This episode is an attempt to sort through my thoughts, meanderings and practices, because there’s been some growth indicators that I’m compelled by. And I will be honest that, you know, beginning this podcast, for a good amount of it, I was always looking for something outside of myself to tell me about myself. Now I find myself actually mining myself.

Rather than looking for a guest, sometimes I wonder what I’ll say about what it is that I’m working on outside of my head and can that be useful? There’s been some indicators along the path that have let me know that I’m healing something in my bloodline, that I’m healing a child wound in my life. And it’s come through dreams.

My mother has had a few dreams in the last few years as I’ve really been digging into kind of inviting the inner child, so to speak, the innocence, pure luminosity, the way they were born, the unconditioned soul, spirit, the unconditioned mind, to invite that in to my life more and more. I had been over the last five years or so asking that innocence in me to tell me what it sees. What do you see in this situation?

Starting to give that innocence or that inner child like a voice more in my life as maybe first thought. First thought, best thought is a Buddhist idea. And it’s something that my teacher even says all the time.

He says the first thought is the one that goes with the heart and then the head gets involved. So there’s been a lot of indicators that this innocence or this inner child thing hasn’t had a voice in a long time. Because when we were kids, we were not seen as valuable because we had innocence and we hadn’t learned about the world yet.

And learning about the world was seen as knowledge. And it seemed like that’s what keeps you safe, is learning about civilization, learning about social faux pas and cultural ideas and things that will get you through life. So that’s not the unconditioned soul.

That is the soul being conditioned. And so I invited that kid, that innocence, back into my life, really just giving it a voice first, just like empowering your child to have a voice in their life. So that’s what I did.

And the results were very interesting because it was some of the toughest work. It’s just like shadow work that comes, like all the stuff that the old haunts that you don’t want to look at, that you think, you know, well, shit, I’m progressing spiritually. This is great.

This is great. Why does it still hurt? Why am I still afraid?

And why do I still want to impress my parents? Why can’t I have a healthy this or that? Why do I keep hurting myself?

All that’s the shadow, the undone, the graveyard. It’s a graveyard of old haunts, of misconnections that we’ve had in our life. That’s what I consider to be the subconscious.

It’s just like where all those things in life, where something missed the mark, where there wasn’t an apology, where there’s something undone, and it’s like a graveyard, and all the spirits are flying around, and we keep that stuff buttoned up, and we try and keep it down. But then when people drink, or people get upset, or they’re triggered, all of that, all of the subconscious graveyard of all those misconnections rises to the surface like Ghostbusters or something, inhabits the upper realm. And that’s why people, the nicest people who seem so nice, and then you get drunk, and then it’s like, whoa, that was a whole other side.

Well, that’s, but there’s a bunch of misconnections in there. So anyway, that subconscious world, you know, those things just like in Sixth Sense, you know, the ghosts are trying to tell you something. And I, most of my life, I thought I’m going to stay on upper consciousness.

I’m not going to worry about the subconscious world. And then it just has a way of finding you. It has a way of showing up in behaviors.

And it’s really your friend, you know, it’s trying to make a connection with you if you’d only look at it, you know. And so it was very painful to look at the subconscious and where like in that world, that world of like where all the hurt originated in our lives. And so anyway, through this process of inviting the innocence to speak forward, my mother started having these dreams.

She’s had two dreams in the last five years that were really compelling that she told me about while I was visiting with her. She said, Hey, I had a dream about you last night. The first dream was she dreamed that there was a child me and there was adult me.

And we were having a meeting with her and we were telling her, we’ll take it from here.

Very powerful image. My mother having to surrender me to me and in a dream, that was very meaningful to me. And she designed, she did something with Photoshop.

She took a picture of me as an adult and kind of put it together with a picture of me as a child, like me holding a child, a child me, like as a buddy. And more recently, she had a dream that she was with me in like a castle. There was an open window, and we were in kind of a tower, and we were way high up.

And I just ran over to the window and just jumped out the window. And my mother was freaked out and horrified, and she thought there’s no way she’s going to survive this. And she went to the window and looked over, and it was a huge drop and I landed on my feet and kept going.

Also, very, very powerful dream. I haven’t been dreaming myself in a while, so when I do, they stand out. Last night, I feel like I had a dream that’s connected to all these other dreams that my mother’s been having, because yesterday I was doing a session, and I do it in front of my window to use the natural light.

And on this particular day, there’s a painting crew across the street painting a house. And they’re on their lunch break, and they’re facing me in lawn chairs, and I’m doing this session, and I’m not paying attention to them much, but they are, I’ll glance over every once in a while, and they’ll be looking over, and I kind of wonder, like, I don’t know, very lightly for seconds, I touch into that place of like, are they making fun of me? I wonder if they’re making fun of me over there.

And it was so light, the touch of, I wonder if they’re making fun of me. And I continued on the session, and these guys, you know, they’ve been here for a week painting across the street, and so they look in the window often, and I wonder what they think. And so it all led up to the last night in the dream, it was, I was me now, and across the field for me in this dream, there were some people making fun of me.

Cool kids or something. And instead of feeling unempowered, and instead of cowering, and instead of wondering if they don’t like me, I walked all the way across this long field, and they saw me approaching slowly to face it, and to say, what is it about me that you don’t like? Which is what I did in the dream, and they scattered.

And that’s, I woke from that, and I told Lacey, she said, that was a really big deal dream, tied to your subconscious. I mean, that’s one of my original kind of wounds, is just always trying to fit in, never wanting anybody to be mad at me, always trying to be a good boy, going way out of my way to just clear anything up or just, I couldn’t have anybody not like me, because then they wouldn’t get it, you know? They wouldn’t get it, like, you’re missing out.

I’m a good person, I swear. And there’s a series of these people in my life, these kind of like cooler kids, these people who I thought were cooler. And of course, later on in life, you grow up and you see them around and you go like, holy shit, I handed my youth over to you.

So it was a big deal for me to sort of, you know, between the series of my mother’s dreams, which feel like I’m no longer needing mother’s protection, you know, and I’ve become independent, and I was feeling that today. Today, after having that dream, I took my dog to the park to walk, and I’m really working on big surrenders right now. Like it’s very, very challenging to try and fit what’s happening to me spiritually into the material world to make sense of it.

And so I’m having those challenges and where the true sustaining good, my true source, is stronger than it’s ever been, and ego wants securities and it’s dying further. So it makes trouble, and it makes worry, and it looks for guarantees, and it looks for safety. Always.

And it’s dying when it’s doing that. If you don’t feed it, it’s dying. Your ego is dying, and you are becoming a part of everything.

But it’s very challenging, and it’s taken years to be able to learn how to navigate not falling prey to it. And the process really has just been calling the bluff on the fear, going toward the fear and pulling the mask off of it and seeing that love is there. And so I took my dog for a walk, and after having this dream, and this dream where I faced the bullies, and they scattered, just like in a psychedelic trip where they tell you to go toward the difficulty and ask you what its purpose is.

You know, I kind of did that in this dream. I was not scared. And my dog and I are walking at the park this morning, and we’re approaching a summer camp, it looks like, for soccer.

And these kids, they’re probably 10 years old. And I’m walking with Billy, and I, you know, you guys know what I look like. So I’m looking like that.

And I’m walking about, I don’t know, 30 feet from the kids with my dog, and then I hear this kid out of the noise of kids kind of call out to me and go, what’s up, brother? And I don’t look. And then the kid says it again.

And I don’t look. I don’t even look. You know why?

Because I’m free.

I freed myself up from needing to look and wonder, does that person like me? And so rather than adding to the chaos of the world of getting involved in something like that, I just kept walking. And I realized then that what I had become free of was some of the earliest conditioning that I received from people who perceivably had more information than me, like the kids on the playground or the people in church, my family.

Now I’ve gotten free from needing to look over there to see if I’m over there, to see if I’m in the complaint about me or the making fun of. I don’t relate to it anymore. And that was a huge feeling for me.

I really felt free. And this has been a lot of effort.

I can’t tell you how important it is to be consistent in your practice. Every single difficulty that I see in the people that I work with in mentorship sessions is inconsistency. From what they know to work, we still flirt with the neurosis.

Because we’re like, can we still make this work? Is there any bit left here that we can make work? God, this is so comfortable.

I like eating this. I like sleeping with this person. I like all the things.

This is what can be done. About a month ago, I was walking through the park on a Saturday. There was an art fair going on in our local bookstore, Barts Books, legendary used bookstore.

I had a stand there, and I was walking by, not wanting to buy anything, just enjoying being around people. That’s it. I just really enjoy swimming in people sometimes.

And I’m walking by the Barts Books stand, and out of the corner of my eye, I see this book, and I walk past it. I see it really quick, and I walk past the stand, and then I come back. The book was The Notebooks Of Sonny Rollins, edited by Sam VH. Reese.

And it’s got a black and white photo of Sonny Rollins, the jazz legend. And I admit to myself that I don’t know much about Sonny Rollins, but moments like these, these auspicious moments where something reaches out to you, I’ve just really paid attention to those moments my whole life.

When a suggestion comes, and there’s some sort of compelling enthusiasm that I have to investigate, that’s really valuable. That’s like alive stuff. So I grab this book, and then the person who’s behind the stand says like, oh, I’m reading it right now.

It’s so good. And this is not on a big label or anything like that. What the book is, and I buy the book for whatever reason, I buy it.

And I have to say that over the last month, I’ve never really had this experience before, but in reading just the introduction to this book, to familiarize myself with its contents and a little bit of background on Sonny Rollins, it doesn’t take me very long to get into here to realize that I feel like I am Sonny Rollins. I don’t know. I’m not taking myself seriously, but at the same time, that’s been my experience is reading this.

I’m just like, I feel so connected to this person. I learned so much about Sonny Rollins and that I want to share some of the things that… Because this book has become the never-ending story for me.

Every time I open it, I’m reading about what I’m going through in that day, the precise coordinates of how to handle it and coming from a mind that I trust because it’s studied the same sources from the East and it’s pulled itself out of civilization for a while after being somebody to actually be nobody for a minute and work on self. And I don’t mean self-improvement. Working on self meaning the one.

Seeing ourselves in everything, practices. And Sonny Rollins did that and I didn’t know much. I didn’t know that he was this person.

But Sonny Rollins had been somebody and he’d been really like somebody who in the first 10 years of his being a jazz musician, in the first 10 years of playing the instrument, he was already a legend. He had been an exciting new person in jazz music. And in 1959, what I didn’t know is that he pulled away for two years to do this independent study on himself and almost just completely disappeared from the scene, almost at the height of his popularity.

You know, and he was a young man, but he was really interested in doing the kind of work that we talk about here on this podcast.

I’m going to read some bits of what I learned today and what I read today…

“Rollins continually reevaluates his emotions, reminding himself that the motive for doing a thing is inevitably and ultimately above that thing. His list of motives and aims includes the wish to uplift and inspire people, and his notebooks repeatedly reflect a belief that jazz could accomplish social good in the world. For Rollins, jazz was vigorously hybrid. It was the music’s ability to break down artificial racial barriers that saw him align jazz with the realization of the next American dream.

Rollins’ interest in both yoga and Zen had a certain connection with the general tendency towards spirituality and jazz. The notebooks reveal someone interested in these both as daily practices and as ways of understanding his relationship to the world. Over this period, entries track his progress with different positions.

He notes at one point that he can now do the lotus pose very well. The header, The Sonny Rollins’ Yoga For Americans Club, signaled his ambition to promote the practice. “

This is 1959 we’re talking about.

Privately. Sonny Rollins. Reading books, studying, pulling himself out of the world, reevaluating, finding what’s important.

This I found really fascinating in some of the notes here. Sonny was concerned with the electric organ coming into jazz. The Moog synthesizer coming into jazz.

This is such an amazing thing to think about is that this electronic instrument, this instrument that now is just so common to see on stage, all kinds of electronic instruments are common to see on a stage, even with organic instruments. And at the time, this influence of something that you plug in, that’s not a real thing, that is pulling sounds from sound waves and almost pulling from invisible sources, these electronic keyboards, there was a concern about, is this jazz? Such a beautiful thing for a musician to have those kinds of considerations.

And so I’m falling in love with Sonny as I read this, you know, his discipline. The style and content of The Notebooks from the 70s vividly convey Rollins’ moments of uncertainty. At one practice sheet, Rollins writes to himself, This is no laughing matter.

He ends another passage with the rather equanimous observation, Things are never constant. Before sharply veering into pessimism, Disaster is coming, disaster is coming. Rollins addressed himself directly, giving himself advice, or reminding himself of rules that he had decided on before.

His tone could be firm, his language always direct, but he was rarely overtly critical of himself. Other comments reveal an earlier history, sometimes violent frustration with his own failings. Like in one particularly moving note, he contemplates showing his wife Lucille how I fucked up my own nose making it more bulbous, a way of hurting myself because of my guilt feeling regarding my musical inefficiencies.

Rollins was searching for a way to measure the greatness, qualified musical talent in non-worldly terms. This is from the book. Rollins’ notebooks stand out for their function, written for personal use, and best understood as a record of his thoughts and motion, and for their style.

Unlike retrospective books or interviews, they are not subject to the distortions of memory or later preoccupations. Neither does Rollins’ right to fit a pre-existing arc. There is no heroic trajectory here.

He is painfully honest about difficulties and shortcomings even at the height of his professional success. Rollins’ tendency to synthesize and distill, a habit that began as a means of sustaining a period of renewed dedication to doing things well, where reflection would allow him to evaluate his own success and calibrate routines, gradually becoming a lifelong commitment. As Rollins says in one of his notes, no matter how you feel, get up, dress up, show up.”

So this is what I read this morning, and this is some of Sonny Rollins’ notes. This is on motives and aims from The Notebooks Of Sonny Rollins. The idea of teaching music in the prescribed manner is our attempt to present people with a view of that finer side of their nature, which is akin to such things as trees, grass, sky, among other natural phenomena.

It is this appreciation of and uniting with such things which determine our ability to establish a contented existence in the world of finance, business, economic, security, etc. This is why the ventures of the project must always uplift and inspire people. In order to bring such inspiration to people, I must not be concerned with applause by the audience.

I must stand erect, tall and straight. I must be of clear head and pure heart. No stimulants.

I should not be either pleased or despondent over a performance and or solo. Always redirecting my attention to the sound of the music. Sound is all in caps.

And in this way, what is produced will assume its subsidiary nature to what my intent and ideal is. In this way, I will be doing my part to inspire and uplift the congress of people who have come to see. Rollins writes a note to himself. Your beautiful collaboration with Thelonious is indeed worthy of the highest commandment from this individual it receives that.

After hearing the record today, it was necessary, proper, and the right thing to so inform you. Continued success in and throughout life. Sincerely, Sonny Rollins, to himself.

This method is so important. What he’s doing here and what he’s studied and when he pulled out of his somebody-ness and he’s going to the root of nobody-ness and he’s taking in teachings that point to him being a part of everything and everything transmitting from mind and motive. That’s such a beautiful teaching that he gave there of understanding that it is not the art that we are creating.

It is the motivation to get in touch with.

Art is a very difficult thing to sit down and actually do. Okay, I’m going to do art now. No, but we get inspired.

We get inspired and that inspiration, a lot of times if we’re really in touch with ourselves, there’s a motivating quality to why we’re making the art that could point to actually what to paint, what to write about, what to speak about, what to sing.

It’s our motivation that matters. Why are we doing this? It’s a big question.

Why are we doing the things that we’re doing? Why do I say that thing all the time that I don’t agree with? Why am I participating in this relationship that isn’t working?

Why? Why am I doing this? Why am I chewing gum?

Something as simple as that. Why do I chew gum? Where did this start?

“These kinds of questions. This is why the subtle needs to be pronounced. And the only way really, really, really to do it is to give a period of time to subtlety, to dedicate a period of time to subtle study.

Subtle study involves a very, very low simmer ego, full broil ego, just wants confirmations, and it knows everything. And it’s not happy about not knowing anything. That feels unsafe.

It points to the truth, nothing is stable. Nothing has ever been stable. You came from nowhere.

You came from the unknown. Everybody goes there. Everybody came from there.

We all survive not surviving. It just happens. For me, I pulled out of all of my strong identifiers, willing to be directed in any way.

That was 11 years ago, that leap. Pulling out of all my ego identifiers and taking a year out of my life to not do anything that I had been doing that was based in ego and try and find a regular job. All the ego death situations, that’s what I did.

I didn’t listen to music, and I worked a job that got my hands dirty. Those two things were big for my ego dying. I didn’t want to work in a machine shop.

I didn’t want to make money for an honest day’s pay, necessarily, like the old-fashioned way. I relied on my talent and me being a musician and all of my credits and all that stuff up until this point. And so now I was just shelving that shit, shelving it hard, and I wasn’t even going to listen to music until I could respect it again and not have it be something that was just there to do something for me, for my ego.

So I took a year off of that, and I did what Sonny Rollins did, pull out of it all, study, learn about the subtle. What I learned in that year is that I am sustained and I am loved by this universe. I just have to recalibrate what my idea of love is.

And my idea of love now is that I get a shot. I’m alive. It doesn’t get any better than that.

That’s love. Yeah, it hurts, and you got to put up with shit, and I’ve got the scars to prove it. They don’t define me anymore.

As a matter of fact, every single pathway that got me here, including everything that hurt, is all of the gold. It’s the gold. I would not exist without it.

It is the golden path. And this thing that Sonny Rollins did, he came back to music in a couple years, and it sent him on a whole new trajectory. In his 40s is when he did this.

And then he lived another 40 years and continued to explore and continued to not worry about the audience and continued to be true to his motives, what was really motivating him and why to create this art and why to share at this time. And, you know, he wasn’t performative in the way of like keeping up with an image or anything like that at any point in his career. It changed his life.

And then I would find this book and just be reading about this person who’s done what I’ve done, and I’m doing it again. I’ve been returned to that time, I feel. I feel like I’m going through that thing again.

Like, what the hell am I? I’m here to help. That’s what I’m committed to.

That’s it. You know, and I’ve found a way, and I’m not lucky. This isn’t luck.

I didn’t find a way, luckily. I’ve curated the things that I love and brought them in, stitched them into this service work. So I made my life look like the eras that I loved, that I missed out on.

And I did it genuinely, not by buying the right things and all that stuff, like really getting into the soul of the counterculture. This thing that got birthed here that ended the dark ages of emotionality and those people, it’s on their backs. I got to say, it’s on their backs for taking acid, for going to Woodstock, even if they didn’t stay a hippie, it’s on their backs that we’re here.

You know, they made it mainstream and they changed something in America that it wasn’t able to sustain. But here we are. Here we are.

The generations that are being born, have you looked into their fucking eyes? Have you looked into a child’s eyes from the last 20 years? These kids are being born to help.

You can see it. You can see it in their eyes. They’re awake.

Just when the planet feels like it’s in peril, there’s this generation of kids that are coming up that we have, a lot of people are writing off. You know, in the same way that we were written off when we were coming up, I was written off for being a skater. Now it’s a billion-dollar industry.

You know, it’s obvious. Skateboarding is obvious now. Back then, it was skateboarding is a crime when I was growing up.

It was literally you’d get a ticket or go to jail. When everything’s changing, it’s evolving, and so it’s on the backs of all these people that we write off that we have all this change, that we’re in this goodness. And that’s what I’ve seen, you know?

And we got to… I’m not saying… Look, I was mad.

I was mad that I had to do the work. I was mad and frustrated, and there was this why me and why can’t… Why can’t my family show up and why can’t the people who were here before me lead?

And why am I leading this thing, this healing charge? And like, this isn’t fair. I was in that forever.

And I just kept having to go beyond it. The bulk of my work in mental health and addiction has been that. It’s been to return to the place beyond the conditioning, to have them re-evaluate and re-envision their lives, because the old ideas that we were programmed with, they haven’t been revised in forever.

It was literally you’d get a ticket or go to jail. When everything’s changing, it’s evolving, and so it’s on the backs of all these people that we write off that we have all this change, that we’re in this goodness. And that’s what I’ve seen, you know?

And we got to… I’m not saying… Look, I was mad.

I was mad that I had to do the work. I was mad and frustrated, and there was this why me and why can’t… Why can’t my family show up and why can’t the people who were here before me lead?

And why am I leading this thing, this healing charge? And like, this isn’t fair. I was in that forever.

And I just kept having to go beyond it. The bulk of my work in mental health and addiction has been that. It’s been to return to the place beyond the conditioning, to have them re-evaluate and re-envision their lives, because the old ideas that we were programmed with, they haven’t been revised in forever.

So we need to revise them, and we need to write the things for the people who are coming next. And that’s what your individual practice is. It doesn’t feel that way at times, but your journaling could save someone’s life.

That meditation that you’re doing every morning when you do it a few days in a row and you’re feeling good about yourself, that shit could save someone’s life. Think about your childhood for a minute.

You know, a kid who wanted it all to go well, a kid who may have been loud or quiet to draw attention to the fact that they really wanted to connect, that kid has been giving a shit their whole life. They’ve been caring.

And we’ve been trying to get people’s attention in one way or another. That’s what I did. Is this good enough?

Is this good enough? Always. Am I there yet?

Mom, dad, I got married. I’m having a kid now. Is this good?

I’m working this thing. Oh, I got a song on the TV show. Is this good?

Always. Is this good? Is this good?

Always about the parents.

So it’s very important. It’s very important the work that you’re doing. It’s very important if you’re able to pull out of ideas long enough to be able to explore them and revise.

Don’t wait for the time to show up. Time doesn’t create itself. It’s an illusion.

But a body is finite. I truly believe that you’re infinite. But it’s without the you.

I’m sorry. It’s just without the you. But you’re a part of things that always have been and always will be.

And this conscious life expands. Consciousness expands and it goes further and further, and you end up wanting to take care of yourself more and more. You end up wanting to listen a little bit more because you know how much it means to be listened to.

And you end up like fulfilling your checklist on your own without people doing it from the outside. And so you have more room to give to people. This is consciousness expanding.

How do you make consciousness expand? The very, very simple way of doing it is challenging your ego in the morning upon awakening, challenging it with a reading of something that brings you outside of stale overnight mind, that stale biscuit overnight mind that’s coated in dream sauce.

It just immediately makes new bread. You throw out that biscuit and you cook something new in the morning that says these are fresh ingredients with the day. Read something that challenges your limitations in the morning, points to a bigger world, just for five minutes and then sit with it for five minutes.

Ten minutes a day could change your life. And here’s the thing. This prescription, ultimately, time is limiting.

So you’re going to have to even let go of time at some point. But for now, to get regularity, use time and just read something for five minutes that challenges the nature of your thoughts. Challenge that thing and then take that new you into all those things that are already designed for you to do that day.

And that’s how consciousness expands daily. You fortify yourself with spaciousness. My ultimate authority now is openness.

It’s the ultimate authority. When in doubt, openness. When certain, openness.

Across the board.

My teacher Lama Lanong came to the Love Server member Kirtan at Raghu Marcus’ house here in Ojai and did a blessing at the end of a beautiful Kirtan. And it was a very, very special gathering, a crescendo of the last couple years here in Ojai, meeting every month on the full moon. And this one was, I feel like the instrument was tuned so well between us all, everyone in attendance.

Just incredible. And afterwards, you know, there’s this feeling, this ecstatic feeling that can come over people. And in this particular case, there was that feeling shared by many.

I was speaking to a highly devoted spiritual practitioner, who I respect, after the Kirtan, who had been in attendance. And he said, you know, the problem that I’ve had with Kirtan is that, is non-integrated Kirtan afterwards. He said, you know, there’s that high that comes, but, you know, during the week, like people aren’t with that same vibration, and so they go for the high, but then it doesn’t filter in to the rest of their life and what they’re like at home and all that, and all their quiet moments.

But it was an interesting taking. It’s across the board. It’s across the board on all spiritual traditions, really.

It’s, you know, you can find this anywhere. We got to watch out for these highs, you know. And Maharajah was really big on that.

Also, speaking of Loveserve Remember, he said it’d be better to become Christ rather than to visit with them. I want to talk about something also that I talked about recently on a Mystical Cynical episode, which is the idea of enlightenment, that it’s some sort of party or bliss state. Enlightenment is no self, and it means you’re a part of everything.

And as a human, enlightenment means you’re here to serve the world and you have no privacy.

I really want you to ask yourself if you want that. Because I have to say, I moved toward it thinking it was something else. It was my ego for many years in forms of spiritual materialism that grew lesser and lesser over time due to my devotion and my practice.

But still, there was always this ego that wanted to get something out of it. The more you practice, the deeper you go, the harder it is to take ownership over something that’s invisible and something that you couldn’t begin to say that you have any power over.

So enlightenment is not a private, royal event that’s bliss. It is dedicating yourself beyond self to all existence. And it’s relentless.

And there isn’t a spot where you get a you, or you would even buy it if somebody sold you a you to take care of. You wouldn’t even know how to pretend to be a you. And I would highly recommend…

You know, one of the advantages of always doing your best is that if you do your best every single day and you’re consistent with it, if the world says you failed, you can verify, I did my best. I know that I did my best. And if this isn’t measuring up, then I can’t do any better.

And that’s very freeing also. When did we learn to not be kids? It had been quiet at the car wash.

I was reading the Sonny Rollins book, and these kids came in and they reminded me of my kids when they were younger, and they even looked like them. And I was like having simulation shit go on, going like, is this even happening? That kid looks just like my daughter, and she’s running like my daughter when she was her age, and my son looked just like that kid.

They just look slightly off, slightly different, but it’s just like, what? Is this a fucking program? Like, what is going on?

And I just see it all now. It’s just like, it’s all my mind. It’s just all my mind.

Right now, I’m talking to my mind. You’re all like, you all don’t exist. This is like a complete invisible world, and it’s so freeing to just know that you don’t exist.

Thank God you don’t exist so I can ramble on. So I’m watching these kids, and they’re loud, and they’re not afraid to be loud, and they’re not afraid to go like, mm-hmm, yeah, I want this. Oh, I want that.

They’re doing loud like confirmations, and I was like, Jesus, like what? When did we get so scared? Now I’ll admit, you know, there was a woman who was in her 60s who was kind of looking over at the kids, and I don’t know, I saw her looking over, and it seemed like she was bothered by the noise.

Then again, I turn that thought immediately, and I go, okay, well, you’re just projecting that that’s what she’s in. Maybe she’s looking over, and it reminds her of her grandkids. And so I just immediately, it throws it into, I don’t know, I don’t know, who knows?

But the kids were loud, and they were taking up space, and it was kind of beautiful because they didn’t have the shame of being quiet, the shame of doubting, can I tell the world that I want this gumball? They don’t know yet that a world might not want to hear them having joy. They don’t know that yet.

And they don’t have that sensitivity to it, thank God. And I was like, when do we stop being kids, man? And I raised kids so I can see where that happens, and of course, no surprise, middle school, I was just about to say is the worst, and I stopped myself because it’s just like my kids are amazing, and they both made it out of middle school, and they’re incredible, and it wasn’t because it went well.

It wasn’t because it felt good, but they’re incredible. Before going to the car wash, I was at the brand new noodle place here in Ojai. I go there weekly, and I take myself to lunch.

I sit by myself, and I’ve gotten to know the people that work there, and they’re really sweet, and we have these great conversations. Anyway, I’m sitting at the noodle place eating my lunch, and there’s these women, late 60s, early 70s, having lunch next to me, and they’re the sweetest.

I hear them talking about why they live in Ojai, and one of the women says, well, I tell my friends that I live here because of the community, this sense of community, and it’s so sweet. And then you hear them just sharing with each other stories. Now, they’re not doing what the culture is doing so much, which is really interrupting each other constantly and going off on subsidiary story journeys and never really arriving somewhere and wondering how you ended up here.

That’s most adult conversations in the world that I notice. Like, there isn’t a strong thread of continuity and one person listening to another. But at this table, this is happening.

This is happening at the fucking noodle world. And these ladies are putting on a clinic of, like, how to listen to the other and how to relate, but without hijacking the conversation in your relation. And I’m listening to it, and it’s so neat.

And they get judgmental at times. They’re like, okay, one of the ladies, I guess she was talking about how her niece is having a shotgun wedding. And they’re going, like, you know, it’s such a shame that, like, they’re so worried about people talking.

And I’m going, like, do you see why they’re worried? But here, to their credit, they’re seeing the positive. And they’re really giving each other space to work this out.

And I was listening to them, and I was going, and then the other friend exchanged a story, and the other friend was there with her. And it was this beautiful thing, and I was going, friendship is a cleaning station. Friends are a cleaning station.

When it’s done right, it’s not something that’s sticky and messy. It’s actually a cleaning station. Like, you bring your stuff to someone else, they support, they listen, they help you not solidify in it, necessarily.

That’s what I loved about this, is that they kind of explored things, and they would get judgmental, but then they would go, but, you know, like, who cares? Like, nobody should worry about you getting pregnant. And then, you know, it’s the times of change, they were kind of saying.

And it was like you could hear these women really doing this well. They were addressing, this is a thing, but then they were also going like, yeah, but who cares? And that I thought was like a really perfect example of friendship, what was going on there today.

Really beautiful. Ask yourself that, you know. When you’re talking about something next time, try and add the element that makes it perfect, which is that you don’t know.

And all of your knowing and all of what it feels like, you still don’t know and that will make it perfect. If you can just code it with, I don’t know as much as this feels. I don’t know still.

Building up enough of those is like building up a pure land. I’ll see you there.