I Was Wrong is the title of the famous book by Jim Bakker, which was accompanied by a round of appearances on national television talk shows, after the once influential evangelical preacher was released from prison following his fall from grace.

We’re not afraid to take risks, we are not afraid to make mistakes, and we are ultimately not afraid to fail. As Napoleon Bonaparte said: “He who fears defeat is sure to be conquered”. We work to actively create a culture where people have the freedom to innovate, to explore, to find their way forward, and yes - from time to time to mistep. Part of that is “minimizing the downside” - creating a culture where we can admit, identify, and rectify mistakes as soon as possible, without having to feel a need to cover them up.

I’m particularly interested in studying success and failure. As Marcus Buckingham puts it:

You don’t learn how to be good by studying bad and negating it. The opposite of bad is not good - it’s “not bad”.

You don’t learn what to do by studying failure. However, you can identify essential elements of success by contrasting and comparing success and failure and analyzing the differences. I’m always interested to know how things are going in different places. “What is working, what is not working? Why?” I’m always looking to understand things better, to be more conscious and intentional in my service.

However, my endeavours to inquire and understand are hampered by the following complications:

• Different places have different environmental conditions. It’s not comparing exactly equivalent things with each other.
• The perceptions that we use to study the different situations come from different people. They have their own unique ways of perceiving things, so again it’s not comparing exactly equivalent things.

Recently, however, a golden opportunity fell my way. I was able to do an examination of two operations in the same environment, using the same perceptual baseline. That is The Loft and Atma Yoga in Brisbane.

I was able to see the unexpected success of The Loft, and the equally unexpected failure of Atma Yoga, and then with a team of fellow surgeons perform a postmortem in situ.

What we discovered in this process has been priceless.

Of course Atma Yoga has not failed, but these past two months have allowed us to come to deeper grips with the elements of the Loft that make it successful. Over the next few days I’m going to share that postmortem with you, and explain what we have discovered to be the active ingredients of the situation.

For those who come to Atma Yoga, you may have noticed a change since we made the move. I think that you’ll notice further pleasant changes back over this next period. No, we won’t be breaking a hole in the guttering to get the sound of the storm water pouring outside the window during relaxation , but we will be bringing back the essential mood of the Loft, and I think in an even deeper way, now that we have come to grips with what it is. After you’ve been soaking in it for a while it becomes invisible to you. These past two months have been an opportunity for us, now that we’ve caught our breath from the hard yakka of moving the place over, to reflect a bit on what makes the Loft / Atma Yoga so special. We’ve spent a lot of time talking with people and finding out from them what it is that they enjoy about the place.

There’s so much more to Atma Yoga than just Yoga, but you already knew that…

If you want to be a preacher don’t expect to be appreciated…

- H.H. Devamrita Swami

For the past two years I’ve been in a customer-facing role in the organization where I work. Being in a customer-facing role is a unique and tricky position in any organization.

On one side you advocate for the organization to the customers. When the company screws up, you take the straw in your mouth and apologize to the customer for your mistake. You bear the brunt of customers’ disappointment, frustration and anger, often in relation to decisions that you don’t necessarily agree with or even understand, and you do it with a smile.

On the other side you advocate on behalf of the customer to the organization. Within the organization resources are allocated and decisions are made informed by the input of the different voices within the organization. Engineering wants this, sales wants that, marketing wants this, the boffins advising management say that… your job is to be the voice of the customer, and to hear the inevitable: “What an idiot! Who cares about that!”

Your job is to advocate for the customers’ interest and their viewpoint, to be their voice in the internal conversation that informs the corporate decision-making process. And yes, you have to take the hits for them. You don’t necessarily agree with their position - hey maybe the customer is an idiot, but they’re your customer and they have to be taken into consideration.

So you walk a tightrope doing a balancing act, trying to represent the company to the customer, and the customer to the company. And yes, you often don’t get a lot of appreciation on either side. If you’re in it for that you’d better move to a different position. Sometimes you do get appreciation, and those times can help to keep going through difficult patches, but you need to have a deeper understanding of what you are doing, and why.

Here’s the full quote:

If you want to be a preacher don’t expect to be appreciated… but you will feel the warm smile of Krishna.

- H.H. Devamrita Swami

In a Loft preaching situation that’s your role - on the interface between ISKCON and the public. On one side you advocate for ISKCON to the public. You own the ISKCON organization. If there is something that you don’t agree within the organization - too bad - you own it, at least as far as the public is concerned. Internal divisions and distinctions are meaningless to them, they just see a homogenous organization that you represent. Anything that ISKCON or anyone in ISKCON does comes straight back to you. You have to explain the missteps, mistakes, and misbehaviour of others, and you apologize for it, with the straw in the teeth and a smile. The corollary of this is that you can bask in the successes of the organization, benefit from the momentum and goodwill created by other organizational units in your local area, and proudly show videos of activities in other parts of the world.

On the other side you must advocate for the public within ISKCON. You have to speak with management representing the perspective of the public. Managers within ISKCON allocate resources and make decisions in service of a wide and diverse constituency. There are many voices and many interests that must be taken into account.

Higher level managers rely on the input of key people within their organizational structure to empower them to make well-informed decisions. They need to hear carefully thought out presentations of the factors that their people are in contact with and aware of. They then balance all these factors to allocate resources and establish policies. Their responsibility is to make sure that the water floats all the boats in the fleet.

You have to take the role of representing the public, and at the same time represent the organization, understanding that there are a wide array of needs and interests, one among which is your particular responsibility - the public.

To be effective in securing the resources that you need, you need to have an understanding of the pressures that the management are under. If you are not getting something that you feel you need to serve your constituency you have to ask yourself: “Why am I not getting this?” When you ask this question honestly, with a sincere desire to understand the perspectives of others, and can then answer that question correctly, you can do something about it. Simply asking this question as a veiled means of criticizing out of frustration will not be so productive.

To be a preacher takes compassion. The dictionary defines compassion as “deep awareness of the suffering of another coupled with the wish to relieve it.” You need to have that to be effective in your role of ministering to the public on the outer edge of the organization, and to be effective in advocating internally for the guests. You have to be compassionate toward both the public, who are burning out there in a desert, and also to your internal managers, who have accepted the burden of responsibility for the mission!

If you think there is little appreciation as a preacher - wait until you try management…

Here is something else that I’ve been thinking about, in the category of “what works, what doesn’t, and why?”

Today I went to the yoga school where I will be doing my yoga teacher training over the next year. I arrived there to find two students outside. As I approached they told me that the class had been cancelled. While we stood there talking a fourth potential student appeared.

Returning home I shared this experience with some of the others, and we related it to the recent consideration we have been giving to whether or not to hold the Sunday Feast this coming Sunday, which is part of the Easter long weekend.

I’ve been thinking about this for a number of years, actually, and here’s my conclusion thus far:

When we put the word out: “Come to the Sunday Feast” we are inviting people to come. We want people to come. If people then respond to this invitation, and come, and find that we are closed, then what does that communicate to them?

“We don’t care about you. You don’t matter.”

That’s a problem.

In Peru I practiced eka-kirtan-vrata. One Kirtan. One Lecture. (I had a 64MB mp3 player, so I had little choice - props to Raivata for that). I only listened to Sri Prahlad’s Harer Nama Volume One, and the Contemporary Urban Preaching Seminars, again and again, trying to extract the essential nectar from them.

Here is one of the things that I discerned to be a guiding principle (you can also read it mentioned in HH Devamrita Swami’s online diary here [paragraph 7]):

The difference between a temple and a preaching center

In the temple the Deity is the center of everything. Everything revolves around the Deity and the service of the Deity.

A preaching center is a center with a different focus. In the preaching center everything revolves around the guest and the service of the guest.

This is an important and fundamental point.

This is an important and fundamental point.

This is an important and fundamental point.

In the Pancaratra-pradipa (the Deity Worship manual for ISKCON) it explains that if a guest arrives, especially the atithi, or unexpected guest, then one should stop their adoration of the Deity and serve the guest, completing the Deity worship later.

The unexpected guest is a representative of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Narayana.

So even if we told everyone there that we were closing next week, unexpected people would come.

Imagine it - we’re putting out the message: “Please come, please come”, and then someone responds to that, and comes along, and we’re nowhere to be found.

It reminds me of Srila B.R. Sridhara Swami’s characterization of the 10th offense in chanting: “To not have complete faith in the transcendental power of the Holy Name and to maintain material attachments, even after understanding so many instructions on this matter.”

He says: “It is like inviting Krishna into our house as a guest, and then ignoring him completely.”

Call me a fanatic, but we are not going to close. I know that some people were a little upset that sometimes we cannot all attend all of the temple festivals, but hopefully this will help people to appreciate that this is not whimsical or separatist. Simply the fact is that for our outreach programs we are saying to the people: “You please come, and we will serve you.”

And we mean it.

Here’s the same point in a another style that may be a little easier to digest for many. From the Contemporary Urban Preaching Seminars:

One day some devotees asked Srila Prabhupada: “Srila Prabhupada, if a devotee sincerely presents Krishna Consciousness to someone, and that person rejects it - whose fault is that?”

Srila Prabhupada replied: “It is the fault of that person - they are envious, like a snake”.

But he didn’t leave it at that. He didn’t just say it was their fault and leave it at that. He continued: “So you must become expert snake charmers.”

Nalakuvara said in a recent post:

After seeing this wave of new regulars at our Auckland and Wellington centres I’m convinced that if any centre anywhere isn’t getting this steady flow of serious candidates for the spiritual life then something has been overlooked.

I’m always interested to know what works and what doesn’t, in order to identify the active principles and apply them in a more effective way.

The 7 Principles of Effective Ministry begins by saying, basically: “If you’re happy with how things are going in your programs now, then great. The results you are getting are a product of your programming. If you are interested in considering something else, then this book may be for you.”

That’s a good approach. If we do have the feeling that our outreach is not as effective as it could be, or that we’d like it to be, then the question we have to ask ourselves is: “Why are they not coming?”

We have to ask ourselves that question.

Preaching and Leadership are the same thing - Influence. In both cases our intent is to induce / inspire change or transformation in others.

Let me relate a personal experience in relation to this.

A number of years ago one of the residents of the ashram I was living in went to visit another city. While he was there someone got in his ear and said things like: “Why are there so many people there? Why don’t they send some people here?”

This question was not being asked in an honest way, to elicit information with a view to making improvements, but rather as a rhetorical, veiled criticism: “It is wrong. They should send some people here.”

I know that previously I said my style is not to go point-by-point. I do actually do that, but I’m not into public debating. I do it for myself and for others who are genuinely interested, and not inquiring as a veiled criticism. I have no interest in twisting the arm of people who don’t want to accept something. I wrote a point-by-point rebuttal of the arguments and doubts that my friend had been exposed to, and I shared it with him. I think enough years have passed now for the persons involved to have faded into anonimity, and to allow me to speak about this in a clinical manner. Let me address this one particular point.

“It is ridiculous to ask why people are not being “sent” here. The question that he should be asking is why he is unable to inspire people to come forward. That will actually give him some useful information. Here there are people because there is some situation where they feel inspired to come forth and voluntarily participate. To demand that people be “sent” is a symptom of the problem that is he’s facing there.”

Leadership is not position - it is influence. Preaching is not position: “You have to listen to me, because I’m right. You have to listen to me because I have the absolute truth”.

You cannot demand that people follow you. If you try to lead from a position then your actual influence will decrease. If you try to preach from a position (”You have to listen to me because I am… I know…”) then your influence will decrease.

In order to lead effectively you have to “touch the heart before you ask for a hand”. Authentic leadership means helping people to develop both themselves and the external situation, simultaneously, toward a better and brighter future.

You have to genuinely care about people and want to help them, not view them as resources to carry out your plans. Of course external objectives are there, but these must only ever be pursued in terms of the people you are working with. We give people appropriate tasks linked to organizational objectives in order to challenge and develop them. When you demonstrate that to the people, they will come. They are searching for genuine leadership.

So whether you are considering a replete ashram in another location or an empty outreach center surrounded by thousands of people, the question you need to ask yourself is “Why are they not coming?”

When you ask yourself that question honestly, and when you can correctly answer it, then you can do something about it. Otherwise, asking this question to other people as a means of reproaching them or criticizing them will be ineffective. You can’t change how others are acting in the situation - you can only modify what you’re doing. If you want to lead then you start leading “from the inside out”, as Srila Bhakti Tirtha Swami put it.

As I summarized for my friend: “Let him demonstrate his qualification for taking care of these people first, and then maybe some people will come to him.”

And so it is. If no-one comes, then we say: “What are we doing or not doing that is stopping these people from coming?” We honestly examine the situation, identify the error, correct it, and advance.

As they say at the beginning of the 7 Practices - if you’re happy with what you’re doing, then all glories, this post is not meant for you. Otherwise, there may be something you can do about it - if you’re willing to take ownership and responsibility for the situation, and that starts with the honestly-asked, self-directed question: “Why are they not coming?”

You’ve got to start out thinking like that in order to be successful in the Loft preaching paradigm, and you’ve got to keep thinking like that to keep it alive. You see, asking this question means that you have actually started to consider the “others” as persons and taken the first step toward treating them personally.

People matter!

Here is a good discussion about the use of “technology in worship“. The comments are especially insightful and illustrative. It’s the old “harmonium in the kirtan” conundrum again. I spoke about this last time we were at New Varshan (Tri Yuga, do you still have the recording?).

It’s a tension between the Holy Name and the carrier wave of musical sound vibration. We know that the active ingredient is the Holy Name of the Lord, but we want to deliver that to the public with a nice sound vibration so that they will sit still and listen to it. At the same time, we don’t want to forget what the essence is. So therefore Srila Prabhupada said: “No harmonium in arati kirtan”, and at the same time spent so much time personally training the missionaries he sent to England in music, and wrote so many letters to Hamsadutta casting the vision of the “World Sankirtan Party”.

At the Sunday Feast here we are developing the first part of the program as something like a musical performance, more akin to a spectator event (no one came and participated anyway, so it’s no loss) and retaining the second final kirtan as interactive dancing and singing with a major emphasis on the participative congregational chanting of the Holy Name.

It’s really important to have that, because that’s what changes people’s hearts. Having the musical aspect helps to get them to come. It’s not a question of one of the other, but both. We need to get people to come, and we need to give them access to the technologies that they need to cleanse the heart.

It’s the same thing with everything that we do. Overemphasizing on one side or the other reduces the effectiveness of our preaching. Overemphasizing “telling it like it is” and “giving it to people straight” helps us end up with an empty room, or at least to miss a lot of our potential audience. Overemphasizing “meeting people where they are at” and “considering their needs and their comfort zone” helps us end up with a room full of people going nowhere.

The art of preaching is to get the balance right. For every story of Srila Prabhupada giving a thunderous denunciation there is another of him taking time to talk about racing cars or some other trivial subject that his audience was interested in.

Adaptive in the field. Conservative at home.
Innovative on the edge, Traditional at the core.

We need both.

-Srila Prabhodananda Sarasvati

I’m just cleaning out my desk, as I’m leaving my job, and I found some notes that I wrote around this time last year. Here is an excerpt:

Process versus Product

Examples:

Loft as product

• Get this type of place, do these types of programs in this way

Loft as process

• Get the right people, give them the right situation and direction, and let them do their thing.

Product is static and specific.
Process is dynamic and adaptable.

Product - what - imitation
Process - how - following

Process - enable Massively Parallel Development

• Generate reusable components and resources
• Allow resource modification and recontribution
• Enable multidirectional communication
• Encourage information sharing
• Maintain common “codebase”

Enable Infinite Scalability

• Empower the individual - distribute power
• Decentralize responsibility (avoid bottlenecks)
• Create resource along with requirement (0 net cost)

From the last post:

What brands now have to do is say, ‘I’m recognizing you as the complete and incredible being that you are.

We have to be careful about this. Amongst our early attempts to develop slideshows there were efforts which tried to show the “miseries of material life”. What we realized when we ran them is that a common perception of this message can be summed up in two words: “You Suck”.

When the public sees a slide presentation like this, it comes across like a direct attack on them. Practitioners of Krishna Consciousness may look at each other knowingly and nod their heads, but when you show pictures of Joe or Jane Public and say something like: “Just see how much he is suffering. Just see how meaningless her life is”, the audience hears: “You Suck”. Why? Because that’s them you have up on the screen. Joe and Jane Public.

When you show natural disasters and talk about how unstable the material world is and how at any moment we can be thrown head over heels, or killed, people say (or at least think): “Those poor people. How dare you try to profit from their suffering by using it to try to guilt trip / scare us into buying your religion”.

So we’ve been working on some different angles, which communicate the same essential truth, but in a more palatable way.

Instead of “material life is suffering!”, we say: “Modern life is too complicated” (people all nod their heads - “simplicity, yeah!”)

Instead of “wasting your life”, we say: “losing time”

Instead of “look at these people suffering”, we say “stress related disorders are superseding all other forms of physical ailment”.

Instead of “working like asses”, we say “many people are obligated to spend long hours commuting to and from work” (they recognize: “yeah - that’s me!”)

It’s all about recognizing that people r0ck, and they just have a few details that they need to align to fix those niggling discrepancies. As Prabhupada begins his Bhagavatam commentary: “You r0ck, but… there is a pinprick in your otherwise awesome existence, and the Bhagavatam is here to help you address that”.

We can help with those details. After all, religion means proper adjustment.

Of course, if the only audience we’re after is one that consists of people who are completely materially exhausted, then another presentation will be appropriate, but this way of doing it seems so far to have the widest appeal.

Atma Yoga

is the new name for our facility here in Brisbane.

It’s primal - it starts with “A”, the same letter that Krishna begins His instructions to Arjuna with in Bhagavad-gita, the ABC of spiritual instruction (”asocyan” 2.11).

As Guy Kawasaki recommends in his post “The Name Game“, it starts with a letter early in the alphabet.

As Aniruddha prabhu, ISKCON TP in Melbourne, pointed out around this time last year, yoga is the “ultimate truth brand“.

It’s a powerful sound bite. Easily pronounced and remembered. It’s symmetrical - two syllables, four letters in each, starts and ends with “A”, the primal phoneme.

It also links us in with Atmananda das’ Atma Yoga program and allows us to contribute momentum to that, while adding momentum to what we do.

I met Atmananda briefly in New Zealand recently while he was there for the Atma Yoga teachers training course. I didn’t get much of a chance to talk with him, but I called him at Radhadesh, Belgium, where he is currently teaching the training course and we talked about opportunities for collaboration moving forward from here.

Atma Yoga - Yoga for the Soul
Level 3
231 Albert St
Brisbane, Australia

There is the one who takes advantage of opportunities, and there is the One who creates the opportunities.

Over the past year we have made a number of efforts in different directions. We’ve trekked over town and put in offers on different spaces. We’ve tried to get electrical work and facility upgrades done on the Loft. In spite of so much effort, there has been little to show for it. In spite of doing everything possible, there were no results. It certainly wasn’t for lack of trying.

Now everything is falling into place. We’re not putting in any more effort. We’ve tried to the best of our abilities before, and we continue to try to the best of our abilities now. Now however, things are happening.

This shows that our effort alone is not sufficient to produce results. The results of our actions are dependent on the superior force of “circumstance”. When Krishna wills it, it will happen.

At the same time, our effort is a necessary ingredient. It is not dependent on our effort. Our effort in fact is useless. It is not what we do, but what we are. What we do, however, is a function of what we are.

Krishna does not need our contribution. The opportunity to give a donation, or to do some voluntary service, is not an opportunity for us to provide something to Krishna that he lacks. There is no benefit for Krishna, or loss for Him if we don’t want to give. The opportunity to give a donation or to give voluntary service is like an amnesty where we can return stolen goods. Krishna doesn’t need us to give. We need to give to Krishna.

Anyway, we keep trying, no matter what result we get. When the results come, we can understand that Krishna is acting. Yesterday as we left the new facility Elliot turned to me and said: “If Krishna isn’t God, then I’ll eat my hat!”

Today Acyuta Bhava called me at work to tell me about the effort to have the electricity connected. We were concerned, because this is a commercially zoned facility, and we have two meters, one for each side of the floor. At the Loft we had to pay $500 as a bond for the electricity. Our concern was that we would be paying at least $1000 for a bond - money we don’t have. Acyuta told them that we were a community-based not-for-profit organization, and they hooked us up for free. When she mentioned the word “Krishna”, the young lady on the other end of the phone started gushing about her visit to India, and the lack of vegetarian food options in Brisbane. When Acyuta told her we do yoga and dinner as a package deal, she took down the address and the hours. She lives in Spring Hill, an inner city suburb close by.

I will not be so bold as to say that I have seen God, but I have seen signs along the way, and I am encouraged.

We’re moving!

Today we took possession of our new facility here in Brisbane. It is at 231 Albert St, 3rd floor. It is 220 square meters, an entire floor - with air conditioning throughout.

We’ve outgrown the existing Loft facility, and the lack of facilities there have been very hard for the past year - no discussion room, no dining room, no kitchen (we’ve been sharing with Govinda’s restaurant - thanks guys!), no storage facility. In spite of these obstacles we were still getting 20 - 30 people a night!

With the new place we’ll be able to take it to the next level. Big ups to Param Satya and Acyuta Bhava for scouting the place, and props to everyone who weighed in to help us grab it before someone else could snatch it up - you know who you are.

Along with the move we’re changing the name - “the Loft” is soooo yesterday (as I joked the day we decided to change it). It was good in 1996 when it was a small place upstairs in Newmarket with Celestine Prophecy discussions. Now we need something that more powerfully encapsulates our brand. Right now we’re in negotiations for the Australian rights for a particular name, so I’ll unveil that once we get confirmation.

It feels like 1998 all over again in many senses, when we first opened what is now Gaura Yoga in Wellington. The same challenges - Param Satya will probably come in at the last minute on our opening night with the plates again…

Anyway, Krishna consciousness is ever fresh.

Of course any move means change and uncertainty. There have been some rumours that we will be dropping the Sunday Feast, or moving the Sunday Feast somewhere else, and probably a whole lot of other ideas. Let me clear up any confusion on that right now:

The Sunday Feast continues at Govinda’s, and we’ll continue to contribute as we have been doing, and to move things ahead as they have been moving. There are no plans to drop the Sunday Feast or move it elsewhere. This is not division, it’s multiplication. We are expanding the preaching facility in the city.

So now you’ve heard it from the horse’s mouth. Hey, I’m always ready to tell people about what we’re doing. That’s what I do best. If anyone ever has any queries or inquiries, just get in touch with me.

OK, so check out the photos of the new place.

I arrived in Wellington late in the afternoon one day in January 1998, with my belongings in two backpacks, one on my back, the other on my front.

I’d just spent the last three or four weeks with His Holiness Devamrita Swami acting as his driver and helping to do a little of the extensive research work for the book he was working on at the time (now published as Searching for Vedic India). He gave me a few books out of the boxes he had, to read over and produce summaries. The sheer amount of raw material that went into that book is incredible, but I digress.

Prior to that I’d been with His Holiness Bhaktisiddhanta Swami on his Nitai Gauranga bus distributing books during the Prabhupada marathon, in Wellington. While there in Wellington taking bath on the waterfront under a firehose in the early morning I had thought that I’d like to live in Wellington. I was born in Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city with a population of over 1 million in a massive suburban sprawl. Wellington, 800 km south, was a picturesque city on a harbour with a concentrated population of 300,000, and a clearly defined city center. The facilities there are disproportionate to the population because it is the seat of government of New Zealand. The civil service there generates a lot of employment and a strong local economy.

After leaving the Nitai Gauranga bus party and travelling with Devamrita Swami for a just under a month we arrived back in Auckland. There Devamrita Swami asked me to go to Wellington, get a job, and help support a new Loft that was to be opened there. At that time there was one Loft center in Auckland that had been running since 1994. The Auckland Loft team was now to be divided into two in order to open a new center in Wellington. Mother Krishnaloka would remain in Auckland to run the Loft there, and Param Satya would head up Wellington.

I walked across town from the Wellington bus station after the 10 hour bus journey and found the address. I had sat downstairs in the car there a month or so before, while Devamrita Swami negotiated with the landlord over the terms of lease. At that time I had no idea of what was going on - I just drove where I was told to, and waited until I was told to drive somewhere else.

Now I found the downstairs door at 45 Tory St locked. The space we had secured was on the 3rd floor of a building that housed Burger King downstairs and next door to our entrance. Later on we would get ice from them for the Sunday Feast programs - thanks Burger King!

I found a payphone and dialled the number I had been given for the Loft - 801-5500. Param Satya answered the phone. “Haribol. Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada. The door is locked - could you open it for me please?”

“What? You’re kidding! Where are you?”
“I’m downstairs at a payphone.”
“No way! I don’t believe you!”
“Could you open the door please?”

A few moments later I was in the site of the new Loft.

The place looked like a demolition site. The other Auckland Lofties had been there for a week or two already and had done a lot of work, but there was still a lot to be done. Mother Krishnaloka, Seva Kunja, Sudevi, Khadiravan, Param Satya, and myself were the initial crew.

I was there sanding a wall one evening when Devamrita Swami rang up. When he heard that I was there sanding the wall he spoke to me on the phone - “What are you doing there sanding the wall? Go and get a job!”

The others did the renovations of the space, which were extensive. Sudevi accidentally destroyed a wall that should have remained, and Param Satya took out another one - right along the side of the main room that formed a hallway leading to the kitchen. As the result of this one we opened and operated for several months with no wall between our main room and the kitchen. The ladies lived at the Loft, and I rented a small place overlooking the city in the woods of Mt Victoria, about 20 minutes walk from the Loft.

The work proceeded at a breakneck pace, and we pushed to open as soon as possible, as our budget was limited and with the facility closed there was no income.

Seva Kunja and Krishnaloka went back to Auckland to reopen the Loft there after the holiday break, and we determined to open on Lord Nityananda’s appearance day in February. The team there consisted of Param Satya, Sudevi, Khadiravan, and myself. Four people.

Khadiravan rang around 50 persons who had given their phone numbers to the Nitai Gauranga bus party members in the street during the Prabhupada marathon in Wellington, saying they wanted to be contacted when we opened a center there. She told them we were having a “fund raising” dinner opening, with a charge of $10 - which we considered at that time to be a lot of money. At the Loft in Auckland we had charged a donation of $6 for the class and dinner, which the guests would drop into a basket in front of the bain marie as they collected their plate. We would later have to keep putting the price up in Wellington to control numbers, until we were finally getting $14 for a yoga class and dinner.

The day finally arrived, and Param Satya was rushing around until the last minute, arriving at 5 pm with the plates and cutlery - just in time to cook for the program.

There was still no wall on the side of the main room, so the sound of the frantic cooking in the kitchen leaked into the space.

I spoke to the guests who came, about Lord Nityananda. One person came from the 50 people that Khadiravan had called up, and she brought two friends with her. If I remember it correctly, they asked us to help them with their bus fare home, and certainly didn’t have $10 to contribute. Angelo, the Greek landlord of the building was there, and also Padmanabha das, Sri Prahlad’s uncle, a colourful local character.

I remember that I tried to speak about Lord Nityananda in an appropriate way to the guests, who had no exposure to Krishna Consciousness or Krishna culture previous to this. At the end Padmanabha started to talk about Lord Nityananda going to pubs to preach and running through the streets naked. At that point I decided to cut our losses, and we ended up. It was an ignomious start. It was difficult to speak because we had no strategy, no hedgehog concept of what we were all about.

8 years down the track Gaura Yoga has a clearly defined concept, crystallized and refined as its identity (view photos). In the beginning we were struggling to determine what we were all about and how best to serve the people. We tried a number of different programs, including a seminar on Aliens (which at that time got the biggest crowd - 14 people on the opening night), and a program called “Spiritual Healing”. We didn’t do a Sunday Feast for a number of months because there was another local ISKCON center in Newlands run by Jagajivan Prabhu which held one. Eventually we started the Sunday Feast. In every city of the world there are thousands, if not millions of people. Different people will be attracted to a different style, a different presentation, a different group of peers. We need unlimited Sunday Feast programs and facilities all over the world - in every suburb, to serve everyone.

Param Satya had started teaching yoga in Auckland in 1997, shortly before we left. In Auckland we had used a small office space next to the Loft, which could fit 6 people. Param Satya had done a two year yoga teacher training course on Devamrita Swami’s advice, and was looking at how to integrate it with the Loft.

Up to this point, the biggest night at the Loft in Auckland was centered around “The Celestine Prophecy”, a discussion group on a highly popular new age book. Friday night was also big, the Bhagavad-gita discussion night, especially when Devamrita Swami was in town.

In Wellington we cautiously introduced one night of yoga to the menu. A few people came, but it was nothing outstanding. Aliens was outpacing it initially. Interest in Aliens fell off until we had one regular (who bought a Bhagavatam set). Gradually yoga began to show itself to be the fastest horse, and we increased the number of nights dedicated to yoga. Eventually yoga took over, and now the center is known as Gaura Yoga. It was an organic development. Having seen the transition from Celestine Prophecy and Bhagavad-gita in Auckland to Yoga in Wellington I have no doubt that yoga will one day go its way as well, and also that different cities may respond differently to different programs. In Auckland there was more of a reading crowd. I’m not sure how that has changed or remained the same in the intervening years.

Nanda Gopa came to stay with me in Mt Victoria, along with another devotee, whose identity escapes my faulty memory right now. The two of them would do book distribution during the day and invite people to the Loft. Later on I’ll tell the story of Josh 2 and how he came to the Loft and ended up in the first Contemporary Vedic Men’s Ashram.

The opening of the Wellington Loft is memorable to me because it fell on this day. The Nityananda Trayodasi festival in 2001 also sticks in my mind, in the current facility in Vivian St. We held an abhiseka of Sri Sri Nitai Sacinandana, our small Gaura Nitai Deities from the men’s Contemporary Vedic Ashram. Mahavan cooked the feast that night, and Wade, who has gone on to become an Anglican Youth Pastor, and I performed the abhiseka ceremony. Sudevi dressed the Deities, whose clothes were made by Mahalaxmi devi dasi (now in New Dwaraka, LA).

The opening of the Vivian St facility was attended by Sri Prahlad and Kala Samvara prabhu, shortly after the Ratha Yatra in Auckland. That was in December 2000. In April 2001 we left Wellington to drive to Auckland on our way to South America. I remember the devotees standing on Vivian St and crying as we pulled away.

When I reach the end of my life I pray that I will still remember those years that I spent there in Wellington, the pastimes that I enjoyed in the company of the devotees, and that in whatever life is to come I will have the privilege to serve them and to serve alongside them once more.

Today is the appearance day of Sri Nityananda Prabhu. You can read more about His appearance and activities at various places on the web, including a number of articles linked to from www.iskconnews.net (I just added Citraka Prabhu’s feed, which has given some great new content).

Today is also the 8th anniversary of the Loft preaching center in Wellington, now known as Gaura Yoga. I’m going to share my memories of the opening of that center today, but first some preamble.

Those of you who follow this blog might remember that I was going to interview Loft devotees in NZ to collate their experiences coming to the Loft, while I was there at the retreat. Well, I thought it would be a great opportunity because basically everyone was going to be in the one place. However, it wasn’t the best setting, because everyone was there in the one place, and it was hard to get time and space with people to go into the subject with the depth needed. I’ll need to do another trip over to NZ to talk specifically with people on this one.

One interesting conversation that I was able to have was with my god brother Mahavan das. We discussed the format of the book on Loft preaching (which is based on transcripts of the Contemporary Urban Preaching Seminars by His Holiness Devamrita Swami, with additional content from interviews). My original idea was to have quotes like Nectar of Book Distribution. We discussed putting a section at the beginning which follows three or four different people through their entire experience of coming to Krishna Consciousness through the Loft. This will help to illustrate the entire workflow of Loft preaching. It’s not just about having a yoga class or a funky building - it’s about knowing what people need to come in out of the cold and being there every step of the way. Then in the discussion of principles that follows, those same people’s experience will be used to illustrate the points in the form of quotes from their experience.

Later I had a conversation with another god brother who is going to open a Contemporary Vedic Ashram. We discussed the process and I had an epiphany. A lot of times people come to visit a Loft center and they take a look around at what is going on and how it is being done, and then they go away and try to replicate that, but it doesn’t work. This god brother of mine had been examining the Contemporary Vedic Ashram in Wellington and making his plans based on that. I reminded him that this was a CVA 8 years down the track and that it certainly did not start out that way. If you try to copy a running Loft you will not get the same results as if you understand how the thing was built and follow that process. That’s my thought on things.

So I think there is some value in including in the book tales of Loft planting, in addition to testimonials of people who came through the Loft, to give some idea of the process of planting a Loft. I’ll make my memories of this day in history a separate entry.

At our strategic planning retreat at the beginning of this year we set three strategic priorities across all our programs:

1. Get the right people on the team
2. Create and Deepen Community
3. Leadership Development

In addition to these guiding principles for our organizational development this year, we also projected some tactical goals. One of these is getting a new Loft. This has now become our primary focus since returning from the Loft preachers retreat in NZ.

The current Loft facility is about as minimal as it gets, and has now become a significant barrier to pushing on our mission here, specifically in terms of creating and deepening community.

Here are the characteristics that we identified at our planning retreat for the new Loft facility:

• Polished wooden floors
• CBD or edge
• Close to transport w/ parking
• 4 or 5 rooms
• Kitchen
• Living Space
• 2 x toilet + shower
• Gas (for cooking)
• Windows / ventilation
• Air conditioning
• Stage
• 2nd floor (or above)
• $3000 per month
• Changing rooms
• Storage

Vision - if you can hold it, you can have it. The bigger the vision, the more opportunities you’ll get to give it up before you get it.

Here is a conversation at the Loft the other night:

SP: “So what do you do during the week?”

G: “I’m studying business”

SP: “Oh? What kind of business are you going to have when you’re finished?”

G: “I don’t know.”

You can tell when someone is not in their zone, engaged in the activity that they were designed to be engaged in, when they lack enthusiasm and are frustrated. After some time on other subjects the conversation came back around to this.

SP: “The Bhagavad-gita explains that we’re all born with a nature suited to a particular type of work. Business is not really your thing, is it?”

G: “No, it’s not”

SP: I can tell. When someone is really wired for business, and I ask them what kind of business they are going to have, they don’t even have to think about it - they have an idea, and a lot of enthusiasm. I can see that your heart is not in it. It’s the same with IT - lots of people study it because their parents want them to, or they think it will lead to a good career. I ask them: “What language do you program in?”, and they say: “We’re studying Java,” and I ask them: “No, I mean what language do you program in, when you get home at night and get on your machine.” Then they look at me like I’m crazy, and I know that they don’t have what it takes.
Everyone is “wired” by nature for something, and when you’re doing that thing you find it very easy. You’re probably not so interested in what you’re doing right now, have to work quite hard at it, and are not really excelling at it. When you understand where your particular area of talent and strength lies, and work in that area, you’ll enjoy what you’re doing, you’ll get results without great effort, and you’ll be happy doing it.

G: “That sounds very interesting”.

SP: “Unfortunately in today’s society there is not much guidance in helping people to understand what their natural talents and strengths are, so a lot of people are just drifting around, doing things that they don’t enjoy and can never be really good at. If they could just understand what nature has wired them for, they’ll be able to be happy and successful.”

This is an angle of preaching that appeals to all types of people, because it speaks to their potential to realize their nature, no matter what it is.

Please refer to these earlier posts for more background on this:
Elevator pitching Krishna Consciousness Part 1
Elevator pitching Krishna Consciousness Part 2
Elevator pitching Krishna Consciousness Part 3

This is in the drafts folder and I’ll publish it before I head to NZ.

When I first became integrated with the team at the Loft in Auckland I was inducted into the outcome of several conversations that informed the vision and strategy of the Loft preaching paradigm. The Loft was originally put together by a team of preachers lead by His Holiness Devamrita Swami.

In an early discussion one of the sannyasis said: “Why are we always like an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff? Why do we always get people after they fall off? Why don’t we get people before they go over the cliff?”

This line of thinking contributed to a focused approach to presenting Krishna Consciousness to a specific segment of the population, and tuning the presentation to serve those persons, while tuning other segments of the population out. They made a conscious decision to purposefully focus on persons other than those seeking primarily relief from distress (who are often at the bottom of the cliff).

This is not a selfish, insensitive, or elitist approach. Imagine a war zone with many casualities. You are a doctor. You have to quickly assess the patients and treat them. Your responsibility is to save as many lives as possible. If you focus on the most critical cases first you will be able to treat only one or two persons. Others, meanwhile, will die, or go from serious to critical. If, however, you treat less critical cases first and then engage them to help you, you will be able to more effectively help a greater number of people.

We’re not talking about neglecting any type of person here, we’re talking about structuring a practical approach to progressively build sufficient capability to serve all types of persons.

There is one Bhaktivedanta Purport to the Caitanya-caritmarita, cited in the Contemporary Urban Preaching Seminars, related to this:

The Krishna consciousness movement is meant to attract all types of men, even those who desire things other than the Lord’s devotional service. Through the association of devotees, they gradually begin to render devotional service.

Most people come to the Krishna Consciousness movement with desires other than performing pure devotional service to the Supreme Transcendent Personality of Godhead, Sri Krishna. Therefore they have mixed motivations involving the four different psychological dispositions described in Bhagavad-gita that I outlined in my article on Preaching for Leadership Recruitment. Depending on the elevator pitch that drives your preaching approach in a given program (we think of them as “brands” to help reinforce the understanding that they are tuned to a particular target market), you’ll appeal primarily to one or the other of these groups.

Remember that most people are not conscious that they want Krishna Consciousness - they think they want something else. The Loft is based on attracting those people by understanding their temporary needs and desires, and simultaneously ministering to their eternal needs and desires - a principle described in the abovementioned puport:

By associating with devotees, such people give up the mumukshu principle and render devotional service. The real cause for this change is the association of devotees.

Now depending on the presentation that you make, you will primarily attract one or the other of these groups.

• If you emphasize free food and escaping from the horrible material world - you’ll appeal to people whose primary motivation is avoiding distress.
• If you emphasize “being opulent for Krishna” you’ll appeal to people whose motivation is to acquire wealth.
• If you emphasize a program of social reform or revolution you’ll appeal to people who are inquisitive.
• If you emphasize a program of acquiring knowledge, you’ll appeal to people who are looking for knowledge.

The point is that you have to be intentional about which type of persons you are appealing to, because remember - as I mentioned, a person’s inner psychology is revealed by the choices they consistently make when two values are in conflict - they value one above the other and act accordingly. So what has strong appeal to one type will necessarily have weak appeal to another group. Birds of a feather flock together for a reason. If a person doesn’t have a consistent internal value structure they are mentally imbalanced and will manifest as socially dysfunctional. If your program doesn’t have a consistent value structure it will be dysfunctional as well.

Experts on presentations generally recommend reflecting on your material and then writing down the one sentence or phrase that you would say to the audience if you could only say one thing. It’s a useful discipline that helps to distill your message to its essence and develop a laser-sharp focus. Tony Evans (who did a great series on Discipleship) takes it one step further, ending his sermons with “I’ve only said one thing tonight - …..”.

Underlying our communication of Krishna Consciousness is a consistent message. One elevator pitch that I have noticed, the kernel, the basic conclusion that is expanded out in further detail is the following:

Life is full of suffering - birth, death, old age, and disease. The material world is a horrible place, filled with horrible things. You don’t want to take birth here ever again. You have to become Krishna Conscious.

In some circles, this is the central message driving the preaching, seeking to motivate people to take to Krishna Consciousness. This is the underlying mentality, the essential point that everything revolves around and keeps returning to: “You know, at the end of the day my friend, life is full of suffering….”

If you read my discussion on Preaching for Leadership Recruitment, you might realize that this type of preaching will appeal mainly to people whose character is such that they are seeking relief from distress. This will resonate with them, and they’ll say: “Yes, I feel that. I am attracted by that”.

A side point is that the people you have will determine the people you will attract. Birds of a feather flock together. The people who are attracted by this preaching will then repeat it with conviction, and attract more people who are looking for this.

There was one boy who was studying administration at the university. Those who know him will know who I’m talking about. He is temple commander now in one of our facilities. Classic ksatriya. Wanted to be a politician and change the world. He was attracted to the movement by a presentation that we were on a mission to change the world. That’s another elevator pitch:

This world is designed by Krishna, and He has the perfect system for its functioning. Our duty within this world is to help the people by organizing the world according to Krishna’s spiritual principles for material organization.

Presentations on this theme focus on social and economic problems and Krishna Conscious solutions for them, in this way demonstrating the superior practical nature of Krishna Consciousness. This presentation appeals to the people who value competence, pragmatism, and changing the world.

Here is the elevator pitch that His Holiness Devamrita Swami uses, consistently:

These books contain the highest knowledge. If you read these books you will be able to see clearly what you are doing and make the best decisions in your life. You will be able to really help yourself, and help others.

Where others might conclude their class with: “Chant Hare Krishna”, “Become a devotee”, “Come to the temple”, “Join us in escaping the misery of the world”, or any one of a plethora
of conclusions, H.H. Devamrita Swami consistently concludes with: “Therefore you should study this knowledge so that you are equipped to make the best decisions”.

No prizes for guessing which type of people that this preaching consistently attracts.

I believe that this is one of the vital ingredients for success in Loft preaching - using the right elevator pitch, or the correct conceptual orientation in presenting Krishna Consciousness. Loft preaching is about recruiting and developing reproducing teams of people. A successful Loft leads to another successful Loft. I always used to wonder - “you know, I saw those devotees all the time while I was growing up in Auckland, but I was never attracted to the movement until His Holiness Devamrita Swami started Loft preaching there. Then I became interested and attracted to participating in the movement.”

Of course some of that is due to my personal journey in life and need to experience certain things, but looking back on it from this angle I can recognize that it was when I was given a presentation of what Krishna Consciousness was about that appealed to my internal values that I was tipped over the edge. I just wasn’t fortunate enough to be on the platform of pure devotional service and spontaneously attracted to Krishna’s pastimes in the spiritual world - like most people in this world.

In the Contemporary Urban Preaching seminars you will hear His Holiness Devamrita Swami explain that most of our guests come through their network of friends and social connections, and very few from foot traffic, which is why we favour low-cost second story locations slightly off the city center.

I am an exception to that in that I was foot traffic. I mention myself in this connection to provide a further example that I personally know about. I was walking down the road one day when I saw a sign that said: “The Loft - Broadway’s Spiritual Centre. Vegetarian Food. Dine. Network. Meet like-minded people.”

I was vegetarian and interested in finding places to eat, and when I read those words: “Network. Meet like-minded people” I thought only one thing: “Recruit”.

And now I’m recruiting for Krishna Consciousness movement.

The type of bait that you put on the line will influence the type of fish that you catch. I therefore propose that an attempt to emulate a Loft that uses a presentation based primarily around: “Material life is suffering - let’s all escape” will fail to have the same success that the Loft programs in New Zealand do, because it will appeal to people primarily seeking relief from distress.

More on that soon…

An “elevator pitch” is a 30-second or less summary of what you, your company, your product, or your service are all about.

The name comes from the exercise of imagining that you step onto an elevator with someone else. You press the button for your floor (it’s a sky scraper and you’re going to the top, or else it’s a slow lift), and the other person says: “So what do you do?” You then have to communicate to this person the essence of what you are all about before they step off the lift. It might be 30 seconds, it might even be as little as 10 seconds. What would you say? “Ummmm…. aaahhh… oh, have a nice day”

Bob Boylan, author of “Getting Everyone in Your Boat Rowing in the Same Direction”, and many others (such as Guy Kawasaki), make the argument that if the people in your organization don’t have the elevator pitch, then they really don’t know what your organizational mission is. Albert Einstein said: “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

In terms of the presentation of Krishna Consciousness we obviously need an elevator pitch, because as I mentioned last year: “today’s generation lives and dies by the “soundbite”, the “schlogan”, the tasty sample that succinctly summaries the siddhanta.”

You lose people’s attention if you can’t quickly and succinctly communicate your message. People are so overloaded with information today that they have developed defenses in the form of filters which quickly sift through the information they are bombarded with. You get a small opening, an audition, if you will, and you have to give them the intro that will get you the gig, or at least an extended audition.

Another point is that this elevator pitch is like a kernel or a seed that all the rest of your messaging develops from. It’s the underlying “one thing”. Everything else in your presentation reiterates and reinforces this central point.

Now - what’s your elevator pitch?

Your living environment affects your consciousness, as explained by Candidasa recently.

Your preaching environment also affects consciousness.

A degraded and neglected environment communicates the message: “We don’t care”, louder and long before you can open your mouth. These environments repel responsible people and attract activities such as theft.

A well maintained environment sends the message: “We care, and we take care”. It helps the staff to maintain a responsible and accountable attitude, and to maintain mission focus.

Here are a couple of before and after shots of the Red Hill ashram where I have the privilege of living at the moment (pay special attention to the skirting board). The
staff of this facility have taken great care to create an environment that is favorable for the cultivation of Krishna Consciousness, and for inviting others to come and experience Krishna Conscious community.

It’s a detail, but an important one.

(Note to self: Remember this!)

Talk to Rick Warren, Bill Hybels, Andy Stanley, or any other pastor of a so-called “Megachurch”, one whose membership is over 1000 people, and you’ll quickly find out that surprise, surprise, their church did not start out as a megachurch.

They started out as a small group of committed people with a mission to serve the spiritual needs of the community. They went from a membership of 0 to 1, and then on to 2, and then 3, and so on…

If you want a megachurch (whether in the sense of a desire to effectively serve people to the fullest extent of your ability, or even simply wanting to cut a profile, or a mixture of the two), you have to follow the same process that they have gone through, not simply try to imitate what they are doing now.

The point is, and this point keeps being brought back again and again, that it is all about making one (1) devotee. Just one devotee, that’s all. It’s not about making hundreds of devotees. It’s always, without fail, about making one devotee. It’s about going from 0 to 1, from 1 to 2. It’s always about making one devotee, the next devotee. That’s it. As long as you stay connected to that fundamental, everything else can fall into place. That’s an integral and indispensable part of the “success formula” of the Loft.

In the megachurches they have retained their ability to care for the individual through small group structures. As Andy Stanley puts it: “You have to grow small as you grow big”.

It’s all about getting one person, the next one. That’s all.

Postscript: On a personal note, it was easy to remember this when we were living alone in a house and looking for that one person. Now living with ten people in an ashram and with a Loft center with 100 or so people coming through a week it is easy to lose that focus, but let me tell you - maintaining that consciousness is integral to the ultra-personalism that characterizes the Loft program. We have to frequently refocus and reconnect with that mission. Just one person, the next person. To be successful in this preaching, make a plan to make one person Krishna Conscious, and execute it. Then alongside them, make the plan to make the next person Krishna Conscious. Look after the people you have, and empower them to do the same. Rinse, lather, repeat. Don’t get sidetracked into anything else - like a plan for making hundreds of people Krishna Conscious. It’s all about one person, just one person, and it’s not you - it’s the next person. Nothing else.