A quick calculation is that I make about the same money doing what I do now as when I joined Oracle as a junior consultant in 1997 (inflation adjusted). It's quite funny when people imagine I'm somehow making out cash-wise as a dissident, and throw around "shill", "grifter", "paytriot" as if it means something.

What's really changed is that I am now truly free and I won't compromise again in the ways I used to in order to get by. I don't relish hardship — being a strict orthodox hedonist at heart — but am willing to endure pretty much anything in order not to be owned by anyone.

There is a degradation that I am seeing in those who are notionally awake but who stay in the corporate world in positions that are not spiritually sound. They seem to resent those who walk away and suffer the inevitable struggles and losses in order to get free of the system. Their cowardice, weakness, and hypocrisy is shown up.