Posted on his Facebook page, this comment by Michael Richardson created a very significant and rich dialogue.
Okay, so I just decided to no longer prostitute my email address for “free stuff”. Everyone and her mother in the, cough, “spiritual community”, is putting on “Free Teleseminars or Calls” or some such bs. Well, it’s not free. My email address, a precious part of my “Digital Body”, has value and I’m not going to whore it out anymore. Period.
I was sitting into this rich conversation which I have enjoyed seeing unfold (thanks everyone and Michael for raising it to start with) while on my run in the forest this morning. As is my long term habit as a coach and systems thinker, I seek to get to the bedrock impulse behind things. The underlying context of the current internet marketing game (and our historical advertising game) is based on the fundamentals of the operating system behind everything we do which is built in scarcity. ‘I am not enough, there is not enough, we are not enough. I need more, and more, and more…and then some more. I am not good enough unless I have this and this and this…more money, more time, more love, more success, more stuff, the next ipod, ipad, another car, another x…to be a best seller, or famous….the business needs more market share, more profit, more growth, and did I mention profit?’
For what purpose do we seek more?
We need to be ruthlessly honest with the deeper intention behind our actions? Is it to get email addresses to sell more stuff, make more money…?? Most of us, if we pause for just a few moments and ask this question, know when we are under the ‘spell’ of spin. When the words that are expressed are designed very specifically to catch us in their spell. However, when we measure value through a single lens of money..which translates into number of sales, number of email addresses, and comes from a basis of scarcity, never enough, to win someone has to lose…then our choices are limited to this very game. “Success’ looks like making tons of money and being famous, and the game is to be successful. If we roll the tape back to our most aligned intent, and declare that…for example…if to make a shit load of money and to be famous is your intent…then have the balls to declare it. “I want your email address so I can sell something to you. Help me become rich and famous. I am going to use you as a pawn in the game and funny enough, you are going to say yes to playing.” The paradox is of course, that if we have the depth of integrity to be this honest with ourselves and declare this is our intention, it almost immediately transcends in the self inquiry and we move beyond this. This game of scarcity, dressed in drag to look like success as defined above (so I can feel good enough, smart enough, have enough status) is actually the major game in town. And it stems from the very operating system in which we live and breath. Therefore, whether we be the conductors of the game or the pawns we are all playing in the same game and we need to take responsibility for that. That includes me.
However, if we really hold as our intent to be of deepest service and to invite people to play if it really is something that resonates deeply with them, and we do not use spin, seduction, ‘clever’ marketing, but rather hold as true that we have something of value to offer that may support your life, and our energetics of the invitation matches the energetics of our core intent (syzergy) then the right people will opt in, by conscious, clean, untainted choice. They will be sovereign to their choice. Because we are not driven by a deep instinct based in scarcity, because we truly see that the world is abundant in every dimension, there is no ‘need’ for spin. And that whole deal of making it scarce (deadline for special offer and other ploys and cons), and all the other ‘spins’ designed to make us buy, are all based on scarcity…. this one thing you are selling will give me what I am missing, and then, it will be the next thing, and then the next. As my friend Jerome says, we are like greedy little caterpillars eating up all of the leaves.
How do I know? Because I have been well and truly seduced, more than once. And I suspect that many of you have as well. And that we are truly over it, as a very small game. However, the game’s ground of being is scarcity. It’s time to invite a game built on abundance, gratitude, service and reverence to all and where the measure of value is not to the god money, but to a multitude of values, which may include money and profit and wellbeing, but not at the price of any person or thing including offering ‘consciousness and personal development’ to people through seducing them via covert means that appeals to what is unconscious in them.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this one…lets keep the dialogue open. And please point us to people who use integrity as the core of their invitation and offering. Two that I know of are Hiro Boga and Chris Guillebeau, as well as Michael Richardson, the initiator of this stream of dialogue.
