Only five years ago, I was a mid-level sales manager in a large U.S. Software Vendor in their southern regional headquarters of Melbourne, Australia. My territory was as large as the continental United States and I travelled the length and breadth of the country every two weeks, for days at a time, to ensure that my annual $2 million quota would be met.

I lived with my wife and our seven-year-old twin children in a suburban house that was well over our budget—but somehow this didn’t seem to matter as credit was free-flowing. It was filled with all the things that we just had to have. At the time I was on a true coffee bender, the only way that I could even out my seventy to eighty-hour work weeks and the bi-coastal three to four hour time differences. Naturally, this required the serious services of the Isomac Italian made, Cafe Standard espresso machine, with it’s price tag of two grand.

After 15 years of this lifestyle, my health was rapidly failing under my 220 pound, 5ft 9” frame. The impact of real-time connectivity meant that an endless flow of emails, texts, Skype conferences and phone calls ensured that I was reachable anywhere at any moment, and implicitly set the expectation that a response was required immediately. Not a moment of my time was really mine, and quality family time was scant. Add a mandatory client entertainment regimen of fine wining and dining and cocktail hours to this equation, and you get a very unsustainable lifestyle.

When I think back, though, it wasn’t my physical state that was at its weakest, though it was declining rapidly—it was my optimism. An “anything is possible” outlook on life that had been my greatest strength up until then was at its lowest ebb ever. For the first time ever, I could see no way out.

It was a hot summer’s night in January of 2008 when I drove the regular 40 minute drive to the suburbs, arriving at 9 p.m. to our over-mortgaged house filled with credit card debt. I went to my wife, Bobi, our children long asleep, to show her the spreadsheet of the unsustainable nature of our lifestyle.

More than the finances, I desperately needed Bobi to see and understand that another five years of this would see me in my grave. It didn’t need a sales pitch. She looked me in the eyes and she completely understood my plight, and how lost I was. It only took a second: she suggested we sell the house immediately.

“This place is not who we are, and our lives and happiness are not dependent on its upkeep,” she told me.

With all her love for me and our children, Bobi helped me to see and understand that the fantasy of owning our place, was not the same as building a home, and that no matter where we were, as long as we were together, we would always be at home.

The First Steps of Transformation

Not three weeks later, our house was sold. We rented a house further away from the city, which added 20 minutes to my daily commute, but made sense to us—we felt a need to be closer to nature. This paid off in dividends—although not as we had anticipated, because only a few months into our two year lease, I was called into the office by two of my co-workers and informed, unceremoniously, that I was being arbitrarily made redundant. I had been the region’s number one sales person for nearly three years running, but my job as I knew it, was suddenly gone. Driving our gas-guzzling Nissan Patrol home my head spun with disastrous apocalyptic scenarios, and fits of rage and anger at the senselessness of their reasoning.

Yet, two days later, my sagging heart began to beat at a normal rate, and my long face began to relax. At home on a sunny winter afternoon, no phone calls or emails, I found myself in the first real moment to think and breath in nearly 16 years. Again, it was my beautiful wife that told me not to search for a job and instead, for us to use the frequent flyer points I had accumulated over the last year to take a trip to Japan, a place that we had both very much wanted to experience.

Nine days after being made redundant, the towering skyscrapers of an almost completely urbanized Japan surrounded us. In the Nishiki Markets, almost directly in the center of old Kyoto, the ancient capital of Japan, our first real course-changing idea dawned on us.

Other Doors to Perception

Drawn in by the glimmering lights reflecting off some incredibly large crystals, my wife and I stood in the middle of a massive crystal shop. After a heavy day of Shinto shrining, temple visiting and walking, we were almost completely physically drained, but we felt an electromagnetic resonance pulling us in. In the moment of entry, free flowing energies inundated us at once—both soothing and incredibly energizing. Like children in a candy store, running from crystal to crystal, we sampled the unique energy signatures of each crystal. While we liked crystals, before this experience, we had never felt even the slightest energetic signature from a crystal. After just fifteen minutes we were energized enough to run a half marathon and had a clarity of thought, with a mutual realization at its center: so many of us are living deeply unsatisfying, unsustainable lives, in the total pursuit of a dream sold to us when we were very young and reinforced everyday by a consumerist society, by our peers and their fear-filled need to be the same.

We realized that, for the majority of people, saying “No” to this lifestyle isn’t an option. Like me, only a few months prior, many people can’t see a way out that would not cause great pain, suffering or humiliation.

We walked out of that shop determined never to return to an unsustainable, consumer-driven style of life. In our hearts a different way of living had become crystal clear, for us, for people like us, for the world.

This idea that a practical and balanced lifestyle was possible for everyone, without having to compromise our principals, mortgage our values and be who we were not, became the basis of a workshop my wife and I began as soon as we returned: a balanced and sustainable lifestyle, for busy people. We called it CrystalSpirit—the real science behind crystals unified the metaphysical explanations as to how crystals actually physically affect our cognition, increase our awareness of being and equip us with the realization that the power to choose this non-compromised way of living was always completely in our hands.

The workshops were met with great support, especially from those highly skeptical of crystals. With the science explained, people were now able to build the bridge between the mystical and how crystals actually work. Think about it, if only 35 years ago, someone were to tell you that the entire Encyclopedia Britannica was contained on a shinny little round disk, you might have had a laugh. With the science explaining it, it was no longer incredulous for many to accept that crystals had unique information for each of us and that it was through our liquid crystal biological nature, through our very own blood and the scientific principal of resonance, that information was transceived (radio terminology for transmitted and received) between human and crystal.

The workshops were a bold move, to follow what our hearts called us to do, but we consciously co-opted the energies around us to come to our aid. No, I didn’t take a course in “The Secret,” but rather experienced for the first time, that when you determine that you are going to act in generosity, in a fore-giving way, (to give before you receive), people aware of this frequency—attuned to its resonant electromagnetic waves—rally to your aid.

This interaction and reinforcement with all the people we came into contact with in our workshops and related activities (like the scientist who attended our workshop), planted the seed in our minds that whatever efforts we invested for the benefit of all, would always be met with support from other humans.

Family Time Inspires a Re-Imagined Education

Wanting to experience being together as much as we could as a family somehow became paramount at this point. With our young children in particular, we felt a strong affinity to taking back our responsibility as parents and becoming the primary providers of their education.

Working from home, the question “Who is really raising our children?” rose to the surface of our daily realities. Both our daughter, Réka and son, Lalika, were already in advanced reading and mathematical programs, but we saw a huge gap between the enforced standardized educational system and the rounded development of a naturally giving human being capable of making their own mindful decisions and who also took others into consideration.

Our need to create an environment of mutual learning, was driven by a common experience and respect of each other’s lives. Without it, our society would continue to produce automatons who obediently complete repetitive tasks without question. There is nothing for us, as a family, to gain out of supporting an outdated schooling system created to sustain the industrial revolution, now long gone. Nor would does this benefit the world.

A glaring problem became apparent: our children’s educational environment failed to encourage, or neglected to incorporate, creative thinking, where limitations and expectations are no longer part of the learning process.

We took our children out of school and started the process of un-schooling, or helping our children unlearn and let go of the repetitive robotic “need for an answer” type of thinking they were indoctrinated with. Instead, we started taking everything in life, from a flat tire to a meteor shower to making a sandwich to something they saw on tv and turning it into a learning experience, keeping wonder alive.

The most important part of this new educational model was that our children drove the learning experience—which now sees Réka seeking a publisher for her pre-teen travel adventure blogs and Lalika about to launch a crowdfunding campaign to support the production and distribution of a mindfulness board game he created, the intention of which is to unify humanity, the profits of which he wants to use to support humanitarian projects around the world.

We had created a mutual learning environment that over a three-year period had a gradual and natural progression, without pain, ridicule, suffering or humiliation. It illuminated our understanding that if we wanted our children to really be in a position to create a better world, we had to set a living example; become an active part of the solution.

Learning and Living Resourcefully

During this three year period, we moved twice, which included our sea-change to the beautiful Mornington Peninsula at the tip of Melbourne’s reaches. At our back door was the National Park—on one side, kangaroos hopping about the steep hills overlooking the ocean, and the bay on the other, a truly spectacular and energizing view. We often spent our time together as a family walking the length of the peninsula to explore each new trail.

To combine resources and extend our family, together with my mother, we lived in a duplex and then a smaller house. For the first time, we realized just how wonderful it was to share life’s experiences together as an extended family. We had many Indian friends, and their recollections of home life with three to four generations living in the one house was a rich tapestry of human connection, lost in today’s norm of separation. Knowledge, wisdom and love is also lost.

Living on the Mornington Peninsula in close quarters provoked a constant state of learning how to do more with less, to spend less, to find creative solutions, to look to community, family and friends for solutions. While our workshops had been effective and well received, we realized that to affect the type of change in the world that we were speaking of to our children, we had to create something that would have global reach and help to realize a less self-centered world.

The Birth of EnergeticXChange

I cannot tell why it was that particular morning, in the fourth year of our journey, that the idea was so lucid in my mind when I awoke. The sun was shining and I noticed Bobi was already up. An idea, luminous, yet still unformed, was blaring in my head. It’s the type of idea that you have to rapidly verbalize before it becomes hazy and you lose it forever. I ran to Bobi like an excited child wanting to express it. Thankful for the investment in the cheap whiteboard we had acquired for homeschooling, with Bobi’s help, within 10 minutes we were able to map it out completely: The Law of Energetic Exchange. For every need out there on the planet, there is a corresponding offering, ready, willing and waiting to meet that need.

There are seven billion people on the planet and through our four-year journey since selling our house, our gas guzzling Nissan Patrol, and other assets to keep us afloat, we had come to understand that somewhere out there, someone was always ready to meet our need. We have experienced this first hand many times, the most recent being six weeks ago when we were stranded in Valparaiso, Chile. The greedy banks had withheld a deposit we were waiting on for over five days. We had 1500 Chilean Pesos or the equivalent of six vegetable empanadas. It was the first moment we considered that we might just have to sleep with the children at the bus station. It was the generosity of the hotel manager, who without question, was willing to let us stay, knowing we had no money in the bank.

Understanding for most people, the challenge was in knowing where to go to when you are in need, we set out to develop EnergeticXChange; a place of gathering where people could place their offerings and needs, having them matched in an orchestrated energetic balance—the natural equation of human giving.

To develop this not-for-profit project, we sold the last of everything else we had in the world, our 2005 Hyundai Elantra, 55” HD 1080P Sony TV, our 24” Mac Computers, Beds, Dinning Suite, Lounge Suites, Cabinets, Super Expensive Spinning Bike, Refrigerator, Freezer, BBQ, and among all the things, of course, the ISOMAC Coffee Machine, which I can say more than retained its value. We also received a generous donation from my father, my mother and mother-in-law, which allowed us to go forward in launching the EnergeticXChange website, dedicated to assist in the creation of a new economic paradigm where every human being is of equal worth and equal importance, because what they have to offer will meet the need of another human being on the planet and therefore everything offered, now has equal value.

That was 15 months ago. We are now living EnergeticXChange.

It would be impossible for the message of EnergeticXChange to ring true for families and communities if we did not live this law, too, so EnergeticXChange has become our life.

Wherever we are, our needs are always met. Like the Franciscan priest from downtown Detroit, who was instrumental in helping us reach our next destination of Connecticut, his gift of $80 allowing us to make the final leg of a journey to a friend’s place, even though we had just met.

Inner trust is what sustains our knowledge, our resolve and energy to continue.

The EnergeticXChange website is not only the global gathering place we envisioned, but it is also the first practical and simple tool that can ensure that all offerings meet all needs on the planet. It works very simply and there are no fees, no commercials, no catches and no hidden corporate agendas. Anyone can register, or sign in with their Facebook ID.

It is then as easy as placing your first offering and placing your first need if you have one. This requires just a little thought, but when you start thinking, you will find you have much that you can offer. Examples vary from a blender, to a power drill, to offering to cook someone a meal, sharing knowledge, helping in a garden—the list is endless. You might think it a difficult prospect to give, but you will find that the opportunity to give naturally finds you.

With what we have, we have found it almost effortless to give. Most recently we found ourselves in a bakery in Bogota at 10 p.m. Having just ordered some bread to share in a meal with our friend, one of the many young homeless men came into the bakery to sell us a DVD, the money from which he could use to buy an evening in a flop house so that he would not have to sleep on the street. We had plenty of bread and we asked him if he was hungry and to join us. While we did not have much money ourselves, we gave him what we could and we were gifted with the opportunity to meet and know another human being.

Interestingly, there are six times as many offerings in the EnergeticXChange system as there are needs. And while we are only in the hundreds, we are making connections, from Miami to Los Angeles, Rio to Quito, Auckland to Kuala Lumpur, Ouagadougou to Zanzibar, Sydney to London, Hamburg to Budapest, New York to Connecticut, where people are meeting and needs are being met.

A system like EnergeticXChange can succeed only if we all participate. Participation means not only getting your offerings and needs into the system, but also to start using social networking for what I truly believe it was meant to be used for. Imagine just how many of your offerings could go to your 1,000 or 2,000 Facebook friends, or how many things they may have that you need, that would never require you to spend a cent—if you just asked.

I am adamant that we could stop at least 30% of our annual spending on one-use items that end up gathering dust in our closets, or put into paid storage never to see the light of day. Yet. most of us are stopped by the social norms we have accepted—to ask is not only a sign of weakness, but also a stigma, burned on our foreheads, advertising our failure to achieve in this society. This is why so many people out there today feel trapped and yet continue to play the game, in silence, living deeply unsatisfying lives. How did we get this way? It’s an interesting phenomena, that something we learned in kindergarden—sharing— could be so hard to do as adults.

Taking Our Message on the Road

We left Australia a year ago to share what we have learned and to learn what anyone else is willing to share.

With kids in tow, we spent six months travelling the USA and five months traveling through Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil and Panama, and blogged about our journey. In South America we met with and made real human connections with communities with little money that are rich beyond means in what they have to offer the world—from the people of the rich lush Valley of Longevity, in Southern Ecuador to the last descendants of the Inca still living their traditional life style, facing life’s challenges and thriving at 15,500 ft in the Peruvian Andes.

EnergeticXChange is beginning to make great headways into Africa, too, where something that you may not have used in a few years would be greatly useful and make a difference in places like Zimbabwe, where the people have been struck for years now with economic hardship. It is not just Zimbabwe, but also South Africa, Botswana, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania and as far as Burkina Faso that are joining, where there are real people you could get to know and be richer from your experience of participation.

EnergeticXChange is about the human connection. Every exchange is a filament of light connection, that I have no doubt, will set light to a wave of third party connections and initiatives at grassroots levels that will make Australian bushfires look tame.

Successful exchanges so far include classes and courses, city tours, accommodations, energetic healing, a water filter for drinking water, and help on a farm, just to name a few. There are needs posted for organic seeds, a fridge, and book delivery, and there are offers of a home cooked meal, assistance self publishing an e-book, and professional business coaching.

The Future Lies in Sharing

Donald Trump, in a recent interview, predicted the dire economic collapse of the United States. Perhaps this would be true, if we all lived like Donald Trump or worse, just continue to live as we constantly have…consuming without questioning.

As I sit here in our very modest 1990 R.V., parked in the Hungarian Community Center in Miami Florida, preparing to engage in dialogue with this community as to how we can combine our energies and efforts in Common-Unity to bring about real change, I reflect back to the 10,000 miles our R.V. has taken us around the U.S. over the last year. All the communities and beautiful people we have gotten to know, throughout the 28 States of the USA and in all countries in South America we have visited so far, on our journey of EnergeticXChange.

Our journey reminds me with great contentment and much gratitude, that it wasn’t always like this. We were there, in crisis, and we realized that it would only continue to be a crisis if we chose to keep living that life. From a budget of $12,000 per month spent on an unsustainable life, we whittled our way all the way down to a budget of less than $1,000 per month in Ecuador.

Living frugally now, we are content. All we had to do was take a breath, listen to our heart, really hear what it was saying to us and confidently take our first step in EnergeticXChange, knowing that our every step is always supported.

Everything we have done in the last five years is about challenging the accepted way most people are living their lives. People are mindlessly consuming in the belief that meaning or happiness can be found in the next purchase of red high heel pumps, that shirt, the 90” 3D HDTV or that two weeks of vacation can somehow make up for the 50 weeks of indentured servitude we sell ourselves into willingly, to find that dream. It is a dream as illusive as the Matrix and no amount of consuming will fill the gap of endless unhappiness.

We started a journey that would help every family and every individual on the planet to meet all their needs and we believe we have created the world’s first simple and practical solution.

How You Can Help

Our goal is to establish a hub of EnergeticXChange activity on every human-inhabited continent. We are seeking EnergeticXChange ambassadors—people in their communities who believe that together, we can meet the needs of everyone and will assist in commuinty outreach. We already have 22 countries registered and by the end of the northern hemisphere summer, we would hope to see this figure to double. And while we have personally funded the project up until now, we are seeking funding to help us expand throughout the developed and developing world.

Aside from individuals, we would like corporations to register their interest to participate, not for reward or brand recognition (not that there is anything bad about brand recognition), but in a true meaningful manner; in the understanding that their corporate goodwill, will make a difference toward transforming this planet. 

You can start sharing on the EnergeticXChange website, and also visit us on our Facebook page. Let us know what you think!