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Technically, the bakery → https://amarbakes.com/

started on June 29th when the Arizona Department of Health approved my menu.

It was on June 1st that I started writing about it on my Substack →https://notesfromthestateofcoherence.substack.com/p/i-think-...

But honestly, I’ve been working towards this bakery since I was 4 years old; sitting on the kitchen counter with my Mom and my Granny while they worked their magic.

Now that I’m here, it feels like this is always where the path was leading me.

The other day, my mom asked me if I was happy about having started the bakery. My response surprised me. I told her that no, I wasn’t really happy, but that it had never really been about chasing an emotional state.

The truth is that lately I am mostly overwhelmed. Not in a bad way, mind you. It’s very exciting and fulfilling, but it’s all new, and for me, that’s uncomfortable.

For someone like myself, who places a high premium on comfort and familiarity, it’s stressful. I am living almost entirely on the edge at the moment.

Yes, baking is something that I love deeply, and there is great joy in the act of it. At the same time, it is completely honest to say that currently there is no comfort zone in my life.

And that’s O.K.

What I’ve realized is that the leap into creating the bakery was never about chasing an emotional state such as “happy.” Emotions are the weather. Here one moment, and gone the next. They are ephemeral and fleeting. More and more I see that building my life around an emotional state is [for me anyway] a recipe for disaster.

Part of it is that I am not primarily driven by emotions. Yes, I am an emotional creature. I think most humans are to a degree. But it’s not the arrival of, or lack of, an emotional state that tends to deeply affect me.

For me, building my life around a desired emotional state is like trying to build a foundation out of water. It’s simply not built for long term viability. It’s also nearly impossible.

What seems to be my holy grail(s) are things like:

Reciprocity.

Clarity.

Sustainability.

Stability.

Interdependence.

Freedom.

Fulfillment.

Simplicity.

These are the states that really turn my crank. They’re also the things that have been in short supply over the past few years.

So when I decided to reorient my life towards Amar Bakes, it wasn’t about wanting to be “happy.” It was about building a life that first and foremost is built around my fulfillment and well being.

Then it became about finding a way to take something I love deeply and deploy it in service of that vision.

A lot of people have reached out to me over the past couple of months asking for the magic formula of how to make a leap into the unknown.

I hate to disappoint you, but here’s the answer:

I just did it.

Literally.

One day, it became painful enough that I finally allowed myself to accept that what had been working wasn’t working anymore.

It was undeniable that Spirit was asking me to move onto greener pastures, and had been for some time.

What I wanted only seemed unavailable to me because I wasn’t allowing myself to move towards it. I was stuck in the mind set of needing a “sign” or another “message.” I believed that there was a “right time” and that if I somehow miscalculated in making a change, I was doomed. At some point, I’d convinced myself that unless it was delivered to my doorstep, I wasn’t allowed to take steps towards building something else.

I had turned the concept of manifestation into a prison that could only be unlocked through divine decree.

The truth is, I was the only thing standing in my way.

My demand for clarity before acting. My belief that I needed permission. The idea that there was a “right” path and a “wrong” one. The assumption that if I somehow made the wrong choice that I was going to be doomed to suffering and misery.

That’s just a small sample of the millions of tiny ways in which I undermined myself.

Someone recently asked me when I felt comfortable with deciding to effectively retire from my practice and start building the bakery.

My answer to her is the same one I am sharing here:

I didn’t.

I never felt comfortable with my choice. I still don’t. I know it was the right choice. I am glad I made the choice. I have no regrets. And still, I have yet to feel “comfortable” with any of this.

My desire for comfort finally become secondary to actually trusting myself to follow the path I’d been wanting to follow for decades.

The difference is that I stopped asking God for permission. I stopped hoping. I stopped trying to “manifest” it and I just did it.

No longer are my prayers along the lines of:

“Please God make this happen.”

Now it’s:

“Hey God, nice to see you friend. This is where I want to go next and this is what I want to build. Can you please open the path? Thanks!”

Here’s what I’d forgotten:

1. God wants what I want.

2. I am always and eternally supported.

3. It’s my belief in myself that creates the degree to which I can be supported.

4. True clarity doesn’t come before action. It only arrives after.

5. Everything between deciding to leap and finally arriving is about trust and faith.

6. I am God.

7. If I ever find myself feeling lost... return to #1 and begin again.

That’s it.

I stopped expecting the Universe to deliver anything to me and got my ass up off the meditation cushion and started moving in the direction of where I wanted to go.

I stopped requiring certainty.

I stopped worshipping comfort.

I stopped shaking my fists and yelling at the sky whenever things got wobbly.

I accepted it all as evidence of my worthiness and became curious about where I had forgotten my sovereignty and just kept going.

I became delusional in my belief that no matter what, everything was, and is, working in my favor.

Look... here’s the truth. I had 100% certainty in my old life in terms of what I did and how I did it, and over the past 24 months, certainty has gotten me fuck all.

Not because I was being punished, but because the life had gone out of it. Spirit had moved to the next level and was calling me forward. It just took me a while to finally heed the call.

Ironically, it was my willingness to sacrifice everything I had built and walk away if that’s what it took to ensure my well-being that finally got things moving.

It was only after I’d decided my well-being was 100% the priority that it finally came to me.

When I made it an unequivocal requirement, life finally relented.

Also, my willingness to look foolish, to make mistakes, to rely on those wiser and more experienced than I, to not know, and to begin climbing a ridiculously steep learning curve, definitely helped.

I’m recalling at the first of the year when the messages from the Fire Horse energy were all along the lines of:

“This year, you either saddle up and let me carry you, or you get dragged behind me. Either way, change is here.”

Change is most definitely here.

So, are you along for the ride? Or are you getting dragged behind it?

A couple of days ago, I hopped on YouTube and shared a mid-month Tarot update. The message was definitely one that mirrors this newsletter.

The time for action is now.

That video can be watched here →

At some point, you just have to decide that what you want is the priority for your life.

I think you’ll be surprised at just how responsive and resilient life is. It is capable of handling far more than you think.

You just have to let it show you.

If you’re seeking guidance and insight, my books are open a few hours a week for Tarot readings. → BOOK HERE ←

Thank you again to everyone who has contributed to helping build the bakery. The support is greatly appreciated!

If you’d like to be a part of it, follow this link → https://throne.com/amarbakes

Bakingly,

Amar

*this entry shares a copy of my most recent newsletter.

Hello, humans!

My gosh... what a month July was!

So much transpired in such a short period of time, I find myself challenged to summarize it all in a meaningful way.

The bakery is officially up and running. I’ve landed my first wholesale account here in Sedona, and have been steadily building day by day.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been in this space of things being so new and pristine.

For someone who has reinvented themselves as many times as I have, you’d think I’d be used to this process by now.

I’d like to say it has been like riding a bike.

What’s more accurate though would be to say “It’s been like riding a bike, after you’ve woken up from a head injury and have realized you have amnesia and now you have to learn how to ride a bike again.”

That’s honest. 😂

Frankly, I was a bit taken aback by how atrophied my reinvention muscles had become.

After a few weeks of push and pull, I’ve finally managed to find a place of grounded awareness. I’m slowly but surely making sense of this new reality and finding my orientation.

You don’t know what you don’t know until you’re forced to assess what you actually know.

Ya know?

The most surprising development over the past week or so has been a call to return to guidance work in some capacity.

When I recorded the video for July and sent out the newsletter, I honestly had no idea if it would be my last offering or not. 

In many ways it felt like I was saying farewell for good. However, I also got the sense that keeping some space available for an evolution of this work wasn’t a horrible idea.

The trick seemed to be simply walking away completely. To focus 100% on the new venture, while allowing the echoes of the old chapter fell silent.

In fact, I was so certain that I was moving on, I canceled my Zoom account, my booking calendar app, and even my newsletter list subscription.

Honestly, for the first few weeks of July, I literally had no available bandwidth for anything other than focusing on Amar Bakes completely.

It consumed my available attention in the best possible way.

Then, a couple of days ago, I started to sense a new desire bubbling up.

Much to my surprise, I found myself with a real hunger to return to Tarot reading.

Not as a sole focus, not even as an identity, but as another way to connect, share, and fulfill spending time doing something that I love.

It’s interesting that through everything I’ve done over the past 15 years, Tarot is the thing that remains.

I love doing Tarot readings. Plainly and simply, I find great joy in decoding and interpreting the messages that come through. It’s really fun for me.

My first experience with Tarot actually predates all of this work.

I can’t for the life of me remember how I did it, but somehow, at age 16, in the middle of rural Wyoming, in the mid 80s, I managed to order a deck of Tarot cards through the mail. They were an OG Rider Waite deck.

I remember so vividly the day they came.

I stared at the box for a long time, finally opening them with a sort of reverence. Like I had discovered some long lost artifact that held keys to the secrets of an ancient world.

I shuffled through the cards, taking in the images. There was a faded sort of recognition from a deeply buried and very still part of myself. I recall so clearly being a bit spellbound by them. 

While I had zero conscious understanding of how to actively use the cards, I felt an illogical connection to them. I understood they were a kind of divination tool, but that was about it. Beyond that I had no idea what to practically do with them. Even after reading the accompanying little white booklet, they remained a complete mystery.

It was an experience that defied my understanding at the time.

Simultaneously totally foreign and yet oddly familiar. Kind of like seeing a face of someone you recognize from a long long time ago, but can no longer recall the details of. 

Anyway, my connection to and love for Tarot has endured since I was that curious and wide-eyed 16 year old.

So, yesterday, I decided to do something I haven’t done in years.

I recorded a monthly Tarot Forecast for the energies of August.

WATCH HERE

I’ve also made the decision to reopen my books for private Tarot readings. My availability for them is a bit limited, I’m only offering them a few days a week for limited windows of time.

This is about weaving in an additional passion alongside the bakery, not finding something to replace it.

Finally, my dream of a life where I get to share the joy of all the things I love to do is becoming a reality!

You can book a session using the button below.

BOOK HERE

I can’t say how often I’ll be sharing video content on YouTube, so for now I’ll invite you to enjoy the video above.

Also, a big THANK YOU to those of you who have stepped up to help build the bakery. Your gifts of financial support, and items from the wishlist for the bakery have been appreciated so much.

Thank you! 🙏

If you’d like to be a part of building Amar Bakes, I’ll link the list below.

HELP BUILD THE BAKERY

I hope August for you is a month of bold, decisive action.

Sometimes, you just gotta leap and figure it out on the way.

-Amar

I’d like to think that in the final tally of any individual’s life there’s a balancing that occurs. I also have to imagine that sometimes the notion of balance, as in what one individual gave and received, or how they failed and succeeded, is inclusive of a larger accounting of what the soul has sown and reaped.

What I mean is that perhaps there are times when a singular life, taken out of the greater context of the reconciliation of a soul’s balance sheet, looks like it was terribly unfair. One person miraculously seems to thrive no matter what despite even the most harrowing circumstances. Another never seems to catch a break and encounters strife and suffering regardless of what they do or don’t do.

Yet, in the end, I have to imagine that every incarnation is a line item in a much larger running total of experience that always finds its way to balance.

The reason this is at the forefront of my mind today is that after a very long season of ebb (and I mean L O N G!!!) it would seem that the flow is returning.

It’s really interesting that this time around it seems to be so challenging to allow it back in.

Even stranger is the truth that I never consciously chose the ebb. I didn’t wake up one morning in early 2019 and say “Hey universe, I’d like for my life to be super challenging and totally suck for the next 7 years. Please ensure that, no matter what, everything I touch during this period turns to shit.”

Nope. Never said it. Not even once.

And the past 7 years happened anyway.

It brings me back to questions I’ve had about the notion of free will recently. Sure, we are free to choose how we respond or react. But we don’t always get to choose what we experience. At least not from our human level of choice.

But, I digress…

For someone like myself, who has uprooted and started over multiple times, starting from scratch is something I’m quite familiar with.

By last count, I’ve moved more than 45 times in my life, held over 20 jobs, lived in 4 major US cities (and several smaller ones), and have built (including Amar Bakes) 7 businesses. You would think by now I’d be a pro at beginning again. And I am. However, for some reason, this transition has been stickier than the previous ones.

Currently I seem to get a week or so of uninterrupted forward momentum where all systems are go. I’m building and creating and flowing freely, then something starts to wobble and I find myself laid out by analysis paralysis and the parade of potential pitfalls.

Fortunately, the familiarity of this part of the process is starting to return. Though they’ve been long dormant, the aspects that know the dance of reinvention are still as capable as ever. It’s requiring a longer warm up than I anticipated, but they finally seem to be coming around.

Kind of like riding a bike with rusty gears. It’s just taking a bit more effort to get things up and running again.

Or maybe it’s not the parts that handle reinvention have been slow to reactivate so much as it’s the part that oversees continuity has been reluctant to soften its grip. It’s been hoarding the lion’s share of the inner resources for about 15 years now, and simply doesn’t want to surrender its tenure.

I understand that completely.

I’d have happily stayed where I’d been if I could have. But “happily” is the linchpin. As the soul begins to divest itself and move on to new experiences, it’s only a matter of time before the human follows. At that point, the human experience is going to be a journey of steadily diminishing returns until it heeds the call and moves on to follow the nudges of the soul.

That much I know.

So I guess a bit of push and pull is to be expected, and welcomed. It’s the sign that things are shifting and changing. Growing pains of a sort.

Now if I could only remember to remember this the NEXT time I am ready to re-iterate my entire life.

Someone please remind me in 15 or 20 years when I’m prepping to start this cycle again.

AMAR BAKES - https://amarbakes.com/
HELP BUILD THE BAKERY - https://throne.com/amarbakes

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“I’m a baker.” I said, responding to his question. The answer escaped my lips before the mind even had a chance to filter and edit it.

Over the past 15 years of building and sustaining my guidance, healing, and mentorship practice, the one thing I’d never fully clarified was my elevator pitch. I failed to find an accurate response to the question of “So, what do you do for a living?”

Sometimes it was an easy answer. When I was in the company of spiritual or “woo-woo” folk, I could say whatever I wanted and people would immediately understand.

The challenge arrived when speaking to [those who I assumed were] more “normal” folks.

The code switching happened almost autonomically. I’d become so accustomed to the internal choreography of self editing and shape shifting, I’d ceased to register just how depleting it was.

When speaking to someone like a new doctor, a teller at the bank, or an online customer service representative, I never fully knew what to say. Sometimes I would claim being a part of the Wellness Community. Occasionally I would place myself within the Coaching Space. Whatever the answer was, it was never a fully accurate description of what I do.

Or did, rather.

When faced with this question, the immediate response always came with a mix of internal tension as I attempted to assess the level of understanding the querent possessed; along with a rapid filtering of potential answers that would both safely satisfy their inquiry and preserve my well-being.

It would always hearken back to earlier chapters of this life when, before I had officially come out, I was forced to answer questions like “When are you going to meet a nice woman and settle down?”

There was always some stopping and stuttering as the mind and the mouth moved to coordinate an answer that would both fulfill their curiosity and staunch the flow of any follow-up questions in that same vein.

Living life as one who feels compelled to make everyone else comfortable with who you are before you can stop bracing and relax is exhausting in a way that you’ll never understand until you’ve lived it.

It’s like walking around your whole life carrying an apology that belongs both to everybody and nobody, and you can’t put it down until you find its rightful owner.

Impossible.

But “Baker?”

That’s an easy title to claim. One that everyone understands, and nobody is confused by.

It’s also one that, blessedly, I don’t feel like I have to clarify, or manufacture a specific explanation for based upon what I assume is someone’s level of comprehension or open-mindedness.

So when my new Optometrist asked “Tell me Amar, what do you do for a living?”

For the first time in 15 years, I didn’t have to think about it.

There was no hesitation.

There was no holding my breath for follow-up questions, or a lack of understanding, or digging for more information.

For the first time in 15 years, the answer was as boring and mundane as the question.

My goodness, it would seem that, despite my best efforts, I may have actually stumbled upon a life that’s as easy to live as it is to carry.

Who knew?

HELP BUILD THE BAKERY - https://throne.com/amarbakes

https://amarbakes.com/

Thursday, July 9, 2026

It’s a strange thing this liminal space.

I’ve been here before. It’s not new.

It’s just odd.

No matter what, this in between of “not-quite-there-and-not-quite-here,” is always really uncomfortable for me.

It seems as if 95% of me is fully on-board with Amar Bakes. The other 5% is dragging its feet, gnashing its teeth, flailing about, and doing its level best to kick up all sorts of chaos and confusion. The Drama Queen Protocol™️ is in full effect.

The impact that the errant 5% has on the whole is quite remarkable.

I’m sailing along, getting things done. Feeling good about what I am building.

Then…

BAM! 💥

Here comes the parade of fears. The litany of unanswerable questions. The barrage of doubt, panic, and [for good measure] a mortar of generalized existential dread.

I know what this is.

I’ve been here before. It’s not new.

It’s just depleting.

These fears aren’t real; as in they’re not grounded into anything actual. It’s simply old parts that see any deviation from the narrowly defined path of my lived history as a recipe for certain death.

Ironically, if these parts aren’t ultimately integrated or released, it will be certain death. Or at least find me living a life where I may as well have kicked the bucket.

Not to be maudlin about it… but seriously.

The more deeply invested in this I am, the more rigid and inflexible the resistant parts become.

I know how to work with these incongruent parts. I know how to soften, soothe, and ultimately reorient them. It’s just exhausting to have to do so. I feel like I’ve been hustling, grinding, and surviving for my whole life.

And I’m tired.

Tired of working with a nervous system that’s so backwards.

Seriously. Who fucking designed the Human Nervous System?

For something as elegant, intelligent, and magnificent as it is, it’s also really fucking shoddy in the security department.

Like how is [the human operating system] SO easily manipulated, controlled, and corrupted?

It seems like the equivalent of the password to Fort Knox being “password".”

If a human’s true and authentic sense of self and notions of actual well being can be SO easily violated and distorted, then the original designers have some serious explaining to do.

My fucking iPhone has more native security than my nervous system does.

Friday, July 10th, 2026

In terms of progress, yesterday was [mostly] a wash.

Not entirely mind you.

There’s the visible and obvious external physical progress.

The kind where I am rolling up my sleeves and getting my hands dirty. There was a bit of that yesterday. Still forging through the red tape necessary to be fully compliant with all of the government agencies. It’s not that it’s excessive. It’s just that until all of my documents, forms, and licenses are in place, I can’t do any direct to customer sales. Which is where the profit margins are wider and the transactions are more immediate.

The sticking point for my mental well being currently is how to make it across the bridge from where I am to profitability in my life. With more money currently going out than coming in, the margins of available resources feel uncomfortably slim.

There’s also the kind of progress that’s internal.

From the outside, it’s quiet. Internally though it’s a barroom brawl. At least it felt like that for me yesterday. The tension I was carrying inside yesterday was so overwhelming, it stopped me in my tracks. Aside from the few things I was able to complete (as soon as they’re resolved, I’ll be able to move into full swing operation) the majority of my time was spent tending to my inner fears and resistance. It’s astounding to me that someone such as myself, who is highly attuned and capable, armed with numerous tools, experience, and insight can still be waylaid like I have been.

I find myself getting so frustrated with and by myself.

The thing that feels the crunchiest right now is the subject of resources. Money, time, support, etc. The answer to the question of how to create a life that’s fully resourced continues to leave me stymied. I get so freaking frustrated when I look around and see how, on one hand, I am doing all the things one would think need to be done to ensure a resourced life. Yet, on the other hand, I can’t seem to figure out how to hang on to or consistently receive what I actually need.

Why is it that this is still a sticking point in my experience?

I don’t feel like I walk around beating the drum of scarcity in my day to day life. Yet, I am also aware of parts internally that feel paralyzed by fear when it comes to having what I need. I have done so much internal work around receiving and abundance and worthiness and all the requisite things that I’ve assumed will create a better life.

And still…

I know that sitting and talking and ruminating on it isn’t the key.

It feels like decisive, forward action is the ticket.

Which is what I am doing.

And still…

Saturday, July 11th, 2026

Currently going down the rabbit hole of packaging. Surprisingly, there are a lot of options out there that align with the values that Amar Bakes upholds. Packaging that is sustainable– that’s compostable, contains no petroleum plastics, or nasty forever chemicals is the key. I’m happy to say there are quite a few options out there.

The sticking point is the $400+ price tag on ordering just a single case of each.

Today the resource issue doesn’t feel like an insurmountable monolith. It feels more like a niggling knot to be unraveled. An itch that is almost within reach of being scratched.

One thing I’ve never been able to fully grasp is the difference between acknowledging what’s happening, and not focusing on it to the extent that I perpetuate an unwanted experience. I mean, my current financial situation is what it is until it’s not. Yes, life turns on a dime and it can change in an instant. So, maybe the solution isn’t to turn a temporary contraction into “OH MY GOD I AM GOING TO BE BROKE FOREVER” and let it be something more along the lines of “I trust the resources I require will arrive in the right moment at the right time.”

That feels better.

Honestly though, it’s a challenge to trust something so vague. From my perspective, I need resources now. Because, until I have packaging for my baked goods, I can’t sell them. Until I can sell them, I can’t make revenue from them. If I can’t make revenue from them…

You get the picture.

Is the answer in a moment like this simply to walk away and trust? To go focus on the things that I can move the mark on and let the things that are currently feeling a little sticky be until they unstick?

Maybe.

What I know doesn’t work is hovering over the problem like an anxious insect expecting it to magically untangle itself.

A watched pot never boils.

A watched problem never resolves.

Monday, July 13th, 2026

Re-reading the entries from this past week, I am struck by the peaks and valleys in my experience. Someone commented recently on a previous post that my experience of building this bakery was akin to giving birth.

I completely agree.

There are times when it definitely less like building something and more like birthing it into existence.

Just like labor, there’s absolutely a rhythm to this process.

I dig deep into my inner resolves. This stirs up some old fears and doubts which activate a contraction of sorts. The old stuff needs to be metabolized and purged from the system. The wave of contraction clears as I allow myself to fully feel the depths of what’s moving out. The fever breaks, the air clears, and suddenly there’s a purview available to me that’s more expanded. Less fraught, and definitely clearer.

I’d say yesterday is when the fever broke.

Through a series of events over the weekend, the details of which aren’t important, I saw once again how the mind created a version of reality that was incomplete. Not entirely false, mind you. Just severely imbalanced.

When I was able to pull myself out of the miasma the mind had created, I saw that things weren’t even close to being as dire as what the mind was offering.

The version of reality available to me through the mind is always some version of “making the best of a worst case scenario.” It’s always fraught with disaster lurking right around the corner. A boogyman ready to pounce at any minute.

The amount of energy I’ve spent in my life bracing for a nightmare reality that’s never actually arrived is astounding to me.

The deeper parts of self however are rooted into something steadier. There’s a maturity there that immediately grants access to reserves of trust and faith. The voice of the body is far more stable and reliable. It’s not so easily swayed by temporary circumstances.

Now if I could just tattoo that onto my forehead, or somehow weave it into my cellular makeup, so that it won’t be so easily forgotten next time, I’d be golden.

For something that’s merely a temporarily constructed side effect of the human experience, the mind sure can be convincing.

I did zero writing last week.

It’s not that I forgot about it or was unaware of it, I just didn’t feel myself called to the keyboard. At least not strongly enough for me to actually sit and write.

Something did happen though.

Something big.

This past Thursday I took some samples of my baked goods to the owner of a local grocery store. She focuses almost exclusively on local growers and makers. On Saturday I got an email from her saying she really enjoyed my stuff and she would love to carry my goods in her store!

Less than 45 days from deciding to start a bakery, and I have my first wholesale account.

It’s official.

I’m a professional baker.

To be honest, this development kinda threw me for a loop for a moment or two. It’s odd because as excited as I am, I am also not surprised at all.

I knew this would be successful. I could feel it in my bones.

I think the momentary overwhelm was simply my system finally accepting that this is the direction I’m heading.

Perhaps because I have been talking, thinking, dreaming about this for so long, the system was like “Uhhh, yeah…we’re gonna wait to see if you actually follow through before we get excited.”

Makes sense.

The thing that surprised me a bit was how emotional I got when I read the email.

Yes, excitement.

Yes, relief.

Yes, slightly gobsmacked at how quickly it’s all coming together.

More than that though, the emotions were about the fact that I chose myself.

Finally.

Not the voice of fear. Not the voice of a million “shoulds.” Not the critical voice trying to keep me small in an attempt to preserve the familiar life. Not the voice of what’s known and comfortable.

I chose what I wanted.

I chose me.

A life that feeds me in return. A life getting to do what I love for a living.

Because I finally trusted the desire itself.

I finally saw that the desire IS the invitation.

The desire IS the sign.

The desire IS the first breadcrumb calling me forward.

This time I decided that I’m choosing me.

And nothing is going to stand in my way.

Let the baking commence.

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Monday, June 22nd, 2026

O.K. I’m doing it.

I figured out a way to walk out of the room that doesn’t require going scorched earth.

It does require me to actually follow through on what I said I was going to do. It allows me to do it in a way that makes sense and is sustainable.

Yesterday, I canceled a bunch of unnecessary apps that were nothing but a financial drain. They were useful at one point, but now they just suck up resources unnecessarily.

I also deleted my LinkedIn profile a few days ago. Ultimately that was a taste move, not a strategy move. That was more about just refusing to engage in something as gross as LinkedIn. Nobody needs LinkedIn. N O B O D Y.

Seriously, is THAT the best humanity can do for a business networking site? It’s offensive to me in so many ways, even eternity isn’t enough time to list them all.

In fact, I think we’ve become so accustomed to accepting whatever the tech industry shoves down our throats as “new, necessary, and innovative” that we’ve stopped critically thinking about what’s been deemed as “progress.”

I don’t NEED a million subscriptions to a million little apps. I don’t NEED to be constantly tethered to or staring at a fucking blue light screen. I don’t NEED other companies offering “solutions” such as new tech to filter out the blue wavelength so that my “modern life” can be safer?!

WTF kind of insanity is that? We all collectively KNOW that this blue light/screen exposure is not just harming us physically. It hits us psychically, energetically, and psychologically too. We’re STILL trying to figure out a million ways to outsmart the toxicity that we seem to have blindly accepted as just a part of our modern world.

NO!

Why not just refuse to try and further integrate ourselves into this borg life, put down the screens, and start requiring more of ourselves and the companies who are so desperate to sell to us? Who the fuck cares what big tech, big business, big pharma, big government want from us or for us? If we just refuse to participate, they’ll have no choice.

I’m not necessarily a Luddite. Technology has its place. But if that place is driving a wedge between me and the natural world, that is NOT the kind of tech I approve of.

As long as I am the user of the tool, and not the one being used by the tool, we’re good.

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2026

This morning I felt the mind [FINALLY] letting go of Amar Energy. A flicker of knowing that was allowed to register.

It reminded me of my life in the very late 90s when I was in Seattle before moving to NYC. I’d been dating Joe for a little over 2 years and we’d been really happy together. We’d even started having conversations about moving in together and taking it to the next level.

I was all in, until I wasn’t.

What started to creep in was the knowing that my career (I was a makeup artist then and things had just started to take off for me) was taking me places that the relationship might not survive. I had been denying the quiet nudges for a while, but it was becoming increasingly clear that we (as a couple) were living on borrowed time.

Joe was raised in a family that was deeply established in Seattle’s society. It wasn’t just any family, it was a “Seattle Family.” This meant his allegiance was to their traditional expectations. As in: He was never going to leave Seattle unless they ordered him to. My allegiance at the time was to me and my budding career. I didn’t want to break up with him, but I didn’t want to stay in a relationship only for him either. So, I did the grown up mature thing, and walked away while it was still good. Breaking up wasn’t necessarily easy, but it was necessary. Especially for me to make the most of the opportunities that were coming my way.

It was a willing sacrifice.

While I can’t say that walking away from Amar Energy is walking away from something that’s “still good.” I can say that I walking away definitely feels like a willing sacrifice.

Breaking up is hard to do, but it’s also necessary sometimes.

If only to intentionally clear space for something new.

Wednesday, June 24th, 2026

It’s challenging to walk away from my practice without carrying a big ration of resentment on my back.

I’ve learned enough at this point to know that those kind of emotional burdens, once claimed, can be very difficult to offload entirely. Resentment is such an easy one to justify. Because there was a whole lot of blood, sweat, tears, effort, and genius that went pretty much unnoticed over the years.

The amount of brilliant offers (especially recently) that died on the vine, or only had one or two sign ups is more than I care to count. It’s really humbling to know that what I’m putting out there is really really powerful and also, for whatever reason, not the right thing at the right time for most people.

It’s been so maddening over and over to see my actually life-changing work and video content getting a handful of views while a video on the meaning of 11:11 gets 10 million+ views.

*insert savage eye-roll

I’d say the biggest challenge over the past 15 years of doing this work has been two fold.

1. I’ve always been a bit ahead of the curve with this work. One of the most fascinating aspects has been living a few steps ahead of the collective curve. Over and over throughout the arc of this work I have found myself going through something– a personal eruption, and energetic upgrade, a phase of awakening– and then reporting back through video or written content with my experience. I cannot tell you the number of times over the years I’ve been met with someone sharing that they were literally going through what I had only just been speaking about. It was often uncanny how parallel it was.

2. My work is not fluffy or pop spirituality. My work requires personal dedication and application. And I get it. It feels super exciting and interesting to dive into some of the more magical and exotic aspects of this work. It’s fascinating to learn about 11:11, the Archangels, and our galactic origins. In the end though, that information is no more useful in terms of existentially freeing yourself, than knowing what your great grandmother’s eye-color was. When you boil it all down, none of that knowledge is going to move the mark on the actual long term quality of your human experience. My work has consistently offered actual, measurable, literal ways to actively create change in one’s life instantly. But, my experience has also shown me that the majority of humans are really fucking avoidant when it comes to doing their own inner work. They usually only show up to do it willingly when life has pushed their back against the wall and there’s no other choice.

In my humble opinion, most humans aren’t interested in actual change. They either want someone to do the work for them. Or they want to find a way to do the work that doesn’t require them to actually change anything. Like they’re hoping for a magical scenario where they get to be deluded, locked in compulsive patterns, AND actually healed. Um, sorry. It doesn’t work like that.

Also, I have 100% been that human over and over… looking for the magical fix that doesn’t require me to give up or change anything.

Not to say that I wasn’t wildly successful in my practice. I was. I helped thousands of people and it was mostly a joy to do so. I guess I am still processing the disappointment of the past few years. Which, if I am honest, has been the most potent era of this work. SO much goodness went unexplored by so many people.

You can lead a horse to water…

I used to get really worked up about this. I used to shake my fist at the sky and tell God “There’s no way in HELL I am going down as the Van Gogh of the modern spiritual leaders! I don’t want my work to be discovered only after I am dead. I want fame and glory now!”

Kind of like Veruca Salt.

Gross.

Human entitlement is often so hilarious to me.

Especially my own.

Ironically, it looks like the fate of Van Gogh may very well be mine. Not that I am going to cut off an appendage, but I have given up the expectation that my body of work will ever be anything other than what it is and has already been.

The difference now is that it is no longer of any concern. The work I created and the stuff that is out there will still, no doubt, change lives. It just may not happen in a way that gives the ego the strokes it so desperately feels entitled to.

If that’s the cost of freedom, I think I’m OK with that.

Thursday, June 25th, 2026

I think I am officially in the in between. I also get the sense that this is the very space the mind was trying like hell to avoid.

Currently there is nothing I am actively promoting for Amar Energy. I have one client I am actively working with in a coaching/guidance capacity and that’s it. No events in the pipeline. No potential future clients lining up for intake calls. Also, still awaiting the approval of my cottage food license. Also, no forward motion on any job applications and resumes I’ve submitted.

This is literally the space in between.

I don’t think my life could get any more nebulous than it is right now.

I am also a bit taken aback at the lack of anxiety. To be fair, there are a few little spikes of “Oh shit!” here and there, but for the most part, it’s smooth sailing.

Maybe I’ve simply depleted my adrenal system to the point that it’s no longer capable of creating a fight or flight response.

Maybe, after 40+ years of it, walking around in a state of abject terror has finally gotten so old the mind has given it up.

Maybe I have finally found a way to rest in faith and leave the details up to God.

I am reminded of a recent interaction I had with a trusted advisor. I was stressing out about something and he suggested I give up the stress and allow a bit more hope into the room.

My reactive response was “Hope doesn’t fucking pay the bills.”

His [maddeningly accurate] reply?

“Neither does anxiety.”

Hmph. 😑

Friday, June 26th, 2026

This morning I went to the creek with a friend for a cold plunge. As we were walking down the hill I remarked that I’m not 100% sure where my awareness has been this week.

It definitely feels like it’s been elsewhere. Not like I’ve been disembodied or wandering aimlessly through the intellect. It’s more like the bulk of my consciousness has been somewhere else, doing something else. More than anything, it’s been an experience of not having a ton of bandwidth for much aside from resting, recharging, and the occasional burst of inspired productivity.

Slowly, and by degrees, I feel as if I have been reclaiming myself from my practice. In many ways, it’s been reclaiming myself from my awakening and subsequent healing. For 15 years it was “surrender, let go, give in, give up, unclench, collapse, release, unbind, unleash, unchain.”

While this was all necessary and invaluable, at some point, one must rise from the steady descent into their personal underworld. The Void isn’t a place of permanent residence. The healing chamber is a phase with a beginning, middle, and end. Every arc has an inflection point, and at some point the return begins.

I think a lot of people get so deeply entwined with their healing identity, that they forget to stop and question where the end point is. Understanding that healing is not an eternal process is one thing. To stop and ask yourself "am I still actually healing, or just prolonging re-entry into the world at large?” is another thing entirely.

I think a lot of this simply comes down to getting clear on what I have been so deeply over-identified with. I never intended that “The Healer” would become an identity. I was unaware that [at least part of] what’s been driving my choices and actions has been a deep sense of unworthiness. The belief being something along the lines of “Who and what I am is inherently wrong or bad, so I have to find someone or something else to be.”

When you believe that you’re existentially faulty, everything becomes an exercise in shapeshifting. Always looking for the next best version of who I could become or what I could do. Perennially searching for anything to enhance, improve, or better yet, entirely transform me.

To have finally granted myself permission to simply be feels almost miraculous.

Not always searching, or chasing, or reaching, or seeking.

Simply pausing, stopping, breathing, and being.

Let life come to me for a change.

I’m tired of always singing for my supper.

Saturday, June 27th, 2026

It’s official! I have been approved for my cottage food license. Why does that feel more daunting than exciting? Most likely my inner overachiever is freaking out because now he thinks unless I become the next Martha Stewart I will have failed. This is the same voice that, when I started to actively build the bakery, piped up with “OMG! We don’t know how to do wedding cakes!! How are we going to open a bakery!?”

GIRL! Who said anything about weddings?!

It really is hilarious to see how the mind ALWAYS wants to go from neutral curiosity straight into building a billion dollar empire. Sheesh! The reminder that this is about small, sustainable steps is more important than ever.

The urge to go too big too fast is always there. I absolutely love the building phase. Historically, the bigger and more complex, the more satisfying it was.

I still like the idea of approaching the art of building a business like a puzzle to be solved. However, I also think it’s important to temper that with the truth that even the NYT takes it easy on the first few puzzles of the week. It’s usually not until Thursday’s puzzle that things get seriously challenging. I’ll take the same approach. I am going to let Amar Bakes be as simple and small as is practical until it shows me what it’s capable of. I’ve no interest in overbuilding to the point that I create an unwieldy structure that can barely stand upright on its own.

Small. Simple. Sustainable.

It’s that. Or it’s nothing.

Sunday, June 28th, 2026

Yesterday, by the early evening, I was starting to feel a bit overwhelmed.

100% there was a part of me that thought this bakery idea was just a temporary folly. Now that it’s official, the reality becomes more, well, real I guess.

I find it fascinating how the mind will always revert to the familiar. Even if the familiar is dying, decaying, or dead. The past couple of days, as I have been deepening my focus on the bakery, the mind has started to [subtly] try and move me back to focusing on content, event creation and promoting Amar Energy. There’s nothing to promote. All of the artifacts remain. The YouTube channel, my Instagram, even my calendar remains viable, open, and active. When people are moved to seek guidance, support, or coaching, they’ll know where to find me.

I think this is when I exercise my personal agency and decide where I focus and what I pour my resources into. I could go around and around for countless laps on the “just one more attempt at resuscitating my practice” merry-go-round. There’s just no need to though. This is where I begin to unequivocally establish what’s central to my life now.

What I find most surprising about that decision is the almost immediate response from some recess of the stress addled mind is one of contraction. As if I am somehow “wrong” in my choice. As if there’s a secret cosmic list hidden somewhere that specifically outlines the parameters of both my success and failure in this life. That’s just not fucking true. By any stretch of the imagination.

It’s astounding to me just how deep the old belief of existential wrongness goes. The story that tells me no matter what I am always going to come up short. That I’m just not quite good enough to “make it.” Even though there’s no objective criteria that would confirm whether or not I have made it seems to be irrelevant to the mind. It’s just living in a hall of mirrors of its own creation.

This morning I was reminded of the inherent illogical nonsense that runs the mental show. The message “stay in the body” emerged clearly once again as I was sitting with my morning coffee. That’s as simple as it gets.

The mind is a hall of horrors.

The body is rational, sane, clear, and compassionate.

The body builds, the mind tracks.

The mind organizes and recalls our history of experience, progress, and learning.

The body leads, guides, and supports.

The problem is that most humans have that reversed.

I did for years.

And I wondered why I always ended up in a place that was both terrifying and vaguely familiar.

The mind doesn’t actually know what I want or need. It’s self absorbed to the degree that it can only try and gaslight me into believing that I want what it wants. Or that what it wants is the only option before me. Or that what it wants is the best case scenario.

None of which is true.

Absolutely none.

It’s taken me almost 55 years to finally accept that the mind is a wasteland when it comes to anything original. In fact it’s a wasteland when it comes to anything other than regurgitated ideas, thoughts, and concepts. The best it can do is cobble together some sort of Frankenstein’s monster of what’s already failed or outdated.

The mind is not a visionary.

It’s an archive masquerading as a generator.
A cog pretending to be the entire machine.
A single piece posing as the entire puzzle.

The emperor truly has no clothes.

Monday, June 15th, 2026

Things feel like such a roller coaster right now. I was a bit surprised at how much the javalinas destroying my plants affected me.

I suppose when so much is uncertain and undefined in my life, I become very attached to the things I can directly control. Plus the fact that, for me, there’s a very real emotional investment into the plants I grow. They are more than plants, they’re my babies.

If you know, you know.

The transition away from my full time practice into building the bakery has me feeling all sorts of ways. I’m excited about what’s to come, but figuring out how to make this shift gracefully is proving harder than I thought. Especially since I’m still waiting for approval from the state. I know it will come through, I can’t imagine that it wouldn’t. Until then though, all I can do is keep building to ensure that when things are ready to go, I can hit the ground running.

Tuesday, June 16th, 2026

Javalinas 3
Amar 0

The greedy javalinas came by again last night. They made sure to demolish whatever they hadn’t trashed the last time they came through. Now about 60% of the peppers I was growing are totally destroyed. At this point, it would be another 60-90 days before I could grow a reasonable harvest.

Not sure if it’s worth trying to plant again or not. I need a day or two to regroup. This round of devastation wasn’t quite as emotional, but it still stings. Months of love and effort gone in minutes.

Even as I resign myself to the possibility that this year’s garden might end up a bust, I can still feel this part of me revving itself up to plant again. What is this drive within me that simply can’t accept defeat? It won’t let me rest until I have “won.”

I don’t even know what it would have me keep fighting against. All the javalinas? Nature itself? The entirety of Coconino National Forest? What would “winning” even look like?

It’s like this part simply cannot and will not give in until I have either:

A) Won

or

B) Destroyed myself in the process of trying to win

Jesus. I seriously need to have sit down with myself.

Wednesday, June 17th, 2026

I think the desire to help and be useful and [more importantly] to be needed borders on compulsive.

It’s like the mind simply cannot give up its focus on building offerings and creating content for Amar Energy.

No matter how much I attempt to focus on building the bakery, I still find myself back to thinking about new content for YouTube or a new workshop.

What I am realizing is that this goes deeper than simply a vocation. This is moving into identity territory. The real question that seems to be emerging is:

“Who am I without someone to caretake?”

This pattern of needing to be needed is so exhausting. The performance of being “helpful” is so freaking tiring. Especially since the majority of the time, the pattern of being needed is deployed when precisely nobody is actually asking for help.

There’s a definition of narcissism that feels strangely appropriate here:

narcissism | ˈnɑːsɪsɪz(ə)m | noun [mass noun] Psychoanalysis self-centeredness arising from failure to distinguish the self from external objects, either in very young babies or as a feature of a mental condition.

That feels accurate somehow. Like my system has become so profoundly externally focused, it can no longer distinguish between itself and those outside of me. As if I have somehow become enmeshed with the entirety of creation and anyone or anything that somehow needs (or in this case doesn’t need) help or support is now my sole responsibility.

It’s insane.

Like literally, insane.

To objectively take the perspective that this pattern upholds and accept it at face value reveals just how out of touch the mind can become.

Is this a boundary issue? A worthiness issue?

I mean I understand that part of the problem is simply that the intellect has been elevated to super status unnecessarily in our current reality.

At some point, we took the intellect and made it the all seeing, all knowing, omnipotence. Which it could not be further from. It’s essentially a storage device. It has no original thoughts of its own. The best it can do is regurgitate what’s already been lived, slap a new coat of paint on it, and proclaim it a novelty.

But it’s not.

It never has been, never is, and never will be novel.

Only recycled.

And who the fuck wants to live a life made of recycled parts masquerading as something new?

Thursday, June 18th, 2026

Since Sunday I’ve been wrestling with a serious head/chest cold. I haven’t been sick since getting Covid back in 2022(?) So when my physical system is in a purging state like this one, it’s 100% a sign that something big is being moved out.

On Sunday, under the new moon, I set some very clear intentions about requiring clarity for myself, from myself, around some very specific things in my life.

The big theme is focused around reconnecting with the body as a source of guidance and wisdom.

This purging seems to be connected to this mental heaviness the body has been carrying for far too long.

It feels like the mind’s non-stop noisy processing created a cloud of constriction and silence in the body over time. I don’t know that it was intentionally created, but it’s what all of the mental pressure eventually manifested. The amount of energy I’ve put into mental processing over the years could power a small planet. That much energy and focus doesn’t just dissipate. It actually creates something.

And what it seems to have created is a reality in which the mind ruled with an iron [and idiotic] fist while the body just had to suck it and deal with whatever the mind wanted.

Those days are over.

Putting the mind in charge is akin to asking a 5 year old to balance the family budget. It’s going to cause more problems than it solves.

I can almost feel the mind trying to force a veneer or familiarity over an experience that has nothing to do with my lived history. In fact, I would go so far as to say that right now the only thing history can offer me is as a marker of where not to go and what not to do. If it’s even remotely familiar to the mind right now, it’s totally uninteresting and unoriginal.

Perhaps that’s a hardline stance to take, but in this case, it’s necessary. The mind is never going to willingly give up its position of perceived power. It’s up to me to reorganize the internal hierarchy.

This isn’t about creating an adversarial relationship with the mind. In fact, that's pretty much impossible. In order to strike an adversarial balance, I would need to be engaging with awareness that is on the same level as I am. The mind can’t even comprehend the level I am currently on, that’s why there’s all this internal tumult.

The mind is simply a parrot echoing everything it has ever heard, seen, witnessed, or experienced. It sounds convincing, but there isn’t an original thought anywhere to be found on that plane or reality.

Its authority is 100% a fabrication.

Poor thing.

Friday, June 19th, 2026

This has been a very odd week.

It’s like time has compressed into nothing. Some days seem to stretch on forever and are spacious and almost empty. Other days go by in a flash and are crammed full of experiences, insights, and events.

I’ve mostly found myself floating in and out of the liminal spaces in between.

The intelligence of the body and its voice have been steadily returning to center stage. Not in spite or exclusion of the mind and its noisy bloviating, but as a much needed counterpoint to its incessant chatter.

Inhabiting the body, as opposed to the mind, offers so much relief.

This week, I have been intentionally redirecting energy and focus from the mind to the body. The intellectual POV has been so dominant for so long that I think I became inured to living everything through that lens, never really stopping to consider another option.

What I am most aware of is this vein of blind determination for everything to be exactly as I want to be, when I want it to be, with no exception. On one hand, that’s gotten me quite far in many areas of my life. A person can accomplish a lot simply by carrying themselves as someone who assumes everything will go exactly as they have planned it to.

On the other hand, there’s a fine line between fulfillment of one’s desires and self destruction in service of achieving those desires. It’s like some animal instinct kicks in and suddenly I find myself in this disembodied fugue state where the only goal is to succeed at all costs.

I’ve seen this most clearly in my battle with the Javalinas this past week.

The rational line of thought would be to accept that I share this space with wildlife. My back yard is literally a part of the Coconino National Forest. Continuing to walk through this rationally, one would eventually accept that [this year anyway] I’ve not adequately prepared myself, or my garden space, to thrive in the face of intense pest pressure.

The rational approach would be to modify one’s plans as future damage control. Make the necessary changes to save what’s left of this year’s garden, integrate the hard earned wisdom and reboot next year.

Yet, not even 24 hours later and I find my resolve softening. I start thinking of ways to outsmart the problem. I start to bargain and negotiate with my own boundaries. Basically gaslighting myself into trying again. Promising myself that this time will be different.

It never is.

It’s been the same thing with pivoting to building this bakery. The amount of intentional focus and effort it’s taking to keep from drifting back into the same old routine of the past few years is really surprising. Blessedly, it gets easier with time and repetition. This stubborn streak is next level. It borders on obsessive.

I can only imagine what a trial it must have been for any sort of authority figure in my life.

Managing me is certainly not for the faint of heart or weak in spirit.

I speak from first hand experience.

Saturday, June 20th, 2026

Yesterday afternoon I laid down to take a nap. This purging cold came with a fever too. It finally broke early Friday morning around 2AM. So I spent the majority of yesterday in recovery mode.

As I was coming back to awareness after this very deep nap, I had a flash of realization that was so clear and simple. In a moment of pure awareness, I realized that there was no tension anywhere in my body. No anxiety monster doing laps in my mind looking for something to latch on to. No bracing for any number of imagined threats.

I was, in that moment, completely at peace. I also noticed that for the first time in far far too long, I was actually resting.

Not taking a momentary break between stress loops or anxiety spirals. Not a quick breather before going back to grinding in an attempt to outrun the compulsive productivity program.

No, this was actual rest.

My first thought was “wow, this feels incredible.”

Then followed a reflection on how it was time to ensure that actual, adequate rest is a permanent fixture in my life. A non-negotiable one to put a finer point on it.

What seems to have occurred this week was a much needed pole shift from the head to the body.

Monday and Tuesday found me grappling with the usual mental chatter. By Wednesday afternoon though, I noticed that the voices were a lot quieter and less intense.

Thursday and Friday felt like a changing of the guard.

No fanfare, very little friction. Simply one part of the system finally passing the baton to another at my behest.

I also noticed something else that seemed pretty profound.

In the past, my self talk and coherence regulation would often feel like I was coming from the edge of losing my patience. In the beginning of learning how to engage with my internal landscape as the central authority, I would often feel so overwhelmed that my authority was deeply insecure.

It was often taking a tone with myself that was incredibly rigid and inflexible. It wasn’t threatening or intimidating myself necessarily, but it wasn’t exactly offering confident leadership.

This week I’ve felt a shift that is not imperceptible, but very subtle.

It’s a flavor of quiet certainty. The vibe of someone who is no longer negotiating with parts that are incongruent. It’s the magnetic pull of an authority that is 100% invested in itself as the leader.

No questions, no doubts.

Clear. Strong. Assured.

And done fucking around.

I’ve got too much living left to do to leave it to the whims of the mind.

Sunday, June 21st, 2026

Today is the Solstice.

No matter what meaning is ascribed to this day, it’s a literal threshold.

Even in the simplest and most mundane meaning of the word as it’s the halfway mark of the year.

Obviously, there are depths to the threshold concept that feel particularly alive for me at the moment. Today I am hosting another online event. This one is the most successful of the 5 recent events I have put on offer; 6 people have signed up.

Doing the math means that out of 5 events over the past couple of months, I have had 8 sign ups total.

Seriously, bitch, when are you going to finally accept that God wants you elsewhere? Dedication and wanting to see things through to their natural conclusion is one thing, but you MUST at this point see there is no more meat left on that bone. The refusal to move on is bordering on pathological.

A couple of months ago, my first post on Substack was asking some deep questions and making some big claims. Many of which I have followed through on, but if I am honest the one thing I haven’t done (that I know I really want to do) is walk away.

I’ve gotten up from the table. I’ve poked my head outside the door. I’ve rearranged the furniture, but what I haven’t done is actually walk out of the room. I’ve been half stepping and trying to soften the blow, but it’s time to rip the band-aid off.

I think I have finally accepted this as a reality.

Today, on the literal day of a threshold, would be a perfect day to make some actual, physical, progress in service of that claim I made a while back.

Monday, June 8th, 2026

Welp. The cat’s out of the bag officially. Yesterday I sent out a newsletter sharing Amar Bakes with everyone.

It felt really good to share it.

It also felt a little like parts of me were bracing. Like there’s a bit of “Oh shit! What have we done?” energy.

That’s to be expected I suppose.

Lately I’ve been saying a lot that I’m the dumbest smart person I know. Nobody, and I mean nobody, who’s close to me is surprised in the least by the fact that I am starting a bakery.

Honestly, the response across the board has been something along the lines of “It took you long enough!”

I had become so consumed by the routines I’d created over the past 15 years that I didn’t even see how rote everything had become. It’s like I was just marking time, waiting for something to tell me where to go and what to do.

That’s the biggest head trip of the past 15 years of re-awakening. The reclamation of agency and authority after so many years of surrender and giving in. Don’t get me wrong, that work was necessary in order for me to get my head on straight. But the whole point of surrender isn’t to stay in perpetual genuflexion.

For me, the experience of being humbled by life was so that I could rise in a more authentic expression of myself. One where I am consciously co-creating with life, rather than trying to force it to give me what I think I need. A life where I am dancing in collaboration with Natural Law, not trying to wrestle it to the ground so I can extract what I want from it and discard it without another thought.

I don’t think God is interested in a permanent surrender of my sovereign authority. I think it was about offloading all of the BS programming and false beliefs I’d been carrying around with me.

In many ways, it feels like life has just begun.

The truth is that when I started this practice almost 15 years ago, I thought I’d found the thing I’d be doing for the rest of my life. I had no plans of changing lanes again. Certainly I saw my practice growing and evolving, but I didn’t ever see myself walking away from it. In truth, I still feel a strong pull towards that work. Whether that’s a harbinger of an evolution/iteration of this work further down the line, or whether that’s simply a part of my process of letting go remains to be seen I suppose.

I guess at this point, the most liberating (and wise) thing I can do is to stop trying to steer my life into a narrowly defined direction that’s driven by notions of scarcity and lack, and return to the simple act of building a life that feels like the experience I want to have.

If the answer to “what happens after healing” really is the re-emergence of faith and trust, then I’d say I’m right on track.

Tuesday, June 9th, 2026

Kind of in limbo at the moment. Or so it would seem.

My cottage food license is still marked as '“pending.” I check pretty much every day.

While I am waiting for the official approval, I am working on menu items, creating labels and figuring out how I’m going to run this business.

The cottage food permit restricts me to selling only within Arizona’s state lines. So that definitely helps clarify things. To begin, I’ll start with local Sedona/Cottonwood customers and traffic. That will keep me from having to drive all over the place and will help me keep my focus small.

In my past business ventures there was a tendency to go too big too fast. I would spend way too much time building websites, infrastructure, and architecture before anyone was even in the door. Part of that is because I really love the process of iterating and creating. I get SO nerdy on color palettes and font selection!

The problem was that I would spend so much time, effort, and energy on building things out that by the time launch day arrived, my expectations were so out of whack that anything less than breaking the internet would feel like a failure.

So the plan with Amar Bakes is to keep it really close to the ground for as long as I can.

I don’t even know if I’ll have a website at first. I like the idea of marketing through text threads, email chains, and Telegram groups.

Lean, agile, and flexible… that’s the model I am building with to start.

Wednesday, June 10th, 2026

I think the baby steps are the ones that in the end prove to be the most influential when building anything new.

Several years ago I took to drawing sacred geometry forms as a meditation practice. It was surprisingly transformative.

These shapes (which correlate with the Platonic Solids) are literally the building blocks of nature. They’re found everywhere.

I had all my tools: graph paper, protractor, compass, ruler, and [arguably the most important tool] an eraser.

When I first started drawing these shapes what became immediately clear was how much they required of me. The precision that they demanded was not something I expected.

These forms are recursive which means that there’s zero room for error when drawing these shapes.

What starts off as an asymmetry or imbalance of minuscule proportions eventually becomes massive. When drawing the flower of life, a line that’s off by even 1/32nd of an inch becomes a huge error by the time you get to the final design.

Those fractions add up fast when you’re talking about a model that’s progressive in nature.

It reminds me of the old adage:

“The way you do the small things is the way you do the big things.”

Excusing errors, sloppy work, and even tiny missteps can compound into big problems down the line.

Like I said yesterday, I’m keeping this as small as I can for as long as I can.

No need to rush myself unnecessarily.

Mindful, deliberate, and intentional. That’s the way to build.

Thursday, June 11th, 2026

I think I am starting to get the hang of this. By “this” I mean building the bakery while still keeping my practice open and available.

It’s taken some time to retrain my system into a reality where I can successfully have multiple irons in the fire at the same time. It makes me question the validity of the idea that humans are meant to be specialists. At least when it comes to our vocation anyway.

What if life really could be an experience of following one’s passions and interests AND having basic needs met and fulfilled? Honestly, it’s not that out of pocket to imagine it. It’s simply a matter of building new systems. Which, at this point, wouldn’t be as big of a challenge as one might think, given that many of them are already shredding at the seams. Because if you really think about it, there’s no evidence that an alternative model for what it means be Human on the planet at this time would be less successful than the ones we’ve been trying to sustain for the last few thousand years. In fact, I think it could be rationally argued that the model for successful living we’re currently operating under is mostly a total flop.

A system that seeks to exploit life rather than preserve it is a depletion based model.

Interestingly, it’s not that much different than the one I was trying to shoehorn myself into over the past 15 years or so. And, personally speaking, I am no longer available for depletion based models.

Now I am seeking to live through models of restoration, replenishment, interdependence, and well-being.

Friday, June 12th, 2026

Surprisingly I got a response from one of the resumes I sent out several weeks ago. I had pretty much let go of all expectations that I was going to hear anything back. The established pattern for most jobs I’ve applied for throughout the past 15 years is that I am way overqualified.

Anyway, I’m having a Zoom chat (I guess it’s a pre-interview) this morning with the person doing the hiring for this position.

It’s a full time job, and to be honest I am not 100% sure that working full time for someone else is the solution here, but I can’t say for sure.

What’s interesting is ever since I got the call yesterday about the job, I am sensing some deep internal movement. This morning as I was sitting on the porch with my coffee watching the sunrise, there was a very familiar voice that spoke up.

It’s the voice that, in moments where I am questioning something or am uncertain, speaks up and gently encourages me to keep going. It’s soft and supportive. It doesn’t feel coercive or punitive. It asks questions like “Are you sure you want to move on?” It offers rhetorical statements such as “You’ve already invested so much at this point, it feels like a waste to walk away now.”

In the past this voice would have served its purpose in that it would have successfully guided me back to the familiar and well-worn path. It’s not an aggressive energy, but it very clearly is a part that the system deploys when it senses I am straying outside the boundaries it has set.

In the past my response would have eventually been something along the lines of “Yeah, I suppose you’re right. It doesn’t make much sense to change lanes after all that I’ve put in.” This would have been accompanied by a deep sigh of resignation as I consented to another round despite the heavy energy of resistance.

This morning however my response was different.

The realization that emerged most clearly was that I am no longer avoiding uncertainty. The lure of what was familiar and known is now void of value. The promises of comfort and understanding aren’t enough when they’re simply a false veneer covering the same empty box.

I reminded this part that I have never once said “I am no longer doing the work of Amar Energy.” What I’ve stated unequivocally is “I am no longer doing the work of Amar Energy within the historical patterns of depletion, scarcity, and needless self sacrifice”

“The work still stands.” I reminded this part.

“What I have built is powerful, and meaningful, and real. And I am no longer paying to keep the lights on in a place that has yet to prove it will reciprocate.”

“What hasn’t changed,” I continued “is the fact that this work hasn’t provided the means to a living wage or income in years. Until it can, I have to do what is necessary to provide for myself.”

That’s it.

Clean. Simple. Clear. And true.

My priorities used to be organized around the concepts of being needed, or useful, or necessary to other people. Even in the face of my own struggles and suffering, I still placed other people’s well being above my own.

My core wounds were driving the engine.

Now my priorities are tending to my needs and requirements first; to only show up at tables and in rooms where what I need is available.

I will do whatever I need to do to ensure my needs are met.

My well being is no longer available to be the fuel for anybody’s fire.

Least of all to the old historical patterns of caretaking, enmeshment, and co-dependency.

No ma’am, Pam.

Saturday, June 13th, 2026

The job interview didn’t really go anywhere. We had a brief, yet friendly, conversation and in less than 7 minutes it became clear this wasn’t the right fit for either of us.

I wasn’t surprised.

Over the 15 years of having this practice, there have been several moments where it’s been clear that something’s needed to change. Often times this has led me to seek outside employment as a means to supplement my income.

With the exception of one part time job I had around 2016, every single attempt at finding extra work has been met with crickets. In fact, if memory serves, yesterday’s interview was the first time I even managed to get that far. In the past, I wasn’t getting any responses at all, not even to say “no thank you.”

Sometimes no answer is an answer.

Anyway, it brings me to a place of total perplexity when I find myself in this spot.

“God helps those who help themselves.”

Really?

Does God actually do that?

Because, let’s see…

The practice I’ve been building for almost 15 years is showing very little signs of life and no matter what seems to be totally unresponsive.

Check.

When my practice decided to roll over and play dead, I chose to seek outside employment to better my situation.

Check.

I sent out several resumes and applied for jobs, nothing happened, and I am still in the same place I was a month ago.

Check.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat the same cycle over and over across the duration of 15 years.

Check.

Is there some other version of “helping myself” hiding somewhere on a secret menu that I don’t know about? Because clearly I don’t understand the assignment.

Snark aside, I am honestly not that upset about it, just slightly frustrated.

It will work out eventually.

Though I am continuing to wonder where I’ve misplaced my keys of understanding, because I can’t seem to find them anywhere.

Sunday, June 14th, 2026

Javalina Destruction.

That’s my new drag name.

Last night some big, stupid, gross Javalina came in and rained destruction all over my garden beds.

Months of care, love, investment, and emerging beauty destroyed in minutes.

Sobbing on my hands and knees in dirt and broken stems while the Arizona sun rises behind me was not on my bingo card for this morning’s activities.

Yet here I am.

It would seem that the current chapter in my life has nothing to do with things making sense.

I understand in the broader scope of what’s happening in the world right now my challenges may seem a bit trivial.

The destruction of a few plants and a momentary financial squeeze isn’t the end of the world.

And, also, anyone who is a plant lover will understand the very real pain I am feeling today.

I grew every single one of those plants from seed. I watched them go from teeny, germinated, sprouts to huge, mature, flowering beauties. Walking out to this morning’s carnage broke my heart.

At times like this that I find it really hard not to take things personally.

During phases like this one I seriously question the notion of a benevolent God.

More and more, it doesn’t feel like an all loving presence. It feels more like an omni-presence that’s neutrally curious more than anything.

Not petty, or cruel, or punitive, but not necessarily loving and compassionate either.

Lately it feels more like a clinical experiment where the lead scientist is simply saying:

“Hmmm, that’s interesting. Let’s see what happens when this plot twist emerges.”

Like an awareness that is deeply curious with a very pure intent to understand; that is equally willing to allow things to be horrible, awful, and miserable as it is willing to let things be beautiful, breathtaking, and miraculous.

Perhaps what’s really dying through this passage is the idea that “God” is outside of me too.

What I mean is that over the past few years it seems the major theme in life is the letting go of the concept of anything being an external source of anything.

Including God.

On some level, I’m still holding onto this outdated concept of God as a figure in the sky handing out reward and punishment based upon my actions and choices.

It’s really mucking things up.

If it really is that nothing is outside of me, then God is also an internal relationship.

If that’s the case, then the answer [ONCE AGAIN] is to seek for everything within.

Ugh.

Sometimes this being human thing is a colossal pain in the ass.

Spirit, please remind me of this the next time I get possessed by some crazy notion to do something as monumentally stupid as coming back for another round of human life. Even if it is to assist humanity through a massive transformation such as the one we’re currently up to our necks in.

Next time, I’ll be a non-physical guide… one that doesn’t have to worry about trivial fucking shit like paying rent and dealing with gross-ass Javalinas destroying the beauty I’m putting out into the world.

Otherwise, it’s a hard pass.

Monday, June 1st, 2026

Last week, I made it official. I’ve submitted my application to the AZDH (Arizona Department of Health) for a cottage food license. I’ve been talking about taking my passions of baking, cooking, hospitality, growing my own food, flowers and botanicals, preserving, fermenting, etc and figuring out a way to share it for years.

A friend recently reminded me of something I said to him a couple of years ago about this dream. I was talking about this emerging desire to build something else, aside from my practice, and he said, “Remember when you said ‘At some point, in order to inhabit this life, I’m gonna have to start taking steps towards it…’ I think you’re doing that now.” He’s right. It took me long enough, but I am finally doing it.

So, last week I took my food handlers exam. In order to get this cottage license from the state, I have to pass this exam. I got a 95% on my test. Perhaps it’s never too late to fulfill my parents’ dream of having a straight A student.

The wheels are officially in motion. Amar Bakes is taking its first steps.

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2026

I’ve been recipe testing this week. I made Rosemary Sourdough Focaccia the other day. It was SO good! I shared it with a friend and we both agreed we’d pay good money for a loaf of it. Unfortunately, I failed to add it to my submitted menu list when I applied for my cottage license. So, I’ll have to amend the menu once I’m approved. I also made some spicy cheese crackers. Those were a hit! A few more iterations on that recipe and it will be good to go. I have quite a few recipes in my back pocket that are going to be a part of my menu.

It’s a strange thing to be walking away from my practice. It’s been the central part of my life for almost 15 years. I’m not closing the doors, I’m just no longer spending any time or energy on it. This week I am tying up a lot of loose ends to get my site and content to a place that it’s evergreen. That is to say, getting it to a place where it can live without any upkeep or attention from me. My booking calendar and website are open and available. If people are interested in working with me in that capacity, I’m here. I’m just no longer sitting at the table waiting. I’m in the other room building a bakery.

The last 4 events I built and promoted for my practice were spectacular failures. One of them nobody signed up for. One of them got one sign up who then changed their mind and backed out. The final two events weren’t total failures, but only one person signed up for each of them. Luckily I was able to offer them one on one coaching instead.

I think it has finally dawned on me that for all intents and purposes, Amar Energy is dead. At least the version of it I’ve been trying to sustain for years is. It took me a LONG time to come around to this realization. I have no idea why this new work hasn’t landed, and at this point, I don’t think it matters. The medicine that comes through when I am working with someone is so potent and powerful. That’s never been in question. I think out of the thousands of clients I have worked with over the past 15 years, only 2 have ever complained or asked for a refund. I know I have changed lives. I hear it over and over. Clearly though, Spirit needs me elsewhere, because I can’t even seem to GIVE it away at this point. When nobody even shows up to your free offerings… that’s a pretty safe bet that it’s time to go.

I’m curious to see if more people will begin to show up to that work now that I’m no longer actively promoting it. I decided that as of yesterday (June 1st) I am no longer actively promoting Amar Energy. The lights will remain on, but I will no longer remain active in that space. No more content, no more events, no more signals. Whew! That feels like SUCH a relief! A lot of it has to do with the simple matter of reciprocity. This new body of work has not shown any signs that it is capable of supporting me even minimally. Until it does, I’m putting my efforts elsewhere. I’m SO excited not to have to create more content for IG or YouTube or newsletters. It’s been a joy the past few days to get back to making something tangible and actual.

It’s also dawned on me that for the past 15 years, I’ve been meeting people in their problems, struggles, and pain. Of course, people aren’t booking a session with me to talk about how great things are going. It’s also been 15 years of ME being the product.

People often showed up with very specific expectations of who they needed me to be for them. I totally get it. That’s the nature of the healing work. And now? Now I get to meet people in joy, and celebration, and eager anticipation for the yummy goodness I have baked for them. Now, it’s no longer me as the product, but what I have made for them. I get to offer them something made with love and excitement. They get to receive delicious nourishment, and neither of us have to talk about pain, or wounds, or the shadow. We just get to share the very simply human experience of food made with love and care.

What a revelation.

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2026

It’s been an interesting week so far. I’ve been working on getting everything from my practice to the point where it’s self sustaining. The idea being that while I am not shutting my practice down, I am also no longer relying on it to be my sole source of income. It feels less like closing a door and more like adding more rooms to the house. I’ve been living in a one room apartment that was entirely constructed around my practice. I’ve outgrown it, so I’m expanding. The room that houses my practice is still a here, it’s just no longer the whole structure.

Interestingly, this week I’ve been busier with clients than I have in months.

Yesterday I spent the better part of the day migrating my course library from an external site to my own website. It wasn’t glamorous work, but it feels really good to have that checked off my list.

The intention with this is to get my practice, and everything connected to it, to the point where I no longer have to actively monitor it. That also means stepping back from constant content creation. It’s not something I’m doing from a place of resentment or anger. I think I’ve finally accepted that my practice is settling into its rightful place. That is to say, it’s slowly becoming one of many pots on the stove.

I’m recalling several years ago when I was coming out of an extended period of being deeply in the void. I was working a lot with the shadow and coming to terms with my own pain and wounds. At the time, I was being asked to get crystal clear on what I really wanted. Spirit would come to me and ask “If you could build any kind of life for yourself, what would it look like?” For weeks I came to her with pageant answers. “I want to feed the world.” or “I want to show people how to end their suffering.”

To which I would get the very strong sensation of someone looking at me sideways and rolling their eyes. As if to say “Nope. Try again.”

All of those notions were noble for sure. Who doesn’t want to see an end to hunger and suffering? But that wasn’t the point. This was about mining the depths of my inner landscape in order to find for myself what was ideal. Not what was politically correct, not what I thought was possible or even reasonable. But like literally, if I could wave a magic wand and have my life become anything, what would it be?

Trust me when I say this is a lot fucking harder than one would think.

Anyway, after a couple of months of this, one day it finally clicked.

I came to Spirit in a moment of deep connection and said:

”I don’t want a job. I want a life where I get to do all of the things I love and have them feed me in return. I want my life to be a joyful experience of moving from passion to passion, pouring love and devotion into them, and have them each pay me in return. Some interests will repay me in money, some in experience. Some will repay me in learning a new skill, or simply having fun. But I don’t want my well being to be tied to any one single thing.”

The second I said that, I could feel a shift in the air. From that moment forward things in my life began to reorganize themselves around this new idea. It took a WHOLE lot longer than I thought. Mostly because even though I truly wanted a life that looked and felt like that, I was still being run by a system that was terrified at the thought of that much freedom. So it fought me, and Spirit, at every turn.

Good lord, the force of my will and determination can be enough to stop even a runaway train. Thankfully, I finally got the message that a fractured foot, a hernia, and a mountain of debt were trying to show me:

The life I’d asked for is trying like hell to manifest, but I was so wrapped up in fear, panic, and outdated dreams that I was essentially trying to outrun it. I don’t think I knew just how close to actual collapse I was.

Thank God I finally got my head out of my ass.

Thursday, June 4th, 2026

This transition is a little strange and surreal. I guess it’s not a transition as much as it is an addition. I’m not getting rid of my practice, I’m simply allowing it to find its rightful place within my life. What was once a primary pillar now plays a supporting role, not a featured one.

For the past 15 years, everything was built around my practice. It was the motivation for pretty much everything I did. What started out as an exercise in building my life around the path of service eventually became the very thing that turned me into a servant.

It makes sense.

The only model I had of a successful business was from my own experience of working for big corporations. It stands to reason that eventually my own business would take on that same form. It’s kind of insidious if you think about it. The capitalist model is so hard to shake.

I suppose the ultimate goal for me is to figure out how to make what I said to Spirit a reality. It’s what I call the Pollinator Model. I go from project to project, passion to passion, seeing which ones need my love and attention and which ones are ready to offer up something in return. Never coming at it from a place of entitlement or demand, simply nurturing and fostering the things I love and setting them up to thrive. Because when the things I am investing myself into thrive, so do I.

That’s the model I’m going with. Mostly because that’s the only thing I haven’t tried. When the goal is just “make money,” then I have totally limited myself to a very narrow outcome. When the goal is “build a life that is fulfilling, reciprocal, and is based around sharing my passions, gifts, and talents,” that leaves a whole lot more room for how things can arrange themselves.

Friday, June 5th, 2026

Yesterday I went to see the Linda Perry documentary, “Let it Die Here.”

She seems to move through the world like a woman possessed; driven by her creative urges, and a desire to understand her place in the world. She’s created a LOT, like a lot. No doubt she’s gifted and has definitely made the most of her talents. What I was really struck by though was how she seems to live at the mercy of her creative drives.

There were scenes where it seemed as if the only way she could find peace was through creative output. More specifically, through creation for other people. In the end, it’s as if the biggest challenge for her has been to use her gifts in service of her own wellbeing rather than continuing to only show up for other people.

I understand that.

I used to move through the world rooted in the belief that my value was directly tied to how much I could produce or create. More specifically, it seemed to me that what I was driven to do was help create meaning for other people.

If I am honest, this was actually born out of a deep desire for me to make meaning out of my own suffering.

For my whole life it seems there has been this disconnect between my actual lived experience and the potential for what could be. The divide between what I’ve had or where I’ve been at any given moment vs. what I’ve known is actually possible has often felt like standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon trying like hell to figure out how to leap across to the other side.

I’ve often felt like a man possessed.

The almost compulsive need to arrive at understanding has been relentless. So much so that at some point along the way I conflated the innate human yearning to find a place and purpose in this world with a very deep knowing that [in this lifetime anyway] I am here to walk the path of service.

What eventually emerged from this jumble of desire, need, and desperation for understanding was a belief that my own suffering must be in service of another. And for a while this worked.

After my spiritual awakening in 2012, I quickly established a formula that for almost 15 years ran like clockwork. I would personally go through some sort of spiritual challenge, or expansion, or transformation, then I would share my experience with other people. This public [and vulnerable] sharing of my own growth process would then inspire people to connect and I would help them through whatever challenges they were currently facing through one on one work or groups and courses.

This was a really effective model that supported me for years.

The problem that I didn’t see, and one that was quietly growing in the background, was that eventually this model required me to suffer. I had essentially monetized my own journey of awakening and had packaged it all into a really elegant and powerful body of work. The big blindspot I had was that all of this work was growing from one singular point:

My own healing.

Which was great while I was actually in the healing process. Once I began to move beyond the healing phase and into deeper states of integration and embodiment, the train started to run out of steam.

Suffering had become the product and as my reserves began to dwindle, something within me started to see that in order to secure a future for this work, I needed to keep suffering.

Without me really even realizing it, I essentially began to cannibalize myself and my own healing. When there were no problems to publicly solve, I would create them.

Self sabotage, second guessing, pathological unworthiness, and big ideas that never went anywhere all became a means to ensure continued job security.

The question that I was terrified to ask, and one that was increasingly sucking all of the oxygen out of the room was:

“Without a wound to publicly heal, who am I?”

Eventually, this question could no longer be ignored or exiled, and I had to face the music.

Which opened up all sorts of realizations that were really hard to accept.

Because for decades, parts of me carried the explicit belief that my purpose, my work, and service to others mattered more than my own well-being.

Which brought me to one of the biggest realizations of my whole life:

My well-being is no longer negotiable, even in service of a life purpose.

Ultimately, that’s what Linda Perry’s story has left me with:

If I am to be a human possessed by the questions of life purpose, creative force, and fundamental well-being; then, from this point forward, I am only available to discover the answers to those questions through well-being.

I am no longer interested in learning about existential well-being through the contrast of suffering. I am now learning about well-being through LIVING WELL.

Saturday, June 6th, 2026

The past couple of days I’ve been aware of what feels like a slow crossfade of realities. Like when a DJ is mixing tracks and there’s a moment where two songs overlap as one recedes and the other emerges to the fore.

This slow and steady reclamation of myself from the old patterns feels a bit like I am reverse engineering something. Like I’ve just only realized how lost I am and so rather than continuing to wander aimlessly, I’m now retracing my steps to find myself again.

I’m only now just beginning to realize how limited I’d allowed my life to become. The simplest things this past week have shown me just how far away from my own center I’ve been.

Going to the movies for the first time in over 2 years felt like an act of non-violent protest against the internal rigidity I’d been trying to break through.

Recipe testing this week, creating my logo for Amar Bakes as an act of liberation through creativity. Playing with labels and packaging, planting more seeds in the garden. Getting back to regular fascia work, taking time in the mornings to have coffee on the porch with the sunrise before turning on my phone, or cracking my laptop open.

All of these small and seemingly mundane acts have felt almost revolutionary.

After subsisting primarily on a diet of terror and stress chemistry for the past 6 months, I suppose they are.

I really had no idea just how far away from myself I had strayed.

All in the name of service to others.

Once again I am reminded of the difference between being of service, and being a servant.

The two are not the same.

Sunday, June 7th, 2026

At some point, I just decided that this is the direction I am headed. It’s often a very fine line between going with the flow and surrendering to what is and totally disempowering myself by giving away my agency by perpetually “waiting for a sign.”

It’s not like starting a bakery is totally out of left field. I started cooking and baking when I was 5. I’ve been doing it in some form or fashion ever since. I’ve also been talking, thinking, dreaming, fantasizing about opening a bakery/cafe for at least 3o years.

I’ve always loved hosting. I also enjoy feeding people. The satisfaction that comes from offering delicious nourishment is unlike anything else I’ve ever experienced. The work I’ve built through my healing practice is also fulfilling in its own way, but the feeding people thing through food I’ve made myself hits differently.

I think my system is still trying to wrap itself around the idea that I can build an amazing life without having to sacrifice my own well being in the process.

One of the moments that sparked the trajectory of 2026 so far was back in November of ‘25 when I asked “what comes after healing?”

I think I’ve found the answer.

I think that what comes after healing is a resurrected sense of faith and trust.

Faith and trust in myself.

Faith and trust that it’s ok to trust my desires again.

Faith and trust in the fact that no matter what, I will always be capable of handling whatever’s present in any given moment.

Faith and trust that I can build a life around joy, fulfillment, service, and satisfaction.

Without immolating myself in the process.

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One of the most challenging things about the gift of profound empathy has been figuring out boundaries around other people’s “stuff” and my ability to feel it.

As a kid it was often overwhelming to feel so much so deeply.
Being constantly flooded with feelings and sensations was enough to immobilize anyone.

Without understanding what was happening internally, I was often really confused. Mix the intensity of the circumstances I grew up in with that confusion, and it’s a miracle I could make heads or tails of anything.

Couple that with an almost pathological desire to be loved, needed, and accepted, and it was a recipe for all sorts of tension and heartbreak in my life.

At some point, any empathic response I registered became my personal responsibility.

I started to believe:

“If I can feel it, I must carry it.”

And even more devastating:

“My worthiness is a direct reflection of how much I can carry for other people.”

I had unknowingly bound my value as a person to the notion of how useful I was to other people.

This perspective continued to grow and compound throughout adolescence and young adulthood. I mindlessly collected pain and suffering from pretty much everyone I met.

Every signal became a summons. Every perceived need became an assignment, and every tension became my responsibility.

No wonder my system was overloaded!

Over time, feeling so deeply became too much to maintain. A consistent connection to my body stopped feeling safe. So, I moved everything into the intellect.

My life became a study in pattern recognition, reading the room for survival’s sake, and uninvited crisis intervention.

Intellectual understanding created a safe distance from the intensity of feeling, and eventually replaced it altogether.

Without a way to create healthy boundaries for myself:

Love = suffering

Care = self-abandonment

Awareness = obligation

Compassion = burden

Basically, I shut the feeling and sensing centers down and moved into the attic of the mind where I was safe and cozy.

What I didn’t realize though is that I had mistaken numbness for safety.

What I also didn’t realize is that when you numb the painful feelings, you numb the beautiful ones too.

Numb = numb. It doesn’t selectively choose which feelings you no longer feel; it kills them all.

Part of learning how to reconnect to myself was not just remembering how to feel again. It was also figuring out how to be present with someone who is suffering without picking it up.

Care is not carrying.

It took me a long time to learn this.

It also took me a long time to figure out how to create healthy boundaries.

That’s part of why I do this work. I walked through the fire first. And now I hope it will make your journey of reclaiming yourself easier.

Not in a gross martyr way.

But in a way that says “Hey, I feel your suffering, because I’ve suffered too. I can’t take your suffering from you, but I can share some things that might help you to understand it. Which hopefully will make it shorter and a little less intense.”

Because compassion says:

“I see your struggle.”

Enmeshment says:

“Your struggle is now my burden.”

Coherence says:

“I can care without carrying.”

Is figuring out to build healthy boundaries enough of a reason to step into this work?

Because boundaries don’t reduce love. They remove distortion from it.

A boundary is not a punishment, it’s a participation filter.
They are structural decisions about what you participate in.

Boundaries give you the opportunity to see clearly without automatically entering the situation.

Not because helping is wrong.

But because maybe there’s an active loop somewhere in your system that says Awareness + Compassion = Responsibility.

The three are NOT automatically linked.

Being an emotional pack mule for other people’s unresolved stuff isn’t a purpose.

It’s a performance.

So here’s the million dollar question:

“Are you ready to step off stage and stop performing so you can get back to living?”

→You Know What’s Good For You...So Why Aren’t You Doing It is where we begin interrupting the patterns that keep you disconnected from yourself.

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• 9 spots remain

This work meets the place where your life stopped belonging to you and hands you back the keys.

Here’s the catch though:

You have to show up.

Not for me.

Not for your kids.

Not for your spouse.

Or your boss.

YOU.

I think you’re worth the work.
I think you deserve to reclaim your seat of authority.
I think you have the right to feel at home in your own life.

I also know I can’t do it for you.

I learned that the hard way.

-Amar

P.S. I recently asked about your “why.” Now I want to know about your “why not?”

If you’re curious about this work but are still standing at the threshold...what’s stopping you from coming in?

Reply and let me know.

👉 Sign up for my newsletter for deeper frameworks and tools for nervous system coherence and personal authority.

→ https://withamar.com/subscribe

✅ Explore my work:

Digital courses → https://paperbell.me/amar-energy

Work with me → https://withamar.as.me/

Website → https://withamar.com/

Substack → https://notesfromthestateofcoherence.substack.com/

📱Follow for more:

Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/amarenergy/

→ https://withamar.com/subscribe

Subscribe now

Trauma is a big topic these days, and rightfully so.

The past decade has seen us collectively diving into this conversation on multiple levels.

We’ve gotten really adept at navigating childhood trauma, relationship trauma, and even sexual trauma.

The discussions and healing that’s happening around these subjects are powerful and necessary.

But what has recently dawned on me, through my own journey of nervous system reprogramming, is something that almost nobody is talking about:

Chronic self-override is internal trauma.

Our physical systems are relational.

There’s a constant dialogue of sorts happening between multiple parts of our body pretty much all of the time.

The nervous system in particular is almost always creating and sending some sort of signal.

Essentially, the nervous system is asking:

“When I signal, what happens next?”

The simplest example of this is bodily functions.

The system sends a signal that it needs water.

We experience thirst.

We drink.

The system returns to balance.

Done.

But something happens when the signal is:

• exhaustion

• sadness

• desire

• truth

• rest

• grief

• slow down

• strengthen boundaries

And the response is:

• “Not now”

• “Push through”

• “Keep performing”

• “That’s not important”

• “Don’t disappoint them”

• “I don’t have time”

Every time you do this, you’re signaling to the body that those needs aren’t important.

This registers in the body as abandonment.

The body experiences chronic self-abandonment as danger.

Eventually, the body stops expecting to be listened to at all.

Not dramatically in one huge event.

Repeatedly in small micro-aggressions.

Chronic self-abandonment is violence against self.

Overriding exhaustion, staying in relationships when the body has already said no.

Performing connection instead of actually feeling it.

Forcing productivity even after capacity is long gone; silencing needs to maintain acceptance.

Over time, that accumulates.

Personally, I realized recently that my fatigue wasn’t because I wasn’t capable.

I was tired because my body no longer believed I would listen when it spoke.

So it stopped speaking and just went into survival mode.

Burnout is what happens when reciprocity between the self and the nervous system collapses.

And when a system goes into survival mode, it becomes inherently adversarial.

Everything is reduced to a binary choice of life or death.

It all becomes about management, suppression, endurance, negotiation, and domination.

Even healing becomes violent when we’re in survival mode.

It devolves into “Fix yourself harder!”

But healing can’t happen through force.

Coherence is not domination.

Regulation does not require suppression.

Coherence can only return when self-override ends.

Once this occurs, the system comes back to balance and says:

“Oh, we’re in a partnership now.”

That is where the system finally stops bracing against your life, and everything changes.

A coherent system is one where communication happens without major internal friction.

Lately, I’ve been noticing something kind of strange.

My energy levels are far more consistent than they’ve ever been. There’s this new stamina I’ve tapped into. It’s not a manic or jittery caffeine high. I am able to work cleanly, coherently, and grounded for a good 7-8 hours. Then at some point the body calmly signals:

“OK, we’re done. Time for dinner.”

And… I listen!

No collapse, no depletion, no terror of what might happen if I stop.

Just reciprocity.

The system supports me.

And in return, I listen.

That’s a totally new relationship with my body.

Most people think trauma is “what happened to them.”

And it is.

But a lot of people are quietly re-traumatizing themselves every day through chronic self-override.

It has nothing to do with them being broken.

It’s because they learned to survive by abandoning themselves.

And the only way reciprocity can occur in the outside world is when it’s a non-negotiable operating rule on the inside.

At some point you have to decide you’re no longer negotiating with exhaustion.

At some point you’re going to have to prioritize your own well being.

At some point you’re going to make the choice to build a life your body no longer has to brace against.

The work I find myself most passionate about is not performance based healing.

It’s understanding the simple truth:

Coherence returns when internal conflict ends.

It does not get any simpler than that.

This is exactly the kind of work we’re doing in my upcoming small group immersion:

You Know What’s Good For You. So Why Aren’t You Doing It?

This is a small-group, 7 week immersion where we’re working with what’s actively happening in your life, in real time.

No endless talking.

No passive listening.

This group is where we will engage directly with the triggers, reactions, patterns, and decisions that are driving your experience while they’re happening.

So you can finally shift them.

DETAILS:

• 7 weekly sessions starting on Sunday, May 31st

• 10AM PT

• 75 minutes each

• Replays available for the duration of the 7 weeks

• Live on Zoom

• Limited to 10 participants

Currently, early bird pricing is available. That pricing window closes this Sunday, the 24th.

MORE INFO HERE

If you saw yourself in any of what I shared here, or in Monday’s newsletter, then it’s probably obvious what your next steps could be:

→ Do nothing, change nothing, and stay in the same loop

→ Decide to advocate for your well-being and sign up

If you’re unclear or on the fence, reply to this email and let’s talk about your hesitation.

Otherwise, I’ll see you on the 31st.

That’s where we’ll begin.

Amar

👉 Sign up for my newsletter for deeper frameworks and tools for nervous system coherence and personal authority.

→ https://withamar.com/subscribe

✅ Explore my work:

Digital courses → https://paperbell.me/amar-energy

Work with me → https://withamar.as.me/

Website → https://withamar.com/

Substack → https://notesfromthestateofcoherence.substack.com/

📱Follow for more:

Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/amarenergy/

Subscribe now

My “why” for doing this work might not be what you think it is.

Yes, I was able to heal my depression and PTSD through this work.

Yes, I do feel that, in this life anyway, I did come here to walk the path of service.

Yes, I 100% love seeing the click when someone I am working with has a breakthrough and “gets it.”

However, the real driver behind my why is quite simple.

Freedom.

That’s it.

And not the kind of performative freedom where I wrap myself up in a flag and sing the national anthem wearing red, white, and blue sequins while fireworks explode around me.

Although that would be kind of amazing.

No, the flavor of freedom that runs through my veins is far more juvenile.

It’s this:

“You’re not the boss of me.”

How’s that for a morally elevated perspective?

As far back as I can remember, I’ve always been aware of this deeply embedded vein of skepticism running through me.

Certainly, as a child, the love, care, and support I received from well meaning authority figures in my life was necessary. I wouldn’t be here without it.

Yet, for every clear and coherent adult in my life that actually helped me learn, develop, and grow. There were at least five others that had zero fucking clue what they were talking about.

For a highly intuitive, deeply sensitive child with superhuman pattern recognition skills, it was very clear to me pretty much from day one, that most humans, especially adult ones, were just making it up as they went along.

For better or for worse, I got really adept at telling adults whatever they wanted to hear so they would leave me alone and I could get back to doing what I wanted to do.

Not the most mature approach, but hey, I was a kid… what do you expect?

The reason I am sharing this is I am curious to know what your “why” is?

I know many of you are considering the work I shared in Wednesday’s post.

How do I know?

Because a handful of you (3 to be exact) reached out directly asking me for more information on “You Know What’s Good For You…So Why Aren’t You Doing It?”

It’s a numbers game.

If 3 of you reached out with questions about it then I know there were at least 40-50 more of you that have the same questions.

Here’s the truth.

Your “why” doesn’t have to be some divinely inspired purpose sent from God and all the angels in heaven.

I’m currently working with a client who’s why is that she feels like she’s on top of her game in every area of her life except diet and exercise.

She’s in this work because she wants to understand why she can’t make the changes that she (and her doctor) know would be good for her.

Another client I’m working with is looking for ways to understand the critical voices in his head and how to quiet them. He’s capable, successful, and has a great life, except in this one area.

Your why can be as simple as “I just want to feel happier in my life.”

Or even simpler “I just want my life to function better.”

This work is real and usable. It’s something you can apply immediately.

It doesn’t have to be 12th dimensional airy-fairy in order to be meaningful.

Your why can be grounded in reasons that are practical and very human.

Because what I have found is that a lot of people secretly feel like their struggles aren’t important enough.

But they are.

If it matters to you… it matters.

Period.

MORE INFO HERE↓

You Know What’s Good For You…So Why Aren’t You Doing It?

• 7 weekly sessions starting on Sunday, May 31st

• 10AM PT

• 75 minutes each

• Replays available for the duration of the 7 weeks

• Live on Zoom

• Limited to 10 participants

Early bird pricing is in effect through this Sunday, the 24th.

Only 9 spots remain.

See you there.

Amar

👉 Sign up for my newsletter for deeper frameworks and tools for nervous system coherence and personal authority.

→ https://withamar.com/subscribe

✅ Explore my work:

Digital courses → https://paperbell.me/amar-energy

Work with me → https://withamar.as.me/

Website → https://withamar.com/

Substack → https://notesfromthestateofcoherence.substack.com/

📱Follow for more:

Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/amarenergy/

Subscribe now

It wasn’t my dirty glass and I didn’t think I should be responsible for cleaning up his mess.

But I didn’t say anything and I let it slide.

Right after deciding not to say anything was another flicker. This one said “If you don’t say anything about it, it’s going to bug you and it will negatively affect your day.”

As I was closing the door behind me, I noticed one of the plants on my front porch was looking a little wilted, so I decided to water it really quick before leaving.

I went back in the house and started to fill up my watering can. I was staring at the glass on the coffee table and decided I was going to say something. As I stepped back onto the porch to water the plant I simply said “Hey, can you please put your dirty glass in the sink?”

His response?

“Sure.”

So what’s the point of this?

This is a perfect example of the work I offer.

The above scenario played out in less than 30 seconds. Because of the work I have done over the years, I am able to simultaneously engage with the outside world while also being fully aware of and present with my inner experience.

In those 30 seconds, I did something very important to this work.

I was able to identify a disturbance in the force. I was able to pinpoint the cause of that disturbance. I projected myself into two potential timelines.

Then… most importantly, I made a new choice.

In those timelines I saw:

One where I didn’t say anything and carried the irritation with me all day.

The other where I addressed it, resolved it, and moved on.

On the surface, it’s not a big deal.

So my friend left an empty glass on the table.

Who cares?

But it matters, and here’s why.

It’s not what happened in the outside world that’s the primary focus here. It’s the fact that my system clocked:

“Wait, that’s not ok. A boundary has been violated.”

Sure, I could have put the glass in the sink myself, but that wasn’t my responsibility in this situation.

My responsibility was to myself and the well being of my system.

That’s it.

Had I not said anything, the message I’d have sent to my system would have been “My well being doesn’t matter.”

Doing that once? No big deal.

Doing it 10 times?

100 times?

1000?

The deeper question though?

At what point do your needs matter and when do you decide to advocate for them?

Every time you ignore what your system is showing you, you reinforce the pattern of self-abandonment.

Every time you decide against yourself, you are making a deposit in a debt account.

Over time, those small self-aggressions accrue and compound.

At some point, your system is going to call you to sign for that debt account.

And then what?

Most people think self-abandonment only happens in major life decisions, but usually it happens in small moments like this.

The way you do the little things, is the way you do the big things.

When you have attuned your awareness to catch the little ways in which you abandon yourself, it makes it easier to see the bigger ways in which you self-violate.

That’s what this work does.

That’s why it matters.

👉 Sign up for my newsletter for deeper frameworks and tools for nervous system coherence and personal authority.

→ https://withamar.com/subscribe

✅ Explore my work:

Digital courses → https://paperbell.me/amar-energy

Work with me → https://withamar.as.me/

Website → https://withamar.com/

Community → https://buy.stripe.com/6oUcN614K9nOdePbQCdIA0D

Substack → https://notesfromthestateofcoherence.substack.com/

📱Follow for more:

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It’s a fine line between commitment and self annihilation. I crossed that line sometime in the latter half of 2025.

To be fair, I’d been dancing at the edge of it for far longer.

I’d say one of the most challenging things about being a service-based entrepreneur is knowing when enough is enough. It’s one thing when inventory of a physical product drops below a certain level. You can just order more t-shirts. It’s another thing entirely when you; your time, your wisdom, your knowledge, energy, etc., is what people are paying for.

The themes in my life over the past few months have been rooted in brutal self-honesty.

Some of the most challenging things to accept have been the ways in which I abandon myself.

Most of it has been easy to see.

The ways in which I would soften my boundaries in the name of “just one more iteration.” The moments where I would drop my own needs in the name of “working harder” or “giving great service.” The times when I would put off eating, or standing up and stretching, or granting myself a pee break took on a whole new vibe.

On the surface, they seem low stakes relative to denying actual needs. Honestly, they are pretty low risk in terms of any friction they create in my life. It’s not like those moments caused any long term damage.

At least not on the surface.

What they pointed to however, was a deeper and more insidious program that was quietly writhing beneath the waters.

The thing that had been silently driving self-abandonment was my conflating depletion and integrity.

See, what I didn’t really fully grasp until very recently, was that my system (and let’s be honest, most of our societal norms do it too) was morally protecting self-destruction.

In fact, it was elevating it.

My system— and the society that formed it— labeled this as responsible and committed. Add to that the propaganda we perpetrate in our spiritual circles that tells us self-sacrifice is always noble and godly no matter what, and you’ve got a tank full of combustible fuel running you straight towards a head-on collision with your overall well being.

The pattern of denying myself was stealthy. Taking those tiny moments of abandonment out of context and looking at them in isolation doesn’t seem scary at all.

It’s the deeper corruption of sacrificing my well being as an act of superior morality that’s so sinister.

Once suffering has been canonized by the system, it becomes almost impossible to interrupt. Let’s also throw into the mix the external validation this self-immolation receives from the outside world.

“Oh, look how committed he is!”

“She works SO hard. No days off!!”

“Wow! I wish I had their dedication.”

See!?
Insidious.

And gross.

Which brings me to my favorite thing about self-destruction…

The anxiety addiction!

I love the smell of survival chemistry in the morning.

When I stop and think about it, the elegance of the loop my system had created (and was mirroring) is pretty spectacular.

Grind and override → needs dismissed → system senses collapse incoming → anxiety chemistry spikes → pressure resumes → cycle repeats.

When martyrdom became the central pillar of false excellence in my system’s architecture, it became more than risky to stop. It became a threat to the very foundation of the false reality I was living in.

I couldn’t stop because the suffering itself had become evidence of my goodness.

And [the promise of] my goodness was the only thing keeping me going.

When my system started to sense me questioning the methods I’d been using unconsciously, never stopping to ask if there was a better way or different way, it would resort to survival mode.

Yes, you heard me correctly. The system that was so good at keeping my ancestors out of physical harm via the fight or flight mechanism had decided that my inability to work for 72 hours in a row with no rest, bathroom breaks, food, water, or unnecessary movement was the same threat level as trying to outrun a hungry predator that wanted me for lunch.

For a system that’s as elegant as it is, it sure can be obtuse.

What the fear programs were telling me was essentially this:

Hypervigilance = love
Anxiety = commitment
Stress = care
Needs = burden

I was living in a reality built from the architecture of self-erasure, and I had gaslit myself into thinking this was a good thing.

This is why so many entrepreneurs, caretakers, coaches, healers, leaders, and high achievers grind themselves into dust.

Because they believe its:

Noble.
Honorable.
Exceptional.

But it’s not.

It’s bullshit.

Lucky for me, my body is a whole lot smarter than my mind is.
Lucky for me, the objective reality of choice and outcome isn’t seduced by the glamour of my delusions.

Because without the string of physical cues that started to show up in early 2026, I might very well be writing this from a hospital bed. Or a recovery ward of some kind.

That’s not hyperbole.
That’s bitter truth.

I love the creative process. I could spend hours (and I have) poring over fonts, hex codes, and the minutiae of pixels and their perfect placement. From early February through the end of April, I was in process heaven! I was so caught up in the rush of creating, that I wasn’t paying attention to the signs and cues that were dropping into my life.

They weren’t exactly subtle either.

I fractured my right foot because I was totally caught up in my head about work (ie not in the body) and was not paying attention at all. I rammed the outer three toes on my right foot into the baseboard at full force while crossing the threshold to my office space. No, the irony is not lost on me.

Not long after that, I noticed a small and kind of squishy blob right above my pubic bone. Turns out I have an inguinal hernia.

Not long after that, one morning I woke up and randomly noticed a huge burst capillary in my right eye.

Hmmm…maybe pressure was building and my body was trying to tell me something?

Still, I wasn’t getting it.

Parallel to these physical messengers arriving, there was also the looming realization that, after almost 3 months of building this beautiful and elegant eco-system, the math wasn’t adding up.

Going into it, I knew that rebuilding my practice from the ground up was a gamble. My (then current) practice had completely stalled out. My client bookings, event sign ups, and other revenue streams had been barely at a trickle for months. The only way I could fund this project was through credit cards. Even though I had just paid off all my debt not a few months earlier (using the last of my savings) I willingly broke out the cards and begin to charge. A few $100 here and there added up fast. Slowly but surely, the outflow of money climbed while my inflow still trickled.

I was also facing the harsh reality that my work wasn’t really landing yet. During the rebuild/rebrand I began sharing offers, events, and gatherings built around the new body of work. There was curiosity. There were congratulatory messages. There was a lot of anticipation.

I knew that the switch wasn’t going to be instantaneous. I was in a building phase.
I didn’t think I’d be filling rooms to capacity overnight. I wasn’t expecting to give Ted Talks right away either. I was prepared for somewhat of a hiccup while the new direction took root. What I wasn’t prepared for was what I got.

Nothing.

No clients. No sales. No bookings.

Crickets.

Fuuuuuuuck.

I remember that day so clearly. The one where the harsh reality came crashing in all at once. I was sitting on my sofa, surveying the absolutely gorgeous systems and workflows I had built.

I was also sitting with the brutal facts of my current financial situation.

The collision of the fantasy world I had been projecting and the reality of what had actually occurred was calling for reconciliation.

The one question that I had to face, one which totally terrified me, had queued up and was now requiring an audience.

“What did the past 3 months actually produce?”

• Insight

• Wisdom

• Creative fulfillment

• Personal growth

• An exciting and dynamic body of work

AND

• Physical harm

• Debt

• Chronic stress

• Zero profit

• Alienation of audience that wasn’t feeling the new direction

• Almost no participation. From anyone.

If a tree falls in a forest and nobody sees it. Does it make a sound?

If an entrepreneur opens a new business and nobody buys anything. Does the work matter?

Once that panic attack subsided and the system settled again, I was faced with an even bigger (and more bitter) pill to swallow.

“At what point do I stop calling this devotion?”

I am not new to being a business owner. Including my current practice, I’ve owned 5 businesses. I am very familiar with the ebb and flow. Some seasons feel fully resourced and funded. And other seasons find me with peacock dreams and a pigeon budget.

There may be lean seasons.

But to pour all of that time, money, effort, energy, awareness, passion, drive, focus, creativity, love, excitement, into building something and then have so few people show up and still think about sacrificing more?

That’s not devout.
That’s fucking dumb.

And I wanna stop [some of] you right there.

If you are even looking in the direction of offering some half-baked platitude like:

“Don’t quit before the miracle!!”

I will kindly invite you [in the name of preserving your physical well being] to move calmly towards the nearest exit before my Virgo sniper death ray locks on to you as a target and you erupt in a pillar of flame and ash.

If ever there was a bigger load of crap being offered out there as the antidote to this experience, I’ve yet to discover it.

I understand the intention beneath phrases such as that. Because as a business owner, leader, entrepreneur, human, there will be days where you are not sure you can go another step. The amount of faith and belief required when you’re building something, especially in the early days, is huge! I know from first hand experience that sometimes “Just keep going” is an appropriate answer.

The problem with that kind of mindset is that when it’s filtered through an identity built on survival, trauma, over-functioning, spiritualized/fetishized suffering, and sunk-cost psychology, it becomes dangerous.

Weaponized.

At some point perseverance became total self abandonment.

I need to make something super clear here.

I am not a victim.

My business didn’t harm me.

I willingly participated.

I kept consenting to a structure that wasn’t reciprocal. I just didn’t realize it.

I also want to make it clear that I am not demonizing my system.

“The Grinder” is what I have taken to calling this program of self-destruction.

The Grinder wasn’t the problem. It honestly thought it was doing the best thing for me. That’s what is so heartbreaking. To realize that I was unconsciously living within a pattern running a belief that this was the best option for my survival hurts.
To accept that had I continued to let it run unchecked I would be in a far worse situation than I am now is also really painful.

And kinda scary if I’m honest.

Because what was running this pattern was far more grave than “I just need to pay my bills and put food on the table.”

This was:

“If I stop, we die.”

This is what I know to be true without question:

The system will always choose familiar suffering over unfamiliar peace.

There’s another layer here that deserves its own highlight for a moment. The work itself wasn’t the problem. Being an entrepreneur or business owner isn’t something bad or wrong.

Purpose, creativity, service, and devotion are some of the most beautiful states of being we humans can inhabit. In fact, without these things, I don’t know if I’d have much of a life at all.

The issue was self sacrifice had become a preferred operating model. I never stopped to question the urge to cut off more of myself to fuel the furnace of my work.

There’s a quote from Jacques Mesrine that I often return to:

“There is no other world; there’s just another way to live.”

When I give myself permission to strip away all of the emotional charge around this experience. When I stop long enough to step out of the silo of “who I should be” it becomes crystal clear.

These are not markers of dedication and hard work:

• fractured foot

• hernia

• burst capillary

• debt

• panic

• chronic tension

• survival chemistry

• inability to rest

• inability to stop monitoring

These are symptoms of life force depletion.

So, if God or Spirit or The Universe is requiring me to accept the above as the terms to walking the path of service?

The answer, respectfully is…

No.

Because I love my work.

But I love me more.

It’s been an interesting week since I got up and walked away from the table of self abandonment.

Despite what The Grinder has to say about it, this wasn’t giving up.

This was me deciding that I no longer require suffering as a way to prove my devotion.

This is me saying if my business and bank account and credit score are going to continue to tank, they’re not taking me with them.

I no longer move from pressure.

I move from presence.

I create from coherence.

So, if I am going down, I’m doing it coherently. With a smile on my face and a resting heart rate so low you might question if I am even alive.

And I am.

So very, deeply, rawly, miraculously, gratefully, potently, viscerally,

Alive.

Because here’s what I believe deeply.

Reciprocity is a marker of coherence.

A coherent life gives back.

A coherent relationship gives back.

A coherent business gives back.

A coherent system nourishes.

A coherent system supports.

And:

If something only consumes you indefinitely, eventually the authority of the system must ask whether that structure is actually coherent.

Because devotion without reciprocity eventually becomes self-erasure.

And I am not invisible.

I am here.

Existing.

Breathing.

Taking up space.

Being.

Coherently.

👉 Sign up for my newsletter for deeper frameworks and tools for nervous system coherence and personal authority.

→ https://withamar.com/subscribe

✅ Explore my work:

Digital courses → https://paperbell.me/amar-energy

Work with me → https://withamar.as.me/

Website →

https://withamar.com/

Community → https://buy.stripe.com/6oUcN614K9nOdePbQCdIA0D

Substack → https://notesfromthestateofcoherence.substack.com/

📱Follow for more:

Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/amarenergy/

The “what” of my work is simple: I’m a Coherence Facilitator.

The “how” of my work is pretty straightforward too: “I work with high functioning humans to reinstall internal authority after burnout, over-functioning, and chronic internal conflict.”

It has, however, recently come to my attention that the “why” of it all may not be entirely clear.

So, to be clear, my “why” comes down to this:

I refuse to accept survival as the highest expression of human life.

Humans are not here merely to endure existence. We are made to thrive.

We are dynamic, multifaceted beings that are part of a much larger dynamic and multifaceted reality.

Survival is not an identity.

Survival chemistry is a temporary state that is deployed as a fail safe for moments when we really are on the edge of existence.

You are built for more than survival.

When survival stops being a temporary response and becomes an identity structure, that’s when trouble starts.

At some point, we began to conflate temporary survival engagement and peak performance. We stop asking ourselves why we’re constantly grinding and hustling.

It’s as if we’ve decided to live our lives like we’re trying to outrun something.

If you’re always trying to get somewhere else, you’re missing the point of life entirely.

I believe people deserve to participate consciously in their own lives again.

It’s the old chestnut “Are you living to work? Or working to live?”

So many people running around trying to “hack” and “game” the system. Your nervous system organized around survival and forgot there was another option.

The question isn’t really “how do I beat the system?” The real question is “How do I reclaim myself from systems that rewarded extraction and neglected reciprocity?”

You can’t lose the game if you simply refuse to continue participating when “lose or survive” are the only options.

Believe it or not, your system almost always chooses familiarity before it chooses freedom. So the real work is what you must do to regain control over a system that’s been programmed to use you up and discard you.

Because until you reclaim your system and begin the conscious work of re-formatting and rebuilding it, it will continue to mirror the environment in which it was created.

Which brings me to the next point…

You are the one that ultimately decides what happens next.

You’re not experiencing reality objectively. You’re experiencing the version of reality that your nervous system has curated for you.

The predominant filters and beliefs that your system organizes around were installed into your awareness before you were 7 years old. I don’t know any human younger than 7 years old who fully grasps the concept of personal authority.

So, no, you’re not responsible for what happened in those formative years. You are, however, accountable for what you ultimately decide to do about it.

Most of us were raised in a collective belief system that told us everything was “out there.”

Our suffering and struggle is always because of something outside of us.

Our happiness, success, and fulfillment is always tied to something outside of us.

This creates a world where most people are looking to the outside world for everything. A fix, a cure, an answer, must always come to us from someone or something else.

How does that work?
It doesn’t.

Ultimately, it’s up to you to decide that you’re no longer available to participate in experiences and beliefs that don’t feed or fulfill you.

Nobody can do that for you.

Even me.
I can give you the tools, but you gotta swing the hammer.

I also believe life was never meant to be a one-way extraction process.

Coherent systems reciprocate.

Relationships reciprocate.

Creativity reciprocates.

Work reciprocates.

Life itself, when organized coherently, gives back.

Life isn’t supposed to only take from you.

A mark of a coherent life is reciprocity. When things are returned to their inherent, natural state, life feeds you in return.

How do I know this?

Because of this final piece of my “why…”

You are born coherent and then life programs you away from that coherence.

So, if you’re born that way… and you were.

Then…

coherence isn’t something you have to learn.

It’s what remains when interference is removed.

Resolve the internal conflict and coherence returns.

Resolve the internal conflict and coherence returns.

That’s the work.

And that’s why I do it.

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Website →

https://withamar.com/

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I use a straw because I’m vain and I don’t want my teeth to yellow from coffee stains.

I drink coffee everyday, so I use one of these straws every day.

Recently, I reorganized my kitchen and I moved the straws from one side of the room to another.

It’s been 12 days since I moved the straws, and I still catch myself automatically wanting to go get a straw from the old location.

The first 3 days I would get all the way across the kitchen before I would remember the straws had moved. It was only when I visually saw they weren’t there that I would recall that I had relocated them.

During days 4-7(ish) the distance I traveled across the kitchen before I would remember got progressively shorter.

Days 8+ have mostly been internal noticing before my body is even mobilized to move across the kitchen.

Today is the first day I remembered where the straws were before I made coffee.

While I don’t think would sign off on the results of my experiment, I know I’m onto something.

My point here is that getting up from the grind and putting my well being first has created a lot of intentional space in my life.

I’m just now realizing how crowded things had become through the rebuilding of my practice.

Tension.

Mental clutter.

Emotional debris.

Resting the past few days feels really good but it’s taking some getting used to.

I find myself able to occupy my time for a few hours in the earlier part of the day. It’s the afternoon and evenings where I find myself forgetting that I don’t have to hustle and grind anymore.

The destination addict within is really hungering for a bite of something right now.
He doesn’t care where we’re going, he just wants to GO!

Inhale for 4…

Exhale for 6…

It’s only day 3, so if the data from my straw experiment holds, then tomorrow should be the day I begin remembering sooner that I’ve rearranged some things and that I am no longer living at the mercy of my system.

I guess this is my 4 of Swords moment.

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Website →

https://withamar.com/

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Honestly, it’s something I’ve been wanting to say for a while.

This morning I am recalling a moment a couple of years ago when I was in a very similar place.

At the time my domain name was coming up for renewal. I had a fancy url extension (.energy) so it was going to cost over $300 for 2 years of renewal. I was broke at the time and couldn’t afford it. My gut was telling me to go ahead and let it go. Not just the url, but my entire practice.

I clearly wasn’t ready yet so against my better judgement I allowed someone else to pay for a 2 year extension and on it went.

Ironically, that 2 year extension just came up for renewal last month.

And guess what? I renewed it again. This time it seemed different because I renewed it in order to point it at my new url.

But was it different?

If I am honest with myself I think the writing has been on the wall for a minute. I’ve been seeing the stall(s) in my practice as a call to reinvent. But maybe it’s really been an invitation to let go.

In terms of financial success, my practice peaked in about 2016/2017. That was honestly the last time I was able to fully support myself without any stress or any assistance from anyone else.

Other than that 2 year span, this work has always had a rough edge when it comes to my finances.

Fuck.

I’ve been standing at the edge of financial collapse for the majority of the past 15 years.

No wonder I’m freaking exhausted.

So… maybe God wasn’t breaking the deal. Maybe he was trying to get me to move on. Just because I want to stay in the same room, continuing to support what I have been building since 2012, doesn’t mean it’s where I’m most needed.

Maybe I was never meant to do this work full time. There are a lot of other things I am interested in too.

And I did say to Spirit a few years ago that I wanted a life where I got to do all of the things I was excited about instead of just having a “job.”

Maybe it was an opportunity to start focusing on some of the other things I am passionate about instead of doubling down on the insistence that my practice should fulfill all of my needs.

Maybe it’s never been about this work being my only source of income.

I am suddenly being reminded of something I have said hundreds of times in my client work.

“Your business (project, dream, vision, etc) already knows what it is. It doesn’t need you to define it, it needs you to breathe life into it. You aren’t so much in charge of it as you are the the steward for it.”

Ugh. I hate it when I’m right.

Maybe it’s not about letting my practice go entirely. Honestly, that wasn’t the point of yesterday’s post. I was never saying I am DONE FOREVER. What I was saying was that it’s not going to work for me to continue to sacrifice my well being in the name of success.

So, maybe it’s not about my practice at all.

Maybe it’s about focusing on the other things I love and am excited about and letting my practice find its ideal level.

Rather than forcing it to be what I need it to be, maybe it’s about simply allowing it to show me what it already is.

Maybe this (substack) is a place for me to explore those passions in a way that is public-ish and see where we land.

I’m not making any promises…but I am curious.

👉 Sign up for my newsletter for deeper frameworks and tools for nervous system coherence and personal authority.

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Digital courses → https://paperbell.me/amar-energy

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Website → https://withamar.com/

Community → https://buy.stripe.com/6oUcN614K9nOdePbQCdIA0D

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Are you in the room?

Cuz right now? All I hear are echoes and a whole lot of static.

Back in 2012, at the peak of a very intense spiritual awakening, I said out loud to God: “I don’t know what you want from me, but if you get me back to Seattle, get me a job and an apartment, as long as I am happy, self-employed, and helping people, I will do whatever you want.”

3 weeks later, despite seemingly impossible circumstances, I was back in Seattle with a job, an apartment, and a fresh start.

Over the next 14 years, I built a thriving practice around my healing and intuitive work and got to experience some really cool things and meet some even cooler people.

Certainly, there were ups and downs, but for the most part, I would say that I was successful.

If I am honest though, I have often felt like an imposter.

Especially recently.

I’ll come back to that thought in a second.

At the end of 2025, I started to ask some deeper questions about my healing work and how I was showing up in service.

The exploration began with a simple query:

“What happens after healing?”

This question was coming from a place of realizing I had done most of my deep inner personal work and now felt like I was moving in circles.

I can’t heal forever.

This line of questioning also bled into my vocational practice as I began to see that what I was offering wasn’t really moving the mark on my mission of supporting people in liberating themselves any longer. Certainly, I was helping people, but my soul was calling for something deeper.

So at the beginning of 2026, I began to rebuild.

When I boiled it all down and stripped it back, what became crystal clear was the driver of all of my work over the past 15 years has been personal authority and inner coherence.

Without even realizing it, I had finally (after 15 years) clarified exactly what it is that I “do.”

This sparked a huge surge of momentum that I rode like an expert surfer.

Beginning in mid-February, I showed up every single day in support of rebuilding my practice and exploring this new direction in my work.

I built an entirely new website. I distilled 14 years of workshops, methods, content, and client work into a course library. I created new events, self-study courses, free gatherings, and expertly designed materials. I clarified and dialed in my offerings of one-on-one sessions. I expanded my mentorship program. I was more active on social media in those 3 months than I probably had been in the past 3 years combined. I created a whole new brand identity with a gorgeous color palette. I optimized my workflows, leveled up my newsletter onboarding sequence; you name it, I upgraded it!

Parallel to rebuilding my practice, I was also rebuilding my nervous system and identity. I butted up against all sorts of internal conflict as I was expanding my reach. I didn’t back down, though. I devoted myself to my inner work. I sat with the freaked-out parts and called them back to center. I leaned HARD on my Internal Family Systems tools. I dug and excavated and dismantled and recentered myself over and over and over. In the face of what seemed like endless pockets of inner resistance, I kept. Showing. Up.

I didn’t give in to the fears.

I didn’t take the bait of staying small.

I resisted distraction and kept building.

For 3 and a half months, I gave my all to this work.

Devotion.

Dedication.

Discipline.

It was such an invigorating experience. Partly because I was finally able to see clearly what I was offering people. More than that, though, was this work actually felt ALIVE. It had weight and gravity to it in a very real way.

What I built in 3 months felt clearer and more aligned than anything I’ve done with this work so far.

And then…

this morning?

I wrote a new résumé and sent it out to 3 employers looking for work.

Why?

Because I am broke.

Dead. Ass. Broke.

I have done all the things God has asked me to do.

I have done all the things “responsible business owners” are supposed to do.

I have humbled myself to advice.

I have listened closely to expert teachers and guides.

I have left absolutely no stones unturned.

I have iterated, edited, and rewritten.

I have prayed, blessed, offered, chanted, and danced.

I have sat in ceremony.

I smoked the things, ate the things, drank the things, banged the gongs, rang the chimes, made the affirmations.

I had the attunements.

I pulled the cards.

I tested the muscles and consulted the oracle.

And here I am.

Feeling like a total imposter.

I am supposedly here to help other people reclaim personal authority and inner coherence, and I can’t even pay my bills.

The one thing I’ve yet to grasp, despite everything I have tried, is how to do this work AND thrive financially.

Hell, at this point, I’d settle for my basic survival needs being met. Forget the 6-figure salary and the house on 20 acres. I’d just like to be able to pay my rent, feed myself, cover my bills, and pay for my car without having a panic attack every month.

Is God in the room?

Because, I’ll be honest, it feels like he’s checked out for an extended vacation.

At least in my life, it does.

For the past 3 months and change, I have followed every nudge, every sign, every inkling.

And what has it given in return?

I have:

• More clarity on my work

• A beautifully optimized system

• An amazing community of people

• A gorgeous course library

• A reinvigorated passion for what I do.

I also have:

• A mountain of debt

• A hernia (and no health insurance to cover the surgery because I can’t afford insurance)

• A fractured right foot (thankfully that should heal on its own)

• No money in the bank (literally overdrawn right now)

• No clients on the books save for one amazing person I am working with in my coaching program.

How did it come to this?

How is it that I do everything I feel I am called to do and still end up here?

Again.

I love my work. If I could, I’d do it for free.

It’s potent and powerful medicine. It’s life-changing in ways that are real and meaningful, and, most importantly, it’s accessible.

I’m not hiding it behind impossibly cryptic language or extreme paywalls. I’m not requiring $10K down and 6 months commitment just to get in the door.

This work is viable.

This work is available.

But for some reason, it’s also invisible.

I desire more than anything to break through, but desire doesn’t pay the bills.

So, God.

Here we are.

I made you a promise back in 2012, and as far as I can see, I’ve kept it.

All morning I have been looking for someone to blame for how this has played out, but it’s not even about that. I’m not blaming you, and my relationship with you isn’t transactional. I don’t keep score like that anymore.

But seriously.

What gives?

I am not coming at this from a place of entitlement. I am not special. I don’t expect VIP treatment in exchange for nothing. I have given everything I can to building this work, and in return, I’ve gotten everything except for what I most need right now.

I’m also not coming at this from a place of standing in the middle of glaring blind spots. Trust me when I say that if there’s been a way to unblock abundance, to manifest wealth, to align my vibe with the inherent generosity of Spirit, I’ve tried it.

I’m not coming at this from a place of magical thinking. I have done my diligence. I have budgeted, saved, scrimped, and cut costs wherever I can.

I can say with all honesty that my side of the street is clean.

Sparkling.

All I want is reciprocity with my work. That’s all.

But, for whatever reason, I am still not seeing something.

So, this morning, I decided to do what I haven’t done in almost 15 years.

Walk away.

Not because I don’t care, but because this arrangement no longer works for me.

I talk on and on about personal integrity and honesty, and the honest truth is that I can’t do it like this anymore. It’s approaching self-violence to continue showing up, giving of myself, and receiving nothing in return.

I’m worth more than that.

I love you.

I love my work.

But I love me more.

I’m not coming anywhere close to bringing in the kind of resources I need to have even a basic life for myself.

And right now, the vibe in my relationship with my practice feels like I am being used. I have given a lot. Like a LOT to building this, and what I have gotten in return isn’t even in the vicinity of being close to enough.

So, while I’m leaving it open behind me, I am walking out the door of this room.

You have my number, and if this work someday grows legs, call me. I will gladly show up and participate again.

If this work is D.O.A. and I never return to it, then thy will be done.

I’m willing to accept both of these possible realities.

It’s not so much that I’m angry, though I am.

It’s more about being fucking exhausted.

I am no longer interested or willing in pouring anything into something that, for whatever reason, is unresponsive to my needs.

I’m doing what you’ve taught me, God. I am honoring my inherent worthiness and drawing a line in the sand.

There isn’t enough being served at the table to meet my needs.

So I’m standing up and walking out the door.

You know where to find me when you need me.

👉 Sign up for my newsletter for deeper frameworks and tools for nervous system coherence and personal authority.

→ https://withamar.com/subscribe

✅ Explore my work:

Digital courses → https://paperbell.me/amar-energy

Work with me → https://withamar.as.me/

Website →

https://withamar.com/

Community → https://buy.stripe.com/6oUcN614K9nOdePbQCdIA0D

📱Follow for more:

Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/amarenergy/

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