Income in Turqoise Communities Advice?

[kieranperez]

So I’ve been talking to Shunyamurti right now emailing back and forth talking about becoming a monk/sanyasa at his community and I’m going to volunteer there, and how I told him that I’m 100% ready to go all in and he was going through this whole thing about saving up money for health insurance, have some money built up and what not before I head over. However, I went through my whole story with him and how I’m going to leave home doing this (have my reasons and already went over it with him and some others) and what I’m confused about with this whole community thing is... I mean I won’t have money after a certain point. How do I actually keep paying for obvious bills like health insurance, have income and what not while I’m in a community like this and I’m paying to out of pocket to volunteer? 

@Leo Gura I know you’ve been there (I told them I heard about the Ashram and Shunyamurti from your stage Turqoise video and they said “Leo!”) and obviously you’ve done a lot of homework on this (which I’m doing a lot of now). What are your thoughts?

[Leo Gura]

@kieranperez I have no idea what it costs to live in that ashram.

In the end, you cannot run away from solving the career/job problem. This is the entire problem of survival. You can't just expect someone else to solve this problem for you. This is a huge thing. This is what my LP Course is for. There is no quick fix solution to survival.

If you had a decent job you could save up money.

If you had a decent business you could live off passive income.

If you had highly valuable skills you could offer those for trade.

But all of that takes years to establish.

Ashrams are not a cure-all for life and in some ways they can be a trap. Once you're there with no money and no exit strategy, you're stuck.

You cannot expect to just live your whole life mooching off of others. What value are you going to offer the world? Answering this question is not really optional. By not answering the question your answer is the default: nothing. Which means, don't expect much in return from the world.

You only get what you give.

To escape wage slavery you must become a massive value provider, or rob a bank.

[Mu_]

Pretty cool  man, sounds like it could be a life changing thing.  You may want to ask the ashram directly, I'm sure there are lots in the same boat.  I'm sure there will be odd jobs of some sort that can be created or found (most likely under the table, since your not a resident).

[cirkussmile]

10 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

@kieranperez In the end, you cannot run away from solving the career/job problem. This is the entire problem of survival. You can't just expect someone else to solve this problem for you. This is a huge thing. This is what my LP Course is for. There is no quick fix solution to survival.

If you had a decent job you could save up money.

If you had a decent business you could live off passive income.

If you had highly valuable skills you could offer those for trade.

But all of that takes years to establish.

Ashrams are not a cure-all for life and in some ways they can be a trap. Once you're there with no money and no exit strategy, you're stuck.

You cannot expect to just live your whole life mooching off of others. What value are you going to offer the world? Answering this question is not really optional. By not answering the question your answer is the default: nothing. Which means, don't expect much in return from the world.

You only get what you give.

It’s so nice to see your growth. 

And for anyone who wonders about the LP course. It’s good and Leo put a lot of work in it. Its not just something he wrote in a couple of hours, it probably took many months of work to make the whole course and it is an investment. The results may take at least a couple of years but this is how real growth looks like. 

[kieranperez]

26 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

@kieranperez In the end, you cannot run away from solving the career/job problem. This is the entire problem of survival. You can't just expect someone else to solve this problem for you. This is a huge thing. This is what my LP Course is for. There is no quick fix solution to survival.

If you had a decent job you could save up money.

If you had a decent business you could live off passive income.

If you had highly valuable skills you could offer those for trade.

But all of that takes years to establish.

Ashrams are not a cure-all for life and in some ways they can be a trap. Once you're there with no money and no exit strategy, you're stuck.

You cannot expect to just live your whole life mooching off of others. What value are you going to offer the world? Answering this question is not really optional. By not answering the question your answer is the default: nothing. Which means, don't expect much in return from the world.

You only get what you give.

To escape wage slavery you must become a massive value provider, or rob a bank.

Yeah that’s what I’m trying to balance. I definitely don’t want to live there permanently. My whole plan was to go then come back but the whole problem with that is that is this path is so unpredictable. There’s no guarantee that it will I even get enlightenment in life, much less have a seventh predictable estimate of time. 

Its hard because enlightenment is just an absolute central piece to my life purpose. I want to go all out with it but at the same time I don’t want to corner myself.

Even then though, we have all these examples of people who lived in ashrams and did all this stuff in the 60s and 70s and came back (like the hero’s journey) so it’s like ‘well, these guys did it and went all gung-ho.’

[kieranperez]

Holy fuck... I get it now. This whole being cornered and all of this to escape the maze and stop being a slave to society, my current minimum wage job, and to my own ego all in order to help the world... 

Holy fuck I’ve been so childish and naive. THIS is slavery to the maze... 

I thought I understood before... Now I get it... I just realized how important strategic thinking, planning, and intent REALLY is. 

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, kieranperez said:

we have all these examples of people who lived in ashrams and did all this stuff in the 60s and 70s and came back (like the hero’s journey) so it’s like ‘well, these guys did it and went all gung-ho.’

Well, they obvious had some kind of financial backing, from parents or whatever. Tickets to India don't pay for themselves.

There do exist ashrams/monasteries around the world which are free. Which basically means you live there and work for them.

Osho's commune had people paying him tons of money to be there. Sometimes giving up their entire life savings.

You gotta be careful. Sometimes these ashrams/communes will leech your money or can even be actual cults.

When cash is low, you can get creative. For example, your cash will go much further in India or South East Asia than in Costa Rica. Then again, you tend to get what you pay for. There are lots of shitty places in India.

[kieranperez]

4 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

You gotta be careful. Sometimes these ashrams/communes will leech your money or can even be actual cults. 

I will admit, I was really excited but also nervous and had little red flag go up in my first email from Shunyamurti after I described my situation and also my financial and he suggested I sell my car, save up, and come down. 

Here’s my own inner conflict going on with all this:

I want to go fully into enlightenment work because I feel like it’s thats call to adventure that I’ve been denying and putting off in terms of a radical turning onwards and going all in. Also because I am struggling to work on my life purpose here at home because my dad is pressuring me to go into real estate, work under him and be his wage slave, making me give up personal development and spiritual practice (he’s a JP and Sam Harris fanatic) and ridicules me every time I’m honest with him (I’m trying to stop lying and be honest with my intentions and desires) about how I want to start a business and that he’s only going to let me work under him if I really want to go into real estate and help him. And I can’t just say “fuck this I’m out” because he holds the purse strings. I live in San Francisco. There’s no way in hell I can find a place here, much less find one any time soon. If you’re not making 6 figures or your parents are paying your rent while you work for some startup or something, forget it and I got nowhere to go or friends I can stay with. 

I really want to pursue my life purpose but what if it does entail that I have to go fully inward and withdraw from society (like in the monk memoir on the booklist - great book btw)? That’s something I REALLY want in my life regardless of how png it takes however there’s this conflict inside where it’s like ‘I don’t want to start this life mission or purpose only to have give it up to go inward after I’ve already started building it.’ 

Plus he’s my dad. I don’t want to just be this sneaky son of a bitch he’s helped for a long time (very dysfuntionally and has caused a lot of harm) and I say I’m going to help in his business and sneakily work on my life purpose only to pop in and leave him. I want to do my thing but I don’t want to be an asshole. 

In the end though, it doesn’t look like there’s going to be a simple pretty answer or solution to this. 

[kieranperez]

I want preface though: I do want to impact the world. I don’t want to be some uneducated person but is self realized as fuck. That’s why I’m so inspired by that becoming a sage video. It’s a balance and union of both. 

[XYZ]

Since we can't all provide enough value to make passive income, be born rich or win the lottery, avoiding wage slavery is often accepting the very real possibility of abject poverty and early death. This was the case for many yogis, monks, ascetics, who were inspired to leave society and wander off into the mountains, and never returned. Still is like this in remote parts of the world I imagine. Spiritual communities without financial means depend on the charity of others and mercy of nature to survive.

[XYZ]

But if I wonder if there are more communities like the Trappist monks who make a unique homemade product and engage in commerce to support themselves.

[Leo Gura]

@kieranperez Sometimes you can't immediately get what you want, but must hatch a longer term plan.

For example, why can't you teach yourself some valuable skills, like web programming, move out on your own to a cheap state like Nevada or Texas and work for a few years to build up a nest egg?

Then you can go monk.

If you recall, Om Swami worked his ass off for 10 years in business before he went full monk.

You sound very young, so you got plenty of time to do both.

You also don't need to go full monk to pursue enlightenment. With Kriya yoga and psychedelics you can make enormous progress quickly while still working a regular job.

By the time you are done building up your nest egg you could already be half-enlightened.

[Solace]

When I was working with the Higher Self consciousness I was not told to retreat to a monastery, I was told to surrender in every day life by maintaining focus on my breathe (in Heart area) upon waking, and even as I was falling asleep. The Higher Self says that going to a meditation retreat is just changing the furniture around in your reality. You are still in a world of forms, now you are looking at different forms. If you cannot focus on your breathe due to very abusive situations then move somewhere else, but in all over cases surrendering even when faced with forms such as your parents that you are attached to can lead to very fast progress (at least for me ).

I also heard something from Jesus that may help. He said if you feel tension when considering something, and if you feel you have to convince yourself to do it, don't do it. Do instead what brings peace, happiness, oneness and love; that makes your body relax, and which you are magnetically pulled towards. Personally, I just let those thoughts of what to do go, because I know that anything I do will not help me become aware of myself as Unconditional Love, so I just trust my Heart to guide me instead of thoughts. But at the start of my journey the above was helpful.

Notice too how most enlightened masters talk about the importance of resting in awareness or breathe or Heart. That is much more essential. If one does not understand this, one can meditate for 7400 years and be deeper in ego. 

 

Edited September 22, 2018 by Solace

[Hellspeed]

Getting a house in the countryside with a generous piece of land will solve most income problems for the meditators.