2022-04-25

LL_Central

3/31 – 4/21

Coming Home to a New Earth Gathering:  We have officially opened registration for L/L Research’s first public in-person event in three years! It will take place Sep 8–11 outside of Asheville, NC. As of this posting, seats are available.

Discussions with Jonathan Tong: The unstoppable Mr. Tong hosted Gary and Austin again for a Q&A with the Seattle Law of One Study Group. Thank you for holding this service, Jonathan! Check out the discussion here: Q&A with Gary and Austin, April 9, 2022

Peace meditation: In addition to the daily Gaia Meditation facilitated by Jim, we continued to hold the weekly world peace meditation. Facebook post here.

Team Expansion: In this period, L/L’s professional team increased by two! We onboarded a new member to work a regular part-time role as an Operations Specialist, and another to work on an as-needed basis as an Event Manager.

The former will blend their energies into the daily operation and join us in the hat business—learning how to wear many of them, sometimes multiple at once, sometimes ill-fitting, sometimes perfectly fitting, sometimes I was born to wear this hat, all of them designed to serve others through the service of the mission. This person’s presence is growing and will increasingly continue to grow our circle of collaborative teamwork in taking another small step toward fulfilling L/L Research’s potential.

The latter will help L/L Research to help meet a vital need among the readership to host in-person and online events. We know how to host events. We are uniquely situated to host events. We are good at the logistics & energetics of hosting events/holding space. But our existing operation is at max. Help is needed, not just to fulfill our designs but to bring leadership and voice to the table of event design and production.

Adding these two entities (to be announced upon conclusion of their probation period) has complexified our processes as we upgrade our coordination, communication, workflow management, etc. Our busy levels have been extra busy. They join with Daniel, L/L Research’s webmaster, who has become a regular voice and partner, expanding our team and empowering the mission with each new addition, both practically and metaphysically. We are so lucky to be working with all of them!

Note: This Blogworthy includes the bullet points of the main new hire who’s been awesome to work with and has added such great energy and ability to the team. One of her jobs in this period has been to reboot the prison ministry with Austin’s guidance. Thanks to her for her contributions!

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  • Working with Translators
    • Bulgarian – Received outreach from one B. who was interested in, and had already somewhat begun, translating Ra into Bulgarian, with intentions of forming an audio recording to be shared. Through successive rounds of dialogue to gain understanding, and to explain that a project to translate the Ra Contact was begun some time ago by Kirilina but stalled after reaching session 38, clarity was gained and the way forward open. Meanwhile reached out to Kirilina, got a status update (prayers and love to Kirilina!), along with her determination to continue the project. Eventually connected B. with Kirilina in the collective hopes that a collaboration might reboot the project. Typically teamwork is better than solo work. Thank you, Kirilina and B.!
    • Serbian – In a not dissimilar situation in a Balkan neighbor, a seeker, D., showed up intent on translating Ra into Serbian. As above, did a dance of finding clarification with D. while communicating with Sheyla about the same project. At the end of the day, Sheyla and D., the Serbian reader, were connected and Sheyla will take up the lead in producing a Serbian Ra Contact. Thank you, Sheyla and D.!
    • Russian – Made contact with a new Russian seeker, M., interested in translating L/L’s material into Russian. Established terms and relationships and really enjoyed her emails and her English. She will begin on the channeling transcripts starting in the 80s. Thank you, M.! | Also, finally succeeded in getting a couple books to Catherine, the Russian translator of 101, via an intermediary.
    • Spanish – Received from the onward-moving Henry several new Spanish transcripts. Thank you Henry! | And received first contact with Emiliano, a Spanish reader who is assisting Gabriel in the efforts to produce a Spanish RC, and got him set up to continue work on the transcripts.
    • Chinese – An active period for Chinese. Received contact from Wen (same name as one of L/L’s volunteer transcribers) interested in translating Ra into Chinese. Discussed the existing Simplified and Traditional Chinese-language versions, talked with Sean and Terry (the principle translators of the two versions, respectively), and made a connection between all three. Wen is going to embark on an a new version of the Chinese RC. |  Also, a young reader from China with a beautiful story of awakening and seeking that most spiritual seekers would find resonance and likeness with, Y., reached out about translating L/L’s website into Chinese. “As I am studying the work of L/L, there is always a strong impulse in my heart to help the L/L Research to translate the whole website so that many seekers in China can access it with the least distortions. I believe they will have the same feeling of coming home as I do.”
    • Polish – After an over year pause, we were surprised to receive a few Polish transcripts from Marlena. Thank you, Marlena!
    • Czech – Worked with the Czech team about a challenging situation of an individual who had produced a machine-based translation of L/L’s material, insisting that it was superior to the carefully human-translated version. Supported them in a finding a path as balanced in love and wisdom as best as we folly-prone, unwise humans can muster.
    • Portuguese – Received a few Portuguese transcripts from Marta. Thank you so much, Marta!
    • Farsi – Worked with the Farsi translator (and Daniel, L/L’s webmaster) to get bits and pieces ready to publish the first sessions of the Farsi translation of the Ra Contact! The biggest hurdle being a difficulty in getting Adobe to cooperate with the right-to-left text, which will hopefully be resolved soon. | Also, dialogued with Pupak about ways to support Meysam’s efforts with intensive internal dialogue required.
    • Korean – And last but not least, received from Sienna some more pieces for the Korean RC. Thank you, Sienna! Always, like all the translators, with a positive spirit.
  • New Hire process: Both new hires have begun their roles! It has been a large process of onboarding and training so far, including all of the work leading up to the hire that involved ensuring employment compliance for a work-at-home employee in a different state. These processes took a large part of our time this period, but the process is going smoothly and we’re eager to continue merging the new people with the squad. It’s been a joy working with them so far. (There will be a probationary period before we officially introduce them publicly, so they’ll remain behind a veil of mystery in public communication until then.) The many various tasks to complete include:
    • New state employment setup (registering for a business tax account, new hire notification, unemployment insurance account, compliance verification, etc.)
    • Work computer and software setup.
    • Registering for the many various accounts needed by the new hire.
    • Orientation, employee handbook, employment agreement, etc.
    • Introduction to processes, communication and style standards, and other policies.
    • And then the actual onboarding for work, and more.
    • Work accounting and systems sharing, etc.
  • Search Engine
    • Search engine. Yeah we’ve said it’s almost here a few times, but you know how it goes…there’s one more thing, and then we could make it better like this, and then we should really get this sorted before it launches, and then the server situation has changed, and then this bug requires a bit more work than necessary, and this new feature would be so great to push for before it launches. Daniel has dedicated an incredible amount of focus and energy on getting it ready (with no shortage of effort from us as well), and it is actually almost here…really. By next report it will be launched.
    • Processed all the feedback from the beta testing of the search engine from friends from around the world, including translators. Thank you so much!
  • Coming Home to a New Earth Gathering: Despite some medical catalyst, L/L’s new Event Manager got started on the job! Her first assignment: help design and launch the Coming Home event. At this initial stage, her presence hasn’t reduced too much work, as there is so much to impart. Invested a lot of time in meeting, planning, constructing all the logistical considerations, refining the language that would help set the container, collaborating with our TOTOH friends, launching preregistration and newsletters and public announcements, working with the venue, etc. She’s in place and is processing registrations and communicating with attendees!
  • Prague Gathering: Our dear friend and lead of the Czech translation team, Vojta, spent a week in the States with his partner, Emilly, an expat born in Indiana, living in Prague for some years, and… cousin to the person who played spontaneous matchmaker, Trisha. (An incredible story.) On Vojta and Emilly’s long sojourn in the US, they spent a week with Trish and Gary at their place. While here, we held a meeting with Vojta to discuss, agree upon, and begin planning for a Prague event! A successful Law of One gathering was held in Prague in Oct, 2019, with 15 different nationalities in attendance. After seeing what a success it was, the intention was to hold an annual event, but, the pandemic. This year will be the sequel, likely in August.
  • Homecoming Gathering: For some years, Homecoming had been held on Labor Day weekend (usually the first weekend in September). But we couldn’t yet commit to it, and the TOTOH crew proposed holding Coming Home in September, and the second weekend worked best, so we jumped on Coming Home, unsure that we’d even be holding a Homcoming. Well, after multiple rounds of dialogue and meeting with Jim, and his own decision to go ahead and open his home to the event, we decided to do it! And then learned that every tent rental place in the area was booked up for that month! On a hail mary, found a company willing to deliver from far away (but twice the cost). We decided to make Homecoming a smaller, alumni-only, low-key event. And in tandem with the above two events, got that one opened as well in this period. And well ahead of officially opening it, Trish gleefully began the experimentation of various dishes in the kitchen, excited to be expressing her love language for a large group again.
  • 102 Editing: Due to all of the above and below busyness, and an extra crunch due to Gary’s meditation retreat, it’s been a difficult task to cycle the editing of Living the Law of One 102 back into the workflow, but with more conscious effort applied to making room, the work has continued.
  • Card deck and LOO typos
    • There are actually two card deck projects on…deck. One being the potential production of a tarot deck faithful to Ra’s standards being handled by some creative professionals who crossed our path, and one being a more inspirational, non-tarot deck based on the Law of One from our publisher. The former didn’t have any movement for this period, but we met with Schiffer to get the ball rolling on the latter.
    • And then a whammy: a reader discovered significant typos in the 40th anniversary edition of the Law of One. She wrote in about a few instances where “light” was replaced with “fight.” We discovered a few more.
    • The LOO publisher created the text to produce the 40th anniversary boxed set by OCR’ing the physical books into digital format, we would learn as a result of this. Lowercase l’s sometimes become f’s in the OCR process. The publisher used the same 40th anniversary text to publish a re-formatted version of the paperback LOO books into a 6×9 format, released just a couple months ago. Meaning that the same typos are present in the paperbacks.
    • One of L/L’s highest duties is to faithfully preserve the fidelity of the material for the interested seeker, particularly the Law of One text, so “fight” subbing in for “light” is significant. We immediately took the printed Law of One books from our online store and reached out to the publisher, who has come to understand our duty to and care for this mission and its material, about the issue, emphasizing how serious this is to us. Fortunately, they got right on the issue and hit pause on their own sales. And… work began between them and us to sort through how it happened and how extensive it is…
    • Enter research on our end. Literally as of this Blogworthy posting, Trish is typing up the abundance of mostly typesetting errors she’s discovered in the newly formatted books (missing paragraph breaks, wrongly inserted line breaks, hyphenated changes, etc.) There is also some puzzlement about what happened to the text that we had reviewed and approved/rejected when they produced the 40th anniversary edition. Each update they wanted to make to the text (the great majority of which were grammatical) were reviewed by us. It seems that the new edition incorporated all of our decisions, but missed some.
    • Held a meeting with the publisher to get the first round of results from their own investigation. They’ve been very supportive, understanding, and responsibility-taking in the mishap.
  • New hire: All Systems A Go!
    • Worked with Austin to set up all necessary programs and laptop settings
    • Learned about and implemented basic workflows and online tools used by the team
    • Familiarized self with the organization’s guidelines
  • Future SOPs: Created a spreadsheet to help track questions about processes, which will be continually added to and referenced when producing SOPs later down the line
  • Podcast transcripts
    • Set up a Dropbox account to work with Christine, a volunteer who is helping to transcribe podcasts
    • Completed editing of four podcast transcripts, with another about halfway done
  • Prison Ministry Program
    • Learned about the prison ministry program
    • Helped to create the seeking letter to email to volunteers
    • Reviewed all volunteer responses and answered their questions
    • Worked with Austin to finalize the list of volunteers by selecting five for the service
    • Drafted the welcome letter that will be emailed to chosen volunteers
    • Set up the Trello board that will be used to manage the program
    • Responded to letters from incarcerated seekers asking for books and newsletters
    • Working on creating The Trello Process document to help guide volunteers
  • Seeker ministry: We continued the regular service of responding to a wide variety of emails from seekers from all around the globe about a number of different topics. There are usually a lot! It’s always an honor and a blessing to be able to connect with people in this way. After some orientation and training, we also integrated the new hire into the process, spreading out the workload a bit more.
  • Social Media/Printed Book Sharing of the Confederation’s Message:
    • Updated Facebook and Twitter with Confederations quotes, created and shared Instagram images, and updated Patreon with L/L news and offerings.
    • Continuing working on producing the Ra Contact YouTube Videos.
    • Shipped book orders around the world and managed the online store, with various customer inquiries to process.
    • Implemented edits to channeling transcripts on the website
    • Got the Portuguese Living the Law of One 101 added to the Translations section of the online store that directs the interested reader to the publisher’s store. As this was created through conventional means—a foreign publisher acquiring the foreign-language rights, translating and printing the book—it won’t be available as a free PDF for a couple years yet.
    • Continued project of digitizing channeling audio, including discovering channelings and meetings that have yet to be transcribed/added to the website. The sometimes haphazard way that cassettes were recorded and recovered over and non-systematically stored at the time is humorous.
  • Audiobook: Producing audiobooks has been one of our most molasses-speed projects. They are so massively intensive that we eventually gave up trying to do it in house after successfully editing and mastering 101 and Ra Contact. Next step was to commission a person on the volunteer list with the skillset, but while she is close to reaching the finish line, and we have formed a great relationship, it is going on a year now for one book. Thus began investigation into unaffiliated professional services to get the remainder of the Jim-recorded audiobook library into publication.
  • Nuts & Bolts:
    • Undertook normal website maintenance to the library site and the online store.
    • Completed several weeks worth of the bookkeeping, including building new systems for the events.
    • Fixed an error that caused L/L’s little Etsy shop to go offline.
    • Tried to find a way to disable ads from the start of our videos on youtube. Research thus far indicates that it’s not possible (outside of having an ad blocker on the user’s end)
  • Smatterings: Met with one of the 35 job applicants whose resume so caught our eye, particularly around her pioneering skill and expertise in designing group programs for healing through creative self-expression, that we asked her if she’d be available to meet. Enjoyed a wonderful video meeting with an open-hearted and funny entity who we subsequently invited to the Coming Home event in order that some cross-pollination learning between us and her might occur. | Continued internal dialogue about Bring4th and our almost non-existent ability to be involved or support the site. | Discovered that some of the links on our tarot page were throwing up errors for our antivirus programs and, by great synchronicity, our friend, Paul, reached out to share that he had found a new and clear source for the original Comte de Saint-Germain version on whose work Fathman and Zain (the version that Don used) were built. That solved the problem for two of the three links!
  • Intermediate Circle: On our own time, met over at Jim’s on Apr 13 for a “five questions” circle. (Each of the five instruments takes a question.)
  • C/C Circles: On our own time, met over at Trish and Gary’s on Apr 20 for a smaller C/C circle where our group question focused on the disclaimer that the Confederation issues about taking what resonates and leaving the rest behind.

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Personal Sharings

Gary: I would have liked to use this space to talk about my recent experience spent in 10 days of Noble Silence at a vipassana meditation retreat, and the profound, chakra-opening experiences I had there while deep in meditation, but the stark contrast between silence and busyness has never been more apparent to me. I remain slogged down in the latter, so there is no extra time/energy at the moment.

I have long wanted to reboot my ancient blog in order to write about a wingèd spirit’s desire for the skies through the slats of the (mental) prison bars, accompanied by those moments when the soul takes flight after eras of moonlight groping and stumbling, and I’ve written up a long-form account of my retreat, but that too has been put on the backburner. Hopefully it, like the heart, will see the light of day.

In the meantime, we send prayers and healing energy to the Dutch translator, Erik, and his family in light of some of the most challenging catalyst a third-density entity can face: the hard medical diagnosis.

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