Why free Bodhi?

Earlier this year I got on a roll. We’d had a 100 Day Meditation Challenge, during which I managed to write blog posts for 35 days before having to drop down to posting every five days because I just had too much to do. Then we had our 100 Days of Lovingkindness, and somehow — mainly by having no more than 5 ½ hours of sleep a night, I managed to post every day. And some of those posts were recordings of guided meditations. I did it, but it was tough.

The 100 Days of Lovingkindness posts are still there, available as a resource. In fact I know some people are working through that series of posts together.

I’d like to do more of that kind of thing, but right now my time gets taken up by tasks that aren’t about writing and teaching. I spend a lot of time doing website maintenance, answering the phone, filing taxes, photographing things we’re going to sell on our store (that’s one way we fund Wildmind), Photoshopping those images, doing publicity, upgrading computer software, doing graphic design, handling student registrations for our online courses, etc. It actually amazes me that I manage to write anything. Some weeks I don’t.

My creative productivity is grinding to a halt. The problem is that organizations need organizing, and right now I’m the only person who can do that. Apart from me there’s one person who works part-time taking care of our online store, a bookkeeper who comes in twice a month, and Linda up in Toronto taking care of the news posts in our blog. I do everything else.

Next year we’d like to run a year-long program of meditation challenges and special events, like our 100 Days of Lovingkindness. I think it’s going to be a brilliant program. We’ll be posting information about these activities soon. But to produce all the material for these projects I need to be free of all this admin I’ve been doing.

I need a business manager.

And we’ve found the perfect guy — a former engineer called Mark, who has already done a few days of work with me. It’s been fantastic working with Mark. He’s really helping next years’ program to come together. He’s helping with publicity. He’s starting to take a whole bunch of tasks off of my to-do list.

But the trouble is we can’t afford to employ Mark for more than a few hours a week at the moment.

So what we’re trying to do is to raise $22,000, to cover the first six months of Mark’s wages, along with associated costs such as employers’ Social Security and Medicare.

Once Mark’s up and running full time, he’ll free me up so that I can not only write more materials that can be freely available, like the 100 Days of Lovingkindness posts, but he’ll also free me up to record more CDs and to turn more of my writing into books. And those kinds of things will bring in more income for Wildmind, so that we can cover Mark’s wage costs in the longer-term. So it all will be sustainable. We just need the seed money to get started.

I really need this in order to be effective as a teacher. And so I’m asking that you contribute to our Free Bodhi Fund. Now I know, there are many things you could contribute to. But not only will you be benefiting the hundreds of thousands of people who come to this site for spiritual guidance and nourishment, but you’ll be benefiting yourself quite directly, because we’re offering some great perks to our donors.

Please do check out our Indiegogo project, and help set me free to teach and write.