Salespage critique request

Thanks for your feedback.

I appreciate that and I am very clear that a lot of people are going to be put off by my branding, and what I'm saying.

Whether someone is practicing Buddhist meditation or not - in any contemplative practice - once you get to the higher levels things get bad. Quite bad, sometimes.

With the material that I am coaching on, there are 16 stages of insight. Here are 5-9:
(ref: Development of Insight: The Insight Knowledges)

5. Knowledge of dissolution
6. Awareness of fearfulness
7. Knowledge of misery
8. Knowledge of disgust
9. Knowledge of desire for deliverance

"When through this knowledge (now acquired) he feels disgust with regard to every formation noticed, there will arise in him a desire to forsake these formations or to become delivered from them. The knowledge relating to that desire is called "knowledge of desire for deliverance." At that time, usually various painful feelings arise in his body, and also an unwillingness to remain long in one particular bodily posture. Even if these states do not arise, the comfortless nature of the formations will become more evident than ever. And due to that, between moments of noticing, he feels a longing thus: "Oh, may I soon get free from that! Oh, may I reach the state where these formations cease! Oh, may I be able to give up these formations completely!" At this juncture, his consciousness engaged in noticing seems to shrink from the object noticed at each moment of noticing, and wishes to escape from it."

This is a kind of inescapable part of development.

In the Christian contemplative tradition these 5 stages are called "The Long Dark Night Of The Soul".

The (Catholic) Church says that Mother Theresa suffered through the dark night her entire life, up to the point of her death.

The bad news really is that it has to be passed through. And whether you want to or not. Whether you practice meditation or not.

The good news is that if you deal with it head on you get past it.

Anyway I ought not to post a bunch of philosophical stuff in a copywriting forum. . .

But I COMPLETELY understand where you're coming from and the reasons why you would feel the way you said you do, and I know I'm going to have to either go full Oprah or I'm going to have to accept losing a huge part of this market.

I'm so far planning on the latter, because I think if I sacrifice the apple (of some of 70% of the market) I'll gain the tree (of a lot of the remaining 30%).

I could be totally wrong.

Anyway thank you for your critique and I know you're right.

I will take what you've said and try to write some pre-launch email copy around that.

That's WHY this could end up being good positioning - with the right traffic.

So many people are fed up with spiritual politics. It's such a facade; a pageant. Everyone's so "la-di-da."

This will appeal to a certain segment of the spiritual population.

How do you know? Have you ever asked them - if they think the spiritual marketplace is filled with too much fluff, BS and made-up nonsense? Everyone's so busy playing the game... and scared to step out of the box that it's kind of an unknown commodity.

Being awake doesn't have to mean you walk around with a sheet wrapped around you... and a blissful look on your face all the time. That's a HUGE misconception about spirituality.

REAL spirituality is embracing how messed up we can be - without judgement... and without the elitism it's usually approached with.

You're 100% right. Again, this isn't a marketing piece. It's a rant. But the branding DOES have major potential. Just not in this context.

Yup.

Good. That's the positioning. It just needs real benefits... and real authenticity or heart.

I think this is a great way to make a splash. Again... with the right kind of traffic... and a message that actually makes sense. This message; this copy sucks. I absolutely don't dispute that. But the basic idea has legs. It's a turkey that CAN fly... with the right positioning.

It needs to be completely redone. They are a few (very few) golden nuggets. Nothing worth holding onto but the premise really.

Mark

https://www.facebook.com/buddhistbootcamp
"Buddhist BootCamp" . . 338,000+ fans on facebook
"hardcore zen" . . . 6,700 fans
"4,000 British troops visit Bodh Gaya". . . Buddhist Military Sangha: 4000 British Troops to Visit Bodh Gaya and Sarnath

In addition to at least 100k people around counter-culture who self identify in the ways I've described and who are very easy to find and target, and who buy ANYTHING related to that identity, there is probably an easy quarter of a million who are more casually interested.

Beyond that - the military guys who are interested in Buddhism IS rather big.

Beyond that, the number of guys between 30-50 who are at least generally curious about meditation or who would like to learn how to do it but who can't culturally identify with the 60's (where the boomers in this niche are STUCK - as if their "discovery" of what other people have been doing for thousands of years was the pinnacle of personal development) is ASTRONOMICAL.

My attempt at a sales letter that was rightly described as a rant kind of needs to be a rant, at least on some level I think.

But it also needs to be drastically improved. I know.

I'll work on it this evening and will record an intro video of me talking to the camera as well and then resubmit for further critique.

The majority of potential buyers WANT somebody to tell them that they can practice meditation and get the benefits and find some measure of stability, peace, focus, and insight into reality itself without being a speech control pansy or having to hang out with a bunch of greying kooks.

And that doesn't mean you have to be a prick. It doesn't mean you can't be compassionate. It just means you don't have to do it in the way that 1 insignificant drop in the stream of this tradition does it, or interpret it the way they interpret it.

To get away from Buddhism for a while - Lao Tzu said to "abandon sagacity and eliminate righteousness" in the Tao Te Ching.

It's exactly the kind of cunning, contrived "spirituality" that turns the majority of people off.

But there is a huge section of society that is interested in this stuff I think, but are afraid they will have to become pretentious douches.

But they don't have to. And I think they are waiting for someone to tell them so.

I understand what you're saying, I think...

I went ahead and took the video down, because it might not be useful. Not so much because of the cig, which I am 100% ok to show, but mostly because I think you're right about not talking nearly enough about the benefits to the reader.

Do you think I should remove all the stuff about me from the top? Should I put it back down in the copy?

I switched it from where it was in the letter originally from the top, because I thought that it probably was a good idea to credentialize myself before I started talking crazy...

I understand your issue with the cig as well.

It's a corollary assumption that most of the market will make. Cigarette smoker=not a meditator.

Is that what you meant?

If so I know you're right.

This stuff gets marketed either as completely mystical mumbo jumbo with the promise of super powers or it gets marketed exactly like a 12 step program or like therapy.

I also understand that a lot of the market doesn't care that many of the most awake and accomplished meditators (who's accomplishment - at least their brain state changes - can be objectively tested) smoke and most (I would say 90%) of them chew Beetel all day long.

Anyway it may have been and may be monumentally awful.

Here's the issue for me:

I live with these guys. I am around them every day.

The guys that actually are doing something and know anything are just normal dudes who know something or who have accomplished something, and it's always very casual. 'It is what it is" and that's the end of it with anybody I've ever seen who knows what they're doing.

Then on the other hand you've got these guy's who walk around like Kwai Chang Kane all day in their never ending pursuit of donations. Head down. quiet. Holy looking. Hands behind their back as they walk slowly...

Because that's what people want to see. I know it. They know it. We all know.

But then when they get back into the monastery, after all the visitors are out - it's like a 10 year old little girls birthday party in there.

The vast majority of these guys walk around like a humble beggar in front of people and like a diva on the catwalk when nobody else is around to see.

And they don't know shit.

They haven't accomplished anything other than a $1,000 phone and a big bankroll while the entire country around them is burning and hungry.

You hear them snoring in the meditation hall.

And on the other hand the guys that are legit -

Act like normal people.

So . . .

I understand (I think) your critique.

I know you're probably right.

The question I'd have for you I guess is just - do you think it's possible to sell meditation training without bullshitting people?

*tangent ninja jump*

...My first year here in MM I lost nearly 100lbs.

I came in when the tatmadaw (junta) still had 100% power and when Aung San Su Kyii was still under house arrest.

There were no ATM machines.

The country was under economic sanctions by EVERYONE.

I wrongly assumed I would be able to get by in a monastery with very little money so I ran out VERY fast.

That first year I couldn't even buy bottled water.

If you saw what I was drinking out of it would make you puke.

I got dengue and TB within a few months of each other.

After that first year or two, they got ATM's here and Obama visited, etc. so I could get money from my bank account from my online stuff, and then I was fine.

But during that time I was living in the monastery. I was following the exact same rules as the monks.

I could have just taken vows and went on rounds acting like what I know people want to see and could have collected a ******* fortune as a novelty and avoided all that headache.

That's what 80% of the monastic community does. Prey on peoples presumptions about what it means to be awake or what it means to meditate to fleece them.

I just don't want to do it.

I know my material is good, and more legit than 99% of what's out there and I know it will produce results.

I also know that I am in a position where it's going to be hard to "sell" what I've got without selling it the way everybody else does.

And that's why I've asked for critiques in here.

I feel like I have to go so far in the opposite direction from the rest of the market just to make a point and to be ok with myself at the end of the day.

I'm asking how I can do that well, or how I can do that better.

Or if it's even possible to do.

Thanks man.