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.

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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

Introduction | 1- Love Your Site | 2 - The 1st Thousand | 3 - The Exponential

4 - The Spirit Of The Web | 5 - Web Craft | 6 - Fair Trade | 7 - Receiving Your Dues

Web Magic � Silvia Hartmann 2002. All Rights Reserved. The Audio Version is available @ StarFields VIP