It’s been a long, long year.
Last year was long too.
We’re in the midst of a radical social crisis driven by more than a few factors.
The ongoing decline of human health (heart disease, declining fertility rates, obesity, diabetes, autism, gut health, etc.) is a central part of our broken Western Society. This is inextricably linked to devastated ecosystems and polluted air, food, and water. It is also linked to broken communities–people don’t stay together; families are thousands of miles apart. The U.S. Surgeon General states that loneliness and social isolation are worse than smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
The sicker people become, the more they seek solutions. Most of our solutions are self-medicating, distracting, or numbing. The deeper issues remain unresolved or worsen.
The more these solutions fail people, the more desperate everyone becomes.
This has shown up in the hyper-reactivity of so many students this year.
I’ve never seen people so ready to blame, quit, and run.
I’ve shifted a lot of my work towards helping people to stabilize. Stabilization comes before inner work; you have to have emotional capacity to bring up and resolve attachments.
I am actively re-thinking how I can best offer my spiritual teaching and myself in the coming years.
Donate to Help Support My Rest and Repair Time
To take care of myself, I’ll take time off from December 18th to January 4th.
I may even extend it and start on December 11th.
As many of you know, I’m self-employed. This solopreneur doesn’t get paid leave. Which is why each year, I ask for a little help from all of you.
I’m looking to raise $5,000 to afford this time of rest, reflection, and self-care.
Support Jim’s Time for Rest and Recovery from 2024
If you would like to help, you can pay via PayPal, using the above link.
If you want to send a check, you can email me. I’ll send you an address.
Below is more about all the work I do in the background to make this offering possible.
In love and freedom,
Jim Tolles
The Business Behind the Spiritual Teaching
Being a spiritual teacher is work.
Being able to do it full-time in the our modern day society means it is also a business.
And it’s been a hard year to be a business.
Where do I even begin?
Inflation.
I’m like everyone else. I’ve seen costs rise in:
- Food
- Utilities
- Cookie consent management tool
- Business license
- Dental insurance
- Trash
- Homeowner’s insurance
- Healthcare insurance, and more
I have raised my recommended investment amount on some of my offerings, but I remain committed to being flexible to students who are committed to this work. That means, I don’t always receive the full amount of what I’m asking so that students aren’t blocked from support.
As always, I have plenty of costs of doing business such as,
- Newsletter service
- Website hosting
- Post office box
- Google workspace account
- Domain registration
- Financial transaction fees from PayPal (this is a big one), and more
Furthermore, I do tons of work that go unpaid such as:
- Blogging, new videos, and new content
- Social media responses
- Email replies
- Legal documentation review and updates
- Any kind of necessary technological update
- Setting up online classes and communities (a lot goes into getting these offerings off the ground)
- Website maintenance (back-ups, plugin updates, security checks, etc.), and more
The Human Being Behind the Spiritual Teaching
That’s the business side.
Then there’s the human side.
Most of the reasons that people come to me is that they are in suffering. Sitting with lots of people in suffering is hard even when you are clear inside yourself.
And the suffering has been up-leveled this year.
At the geo-political level all around the world, voters and political parties are hyper-reactive–blaming, shaming, punishing, and even becoming violent. These politics don’t work. They cause more suffering.
For so many, these broken political systems lead people to apathy.
Which doesn’t work either.
The problems at the large-scale impact the small-scale, and then individuals impact the communal-level. It’s a vicious, downward cycle.
We have to get to the root causes.
In my spiritual teaching, I’m all about getting to root causes to resolve and break cycles of suffering.
But again, when people are highly reactive, you can’t do much work until they are calmed down and stabilized.
I’ve felt a lot of that suffering and reactivity in my work.
There’s an upper limit to what you can do with self-care.
I’ve found that limit.
So, I’ve reduced the amount of time I give to this work.
Now, I need a break this winter to recharge. I hope you’ll make a donation to help me. All systems and people need replenishment and rejuvenation.
Otherwise they die out, disappear, or end in some way.
Help Jim Afford Time for a Winter Break
Thank you.
Jim
