The Question of Intellectual Property

Does The Alchemical Journey belong to me? This is a question I have been asking myself over the past few days. Is it “mine”? Do I own it? And if I do own it, what does that mean? Does that make it exclusively my property, and what happens as it starts developing its own identity out there in the big wide world of possibilities. Gerard and I are currently involved in a fascinating discussion about intellectual property and its implications, and looking at the idea of “creative commons” as a potentially more progressive model for the thorny and complex issue of IP rights. The Creative Commons movement enables authors, scientists, artists, and educators to mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. It allows a person to change their copyright terms from "All Rights Reserved" to "Some Rights Reserved." See www.creativecommons.org - it leaves me with these questions: How do I honour my own creative input and ensure that I am properly remunerated for that? Do I give it away in trust, or carefully license it and how do I guard against my work being used by others without proper license and perhaps in ways which I deem inappropriate?

Protecting What You Have
I did a fantastic training recently called “Leadership Presence”, which took skills from the acting profession and applied them to leadership. It was full of superb material, beautifully facilitated and I got a huge amount from the experience. However, I almost pulled out of the training beforehand because I was so appalled by what I saw as the organisation’s fear and control around their intellectual property. This came to a head when a friend of mine was told she would not be allowed to participate in the workshop because she was promoting herself as a corporate coach and trainer. The organisation were afraid that if she participated, then she might steal the material and use it in her own work. I was really quite shocked by this and lost a lot of respect for the organisation. I’m glad I did the workshop, because the material was brilliant, but what about this issue of intellectual property? It began an enquiry for me in relation to my own programme.

Originality
I have created The Alchemical Journey – it’s an original project, but it naturally draws on a huge number of variables that aren’t exclusively original to me. Yet my formulation of the material and the way I’ve put it together makes it pretty unique in both the field of astrology and in the field of self-development. And, yes, it is something I naturally think of as my intellectual property. Yet, here I am in putting ideas forward, running courses, seeking collaborations with other trainers and facilitators, making my intellectual property extremely vulnerable! I run the obvious and very real “risk” of it being changed, re-interpreted, mis-interpreted, used and potentially abused in other contexts, even without my knowledge.

The Alchemical Formula
What should I do about this? One response might have been for me to keep the ideas to myself (bit late for that, now!) until I had broken down each element of it, copyrighted each element, patented it, trademarked it. Then that would need to be policed and a lot of time and energy put into making sure others weren’t pinching what I had developed. To stand any chance of preserving it in a recognisable form, I would need to standardise the course with very clear set practices and delivery requirements and I would need to formularise it, so that the IP of each component can be readily recognised and legally identified. This seems shrewd and I’m sure that if I was being strictly business-like about it all, I’d probably attempt to do something like that. I haven’t though. Why not?

I’ve thought a lot about this issue and wondered at how I might protect myself. After all, I have developed this and put a huge amount of time, energy, money and resources into it. I don’t just want someone to pick up my years of research and then churn something out that isn’t in line with the ethos or intention of what I’ve created. So there is a need for balance here. I recognise that I need to hold the integrity of the programme. But what would I lose, and what would The Alchemical Journey lose if I were to turn it into a more easily identifiable formulaic process. Well, I figure there would be a loss of spontaneity, a loss of creativity, a loss of participation. Basically, I would destroy it as a living, transforming, evolving entity. I have been part of the process of giving birth to The Alchemical Journey, and it now lives and breathes in the world. I can’t control each step of its growth – any more than I could or would want to control the growth and development of a child. But I can gently guide and support it; respond to its own transformational journey and let myself be guided, supported and responded to by the journey. I want to stay in relationship with it, keep my love for it alive, allow it to evolve in a way that is going to make the most difference in the world, in a way that is going to enable learning, healing, community, love.

Guardian
In my more philosophical and altruistic moments, I question whether it was really me who created it at all – wasn’t I simply the vehicle through which it manifested – my particular dimensions of body, mind and spirit just happened to be a fit for it to be born through me! So, wouldn’t it be more accurate for me to consider my relationship to it more as a carer or guardian?

Perhaps, by calling The Alchemical Journey “mine” in any kind of exclusive sense I run the risk of robbing it of its own autonomous life force. Yet, just like a parent, if I didn’t nurture it, water it, protect it through its early development, it would die of neglect and be exposed to unnecessary dangers before it is strong enough to cope. So I guess what I’m doing by carefully delineating the distinctions of each phase of the journey, and being specific about the way I’m using language, images and stories in particular contexts, I am helping to support its integrity, firming up materials and resources, becoming clear about a pattern of delivery of the programme.

So, more and more, I am seeing myself as the guardian of The Alchemical Journey, rather than its owner. And the beauty is, that, as its guardian, I can have so much more access to gratitude and appreciation, because I am so much more sensitively awake to the relationship I have with it. I can respond to its needs, it can respond to mine; it can surprise me in ways that it couldn’t if I was busily controlling every aspect of it. Running this programme becomes a joyful privilege that I can never take for granted.

The Consolidation Phase
With regard to The Alchemical Journey, we can see that each stage of the journey has its own theme and dynamic. We are currently experiencing the second stage. This stage is about recognising what we have and consolidating our resources. It is actually about saying “this is mine”, and experiencing it as such. My sunflower has been doing that in the last couple of weeks – claiming the soil for its own, becoming more established in its pot, after that initial burst of life when it broke the shackles of its seed pod and pushed its way through the soil. This is only a phase of the journey though – the energy will change and become something else soon – what was clearly experienced as “mine” in Taurus will become less clear as we enter the mutable sign of Gemini, and the realm of Mercury, the language trickster, in a couple of weeks time. For when we start thinking and speaking about what we have and engaging in dialogue, our experience of what we have will change. I find my awareness of this immensely helpful in this whole question of IP, and what to do about it. It reminds me that there is a need to consolidate and strengthen my resources before talking about them too openly and sharing them with everyone I meet.

The enquiry continues…

John x

Taurean Resistance

One of the great things we are learning through the Taurus perspective is the value of gratitude and appreciation for what we have. This principle is clearly at the heart of alchemy and the process of creative manifestation. As Lynne Twist says “What you appreciate appreciates”. However, when this appreciation is limited to those things that we have come to identify as being exclusively “mine”, as being opposed to “yours”, then surely we are doing precisely the opposite, and actually resisting and stifling the creative process. Perhaps there is a fine line between gratitude and smugness.

For example, I might value and appreciate and love the house that I live in. I might love it so much in fact, just so, the way it is, that I take steps to preserve it that way at all costs, ensuring that others don’t come in and ‘mess it up’, rearrange things, disrupt the perfect order of it. I might love and appreciate it so much that I forget to live and let live in it, so anxious that it might become something else that doesn’t fit my picture of perfect order and contentment. I might love it so much the way it is that I forget that it is alive with possibility, alive with participatory presence.

If I try and keep something the way it is and use gratitude and appreciation as a way of resisting the natural cycles of life, then it would seem that I am inhibiting or restricting the dynamic of transformation necessary for the processes of life to occur. The “thing” that I appreciate only has value when I experience myself as being in relationship with it, and I can only be in relationship with it, if I experience its aliveness. By restricting its own transformational potential by attributing exclusive ownership to it and guarding it against the interest and attention of others, I will actually strangle the life out of it, and end dragging it around with me, like the proverbial “dead horse”.

When we are living our lives from the Taurean perspective, then we can become very comfortable with what we have. After all, if everything was really fine just the way it was, why would we want to change anything? This is really part of the paradoxical quality of this sign. Does it mean that gratitude and appreciation is really a double-edged sword? Through reflecting on this, I have been reminded me of the need to be inclusive with my gratitude. I mean, it’s one thing to be grateful for the all the things I obviously love and cherish – but what about all things I don’t ordinary welcome or enjoy. Can I be equally grateful for those? Can I be grateful for the things that upset the status quo and disrupt our sense of contentment? Can I welcome in change and transformation over settlement and security. Can I feel secure in the midst of uncertainty? Can I remain in touch with the centre of our being, even as the wheel turns and crushes the old form? I strikes me that these questions lie at the heart of our alchemical enquiry and should thus certainly be included in our practices of gratitude. Again, the story of the Buddha is instructive, that great Buddhic realisation that the circumstances need not determine your inward experience of being. And it is this inward experience of being which is the alchemical gold sought by the true alchemists and misunderstood by the “puffers”.

So the Taurean perspective can very easily become one that resists the journey of transformation. Certainly, the element of earth offers a natural resistance to fire. In Aries, it was all about creativity and sparks of life. Taurus has a settling influence, but can easily become too settled! After all, when the element of earth is well nourished it is a natural extinguisher for the creative fire. So it is worth asking ourselves this month where in our lives we may be getting complacent with our current situation in life and afraid to change.

John x

Thank You Mum!

I'd like to share with you my most profound Taurean revelation of the month so far.

The last couple of days I've felt really good about myself and the world and really in a profound state of gratitude - and I'm it putting down to listening to the Taurus soundtrack that I've created for myself. I've been playing it over and over and a lot of the songs are ones that I wouldn't normally listen to. They are unashamedly happy and positive Taurean songs, and the thing is, many of them are my Taurean mother's favourites! More than that, even, they are songs which I grew up listening to as a child. My mother's mission in life is that she and everyone around her should be happy and positive. I grew up with this message - we listened to happy songs, watched happy films, and read happy stories. When I was young, my Mum would read me and my brother a happy story, or sing a happy lullaby, would kiss us goodnight, and say "see you in the happy morning" - every night, without fail. I don't think I've ever really appreciated what a gift that was. By the time I was a young teenager, I was rebelling against all of it. I was asking difficult questions of the world, focussing on all the things that were wrong with it, all the things that were wrong with me and all the things that were wrong with my mother! I was questioning everything, listening endlessly to The Smiths (such classics as "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now") and fighting endlessly with Mum and what I saw then as her overprotective control and anxiety, and her inane "sing-a-happy-song" approach.

When I discovered astrology at age 21, it all made perfect sense. She was a Taurus (a double-Taurus in fact)! I was an Aries - two sets of horns locked - one set focussed on trying to burn bridges and change things, the other set on preserving what she had, a propogandist of positivity resisting change at all cost! A battle that couldn't be won but both set on trying to prove the other wrong! But what if neither persepective is wrong? What if both - set appropriately within their own context - are "right"? I've been thinking a lot about this for the past two days and really getting in touch with how grateful I am for the exposure to all that happy, loving, supportive, positive, nurturing attention I received as a child, especially within this phase of Taurean enquiry. I have always tended to look back on it with a lot of criticism and say "oh, she tried to wrap us in cotton wool", "protect us from the world" - well maybe she did to a certain extent, but as I contact these memories now, as I listen to these songs, I just feel incredibly grateful. The Carpenters, Abba, Don Williams, Leo Sayer, Val Doonican, Julie Andrews, Showaddywaddy - (I mean how inane, and middle-of-the-road can you get?!!) - this the music we would play on the car as we drove off to my Grandpa's holiday house on the Norfolk coast, and we would all sing along, play I-Spy, and try and be the first to see the sea, across the flat Norfolk landscape. They were idyllic times - up to the age of 10 or 11, I remember. It was a real age of protected innocence and it's only in these last few days that I've really let myself get in touch with what a wonderful childhood that was. So thank you Mum!

It's her birthday on Sunday, and I've decided to drive up to Nottingham to surprise her, and as a birthday present, I'm going to present her with a Taurus soundtrack with all those inane, middle-of-the-world, yet wonderfully positive and innocent songs. It's a long way to drive up there just for the day, but I'm really excited about it and I'm going to share my revelation with her.

John x