EXPAND HERE
I suppose it’s not particularly nice to say that someone––especially someone you haven’t even spoken to––has a creepy energy, but sometimes it’s just plain accurate.
Yesterday, as we walked past the baseball field for our early evening walk, on the other side of the street, peering through the fence, we saw a silent stranger taking extensive videos with his iPhone.
There were no sporting activities taking place that night, and since it was a perfectly lovely August evening, the field was unusually full of frolicking dogs.
As we strolled along, he also moved to another location, again documenting the canine scene.
It wasn’t choreographed, but his path eventually merged with Vlad’s and mine until he split off, walking away with a phone full of playground dog videos for purposes known only to him.
I’ve shared many of its most dramatic moments in the past, but the baseball field has been surprisingly chill this summer.
Chill…but often quite strange.
For me, the oddest thing was that many months ago, during a time when there were no official sporting activities on the field, someone––definitely not the City’s Parks Department––put high-grade bicycle locks on all the entrances.
The next day, someone from the dog community simply cut sections of the fence at either end.
From that moment on, like in a prison break movie, the only way into the field was through crouching through the holesin the cut wire links.
Even when the officially sanctioned baseball season began, with properly scheduled games occurring, all the baseball players had to enter that way.
Although the “Concerned Citizen” who took it upon themselves to lock up the field did manage to make things a little more difficult for everyone, as reflected in the indomitable spirit of Expansion––August’s Meditation HERE––ultimately, they failed completely.
If anything, the field is now more crowded than ever.
Speaking of creepy things…
Like many people, I have very mixed feelings about marketing.
It’s especially tricky when you deeply believe in the value of what you’re offering, but there are checklists of marketing tips (sometimes even called “tricks”) you’re encouraged to follow.
Limited-Time Offers, Flash Sales, and Countdown Timers.
Exclusive Access, Limited Editions, and Social Proof.
I did an interview for a podcast event I thoroughly enjoyed this week with an internet savvy friend.
Afterwards, here was our conversation about my latest course HERE:
Them: “It looks great, but I think you should really beef up the concept of Scarcity.”
Me: “But the course focuses on Expansion.”
Them: “Exactly.”
In the last two weeks, I’ve celebrated the synchronicity of drawing the Jupiter card multiple times from a deck my friend Sarah Tomlinson created.
Accompanying the sacred yantra geometry, I find the text beneath the “Expansion” title particularly resonant:
“Spread your wings wide.
Move out into the space around you.
Generosity. Sharing.”
I know that astrologically Jupiter has these associations in both western and Vedic systems, but I was also curious about how astronomy inspired this feeling.
Some of this I remember from a science poster in my elementary school bedroom, but as a fun refresher, here are some “Fun Facts” about Jupiter.
• Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system.
So large, in fact, that over 1,300 Earths could fit inside it.
• Jupiter has 79 known moons, the most of any planet in our solar system.
Can you imagine looking up at that sky and not being impressed?
• The Great Great Red Spot, according to the Smithsonian, is a storm with winds up to 580 mph.
Not only is this storm larger than our entire planet, it has been raging for at least several centuries.
• Perhaps most significantly, Jupiter’s immense gravitational force plays a crucial role in shaping our solar system, influencing the orbits of many celestial bodies, including asteroids and comets.
In fact––and this was news to me––extending far beyond the planet itself, Jupiter’s gravity has played a crucial role in protecting Earth from potential asteroid impacts.
Its expansiveness, in other words, helps keeps us safe.
There are benefits and drawbacks to Scarcity Marketing.
For example, by creating urgency, people make faster decisions.
They “pull the trigger” in other words, rather than “someday getting around to it.”
I suppose there can be a higher perceived value as well, and in this case, that’s actually true: in the future the course will just be the recordings, but for this Beta incarnation, there’s the invitation for live interaction afterwards.
There are drawbacks to scarcity marketing, of course.
When it’s overused, such marketing leads to distrust and skepticism, or it can feel like a pressure tactic designed to manipulate.
And yet the deadline is quite real––the course begins on September 4th––and doors won’t be protected by bicycle locks, but they will close.
As with all things perhaps, ultimately you just have to trust that the right people will find it HERE and make their own decisions.
I initially thought of James Wright’s poem “A Blessing” because, in some oblique way, the barbed wire and animal imagery remind me of the baseball field and our dogs.
More than that, the poem reflects the contrast between scarcity and abundance––also the theme of the new course HERE, particularly in the context of nature and human connection and the great joy we can find in those experiences.
A Blessing
Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.
In closing, I have one more tidbit about the field.
Consistent with the endless mysteries, last week the Parks Department did seal off one of our two cut-wire entrances.
The week before, however, the mysterious bicycle locks barricading the two dugouts vanished overnight.
I’m reminded of the proverb popularized in The Sound of Music about how,when God shuts a door, He opens a window.
Yet, in this more expansive version of reality, when one fence gets patched up, two doors are unlocked.
Bottom Line: Even if we’re occasionally being videotaped by a disgruntled citizen for an irate presentation at an upcoming city council meeting, Vlad and I can now enter the field without crouching.
We can, as my friend Sarah’s card invites us to, “Move out into the space around you,” a space ready for the possibility of generosity and sharing.
Or, as Rumi said:
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”
I sincerely hope you join me in discovering more open doors to that Abundance HERE.
Namaste for now,
