I was thinking about this guy I know.

There are certain things that only humans can teach other humans. It’s in the example and the knowing. The borrowing of knowing. The showing of knowing.

The question, “How do I do it?” is a sane question. The belief that there will be a “how” so perfect that one bypasses surrender is flawed.

Pretending there isn’t a surrender is fraud. That hurts the worst. Trying to find the right way is flawed. Even scouring for the best right way we last knew is at least problematic.

The ideas from now are the reincarnated children of the ideas that were forgotten. My body grieved their passing and testifies to them in this moment.

I’m showing this knowing to myself right now by…placing my head in my hand and letting out a deep exhale and forgetting what I was thinking of before and just saying the truth that’s actually happening. All of the spirits of the past applaud, “He just needs to let go and be himself.” I’m showing that knowing to myself by living it. Not by planning it or controlling it, just being it. When we stop trying, stop wiggling, we can find stillness and see that something is still wiggling.

But that’s a weird one. Someone shared that knowing with me and I continue to share it with myself and…when I look at anyone or anything, now I’m somehow closer to the thing in them that won’t stop wiggling. And somehow that’s me showing them that I know.

It’s weird. I know it, but it only occurs to me in the moment. Like the moment is a portal to a me in a different universe who knows that the wiggle that you can only see in stillness is and was always wiggling. I guess it’s there- pretend like I know, look, see, and know…all in a kind of rolling along way.

I used to think I was bad if I had to be shown what I know more than once. That was terrible. It’s so much better now. Now, for some reason, needing to constantly and perpetually be reminded of what I know is some other knowing that’s a new perspective on the old one.

The wiggle wiggles, whether I’m good or bad, and somehow that makes me gooder.

I pray to myself, “Remind me of what I know and remind me that being reminded is good and part of the knowing.”

I love remembering that I love you at the end of these letters,

Mike

I’m in Palm Springs. Jeff left Monday to visit his parents and I was joined by C. We dated for 6 years and are creating a new relationship in this post-boyfriend era. He was in LA with his husband and drove out to spend a couple of nights with me here.

Today was so busy, we were both in constant calls. I did two coaching calls, filmed a scene, and then met with the guy who’s organizing the Gay Men’s Travel Retreat I’ll be leading in Thailand in April.

It got to dinner time and I asked C if he wanted dinner. I took him to the Mexican Restaurant that Jeff and I found, “Tlaquepaque”, which was so great, most notably, because the waitresses were magically kind, generous, and helpful. I imagine that they were all mothers.

When we got back after dinner I told C that I was going to walk around the block and smoke a joint. On the walk I named four insights from our relationship that I tell people about all the time.

Number 1 is, “There is no love without boundaries.”

This isn’t meant to be a claim like, “The universe is meaningless and it sweats love.” It’s more a statement that is attempting to recalibrate love between people. Growing up, I thought, “The more love there is then the less we need boundaries.” Boundaries were almost seen as me being insulting and telling whoever was listening that I didn’t trust them. What I learned from C, and the one he put into words was, “There is no love without boundaries.” Why? Because love needs contact and we cannot contact each other without edges. Boundaryless love is like dating the ghosts of who we agree that we should want to be instead of who we are. There’s an everpresent subtle way that we humans do stuff and can’t avoid the inference that we “earned love”. Boundaries are a great way to see that love is a thing that exists even when no predictions are forecasting okayness.

Here’s the math:

(“Susie only loves me because I’m a provider”) + (“I can’t work anymore because I injured myself”) (still strangely =) (“Susie loves me”)

“Susie still loves me” is one of the most interesting phenomena. So many false premises (premii?) fall if “Susie still loves me” has room to be seen.

Number 2 is, “I’ll never stop saying I want more from you and I never mean that you’re not enough.”

This one is so weirdly persnickety. I have whittled myself and others down. I used to say, “I want more from you…like if you changed in these ways it would be good.” Now I know that I was loving people contingently to change and even making their willingness to change into a sign that they loved me. Nobody can handle that. It’s too weird. “Come with me. I’ll cut your hair and dress you up and I’m sure you’ll appreciate that I’m standing for you to change.” Whittle whittle whittle…”I want more from you (so I can feel more alive without paying more attention).” “I want more from you because you won’t love me unless I care enough to try to change you.” There’s probably infinite subtext bugs in there.

At some point I realized that wanting more is ok if it’s actually wanting them and not their presentation. It’s like a magnetism of acceptance, a desire of witnessing.

“I want more from you: your voice, your preferences, your boundaries. I love that, whether you respond to me directly or not, I’ll take responsibility for listening deeper to the ways you are communicating.”

But even that didn’t sit right if it came out of my mouth. I could see that C was only ever hearing “You’re not enough.”

It took me a sec. “I say, ‘I’ll always want more of you,’ and he heard, ‘You’re not giving enough!’.”

I remember being in the kitchen and slicing through the fog.

“I never mean you’re not enough.”

His eyes unfogged and he could see it was just miscommunication.

We came to understand that it was ok if this particular qualification had to be pointed at when we weren’t feeling safe.

This particular set of crossed wires can be heard everywhere once it’s understood.

Number 3 is, “Finding fault with your partner is often a sign that you’re unhappy with your career.”

I saw this one. I was just whiny. I was doing a thing where I was using the relationship’s needs as the reason I didn’t have time to commit to my career. There’s so many angles.

“I’m totally allowed to clearly bitch at you if I have avoided all the big risks career-wise that I’ve been putting off and you haven’t been coming home and paying attention to me as if you knew I didn’t do what I wanted for you.”

“What I want to do” is the easiest thing to not do, especially when we can find any way that our partners would not like it. So much inside of this.

“Are they the right partner?”

And

“Are we scared to find out that they love us even when we do what we want?”

…are tough to see as different tracks that can’t be ridden at the same time.

Whenever someone tells me about problems at home, I always quickly wonder, “What expression has been sworn off in order for you to put your self-resentment in someone else’s body?”

Number 4 is, “You can leave when you know it’s over or you can stay.” The lessons will always be there and we both knew it was over so many times. It wasn’t working and we kept learning and we kept loving and we kept suffering and we kept proving that we could fight to make it work. The last morning, when we ended “together”, no words were spoken. We stood in the grief and kissed again. We both knew that we could never fall out of love and we both knew that the fighters inside were tired.

I can clearly recall an early moment when I thought, “I don’t know if this will work.”

“That was a rough edge.”

At the time I thought everything could be “worked through” and didn’t have an awareness of that being…just a speck of dust in a sea of possibility…a Monopoly game that didn’t need to be finished…a camouflage for a deeper question.

“What do I want right now?”

“Should I stay or should I go?”, is a Batman smoke bomb hiding my awareness of deeper questions.

There was no right or wrong to how long we held on.

It was love.

Letting go,

Mike

I’m sitting next to Jeff.

Jeffy.

I met him back in December when I went to Portland to film after Tom cancelled. As I was driving down to Portland I thought, “I still want to have a romantic weekend.” I had seen him on a dating app when I was in Seattle and then again when I got to Portland. He came and was my cameraman and it was great because I was so turned on by him that it didn’t matter that I had just filmed.

In my last letter I talked about the next edge being the possibility that everything was fun and easy and ineffable.

Have you ever played “Go Fish”?

After you ask someone if they have a card and they say no, you draw a card from the deck and if it’s the one you wanted, you say,

“Got what I wanted!” and you say it in a kind of sing-song voice and get another turn.

“Got what I wanted.”

Jeff holds me like ALIFTIMTS does. He’s not particularly philosophical but he always works out what I’m on about and smiles. He is so direct in wanting me. I think one of the most wonderful things in the world is to reciprocally want towards another person.

Do you know how when the wrong person wants you and it can feel like, “No, not so close,”?

That’s more common for me. There’s a huge relief for our alignment.

I just touched his arm. I was writing this, for some reason this letter is tough. He was over by the pool at the Airbnb we’re at and said, “Can I come sit by you and listen to Instagram reels?”

“That’s my preference,” I responded. He giggled. He makes nonstop dad jokes. When I touched him, he said, “You’re touching me. Are you a brazen homosexual?” but he really means,

“Please keep touching me.”

I think he jokes at times when he’s nervous. When we were out last night, in small moments when it was pretty claustrophobic he would make 4 or 5 jokes in a row. It was a little jarring until I understood, “Oh…he’s nervous. He doesn’t realize he’s one of the hottest guys in here and everybody’s looking at him because he’s handsome and exudes kindness.”

We get along so well and I’m still sticking to my vow, “No boyfriends for 2026.” I got what I wanted and I’m still going to stay open. He comes towards me and I’m still going to stay open. Jeff isn’t the most…pro-Gay (huge sigh of relief). He’s not part of any scene. I don’t think he thinks in terms of popularity. He just has friends. He just loves building stuff and fixing stuff and taking care of people and his parents. He just got up and said, “Do you need anything?”

I said, “A kiss!”

He comes around and leans over and gives me a minute of amazing leaned over perfect kisses. I push him away and tell him that I’m going to keep writing.

We came to Palm Springs to attend “IBC: The International Bear Convergence.” When we were in Portland, I said to him, “I wanna go dancing with you in a place where we can take our shirts off.” He got a little self-conscious and implied that he couldn’t take his shirt off in most places. He’s a little chubby. He then said, “I’m going to IBC in February. I could dance shirtless there.” And here we are. Friday night we got Italian and just laid around talking and touching. We got in the hot tub and talked and touched. Yesterday we fooled around quite concertedly. It was awesome. It was a whole day of, “Would you do ____ to me?” and the answer was always, “That’s a great idea!” He was married for 20 years and has been divorced for about 4. They stopped having sex and when Jeff asked why and got “I’m not attracted to you anymore,” he replied, “Let’s get a divorce then.”

That’s kinda rare in “gay world”. He’s out exploring and he tells me all kinds of ideas he wants to explore- with me, with himself, and together with other people. It was so cute how self-conscious he was about going dancing last night. He looks like a midwestern high school gym teacher and dresses like that, too. I know what bear events are like and, while I’m a content creator, he looks like the king of the bears. The doorman who was extremely butch, called him, “Sir”, but not like “old guy = Sir.” Like he was deferring to Jeff’s hotness. Young guys were eyeing him all night and it was so hot to see it register on his face. They would walk by and look at him and I would use my gaze to inform them, “You can definitely come talk to us.” The first guy that came over started kissing him and then we all started kissing. The guy stumbled away muttering, “That was amazing kissing.” Yes. Jeff is the nerdiest hottest bear daddy who is an amazing smoocher.

The second guy that came over had hungry eyes and my eyes were so clear,

“Come here.”

He started talking to Jeff and I stood next to him, my body language saying, “Keep going”. I leaned into his ear and said, “He’s so lovable and you can love him as much as you want.”

He heard me and relaxed.

Both guys were so crazy hot it just made me so happy that Jeff got some appropriate feedback.

“You’re wonderful.”

I was standing right there and he kept making sure to include me. It was so cute. We danced and made out with each other for two hours straight, totally sober. He was drinking soda waters and I was downing Diet Cokes. I tipped the bartender big and he was quick to refill us.

It’s an edge, “Got what I wanted,” because I hadn’t imagined past this point. I could feel all the other occupants of my heart being rearranged. None of them fell out. I could just feel alignment doing its thing. Hannah Taylor talks about some loves being closer in and “closest in”. Alignment is an impersonal understanding of how well people work together. I still feel love for all the others.

I’m shaking a little bit inside. I keep stopping myself from saying, “I love you.” I don’t know why. I really want to wait to tell him. I want him in my life. It’s funny to fall in love and then see my destiny get nudged. It’s an interesting integration. Jeff is a really particular flavor. I know my mom will like him. My dad will like him, too. I want him to meet my parents.

I can feel the distance between me and him and am comparing it to the distance between me and Tom. This is how close I wanted to be with Tom. This is how close I want to be with Tom. I get scared to share thoughts like that in writing. I had an impulse to feel guilty and then I felt an impulse to look over at Jeff and say, “I love you.”

I don’t get it. I’ll keep thinking and feeling it.

Hannah always says that she doesn’t fall in love, she’s always just in it. I can kinda make sense of that. I’m in love and some people align with me so I feel it more viscerally.

I can tell that I love him and that means that I’ll always love him.

It feels like a big deal and we have one more night together. We’re gonna tool around today, maybe workout, and then meet a few of his friends here for drinks.

And then I’ll continue the motion for this year. Getting what I wanted is not the same thing as continuing the motion and I need to see what happens when my Jeff-loved heart faces the world. I don’t think I’ll see him for 7 months or so.

I’m trusting the path,

Mike

PS: I kinda want to read this to him. It helped when I read these to T as I wrote them. I’m going to give it the day. On some level I think I say “it” too fast but when I look back, there’s no regret and each declaration still feels true.

No matter the distance or time or events, I’ve never fallen out of love with anyone.

I’m in something funny. I’m learning to see how I’m applying irony.

I just said to myself,

“If the cost of freedom is everybody pities my potential ending…”

I have a belief that people believe I’ll end up alone.

Abracadabra I know I’m projecting and now I’m here with a belief that I’ll end up alone.

But it’s not a crazy wild projection and I’m open to it containing perception.

I’m not working on my retirement fund. I just figure I’ll keep being me. I have enough money. I’ll have to have an active life and death. I meet plenty of people that enjoy being with me and hanging out and talking is free.

And I’ll probably still always feel the pall of the prediction.

“You’ll die alone.”

It’s kinda true. In that moment, dying, even if my hands are held, I’ll release alone.

Step one. Something in me needs compassion. Before I even know what it is, “I got you little piece of me in grief.”

I breathe for a minute and the strangest thing happens. I was willing to feel the voices but keep my belief that I don’t know what death will be like, or old age. Instead of the irony, the voices were gone…created away…or let go of…maybe they’re just in hiding…maybe they closed down the factory and are all moving to the coast to get jobs at my newfound ability to see…possibility when the emotions suggest doom.

It’s an irony of possibility.

I’m not sure where it started. A few weeks ago I could tell that my mind was making predictions from a super heteronormative and codependent place. It was giving me a mood. A little thought in my head said, “Why is it so abnormal to daydream the most decadent future right now?”

And like flipping a giant stone on a beach, I imagined:

-meeting someone who really likes to talk and listen

-meeting someone that’s too much but it just makes me feel loved

-meeting someone who understands that good things can happen now

all came into my mind.

And then I felt like a million bucks. And awesome stuff happened all day.

A deep belief in me is that the willingness to be perpetually ironic is the cost.

What happens after is a miracle.

I’ve seen:

-me fooling myself and there is actually something in me that needs to be addressed

-me finding a very interesting homeostasis in the irony. Voices shouting “No!” and me feeling and trusting an embodied yes. And the voices strangely deepening my understanding of the people around me.

-me having the voices disappear almost immediately, as if my doubt or lack of commitment was the thing actually creating them

My friend today was saying that there’s always a fear in him in sexual contexts.

He looks at me and sees me so confident.

And I correct him. I am confident but there is always fear. Especially at the beginning of things, there is always fear. But I know that it’s always there. It’s, to me, existential.

If the cost of freedom is always fear then…

…freedom is cheap and I’ll enjoy it. I’ll get so good at seeing the fear as phenomena and not as a message. I’ll get good at discerning which fears are good ideas and which fears are echoes of the past and which fears are empathy with my perception of the masses.

If the cost is learning to ignore voices, I’ll pay it.

If the cost is looking like a fool, I’m in.

If the cost is feeling sad but believing that, this too is love…take my money.

The cost that’s actually the newest and edgiest and scariest for me is,

“What if it’s easy and glorious and ineffable?”

I shudder. Nod my head. Let’s do this.

The possibility machine in my noggin fires up. (Insert futuristic machine humming)

I can go to bed in 30 minutes instead of 2 hours and 30 minutes. I can trust that my habits are innocent and like stains on my teeth…only a problem for the wrong people. I haven’t had a single thought about, “I need to make money,” lately and my bank account is at an 8 year high.

I will get to Palm Springs and feel safe and open in love.

I will feel safe and curious and see the sacred everywhere.

I hope you read these someday,

Mike

I gotta work this one kinda wonky. I’ll start with what’s on top so I can put it down.

“I’m praying to be strong enough to wait for people to change their minds about love.”

Mostly with Tom.

I don’t feel pretty, typing that.

I was at the Monday Flow at the Relatefulness studio in Austin. Everybody was acting like the circle wasn’t “about them” and deciding if they wanted to participate.

Something nicked my anger. I let it move. I was trusting that I was doing my best and that my values were being stewarded by my body and…

…I ranted.

“It’s so fucked up when you guys keep saying how you’re feeling like it’s not about you and you’re not an active participant. You’re choosing at least many parts of this. It’s fucked up not to admit that you’re choosing it. You’re praying for it.”

And then softer, “I don’t even really care that you’re doing it, just that you’re not admitting it.”

The reason it came up in the circle at the studio was because I think we create our realities with our attitudes and when people are “deciding” if they want to participate…my brain screams, “You have infinite choice to create what you want right now and you’re creating a make believe story that you’re not participating and that’s weird! It’d be like going to a potluck and the dish you brought is uncooked and there’s a note that says, ‘I’ll throw this in the oven if you guys convince me that we’re worth feeding or everyone promises to like it’.”

I was still in the Flow of the emotion and my brain flagged, “That was weird,” and “Check the mirror.”

It’s the most normal thing in the world to quickly flip anything I’m saying about anybody or everybody into how I already think about and judge myself.

“What am I praying for?” The heaviest haze was feelings with Tom and T…basically just wanting them to be different and telling myself, “They’d like it better if they changed, too.”

And then it came to me a few words at a time,

“I’m praying…to be strong enough…to wait…for people…to change their minds…about love.”

I see an image of a young boy devoutly praying. He’s like a giant of faith.

“Please let me be strong enough so in case they change their minds, I will still be here waiting.”

I can’t even critique him, this stalwart stoic past version of me. Wow. The bug he is keeping alive is intuitively inelegant to me. But he looks like the reason I know what strength is and that I have it. He looks like the reason I know what faith is and that I want more of it. What a strong big thing I have done. I basically prayed to be a Bodhisattva when I was 5.

“Whatever I gotta do to be ready in case you change your mind.”

“My hopes about what it could be like are worth waiting for, in case you change your mind.”

Kids are so brave.

My surrender is right there.

“Let that go and see what happens.”

“Let go of the waiting and see what happens and watch to see if what happens is actually better than what we thought would happen and if it is…let go of thinking, ‘Now I know how to control this kind of situation!’”

(It’s six months later and I’m finishing this one up)

I’m here in the result of this exploration. Things have been going great and this lesson in particular is persnicketedly poignant again.

“I’m ok,” I tell myself.

Two giant value sets are sharing space.

“Do what you want” and “Let go” are an old cat and dog that are sharing one of those dog basket beds.

I’m making skagenröra for Jayne and Andrew. I’m skipping the gym. I’d like to move slowly today. I’ll get lots of walking going to the store to get the food.

I’m still in love with Tom but I’m not thinking about him anymore. I let him go. But I’m still learning about love with people. I’m still learning to let go. There’s little divots in my mind’s past-section. The thought starts with, “Did he get upset when…”, and morphs slightly to, “That happened because I didn’t let it go when he said…”, but…it fades before it can grab space. I trust that.

Those thoughts seem reasonable but they’re not letting go.

I will wait to call “him” until the next time I feel the desire, “I want to call him!”

And that will be enough.

The prayer has changed:

I’m praying and receiving the trust to know that doing what I want includes letting go. Does that make sense? We can’t grab new stuff when we don’t know how to let go.

I see monkey bars. I hold onto the first one until I get to the next one and then I can’t have that third one until I…

Night Johan,

Mike

I was just in Dara and Jason’s Flow session at the Austin studio.

It was good.

Boredom was named.

I never get bored. “Bored” to me is just a word that tells us that someone didn’t let themselves say what they were really feeling. I trust “boredom” if it’s pleasurable. If it’s suffer-y then I know it’s a cover.

I explained that to the group. “Guilt” and “Boredom” are what we say when we can’t say what’s really happening.

There was a spot where I told a woman, “You’re so ironic.” The group asked me to clarify what I meant.

There’s “Authenticity” which means something but most people use it to mean, “anger = attack, fear = back up, sadness = fall apart” and those people using it incorrectly are like little stunted remote controlled people, controlled by their feelings.

“Ironic” is when someone can feel a feeling and then do the opposite of what most people would say they should do.

I didn’t say that “choice” is the thing that can help us switch tracks. I love when my experience lines up with my feelings. It feels like skateboarding down an easy hill, just ‘agliding on my feelings.

The boredom was still there and every time I hear it from someone I do what I do when I get close to the spot where I think most people are feeling boredom: I look at my experience and ask it for more honesty.

Anger. I follow the anger and it seems like it’s at all the quiet people, the bystanders. I understand that some percentage of them are just fine and don’t need to talk. I also understand that some or all of them think something like, “This isn’t about me/I don’t want to ruin anything/I wish we’d do something else.”

And mostly they’re thinking, “I don’t make any impact when I decide to stay quiet.”

Like “no impact” means:

-I’m not causing harm

-No one can accuse me of anything if I don’t give them anything

And I thought my anger was at that for a second and I let some of it out and probably that wasn’t great.

Then I scooped it back, apologized for my sloppiness, and owned the real feeling.

Loneliness. I’m lonely and I think I’m supposed to just be lonely or love myself enough where it doesn’t matter…basically I’m supposed to be in some grand equanimity.

That’s what the anger was about. I’m angry at the voice in me that tells me that loneliness should be held well and that was the co-opted definition of spirituality.

I do not believe that the goal is perfection. I think the goal is accepting humanity.

I accept that there are bystanders- people who think they’re not involved in what’s happening or that it’s not their business.

I accept that people not participating can be a huge act of love.

I accept that no one who is silent in a circle is hurting me or making me feel lonely.

I accept that people who are feeling good will probably mostly dampen their light when they can sense people struggling in the dark. I can accept that there’s no direct responsibility to share. What I’m struggling with accepting is the thing where good people don’t say good things for fear (and certainty) of shaming those who aren’t feeling good. That is so fucking arrogant in the wrong way, even though I get why that can be challenging.

I accept that I always might need to stand up to that spirit of perfection that says, “Love is having no needs and being able to satisfy everyone else’s.”

I lean in and tune into the loneliness and it’s soft and nice to be with. I notice that this feels private. I wouldn’t want anyone to watch me here as I’m doing it.

I accept that I can’t fix anything by just saying, “I’m lonely,” because, in general, other people solving that isn’t what I want either. I love when people show up for anything and I get to watch. My loneliness is a longing. I’m longing to witness life.

I still feel the loneliness. I’m keeping my enthusiasm separate from it, like I want them both to have room.

I told the group, “The way I’ve been working with this is to just, in effect, abandon whoever isn’t sharing. I’ll check back in with them but my attention won’t stay with people who aren’t taking up space as a kind of policy.”(That’s both my policy [unendorsed] and people-who-don’t-take-space-as-a-policy)

The thing that’s clicking now is, “That’s their choice, to pretend like they aren’t making a choice. We get to learn whatever we want for as long as we want. I’m going to learn why it’s ok for me and ok for them.”

Jason just gave me a few gems:

I’m done not talking about how thinking, “I’m not hurting anyone in my isolation,” is a huge assumption.

It’s a huge part of stepping out of codependency to be able to not respond when someone else is suffering and demanding that we fix it.

But after that, it’s pretty reasonable to take responsibility for acting. My not showing up has created a world.

My not showing up created this world.

I can feel a new creation brewing.

Sometimes when someone is spiraling and everyone goes into, “Hush now and pay attention to this person most hurting and certainly don’t share what you’re actually experiencing,” I can see…we’re sacrificing them. We’re hovering like adults around a cradle and reifying their problem. We’re saying, “This is about you and not about us,” and that is a weird and cruel gaslighting. “You’re suffering” infers to everyone that “I’m not”.

That’s fine if it’s true. It’s cruel if it’s not. If it’s true, who said that it must be hidden?

One of my favorite memories still is Dara saying to someone who was spiraling, “I’m ok and I don’t know how to be with you but I’m interested in being relational.”

Night,

Mike

There is a way where the world teaches us not to do what we’re told by others, but somehow, since we’re an other for others and our right brain, subconscious intuition soul is aggregating its impression of what’s important to us and picking a line of destiny, our ability to be our own—excuse me—”bitch” is so important.

There’s an interesting facet of this that’s even retroactively punitive, where I’m eating a Totino’s pizza, and I’ve only ever eaten whole Totino’s pizzas at a time, maybe even two. And I’ve been really pleading, choosing, praying, and becoming the listener of the voice that directs. I wanna be my soul’s bitch. It’s like being my own sub, except my Dom is telling me to lay down and receive good stuff.

And when I listened to the voice that called out to me and said, “You’re actually satisfied now, even though you only ate one quarter of that Totino’s pizza. You’re happy right now. Feel your stomach.” That was the voice saying, “Recognize. You feel great. That was exactly the amount of hunger.” And I don’t know, maybe it’s a sign of—am I learning something? I just did it.

And then right there, there’s a thing that curls back around and says, “You just did it so you could write this letter.” And two minutes ago, when I had the idea to write this letter, it said—usually the voice curls around and says something like, “See? You’re no good without being told what to do. Listening to your own voice is proof that you need to be told what to do.”

And I was like, man, that is the stupidest emotional attack. I’m so glad I talk about my experience so much, because I just snagged it. I was like, man, that’s so punitive. It’s like a reflection in my mind about me basically just being myself. And then the features of the concept of self and the ego and all that—they’re basically just broke, so they flash me this little emotional test.

If I have to, I will become completely autonomous with that thing that calls me a fake or whatever. Whatever I gotta do, whatever features of my existence I have to accept so that I can be in harmony with my values, I’ll pay it. Yeah, I feel so good.

I don’t wanna be—or I can’t. I cannot be responsible for you picking the thing that makes everybody happy. We all have to do that together, through collaboration. I want to get—like I try to invite more and more—but agency, or this misinterpretation of agency, has pushed everything to an individualist frame.

Agency is not making my own choices. Agency is this little microsecond of enacting, joining a current. The current doesn’t have to be self-generated, and that’s still agency. I opt in. I don’t have to be justifying everything I’m following. It’s because I’m learning by following what I’m attracted to. I’m informing my nervous system that I have a value of being in motion and learning. And all my values about not hurting people are still in play. They’re just joined by other values.

I really just don’t—if I have the ability to choose whatever I want, and then I fastidiously, with great fidelity, borrow a choice from another, who fucking cares? No, no, but there’s—you know, like they discover new math, but whatever their math thing was, it was already there. It’s the same way with all these choices.

I want—I want, really—I want to catch a wave. And I’m willing to suffer my mind telling me I’m a sheep for one quick instant.

Have a good night,

Mike.

That song, “Auld Lang Syne,” is playing in my head.

I’m headed to the gym. My scene partner today just cancelled-ish…he might change his mind but I’ve already moved on. I’m going to a Super Bowl party at Dara, Val, and Annabeth’s and I’m excitedly horny.

Some words Hannah Taylor wrote recently, “…low stakes love, thick on the ground…” are echoing in me.

I feel so good and there’s an anxiety that low stakes cannot be understood by most people as “still highly meaningful.”

Phone in hand. I enter the gym.

It’s back day. I just went up 10 lbs on high rows and I’m watching my experience like I listen to Tom: I don’t really understand but I’m fascinated. Understanding seems so much less important now. Like a cereal company counting profits and having no connection to all the people that snuck a Cheerios midnight snack last night.

Wonder and understanding pair well but are mutually exclusive.

It’s almost anticlimactic: wonder trumps understanding. Wonder can be present as understanding both forms and melts. My wonder and my self-love (that’s such a weird thing) feel like the same thing from different perspectives.

Self-love is just me feeling compelled to listen toward…myself? Selves are weird!

The wonder feels exactly the same but it’s biggerly applied and grandiosciously appropriate. Wonder is self-love when the murky borders of the self are underfunded, undefended, and just…

I’m on my third exercise. My back muscles have gotten to the bigness where people wouldn’t realize from looking at me that they’re relatively new. Contextually, this day has almost no urgency baked in. There’s no pressure, I’m horny, and…

Those ellipses crack me up. Is that how you spell it, the plural of ellipsis? An ellipse is a circle with two foci. A woman told me once that “universe” meant “one sentence” that is still being spoken. Wonder is the background I keep returning to…and I can see why understanding seems to matter so much:

Connection looks like understanding.

Lack of understanding hits my nervous system like a potential relationship rupture.

“High stakes” love is love that, when encountering misalignment, makes the meaning of tragedy.

“Low stakes” love does something else. It presumes misalignment is a feature of connection. It happened in the medicine journey.

“No,” means, “I love you.”

“No” makes the event of “Yes” into a gift from God instead of a chore or some kind of, “Oh it’s Tuesday? Guess we have to fuck again.”

“No,” means, “Oh, hey, I’m over here now. You thought I was there but now I’m here.”

The ending to “Stairway to Heaven” just pointed my mind back to synchronicity.

Love and alignment are gifts proving that love is free.

Should old acquaintance be remembered after being forgotten, I’ll take that as a sign…

Mike

I was making myself giggle, thinking about writing a letter to you in a Doctor Seuss format. I’d change “Oh the Places you’ll go” but change it to “Oh the places you’ll stay.”

The early morning before getting out of bed.

In front of the TV before everybody’s up.

When you finish a test early.

The places you get to just be. (I’m not interested enough to get the meter right)

It’s usually, “Get in the car,” “Make up your mind,” “What’s your Major?”

As we get older we take smoke breaks, sit in our cars in the rain, and often chase others away.

I’ve stayed in chasing others away.

The pain of a breakup.

Then we develop in the direction of slowly including our being in more and more contexts. Like old people have zero fucks left to compromise. They stayed in enough places that they realized having fucks in their backpacks was not comfy.

It’s easier or harder to rage bait someone in proportion to their presence.

I think I’d say that presence and being are similar but not congruent.

Our breakthroughs in bringing more of our being, our ability to associate to the present moment as an awareness having an experience, goes up and down in so many ways,

Humiliated? I’ve seen people retract and people break free.

Loved? The same.

When I’m leading a Focus session with someone I often ask,

“Can we stay here?”

They’ll have just said something and I was attracted to a word or felt a feeling and I’m declaring the experience of listening had become a location for me.

“We’re on a planet called ‘what you just said’.”

Minds fixated on optimization aren’t huge fans of this. It’s because their subtext is usually more keyed to “meaning lies in getting over stuff/getting through stuff/not being stuck”. I think part of this has been programmed from therapy spaces where people talk about “healing”.

I said in Gay Club tonight, “There is a release with some healing but most healing is actually just learning how to bear our awareness.” The past gives some of our visions a squint. Our eyes have been punched so many times they have adopted a perpetual flinch. Sometimes we can release a squint. Sometimes we just become an expert in making squinting sexy.

Get it?

People are so sensitive about sensitive people. “God you’re so sensitive”.

Well it’s metaphorically 50 decibels louder for them.

I love when I say, “What are you feeling?” and the answer is, “I just don’t know. I can’t tell. Everybody tells me it looks like I’m feeling something.”

And then I’m like, “What’s that like, to not know how you’re feeling?”

And here is so interesting:

-Sometimes they just tell me

-Sometimes they tell me they don’t want to tell me

-Sometimes they’re so weirded out because they think…they already told me what was happening, “Nothing. Nothing is happening except my failure to feel.”

-And sometimes they say, “Why would answering that be good when I just want to figure out how to make not-feeling this go away?”

And that’s when something happens. Either a trap is sprung or a bloodhound is released from a kennel and I’m like,

“The failure mode of this moment is forgetting that we develop in relationship. So any part of you that hasn’t got to be with another person, or even your own presence itself, will be like a zygote in a context where you’re demanding yourself to already be an expert and make it look easy.”

“So before we think of fixing, let’s just start with staying here.”

Urgency of becoming is one of the biggest dissociating forces toward being.

I don’t know why but people who are into parts work don’t ever look to me like they know they’re talking to themselves.

They always look like they’re talking to their fleas.

“I love you, little part, and I’m loving you so that you’ll go the fuck away.”

I don’t really ever look at a part of myself as a temporary relationship. Maybe the feeling will change but I’m actually in a relationship of shared awareness with the “feeler”. Me.

Let’s say there’s some “trauma” under my belly button. A place I flinched and froze where I didn’t know to bend and flow. No one came up to me when that happened and said, “I’ll feel what it’s like to be with you while you feel what it’s like to be you.”

Liz taught me to look for the flinch’s wiggle. It’s a memory that suspiciously occurs at the same time as a little wiggle in our bodies.

I do see the flinch’s wiggle. I know somatic experiencing so I know to develop the wiggle in larger motions and necessary expressions, such that it kinda “goes away”.

But those words “flinch”, “wiggle”, “trauma” are all words of a calculus about the trajectories of my belly button. The relationship was with my belly button, not the “freeze”.

I’m keeping my belly button forever, even if people say,

“Boy, that guy sure has a flinchy belly button.”

I’ve probably said most of this before. It was just in the air tonight.

Have a great night bud,

Mike

There’s a famous line, “The map is not the territory.” It’s good. It describes the unavoidable difference between experience and understanding. I think the line unintentionally obfuscates a different layer, the “car”.

I always had this sense that I was kinda “driving” my body through space and time. I think of one of the aliens in Men in Black, who drove a humanoid body but was actually tiny and sitting in a cockpit inside the head. “Driving” is a skill that blends awareness of map, territory, and difference. It’s so “hard” that forgiveness becomes the Prep pill (what people take to not contract HIV) enabling promiscuity.

You gotta be willing to say sorry if you’re going to learn anything.

The problem that occurs when the “car” isn’t made distinct, is that the mind keeps looking at the map for the answer to “How do I do this?” and the map can tell you what turns to make but it’s totally devoid of questions that really want to be asked like, “Will I be ok when I don’t do it perfectly?”

The map gives no instruction on what is normal to feel. Should it feel easy? What if it feels hard even after it’s actually easy? Am I normal?

We can hope that the best map would delineate the use of the gas and the brake.

Maps give us polarities. I’m a skier on a mountaintop and I have seen that there are sides to some mountains that I do not want to fall off. But the only thing I think about to proceed is, “Where’s my line?”

This distinction of “where’s my line” puts us properly back in the vulnerability and power of being the one behind the wheel.

Fuck the polarities, I have values and my body has been watching me my whole life. It knows my values. I’m going to pick my line and know that I’m either:

-forever in-bounds

Or

-learning that what’s lovable is greater than I knew

But definitely both.

I love that after riding my motorcycle through mountainous winding roads, I look back at the way I have come and it’s like looking down on a map. But it’s so beautiful that I glean no clever insights. I can’t even get my phone out to make this moment meaningful. It’s just pure beauty and then it’s gone…forgotten. If I have that experience, the best one, will I be forgotten?

Yes. Either way. I’ll be forgotten. I used to fixate on maps and now I fixate on map making and map destroying. And most importantly, trusting that my body holds the map I need while I’m in actual motion.

People always stall out by thinking, “I need to know how to do it before I start,” but that flies in the face of learning to ride a bike. It’s easier to balance when the thing is in motion.

It’s gonna get easier but it still feels like flipping over a big stone to remember that I am allowed to ask, “What would be fun? What sounds pleasurable? What could be too good to be true?”

And then I’m off to the races. And I’m tracking and mapping so much less. It’s like I’ve stopped carrying around my baby pictures. I’m so enraptured in the moment that I don’t have time to connect to nostalgia.

I tell my coaching clients, “It’s not worth trying to change the song. It’s much easier to add a new verse…and the new verse doesn’t have to make sense. In fact, it should change the context.”

The car doesn’t work like a normal car would work while trying to sing a song.

Example:

-Song line 1: “I want X!”

-Song line 2: “How do I do it?”

-Standard song line 3: “If I don’t know how then I can’t do it.”

Alternate lines for song line 3:

-”I’ll research/ask a friend.”

-”I’ll take a breath and let my brain work on it in the background.”

And my personal favorite:

“I can feel it.”

It’s the new jazz.

“I don’t know how to do it but I can feel it.”

Have a beautiful day,

Mike

For the past 3 nights I’ve had something to write on the tip of my pen’s tongue…and then I forget it. They are huge ideas.

One just came back, just as an orange cat asked me for connection.

Type!

I’ve been trippin lately. I believe in love at first sight. I don’t think that’s the only kind. I just believe in it. It’s happened a lot lately. It’s so clear.

The cat insisted and I turned away from typing for a sec.

The “love” I’m speaking about is an intense compulsion to listen to someone. It’s so compelled that it feels relaxing. Every second the person keeps sharing is another second where I’m awestruck, “Wow. Who the fuck are you?”

It sustains with people I fell in love with a long time ago.

I watch anime. There’s a lot of anime. I like when the characters get transported to other worlds. There’s a lot of anime like that. But I have to search for it now. I’ve watched so many. When I find a good one that I can binge watch…”See you next week!”

That’s how it feels when I love someone. I can just binge them over and over and over and I don’t get fat or sick because they’re like bingeing weightlifting and greens. It’s good for me, this love. It’s the other person’s job to decide if it affects them, my love. I’m just responsible for feeling it on my end.

This love alights on me like a gift…to me.

“Ah, something to wonder towards.”

The listening is both an expression of love and love itself. Like it knows how much I want to be all in on the moment and it proves it to me by showing me that peace and equanimity are actually just features of being me. No trying needed.

I’ve been feeling the love more and more strongly. I can feel my love when I think of a lot of men. A lot of people, too. And I was sitting there noticing how strong and easy it was…how sustaining…and then I owned it. When I own something there’s always a way where I can see that I already know it but have not applied it in a novel way. The thing I don’t intuit quickly is that I usually have not applied what I’m owning to me.

“Can I point this at myself? Do I have a sustained attentional relationship with the meat we call me?”

I just looked and it’s right there. The feeling of loving myself is almost exactly the same feeling I feel when I love Tom. That’s so interesting to me. It feels good.

It was right there.

My brain can’t find words to express this. This feels like proof that I love myself to me and it’s so relieving. Isn’t that weird? It’s like some part of my background experience was wondering if I loved myself.

I seem to, to me.

I do place generative and patient attention upon myself. I’m betting it shoots up after this insight.

There’s another feeling that led me inside to type this letter. Because the bounds of this “self” thing are super unclear, I somehow love myself by being me in the world. Just being. Like I’m both the actor and I’m watching a movie. I’m pretty predictable if I have fidelity with the boss.

Me.

I have things that are important to me and those things create my destiny. It has been very easy in the past for me to not take responsibility for my being in the world. The responsibility is an email from the boss beneath my heart. My voice of intuition. The one thinking, “You told us what was important to us and we’re telling you it’s time to move. Time to write. Time to love. Time to live.”

She sayeth, “Move,” and sometimes I pretend like it went to my spam folder.

“I’ll write it later.”

One of the Masters in the cult said, “The only choice is ‘no’.”

I think he meant that if you were listening to the voice enough and you just listened to it and followed it, that would be a perfect being. We only need choice in order to not do what God tells us to do.

Super random tangent:

I got stuck after writing that last part. I both like and don’t like when I end up agreeing with a cult leader that…loved me roughly. I’m sitting here the next day watching Star Fleet Academy and one of the students in the show is studying a character from Deep Space Nine. The character is on a mission to discover who the other character, Benjamin Sisko, was. The TLDR is that he was a character who loved so many things but who made choices given to him by super advanced beings. The student surmises: he never got to make any of his own choices.

That’s how it feels to listen to the voice inside me. The voice upsets my sense of control because I know that my life goes well when I listen to it. I have the power for my life to go well but I have to give up being the author.

The author I cede control to is the one that forms in the relationship between me, the world, and love. For an instant it makes so much sense. “Ah, that’s perfect.” And then I feel a malaise. It’s this little foggy option inside to not-do what the voices are telling me.

Right now it’s telling me to go to the gym.

I’m to keep my phone on me and just write constantly so people get used to it.

Some part of me is scared that I’ll start writing and then never do anything again that I want.

Even though I want to write.

It’s so bizarre.

My intuition is directing me to what’s actually important. And this malaise is presented to me in every moment.

“No.” I always get to tell the voice “no”.

I think the Master was wrong. That malaise is a gift. It preserves the meaning of the fact that I am saying,

“Yes.”

Every time.

I may not be the author but I am the pen and page. I’m saying yes to being a pen and page.

So I guess, I do love myself and I love myself by being myself in the world. And the boss loves me even when I learn about “no”.

Let’s fucking go.

Mike

I read a sci-fi book series once where these humans were experimented on and had evolved but were placed on a reservation for “reasons”. The story was about some young mutants who left the reservation for a “we have to” reason and they navigated the human world as they could. They were faster and stronger than humans, but humans had guns.

And they were not allowed, “to let the weapon leave the hand,” or something like that. It basically means, no projectile weapons: arrows, bullets, missiles, etc. That phrase has been rolling around in my head all day.

“Let not the weapon leave the hand.”

They hunted deer with knives.

In the story, these freakin kids had tangled with the law so many times and they were desperate. Their only chance was to get close super quick. And then, in a moment of desperation, someone shot a bow or a gun. The kill was clean. Too clean. And too easy. All the kids looked on in horror as they realized why they were always warned away from killing at a distance.

I thought of my friend Justin looking into my eyes. He looks surprised that I just told him that I learn a lot when he steps forward and leads. It’s so easy to focus on me doing something for him, for me. What’s more special is how I thought, “Wow, I really matter to him. He cares about me.”

He actually cares about me. It’s not about value though I am valuable. I’m a special person. Not just a person. I’m the only one of me to him. I’m not an NPC in the throng of humanity.

At the end of the immersion, I could tell that everybody in the room had something that they wished somebody else would learn. I asked, “Can I close us out?” as we got to the end of the 90 minute integration circle. Everybody nodded. I asked them all to think of one person in the room that they wish would learn something.

I was like, “Ok, just hold it in your mind…”

And then I looked right at the mother in the room who was driven to make sure that people knew they were loved and said,

“I am currently learning how much my mother loves me. I don’t think I’ve loved anything as much as she loves me. I want to learn it and it’s actually quite big. I can’t always just learn things in an instant. I might still be understanding how much my mother loves me on my deathbed. To us the thing we want the other person to learn might be simple. ‘It’s right there!’ But we’re all different and some of us learn things in different orders. Ok, let’s end there.”

And everybody let out a huge sigh of relief.

I kept my hand on the blade. It’s interesting to me that it was effective but what’s more interesting is I kept healthy “skin in the game”. I spoke from my unfinishedness and kept the weapon in my hand.

I always tell the facilitators, “Have skin in the game.” It means to keep your attention, preferences, feelings, values, and all kinds of personal stuff available and allow it to inform the flow. Not like a shepherd. Like the Pippi Longstocking of sheep. I used to highlight the why of “You’re a person, too. An important one. When people look to hold the ‘We’, the first person that gets dropped is the ‘I’. You’re leading because you have the faith to risk mattering.”

I love it.

But now I’m like, “Dudes, we’re fucking gonna die in the next 60 years. Let yourself be loved. It’s a beautiful thing to model but fuck utility, we need love.”

I don’t mean, “Run workshops to be loved.” I mean, “Run dope workshops believing that Love is super-permeating all of your experience. When someone says, ‘Thanks for the workshop,’ take a sec to just trip out on how a person thought, ‘If I loved me as much as this person just loved me, I would love to hear a thank you.’”

I keep the “weapon” in my hand so I can feel the interpenetration of me. I go into every facilitation with at least one frayed thread coming off the sweater of my soul. I need to keep my triggerableness in the room. It benefits the students. It takes imperfection and humanity and forges them into a new sword. But the reason I do it is because to love the “We”, I must anchor in the “me”.

My brain goes to this influencer/coach guy I know whose life changed when he started only eating meat that he hunted. I think he just shot deer with a bow and they were deer that were vaguely corralled in a large space…so it wasn’t extreme hunting. But he had to be there for their deaths. He had to acknowledge the killing with his hands. Though he let the weapon leave the hand, his hand was much closer to death and nourishment that he was taking in. His was certainly closer than mine.

May my hand always shake when I hear the words, “I love you,” and…I paused after typing that…a neutral bliss came over me and the voice inside said, “I’m so glad to be a life.”

Have a great day,

Mike

I was just looking at our last text exchange from a few days ago. It feels sweet and the sweetness is worth any ache I feel about not knowing if I’ll ever see you again. I just asked Tom to meet up with me after California. He’s gonna think about it.

I could feel a longing. I believe some part of the longing is the place in me that needs, or thinks it needs attachment. There’s certainly a part that wants that. I say a part because I believe longing is always part of a love in a natural way and a good way, too.

I was feeling it about Tom and then I saw your text and then I thought, “It’s ok. It’s gonna be ok. The sweetness will remain.”

I’m dazzled watching my attention watching him. Who am I to be so drawn? I told a guy at this cool meetup tonight that love to me lately is a sustained relaxing listening, a listening that lightens me. I’m always practicing not trying to predict what someone will say next. It seems that when I love someone, that gets easier and easier. What they do is always more interesting than what I think they will do.

The other thing I learned from meeting you, Johan, is that it’s ok and good to let my attention wander away in the space where we’re not actually communicating.

“Head on a swivel!” the football coaches used to say.

They wanted us to expand our awareness as we were running down the field so we wouldn’t get hit by a block that we didn’t see coming. Without attachment, awareness becomes security. More specifically, an awareness of love has become critical.

I followed the voice in me today. I didn’t feel like it’s sub. It felt like my administrative assistant. It was a good day at the office. I surprised myself by doing things I don’t normally do. I had a conversation I’ve never had before.

A woman told me she was attracted to me and we dialogued about what it was like to get coffee. It was really important for me to not rush myself or make definitive statements or respond to her as a policy. It felt so good.

I got my scheduling wrong and seamlessly got everything I almost missed. I made a Totino’s pizza and only had one slice. It’s 1am and I’m gonna make myself go to bed instead of pushing it until 2.

I kinda loved myself by not knowing what I was gonna do next. Or say next.

I go into the patience of listening I feel with Tom and I think I notice a little ache. I imagined looking at myself from the outside and thinking, “He (me) might discover that it’s even more ok to have limits…and needs.”

And my attention on me towards me has an ache.

The voice I can find that speaks to both aches is, “Will he ever believe that I love him?”

It’s a question mark for the ache toward Tom and a shy yes from the ache toward me.

Something mobilizes in me…a cat doing the wiggle butt part of stalking. It licks its lips and I hear, “Will I ever start my motion from this knowing?”

Will I ever own that an ache in me seems more like a breakdown than a feature?

I have a weird belief that if I can ask a question then it’s a prescient sign of possibility.

1:28 now, I’m off to bed.

Mike

A guy in the Flow tonight here in Austin asked me in front of everybody, “I saw you fucking an old guy on your twitter and I can see you cuddling with an older guy right now and I’m assuming you’re just doing it for impressions.”

Before that, he had said, “Can I say something edgy?” and I replied, “Only if you’re open to it not going well. My consent for your share is not an indemnification of the consequences.”

Wisdom might be understanding that there is no indemnification of actions. Innocence might be understanding that no matter how much I learn, there will always be more.

I eventually loved that the guy got so explicit. I felt embarrassed and special and the doorway to admitting my preferences was open. It’s not a secret to my friends but I’ve never claimed it at a town hall before.

This all started because an older straight guy I’ve known forever was telling the group that he wanted some touch and I just got up and offered it and 4 of us were cuddling on the couch. Unbeknownst to almost everybody else, the older man at the far end of the couch was a guy I met on Scruff (gay dating app). (He later told me that he could feel my warmth but that he hid it because…reasons?)

I was so happy. We were four deliriously happy dudes cuddling.

The guy I invited from Scruff later told the group that his biggest fear was being unseen and that older guys were often ignored.

I’m orbiting the strangeness of karma.

I really warned that first guy that outed me, “Nothing excuses the consequences besides being with them.” (Vague awareness that I understand I was talking to myself)

That sounds so right but I’m frayed with a few threads from that night. That old guy line was just one.

1. I liked the impact of the first guy accusing me. It helped me to take in the experience of being accepted and even dazzling.

2. With a second person, I made a mistake in approaching them and it was obviously flawed in hindsight but I’m still confused on what I would’ve done differently.

3. The third thread was a young guy in the group who I really let down a while ago and he’s still pretty upset about it.

And my responses so far are:

To 1: The risk of doing something wrong should be equal to the risk of not doing something right? (Somebody check that math!) (E = Not risking isn’t actually safer)

To 2: After me and the person I fender bendered with connected, it did the thing it mostly does where we came to a better homeostasis but that doesn’t excuse my poor approach. I’m gently knowing that I’ll do better next time. I’m gently knowing that I don’t know how to avoid that in the future. But I know I care that it failed.

To 3: The young guy and I have very different stories about what happened. I want goodness for him. I keep getting stuck because he keeps asking me for my version of what happened and then getting defensive when I tell him. I let him down in a professional capacity. I wish I had had enough wisdom at the time to just say, “I’m out of my depth on this situation.” I told him sorry and I told him I was wrong and I told him that he is welcome to malign my name.

I try myself on for a sec and the image that comes to mind is being in white water rapids but I don’t fear hitting my head on rocks. It’s more like it feels like I’m tumbling.

After the first guy brought up the old guy and the porn stuff I shared with the group, “I like old guy skin more. I like how it feels.” Everybody likes how soft my skin is and I like skin that is worn…thin…rough.

The old people in my life felt like the most sane people in my world when I was young. I was 5 or 6 when I decided that I wanted to be Merlin or Gandalf.

My first friend taught me to play Dungeons and Dragons and each character has stats: Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, Constitution, and Charisma. I remember thinking, “I’m pretty good at all of these and there are lots of people that are interested in Strength and Intelligence so I’m gonna focus on Wisdom.” I chuckle, glimpsing the memory of my young confidence.

My results with those three encounters were wildly different. One looked like a gift. One looked like a stalemate. One looked like a failure. My brain is saying that wisdom is consent to acknowledge that though they were different, they’re somehow the same.

As soon as I say that my body and mind feels much more simple and sturdy. I walked around the kitchen for a sec…

…I hope I’m a worthy old guy when I become one.

“How do I finish this?”

Something deep says nothing and I stumble toward, “Something that doesn’t end wants to be acknowledged now.”

So…

Mike

PS: On the edit pass I think, “Wisdom is the reclamation of innocence after seeing a bunch of life makes us wonder if we’re enough.”

I got psychoanalyzed by a stranger today. I woke up a few days ago and was looking at Substack. There are these “Subscriber Chats” where profiles engage their readers a little more directly. A person free-subscribed and I followed back and they didn’t have that many followers but I’m curious to connect with other thinkers.

They put in the chat “Share your deepest, most honest thoughts with me.”

I thought, “I’ll bite,” and typed, “I’m so happy to age. When I think about dying my whole body relaxes.”

They replied, “Beautiful, thank you for sharing. Many people are afraid of aging or dying. Sounds as if you found a kind of peace?”

Me: “More like excitement. I’m sure my heart will break and I’m glad I get to choose it.”

Them-must-have-deleted-it-after-sending-but-I-can-still-see-what-it-said-in-my-notifications: “My honest feeling reading these words is that something about this feels off to me. Not because of you embracing aging or dying, but because I sense a sort of hate for life in your words, maybe for yourself too, a too nihilistic view, and that gives shivers. I might be wrong, and I wish you find…” and then I couldn’t read more because if I click on it, it says, “This is no longer available.”

Hats off to them for deleting it.

They’re right.

Sorta.

Hate for life?

Well…I am still learning how to say, “Ouch.”

Nihilistic?

I’m trying to trust that what I most believe in is in my body and I trust that when it comes out of me then it is good and I will learn from it BUT…I don’t want to watch it all the time and make sure it’s good because that always secretly means “looks good” and I’m letting my looks be the business of the people looking and I’ll just do the being me part.

Seems like I believe in something.

It’s a little scary to me, my habit of “shrinking people”...down to their problems…down to their trauma.

It directs the attention so much. It grabs onto the “what’s wrong with me” in me that is the shockwave of forgetting I’m loved.

When I think of the number of people that I errantly led to believe, “If you can label all of your psychology then you’ll be free of it,” I feel a ton of grief.

I never actually said that but I didn’t say the opposite and since a part of me believed it, the meme proliferated through my embodiment of it.

We think we’re gaining insight, and we are, but we’re also allowing our attention to be directed…away from life. There’s some kind of “up the mountain, down the mountain” thing I notice.

It’s related to the dialectic: thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Learning the synthesis after we’ve been so “anti” is super beautiful and weird. Because the psychology knowledge never really goes away. It’s always there, dissecting everything it sees. I’m just learning to listen elsewhere in my mind…to the beauty…to the aliveness…to the experience. It’s weird because when the psychology is needed it is now nested in my life. I’m living it. I get zapped by it all the time and it’s listening to my conversations. It’s becoming grizzled and worn and understands that I can like my fraying edges and my necessity of irony. Now it projects my gratitude at retaining some innocence.

Translation: I see grateful innocence when I look at the world.

It sees in others that look, at a one we love, at a best try failed…it keeps barking, “Does not compute. Impossible to compute.”

And the irony has been the new fantastic joy of my life.

If the cost is understanding that my scars are my freedom…

…that shit is cheap and I will pay it every time.

Scars shrink, too.

Love,

Mike

I almost died 74 minutes ago. I woke up early and forced myself to the gym. Brushing my teeth was hard. Getting dressed was hard. Jason cheered me on, telling me I won’t regret it. It’s a mundane heroism.

I drove to the gym and on the way, in my neighborhood, all the streets were blocked. I asked some women walking what was happening and they said, “There’s a guy who’s armed, barricaded inside his house. His wife didn’t make it.” Wow. The world is doing strange things. I get to the gym and mail in a workout. Just a little weights and a little cardio so I can move my body before I sit for a while doing online Relatefulness and coaching. My session starts at 10 am and I get there 10 minutes early so I can visit with Val, my great friend and peer.

I’m driving back from the gym and I stop for coffee. It’s pleasant. These gay men that work there are sharing that they’re taking a trip and one of them is scared of flying. His partner is teasing him. Their friends are laughing and wishing them luck.

I get in my car. Jason’s house is about a quarter mile away. I’m relaxed. I’m thinking about some conflict Val and I got into in the last 3 days. My brain is contemplating what relating with her will be like when we get on the call. I’m at a four way stop. I’m trying to get back to Jason’s without using Google Maps. I stop completely and slowly start going through the intersection and I hear an engine of a car going faster than neighborhood streets should hear. I glance left and a car going at least 75 mph comes flying through the intersection that I’m in and misses the front of my car by inches. I’m safe.

“That just happened.”

A woman is walking her dog and I turn my head and we just look at each other.

“I could’ve died,” my brain says.

I roll down my window. “I should call the police?”

“Yes,” she replies.

I can still kinda hear the engine of the car that almost got me and 3 seconds later a large crash.

“He just ran into that house,” she says.

I slowly turn my head. About an eighth of a mile down the road the car has gone straight into a house.

“I’m calling the police now,” I say flatly. I go to grab my phone and stop as I hear sirens.

A police car is coming from the same direction that the guy did. I’m not quite in the middle of the intersection anymore, I’ve slightly moved and there’s room for him to go by. The police officer is a young handsome latin man. He looks almost like a superhero, ready to step into a situation and he doesn’t look scared. While going 50 mph through the intersection, he looks at me and mouths, “Did he hit you?” and I mouth back, “No,” and shake my head. He nods like, “Good,” and continues towards where the man hit the house.

I slowly slowly slowly begin driving again and a line of cars has piled up coming the other way from me. Each driver seems to intuitively understand that I’m affected because they all slow down and look at me very directly. Their eyes are all kind and they all seem to care. I felt like strangers were all reaching out, saying something. “Hello”. “I see you”.

I get home and turn on my laptop and log in and there’s Val. She speaks, “Blas, I’m sorry.”

“Thanks Val. I’m sorry, too.”

“Val…” and I tell her the story.

“You almost died.”

“Yes.”

And now it’s time to start the call. I tell them the story. A few people’s near death experiences come up. Everyone is supportive and asks me about my shock.

The friend who told me he loved me last Wednesday is there. My brain shows me a picture of him at my funeral and he is devastated in my imagining.

I don’t understand what I’m seeing. My understanding that he loves me just became more visceral. I tell the group, “Somehow when someone says they love me, I kinda take it on faith. Something is different now. Knowing that someone will grieve me makes something about ‘I love you’ more real.”

I’m trying to write more about the circle and I’m just stunned. It’s not the “I almost died” that’s doing it. It’s the “people love me” that’s causing the shock. Some massive integration is slowly changing me. I told them, “I’m almost scared to leave the house because if I see someone who loves me…I’ll feel this strange future grief’s love.”

I ended the circle with, “Every time I get off the phone with my dad, he says, ‘Just make sure to have fun. Stay safe. I love you,’ and that ‘stay safe’ rings out. My will to survive has a strange new aspect. I want to protect everyone from that grief.”

The group nods and then I add, “I want to die last now, so they don’t have to feel that.” That doesn’t really make sense to me but smiles sparkle in the group and they turn into soft tired laughter.

I smirk thinking, “I asked love to teach me and I’m getting the lessons in the weirdest forms.”

When my dog Oly died and when my cat Smoch died, I had the same experience.

The vet came in. I handed over my space-holding. They gave them the shot. I placed my hands on them, and then an energy…lightning mixed with wind mixed with warmth came shooting through my body.

It made me think, “An aspect of Love is that it will never let us get away with not feeling it. It will just keep coming and coming until we have felt it all.”

Bob said that feelings are often not what they seem. Anger is forgiveness returning. Like Clint Eastwood walking into town looks like anger on the horizon but when he finally sidles up to the saloon we can see that he’s forgiveness.

I saw, “Grief is love refusing to be forgotten.”

Worry about someone else’s safety…”pre-grief”...seems to be a very beautiful way to say, “I love you right now.”

So I limit my shenanigans to ones I won’t die from.

That’s my way of telling my dad and all the others,

“I love you, too.”

I love you, too,

Mike

I’m still with some things I found during the immersion.

The Wednesday before, I was at my gay men’s club and it was really great to be back. At the end of a wonderful session the attention got focused on me. I did something I’ve done in the past. The time I remember best was the first time I was really really circled.

The “thing” is I start talking and sharing and emoting and empathizing with myself and feeling compassion and letting it out and…my friend with glasses and great hair jumps in after a while and says, “Blas, I’m still with the second sentence you said, ‘He’s going to dump me and we’re not even dating.’”

And I just stopped and they slowly all shared how they were all still with that one sentence. Some had questions. Some said they were resonating with me so powerfully.

The one who interrupted said, “Blas, you circle yourself so fast that I don’t think you see us seeing you.”

And then he said,

“Blas, I love you.”

And a metaphorical heart in me, fell to his knees.

And a soft voice in my head said, “It’s ok if you’re never good at receiving love. Love doesn’t care.”

And

“Is it ok if connection is always hard? I can just give up the pressure of pretending I’m an expert?”

I took that as my secret context into the medicine journey I was just part of leading. I led from a place of “I can know all the things I know and also know that love is something that may always be a surrender and kinda scary. It’s ok if I need 3 days. It’s ok if I need all the way up to my deathbed. Beyond that isn’t my business.”

Everybody had their own medicine-combination but me and my one friend were on the same path and we were the only ones who finished on mushrooms. We did that last time, too. We ate mushrooms off of his dad’s stomach and we were all laughing and it was like a weird ceremony. This time I wasn’t so sure. I had had a great journey. I asked him, “Are we doing this to prove to each other that we love each other?”

He smiled, “No, I just keep thinking about them. I feel celebratory.”

I could see that I wasn’t sure that was different but I had opened a tiny crack somewhere from the “I love you” on Wednesday. And I looked at my friend again because I felt really open.

Yep, he looks like he loves me. If I had to guess I’d say that looks like love.

And what I was telling Jason tonight was,

“The place where I can hear ‘I love you’ is the same place where I can receive help. And it’s the same place in me where it feels good to think, ‘he might know more than me about this’,” and he held out a cap as my mouth was open, listening to someone with awe, and I ate it. And I ate one more stem and cap. They were called penis envy mushrooms and they were the strongest mushrooms I have ever experienced.

I started hallucinating lights in the room *while* I was chewing them.

He took two or three more stem + cap. I’m glad I stopped where I did. I’m so glad I took them though.

We had the best time.

I’m going to keep trying to remember:

The place in me that can see, “I love you”, in someone’s eyes is always going to be vulnerable, sometimes.

The place in me that can receive help is the same place.

The place in me that can be taught and led and shown is there, too.

If Yin was a vitamin I’m going to allow it every day.

I love that.

Night,

Mike

I’m texting with a coaching client. We were just together and now texting about how we’re integrating and he said,

“I’m just in so much confusion.”

And

“Integrity is so important to me.”

And I responded,

“Integrity is not being perfectly balanced. Integrity is integrating. If you’re really listening then you’re going to see things that confuse you. You’re confused because you were integrating. Confusion is integrity.”

He just replied,

“Man, I feel so free. I was really making my confusion wrong.”

I spent about 18 months doing Tai Chi about 5 hours a day about 15 years ago. I would get home from work, smoke a joint, and then just practice. There was a persistent desire to get it “right”. In the beginning stance, Wuchi, I would look to see if there was a perfection, a place where I could call it “good” and then…stop paying attention (I didn’t realize that was the hope underneath).

If persistent breakdowns are features, even back then I noticed that, “Oh, listening and balancing…if they’re not things to perfect…but aspects of being…that would mean that listening and balancing are aligned with existing. “

If I’m existing then I’m listening and it’s good.

I’m integrating. It’s moving. It’s confusing.

It’s integrity.

I love my life.

Night,

Mike

My friend Jason is letting me stay in his guest room for three weeks while I’m back in Austin. We’ve been talking a lot. He’s a facilitator and a therapist.

We had been talking about “stuff”.

He asked me,

“Do you ever dream of being in a throuple with them?”

And I said,

“Totally and right now there are so many many dreams and they have no hierarchy because they are all immeasurable. I’m being told by a part of my brain that I have to pick one dream or a bullseye is impossible. One life cannot hit the bullseye of many dreams. But what I think is, ‘It may be true but I for some reason believe that wherever my arrow lands, I won’t regret it. My deeper secret belief is the new mark will be immeasurably better than hitting all of the old ones at once. The mind isn’t good at seeing this because it cannot see past dissolution. The mind cannot see past a new choice. The mind cannot see past surrender. My mind gives me fractaled destinies because it can’t make symbols for something I wouldn’t believe is possible.”

And all of that wisdom is being generated by the part of me that is deathly afraid that it will never be loved unless it adopts a monogamous frame. It’s such a sick idea that I don’t care where it came from.

So I’m putting my money down on ‘keep all the dreams’.”

It’s been really fun staying here.

I have so much to tell you about the medicine journey I just facilitated.

Have a good night,

Mike

I don’t quite understand but opposites are relative and contextual.

I keep stalling out on “the next opposite”. I don’t know what it means but my brain keeps repeating it.

That feels so good. Symmetry and sequence, two things I eschew. The best way to eschew is to embrace.

Bleh.

I can say yes when I feel no and vice versa. Irony is in my authenticity so I’m free.

The next step is surrender.

I’m with ALIFTIMTS and it’s our last night.

I just talked to James about kicking a participant out of our last immersion in Charlotte.

I was feeling a type of love that I know was including attachment with ALIFTIMTS.

In response to him grumbling about why this younger guy that lives near us keeps texting him and asking to hang out:

“I really relate with him.”

“He feels safe around you.”

“That’s special.”

These are things I said. It’s no wonder to me that other guys are chasing him. If he wasn’t in the closet he would be an amazing life partner.

We’re closer now. We got in a conflict while drunk and then the younger guy came to the bar we were at.

I think he was worried that we would be territorial but I just related to him.

“Dude. He totally does that and you’re right,” after the kid complained that ALIFTIMTS was always hot and cold.

This is our misalignment. He’s in the closet. He has a dysmorphia of love. That’s an irony, an opposite, that I hold. He is totally lovable and has no idea and can’t hear anyone assert it. In the quiet private places where no one is looking, if we don’t talk about it, his eyes twinkle like he loves and knows he’s loved.

We all have some love dysmorphia. It’s a paraexistential irony that any human in modern society must be able to hold. My job is to not make anyone feel anything. My life purpose is to remember love as the irony shifts the feelings through the whole spectrum and teaches me the infinite ways love can feel.

In normal conversation we humans seem to attempt to proceed together so that, when we encounter a misstep in shared reality, we debate the point to attempt to move forward together.

“You’re lovable.”

He can’t hear that. It makes him retract and I’ve decided that if I’m to love him then I can’t say that. Or we would have to be very drunk and he would have to demand I tell him what I’m thinking.

So I hold that “opposite”. “He’s lovable but can’t know it.”

So anytime that debate point comes up I have to be creative. We can’t go down that track that needs him to know he’s lovable. I used to think that was the saddest thing on the planet. But now it’s just tricky.

When my company trains people how to facilitate Relatefulness Focus sessions, we always have them lead their 3rd or 4th practice session with someone who hasn’t done the practice. We want to make sure they understand that “getting someone’s world” or “being with someone” doesn’t mean teaching them how to talk like us. It doesn’t require us reminding them to only speak from the moment or to speak to the space in between us.

That’s our job.

“We’re the ones who have chosen complexity. You can’t choose the Path for others and you create suffering by making people wrong for not choosing it.”

I’m so enamored with him and the cost is holding these opposites and moving forward without resentment. My heart cracks just a smidge when I feel our misalignment. My temporary life feels a flare of meaning that feels really sad and nice right there.

At the bar tonight there was a shouting match/fight. I intervened. ALIFTIMITS sorta did and then went off on me for getting involved. He said, “you don’t know what happened before now.”

He’s right. We’re in a dive bar with the propriety of a bathhouse. You get buy-one-get-one free on drinks if you’re wearing underwear-only or less. But that dude was escalating after we were sure it was no-go on relationship.

I could feel my conversation with James about kicking the guy out of the immersion. We couldn’t find a demarcation line of when he needed to be kicked out. We just knew that as soon as he started escalating emotionally he had to go. In one sense he was turning up his own pain and kicking him out was as much for him as it was for anyone. I don’t think he did anything objectively wrong. It just wasn’t what James and I could handle in a good way with the time that we had.

When I stepped into the middle of the argument, one guy who was mostly sober was screaming undendingly at another guy who was the opposite of sober. It flicked my heart.

“You came in here to a place where people are wasted and you obviously enforced your boundary when you started walking away. Coming back to upbraid this guy is hurting everything.”

The yelling man turned his ire on me and I think that’s what made ALIFTIMTS upset.

He told me that I *can’t* do that.

I looked at ALIFTIMTS and said, “Don’t tell me what I can do” (In my brain, I thought, “You shouldn’t need to tell him this. You should just use this moment to own that you’re disregarding yourself.”)

He came back again, “No, because then I’ll have to protect you.”

Oh. You’re dealing with attachment then, too.

“I’m going to do what I choose to do and you’re going to do what you choose to do. You’re right that I might have been wrong to intervene but that’s my lesson to learn.”

I didn’t say, “You don’t get a say because we’re not attached.”(like I can feel “if you don’t put a ring on it…” in my chest but I’ve come to hold that well with him.)

I’m holding it.

He’s been telling me, “Michael, you think too much.”

“Michael, you’re too deep.”

I’ve been holding that, too, so far. I know I think too much and I know that I don’t have to go deep as much as I do. My peace will probably benefit. But I also know that we’re all mirrors and I’ve never clapped back to him, “You could think more and your life would be better.”

“You could stop avoiding depth and it would be a boon to all you love.”

I don’t do that. I wouldn’t want to do that if we were in a relationship and I’m certainly not going to do it as his friend that’s in love with him.

There’s an opposite. I can look in the mirror. “I could think less”.

He can’t. Won’t?

Doesn’t.

I’m holding opposites, “I could think less and I think the perfect amount for me.” I’m going to think more sometimes and more elegantly. Sometimes I’m going to think more simply and less. They will support each other.

He’s not. So now I’m holding my own opposite and his lack of holding opposites.

“I like this song,” “That guy’s hot,” and “Did it switch from happy hour to buy-one-get-one free yet?” are totally viable conversation turns when I’m holding this many opposites.

I dropped it for a second when the kerfuffle happened in the bar.

After I calmed a bit and he wouldn’t drop it I just kinda politely said, “Fuck off about that noise.”

And then he did. And it wasn’t weird. We were back to peacefulness 3 minutes later. He dropped another, “You think too much,” and I just said, “That’s not your business, sweetheart.”

He looked chastised for a micro-second and then nodded. And then it really looked and felt to me like he just let it go.

If I was even more free I wouldn’t have had to say anything. I could’ve just looked at him like I was an alien and moved on. It’s so interesting and difficult to flag these eddies and not take the missteps as reasons to react or act out. I love him. I’m going to love him forever. I don’t imagine the future with him. I just don’t imagine the future without him either.

It really popped something in me. I can feel the love and my mind is just a little more free…and owning that we’re not attached. I’m not going to see him for at least six months. He might retire and he might not. I tried to plan a rendezvous and he was vague. And I felt a little sad but now it’s relief. I can wander away without attachment. I don’t notice any guilt at moving on.

I know I’ll always love him.

We got home to our airbnb and he made me a bacon, to-mah-to, and cheese sandwich. Then he passed out in my lap. An image of his hairy ass seems to be a desktop icon in my mind for a profound zipped file of love, loving, and unconditional connection.

Thank God for this life.

First a straight guy and then a closeted one. The path proceeds, Johan,

Mike