Philadelphia integral development

Why I can’t tell it all (and how Brendon Burchard changed my life)

marc — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 14:24:31 +0000

Thanks to everyone for the nice comments about my last post, How I rebooted my life with Google and Android. I had promised a major check-in this month, and indeed there are big changes afoot in all areas (business, personal and relational), but as often happens things are taking longer to manifest than I would wish, and it’s too early to share. But never fear, I will share everything later, including my crazy experiments with polyphasic sleep, the ups and downs of being an internet information marketer, and the joys and challenges of marriage and family life. Suffice to say that as spring has returned to Philadelphia, a kind of fog has lifted from me, and I have realized how unhappy I have been lately, and that realization has been very freeing, as it gives the opportunity for real creative action to emerge (as opposed to compulsive reaction). And so I am once again on a great creative roll.

Continue reading this post at Marc’s Life and Travels blog…

Do you want to become financially independent? The real answer might surprise you (plus an embarassing moment)

marc — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 12:34:46 +0000

Last Wednesday I interviewed my mentor, legendary business coach and internet entrepreneur Mike Jay, for my community.

It was an odd experience – something close to the peak experience of my career, actually – but the call didn’t start out well. I was very nervous and Mike was a bit rambly – it was 10pm in the Philippines where he is based, and and he’d had a long day. However, we both warmed up after a while and it was still vintage Mike Jay (how bad can it get? The man is a genius). Download the complete recording of the 1-hour call here.

The most important conversation occurred for me in the last 10 minutes of the call. This conversation rocked my world, and has caused some deep changes in myself and in how I relate to my clients.

Continue reading the original article (and please answer the important question in the comments)!

Love,

Marc

A turning point, an appreciation, and some musings on “soul work”

marc — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 15:59:26 +0000

This will be brief.

Big party at Trellis yesterday has me a bit altered-state on this cold quiet Sunday morning. See a few photos of me as an Avatar and Rebekah as Lady Gaga.

Party was super-fun and yet… do you ever experience people as just plain difficult… do you crave human interaction and yet resist it at the same time?

This is what I call “soul-work”: the tension that I (and most everyone, according to Thomas Moore and Saniel Bonder) feels between our need for complete mastery and self-transcendence, and the compulsion we have to enter the messy, complicated, mysterious and dangerous worlds of other human beings, and of what shows up for us in relationship to them…

Continue reading original article at Marc’s Life and Travels.

I am interviewing Mike Jay about “Flawless Living” on Wed. Nov. 3 — “be there or be square”

marc — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 17:18:34 +0000

Dear friends,

This coming Wednesday Nov. 3, at 10am EST, I am interviewing Mike Jay for my community (that includes you!) on the Flawless Living philosophy as it relates to personal and spiritual development. To get the dial-in information (and/or the recording), just signup from http://integralwealthsystem.com (disclosure: affiliate link).

I cannot say enough about Mike Jay and how this system has catapulted both my personal life and my business into entirely new territory. Those who know me are aware that I have been a struggling entrepreneur for the last 6 years, determined to do something in the world that was both enjoyable to me and that also benefited my fellows in some way; but until very recently, the kind of success that I had hoped for had eluded me. In the very short time since I joined the Flawless Living network, all kinds of things have opened up for me and I am now very close to making a full-time living through my writing, which has been a lifetime dream of mine (whether it be technical writing or developmental writing doesn’t matter to me, I love them both).

Mike Jay is, to my mind, one of the most brilliant business coaches and integral developmentalists on the planet, and Flawless Living is the fruition of his life’s work. Its fundamental premise is that the cultural “operating system” that we have been working with since the second world war, which Mike calls “Blank Slate Operating System”, or BSOS, is not working any more, and that new models are going to be required to thrive (and even survive) in our current environment.

BSOS is the idea that we are “blank slates” onto which anything can be written, and once we properly assimilate that information, we can go on to do and become whatever we want in life. In other words, BSOS says that if we work hard enough, get the right education, find the right contacts, etc, we can achieve anything we want. There are just two problems with this system, the first being that it doesn’t really work anymore (it doesn’t create success for the majority of people, and particularly in the new economy) and in the second place, it doesn’t create happiness (except for the minority of people whose success requirements are naturally aligned with their happiness, or intrinsic motivation – we will discuss this on the call).

By contrast, Flawless Living states that we come into the world at varying levels of capability and vastly different motivations and meaning-making systems, most of which are actually genetically determined. The failure to understand and accept ourselves around this, both our real desires (sources of happiness) and our limitations, is the cause of untold human suffering (not to mention business failures). Flawless Living starts with self-knowledge and self-acceptance, and from that place, it teaches how to reach out to others for fun and profit.

And this is actually the most extraordinary thing about the movement, because it’s not just another seminar, it’s a network of awakening professionals and conscious entrepreneurs who are committed to helping each other. While lots of people are “talking about” development, and running seminars, Flawless Living is an actual business network designed to assist, or “scaffold” people in their areas of weakness – those areas where we really need to understand our limitations and reach out for support – which is, ironically, what most of us need to do in order to be successful in an area of passion, and to survive in the “new economy”.

For more information

If you want to read more about how I am bringing this into the world, you can check out my latest creation Lifestyle Design School (http://lifestyledesignschool.com)

Conference calls with Mike Jay + internet coaching offer + “my cup runneth over”

marc — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 15:13:15 +0000

Two big events and a check-in below.

Three free teleconferences with Mike Jay on “Flawless Living” coming up, one of them hosted by me!

Mike Jay is doing three free teleconferences over the coming month describing the Flawless Living system and business network. The dates are as follows:

Tuesday October 26–7-8 pm EST. Henri Schauffler, CEO Focus business consultant will interview Mike on “The New Rules for Happiness and Success: What Every Person Needs To Know To Succeed In the New Economy”
Wednesday November 3 – 10-11am EST. Marc Beneteau, founder of Word Press Academy, will explore the core concepts of Flawless Living and how they relate to personal and spiritual development.
Wednesday November 10 – 8:30-9:30pm EST. Olivia Parr-Rud, international speaker and author of “Business Intelligence Success Factors, Tools for Aligning Your Business in a Global Economy” will discuss the implications of Flawless Living for creating profitable values-driven businesses.

For more information and to register for the calls, click here. (I did the site design btw, do you like?)

Now, these calls are going to be very powerful and should not be missed, regardless of who is hosting them ;). Mike is, IMHO (In My Humble Opinion) one of the most brilliant minds on the planet on personal and business development from an integral (wholistic) perspective. So if you want to find out what I have been ranting and raving about on this list for the last 4 months, sign-up to the calls. If you can’t make it live, you can listen to the recordings.

Also at that link, right underneath the first opt-in box, you can find Mike’s intro video of the Flawless Living system (very compelling), and also information about the Philadelphia Flawless Living workshop that is coming up Nov. 19-21. If you can make it to Philadelphia that weekend, it’s going to be an amazing weekend. I will explain more later.

A major new site by me, and a coaching offer…

I completed a major new offering over the weekend, one that has been struggling to be born for a very long time. It’s called Lifestyle Design School and contains my first article:

Happiness is natural, but success is learned: my journey to happiness and success

This is for anyone who aspires to be, or who has already begun but wants to be more successful as, an internet entrepreneur. All the information on the site, and even the private (email) coaching, is free for now. So if you are wondering about whether making money from the internet is possible for you, this is the way to start.

And finally a check-in…

Life has truly been amazing lately. As I am transitioning to becoming a full-time information marketer and community-builder, I feel showered with blessings: interesting and meaningful work, great community, good health, family life is good… I can truly say “my cup runneth over”. A dream I have had for almost 20 years, which is to make my living working part-time doing something I enjoy, with a lot of free time left to pursue interests and relationships, is coming to fruition.

And yet… a strange paradox… all of my addictive / compulsive / neurotic tendencies, particularly around workaholism and caffeine, are very active. I feel very happy and very productive, and yet not fully “whole”… my soul hungers for something more, some kind of daily connection to Spirit maybe, and I don’t quite know what to do about that… or maybe I do, but I am just resisting the type of surrender that I talked about in my previous article.

And of course this is all perfect, I see it as the tension that exists in all human striving and aspiration, the tension between that part of me that hungers for total freedom and transcendence, and that part of me that simply wants to be with all of the messy complicated business of life and of relationships and the endless problems and frustrations of life… in other words, those problems that make life interesting and worthwhile, who among us would want a life without any problems, how boring would that be?

Thomas Moore talks about this in “Care of the Soul”, he calls it the tension between “psyche” and “soul”, “soul” being that part of us that will not be separated from the messy business of life, that refuses to “rise” to some imagined clarity of purpose and purity of emotion, and instead loves to throw sticks into our spokes and slow us down with so-called neurotic symptom. “Soul” likes to remind us that no matter how much we know or think we know, we are still just “beginning students of the art of living (and of loving)”.

And so I am learning to hold that tension better, not to take it so personally or myself so seriously, and not trying to disappear it either… and yet (and this is the paradox) the effort to understand and manage that tension is also genetically inborn and cannot be silenced (at least not at my current level of spiritual realization ;)), so I keep on trying. I will write about it on my next article at Lifestyle Design School, called Success requirements and the design of an effective performance management system.

However you will need to subscribe to Lifestyle Design School to get that article, since this list (Marc’s Life and Travels) is going to be much more about soul-work going forward and less about performance management.

With love,

Marc

Polyphasic sleep, consciousness development, and addiction – Part 2

marc — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 13:35:59 +0000

Reprinted from the polyphasic sleep blog.

_____________

I am back on my modified Everyman schedule for the last few days, and I am particularly euphoric today because it’s 8am and I more-or-less finished my work for the day. I am feeling fabulous and getting a lot done. What a life ;).

It’s difficult to believe that I have been following the same polyphasic plan or idea now since March, almost 6 months – that is very unlike me! Although I have not been polyphasic every day – in fact it’s been the exception rather than the rule – it’s been a consistent and stubborn notion of mine for that entire time. How sweet that it is finally coming to fruition.

And what is just as important is the lessons learned. It has confirmed my original hypothesis, which is that to be successful with polyphasic sleep you need to be willing to examine (and question) the totality of your life. This includes the overall quality of your life, your current level of success, your diet and health and self-care regimen, your current performance management system and whether it’s working or not, etc., etc.

And I return also to my original assertion: that polyphasic sleep remains one of the greatest consciousness experiment (developmental experiences) that anyone can do alone. It doesn’t require you travel to India, attend any expensive seminar or purchase any programs, or even leave your house. All you need is a bed and an office (and maybe a garage and a kitchen, that you can tidy-up when you are too hung-over from lack of sleep to do anything else ;). Life doesn’t get much simpler than that.

However if your life is in crisis, it’s unlikely to work. It’s a very rare individual who can successfully adapt to polyphasic in the midst of a major depression – Puredoxyk is one, but this is very rare. Back in February, when my marriage was in shambles, my business struggling, ,my health challenged, and my coffee addiction out-of-control, there was no way I could have succeeded. But the idea was planted – and it’s been a very persistent idea, us polyphasers are a strange blend of stubbornness and obsession, which is probably not a bad thing ;).

And also as I had mentioned in an earlier post, polyphasic sleep is likely to activate any latent addictions or addictive tendencies that you might have. I am not talking about heavy-duty chemical addictions, or even of the ordinary (garden-variety) addictions that most of us deal with around things like sex, relationships or co-dependency, workaholism, money etc – I am talking about the fundamental “addiction” of the human condition, which is the attempt to control or manipulate our environment to meet our needs and avoid pain. This of course is natural and healthy to a degree – many great works were accomplished out of that motive – but there is a cost to it as well. See this powerful article by Waking Down in Mutuality teacher Ted Strauss. A life well-lived is not just about performance, overcoming obstacles and being productive members of society. It’s also about our soul, our spiritual condition, our relationship to our creator.

The culmination of this epic inquiry has been the creation of my main site and passion business Lifestyle Design School, which is a performance management system for internet marketers and other work-at-home professionals. Check it out.

I know people are reading this (from my stats), so if you like what you are hearing, please comment, subscribe (top right), or write to me at marc

Blessings on your journey,

Marc

“Beyond Awakening” teleconference series with Terry Patten begins tomorrow, Sunday!

marc — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 01:52:00 +0000

I have just learned that a new free teleconference series, hosted by my friend Terry Patten, is beginning tomorrow. First guest will be Craig Hamilton, founder of Integral Enlightenment. Future guests include my mentor Saniel Bonder, and Marc Gafni. This looks it will be worthwhile to follow – see the email below or signup from here.

_______________

Thanks again for registering for our free teleseminar series, Beyond Awakening: The Future of Spiritual Practice. I’m excited to announce that the first call in the series is this Sunday, September 12^th from 5:00-6:30 pm (PDT / GMT-7). All the access codes and important information to get on the call are right here in this email!

To begin, I’d like to tell you that the response to this teleseries has been tremendous — the topic has clearly spoken to a deep yearning we all share to embody our spiritual practice in ways that really matter. As a result, as of this writing, our collective practice community is already well over 15,000 strong–and growing!

In this kick-off call, "The Evolution of Awakening", I’ll be joined by my friend and colleague, Craig Hamilton, founder of Integral Enlightenment and a luminary in his own right in the field of Integral and Evolutionary spirituality. During the call I’ll describe some liberating and challenging insights that inspired me to create this teleseminar series. And in dialogue with Craig, I’ll dig into the fundamental spiritual questions that I’ll be exploring with our esteemed guests throughout the series. We can all expect to learn, to converse, to join together and to evolve together by participating in this unprecedented public discourse on the future of spiritual practice.

Our first event will take place this coming Sunday, September 12^th, from 5:00-6:30 PM Pacific Time (GMT-7). You can listen live by phone or online, or download the complete recording anytime after the call.

To check the time in your local area CLICK HERE! Enter: September 12th at 5 PM and your location.

HOW TO PARTICIPATE:

The Evolution of Awakening on Sunday, September 12^th @ 5 PM Pacific:

To listen live by phone dial: 216-258-0785 and enter Conference ID: 272072#

**You can also click HERE to find a local number to dial in with from the US. Enter the same conference code provided above!

To listen live online: http://AttendThisEvent.com/?eventid=14914209

To download the audio after the teleseminar is complete, go to: http://AttendThisEvent.com/?eventid=14914209

Join the Dialogue: At 6:00 p.m., we’ll open up the lines and you’ll have the opportunity to interact with us directly over the phone or via instant message. Here’s what to do:

1. To interact live by voice, dial into the conference line number and wait until we ask for a question from someone in your region, or

2. Send us your question via instant message in the teleseminar window on your computer, or

3. Send us your questions and comments before or during the live dialogue by posting them on our Beyond Awakening Community Facebook page.

*Please Note: There will be a limited number of lines available on the live conference call, so we encourage you to listen online if possible. To make sure you can get through by phone, we encourage you to dial in early.

If you have any questions or need any assistance please feel free to visit our online FAQ or email us at support.

I very much look forward to being with you on our first call!

Sincerely,

Terry Patten

& the Beyond Awakening Team

Integral Theory Conference: takeaways

marc — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 15:29:10 +0000

I just returned from the Integral Theory Conference in Pleasant Hill, CA. This is (arguably) the largest inter-disciplinary conference on the development and evolution of consciousness, from both an academic and a practical (business and social change) perspective.

People often ask me “what is integral philosophy”, and I have been at a loss for words (Ken Wilber wrote 10,000 pages on this topic). I feel a little clearer now in answering:

“Integral” is a philosophy and a model of consciousness and cultural development that asserts that human development occurs by successive integration of higher-order (more complex and inclusive) perspectives, but without making the previous perspectives wrong. In short: “everyone is right” (even the Taliban – if you saw things from their eyes and from their developmental level, you would agree with them)
“Integral” asserts that human development (as in, increases in happiness, love, contribution and maturity) occurs best by acting simultaneously on all challenges at once – including both our personal development (consciousness) and our work in the world (service or contribution)
That spiritual development follows the same lines as above, and is no longer (if it ever was) only a solitary pursuit, but that it has become indistinguishable from our engagement with our communities and our network

Seen as this is my lifelong obsession (doing God’s work while having a good time ;), it’s not surprising the conference blew my mind. For perhaps the first time in my life, I found myself in a large gathering with a group of people who seemed to have the exact same interest as me. It was exhilarating. I had such a sense of having “found my tribe”. Apparently, many people have been thinking about this most troubling problem of mine for some time (success and happiness), they have ideas, even solutions.

So – I am “in”.

Aside from this, and great networking and other business opportunities, let me give another great takeaway.

I met a guy called Brian Whetten, very compelling guy, silicon-valley entrepreneur who has turned his mind to coaching integral business models (see http://sellingbygiving.net), and is doing well at it.

His idea is that one of the greatest challenges we are facing as a society is helping people create careers and organizations that integrate both money and meaning. The reason this is so difficult can be understood within integral theory: that money (or survival) is a lower-order need compared to meaning or fulfillment, but still must be (of course) included if we are to be highly-functioning in the world, offering our gift freely.

Many of us are searching for work and careers that provide meaning and fulfillment, while by-passing or suppressing the issues that come up as we confront survival. These issues come out as “shadow”, as all kinds of resistance and procrastination that many heart-centered (service-oriented) professionals experience. This can manifest, for example, in resistance around enrollment activities, charging too little for our services, and a thousand other ways.

The key is this: we have to heal our shadow aspects before we can reach the kind of fulfillment, self-expression and joy (along with income!) that we deeply desire. We have to take a more “integral” perspective on our resistances and other seemingly neurotic behavior – including them, paying attention to them, loving them as it were.

I don’t know about you, but nobody taught me this in business school (or entrepreneurial school).

Expect more to come on this. It’s a very exciting time for me, and I am thrilled to have you in my life, to be able to share this with you.

Blessings,

Marc

Entrepreneurship, success, and happiness: lessons learned, and an invitation

marc — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 00:55:15 +0000

I am going to be traveling a lot in the next 6 weeks – to the Integral Theory Conference in Oakland, then a week with Mike Jay in Las Vegas (see below), and then Burning Man – and reporting on all these events – so I am leading off with a long piece on entrepreneurship, happiness and success, followed by an offer / invitation. You can skip the narcissistic ramblings and head directly to the invitation below, if you want, which is a pretty good one.

The ups and the downs of being an entrepreneur

I got a mixed response to the Entrepreneur test piece, with people asking me “is this really you”? Well, in many respects, sadly, it has been. I am actually not a natural entrepreneur, yet I have spent a large chunk of my life looking for some way to support myself that would also feed my happiness and allow me to do the things that have been most important and vital to me (my adventures in relationship and community and “experiments in consciousness”). I became an entrepreneur by default – I couldn’t think of any other career that would give me the freedom that I needed. When I met Rebekah, after a lifetime of seeking in both the relational and business arenas, I became happy for perhaps the first time in my life, because I had found a path to sustained sexual intimacy with a person of the female persuasion (don’t laugh – it’s actually not an easy thing).

With this triumph, and flush with excitement, I then created or participated in 4 different businesses over the next 6 years – all of which failed, and two of them spectacularly so (the first web business and Trellis). My current business, WordPress Academy, is the first one that is successful. Maybe because it’s more related to an area of desire (or intrinsic motivation), for me: WordPress Academy is a type of conversation for transformation, which is the thing for which I live.

And yet I continue to struggle with this – either sacrificing happiness in the pursuit of success, or, as of lately, sacrificing success in the pursuit of happiness. This, I have come to learn, is very common.

On this topic, I just recently re-read Gurdjieff’s Meetings with remarkable men, that relates extraordinary events in Gurdjieff’s life that happened 100 years ago but which are extremely relevant to my condition. For the first half of his life, Gurdjieff conducted extensive travels and meetings throughout Asia with a group he called the “seekers of truth”. He was also a very astute businessman and trader, and he supported himself throughout this period by a series of business ventures and schemes which included (in a moment of desperation) snaring live sparrows, clipping them and painting them, and selling them in the market as “American canaries”. Laying aside the ethics of some of these activities, the story was extremely inspirational to me, first because it legitimized my own struggle to support myself financially as a “seeker of truth”, but also because it reminded me that it is possible to be a spiritual person and smart and resourceful too. In other words, that the pursuit of enlightenment and the pursuit of business are not inherently contradictory. Another great guru and teacher of mine, Swami Rudrananda, ran a very a successful art import business his whole life, and firmly believed that a spiritual teacher ought to have an independent means of support. He would sit in his Manhattan storefront and teach his students in between visits from customers.

Enter Mike Jay and Flawless Living Design System (FLDS)

The basic idea of FLDS is that happiness is natural – happiness comes from following our desires and intrinsic motivation, where we can exist in a state of flow while creating those things that we value – whereas success, for most people, is not. I define “success” as the ability to provide what we need in life while following the path of our happiness. Unlike happiness, success comes from executing the success requirements of our business or profession, which may or may not be inborn, and which may or may not be part of our intrinsic motivation. This is why it’s so hard and why so many of us are under great tension around this. The situation is actually made worse by all the self-help gurus (Tony Robbins, Steven Covey, etc.) because they teach systems that work well if you work them, but that only 1% to 5% of us will actually apply – thus funding a billion dollar training industry that does nothing, and leaving many of us struggling our whole lives trying to mold and adapt ourselves to some standard that just doesn’t fit with who we are, and then wonder what is wrong with us.

The fascinating thing (to me anyway) is that I have been discovering many of the ideas of FLDS on my own, through my own life and research; but Mike Jay has actually made an entire developmental system out of this, that he calls a “memetic operating system” (or values-based program), that is backed by a ton of psychological research and theory, along with his work with thousands of coaching clients over the last 20 years; and what’s more that there is a business community being created around this, a movement really, of people committed to exploring their happiness while expanding success – of people committed to living more inter-dependently and with greater passion and contribution. Because the solution, of course, to our inability to do the things that are required for success, is first to accept our limitations, and then to ally with other people who can do those things naturally that we cannot.

I invite you to come experience FLDS with me in Las Vegas on August 20-23

I invite you to experience the first (beta) Flawless Living seminar in Las Vegas from Friday August 20 at 6pm, to Monday August 23 at noon. The first FLDS seminar – and probably all of them – is going to be free, except for an administrative fee for various assessments (that are key to the discovery process that happens during the seminar). During the first two days, we will each create a blueprint for success, unique to us, using Mike’s inquiry methods. On the third day, there will be an offer to buy-in to the business network, at guaranteed rates of return or money-back – it’s truly an unusual and extraordinary offer.

If you can’t come to Vegas in August, there is another in Philadelphia in late November.

Much love,

Marc

PS: here is the brochure I designed for this event – first-draft, but not bad IMHO, especially considering it’s my first brochure, what do you think?

Are you a natural entrepreneur? Take the entrepreneur test

marc — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 09:19:18 +0000

I am willing to lose everything.
I embrace failure.
I am always willing to do tedious work.
I can handle watching my dreams fall apart.
Even if I am puking my guts out with the flu and my mother passed away last week, there is nothing that will keep me from being ready to work.
My relationship/marriage is so strong, nothing work related could ever damage it.
My family doesn’t need an income.
This is a connected world and I don’t need alone time. I want to be reachable 24/7 by my employees, customers, and business partners.
I like instability and I live for uncertainty.
I don’t need a vacation for years at a time.
I accept that not everyone likes my ideas and that it’s quite likely that many of my ideas are garbage.
If I go into business with friends or family, I am OK with losing that relationship forever if things end badly.
I don’t have existing anxiety issues and I handle stress with ease.
I am willing to fire or layoff anyone no matter what how good of a friend they are, if they are my own sibling, if they just had a baby, if they have worked with me for 20 years, if their spouse also just lost their job, if I know they might end up homeless, if they have cancer but no outside medical insurance, or any other horrible scenario millions of bosses and HR people have faced countless times.
I am OK with being socially cut-off and walking away from my friends when work beckons.
I love naysayers and I won’t explode or give-up when a family member, friend, customer, business associate, partner, or anyone for that matter tells me my idea, product, or service is a terrible idea, a waste of time, will never work, or that I must be a moron.
I accept the fact that I can do everything right, can work 70 hours a week for years, can hire all the right people, can arrange amazing business deals, and still lose everything in a flash because of something out of my control.
I accept that I may hire people that are much better at my job than I am and I will get out of their way.
I realize and accept that I am wrong ten times more than I am right.
I am willing to walk away if it doesn’t work out.

Courtesy of Seth Kravitz.