For nearly 30 years, I’ve been participating in Native American ceremonies, noticing that in this time I’ve introduced many friends and relations to the ceremonies without even one of them taking it up as a life’s path. I took to the ceremonies fervently, as they fed something within me that in the early years could only be described as brief moments in time where everything seemed right in my world.

At that stage in my life, there was much that was not right with my life. So, in those moments in the tipis and sweat lodges, enmeshed in a state of subtle and continuous misery — extreme heat in the sweat lodges, at times nausea in the tipi, struggling to stay awake through the night, or trying to get comfortable sitting on the ground for so long — I would ask myself: Why do I do it?

The answer was and is that in those states of misery, everything transforms into profound moments of rightness — moving through the discomfort to the other side of it, to a state of mind and emotion where the beauty in all things is undeniable.

Is the physical challenge necessary? I believe yes.

The avoidance of physical challenge is also what prevents most of us from perceiving the beauty in all things. And yet, we have so many examples of how our lives improve in relation to our ability to sit in discomfort. Most notably, we know that rigorous physical exercise results in enhanced vitality. Studying nutrition and eating more consciously, result in long-term health benefits. Studying hard in a college results in better grades, making the honor roll, and possibly better job offers upon graduation, while also enabling us to more fully develop our minds.

Taking long hikes leads us to sites and experiences that we’d never find by peering through the window of a car as we drive a mountain road. Nor would we have healthier relationships were we not willing to face into the discomfort of having difficult conversations and striving for greater honesty with ourselves and others.

One of my personal struggles is being more consistent in my practice of yoga. I know that when I do it, I feel better. And yet getting myself to do it is an exercise in facing discomfort. Every time I attend ceremony there is a moment of nervous apprehension, followed by quiet resolution, then long periods of physical discomfort before the beauty reveals itself. It’s been described by one late elder as “Unspeakable joy!”

It truly is unspeakable because there is no way mere words can describe it. We can only experience it. Even still, of every person I’ve introduced to the ceremonies, maybe only two have glimpsed the beauty I see every time. I’m not saying this to suggest that I’m somehow better at it than others, but perhaps to note that I’m wired a little differently than most people — that I’m willing to sit in misery for hours at a stretch because I know there is something profoundly important taking place.

My primary teacher in the Native traditions, my late brother Daniel, had a tendency to select the largest rocks he could find and pile a great many of them into the fire, so that upon their placement in the sweat lodge as glowing red emanations, the heat was so intense it was unbearable. Most people lay down when it gets that hot, and while he didn’t say this to anyone else, to me he would say, “Sit up. Take the heat.”

I have a few friends who frequent meditation retreats, spending days at a time in silent meditation. This is another form of facing into the discomfort for the beauty that lies on the other side.

And arguably the greatest form of facing extreme discomfort to find beauty on the other side is the act of a woman giving birth to new life — something that, as a man, I can only imagine.

It’s also notable that every religious tradition involves some form of fasting for extended periods of time in combination with prayer and reverence.

But this isn’t a popular message. In fact, I’ve learned that whenever I try to share some of the knowledge I’ve obtained related to nutrition, it can be triggering for people. So many times, in the men’s work I do, I find myself having conversations with fellow travelers about the importance of daily meditation, and preferably for longer durations of time. Again, not such a popular message.

Often, I drive hundreds of miles to ceremony, sit up in prayer and meditation through the night without food or rest, followed by hours of social time and a big feast, take down the tipi, load vehicles, clean the area, then go into the sweat lodge for four rounds of heat and more prayer and meditation, then drive hundreds of miles home. Which is not to say that I’m not incredibly exhausted after such an adventure, but I’m also feeling altered, inspired, and peaceful.

As I write these words, I wonder how many people will unsubscribe from the DEEPER side of things following this post because I know this is not what we want to hear.

In a different context, although not unrelated, Thomas Paine wrote, “The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph” and “What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives everything its value.”

In the wee hours of the morning, after enduring many hours of so much to get to this point of total surrender, in the light of a flickering fire, the constant drone of a water drum, the gradual crescendo of voices in unison singing as native people have for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, with no words but merely chants expressed as prayers from the heart, there is release, there is healing, there is revelation that delivers under a physical and emotional burden — that we are one people.

Our egoic minds continuously tell us we are separate, that we can take care of ourselves, that we can solve our own problems. And yet, through the sacrifice we come through the other side of our suffering in recognition that we are not just a part of the great cosmic journey of life, that we are life and life is us.

Such an understanding is not logical. And yet, it’s still true. It’s a truth that takes total surrender to bring us to a point of acceptance and integration.

I can quote studies and statistics all day. I can wax on about the implications of quantum physics and the truth that all matter is energy and all energy is connected. But knowing this intellectually will not change our understanding.

In October of 2010, I sponsored a sweat lodge ceremony for my 46^th birthday. I passed tobacco to a Lakota man, much younger than me but who came from a rich lineage of medicine people. In the lodge, he conducted himself as one who had always been there, and when presented with tobacco and a clear intention for ceremony, he always stepped up in such a way that brought great power to the ceremony. It was to be significantly life-changing for me.

In a moment of excruciating discomfort, in the third of four rounds, I reached total and complete surrender and, as a result, received a very clear message of how I was to live the remainder of my life.

Each morning as I sit at my altar, light a candle, bless myself with the smoke of palo santo, sound a singing bowl, and enter meditation, I’m reminded of this ceremony and the very clear message that availed itself in an undeniable way — accessible only through a moment of extreme discomfort. The result has been a consistent daily practice of meditation that has had the single greatest impact on my life.

Even meditation can be an exercise in discomfort, although to a much milder degree than sitting on the ground all night without food or rest. A mere 45 minutes to an hour of quieting the mind is a small sacrifice in comparison, while its daily progression is what builds to a profound measure.

One tiny increment of presence that carries through my day, practiced each day, builds upon itself. Awareness comes. Truth unfolds. Life continuously changes in a progression toward greater peace, understanding, and wisdom.

Teilhard de Chardin’s prayer “Patient Trust” refers to the “slow work of God” and accepting the “anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete” as necessary stages of progress. In Luke 9:23, Jesus says, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me,” suggesting metaphorically that the spiritual path requires sacrifice.

Buddha said, “When touched by a painful feeling, an uninstructed person sorrows, grieves, and laments. They are hit by a first arrow. Then they are hit by a second arrow. The second arrow is their reaction of aversion and resistance to the first.” Thus, embracing the discomfort and recognizing the gift in it assuages the second arrow.

Lastly, Tibetan Buddhism refers to “renouncing” earthly possessions and experiences, which doesn’t mean we’re in opposition to them, but rather that we emotionally let go of the need for them, which ends our continuous suffering.

And so many more teachings and examples speak to this truth of embracing the discomfort so that, in our moment of surrender, the beauty reveals itself.

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In a recent conversation with a close friend — someone I’ve always considered spiritually inclined — I heard him say something that surprised me. He told me that he didn’t have the kind of faith in God that I do. When I asked why, he explained that he struggles to believe in a God as a man in the sky, passing judgment on humanity.

My immediate reaction was: Wow!

How could someone who openly rejects modern organized Christianity and lives a somewhat spiritually oriented life still hold such a simplistic conception of God: anthropomorphic, patriarchal, and authoritarian?

I recall attending Catholic school as a boy, forming a similar view, which fixed my ideology in such a way that, for the next two decades, I resisted the use of the word God in reference to what’s out there. I resisted other words too, like church, worship, sin, and Jesus.

It was at the point where I witnessed the violence of the nuns toward the children, and eventually toward me, that I didn’t feel Christianity had anything for me. And then some Pentecostal neighbors of ours, who probably thought I was young and impressionable such that I could possibly be saved from a life of sin, petitioned my mother and stepfather to take me to one of their services. They asked me and I said, “sure.” I was game for exploration without obligation.

Two and a half hours into the service with abundant wailing and praying in tongues, I thought, this isn’t for me. Maybe if they had tried to explain some of what was occurring, I might have gained some sense of the point of it.

And yet, I always felt a presence. It just seemed to make sense to me that there was something behind the lives we live. Many years later when I was introduced to the world of Native American ceremony, I felt a great resonance with the practice, while scratching my head at the subtle influence of Christianity.

Some four years into my journey with the ceremonies, I met the man who became my primary teacher in the ways, a Navajo medicine person who, one year later, adopted me as his brother and took me into his family. Following were many years of travel together, attending ceremonies around the country and continual teaching in the traditional ways without any hint of Christian influence.

In this realm, the word God was commonplace. Many times, it was “Creator.” Sometimes it was “Diyin,” the Navajo word for God. And so, it took me a few years to get past my aversion to the word. What helped was a growing relationship with the ineffable, and a sense that God was much more magnificent than what I had been led to believe as a child.

And still many years later, as I was studying various philosophies, I learned about non-duality, which is when the notion of God as a substrate of all existence made the most sense to me. This doesn’t mean God is a thing, but rather an energy and a force that underlies everything everywhere.

And when discussing the nature of God, we must acknowledge the severe limitation of language. If God is the creator of the Universe, it stands to reason that God’s intelligence is not just off the charts, but wholly incomprehensible to those of us experiencing this third-dimensional realm known as human life. So, when I say things like God being an “energy” and a “force,” those words are puny and inadequate.

Which also means there are not likely to be any words in human language capable of explaining the true nature of God. Which also leads us to an important question: Is it even possible to truly know God?

I believe the answer is yes, but not so much by learning the definition of a collection of words and phrases, but by transcending the words to a deep abiding feeling of the presence that is always there.

And we can only have that by having transcendent spiritual experiences — experiences so powerful they are beyond words. Moments where time stops. Where, in the briefest instant, everything is right with the world and there is beauty all around us.

I can imagine that a woman giving birth is a transcendent experience. But graduating high school or college is not. It may feel inspiring or joy-filled, but the ceremony itself is still rooted in our notions of accomplishment, which is egoic in nature.

There are many stories of people coming together in heroic ways following significant natural disasters. They are moments where the intensity of the situation gets us out of our heads and fully into our hearts, when all we want to do is help people, especially strangers.

There are abundant stories of soldiers doing incredibly heroic things in battle. It’s not that war, and the death and destruction it brings, is good for humanity, but for the soldiers on the field who, in the intensity of battle, have only each other to rely on for their very survival, it can be transcendent. In such an environment, the bonds they form are among the most intense we may ever feel toward other human beings.

I’ve been fortunate enough to experience many, even countless, transcendent moments. Mostly in the ceremonies, but not only there. I’ve seen many things that would be considered unexplainable by conventional science. I’ve experienced miracles many times over such that for me the presence that is always there is real and palpable.

It’s not hard for me to acknowledge the presence of God in my life — but can I put it into words?

Not likely.

I can only talk around it. I can present shades and tones that reflect the footprint of God without being able to say, “See, there is God. He/she/it looks exactly like this.” Even applying a pronoun of any kind is a lessening of what God is.

The Navajo are fond of the use of the word “Nizhóní,” their word for beauty or beautiful. In my experience, they are referring to the footprint of God by constantly affirming the beauty all around us, in us, through us, above and below, and, by extension, they are expressing the feeling tone associated with their connection to God.

Not only have I never heard a Navajo, or any Native person, refer to God as authoritative and patriarchal, in my reading of the quotes from Jesus I’ve never interpreted Jesus as referring to an authoritative, patriarchal God. The Bible uses he and him pronouns, but wouldn’t that be a mere limitation of human language? And how much has been lost in translation from the original Aramaic that Jesus and his disciples spoke as their common language? From Aramaic to Greek, from Greek to Latin, and from Latin to English.

Then, in a conversation with another friend, reflecting on this very question, when I was lamenting how I feel Christianity has done a great disservice to humanity by oversimplifying God, he said, “No, it’s not that. It’s art.”

Art?

I was stumped, until he explained that it’s been the artists, throughout the ages, attempting to depict God in human form who have influenced our perception of the nature of God.

“Of course!” I thought.

We have so exalted the works of Michelangelo, da Vinci, and others that we have elevated their works to the level of divinely inspired. Their works are extraordinary indeed, perhaps even transcendent, but still puny as true representations of God.

The same can be said of the most gifted and inspired poets, philosophers, novelists, preachers, priests, and ministers. Are they truly describing God or merely hinting at God? Or worse, are they infusing their image of God with their own egoic need for authority and self-aggrandizement?

No matter how I may attempt to describe God, there is still going to be some of my personal influence, language limitations, and egoic threads — large or small. We can only strive to get closer to an understanding without ever nailing it with precision.

We can no more articulate God than we can fully express our deepest essence to another human being. That is because, if God is a substrate, an energy and an intelligence that is always present, then that means God is in all things, including us.

And if God is a substrate, then there is no separation between us — that all things are inherently connected. Which, by the way, has been proven through the study and experimentation of quantum mechanics.

And so… given all limitations mentioned herein, here is my grossly imperfect expression of the nature of God:

An intelligence beyond comprehension that is expressing, being, allowing, and loving —existing in all things, all beings, all life. It is life, and life is it.

But then the use of the word “loving” in my definition is ambiguous, because we can’t even truly define love. Webster defines it as, “an intense feeling of deep affection; a feeling of deep romantic or sexual attachment to someone,” and so on.

And yet, psychologists have recognized that it can be considered a loving act to let one’s children or teenagers suffer the consequences of their own ill-informed decisions. We call it “tough love.” That letting them suffer helps them grow and mature. That we love them that much to watch them suffer, knowing it will make them stronger.

In twelve-step recovery circles, it’s understood that enabling an alcoholic or addict in their addiction is not helping them, while the concept of “detachment with love” is discussed in depth — letting the addict suffer the consequences of their addiction hoping that one day they will hit their rock bottom and become willing to do what is necessary to become sober and piece their lives back together again.

The part of Webster’s definition, “deep romantic or sexual attachment,” is not, what I believe, the true nature of love, but more a self-centered need for another person to validate our worth.

I could go on about just this one word, while the point is that even to clearly define one word in my definition, “loving,” is nearly impossible. And yet, many mystics and spiritual teachers have described God as a substrate (my word, not theirs), with the substrate being love.

And so, here we are at the quandary: How do we define God in a way that comes within a ballpark understanding of God’s true nature?

The answer is, we can’t.

So, as a stand-in for the true nature of God, artists have depicted God in human form, always male, always with a gray beard, reflecting cultural assumptions and limiting beliefs about what the Universe is, what God is, and why we are here experiencing life in human form. All of which (by the way) contradict the teachings of the greatest of our spiritual teachers and the findings of quantum mechanics.

Given such an understanding, why must we continue to limit our thinking and our ability to connect in a visceral way with the God of our understanding by characterizing God in anthropomorphic terms?

And one last thought to share: The anthropomorphic image of God is widely explained by the biblical passage from Genesis, “God created man in his image.”

The problem with this interpretation is that we assume we are our bodies — bipedal, humanoid, binary, physical beings with lots of brain capacity.

Really?

Do we really think God is humanoid? And more to the point, do we really think we are nothing more than our bodies? What if that passage was intended to convey that we are of a divine nature, such as God? “As above, so below.” That we are energy, as the quantum physicists have shown. That we have eternal souls, such as God. And that we take such attributes directly from the image of God.

Thus, to know God, is to know ourselves. Which is how we grow closer to a true understanding of God. One small step at a time.

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For more than 100 years, we’ve known from quantum physics that everything is connected. But knowing this doesn’t necessarily change anything. It’s like this “Oh, wow!” moment, but then we regress back into our default operating system.

Coming to a new understanding of life in such a way where we literally change the way we think and feel takes more than watching a YouTube video by some super-duper PhD-type physicist with beautiful animations. Such videos are profound and confounding to our logical minds. But if we watch them over and over and really think about them, they can become solidified in our intellectual understanding of the makeup of the universe.

However, most often a very real human tendency called “cognitive dissonance” kicks in, which is an attribute where when faced with two seemingly opposing truths, our minds go with the more palatable one.

If we’re truly connected to all people, all animals, all plants and trees, all things, and even celestial bodies, what are the implications of such an understanding? That’s where cognitive dissonance takes over. We think, barely at the level of conscious thought, “This is too much to process. I’ll just keep on trucking through life as I have.”

And so, human progress is painfully slow because even when faced with undeniable evidence that we’re ignoring the true nature of the universe, it’s far easier to just keep on keeping on.

As an example, what we understand of Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” is actually a misunderstanding of his research. What his work revealed is that adaptability and cooperation are what ensure the survival of a species, not that one is stronger, faster, bolder, or more aggressive.

We think of African lions as the fiercest and “fittest” of species while ignoring that 50% of their diet is carrion, which means they are just as much scavengers as they are hunters. We also don’t give much thought to the well-known fact that they hunt the weakest and slowest of the species they seek. So what they’re actually doing is culling herds of their weakest because lions are not fast enough or possess enough stamina to hunt the strongest. Thus, they’re contributing to the strengthening of the herds by removing the weakest among them before they can procreate, which can also be understood to mean that lions are helping zebras become genetically stronger.

A well-known story about the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park revealed that when they returned to the park, all sorts of other species prospered, including the return of aspen, willow, and cottonwood along the riverbanks – revealing the interdependence of species, both plant and animal.

Everywhere we look in nature we see symbiotic relationships, not some species dominating others. If “survival of the fittest” means strength, aggression, and stamina, then we’d have far less genetic diversity on this big blue ball we call Earth. In fact, the stronger and more “fit” that some would become would mean a decreasing number of less-fit species, which would also mean that the “fit” species would eventually consume their food sources and slowly perish.

Sound familiar?

I’m not saying anything we don’t already know. In fact, these concepts are regularly discussed in high school biology classes. The rub is that we haven’t yet changed our paradigm to match our scientific understanding. We even have many people, egged on by mendacious podcasters and bloggers, who believe that science is a problem that distorts our thinking and needs to be disregarded.

How convenient.

Everything being connected is not just about species and subatomic particles; it’s also about how we become more conscious beings. Which also means that as we become more conscious, we acquire the ability to grasp confounding truths when faced with undeniable evidence.

But how do we do this?

One thing I’ve heard many times, and even felt myself at times, is that after spending many years — even decades — deeply involved in healing and growth modalities, that it seems as though we’ve barely progressed. It’s like climbing a mountain with an elusive peak that never seems to appear much closer than it did an hour ago or two hours ago.

There are many reasons for this perception and the truth of how slowly we progress. The topic at hand — in the context of everything being connected — is that we tend to overlook one critically important understanding about what human growth requires.

Allow me to digress for a moment. I’ve never considered myself very good with plants. I’ve even heard myself say more than once that I tend to kill plants. I can never seem to know whether I’m watering too much or too little or providing too much direct sunlight or not enough. Enter AI — I snap a photo, upload it, and ask what’s causing the plant to be in distress. Within seconds, I have a detailed analysis and prescriptive remedy.

I like having plants in my home for many reasons, but I also feel a mild stress about them because I always feel unsure of my care for them. Will I kill them or finally figure out how to nurture them to health?

Plants require many things to thrive: the right soil composition, the correct size pot for the species, and the correct amount of water and light. They also thrive more when exposed to good vibrations, which is why those we deem to have the proverbial green thumb will talk or even sing to their plants. Research has shown that we form psychic bonds with our plants — that they sense and respond to what we’re feeling.

Plants require many things to prosper — and so do we.

Our journey of healing and growth requires many things. Even hiking up a mountain requires a complex matrix of conditions and elements if we’re to make it to the top.

To truly progress in a meaningful way in terms of a spiritual journey of healing and growth requires many things. And here’s the catch…

Those many things are not linear.

There are no 10 (linear) steps to spiritual freedom. Even 12-step recovery, which is taught to be worked in a progression from 1 through 12, is not actually linear. When we truly work a 12-step program, we’re most often working half a of dozen steps at any point in time. We’re jumping back and forth and revisiting constantly.

This may seem like an overly simple concept, a kind of “Yeah, so what, Glenn? I already knew that.”

True, but what I’m getting at is that we need to more deeply embrace this notion of “many things” so that we can continue to explore modalities and approaches. For example, research shows that gut health has a notable effect on emotional health. Thus, nutrition is fundamentally related to a journey of emotional and spiritual growth.

We know that healing from emotional trauma is vital for growth to occur, but what we don’t talk much about is the need to cultivate the intellectual side of spirituality in tandem with our emotional healing.

Why? Because emotional trauma causes us to act in ways that cause continued pain for ourselves and those around us. But merely releasing the emotional trauma is not enough to change our behaviors. We also need to explore our beliefs and attitudes that were driven by the emotional trauma so that we can release outmoded beliefs. And releasing old beliefs can be as challenging as releasing trauma. Yet we need both to truly transform.

It’s like watching those wonderful YouTubes videos on quantum physics but never truly being able to integrate the implications of the understandings into our daily lives. With physics, we begin with mental gymnastics, which require deep emotional cleansing work to fully integrate. With emotional cleansing work, we need to engage in a form of mental gymnastics to try on new belief systems and see how they fit.

If we focus too much on the emotional without developing the intellectual understandings, we may re-wound ourselves by the mere nature of the old beliefs we’re still holding on to. Whereas if we focus too much on the intellectual without the emotional cleansing work, we will never be able to authentically embrace the concepts we’re learning because we’ll be thinking them, not feeling them.

And so now you may be wondering, “Well Glenn, that makes sense, but what of it? We do our trauma therapy work alongside the cognitive work, and we’ll reach nirvana lickety-split.”

Well, not exactly. There’s a little more to it than that, which is why I so strongly advocate for multiple modalities, with a primary one being a meditative practice.

What I’ve come to learn is that how we think is habitual. It’s what is often referred to as the egoic mind or the egoic operating system. It’s the mental chatter rambling away in the background, ever-present — affecting our beliefs, behaviors and emotions.

And it doesn’t change until we consciously and actively work to change it. Our thoughts do not change by forcing ourselves to think different thoughts. Affirmations are great, but without emotional content, they’re useless — which is why this process needs to work in tandem with the emotional cleansing work.

With each new plateau of emotional healing, we need to take time to re-evaluate our beliefs and attitudes. We need to literally challenge ourselves to think differently, often confronting a feeling that we’re going insane, because to not think the way we’ve always thought (which is also how most of humanity has always thought) can only mean we’re crazy.

But no. Enlightenment and insanity may appear similar at times, but they are not the same. Insanity is disassociation from reality, while enlightenment is embracing the true reality, not the assumed reality that we’ve been conditioned with.

It’s important to note that this is an active process and is only effective when it flows from a meditative practice, which is to say that we spend long durations of time each day observing our thoughts without identifying with or judging them. When we do this, we are literally rewiring our brains by creating new neurosynaptic pathways that enable us to consciously change our thoughts.

This may take months or even years, but it’s how we progress in such a way that the mountaintop will appear distinctly closer each day.

Re-wounding happens more often than you may think and is precisely why so many spiritual warriors feel frustration with the length of time they’ve engaged in healing work, only to feel like they’re still at first base.

The alternative is to blend an emotional healing practice with a meditative practice with an intellectual process — to roll the three together with the recognition that we need to progress in somewhat equal steps, never giving an unbalanced focus to any one of the three without the other two.

If we notice a thought we deem unpleasant and say to ourselves, “I don’t like this thought I’d like to change it,” we can’t just not think a thought, because the act of trying not to think it is, in fact, thinking it. But what we can do is distract from the thought by returning to presence through breath and emptying the mind. And this we can only do if we practice sitting meditation each day. Through practice, we cultivate the ability to carry the meditative state throughout the day, each day. Each time we redirect ourselves from an unpleasant thought, we are creating new neurosynaptic pathways in the brain — literally rewiring it.

But if we haven’t done the emotional cleansing work this won’t work, because the deeply buried trauma will overpower our attempt at emptying the mind. With the three practices in tandem though, we achieve an almost mystical trinity of accelerated growth.

Everything is truly connected — from subatomic particles to celestial bodies, me and you, us and them, liberals and conservatives, plants and trees — we are all one. So too, our spiritual process is interconnected with an infinite number of points. There is no single panacea, no overarching modality, no single guru with all the answers, and no one religion that has it figured out better than the others. We are all infinitely connected.

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I wonder aloud: Will we learn? Will we evolve? Will we wake up from the collective slumber of cultural and political narratives?

Or,

Will we continue to order our double shot café mocha at the drive through, binge the latest drama, blame others for our misery, and find community through mutual agreement of narratives that have been widely debunked by people much smarter than us?

When asked how we may create the world we envision, Ram Dass once responded that we have the world we’ve envisioned. “This is it,” he said.

How incisive. How clear. How to the point he was.

The reason we have a world that seems as though it’s falling to pieces is precisely because the collective consciousness of humanity has envisioned this very world.

Amazonian indigenous people have been known to say that we need to “dream” a different dream.

Imagine that! Those primitive savages without a written language or smartphones telling us how to live our lives. And after all, they’re a part of the very same human collective consciousness.

But wait. Let’s back up a step. Because clearly, I’ve jumped a chasm in understanding from “The world is f-ed up because of certain people” to “We’ve all collectively created this world.”

I’m assuming you know what I mean when I say, “collective consciousness.”

But do we understand?

Notice I’m saying “we” now, because it is a “we.” It’s not and never has been you or me, or even you and me, but us. One single us, living in a nightmarish existence of violence, poverty, corruption, endless war, tech-bro billionaires, and sociopathic world leaders. Not to mention social media farms feeding the collective with a steady stream of hate and division, and a consolidation of large media outlets increasingly owned by the very same billionaires hell-bent on coalescing even more power than they already have.

But one simple tweak in our understanding and the whole structure of modern society unravels.

“Can it be that simple?” you ask.

Of course.

Consider the primary weapon of control has always, always, always had one characteristic in common. And I’m not just referring to the modern world, or even the world of the last 100 years, but for as long as recorded history can muse there has been one consistent misconception.

The notion that we are separate is not just a misconception but a blunder of profound proportions.

We may not have a queen bee sending us instructions we’re incapable of resisting, but we are all tapped into one collective. We’re affected by it in ways that are subtle and persistent. We can resist the collective consciousness for sure, but doing so means we walk a path of those “other” people — often alone, often an outcast, most definitely misunderstood, and often questioning our sanity.

It’s far easier to just hit the drive-through, checking our social media feed while waiting, and parroting the latest political narrative that encourages more division.

It’s not enough to say we’re interdependent, even though it’s true. Because interdependence is easily dismissed as the rantings of the idealistic. The idea of social Darwinism (which is a gross distortion of Darwin’s findings, by the way) has been cited as the justification for the belief system that there are some among us who are better equipped to manage the masses (“manage” being a code word for control).

We are interdependent, indeed, but the profound human blunder is to misunderstand that we are more than interdependent — we are of one consciousness. The suffering in far-off places in the world affects all of us. Wars in far-off places affect us. Famine affects us. Human indignity affects us. The pain of others is our pain.

So too does the joy of others affect us, and quite profoundly so, as the power of joy usurps fear, just as the energy of peace usurps aggression.

And yet, we have the world we’ve envisioned, as Ram Dass suggested, because we consistently envision ourselves as separate.

And for the majority of humanity who persistently believe we are separate, division becomes a powerful tool for control.

And why, you might ask?

What is it about divisive talk and divisive ideology that is so appealing?

The answer is so astonishingly simple as to be easily dismissed as merely pat. But to understand the truth about our tendency toward us-versus-them-ism is threatening to our egos.

If I’m in my group, and you’re in your group, and those of us in my group believe we are better and more correct than your group, then those of us in my group can get together and discuss all the reasons why our group is better and more correct than yours — and it feels good.

It feels good to be better than others, to be more correct, to have the one “true” religion, the correct economic philosophy or political system.

It also feels good to berate you and yours as having the wrong ideas, because this also feeds our ego.

So then you might ask, “If the reason for our divisiveness is the human ego, then the root of the problem is our ego, not divisiveness.”

“That’s a great point,” I say, “but . . .”

The human ego is the mechanism by which the poison pill of the belief that we are separate is delivered, reinforced, and baked into our collective belief system. The belief in separatism is the poison; the human ego is the syringe.

The answer is to rewire our brains with the understanding that we are of one consciousness — that how we think and feel affects the collective. That the suffering of others is our suffering. That the joy of others is our joy. And that we can purify the syringe, fill it with love, and inject that into the collective. It begins with the understanding that we are of one consciousness.

But let’s step back again and see if we can jump another great chasm of human thinking.

What’s the dealio with this human ego thing? Why do we all have one? And what’s its purpose?

“Great question!” I say, “and it just so happens there’s an answer.”

It’s about survival. Without the ego, we would cease to strive even for the most basic necessities of life. We would cease to progress, cease to learn, and eventually cease to exist. It’s precisely because of the combination of our intelligence and our egos that we have become so successful as a species, such that shelter and food production, once the sole focus of our existence, have become a minor focus for a great many of us.

But we didn’t stop with the mastering of shelter and food production. We kept going. We kept striving for more. More achievement, more learning, more production, and more profit — driven by the egoic desire for achievement.

We have also accomplished profound achievements of music, art, and literature, in parallel to exploitation of the environment and human enslavement. Whatever it is, we strive for more.

This is both our blessing and our bane. It is what makes us distinct from the animal kingdom. It’s what pushes us even to venture beyond the atmosphere to explore other celestial bodies. But with all our intelligence and progress, we’ve misunderstood who and what we are.

Those in the animal kingdom understand their interdependence. Those savages of the Amazon understand it far better than the CEOs and Ivy Leaguers among us.

When Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” he wasn’t saying love your neighbor as you would want your neighbor to love you. He said “as yourself” because your neighbor is you, and you are your neighbor, because we are all of one collective consciousness — one being.

“Yeah, but . . .” so many will say.

What about those Muslims or trans people or immigrants or liberal commies or right-wing hacks? What about those drug-addicted homeless people or the welfare mothers or corrupt government bureaucrats or terrorists or fill-in-the-blank?

What about those other people who are screwing things up for the rest of us?

Yeah, what about them?

What is it about them that pisses us off so much? What about them reminds us of those shadow parts of ourselves? What about them that makes us feel that life is unfair?

We didn’t incarnate on this planet to experience pleasant lives filled with fairness, equality and justice. We came here to experience the pain of this place so that we could understand the contrasts of hate and love, division and connection, fear and belonging. We came here to feel pain and to learn to love even in the face of our pain.

Love in the presence of sacrifice is love with a profoundly deeper meaning than love in a space of convenience.

Just one simple tweak in our collective understanding of who and what we are, and the constructs of our social structure, world religions, political ideology, economic stratification, and so much more will begin to unravel and reform themselves in a context of interdependence.

The great Christian mystic Meister Eckhart once said, “Love is the root of all joy and sorrow.”

Noted philosopher and author Ken Wilber wrote, “If love does not shatter you, you do not know love.”

From Matthew 5:44: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

And lastly, from Buddha: “Grief, pain, and despair spring from love; their source is love.”

I don’t believe God is cruel. I believe we chose this painful journey to learn to love from a profoundly deeper place than love with conditions, love with attachment, love when convenient.

And through this understanding of the true nature and depth of love, we may come to a fuller understanding of our oneness.

For this post, I’m borrowing an attribute from economist Paul Krugman’s Substack,

MUSICAL CODA

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I heard a powerful quote recently, attributed to Alan Watts: “Life is not a ladder to climb but a mystery to dance.”

The quote’s inherent insight stopped me in my tracks, which lead me to googling it to retain its wisdom and possibly use it, like in a post such as this.

And so here it is, attribution granted in the very first sentence of an emerging thought on the nature of life. Grandiose to say the least, that any one assemblage of words can illustrate the very basis of our existence.

A ladder or a dance!

Really?

Yes, really. But I’ll turn back to this in a minute, because the first and most obvious flaw with the quote begins with the attribution — in this case Alan Watts.

Upon googling (notice the lower case “googling” to express the ubiquitous search engine as a verb). Another point to return to in a minute.

Anyway, googling led to some confusion as to who actually said it. One search attributed it to the late Indian philosopher Osho. The same Osho formerly known as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. The same Bhagwan who wrote many books and amassed a large cult-like following in Oregon in the 1980s and was the owner of some 30+ Rolls Royce’s, to name just a few accolades.

And another search argued the quote is a paraphrase of Watts’ work in general — of living for the experience of life over the pursuit of accomplishment. Okay, cool beans. But where did the quote actually come from. Like as in the specific construct of just 12 words in specific order, that, as heretofore mentioned, stopped me in my tracks.

The point is . . . it doesn’t matter where it came from because the attribution contradicts the point of the quote.

As an example, how many times have we attended conferences in which every presenter is prefaced by the reading of a braggadocio mini-CV reciting one accomplishment after another. So much high-minded praise heaped on a yet unheard speaker such that we’re forced to stipulate to their unquestioned authority on the topic for which they are about to present. And by the time they take the mic we’re already blurry eyed to the extent that after hearing so many other prior high-minded individuals of such erudition that we lose track of why we’re there and what we’re supposed to be taking away from the conference.

But then, a couple of months ago I attended a “Data Users” conference. Sounds exciting, right? Well, no but yes. I expected boredom but was quite stimulated.

There was the usual reading of mini-CVs: Director of this, Founder of that, and so on. But the second speaker in the morning plenary was a woman for which the organizers seemingly forgot to pump her up into the presumed expert. She was introduced in a rather low-key way by simply stating she works for the “UNM department for Geospatial and Population Studies” as a senior researcher, which sounds modestly impressive but not enough to give her the presumptive nod as a rock star of Geospatial and Population Studies (whatever that means). The most impressive thing said about her was to introduce her with the prefix, “Doctor.”

60 some slides, beautifully designed and organized. She was articulate and engaging. So much so, that following her presentation a colleague and I engaged in a rather deep conversation, based solely on her research, about the future of small business in the state of New Mexico. Not because she’s all that and a bag of chips, but merely because what she shared with the audience was undeniably insightful.

So, I googled her (the verb again), and as it turns out, she indeed has a highly impressive dossier of accomplishments such that she could have easily been presented as the presumptive rock star. But that would have detracted from her presentation, as what she offered was a creatively constructed picture painted with data. She offered very few actual conclusions but instead invited the audience to draw their own.

It didn’t matter where she went to school or what innovative accomplishments, she became a rock star in my eyes based solely on how she deduced and presented the data.

Osho, with 30-some Rolls Royce’s and countless books said many wonderful things and was also surrounded by controversy and scandal.

Google, the ever-present oracle of anything we want to know in the moment, has become a form of a monopoly, as many of the tech giants have inevitably become. They grow and they grow and take on a certain momentum that overshadows and distorts the original vision upon which they were founded. And we think, “Google”, it’s all that and a bag of chips, so much so that it’s become a verb.

Oracle, the database designer (the irony of the name not being lost on this writer) has become all that and a bag of . . . Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia and a handful of others have morphed into something else — essential megaliths of modernity that we’ve become dependent on.

By the sheer nature of their size, influence and resulting momentum they are now “tech giants” wielding incredible influence over our political system, the news we consume and the economy upon which we rely for our very survival.

And yet, the “tech giants” of today will one day fall upon the dustheap of history, recognized as mere contrivances of a system gone mad on accomplishment for the sake of accomplishment — the “ladder,” if you will.

But the “mystery we dance” is an entirely different approach altogether. At the risk of sounding cliché, it’s not about the destination but the journey. Okay yes, but what does that mean exactly? How do we actually live life for the journey when it’s been impressed upon us from age four that we have to always be thinking about our future.

Age four you may argue is a bit early. Oh, but yes. Think of pre-school and the incentive systems employed to enjoin the desired behavior. Behave, sit still, pick up your toys and you’ll get a cookie after nap time, or whatever other creative device seemed appropriate in the moment.

The point being, that the conditioning begins at the earliest possible age when we first acquire the ability to reason our actions in relation to consequences. This trick (if you will) of our superior intellect is the trap that keeps us stuck in a system of manipulation perpetrated by those who love us, into becoming the upstanding young men and women that make our parents and teachers proud.

Or more squarely stated, it’s the system by which we are taught to conform to societal norms for the sake of the collective sanity of those who are responsible for our upbringing.

Another quote (by someone who actually wrote it — or so we think) is, “Why do you want a purpose for living? — live. Living is its own purpose.” So said the great Indian philosopher, Jiddu Krishnamurti. Notice I said “great” so as to make him the presumptive expert of all things related to philosophy. Or maybe I just want him to seem as such because I had the opportunity to sit in his audience when I was a young lad of just 18 years. Or what if I never mentioned who wrote it? Would it make the quote any less important?

Philosopher and writer Ken Wilbur has written much of how all present understandings are possible only by building on the shoulders of prior understandings. The notion that African people are not worthy of being considered fully human led to “All men are created equal”, which lead to the women’s suffrage movement, and then the civil rights movement, and so on.

The point being that wisdom (in the form of concise quotes), no matter how impactful or who said them, would not be possible were it not for all prior understandings, including the disastrous courses of humanity such as wars, genocide and slavery. And every quote we find impactful are only found to be so because we have acquired the capacity to grasp their meaning. Thus, our capacity to understand is what actually gives them meaning. Which also implies that who said them is not important.

In a circuitous way, this leads us back to the original point of this post, which is about life not being a ladder to climb but a mystery to dance.

What if there is no point to life, except the choice we make in how to live it? Not anarchy or nihilism, but choice.

Now there’s a quote you can use, but if you attribute it to me people will say: Who? And therefore, the quote rendered unimportant. But if you just say one day in the company of various acquaintances, “What if there is no point to life, except the choice me make in how to live it.” People will ask, “Who said that?” And you can tell them Albert Einstein or Nelson Mandela or the like, and they’ll be like, “Wow! That’s a great quote. I’ll have to remember that.”

The wisdom is the wisdom regardless of who said it, because the truth of it is that no one can claim ownership to wisdom, and using illustrious names for attribution distorts the importance of the quotes, because they are only as important as we ourselves have the capacity to grasp their meaning.

Which leads to another equally interesting topic that I will endeavor to explore in a subsequent post, which is that truth and wisdom are not static but change as we change in our capacity to understand.

So, how about we just dance in the meantime?

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So often I think of you, the reader, and my long absence from the medium of written form.

I miss writing, yet my absence has not been for lack of desire to communicate and connect, but rather because my life in the past two years has been so full of so many things that I simply lack the mental bandwidth to enter the cavern of the writing process.

Lately, though, my thoughts have gravitated to this medium almost every day, and on this day, I can’t say no to the urging of my soul.

What’s most on my mind is that as I watch the unraveling of democracy in our country, I can’t help feeling that humanity is taking two giant steps backward, which brings sadness within me.

And yet, I know my sadness does nothing to help humanity or those closest to me. I know the most important thing I can do to help humanity is to continue to do my own work — to continually grow and live an authentic life.

I know that my joy, not my sadness, has a healing effect on those around me and sends tiny ripples through the sphere of human consciousness.

A few days ago, I received word that a close friend of mine had just passed. He was a Navajo elder and medicine man, widely known throughout Indian Country. He and I go way back. He was one of the first people I met when I started going to ceremonies.

It took a minute for his loss to sink in, and when it did, I thought of how much I’m going to miss his presence.

And of his presence? He was all about lightheartedness — constantly joking around and having fun with people. He gave a few people nicknames that stuck, with me being one of them. The first time I met him, I had arrived early to the ceremony grounds and spent the day helping prepare. I helped put up the tipi. I worked on firewood. I fixed and arranged things — whatever needed to be done.

Then, the following morning, as the ceremony was winding down, he was going around the tipi thanking people who had helped. When he came to me, he couldn’t remember my name, as he was just getting to know me. But he remembered where I worked, because he had asked when we were chatting the afternoon before.

And so, at 5 o’clock in the morning, after a night of singing and prayer, as he was giving thanks to several people, he was looking at me, struggling to remember my name, and he says, “And you, uh, LA Times, thank you for your help yesterday.”

The tipi erupted in laughter and the name stuck. To this day, some 27 years later, I am still known as “LA Times” throughout Indian Country, even though I haven’t worked there since 2008. Every time I tried to explain to him that I needed a new name he would just laugh and say, “LA Times.” He would call me up, I’d answer the phone, and I’d hear his voice say, “LA Times,” and he’d laugh.

Once I was in a ceremony with him when a man came into the tipi with an open can of beer and sat down in the doorway. I was aghast, but my friend was calm. When this drunk man got up and started walking around the tipi, just as he reached the alter, my friend merely put up his arm and said, “Stop. Go back.” The man turned, walked back, and left the tipi. There was no need for drama or judgement, only calm.

A little more than a year ago, there was a family traveling from California to New Mexico to sponsor a ceremony that my friend was conducting and I was supporting. On the drive from Cali, the family was involved in a serious car accident, and the father was hospitalized with multiple injuries. There were those who were expecting and suggesting that the ceremony should be canceled. But my friend said, “We’re having a ceremony.” And when he said, “We’re having a ceremony,” everyone took it as canon and continued with the preparations.

There was more than one conversation in which it was suggested to cancel, and my friend repeated, “We’re having a ceremony.” In the back of my mind, I thought it was going to be a challenging ceremony given how much more important the prayer had become. But the ceremony was easy and lighthearted, and the night flew by. My friend understood that when tobacco is exchanged, a date is set, and the spirits are called in, then we stick to the date. No drama, no need for argument — we just stick to the plan.

The next morning, in a typically lighthearted conversation, I again brought up the suggestion for him to give me a new nickname, and he said, “I’ll give you a new name, but you won’t like it.” I said, “How about, ‘White Rolling Clouds Over Many Mountains,’” (cue the flute music in the background) and he said, “I’ll call you ‘Biyoochʼííd,’” which is the Navajo word for liar. He and the other Navajos present just laughed, and I said, “Okay, we’ll stick with LA Times.”

A few months ago, he took me as a brother, which is a Native tradition of adopting people as adults who become like real family over time.

The last time I spoke with him was a little more than a month before his passing. We spoke about the things happening in our country and he said, as he had before, that the Spirits will take care of it and reminded me to always thank the Spirits of the elements: air, water, fire and Earth.

So, while I will miss my friend so much, I will never forget his lightheartedness. I will never forget his humor and his laugh — that in the midst of challenging situations, we can still laugh, we can still be happy, and give thanks. We can still call each other brother, sister, auntie, nephew, niece. We can still be friends and form lasting bonds. We can still love each other into a more beautiful kind of culture and way of life.

With gratitude.

Walter Jacquez

Born August 2, 1943

Passed on October 1, 2025

Mother’s clan - Bitʼahnii

Father’s clan - Toʼdichʼllʼnii

Mother’s grandfather – Cheii - taʼchiiʼnii

Father’s grandfather – Nalii - Toʼbazhniʼazhi

Mother, Mary Jacquez, from Dzilth-na-dith-hle

Father, Tom Jacquez, from Blanco Canyon

It’s been suggested that people who have meditated for many years eventually reach a point where the meditation process is so simple that few people can do it. The irony is that less structure makes it more difficult for the untrained mind. In fact, meditation itself is more a process of stripping away and letting go of not just what no longer serves us, but literally everything.

I have always been curious by nature, living what many would call the life of a seeker. And through years of exploration, I've gathered countless stories and insights that fill me with a desire to share. Hence, the origin of my writing life.

But I feel as though (at present) I have reached a point where I see with such clarity that I have very little to say — that writing or saying what’s on my mind seems in some way to take away from the message.

I’m also choosing to see people as inherently intelligent. Sure, there are those who are ignorant, but I believe more by choice than ability. Mostly, I perceive as a species we are smart and capable. The source of our calamities has little to do with outstretching our capabilities and more with living lives with blinders attached.

Thus, if we are all inherently smart and capable, the question I’m pondering is: Why state the obvious?

And I know the answer(s) to the question: that some of us may be in a state of readiness to be reminded of certain truths that we may have turned away from, that I give my own creative voice to the answer, that while most people will not relate to my message that some will. And so on.

But seriously. Why state what we already know? Why drone on with truths, no matter how profound, if it doesn’t change anything?

And then I’m reminded of something I learned a long time ago through immersion with Native American culture, which is that for the most part, indigenous languages the world over are mostly rooted in the verb instead of the noun.

And why is that important?

Because their language reflects their culture and value system — which is that we exist as expressions not things.

In the beautiful place of stillness I often reach in meditation, there is so little there that there is almost nothing. And in that place, there is no identity, no noun that defines who I am, no adjective that embellishes, no status, no aggrandizing stories, no need to stress over what I’ve accomplished or not accomplished, no need, no yearning, no desire, no possessions that hold any meaning for me, no anything more important than the breath that fills my lungs in the moment.

And yet, this is all in stark contrast to the ruse of our culture — the common narrative that keeps us engaged in a flurry of activity, if even that activity looks like binging on Netflix.

Less is better is a commonly understood axiom, and Occam’s razor, the philosophical approach to problem-solving utilizing the smallest set of variables and the simplest solutions, both speak to what I’m expressing.

If there are no nouns, no identities that truly matter, no accomplishments that provide enough validation for us to finally feel like we’re worthy, no possessions that make our lives more meaningful; if there is no-thing that truly makes a difference in the grand scheme of human existence, then what is there?

Expression!

Hardwired into the indigenous cultures of the world is the notion that we are not a thing, but an expression. And if we are not a thing, then what are we?

Right! I just said an expression. But more deeply still, what are we?

What flows from expression, which could be more broadly interpreted as art in all its forms?

Beauty, perhaps.

As the Navajo people commonly refer to the path of “walking in beauty,” they do not say, “She is beautiful,” but “She is walking in beauty,” or “She walks with beauty.” In other words, she is expressing beauty. Not to be confused with physical beauty, although we may at times interpret a person’s expression of beauty in physical form.

And what makes an expression beautiful?

Answering this question is why I’ve been struggling with my writing so much of late, because the answers to the questions seem so ridiculously simple that it’s stating the obvious. And you’re a smart person, surely you already know the answer. Do I even need to say it?

Hint: It’s not about taste or what’s in vogue or where we studied.

Do you have it yet?

I know you know this, and I’m resistant to state it because I don’t want to talk down to you. Can we just leave this question hanging in the air for the moment?

Let’s return to the original prompt for this post: the point about simplistic meditation being really challenging. I think it’s all related.

Mark Twain once said, “I didn't have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one.”

It’s more difficult to be concise. It’s more challenging to sit in meditation and just breathe than to run our minds through complex processes or recite mantras known only to the practitioner. It takes more effort to listen to someone vent their frustrations and have little to say in return than to try and fix their problems for them. It’s more arduous to try and navigate complex emotions in a relationship than to merely sit in silence with a person we love and allow the emotion to flow.

It's extraordinarily difficult to disembark from common cultural narratives, to turn off the television and sit in silence with our thoughts and emotions. Like an old movie projector that’s slowly losing power, these thoughts and emotions gradually fade, their images moving more slowly, taking up less space in our eternal minds. Eventually, perhaps after years — the projector stops altogether, and we have only the present moment in pure form.

I have very little to say about this, except that in a world in which mass distraction is the norm, sitting in stillness seems the ultimate rebellion.

The movie projector is moving slower now, such that the movie itself has less importance.

And what remains?

Only this one single breath and the expression that is my life in the moment.

Not to forget, the answer to the obvious question about what makes an expression beautiful . . .

. . . authenticity.

If it’s real for you, then it’s beautiful.

If you’re new to meditation, here’s a great piece by a friend that can help you get started, A Beginner’s Guide to Meditation and Inner Peace

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A question I keep returning to is: Why does the progression of human consciousness occur at such a glacial pace?

Now, more than ever, I find myself asking this question with more fervor, combined with an aching heart, as I watch the unraveling of civil rights, of accountability and fairness, of compassion and understanding.

Only a few years ago, the notion of being “woke” transformed from something hopeful to a smear on the character of those who strove for a more compassionate way of being.

It went from, “Yes, we can do better. We can be better,” to “The woke are crazy people.”

It went from striving to judging, and from understanding to bigotry.

Certainly, the act of claiming oneself as “woke” itself presents an opportunity for yet another stoking of the fire of human ego — another identity to latch onto that makes us feel elevated above others.

Not much different than bigotry itself.

It’s fundamental to human nature to consider ourselves elevated through a seemingly infinite array of options: stronger, faster, more powerful, smarter, prettier, sexier, more successful, wealthier, and even more moral and wise.

Two sides of the same coin — the coin of self-aggrandizement in whatever form is still self-aggrandizement. The funny thing is that we all do it, or have done it, at some point and to some degree. Its effect is subtle and often difficult to detect.

Even those who sacrifice for the betterment of others with undying energy can be guilty of it, if even a small measure of self-serving aggrandizement underlies the intention. If there is a tiny hint of, “I’m a good person because . . .” then we are falling into the vacuum of self-importance, of placing ourselves (at least privately within our own minds) above others.

I’m not illustrating this point to nitpick or criticize, but rather to identify a fundamental weakness of human consciousness, one that keeps us stuck in a seemingly endless circle of us versus them.

The civil rights era of the 1960s gave us hope for a new beginning. But then we slipped backward. And then a Black man was elected to the highest office in the land, and we again had hope for a more compassionate way of being. And then we slipped backward again.

A Black man in the Oval Office is, at a minimum, powerfully symbolic of a society and a culture that has evolved — or so it seemed.

Then we snapped backward, and then forward again, and then backward again, like an endless zigzagging of human consciousness from hope to fear and back again.

But in actuality, the hope and fear merely switched from one ideological base to the other. When Obama was elected president, he gave hope to untold millions, while millions of others believed our country was going down the drain. Then Trump was elected (the first time), and while millions felt despair, millions of others felt hope.

What lies at the heart of this conundrum is the human failing of our often subtle, often strong, desire to feel better than. It’s like a free dose of opioid, a hit to our nervous system that gives us a momentary euphoria, a reprieve from the despair and fear. Although there is a cost, but not in the monetary sense.

The cost is that after a period of expansion, we again contract. After embracing a (pardon the expression) moment of being woke, we return to slumber.

And what is our greatest fear?

Is it failure? Is it poverty, sickness, death, being alone and unloved?

Or is it something much more deeply buried within our collective psyche? Something so intrinsic to our construction that it functions like a computer operating system silently running in the background.

Could it be that our souls strongly desire growth and expansion, while our human egos desire safety and predictability?

Could it be that what causes us to contract after a period of expansion is not what we assume it to be, which is that some people have the wrong idea of how to do things and they just won the most recent election? But rather, it’s that those who felt the expansion got afraid and decided to retreat and let the other side take aim at our “woke” ideologies.

Those who strove for human kindness found themselves out in the open, exposed and vulnerable. And we can only take so many shots while being exposed before we look for a way to retreat. And so, we back off and let our fearful sides take over.

What is important to note is that the underlying operating system functions like a filter over everything we read, watch, or experience. It short-circuits our intrinsic loving nature. It overrides the need for belonging to all people of all walks, to the safe feeling of belonging to an exclusive group of like-minded people (whether their ideology makes sense or not).

We subconsciously cling to that which makes us feel safe. And the object of our safeness is related to our belief system. And our belief system is related to our ability to feel better than. And around and around we go.

Today, in the US of A, we live in a modern oligarchy. A country run by (mostly white men) who have grown drunk on power and operate similarly to the stereotypical drunk who babbles nonsense, stumbling around, spewing nonsensical platitudes, is quick to anger and even violence, appearing confident while their perceived confidence is driven by the foreign substance coursing through their veins.

It is no different for the adrenaline rush of power and influence.

In Alcoholics Anonymous, there is a saying, “One drink is too many, 100 is not enough.” One could adapt this to, “One piece of manufactured power over others is too many, one billion is not enough.”

While this may seem like a digression from the point about the human weakness of needing to feel elevated over others, it’s not. Here’s my point—

Power exists mostly for the sake of power, which is because having it makes one feel elevated. More power begets more power, which means an even greater sense of elevation over others.

But then there is this interesting phenomenon, which is that others feel power through proximity to power. To be on the winning team. To be friends with or associated with those in high places feels powerful. Even receiving the approval of those in power provides a boost to the ego.

And so, we gravitate toward that which enables us to feel elevated, either through judgment of, or power over others. And this is how we contract.

When we expand, it’s because we have looked within and caught a small glimmer of perception of our truest nature — the part of us that yearns for wholesome love, without judgement or conditions.

The answer to my question: Why does the progression of human consciousness occur at such a glacial pace?—

Because when we contract, it is so easy, so hypnotically enticing, to slip back into merely feeling good in the moment by feeding the part of us that seeks safety and predictability. Thus, we take one step forward and one step back, and we repeat.

But there is a progression, if even at a glacial speed, in which we take one step backward and one step forward plus one tiny increment more than a step. It’s so small that it’s barely noticeable.

Then with each step backward, we are reminded again of why we previously took a step forward, and the process begins again.

We are reminded, so then we strive for hope, for compassion, and what has been demonized in recent times as being woke. Then we feel fear, and we retreat.

It’s not that the mountain is too high, it’s that the notion of one day standing upon its peak scares us to the core.

Back and forth we go.

But we do progress, if even by a tiny measure, infinitesimally small and unnoticeable. Over many generations, we can look back and perceive a subtle shift.

It’s there if we look for it.

We can support the progression by endeavoring upon the courageous lifelong journey of transcending the egoic part of ourselves.

One tiny increment at a time.

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Here . . . as in Substack and the DEEPER side of things. It’s been seven months since my last post in June 2024 — seven months of silence. And if you’re reading this, I’m so glad you’re still interest in what I have to say — more so, I feel grateful.

Which leads me to a question that’s been on my mind. Which is: Why do I write? Over the past seven months, I’ve had no shortage of ideas to write about, but little to no time and no extra gas in the tank for the writing and editing process.

And yet, I still think about writing and what I’ve created with the DEEPER side of things, in the form of a collection of posts that speak to an inner dialogue about the evolution of consciousness and human culture.

My focus in the last year has been mostly about rebuilding my life since the disintegration of my marriage and business in the fall of 2023. I’ve focused intensely on making money, paying down debt, and building a stronger financial future for myself. In one sense, a very mundane component of the process of life.

In another, it’s been nothing short of transformational. I’ve been emerging from a kind of gestation, metabolizing the old into something new — a phoenix rising from the ashes.

Creation comes from change, which so often means letting go of one thing so another can emerge. The hard part of it comes from the fear of letting go. A life grown too comfortable carries an investment in the status quo motivated by an irrational fear that without things continuing as they are happiness will not be possible in the future.

And yet miracles only occur in the space of letting go.

I truly thought my marriage was for the long haul, so much so that I had wrapped my identity around it. When I finally let go, I felt relief and emergence.

So too, with my business. To this day, I still feel pangs of disappointment because I believed then, as I do now, that we offered an incredibly valuable service. But I’ve come to understand that the realm of business and commerce is fundamentally rooted in the practical. This means intangible services barely register in the collective mindset of how business is done. Only a few visionaries can peer into the abyss of the intangible and perceive a practical benefit. Thus, my business model was untenable.

In both cases, letting go and moving on has led me to new opportunities for learning and growth: a new relationship, a new business partnership, an evolving job with the New Mexico Small Business Development Center, a new living space, a new lifestyle, and so many opportunities for continued growth and evolution.

But enough of me and what I’ve been up to. What I really want to say is that one of the most profound lessons I take from the last year has been a growing ability to constantly feel into the intention that underlies my words and actions. As mentioned, the question I keep asking myself is why I write.

Many times, the answer is clear. Sometimes not so clear. In either case, the questioning is healthy.

In my new business partnership, I’ve been confronted with one of my significant shortcomings as a businessperson, which is my reluctance to fire people. On the one hand, it feels cold and harsh. On the other hand, at times, it is necessary. This means the longer I delay, the greater the harm to the business. I’ve seen this directly in recent months. Unfortunately, my business partner suffers from the same reluctance. So, we struggle with this together.

The path through the confusion is to question my intention. Am I firing this person because I no longer like them, or to get back at them, or to make a point? Or am I firing them for the health of the business, or to maintain respectful boundaries with the team? Is my reluctance to fire them because I don’t want to harm someone? But if retaining a person who has become divisive is hurting the business as a whole, then what is the decision to be made? Questioning my intention is the path to clarity.

In my new relationship, I question my intention a lot. Is it about fear of being alone? Is it about edification of the ego? Is it about helping someone? Or is it about companionship and authentic love? Is it about the next stage of my learning and growth? And a huge one for me: Is it about exploring a deeper expression of authenticity?

It may be a little of all the above, while knowing with clarity that my soul feels strongly drawn to her and our evolving relationship. Through the questioning, I move through my life with greater clarity and ease.

Why do I write?

I’ve asked this question before in a previous post. I’ve explored it deeply. And the answer seems clear to me, but this long hiatus has given me cause for re-examination. Only recently has my stress level diminished from the fury of the past year. And in this space of lessened stress, my thoughts return to the writing process, and something within me misses it.

Given all the changes with the online writing platforms and my understanding of how writers build large followings and eventually make a living from their writing, I no longer hold any design or intention for this to be the primary focus of my life. I see it now more as an expression, an outlet for sharing what I’ve learned along the way of a life lived as an unfolding adventure.

One of my favorite quotes is from Helen Keller: “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.” This quote speaks to my yearning, to what I’ve always wanted — adventure over safety, learning over stagnation, love over withholding, and an insatiable desire for self-discovery.

If the DEEPER side of things is anything, it is this one thing: a diary of sorts, of an unfolding life lived as an adventure for ever-deeper understanding, and a love for you and the hope that maybe a few of these words will settle deeply within your soul.

So, here’s to the adventure of life.

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“Hi, I’m Glenn, and I’m a taco-a-holic.”

Oh, sorry. Wrong meeting.

Oh, sorry again, this isn’t a meeting. It’s the DEEPER side of things where I’m supposed to share some valuable observations and insights.

Righto.

Okay, let’s try again.

Yes, I’m addicted — addicted to tacos. But not the Gringo style. Not the ones with cheese and sour cream, and definitely not the ones with ultra-tame salsa.

I lived in Los Angeles for 14 years, and during that time I had a friend who lived in East LA who turned me on to the taco trucks of the east side. The kind with Mexican families working the trucks. Usually a grandma or two forming tortillas by hand. The tacos were simple: warm tortillas, carne, cilantro and onion with lime and a roasted jalapeno on the side. Not to forget the chile (the word they use for salsa). It’s hot. Really hot, and full of flavor.

One bite in and the flavor bomb goes off in the mouth. Three to four bites in and the sinuses are running. Six to eight bites and the eyes begin to water.

Well, that was back in the day when I couldn’t fully handle real spice.

Fast forward a few years and I married Maria, a Mexican woman who cooked authentic Mexican food, and she served habanero salsa with almost every meal. The delight of the habaneros took a minute to find, but after a few months I could chow down with the best of them, pilling heaping spoonfuls on every plate and loving every minute of it.

Nowadays, as I drive around Albuquerque, I see taco trucks and I want to stop. It’s somewhat of a mild obsession. I’ve been ruined by too much authentic Mexican food to want to partake of the restaurant versions.

Rarely do I find myself satisfied eating Mexican food in a restaurant. It’s a tamer version with cheese on top of nearly every dish. To my knowledge, people in Mexico don’t put cheese on their tacos. They don’t even put it in their burritos. Definitely not on their beans. It’s not that they (or me) have anything against cheese, but in its proper place — like in enchiladas or relleno.

In New Mexico there is a style affectionately referred to as “New Mexican Cuisine.” At the risk of offending some of my New Mexican readers I’m just going to say that I don’t care for it. It’s like Mexican food smothered with sauce and cheese. To me it overpowers the subtle flavors of the carne, and the sauce is not very spicy. It’s just rich in combination with the cheese. Sorry guys.

So, I’ll admit it. This post is somewhat of a rant, but if you can stay with me for a minute I’m getting to the deeper part.

But before I can speak to the deeper part of taco trucks we first need to unpack what’s not so deep about the typical Mexican restaurant. For starters they’re a business. Which is not to say that taco trucks aren’t, but the stakes are much higher for restaurants. The capital requirements of starting a restaurant are staggering. Your position is fixed. If you don’t get the foot traffic you can’t just drive to another locale that works better. The health codes are more stringent. Staffing is your largest expense, followed closely by the cost of food. Labor and fixed overhead are constant no matter how many customers. 27% of restaurants fail in the first year while 50% fail within the first three years.

This means that shaving corners on labor and food costs is a constant practice, while making their menus more generic to appeal to a broader audience is a vital strategy for success.

Whereas taco trucks serve the minimum viable audience. A single truck may only need to serve a couple hundred people a day to make a living. Fixed costs are comparatively lower while cost to entry is significantly lower.

But what’s the greatest difference? What is the flavor difference (no pun intended) between a typical Mexican restaurant and a typical taco truck?

Hint: It’s not the cost structure. Or at least not directly.

Low cost to entry, mobility to meet audiences where they are, a small physical space, more simplistic menu, and catering to people who don’t require an air-conditioned dining room relates to a different kind of cultural experience. But I’m not referring to the culture of Mexico, but rather the culture of eating standing up or in the car, not being waited on, not requiring a giant plate of food with a diversity of colors and a basket of chips and salsa on the side. No ice water with a wedge of lemon. No margarita. No cloth napkins. Or even a mint with the bill.

It's on the side of the road. It’s simple without the frills. There are no hostesses to greet you at the door. Just a an elder in the back, a young one with English skills at the window, and a husband or brother working the grill.

What does this say about the taco truck aficionado?

Here’s my take. We (and I’m including myself in this category) are the sort that look for a little adventure in life. We’re not looking for the tried and true, but the real and authentic. We do not seek predictability, but spice (in the literal and figurative sense). And most importantly, we’re not so impressed with restaurants with great décor and mediocre food.

We want realness.

No uniforms, or cheesy umbrellas in the drinks, but real people making food they love for people who appreciate the real thing.

Am I sounding lofty? Maybe. But am I being lofty when I’m devouring my tacos in a gravel pull out?

I think I prefer the dance of flavor in my mouth and the satisfying feeling in my stomach to the salsa with a Scoville rating akin to something like a pimiento.

I love realness in life in all its forms — real people, real music (not sampled), real business (not corporate owned with a need to extract profits for headquarters hundreds if not thousands of miles away), and, yes, real tacos.

Restaurants designed for the masses (by necessity) need to be generic and unadventurous to appeal to the many. Restaurant chains exist for the benefit of shareholders, not the families who source the ingredients, cook the food, and serve it with a smile, and not even for the people who eat the food.

Restaurant franchises provide predictable experiences for both the customers and the owners. But such predictability is a direct outflow of following a specific formula. Hence, the absence of realness.

The DEEPER side of taco trucks is that you can’t make it in such a business by being generic. The raw and unfiltered nature of such a business necessitates some measure of realness.

And what does this say for the rest of us? In all our businesses, careers, relationships, families, creative pursuits, hobbies and recreation we have the choice to be authentic and real. Maybe we won’t make quite as much money but the experience both for us and our customers will be richer and more meaningful.

Realness in our careers means we take our work to a level of art. Not just art with food, but art with service, art with approach, art with meaning. Even a CPA firm could elevate their work to art. While I admit, it’s challenging to make art out tax planning, they can make it by tailoring their approach.

Lately, I’ve been having conversations with my roommate about his legal practice and his brand. He, like most small business owners, never thought much about his brand. His current website merely touts him according to his area of specialty, which is not very interesting. Sure, if I need a disability attorney and find his website I might be inclined to call him, but not before looking at few other disability attorney websites to see which one grabs me more.

Then I visited his office and took careful account of the décor. He’s a lawyer, but there’s nothing sophisticated about his office space. No $10,000 mahogany desk, or vaulted ceilings, or glass wall office spaces. In fact, it’s rather rustic, including an unfinished monitor stand he built himself from scrap wood. He has a nice leather sofa in the waiting room, but that’s the only point of luxury in the office. The rest is functional, well organized, and orderly, but not highbrow in any way.

He also doesn’t have a receptionist. No gatekeeper to buffer him from clients. If a client calls they get him on the phone. He’s figured out how to make his one-man operation work, which lends itself to the unique and authentic nature of his brand.

No frills, 30-years of experience in disability, social security and worker’s comp. If he doesn’t think you have a case he’ll tell you. If he sees weakness in your case he’ll tell that too in rather blunt fashion. But he also takes cases other lawyers turn down and finds satisfaction in serving the underdogs, the dispossessed and downtrodden. He’s represented homeless people, people with severe mental health conditions, people who have tried for years to obtain disability for chronic conditions but have been repeatedly turned down. My roomey is a true man of the people. That’s his secret sauce, his authentic realness. He’s the taco truck of disability law in New Mexico.

His business is a true reflection of his personality.

We can all do this if we choose. We can make art of our work. We can be real in our lives and work. Let’s make more food trucks and less McDonalds.

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Here it is, three months since my last post. A mere blink in the grand scheme of things. But of course, you haven’t been wondering why the DEEPER side of things hasn’t crossed your inbox of late, because you have better things to do with your mental attention than worry about the frequency of these posts.

But let’s face it, we’re all busy, even when we’re not we’re still busy resting and recharging. Resting is as important as doing, recharging as vital as creative outflow. And in times like the present when all seems so uncertain and confusing it’s a great time to reflect on, well, the DEEPER side of things.

And so, with that I offer the following crystallization of my current observation of the state of human existence. Yes, you heard me right: “human existence.” If we’re going deep, we might as well go all the way. Like what the heck is this thing called human existence and what are we supposed to be doing with our focus and attention?

In conversations with conscious friends, a common thread emerges: a collective scratching of the heads. A question about why? Why is the world in such turmoil. Why can’t people see through the distortion of corporate owned media? And what’s the delio with the ever-persistent Trumpism.

While I have carefully avoided dipping my writing toe in the political waters for fear of entering the clouded sphere of political belief and identity, I think I’m safe to question the phenomenon of Trumpism, as I’m estimating the likelihood of any Trumpers reading the DEEPER side of things at about zero percent.

So, with that understanding out of the way and safely naming Trumpism a most troubling phenomenon that will likely go down in the annals of history as a watershed moment in which (again) humanity has forsaken its own collective benefit for the indulgence of the few, let’s get back on track as I’ve digressed enough.

So, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, my current observation of human existence.

Biting off a big chunk to chew on, here goes . . .

Since perfect parents do not exist, we are all raised imperfectly, loved imperfectly, nurtured imperfectly, at times neglected, at times allowed to run raggedly across the years of adolescence, and in all too many instances we are even abused.

The result is that we grow into adulthood with our imperfections in tow, because of course we can’t be perfect given we were raised imperfectly, which means as we have children, we in turn raise them imperfectly and the cycle continues.

While we have many cultural values that are rarely named, and yet strongly impressed into our minds from an early age, one cultural value we do not have is to place high importance on personal growth and healing.

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I learned a valuable life lesson way back in my sophomore year of high school in driver’s education class. Sitting in the middle back of a crowded compact car with a nervous 15-year-old girl at the wheel the instructor said, “Steer into your space.” He told us not to look at the cars on the side of the road or the center line but rather to steer into the empty space of the lane in front of us.

Many times I’ve recalled that lesson when rounding a highway curve at 70 mph at night with a semi-truck in the lane to my right and a guardrail to the left. If I focus on either the truck or the guardrail my navigation is going to be highly stressful. But when I let go to the trust I have in my depth perception and merely steer into the open space, it’s a near effortless process.

In martial arts students are taught to focus on the overall opponent. If you focus on his hands you’ll miss the kick that’s headed your way. If you focus on his feet, you’ll miss the punch.

In the game of billiards, when I’m endeavoring to sink the 8-ball in the corner pocket while the 5-ball is crowding the path, if I focus on not hitting the 5 I’ll most assuredly hit the 5-ball and miss the shot. Whereas if I look to the space barely wide enough to squeeze the 8-ball through, I’ll have a higher likelihood of potting the ball and winning the game.

When I’m studying a book and wish to highlight a line of text, if I try very hard to guide the highlighter over the words in precise fashion, I’ll end up with a squiggly yellow line across the page. But if instead I place the marker at the beginning of the first word and direct my attention to the end of the line, I end up with a clean highlight.

In business, it’s common to focus on the metrics that constitute the commonly accepted definition of success, such as headcount, gross revenue, profit, cash flow, share price, lead to sales ratios, and so on. This is tantamount to focusing on an opponent’s feet while missing the punch.

For example, profit is closely tied to customer loyalty because a repeat customer is a near effortless sale compared to prospecting for a new one. Employee turnover is very expensive, not just in terms of the hard cost of recruitment but also in the loss of institutional knowledge that walks out the door with every dissatisfied employee. Poor culture leads to unengaged employees, which translates to the newly defined trend of “quiet quitting,” which is when a person stops caring about their job — they keep a seat warm and collect a paycheck, but they don’t do much for the company.

In the realm of personal development, the focus is typically on finding abundance or a new relationship. Again, it’s missing the punch while studying the legs.

Lack of abundance is related to such things as low self-esteem, negative thinking, or a misunderstanding of how the law of attraction works. It can also be related to hard-held beliefs ingrained in the subconscious from childhood, or from an unwillingness to let go of career directions that do not align with our soul’s journey.

Yearning for a loving relationship can be related to dozens if not hundreds of potential issues.

Seeking the external attributes such as more money or a loving relationship is like watching the guardrail while rounding a turn at 70 at night. It’s how we end up colliding with the very thing we’re avoiding.

Which speaks to the key to living a life of love, abundance, and a fulfilling career. If we avoid looking into the open space, seeing the overall opponent of our dissatisfaction with life, then we’re focusing on the feet while a George Foreman-style left cross knocks us silly.

The company looking to move the profit needle by 0.4% by shaving some material costs or cutting back on employee safety is about to hit the guardrail.

Allopathic medicine is largely about treating symptoms, while eastern medicine focuses on root causes. Which is why western medicine relies so heavily on prescription drugs to cure symptoms, which leads to side effects that cause other problems, which requires more drugs, and then more side effects. Eastern medicine practitioners have pointed out that suppressing symptoms is bad for the body. Symptoms are our body’s way of telling us that something is amiss. So, it’s no surprise that all prescription medicines have some form of side effect.

Steering into our space means we’re following our intuition, the subtle and highly accurate voice of the heart. Not strictly the feeling center but the integrated heart in the collective that draws from a non-dualistic place within us.

Rounding the curve at 70, I’m not calculating the distance between the guardrail and the side of my truck or between the semi and the other side of my truck. Were I to run a visual calculation in such a high-stress moment, it would shut my mind off to my intuitive sensing self.

People who cook without measuring — a pinch of this, a handful of that, four spoonfuls on an overcast day — are using their intuitive whole selves, which, by the way, is how we infuse our food with a higher frequency of love.

Steering into the space is a way of tricking our egoic dualistic self into letting our heart-centered whole selves drive the ship. It’s so simple and yet so powerful. It means the difference between fighting the mere limbs of an opponent (the external features and conditions) versus meeting with the overall opponent.

The approach moves us beyond focusing on metrics and symptoms to perceive not just the space but to feel into it. The examples of billiards or martial arts or navigating a curve at 70 are more than metaphors. It’s precisely the same process that we follow if we are to advance a business, improve our health, manifest a loving relationship, generate more abundance, and so much more.

I’m not trained in martial arts, but I imagine that were I to spar in such a fashion that looking at the whole opponent would represent a letting go of my need to control the outcome and trusting that by taking a wholistic approach, I’ll be able to draw from deeper parts within myself. That by looking to the whole, I’ll sense faster and more accurately than were I to rely specifically on my vision.

Can you think of some areas of your life in which you’ve focused on the guardrail? Can you share about it in the comments?

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At the risk of stating the obvious, time flies. It’s hard to believe it’s been two years and 143 posts since the launch of the DEEPER side of things, but today marks our second anniversary.

It’s been fun, enjoyable, challenging, at times invigorating, at times painful. Seeking always to go deeper means not just accessing the deepest parts of myself, but also forcing myself to go deeper than I had previously considered.

So many times I catch an idea for a post and in the writing of it I learn so much more than I already had a mind for writing about. There is this concept called the Learning Pyramid, which is more anectodical in value than empirical, but a useful concept all the same. It says we retain only about 5% of what we hear in a lecture, 10% of what we read, 20% of what we watch, 30% from demonstrations, 50% from group discussions, 75% of what we practice and 90% of what we teach.

The point being, by writing about, and in a sense, teaching through the posts of the DEEPER side of things I get to go much deeper than if I had never put fingers to the keyboard. By your reading and responding to what I write, you’re encouraging me to keep writing, and by my continued writing I continue to learn even more. In other words, it’s a mutually beneficial relationship.

And so I say thank you. Thank you for two years and however many of my posts you were able to spend time with. I hope you’ve found them valuable and enriching. And here’s to another two years — two more years of peeling the onion.

I can’t say where I’ll go with the content in the future though. In truth, I can never say even from one month to the next what will flow from the ethers of research, meditation, thought, consciousness, and intension. But I’m so glad you’re on this journey with me.

Aho!

Glenn

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“Well . . . it’s time.”

“Time for what?”

“Time for self-reflection.”

“But of course,” my alter-ego says. “I do that already. Why would I read your posts if I wasn’t already the sort of person who self-reflects.”

“Yes.”

“Yes, what?” he says.

“Yes, you already self-reflect.”

“So, why suggest I self-reflect when I already do?”

“Because it’s time to peel another layer,” I say. “Yes, we already go deep, but can we not go deeper?”

“Deeper than deep?”

“Deeper than present depth, so that we may begin to see into our blind spots.”

“Blind spots?”

“Yeah, blind spots. We all have them. I have them. You have them. Even the great spiritual visionaries have them.”

“But,” he says, “how can you be so sure that even the spiritual visionaries have blind spots?”

“Because they wouldn’t be here if they didn’t.”

“Here? Here, as in where?”

“Here, as in the Earth School. You know, this thing we call human life.”

“Oh, that. Right. But where else would we be? Planet Zoltron? Nanoo, nanoo?”

“Something like that. The point is we chose this school. We came here to learn.”

“Why would any sane person choose to come here of all places? Never mind, I know what you’re gonna’ say.”

“It’s about blind spots,” I say.

“Blind spots,” he retorts.

“Yeah, we can see them. They’re right in front of us, or rather off to our side. We just have to contort ourselves to perceive them.”

“How about you give me an example, instead of all this conceptual mumbo jumbo.”

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Apologies for going dark for the past month and a half. It’s been a whirlwind of change and activity. Maria and I ended our marriage of 14 years in November and have since been reshaping it into an evolving friendship. She moved to Florida, I moved to Albuquerque. We both started new jobs and are reshaping our lives into something altogether different.

It seems as though Creator had a different vision for our lives than the quiet existence of homesteading in a remote location with very little contact with the outside world. Instead we are both engaged in a metropolisistic dance of people, people, people.

I’ve been working a great deal while packing, cleaning, and moving from our cabin in the woods, trekking belongings 140 miles eastward to a storage unit in the centrality of big city, while in temporary domicile with a friend from my former men’s group. Thankfully, the move is now complete.

I’ve begun working with the State of New Mexico, Small Business Development Center in the process of crafting a program to teach entrepreneurial skills to incarcerated individuals. And I can’t begin to express the synchronistic nature of how this job fell into my lap.

I’ve had a long-held secret desire to work with incarcerated people, as I’ve felt a deep sadness for the way our culture brands those who have served time with a life-long Scarlet Letter deeming them unworthy of many of the benefits the rest of us so often take for granted, such as fair-interest loans, jobs with dignity, clean and safe apartments, and freedom from judgement as being less than for mistakes made years prior. Never mind that making life difficult for formerly incarcerated individuals contributes to a higher rate of recidivism instead of actually helping them reintegrate.

But what’s been on my mind and weighing heavy on my heart of late is homelessness. For a couple months I’ve been helping a friend with a start-up business to transition from early to mid-stage, and his warehouse is located in one of the worse parts of Albuquerque. Each morning I’ve pulled up to the chain-link barbed-wire fence at an early hour there are at least 30 homeless people within a stone’s throw, burning fires in the alley, requisitioning whatever combustibles they can find to stay warm in the frigid open air of late fall, early winter.

Often I observe small groups of them huddled together shooting up or smoking Fentanyl. Obvious mental health issues abound, severe addiction, and an unwillingness to get the kind of help that comes with the important attached string of staying clean and sober.

My heart goes out to them, sending waves of compassion and blessings, hoping that maybe some of them (one of them) can feel a spark of something within that brings about a change. On one occasion I was guiding a truck that needed to pull into an alley so that it could back into our yard, but there were so many homeless people milling about in the alley that the truck had little room to pull in. There was a group of them to one side sprawled about on the ground. I looked to them with an express of asking when one of them said, “Sorry bro, I would get up but I’m too depressed to move.”

What can you say to that?

Clinical depression is real and debilitating and affects a growing number of people.

I attended a Christmas dinner with friends and somehow the conversation migrated to the topic of homelessness. Finding myself in the company of some rather learned and accomplished individuals, I was surrounded by people capable of rational analysis and nuance. It was a great conversation in that there was no judgement, no shaming, no egoic attachment to being right. Just discussion and consideration.

At one point when the conversation had temporarily migrated away from homelessness one of my friends was staring at me with a look that suggested he had something to say to me. So, I said, “It seems like you have something to say.” He replied, “I’m trying to understand you.”

He was genuinely trying to understand my perspective because I was the only one in the room who gives money to homeless people. The others were mostly of the mind that giving money to homeless people doesn’t help them because they’ll just use the money to buy drugs.

True for many.

They were also of the mindset that there is a plethora of programs to help them, but that homeless people largely don’t want the help.

Which may also be true for many.

But my position is that the reason I give them money is not about helping them necessarily. Rather it’s more about compassion and that the mere expression of compassion for another human being has value in and of itself. You could say that in the act of giving there is an energy exchanged that carries more value than the mere monetary value or the cup of coffee they purchase with it or another hit on the pipe.

It doesn’t matter what they do with the money. What matters is that we acknowledge them in their suffering and send waves of compassion to wash over them like a gushing mountain spring flowing over the grime of homeless city living, addiction, mental health, poverty, crime, and desperation.

What matters is that we send them our loving prayers.

Yes, we can give them food instead. But usually they would rather have the money, so they get to decide what to do with it, what food they eat or drugs they buy.

I’m not suggesting enablement. Just simple acts of compassion, which can be expressed in many ways. A buck or two is just one way.

And there is another reason to send them our compassion, which is to acknowledge that we are all connected — one humanity.

And yes, there are important systemic changes that would be far more effective than current methods. But until our society becomes more enlightened and compassionate, what if we view the homeless as doing us an important service — reminding us of our interdependence.

Through our empathy, we feel their suffering, and we are reminded of our humanness. That, in a sense, is a great gift.

I can’t say I’ll return to my prior writing cadence anytime soon, as my life has greatly transformed. I’m much busier now, and often feel too exhausted to write even when ideas are forming in my mind. But I’m here and I’m still pondering life in deep ways.

Until next time.

Glenn

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I think I’ve started and not finished at least five posts before completing this one. The point is not so much about finishing what I’ve started, but about not judging the outcome regardless of whether I finish. Self-judgement prevents us from moving effortlessly from one endeavor to another with a willingness to discover new opportunities and directions.

Seth Godin has written a lot about sunk costs — that in business there is a tendency to keep pumping money and resources into projects that are either not profiting or not producing a beneficial outcome. The feeling is that we’ve invested so much that we can’t give up on it. Seth calls it “sunk costs,” meaning they’re unlikely ever to be recouped.

The alternative is to let go.

Letting go means letting go of the need to recoup or make it successful when all the signs indicate it won’t succeed no matter what we do. It also means letting go of our egoic need for everything we do to turn to gold. We all make mistakes, even (and especially) many billionaire types have tried and failed many times before making it big. It’s been said that we only have to succeed one time. Translation: fail, fail, fail, and then fail again before succeeding.

The problem with failure is that it bruises the ego and diminishes self-esteem. I once worked at a large company managing several large projects in a culture in which failure was not acceptable by certain leaders. This blended well with my penchant for perfectionism, or rather created a perfect storm for self-judgement and rigidity. It was a nearly impossible environment for creativity and innovation to flourish.

More recently, Maria and I have called it quits after 14 years of marriage. We split because we both realized that we have different visions for our lives and that our souls were yearning for a different kind of life. It’s been three weeks since Maria left for Florida, I left for Albuquerque, and we both began exploring a new kind of life.

But it wasn’t because we weren’t good together, or that we don’t love each other, or that we’re incompatible, but rather that we recognized that for our souls to continue to evolve we needed to make this change. Thus, the comfort of our companionship was a sunk cost — that we had gone as far as we could in the present context, and it was time for a change.

Since separating we talk all the time, text, email, and video. We’re continuing to process things with each other. Which has been one of the most meaningful aspects of our relationship all along. Maria mentioned just yesterday that she feels our conversations are grounding for her, and I feel the same. So, we haven’t actually ended our relationship, just changed it. But we couldn’t have gotten to this place if we weren’t willing to change the nature of our relationship. How it will evolve in the future we can’t say at this time, but there is openness and freedom to explore together and separately.

At the same time we’ve also decided to wind down our business, 4 Directions Branding. It’s been heartbreaking to consider our brand work a sunk cost because I truly believe we’ve created an amazing service that can help small businesses grow and flourish. But the problem has always been that only a tiny number of people understand what we do such that they would want to hire us. It’s so intangible that it’s hard for people to relate to.

Case in point, my friend David Smith and I are launching a small side project, beginning with the brand. Knowing David as I do, knowing that he’s lived a spiritual life, that he meditates daily, and has an open heart that I wouldn’t need to guide him through a lengthy education in brand design. Yesterday we spent less than an hour on video and accomplished what would normally take eight to ten hours of slogging through it with most clients.

The difference is that he’s spent an entire life developing the kind of muscle necessary to feel deeply into a project or business, and I’ve been seeking to bring that kind of depth to the world of business that is simply not ready for it.

So, it’s a sunk cost, and by remaining open to what new adventures may unfold in the space of letting go of that which is clearly not going to work no matter what I do or how hard I work at it, I can entertain any number of new adventures.

Maria and I are not a sunk cost, but the nature of our relationship had become one, and through letting go we’re able to discover a new way forward.

Living my life the same way is a sunk cost if it prevents my further growth and development. Letting go opens the door to new adventures.

As the great Hellen Keller once wrote, “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”

I’ve been practicing letting go. It’s not easy or necessarily comfortable. It’s like pushing off from the bank of a river into an unknown current. Or driving across the country without a map or GPS. Or entering into a new relationship. Or starting a new job. Or launching a new creative project.

It’s all unknown. Which makes it courageous and adventurous.

Holding on to sunk costs keeps us stuck in place.

Breathe deeply. Notice the egoic desire to hang on. Notice the ego identifying with your life in the way that it is . . . and let go to the possibilities.

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Wherever I go, whenever the conversation touches on the war in Gaza, I feel sadness in the air. And while in the media my sense of the commentary is that people fall into one of two camps — either pro-Palestine or pro-Israel — what I hear from people in my circle is neither pro one side nor the other, but rather pro-peace, anti-war, anti-killing, anti-suffering, anti-turmoil.

People are sad about the war. And while many have fallen into the trap of polarization, many more are just sad.

War is never about the masses of people acting on the belief that their survival depends on it, but rather on small numbers of people pulling the strings on narratives that convinces the masses that their survival depends on it.

War generates huge profits for small numbers of people. War is about power — the power to control narratives to generate more war.

There is no specific end game other than to coalesce more control. Control is the end game, exercised in the form we’ve come to understand as “power.”

There is no justification for the actions of Hamas, nor justification for violent mass response of Israel. Of course Israel or any sovereign nation has the right to protect themselves, but just as Biden suggested in a recent speech that our response to 9/11 included mistakes, that it wasn’t perfect by any stretch, bombing out the civilian people of Gaza is another mistake.

If we want peace, then we wage peace, not war.

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“The Matrix” as envisioned by filmmakers Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski is an iconic metaphorical film that continues to remind us of a veil that exists over our everyday lives. As Morpheus said though, “Unfortunately, no one can be told what the matrix is, you have to see it for yourself.”

Just before Neo reaches for the red pill to see how far the rabbit hole goes Morpheus reminds him, “Remember, all I’m offering you is the truth. Nothing more.” Then Neo swallows the red pill, and the adventure gets very real.

There is a veil that exists, but it’s not made up of vertically descending computer code in contrasting green over a black background. It’s not human pods providing small electrical currents to supply the needed energy for an AI world of bots and self-aware programs. It could be a form of a simulation, but not existing within a computer mainframe as we envision it.

It’s there. Morpheus described it as being, “Everywhere. It is all around us . . . It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.”

The Matrix is some of the best entertainment ever created, and as so many writers have noted, its metaphor is not far from the truth. Some have even referred to it as a documentary. Extending on the Alice in Wonderland metaphor it takes us to a dimension altogether deeper than had been previously conceived in the realm of made-for—prime-time feature film. It’s sublime. It’s gripping. And it makes us think.

But how far do we really want to go down the rabbit hole? Do we really want to take the red pill? Is there a blue-ish/red-ish pill we can take where we venture just a little way down? Is there a way to retain our ignorance-is-bliss world and still understand things a little deeper than the surface story?

The challenge with the rabbit hole is that curiosity gets the better of us. Once we begin to see through the veil just a little we want more. But the even bigger challenge is what to do with what we see.

Anger is a typical first reaction, but it gets us nowhere. It’s understandable, but not productive.

Isolation is another reaction, that it becomes more difficult to function in the world when we begin to see through the hypocrisies and narratives. So, we keep to ourselves and avoid conversations that we know will be triggering for people.

Sadness is an understandable reaction. In German there is a word for it, “Weltschmerz” (pronounced Velt-schmerz), which means world-pain, depression or discomfort with the human condition or state of the world.

Depression seems to be the result of such reactions because we feel helpless to do anything about it. Which then leads us to the question: Why are we here?

Are we here to reveal and understand the complexities of the human condition and then fret over it? Are we here to feel Weltschmerz? Are we here to get angry? Are we here to create a ruckus? Are we here to hypothesize and philosophize? Are we here to force change, to try and wake people up to the matrix?

One thing for sure, trying to wake people up is a losing battle. And being angry only makes us unhappy. Depression. Helplessness. It’s a zero-sum game.

So, where does this leave us? If you’re reading this, if you’re a subscriber to the DEEPER side of things, then you’re curious. You want to know and understand more. You seek depth in life.

But what is the driving force behind the urge to know and understand more? Why do we seek it if it makes us feel unhappy?

Maybe it would be easier to remain ignorant. Work a job, build a business, raise a family, grow a 401K, retire to a state of diminished activity, shower grandkids with love, fret over the economy and who the next president will be.

But no, there is an urging deep within. We want to know more. We seek the truth even if it hurts. Even if it makes us feel Weltschmerz.

It’s not wrong to want to know more, or even to be a rebel. It’s not even wrong to feel anger and sadness. It’s merely a stage for us to pass through. Waking up to truth requires a period of adjustment. The cycle of emotions is a natural response to new understandings. The trick is not to hang out in a place of anger and sadness. Not to allow our lives to revolve around it but to pass through it.

The other challenge is not to go to a place of judgment for those who do not seek to know the truth. As illustrated in another Matrix metaphor, when Cypher made a deal with Agent Smith to be placed back in the Matrix with no memory of having lived outside the Matrix in exchange for delivering Morpheus, we got to see the profound challenge with truth when Cypher said, “After nine years, you know what I realize?” as he chomps on a bite of rare steak, “Ignorance is bliss.”

The desire not to know is all around us and even within us. It’s easier to simply not know, to not understand, to not venture deeper, and live in peaceful ignorance.

But . . .

It is also possible to live in peace while in full view of the matrix. We can know the truth, cycle through the emotions, and awaken to the light of peaceful understanding with compassion for those who have not yet opened their eyes.

We can’t wake them up. They have to want it for themselves.

Morpheus didn’t present the offer to Neo just because. They pulled him out of his daily life because Neo had perceived a glimpse of the Matrix and was curious to know more. It was a gamble, which is why the choice of the two pills was offered. He could take the blue pill, “The story ends, you wake up in your bed, and believe whatever you want to.” Or he could take the red pill and “You stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”

The choice was provided. Which is as much as can be offered. It’s as much as we can do.

And yet, there is a subtle effort that exists within and behind the living of a kind of life in which we seek to know and understand more deeply. For lack of a better terminology, you could say it’s a sort of quantum field that emanates from those who perceive the world more deeply. You can feel it from them. Those who are curious feel it. It’s our energy field itself that serves as a form of an invitation.

It can lead to unexpected friendships filled with a level of conversation that ventures more deeply and more meaningfully than most. It will feel nourishing, the kinship will grow, and the topics will venture ever more deeply such that we learn even more from one another and help each other wake up just a little more each day and with each conversation.

The Matrix we live in is not meant to be upended or overthrown. It exists for a reason. A reason we can only posit or vaguely sense. Understanding its purpose, you could say, is way above our paygrade. But it’s there.

My purpose is to know and perceive, and to cycle through the emotions to emerge on the other side in a place of loving kindness.

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Many prominent physicists have dedicated much of their lives to resolving the conflict between quantum physics and macro physics, including Albert Einstein and David Bohm. There have been many. And while I’m hardly a physicist, I’m quite fascinated by the conflict and find myself spending much time contemplating the quandary.

Could it be possible that I may have a hypothesis of some merit? Or maybe it requires a level of thinking that is beyond the math and science, and perhaps more non-physicists contemplating the conflict may add to our collective understanding.

“Bolderdash!” would be the words of many scientists. They would deem me grossly hubristic or naïve to suggest an explanation for something the greatest minds of science have yet to figure out.

True indeed, but I think the question of the essence of matter that behaves decidedly different from the macro world of physicality is beyond our ability to denote with mere numbers and formulae. But neither will I attempt to articulate my hypothesis in mere metaphysical terms. Instead (and I’m taking a deep breath as I ready myself to undertake this attempt) I will delve into the realm of consciousness and the nature of thought.

Okay, without further delay (and taking another deep breath) I share my ruminations on the nature of reality.

An atom . . . yes, let’s start there. Just a single atom — a building block — an element that forms together with other atoms to create molecules. And molecules form together to create other things, such as minerals and even cells, which form together to create sentient life, and so on.

Many minerals form together to create planetary bodies, which by the mere nature of their mass generates a gravitational pull, which leads to the way planetary bodies move through space and time. But it all starts with the atom. The single unit from which all things form.

Okay, this is clear so far.

But it gets weird when we investigate the composition of an atom, which consists of a nucleus made up of protons and neutrons, and a “field” for lack of a better word, of electrons that orbit the nucleus.

In one analogy shared by Gary Zukov in Dancing Wu Li Masters, we view an atom as a 12-story building. In such an example, the size of the nucleus would be that of a grain of salt. In another analogy, Michio Kaku described it as such, “If an atom was the size of a football stadium, it would be empty because the nucleus would be roughly the size of a grain of sand. The atom appears to be solid, but that’s an illusion. The reality is that matter is basically empty.”

Just let that sink in for a minute . . . all of what we perceive to be solid matter is mostly empty space. Even the hardest steel or gemstone is just empty space. Think of that as you whack yourself upside the head with a hammer. It won’t feel like empty space, but it truly is.

But quantum physics gets much weirder still. The electrons that make up the empty space are negatively charged particles that orbit the nucleus in what are referred to as “shells.” Electrons change shells all the time, but they don’t move from one shell to another, they phase out of existence in one shell and back into existence in another. In other words, they don’t always exist. Thus the electron fields (consisting of orbital shells) are not fully in existence, and yet make up the vast majority of what we perceive to be physical matter.

Then there is the befuddling nature of sub-atomic particles and photons behaving both as waves and particles. This has been repeatedly proven in a famous experiment called the double slit. If you’re curious, go to YouTube “double slit experiment” and watch in amazement. This one in particular is really good.

Then there is quantum non-locality, which refers to two particles separated by an infinite distance and yet linked. As we affect one particle the result manifests instantaneously on the other regardless of the distance of separation.

But the most befuddling quandary of all is the fact that the observer of experiments affects the results of the experiment, prompting some notable theoretical physicists to note that the observer and the observed are fundamentally linked. This is the great conflict between the quantum world and the macro.

If I carefully observe a fast-moving bus and intend for my thoughts and observations to change the nature of the bus just as I step in front of it, the result will be catastrophic. In other words, my observation of the bus will have no effect on the bus. But if I observe quantum particles in an experiment, my observation will change such things as the position and velocity of the particles.

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Just as I’ve been contemplating the writing of this post I opened an email from and read the following quote,

“We do not always allow ourselves to work through pain. More often than not, we think pain is a signal that we must stop, rather than find its source. Our souls do not like stagnation. Our souls aspire toward growth, that is, toward remembering all that we have forgotten due to our trip to this place, the earth. In this context, a body in pain is a soul in longing.”

— Malidoma Patrice Somé, Ritual: Power, Healing and Community

The part that jumped off the screen for me was “Our souls aspire toward growth.”

Which means that the work I’ve been doing within myself and with others, which is to connect more deeply with our purpose, means, that by extension we are connecting more deeply with our souls. And when we connect more deeply with our souls, we come to recognize the soul’s innate desire for growth.

Each time we are born into another incarnation we forget who we are as we enter into the tiny fetus of a being with a brain that will take decades to fully develop. We lack the intellectual capacity to hold the knowing of our being in those tiny developing brains, and instead we enjoy the tactile experience of being held in embryonic fluid and the constant warm embrace of a mother’s body.

As we come into the light of the outside world our every need is attended to by nurturing mothers, fathers, family, friends, and helpers. We only need to cry and we receive attention. And we live this way for some time while our brains slowly develop. We’re cradled in the climate of culture and its values and precepts. We feel the fears of those around us, just as we feel their joy. And by the time we reach the point in our development where we expand our sense of self to include those around us as distinct beings operating independently from our own personal needs we have already absorbed a great deal of information and experience related to how we are to function in the world.

Which is to say that all the limiting beliefs and understandings of who we truly are have already been inculcated into our developing intellectual capacity with no understanding of the soul’s infinite journey, no memory of prior incarnations, no knowledge of who we truly are.

Only a slowly developing conscious life of physicality, rote learning, and play. And play, by the way, is a giant clue to our true essence. But at the time of childhood we don’t yet know it. Even most adults fail to recognize its importance, as the nature of our play is the first and most powerful clue to our innate being.

And so it continues. We build a life. We make choices. We attach ourselves to some values and not others. We feel compelled to move in certain directions, and not others. And we continue to feel the powerful dynamic of human culture convincing us of the purely physical nature of our being, while diminishing the voice within that prods us toward a life of continual change.

Our culture tells us we have to achieve certain things, things of permanence. A college degree becomes a thing of permanence in our resume/CV. A marriage, we are taught, is supposed to be permanent. Purchasing a home so that we may establish a permanent residence. Finding a good job that we can settle into. Becoming a part of certain communities, which are tacitly understood to imply permanence. And family is always understood to mean that it’s forever.

The holy grail in academia is to achieve tenure. Being elected to political office is supposed to be for a limited time, while entrenchment is the norm. Friendships are understood to mean we are locked into them forever. And while lasting friendships are a beautiful thing, when one in a friendship seeks to continuously evolve while another stagnates, it is usually best for them to part ways.

Interestingly, I have one single friendship that stretches back 52 years to the second grade. It continually amazes me that we are still in touch and still greatly enjoy each other’s company. We may go a few years between phone calls, but once we’re on the line together it’s as if no time has passed. At this point, we both get that our souls recognize each other, that this is not the first lifetime we’ve known each other, and that we’ve been brothers before. More importantly, my friend Alfred is a seeker. He looks within and gradually and continually evolves, which is the most significant reason we are still such good friends after all this time.

But then . . .

All around us there is constant change. With the primary example being nature. Leave a yard untouched and nature takes over. Leave an entire city behind and it takes over. Mountains are constantly forming and eroding. Even our cosmic journey through space is in constant movement, as our solar system travels around the Milky Way at approximately 448,000 miles per hour. It takes roughly 230 million years to complete one rotation. The Milky Way itself is traveling through space at 1.3 million miles per hour, and in 4 billion years our galaxy will collide with the nearest spiral galaxy, Andromeda, creating a spectacular cacophony of intertwining orbits and collisions.

There is no possibility for stagnation for more than brief periods. In stagnation the pressure for change builds up in the form of tension and even conflict until the proverbial levee breaks.

We build levees within ourselves. We tell ourselves we have to make things work, keep it steady, keep it the same. All the while ignoring the pressure within that feels like a growing discomfort. We ignore it for as long as we can. We may seek to inebriate ourselves, to numb out, to avoid, and when that doesn’t work we blame other people, situations, or places without understanding that no one is at fault, it’s just our soul yearning for change.

I’m only recently understanding this dynamic more fully, and in coming to this awareness I’m reflecting on prior changes and recognizing how much I’ve blamed others for them. The company I worked for had a lousy culture. Certain people were unethical. The former wife did this or that. That friend was this or that. The community didn’t offer this or that.

Many of those things are true, but those things (whatever they were) were not the real reasons for the change. The true reasons were that my soul was ready to move on.

I had learned what I was at the company to learn, in the relationship to learn what I was meant to learn, the friendship, the community, the city or state I was living in, the car I was driving, the style of dress, the lifestyle, the hobbies and interests. All of it. Was intended to be temporary, like the constantly changing landscape of our natural world and the great evolving cosmos.

As I wrote recently in Emerging from Gooey Gestation,

“Butterflies are unquestionably beautiful, and yet they evolve from a gooey substance within a cocoon in which they literally digest themselves in the process of reconstituting into a new life form. From caterpillar to sticky goo to delicate beauty, and then within less than four weeks they perish.”

While we live much longer than four weeks, we are not unlike the butterfly. We are conceived into a fluid, formed, and pushed out into the world. We grow and evolve and then we decay and decline before our physical form ceases to function and our soul moves on to the next adventure. And yet many of us have our bodies preserved, placed in sealed caskets, and buried in the ground with much ceremony and commemorated with often elaborate headstones that are presumed to remain in perpetuity. Nature, however, will not allow any cemetery the permanence with which they are intended. Tectonic plates shift, new mountains form, and in a million years there will not exist the slightest trace of us having ever walked the Earth as distinct beings.

But our egos want us to be remembered forever, because we feel through remembrance we will live forever.

This understanding is important to embrace because it helps us make sense of our lives. The tension we so often feel in relationships, places we live in, career directions, friendships, and all of it are most often misunderstood as some form of a conflict or dissatisfaction with the person, place, or situation. Thus we seek for the drama that may not exist or to amplify minor drama into major drama to give ourselves the excuse to walk away. We may even create drama where none needed exist.

Understanding this dynamic more deeply is providing me not just great clarity, but serenity in the face of change, as I share this in the context of great change I’m currently preparing for.

In Emerging from Gooey Gestation I shared that Maria and I have been having open and honest conversations about what is emerging from within us and the kinds of lives we are seeking for ourselves. As a result of such conversations we have made the decision to go our separate ways. As we’ve begun to share the news with close friends and family we are usually met with expressions of sadness. And while there will be sadness and grieving we are not making this decision because our relationships has become toxic or unhealthy, but simply because we are being called to different kinds of lives and we are honoring our soul’s calling.

We’ve even joked that maybe we should try to find something to argue about so we can blame the other for the separation, but only in jest. There is some fear, uncertainty, egoic crumbling, and also excitement and a feeling of release and freeing up.

What remains is our friendship, which we feel is enduring, as we are after all, best friends. We feel on a deeper level, our relationship is not ending but evolving. Maria will continue to edit these posts and provide her valuable input on the shaping of content, and she has stepped away from her role in 4 Directions Branding.

We will move on to re-create our lives anew. We will honor the call of the soul to continue to evolve, and I’m sure I’ll be sharing aspects of my new journey here at the DEEPER side of things, as many things are in the works.

And so, to the topic of fundamental change, embracing change is mostly an uncomfortable process but it enables and allows the soul to evolve in ever more exciting and profound ways. Deciding to seek permanence is not bad, it’s only a choice. I’ve just chosen differently — not better — just a choice.

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