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  "map_content": "For decades I have mostly been talking about the \u201ctouchy feely\u201d side of my experiences with Mud Fun and recently some mathematics was revealed to me that adds a whole new perspective which I\u2019m sure you\u2019ve never heard or considered and so I\u2019m keen to share it with you and have you challenge it because I\u2019m certain it will challenge you. I\u2019m calling this discovery \u201cBank Power Bank\u201d which is a kind of power that is strongly related to financial freedom and wealth.\r\nThis came to me while I was spending lots of time in and around our completed sleeping pod and feeling a certain way which I couldn\u2019t quite put my finger on.\r\nNoticing the immediate positive emotional reactions of people visiting the cubby and hearing them express how much they would like to have one, and then noticing that no one was able to take any next steps, there was a conflict. As I began pondering the most probable obvious roadblocks for people to take next steps, I discovered a game-changing revelation hidden in plain sight, based on maths.\r\nThe obvious roadblock is that we only have so much time, energy and money available, and as romantic as the backyard sleeping pod cubby house concept might feel at first sight, it doesn\u2019t take long before our logical brain kicks in and categorises it as a whimsical nice-to-have play-thing, and not as a serious asset that can provide any stability, wealth or power, which takes precedence.\u00a0\r\nAnd then I discovered the maths that shows another opposite perspective. To be clear, we are not collecting any rent here from this sleeping pod cubby; (despite offers) we are enjoying the space as extra room to spread out in, and as I spend time in and around it, I\u2019ve realised I\u2019m collecting an energy and power which very few people have. This power has a\u00a0mathematical element and I came up with the term \u201cbank-power-bank\u201d to describe an aspect of this power which comes from the idea of a power bank, as in a storage of power that you can take with you anywhere, and also \u201cbank-power\u201d\u00a0as in having some of the same power as the banks, which will make more sense later.\r\nHere\u2019s the maths. $100 a week is the minimum anyone typically pays for shelter here in Australia. People pay more than that to park their van on someone\u2019s land and use their water, toilet and power. Therefore, it is very safe to say that the value of having this sleeping pod cubby house is the equivalent of $100 per week. Most people say the cubby house is worth more than this because most people pay about 4 to 5 times that for a self-contained studio providing the same kind of privacy and autonomy. The cubby provides this in a more rustic and whimsical way but to make my point using the most conservative estimates I\u2019m going to go with the $100 a week figure, which multiplied by 50 weeks is $5,000 dollars a year, which is to say that having this sleeping pod cubby is capable of either saving $5,000 a year or earning that if rented out.\r\nNow to compare the security of this earning or savings capacity with other available options we must ask what is the likelihood of the cubby being able to consistently collect or save this amount, and what else offers a comparable amount of security? Considering how important shelter is and how appealing the structure is, its inherent strength and location, I believe it offers a very secure guarantee. The only other thing I can think of that is equally guaranteed is having money in the bank earning interest, specifically a savings account. Several government and corporate financial sources state that the only way to safely guarantee earning interest is via a traditional savings account. There are other types of accounts that earn higher returns but when there is a financial crisis they are not guaranteed like a plain old savings account is. And by comparison, this sleeping pod cubby structure will always be able to earn or save the money regardless of the financial situation and so its security is more comparable to a guaranteed savings account than to any other types of investment accounts which provide higher returns but are not guaranteed.\u00a0\r\nSo guess how much money you would need to have in such a savings account to earn $5,000 dollars a year?\u00a0Have a wild guess. It doesn\u2019t matter if you get it wrong because most people don't know, and I\u2019ll explain why later.\u00a0For now just have a wild guess.\u00a0\r\nHere's what I found. The average national interest rate for savings accounts is 0.1768% and in such an account, $1 million dollars earns $1768 per year in interest and so you would need to have about $2.8 million dollars in your account before you could safely sit back, do nothing and collect that $5,000 a year. And so, it begs the question, could it be that this cubby has the same inherent power as $2.8 million dollars?  No wonder I was feeling like a million dollars, but not. That\u2019s the first part of my revelation.\u00a0\r\nAnd then I realised you could ask anyone how much it costs to rent a room in a house in their area, and they would know the answer, but most of us don\u2019t know what it looks like from the other side, from a banking perspective, and what it takes to collect guaranteed money. And the reason we don\u2019t retain this information is because having $2.8 million dollars in the bank, just to collect interest, is not in our realm of possibilities so there is no use in storing that type of information. We are programmed to think like people who work, earn, spend and depend upon banks, (which makes banks powerful) not like people who think and act like banks to make themselves powerful.\u00a0\r\nThe only people who retain the information of what it is like having $2.8 million safely parked in the bank collecting $5,000 a year in interest are the people who do that, which are only a tiny few, the top tier customers of the banks. Chances are we will never meet such a person, and neither have any of our ancestors so it\u2019s not even in our DNA, and so it\u2019s fully understandable that we don\u2019t know or think of such things.\u00a0\u00a0\r\nTo extrapolate this maths, guaranteeing $200 or $300 a week, which most people agree the cubby could easily fetch (or save if we are trying to find something comparable) would take $5.6 million or $8.4 million respectively, and so when you consider this, building a sleeping pod starts to look more and more like a very sensible action to strengthen one\u2019s financial stability, not just a whimsical play-thing to do for fun.\r\nNo wonder I\u2019ve been feeling like a king who can't quite point his finger to his royalty. Haha. So that\u2019s my revelation. Let me know if you see a hole in this logic. Or even just let me know what would be the biggest reason preventing you from going down this path right now.\r\nFor decades I have sensed and felt the inherent power of sleeping in something hand-sculpted with materials found locally, and I have talked about shelter creation in terms of feelings, but have not been able to express it from the perspective of banking finance. And now having stumbled across this mathematics and applying it to this situation, I see that up at the highest bird's eye perspective, these good feelings are directly related to the freedom of financial wealth and its power.\u00a0\r\nThe average cost per person for shelter in Australia is $600 per week which would take having $16.8 million in the bank. I hope this opens your mind to a new perspective about just how powerful it is to take shelter back into our own hands. It also sheds light on why people out in remote, non- industrialised places (who are cash poor but without shelter debts) seem to be so happy and generous with what they have.\u00a0\r\nI see bank-power-bank as an internal storage of power and energy that comes from thinking and acting like a bank, and seeing yourself in that light, as the highest authority over your destiny rather than limiting yourself to staying in a codependent or abusive relationship with a bank and using them as middle men for your shelter needs.\u00a0\r\nThis power is accessible to all. Once you get your head around it, it is a path of least resistance. Its \u201cLess is more\u201d. The cosiness factor, which makes our sleeping pod cubby feel so appealing, is dependent on a small space rather than going all out as we do for the big dream home concept. A sleeping pod is all that is needed to achieve that unique blend of protection, comfort and freedom that speaks to our inner child. Sleep is the most important aspect of shelter and so focussing on providing a good night's sleep is the most direct way to get the greatest social-emotional and financial returns on your investments of time and energy. The health benefits of getting a good night\u2019s sleep cannot be overestimated and the quality of sleep you get from sleeping behind earthen walls is unparalleled.\u00a0\r\nThe first impressions and gut instincts of this sleeping pod cubby speak to the heart and tell us that it\u2019s something good but it doesn\u2019t tell us it looks like financial stability, wealth or the equivalent power of wealth. But the revelation of this maths shows a different picture. It is fiscal logic that supports and encourages us to follow our heart and take next steps.\u00a0\r\nWhile pondering on this, I began to see how this revelation ties in with other things that I have learned over the years. but stored in different mental files, like the value of social-emotional capital.\r\nAt first I thought \u201cthis can\u2019t be right.\u201d and had to run it by a few financially minded individuals, and even after they approved this logic, it was difficult for me to equate such a structure to millions of dollars in the bank. But after further reflection I came to see that it has a greater value and here\u2019s why: Collecting interest from having millions in the bank (to pay your rent or mortgage for you) is the equivalent of being granted freedom as long as you don\u2019t tell anyone, and keep the freedom to yourself. This is because you can\u2019t really show other people how to have what you have. In order to be like you they need to go find the millions of dollars first, which is unlikely to happen, but building a sleeping pod gives you a know-how that you can share with others immediately and get them the same results as you, and this is more valuable.\u00a0Sharing knowledge that lifts others strengthens you and increases your confidence, power and freedom, and that of the circle you are a part of.\u00a0\r\nHarriet Tubman, the famous American freedom fighter, was once a slave and after she escaped to freedom, she risked her life and freedom many times to go back and free more slaves because she believed that true freedom is in freeing others once you are free. There is obviously some priceless value in being able to share your freedom and power with others and I\u2019m sure this is why Harriet Tubman was so motivated and partly why she lived such a long life.\u00a0\r\nShelter creation freedom and the \u201cbank-power-bank\u201d it generates is something I want to share because right now it is sort of invisible and therefore sort of at least partially non-existent. The more people who can see the value of something and believe in it, then the more real that value is.\u00a0\r\nTo put this whole subject in context, there is a new emerging voice within the collective saying that the way forward involves learning from the ways of our ancient ancestors and the original land based indigenous peoples who still embody such information. Creating a simple, cosy, high performing sleeping pod with your own hands with local materials is aligned to this voice.\u00a0\r\nIndustrialisation imposed consumerism upon us which got us to let go of the traditional ways of creating and appreciating shelter. And now the practice of following our instincts and the ancient principles from our original ancestral ties to homelands is a new frontier that involves re-awakening this innate knowledge and setting out on a new path.\r\nHuman nature is such that we are more likely to make decisions based on our fears of losing what little we have rather than on going towards gaining something better that we don't have, and so entering new territory goes against the grain, and requires overcoming our fears.\r\nWith this in mind, I decided that building a small scale model around a table in the comfort of your home, is the best way for people to start down the road of shelter creation freedom with minimal risks. That\u2019s how I got started and it was life changing. It gives you the confidence which opens up the way forward. And I\u2019ve created a curriculum made up of a written manual of instructions which can be supplemented by videos - which I\u2019ve started making - but in the meantime want to deliver the video part live.  While building the model you learn and apply all the formulas, methods, and considerations for building in life size.\r\nIf we look at our society objectively, it is fair to say that we have all been so busy paying bills for so long that we have become numb to how much of our time and energy we are giving away. When being congratulated for her work freeing slaves Harriet Tubman said she could have freed so many more if only they realised they were slaves. As slaves they had food, shelter, a job and plenty of friends and family around, and they didn\u2019t want to lose any of that. They didn\u2019t have the experiences to imagine another reality and their fears of taking risks to change their circumstances were too great to accept her offer.\u00a0From one perspective we are a bit like those slaves.\u00a0\r\nAnother thing is the power and value of fun and play. While working as a volunteer youth chaperone in America with the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement in Atlanta, I learned that one of the most powerful weapons they used to achieve their big wins against all odds, was fun and play - making the whole thing into a game to enjoy, and that\u2019s why I kept the simple name Mud Fun when people were saying we should change the name. The goal of the Mud Fun curriculum is to make shelter creation as enjoyable as possible. That's how our sleeping pod was created and so there is another kind of value embedded into it, via the process of its creation. Starting with a small scale model is the best way to get the social-emotional formula right from the beginning.\r\nInvitation to the Central Desert\u00a0\r\nMy invitation to share Mud Fun out in the Central Desert is significant because I believe that once earthen masonry shelter construction is re-established as a cultural practice, it opens a door to many new possibilities.\r\nIn the places around the world where earthen masonry flourishes, and its high performing benefits are available to all, shelter creation is a cultural expression and the people are culturally and ancestrally tied to the land and so there is an inherent independence from industry.\u00a0\r\nIn those places, a festive community approach, based on invoking the spirit of generosity is what makes traditional earthen masonry available to all and this is what is missing from modern commercialised shelter.\u00a0\r\nEven though traditional shelter looks and feels very simple, there is a complex web of social-emotional and environmental-cultural threads behind it.\r\nHere in the industrialised consumer world, earthen masonry is a rare expensive premium product, and despite honourable concerted efforts to make a difference, earthen masonry housing is not accessible to most people, and I have concluded that industry is the wrong vehicle for delivering traditional shelter which has different goals to modern real estate.\u00a0\r\nIf shelter creation is seen and practised as a form of cultural expression rather than just a purchase, then the practitioners of this expression become more independent of industry and able to nurture each other\u2019s self-worth via other means than their income earning potential.\r\nThe purpose of the Mud Fun curriculum is to create this community element from scratch, and so this opportunity to work out in the Central Desert under a tribal leader who wants to revive cultural connections to the land via a traditional approach to earthen masonry shelter construction is significant.\r\nIndustry is a very new thing compared to shelter, and in a relatively short time, industry has dramatically changed our relationship to shelter. As consumers in an industrialised world, our identity and self worth is strongly linked to our ability to make the purchases we need, with shelter being the highest priced item we will purchase or make ongoing rent payments for. Shelter has become the product that makes us dependent upon and beholden to the global finance industry which is above all other industries.\u00a0\r\nAncestrally speaking we were all once culturally connected to the land and so this invitation from people whose ties to these lands go back many thousands of years, represents a priceless opportunity that can have a very positive impact on many people.\u00a0\r\nI have more to say about this and am looking for allies to the cause, and so if this is something you feel called to be a part of, let me know.",
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