Lesson 3 - Experiencing The Exponential
The "1000 people" meditation we did last time
was based on the idea of a simple, linear increase - one
person a day, one person the next, and it never changes. If
you remember, I said there's one visitor a day, every day,
for about 3 years and that makes our first thousand.
Web traffic is not all like that - it is *exponential*.
Like the repayment chart of a standard mortgage, there is
this time at the beginning where nothing seems to happen at
all, the graph is creeping painfully along the bottom of the
chart, no matter how hard you work, no matter how much time,
effort and money you seem to be investing.
Web makers who are young and new to the field often don't
really understand this simple fact and they get
disheartened, disappointed if you are doing all this work
and *nothing* by the way of positive feedback - or at least
seemingly nothing, disappointingly little, entirely
disproportionate to the effort involved.
See, these kinds of things are much like pushing a
boulder - to get it moving at all from a total stand-still,
a tremendous amount of energy is required.
You push and heave and shove, and eventually, it gives a
tiny, teensy little bit. You notice that and you start a
kind of rocking motion, backwards and forwards, and the
movement builds up each time and finally, a threshold is
breached and the boulder starts to roll.
Now you're still pushing pretty hard but it doesn't seem
so hard because you now actually know it's beginning to
happen, and you are finding out how hard you have to push to
really make it move.
Once it starts to roll and has just a little bit of
steady momentum, the pushing required becomes less; if you
push a bit more than required, the speed of your boulder
increases quite disproportionately to the added effort.
Thus it is with web sites.
The Exponential Time Meditation
Now, for the exponential time meditation, I want you to
imagine that you are standing in the middle of a smooth,
pure white walkway that extends all the way, all the way to
the far horizon, beneath a cloudless, early morning, deep
blue summer sky.
As this is a magical time way, we don't walk but instead,
we begin to glide along without any discernible effort
required at all.
As we glide quite swiftly forward, you can notice that
after the first excitement of gliding smoothly and without
effort on this seemingly endless ribbon of white, it is
actually quite boring - it seems as though it goes on
forever, with no reward or reason to be doing this at all.
But on you glide for now, although and even as you
continue to wonder whether it is worth spending any more
time doing this, if there's any merit, any value, any worth.
Time passes and nothing changes, apart from perhaps a
near perceptible rise in the walkway beneath you as you just
travel, travel along.
This is becoming frustrating and you are now seriously on
the verge of going to do something else and yet, and yet
there is this nagging knowledge in the back of your mind
about the mission, about the reason for you being here at
all, and above all, the *feeling* that there might be
something out there after all if you just stay a while
longer, just a little while longer, just another few minutes
perhaps ...
And even as you think this, it becomes apparent that the
ground is rising more steeply and you notice with surprise
that strangely, as it rises, you are moving more swiftly as
in response to this.
For a moment you are distracted by the fact that this
seems quite illogical and not as things appear in waking day
and when you place your attention back on the road ahead you
gasp for before you is a huge, steep rise, clearly visible
now, all the way up, up, higher and higher and disappearing
in the deepest darkest blue of the sky above and you are
travelling fast and faster in response to the rising ground
below, ever steeper, faster and faster until the threshold
is breached and you are launched -
- in a beautiful rushing of blue and white, pure power,
pure energy straight upwards, up and through and straight
into the sky beyond, the stars above and the World itself so
beautiful in blue and green and swirls of white below.
There is a sense of vibrating, resonant power as you
steady within yourself and get a sense of how different this
state of being, how profoundly unique and how the travelling
and launching from the white walkway had been worth your
time, indeed.
Wait until your sense of shock and horror at missing all
of this if you had made back then the decision to not go on,
to step off and give up on the walkway has fully resolved
and you are breathing deeply, freely, and with delight.
From your vantage here, so high above, so clear and light
and tingling full of energy, you can now perceive the World
and as you look and float and wonder, you begin to see a
diamond sparkling and as you look more closely still, you
realise that what you're seeing are the many strands that
make the World Wide Web - impossibly complicated, impossibly
many, a diamond spider web that shines so brightly, it is a
wonder to behold.
You feel the deep desire to just simply reach and touch
those strands and so you do, you stretch and reach and touch
and dive, and swiftly, dive into the strands, becoming one
and as a pulse that you now are, you merge and travel in the
purest light speed pleasure, travelling along the pathways
of the web, around the World, just here and there, until you
sense a homecoming of sorts and you are near to home, called
home and so you find your own work station, your own portal
and you enter in and through to find yourself at home once
more, becoming quite yourself again - but with a most
important difference, or two, retaining and remembering.
I hope you enjoyed this magical meditation. Do it a few
more times, in your own time, until you feel you really
understood the nature of the Exponential Experience.
Next time, we have something very special, and it
revolves around you, and your message and mission.
Until then,
keep the wonderment alive :-)
Silvia Hartmann
http://starfields.org
