It’s been 10 years since I updated my old youtube account for Open Source Spirit – so many great video interviews that no longer are useful. People have been asking me to take the old videos down, now that they have changed, and are moving on they no longer want those old versions of themselves populating the interwebs. Okay. Fine. Done. Except for those videos that somehow found new homes as spores in other areas, colonizing other areas I have no control over.
Some had a few views, some had quite a lot. Most of this was from the old pioneering video chat recordings in my Open Source Spirit experiment. For a hobby reason, I recorded interviews with folks who were doing spiritual things, or had dedicated meditation lives. Or were just interesting, devoted, or sincere. So we talked and I recorded, then uploaded the videos. Went the extra mile and transcribed many of these, all on the now-lost-forever Open Source Spirit website. So it was thorough – the interview conversations recorded and uploaded, then placed in the site along with transcription of the talk. I loved doing it until I realized, “Hey, this is a lot of work and I’m not being paid.”
And then there was the shift, and I began being contacted by people who had something to promote. I didn’t want to be working their PR for free and couldn’t find it in my heart and mind to monetize what I was doing, so left it to lie fallow and then I quit. Now I look back and remember how interesting it was to be doing this pioneering work, split screen recording of skype calls – the sync was horrible, I have to say.
And now I review my interests with this experience under my belt. There is so much more to every human being I encounter, and each person is in their own way seeking truth. Is it only to be found in the meditation hall? Hardly. There is still much to be done in the realm of this open source idea as it relates to spiritual meditation life.
One added note here: I’m super-grateful to my old friend, Jim Van Wyck, who got me going on this idea, helped it form and get started, then expanded the possibilities for it to grow.
CAROL SILL 