Why do money and selling sometimes feel icky? In part, it’s because we’re wired to give and receive freely. When you give your gifts freely and they are freely received, it feels great because it affirms the place inside you that was meant for giving and receiving freely.
In contrast, our economic system denies our innate wiring and instead incentivizes us to extract as much as we can from each other. It’s like having a friend show up at your birthday party, hand you a gift, and say, “Are you going to pay me for that, or what?” It would feel terrible because it suddenly becomes clear that your friend is only giving to you in order to extract something of value in return.
When exchanging money for art feels icky, it’s because this extractive attitude is somehow at play. You can address this extractive attitude firstly by becoming aware of the ways it already affects your life. Secondly, you can address it by creating novel artistic “products and services” that meet at the center of a Venn diagram that includes your authentic creative energy (your Soulforce), how you meet your basic needs, and in which you can be deeply of service to your community.
Their meeting place in the middle of the diagram below is what I’m currently fascinated by. I believe it hold the key to being able to support ourselves with our art in a way that feels good (in alignment with your Soulforce and values) and genuinely serves a world in need.
Please join us for the third roundtable conversation on art and money. In this meeting we will imagine what might exist at the meeting place in the middle of this diagram. We will also have a guest speaker, Johannes Fischerkeller who has thought very deeply about alternative economic models and can shed fascinating light onto the topic we’re exploring.
Here’s the link to the event.
And if you haven’t already, please talk with one person in your community (using the prompts below) and bring the insights from that conversation to our conversation tomorrow. These insights will be very valuable!
- Talk with at least one person you think of as an ideal recipient of your art.
- What are their biggest challenges in life?
- What are their biggest aspirations and goals?
- What obstacles they face in relation to those goals?
- What they’ve tried in order to overcome those obstacles?
- What do they love about the arts (yours included)?
- What don’t they like about the way the arts are usually presented (yours included)?
I hope to see you then!
Joseph
Joseph
