriage isn’t really working,” “you should travel a lot more,” and “maybe you ought to look into this WordPress thing.”

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

These experiences have been with us for a long time for a very good reason. They help us grow. And so we’re going to continue creating them as long as they continue to serve that purpose so well.

From one perspective these experiences may seem wrong or bad. And yet people are experiencing them every day, and your feeling bad isn’t making a shred of difference to them. Wars are still being fought, people are still getting cancer, and many don’t have access to clean water — despite your best efforts to feel as bad as possible for as long as possible about their crummy situation.

What if you’re the one going through such an experience? Again, your feeling bad doesn’t help much. If anything it makes things worse and guarantees that the unwanted situation will continue. Feeling bad doesn’t typically end wars, hunger, or disease. More likely those negative feelings may help give rise to those events.

Is it noble and ethical to feel bad and then do nothing about it? Complaining about what you don’t like doesn’t make you a compassionate person. It just makes you feel powerless.

You’re not going to change these aspects of reality, not because you don’t care about people, but because deep down there’s a part of you that recognizes the intrinsic value of such experiences, even if you’re not ready to consciously acknowledge that.

From a broader perspective, we can see that the pain involved in such experiences is always temporary, never permanent. It always comes to an end eventually, allowing us to cultivate an awareness of the value of such experiences — a newfound sense of appreciation and gratitude for life.

If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll see that you don’t hate these things or want them to go away. The real truth is that you love them and can’t get enough of them. You’re just having a hard time coming to terms with this truth since you’ve been taught to believe it’s wrong.

And so you justify your interest in violence by saying that you’re just observing it or educating yourself — you’re not an active participant, just a concerned bystander. In a similar fashion, you may pay people to slaughter your daily feast of animal flesh, while continuing to pretend you’re a nonviolent person.

Which diseases have you cured? Which famines have you fixed? Which wars did you end? If you think these are ethical pursuits, then where’s the evidence of your ethics? Are you just lazy? Or it is possible — just maybe — that you don’t actually care to spend your life working on any of these things? Aren’t you perfectly fine doing something else entirely? Does this mean, as you’ve been taught to believe, that you’re a bad or uncaring person?

Another way to care about people is to recognize that we’re more than just physical creatures. We are conscious beings, and all of these seemingly negative experiences serve to fuel our expansion and growth. If all we had was perfect peace, health, abundance, and more, we’d likely be bored to tears and depressed. There would be no basis for appreciating what we have. Gratitude and appreciation exist in a realm of contrast. To appreciate something is to recognize the value of its presence relative to its absence.

When you know sickness, you can appreciate health. When you know violence, you can appreciate peace. When you know imprisonment, you can appreciate freedom.

But you can go way beyond appreciating one side at the expense of the other. When you embrace these opposites, you can learn to appreciate both sides as an integrated whole. You can appreciate war as much as peace, disease as much as health, lack as much as abundance, etc. You can see how war expands your courage, how disease gives you time for solitude and introspection, how imprisonment makes you think deeply about how you use your time.

Some people mistakenly assume that I’d like to eliminate poverty, war, disease, and so on from the world. Perhaps I should want to create a more equitable situation for everyone. I would not like that at all. I value these aspects of reality and appreciate them, and I expect to see them continue.

In the years ahead, I expect to see the gap between rich and poor grow even wider. Some people think this is terrible, but to me it’s a good thing — it means more contrast, which will fuel more conscious expansion and growth experiences for all. We will add new layers upon layers as the haves move ever further away from the have-nots in terms of wealth, health, technology, and more.

I expect to see lots of new weapons invented and used as well, and I welcome their arrival. I expect to see new diseases. We have a whole host of new problems ahead. Again, this is wonderful fuel for expansion and growth.

We live in an expanding universe, and it’s expanding in all directions, not just the directions you like. Would you rather live in a contracting universe? Would you truly be happy in a world where life is collapsing towards equality, uniformity, and conformity? Would that make you breathe a sigh of relief — knowing that we’re reducing contrast over time instead of increasing it? Would that be heaven… or hell?

Whether you agree with this article or not makes little difference to me. I care nothing of convincing you of anything. My job is to stimulate growth by bringing unconscious notions to conscious awareness. But for your own sake, make up your mind about this. If you’re serious about putting an end to those unfair, unpleasant, and cruel aspects of human life, then don’t waste another precious moment reading my blog when you could be doing the hero thing. If you truly think the world needs rescuing, then quit being lazy, pick a problem to tackle, and go get busy. Or you could ponder the possibility that maybe the world is perfect the way it is, and your relationship to it is what really needs rescuing.

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

If I see someone in emotional pain, I also see that within them is a seed of joy that they’ve simply lost touch with. I can understand why they’re feeling bad (empathy), but that doesn’t mean I have to feel bad with them (sympathy with the lower self). Instead I’d rather feel good as I watch that seed of growth within them expanding through the contrast they’re experiencing (sympathy with the higher self).

This doesn’t mean being heartless. It means using the heart a little more accurately — to connect with a person’s inner strength instead of their temporary projections of weakness.

Feeling bad that people are suffering isn’t much of a remedy. For some it can be part of a process of healing, but the feeling bad part isn’t a necessary component (unless you believe it is and therefore make it so).

If people insist on suffering by resisting expansions in certain directions, allow them to do so. All suffering is temporary and will eventually end, not because those particular expansions cease but because people will eventually change how they relate to such expansions. This shift frees up trapped energy, thereby making new expansions possible.

The best thing you can do with your energy is to focus it where you’d like to see further expansion. Personally I’m not that interested in increasing the amount of suffering in the world, so I largely ignore it. I’m much more interested in expanding other aspects of life such as creativity, abundance, playfulness, a sense of purpose, fascinating technology, openness, honesty, courage, expressions of affection (hugs, cuddling), lucid dreaming, traveling, and of course hot sex with Canadians.

If you choose to participate in the expansion of suffering, you’re free to do so, and no one will stop you. Lots of people seem to find it interesting enough to dedicate a significant part of their lives to it. Just as there are people who can’t fathom how I could ignore suffering, I find it ludicrous that so many are able to ignore Canada.

While some may convince themselves that it’s a good idea to pay more attention to suffering, I shall continue to focus my attention upon the expansion of yumminess, and I’ll leave the committed sufferers to their own preferences. If you think it’s better to focus on suffering, I suggest you welcome the frustration I cause you as part of the expansion of suffering that you’re inviting. Happy to help out!

If on the other hand you wish to help me co-create the further expansion of yumminess, then let’s pour our collective energy into what we want to see more of in the world, and withdraw our attention from what doesn’t inspire us.

What inspires you? What would you like to increase and expand in this reality?

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

You may have seen other maps of conscious growth such as those from David Hawkins, Ken Wilber, or the Scientologists. I’ve studied all of their maps in detail, but I always felt something was missing from them. So I put a lot of effort into going deeper into this subject than I believe anyone else has ever done before, and eventually I came up with something that — I believe — will render all other maps of conscious growth obsolete.

So… drumroll please… here is the new and improved map of conscious growth, from the lowest level of consciousness to highest level of enlightenment:

1. Complete idiots
2. Catholics
3. Meat eaters
4. Skeptics
5. Late sleepers
6. Broke people
7. Cubicle workers
8. Facebook addicts
9. Stalkers
10. Married people
11. LOAers *
12. Left-handers **
13. Computer game developers
14. Polyamorous BDSMers
15. Personal growth bloggers
16. Canadians

* An LOAer is a person who subscribes to the Law of Attraction. They see 11s everywhere.

** You must be left-handed to progress to Tier 12 and beyond. Right-handedness implies excessive conformity. Ambidexterity means you’re indecisive. And not having hands implies clumsiness.

The worst place to get stuck is Tier 6 since those people have a hard time affording my workshops. In order for them to stop being broke, they need to find a tolerable cubicle. From there they can develop an addiction to social media, which will in turn help them develop good stalking skills.

Most likely you have a long way to go. Be patient with yourself. Conscious growth is a marathon, not a sprint.

I’ve been working on this path for more than two decades, and I’m still not at the top level, although I’m having a lot of sex with someone who is. That does seem to help. It really is blissful to be so close to enlightenment.

Have you noticed that each time someone creates a linear map of consciousness (i.e. a series of defined tiers that you can progress through), they almost always put themselves on the 2nd or 3rd rung from the top, with the top tier being the idealized version of their values? Are their values universal? Of course not.

On someone else’s map, this same nearly enlightened person could be slotted anywhere, often somewhere in the middle. On my new and improved map, most of them haven’t even made it past level 3.

There is no universal, tiered, linear map of conscious growth. There is simply expansion, with no direction being more or less enlightened than any other. This is true not only for individuals but for societies as well.

If you wish to become your own guru, then feel free to construct your own tiered map of consciousness. It’s a lot of work to be sure, but I think you’ll find as I did that it’s truly a labor of love. Make the top tier a clone of your values. If you want to feign some humility (which I recommend), put yourself on the 2nd or 3rd rung from the top. Just make sure you’re in the top quarter no matter what, or you won’t get as much sex as other gurus, and you may someday find yourself backsliding to Tier 10.

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

Scarcity -> Freedom

When I experienced financial scarcity, I disliked it very much. It bothered me not to be able to afford many things. I hated seeing wealthier people live with fewer limits while I had to watch my money so carefully. I hated working hard for years and ending up with less money than before I started. Sometimes I felt incompetent just because I couldn’t get control of my finances. I resisted my experience of financial scarcity. I thought it was very unfair that some people should have so much while I should be struggling to pay my bills and get out of debt.

But spiritually I was launching what Esther Hicks calls rockets of desires. Financial scarcity isn’t me. I want to be financially abundant. I want to be able to afford anything I desire. I want to live without financial limitations. I want money to become a smaller part of my life instead of my constant daily concern. I want to be more generous. I want to live in a world where there is abundance for all. I want a way to make money that I can feel good about. I want to earn enough to cover my expenses without having to work such long hours every week. I would love to be able to take a vacation now and then. I’d love to have time for travel. Please!

These desires helped me see the truth that I wasn’t living congruently. I wanted to be someone other than I was. I saw that deep down, my spirit was more than these petty problems. Some part of me was elevated above my situation and retained this truth. I just had to access it by following the trail of desires. Desires lead us back to our true selves.

The truth is this: My spirit is abundant and limitless. My spirit is creative and resourceful. My spirit is generous and giving. My spirit is complete; he wants for nothing. My spirit is free. My spirit is far more powerful than money.

Cruelty -> Compassion

When I learned of the process by which a beautiful animal becomes a packaged product for sale, I was disgusted by it. How could people be so cruel and heartless? How could people be so blind and callous towards suffering?

But spiritually… more rockets of desire: I do not wish to be a cruel, heartless, or ignorant person. I want to have the courage to seek out and embrace truth and to act congruently with it, even if it requires significant lifestyle changes. I want to keep my heart open, to care about all living creatures, and to live in harmony with them. I want to be brave enough to stand up for what I believe is right, even if it seems like the whole world believes the opposite. I want to be a person who’s unwilling to take advantage of the helpless just because I can. I want to be vegan for the rest of my life. I want to teach my children to care about animals.

My spirit is caring, compassionate, and nonviolent. My spirit knows that we are all one. My spirit is innately powerful and therefore has no need to overpower others. My spirit respects and values all life.

Separation -> Connection

As I was nearing the end of my marriage, I experienced more resistance. There has to be some way to make this work. Why is it so difficult to get my needs met? Why do I feel trapped? I don’t like going through this process. I don’t want anyone to get hurt. How did I get myself into this situation to begin with?

And the rockets of desire: I want to experience relationships that are free and open. I want to connect with people on the basis of desire and choice. I want to experience love without obligation. I want to enjoy relationships that are free of jealousy, guilt, and ambivalence. I want to care deeply about people. I want to make people that I care about feel good. I want to enjoy people as they are and not feel that I have to change them to be happy. I want to say “I love you” more often and to hear it said more often as well.

My spirit is free. My spirit is deeply connected, yet it is unattached to the specific forms of those connections; it perceives oneness and beauty regardless of form. My spirit accepts all and requires nothing to change. My spirit has all that it needs to create its own happiness. My spirit allows, invites, and attracts. My spirit can never be lonely or trapped.

Imperfection -> Beauty

And more resistance in relating to my physical body: Why can’t my body be the way I want it? Why does it take so much effort to lose that last bit of body fat? Why is flexibility so difficult for me? I miss distance running; I wish I hadn’t messed up my knee. Why do I look so dorky in that photo? Why is my hair slowly retreating from my forehead?

And the rockets of desire: I want my body to be healthy, strong, and physically fit. I want to be more flexible. I want to enjoy running again. I want my body fat to be lower. I want to less physically judgmental of others, accepting them as they are regardless of their physical fitness or appearance. I want to enjoy exercise as a form of play. I want to fully enjoy and appreciate my body and all that it does for me. I want to smile when I look in the mirror.

My spirit lives within the physical but beyond it as well. It perceives no ugliness and sees only beauty. My spirit declines to judge on the basis of physical appearance and sees everything as a part of itself. My spirit appreciates and relishes the chance to experience life in physical form. It knows that the challenges of the physical world serve to enhance its expansion. My spirit loves and appreciates the body it gets to use here. My spirit sees beauty everywhere.

Coldness -> Warmth

In seeing how people relate to each other, I think: Why do so many people keep their true feelings to themselves? I hate trying to communicate through shields. I’m tired of talking to shells. I don’t like it when people hide their hearts and souls. I hate not being able to talk to strangers; the world is full of strangers — why can’t it be full of friends? I’m so tired of walking around and having people pretend that we’re separate. I’m sick of seeing people depressed when I’d gladly give them a hug.

And new rockets of desire: I want to connect with people without shields. I want to hug people when I meet them instead of merely shaking hands. I want to relate to everyone I meet as if we’re already best friends. I want to cuddle my female friends and bask together in those blissful feelings of love and warmth. I want to communicate with depth and soulfulness. I want my relationships to be full of happiness, playfulness, and spirit. I want to be a beacon of openness, honesty, and receptivity. I want to be able to go out each day and experience deep connection, warmth, and affection wherever I am. I want to connect easily with others, and I want others to connect easily with me. I want to feel surrounded by friends and family.

My spirit recognizes that we’re always connected. There is no separation, no ice to break. We’re already family. We have physical bodies and physical lives, but they exist to serve the expansion of spirit, not to limit or define who we are. Connecting is easy and automatic.

Sin -> Spirit

In coming to terms with my sexuality and that of others, I feel frustrated by conflicted thoughts that tell me it’s shallow and inappropriate to desire a woman sexually, but it’s okay to connect with her mentally and emotionally. In part through my Catholic upbringing, I was taught that love is good, but lust is evil. And yet towards many women, I still feel both love and lust. I’m tired of thinking that one feeling is more virtuous and the other more sinful.

More rockets of desire: I want to be able to connect with women on all levels — physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual — without guilt or shame. I want to relate to women on the basis of honest and open communication without hiding our true thoughts and feelings from each other. I want to enjoy a life where lovers and friends needn’t be sharply separated. I want to regard sexuality as sacred and spiritual, yet without disconnecting from the physical pleasure of it. I want to be able to connect with a woman’s mind sometimes, her body other times, and still other times, her heart and spirit — and sometimes all of these at once. I want women to reject those influences that tell them they aren’t naturally beautiful.

My spirit recognizes the purpose of the sexual drive, which is to ensure that we connect. Sexual desire is a projection of our connectedness at the spiritual level. It is an intense feeling because we are intensely connected. My spirit embraces and acknowledges the desire to feel connected as innately beautiful. There is no shame or guilt present. To want to be inside each other is a perfect projection of the truth that we are already inside ourselves, creating this amazing expansion from within. We find each other attractive because spirit is aware enough to recognize and appreciate its own beauty.

From Resistance to Awareness

For every adversity, problem, or challenge, we shoot off new rockets of desire. Those rockets of desire, when we finally let go and follow them, lead us to a deeper awareness of our true selves. Our desires put us back in touch with who we really are. Once we remember that, the desires themselves begin to manifest.

As long as we resist our experience, we cause it to persist and intensify. The more we hate financial scarcity, the more of it we attract. The more we hate feeling disconnected, the more disconnection we attract. The more we hate our bodies, the more our bodies betray us. We continue to attract more of what we don’t want until we finally leverage that resistance to discover what we do want. Then we can follow those new rockets of desire back to our true selves.

Notice what experiences you’ve been resisting lately. Turn your attention to the new desires you’ve been launching as a result of these seemingly negative experiences. Can you see how much more you desire abundance, love, peace, etc. as a result of having these experiences? Can you see how every negative experience teaches you more about your true self?

Follow the trail of these desires back to your true self. Who are you really? What is your deepest nature?

As long as you remain out of alignment with yourself, you’ll continue to attract more of what you don’t want. But when you reaffirm who you truly are and reintegrate this spiritual truth into your daily life, the negative experiences will quickly fade, and you’ll begin attracting what you desire with relative ease.

Learn to appreciate what you still resist. Notice that these experiences serve as signposts directing you back to spirit.

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

This inspired vibe has many forms, which include aspects like caring, playfulness, happiness, passion, curiosity, exploration, love, and oneness. There are countless ways to be in the flow. The common element is that when I’m in the flow, I feel open, connected, and graceful.

It took years of public speaking practice to reach the point where I could experience this flow consistently while in front of an audience. When I first began on this path, I started as many others do. I focused on the words I was saying. I learned to write speeches. Then I learned how to deliver what I’d prepared.

I attended workshops on how to improve at writing and delivering speeches. I networked with successful speakers. I got involved in Toastmasters International and the National Speakers Association.

I also stretched myself by competing in speech contests, winning several of them. I did comedy improv for a few months and performed in a couple shows. I kept pushing myself to get better.

In the long run, however, I found this approach to public speaking to be a dead end for me. It always felt a bit unnatural for me. This style of speaking, while very popular and well developed, was too rigid and controlled for me. I can’t speak like that and be in the flow of inspiration at the same time.

My message is about waking up to conscious growth, to live more truthfully, lovingly, and powerfully. It’s not a message just for me. It’s a message for all of us. It’s not a message of words. It’s a message of being.

The particular words I use to deliver this message aren’t as important as I was led to believe. I sure have written plenty of words so far, and I’m always coming up with new ones. If I’m delivering this message to an audience, what I say isn’t critical. I find that the most important factor is who I am when I’m on the stage.

Public Speaking as a Co-Created Experience

If I’m speaking to an audience, delivering a well-written and polished speech, but internally I’m focusing most of my energy on remembering what to say and do at each step, then what is the audience’s role in that speech?

I’ve seen many speeches that seemed excellent from a technical standpoint, but I didn’t feel the speaker was actually present in the room with us. His/her energy was focused on what to say next… or what gesture to make… or where to move on the stage so as to use the whole speaking area… or perhaps on appearing confident. On the whole I don’t enjoy such speeches, and I prefer not to watch speakers who communicate like that.

When I’m really in the flow of communicating with an audience, I’m not thinking about what I’m going to say next. I’ll have an idea of what I’m going to talk about, but I’m not really giving a speech. The experience is much more interactive. It feels like my energy combines with that of the audience, and I become a conduit for the flow of a co-created experience.

This might sound chaotic at first, but it works well in practice… perhaps because when people come together for a workshop or presentation, they’re showing up with similar assumptions, expectations, and desires. People typically attend my workshops because they want to grow, and so our collective energy co-creates a growth experience for the group. Everyone wants that to happen, and so it does.

I’ve done 5 Conscious Growth Workshops so far (with a 6th one coming up in 4 weeks), and each one has been unique. I do continue to improve the structure each time, but I believe that most of the difference in how these workshops turn out has to do with the particular energy of each group. Every audience broadcasts a collective energy, and it’s a different broadcast each time.

While I understand that for many people, public speaking seems like a frightening thing to do, for me it’s a very beautiful and harmonious experience. This is probably because I don’t see the audience as being opposed to me in any way. We come together with a common purpose — to create a powerful growth experience for all. So we’re all on the same page. I want to be a good facilitator, and the audience wants me to have a good experience. So what is there to be nervous or worried about? A workshop is not a performance; it’s a stimulating group adventure.

I understand pretty well how this co-creative model works in the area of public speaking. I think it’s why I enjoy speaking so much and why I find it so rewarding. Lately I’ve been pondering how to expand this co-creative model and apply it to other parts of my life as well.

Co-Creation vs. Domination and Submission

Last year I shared some ideas on domination and submission and how it applies to personal growth. While this can be practiced as a sexual thing, it’s really a general pattern of relating. If you tell someone what to do and they do it, you’ve dominated them. If the opposite happens, you’re practicing submission. Don’t get hung up on the words — it’s the underlying concepts that matter, not the words used to describe them.

You can use domination or submission patterns in any part of your life. You can relate to others by trying to dominate them or by submitting to them. A boss tends to be a dominant figure in many organizations, one that employees are expected to submit to. You can use a dominant parenting style by controlling your kids and telling them what to do. When dealing with a gun-wielding law enforcement agent, you might find yourself taking on a more submissive role.

Co-creation, on the other hand, is a more cooperative approach. Parties combine their power to create something together, with neither submitting to the will of the other. In a way you could say that all parties agree to submit themselves to the collective will, but no one is personally in charge of the collective.

I’m not suggesting that one model is superior to the other. They each have their strengths and weaknesses. In urgent situations a command-based approach may be important — there may be little time for discussion when fast, decisive action is required. It makes sense for the surgeon to be the boss of the operating room when a critically injured patient is on the table, and time is of the essence.

In other situations a collaborative approach may produce superior results. To continue the medical example, multiple doctors may confer about a patient’s care, potentially coming up with better treatment options than any one of them might have chosen individually.

I’ve explored the D/s pattern enough to see that it does have value, but my interest in focusing on it has basically run its course, and now I’m drawn to explore a co-creative model. Since I love immersive experiences, I’ve already stepped into that space this week and plan to continue with this direction for quite a while. I want to deepen my understanding of co-creation through direct experience and see what it’s capable of.

Subjective Reality and Co-Creation

Since I’ve been getting incredible mileage from exploring subjective reality, naturally I want to explore how co-creation and subjective reality can mesh with each other.

At first glance it may appear that subjective reality is in conflict with the idea of co-creation. If you create your reality, and if there’s only one consciousness, then how can we talk about multiple consciousnesses creating something collectively? Does that even make sense within a subjective universe? Isn’t there only one being, and how can you co-create with just one entity?

I understand these concerns, but there are easy ways to resolve them. Remember that subjective reality is not a truth per se — it’s just a perspective, a lens through which you can look at truth. It isn’t difficult for the subjective lens to include a co-creative aspect.

Clues from Lucid Dreaming

For me the major clues regarding how to connect the dots between subjective reality and co-creation came from lucid dreaming. I’ve had many more lucid dreams this year, i.e. dreams where I’m conscious and aware that I’m dreaming, so I’ve been doing further experimenting along these lines.

If you’re having a nighttime dream, would you say there are multiple consciousnesses in the dream, or is it all just you? I imagine you’ll probably agree that there’s ultimately just one consciousness there, and it’s yours. You’re the dreamer of course.

What are the other dream characters? Do they have independent will separate from your own? You’d probably say that they don’t. At best these characters may represent different parts of your psyche. Since the whole dream world is playing out in your mind, everything in it is coming from you.

Those who believe that the objective lens is the only truth would probably agree on this much. They’d probably say that the whole dream is due to a pattern of neurons firing in your physical brain, and therefore everything in the dream world is coming from within your brain. So of course the dream characters don’t really have a consciousness that’s separate from yours.

That said, I’ve had some fairly interesting experiences involving a certain aspect of lucid dreaming — trying to mind control the other dream characters.

You might think that if you get really good at lucid dreaming, you should eventually be able to mind control your dream characters perfectly. What’s to prevent you from controlling them just as easily as you control your own avatar? After all, the dream body you have isn’t the real you. It’s just a mental projection. So are all the other dream characters. So it seems reasonable that you might develop the skill to control the other dream characters, willing them to do your bidding however you see fit. If there’s some mechanism to prevent you from doing this, it’s not clear what that would be. The main limitation seems to be just developing the skill to do it, just as you’d develop any other lucid dreaming skill.

As I tried to further develop this ability in my lucid dreams, I noticed that while I could successfully mind control other dream characters, it wasn’t as easy as I expected it to be. It takes a lot of concentration to bend a character to my will, and on some level it feels like the character is resisting being controlled. As soon as I have a lapse in concentration, that character breaks free for a bit and stops following my mental commands.

I called Erin and asked her about her experiences in this area since she’s been lucid dreaming much longer than I have. She reported similar results, and she added that it feels like the other dream characters are pre-programmed to do certain things. If you try to mind control them, you can, but as soon as you let up or lose concentration, those characters’ original programming reasserts itself, and they continue following their previous scripts. Erin suggested that the resistance may come from the characters being programmed to play out a certain storyline, and when you try to mind control them, you mess up the storyline to an extent.

Erin also said that it’s possible to take control of the whole dream and to essentially wipe out the pre-programmed story. When she does that, she says it’s much easier to mind control the other characters. They no longer have a scripted routine to return to. I haven’t tried wiping out the entire dream story, but what Erin described is consistent with my own experience.

Now the interesting part is that waking reality seems to work in much the same way. If you try to control other people, then to a certain extent, they let you. Perhaps you don’t do this through the same mechanism of telepathic mind control, but you can just as easily develop the skill of influencing others, essentially using your will to override their previous behaviors for a while. It’s not that difficult to knock someone out of their pre-programmed script for a while.

Hitler and the Nazis are one potent example of this phenomenon. Since then there have been some intense psychological experiments demonstrating just how easy it is to control and direct people. Perhaps the most notable would be the Milgram Shock Experiments during the 1960s. If you aren’t familiar with them, I encourage you to follow the link and read up on them. These experiments have been repeated numerous times with similar results.

If we commit to doing so, we are indeed capable of dominating and controlling others, and to a great extent, they’ll let us. Similarly there’s also a part of us that’s eager to submit to authority. Start noticing how often you tell people what to do, and they obey you. And also notice how often people tell you what to do, and you obey them.

Become aware of all the subtle ways the command and control model comes up each day. When you get an email and you reply to it, you’re doing someone else’s bidding. If they hadn’t sent you that message, you’d have directed your time elsewhere.

What I’ve observed regarding how dream characters react to being dominated aligns pretty well with how waking characters respond. They may offer token resistance, but they also bend to the dominant will most of the time. When the dominant will is relaxed, the character return to their previous scripts for the most part.

So how might we use this to connect the dots between subjective reality and co-creation?

One Model of Co-Creation

If we assume, as Erin suggested, that our dream characters aren’t really conscious and are just following something akin to a pre-programmed script, then one way of explaining co-creation in a dream world is this:

The other dream characters aren’t really conscious, but they’re pre-programmed with a storyline to follow. This storyline is a higher level construct, one created by our subconscious. When we dominate or mind control other characters, we knock them off script, which can throw off the unfolding story. Yes, we have the power to do this, but perhaps it’s better to go with the flow of the story (or the dream) and see where it leads. Perhaps there’s a purpose to the story that we should listen to and understand.

If we apply a subjective reality lens to our waking world, we could suggest a similar interpretation. The other people walking around aren’t separate conscious beings, but they’re pre-programmed to help create a certain storyline. This story isn’t something we’ve consciously created per se. It’s being created by our subconscious. While we can control people by exerting our dominant will, we may mess up the story when we do so. It’s preferable to allow the other characters to follow their intended scripts, so we can better understand where the story is going and flow with it.

What is co-creation then? Co-creation is cooperation with our subconscious. To co-create is to align ourselves with the unfolding story. The other characters all represent different parts of us. They may not be independent, fully conscious beings, but they are pre-programmed with certain behaviors because it’s part of the storyline. We can resist their behaviors and try to change them, but ultimately this may corrupt the storyline. If we really don’t like where the story is going, we always have the power to consciously step in and take control and redirect a given scene, but perhaps it’s best to let the story unfold as it will and to play our own part in alignment with what the other characters are doing.

To co-create with this model is to acknowledge that a story is indeed unfolding in this reality, and we’re all characters within it. Every character has value because each one contributes something to the story. So this form of co-creation isn’t necessarily something we must do in terms of adopting different behaviors. It’s more of a general attitude of cooperation… of valuing what the simulation is playing out and flowing with it. In other words, sit back and enjoy the ride, and don’t resist what’s happening.

There is some value in this perspective, but overall it’s not my preferred model to use for co-creation. It seems a bit too passive, and it also paints the other characters as little more than automatons or NPCs.

Another Model of Co-Creation

Instead of using scripts and programming to describe how people behave, we could also say while deep down there may be just one creator in this reality, everyone is a part of that creator, just as each cell in your body is a part of the greater whole.

So co-creation is simply consciousness collaborating within itself. Just as you may have a discussion with yourself, listening to the different voices within you in order to come to a decision, you can do the same with other people, and it’s essentially the same process.

You enjoy inner harmony when your different facets are in agreement — your thoughts, words, and deeds are congruent. Similarly, you create outer harmony when the people in your life are mutually supporting one another.

External co-creation is really the same thing as doing inner creative work. In order to create anything, you must somehow get all the different parts of yourself to agree upon what to do at any given time. If your mind wants to write, sleep, eat, and go to the bathroom all at the same time, you’ll just spin in circles.

While you can use a domination-based model to get yourself to take action, it tends not to be very sustainable in the long run. Just like mind controlling other dream characters, it requires intense concentration. As soon as your attention lapses, slippage occurs. In practice it’s difficult to maintain this state for long.

With this model the focus is on creating harmony. Forward action requires cooperation, whether it’s internal cooperation or external cooperation.

In this case we wouldn’t say that other people have a separate consciousness per se, but then neither does your avatar. There is still just one consciousness, and the different human beings within it are projections of the different aspects of that consciousness. So they’re not separate consciousnesses, but they are all conscious… just as your fingers aren’t distinct human beings, but they’re still human.

So to subjectively co-create with other people doesn’t imply that we’re all distinct conscious beings. We’re all individual projections of different aspects of consciousness. Co-creation is the process by which consciousness establishes harmony within itself.

Your avatar is a vehicle for creating that harmony. Instead of passively watching the story play out, you can exert some influence over the storyline. You get to be part producer and part audience member.

To co-create is to influence the other aspects of consciousness, to discover where we can agree, and then to leverage that agreement to develop and release a more powerful aspect of the story.

Exploring Co-Creation

For years I’ve been practicing a model of conscious creation that involves setting goals and achieving them, or setting intentions and manifesting them. This model is effective — it works.

I’d also like to practice co-creation, to see what can be created when two or more people contribute to a goal or intention that goes beyond what either of them would have chosen individually.

Co-creation is more than just teamwork. One person can come up with a goal and assemble a team to work together to achieve that goal. Co-creation, however, is when the team comes up with the goal as well. So the goal isn’t handed down from above.

Co-creation occurs from the idea stage onward, so even the starting idea is worked through collaboratively. If I already know what my goal or intention is in advance, or if some other individual does, then most likely we have one person submitting to another person’s direction. A co-creative team comes up with its own projects.

With co-creation you don’t even know what the goal or intention will be in advance. That’s something to be worked out collaboratively. Each person can suggest ideas and bounce them off each other, but the point isn’t for one person to convince the other that any particular idea is best. The idea is for all involved to collectively reach an agreement that everyone willingly commits themselves to.

Co-Creation and Relationships

While I could apply this model to my business (and I’ve already started doing so, with some cool new ideas percolating), I’m actually more interested in applying it to my social life first. Due to the highly social nature of co-creation, this just makes sense to me. But in practice I have to be more flexible than this because you never know where co-creation will lead. So my social life is merely a place to get started.

Because it’s uncommon to consciously co-create our connections with others (we normally do so unconsciously), we often fall into the domination-submission realm in terms of how these interactions play out. One person decides what they want and then seeks to get the other person to go along with it. This works to some extent, but as with mind controlling a dream character, it normally meets with some resistance.

In situations where I’ve already been using a co-creative model, the results have been promising. My workshops are a good example. I don’t feel overwhelmed or overloaded there. We create a certain energy that seems to keep things pretty balanced and harmonious. I think the face-to-face feedback helps as well. People tend to be open and friendly but also respectful of the fact that I can’t have 5 conversations all at the same time. I don’t need a list of rules telling people what’s okay or not okay. Within the environment that we create, people tend to be pretty socially graceful. You might say that it’s because of the face-to-face element, but I see this online in some places too, such as with my Google+ interactions.

I do believe it’s possible to co-create with large groups, but it may be more difficult to get everyone to agree. Take note that this isn’t the same thing as dominating and controlling large groups, such as Hitler did. My workshops attract people with common interests, so it makes sense that co-creation can gain a foothold there. But with more diverse groups, it could be more challenging.

Consequently, I’m going to focus for now on co-creating with individuals and very small groups, such as my existing friends. I probably won’t have time to try this with everyone right out of the gate, but I think it would be rewarding and enlightening to have a discussion with a friend about how each of us would like to see our connection evolve, then to see what we can agree upon, and then to commit ourselves to that co-created vision of where our relationship will go next. And then of course we have to keep adjusting our vision as we grow and change, so it doesn’t go stale.

I already did some of this with Rachelle yesterday. We had a deep discussion about what we want to create next in our relationship. Instead of only discussing what we each want as individuals, we tried to gain a sense of what we could co-create that would inspire both of us. I think that individual desires are necessary because they provide fuel for the collective vision, but then you have to let others’ desires combine with yours to create something together, something that goes beyond what either of you would have come up with individually.

This morning I had another experience while talking to a business partner. Going into the call, we had two separate projects to discuss, one of his and one of mine, but after we’d talked for a bit, he suggested a creative way to combine them. I instantly liked the idea, recognizing it as something that would be good for everyone. We agreed to make it so immediately, and now we’re already moving forward with it. It was a very fast way to work out a win-win arrangement. The best part is that this will ultimately produce something that’s free for everyone but which will also benefit our respective businesses, so it isn’t just a win for the two of us but also for everyone else who will be affected by it.

A Co-Creative Attitude

At the individual level, you may set goals and intentions based on what you desire.

A co-creation attitude is all about win-win. It isn’t just about what’s good for you. It’s about what’s good for everyone. You can co-create at the level of determining what’s good for the team, or you can co-create as Marc Allen recommends — for the highest good of all.

My experience on this path is pretty limited since I’m just getting started with it, but I can already see that the energy signature of co-creation is different than the one I’m accustomed to with traditional goal setting or intention-manifestation.

Co-creation requires a more flexible attitude. It’s important to bring your own desires to the table, but then you must be willing to allow the energy of others’ desires to merge with your own, so that you eventually come to form an intention or goal that everyone loves.

I’m looking forward to talking with more friends to discuss what we might co-create together next. It’s too early to say what the results will be, but I’m pretty optimistic about it thus far, and the few interactions I’ve had with this mindset in the past couple days have all been great.

I feel this is a good time for me to get started on this path, but I can’t predict where it will lead. To be truly co-creative as opposed to dominant, I have to open myself to seeing my relationships evolve in ways I wouldn’t necessarily have chosen on my own.

I’m not treating this as a 30-day trial since I expect it will take considerably longer to explore it, but it does feel a little like embarking on a new 30-day trial where I don’t know what the outcome will be.

I’ll surely be sharing more about subjective reality and co-creation at the upcoming Subjective Reality Workshop in October, which already has dozens of people signed up for it, but I also expect that I’ll blog about new insights along the way.

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina