I

I, Daniel Aaron, am…

I am Kintsugi, magnificently messy making masterpieces.

I break hearts open and fill the cracks with light, leaving people stronger and more beautiful at the site of their own breaks.

I am a black-belt in judo.

A lifelong pacifist, vegetarian for 39 years.

I’ve been wealthy enough to travel the world first class, stay in 5 star hotels, live in mansions with our own chef, nanny and driver.

I have been so broke that I could not afford food or gas, have lived in my car, lived in a tent.

Reverend. Ordained priest.

Not religious.

I traveled the Iberian peninsula working on psychic fairs with a band of chain-smoking witches.

I dived deeply into non-monogamy, been part of sex cults and participated in therapeutic pleasure sessions that were painful, scary, confronting and liberating.

I have had hundreds of coffee enemas, dozens of colonics and water-fasted for 21 days.

I have experienced many kundalini awakenings, starting from when I was an atheist.

I was once put into a straight jacket and involuntarily committed to a locked psych ward.

I’ve lived in ashrams, been with gurus and enlightened beings.

I have been jailed for drugs.

I was fat, shy, depressed and powerless.

I took Buddhist vows with Thich Nhat Hanh.
I became an Osho Sanyassin while living at Humaniversity in Holland.
I was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

I built a 10,000 square foot yoga and wellness center in Bali from the ground up.

I raised my daughter mostly on my own, liberating her mother from a sense of obligation and resentment.

I regularly immerse myself into the darkest dark.

I have plunged into many dark nights of the soul.

I survived multiple NDE’s such that I “should” have died.

I have lived many lives.
None are meant to impress.
Instead, to invite.
You.
To bring your darkest and your brightest.

I am a guide to greatness. Yours, mine and everyone’s.

I am YES. To living my potential, to what calls me to awaken, to realize the truth of who we are.

I am that there is nothing you have done or said, could do or say, that will keep me from loving you.

I am the deepest listening and keenest understanding you’ve ever known. Presence, incarnate.

I am that your dreams are sacred, your purpose powerful and your destiny within reach.

I am your greatest champion — willing to battle anything and anyone in the way of your potential, including your own stories of limitation.

I am the abundant all-sufficiency.

Free — I need nothing.

I have nothing to prove.

In my presence people’s lives become better and they love themselves more.

I’ve invested ¾ of a million dollars in my own awakening.

Many times I committed before I had the money.

By far the best investment I ever make is in me.

I am that you are infinite.

I am a holy disruptor.

I have been the golden child and the black sheep, the inner circle and the banned. Often in the same room, for the same reasons.

I am sword and scythe, so committed to your potential that I will say what might cause you to hate, fear or avoid me.

I am the guts to face up to the hardest truths,
the persistence to transform pain-producing patterns,
and the love to see you until you see yourself.

I am a prophet, called by God.

I am Infinite, Impactful Service.

Heart wide-open, unconditional love and prodigious patience.

Everyone is my family.

I grow through coaching you.

My business is ministry.

My wealth is service.

My presence is profit. I am the law of increase in flesh form.

I am that the Truth will make you free.

I will be and do whatever it takes.

I am with you. Always. No matter what you bring.

II

You are

Not your bio or beginnings,

not limited to your current imaginations.

You are that you know.

You know what mediocre monotony looks like and it pains you.

You know who you really are.
You’ve glimpsed it.
In quiet moments.

In conversations.

A dream. A vision.

You have felt the fear of speaking it.

Then you’d have to live it.

You’ve felt it receding.

No more.

You are called.
For a unique purpose.
To disturb the status quo.

To make your life a masterpiece.

You are not lazy. You’ve done a lot of work.

Books, courses, retreats.

Now, it’s not about information.

You must be a hero.

To children whom you haven’t met.

Must be your own hero.

You are willing:

To love more: yourself, the people close to you, me, and ultimately all beings.

To have the uncomfortable conversations.

To strip the armor.

Stop performing.

Start living.

To set your baseline to yes.

To fully live.

To ask: how good can it get?

You are the Universe.

A master magician,

always ready to draw new circles.

III

We Are

Partners.

Project: your life as a masterpiece.

Always learning from each other.

Never done awakening.

Always creating more for you — problems and possibilities.

We bring our deepest and scariest thoughts and feelings to our conversations.

We share our “failures”, fears, shame, shadow, history, contradictions.

We air the inherited narratives: money, men, women, sex and God.
Grist.
We are milling.

Making masterpieces.

We are aware that our work together goes beyond us.

I use you and you use me.

Coal. Compression. Diamond.

Our relationship is sacred ground.

How we meet here is how we meet the world.

It is light, and carries gravitas.

IV

Together We Create

From the outside it just looks like conversations.

We are creation constantly creating.

This is one of the most important relationships of our lives.

We are not playing and are ever so playful.

You speak - dreams, fears, fantasies. What you have never said before.

I listen, love, hear beyond the words.
Reflect you to you, a you you’ve known forever and are just meeting.

This is a laboratory for:

Radical experimentation,

audacious asks,

bold action without certainty,

falling flat,

changing course,

laughing at ourselves,

creating what is impossible.

A year, ten or a lifetime, deeper and deeper we go.

There is no bottom.
We keep asking: how good can it get?

Three years from now we walk on a beach together.

It’s early morning, quiet, a few gulls.

A reporter recognizes us. Asks you:

“Do you have a message for the world?”

You smile.

“My life is my message.”

We walk on. Pause. Face east.

I ask you:

“Who are you?”

You nod:

“I finally love myself.

I am the Universe.

I create what I desire.

All my desires are holy.

I am THAT.

My life is a masterpiece.”

The sun hangs just above the water.

We breathe.

Names and identifying details have been changed.

“Can I push?”

My gut clenched.
No question had ever scared me more.

We were alone in the house.

Anna’s face strained even as her laboring body sank into the overly soft mattress of the dark corner bedroom.

I wasn’t the midwife.
I prayed she’d arrive soon.

I was the father, not a husband.
We were no longer a couple.

The contractions were longer, closer together.

From obsessive reading, I knew—
when she felt the urge, it was time.

“Yes.”

I called the midwife.
Again, her answering service.

We’d arrived an hour before.
Upcountry Maui.
A house loaned for the birth.

I got her settled—comfortable, as if that were possible.

Then I filled the birthing pool on the lanai.

During the last fifteen minutes of the drive, as the Haleakala Highway steepened, all I saw were jacarandas.

The amethyst blooms—surreal surges of life force.

They blossomed up and out, rounding skeletal trees into bursts of blue-violet.

I held Anna’s hand
and breathed beside her, inside a violet trance.

For days afterward, every glimpse outside—
an oxytocin wash—
a world awash with purple pollen.

Nine months prior:

We met in Bali, where I lived and she was visiting.

I was in the role of yoga teacher. She had come as a student. I wouldn’t cross that line.

She was from Maui, a place where I’d nearly put down roots. Then I was sent elsewhere—Bali.

Both our mothers had recently died.

It felt like kismet.

Six weeks later I saw her at a cafe, just before she flew home. I decided not to let my teacher’s rules be a prison — something larger was at work.

One magical night.

A night when I watched my body choose something I never would have.

There were forces beyond us in motion.

My email the next day. Even as the sweetness lingered on our skin, part of me knew:

“Of course we were both responsible. Yet, if you’re pregnant, it affects you in ways that I can barely comprehend.”

Her response that same day.
“Of course I’m not pregnant.”

Three weeks later:
“I’m late. I’m freaking out.”

A pregnancy test. The confirmation.

Me: an unmistakable, unhesitant yes to this new life.

A hopeful glow that Anna and I might be a couple. I’d also lived enough to know how vision and chemistry can fade.

Her: wrestling with it all. A baby was not part of her plan.
Nor mine.
Not like this.

I tried to be clear.

I’m all in for parenting.
I’m all in for us finding out if we’re a couple.

How do I tell her the truth—without overly influencing her?

My mother’s voice. A national leader in the Women’s Liberation movement. A woman’s body. A woman’s choice.

Every day for months I gazed through the jungle toward the crevasse beyond the house.

Impassable.
The bottom lost in darkness.
So much of my own life now out of reach.

Yet I could hear the river below gurgling up from the darkness.

Through the dense canopy, I could just glimpse the rice field beyond.

A large dark bird swooped in daily, perching in the mango tree. As it looked at me, and I at it—

It felt like our child’s spirit watching me back.

Stay with me.

Every day the powerlessness pounded me.
Weak internet. Rare and spotty calls.
I felt cut off from my own growing heart

I stayed.
I prayed.
I sent love across the waters.

I’d sobbed the day Anna went for an abortion.

Yet, the image.
The sonographic blip of that miniature peanut.
That—plus her stepmother saying, “Anna, I know you. You would regret it.”

She’d aborted the abortion.

Then she was all in on the baby.
All in on us.

Back in Bali, back to my home, where it had all begun.
Playing house, getting to know each other amidst the strangest of circumstances.

At seven months, I knew.
I knew what I did not want to know.
Did not want to be.

Then I couldn’t unknow it.

But knowing didn’t tell me when to say it out loud.

During pregnancy?
That would be cruelty.

She had put her faith in me—traveled across the Pacific to create a family.

Hold back the truth for two more months? Two of the most important months of our lives. Live falsely?

And worse: let her keep believing in a future that I knew would not be?

An impossible choice: tell her now—or lie by silence.

Cruel either way.

For weeks I turned it over like fire, only to at last admit, I didn’t know which was worse.

So I admitted it. To myself. Then to her.

We’re not a fit as a couple.

Certainly some part of her must have known too.

Yet…

Pregnancy hormones.
Youth.
The fairytales we’d all been fed.
Whatever greatness she projected onto me then.

A month prior I’d bought us a mosaic-framed mirror.

She threw it from the house.

Her scream.
The crash of glass on the stone path below.

I leaned over the rail to see the walkway strewn with glass and tile, splintered reflections flashing back up at us.

She was — understandably — enraged.

My fault.

As much as I wanted to whip myself,
to sink into shame
to acknowledge to my dead mother that I had become yet another man who hurt a woman—

Time was ticking.

Despite flights, fights, oceans and islands, we held together—
a raft between islands.

We were now locked into at least one trajectory.

Birth.

The midwife arrived just moments before our daughter emerged.
We never got to the pool.

Pushing became peace.
The veil was parted and my breath was gone—
the greatest portal into the sublime I had ever known.

I left three days later, returning to Bali to lead a training scheduled a year before.
Fifty people were waiting. A commitment I had made before any of this existed.

Leaving Anna was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.
Leaving our daughter—harder.

With the two of them on Maui, every mile I flew stretched something in me that was never meant to stretch.

The birth was no ending—though it brought relief from our first-time fears.

Success. Natural. Healthy.

The storm had broken.
Now came the drift.
Rafts don’t have rudders.

In Bali, I spoke to the trainees as if my life were whole.
Part of it was across the Pacific.
I had to—to lead well.

Anna wanted a Z name.
She proposed “Zaida.”
Arabic.

I loved it.

Abundant, overflowing, flourishing.

When the training was nearly complete, I said it out loud:
My heart is on Maui.

After the birth. After the training. New questions.

Custody?
Location?
Would Anna’s disappointment and anger dissipate?

Not yet. Understandable.

For a time, I thought I was supposed to let go — Anna, Zaida, being a father.

What did it mean—Maui, Bali, all of it?

A scripture I’d read—misread—
leave your father, your mother, your brother, your sister…

I believed it.
Or tried to.

When I got back to Maui, every cell of my being knew:

I had to be in her life.

Whatever the cost.
Even if it meant moving there.
Even if it meant leaving the life I had built in Bali.

In time, Anna saw it too:
The life she’d have if she didn’t accept my invitation.
A single mother. No skills or money. Maui cost of living.

She didn’t want to come back. For her, Bali had become a place of heartbreak.

Yet in Bali I had built a beautiful life.
On Maui, it would have been a struggle—for all three of us.

For Anna to land on Bali again, now as sanctuary, was its own work.

The three of us flew together.
I paid for her food and shelter. We had a nanny.

Still, it was so hard for her.

Despite community living. New friends. Other mothers.

None of that was sufficient.

I’d seen the signs, but wouldn’t admit it to myself.

Motherhood, Bali. She tried.
But she did not want that life.

Still, we did okay. Our baby went back and forth between us.
Pumped milk. Bottles. A rhythm.

As much as I loved my daughter, I didn’t love being alone with infants.
Not for long periods anyway.
Their neediness I could handle.
The guessing exhausted me.

I knew the benefits of cosleeping. Some say fathers shouldn’t sleep with babies—they might roll over and suffocate them.

I had no fear of that, but I was scared she’d roll out and hit her head on the teak floor.

So I had someone build rails around the king size bed.
The biggest crib I’ve ever seen.

When she cried, I held her and paced a U-shape in that tropical cupola—singing Jai Ganesha, inserting her name. Zaida Shazandra… Gopala.

A phone call that changed everything.

Anna, across town in Ubud.
Crying.

“She was just playing. You know the chili plant on the lanai...”

I nod, forgetting that she can’t see me.

I know the plant.
Where is this going?

My pulse already pumping.

Kadek’s voice in the background, soothing Zaida—still gasping.

“She must have gotten it on her fingers, then her eyes. They are so red.”

Breathe, I tell myself. Don’t react.

Cinta, our dog, stares at me—alert, unmoving.

“I couldn’t get her to stop crying. I didn’t know what to do.”

Now sobs from Anna. I wait. My leg twitches. I want to get up, run. Electricity floods me.

“I shook her.”

My breath catches.

“I didn’t mean to. I just… I’m losing it.”

Now I know. We hit bottom.
And then, strangely, I’m calm.

My breath slows on its own.
As does time.

The panic in me pauses.
A strange serenity takes its place.

One slow step at a time.

“Don’t worry.”

I sink my fingers into the rolls at the rottweiler’s neck, pull her into my leg.

“I’m coming over.”

A devastating admission.
The world I’d been living in collapsed.

She admitted it to me — that in itself was a miracle.

Despite the resentment, the anger—she was honest.

Maybe she didn’t even know how bad it was, how serious.

Whatever the case, I’m grateful.

My eyes opened.
At last, I saw what I’d refused to see.

Anna didn’t want to be a mother.
Not now.
Not like this.

The shaking. That woke me up.

I wouldn’t call that abuse.
Not to her then.
Not now.

What would that say about my willful blindness?

My self-blame rose again and again.
Still, I fought to focus on the future.

It’s not the same as hitting.
And it didn’t matter what I called it.

Or—and this question tore at my belly for days—
what if the shaking wasn’t that big a deal?
How normal is it?

And what parent doesn’t have moments of longing for the freedom they once had?

Part of me wanted to believe all that. Going back to the way it’d been looked so much easier.

There was no certainty.

Yet, what my gut finally settled into: I had to do something.

I didn’t know what or how—only this:

I won’t let that happen again.

An angel.

Rachel—my employee, my friend, also Anna’s friend. She had a mother’s heart—even then, before her own children.

She confirmed—a line had been crossed.
Shaking a child.
Something had to be done.

She counseled me.

Don’t say that.
Go slow.
Be artful.

She helped me move past the primal protection instinct.
To find compassion for Anna.
I did love her.

Her life had been interrupted. Whatever her part in that, the question now was how best to love this child.

Beyond labels—abuse, neglect, shaking—

I knew the real damage was resentment.

As much as my own mother loved me—her fifth child, eight years after the others—I was an anchor, holding her in a life she was trying to leave.

I knew parental resentment—
the feeling of being a weight on someone else’s life.
I could not bear that for Zaida.

Nobody wants to be with someone who doesn’t want to be with them.

Except maybe a baby.
With their mother.

Rachel helped me find the phrasing—the truth:

Anna, you don’t have to.
I will be one hundred percent responsible for her.
You can be with her only when you want to.
If you want to.

Zaida would ask me: “Where’s my mother? Why isn’t she here?”

I had vowed not to do what my parents did.
I would never speak about Anna in a way that hurt Zaida’s love for her.

All I knew to say to three-, four-, five-year-old Zaida: “Your mother loves you.”

It was true.

All mothers are part angel. Anna, especially.

She may not remember that I offered her the freedom to leave our daughter.

Or that it was prompted by the shaking.

A young mother’s resentment thudded up against the limits of what she could offer our child then.

Infants are hard.
Parenting is provocative.

But shaking one—that was too much.
I could not let it happen again.

For more than a decade I wanted to be understood. If not thanked, at least not vilified.

Invisibly, in my own mind, a toddler’s tantrum.
Flailing, screaming, protesting.

I don’t ask how she recalls it. It’s not my business.

Eventually I stopped wanting to correct the stories.

Her perspective was:

His baby.
I was just the means to that end.

In the mind of our daughter:

He kept me from my mother.

I was not willing for Anna to appear as the villain in other people’s minds.
Not that I could stop it.

But when she told me what other mothers said to her—

How could you leave your child?
I could never do that.

I wanted to protect Anna—to shake those women awake.

The courage she summoned to make such an agonizing decision.

The honesty to listen so deeply to her own heart—beneath the very real maternal instincts alive in her then—
to face the judgment of those women,
to trust her deepest desires:

freedom, distance from Bali, the knowing that her time for mothering had not yet come.

It was a miracle that she trusted me enough to admit to the shaking.

Another—that she trusted me when I released her from obligation.

Relief was one stream coursing through me.
We’d found a way through for us all.

Another current: fear.

Our daughter not yet turned two, and I, an orphan, with no ties to past or family, now fully responsible.

For the next eight years, the three of us formed and reformed—a family no one had taught us how to make.

Yet rivers run unstoppably—and our daughter blossomed.

Now. 2026.

Zaida and I sit in a park a couple miles from where she was born. In front of us the West Maui Mountains are greener than I’ve ever seen them.

We moved here from Bali when she was ten. Her mother’s time had come.

It’s two weeks until Zaida’s nineteenth birthday. She asked for new sneakers—the indigo Nike Swoosh.

“What was the thing you used to say to me at bedtime when I was young?”

With most anyone else, I’d say, “You’re still young.”

I smile.

She let me read to her in bed until she was thirteen. Then I would close the book, turn out the light and speak the words:

“Que sueñes con los angelitos.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. I remembered it right.”

We both turn at the sound of her little brother’s voice—her mother’s second child, with the man she’s still happily partnered with.

Five now, and he’s learned that if he sits at the center, he can spin himself on the carousel.

Behind us, three huge jacarandas claim the sky. They’re not full, yet their authority is already resplendent.

I add the Indigo Swoosh to the mountain’s magic purple.

I am forever wedded to May on Maui.

Jacaranda—
always blossoming in my heart.

I cannot — will not — be late.

Not after all that’s gone down.

People stream in behind me—faster now, pressing past me toward their seats.
Still, I don’t move.

Everyone’s bought in. Be on time. Be your word.

My body twitches—seat, door, seat again.

Maybe I shouldn’t have told him.

Or maybe it was going to come out anyway.

Just as I step toward my seat, the staff room door opens.
Penny strides toward the stage.
Michael heads straight for me.

His face is tight. The ease has vanished.

A breath in—lips pressed thin.

I glance at my phone. Two minutes ’til start time.
Day three. Final session.

My breath shortens.

He speaks first.

“I’m sorry.”

Head tipping, his eyes drop into mine.
“You’re going to have to leave now. We’ll be refunding you.”

I blink.

“What? Really?”

I almost laugh.

It would be funny—should be—if he weren’t so serious.

“Yes. I’m…”

His firmness lands between us.
I have no response.

He nods toward the doors.

“Let’s go over here.”
To the last table—maybe the same one where I registered.

I sign what he asks.
Pen pressed hard. Hand quivering.

My legal name.

My mind whirs.
I don’t see a way to reverse this.

I saw the intention of the policy from the start—even if it shouldn’t have applied to me.

This decision, though—it’s ridiculous.
I’ve proven that.
Anyone can see it.

Suddenly I’m outside. The sun glares off the concrete. I squint.
Just stand there.

Heat rises off the ground.

I sit in my car, door open, one foot on the pavement.
Out of sight, traffic buzzes on The 5.

Moments ago, I was a star participant.
Now I’m not allowed in the room.

And my honesty—about the lie—caused that.

I close the door.
Start the drive home.

Five days earlier, Elias was driving us to LA for business.

Without looking, he reached across from the driver’s seat to the box in my lap. He squeezed a green fig, then brought it to his mouth.

He paused before taking a bite, gaze fixed ahead, hand hovering.

“You know, there’s a Landmark Forum coming up this weekend in San Diego.”

His voice was thin—cautious and constrained. It wasn’t the casual tone he wanted.

He bit all but the stem.

“Okay.”

I let the second syllable lift, lingering in the cool air.

I’d already told him a couple months ago I’d join the seminar. At some point.

He dropped the stem into the plastic pint container and reached for another fig.

“You could go.”

I inhaled sharply, my eyes widening.

“Okay. Thanks.”

He wanted me to say more.

The silence turned edgy. I let it hang.
He’d created it; I’d let him sit in it.

The AC fan whirred, dissonant against the engine’s whine.
Cool air blew against my face.

In May, on The 5 heading north toward L.A., the engine and AC both strained in the heat.

“You could call now and register.”

My eyebrows rose above the rim of my sunglasses.

It was unusual for him to suggest what I should do. His persistence caught me off guard.

I was impressed.
And annoyed.

We were both living in Spain when we met. I was in my “everyone should be doing yoga” phase. The first time he joined me, he got angry.

“I only did it so you’d shut up about it.”

That had stung.

We passed the Carlsbad exit toward the coast.

I was out of town when he participated in the Landmark seminar.

When I got back, he was different. The way he walked carried a new boldness. He started making more money on our book-buying days.

He’d been low-key about his experience. He had suggested I do the seminar—yet cautiously.

My response was immediate: no. It’s too mainstream.

I’d been with gurus, at ashrams. Had done screaming sessions, hitting pillows—radical therapies.

Between my stints at Esalen and Humaniversity, I saw myself as evolved.

Yet his sincerity tipped me to yes.

“I know you. You love to grow.”

There was real love in it. I felt it land.

By then, he was into yoga. Really into it.
He’d come with me to Humaniversity that first time.
When I went back to Omega Institute, he came too.

Back in the car, I ate another fig, smiling—we’d just spent $50 on figs for the drive.

We were living life on our own terms.
`At least I thought so.

I couldn’t argue. He was right. I did love to grow.

“Okay.”

This time it meant that I would call.

He pushed us toward our first stop at UC Irvine, listening to my side of the conversation with Landmark.

Past the perfunctory questions, they asked why I wanted to join. I answered easily—instantly—about my commitment to growth.

The next question hit like a dodgeball to the face—sharp, sudden.

“Have you ever been hospitalized for any mental, emotional or psychiatric condition?”

I blinked at the heat shimmering off the asphalt. Something flared in my chest.

“Well, yes.”

There was a pause. He hadn’t expected that.

“Will you tell me about it?”

I didn’t want to. I didn’t like the question. But I wasn’t going to be pushed off what had happened. No hiding.

Noticing the change in my voice, Elias turned toward me. Our eyes met. His brows twitched. We both faced forward again.

“Okay. I was once in a psych ward for a few days. I guess you could say — from that perspective — that I had a manic episode.”

I could feel the defensiveness in my voice. My lips pressed tight. I’d hoped I was beyond that.

“Do you take medication? Do you have a diagnosis?”

His voice didn’t change. He sounded like he was reading from a script.

My eyes narrowed, shifting from the cars ahead to the clock on Elias’s dash.
10:48. 10:48. 10:49.

My jaw tightened. I could feel him drawing a frame around me. And just as fast, me erasing it, refusing to be boxed in.

“I don’t take medication, and they said I have bipolar disorder.”

He explained their policy.

Since I’d been hospitalized, it was still possible for me to join the seminar—if I had a letter from a psychotherapist.

Permission.
Ongoing treatment.
In case of emergency.

My old judgment flared. Too mainstream. My exhale came out as a snort.

Nothing annoyed me like blanket rules—policies that ignore individual circumstances.
Especially when they applied to me.

Elias drove on, quietly attentive—as if eavesdropping.
I could feel him trying to understand.

I shrugged it off.
My shoulders dropped.
I went flat.

“Okay. I understand.”

A sigh.
“I’m open to all of that, but certainly it’s not going to happen in the next three days.”

Silence.

In the car.

On the phone.

“Maybe you could join the Forum another time then.”

Really? I thought.
That’s the best you can do?

After the call, I explained it to Elias.

He was silent.
No commiseration.
No confirmation of my indignation.

Then he threw me a curve ball.

“If you really want to go, you still could.”

I’d done what Elias wanted. I tried to register.

And the Universe had spoken.

I was off the hook. Relief loosened my chest.
I was also blocked. That fired me up.

After I’d been locked up, I dove into therapy—traditional, group, shamanic.

I was not going to take medication. And I was not going to get locked up again.

That’s when I moved to Omega.
I immersed myself in Transformational Breath, meditation, and yoga.

I was going to attend a ten-day silent meditation retreat.

The retreat center had refused me the same way.

Policy.

Blanket rules.

I looked at Elias, his face as steely as his driving.

I did still want to join the Forum.

“Yeah? How’s that?”

“You could call back. Give a different name and just say no to that question.”

“Elias—”

I gasped—mock shock, real awe.

Turning toward him, my back pressed against the door.

“You are suggesting that I lie?”

In our friendship, I was the one who beat rules—who assumed they didn’t apply to me.

That sometimes drew Elias’s judgment,
sometimes his respect.
Seldom his participation.

“You know why they are asking that question — the policy. And you know you’re not actually a danger in the way they’re worried.”

He was right.

I called again, and luckily got a different person.

“Hi. I’d like to register for the Forum this weekend.”

Elias took the last fig.

“Yes, of course. My name is Anand Siskin.”

The words came out easily.

Up ahead, traffic snarled. Elias merged from the left lane toward our exit.

Friday morning, I stepped up to the registration table—on top of my game.

“Welcome to the Landmark Forum.”

Short hair, middle-aged, huge smile. Efflorescent enthusiasm—over the top and completely genuine.

“Thank you.”

“What’s your name?”

“Anand Siskin.”

At that point in my life, everyone called me Shekhar.
Hearing “Anand” come out of my mouth felt off.

“Okay, Anand.”

She beamed, checked her list.

“Are you ready to have the most transformative experience of your life?”

“Absolutely.”

I matched her—even as something in me winced.
She believed all of it.
Fully.

Part of me admired that.
Part of me thought she was ridiculous.

She looked down, found my name, then back up—over pink-framed glasses.

Glitter around her eyes.
Gold. Silver.
Actual glitter.

“I see a note that you’ll be sitting on the floor. Is that right?”

“Yes, please.”

A small pause—just long enough for her eyes to flick over me. Then the smile returned, unwavering.

“Perfect.”

I grinned to myself. Elias had been right.

He’d been driving us back from L.A.

“Can I give you some tips about the weekend?”

I didn’t need tips.

“Okay.”

“I know you like to do things your own way.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“It’ll work better with Landmark if you ask permission first.”

My legs quivered—energy with nowhere to go. I was itching to get home, to get out of the car. I didn’t like being a passenger.

“Like what?”

“Like sitting on the floor. You and I both like that better than stupid chairs.”

“Okay.”

“But you’re going to be in a big group. They’ll already have it set up with chairs.”

“Yeah?”

“So if you ask ahead—give them a reason, like your back—they’ll probably be fine with it.”

“Ah huh.”

They’ll be fine with it?
Like I’m going to ask permission to sit.

Just the idea of it irritated me.

We passed the exit for Legoland, traffic backed up onto The 5.

“It’s no big deal, man. They just have their ways.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

I called the next day.

“I’d like to sit on the floor. My back will be in pain if I sit in a chair for three days.”

That was true.

I’d found the phrasing that worked.

I thanked the bubbly registration lady and took the lanyard with the name.

“Your seat’s all the way in the front.”

She winked.
I had no idea why.

Beyond the row of registration tables, we funneled in through a bank of glass doors.

Inside, my eyes adjusted.
A huge, windowless room.
So many people.

The size of it hit me. My cockiness deflated.

A small army of volunteers, carrying that same over-the-top energy.

My body wanted to bolt. Still, I moved deeper in.
Part of me recognized the danger. Another part overrode it.

They’d put me in the first row, on the end.

A great semicircle.
Each chair precisely placed.
Barely enough space.

All aimed at the stage — with a tall chair, a side table and a lectern like a music stand.

By the time I reached my spot, my bravado had drained. Where I’d been righteous—even rebellious—I now felt self-conscious. The familiar shyness.

Trying not to show it, I folded into lotus—as if it were effortless.

I hoped—no, knew—some would be impressed.

I kept my face neutral. Underneath, disdain—for the masses, the people whose legs dangle.

Three hundred chairs.
One young man on the floor.
Fluorescent lights.
White paneled ceiling.

How ironic that I—a full two feet lower than everyone else—could still look down on them.

I judged the chair-sitters.
I’d outsmarted the system—or so I told myself.
My chest swelled.

I got what I wanted.
Sat how I wanted.
Even a front row bonus.

A woman with chocolate-toned skin stepped onto the dais. Overweight, yet she moved like an athlete—a purposeful, light stride to center stage.

Perched on the stool, her feet just touched the ground.
She looked out over the participants—way above me—toward the back of the room.

Chin lifted, brows raised—she caught the signal.

A smile. A sweep of the room—and it stilled.

“Welcome to the Landmark Forum.”

Her voice filled the space—steady, warm, in control. The rest of the chatter ceased.

“We’ve been waiting for you.”

Long pause.
She slowly scanned the audience while we all looked back expectantly.

Silently, she stood and stepped to the side of the lectern.

Nothing between her and us.

“I am going to show up and deliver for you completely. And if you show up fully, participate fully, your life will improve in countless ways.”

Total stillness.

“Are you willing to show up and participate fully in this program?”
A scatter of “yeses” and “absolutelys.”

“If anyone is unwilling, that’s okay. Maybe someone coerced you to be here. Maybe you were appeasing someone.”

She paused again. Returned to her stool.

“Here’s what’s going to happen. If you don’t really want to be here, we’re going to let you off the hook. We won’t waste your time. We’ll give you a full refund.

If that’s you, now’s the time. Stand up, bring your belongings and head over to our team by the door.

I don’t want anyone to be here because they think they have to.”

She waited.
We all waited.
No one moved.

“If you choose to stay, then you are agreeing to participate fully.”

No one moved.

“Good.” She smiled. “Then let’s get to work.”

I sat straighter. Watching her, some part of me already knew — no matter her weight or dress, she was not to be messed with.

She had an authority that inspired desire for her approval—and fear of not getting it.

“Let’s go over some basics, that will help you get what you came for.”

“I invite you to go all in. The way you show up here is how you show up in your life.”

She let that hang in the air. I was with it. I often said “the way you do one thing is the way you do everything.”

That’s how I lived. Or so I believed.

“Blindspots. We all have them. You know how most driving accidents happen because of the blindspots?”

Nods.

“Same thing here. But blindspots are also where transformation happens. They are where insight comes from.”

She was good. Clear. Strong.

She drew a perfect circle on the board.

The more we know, the more we see how much we don’t.

I was in.

If I’d known where it was going, I would have been afraid of the collision that was coming.

I don’t remember the woman, or her story. Only fragments—a pink scarf, and the way Penny held her there, standing in place as we all watched.

Relentless questions. An unshakeable gaze.

No sweetness. No coddling.

Every time the woman veered into blame, Penny cut her off—sharp, immediate.

Three hundred people sat silent.

I felt it—what it would be like for Penny’s attention to land on me.

I wanted that. I thought I had nothing to hide.
I mistook my confidence for evidence.

She paused the dialogue more than once. The woman stood there while Penny worked the room—her spotlight widening, encompassing everyone.

I was very still. Attentive.

“Are you seeing it? Do you see how you do that in your life?”

I watched the woman. Then Penny—
hoping she would see that I got it.

In the end, the woman folded forward, covering her face.

Penny said nothing.
The woman blew her nose, looked up. Eyes wet.

With her arms at her sides, it was as if something heavy had dropped off—something long dead.

Her face was puffy—yet lighter.

Penny let the silence stretch.

“Do you see what we do?”

I was sure I did—blind to the fact that the lesson was already aimed at me.

The sound of sniffles didn’t break the spell.

My list came quickly.
Names. More names. Too many.
With each, my gut clenched.
I sensed where this was going.

Relationships where there had been love—now broken.

Then the assignment: phone calls.

I did not want to. Not at all.
Just follow the instructions, I told myself.

The parking lot filled with people pacing—heads down, voices low, intense.

After lunch, the tone changed.

A man and two women slipped into their seats, late.

Penny didn’t stop, didn’t flinch.

“Do you want to know why you’re here? Why your life doesn’t work?”

She drew a wagon wheel on the board.

“What happens if a spoke breaks?”

“Does it keep rolling?”
Nods. Uh-huhs.

“Get this—”

She set down the marker and sliced the air with both hands.

“Integrity is not good or bad. This is about what works and what doesn’t.”

“The way you show up here is the way you show up in your life.”

Penny stepped back onto the stage and sat.

It clicked. Clean. Self-evident.
So simple. I liked it—
mostly.

“Who is ready to clean up? To restore integrity?”

The room went quiet.

Then her voice intensified.

“What are you here for? This is your life.”

The man raised his hand.

“You’re trying to shame people. I don’t like it.”

“I’m not shaming anyone. I’m telling the truth.”

My pulse kicked up.

Penny didn’t blink. Didn’t hesitate.

“Are you feeling shame?”

“Oh, c’mon. Don’t try to make this about me. I’m not going to let you make me feel bad for being late.”

She didn’t answer right away. Just stood there, eyes fixed on him.

“Were you here when we broke for lunch?”

“Yes.”

“Did you hear me say 1:35?”

“Yes.”

“What time did you get back?”

He hesitated. She waited. Then he brought the mic back up.

“It’s not a big deal. Things happen.”

Was it a big deal? To her, it was.

She paused. Softer now.

“Yes, things happen. The world happens. What I’m interested in is you—what you choose, what you do.”

He lowered the microphone again, chest rising and falling.

“I’m not telling you what to do. It’s your life.”

For all her toughness, there was compassion there.

“You wouldn’t be here if your life was working. Without your word, it never will.”

My shoulders tightened. A bit extreme.
Still—I couldn’t argue it.
Nor could I pretend how easily his defense could have been mine.

He stood there. Silent. His breath the only thing moving.

My knee bounced. Something in me bristled.
I reached for my water bottle. Took a sip.

“Let me ask you something.”

He nodded.

“What did you come here for?”

I flashed on Elias’s persistence.
What was I here for?

The man answered. Slowly at first. Then it came.

By the time he sat down, people were passing tissues.

At the end of Friday, I’d called twenty-two people. Spoken with nine—mostly ex-girlfriends.

The apologies were real—even when they stuck in my throat.

Not easy. Not clean. Still real.

Even if I hadn’t meant to, I had hurt people.

Taking responsibility for the rifts was harder. My stomach tightened every time.

The blame I’d put on them—I took it back, piece by piece.

With one, something opened. She told me how much I’d hurt her, and I felt the old reflex rise—to defend, to explain.

I held it back.

I asked questions, listened.
We both cried.

Another told me she wasn’t interested—neither in what I’d learned nor in hearing from me at all.

That landed harder than I thought it could.

I dialed the next number.

Before each call, my finger hovered over the green button.
My face flushed.
I hesitated.

And with each attempt, regardless of the outcome, something in me grew. My chest felt fuller. Softer.

I could feel something shifting—
more than I knew.

Walking in on Saturday morning, the room had changed—louder, looser. Even before Penny took the stage, the volume of the voices had tripled. Everyone talked at once.

By now every time Penny asked for volunteers, dozens of hands went up.

When she chose me, I was surprised.
And—of course she did.

I don’t remember what I said. Or what she said.

We stood just a few feet apart.
With my back to the room, I felt eyes on me.

I kept switching the microphone from hand to hand, aware of my sweat slicking it.

She called me Anand, which felt off in my body.

Still, what I was sharing was real.

I wanted her acknowledgement, a nod to all the work I’d done.
Instead, she kept asking questions. Hard ones.
Steering it away from where I wanted to go.

I wanted a breakthrough without breakage—

to be seen without exposure.

My breath caught. I wanted to disappear.
Three hundred people watching.
Me at the center of it. Nowhere to go.

I shook out my hands. My shoulders dropped.

When what she said landed, my exhale was enormous. I hadn’t realized how much I’d been holding.

Her acknowledgement didn’t matter anymore.
She’d gotten me to see something I hadn’t seen.

I didn’t need to prove anything.
My belly relaxed.

After, people came up to me.
Their thanks didn’t make sense—until they told me what had shifted for them.

I called Elias, grateful.

He was right.
Mostly.

He’d seen Landmark. Seen me—
and still missed something.

“Breakthroughs are like popcorn.”

Sunday. Day three.

Penny stood facing the group, gesturing to the man who’d just sat down after his breakthrough.

How did she do that every time?

“At first as the heat comes up, there’s a pop here. Then a pop there.”

She walked to the other side of the stage, heels clacking on the black-painted wood.

“Then it becomes pop, pop. Pop, pop, pop.”

“It’s contagious. And if you’ve not popped yet, today’s your day.”

People were shifting. During every break, contact info changed hands.

“Let’s get together. Let’s stay in touch.”
Hugs. High-fives.

I found myself talking with staff and volunteers—asking what they’d gotten from Landmark, why they kept coming back.

Michael said he’d been moved by my conversation with Penny. He had an alcoholic father too.

He said Landmark had saved his life.

Brought his family back together.

This was his twelfth time volunteering.

I liked him. It felt like we might become friends.

The second time he called me Anand, I winced. A flicker of unease.
The name pressed on something. Its meaning—bliss—began to grate.

I told myself I was restoring integrity.
That was true—just not all of it.

Would I have been willing to confess to Penny?

I spoke without thinking.

A deep dissonance had worked its way to the surface—bigger than the seminar. Darker.

“You know, Michael, I realize I haven’t been in full integrity here.”

His face tightened—quizzical, then concerned.

Something in me dropped. I let go.

“What do you mean?”

Does the name really matter?
It’s just a label.

I’d outed myself—and was still trying to hide.

My jaw set.

By then, it was too late.

“Yeah, Anand is not my real name.”

The words landed between us.

He said nothing. Just looked at me.

As I told him what I’d done, I searched his face for a smile.

I wanted his grin, the confirmation of my cleverness, the brilliance that paved the path for how powerfully I’d shown up over the last three days.

He nodded. His face stayed blank.

A micromoment of panic.
My world cracked.
He wasn’t getting it—wasn’t getting me.

Deep in my bones, a calcium quake.

I couldn’t see that then. Couldn’t have.

After the last three days, he had to see that it worked.
How could he not?

He just looked at me—gentle green eyes tightening, concern settling into his face.

If anything, they should be praising me.

Or so it seemed then. Superiority slid in to prevent collapse.

When I finished, all he said was that he’d be back in a moment.

The moment kept stretching.

For the first time in three days, the current flowed around me as if I’d snagged on a rock in the river.

Years ago, one of my yoga teachers said to me:

“Shekhar, I’m putting you on a diet.”

That was weird. I was already eating only raw vegan. What was left?

“No more handstands until we fix the fundamentals.”

I had wanted the handstand badly enough to force it.
It worked.
And it was wonky.

Over months, he took me back to basics.

Alignment.
Core.
Stability.

When I got upside down again, I couldn’t balance. It was shaky.

For years I thought I’d won with Landmark.

I got in. Participated fully. Had the conversation with Penny.

I felt no humiliation in getting kicked out.

It wasn’t me. It was their stupid policy.

I was king of rationalizations.

They weren’t denying me. Just delaying me—for everyone’s safety.

I got what I wanted. And more.

That was enough. Or so I thought.

I wasn’t wrong.
I won the only game I could see.

It was a small game.

I got myself in the room.
Even under a false name, I was myself.
I learned something essential—integrity.

I lied to get it.
I told the truth and got removed.

At the time, it made no sense.

I wasn’t unstable. I wasn’t a risk. I’d proven it.

What I couldn’t see was that it wasn’t about me.

Had they let me stay, they would have been out of integrity.

We were all being as honest as we knew how.

Elias. Me. Even them.

It worked. Up to a point.
Then it didn’t.

Balancing in a handstand isn’t holding.
It’s constant correction—too far one way, then back.

It’s not about right or wrong.
It’s about what can stand.

Before my teacher took me back to basics, I could balance in a handstand.
For a while.

It took effort. A lot of it.
It passed for mastery.

After, it felt different in my body.

Less force.
More awareness.
More subtlety.

Not holding.

Adjusting.

Tiny tremors through my hands.

Too far one way.
So move in the opposite.

Every day the oscillations become finer.

Invisible from the outside.
Essential.

👉 What did this bring up for you?

Most people say they want to grow.

Fewer are willing to be uncomfortable.

And almost no one is willing to make others uncomfortable.

Let’s talk about that.

You’ve probably heard it before:

Life begins where your comfort zone ends.

You might even practice it physically.

Workouts.
Cold exposure.
Pushing your body past what’s easy.

Good.

But what about emotionally?

Psychologically?

Spiritually?

Because that’s where most people stop.

One of the biggest edges in my life as a coach
has been learning to be comfortable with discomfort.

First, my own.

Still a practice.
Still evolving.

Then…

being okay with other people’s discomfort.

Not fixing it.
Not softening it.
Not rescuing them from it.

Just staying present.

And now?

There’s a deeper edge I’m dancing with.

Being willing to cause discomfort.

Pause on that.

I don’t want people to suffer.
I don’t want to create harm.

But I am willing to disrupt comfort.

Because I’ve seen the cost of not growing.

The quiet pain of living below your potential.

The slow drift into what I call:

mediocre monotony.

It’s not terrible.

It’s just…

not alive.

Years ago, I was leading yoga teacher trainings and running a studio in Bali.

I required anyone who wanted to teach at my studio to complete our teacher training—

which pushed people harder, emotionally and spiritually, than almost anything else out there.

I didn’t charge my existing teachers to go through it.

A man named Marcus joined—and quickly hit his edge.

He wanted to quit.

He didn’t think it was fair.
He’d already done other trainings.

I told him I understood.

And if he wanted to keep teaching at the studio, he needed to stay.

He stayed.

The next day, he asked to speak with me.

No one has ever challenged me like that before.
No one has ever insisted on my potential.

And he thanked me.

We are here to evolve.

To expand.

To become more.

And that process is not comfortable.

One of my coaches helped me see this more clearly.

I created a declaration I spoke hundreds of times:

I am happy to hurt in order to heal.

Read that again.

There are two truths inside it.

I am willing to feel discomfort myself.

And…

I am willing to be a stand that creates discomfort in others—

in service of their growth.

Because staying stuck hurts more.

So here’s the real question:

👉 Where in your life are you avoiding someone else’s discomfort—
when telling the truth might actually serve them?

I’d love to hear your answer in the comments.

More soon,

Daniel

Father Mikey is not a Jesuit priest.

I’m the only one who calls him that.

He’s not related to me.

He’s not even human.

Father Mikey is a small terrier mix.

My father—Edwin Charles, Ned—died when I was fifteen. Alcoholism.

My mother died when I was thirty-three. Heart.

They both went quickly.

Too quickly for certain kinds of love to happen.

Mikey arrived without asking.

All my life, dogs have trusted me quickly.

Listened. Followed. Loved me easily.

Mikey is not like that.

He’s what people call old. Maybe there’s dementia.

Like some men who’ve been around the sun many times: small bladder, stubborn habits.

Most of the time, he wants to sleep.

Sometimes he just stands there, staring into space,

as if something is happening that I can’t see.

When I invite him for a walk, he sometimes snaps at me.

Not vicious. Just: no.

I don’t know if he thinks I’m someone else.

Or thinks I’m about to harm him.

It doesn’t seem to matter how slow I move,

how soft I speak,

how low I crouch.

Occasionally—snap.

I’ve asked him about it.

No response so far.

His young sister, Lola, is the opposite.

She sees me and collapses into joy—on her back, offering everything.

Please. Belly rubs. Love me.

Mikey doesn’t offer much.

He pees on the floor.

He poops on the floor.

Not always.

But often enough that it becomes part of the relationship.

I’m not entirely sure what’s going on.

Maybe he can’t hold it.

Maybe he’s saying,

yeah, you handle that.

I’m done with your expectations.

I’ve asked him about this too.

Still no response.

There’s something in it, though.

A kind of late-life freedom.

I will wear purple when I am old.

I stop asking permission now.

And so we move slowly.

Slower than I like.

Slower than my life has ever moved.

Four hundred times slower than I’m used to.

Six hundred times slower than Lola would prefer.

Step by step.

Pause. Wait. Breathe.

Sometimes we don’t walk at all.

Sometimes we just stand together

while he decides whether the world is worth engaging.

And somewhere in all this,

something in me is changing.

I’m becoming more patient.

More willing to love without response.

Without reward.

Without being seen as the one who is loved.

Jesus taught: love your enemies.

I don’t think Mikey hates me.

Sometimes he’s loving.

I think he’s a little lost.

Maybe in some pain.

Set in his ways.

Living inside a world I can’t see yet.

And still, he gives me something.

A chance I didn’t have before.

To care for someone

who cannot meet me where I am.

To clean the floor without resentment.

To wait without demand.

To offer love that isn’t returned in the ways I understand.

My parents died before I could meet them there.

Before I could learn this version of love.

Mikey, in his small, stubborn, inconvenient way,

has become a doorway.

Not to the love that comes back.

To a great love:

to clean up after one who seems to resent me.

Thank you, Father Mikey.

Who in your life is teaching you to love without getting what you expect in return?

Share below.

Most people avoid hard things.

Not because they can’t do them.

Because they don’t like how they feel while doing them.

Why do I hate fasting?

Because it’s hard.

Every quarter—usually at the solstice or equinox—I give myself the gift of at least a three-day water fast.

And every time, part of me resists.

I’m hungry.

Food looks good.

This would be easier if I just… didn’t.

Two weeks ago, I was in the middle of a particularly intense week in a program with one of my mentors.

I had planned to fast.

Some people suggested I skip it.

For a moment, I pushed back.

“I’m doing it anyway.”

And then I did something I don’t usually do.

I changed my mind.

Not from weakness—from awareness.

I chose a better window.

Because timing matters.

Now I’m in it.

Yesterday was day one.

And right on cue, the voice came:

“What if you just skip it this quarter?”

And just as quickly, something deeper answered:

I’m not someone who runs from a challenge.

I am someone who does what he says he will do.

Adjustments? Yes.

Avoidance? No.

Because I know what it costs.

Not physically.

Internally.

Three months of knowing:

“I said I would do that… and I didn’t.”

That’s not a cost I’m willing to carry for the next three months.

The real reason

So why do I hate fasting?

Because it’s uncomfortable.

Because it strips away distraction.

Because it asks something of me.

Why do I do it anyway?

There are so many benefits—physical, emotional, and spiritual.

Physically, the body shifts.

Digestion rests.

Stored energy gets used.

Inflammation can decrease.

The body redirects energy from processing food into repair and healing.

There’s a kind of internal cleanup that happens.

Mentally and emotionally, things get quieter.

You see your patterns more clearly.

Your impulses.

Your habits.

What you reach for when things feel uncomfortable.

Spiritually, there’s space.

Less noise.

More presence.

A deeper connection to something steady underneath it all.

And the greatest benefit is this:

It reminds me who I am.

Not the version of me that negotiates with comfort.

The version that chooses, and follows through.

You don’t need to fast.

But you do need something in your life that asks this of you.

Something that draws a line and says:

“Are you who you say you are?”

What is something you do that challenges you—

that takes you beyond the death spiral of our modern, over-comforted world?

Comment below and let me know.

This is the opening of a book I’m writing.
One that’s different from anything I’ve written before.

What follows is the opening scene.

Read it slowly.

There are moments in life that neither ask nor tell.
Some moments devour—
indifferent to consent.

They take—
what cannot be recovered.

I didn’t know that then.
I was counting down, nearly done, already out the door, thinking this era would fade into another.
Still—I hadn’t gone.

His hands, softly interlaced in front of him, palm heels touching, almost the shape of a prayer—
yet with the fingers folded over, tracing down the outsides, gently wiggling.
His hands — long, the skin between translucent and luminescent — always say something.
Together. Gentle.

“Go easy on yourself, Love.”

His smile comes through the loveliness of his accent. Greta’s face softens as his ease settles over her. Her shoulders slide back.

Now his face softens and widens too. I look back to Greta, sitting on cushions on the floor like the rest of us.

The uprightness of her posture — like a string pulls her sternum toward him up on the stage, in his wide chair — fades back. Her height lessens as her back rounds again.

It’s the last day. The room hums with that last-chance pressure — ask now or go home unchanged. Miss the shift only he can deliver. Hands rise faster than they have all ten days.

As usual, he scans the room from the stage—

Where’s the energy? What wants to happen?

These questions are the way the choosing happens.

He always says, “It’s not me. I’m not doing the choosing. Something tells me.”

I do not raise mine. It’s not that I’m hiding or don’t want to grow. He’s soured on me. A steady swing from green, alkaline, sunshine love to something acidic and absent. Disappointed.

When my mother’s death had brought me out of the Byron Bay bubble, and caused me to miss the first part of the tour, I’d expected at least a flicker of sympathy from him. He offered none. That surprised me. And it hurt.

Once it had felt like pure love from Simon. There was never a time that I didn’t feel nervous, somehow wrong. Yet, being with him in Byron. Alone together in his office or kitchen, it was something like intimacy.

Why deepen my descent now?

His sky-blue eyes widen from Greta, then settle into their usual room-scan — half receiving the field, half transmitting into it.

Beyond the glass on the mountain side of the room arid air picks up specks of beige earth and spins them before dropping them again.

Then he does what he never does. His eyes narrow into a rare ferocity and bore into me — even though I haven’t raised my hand.

“Your compulsive use of women to feed your fragile ego is disgusting.”

Hands drop. Side conversations fall silent.

People look around — alert, cautious. No one wants to intrude on this moment.

A few are not yet sure who he’s speaking to.

Heat rises through my chest. He hasn’t said my name, nothing that truly identifies me. Even if others haven’t got it, there’s no point in me dancing around it.

I know it’s me. Still, nothing comes to say back.

He waits a beat.

“Worse. You call it love.”

He turns aside slightly, as if about to spit.

“Love-making. It’s pure, pathetic manipulation.”

My unblinking eyes stay with his, locked to him with a steadiness that pulls the whole room still. I don’t shrink. Don’t defend.

He raises one eyebrow, one half of his face surprise, with a ghost of the old warmth; the other screwed down into scorn.

“Nothing to say? That’s rare.”

The lilt of his British accent is still lovely, his sarcasm edged with a humor I might have laughed at in any other moment.

My breath stays steady, rhythmic, bracing me against the fire pouring off him. The heat drops down through me, into my folded legs.

What can I say to that?

No defense comes. Still, his energy surges through me. I sit taller.

“C’mon. Something clever. Something guarded.”

His eyebrow drops, his face settling into an eerie symmetry.

His head moves in a slow, side-to-side oscillation, disappointment passing over me like a verdict. The corners of his lips descend, and the bottom drops out of me.

The room, the 150 breathless onlookers, fades into half-light. The beam between Simon and me brightens.

“No. There is nothing for you to say. Maybe for once you’re ready to admit it, to see your sycophantic nastiness as the hate that it really is.”

I hear the straw-sucking sounds of people inhaling.

“Misogyny doesn’t even do it justice.”

For the many who don’t speak English well, the words are only partially decipherable. Everyone knows they’re for me.

And even though I know what they mean, they fly over me as his sword plunges into my flesh.

I breathe, and out of nowhere sit taller again. Heat.

“I see.”

I don’t know what I mean, only that it rises out of the buzz running through me — something in me pushing back. I do see, at least enough to meet him.

I won’t look away.

“Do you?”

He lifts his bony left arm as if directing some invisible force at the back of the room.

Then the right one chops toward me, as if it’s discharging the words rather than his mouth.

“Because if you did, you’d probably never touch another woman again.”

The stillness of the room breaks only with Mara’s shaking head, the rust of her hair swaying behind it like a slow, drifting tail. Disgust — another nail in the coffin.

Simon doesn’t turn his head, doesn’t acknowledge her movement. The silence is excruciating.

“But predators don’t usually stop to see what they’ve done.”

He looks around the room now—my eyes don’t flinch from his face. I am aware that other faces move back and forth between Simon and me. Like and accident beside the road, they will look away — embarrassed — if I turn toward them.

My breath stays even, feeding the fire rising in me. I won’t submit.

He returns to me.

“I think we’re done.”

Something shifts — and though I’m on the floor and he on the throne, for the first time I am not afraid of him.

“Yes.”

Instinct answers for me before I can think.

He doesn’t look away though. The silence stirs questions in me.

Done with this moment?
Done forever?

My gut answers. But to which?

He leans forward now, gripping both hands on the arms of the chair.

“If you really let this in, you’d go crazy. You wouldn’t be able to function in the world. They’d lock you up.”

Half sneer, half smile — showing how dangerous his words are, and how little it matters to him.

I wait. Not to see if he’s done. Not out of deference.
Then the response comes out of me, from somewhere other than my mind.

“I will never let that happen to me again.”

As I stare at him, he sits back — as sitting upright is no longer worth the effort, not for me.

Now: soft chair, soft belly, the rest of the room still gone.
They are silent.
Like a crowd at the Colosseum, watching the spectacle—one gladiator will die.

“No, you are way too controlled for that.”

A parting parry.
A final jab.
His house.
His rules.
The final word.

He turns, the next scan already underway.
Like the way the light used to disappear when we turned off an old TV—pulled into the center of the screen, then gone.

The beam that had been between us dissolves.

An instant inversion.
The room opens and I close into myself.
I breathe, keep my back up.

It doesn’t matter that only Simon and I know what I meant.
I will never let that happen to me again.

“Hello Rowan.”

Simon lilts the hello, exaggerating it for his fellow Brit.

Rowan stands, unfurling — all awkward angles and long limbs.

That’s the custom.

Hand up.
If Simon calls on you, stand.

“I just want to say that…”

He looks over at me.
I follow the live current of the group wherever it shifts—not letting myself fully recede, swimming hard against the undertow.

Rowan faces toward Simon again.

“I think Daniel’s already doing that. I mean… He—”

I watch the attempt as if from behind glass. Nothing in me moves.

“We’re done there.”
Simon waves a hand, not at me but past me — dismissal, nothing more. He doesn’t look at me.

I don’t yet know we’re not done — and I doubt he does either.

Simon’s eyes scan the crowd.
“Who else?”

Rowan looks back toward me as he sits.
The courage to counter Simon — laudable, even if the outcome was always doomed.

I look at him, expressionless, still too stunned to even know if I appreciate what he did.

Staying present had taken so much energy and now the last cords of attention in me are cut,
and while my body still tracks the group, posture erect, face aimed at the speaker—
I am gone.

When I start my writing work each day, I read this aloud.

I write what God gives me.

I serve with story, breath and broken beauty.

I listen. I remember.

I convey what burns true.

All else falls away.

When I create my next residency, similarly there’s a guideline.

Some years ago a doomed English Rowing Team adopted a question that became the filter for all. Attitudes, activities, associates.

Will this make the boat go faster?

A simple to understand clarifier. And once something is more clear, it’s imminently more actionable. Clarity brings dynamism.

For me now it’s: will this X, Y or Z increase the heat in the authorial forge that is my life?

Will this residency — regardless of appearances, features, location or any other practical data that my left brain would love to use — add flame?

Duration. How long will I be there. I believe — and so make actual — that my life, work, impact succeeds based on the depth and meaning therein.

When I arrive someplace new, the living ecosystem that I inhabit and use immediately begins a complex and intense process of sensing all aspects of the environment and adjusting accordingly. This takes several days.

It thrilled me that I boarded the Nevermore Saturday evening and was working on my manuscript full tilt by 10:30am Sunday morning. I am inspiration and never wait upon it.

During the nervous system calibration period, my vibration deepens hour by hour. In about three days I reach a cruising altitude optimal for deep work.

So, I seldom filter for a residency of less than one month duration.

Exceptions may be.

My first Sanctuary Stewardship, in Evergreen, Colorado, ended prior to the agreed upon date. The home owner decided to cut their trip early.

The service I pay for vetting the home-owners, aka pet parents, assures me that someone cancelling a sit early — as did the people that belonged to Ollie and Burl — is a rarity.

I hope so.

Having booked that stay in Evergreen, Colorado on a Saturday morning in December, and then flown there that very night, I felt luxuriously stable creating arrangements from there.

Before we’d even entered January, I booked the next residency to start the same day we finish — January 14. I even booked my flight to coincide with the pet parent’s landing such that I could deliver me to the airport and his car to him curbside just after he landed.

Next day: “sorry. I have to come home earlier than planned. Very sorry. I have no choice.”

I was blessed with the opportunity to create optimal conditions for the 11 day gap that had just been created.

Several impassioned conversations had I with my nervous system.

It: “dude, where are we going to sleep as of Saturday?”

Me: “chill out. We are safe.

We are always safe.

We have lodging tonight.

As is always the case, my outer world adjusted after I adjusted my inner world.

New declaration:
I am that I thrive in my Supreme Sanctuary — now and always — the perfect expression of my peace, power, purpose and prosperity. For the next two weeks, I thrive in a phenomenal living situation that optimally supports my work.

The next morning: with great curiosity, I looked into the world to see how it would arrange itself to fit my declaration.

• I could rent a place in Evergreen.

• Visit friends in Boulder

• Take another Sanctuary Stewardship Gig.

• I could head to Port Townsend (my next location) early.

The filter: what will best heat the forge?

I recalled: I’d just been speaking with my friend, Noah, long time partial resident of Port Townsend.

The least adjustment and logistical cost was to arrive in my next destination 11 days early. Less travel, less friction, more creation.

Phone call with Noah:

“There’s always the boat. We’ve got a bluff house AirBnB rental, so that depends on availability.”

Four suitcase wheels broke moving through SeaTac, the LightRail to Symphony Station wasn’t available, and so I opted for RideShare, which brought me to the ferry.

My next house sit hosts picked me up and drove me to the marina.

Tired and cold laid great conditions for me to lose awareness long enough to focus on what was missing (toilet, hot shower, daylight in my work area).

Luckily the rock of the harbor water lulled me into a gorgeous sleep. I woke with sanity returned. Grateful for the blessing of warmth, a floating museum curated over thirty years with love of wooden marine-craft as well as spirit’s of the Pacific North West indigenous culture.

A great history of words penned aboard vessels inspired me. As did the romantic glow from the lamps reflected off the loved-up cedar boards.

By eleven am I was in writing mode. Within two days I’d finished the last sections of the first draft.

Walking through Port Townsend became my yoga. I interspersed it with writing sessions. With daily coin operated showers.

Though I spoke to few people, I did make a friend.

Later I learned that river otters look cute, however their presence on a raft is akin to a squirrel getting into one’s attic. Not good.

Three days aboard.

A new four-pass editing process was born, which brought me over Movements one through four of my current manuscript.

The House on the Bluff.

Port Townsend, Washington.

Early January.

Sunrise: 8am
Sunset: 4:45pm.

After 21 years of living in the tropics, I say: this ain’t that!
It’s like being a kid back in Maine in the winter.

Daniel text to AI:
I haven’t slept until 8 am for the last 480 years. It feels weird. What are the medicinal qualities and benefits of hibernation.

Distilled AI response:
Depth
I’m down! Pun coincidental.

In order to be the greatest author of all time (birthing a world of divine emergence), two activities are most key.

Writing.

Reading.

I wrote.

I read.
I’m loving:

Mary Stewart’s The Hollow Hills (my first listen ever, first time revisiting her classic series since I was a boy). Merlin ain’t no joke.

Bo Eason’s There’s No Plan B for Your A-Game. Every time I watch, listen, read Bo, I remember who I am. I get associated with truth, with my declarations, with the infinite power of creation.

Mary Karr’s The Art of Memoir. Since my writng has evolved into a new realm, and while I will not be limited by any precedent or existing dogma, I am loving learning more about this genre.

“I create my environment, and my environment creates me.”

—Principle 22

I write. I edit. I convey what burns true.
I walk, I read. I make and eat delicious food.

Forest bathing, communion with tree and forest spirits.

Chocolate superfood smoothies by day. Roasted veggies by night.

What is worthy of you? What are you willing to be the best in the world at?

It’s December 24 and I’m alone in a house in a town I’ve never been to before.

We are all in the midst of a holy daze.
The holidays.

1987 was the year I experienced Christmas alone for the first time.

In August, I left the home I shared with my mother in Northern Virginia and went to college.

In October, my mother sold the house and moved closer to her origins — Boston.

I chose to return to NoVa for the holidays rather than go north to stay with my mom.

Every day I drove my motorcycle to my job at Circuit City, the crisp air biting my cheeks.
I earned enough money selling car stereos, boomboxes, and Walkmans to pay for another semester of school.
I stayed at my friend Taylor’s quiet house while he and his family went to Arizona.

Mom worried about me being alone on a holiday that had always been a big deal for her — especially when she had five children.

I’d been working twelve-hour days while the shoppers were out in force.

I loved having a day off.
I rented three movies on VHS from Blockbuster and just relaxed.
I’m about to have my first Christmas Day solo since those early years after I first left my mother’s home.

When I was eighteen, I didn’t want to miss my mother, the tree or the gifts.
Still, education came first.

And now — solitude again.
I’m immersed in a kind of writing that is demanding—almost frightening in its call for vulnerability and self-revelation.

With my daughter and me both in seasons of soaring, I’m house-sitting in Evergreen, Colorado and using this time to write.

This phase of my life has become a mobile author’s forge.

I am reflecting on the amazing people I have been fortunate to walk with over the years.

You are creating your life right now.
Let it be deliberate.

Whether that is five minutes of meditation, a walk in nature, journaling or feeling into who you would love to become next year.
Or all of these.
Or something completely different.

The how — and how much time — is secondary.

Consciously create your life as a masterpiece.

Creative introspection is your heroic superpower.

Don’t put it off.
Our world depends on your vibrancy.
I love you.

It amazes me the way the world goes on.

The cars whiz by.
I don’t want to see the bridge.
Mom insisted.

Just as she insisted on seeing Casey’s body.

Her body.
Her tangible body.

I didn’t want to.
I waited in the lobby of the funeral home, it’s black wood bench, high carved ceilings.

Then, too, I heard the world going on.
I cracked the door, shut it quickly.
I didn’t want the sunlight, the pedestrians, the barking dog.

Our world is here, I thought, where downstairs my mother and brother look at my sister.

And it occurred to me that I am like she was:

I create my own reality.
I choose not to see her that way: her missing eye, the claw marks, all done by her.

I want to remember her the way she was when she handed me a green basket with plastic grass and chocolate eggs on Easter in 1977.

Dana is quiet as he drives.
He doesn’t want to climb this bridge either, I think.

“How did she get up here?” Mom says.
There’s no sidewalk, no room for pedestrians.

“Must have hitched and made the driver stop,” Dana says.
“They said she died as soon as she hit the water. There wasn’t time for much pain.”

“Stop the car,” Mom says, at the top of the bridge.
We’re in traffic, but Dana puts on the hazards, shifts into park. It’s so bright out.
My hand is against the door handle.

I could do it too. I could pull the handle, climb the fence, and jump.

Cars honk behind us.
I don’t understand Mom’s insatiable need to see: the bridge, the body, Casey’s one room apartment.

Such probing, and years from now she won’t be able to say my sister’s name.
And if somebody asks her how many children she has, a lump will rise from her womb and take away her voice.

But now she wants to see and neither Dana nor I can tell her no.

It’s so goddamn bright I want to scream.
The boats look like toys, tiny and slow.
Finally we drive on. Dana forgets the hazards until we’re off the bridge.
When we get back to the house Mom turns to Dana and says:

“Why didn’t you buy her new curtains? She had sheets on her windows, for Christ’s sake. Why didn’t you help your sister?”

I’m still in the back and I want to stop them.
We’re in the shade now.
The seat is cool against my let, though still damp from my sweat.

“Curtains,” he says.
“You’re asking me about curtains. How can I explain it to you.”

“I don’t know, “ she says.
Her eyes are fierce, puffed, fierce.
“I’d like to hear it.”

“I tried to help her. I tried so many times. Curtains, Christ.”
He shakes his head: disbelief.

They are both quiet now.
Dana is frowning; if he talks more he will cry.

I wish we could go inside.
We sit in the car; it’s silenced our world.
When one of us opens a door we’ll hear the neighborhood kids, or a distant car horn, or the buzz of a lawnmower.
It will remind us that the world goes on.

It should stop, I think, just for a minute.

As we sit I think, I believe him.
I believe he tried to help her.
And yet, I want to know about the curtains too.

I’ll never ask.

Was it weird that she wiped my ass?

She—our neighbor, Helga Ryder. Mother of my first and best playmates, Stephanie and Shelley.

Helga still had some German accent. People said she was an alcoholic, that her husband, Steve, beat her.

I am in between gratitude and embarrassment. Neither Mrs. Ryder nor her daughters made me feel badly—

that I hadn’t yet learned to wipe my own butt, or that my mother wasn’t there to teach me.

It’s a fundamental to human life. Everyone needs to learn to clean their own shit.

There’s a hole in my bucket,

Dear Liza,

Dear Liza.

For 19 years Mom had been on the booze bus with my father. Not your usual party bus, like the ones Dad charted years later—him, me and forty of his cronies Greyhounding the two hours from Portland to Boston for a Red Sox game.

He’d charge them for the ride and for the ticket to the game. They could bring their own beer. Big wins all around: no drunk driving (at least not ‘til they got back to Portland at one in the morning), they arrived at the game already drunk, so saved on the price of beer in the bleachers, Dad made some money. I got to drink as much soda as I wanted.

But Mom didn’t drink. So, I wonder… who chartered the bus that was their marriage? Who ordained it—and for what holy lessons?

I got on just before it crashed.

By then, Mom was taking her fight to another level.

Could she really blame Dad for the trip? For their first anniversary she gave him a silver flask with his engraved initials: ECH. Edwin Charles. Everyone called him Ned.

He wrote his dissertation on alcoholism, citing himself as an example of what early stages look like.

“You hit what you head for. You get what you ask.”

There’s a hole in my bucket,

Dear Liza,

Dear Liza.

It was the era of the Equal Rights Amendment—1970s feminist ferocity. Was Mom just looking for a new opponent?

Every hero’s journey includes trial by fire—within and without. She had finally defeated the little girl inside herself that clung to the fantasy of what could have been with Ned.

She was both surfing and steering the waves of that era.

By the time I’d entered the liminal realm between diapers and sovereign, still in the ‘help with wiping’ stage, she’d won the war with my father.

Sure, their battles burned on for some years yet—like countryside carnage that continues before boots on the ground learn a cease-fire’s been called—but part of her had already disembarked the brawling bus of their unholy matrimony, and Ned had no chance of getting her back aboard.

Did he even want to?

Some say alcoholics are always alcoholics.

My Mom, Dorothy Anne, had won a war, though like a chain smoker lighting the new cigarette from the last, she started waging the next before the divorce was even final.

I didn’t yet know that my tiny two-year-old pecker was going to make me her adversary, maybe already had.

There’s a hole in my bucket,

Dear Liza,

Dear Liza.

Once, she brought me to the home of one of her new university friends—a fellow woman warrior. They talked for hours while I was meant to play quietly, my Matchbox car bumping over the dark wood floor’s rough grain.

I wished she’d left me at home, but I was far too young, and we couldn’t afford childcare. How much of their “men are pigs” rhetoric did I actually understand?

Was it just boyish boredom? Or was it the anger I didn’t yet know how to name—resentment for being cooped up in that stale living room?

Or did I know more? I’d already witnessed enough of her wrath to understand: expressing my displeasure directly was dangerous.

Mom didn’t find out until later. I wonder how her friend pieced it together.

By then, not only could I wipe my own ass, I’d honed enough pissing power to arc a yellow stream clean over that woman’s toilet—straight into her open case of curlers. The jet hit the plastic tines and exploded into pinball droplets, ricocheting off the spiked little grips she used to tame her hair.

Some of the liquid hit the wall behind. Most collected in the casing.

Mom didn’t yell or hit me as I’d expected. Even then, she must’ve known something in me had gone sideways. Not all acting out can be beat down.

Dad’s drug was simple. Dorothy Anne preferred a more cankerous cocktail—fantasy, fury, and self-blame. As gross as it was—me pissing on her friend’s curlers—Mom knew it wasn’t just me. She had a share in it too.

There’s a hole in my bucket,

Dear Liza,

Dear Liza.

✦✦✦

Mom wanted to look good at my brother David’s wedding.

Finally, her motivation was strong enough to lose some weight.

She looked great in that sheer teal gown.

And even though it was one of the only two times I remember seeing her and Dad in the same room,

I have no idea if he looked at her twice.

There’s a hole in my bucket,

Dear Liza,

Dear Liza.

The last time Mom took me to the emergency room for the pain in my ears,

the doctor told her that if it happened again, they’d have to put tubes in.

Whether conscious or not,

we’ve all got our “do not cross this line” boundaries.

Hafiz said:

Because of Our Wisdom

In many parts of this world water is

Scarce and precious.

People sometimes have to walk

A great distance

Then carry heavy jugs upon their

Heads.

Because of our wisdom, we will travel

Far for love.

All movement is a sign of

Thirst.

Most speaking really says,

“I am hungry to know you.”

Every desire of your body is holy;

Every desire of your body is

Holy.

Dear one,

Why wait until you are dying

To discover that divine

Truth?

✦✦✦

If I stood gape-mouthed when my mother loosed the torrent of her rage at me—

or, on the rare occasion I cried—

she’d scold:

“Why can’t you be more like your brother? He lets it roll off his back.”

One definition of love:

Comfort with another’s body fluids.

There’s a hole in my bucket,

Dear Liza,

Dear Liza.

I would have given anything to patch the pail of my mother’s heart.

Lord knows I tried—

not just to escape the guilt trips.

So much flowed through her,

yet she always remained a thirsty woman, drowning.

✦✦✦

When I was fifteen and Dad was dying, she came with me.

That she didn’t want me alone at his house while he disintegrated in the hospital bed—

no surprise.

Even her beside me on the cold vinyl seat of the taxi,

slushing through the black-grey melt

as we climbed the hill to Maine Medical—

not shocking.

What got me was his ankles—

distended like mini basketballs.

The dam of his liver had burst,

dominoing to his kidneys.

What was worse:

seeing the tubes that gave him breath,

but took his voice.

Everybody’s gotta learn to take care of their own shit.

That wasn’t what undid me.

I’d lived through deeper muck.

What was too much—what gutted me—was watching Mom take his hand,

look into his eyes, speak to him.

And him—wasted, nearly gone, body failing—

but with consciousness still flickering in his pupils.

Inscrutable. At least to me.

Later, Mom told me that she knew he had appreciated her being there. Maybe. Probably.

I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, how he felt. But maybe I would have known if the hate that had always been theirs had flared.

But if that was a precious moment—

if the storms and struggles had drained just enough

to let a flicker of peace arise,

maybe there was something sweet in the end.

Maybe the conditions were just right

for a flamelet to form.

But wouldn’t that suggest the ember was always alive?

Then what weighs more—heart or feather?

A moment of peace, maybe love, after decades of torment?

Or the tragedy of a sacred bond buried so long,

just because neither of them knew how

to clean their own shit?

I’ll never know what was awake inside my father in those last moments.

I do know that I am my parents’ child.

Addicted, like they were, just in different directions.

Optimism can be a form of fantasy.

Some folks pit gratitude against realism.

They say Jesus and the Essenes—the mystic Jewish sect he may have belonged to—

practiced enemas.

Cleansing as prayer.

Purgation as practice.

There’s a hole in my bucket,

Dear Liza,

Dear Liza.

I picture Jesus’s cousin dipping the Messiah-in-training back into the river.

There’s no hole in a river.

It’s meant to flow.

And now—decades beyond the debacles, debauchery, and disaster of my parents—

I go back to my birth

and baptize them both.

There’s a hole in my bucket,

Dear Liza,

Dear Liza.

So I pour.

I cleanse.

I let go. Let flow.

I am baptism, baptizing—

Not once.

But again—

and again—

and again.

— Daniel Aaron

The element of surprise—the sharpest weapon in war.

War. Sport. Life.

Dare we distinguish?

✦✦✦

That poor man never stood a chance.

Me—too cute. Too unassuming.

✦✦✦

Twenty years later,

a woman backed up a quarter mile along Route 90,

her car hugging the shoulder,

answering the wish of my outstretched thumb.

“I don’t stop for hitchhikers,” she said.

“But I realized you were harmless.”

She didn’t know how much work that had taken.

Or how much remained.

Appearances deceive.

I hadn’t yet learned

to take what she said as an insult—

or that safety doesn’t exist

without danger.

✦✦✦

That poor man wasn’t poor.

He was a target. A screen.

Me—

all instinct,

a honed bullet of assassination efficiency,

trained in our familial school of sniper sarcasm.

Plus, I was a prankster.

The pump of my mischief primed

by Dad,

the drunks,

and their practical jokes.

Was the spectacle I spearheaded just to get Dad’s attention?

✦✦✦

That poor man

wasn’t wealthy either.

Now I know that above-ground pools are pseudo-success.

Still, he—the Fat Man—was grand.

A pristine Panama Hat at the peak.

Below, a mountain of shimmering white suit.

He loomed above the crowd—

taller than all,

wider too.

The sickly cigar.

I smelled him before I saw him.

Mid-summer. Baking sun.

The promises of a pool party—

luxury, richness, relief—

sweet succor amidst the swelter.

✦✦✦

Back then, Dad still met people.

His decline not yet defined.

The ruts of his unraveling not yet deep.

He was ascending,

rising,

fluid.

No longer the vapor of

“he could really be something.”

But not frozen either.

His eyes,

his face—

they shone.

The alcohol not yet perforating him,

making others uncomfortable,

unavoidably present to his poison.

Sure, the divorce had knocked him down.

Living in a mobile home wasn’t good.

But everyone knew it was temporary.

He wasn’t out.

I loved the place—

the blueberry bushes,

the rectangular yard

where Dad would sometimes play catch with me.

We went to bars.

But not yet the bar.

He was still flowing.

Unpredictable.

There were chances for him—

for things to turn out differently.

✦✦✦

I don’t remember who Dad knew at the pool party—

who had invited the divorced man with the son on weekends.

It wasn’t the Fat Man.

He was a stranger to Dad.

And he wasn’t—nor would he ever be—one of Dad’s cronies.

Speculation still simmers.

That day, I sparked a concoction of curiosity,

amusement,

surprise—

and assuredly,

scorn from some.

It could have gone badly.

So all credit to the Fat Man and his good nature.

Good-natured—

and a poser.

If not poor,

certainly nowhere near the American posh he presented.

But the murky mix that made that moment

contained more than money misdirection.

We, the overweight, develop another kind of deception.

Layers of clothes covered him—top to toe.

Even in that heat,

he was vested

and tied.

Wrapped like a gift,

no one would dare—

or desire—

to uncover.

When excess fat piles on flesh and bone,

we don’t want you to see it.

We go to great swathes to dress deceivingly—

as much to fool ourselves as you.

His particular covering also offered the pretense of wealth.

It worked on me.

When I climbed the stairs and saw him—

a glimmering icon of affluence,

the sun’s reflection off those yards of white—

I was stunned.

Stunned into motion.

Attack.

One of the primeval laws of our primitive species:

we tend to castigate, berate, or beat

what we do not understand.

I’d never done anything like it.

✦✦✦

Dad’s foray into trailer park living was brief,

and while his hands were never manicured,

he was also no pugilist—

at least not in the years I knew him.

Our weapons were words.

✦✦✦

That said, the giant girth of the man standing before me

as I stepped onto the deck

provoked something more primal in me.

The closest I’d come to seeing something like him

was on The Beverly Hillbillies.

I misread the rules of the game—

this game,

on this turf,

on that feverish day.

Everywhere else I went with Dad,

I could do no wrong.

My imitations…

of the guys,

the gambling boozers,

my father’s friends,

their razzing,

roasting,

teasing—

it was in fun, right?

Friends—not foes, right?

My mimicking of their mutual mockery,

always aroused amusement

got me

attention

admiration

inclusion—

a seat at the table, at the bar.

✦✦✦

On that flaming day,

I don’t know what possessed me.

Not a religious gathering,

Nary a guest would have pondered

the possibility of that kind of possession,

Though certainly

many spoke the tongues of:

“what got into that boy?”

A better question:

what was coming out of that kid?

I hadn’t yet learned the practices of numbing.

Food was still fun,

and I was decades away from drugs.

✦✦✦

As soon as my first foot landed

on that six-feet-above-the-earth decking,

I was horizontal.

✦✦✦

My family was ferocious

in our ability to assuage personal pain vertically—

put it in the mouth:

ice cream

or vodka—

and something like soothing followed.

The other direction worked too—

it was acceptable to feel a pang,

the hurt of home,

and project it like vomit,

so long as it was packaged as humor.

Eventually I would get so good at that,

I would need sarcasm rehab.

One day, I’d become a harmless hitchhiker—

or seem like one.

✦✦✦

A kaleidoscope produces

infinite constellations of balanced beauty.

The universe we inhabit and are creating

is always even, symmetrical.

✦✦✦

The collision of my hands

with the squish of that man’s belly

could have doubled him over—

folded him in upon himself

like what I learned to do thousands of times in yoga,

the forward bend that lengthens the back.

Or my hands could have simply disappeared,

been absorbed into the fleshy rolls,

invisibly obvious below the screaming white cloth.

Perhaps priests wear black

to repel the projections of the parishioners—

to isolate their holiness from the mundane.

What possessed that kid?

✦✦✦

No warning—

I didn’t get any either.

One minute: wide-eyed wonder…

—After all, it was my first time seeing a pool in person,

even a pauper’s pool.

There was so much to take in—

The next moment: devilish drive.

✦✦✦

I puzzle on it too.

What did get into me?

Beyond that—

why did he comply?

He must have been at least five times my weight.

And yet—

he didn’t double over,

nor did my digits disappear

into the marshmallow of his midsection.

He could have been immovable.

All in an instant that tower toppled—

Like a tree chopped at its base.

And with not enough time for anyone to yell “Timber,”

what had stood tall

traced a tremendous arc

until horizontal and saturated became one.

All eyes were on him

as he found his footing—

chest, shoulders and head soggily visible

above the wet blue horizon.

Time and space resumed around us,

the air singing with the varied vibrations of:

“Oh my God.”

“Are you okay?”

“What happened?”

Some laughs. Some gasps.

The spell was broken.

Krishna started time again

and Arjuna knew he would have to live out his duty.

Likewise, I would fulfill mine.

I would learn to overfill my own skin-bag too.

I would learn to live in the prison of appropriate.

But not yet.

✦✦✦

Even now, it shocks me that I got no punishment.

That’s the parents’ job.

The partygoers were not responsible.

Neither was Dad.

He spoke no praise,

though the corners of his lips conveyed pride.

Only Mom offered reprimand—and even hers lacked conviction.

The party had gone on, after all.

Eventually, discomfort disappeared—

drowned in the spirits.

✦✦✦

The element of surprise

may indeed be the most successful stratagem.

All’s fair in war.

Sport and life too?

Surprises are quick lived.

The results ratify the road taken to get them.

Splashes subside

while waves go on forever.

✦✦✦

The pool’s skin still pulsed,

the mass of the man

churning the chlorinated tide.

For another moment,

I looked down at the Fat Man

whose cigar was gone.

The Panama hat,

once white,

now grey,

lurching against the edge of the pool below my feet,

vainly struggling to still itself

as the sea around it still surged.

The whisper came at the farmer’s market.

I was sitting on the grass on a perfect summer day.

A trio of brothers were jamming live music.

Few people paid attention to them—

I was basking in the beauty of it.

“Let’s give them some love,” I thought.

I reached for some money.

“Perfect,” I thought. “There’s a five-dollar bill.”

Then the whisper came:

“Give twenty.”

Next thought?

“That’s crazy.”

Cash flow is tight.

A bunch of big expenses are coming.

Rent is due.

Lately I’ve been focused on writing, not on marketing or sales.

And still…

I live by a commitment I made long ago:

Never resist a generous impulse.

Many times, those impulses feel counterintuitive. Risky.

They ask me to give time or money when it looks like I “can’t afford it.”

But I’ve come to trust them

—more than my conditioning,

—more than my fear,

—more than my bank account.

And I’ve learned to distrust the fear.

It’s not that I didn’t feel doubt.

I did.

But the principle I live by carried me forward.

So I gave the $20.

Not two minutes later, a message popped up:

“Hey Daniel, what’s your Venmo? I’ve got $400 for you.”

A fellow coach was thanking me.

I’d introduced him to someone who became a client.

I wasn’t expecting anything from the introduction—just made it because it felt right.

And definitely wasn’t expecting anything in that moment.

That $400 was completely unexpected.

And no, it’s not a huge amount.

But it’s a 2,000% return on generosity—on trusting the holy flow

and honoring the principle I live by.

Not because I “earned” it.

Because I aligned with who I choose to be.

That’s how Divine Flow works.

Now, I’m not saying that I caused that 2,000% ROI.

Still… had I let “I can’t afford it” dominate my behavior?

Who knows what might not have happened.

That phrase?

It’s a lie. Always.

It blocks the flow.

What it really means is:

“I’m not willing to figure out how to create the money.”

But you can afford everything that truly matters to you.

You are infinite.

You can create anything.

When we shift from limitation to creation,

from fear to faith,

from scarcity to our Supreme Self—

miracles happen.

So I offer this to you:

If you’re waiting until it feels safe to be generous…

If you’re holding back until you’ve “earned” the right to invest in yourself, in abundance, in possibility…

You may be postponing your own miracle.

Instead, I invite you to listen.

Not to me—

But to the generosity already inside you.

That’s the door to the Divine.

They are cold—

The waters.

Even as the

summer

sun

sears.

And yet—

I feel none of that.

Not plunge, not dive—

inchmeal immersion.

Entranced.

✦✦✦

Earlier—

First came the house on the hill—

infinity of windows to wash,

the view—

of ocean—

the value.

Second,

million dollar cottage to clean—

salt wind smears

versus our rags.

Always—

more.

“There are many rooms

in my Father’s mansion.”

Kneeling

in a tub

to scrub it,

my hands lacking power.

Even as I desired—

de sire,

“of the father”—

to give it my all.

My body engaged—

something else stirring…

Inside me:

words—

heard,

known—

“I’m cleaning out rooms in my psyche.”

Breathing—

into bewilderment—

What does that even mean?

Then—

It’s enough

to know:

Whatever this is:

Good.

Beyond important—

Essential.

Unavoidable.

✦✦✦

Midday,

the deli’s clatter.

Maya’s arrival.

The pulsing porch—

kids darting,

wafts of dough—

unseen beneath the planks:

the Atlantic’s briny breath.

She glides up

the wooden steps.

My body lifts

from the rocker

into our smiling embrace.

Her breath on my neck,

fans the coal

of the holy cleanse

simmering

inside me.

The presence of people

remind us

to peel apart.

Her “hi” meets my melt—

I cannot speak.

She tilts her head,

waiting.

I shrug, foolish,

afraid of disappointing her.

An awkward silence is one thing—

but minutes—stretching.

“Okay.”

Her smile’s glow—

mercy on my muteness.

The first time I saw her,

across the red-mat gym:

Sweatshirt snagged halfway off,

hiding her face.

gi top dangling from her belt.

Her tee shirt creeping up,

a hand tugging it down—too late—

a stripe of belly revealed.

Then,

her grin—

Pure.

Radiance.

Zero self-consciousness.

If I could ever be with a woman like that…

Fantasy formed.

✦✦✦

Two months later.

Judo sparring

spurred summer swim.

Her confession:

she’d cheated on her fiancé.

My conclusion:

not partner potential.

“I feel awful.”

“I can’t tell him.”

Tormented,

tangled in lies.

Now—

free from impressing,

I became real.

No polish,

or pose,

belly relaxed,

fun flowed.

So—

Why not a fling?

No matter that

Ms. Thackery,

my therapist,

is right:

“unavailable women

don’t lead to relationships.”

If I could be with a woman like that…

And then I was.

✦✦✦

Six days—

more swimming holes,

slices at Antonio’s,

so

much

love—

making—

we barely separated—

The scent of our sweat

merged

into a rapturous mix

such that

showering felt false.

until—

the seventh morning.

I drove to Boston for the tournament,

leaving behind the Ark,

my communal home,

and Maya,

cradling my Ark-mate’s baby

asleep in her arms.

I wondered

was she getting too entwined?

✦✦✦

Against the odds—

having never battled black belts before—

shoulder separating,

stabbing pain—

I took third.

Months of training,

pounds shed,

had paid.

Homeward—

over rivers, around reservoirs,

threading inland,

yet spirit tugging me seaward.

Driving—

clumsy, swervy.

One arm

shifting, steering.

Every bump a twinge—

alert,

awake—

hoping Maya would be waiting,

while wondering:

how much is our desire

driven by the forbidden…

Back at the Ark—late.

Dark, silent, hollow.

Maya gone,

my belly breath held—

tight—

a sigh slipped out,

as I dropped my duffle,

sagging in a heap—

like me.

Even the black

of her bikini,

no longer hanging,

beside my bed.

Blinking plastic red,

Her smiling sound,

“Congratulations!”

Instantly I craved

the press of our bodies—

the pang disturbing.

✦✦✦

The next morning rose,

me waking late

slow sounds floating in,

child chirps,

Ark-mate’s kids’ outdoor game.

I fought the phone—

say what you must—

kept putting it down.

The Maple Grove for brunch.

Do we touch? Kiss?

No—

Sit, opposite.

“Listen,

I’ve been thinking.”

“Me too.”

“You first.”

We both knew.

Wrong—

bound to burn.

So,

we agreed.

Fresh day,

Clean slate.

New commitment.

Breath lighter,

eyes brighter.

Friends.

Just friends.

A vow—

no more sex.

✦✦✦

Days later.

We are on the edge

of the island,

the waters—cold—

mesmerizing me.

Bare feet stepping

on black-speckled sand,

Vow still fresh—

windows wiped, cottages cleaned,

yet the soul’s cleansing churns on.

Ocean—

glimpsed through glass before—

now summons—

a pull to the horizon,

grey-blue chill of infinity.

My shorts fall,

to the earth.

I step out,

toward the tide.

My nakedness—

known,

yet new.

Maya lets me go—

alone.

Step by step,

my body

delivers me

into the Atlantic.

The Word

is

rising.

And then

it speaks.

Not out loud.

No sound.

Outer world undisturbed—

the words saturate inward.

Unmistakable.

A voice I know—

yet had never heard.

Not mine.

Familiar,

foreign,

matter of fact.

The fact—

“Daniel,

you are home.”

Home.

Ocean.

The Atlantic that birthed me.

This island.

Despite

no family—

no roots—

no right.

A voice?

Hearing voices,

the lip of lunacy.

Spoken to me?

I—opposed to religion…

Yet it is—

a declaration,

the weight of water.

Once.

I hear it once.

Repetition not needed.

Understanding not required.

Doubt impossible.

A radio—

suddenly tuned to station—

static into sound.

Yet I am not searching…

For song—

or news—

or transmission.

Yet it comes—unbidden—

an invitation, a charge—

amidst salt and sea

for me alone.

Then,

soundlessly,

Maya glides up beside me—

Now,

she too,

without words—

Below the surface,

unseen,

where energy flows—

a current

conducts us—

hands

arms

her legs—

human tentacles,

impelled by spirit—

our bodies

interweave.

Her eyes—

sage, alive,

deeper than sea grass.

Sacred mirrors

of green fire—

ancient portals,

into the void—

home

For forty years
the fight—
a failure.

His face—
famous face,
facing me,
my torso turning away.

Toward balance,
defense.

How unsafe seems
the suspended sink,
sticking out,
foundationless below.

Both my hands hold its slippery sides.

The basin should have broken,
wrenched from the wall,
beneath my deplorable weight.

Poor design.
Pudgy boy,
Precarious porcelain.

Boys’ bathrooms
should be built for danger.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Middle School.
Middle.
Between.

If I hadn’t been so on the edge…

Twenty pounds less,
and my talent triumphs
over what
sank me in all sports.

Or, if I had been…

Even fatter—
weirder—
we’d have all put me completely
outside the circle.

Fitter,
or freakier—
instead,
I flitted on the fringe—
where they find you.

If…
then I’d have scoffed
at their taunts and teases.

But I was close enough to cool,
near enough to okay,
that the wisdom of
“no”
never arose.

Six of them surrounded me,
crowded close.

They swept into the classroom
like a swarm,
circling,
thrumming,
looking for a hive.

They honed in on me—
their trembling testosterone,
hovering long enough
to make their case.

“We hear you’re fighting
David Grohl
in the bathroom
right now.”

Statement

Question

Challenge

It had to move—
that raw, kinetic potential.

Stillness—not an option.
Pause: impossible.

A whirlpool of wildness,
it sucked me in.

Never mind there was
no beef between David and I.

Seconds later, I was swirling
in their seething,
lip-licking lust
for violence.

For the spectacle—
and—crucially—
to be spectators.

What had been David’s prep?
Had he masterminded it?
Unlikely.

No beef—
outside of the animal halls of school
we were bonded
by the same streets
we’d grown up in.

Intermediate.
Not grown yet.

Neighbors
Known
Not friends
Not foes

What had brought David
to the bathroom that day
I will never know.

He was there already—
as were more bees,
buzzing,
salivating.

His back to the wall
beyond the sinks,
with their industrial,
shatterproof mirrors.

Shiny enough
to see yourself looking back.
Solid enough
to distort the image.

The room—
built for peeing,
not pleasure—
a place to execute
essential functions.

No comfort.
Don’t linger.
Grout-lined walls, metal, water—
evacuate,
exit.

When the rush of the posse I’d joined
breezed in,
the secondary swarm
that surrounded David
split apart—
and suddenly
he and I—
across the tiled theater,
faced each other.

What had been a body of buzzing boys
became an orderly oval,
an audience at the arena.

I’d wondered,
as we whipped our way there—
and again now
in the nanosecond
before the battle was to begin—

Why?
Why were we here?
What was the point?

On nanosecond two,
I pivoted ninety degrees,
escaping the opposition.

Impulse.
Instinct.
My hands,
the sink,
balance.

American movies teach—
I should have ripped the sink off the wall,
hurled it at my adversary.

Impulse.
Instinct.

I could have.
Fat, but strong.

Instead, with basin for balance,
I stood on my left leg,
raised my right—
not to kick him—
to place it between us.

Whatever story
circled through David’s head—
Had someone tantalized him
with a tale of me
doing him wrong?
By the first step he took toward me,
his fists were raised,
ready to rumble.

So, the simplicity
of my sidestep,
lifted limb between us,
pulled the plug on the party,
drained the bubbling vigor
of the expected exhibition.

He could still have hit me—
moved around the leg—
knocked it out of the way.

No doubt—
disappointment reigned.

Blow outs bore.
We’d rather watch
our team lose
than sit through
a rout.

My lack of engagement
released the charge—

David’s raised arms released,
and as quickly
as the whole constellation had coalesced,
it disbanded.

In an instant they were gone.
I was alone,
the sink still intact
as I let it go.

High quality mirrors are fragile,
finery,
found in expensive homes.

Those in institutions cost less,
endure more.

Not fragile
does not mean
anti-fragile.
That lesson came later.
Back then, the distorted image I saw
reflected back to me—

Fat boy,
Failure,
Freak,

Consensus:
coward—
a decree I carried, punishing myself for decades.

No matter how strong the pane,
nor how long pain endures,
in time, they crack.

A single fissure
may live its lonely life
for ages.

Yet sooner or later,
that split will spread.

One becomes two.
It will
spider-web wide,
wild,
wandering,
until no frame can hold
the spilling shards.

Two feet on the ground.
Sink intact.
Mirror remaining.

If not fight,
nor flight,
a rarer road opens—

Bold,
brave,
the daring to:
Stand,
See,
Sow.

Look beyond
the warped, frozen reflection—
beyond fight, beyond flight,
into what can be.

Through the looking-glass,
a portal of possibility opens—
sovereignty is sown.

“Excuse me, sir.”

Tight smile, cropped hair—his neck straining the white of his collar as he leans into the row.

Even with the tie, he carries the coiled calm of a soldier.

“Would you be willing to step out and speak with us for a moment?”

His breath smells faintly of mint and danger.

Two other men, both larger, stand a row below—eyes trained, unblinking.

It’s Sunday morning, 10:15. The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square—what many still remember as the Mormon Tabernacle Choir—sings:

“I will go where you want me to go, Dear Lord.”

The lyric lands large. Perfect. Eerie.

I almost laugh.

“I will say what you want me to say, Dear Lord.”

“Sure.”

I unfold my legs from lotus.

As I rise, realization rises with me — this moment didn’t begin here.

Two weeks earlier on Martha’s Vineyard, the invitation arrived.

My intuitive answer was already yes.

A reason followed: just being in the room with that massive organ would be blessing enough on its own.

I had seen and felt it through video.

I didn’t know how potent that summons would be.

“I will be who you want me to be, Dear Lord.”

I slide on my shoes. Fear hums at the edge of my calm.

My right heel catches.

Pause. Breathe.

No need to hurry; they can wait.

We are at the bottom of the balcony, hanging—floating—in space, with an unobstructed view of the choir:

women in cerulean gowns on the left, men on the right, teal ties rising like exclamation points from their chests.

Behind us, hundreds of velvet seats hold the hearts of Saints, and countless watchful eyes fix now on my shaved head.

I sling my bag over my shoulder; the movement tugs the symmetry from my navy-and-indigo shawl—pure Peruvian alpaca from the trip my daughter and I took three years ago.

I want to right it — to show its beauty.

I’m wearing my Sunday Best, though not the usual LDS garb.

I let it stay discombobulated and choose motion instead — the long ascent.

They’re waiting.

I walk behind the one; the other two fall in behind me.

My heart rate rises, and it’s not just from the steps.

This is the miracle I called for.

The unseen hand of God.

This is persecution.

It’s also annoying.

Part of me wants to glance side to side; surely some Saints see a dangerous criminal being removed — someone who doesn’t belong.

I want to meet their gaze defiantly.

After all, I was invited. I am a member.

In my bag, beside my Hawaii driver’s license, lies my temple recommend—a silent reminder.

More importantly, God had said to me:

Come closer to me, my son.

I also desire to meet the stares of fear with loving understanding, with the peace that might melt and soften and soothe.

Yet the aisle is narrow.

The stairs steep.

Safety dictates; eyes down.

Stumbling would make this worse.

At the top, he waits.

Beside him, I realize that we’re the same height.

He gestures to his left.

“Let’s step out into the hall.”

As eager as I am to dispel their concerns, I don’t want this to end—

or even deescalate.

Part of me wants to go back to my seat.

And yet…

I tingle with the certainty that this is the miracle I called for.

Only I know the prayer that set it in motion — the story embedded in this mystery.

It’s the crest of a long unravelling.

I am less than a week from the end of this five-month journey—part pilgrimage, part sabbatical, part ritual.

I’d given up my home and possessions on Maui, where I’d lived the past eight years.

My priority had been caring for my daughter as she traversed her last years of childhood — ten through eighteen.

Just before her eighteenth birthday, as we were talking about what came next, she said:

“Papa, no offense, but I don’t want to live with you anymore.”

She smiled. I laughed.

My desire to keep us under one roof was eclipsed by love —

for her, for the confidence she carried.

A few days later, Spirit directed me clearly:

“You are to insert a buffer between what has been and your next chapter.

Go to Martha’s Vineyard again.

Commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the moment I shook you awake to Me.

Use this time to write your next book.

Raise the $45,000 to finally hire your mentor.”

Hinduism would call that previous chapter the householder phase of life.

The morning my daughter drove me to the Maui airport, I sold my car and shaved my head.

As impractical as it was to give away my prized possessions, I trusted the truth: the more I released, the greater the velocity of my destiny.

And now that current carried me straight into this hallway.

Moments ago it bustled with the excitement of Saints.

Now it echoes, eerily silent.

The brightness blinds — a stark contrast to the dim auditorium, whose doors now close softly behind us.

He faces me.

“My name is Nate Greer, head of security.”

My hand meets his.

“Daniel Aaron.”

“I understand the metal detector went off when you came in this morning?”

Behind him, wisps of white clouds wrap the towering temple.

The gray of its granite glows against the sky, and the black bars of construction scaffolding imprison it in earthliness.

“Yes.”

Of course I knew what he was really asking—

whether I was a threat, whether I belonged—

at least on the surface.

“And… there was something about a drink?”

He shaped a bottle with his hands.

“Yes. Would you like me to explain?”

“I would.”

He glances down the hall; the escalator’s faint clicking hum drifts back to us.

“And we’re going to need you to go back through the metal detector—”

His lips — and the soft white-pink skin around them — contract like an aperture, a flicker of apology.

“So let’s talk as we walk.”

We move, and I start telling him what I think he wants to hear.

I don’t tell him about the miracle.

I’d planned to wire my mentor the $45,000 weeks earlier, but the funds hadn’t materialized.

The plan was to go to his Phoenix office directly after Salt Lake City for my first coaching session.

That morning I’d asked — of God, of myself — whether to abandon the plan or create the money now.

One new private client would be well over the amount I needed.

However, I was not here at the conference to create a client. I was here to commune—with Saints and with Spirit.

And yet, anything is possible. The response to my own question was clear and immediate: we do not abandon the plan; we do create the money.

My mind screamed back: How is that possible? I don’t see a way.

Shhhh.

What is not clear: how it’s going to come about.

What is: being removed from the conference must be part of it.

I don’t say any of that to Nate. That’s not what he’s concerned about.

“The metal detector went off because of my phone charger.”

“Okay… and what was it about the drink?”

“Yeah, I thought a glass jar was fine — just not metal.”

“No, only empty containers are allowed.”

I shrug. Obviously I know that now.

We stand side by side on the same corrugated step, our eyes level as the escalator carries us down.

“Where are you from?”

He’s changed gears — friendly now, filling the silence.

That question.

I smile inwardly, remembering a conversation with my coach the day before. I’d been seeking a better response — one that honored both the geography of my travels and the deeper spiritual reality of my life.

I’d been on Martha’s Vineyard for four months, then a few weeks traveling. Next was my mentor in Mesa, Arizona. After that, Maui again—I’d committed to care for a friend’s place there for two months. Beyond that, nothing was known.

So where am I from — really?

That question had been chasing me for months.

A few days after my daughter told me she was ready to live on her own, I told a friend I was moving into the empty-nest phase of life.

I didn’t like how it felt in my mouth, so I started telling people I was entering a season of soaring.

God made it clear that this season would require agility and flexibility.

Some commitments remain — to my mission of creating a world of freedom, love, and vibrancy — and to my clients.

Now, though, geographic commitments are brief.

No leases. No mortgages.

Given the blossoming Christ energy rising in my life lately, my coach suggested:

“You could say what Jesus did: ‘The son of man has no place to lay his head.’”

I remember that now and smile — fully aware Nate might not appreciate it.

“Or… the simplest: ‘I am at home wherever I am.’”

This is my first chance to respond to ‘Where are you from?’ since that conversation.

I look him in the eye and smile.

“I am at home wherever I am.”

My right hand automatically goes to my heart.

A beat passes — a tiny opening.

“Well, you look like you’re well taken care of.”

I receive his words first as a compliment and smile at the irony. I care for myself better than anyone I know. I think of my cacao superfood smoothie that had caused such scandal at the security table this morning; it contains more nutrition than most people get in a week.

I’d woken at 4 a.m. — time enough to journal, speak my Supreme Self Manifesto, and practice yoga before Uber brought me to the conference.

I turn to him again. “I am well taken care of— and I’m curious what prompted you to say that.”

I still hadn’t gotten it.

He studies me, eyes lingering on the fresh shave of my head.

The conversation had drifted from spirit to surface.

His next words made that clear.

“You’re well groomed.”

Then his gaze travels downward, clinical and curious.

“Your clothes are clean… and you don’t smell.”

He half-laughs, half-checks with a mock-sniff.

“At least not that I can detect.”

And then I realize — he thinks I’m homeless.

“No.”

I shake my head.

“Not like that. I’m not homeless.”

Inwardly I cringe; what I just said isn’t even linguistically accurate.

I do not own or rent a home; I am homeless—intentionally.

Later that day, I’d check into a new Airbnb.

He grins, unconvinced.

Okay… where did you sleep last night, then?

His question is a test.

“At my friend’s house in Orem.”

My lips tighten as soon as they close.

That it’s a luxury house, that my friend is wealthy — none of that matters.

He hadn’t even taken in my answer.

Suddenly I’m angry at myself—I’ve fallen into the trap he set.

I’m pissed—at his gibe—and more at myself for letting it rankle me.

I do not want to lose the love that’s been so full in my heart all day.

We step onto solid ground, turn a corner, and descend on the next escalator.

My own tension bothers me—

“Look.”

I shake my palm to soften the clench in my shoulder.

“I know you’re just doing your job. Security is important.”

“It is.” He nods.

I think of the assassination of Charlie Kirk last week, and the LDS church in Michigan that was shot up.

Finally, we reach the ground floor and move toward the main entrance.

We pass a fifteen-foot-high image of Jesus, the white stone luminescent, his outstretched hands alive, inviting.

‘Come unto me,’ carved so deeply into the base a finger could sink in.

Relief rises in me; the rancor drains away.

Elder Holland’s deep rasp rolls through the hallway speakers:

“…all of this the sightless man obediently did, and came forth seeing…”

He’s quoting scripture — the healing of the blind man at the pool of Siloam.

The ground floor widens before us, broader than the upstairs hall.

I glance back — following us are eleven more men, each with wires in their ears and guns at their hips.

All this for me?

How odd: me — a man who has never been in a fist fight.

Not as a boy.

Not in years of martial arts.

Do I really seem so dangerous?

I walk through the metal detector again.

No sound.

The phone charger — again — the only physical thing that draws attention.

They photograph me, then my driver’s license.

Finally, I raise my eyebrows at Nate.

“Are we done?”

“We are.”

He smiles, a touch too self-satisfied. “What would you like to do now?”

I furrow my brow.

He continues, “Do you want to go back in and enjoy the conference?”

“As opposed to what?”

“As opposed to leaving?”

Again, peace slips.

My puzzlement sharpens into a peppery annoyance.

A few days ago a friend drove me to the ferry terminal on Martha’s Vineyard.

A ferry carried me across the Vineyard Sound.

A bus brought me to Logan Airport in Boston.

Then a flight to Chicago.

Then another to Salt Lake City.

A little over a year ago I followed God’s prompting, was baptized, and joined this church.

I came a long way — why would I leave?

“Nate, look, this is not required…”

I take a breath, steadying myself, ensuring my request isn’t a demand.

“…and it would be nice if you offered me an apology.”

Inside his head, he shuffles from one foot to the other.

He looks back at me.

“You said yourself we’re just doing our job. That security is important.”

“Yes. I did. It is.”

Another breath. I level my testiness.

“And for the last half hour, a whole bunch of you have treated me as if I’d done something wrong.”

His team leans in, listening.

“…so while not necessary, an apology would be kind.”

Now the foot-shuffling turns to hand-wringing.

His face reddens.

“We didn’t mean to offend you.”

I’m not offended.

That’s not an apology.

And still — it’s the best he can do.

“Thank you for your kindness.”

I turn and begin the long walk back to my seat.

I don’t look back now.

I know who I am.

Elder Holland’s voice rumbles through the hall:

“What if the answers to our prayers come in convoluted ways?”

I want to hear the rest of his talk, yet I don’t hurry.

I have passed a test—if not quite aced it.

I wonder:

How is this experience an answer to my prayers?

How does this create the miracle I called for?

A few steps further and walking is working the charge out of my system.

Striding across marble, alone in the hall’s spotless purity, I remember:

On the escalator down, Nate had asked if I had a ticket to the conference. I did.

As much as I wanted to tell someone how cleverly I’d gotten that ticket at 9 a.m., this time I managed prudence and curbed my tongue. He was not likely to appreciate the story or its layers.

Without saying it outright, he was asking if I belonged — a theme threading through the day. Who decides it? Who truly issues the ticket to enter?

The first time I ever felt like I belonged was in the parking lot before my first Grateful Dead concert.

Marijuana, patchouli, and the skillet-scent of grilled cheese drifted through the air.

Tie-dye whirled.

A Deadhead in full Uncle Sam regalia stomped past.

And there I stood — my belly tight with the ache of a lifetime of not fitting in, yet softening into a sense of home among the most diverse misfits I had ever seen.

The next week I dropped pre-law and declared a double major in Philosophy/Religion and English.

Every concert included at least a few Heads at the gate with wide eyes and an upward-pointing index finger.

By sign or half-whispered plea, they parroted the famous lyric: “I need a miracle…”

It meant they had no ticket and no money — only longing.

And more often than not, a stranger handed them their hope.

What if miracles come in convoluted ways?

LDS conference tickets have no financial cost.

They’re distributed to members worldwide, each region receiving an allotment.

If someone is willing to travel to Salt Lake City, chances are high they can get a ticket to at least one of the five sessions.

My mentor told me how he and his wife had brought a new member to the previous conference and—unusually—they had received tickets to every session.

As in many faiths, favor often leans toward the newest to the fold.

I could have watched the Sunday morning session via livestream from my friend’s sofa and saved the $75 ride.

I could have watched on the big screen with other Saints across the street in the Tabernacle, where the conferences used to be held.

When they told me I couldn’t enter with my smoothie, my first impulse was to go to the Tabernacle. That drink was my food for the whole day.

Tony Robbins used to say,

“Proximity is power.”

After my first endowment rituals in the LDS temple just weeks earlier, I’d described it as a vibrational adjustment.

So I sacrificed the smoothie and fasted for the day in order to attend the Sunday morning session in person—

in the room where it happens.

Just as I complete the long walk back to the tall doors of Balcony Entrance, I reach for the golden handle.

The door whispers welcome on its well-oiled swivel—

when behind me I hear an out-of-breath,

“Sir, hold on. Sorry to bother you again…”

Turning, I see a guard, one I hadn’t seen before — young, with dark wavy hair, jogging up.

What now?

“We were thinking it might be better if you didn’t go back to your same seat.”

I flash on arriving an hour early that morning so I could sit as close to the front as possible.

I think of that unobstructed view to the organ, the choir, the leaders I’d been taking in only a half hour earlier.

“Why?”

“We were thinking you might not be comfortable there now.”

“That I might not be comfortable?”

“Yes.”

I pause — more skeptical now, more guarded, the sheen of the Saints slightly sullied — trying to gauge whether his words are sincere, whether this is really what’s going on.

I smile, concluding that his motive really is for my benefit now.

“Thank you.”

I breathe, considering.

“Well, unless you’ve got a better seat for me…”

I chuckle. “I’ll go back to the same one I was in before.”

I tap my fist once against my chest.

“And if I have any discomfort, that’s mine to work with.”

Back in my original seat, I fold my legs back into lotus.

The lotus blooms from mud — and as I settle, something in me rises.

A current pulls me upstream toward those who were ridiculed, reviled, or worse.

I think of David Goggins, listening on repeat to recordings of people viciously criticizing him—alchemizing their ferocity into fuel, criticism into confidence.

Then my hero Martin Luther King Jr. steps forward in my mind — the man who knew he would be assassinated for speaking against poverty, hatred, and violence… and spoke anyway.

And then, I go further back, to the reason for this conference:

Jesus.

Rebel.

Signs, wonders, and miracles.

So many said he didn’t belong.

And yet — I’ve often wondered why he kept his true identity quiet at first.

When I ask people, the most common response is “because the world wasn’t ready.”

That never made sense to me. The world is still not ready for living love and forgiveness.

I believe he was still growing into the ability to stand as love in the face of such misunderstanding, attack, and hate.

Twenty thousand souls listen closely now as the talk turns to refinement.

As the morning session streams onward, I feel as if I’ve just come through rapids.

Yet I’m not resting on the riverbank.

Something moves through this place, through me — smoother now, yet I’m still bobbing in white water.

A man at the pulpit is explaining the word prove.

“To prove something is not simply to test it. It is to increase its strength.

To prove a piece of steel is to place it under strain.

Heat, weight, and pressure are added until its true nature is enhanced and revealed.”

I think again of the earlier reminder: sometimes our prayers are answered in convoluted ways.

I could not have created the sequence of events this morning had I tried.

I sat in the middle of this great sphere of spiritual energy, as if suspended in the air—the vibratory center of twenty thousand souls devoted to the Prince of Peace.

And then I was chosen, as if I needed to prove something.

As if I were a danger.

I wonder: to whom was I proving anything?

The flow of the day, the tempering of my sense of belonging—

all orchestrated by the same unseen hand that gives life, makes miracles.

My mind begs for relief—how does this convoluted morning create the miracle I commanded?

Then I see.

Magic is only magic until we recognize the method behind it.

The how is not my concern.

That’s it. That’s all I need to know of the method.

I command.

We create.

When the woman was healed simply by touching Jesus’s clothing, he asked, “What healed her?”

Faith.

It wasn’t the garment.

It was her certainty.

To the rational mind, faith is folly.

In 1972 Stevie Wonder sang: “When you believe in things that you don’t understand, then you suffer. Superstition ain’t the way.”

He was half right.

Superstition crouches under a God of fear and punishment.

That ain’t the way.

Yet to believe in things you don’t fully understand:

Flip the switch, see the light—electrical knowledge not needed.

The warmth of the sun—stellar fusion’s mechanics not required.

Love—no theory can explain it.

That is the great way.

He was blind when he wrote Superstition.

Maybe blindness taught him what so many forget:

sight is not the source of vision.

He grew to see more and more.

Some say his 1976 album Songs in the Key of Life is the best album ever.

It starts with Love’s In Need of Love

and then goes to Have a Talk With God.

Part of me wants meaning — the storyline, the reason, the resolution.

My ego wants the apology.

My mind wants a map.

Yet faith and certainty need not know the how.

They crave not the cause.

And like them, I can smile and sparkle in the strangeness.

After all, curiosity skilled the cat.

The man offering the benediction prays that we will become better peacekeepers.

The choir moves into their final hymn.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound.

I wonder about the moment ahead — when I’ll finally look into the eyes that witnessed my removal.

I once was lost, but now I am found.

Was blind, but now I see.

Slowly the Saints stir. Rising, we begin to flow back into the outer world.

I stay seated. Beneath mind and ego, the deeper truth waits.

Rumi knew: there is a field beyond right and wrong.

And Amazing Grace whispers: there is also a path through them.

Through many toils, snares and dangers I have already come.

Another was already waiting for me — just one sunrise away.

I stand.

I turn.

Ready to see.

His grace brought me safe thus far.

I’m at the bottom of the balcony.

Those behind me will file out before I ever meet their eyes.

So I wait.

I will be last.

This season of soaring continues.

The miracle is made.

Life unfolds in majesty and mystery.

My heart is full.

And grace will lead me home.

Soon I will be in Mesa — at home wherever I am.

It is there the miracle will reveal itself: the money was never the point, only the path.

° I wrote this story for the miracle it carried; and also for the mirror it might offer.

What did it reflect back to you?