Hey, I don’t really, really know you guys. I think that’s strange. It’s strange to have that level of connectivity and really beautiful, what an opportunity for me.

That I take seriously and also take no responsibility for. And that’s kind of a baseline. Love is everywhere.

Love is everywhere. Doesn’t feel like it though, at times. But love is everywhere.

The thing that makes it not feel like that is our mind. And our mind is using all the references that it’s stored over time in every moment to try and tell you something about the present. It’s using old information.

And it says, you gotta listen to this, about this that you’re seeing. And it can be very convincing if there’s not another voice. Or there’s not another authority in our minds.

And this authority for me is openness. Openness is my ultimate authority. It’s really what I’ve found at the highest level of teachings in Tibetan Buddhism, is that it’s like, oh yeah, say bye to Buddhism too.

The boat that rode you across Samsara, you now no longer need. Kind of thing. That’s the idea.

So anything that’s good is set up for you to transcend it. Anything that’s good, I feel like, has elements of the universe that want you to go beyond all your ideas and just get into your existence. Being alive.

It’s everything. It’s everything and we miss it. It’s everything.

It’s my whole world now. Just happy to exist, simply happy to exist, and the magic really happens there. It’s hard to convince.

It’s hard to convince a conditioned self that only has the repetition of conditioning for most of the day we are called to go back to sleep by participating in what we call civilization. And which has notes of that at times, but really is a competition machine. But I kind of want to look at the thing that’s looking to call things competition, that part of my mind.

So when I say Love Is Everywhere, it’s also a song by Pharaoh Sanders, and it’s an amazing song that I’ve listened to a bunch in the last year.

And it’s just kind of like an explosion of love. And I feel like that’s what this world, that’s the way I’m experiencing it now, even no matter what the circumstances. Death, people die, people get sick.

There is plenty of hurt in the world, and I’m exposed directly to it. In weekly sessions, I sit with people, and I help them parse through all of their difficulties, the difficulties throughout their entire life. We look at all of it.

We look at what’s coming up in the present, and we find sustainable ways of being able to maintain naturality. See, we’ve separated ourselves from nature.

We’ve completely divorced ourselves from it. We wear shoes inside. Do you understand?

We wear shoes. Wearing shoes is like, there’s subconscious sendings to a natural body that says this earth isn’t safe for us. We need this distance between us and the earth because it’s not safe.

And that’s how far we’ve gone from our naturality. And we talk about getting into nature, forgetting that we are it. Forget it.

We are it.

So I’m, these days, I mean, reducing myself at any given point, and this is the openness authority in my mind that I talked about earlier. The openness is, what am I beyond what I think? What am I beyond what’s been shown?

What am I beyond this unfolding story? Even, what am I beyond the road to enlightenment? What am I beyond a Buddhist?

I am an alive happening. I am a happening that is here now, brought together by many elements of the universe, fire, water, earth and air to begin with, and space. But then there’s the history of all those elements and where they’ve been in time or beyond time.

The history of all those elements as they’ve related to other things in the universe. And then those things have all come together in this composite body. And it has a limited time as that on earth.

And it has a specific lens to see the world. And there’s an expression. How could there not be an expression of all these elements coming together as a human being?

How could all that not be expressing other things? All the things that make up us came from somewhere else.

And so, I’m trying to get back to the essence of the sources of nature that I am. And that’s where Buddhism and recovery and all these things have taken me is to really want to go beyond even my most spiritual idea. Lacey and I, lately, we’re just going like, we don’t even want to use the word spirituality anymore because just like so over here, it’s just like spirituality, like that’s a thing.

Like spirituality to me is how to honor your existence through being in a harmonious rhythm and interplay with the elements of the universe, taking in all pathways and all viewpoints where they intersect in truth. That’s it. And that’s something, those are a lot of words still, but it points and frames a picture of what I’m talking about that is just an ongoing practice and communion with.

That’s how I spend my time. These days, I’m just as likely to be driving with the sound off in the car, to hear the wind, to listen for the spaciousness in my mind, to pay attention to how the drive is affecting my body as I drive through different traffic platitudes.

It’s really nice to listen. It’s really amazing to listen to your body and to listen to what would be called intuition, which is like when you’re in openness, when something beckons you, curiosity can go, hey, what’s over here? And what I find is when I’m not looking for things these days, and I’m in that openness, that a very specific thing near and dear to my heart occurs.

An invitation comes or what appears to be an invitation, but really it’s I’ve given the invitation to this situation to have me, and I follow it, and it ends up being something miraculous, and this is a daily occurrence. It’s all from openness and curiosity. So that’s the ultimate authority to me, and however I get there, and I can get there through Christ consciousness, I can get there through indigenous wisdom, I can get there through bhakti.

These are all amazing ways of getting there that ask none of us to belong to solely. And yet, why not all one?

Today I need to get my car washed. I went to the local car wash here, and I thought I’d get an oil change also. And the lady said it was going to take an hour and a half.

And I don’t bring AirPods to this. I think ahead and I go, should I bring AirPods to this? Should I bring a book to this?

And these days, I’m finding that being with my own mind when I go places and just being open to any situation and not filling it with something else, yields more of what I’m looking for. And I’m reading less, you know, if you have been following this show at all, you know that I read every morning and have for 20 years, just read a little bit to throw off the mind every day, when you wake up and you’re in whatever last night’s dream was and what are the day’s expectations of you are and that seems to be pulling you toward it and you’re just almost unconsciously moving toward goals that you don’t even agree with and you know that thing. I need to throw that off in the morning and have and I was on to it very early on once I got exposed to some spaciousness in my mind, I thought, wow, there’s a real jerk in there.

“That’s kind of like calling the shots all the time and using shame and using like, oh, this really intense visceral anxiety, crippling anxiety, what I used to call free floating anxiety, which I now know is just being in disharmony with some element of your own truth, with some element of your own environment. That’s where anxiety comes from. And it’s the universe’s love, isn’t that fucked up?

The universe loves you enough to say you’re off course, and this is the way that I’ll get your attention. There’s no reason anybody should ever feel strangled by their own body, not in this limitless universe. There’s no reason.

We’re pushing against the rhythm. If you push against the rhythm, the groove falls apart.

So I’m always seeking to harmonize. And sometimes, here’s the thing, here’s the tricky thing about harmonizing with your environment, is that sometimes, you know, you got to hit some off notes, actually. It calls for you to hit off notes to be able to equalize what’s going on in a room.

Sometimes, if the room’s too quiet, there needs to be something loud to wake everything. And sometimes, if the room’s too loud, there needs to be somebody dwelling in the silence and drawing attention to that. That’s hitting the harmony.

It’s not blending in. It’s hitting the harmony. It’s balancing.

So that’s really important to me, and it’s really important as an ongoing practice. And so I trust my mind now, believe it or not, there isn’t much being said about being able to trust your mind again on planet Earth that you can do that.

Why do I trust my mind and how? How are you able to trust your mind? Maybe you might be asking, you know.

For 21 years, I’ve been paying attention to my mind in a somewhat sterile environment supplicated by various spiritual traditions and early recovery in 12-step groups. All of that was the environment, that was the new environment to be able to explore my mind, and I didn’t really take up the opportunity in the first decade. I thought, well, there’s a new character here forming, and God, it feels so good to be listened to.

Fuck, I’ve been a victim my whole life of so much, and now I’m in a room full of other people who were victims, and they’re all listening to me, and they’re giving me good feedback and camaraderie, and oh, my God, it feels so nice to be celebrated. And so it’s a new intoxication. The rooms, the 12-step rooms, are a new intoxication.

It’s an intoxication of being heard, being recognized, being celebrated for being one among the shipwreck. You didn’t know there were others. And so that was my experience, is like I built a new character, and this person was now industrially serious, and he was basically the opposite of the guy that I was.

He was not on the take, he was on the give, but it was really for the same reason. At the end of the day, it was like, so I could have some peace of my mind. That used to be from drugs.

And now it was from like, well, I’m outrunning that old Jaymee. God, he was a real asshole. Oh, thank God, he’s gone.

And that he that is talked about there is my mind and my heart that is being talked about there by me for the first 10 years of what would be called 12-step recovery. That’s a fight. In this case, it’s shitting on yourself.

It’s shitting on a kid who was brought into this world, all of us, and then programmed by our surroundings. And if that malfunctions at some point down the line, we call that us. After we hurt people, and then we end up in something that can help like recovery or something, then we shit on the us that we were, and we try and outrun that us.

And it’s like a subtle or not so subtle form of aggression toward ourselves, as Pema Chodron would say. So that’s what I did my first 10 years. I was trying to outrun myself and prove something to myself, that I’m worthwhile and that I’m good.

But you know what? I still had a lot of the old thinking, and I still ashamed myself into things, and I still experience anxiety and things like depression, and I had to go outside of the rooms. I was on antidepressants at one point, which helped instantly.

And so I don’t shit on them. It helped instantly, and I’ve been off of them for a decade. All things are that, to intermingle ourselves with life and all of its variations, and then move beyond it.

But always be a continuing thread to that thing, to that place that you’ve been, to that road. There’s a continuation, and yet it’s gone. It’s like a candle flame.

You know, the candle flame, it looks like this still object, but it’s really just like a bunch, it’s just constantly going. You couldn’t catch the candle flame, it’s just, it’s in constant movement, and yet it looks still, and that’s our naturality, I think.

So I’m really interested in that, and I’m really interested also in, you know, this work that I’ve been doing for a while, when I started in addiction and mental health treatment, they would pair me up with people. I was not a therapist, they had hired me as a spiritual director, and I was this guy who had a diminished ego and was a friend to everybody, and could teach people how to meditate, which has been the most helpful thing I’ve ever found. And so, I used to spend an hour in sessions with people, and this is totally just like, I just got thrown into this situation.

I have no formal training as a therapist, but I had 10 years of recovery leading up to that, and I had kind of moved beyond the ideas of that recovery and all the limitations of it, and moved into this new domain, and I was surrendering every day to all my ideas of myself, and had been doing so for a year and a half before I hired at this job, and so I was in this like new state of, I don’t know anything, I don’t know “anything. And so, they paired me with people in these sessions, and so I’m doing kind of like what therapists are doing. This is 2014.

I would go in a room with somebody who I just met, and I’m building a relationship with, and then help them go over their story in the way that I’ve gone over mine. All I’m doing is using my story, all of how I’ve untangled myself from my story. And this has kind of grown into now I’ve been doing it for 10 years where I’m not a podcaster.

This is my love letter to you. It’s a record of one person’s awakening and how that person interacts with other people, some of his favorite people of all time. I’m somebody that helps people with their stories and teaches sustainability.

How to sustain not a spiritual practice but a life. And it’s heavy work. It’s the heaviest work.

This is not, I don’t teach people to meditate in these sessions. This is going over the story and using my particular lens, which if you’re here and you’re not new to this show, then you know what that lens is and how it’s drawn in some of my favorite people more recently to just have the conversation. You know, I had nothing to offer Jim James, but the conversation.

Really nothing to offer him but who I am when he showed up here. I drew that in by being who I am, what I have to offer as a person in a moment in time. And that’s what I teach my children, how to be good people that people want to be around.

And that starts in our own mind. The news starts in your own mind.

Everything starts there. So we have to develop a friendship with ourself and that’s what I’ve done. I’ve developed this friendship with myself.

I am my greatest resource and I’m not a singular resource. I pull from all areas of the universe and I have two gurus, no, three gurus. Two who are alive and one who’s invisible.

Take what I can get.

But I become my friend. I trust me. I trust my mind.

That’s an accomplishable thing. To show my kids how to do that is to show them basically how to fish rather than buying them a fish dinner. If you develop a friendship with yourself, people are going to naturally want to be around you.

It’ll be a no-brainer. I want to be somebody that can benefit directly without what you can do for me. I don’t sign up for what you can do for me.

Anything that I sign up to ever, I never hold anyone to giving me anything that hasn’t been pre-arranged. There’s no quiet little takings, no like a well, hey, I did that for you that one time. Anything I show up to and I commit to, it’s because I want to be there and I know what I’m giving and I sign up for that no matter how it goes.

It’s not contingent upon how it goes. I just signed up for showing up to something and I used to bring a book just in case something went wrong. I could read at least, but now I don’t even do that.

I can just sit with my mind. So today, I was at the car wash and rather than sit there for the hour and a half, I thought that I would walk down the road to a restaurant called Mandala, it’s a Tibetan restaurant, and I was close by the car wash, so I decided to go sit there instead. And on this day, I didn’t bring the airpods, like I said, or a book, I just kind of wanted to sit and just like, because you might hear something.

Sitting in quiet, you might hear something like, hey, why don’t you take yourself down the street? Go to Mandala. You got an hour and a half, are you going to sit at a car wash or go sit among all this Tibetan iconography?

So I went down there and I walked down the street. It feels good to walk down the street. It feels good.

Like I’m at the car wash and I’m walking down the street and it’s, you know, all these cars. And it just reminds me of all the times like I walked in my life without anywhere to go, like without anywhere to land. I remember one of the last days before getting off Skid Row in 2003, like I was walking in Pasadena and I had to be out all day.

I was walking around because I didn’t have anywhere to sleep and nowhere would have me anymore and I had burned all my bridges and there was a shelter that accepted people at night and you had to be there at a certain time, so I’m killing time during the day just on foot and strung out in South Pasadena, where my kids now live and go to school, where I just watched my daughter graduate from middle school yesterday. Those same streets, I was walking around homeless, maybe two miles from the house I grew up in, no one wanting to come and rescue me for good reason. And me just wandering and walking, hoping that something would happen and being so hurt and not seeing it as my problem, seeing it as everybody else’s.

It just reminded me of that, just walking down to the restaurant to Mandala today. It just reminded me of walking and then there’s all those cars passing by. And I don’t know, it just reminds me of something analog.

It just reminds me of the 90s, of nobody fucking walks down the street anymore.

I’m not talking to you, New York. So anyway, I go down to this restaurant and it’s not open yet. I’m an hour early.

So I just sit there. And as I’m sitting there, I’m thinking about, because it’s a Tibetan restaurant and basically my world has opened up from this restaurant. Oh my God, I’m unpacking this right now, in real time.

But showing up there today, I showed up there as I’ve shared on this podcast one time when I was really in something and then the owners who I’d become friends with introduced me to who would become one of my root teachers. Just from showing up at that restaurant, that teacher introduced me to my guru, Lama Lanang. So a lot of good things have happened from just going to this restaurant and being in a sort of open state.

And so, I went there and I’m early, and I was just thinking about my teachers, and I was looking around and much nicer on the eyes than the car wash. And at that moment, my guru calls me.

And I, you know, I will say that Lama Lanang and I are in regular communication, but the timing of this is extraordinary. And we connect and we have a wonderful conversation. And he says things to me that are jokes that it’s kind of like inside jokes that I’m so incredibly proud to understand that I get and that he gets joy from knowing that I get and we’re having this conversation at this unopened restaurant where all the magic has happened for me in the last four years or so.

And you know, this is unplanned. I didn’t wake up with this in my head. I’m getting my fucking oil changed, you know, and I’m open.

I’m not filling my head with a podcast. No problem if you’re doing that. I’m just saying I’ve done that.

I’ve done that. And now it’s really hard actually to listen to people trying to tell me all the time who to be, how to be, how to see it. Sometimes I need somebody, I guess, like sometimes it feels really good, I suppose, to hand it over to somebody else to show you something that you haven’t, to show you it bundled in a new way.

But it’s getting harder and harder to be entertained.

It’s getting harder and harder.

And I really want to take one for the team. I really want to. But I’m 47.

I’m now older than Chogam Trump was when he died. I’m older than John Lennon by seven years when he died.

And it’s hard for me to sit around and not try to be of benefit. And my life looks colorful maybe, hopefully, because it is. You know, and I’m showing windows of possibility through going through your own story.

The benefits of going through your own story, not waiting for other people to come and apologize to you, not waiting to be shown how to do it, but just tackling the parts that hurt and going towards that with verifiable traditions and the wisdom contained within. And that’s what I’ve been doing, filling my head with that rather than my own thoughts, creating space and applying that to my own story. Because you need space if you’re going to view your story, because most of us think we are our story.

So space is that other authority that comes in and it’s just, it’s the zoom out. It’s when the astronauts first went into space and they looked down at the tiny ball and they’re like, what are we all fighting for? This is crazy.

Why are we fighting? This is like one tiny, we’re all just so small.

As you all know, you may know if you followed the show, my perfect recipe is like the grain of sand. The grain of sand on the beach is, there’s more stars in the sky than there are grains of sand on all the beaches combined. But there’s more atoms in a grain of sand than there are stars in the sky.

I’m the grain of sand. That’s my practice. I’m so small, and everything is in me, and I’m a part of everything.

Every day I’m looking to be introduced to a new aspect of existence. Something that’s just passed me by and I really needed to get out of town. And I hadn’t seen my brother’s home in Aptos, California, beautiful forest and they have a ton of land and a beautiful home and it’s quiet.

You get introduced to a quiet, you know, that’s like where there’s no manmade sounds. I could hear a single cricket like in the afternoon, just chirping, nothing else. So quiet.

And it’s really weird because I find myself in this situation where like I am somebody who has valuable things to say, and yet I don’t want to say anything.

Like I don’t want to say anything, I just, I don’t want to be in the way. And yet, I’m in on the joke. It’s one of the universe’s bits of humor which are so important.

And if you listen to this podcast regularly, you hear a lot of laughter. God isn’t the universe absurd at times in its delivery.

Just how it chooses to speak to us can be so absurd. Getting quiet up in Aptos, so beautiful. And I could feel how much of this city, and I live in a great town.

It’s hard to call Ojai a city, because it still feels just like a town. But I could feel even the pace and the rhythm of what I’m normally in, in the city of time. I could feel time go, surrendered time, for a day or two.

I had the opportunity to shut off and surrender time and just to allow whatever happened, happened in those days in the openness. One of those days was, I was missing my spiritual community. They were all getting together.

Sam Burkle’s group were all getting together at Devender Band Hearts House, and that’s where we meet for Sangha. And I was up in Aptos, and so I was too far away, and I was missing them, thinking they were getting together that day. And I was really wanting to dig in a bit deeper this past Sunday and connect.

I hadn’t talked to Lama in maybe a week, and we hadn’t met in class because classes hadn’t been, had been postponed because he was doing a retreat. And so I was just feeling like, you know, it’s like, I guess what used to be called Sunday scaries, like which is that like, oh, I’m going to work tomorrow, like that sort of thing. I was kind of feeling that tinge of just like, I want to dig in a little deeper.

I miss Lama, and so I want to spend some good time studying this morning. And as I pull out the book and pull out his picture and all that and think about Sam Berkel’s down south in LA and the crew all getting together for a Buddhist ceremony, I’m sitting there with all my materials and Sam Berkel’s text, and he says, Hey, you’re up there. You should go see Pema Oso Ling, which is a retreat center.

It’s like 150 acres in the Santa Cruz Mountains. And it’s where Sam and many people, if you’re a Tibetan Buddhist, then this place was, Tinle Norbu Rinpoche inherited this place and then gave it to his principal student Lama Sunam Rinpoche, who is a friend of mine who’s an elderly man, but I am developing a relationship with him. And he has a daughter named Yeshe and she has a boyfriend named Adam.

And I’m close with them, getting closer with them. And we meet at these sanghas normally at Devendra’s with Sam. Anyway, that’s the lineage is like Tinle Norbu Rinpoche’s.

This is his center and there’s a gigantic, huge Guru Padmasambhava statue, just enormous in a shrine room. And there’s a stupa there that’s really breathtaking. And I hadn’t seen any of this.

And so Sam sang like, hey, while you’re up there, you got a last day. He takes me out of the blue, unplanned. I told you what my day was like.

It was just wanting to connect deeper to my Tibetan Buddhist practice and to kind of honor my teachers somehow. Well, Tinle Norbu Rinpoche is my teacher’s teacher, and this place was his. And it’s nearby, I’m like 20 minutes away.

So I decide that I’m going to do that. I’m like, that sounds great. And now I’m like, what kind of magic is this?

I was just missing them down south. And now it’s found me in this bed on my last day in Aptos. So I do my practice, and then I get in the car to go to drive, and a student of mine texts and says that he’s in some trouble, so I pull over on the side of the road where there’s a reception, and we have a nice conversation, a 20-minute conversation or so, and it feels very nice to be that person.

It feels very nice to, you know, this is somebody that I worked with years ago who can still call me and say, hey, I’m in something. You know, I can’t afford a session. Can we meet?

And me being on this vacation, on this very special journey even, going to a place that I’ve just been invited to over text, that’s a continuation of like my life’s goals, and yes, of course I can pull over. Yes, and yet to be me? Yeah, that sounds great.

I’ll be me over here and be of benefit on the way to be of benefit land. That’s taught me everything about this. So it’s easy.

I pull over and I talk to this person. And then I get back to driving, and the reception is starting to wane. And I’m in the redwoods, and I’m going up.

The grade is getting steeper, the road is getting bumpier, and there’s no reception. And I want to talk about this for a minute because I’m kind of obsessed with this. The feeling, and this is so fucking sad, but the feeling of being unreachable and not knowing what’s going to happen next and still feeling like you could survive it, that is a very interesting feeling.

And that’s what I experienced. I have no cell reception, the road is bumpy. I don’t know where I’m going, I’ve never been there.

I know it’s up this road somewhere. Anything could happen right now. I wouldn’t be able to get help.

There are no cars going back and forth. Pretty insane. And I love it.

And I don’t know what that is. I mean, trust me, I’m not like trying to bungee jump or skydive or anything. You know, those are extremes.

You know, this is just everyday bungee jumping. You know? And it’s sad that that, and why I said it’s so fucking sad is like that that’s the risk.

It’s like, oh, whoa, you drove without reception for a minute. Like, wow, fucking David Blaine over here. But it really felt like something.

And for a minute, I didn’t exist. And I’m driving through the Redwoods. I’m unreachable, nobody, nothing, nowhere.

And that’s kind of one of the most natural places I’ve ever found. Because there’s nothing that can be done for you in that moment. And here we are, riding the fickle horse of life directly into the unknown.

It was a good feeling, and I felt like I was going through the car wash. Like, you’re unreachable now, and you don’t know what’s next. And so you’re going through this force, like you’re going through this force field of leaving it all behind on the way up to leaving it all behind-ville.

And I finally get up the hill, and I pull into the first available parking spot. And I don’t know what to expect. Gigantic place.

“Where to begin? But I was just told that by Sam, he said, like, hey, if you just say where, you know, tell him that you’re a friend of Lama Sanam. Lama Sanam is the sweetest, sweetest man, the most humble man.

Oh, my God, you would freak out if you knew Lama Sanam Rinpoche. Oh, the sweetest man. The man will not take any credit for anything.

I’ve tried to get him to bless Malas, and he always looks for the bigger guru in the room. He’s like, no, no, no, this person should do it. So I was told that if I connect, if I just say, I know Lama Sanam, can you show me where his quarters are?

That I would be shown, but I’m kind of like hoping that I don’t have to use that. So I pull up, I get out of the car, and it’s like a scene in the 60s where like, you know, where you arrive at the commune or the ashram or something, and then like some girl in the distance is like, like in a 60s movie, like, hey, what’s going on? Like, nice to meet you, what are you doing here?

Kind of thing, and it’s like, they’re in the distance, it’s like this girl and this guy, and they’re kind of running toward me, and I realize it’s Lama Sonam’s daughter, Yeshe, and her boyfriend, Adam. I had no idea they were there, and they don’t live there. And there, I would have expected to see them at Devendra’s.

But they’re here, and they’re running toward me, and I’ve just pulled up, and I’ve gone through the wash of the Redwood Forest, and I’ve answered the call from my bed that morning of like, ah, digging deeper, and then Sam comes with this invite, and all of that is now run toward me through Yeshe and Adam. And you’re just pulling up, and it’s this kind of magic. It’s fucking magic.

This is every day of my life now. Friendship with self, openness, benefit, no harm, dedication, devotion, non-self-practice, those are the ingredients. All of that has materialized into this kind of magic.

It’s really been following me around a lot longer than I’ve paid attention. I mean, it was with me when I didn’t even know. I posted a picture today of being at the Tibetan Freedom concert in 1997, a concert that my favorite group of all time was throwing, having all of my other favorite artists, Radiohead was there, U2 was there, Tribe Called Quest, Sean Lennon.

It was an insane lineup. And I worked the concert. I knew one of the guys who ran the Milarepa Fund for Adam Yaut.

I got to go to the after party and hang out. That shit changed my life. I ended up sitting in a booth with Adam Yaut, Winona Ryder, my friend Josh, who ran the Milarepa Fund, and David Blaine is doing a card trick for us.

This is 1997, so he hasn’t put out his thing yet. He’s practicing, he’s snuck in, David Blaine. Everybody’s in the room.

It’s like a collection of everybody that I’ve looked up to forever. Courtney Love, Steve Malcolm is from Pavement, Lenny Kravitz, all the Beastie Boys are there, Twiggy Ramirez, Helena Christensen. It’s an insane room.

Everywhere you look, radio heads in the room. And I had just gotten into OK Computer. That record had just come out.

This is then. And a friend of mine who I didn’t even know was there also, another friend from Santa Fe, who’s a photographer for Spin, happened to be there, been flown in. I didn’t know this.

And he was like, Oh, my God, you’re here. He’s like, This is perfect. You’ll be the excuse for me to like we can go around and I’ll take pictures of you talking to people.

So he used me as like the thing to be able to generate people talking to each other. Like that happened to me at 20 years old. And I got into fucking so many concerts that I wanted to get into, like the backstage thing.

I met the Beastie Boys so many times backstage. I would just get in. Somebody would just hand me the ticket.

They’d just stick the sticker on me. They’d say, go in, kid. And so this kind of magic that’s been following us and limiting mind is what has been restricting us, limiting mind based in how we’ve been emotionally raised, what our level of maturity is, what we’ve shown are the laws of this universe.

Is God money? Is God prestige? Is God physicality that you can accumulate in a bunker and be safe?

Is that God?

Or is God love?

And is love something that maybe we can look at? A lot of what we get involved in, it looks like what you can do for me. It looks like capitalism, you know?

And we all need it, and we know what it is. We really know what it is. We know when somebody listens to us and doesn’t have an agenda.

We know when they’ll show up for us because they have, because they’ve shown that. We know what love is. It’s unconditional, goes beyond, goes beyond condition and is still there.

We know what that is, and we’re all looking for it, and we don’t know that we’re it, and that is not out there. If you think that love is outside of yourself, you’re going to be in an addiction. It’s not.

That’s a dependency on something to bring you into love. Yes, people do bring people into love. Absolutely, they can be that window, but ultimately, the only love that you can ever count on is the love that you have for yourself because people will fail.

They’re designed to. They’re not designed to fit your specific qualifications. That’s not what other people are designed for.

That it even happens is a miracle. That people can cohabitate, that we even fucking drive down the street and aren’t crashing into each other left and right, and are all maintaining that distance in between the cars. You know what I mean?

Like as insane as people can be, most people are keeping that distance between the cars. Like there’s this respect. There’s this ongoing respect on the road that we don’t talk about.

We’re only talking about the accidents, and that’s limiting mind. Limiting mind is the news, focusing on only tiny parts of the story of what’s going on in the whole.

Limiting mind does that, and it says this is what this is. You know what this looks like in the Southland. We’ve seen this before.

Here comes El Nino. We call something El Nino. We’ve nicknamed something something, and then it’s a whole personality that either comes to fuck us up or make our land green, whatever we decide in that moment, whatever limiting mind does.

So this notion of God being love, it’s just it goes beyond your ideas. It’s the staying power of presence, the unmovable staying power of presence that really is not asking anything of you. That is love.

Everything else is a form of dependency. But it’s another way here. I’ll make it gentler.

It’s a vehicle. Love outside of ourselves is a vehicle, just like spirituality, just like health and wellness. It’s a vehicle, just like psilocybin, just like antidepressants.

A vehicle, not a destination. A vehicle, a thing to use to go from here to there, and then you leave the vehicle.

And that’s freedom. You know what non-freedom looks like. Go anywhere, you see people trapped in their bodies.

You see people adding comfort layers to themselves. To distance their heart from the world, you see it either through muscle or through fat.

Muscle is somebody hurt me, I’m going to protect myself, and they’re never going to get me again, and I’m going to show them, yet I’m still scared on the inside, or else I wouldn’t have to do this. I wouldn’t have to blow myself up. And the other one is I’m sad, and so there’s these layers between me and the world to protect me because I’m sad.

Ultimately, I don’t feel like I matter, so there’s these layers in between me and the world. It’s trapped energy, that’s all. It’s trapped energy.

Energy needs to move. And you know what? Wherever you find yourself, it’s all just a story, and you see people carrying their story around, and you see it in the way that we interact.

And I want to tell you, the content that you’re taking in, a lot of it, I don’t know if you’ve noticed this or not, but they’re cutting out all the fucking gaps. They’re cutting out all the gaps to fit in as much information as possible to hold your attention away from your life. Posing as something to enlighten you, but they’re showing it to you through no gaps in speech.

So we’re all starting to talk to each other with no gaps in speech. The way that these shows are edited are just a subconscious feeding of what it’s like at a higher caliber of living than you are, which is implied, because you’re the one on the other side of the phone looking at them. So you’re watching them feed you content at this rate, and it subconsciously programs your mind to think that it’s okay over time.

And this is how social behavior changes. And it’s happening. We’re not really listening to each other, knowing everything that we know now about what’s destructive.

So just watch out for it. There’s a valley of intuition that occurs in between gaps and sentences. It’s something to be explored.

Don’t take my word for it. Pay attention. See if paying attention to somebody else and putting your shit aside for a minute, really listening from a deep place.

See if you can more skillfully navigate their situation, really listening to them, not listening to what you already think they’re going to say. To finish the story of visiting Pema Osa Ling, Lama Sonam’s daughter, Yeshe, and Adam, take me directly. They’re like, oh yeah, Lama is having lunch right now.

They’re on break at this retreat, and there was a three-day retreat there. And I’ve shown up, and this is incredibly auspicious, as I’ve outlined. So I go inside the cafeteria area, what would be considered that.

And there’s four teachers, obvious Tibetans, all over the age of 50, if not over the age of 60, sitting at a table by themselves. Then there’s all these empty tables around them, and then the people who are there for the retreat are sort of in all the other tables. So there’s this distance between the teachers and the people.

And out of respect, I imagine. I’ve just blown in the wind, like I’m like some tumbleweed blowing in. But Yeshe brings me in, and Lama Sanam looks at me and he goes, It’s you.

I can’t believe you’re here. He goes, Do you want lunch? And I was like, I’m not going to say no.

My teacher Lama Lanang, who lived at Pema Oso Ling, which is so extraordinary to get to go to this place that my teacher, my guru, lived early on in his residency in the United States. So I felt already, I knew that bit of the history going there. And Lama Sanam knows Lama Lanang.

And Lama Lanang has told me, Don’t obstruct anyone’s kindness. Just if someone offers you something, you can take it. Just stop limiting people’s generosity.

And so I’m like, Sure, I’ll eat. Yes. And they put me at the table.

Now, my idea going there today, just to bring you into this, this is kind of fun, is like my only idea was like, when I got the invitation, I was like, Oh, this is gonna be great. I got this Jesus T-shirt that says, Power in the blood of Jesus. And it’s Tibetan red, like that maroon with yellow writing.

And I just thought it’s so funny. I haven’t worn it yet. It’s a vintage shirt.

And it’s just so great. And I wanted to bring that shirt. I wore that shirt there.

And I wanted to bring a booklet of Maharaj and bring a picture of Lama Lanang. All in my mind, this is my creative idea. And take a picture holding up Maharaj’s picture, wearing this Jesus shirt in front of the enormous Guru Padmasambhava statue.

At some point, I want to have somebody take a picture of me so I can just do a post that says, same thing. And it’s a fun creative idea. This is how I think of these things.

We’re like, oh, I’m going there. How can I use this opportunity to playfully and skillfully show what I really believe, that I’m not just a Tibetan Buddhist.

That I’m not just a Christian, that I’m not just a bhakti, a yogi, a Taoist? It was fun. It was like this, oh, maybe I can pull that off.

And I sit down at this table, and I take off my jacket, and I’m wearing the Jesus shirt with all the teachers. And they’re all looking at me like, I think, and it’s fascinating. And then the people who are there for their treat, I imagine, are like, what the fuck just blew in here?

This guy with the big white beard, and the Jesus shirt is now sitting. And my T-shirt, the color matched all of their maroon at the teacher table. So I’m like this guy in the beanie with the white beard and the red shirt with the teachers at the teacher table, awkwardly eating this meal that’s been brought to me, but with joy.

And so like, this is, what do I do? Say no or move away or go, no, no, no. I breezed in, I had no plan.

I had no plan. And I’m ending up at the teacher table at the retreat, where my teacher once lived, where the great Tinlin Norbu Rinpoche handed it to this teacher, Lama Sunam, who’s at this table, who’s brought me there, and all unplanned. And so of course I’m going to eat.

And of course I’m going to sit there. And also, this is the trippy thing, when you’re sitting at a table with four Rinpoches, two Lamas, two Tolkus, that’s what I was sitting with. And one of them was leading the retreat, and he’s like a heavy.

When you’re sitting there, some of the social graces of like wanting to connect, like and go like, like, so yes, I’ve come from whatever, like and there’s this language also kind of thing that you have to navigate. And so I just, I do one awkward thing and kind of catch myself where I’m like, I pull out my guru’s picture and I go, Lama Lanong, like showing everybody. They’re like, oh yes, yeah, we know him.

And I said, he used to live here, right? Yes, yes, yes. And then I realized I’m trying to make conversation with people who don’t, they’re like the people who don’t need you to fill the fucking space.

Like that’s the whole design is like eat your lunch. And so I just sat there and I ate my lunch in a very dignified way, in a way that I was very proud of. And I can also accept the fact that I’m at the teacher table because the same thing happened to my original mentor when he entered in India.

When he entered in India, within a few days, he was sitting with the Dalai Lama out of nowhere, just wanting to be open to the experience. And he was immediately put in front of the Dalai Lama and studied with him for two weeks and then was sent to study with Zansar Jamyan Kensey Rinpoche. So this has happened.

I know this. As this is happening to me, I go, okay, well, I’ve seen this before. My teacher told me about this, my original mentor in Tibetan Buddhism.

So I know now that I can sit at the teacher table, and it doesn’t matter what it implies. Don’t get excited, Lama says. No matter what it is.

Don’t get excited. And so I can sit there and I eat, and they’re all looking at me, and it’s really sweet. They try to include me in a conversation.

And these are elderly men, and they’re all having this conversation in Tibetan. So Lama Lasanam is wanting to let me in on what they’re discussing, and he says, Oh, a friend of ours just passed away. And I say, How recent?

And he said, Two days. And I’m like, Wow, two days. Knowing what I know about the PoA process, I realize that there must be people praying for him, for this person, and there are probably maybe multiple people praying for him, navigating this experience of leaving his body and as he heads to the next.

And so I ask, I was like, Lama son of them, there’s a lot of people doing PoA probably right now, right? And he goes with his hands. He was like, Yeah, it’s us.

Like, it’s the people at this table. And I was like, Oh, I was like, Wow, this is the team? I’m sitting with the team of people who are quietly at this table.

As I was trying to fill the space, what they’re doing in their downtime that looks like downtime is praying to their friend who’s passed away and making sure that he knows that he’s dead and making sure that he can skillfully navigate this experience and bring all the teachings into him moving through this. And that I’ve sat at this table. That’s an active participation of that.

And that was mind-blowing. At the end, we take this picture. It’s really sweet.

I got Tukultajrul to bless a mala, but my brother just brought me back this mala from Kathmandu that he got on the street from a mala maker. Anyway, so I have this mala, and I’m like, it’s brand new. I haven’t worn it yet, and I really want to have it blessed.

And I think I’m in an extraordinary situation to have it blessed. So I ask, there’s four teachers at this table, and I try to give it to Lama Sanam, and I say, like, hey, I brought this mala. My brother just bought it in Kathmandu.

He says, back from there, could I have a blessing? And he, oh, no, no, no. He’s like, both two teachers, both kind of like, oh, no, him, him, him, him.

And they all go, like, give it to Tokutadro. Like, oh, not us. And this is Lama Sonam.

This is so Lama Sonam, which is extraordinary. In the times that I’ve met him, this is this humbleness. It’s like he always looks to somebody that’s bigger, that could be perceived even as bigger, and gives it to them.

It’s like, no, no, not me. God, he wouldn’t want this. And this Lama Sonam, he took care of Tinle Norbu Rinpoche in his passing.

He helped a saint pass. And oddly enough, what’s really funny is this very humble person, this very humble, if we can call him a person, this very humble monk, he was given. Tinle Norbu was like, I don’t want this center.

He’s like, here, give it to Lama Sonam. And Lama Sonam, of course, doesn’t want to be in a position of power. So I think this is hilarious to me to learn this, that Lama Sonam has inherited Pema Oso Ling as a responsibility, because he’s just always looking to see who’s higher than him.

His humility has just gone so far beyond, just baseline of like, oh no, I’m okay. It’s just like, no, there’s got to be something better. I’m nothing.

Thank you. And you know, that can be a turn off to people, I imagine. Maybe they can go like, oh, I don’t want to aspire for that.

That sounds, you know, but he’s gone through all the stages of ego to get there. So this is like a byproduct of actually indulging in the ego on some level and working through its stuff. So Yeshe then takes me from this lunch, once again, nothing planned.

Takes me from there to see this stupa. This stupa was just recently redone, and it’s beautiful and it’s one of the only red stupas in North America and or in the world, I guess. And it’s a very special one.

And look up what a stupa is, so I don’t have to stop here. And you can even look up a stupa at Pema Osel Ling. And it’s so beautiful when we do these rounds, I do these circles, and I can’t even believe it.

I’m at this place, and this has all come from me just in the morning wanting to dig into my practice, and now I’m in the place where my teachers have taught, and so many blessings and empowerments and studies and intentions have been put into this place, and it’s so close to my heart, and it’s like the universe couldn’t stand it. It’s like, no, no, no, no, Jaymee, the last day in Aptos, no, we got to get him there. And here I am, and it’s like the most personal thing to me.

I’m crying because I’m looking at this stupa, and I’m like, this thing couldn’t be more, it looks like an antenna, an alien antenna, sort of energy vortex, like monument, so colorful and dynamic, and it looks like it’s a charger or something like, if the Grateful Dead did Star Wars or something. And I’m looking at this thing, and it’s so foreign to everything else in my life, like so foreign, nothing looks like this. Nothing is kind of designed like this, and yet it means the most to me, this thing, this foreign object that is not of my nationality or my spiritual upbringing, is now like the most important thing to me, to be sitting in front of.

And I spontaneously cry. These days, it’s so much that it’s very hard to say anything about it or do anything about it in those moments. You just go, what can I do with this?

You try and capture it on video, and you try and bring other people into it. You try and capture it. It doesn’t do it.

It doesn’t even get close. And I really care about sharing the journey with you. I think it’s fun.

I feel like some sort of spiritual journalist or something who’s kind of on a Hunter S. Thompson trip, and just kind of like sloppily and skillfully, perfectly sort of navigating these situations that call for reverence and respect, and somehow I’m invited into those things as me as this guy in the Jesus t-shirt at the stupa. And that’s an extraordinary place to be, and so I try and share with you on Instagram and occasionally on this podcast, but an episode like this, you get to hear me without interviewing somebody.

And I think I’m always pushing myself to ask better questions on this show and always noticing that I am, I think, asking more skillful questions. And so I’m proud of myself in that way, and I do this as a thing to, I bring you into it, but really it’s like, it’s a record keeping of the love that I found for not only this universe but myself in it, this limited time self. And so all that occurs to me on a daily basis as I walk down the street, I’m not being Jaymee.

I’m not. I’m walking down the street and I’m going, I’m a collection of all these things that are having a unique lens in this moment that isn’t a person and really doesn’t want anything from anyone, only wants what the universe wants from me. I’m a decade into that philosophy, fully surrendered into it, with many stages of other surrenders that have come in this decade.

But here I am in that moment in front of that stupa, realizing that this foreign object, this strange thing is like, it’s really my whole life’s work. So we go from there then to the shrine room. Two weeks ago, I was meditating before, sitting with Lama Lanang in a class on Zoom that I attend every Saturday for two hours.

And I’m meditating after doing my practices of guru yoga. I’m sitting in still space of meditation, and I see a shrine room in my mind. I get a flash of a huge monument and sort of like a room that just looks like a highly decorated and decorated also room.

And I get a flash of it, and I’m like, whoa, oh wait, I’m sitting in class with Lama in a couple minutes. Maybe I can ask him what that is. And so I do in class.

I said, Lama, when it came time for questions, Lama, I just had a flash of a shrine room in my mind. I’ve never heard of that before. Is there a shrine room in our minds?

I try to make it general because it’s an awkward thing to ask. And I don’t want to come off as like, you know, oh, you’re having a special experience. And he says, yes, but don’t get excited.

Just like does not want me. He’s like, yeah, that’s the thing, but hey, what are you going to do about it? You know, basically.

Like, yeah. And I don’t know if I want to talk about the shrine room in your mind right now. He doesn’t say any of this, but this is kind of what I hear.

Just like, yes, but look, not everybody’s having the shrine room in their mind flash. And I don’t know if I want to address that right now. It’s kind of like the feeling that I got.

And I was like, okay. And I just left it as this unopened thing, like this unanswered thing. And now I’m at Penma Oso Ling, and I walk in that shrine room, and I realize that’s what I saw.

Now, how does that even happen? I don’t know. I don’t care to explain it.

You guys will figure it out. You guys will figure it out in your own life, or you won’t. It’s okay.

But that happened. And I’m in there, and I can’t believe it. And I have my little Maharaji writing booklet, journal, that has Maharaji’s picture on it.

I walk in with that, and a picture of Lama Lanang, and I’m wearing my Jesus T-shirt, just as a reminder. And this shrine room, this gigantic hall, with a huge statue of Padmasambhava, they bring me Lama Sanam says, will you stay for the ceremony? And I was like, yeah, for a little bit.

And I meant it. I’ll stay for a little bit. I’d want to stay for the whole thing.

But I was going to spend some time with Lacey in the afternoon on our last day up there, which I wanted to do. I wanted to do that and stay for what I could. So I said, yes.

And he brings me this table. This is the second table that I’ve now sat at. This one’s on the floor, but it says reserved seating.

Now I go, am I that? At the table, the dinner table with everybody, with all the teachers, me and my red shirt. And it said reserved seat.

Brought me right to it. Empty seat, the only empty seat at the table with the teachers. You know, reserved seating, it just messes with your mind is all, is what I’m saying.

I don’t know what the fuck. I really don’t. So I sit down with my Maharaji booklet, which is not this tradition, just in case you’re green around the deities.

Whole other tradition, Ram Dass’s guru. My gurus are Lama Lanong Rinpoche, Tilku Oregan Phuntsok Rinpoche, and Maharaji, Nirmal Kurali Baba. So I have them all out on my little table that says reserved seating in front of the gigantic, like front row seat in front of the gigantic thing, Padmasambhava.

And I have this booklet out, and this man comes from behind me and puts his arm on my shoulder. And this is their attendance for the retreat that are there. And this guy with dreadlocks puts his hand on my shoulder.

I look up because I’m sitting on the floor. I just look up over my shoulder. I see this guy, and he’s got tears in his eyes.

And he looks like Maharaji, like a skinny Maharaji with dreads. And the tears in his eyes, he’s staring at the picture of Maharaji. You know when an older man cries?

You know how sweet it is? How amazing it is? How miraculous when a man over 50 cries and it’s not sloppy, but it’s like you can tell that they’re working to cry, that they’re honoring their feelings.

He took one look at Maharaji, and I could see in his eyes how much that person has meant to him. And I think in that moment, Maharaji, the last person that he expected to see in the Tibetan Buddhist retreat that day. And I brought it and made him cry.

And he said, he’s a good one. And I said, oh, I see him on your face. As he walked away.

And there I am sitting with that booklet. I’m looking at Lama Lanang’s face, right next to Maharaji. I’m looking up at Padmasambhava, and I’m in the Jesus shirt.

And this is perfection. All one. Maybe even all zero.

But all one, and it’s being honored. And this one individual here is bringing all these things together, taking it all on a ride, ending up in the reserved seats. How many of those fucking seats did I miss in my life?

How many seats because I wasn’t quiet enough? How many seats because I didn’t have the integrity to actually say, no, actually, this is what I want to do to honor me today. Did I miss?

Scary thought. One, I don’t really entertain anymore. I take the opportunity to live.

And so that’s my beautiful time at Pema Oso Ling. I stayed for a bit of the ceremony, which was incredible. I snuck out about 40 minutes later from the front row and didn’t really sneak much.

I left Pema Oso Ling and I went back through the wash of no Wi-Fi. And it’s almost like, on the way in, leave it all behind, have a fresh experience. On the way out, leave it all behind, have a fresh experience where you’re going next.

So beautiful what the trees in the wilderness did for us. Us. I’m a traveling us.

Us.

You know, also, while it was up there, I took a couple sessions, and I have a student who’s my morning jacket super fan. I mean, like, not a basic bitch super fan. I’m talking about like legit, like, come to Jesus, Jim James type shit, you know?

And I love this person. I’ve been working with her a couple months, something like that, and grown really close. She’s listened to every episode of the podcast or something like that.

She deep dove after Jim James and even came to OI to do a session in person and went on the tour on her own. Went to Mandala Restaurant and went to John Dennis’ shop, Valley of the Moon. All these people had been guests on the show, you know?

Went to the places and then came here and did a session with me early on. Well, there’s this, My Morning Jacket just did four nights at the Fillmore in San Francisco, the legendary Fillmore, where everybody fucking played. It’s like the monastery where the counterculture musically was erected.

And so then these are very small venues for My Morning Jacket. They’re usually playing Hollywood Bowl, stuff like that. They’re not playing theaters these days.

And so this is four days in a week with one gap in the middle of My Morning Jacket only, no opening group at the Fillmore, and they’re not playing any repeat songs. I’m in this session on Thursday morning in Aptos, and her name is Jaymee. It’s funny too.

Yeah, it’s great. It’s the Jamie’s. Jaymee has gone to every night of this concert.

It has tickets for every night. She also intuited the ticket password, the code. She didn’t have the code when it came time for pre-sale tickets for this thing, and she intuited it in a moment.

She typed in the right thing, and she got access. She used some, I’ll leave that to her. But she couldn’t believe it, and she got nights to all four, and she had gone to two of them so far and was there to report that there was such joy and that it was palpable.

And so I text Jim, and I told him. I was like, hey, this is the report from the audience. And he invites us to the next night on Friday, which is the last night of the run.

And it’s Friday night at the Fillmore. We’re in Aptos about an hour and 40 minutes away, and so we go. And this is unplanned, all of this is unplanned, and it’s so specifically us.

And so our plan becomes to meet with Jaymee Merritt, and I decide, well, let’s do it at Haight-Ashbury, because I want to touch into Haight-Ashbury whenever I can. I mean, it’s like a power station, almost. We go to Haight-Ashbury and hang out there for a bit, meet up there, and then we head to the concert.

We don’t know what it’s gonna be like. We don’t know what kind of tickets we have. We don’t know anything about this experience.

We just know that Jim’s invited us, and we’re at Will Call or whatever. So we get our thing, and we get passes, and we get this access to an after show party sticker. We put it in our pocket, and we go inside, and we’re some of the earliest to get there, and we’re right up front.

And we’re with this group of super fans that Jaymee is friends with. She has been going to a lot of the shows since she’s been a fan and has dove deep into this community, and it’s a really incredible loving community. If you’re a My Morning Jacket fan, I have to say that it has some of the unique, most unique qualities of community and friendship and love and acceptance.

Something that you might expect at a Grateful Dead concert or something like that is really happening at these My Morning Jacket shows. And we take in this concert, and it’s three hours, and it is like a drug. I mean, of course we know all these songs, and of course we’ve been invited by this singer who’s like five feet away from us, and we’re attempting to have this relationship.

It’s so intense. And we’re jumping with people and feeling this joy, and it’s like people are touching our shoulders and looking at us in the eyes and smiling, and we’re like a part of this big throbbing machine of what the band is generating at their most arguably harmonious between themselves. You can really see it.

I notice the drummer looking fondly at moments at gym when he doesn’t know it, or the guitar player or bow or the keyboard player, any of the guys, I catch them over this three-hour concert looking fondly at gym or at other members of the band and going like, wow, what I perceive to be like, God, I love that guy. Look at what we’ve made it through. It’s the Fillmore, and it’s one of our favorite bands of all time, Lacey’s and Mine.

And so we just, that’s our experience. We meet this 10-year-old girl who’s there with her parents, and they’ve taken her to like 10 shows this last year, and she’s gotten sticks from the drummer, and these parents are just the most incredible people. They just, they have means, and they take care of their children.

They take them to the concerts that they want to go to no matter where they are. She ends up getting another pair of sticks from Pat the drummer at the end of the show. This incredible fucking unbelievable show that while you’re there and in all of that, and while I’m me, and seeing how this all materialized from nothing, and seeing that all of this is going down, you go, what do you do?

What do you do with this other than be there for it? So we’re really there for it, and afterwards we go to the after party, which is so cool because it’s so mature men. These men in this band have their after parties like snacks, and people that you can have light conversation with, and it’s not a party, it’s not sluts and drugs and all kinds of shit.

It’s like a very sincere place to just take in a few moments with people that have been invited to the after party. And we see Jim come in the space and he comes up to us immediately, and we hug and we talk for a bit, and we have some quick exchanges, and I get to meet Pat and tell them about what it’s like being in the audience. And it was one of the greatest concert experiences of my life, for sure.

For sure. And we don’t stay long at the thing. We pay our respects, we say hi to Jim, we exchange for 10 minutes or something like that, and then Lacey and I go.

That’s how I’m decoding my ego, is like going to all the holy places, and going to all the holy people, and seeing that they’re all just people who are still asking questions, who haven’t found the thing yet. And I’m decoding the ego thinking that there’s anywhere to be in all these situations. Meeting the people, you meet them, and then you find that they don’t want to sit around and talk about how great they are, believe it or not.

They don’t want to talk about the history, necessarily, of what they’ve done. They’re wanting to relate to now and sort of maybe have something outside of that because they don’t get it very often. And so, and all I’ve wanted to be was them.

And now it’s pretty good just being open.

It’s really good just being open. Dreams come true, and they become more specific the less you chase. And I hate to say it.

I fucking hate to say it, to tell you that, because I really went at it the other way, and you couldn’t tell me any different. But it really is in surrender and trusting that whatever it is that you love that’s truly meant to be will not only find you, but it’ll wrap itself around you and never let you go, and you’ll kind of disappear into it. Lacey and I do mentorship sessions.

These are anywhere from an hour long to I do longer intensive work with people, but these hourly sessions can be scheduled through lacey at loveistheauthor.com. She can book consultations to sit with us and have our particular lens look through your life and help you find sustainable ways of living and truly being in your existence. And we do that through various traditions, all of which the thread of which are sanity, not magic.

I hope this has been informative and that it helps in some way. I want you to know that if I don’t know you, I’d like to know who you are. Make yourself known on some level.

I know that I’m thinking about you. One of the greatest honors of this incarnation has been that I’m sort of the guy who, as soon as I get somewhere, I sneak everybody in with me. So just consider yourself a part of that family.