Many Lightworkers today are still working under the tribal attitudes that probably carry over from past lives when we were shamans, healers and tribal medicine men. In those days and places we didn’t have to fool with ‘making a living’, we could just live and take care of the tribe and the tribe took care of us.
Now the world has evolved and there are new ways and new attitudes. We still need to take care of the tribe and the tribe is happy to take care of us, but all too often it’s we Lightworkers who aren’t making the shift into this new world and it’s actually causing problems for the tribe.
We’re seeing an interesting revival of the Old Ways now. Some of the modern religions have done a good job of providing a framework for laws and social norms and mores, not to mention fodder for countless wars and atrocities, but it seems that they’ve left a lot of people looking for spirituality rather than providing an easy path to help integrate the body, mind and spirit and many people are actively beginning to seek alternative paths.
These are our tribe; the seekers, the wanderers and those open-minded souls who intuitively feel that they should be looking inside themselves for the divinity that they can sense rather than looking outward to the invisible Gods that are forced upon them.
A Lightworker is always going to be in the position of straddling the boundaries between the various realities. We don’t believe in the Universal Powers and the Universal Laws, we know that they are real and that they work because we’ve felt and experienced them.
One of our missions is to help awaken others to those powers, and in many cases those others don’t believe that the powers actually exist because they have been taught that they have to be able to scientifically prove their concepts before they can be free to believe in them.
At the same time the people that we are supposed to be helping to awaken are indoctrinated from birth into mainstream religions that tell them to have faith in the religious version of the supernatural while teaching that all other versions of the supernatural are unreal and evil.
It’s no wonder that the tribe is confused and looking for relief and answers.
Another problem here is that many of the Lightworkers are still breaking free of the attitudes and teachings of the mainstream religions. It’s hard to grow up being taught that ‘money is the root of all evil’ and then being put into a position where one must learn to use money as a tool in order to help the tribe.
Many Lightworkers feel that to accept money for teaching or healing actually sullies the teaching and healing and lessens its worth. I’ve also met Lightworkers who have difficulties accepting money or even bartered goods that are offered in exchange for teaching and healing. The tribe, on the other hand, is being taught that ‘you get what you pay for’ because they are being indoctrinated into a consumer oriented society. When a Lightworker offers a service then the tribe expects to pay for that service just as they would pay a doctor or a plumber or a school teacher.
When a Lightworker has an inner conflict over accepting payment it actually interrupts the flow of energy that exists between the tribe and the Lightworkers! We can’t teach that ‘energy doesn’t flow through tight muscles’ and then create resistance to our energy flows.
In the times before the industrial revolution and the rise of the consumer oriented cultures Light workers only had to straddle 2 worlds. We had to keep one foot out in the Universe and the other foot here in the collective illusion that the tribe creates as it flows along its daily path to awakening.
Today we have to straddle 3 worlds. The Universe and the illusion are still there and we have to help bridge the gap between these for the tribe, but we also have to stay tapped into the financial world created by the consumerism of the modern times.
The problem for many of us is that we literally don’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to this new consumer society and no one has ever taught us how to integrate it into our teachings and practices in any useful way. In fact we’ve been taught that consumerism is bad and we’ve believed it even while espousing balance and harmony! We can just add this to the growing list of inner conflicts that are blocking our energy. I hope the tools and exercises in the book are helpful with balancing out some of those conflicts.
Consumerism and the modern world
Sometimes it can be hard to balance the realities of the worlds we straddle. We can directly attribute much of the rise of the New Age to the books and media distributed throughout our consumer society. In fact the tools and technologies of the Information Age have made it easier than ever before to develop a healing and teaching practice.
There has never been a time in the known history of the human race when the common people, the regular, ordinary working people, have had access to the writings and teachings of every great discipline that has survived the purges of the religions and ravages of time.
Today we can go to the bookstore, visit the library and read the websites and find vast amounts of information and guidance that previously would have been available only to the priests and royalty. Lightworkers have the ability to teach, heal and reach across vast distances to help the members of their tribe.
Today the members of our tribes are scattered and it’s up to each of us to find them and then help provide the healing, teaching and guidance that they might need. We may not always be able to meet them face to face or heal them directly as in the old days, but that simply means that the modern Lightworker has to be more versatile, persistent and tolerant than ever before.
Most people are taught to <a href=”http://spiritualentrepreneur.biz”>define success</A> by what you HAVE. You HAVE a great job, or a beautiful wife or a lot of money, etc. People who base success on the HAVE often find that they can lose their success just by losing the things by which they define their success.
What you HAVE can always be taken away, lost or stolen, so if you base your sense of success on the external HAVE then you are setting yourself up for a huge crash sooner or later. That’s why people commit suicide after a stock market crash and why most lottery winners fall back into the same economic niche when the money runs out.
We’ve also been indoctrinated to believe that what we DO is who we are. How many people in this culture define themselves by their job? I’m a cop, I’m a teacher, I’m a writer, etc. Once again this is an external reference and not who we really are, and once again all the externals can simply go away, leaving you feeling bereft and out of place.
I think it’s also amusing that we ask kids what they want to BE when they grow up and then reference it to what their choices are for the DO category. Then again, maybe it’s not so amusing at all.
When we talk about BEing successful, or BEing a good person or BEing intelligent then we are not referencing any external aspect of ourselves, but rather our internal core. When you learn to BE a successful person then it means that you have expanded your context and actually grown into that successful person. It’s not something that you get hired into or that you put on and take off like a jacket.
Learning to BE
I remember as a child, watching my parents trying to be involved in Amway and Raleigh and other MLM’s. Now these were what I would consider to be good companies with great products, but the problem was that my parents were trying to go from being farmers to being businesspeople without any way to expand their context and cover the steps in between. Like many people who try to buy into MLM’s and become instantly successful they failed and then blamed the system and said that MLM is a scam.
<B>Managing a business is like learning to ride a bike. No one ever learned to ride a bike by taking a class, and they never learned to ride a bike without falling off a few times.</B>
The Rules Are Different
One of the problems that we have is that people in Western Culture have been taught that ‘you get what you pay for’.
This is just one of the paradigms that you’ll find are different for business people. Business people make a POINT of not paying for things in the same way that the average person does, and some of these concepts (you get what you pay for) have been specifically fostered in our consumer society. It’s completely subconscious.
I discovered when I first started teaching meditation classes that people took it more seriously when I charged them for it, simply because they subconsciously placed more value on the class if they spent their money on it.
Shifting the Paradigms
To a businessperson it would be unthinkable to PAY for a product and then to try to resell it. Businesspeople set up a NET 30 or (preferably) a NET 90 account (they don’t have to pay for the products for 30 days, or 90 days) and then they sell the products first and then pay for them. This is just one of the ways that the business world is exactly opposite from the consumer world.
The ultimate goal is to BE the person who can DO the things that let you HAVE success.
“BE Successful” is an excerpt from Robert Morgen’s new book <a href=”http://www.amazon.com/Spiritual-Entrepreneur-Robert-Morgen/dp/0979040035″><b>The Spiritual Entrepreneur</B></A>, which can be downloaded as a FREE Ebook (for a limited time) at <a href=”http://spiritualentrepreneur.biz”>http://spiritualentrepreneur.biz</a>
Once of the places where I consistently see people getting ripped off is with the creation of websites. This article is going to have a certain amount of jargon in it. Take the time to look up the words that you don’t understand because the links you find will teach you a lot.
If you are a sub-micro entrepreneur and have an extremely limited budget then there are 3 points that I want to make right up front concerning websites;
1. Domain Registry should cost less than $10
2. There are tons of Web Hosting Plans for less than $5 a month
3. There are a wide variety of free website builder software programs that let you build a simple and useful website quickly and easily.
If you absolutely want a website then keep those factors in mind.
However, my question these days is ‘Why would you want a website in the first place?’
You MUST have a web presence. That’s a given. If you want to start taking advantage of eCommerce and developing multiple streams of passive income then you absolutely must have a web presence. However, websites are far from the best way to accomplish that.
Blogs Blogs, or weblogs, started out a few years ago as a version of online journals. They had some qualities that didn’t exist (and still don’t) for most websites;
1. They are extremely user-friendly. Very little or no HTML needed in most cases.
2. Consistent look or theme throughout the entire site.
3. Easy to add pages and posts.
4. Easy to build traffic.
5. Huge support systems around the internet for promoting your blog and finding tools and accessories, usually called plugins.
I started using WordPress in 2006 simply because a friend referred me to it. There are other blog systems that probably work equally well so pick what you like.
I host my WordPress blogs on my own hosting account. You should be able to get a decent web hosting account for $50 to $100 per year, so DO NOT get caught up in the $29.95 a month traps that exist online.
Without getting too deeply into Search Engine Optimization (SEO) I just want to say that if possible get the keywords for whatever you do in the URL and avoid the .info and .biz domains. Some SEO experts will tell you that those domains have been abused by web scammers to the point where Google and the other search engines will react negatively to them.
Having said that, you’ll see that my primary URL is http://SpiritualEntrepreneur.biz. To me it was more important to get the keywords than to avoid the .biz. You’ll also notice that my URL leads to a blog.
One of the advantages to the blog system is that people can subscribe to it and have updates delivered directly to their email, phone, PDA or the chip in their head (coming soon). In many cases people will subscribe to your blog through a Really Simply Syndication (RSS) Feed and never actually come to your URL!
Installing and Using your Blog
Installing a WordPress blog literally takes less than 10 minutes (less than 5 if you know what you’re doing). You’ll need to know how to create a database and a few other techy things, but there are great step by step tutorials on the WordPress.ORG site that will help you do this.
My advice is to take the time to learn to install WordPress because you’ll then be able to install the myriad other PHP based programs that you’ll find useful online.
The forums and tutorials at WordPress.ORG (notice that I keep stressing the .ORG) will walk you quickly and easily through almost anything that you’d want to do with your blog. Be sure to search the forums before you write in looking for help. I assure you that the answer you need is probably already there.
One note about the forums – DO NOT write a post with something like “Need Help” or “Stuck and need answers” or “AAAAAAAAH!” or something equally stupid in the subject line. When you do that it keeps the people who might help you from being able to see what the problem is!
Put the ‘error message’ that your blog gives you in the subject line, or at least a description of the problem.
Updating your Blog
There’s a simple equation to blogging;
Frequent updates = more readers
Updating your blog doesn’t mean writing a new article everyday. There are hundreds of Article Directories online where you can get good content. I like GoArticles.com and everything I write gets published there. Go to the search box in the upper right hand corner, do an Author Name Search for Robert Morgen and you’ll find a list of my articles that you can use on your blog.
I generally only right about 20% of the articles that I post on my blogs and newsletters. The rest come from the article directories.
Syndication
Get the word out about your blog! I like FeedBurner.com because they give you a lot of tools to optimize your feed and your blog and make it easy for people to get you content.
Take some time and explore the different ways that you can use FeedBurner. It’s a great tool that I recommend wholeheartedly.
Plugins
There are literally thousands of Plugins available for blog systems. I use plugins for Google Adsense (creates a passive income stream from Google), YouTube, Search Engine Optimization and Social Bookmarking.
Content is King!
One last note. It doesn’t matter how much you promote your blog if you have lousy content. While Britney Spears may be able to take bad PR to the bank, you probably don’t have that ability.
Find GOOD articles to put on your blog. If you can create a blog that has good, helpful content then you’ll find that people will not only read and subscribe to your blog, they’ll refer their friends to it (Viral Marketing) and that is the best advertising you can get.
At this point you should have enough information to start getting the answers you need to set up your blog. If you started reading this article looking for a comparison of blogs v. websites you’ll notice that I didn’t waste time telling you the difference between the 2.
If you don’t know that already then save yourself a LOT of time, hassle, inefficiency and money and get your BLOG going asap.
