--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Patrick Gillam" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB <no_reply@> wrote: > > > > Who paid for it? For the posters and the ads and the cost > > of the meeting rooms and the time spent teaching the classes? > > We did, of course, "we" being the students of that partic- > > ular spiritual path. We considered it selfless giving and > > "paying it forward," because other students before us paid > > for our first free talk and instruction session. > > The Internet has been a great place for > people to teach for free. I'm continually > amazed at the people who make an avocation > out of teaching and counseling gratis online. > Since going online in 1995 I've read > educational pieces for sex, appliance > repair, grease cars...
Can I dare to hope that the courses in sex, appliance repair and how to operate a grease gun were not all offered at the same website, or worse, in the same course? :-) > ...meditation and more. > People do it, apparently, because it's > fun. It may aggrandize the ego - "I know > more than you" - but often the impulse > seems selfless. > > In Waldorf Education circles, it's > acknowledged that the impulse to teach > arises from within the soul, and cannot > be denied. Neither can it be sold. True > teachers cannot *not* teach. Waldorf > teachers consider their teaching to be > a gift they give, and encourage parents > to consider their tuition payments to be > gifts as well, rather than fees for services. > > The problem with this teaching-as-a-gift > model is that it's not sustainable. I beg to differ. It's how a couple of tradi- tional Tibetan sanghas I've interacted with have sustained themselves for centuries. The key is size, and no one in the organiza- tion getting paid. No one. This includes the "head teacher," if there is one. He or she has a Day Job and works for a living, too. Plus, none of the three or four organizations I've had personal experience with that teach for free has ever had any desire to "get big." They have no staff, they have no accountants, they have no real expenses *except* the rooms they teach in and the ads and teaching materials. And they like things that way. Introduce the grandiose and (some would say) megalomaniacal desire to "save the world," and you have the TMO.
