Articles Duncan's Blog Events News: fear magick meditation paranormal reality self
by Duncan
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Alone With Ghosts
Fancy a change from your usual meditation practice? Give this a try:
He who practices sadhana is supposed to go at night to a deserted house, a mountaintop, or a cemetery. There he must sit astride a corpse that has been laid on its belly, facing north. He must draw on the corpse’s back a graphic symbol (yantra), usually an inverted triangle, representing Shakti. At this point he evokes elementary forces by reciting mantras and by projecting prana in the corpse with the purpose of animating it… If the rite is successful, this force actually manifests itself in the corpse, whose head will then spin around and speak to the apprentice. The apprentice must be able to impose his will right away on the ‘ghost.’ This practice is considered terrifying and most dangerous. [1]
Maybe it’s not so easy in modern times to dig up a fresh corpse as it may once have been. But suppose that wasn’t the case and you had the means – are you up for it?
Even supposing the head doesn’t turn around and speak (which I imagine is quite likely), this would still be probably one of the most frightening experiences of your life. Even to reach the point where you had proved to yourself the spell didn’t work, you would have to master a massive whack of fear that it just might.
And if the corpse actually did turn around and speak? Well, then you’d have to master a whole whack more…
On Halloween this year I’ll be doing my own version of this ritual. I’ve arranged to spend the night all alone and in the dark in a very haunted place: The Old Police Cells Museum, in the basement of Brighton Town Hall.
Some of the cells have been renovated and turned into a museum, but the remainder are still derelict. They were in use throughout the 19th century, right up until the 1960s. A police chief was murdered there in the 1840s, and who knows how many poor souls died or languished down there in misery. No wonder the place has a reputation for being vigorously haunted.
I’ve wondered for a while about making a point of facing my fear and doing something like this, so I’ve decided to collect sponsorship for the challenge. The proceeds will be split between the museum and the local branch of a national mental health charity, Mind.
I’ll have a night-vision camera for company, but I’m not planning a ‘paranormal investigation’. Instead, I want to see how good my meditation skills are at dealing with fear.
I recently read an account by a paranormal investigator of his most frightening moment. He fled from a house after being physically attacked by a poltergeist:
As I stood in the back garden I contemplated my future in paranormal research. I thought I had been in acceptance that such phenomena existed but apparently not. I had been fooling myself! This was all a bit too real for me… [2]
Fear and reality go hand-in-hand. We can’t fear something unless it becomes real; fear of something that isn’t real we instead call ‘worry’ or ‘anxiety’, whereas – as in the example above – the more real something becomes (especially when it hasn’t quite been recognised before) then the more incredibly, mind-blowingly scary it suddenly is.
But where is ‘real’ when we look at it in our experience? A sensation of reality involves things becoming vivid and impactful. Yet if things are not vivid or impactful, is our experience therefore less or only partially real?
I don’t think so. If it were, then we couldn’t recognise non-vivid experiences as being real – and yet we do. Also, the opposite couldn’t happen either: an experience such as travelling at speed would never cease to be vivid – but of course, over time it does.
Reality is not a concrete quality that experiences do or don’t have, but a description of our relationship to experience. In sensations of threat, awe or powerlessness the causes of these feelings spring into vivid relief as being ‘out there’ and a strong sense of reality is initiated. But this feeling of reality is just the flip-side of the sense of self; generally, the less there is of self, the more reality – and vice versa. But the fact we can recognise and shift between either implies that both are there, bound up in each other. It’s the habit of drawing a dividing-line in different places that makes some experiences feel more real than others.
Now, I’m not saying that being punched in the back by a poltergeist didn’t happen to the paranormal investigator, or wasn’t real, or that he was chicken. But although you can change your circumstances (by running into the garden, for instance) there’s never anywhere to hide from experience. Everything in experience is always how it seems, whether that means things feel vague, or else that things are far too weird or vivid to bear. Fear is what arises when we assume we can somehow hide from experience. If we remain accepting of experience then fear will not arise – and if it does, then we should accept that too.
I’d say it wasn’t quite the case that our paranormal investigator didn’t believe poltergeists were real; he did, I’m sure, but it was the experience of being punched by one that drove him into the garden. Who can say they wouldn’t have reacted the same?
Will I be able to spend a night in haunted cells without cacking my pants? I doubt it. It’s going to take every gramme of willpower to keep me down there. Hopefully, the even worse prospect of letting down my sponsors will keep me standing firm(ish). But if I’m able to make use of them, there should be plenty of opportunities to work with my fear.
I’ve set up a new blog for this project, with more information, a diary of the build-up to the event, and various observations on the paranormal. Drop by if you’re interested – and wish me luck!
References
[1] Julius Evola, The Yoga of Power: Tantra, Shakti, and the Secret Way (Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions, 1992), p. 96.
[2] Steve Mera, ‘The Invisible Assailant’, Paranormal Magazine, 50 (August 2010), p. 51.
Occult Experiments in the Home
This post is a shameless plug for my book on magick and the paranormal, Occult Experiments in the Home, which has recently been published.
The connection between paranormal phenomena, spirituality and enlightenment is a topic that has long been close to my heart. I never suspected that a childhood fascination with ghosts, UFOs and tarot cards would lead me to a serious engagement with Buddhism, meditation and the nature of reality.
Intuitively we recognise certain experiences as ‘paranormal’, yet the apparent causes of these experiences contradict rationality. Magick, meanwhile, is a set of practices that set out on purpose to bypass rationality, in order to shape experience according to the magician’s will. Magick – in other words – is a means of creating the paranormal.
Take any of the paranormal reality shows that are quite common on television these days. It’s pretty obvious that the presenters of these shows are hyping up situations in order to create the very type of experiences they supposedly set out to ‘investigate’. If only these shows weren’t so constrained by the demands of the entertainment industry, we’d see quite clearly that they are contemporary examples of magick in action.
Yet magick has uses that far exceed television shows. Magick intervenes directly in the processes that create reality. What we experience as reality is not seamless and given, but the product of a linked chain of processes. In Buddhism this chain is called ‘dependent origination‘ and is the subject of highly detailed exposition. For the purposes of practical magick, however, a far simpler model usually suffices: desire shapes belief, which shapes perception, which shapes reality.
For many magicians, reshaping reality is the extent of their practice and many of them end up spending their lives simply and repeatedly bending reality in order to realise their desires. But magick takes its place among the world’s genuine spiritual traditions when its principles are applied to desire itself, and to the notion of the self that we suppose is the source of those desires.
Every magician gains clear and first-hand experience of how reality is a construct, amenable to desire, but few take the logical next step to examine how desire and self are merely constructs too. One means of arriving at this understanding is meditation. In this way, every act of meditation is also an act of magick.
All the major spiritual traditions employ some form of meditation, and also some form of magick as well. Christianity, for instance, uses prayer as the basis of meditation, and various rituals – such as the Eucharist – to invoke the presence of God through magical means. The classic Buddhist texts on meditation, Visuddhimagga and Vimuttimagga, also include extensive discussion on cultivation of siddhis or ‘supernormal abilities’. Evidently, meditation and magick are inseparable. You cannot realise what reality truly is (or – rather – isn’t) without realising at the same time the extent to which it can be bent, manipulated and taken apart.
Every meditator practises magick and every person who has experienced enlightenment is a magician.
Magick can be a fast-track to enlightenment – or, at least, a valuable catalyst to the process, because it demonstrates so vividly to the practitioner the utterly fabricated nature of reality. Whenever we bypass or bend reality with magick, a paranormal experience is the result. A paranormal experience is the strongest possible assurance of and motivation toward the realisation that reality is all made up.
The spiritual traditions differ markedly in their attitudes towards the usefulness of the paranormal. Western magick, of course, places it right up front: first, take reality apart; next, the self. But the risk here is that we have so much fun bending the world to our desires that we never bother to look very hard at what we suppose is doing the bending.
Other traditions ban their students from any reality-bending altogether, until they’ve made headway first in understanding the nature of the self. The risk here is that by denying them access to magick, students never have the powerful experiences that can propel them over the hump of over-conceptualisation and give them the motivation and understanding required to examine the self effectively.
The paranormal plays an integral, subtle but easily overlooked role in the development of authentic spirituality. This is the basic theme I develop in the book and trace through a variety of types of paranormal experience. If this appeals to you, then I hope you might give it a look.
It’s available from Amazon US, Amazon UK, or from wherever you prefer to buy books.
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by Alan
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The End of Open Enlightenment?
It’s been awhile, hasn’t it?
My absence has been due to the bad customer service I’ve received from a certain broadband service provider, but as frustrating as this experience has been, it has given me time to take stock and reflect on the purpose and value of this blog.
I haven’t been lazy in my time away; I’ve written a rather lengthy two part article on morality and how it relates to wisdom, an article entitled ‘More Buddhist than Buddhist’ for the new Buddhist Geeks digital magazine, and a piece on the relationship between the Dharma and money, with an emphasis on how it relates to my future teaching plans.
But I doubt any of them will see the light of day.
You see, just as it took some time to fully understand the purpose of the Baptist’s Head project, so too has the purpose of Open Enlightenment slowly emerged. At first, I thought OE would facilitate what I felt was a necessary and beneficial conversation, and the aim was to try to explore the best way of understanding enlightenment and our relationship to it. This wasn’t always clear to many readers, and we spent a good deal of time arguing with detractors. As it became obvious that the conversation I hoped to have was never going to happen if we only ever repeated ourselves, I wrote the ebook to move the conversation along and act as a jumping off point.
But as time marched on it slowly began to dawn on me that this blog serves a rather different function. Both Duncan and I have posted our thoughts on enlightenment right from the word ‘go’, despite the fact the experience of awakening was still very fresh and we hadn’t enjoyed the benefit of allowing the dust settle. For some, this could be seen as a mistake that can easily lead to making embarrassing public gaffs; but if it wasn’t for this blog, which has acted as a focus for getting my thoughts down and sorting the wheat from the chaff, I would never have reached the understanding and view I know hold about enlightenment. If anything, blurting out what could have been premature and perhaps ill-informed comments about awakening (which, for the record, I don’t really believe we have done) as and when they arose has led to what I consider a much more mature view of the phenomenon than if we had remained quiet and careful. And for those with a genuine interest, there is perhaps more value to be found in witnessing what we have posted and how this has changed over time than perhaps in the actual content, something only an honest and regularly updated journal of post-awakening experience and thought can provide.
However, we’ve now reached a point with the blog where I feel we may start repeating ourselves (again), and I have to question the value of that. It doesn’t help that we still have to answer the same dull and ignorant comments we’ve endured since beginning this project, which sometimes feels like a constant uphill struggle. I still believe the conversation whose parameters I outline in the ebook is very important and worth having; I just don’t think many people are ready to have it yet.
Just as I felt it was necessary to write the ebook to answer the many common questions and objections we would frequently find ourselves dealing with, I now feel it is necessary to try and present a view of enlightenment that is both comprehensive and able to highlight and explain the common misgivings regarding the phenomenon that (I believe) frequently crop up during public discussion. As this view has emerged, I’ve found it increasingly difficult to discuss awakening, because what I wished to say would almost always require many more lengthy explanations before I could expect my comments to really make sense.
So I need to write another book, but this time it requires something more substantial than an ebook. But rather than write this blog off, shut up shop and spend the next year writing in seclusion, I’m going to utilise the wonderful power of maintaing a blog in focussing my efforts. Although there will no doubt still be regular postings here from me and Dunc (but probably mostly from Dunc), you can expect posted excerpts from the work in progress for your enjoyment and feedback.
My journey with Open Enlightenment has also led me to a particular conclusion regarding teaching and that rather thorny subject of mixing money with Dharma, and the material I am now working on will inform my future teaching in the form of course material. So this ‘new’ direction isn’t just about a book, but what I hope will eventually form the backbone of a new Western school of awakening.
I hope to have the first excerpt posted in the coming weeks.
(P.S. So the answer to the headline is, erm, ‘no’.)
Alan's blog Events News: Business ethics expectations For-Benefit Enlightenment involvement meditation morality Open Enlightenment practice satsang teaching
by Alan
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Lost in Translation
I’m only five satsangs in to my teaching career, but I think it’s time for a course correction.
In the past I‘ve always considered the irreverence for authority prevalent in the West to be a good thing. Authority is prone to abuse, and is often faked; respect should only be forthcoming when genuine authority is demonstrated.
In the past I’ve found the offense Eastern teachers take from the Westerner’s failure to acknowledge position and status a quant example of culture shock. I’ve also considered Westerner teachers who bemoan our irreverence to be suffering from their own power trips.
But then I had never tried to teach before; I had never encountered how easily people’s issues can co-opt a session (to their complete ignorance); how the failure to honour a teaching hierarchy (especially on my part) can allow others to sabotage the time with their own lack of integrity by holding forth with their opinions; how a student first needs to recognise the teacher’s function and their own reason for being there before any real teaching can commence.
I’ve experienced all of these things (and more) in my very short time as a teacher. And all of this is due to my own naivety!
My plan was simple: I would adapt a traditional Eastern method of teaching by holding a weekly satsang, where those wishing to explore enlightenment could come and ask me questions as a means of facilitating their own enlightenment. It would be relaxed, open and informal. As I was just starting out, I thought adopting a donation model would work best: the room was cheap, and maybe if everyone gave a couple of pounds, I could cover the room hire and perhaps save a bit of cash that could eventually go towards hiring a bigger and better venue, or perhaps allow me to buy a few cushions for our sits, or even organise a weekend retreat.
But the sad fact is very few people are interested in enlightenment, many cannot and do not recognise the function of a teacher, and some couldn’t care less if the cost of the room is covered if they don’t really have to pay.
I’ve come to the conclusion that we Westerner’s only really respect one thing: what we have paid for.
About turn
I like to think of myself as a quick study rather than a failure, but the truth is I have come realise that I am doing my students or the attendees to my teaching sessions an incredible disservice by not honouring the fact they are Western, thereby failing to offer them:
a). a structured, easy to digest teaching (perhaps in modules or stages).
b). a structured, formal teaching environment.
c). the facility to pay a set price for a given service. Let’s face it: you’re only going to pay for something you actually want, and if you’ve paid for it, you’ll definitely try and get all you can out of it!
So I’ve cancelled my forthcoming satsangs, and I hope in a short while to return with a series of talks/workshops that will cover my teaching in a structured, easy to understand manner, and with a set ticket price. I hope this will naturally follow on to weekend and week long retreats.
I have gained a few formal students in this period (and I will continue to accept prospective students) with whom I maintain frequent, personal contact on a 1-2-1 basis (which is a bonus as no money is involved). If you were intending to come to one of the cancelled satsangs, and you are genuinely interested in enlightenment, feel free to e-mail me: alan at (replace with @) openenlightenment.org (no spaces) and we’ll see where we go from there.
Satsang Dates
Just a quick note to say my upcoming satsang details can be found on the Satsang Dates page. Dates for January are up at present. Feel free to drop by!
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by Alan
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Permission to Satsang
Over the holidays my mum asked me how my writing was going. I shrugged my shoulders because progress had been slow (as it always is in the publishing world). But then I remembered there was a new development, and proudly announced that I had held my first satsang recently. I’m not quite sure she fully understood the concept of a satsang, but she nevertheless looked puzzled and asked me that if I was teaching surely I would need some type of qualification from someone. Without going into too many details, I told her my experience spoke for itself, and left it at that.
But experience alone doesn’t make a good teacher, does it?
I’ve said it on this site before, and I’ll say it again: just because you’ve experienced awakening, it doesn’t mean you fully understand it, have an accurate and healthy approach to it or that you are teacher material (not to mention that some awakened people don’t want to teach at all!).
Top Secret
A few commentators on this site are students of Shinzen Young, who advocates maintaining a relationship with a teacher – or someone more advanced along the path – regardless of whether you’ve experienced enlightenment or not. I reached enlightenment without a teacher, and I was lucky enough to do so without making too many big mistakes; but I’m not naive enough to think I won’t make mistakes in the future, and so taking Shinzen’s advice, a few months ago I decided to see if I could find a teacher before taking up the mantle myself.
Of course, Shinzen would be the obvious choice (as recommended by his students), but after reviewing what he offered I decided I really needed someone closer to home who I could talk to face to face. After a bit of a search, I came across Mr. X (I’m not giving his name because I’m not sure he wants any attention), a dharma heir to Master Gudo Nishijima of the Soto Zen lineage. Being a big Dogen fan, I hoped we might have a common ground on which to discuss enlightenment. I prayed he wasn’t going to be one of those strange breed of Zen types who refuse to talk about awakening.
I need not have worried; Mr X was open about enlightenment and versed in many traditions (even my own). His enlightenment had been a gradual falling away affair after his life took a difficult turn, as opposed to my three stage awakening, but he recognised that the process unfolds in a variety of ways (although he seemed to take some time probing me before he seemed sure I was enlightened). I was convinced that his awakening was authentic due to my experience of intersubjective enlightenment upon first meeting him, and because he spoke to my experience.
At the end of the discussion, I was quite thrown when Mr. X asked me what I actually wanted. Why had I come to see him? Was I looking for confirmation of my experience, for permission to teach? I certainly wasn’t looking for anyone’s confirmation or permission (God forbid!), and although I arrived at his doorstep with no clear reason to be there, what I did get was an interesting insight into Mr. X’s experience as a teacher.
Mr. X had begun teaching Zazen and the dharma as per his lineage, and although at one point he had a modest Sangha, he eventually decided to stop teaching a group, to close down his popular website, and to carefully vet any prospective students. He had met too many ‘damaged people’ he said, and his lineage, no doubt thanks to the popularity of Brad Warner, tended to attract for the most part people who were only interested in having a Zen teacher or belonging to a Zen lineage for the kudos. Mr. X was pretty sure he could make a lot of money if wanted to by publishing the couple of books he had written, shaving his head and by giving talks wearing the special Zen robe he had received at dharma transmission. But this to him has nothing to do awakening or helping others get there.
This gave me a lot to think about. Exactly why did I want to teach? To make money? To be a famous teacher? Was I prepared to take on the responsibility of dealing with ‘damaged people’ or insincere seekers?
Mr. X’s advice was to think about teaching very carefully, and to write a book. That way, people would have something of substance.
The Satsang Has Landed
After thinking about it for a long time, I decided that teaching was a natural progression for me (I am of course already writing a few books!). I think there is much more to be gained by sharing my knowledge and experience than there is from hiding away for fear of having to deal with difficult people or their issues (which I already have some experience with after running a popular occult website for a few years). And of course, I can always visit Mr. X should I need advice.
Whether or not I will make a good teacher remains to be seen. And here’s hoping I don’t become an ego-maniac…(I can hear Duncan now: ‘What do you mean, ‘become’?!’)
My first satsang happened on 17th December 2009 at the Bonnington Centre in Vauxhall, London. 5 people turned up (7 including me and my wife) which isn’t bad for an inaugural meeting on a cold, wintery night in London. I very much enjoyed myself, although I must confess I found the experience a little bizarre, sitting in an armchair in the middle of the room dispensing off the cuff ‘wisdom’ (ha!), but I was surprised at how relaxed and easy the night went, and at how great the people were who came that night (thankfully no ‘damaged’ people!). I hope everyone else got as much out of it as I did.
I look forward to making the satsang a weekly occurrence (possibly starting mid January), and I hope to record the results and maybe post them here for those who might benefit from them.
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Micro-patronage is a macro-flop
Spurred on by the success of other sites employing the micro-patronage business model, I had hoped to finance the Open Enlightenment project with recurring low monthly donations by generous readers. However, this approach has always sat uncomfortably with Dunc, and so after a good deal of debate and deliberation, I have relented and cancelled the forthcoming micro-patronage drive.
This does mean that certain objectives have been put on the back burner, but we are still open to donations and – as Duncan has been fond of telling me recently – we are still going to be doing everything we have planned anyway!
Onwards and upwards…
Meditation Practice Group in Brighton, UK
Beginning on 16th November, 2009, I’ll be leading the Monday evening unguided meditation group at The Bodhi Garden in Brighton, UK.
The group begins at 6pm (doors 5.45pm) and will end at 7.15pm. Sessions will consist of unguided meditation for up to one hour, with an optional discussion session on practice afterwards. If you’re new to meditation, come along a few minutes early if you’d like some guidance before the sitting.
Please see The Bodhi Garden website for details about the centre and its location.
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The London Open Enlightenment Group
I recently posted a pledge to start an ‘Open Enlightenment group’ in London if ten people were interested. Well, it turns out that ten people are interested, and so I will indeed set up the group.
The first step is for everyone to meet up in central London somewhere (that’s free, say a pub or cafe) to discuss exactly what I have in mind, what everyone would like from the group and where might be the best place in terms of location to start weekly sessions.
Even if you haven’t signed the pledge, or you missed it, the invite still remains open to join in!
I have a proposed learning structure based upon my three major awakenings, which I describe as the ‘relationship model’. Sitting or meditation is a relationship with yourself (my first peak awakening occurred during a daily sit), discussion between peers is a group relationship (my partial awakening occurred during a discussion with a friend), and Q&A (satsang) or a 1-to-1 session is a relationship with a teacher (my final awakening occurred during a satsang with a guru in India). I think a good spiritual practice should include all three.
This means that there are 3 major components to the structure: daily sitting (with weekly meet ups to instruct/provide support), group meetings to discuss everything and anything related to enlightenment/dharma/practice – especially as an emerging 21st century spiritual culture, and group/1-to-1 meetings with a teacher (me) to ask questions directly about awakening or to take instruction.
It should be noted that although I will be fulfilling the role of teacher within this structure, that relationship is only 1/3 of the model. So although a teacher – as an example of an awakened human – is important, it doesn’t take precedent over having access to a group of peers (of which a teacher is ultimately but one of many), or the development of the necessary relationship with yourself.
Before I timetable any of this though, I thought it would be best to allow you (should you be attending) to have some input as to what form these three components take (how many group sits a week? Will the group sits and questioning naturally merge?), hence the initial meeting.
Needless to say I’m very excited about getting group up and running in London, and I’ll post details of a proposed time and place shortly.
Any comments/suggestions welcome!
A Business Case for Enlightenment?
I’ve always felt very strongly that enlightenment should not be treated as a commodity; being nothing less than the full realisation of what it means to be human, and as the birthright of every man, woman and child on this planet, where are we to find the moral justification for a teacher who determines access to their teachings on financial grounds?
Osho is one example of such a guru, where the entrance fee to his ashram in Pune, India, and the requirement of the purchase of not one but two robes before you can even begin to meditate, ensures the exclusion of the impoverished Indian people from his organisation. And what are we to make of Genpo Roshi, who charges several thousand dollars for the privilege of a five day retreat in his presence? Does his marketing right hand man, Bill Harris, really need a personal jet in order to spread the dharma?
From Socrates to Crowley, the idea of charging for enlightenment has been deemed ethically inviable, and the most popular means of a full time spiritual teacher putting bread on the table has been the concept of dana or donation. Indeed, this appears to be the preferred business model for many fine websites that produce ‘enlightened’ content on the web today, and myself and Duncan adopted this approach with our occult website The Baptist’s Head. Over a couple of years we managed to produce thousands of pages of material and a number of free books, and the feedback we regularly receive suggests this material is highly valued amongst our readers. The Baptist’s Head has been a labour of love, and the truth is we would have produced the content regardless of any idea of financial return; but we did expect that with the odd donation we would at least cover our minuscule server costs.
Despite the praise and the high hit rate, I can count the number of donations we received over two years on one hand; we didn’t cover our costs. This hasn’t been a problem because both myself and Duncan have worked full time as well as maintaining the site. But if I’m honest, I have personally found this lack of financial aid disappointing. However, even more disappointing is the sad fact that even a highly polished and quality service such as Buddhist Geeks – a website that produces a podcast every single week with leaders in the field of Buddhism – has to be run on a spare-time basis too. In my opinion, the content of both The Baptist’s Head and Buddhist Geeks far surpasses the 99.9% of vapid, pointless bullshit produced by professional sites and publishing houses in the field of spirituality that the public are more than willing to keep in business. My faith in the public’s propensity to financially reward those services that only suggest a donation is almost non-existent.
I’m now onto a new project with Open Enlightenment and I fully intend to teach full time, employ a number of staff and build an organisation – complete with a centre in London – that can provide public access to quality material and teachers. The motivation for this project has its basis in the very same ethical stance that informs the refusal to make enlightenment a commodity: enlightenment should be available to everyone!
But how best to fulfill this ambition without charging for enlightenment, or without providing an amateur service? Let us not be naive: without some serious money, Open Enlightenment will never be anything more than just another part time internet project, and I refuse to dream so small. All the good will in the world does not change the fact I will have to charge for talks, workshops and retreats in order to cover venue costs, because I don’t have free access to a venue or retreat centre. And If I want to build a centre myself, where is the money going to come from if not from profit?
If I seriously wish to open a centre in London, should I run OE as a business and charge for every talk, podcast, article and retreat? Or should I register OE as a charity, and hope for some big donations? Should I attach a fixed price to material, or suggest an amount for donation? What about a membership scheme?
I imagine it is going to take some time to flesh out all the details, but of one thing I am sure: I would like to try and get OE up and running with as little money involved as I can. To do this, I would like to proceed on a gift economy basis. This means I am willing to trade my time as a teacher – perhaps in the form of talks, workshops, retreats or one-on-one sessions – for help in creating Open Enlightenment. This means that OE is not just my project, but (should you be willing to help) your project too.
We’ve already found a web developer to help build a site, and hopefully a designer to create the brand. We also know a builder who would like to build the OE centre should we find the capital. But we need a lot more, such as marketing materials, media equipment, and venue access.
If you are interested in participating in the Open Enlightenment project, please e-mail me with the skills or resources you have to offer, and we can see if we can realise the OE dream together, as a community. I’m hoping this approach will be a great success, because it will certainly determine how we proceed with OE in the future.
Any suggestions or comments are most welcome!