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“Life happens in the grey zone buddy!”, said my sponsor one fine evening during our weekly zoom call.

”It’s not all black and white. That’s addict thinking bro.That’s digital mind. It’s only 1’s or 0’s. Nothing in between. But analog is a wave expression. Analog contains the entire spectrum between on and off, 1 and 0, black and white.”

I honestly do not know what I must have done in past lives to deserve a sponsor like the one who showed up for me when I was at my rock bottom. This was not the first, nor would it be the last time he would blow my mind with an insight truth bomb like this one about digital and analog thinking. 

This concept has re-shaped much of the operating system I use to navigate through this life-school, yielding a much more balanced, grown-up, and less chaotic day to day experience.

”You see,” said my sponsor, chillin on his brown couch, 3000 miles away on the east coast, “the addict mind wants on or off, all or nothing. It wants ‘I’ll never do fill-in-the-blank again.’ 

“To the addict-digital mind we’re either passionately in love as perfect soul mates forever, or broken up, never to communicate again. 

“It’s binging on ice cream, pizza and hamburgers, or being a raw food vegan.

”It’s working out every day for an 2 hours in the gym at 5 AM to get massively ripped, or being a total failure and gettting couch locked watching Netflix for hours and hours.

”The analog-sober mind says ‘I’ll abstain from fill-in-the-blank for today, and go from there. 

“It’s ‘there’s a lot I love about this person and a lot that’s great about our relationship. There are also things that aren’t working for me. What do I need to communicate to get my needs met? What compromises can be made?’

”Analog-sober mind commits to hitting the gym 3 times a week. It chooses realistic goals that you can succeed at. It says ‘lay off processed food and don’t eat after 8PM’.”

It’s pretty obvious once you begin to see it. 

While the addict-digital mind wants strictly defined 1s and 0s, black and white, the analog-sober mind resonates in the vast and infinite spectrum between the polarized opposites. 

Since beginning to re-orient my attention into this vast and infinite spectrum of creative possibility, life has not been the same.

It’s a bit like… once this concept gets groked, the spell gets broken. The spell of limitation which breeds compulsion and addictive habits, the spell of the digital mind dissipates like vapor over a lake, and one is introduced to the colorful sine-wave reality of Nature, the organic, and sobriety. 

I know, I know… that that last word is a buzz kill for many of you. It is not a popular word. It comes with this stigma of withdrawal, of cardboard, bland, tasteless, boring, no fun, dry. I know. 

But if you think about it, most of the “personal transformation” we are seeking is in fact, a journey of sobriety. It’s about stopping the habits that are derailing us from where we want to be in life. 

Most of us, when we think of how we want to change, most people want to loose weight, stop unhealthy habits, stop doing damaging things to ourselves so we can rise into a better version of who we are.

Damaging things we do to ourselves over and over even though we want to stop, is called an addiction. 

To the digital-addict mind always wants to be high. It’s basically ecstatic, excited, amazed, and awesome, or depressed, miserable, and exhausted. 

Since being high all the time is not how life actually works (as we are emotional beings who need to experience a wide spectrum of feelings in order to make informed decisions in our journey through Earth School), the digital-addict also needs to experience the opposite low.

The digital mind wants caffeination. It wants peak psychedelic experiences, it wants inspired, motivated Tony Robbins jacked all the time. And once the high wears off, it’s depressed, dopamine depleted, and fatigued, which sets the stage perfectly for the on-off, black and white, high and low doom cycle to begin again. 

But it’s important to be ok not feeling great. It’s really important so that we can address the cause of what’s not feeling great. It’s important to not numb out the discomfort so that we can have that uncomfortable conversation with a loved one, or at work. So we can get help, or express our needs in some area of life. 

The wisdom of the analog also realizes that it’s a wave. Pleasure, happiness, joy comes, and then sadness, grief, even boredom come as well. It’s always undulating, always changing. That’s the nature of this realm. Constant endless change. If you’re not stoked with a work project, chances are that will pass. If you’re not feeling the deepest adoration and love for your partner, chances are that will also pass and you’ll be laughing again soon. 

I think this is enough for now, but in future articles I’d like to explore further into how our society promotes digital-addict thinking on a mass scale, keeping the spell in place for as many people as possible for as long as possible. This is another layer of the spell breaking when you start to really see the orchestrated and strategic implementation of keeping the collective mind fragmented with digital, unnatural, addict programming. 

And once you see… you can get free. 

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8 hours shy of the goal. 

The 72 hour water fast has been on the old bucket list for years now. Before this, I had only made it about 60 hours. Got a bunch of 24 and 36’s under my belt. Just sayin.

So when I saw the email from Dr. Mindy Pelz notifying me of the group fast she was facilitating with thousands of others, I decided the time had arrived and I signed up. 

Brief general summary of the 72 hr water fast:

Not fun.

I was hungry the entire time. I was grumpy and agitated most of the time. I was tired and fatigued and brain foggy most of the time. 

It mostly totally sucked. 

During fasts in the past, I always reached at least some place of deep peace and resonance with a deeper place of quiet, a oneness with Nature kind of thing, but not this time. 

Usually in a prolonged fast, there’s insight, and heightened clarity. There’s times when the gaba is flowing through the veins and you’re all…

”Woo hoo! I’m unplugged from the matrix! I’ve trancended the density of physical matter, this rocks!”

But not this time. It just pretty much sucked. The whole time. 

Oh and there was lots of nausea and belly pain. 

This is why the Dr. Mindy Pelz 72 hour water fast of 2026 stopped at 66 hours. I was sick of feeling so crummy. After feeling so rotten for so many hours, I was just over it.

I broke the fast with a delicious spread of cashew butter on apple slices. Followed by bone broth, and later some yogurt. 

And later some donuts.

Don’t judge. They had jelly in them for God’s sake. I know, the whole donut thing is bizarre anyway because donuts rarely (like never) find their way into my fridge. It just so happened that my dear elderly neighbor had dropped them off a couple days before and, well…

They were delicious. 

Cut to the Chase here kid, What did you learn?

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In case you didn’t know, there are all these amazing health benefits of fasting that long. There’s the cellular cleaning, the detox, the increase in human growth hormone (HGH), stem cell production, gut lining repair, dopamine reset, new dopamine receptor genesis, etc etc yada yada the list goes on and Dr. Mindy can tell you all about it if you’re interested.

I know I got a lot of these benefits. I definitely feel it. Like the suffering wasn’t all in vain. Upgrades occurred and I’m glad I did the fast.

But the coolest ever thing I learned was about goal setting in general. And goal setting is pretty much what the human experience is about if you really think about it. We are navigating this reality of form, going from experience to experience, doing different things we think will make us happy, or healthy. Learning what works and what doesn’t in this ongoing process of evolution. 

This lesson came in with great timing, what with everyone’s New Year’s resolutions and goals saturating the collective field and all.

I’ve really had to ask myself, however, why didn’t I make it 72 hours? Thousands of other people made it that long in Dr. Mindy’s group. Lots of em probably went longer. Lots went shorter probably too, like me. There’s no way I was the only one who jumped ship early. 

Thankfully, the inquiry entered my reasoning process without having to deal with any guilt or shame for not making it to the goal. And thank God for that! This time (it ain’t the first fast I didn’t make it to the end of), I didn’t beat myself up for even a second because I bailed early. I have finally gotten the message from Life that harshing on one’s mellow for pretty much any reason ever is a complete waste of energy. We ain’t got time for that my friends. 

So why did I bail early? Or more broadly, what happened?

One of the things that came through was the idea of goal setting vs experimenting. 

I recently got turned onto this concept by a gal named Anne-Laure Le Cunff, author of Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World. Even though I haven’t actually read her book yet, the interview I heard with her and Ryder Carrol (Bullet Journal dude) was enough to plant a seed in mind. 

I realize that I went about this fast as a goal. I saw it as a concrete thing that I was going to accomplish. Going to just do it. Make it happen. Suffer as much as need be. Goal: Fast. Do. Check. Next.

Looking back I see what a Newtonian approach this was. I see what a masculine energy it had. Not that there’s anything wrong with Newton or masculinity. What I am saying is it was limited. It was binary. Digital.

Do this, don’t do that. 

There are two outcomes in goal orientation: success or failure. 

I failed. End of story. 

But it’s really not like that. It doesn’t need to be like that. 

Looking at goal setting from this perspective, well it just sucks all the fun out of it. It makes the endeavor rigid, serious, formal, dry and sad. 

I think this is a big part of why my fasting experience sucked so bad. My approach was similar to a soldier taking orders from a drill sergeant. “Do this! If you don’t, you fail!” I was pushing for an end result. Stem cells, spiritual clarity, defined 6 pack, check off the bucket list item. I was caught in linear horse blinder vision. Robotic. Programmed. Predictable. Nothing artistic or poetic allowed.

So here comes our new hyphenated-named friend Anne-Laurie (who by the way is this super successful neurobiologist who used to have a big fancy job at Google, and now does amazing work as a PhD and all that) saying…

Turn your goals into experiments. 

And wow does that change everything!

Instead of:

”I’m doing a 72 water fast. Starting Monday. Ending on Wednesday (or whatever). I’m going to get tons of stem cells and various other amazing benefits and be a better person afterwards.”

We try:

”What would happen if I water fasted for 72 hours? I heard this, this, and this benefit occurs. I heard that this other thing is supposed to happen. Let’s see, what will actually happen?”

I’m not saying this is the reason that I ended the fast. I’m not using this as an excuse, don’t get me wrong. It is possible that I could have lasted longer with a different mind set. But that’s not really the point. 

When we experiment, we are playing. We are geeking out. We are like kids mixing finger paints to see what kinds of crazy messes we can come up with. Success and failure aren’t really even a part of what’s going on. There’s just information, cause and effect, clay getting turned into different forms. “When I do this, this happens. Oh how interesting and fun.”

Here’s another example:

Experiment: “What happens when I go to the gym every day for a month?”, to me is a lot more exciting than: 

Goal: “Go to the gym every day for 30 days.”

With the experimental mindset, there’s even more of a chance to actually go to the gym every day. Why? Think about it. It’s freezing, you’re tired. You don’t want to go to the gym. The idea of getting your gym bag and heading out the door feels like torture. 

If you were in goal orientation, it’d be easy to say fuck it. I fail. I suck, I’ve tried these dumb resolutions a million times before, and I can never do it. You don’t go to the gym, and slap a label on yourself and the goal: FAIL. Back to the couch with a bag of Cheetos.

However, if you were experimenting you might think “I’m tired, I don’t want to go to the gym, but what would happen if I did?” That shift in thinking alone … do you see how it opens a door? It let’s room in for play, for creativity, for wonder. It allows for curiosity to fuel the process through discomfort.

So you might find the spirit to make it to the gym.

Or maybe you don’t. And if you don’t, there’s no need to label anything with FAIL. You just look at the experiment. “Oh, when I stay up smoking weed till the 2 in the morning it’s really hard to get up and go to the gym. I really want to find out what happens to me when I go to the gym every day for 30 days, so maybe tonight I’ll start smoking weed earlier.”

The next day you make it. You discover that even though you didn’t make it to the gym every day, you learned a lot, you made it a lot of days, your 6 pack looks great, and that’s pretty rad if you ask me. 

In conclusion…

You, dear reader, are actually a part of this Substack experiment that I am playing with, and for that, I thank you.

What if I publish at least one article a week for this year? What if I give myself the permission to actually publish consistently, making this writing practice a priority. Where will this go? What could I learn?

What if I let go of some of the “oh so important” to-do list items so I can let these myriad ideas dancing in my mind find life in physical print?

There’s no way to find out unless I try. Here’s to the experiments. Let me know in the comments what your inner mad scientist rebel artist is up to…

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It’s been a lot for a lot of us, I know.

The news, propaganda, digital mind-warp, perception deceptions, MK-Ultra protocols beaming through our hand-held devices (de-vice, the-vice), wars, fighting, endless streams of bad news, inflation, chem trails, nano-tech, Morgellans disease… ahhh!!!

Red vs Blue

Tyrants, dictators, psychopaths with lots and lots of power.

Everyone seems to be more and more plugged into their own isolated realities, heavily guarded by defensive ego structures that get so easily offended and react all too quickly.

Eye for an eye is indeed making the whole world blind, so it seems.

After screwing up a construction job, I came home the other night to my two girls, who would just not. stop. fighting.

I’ve been feeling a bit like falling apart lately, to be honest. Like taking a big dose of fuckitall and heading for the hills.

Except I already live in the hills. And I’m nestled deep in a 12-step program that has been very successful at keeping me off my favorite forms and variants of fuckitall.

It’s no fun being at the end of your rope, with the two people you love so dearly having at it with one another, with nowhere to go. No escape. Just irritation, sadness, and frustration.

But there happened to be this book on my coffee table, and it quietly began calling my name. It was an innocuous way to check out of the chaos in my home. Books are an escape I fully allow myself to indulge in.

The book is titled: Shambala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior by Chogyam Trungpa.

Too tired to shout at my kids, tired of everything generally sucky about my day and last week actually, I opened to a random page. The following quote seemed to shoot into my brain like it was set in neon light:

(I know it’s quoted above, but it’s SO good that I need to throw it into your brain at least one more time)

I read this and sat straight up on the couch. I have fallen to pieces enough in my 46 years.

Life’s not appearing the way I would like, so there’s wine. There’s weed. There’s my phone, there’s an unhealthy relationship to get distracted by, there’s shows and porn and junk food enough to fill the 7 seas.

But I’m done with falling to pieces. I’m done with the excuses.

The overwhelm of the arguing around me was driving me to check out, to get depressed, to go down a spiral of rumination about how hopeless life is. But these words served as mighty cold plunge for my soul. And I dealt with it.

I’d like to say the conflict between the sisters was resolved, but there’s still a lot of work to do there. Family dynamics I don’t need to get into here. But I addressed the issue by being fully present, by holding space for both their pain. I put my big boy warrior pants on and we talked, and listened. I counseled on the vital importance of using kind words. That God has given us speech to uplift one another, not to cause harm to those we love, or anyone for that matter. The whole episode turned into a blessing, a lesson, a hunk of compost to grow as a family.

As this quote has percolated deep into my consciousness over the past couple days, I also have noticed what a victim atitude I have been harbouring regarding the state of this world.

The news, the feeds, the talking heads, the endless streams of info about the depth of treachery and lies and psychological manipulation taking place on a systemic level within government and business.

It’s overwhelming. It saddens me. I keep hearing myself say “well what can I do about it? There’s nothing to do.”

To which Chogyam Trungpa calls me out with the precision of a samarai blade.

Refuse to give up. On anyone or anything.

This is warriorship that we are all capable of embodying.

We simply do not have the luxury to fall to pieces and keep out heads burried in the sand.

There is crazy shit happening, on a level we really can’t fathom, but it is up to us to prevent the destruction. Not with more violence, not with manipulation, but with strategic and precise awareness. Presence. Compassion and understanding.

Addressing what is happening with all the spiritual tools we have in truck.

It sounds like a lot. But I have noticed a shift occuring in me which has gone from:

“fuck it, we’re doomed, we’re all so fucked, it started way before I was born and what’s destined to happen will happen.”

To:

“what can I do?”

Perhaps I can write a post about something I see that needs to be seen. Perhaps I can share how I am navigating this carnival circus ride called the 2020’s. Perhaps I can get right with my creator, get un-addicted from all this crap that’t pushed on me to consume endless amounts of every chance I get.

Perhaps I can start reaching out to friends and family more to tell them I love them and listen to their pain. Without judgement.

We know what to do.

Plant trees, flowers, stop buying crap, meditate for the benefit of all beings, pray, volunteer. Raise the vibration people!

Yea, this shit show started way before any of us incarnated. We didn’t start the fire, it was always burning since the world was turning (thank you Billy Joel). But what an empowering, thrilling reminder Chogyam passes us…

We have power.

We can prevent the ensuing disasters of these times.

In fact, it is up to us.

Let’s make sure no disaster happens.

Wow.

Mike drop Chogyam Trungpa.

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PS: This post was inspired by these great and inspiring writers right here on Substack whom I highly recomend reading:

Michael Logan - The Unsaid Underside. Bro hits it our of the park every time.

The Unsaid Underside

For those more than a little curious — ready to grow beyond the mask, mirror, and small self built to be liked. For the ones ready to step out from the shadows and truly heal.

By Michael Logan 🐦‍🔥

The Wise Wolf - a bit extreme but very informative, thought provoking, and insightful

🐺The Wise Wolf

A wise man once said, 'Don't argue with a stupid person because they will just drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.'

Lauren Oliver - one of my favorite poets right now. Her words provide relief.

lauren oliver

poetry, prose, and philosophy from the raw, unfiltered edge of the feminine psyche; a sanctuary for the soul that feels too much and not enough. this is where the shadow meets the light. this is where we remember divinity.

By Lauren Oliver

PS: In case you needed just one more reading of this quote, you know, to let it really sink in because I feel we could all use this kind of message floating around our minds a lot more, here it is friends:

Love and gratitude,

Christoph

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Congratulations to Miracle Soup!! We’ve hit episode 96!

While I adore the act of writing, I find that there is something so unique and remarkable about the medium of the podcast format itself. Amidst the hectic tides of adulting these days, it is often much easier to share some spoken word with an audience than it is to type out an article.

I have also been experimenting with video, and honestly, I don’t think it’s quite my thing. This is mainly because I keep having this experience like my soul is getting sucked out of my face when I’m consuming content on a screen.

My daughter and I are listening to Harry Potter right now. Remember the Dementors from Prisoner of Azkaban? They’re these grim reaper wraith-like creatures who float around, and if they don’t like what you’re doing, they suck your soul out of your face.

I’m over the soul sucking thing. Over getting my soul sucked into these screens and these apps and being left having to rebuild my life-force just to get back to base level non-zombie human status.

And it doesn’t even seem to matter if I’m watching super spiritual people with tremendously insightful messages. These screens people… Dementor tech I say… Something about the frequency…

So that’s part of why I adore the podcast format. You can capture people’s attention without the guilt of knowing you just assisted in the Dementor tech soul harvest. Also, I love listening to podcasts while I am driving or walking my dog, or putting on massive gains at the gym, or doing a job that is boring the crap out of me.

So here’s to podcasts, here’s to expressing our voices by whatever means tickles our fancy, and here’s to today’s episode, which I consider to be a bit like a dharma talk of sorts. You’ll see, I get all Buddhist and stuff.

So in the spirit of dharma, I will unashamedly include the following orange button below:

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where you can have the option to sign up for a paid membership. There’s really nothing fancy here at Miracle Soup for paid subscribers. I don’t include “behind the scenes” super VIP content or anything like that. It’s just an opportunity to give back if the material here has made a positive impact in your life in some way. You don’t need to pay monthly for the rest of your life, it can be just one time, or a year, or whatever feels right.

And the other thing that helps keep the good vibes flowing is to use the following orange buttons to spread the love.

I ‘preciate you.

Till next time,

Christoph

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In the following post, I pull from a dialogue I have with a Tibetan Lama who lives in my imagination. I don’t claim that this is channeled information or anything like that. It’s just me putzing around with ideas and having fun. The word “Rinpoche” means precious jewel, and is used in the Tibetan tradition as a title of respect for a teacher of dharma (teachings of liberation from suffering).

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Dear Rinpoche,

Please help me. I am suffering due to my addictions and harmful habits, which seem to have overtaken me. I feel so sick. So lousy. Lonely. Sad. Miserable. I just want to cry.

Rinpoche: When depression descends and visits you, uninvited as usual, like a dark, poisonous gas cloud, there is this wonderful possibility available:

“Could I suffer this depression so others may not have to?”

Try asking this, just for shits and giggles:

• How can I work with this depression?

• How can I work with it as material to build what I want to build which is a life of peace and happiness?

• Could I use this depression gas to help others?

• Could this sadness and darkness create something that will benefit someone in some way?

You may not have the answers to these questions right away, or at all, but the simple act of even considering them begins to release the pressure valve of the pressure cooker of pain.

Because the trip, as we know, with depression is it’s a very condensed and constricted focus on “me” as an individual who isn’t experiencing things the way “me” would like them to go. Considering others starts to loosen up those chains a bit. It begins to create some breathing room around the bondage.

Maybe you just decide to share a post. Or maybe you write or call a friend who may be going through a tough time. Perhaps you just squeeze out a smile towards someone more miserable than you (of which I guarantee there are many).

Furthermore, the alternative is to have a pity party about your condition. Or sit there beating yourself up for not feeling happy and energized and having your shit together.

You could always shame yourself for doing the things you did, which may have contributed to the release of depression gas. We all know what these things are. Or for not doing the things we should have done to help us feel better, like exercise, a clean diet, meditation, etc.

That is not the preferred option because shame and guilt literally fuel the depression gas machine to keep pumping out clouds in your face.

It’s also great to forgive yourself, love yourself, call on your saviour, guru, angels, etc. Nothing wrong with that, for sure.

But there’s leverage in including others. There’s leverage and power in considering how the pain you experience could be, somehow, a help to others. There is a potential to use the depression gas cloud machine for good.

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Mystery Button

The Miracle Soup Podcast has a magic about it, at least for me, where it serves as a sort of springboard for a lot of creative flow in my life.

Example: I publish a podcast and then a cascade of new writing ideas, post ideas, creative ideas, all come flooding through. It’s like I’m actively saying to the Universe of Pure Cosmic Intelligence: “Ok, I am actually doing at least something with the ideas you are sending my way. I am at least taking some kind of step towards answering the muse’s seductive call. Even if it’s only a 20 minute solo podcast with hardly any listeners!”

To which the Universe responds with “Oh cool, here’s more now that your pipes are unclogged from the stagnant last idea I sent you.”

It’s literally like that. There’s a creative urge. We say “no, I can’t do that. It won’t be good. People might think I’m lame.” And then it just sits there like a clump of undigested hamburger clogging up the intestine hose of creative flow. No more ideas can flow through until something moves. Then the Universal Intelligence needs to find another instrument to have the idea expressed into manifestation.

Sharing creative ideas is then akin to (you guessed it) a wonderful, energetic enema. It gets shit moving again. And then everything works better.

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People pleasing. It’s a thing.

Debilitating if left unchecked, and pretty unessessary when you think about it.

“Please like me! Please! I promise to be better. I just want to be good enough!”

That’s the underlying voice. A little boy wanting to be assured that he’s ok. That he’s good enough.

Have you seen the Netflix show “Adolescence” yet? Powerful show that is. When the kid is screaming at the therapist, “But do you like me?! Am I good? Do you like me?!”

(I would go on about that show, but I don’t want to spoil it for you if you haven’t seen it yet. Definitely worth watching.)

A few weeks back, I basically no-showed on a commitment I had made. There was this church function where I was the guitar player and had been all gun-ho about attending the event. When Saturday came, I realized there was no way I could drive all the way down to the Marin County from North San Juan to show up like I said I would.

Why?! Because of my reasons! My valid and responsible reasons!

The first rains of the season were coming. I had to secure firewood under tarps, cover the RV to prevent leaking, work on this, do that. Kids, pets, invoices, vacuuming the damn carpet. There was shit to do at home. How could I run off to be all spiritual, sitting around and praying while my house was in disarray?

This decision was also infused with some anger. Just general anger at all the (seeming) minions of people demanding stuff from me. Clients needed this, my kids need that, tenants on my land needing stuff, dogs, fish, damn ducks and chickens, cats whining for food and cuddles.

So I put down a big “fuck it all” flag and secluded for the weekend I was “supposed” to go play guitar for the church.

And it felt… WONDERFUL!!

I putzed around my land, got shit done, and felt great about it. Let me tell you.

Over this weekend, I attended another church event…

And by the way, I suppose I’d rather just be up front and clear it up in the reader’s mind that this ain’t no church you’re probably used to. I consider myself blessed beyond reason that I get to be a part of the Santo Daime church, sometimes reffered to as the Church of Ayahuasca.

So, yea… instead of going up for a bit of wafer and wine for communion, we go up to the altar for a cup (or 3) of Amazonian psychoactive visionary jungle juice sacrament. And talk about communion… (if ya know you know). But I won’t get into that here. You can leave a comment if you are curious and want me to share a more about my 20 year journey with ayahuasca . I will say, however, I can’t recommend it enough, though it’s certainly not for everybody.

Where was I?

So I go to this church event on Saturday. This powerful evening of song and prayer was a cosmic deep dive as I played guitar for the 8 hour ceremony. Afterwards, during the warm afterglow of the visionary healing experience that comes with drinking a few cups of medicine, I approached the church leader, a beautiful elder whom I refer to as “Madrina”, which means godmother in Portuguese.

“Madrina, I am sorry that I bailed on the last ceremony we had. I didn’t even let you know, and I just no-showed. You see, the thing was… the rains were coming and I had all this stuff to do and there were like a million people and animals who all wanted stuff from me and….”

“You know Christoph,” she interrupted, “hmmmm, how should I say this….”

Madrina put her index finger over her mouth and closed her eyes as she searched her afterglowing brain for the right words (I bet if you took brain scans of all of us after a ceremony like that, we’d all look like sparkling Christmas trees).

“You don’t need to give me any excuses like that. People call me so often and tell me this reason and that reason for not being able to attend. And honestly, I don’t need so much information. I don’t really care.

“It’s enough, if you are unable to attend for whatever reason, that you just send a quick text that says ‘I am unable to attend this time. See you soon’,

“And we will miss you and wish you were there.

“And you will wish you had made it, because we are always glad when we come and drink the sacrament,

“But life is life. It’s okay. Just come when you can, and we love having you.”

What? Seriously?

I was ready for something like: “You know, Christoph, this is a serious responsibility here. When you make a commitment, you need to keep it. We were expecting you and blah blah blah.”

But no.

Instead, a simple and beautiful teaching came through my beloved friend.

You don’t need to make excuses. That’s it. Just do your thing.

No guilt, no “I promise next time”.

No shame-based fuel for perpetuating the cycle of feeling like crap about myself.

No reinforcement of the nasty little belief of not being good enough, not being liked.

In a very real sense, my Madrina’s words had liberated something in me: it’s ok to not be perfect. It’s ok to do your best. And it’s ok when others are bummed that you weren’t able to show up. There’s nothing to prove to anyone. We’re all doing our best at life.

Come back next time you can.

And in the meantime, have a glorious day.

Christoph

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When I let YouTube babysit my daughter Rain (I know, don’t judge), she goes to Aquarium channels. There are quite a few, as one could imagine, and honestly, I find them fascinating.

We are big fans of a particular channel called “Bass Fishing Productions,” which has nothing to do with fishing and everything to do with this kid in his early 20s named Robbie and his girlfriend Helen. Helen works the camera, while Robbie goes out to abandoned ponds, streams, and pools in Florida to rescue fish for his backyard. Since this channel has an upwards of 8 million subscribers, Robbie’s backyard is pretty epic. He has tanks and pools, ponds, sharks, piranhas, alligators – all of it.

It didn’t take long after being introduced to Robbie and Helen that I wanted an aquarium just as much as Rain did. I was amazed at how much she had learned about fish. I mean, she wouldn’t shut up about plakos, red tail catfish, Kunj Catfish (they get big enough to eat a person), betas, puffer fish, eels, sturgeon, fish I never even knew existed.

She introduced me to this fish called an arapaima, which is from the Amazon. The thing is insane! No teeth, but the power of their jaws can break your finger bones. We saw some at the big Aquarium in Folsom. They’re huge, gnarly, tough-ass looking sea creatures you should definitely check out some video of. By far, this is my favorite fish. I adopted the arapaima as my spirit fish. JSYK.

The ultimate Holy Grail of fish husbandry, though, is an Axolotyl, which is like this weird Mexican salamander that can lose arms, limbs, tail, even its head, and those appendages will grow right back. OMG, so cool, right? Since an Axolotyl is like $70, we decided last year to start with a tank full of less expensive fish, and we are doing very well with them. So far we’ve only lost one guppy named Ember. He was gorgeous. I felt that one. We both grieved. But what to do? The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh as they say.

There are still zero Axolotyls inhabiting our aquarium, but we do have 2 African dwarf frogs (pictured below) named - you guessed it - Robbie and Helen. Helen is an albino, which is pretty cool. They had 4 baby African dwarf frogs once, but we think Robbie ate them because he’s a bit of a fatso, as you can see.

Then we have Spark, a red rainbow guppie (I just named that species of guppie by the way), and Lemon, a yellow speckled guppie (yes, that one too, though Rain gave the actual pet names to all the aquatic family members).

Zippy is one of the strangest-looking fish I’ve ever seen. He or she is apparently an albino plako, even though she looks pretty orange to me.

Plakos are amazing. Before we got Zippy, the tank was overgrown with algae and general fuzz. We had to wash it out every 2 weeks maximum. Thanks to Zippy’s non-stop sucking away at every square centimeter of surface area in there, we change the water once every two months! Zippy, I love you. Really, I do. (See picture)

Lastly, there’s Blue, the female beta. Can you guess what color she is? Right on! Blue is the queen of the tank. Female betas don’t cannabalize their tank mates like the males do. They just chill and look regal and beautiful all the time with their flowing fins and graceful demeanor.

Ok, now that you know about this little world that inhabits the shelf behind my couch, I will tell you why I am writing about this.

It’s because after months of not cleaning the tank (thanks to Zippy’s vacuum cleaning super-power and my mad procrastinating skillz), it was time. After procrastinating for another 2 or 3 weeks, I finally pulled out the syphon, sucked in a good, hearty mouthful of dirty aquarium water, got laughed at by Rain for doing that again for the 11th or so time, and began the process.

Thanks to my fore-mentioned and impressive procrastinating abilities, there was a pretty good amount of green film stuck to the side of the tank walls. I pulled the old scrubber pad out and began scrubbing away.

But here’s the thing. Our fish family had just had all the aquatic plastic plant life removed by Rain, along with the sea cave and sea shells. That’s kind of like having some giant reach into your living room and remove all the furniture. But more like your whole house and backyard set-up.

Then, 3/4 of the delicious-tasting water was removed by the syphon, which almost sucked up both Robbie and Helen, who were not paying very good attention to what was happening. Not to mention the syphon was kicking up all kinds of debris from the gravel floor, making the water all cloudy with fecal matter and old nasty brine shrimp. All this activity must have been quite disturbing to our little crew, I’m sure.

Then here I come along with this scrubber, and damn if this algae wasn’t fused right into the molecules of the glass itself! So it took a bit of elbow grease to get the algae off, and this caused massive hurricane-level waves to thrash around the 10-gallon micro-sea.

That’s when it hit me. Holy shit, this is life right here. Storms hit. Sometimes hard. Sometimes furious. And this was a hell of a storm. Man-made, but still. Storms churn and reorganize and destroy and cleanse so that things can settle down better afterwards in a new way. Chaos and even violence come to peaceful situations, causing a ruckus, but things eventually get rebuilt, restructured, remade.

I even told the little creatures as I scrubbed, “Don’t worry! This will be over soon! It’s for your own good!”

And if you’re one to anthropomorphize your Higher Power like a lot of us do, I’m sure that Higher Power probably says the same thing to us when the shit is hitting the fan in our lives. Maybe when we lose a job, get dumped, get a call from the school that our kid just got suspended, and our dog runs away - all at once.

Or even in bigger and worse things like, God forbid, natural disasters leveled our home, bombings, tornadoes, air strikes, or financial collapse of our business or economy. Drought, pestilence, locusts, cancer. There is no shortage of storminess on the ocean of life.

Yea, it sucks. That kind of thing sucks. I bet those fish thought (if they do that kind of thing) that it was going to be over for them. I bet they were looking at each other like “this is it. Great knowing you!”

And Robbie was probably saying to Helen “I’m sorry I ate our kids and blamed it on Zippy. I was so hungry! You have no idea what it’s like to be a male African Dwarf frog who has the appetite of a Cane Toad. But I’m sorry, it wasn’t right. I love you Helen!!!”

As the presiding quasi-Higher Power in that situation, I thought that if I could incarnate as an avatar of the tank, like if I could go down like Jesus or Krishna, I would teach them all meditation and Chi Gong to learn to ground themselves, to center, to find peace amidst the chaos of the storm.

I would say something profound and scripturally worthy like “Be still, and know that I am God”. Then I would turn around with my spiritual flowing fins and say that storms pass; they are scary, but they don’t last forever. And when they end, they leave the tank clean, clear, renewed. That, in fact, life would cease to exist without these occasional storms, and everyone would get sick and miserable.

I hope you think of this story the next time shit goes down in your life, which I hope it doesn’t, but know it will.

I hope you think of flowing Jesus or Buddha fish with his (or her) angelic fins all flowing miraculously, a glowing water-based aura appearing around compassionate, un-blinking fish eyes, saying (telepathically, of course): “Be still. Just chill, it’s all going to be over soon”.

Lots of love

Christoph

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In other news…

For all of you wonderding what else I do besides clean fish tanks and write articles on Substack, you can check out my YouTube channel Here.

That’s where I post video content about one of my great passions, fasting, meditation, and that kind of thing. If that’s up your ally, have at it.

Thanks for reading, honestly, it means the world to me to have an audience to share my journey with and I appreciate all of you.

EXTRA CREDIT OPP:

What is your spirit fish?

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On Sunday mornings, my daughter Rain and I launch into a full-powered creative flow.

She dives into her tiny toy world of Legos, Calico Critters, and 3d printed dragons (which are the big trend right now in case you don’t have a 7-year-old to tell you about that kind of thing).

And I sink into writing.

It begins with a 10-point gratitude list (my daily practice no matter what), followed by a written dialogue with my higher power who goes by different names and forms depending on the mood of the day. Today was Sai Baba, some days it’s Jesus, some days it’s St. Michael, others it’s the Mushroom spirit. My relationship with the Higher Power Mystery allows It to take any form that helps me connect. Thank God he’s all freed up like that.

Where and Whut?

The image included in today’s post is a key to unlock the mystery of life.

I know, that’s quite a tall claim and all, but bare with me if you dare.

I received this image during a particular, ridiculously strong ayahuasca journey. It crept into my awareness subtly and quietly, but when I got it, my brain did the nuclear explosion brain emoji thing, which I have no idea how to do on this keyboard.

When properly interpreted (with or without the influence of an entheogen), this picture has the potential to reframe our struggles here on earth in a profoundly empowering way.

Jesus and Wetiko

We all know who Jesus is, but for the sake of clarification in this context, let me explain further: Jesus means Pure Love.

That’s it. I know, I know, a LOT of people have big hang ups with Jesus, and the patriarchy, all the damage that the organized religions have done around the world for the last 2000 plus years and all that. But hang with me here. In this context, Jesus represents Ultimate Pure Endless Perfect Love. If you really can’t hang with Jesus, you can go on Chat-GPT and remake this image with whatever this boundless infinite love looks like to you. It’s all good.

Ok, so what’s with the demonic rabid dog with blood dripping from its jaws?

Chances are you’ve already guessed it. Yea.. that’s him alright. The dirty devil. Call him what you will: “he who shall not be named,” satan, anti-Christ, demiurge, lucifer, the adversary. Myself I call it wetiko from the Native American term they used for the mind-virus that causes humanity to turn away from oneness.

Again, it matters not what term we use; this nasty-looking hound is essentially the dark force that seeks to corrupt our contact and connection with Pure Love. This force is what deludes us into forgetting this connection, which causes all manner of trouble from general grumpiness in the mornings to destructive addictions, to full blown genocides.

In my vision, I was shown that this satan-dog is essentially Jesus’ little thug. You see how Jesus has him by the leash. Jesus (Love) is the master (duh, we’ve heard that before right?). The dog is obedient to his master.

What happens is Jesus sends this mean-ass dog off into our lives when we get too lost in the labyrinths and quagmires of this world. When we get too lost in idolatry, ie, becoming hyper-focused on thinking that something here in the world of form is going to save us. Like that new job, or car, or girl, or drug, or whatever. Not that there’s anything wrong with any of these things inherently, but when we forget about our connection with Love… it all falls to shit.

This image, when contemplated with the mind of the mystic that we all have inside, radically transforms the polarized interpretations we have about what we experience as “bad” or “evil” in this world. And I know you know… there’s a lot of it that we are seeing now, isn’t there?

If we can see the force of destruction, lies, and evil as a sort of messenger from Ultimate Love, it empowers us. When we see the darkness as just this big nasty force that has all this power and authority, we become victims of it.

“Why did this happen to me?”

“This is so horrible. How could this happen?”

“Now it’s time to get even!”

If we don’t see that the nasty people and situations sent into our lives are actually sent by Love, we will want to fight back. Retaliate. We want to cause harm to what has caused harm to us, and that’s like giving satan dog a big chewy treat. He will gobble it up and do more of his nasty business to get more reward.

The invitation encoded in this picture is to rewire our perception to see the nasty business as a message sent by Pure Love that it’s time for us to come home. It’s time for us to make, as they say in 12-steps programs, conscious contact with a power greater than ourselves.

This is in fact the beauty of addictions (I know that sounds weird) because with any good, strong addiction that really fucks up our lives, we are left with the blindingly compassionate realization that we cannot fix ourselves on our own. There has to be something that can.

That something that can is the Power of Love.

So we begin, from that place of fracture and despair, to develop a relationship with this Love, and then we get to…

(yes, we get to!)

…experience the unfolding process of how this Force of Love gradually, gently, miraculously, and masterfully transforms our entire life. We get to watch how It brings redemption to our relationships with all things and all beings, and ultimately turns the lights on in the dark room of horrors.

Application

So the next time you notice yourself getting fired up about the unfolding nightmare on the news, or what that guy in a suit said or did, or lied about again for the millionth time. Or the betrayal you experienced, the unfairness from your boss, the next guy who gets shot in the neck. Or when that addiction you’ve been trying to kick for decades wins again for the billionth time… it can easily begin to all look so damn evil. It can appear like there’s a force literally trying to bring you down.

And that’s probably because it is.

We don’t need to be afraid. We don’t need to spin off on a tirade and get all depressed over something we have absolutely no control of. It’s just that old dog doing its job, causing enough of a mess of pain, suffering, and confusion to finally get us to change our ways. If not to get on our knees, then at least to look inside. To get still and wonder: “could there be a better way?”

Maybe we can finally call on that mad dog’s Master, by whatever name that feels right in our hearts, to call off the hound, and bring us closer to the restorative presence of sanity.

Like and subscribe and all that if you want folks. But really, I’d love to hear from you if this post has left an impression in some way.

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And if you’re hungry for more, there’s always my YouTube channel and the Miracle Soup Podcast on Apple and Spotify.

In Love Always,

Christoph

To all of you 300+ subies, I want to thank you for being a part of Miracle Soup. You are part of more than just an email list, you are part of my evolution as an artist, and for this I offer BIG thanks because to be seen is part of the sustenance we as humans need to grow. By reading this, you play a big role in my journey and that makes you a rock star.

It’s not like I just gave up creating and became a drug addict. Err…well, actually, I kind of figured out I already was one.

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Full vulnerable share disclosure is that I joined a 12-step group for sex and love addiction back in March and got some well-needed liberation from a cripling pattern of imprisoning myself in reeeeally unhealthy relationships. Like somehow my “partner picker” was masterfully attuned to choosing the most dramatic and chaotic relationships possible. I finally I realized I needed help. Bad. Step one hit my like a ton bricks; I realized I was powerless and my life had become unmanageable.

Dang. Sobering AF.

But it gets better from there. Once I let the Higher Power Step in, (like really step in. As in taking the wheel) and I realize I don’t know Jack from Jill, like I know nothing, but there is an Intelligence that does know and I can access that when I surrender what I think I know… then it’s like the storm clouds gradually part. Eventually the fog lifts and the bright sunshine of clarity and rebirth dawns.

It’s really an incredible process that I cannot do justice to here in this post. Heck, I had no idea I was even going to write about this. But there you go. That’s what’s cool about the creative journey… you really never know what’s going to happen and the more you step out of the way the more magic you can discover.

Besides that epic and life-changing adventure of finding sanity through sobriety via the 12-steps, I’ve been flowing along with this new medium of creating videos. In case you didn’t know, there is a YouTube channel which was birthed from the rib of this substack.

(You can check out this channel HERE.)

There’s a weird thing about that, though: turns out the last written post on Miracle Soup was about how fasting had healed my eating dissorder. This was published in May of 2024 and for some reason I was disproportionately embarrassed and ashamed of this post. Cringe city. Some gnarly gnar gnar voice got in my head after that one and started hitting hard with an energetic baseball bat saying things like:

“You’re such a fake. Who the hell are you to go on about fasting and healing. You still over-eat, you’re still messed up. You’re like all these other attention seekers blah blah blahbutty blar.”

Basically, that’s the voice of what Steven Pressfield calls the Resistance in his EPIC book “The War of Art” (highly recommended). I straight up call that voice Satan, the Dark One, Lucifer, Demiurge, or little bugger. I let him win that time, as it felt so weird sharing that story for some reason. Yet now I have an entire YouTube channel with like 20 videos up all about fasting and my journey with how epic it is.

I won’t get into that here too much either because you now have the magic link to the channel, where you can delve into the wonder and mystery of fasting. I will say, however, that fasting came into my life as an answer to my prayers of:

“WTF Lord. WTF do I do about this shit-show part of the life movie I am experiencing right now?”

There’s a video about it, but essentially, a perfect storm was manifested by Higher Power Universe to get me on my knees. Relationship drama was maxing out, my work was falling apart, had to give away my dog, and a bear invaded my home 4 times in 2 weeks killing 4 chickens and leaving quite the mess, lemme tell you.

Since I had some experience fasting (as you may know from my last written post), the answer I got from my “Lawd-throw-me-a-freakin-rope-prayer” was - you guessed it -fast. Unplug from eating, actually feel your feelings, and watch what happens.

And life ain’t been the same since. After 46 years, I’m still constantly discovering how effective it is to actually listen to intuition/ God’s will and act on it. Duh!

And lastly of course there is still the Miracle Soup Podcast which I won’t link because you can just type that into wherever you listen to podcasts as long as it’s Spotify or Apple Podcasts. That’s been a somewhat consistent flow of creative juiciness.

But it’s getting on here and who has time to read a newsletter all day, let alone write one so I’ll have to save my reports of the EPIC plant medicine ceremonies I’ve begun co-facilitating in Hawaii and California, how I’ve actually been getting paid to play guitar (what?!?!?!?!?! Dream come true!) and all kinds of other crazy shit for another newsletter.

Which won’t be too long because there is something extra, uniquely magical about writing that I no longer want to miss out on.

Writing is like a pitchfork that tills the soil of creativity. It creates fertile beds for seeds to take root and flourish. There’s really nothing like it.

Thanks for reading this far. And if you’ve enjoyed this, please click the like button and share with someone you love. It’ll make us both feel good.

One Love
Gratefully,

Christoph

PS: What did you create last week?

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It is my hope that after listening, you will have a better understanding of the best tool I have found to heal mental dis-ease, depression, addiction, and to generall upgrade the human experience.

I riff about the Essene Gospel of Peace, get into a bit of lite Demonology, and even start off with a little bible story.

Oh… and have you ever heard of Abba John the Dwarf?

No?

Well, you will after hearing this episode.

In gratitude

Christoph

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Yes, it’s me. I haven’t forgotten you. Just had a massive creative block which has lasted for about a year. But Miracle Soup podcasts have been still trickling down the digital pipeline and the momentum of my work is picking up once again.

Thank God. It feels so good to create.

Which is what a lot of this week’s episode is about; responding to this planetary monkey circus mayhem with creativity, ascending beyond outdated frequencies of addiction, and dropping toxic operating systems.

Enjoy and respond accordingly.

Gratefully,

Christoph

PS if you didn’t know, Miracle Soup has a nascent YouTube channel you can check out HERE

Episode 80 is a deep dive into my history and experience with this miraculous and ancient prayer. The first part discusses my personal journey with this set of meticulously crafted 24 sacred syllables, while the second half goes into the origin story of the Gayatri Mantra - a compelling tale of the sage Vishwamrita and his transformation from a not-so-cool warrior king into a full-blown Brahma Rishi.

This episode is the first I have recorded and filmed at the same time. So pardon if I get a bit distracted at times, this was new to me - looking at my face while talking. Or actually trying not to look at my face while talking. It’s very odd and unnatural to look at one’s face while talking.

Also please pardon the interruption about 3/4 of the way through. An Amazon delivery showed up during a particularly gripping part of the story, so I paused the video.

Ok, enough already, I hope you enjoy the episode.

LINKS:

YouTube:⁠ https://www.youtube.com/@chrisdheinen⁠

Substack:⁠ https://miraclesoup.substack.com/⁠

Om Swami: ⁠omswami.com⁠

Om Swami's Book ⁠"The Hidden Power of the Gayatri Mantra"

This was one of those conversations you are blessed to have, and it leaves such an impression that you can’t help but share it with whoever might listen.

Alex lives a completely “unplugged” lifestyle. No cell phone, no social media, no email, no laptop. He is also totally clean and sober and offers a unique, refreshing, and crucially important message to our human family.

So listen up, thanks for tuning in, and as Alex did…. dropping out…

A few nights ago my friend Zen and I found ourselves sitting beside a campfire beneath a waxing moon catching up and sharing tales. Zen is one of those guys who can talk, and he speaks with a sense of authority that demands attention from his audience.

From this intimate setting, a few things started the percolating process in my mind, and I decided to record this short episode to amplify the takeaway points for my own audience.

Mainly our talk that night was of death, what it means to live a good life while we’re here, and what it is to be wealthy. Truly wealthy.

I hope this episode can serve as catalyst for an increase in your own wealth, or at least help shift any myopic beliefs you may be carrying that tie wealth inextricably to the modern-day financial system.

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Thank you for listening

Christoph

I just completed a 60-hour water fast.

Why, one might ask, in the hell would anybody want to do that?

My answer is very simple:

Fasting is the only way I have found to heal a debilitating eating disorder that I have struggled with for most of my life.

Let me tell you…

I’ve prayed to God and Gurus and Archangels. I’ve tried plant medicines, psychedelics, meditation, exercise, therapy, Joe Dispensa, micro-dosing, cold plunges, you name it. All these endeavors helped to some extent, but nothing lasted. Nothing actually healed the binge-eating little monster inside me. 

Then this spring, at the age of 44, I was at my wit’s end. Why was this addiction so impossible to heal? I didn’t know what to do.

Why, despite all my efforts to leave foods alone that I knew were going to cause me health problems, did I keep binge eating them? Why couldn’t I control what I put in my mouth? How would I get a freaking grip for God’s sake, and exit the vicious loop of feeling bad, overeating, feeling worse, overeating, getting depressed, eating, and on and on and on?

I read a story about this guy named Henry S. Tanner. Old Henry was having one heck of a time back in the late 1800’s. His medicine practice was not thriving, his wife left him, he had stomach issues and he was stuck in a depression. Figuring he was pretty much done with his lousy life, he decided to stop eating and only drink water until he died. Back then it was assumed by modern medicine, that the human body would die after 8 days of no food. Since Henry had a big fat fuckit card in hand, he could care less about what experts had to say. Henry S. Tanner ended up fasting for 40 days, thus turning the medical community’s established assumptions upside down.

At first, he went around moping, saying his goodbyes to the things he loved, figuring this was as good a way to go as any. However, as he continued the fast, day after day, he began to feel much better. His depression lifted, he felt like he was micro-dosing on mushrooms (even though that didn’t really exist then), his stomach condition went away and he was basically healed of the anxiety and depression that caused him to be suicidal.

I can relate to Henry. I had also become so fed up (pun intended) with the cycles of binge eating, anxiety, and depression. Seeing how these cycles were affecting my work, relationships, and creativity, I pulled my own Henry S. Tanner fuckit card on April 8, 2024 and took only water for 36 hrs. 

And that was it. 

That was enough to reset the momentum of a multi-decade cycle of binge eating and self-medicating with an unchecked cascade of various numbing agents.

During that 36-hr period, I read The Miracle of Fasting by Paul Bragg. This book gave me inspiration and guidance on how to continue to heal my lifelong disorder. He gives an outline of daily intermittent fasting (16-18 hrs), a 24-36 hr water fast each week, and after 3 months of getting used to this, you go for a longer fast of 3 days working up to longer if desired.

Since that initial 36-hr fast, I have discovered that my years of prayers for healing this miserable cycle of addiction were indeed answered. During this past month (and change) my binging episodes have decreased by at least 75%. My diet has automatically become more healthy and clean. As a result my work performance has improved and anxiety and depression frequency has diminished massively. I have more energy for my friends and hobbies like gardening, yoga, meditation, and running. Possibly the best outcome has been become a more present, fun, and generally better dad to my two daughters. 

It’s important to understand however, that the 36-hr wasn’t the final cure. Healing a lifetime of abusing food and other substances as a regular part of life takes time. It takes a shift in lifestyle, in routine, in habits. 

Getting used to incorporating regular smaller fasts into regular day-to-day life is the key. As a species, we are not designed to constantly be consuming. We are meant to feast and then do work. Animals are designed the same way. Some animals like snakes and alligators feed once and can go months before their next meal. I’m not saying we should be like giant reptiles, but if you think about our hunter-gatherer days, there just wasn’t food available to snack on at all hours. And there wasn’t the noxious plethora of processed additives and chemicals to stuff your face with either. 

One of the most helpful lessons I have learned through this transformative journey of fasting and healing from binge eating is that it is imperative to increase your levels of compassion. I would go a few days with a consistent intermittent fasting flow, and then fall back to binging and miss a couple of days of the protocol. 

What feeds the habit of binge eating (as well as all addictions in my observance) is the guilt that comes after falling off the wagon - the harshing on one’s self for being weak and powerless, the negative self-talk, the giving up because you’ve tried so many times and you just can’t do it. 

Realizing this kind of thinking trap was all part of the disease, I reminded myself about the whole two steps forward, one step back concept. Cut those guilty voices off right at the root. Don’t indulge in the guilt and negativity. If you did a 12 hr fast, you celebrate that. Then gradually work up from there. You will regress and regressing is part of progress. 

As an example, the 60-hr fast I just completed was set to be my first 72-hour. Yes, that’s three days. On the morning of the third day, I realized that technically I could white knuckle it and make to 72 hrs, but I am not a yogi sitting in a cave. I have kids, I have brake pads that need to go on my truck, I have new tenants to interview for my rentals, I basically have shit that needs to get done. 

Compassionately, I looked at the situation. Completing 72 hours did not seem like a compassionate act. It seemed forced and harmful. Also, I reasoned that just maybe our friend Paul Bragg knows a bit about fasting when he suggests adopting a certain fasting lifestyle for three months before jumping into a 3 day or longer. I was a month in. 

In retrospect, I should have done a 48-hour first, maybe even a couple of those, but am I harshing on myself? NO! Do I think I’m a failure? No way Jose. Going 60-hrs without your digestive system needing to do a thing reroutes enormous amounts of energy for physical repair, rejuvination, autophagy (the body’s mechanism to consume unwanted material for energy), and fat burning. My mind is clearer, body lighter, stomach tighter, and my energy high (well… now that I put some yummy calories back in the old gizzard).

It’s like I tried a tough yoga posture, found my edge, and realized I just need to practice more. Eventually, I’ll get it. That’s the way it works. 

Another thing I learned during the 60-hr fast, is when I do go for 72 hours, I need to take a little break from people, from work, and various responsibilities. During this fast, I worked two of the three days and while the first day was alright, the second was miserable. I became extremely frustrated with my German client who kept barking at me for not being able to read her mind (Lord, don’t get me started). Tough cookie that one is. Not sure if she’s going to hire me again… oh well.

When the body is “on Nature’s operating table” (as Paul Bragg puts it) it is important to have space to be still, to read, to pray, do long guided meditations, make up goofy songs, sunbathe naked, that sort of thing. I believe that taking time, sacred-sabbath time, despite the demands of our fast-paced high-accomplishment-focused society, is imperative to finding sanity and balance. Though I am generally an introvert, I noticed myself craving solitude more than food during the second half of this fasting journey. 

It has only been a month of integrating this new lifestyle, but I know that I am on to something quite remarkable. While there are many great resources out right now on fasting (YouTube channels, books, tons of fascinating podcasts with scientists, peer-reviewed studies, stories, testimonials, and tips for success) I do not think for a second that there is nearly enough information and support on fasting. Since this practice has healed me so powerfully, I most assuredly intend to support other people on their journey. 

If you struggle with food cravings, addictions, an eating disorder, or mental afflictions, I believe that fasting can most assuredly heal you. Please feel free to reach out regarding any support I can offer, or ways I could point you in a good direction. 

For now, if you want to hear more, besides a general search on YouTube or your favorite audible platform, here is a link to the Miracle Soup podcast I made to document my first 36-hour “eclipse reset” fast.

Have you tried fasting? What beliefs/convictions do you hold that keep you from trying? Comments are as always, welcome and appreciated.

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In gratitude,

Christoph

Today it was a lizard tail. Why would I decide to record an episode about such a thing?

There’s only one way to find out. (Hint - play button)

Today’s short episode is about interpreting signs from the Universe. It’s also about the importance of a non-judgemental posture for writers and creators, and it’s about … well the third point you’ll have to discover for yourself.

Much love to you all

Enjoy a shorter episode this week - kind of have a lot going on lately.

Christoph

One of the main challenges I have been facing as a writer recently is the writing part. 

Specifically, the part that involves putting words on the page that sound right. 

I just finished reading the novella “Legends of the Fall” by Jim Harrison. Jim’s writing, in my humble opinion, is pure genius. He definitely has the skill of putting words on the page that sound right.

Like listening to a Beethoven or Mahler symphony, it makes you wonder, “How on Earth could someone possibly come up with something that beautiful?” 

Experiencing the work of a master is humbling. Whether you are in the presence of a spiritual master, a musical virtuoso, or enter the world created by a writer like Harrison, your ego gets reduced to a little smear on the coffee table. 

That’s the price we end up paying to experience true magnificence; the sense of self that we have so much importance attached to has to take the back seat in order to let the wow in. 

One reason that magnificent work humbles us in this way is that a master isn’t creating from the ego. The master is pure authenticity expressed. When I read Harrison, or Bukowski, or Anne Lammot, I know for certain that what I read is 100% honest. There’s not the subtlest hint that anyone is trying to sell me anything, or get liked. That quality of art is a song that resonates with Nature, it aligns with the same intelligence that creates a dazzling sunset, the aurora borealis, or a mountain cloaked in winter mist. A master can introduce us to a vastness which transcends the mundane yearnings of our needy minds. 

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Miracle Soup News

I am very grateful to all the new subscribers who have joined this publication. At the time of writing this post, there are 160 of you. While this is wonderfully exciting, I’ve begun to relax a bit regarding the amount of importance I feed into this metric. People subscribe because they like the writing, so I figure I just keep doing that as best as I can and let the numbers do their thing. 

How having a substack has changed me

The number of subscribers here really is an indicator of the amount of value I have gained from contributing to Miracle Soup since staring in late January. I have consistently shown up for two weekly publications since then which has shaped me in ways I never expected. 

When we embark on a journey to manifest a goal (say writing a book, start a substack, a business, a romantic relationship or whatever), it’s as if the actual outcome is just a teaser the universe puts out there to dangle in front of our noses. We think that the end result “thing” is what we want but in actuality, it's the metamorphosis we go through that’s the real prize.  

Getting to 160 subscribers is great and all, but by showing up consistently to write, I have noticed the following 5 changes taking place in me:

1. Greater ability to ignore negative voices that try to convince me not to publish, share, express, or create. 

2. The realization that I don’t know what is good about my writing. More than a few times I have published something I considered to be downright cringe-worthy, only to receive comments and feedback expressing gratitude for something that truly helped a loving reader. 

3. Artist Writer Wonder Eyes. This refers to the ability to see the extraordinary wonder in the mundane unfoldment of life. A normal day on the job site becomes material for an article or book. A walk in the woods becomes an adventure. Each person I interact with is a character in an ongoing story being written by an invisible author. 

4. Greater appreciation of other writers. I wouldn’t have found Jim Harrison’s writing if it wasn’t for a Substack post commemorating his life. And if I hadn’t been writing so much I may not have appreciated the absolute brilliant mastery of his work. You know how it is, only when we make the effort to learn a craft can we truly appreciate it more. It’s one thing to enjoy a nice home, but when you spend some time as a carpenter you become far more dazzled by the craftsmanship put into each floorboard and window sill. 

5. I’ve become more selfish. By this I mean I have worked through a lot of guilt around giving myself the time to write. It has been very interesting to see how much guilt comes up when I block out an hour to just sit and write. 

“You should be doing something else. This isn’t making you money. What about your career? You should be studying for your contractor’s exam. The dishes need cleaning and the lawn isn’t mowed. And the house needs fixing, and and and and ….”

It’s like that. I have learned to literally talk myself through this creativity killing arguments by saying to myself something like:

“It’s okay to take one hour to do something that is fun and rewarding. It’s okay to take two hours actually to do nothing at all! I am allowed to follow my calling. I am allowed to have fun. I am allowed to explore, make mistakes, and do stuff that doesn’t have a monetary outcome. Thank you very much voices of guilt, but you can fuck off now.”

What I’ve Been Reading

• Legends of the Fall by Jim Harrison

As was mentioned above, Legends of the Fall by Jim Harrison has been my literary church lately. Jim’s a wizard if you ask me. He’s got this power to suck your mind into another realm, agitate tears out of your eyes, and put chills on your skin.

• Share Your Work by Austin Kleon

Show Your Work was introduced to me by whose Substack is “the Social Media Escape Club”. Seth has a book club (link here) featuring Show Your Work and I am very glad I joined.

Austin Kleon basically does a brilliant job of filing down minions of negative creative blocking beliefs by encouraging readers to think outside the box. Big emphasis here on releasing control, releasing judgment and perfectionism so that the world can benefit from your unique voice.

I read this book in a day or two, and will definitely read it again. Highly recommended.

And Seth is super cool too. He gave me free access to the paid book club which I bet you could get too if you’re shy on cash flow and reach out to him like a nice human being. I’m sure he’d love to hear from you.

• The Bored Millenial by .

I have to include this Substack because Marie’s recommendation of Miracle Soup has sent a good percentage of Miracle Soup subscribers my way. Being recommended by another writer is a huge honor and I want to acknowledge Marie for that.

The Bored Millenial is her blog documenting her journey through life, overcoming boredom while becoming a writer. Her Substack has been taking off lately, and rightfully so. Her writing makes you feel like you’re hanging out with a really good friend. It’s insightful, thought-provoking, and generally provides helpful reminders to get through your week with more humor and self-acceptance.

This Week’s Podcast

I never know what I’m going to talk or write about until I start. This week’s episode surprised me, as I have never made a biographical episode before.

But this was wild because I kept hearing this dude’s name in my head all day. When I googled him I discovered that not only was he a fascinating and relevant character, but it was his birthday!

So I had to record an episode.

In a nutshell, Upasani Maharaj was a tough ass saintly dude who will no doubt inspire you to lean into discomfort, overcome aversions and step up to a higher version of yourself. His story is one of persistence, grit, and ultimately surrender to the Higher Power.

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Summary:

Find wonder in the boring

Show your work

Learn to appreciate the genius contributions of art that great masters have made.

Realize that we all share the potential for genius

Realize that you deserve to carve out the time to nourish, cultivate, and express that genius.

The end goal is a symbol of the transformation you undergo on the way.

Have a wonderful week everyone,

Christoph

Upasani Maharaj is one of the toughest, gnarliest, hardcore spiritual masters I’ve ever encountered in my slightly obsessive research of spiritual biography.

It is my hope that this story inspires you, as it has me, to embrace the suck, lean into discomfort, and shy not from pain, for as we know, this is where real growth, healing, and transformation happen.

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Be As It May - Upasani Maharaj

I always used to beg with a broken earthen pot 

and eat from it, drink from it. 

I used to roam about naked

I used to lie by a dust div and used a

few rags to cover myself. 

People used to

take me to be a madman

but remember unless you become mad

cannot obtain godhood.

Forbearance to its maximum

means the attainment of the original

Forbearance to its maximum.

Sometimes one gets crumbs of bread while

some other time one gets to eat nice sweet things.

While at other times one has to fast.

That is how things happen. 

One should allow things to happen.

One should follow:

Be as it may.

yes man

whatever comes up should be accepted 

Go ahead.

It is always better to have pain to suffer

If you suffer with pleasure you will get plenty of pleasure.

Whosoever wants to be happy has to suffer for it first. 

That is why I tell everybody that comes here that they

should not mind pain.

They should patiently bear it, suffer it even with pleasure.

They should never try for pleasure or happiness. 

They should always remain content with whatever they have.

The most important mantra of mine is:

Be as it may.

I've been constantly saying that everything has two aspects, 

night is opposed to day and both these opposites

together constitute a whole day. 

Nothing can change it. 

In the same way pleasure is always associated with pain.

If you want pleasure you are bound to have pain.

As well if you can accept pain with

pleasure it leads you to infinite God.

This Siddhanta. 

This is way.

Forbearance to its maximum,

After all God is real. 

Honor, evolve,

And if he chooses to take away all or

anything from it no you can’t you prevent him.

Be as it may.

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In 2019 I ran my first (and only) 50-mile ultramarathon outside of Oakland, CA

Every negative limiting belief in the galaxy decided to invade my head during the weeks before the race. They were mirrored in the people around me.

My dad told me it was a terrible idea, that I was going to injure myself and do irreparable damage.

My best friend told me to throw in the towel. He said there was no shame in that. I’d injure myself. It was a terrible idea.

The inner resistance crescendoed the morning of the race.

“You aren’t a runner, what are you doing here?! You can’t do this race, you don’t even have the right gear. Look at that cheap watch, it doesn’t even have GPS! You’re going to fail, you shouldn’t embarrass yourself here, you’re going to be a burden on other racers because you’re a fake!”

Ouch. Harsh.

It was like listening to the worst radio station imaginable. I eventually reasoned that I knew I could at least run 26.2 miles, the distance of the San Francisco marathon I had completed a couple of months before. As a matter of fact, that hadn’t gone too badly as I was 2 minutes shy of qualifying for Boston. 

I told the voices to screw themselves and finished 50 miles in 11 hrs, even though much of the race was run barefoot. An unforeseen sock issue caused knife-like stabbing pain in my left arch around mile 28. Luckily the still small voice within I mentioned above whispered that I abandon footwear. 

It worked. 

11 hours ain’t too shabby for a first 50 miler. 

As I crossed the finish line that evening my 9-year-old bonus-daughter (bonus is my replacement for the word “step” which has negative connotations for me from the story Hansel and Gretel. Remember the evil stepmother? Ooh, what a nasty one she was. She clearly was not a “bonus” mother) was waiting there clapping and cheering me on. 

The pain in my legs and pretty much everywhere was excruciating, but it was well-earned. With what little endorphins I had left, I was able to feel pretty good about my accomplishment. 

(Side note: after a good night’s sleep that evening I had a runner’s high that lasted almost two weeks - a welcome side-effect I was not expecting.)

That’s when Leah (bonus daughter) said something to me I will never forget:

“Christoph, you just ran 50 miles. If you can do that, you can do ANYTHING!”

The way she shared those words with such conviction and excitement caused my brain to stall for a moment. In my state of utter exhaustion, her statement landed like a seed in a ripe bed of moist potting mix. It was a suggestion planted by the universe, through an innocent young girl, into my fertile and completely impressionable ragged mind. Perfect timing, perfect delivery. 

I think about that sentence every day.

You can do anything. 

After receiving my little medal and t-shirt for completing the race, I grabbed a complimentary beer from the cooler, chugged it, and proceeded to vomit for the next two hours. Apparently, I hadn’t really digested anything I ate the whole day since my energy was directed mostly towards my legs and heart muscle. I watched the whole sequence of trail bars, gels, electrolyte drinks, and general food stuffs exit out of my face like a watching VHS tape in rewind.

You can do anything.

 If I could run 50 miles, something I had previously never believed I could do until I tried, what else am I capable of? 

What else am I capable of?

You may think I’m going to say a 100-mile race.

Well, I’m not. I’ve thought about it, but honestly it doesn’t really tickle my fancy these days. Running is great and I love it, but it’s not a passion like it used to be.

Plus, it’s too small of a goal.

The main point of this article is that we are capable of much more than our conditioned stinkin’ thinkin’ will allow us to even imagine.

I’m shooting for the stars here folks, and I know this sounds crazy, but…

I want to save the world.

Now… the thoughts going through both of our heads right now are probably not much different than the thoughts that tore through mine before my 50-mile race.

“That’s crazy. You can’t do that. You’re going to scare off all your subscribers. That’s unrealistic.”

“Throw in the towel.”

“You….. can’t.”

Allow me to take a brief moment here to reach inside my pocket and pull out a nice shiny BULLSHIT card.

Before you start arguing with me and jumping into the comment section all guns ablaze, please understand a thing or two about what I’m saying:

The idea I’m offering is to set bigger-than-possible goals. If you shoot for the stars, you may at least get to the moon, and that’s a pretty remarkable accomplishment.

I was once blessed with the opportunity to join my teacher Ammachi (aka the Hugging Saint from southern India) for a special little gathering in a devotee’s living room in Ann Arbor, MI. This kind of meeting is really quite rare since Ammachi is constantly surrounded by hundreds, if not thousands of admirers all day, everyday. She’s like one of India’s most famous Gurus.

A high school student was telling her of his ambitions to attend Harvard, and then to become a delegate for the United Nations so that he could fix the mess going on in Sudan, as well as address the injustices happening all over the planet.

Ammachi replied most sweetly, “Son, trying to change the world is like trying to empty the ocean one drop at a time. It will never happen. You should continue to strive to do what you can, but don’t be attached to the outcome.”

I thought that was a pretty good answer quite frankly. Go Ammachi. And this is coming from a person who arguably does more to save the world than anyone in history. Check out her website if you wish. She has hugged like 30 million people and opened free hospitals, orphanages, schools, universities, and on and on.

But this isn’t about trying to recruit you into a spiritual movement. It’s about reframing our orientation around what is possible and what can be done about the state of affairs that surrounds us.

Gandhi. Now, here’s another giant whom I admire with great fervor (plus I had a dream about him the other night. Don’t worry it was G-rated). Do you think Gandhi let those obnoxious pre-50-mile-race kind of voices stop him from kicking that old British regime out of India?

Since both Gandhi and Ammachi are from India, they both are/were familiar with the famous text called the Bhagavad Gita (Song of the Lord). One of the main points of this text is that we are not responsible for the fruit of our actions. Do your work the best you can, and the rest is in God’s hands.

So why not shoot for the stars? Why not take on the daunting task of saving the world? The worst that can happen is you’ll leave this planet a better place, with maybe some more trees, a handful of happier people who you weren’t a total jerk to, a little bit less pollution, and a legacy of good stories about someone who gave a shit.

I don’t care what the hordes of inner and outer naysayers shout in my head. I ain’t throwing in the towel. By having a HUGE, unrealistic, and slightly ridiculous goal in place, I find that many smaller goals line up underneath the “umbrella” of the BIG one.

I want to save the world - BIG Umbrella Goal

I want to be a writer who shares inspiring, encouraging, and positive healing messages with a whole bunch of people - smaller goal that goes under the umbrella.

I want to get paid to do this so I can do it more - under the umbrella.

I want to be in great physical shape, resolve addictions, and have lots of energy - under the umbrella.

I want to generate a sizeable income in order to purchase ecologically sustainable products which are usually more expensive, as well as have more time and freedom to serve in more ways ….

I want a great relationship with a partner who wants to save the world with me…

Under the umbrella goals.

I could go on, but you get the gist.

Under the umbrella goals get a lot of juice, a lot of electricity, when they are aligned with a BIG HUGE Umbrella goal. They get infused with chi (if you will) and become fortified with perseverance, faith, focus, and sticktoitness.

I can’t believe spell check let that last word slide.

So who’s in? What’s your BUG (Big Umbrella Goal)?? What goals align with it?

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In Other News…

I am THRILLED beyond reason to share that this week not only did Miracle Soup surpass 100 subscribers (!!!) but it also received it’s first paid subscription!

It’s kind of like running a 50-mile ultra. You put in enough early mornings, you find enough self-love to commit to carving out the time to do what lights you up, and gradually some results are reflected back your way.

Here’s the feedback from the notification of my first paid sub:

"Your style of writing and storytelling is beautiful. I find your words truly resonate with me. And, you are the only person I have a paid subscription to. I sure hope this doesn't add to your angst of more eyes reading or create any pressure to write more or better as you've mentioned in an older post. You speak from the heart and I feel it.”

This message literally caused me to tear up. It’s amazing what some words can do.

I told her it definitely adds to my angst and pressure, but that’s not her problem. Just more breaking through “pre-race voices”.

And don’t worry I also said thank you.