[Bruce Achterberg]

Originally Posted by Honeywith4bees

So, Steve, I don't mean this to be a wise guy type of comment, but are you willing to give me a handout, alms as you refer to them, so that I can quit my job and spend a year in school retraining for something that I would rather do? I figure that if you gave me a years worth of support for my four kids and I, I would be free to pursue my purpose with out harming my children or losing our home.

What do you think?

It's an interesting question, and I don't think you should think it's silly at all. What's even more interesting is that Steve's already talked about this type of thing in his post, Ask Steve - Money and Financial Issues Solution. I quote:

Although no one suggested it directly, I soon had another mental breakthrough. I realized my original Star Trek paradigm of making money irrelevant in my life wasn’t actually broken at all. On the contrary I just needed to expand it. Once I realized that, everything fell into place for me. I need to extend my successful microcosm of financial freedom beyond my own family and share it with others. Imagine what could be accomplished by financially supporting dozens, hundreds, even thousands of other people who’ve devoted themselves to serving the highest good of all.

This is an exciting paradigm for me because it’s congruent with many of the suggestions I received, and it fits my existing expansion plans like a glove. Ultimately I want to devote the bulk of my financial resources to assemble a community of highly conscious, purpose-driven people (aka lightworkers), and make financial concerns irrelevant for them as well. I’ll see to it that all their material needs are well-met, including food, clothing, and housing for them and their families. They’ll be free to focus all their energy on serving humanity to the best of their abilities. Writers can write, speakers can speak, teachers can teach, musicians can compose, counselors can counsel, researchers can research, inventors can invent, healers can heal, peacemakers can pacify, and so on. And none of these people would need to worry about monetizing their work to support themselves unless doing so genuinely served the greater good. Some members could also support the community by assisting with childcare, cooking, etc. The members of this community would have a stable base of financial and social support to fearlessly fulfill their life purpose, the freedom to do what they came here to do. This would not be an isolationist hippy commune. It would be passionately engaged with the world at large.

[...] Find me someone with Mother Teresa’s compassion who’s been working at a meaningless job in order to pay her bills, and I’ll do whatever it takes to keep her fed, clothed, sheltered, and happily jobless until the day she dies. Additionally, I’ll provide the delivery vehicle for sharing her message of compassion with the world.

So if Steve does decide to go down that route and you really mean business, perhaps you might get your wish after all. (That said, if I've learned one thing from observing Steve is that he changes often and that he always tries to do the very best he can -- he doesn't just dabble -- so it's very possible he could change his plans.)

Personally, I really love the idea of making a ton of cash so you can distribute it to worthy projects -- and I'm not just talking charities, but actual projects that you are directly involved in.

For example, if I had a ton of cash:

1. I'd keep doing what I'm doing because I'm doing what I love. I'm not there yet, but I'm improving all the time and I can feel that I'm getting closer. What I would do, though, is quit my part time job because I sure don't do that because I enjoy it -- I do it to pay the bills and so that I can keep doing what I love to do and constantly come into better alignment with my passion.
   
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2. I'd be really, really interested in doing some sort of high level, high leverage projects that involve things like automation, creating really good resources for people (maybe something like Wikipedia, but better/different), and possibly something to do with media/games.

To go into a bit more detail:

Automation
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I cringe at the amount of things that we haven't automated yet. So many people say to me, "but we need to do these things. Not doing it is just lazy. What would you do if you didn't have to do these things?". Ahhh, how about important things that are worthy/fit for human beings -- things that take us past where we've gone before and utilise our potential?!

The old saying of "work to live, not live to work" comes to mind. Use your time for things that are interesting/important, not all this stuff we "have" and "need" to do because we haven't yet created the conditions necessary such that we can focus on what we REALLY want to do. To me, any excuses (ie. "we need to stay grounded somehow") are more about fear/someone struggling with coming to terms with their potential.

Many years ago we didn't need things like gyms because there was plenty of physical activity in every day living. And that, for a time, was good. But we can do so much better then that (without excluding such things for those who do really want to live like that), and it's much more effective to do a targeted exercise regime and use efficient transport such as cars, etc, then it is to walk around everywhere just to stay in shape. If walking takes 2 hours, and you can do better training in half an hour and use the 1.5 hours for other things, what would you rather do?


Good resources
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It boggles my mind that it's so difficult to become a millionaire. Likewise with understanding the nature of reality, and many other things. Why don't we have resources that cover all of this such that it's not trivially easy, but not such a huge effort? Why don't we make much, much, MUCH better use of the lessons people have learned before us so, instead of solving things we've already solved, we can work on new, interesting things? Why do we not have systems that make it easy and even desirable to share what we know so that other people can leverage our ideas? It's the notion of:

If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.
~ George Bernard Shaw

It's win/win!


Media/games
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I've been a gamer my whole life, and I've learned to see past the exterior of games and see what really lies underneath. I think there's HUGE potential in the medium of interactive media. The broken paradigm of the game industry is one of main reasons that the games industry is not overshadowing the movie industry right now, and I think if a whole lot of money was thrown towards creating the right conditions -- conditions that would act as a soil for rich, value-packed projects to be grown -- we'd finally be able to reap the benefits that come from working to make things good as opposed to working to make money.

Think along the lines of games that actually make a real difference in the world and teach valuable lessons. Think games that use human "computing power" to solve real-world problems more efficiently then any machine can. Think games that are so effective at what they do that they make standard forms of education look archaic and inefficient.

That's what I'd do with a ton of cash (at least, those are my ideas... anything else would only be different by degree, not essence). I see so much potential everywhere, and I'd love to see it being used rather then consumed in less worthy/interesting pursuits.

As Steve says, nobody wants to take out the garbage. Nobody wants to have to wash dishes and mow the lawn. Nobody wants to spend years learning something when they can learn it in half that time and get on with doing what they love/desire.

If some people do still want to do those things for legitimate reasons, that's ok to -- they still have the option to. It's about expansion with inclusion, not exclusion. But deep down, the vast majority of people really don't want to do that stuff, and I'd like to help with that because I can see that reality so clearly. It's essentially who I am, so I don't have to envision something, I just have to be myself to the best of my ability and what I speak of will come into being as a side effect of my existence.