What to Expect From This Newsletter in 2023

Reflections, Ideas, and Opportunities

I started writing publicly about my experiences exploring the expansion of consciousness earlier this year in order to share what has been the most meaningful pursuit of my life. I wasn’t sure whether I would enjoy the process and if anything would come of it.

It’s been just over 4 months publishing now and lots of joy & meaning from this process has emerged. I’ve had probably hundreds of people reach out to me indicating that they were going through something similar or that they were able to find clarity by seeing parts of their own journey in mine. This feedback has provided a sense of purpose and service beyond simply expressing a part of myself that remained hidden for a long time. It has also ignited deeper levels of inspiration to be a vessel for creation that contributes to humanity as we user into a new paradigm of experience.

In many ways, publishing has felt like a spiritual coming out party. Spirituality and consciousness evolution is a funny thing. It can be the most important part of your life, but we have been programmed not to share it for fear of alienating others and ourselves. This is all a derivative of the self-preservation prerogatives of the ego and it can make the journey more lonely then it needs to be.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are many people that love to lead with their spirituality. You can’t be in a conversation with them without them commandeering it to redirect the flow of discussion towards some sort of spiritual or esoteric topic. I never found this behavior to be enjoyable to be around so have been mindful not to emulate it. Nonetheless, for years I have craved fellowship on this path and greater depths of relating beyond what Neflix shows I was watching or recapping hiring plans at my startup. 

If you find yourself in this position, I encourage you to consider writing or some other type of creative expression like a podcast or youtube channel. It’s a way to share this monumental part of your experience that isn’t so in your face to others. It’s kind of like you throw a rope out and see who reaches for it. I bet you’ll be surprised!

My experience has been that sharing my own journey publicly has enriched many relationships and helped form new ones. Lots of dissonance that occurred where the expectations of others butted up against my inner world has softened since it is now much more evident to others what my deepest interests & priorities are. The topic of how to handle relationships and friends as you grow spiritually can be a tricky one and something I will write more about in the coming year.

I wanted to provide this backdrop to you in order to share what to expect from this newsletter in the year ahead.

Publishing Schedule

My hope is to continue to write weekly, but I am prioritizing writing a book. The book is about the evolution of consciousness taught through my own experience of going through the process while running a high growth startup. Right now it seems like it’s kind of shaping up to be like if the Map of Consciousness, Untethered Soul, and The Surrender Experiment had a baby born in 2022 by a Dad who was in his 30’s vs. 60+. I’m about 100 pages in and we’ll see where it goes.

I also hope to continue to publish podcasts and videos as I find the process fun.

Creating A Paid Option

I am starting to add a paid subscription option. There are a couple of reasons I am doing this:

1. I want my work to reach the most amount of people that it could possibly be of service too. Not surprisingly, Substack promotes paid authors across the platform because that is how they make money. So to increase reach, you need to charge.

2. I spend a lot of money and time on creating media. Between editing, image creation, software, hosting, freelancers, audio/video production etc it really starts to add up. I am happy to allocate my time and resources this way, but it would be nice to offset some costs. 

I view money as an energy exchange. So if you are getting a lot of value out of the energy I am putting in, feel free to send some energy back my way : )

To come up with a price, I looked at the top 25 paid publications in the faith/spirituality category. The average was $6.61/month and cheapest was $5, so I’m going to make it $5 for now. This, like all things might change.

I found it interesting to look at the data interesting across a number of categories.

This gives you the idea of how much money the top publishers are makin on Substack. I’m shocked that some people seem to be making over a million a year on here in the business category. Good for them! It doesn’t seem like the topic of self-realization is as lucrative 🤣.

In terms of what you get with paid, right now I’m not sure. I still want as much of my work to be available to everyone who could derive value from it. Even though the cost of a competitively priced latte per month may be a nominal amount of money for most, I don’t want a paywall to get in the way of anyone experiencing the content.

I also don’t want to run the risk of diluting my creative process to serve one audience vs. another. For example, if I see that paid subscribers really like one topic there might be a propensity to cater to them vs. maintaining creative purity. The only master I want to serve is the creative inspiration that flows through me.

So for now the paid option will be more like just appreciate my work and want to support it. Perhaps my thoughts on this will change in the future. I don’t know.

Areas of Exploration

From a process standpoint, I am usually just writing about whatever seeks to emerge out of me. I have a big backlog of topics and ideas, but often times just feel compelled to write a realization I had the previous day and just go with the inspiration.

That being said, there are a number of things I am excited about sitting and putting pen to:

• How consciousness effects the health of the physical body

• How the rules of reality evolve as identification shifts 

• Common spiritual drivenness patterns

• New paradigms in business like what a consciousness first company looks like

• Understanding the responsive reality: how life presents itself for your evolution

• Common difficulties one encounters as they grow spiritually: relationships, malaise, physical challenges etc

It seems like my posts about my personal revelations seem to resonate most with people so integrating this component into the articulation of these bigger concepts is something I am excited about.

How You Can Help

Heading into the new year, there are a few ways you can help me:

1. Interesting people - Let me know if there are people out there who are talking about interesting things at the intersection of expanding consciousness, business, technology, and living a modern life. I’m generally interested in learning about these people and perhaps interviewing them or something 

2. Interesting topics - Are there topics you think are not well explored or difficult to grasp in your own evolution? I’d love to hear about them. I often find this feedback as a source of inspiration. For example, someone’s comment on how this post on Surrender was incredibly clarifying inspired me to record an entire Youtube series that went even deeper. Don’t be shy.

3. Recommend this publication on Substack - if you write on substack or plan to and have been enjoying this publication, I’d appreciate a recommendation. Recommendations are the number one way new people find it. Here is how to do that

4. Support with paid - If you want to start a little energy circle ∞ with me, any support is much appreciated. If not, that’s cool too.  

If you have any feedback on any of this or ideas based on the help areas, please let me know in the comments or by responding to this email. 

Much love and happy holidays!

-Scott