Cutting the Cord With Coaching and the Evolutionary Community

My energy has really opened up over the past month and now I’m making big changes in important areas of my life.

Some people aren’t going to like this post.  Some people I consider friends aren’t going to like this post, and I hope they can learn to understand this isn’t a personal attack on them, this is a truth I have learned on my journey.  It may not be good for their business, but that’s not my business.

One of the things I realize about myself is stillness is a constant practice.  But it’s also the most important characteristic of massive, positive change.  A constant level of doing-ness will not produce change, only create the illusion of change through unnecessary and counterproductive movement.  Over time this doing-ness will lead to fatigue and you’ll be left with the unsettling feeling that much was done and little was accomplished.

Most things do not need to be done.  Most thoughts do not need any attention.  Most of the time the proper response to everything is nothing – stillness. 

It is only looking back that I realize the period of doing nothing and going inward was my most productive period of time.  Instead of wasting time and effort doing things to no effect, I brought my attention inward to the source of the desire to “do something” or engage in thought patterns.  While nothing was going on at the surface, much healing and change was taking place inside.

People would ask what I’m up to and I’d say “not much.”  I’d find myself getting annoyed with the questions – Do I need to waste my time so I can give you an interesting story?  Why am I feeling bad about saying I’m not doing anything?  Why does it feel good and right when the world tells me it’s unhealthy?  Why am I feeling lazy, lonely and bored?  And these are good questions.  They lead to the sources of my patterns.

It’s both difficult and a relief to arrive at the realization that much of my life has been a waste of a lot of time, money (which is time) and energy to little effect.  But when I look at my life and say I have managed it poorly, this is actually optimistic. It means I have to potential to live a much better life as I learn to manage it more effectively. 

And it started with realizing I am not lazy, I am not tired, I am not low-energy, these are symptoms of something else. And that something else is what has been driving the misuse of my energy and leading to wasteful patterns.  So it isn’t about being more disciplined or bringing more energy into the patterns that are slowly destroying me, but in destroying those patterns.

I’ve written about some of my epiphanies along the way, and I’ve made changes.  Mostly I’ve stopped doing or thinking or engaging.  There’s no point in action when I’m filling my life with things that suck energy – until I solve the underlying issue and begin generating nourishing behaviors, the only appropriate action is no action and the only appropriate thought is no thought.

When enough things clear, then the course of action becomes easy to see.  Big changes can happen seemingly at the flick of a wrist.  The most difficult part about creating real, lasting, beneficial change is clearing out what isn’t serving and allowing my true desires to reveal themselves.

I’ve come to this realization, and this is a big a-ha that flies in the face of almost all the “personal coaching” modalities out there:  It is far better to know that you don’t know what you want than to think you so.  The man who knows and accepts that he does not know his path is far closer to his goal than the man who actively dedicates himself to an illusory path so he can say “I have a purpose.”

The first step to personal growth is not to “find your purpose,” it’s to realize you have no idea what your purpose is and to find peace in this.  Far too much attention is placed on this notion of a “man’s purpose in life.”  Certainly a guiding purpose is essential to a fulfilled life, but pretty much everyone is so clouded in their thinking (myself included) that a man has no chance of finding that purpose in his disoriented condition.  First a man needs to stop the spinning and let things settle.  Then he needs to find north.  Then he can look at the map and will likely find his path jumps out at him (and is either far away from his current location or the very path he is on).

So a man who knows he has no idea what his path is can easily learn to find peace, while a man who stubbornly insists on following his purpose first will circle the globe several times and never come close to his path (and likely delude himself into thinking his aimless circling is a pathway, when he’s just wasting his time).

Most men don’t need a life coach.  They need stillness.  They need to stop what they’re doing, stop looking around and start seeing clearly.

So I sat at home, found stillness and felt bored and lonely.  The personal coach will say, well, you’re bored and lonely because you’re not doing anything and your alone.  So go do something and be around people. 

Then some time goes by and I’d be right back in this place, just a little older and more tired.  Because this is where I was supposed to be and I wasn’t listening.

Clearly the “problem” isn’t what I’m doing, it’s what’s driving my thoughts, which drive my actions.  I wasn’t “bored” or “lonely,” these aren’t even real concepts.  They don’t exist, it’s all imaginary bullshit.  There’s no such thing as boredom or loneliness, they’re constructs to create the illusion of separation.  A clear and honest perspective shows, no, I wasn’t lonely.  There were, are, and always have been plenty of people in my life.  Loneliness is about misperception, misdirection and misapplication of energy.  So when I’d go out into the world holding this pattern, what happens?  I’d attract other “lonely” people who confirm my illusion. 

It turns out, when you operate under the delusion of boredom and loneliness, the whole world is full of bored, lonely people who reinforce each others’ illusions of disconnection.  The solution isn’t action, it’s an attitude adjustment.

And the irony for me was that I had to go towards the feeling.  I had to let go of all the ways I artificially stayed connected and go deeper into the source of illusion.  I’m bored? Stop doing things.  I’m lonely? Get off social media and stop wasting time with fake friends.  Embrace it. Embrace it so much it becomes a friend instead of a problem. 

Then you find peace.  Then you find stillness.  And then the path of action becomes clear and simple.  You walk toward the hologram until you can touch it and know it’s not real.  Then it goes away.  Then you can make real choice. 

Coaches won’t teach this because there is no glory in this process.  It’s “boring.”  It doesn’t yield itself to “instant success stories” and cool “before and after” pictures.  But then again, a real life coach would be focused on a person’s life from the source, not the BS external stuff.  Nobody I’ve met is a true life coach (well, maybe a couple, but they go by much different titles and would NEVER refer to themselves as being in that category), and very, very few people need the services the purported “life coaches” are selling. 

And by “life coaches” I mean all of the variants – evolutionary coach, spiritual coach, PUA coach.  It all falls under that “solving general fucked-up-ness” category.

Coaches and teachers are great – if you know what you want and are looking to gain specific skills.  Focus on that one thing, learn it, master it, move on.  Hiring experts is great for that.  Living your life…? No.  Actually a coach is counterproductive in this situation.  Even the most well-meaning of coaches can’t help but inject a subtle (or not so subtle) agenda into the process.  He or she will have a certain way they want to see the world become and expect you to fit into that.  He or she will also be impatient for quick results – coaches don’t play a long game. Quick, visible results are good for the coach – but are they good for you?  After years of going down this path, I can say with certainty it wasn’t good for me.

Idealism and time constraints are the enemies of real growth.  Idealism is just a nice word for “false expectations.”  Many people have these pie-in-the-sky opinions of how society and they should be, and they pursue these “dreams” (fantasies) without ever questioning the basis for their idealism. Inevitably, if they took the time to reflect instead of assuming their opinions are truth because they are connected with strong emotions (as are all limiting beliefs), they’d soon realize these “ideals” are nothing but mind programming.  You’re not saving the world – you’re full of shit and being a pain in the ass for the rest of us in the process.

Almost every coach I’ve met is an idealist at some level, and none of them have gone through this internal reflection process.  Inevitably, their students generally tend to follow the same ideological path as their teacher (there’s that agenda kicking in, as well as confirmation bias).  The fundamental issue here is pretty much everyone who has chosen “personal coach” as a vocation (or hobby, since few make a living at it) is living out their unconscious ideological fantasies (while many call themselves “conscious” as they do so, because irony is fun).

The universe hasn’t asked all these people to coach.  It’s a form of groupthink – and how is a person who is hypnotized by group delusion going to help you let go of your illusions and find your inner truth?  They won’t.  They’ll tell you what you want to hear – or they’ll tell you what they want to hear until you accept it as your own opinion (or fire your coach).

Take away the expectations and time constraints and instead focus attention on what is behind those expectations and time constraints.  What’s driving this?  Go into that.  Feel more of it.  Get really curious about who you really are, behind all that. Turn off the news and social media.  Go for a walk.  Meditate.  Do something you enjoy just because you enjoy it, whatever it is.  Find those access points to your deeper self.  You’re in there.  It might feel like a tangled ball of thread, or a hodgepodge, or a giant to-do list, but somewhere under all that is you. 

You strip everything away and there is a core and in that stillness with only your essential self, this is where you find your true north.  A coach isn’t any good until you’ve done this much, and after you do that the huge majority of, if not all of, the coaches will be irrelevant to you.  Most people just need awareness and a reset.

Most people are basically happy and suffer under the delusion they’re unhappy. Even people I’ve known who had pretty awful childhoods have been able to find peace and happiness later in life.  The unhappiness comes from running away from those things inside instead of facing them – face those demons and discover they’re holograms and everything changes. A lot of pretty intense emotional patterns can grow from pretty basic core illusions and many people who seem “hopelessly damaged” are actually one step away from total health, if they’d just turn around and face their shit.

There are some people who need more help, professional help, not a coach.  It’s a far smaller number than those seeking such help.  There are a few who cannot be helped.  These are the exceptions. 

I was wrong about coaching and I was wrong about myself.  There are certain things I’ve learned and experienced through the benefit of coaches/ teachers which are immensely valuable.  But a coach can’t teach life.  A coach can’t teach purpose.  You can’t teach happiness.  Coaches can’t help you find your core, clear out illusion or make you appreciate your true worth.

Looking back I would reflect on my experience with coaching  overall with a great deal of regret for the time and money wasted.  It’s not that I didn’t learn and grow, it’s that coaching at some level is inherently disempowering for the student, and over time it actually retards growth.  For me, I feel coaching was a distraction from actually facing my stuff and understanding my true self.  The times when coaching has worked has been when I was on my path and wanted specific things – alchemy (the most recent work with Etienne) would be an example, as would my very earliest work with Destin Gerek, which was issue-specific. 

Looking back I knew who I was and coaching actually did more to feed my underlying doubt than to go through it.  There were times when I knew what I needed was simply a different choice – in jobs, in partners, in where I lived, in friends, in lifestyle.  A few simple things that make an immense difference in life.  I needed to just believe in myself and make the change.  In a way I’ve spent my entire life growing and evolving, I just needed to trust what my higher self already knew.

Coaching did not assist in this natural growth path, it was an impediment.  “Life coaching” actually held me back.  It directed my attention to a process that was more feel-good distraction (which through time and repetition became boring and annoying distraction) instead of really getting right with who I am and what I really wanted to do.

A simple meditation practice, along with a few lifestyle changes, was really all I needed to overcome my anxiety attacks and take the action my heart desired.  Instead I dragged out this “evolution” process for years.  Same with all my other so-called “problems.”  The truth is, for the most part, I needed more than anything to simply learn to accept who I am, what I like, and how I enjoy living my life. The other stuff was not a good use of my time and money – there’s a reason why those aspects became annoying over time.

Am I bitter?  No.  Am I ungrateful?  That depends on your point of view.  I feel I provided more than fair value for what I received and wasn’t a pain in the ass student.  I’ve expressed gratitude for the services I’ve received and now I believe – no, maybe that isn’t the truth.  I want to make people feel good and support people, but maybe in my effort to be supportive and kind I haven’t really been listening to myself. Especially with regards to coaching.

The thing is, I like these coaches as people.  That’s the problem.  I liked them so much I handed over my precious time and money and really wanted them to succeed with coaching me.   The truth is, I still like them, but I would have been better served not getting the coaching.  I really like who I am and where I’m going in life, but those years of wandering through the woods – didn’t help.  To be honest, a couple good one-on-one PUA classes about 15 years ago to smooth over my anxiety and rough edges, and maybe one other specific course I could have and did find online, and I would have found my way here much faster and with less painful and annoying side journeys. I would have found what I needed and have more to show for it.

That doesn’t make me bitter or ungrateful.  It makes me (finally) honest.  I didn’t need a coach, just a little attitude adjustment and some social skills.  And later, when I was ready, some energetic teaching.

I’m disappointed by what I see going on, especially in a lot of my coaching/ evolution circles.  Apart from the boring repetition and buzzwords and complaining, the larger patterns are actually kind of troubling.  The percentage of students who “discover” their life path is the same as their coach is something like two thirds – a ridiculous percentage.  The “conscious” community seems to have two career paths – personal coach or artist. (Wait, four paths – I forgot “author” and “gardener.”) These aren’t career paths, these are escapist hobbies.

And I’m as guilty as anyone of this.  I love to fish and write books.  But “fisherman” and “author” are not my purposes here on this planet.  I have a good job that supports my family, and that family is a purpose.  There’s a larger purpose that encompasses this, but this is where my time, energy and spiritual energy is going. Writing is a creative outlet.  Fishing is a hobby.  Planting a garden is a nice hobby for some people.  Farming – real farming – is a business that requires study, research, effort, capital (land, equipment, labor) and return on investment.  It’s a full-time job that leaves little time for writing arrogant ebooks about how you think men should fuck (as if anybody fucking cares about your opinion on this subject) or spending two weeks in the desert being Chief Thundercock of the Idiot Nation.

And fucking around without paying your bills is NOT a life purpose.  It’s escapism and it’s fucking inconsiderate to the rest of the world that’s working its ass off so you can be an arrogant, worthless dickhead living off the fat of Western economics, telling everyone how awesome you are in bed and how terrible every other guy is, while railing against the very capitalism that ALLOWS you to live your party lifestyle while providing ZERO REAL VALUE to the world.  Nobody in Venezuela is paying for your bullshit “art” or “services,” you communist hypocrite moron.

And after hearing enough of THAT pattern of bullshit, and getting more and more irritated with the collective patterns of stupidity and self-destruction cloaked as “evolution,” I’ve had enough.  It’s bullshit.  All of it.  The whole community is bullshit, and so is the coaching.  Stupid people behaving stupidly get on my nerves very quickly, no matter how much I love them.

And I’m done.  I’m sorry I ever did it.

And it’s hard because, even though I’m obviously annoyed and deeply regret the time and money wasted, I really do like these people.  They probably won’t like me anymore, because I’m goring their ox, but it’s true – I like these people.  They have good hearts and souls, just badly underdeveloped brains.  And that’s probably why I lingered longer than I should have – my core self had walked away years ago, but my emotional attachment kept me lingering and getting more and more angry.

As Etienne said, I was stuck because I was holding onto attachment to people who won’t follow.  My core self is miles away on a different path and the cord of attachment just gets longer and more tense by the minute.

So… it has to be cut.  I can’t keep torturing myself because I’m fond of people.

Removing Layers of Oppressive Energy, or Accomplishing a Lot by Doing Nothing

Over the past couple weeks my energy has become much more clear and my energetic perceptions more accurate and defined. 

There are a few things that have allowed for this opening.  First, the culmination of my period of going inward during the late fall, winter and early spring. Allowing my mind and body to more fully attune with the nature of the seasons allows my energy to attune more as well.

Second, some big energetic breakthroughs, including an energetic validation I referred to a couple weeks back.  This has freed up a lot of energy.  Sometimes I can’t tell what is oppressing my energy until it goes away.  But my energy was immediately out of the quicksand and flowing after that.

Third, the conscious decision to remove certain oppressive patterns from my life, or at lease eliminate their importance.  This is ongoing, but saying goodbye to the obsession with Cal football and basketball is huge.  So is energetically dissociating from the evolution guru and group I’d been involved in for a very long time.  Again, sometimes you don’t know what’s oppressing you until you don’t feel oppressed.

Fourth, some opening in my career and finances, particularly a significant reduction in debt.  Debt is interesting.  From a logical standpoint one can see the value of debt – if you utilize the debt for things that produce a higher return it’s like free money.  But that’s ONLY if the debt is being applied directly toward something value-producing.

In my case it wasn’t. 

Now, from a purely rational financial calculus, yes, it’s a good deal.  But energetically, no, it’s a drain.  My energetic relationship with the use of the debt proceeds changed and the stress of sacrificing personal enjoyment and basic wealth-building to fund the debt is a huge energetic drain.  This personal experience has led me to the conclusion that in the huge majority of cases debt is bad energy for people, even if it makes logical financial sense.  Most people, including myself, are better off getting a comparatively lower return and paying off the debt than earning a higher return and maintaining debt.

And my personal energetic experience confirms this – every time I consciously lower debt, my energy frees up.  And I’m sure my efforts in this regard, which preceded the energetic breakthrough a couple weeks back, helped “unstick” that energy as well.  It’s all interrelated. 

So in other words, when my higher self told me to go inward and focus on paying off debt, this was because my energy was so clouded and stuck with the combinations of energy oppressors that any active work would be counterproductive.

Now it’s expanded to meditate, pay off debt, and dedication to physical exercise and health.  Again, the reason I have to trust my higher self is because he sees things I cannot see.  He can see I’m stuck energetically while I “feel” I’m not.  Because I experience some movement and success I think “this is progress, I’m good,” while he can see from a bigger perspective that, no, this marginal success is a drop in the bucket next to the energetic oppression.

So over the past couple weeks I’ve become aware of the physical pain of people close to me emotionally and in my physical proximity.  It’s not that I feel their pain, but I sense it and it draws my thoughts toward pain and suffering.  I can also sense psychic suffering and feelings of pleasure, though less clearly.  So there’s SOME movement, but there’s still quite a bit of stuckness.

And there’s probably additional layers of energetic oppression in my life that need to be cleared. Almost certainly.  It is very important to my higher self that I clear these things out first before taking on any new endeavors. And it is clear doing so is very beneficial to me, even if there are times when I feel like I’m wasting my life or “not doing anything,” because all that “doing things” has really gotten in the way of my doing the things I am set here in this lifetime to do, my dharma. 

Saying Goodbye: To the "Life Coach" and Cal Athletics

I’m going through a period where I’m reevaluating some of my longstanding relationships.  No, not my marriage – that’s actually one relationship I’m very happy with. Marriage, job, family, all very good, satisfying relationships.  It’s other relationships and where I’ve been placing my attention and energy, particularly the troublesome “life coaching” relationship and my weird, dysfunctional relationship with Cal athletics.

At this point I feel I’m done with the “life coaching” stuff.  There may still be a place for targeted coaching for developing energetic and spiritual aspects, and there likely is.  My evolution path is in developing my inner alchemist, my “Dr. Strange.”  But even this aspect isn’t asking for coaching now (because at this point the spending of more money would poison the benefits), but deeper exploration and practice.

There is no overlap at this point between the exploration I am doing now and the “life coaching” and group work I’d been doing for years up to now.  And as I check in, I see the energy of the “life coaching” for me is an anchor.  This is true even for the work I’ve been doing in support of the evolution coaching, actually it’s especially true.

While my higher self has known this truth for some time, my rational self came to this conclusion after finding myself irritated one too many times with what I was seeing coming out of the life coaching group.  It’s not one thing, it’s the whole energy and my relationship with that energy.

To be honest with myself, this modality hasn’t been bringing me value for a while now, and in turn I haven’t offered any real value.  It’s basically been a waste of both parties’ time and energy, another way to distract myself on the Internet.  And there’s too much of that in my life, too many places where I bleed energy in order to avoid listening to the higher truth. Or more specifically, to avoid going through the pain of my thoughts, feelings and beliefs that are between me and that higher truth.

It’s not that this modality doesn’t hold value – it’s clear in looking at the men in this group they are deriving value.  It’s that my experience is not aligned, so I just see the energetic inconsistencies.  And I’m reminded of my own imperfect journey through this modality.

In looking back I have mixed feelings.  On the one hand, I experienced a lot of personal growth.  On the other hand, it came with a lot of unnecessary suffering and a LOT of wasted time and effort that could have been better utilized. 

The big lesson here is, like every relationship, happiness comes down to how I show up.  I began this journey when I was not experiencing success or power in any aspect of life.  I felt desperate, and really was kind of a loser, though a loser who was willing to work hard to get out of Loserville.  The problem, though, is despite what the “life coach” people say, this is a poor place from which to make changes.

For one thing, spending a lot of money on life coaches when one is financially strained is a terrible idea.  I have yet to find any life coach who offers even a 1:1 return on investment financially, so you have to go in with money you can afford to lose forever, because it’s unlikely you’ll get it back financially. Most of the guys I’ve seen go through this either already had financial success (best place to be) and then had personal success (much easier to build) or came in with nothing and found some “feel-good” lifestyle profession that, if anything, pays worse than their previous job.  That leads to disaster.

The financial strain of overextending myself for this coaching was (and in some ways still is) a huge strain on my energy, which is a huge anchor to personal growth.  It’s like cutting your coaching value in half, and it’s a dumb approach.  It also leads to poor decisions and makes it that much harder to move into an abundance mindset.  The life coaches are wrong – going into debt for coaching is never a good idea.  Never.  They’re selling that concept precisely because THEY are in a scarcity mindset and afraid if they give you the best advice – to get your finances handled first – you’ll then not feel desperate anymore and not sign up for their services.  In other words, THEY don’t believe in their own value and have placed false time constraints on their OWN success, which they are passing on to you.  (It’s also a sign the coach himself is facing extreme financial pressure, so “helping him out” by going into debt yourself is really doing the whole universe a tremendous disservice.)

Bottom line – get your finances handled first.  THEN upgrade to life coaching from a place of some financial success and comfort.  ALWAYS.  And NEVER invest in a life coach who promises you financial success unless his finances are SIGNIFICANLY better than yours and he’s got a lot of financially successful reference.

The other thing is I came in “lost,” as most men do to some extent.  But I was so lost I didn’t have any idea of what success would look like.  My current relationship at the time was hopelessly dysfunctional and I just “wished” for it to get better – which it did, by ending, but the coaching actually prolonged and exacerbated the suffering for everyone.  I was lost in my career, but so was my coach, to be honest, so all he could do was facilitate my ending the bad, again unnecessarily adding to my stress and suffering, while I found my way on my own, more in spite of my coach than because of him.  My energy was a mess, but really with the other two oppressive factors it was like swimming upstream in raging rapids.  So I got *some* value, but only a fraction of what I’d have if I’d waited and focused my energy on the two big problems I was avoiding by playing “life coaching” pattycake.

What’s more, my being “lost” meant that for a good amount of time I simply modeled the energy of my coach instead of actually directing change.  So I was changing, but it was still from a very disempowering place – I hadn’t done anything to solve the real problem of giving away my power, I just gave it away to someone who made me feel better than the others for giving it to him.  That is something, but not much.

And the part I’m finding really annoying now is I’m not the only one whose been his disempowered “protégé.”  In fact, I see a pattern, and one that I’m finding disturbing now.  I saw a coaching video of his newest protégé and I felt a combination of amusement, annoyance and mild disgust.  Similar to me, Protégé #3 has adopted the mindset and career goals of the coach (which is awful – really if you find yourself wanting to follow in your coach’s footsteps, both you and your coach are failing, but this is the third time this “mini-me-coach” pattern has shown itself, clearly something is off and it’s not just me). But even worse, he’s adopted the mannerisms of his coach, down to the annoying hand gestures and tonality, nervous tics and distracting energy bleeds (and no, they’re not NLP techniques, he’s ACTUALLY adopted the most unhelpful aspects of his coach’s communication, to the point of aping him and INTEGRATING that aping).  You have to see it to really appreciate the levels of “ick” here.  He’s even aped the coach’s use of icebreaker toys in social situations.  I’ll take wagers on how long before he goes to Thailand and gets a chest tattoo.

It’s annoying and creepy.  And for me, far more so because I can see so many embarrassing aspects of how *I* was being when I was the protégé.  And I saw what happened to protégé #2, who is still dealing with the aftereffects of that dysfunctional relationship. 

Really, it’s hard to look at that pattern and not say “this is a cult.”  And there are aspects of what this coach wants to do that, frankly, are cultish.  There are things this coach has done recently that literally ARE cultish – including unwittingly (assuming the benefit of the doubt) taking fellow students to a rape cult in the Philippines.  Now, he didn’t do this consciously (unless I’ve totally misjudged him and I believe my assessment is accurate), but his attraction to things that any normal person can look at and see “yah, that’s a creepy cult, what are you doing, bro” is troubling.  Add in his ambitions to create this in his own life with himself as the leader and his devotion to the words of one of the more famous modern rapist cult leaders and that’s a troubling mixture.  And then you have the pattern of former students “working under him,” all suffering from the same disempowering patterns (the latest one the worst I’ve seen, and VERY troubling) and it’s hard for me to say “it’s not a cult, he’s a good guy, it’s okay” without sounding like I’m brainwashed myself.  Something’s fucked in la-la land.

Because, even though I genuinely don’t believe it was intentional on his part, I did allow myself to be brainwashed, and I’ve gone through the trauma of disassociating, as has his Protégé #2.  There are a lot of weak-minded people who sign up for this who allow themselves to be willingly brainwashed under the guise of “evolution.” 

I still believe that positive change is possible and that there is an aspect to this modality which can be beneficial, but not when one is in a place of abject weakness and desperation.  And I believe a good coach who has his clients’ best interests at heart should screen out the weak, the financially troubled and the desperate. Those people need other kinds of help – financial and career coaching, professional therapy, etc., BEFORE coming to the life coach.  For this coach, unfortunately, the weak and powerless account for most of his customer base and a significant portion, if not a majority, of his income.  One cannot separate the toxic from the clean in that kind of energy exchange, it poisons everything.

You can tell the energy of a man by the energy of the women he attracts.  For a long time, I was in a place of self-disempowerment, so I was attracting feminine energy that was dominant and taking.  This created really draining and unhealthy relationship dynamics.  When my energy was drained enough, I’d then feel angry.  It was a terrible pattern that started with Mom and went through my second marriage.  (Unsurprisingly, all my exes over that time HATED my mom, because their energy was the same and thus a natural conflict, which only added to my self-inflicted misery.) On the rare occasions when a nice, submissive feminine energy would show up, I wouldn’t stay. 

Eventually I broke this pattern (even with Mom, our energy is very different now) by changing my energy, but this was something I did on my own.  If anything, my relationship with my coach fed the “give away my power” beast by creating a positive feedback loop for disempowering behavior.

In looking at the energy of my coach’s many women, there is a troubling pattern.  The huge majority have terrible energy – they’re not just carrying wounds, they’ve made those wounds an essential part of their identity. 

I’m good at intuitively reading energy, I’ve just never really been able to consciously explore it until very recently. (And for many years I was damn crappy and integrating this gift into my personal experiences – still working on this.)  Many times I’ll come across a woman whom I can objectively sense is physically attractive, but the energy is so bad I’m physically repulsed.  For a long time I struggled with this conflict, but I’ve learned to trust it because it’s right on.  And almost no other men have this capability  - for years I doubted my intuition or thought there was something wrong with me.

And this coach attracts a LOT of women from whom I get that feeling of energetic revulsion. (His current primary lover has a clean energy, but I sense part of him is still “looking around,” maybe because this clean energy doesn’t resonate with him in a fully satisfying way.)  Some of the women he holds out as thought leaders, their energy is so corrupted that I can’t even read or listen to what they’re saying without taking strong energetic precautions or adopting a confrontational energetic stance (always a lot of fun in a group setting, now I’m the jerk for trying to keep someone from polluting me and everyone around me, so I stay away from those potential scenarios –why make life hard for myself and everyone else?)

Which is all a long way of saying I need to break this off as a coaching and working relationship.  And since this has been a big part of my life, time and energy, that’s a challenge.  If I let this go… what will I do?

Then there is probably the most unsatisfying, stress-inducing and general unhappiness-creating hobby I’ve ever had – Cal athletics.  Check that, it is CERTAINLY the most unsatisfying, stress-inducing and general unhappiness-creating hobby I’ve ever had. 

I’m proud of my education, but at this point it’s a degree. And not even a relevant degree, given how old it is.  The entire energy is a lot of time wasted, energy spent and stress over a psychological attachment to an idea. Yes I enjoy watching football and basketball, but closely following this team – with the online forums and all the other energy, plus the games themselves – has been a stupid and fruitless waste of time.

The teams suck.  The administration has done nothing over all the years I’ve been a “loyal fan” to make the teams anything more than mediocre.  There is zero evidence the teams will be anything other than mediocre.  And how much energy are mediocre teams from a mediocre university worth?

Add to that the fact that UC Berkeley really doesn’t deserve my loyalty.  The university, its students, faculty and alumni, regularly spit in the face of my values and beliefs.  And now the university has taken to basically censoring opposing points of view.  Like mine.  So I’m investing energy rooting for the team of a school that slaps me in the face.  A lousy team of a school that slaps me in the face.

Why?

Over some weird sense of loyalty?  For what?

No, it’s out of habit.  It’s an unhealthy addiction.  I live for the brief moments of joy when the team actually does well, which immediately leads to wanting more. Then being disappointed when they lose for seemingly random reasons and needing that good feeling even more.  It’s a total addiction.

And the bullshit on the forums?  Fuck these people.  I don’t know any of them, and I don’t care. 

In both cases, I should be spending my time doing better things.  Or burning in the boredom and unhappiness of not having anything better to do, until I get out and do something. Because in both cases, these things have become worse than nothing.

There’s nothing wrong with enjoying football games.  Nothing at all.  But then do that, enjoy that experience, and let it go.  If it’s not enjoyable, fucking stop.  And it hasn’t been enjoyable.

And if I stop… then what do I do?

And that’s silly, there’s SO much I can do, and being done with both of these things frees up ALL kinds of space and helps me appreciate the people and things who do give me value.

So goodbye unhealthy habits. Hello life.

What is #californiaspirituality?

I had little Twitter-burst about #californispirituality and some of you might be wondering what I’m talking about.   

I’m not talking about spirituality.  #californiaspirituality has nothing to do with spiritual connection or living a more holy life.  It is a social and psychological dysfunction that has its genesis in the San Francisco Bay Area but has metastasized in communities throughout the US and the world.  It is right now the biggest threat to true spiritual growth and energetic evolution, because many people in this community are both extremely gifted energetically and hopelessly deluded in the head.

#californiaspirituality is the unholy alliance of raw spiritual gifts with American leftist political, social and economic dogma, and all the spiritual, emotional and physical wounds and illnesses that go along with this. 

Unfortunately, probably 90% of the “spiritual” community in the US subscribes to this false belief that spirituality and dysfunctional political and social dogma are intertwined, and the result is nothing short of disaster on a spiritual level.  And now it is reaching crisis level on the physical level.

A rational, independent-minded person wouldn’t have to be told that drugs are not spiritual and that spiritual connection is not obtained through external or artificial methods.  One would think a group of people who eschew anything artificial in their diet would be the first to avoid drugs produced artificially in labs with God-only-knows what standards from God-only-knows where.  And that said people would avoid putting essential oils directly on their skin.  But such is the psychosis of #californiaspirituality.

#californiaspirituality seems to be 50% about sex, 30% about drugs and 20% about arrogance.  Feeling superior to others, and communicating that superiority in the most annoying ways possible, is a critical element of this “tribe.”  (Really, calling this group of idiots a “tribe” is an insult to every tribal system ever created in the history of the universe.)

#californiaspirituality is obsessed with sex.  Dropping trou, letting your tits hang out, dressing up like rejects from the “Rocky Horror Picture Show,” pole dancing, being overtly sexual with someone you met just then, Tantra this, Tantra that, telling everyone how sexual you are, telling everyone how awesome you are in bed, writing a sex manual, being a sex coach, and calling yourself a sexual healer seems to be pretty much all this group does.  You’d think they’d get bored with this schtick after a couple years (I’m bored just writing about it), but they’ll stay this way for *years.*

Along with the weird obsession with sex, #californiaspirituality is heavily into drugs. #californiaspirituality will tell you cannabis is spiritual.  Period.  And FUCK YOU for JUDGING ME!  SERIOUSLY!  IT’S FUCKING LEGAL!!!  I’M FUCKING SPIRITUAL, STOP JUDGING ME YOU FUCKING PRUDE!!

Yah, no drug problem there.

They load up on EVERYTHING and imagine that they’ve found clarity in their addled state.  Then they post all the verbose, boring, nonsensical shit that comes out of their ass when they’re high as fuck on their “spiritual medicine,” and apparently others fucking READ this shit and reply with their own fucking pot novels.

Ick.  And unbelievably annoying.  And really ick.

So that’s 80% of #californiaspirituality.  The other 20% is an obsessive need to show how much better they are than everyone else.  Cuz nothing says awesome like a broke-ass guy in his forties, whom Children Services won’t let see his kids, writing a pot novel on Facebook about how his sex life is the envy of everyone.  (Dude, NOBODY fucking cares.  Including your partners.)

A lot of these people feel the need to “make an offering to the world” in the form of yet another “look at me” sex manual, so we can all be as awesome as you.  Then they wonder why nobody is buying their fucking book.  (Can you say “LOSER??”)

It’s obvious to everyone observing that isn’t drinking the kool aid or high on whatever is handy that the smugness and self-congratulatory behavior is a cry for help.  Every time I see a “I’m so great, I’m such a great lover, I’m so evolved, please look at me” post, I feel sad.  I want to give the poor soul a hug and tell them it’s going to be okay, refer them to a good therapist.  Because they’re clearly hurting a lot.  Healthy people don’t act and behave like that, they just don’t.

Oh #californiaspirituality HATES the word “normal,” they conflate it with their ideological dogma and think “normal” and “therapy” are tools of Evil Capitalist Devil.  So I have to do end arounds their blocks – HEALTHY people (which is really what “normal” means, the vast majority of people who are psychologically and social well-adjusted and can function in society with other humans) don’t obsess over sex.  They don’t spend all day posting pot novels on Facebook.  They don’t feel an overwhelming need to write a sex manual because their partner had a good time with them (WTF??). 

Healthy people aren’t arrogant, because they’re well-adjusted.  Maybe they had wounds, but they got over their shit and they aren’t tooting their own horn all the time.  They know drugs won’t get you to God unless you OD.  And that’s NOT a good thing.

#californiaspirituality looks down its noses at healthy people – they think they’re unhappy.  Because #californiaspirituality is unhappy.  Really unhappy.  And they think that’s just normal.  It isn’t.  The unhappiness, dysfunction, emotional wounds, unemployment, underemployment, financial distress, marital distress, issues with the law and children’s services that people in #californiaspirituality deal with is FAR, FAR, FAR, FAR out of proportion with what those poor “normal” people deal with (which is damn little, to be honest – NORMAL people don’t have their kids taken away or go to jail for prostitution or drug dealing, they just don’t.  That’s what FUCKED UP people do!  The jails are full of them.)

The level of depression in #californiaspirituality is off the fucking charts.  I have a lot of friends, most “normal,” but many in this spiritual community.  ONLY in the spiritual community do I see “adrenal fatigue,” or “doxing issues,” or “Mercury Retrograde” excuses for SEVERE depression issues, or “trauma memories,” or any of this other bullshit.  “Normal people” have problems.  I have dear friends who have been raped.  “Normal” friends heal and move on.  #californiaspirituality people make it a fucking LIFESTYLE.

Then what?  Well, let’s see, a group of people with a high level os psychological dysfunction and an aversion to therapy that is into sex and drugs – WHAT COULD GO WRONG??  Well, for starters, everything.  Rape in this community is more common than having a full-time paying job.  So is suicide.  So is tragic death.  So the end game of #californiaspirituality is a crappy, unhappy life full of self-delusion that more likely than not ends in a tragic, early death.

In other words, it’s completely fucked up.

And I have more bad news.  The powers that are elevating the energy of Earth are not patient.  They really don’t care about the issues of this community, and they have zero tolerance for the drugs and ideological dogma.  While I don’t like seeing basically good but very misguided people suffer and die, the higher powers are very indifferent to that scenario and would be perfectly fine with the whole community dying off to make way for the growth that needs to come, burn off the weeds and plant healthy new souls. 

I feel bad.  Most of these people were raised in this environment.  Their parents were hippies and beatnicks from San Francisco and brainwashed them.  They know no other way.  They really didn’t ask for this, but not it’s their karma, and it sucks.  But at this point I don’t know what else I can do except hold up a mirror, hope some people are seeing what’s reflected, and do my best to ensure no others get sucked into that mess.  I’ll continue speaking up but honestly I feel I’m pissing into the wind. 

Not all my posts are cheery.  Sorry.

On Karma

I want to revisit an important spiritual subject I’ve talked about regularly here, because I feel like this subject gets twisted and misconstrued a lot.  I want to talk about karma.

What is karma?

Well let’s use my situation as an example.  Right now I’m sitting on the sofa, writing, basking in the glow of a good workout at the gym and a nice long walk at the beach.  I just had a nice late lunch and I’m enjoying a beer as I relax and enjoy this afternoon and share my thoughts with you.

I could go on – job, family, everything else in my life.  This is my karma.

Karma isn’t just bad things happening to you.  It’s good things too.  It’s everything.  Because karma is the “effect” of the Law of Cause and Effect.  Every thought, every word, every belief, every action, these create energy in the universe and there is a direct effect to each of these. Collectively they directly create the effect that is our life situation.

People who are hurtful or damaging in their thoughts, words and/or actions receive hurt and damage in their own life and often in future lifetimes.  You can’t fool karma – you may be able to fool your friends into thinking you’re a nice person, or your evil is justified, but karma doesn’t care.  What you create is what you receive, and there is no other way.

You say well, some people are so nice and they don’t deserve the bad things happening to them.  But, first, you don’t know.  Maybe they had you fooled.  Maybe their thoughts are filled with hateful thoughts.  Maybe their karma is carrying over from prior lifetimes.  And maybe that “bad thing” you’re observing isn’t actually “bad,” maybe the universe is trying to push your friend in a direction they refuse to go and then there is suffering – but your friend brought this upon themselves by refusing to change.

And what about those “bad people” whose lives seem to be happy and they never get their comeuppance?  Many explanations, but it all boils down to the fact that you really don’t know and need to refrain from making assumptions and jumping to conclusions.

Most often we know.  I’ve seen more than a few people who have been unfair to me and others and I’ve seen them get a strong dose of karmic realignment.  And in almost every case, they didn’t get the message and more “bad karma” followed. 

“Bad karma” is not “bad luck.”  Tipping or not tipping the barista is not going to change your karma in any significant way by itself.  If your intention in tipping was to assuage your guilt over something you’re doing that you know is wrong, you’re probably making your karma worse and would be better off stiffing the barista and gaining clarity on what is driving parts of you to behave in ways you know are wrong than blurring things with false generosity.

I believe most people receiving good or bad karma knew deep down it was coming.  They may outwardly be “surprised” by their change in circumstance, but in their heart they knew it was coming.

Karma includes the universe’s various ways of communicating with us – some subtle, some harsh – in order to get us to change.  A lot of human suffering is people attached to their routine, or their story, or their right-ness and as such unable or unwilling to heed the instructions when they’re being told to change.

The worst response to karma is to act as a victim.  Nobody is a victim.  I realize what I just said here is jarring and will challenge the beliefs of many people, but it’s absolutely true.  There are no victims in this world.  However wronged you think you have been, you are not a victim.  And it’s even possible what you think was wrong was not what you thought it was.

This is where I’ve ended up in negative cycles.  Someone did something wrong to me and I’d engage in hurtful thinking and actions.  Then I’d wonder why bad stuff kept happening to me.  It took me learning the truth about karma to finally let that stuff go.  And when I did, I noticed something interesting – people trying to do bad things to me ended up having much worse things happen to them, thanks to their karma. 

Acting like a victim or seeking revenge will only bring a person more negative karma.  The way out is understanding and acceptance, and taking control of one’s thoughts, words and actions.  Once you accept that you are the sole creator of your life, your thoughts naturally shift toward “what do I want to create? More shit, or something good?”  You stop holding onto the illusion of victimhood or the fantasy or revenge and place more and more intention on good thoughts, good words, good actions.  And “magically,” karma starts improving.  But of course it’s not magic.  It’s a law of the universe. 

Energetic Liberation

My higher self has been consistently telling me April 15 is the time to start making plans for a move.  At first I thought this was for financial reasons – and it does appear I’ll be in the right place financially to make a good move by then, but I probably could have moved earlier too and been just fine.

No, there’s more.  After last week I’ve had an undamming of energy.  It’s like for years I’ve been carrying around this oppressive psychic weight and didn’t even realize how bad it was.  And now it’s totally gone.

It’s more than an affirmation that I was on the right path and I’m a good person.  It’s more than a validation that I’ve been doing the right thing, even when I doubted myself for so long and suffered so much.  It’s a deeper and more integrated connection with my heart and higher self – the inner conflict between my higher self and my thinking/ego self is resolved and I’m really listening to my heart and higher self much more clearly now.

All week this has been integrating and the truth is becoming more and more clear.

My higher self kept telling me to wait for “spiritual reasons, not financial reasons.”  And at the time I didn’t understand.  I understand now. Things had to clear up in my energy for me to be able to make the decision that would best serve my higher self. 

Because it’s not just a move, it’s a realignment.  I’m saying goodbye to some energies and habits that aren’t serving me anymore. I’m significantly limiting my social media.  I’m cutting out people who are just annoying and not serving me.  People who I allowed to have power over me are finally completely gone from my energy field, along with all their junk. 

It’s a relief, it’s an awakening, it’s a transformation.  There are many aspects of my life that were fear-based.  Maybe I thought I had to, or out of convenience or whatever reason.  The problem is those aspects affected other things as well – many of my relationships, even ones that were intended to be empowering, were fear-based in some way.

That’s gone now.  The cancer is gone and the rest of my energetic body is healing.  And many relationships that were disempowering at one level or another will either change or die.

Also, those haters who tried to keep me down and make me believe I was less than I am, or that I was a bad person when I wasn’t, their lies have been exposed.  I no longer listen to them and I’m no longer afraid of them.  Energetically they’re gone from my life completely now.  Now it’s freedom. Openness.  Clarity. 

Soon there will be more changes.  The period of going-in and slowing down is yielding to a new period of change and growth.  And energetic liberation.  The dark clouds have passed.  The process makes sense now.  My higher self was right all along.

Higher Self vs. Lower Self

I’ll talk about my story, because many people on this spiritual path deal with similar challenges.

There are two versions of myself, battling it out for my energy.  There is my true self that follows my heart and there is my anxious, doubtful self that has been raised to suppress my true self.

My true self knows how to find silence, how to connect to higher planes of energy, how to create some amazing things.  It does things that are not intuitive, that are often difficult to explain to other people.  Sometimes it takes me through pain and suffering and periods that can elicit doubt.  But it’s always right, it always leads me to where I need to be and doing what is best for me and everyone.

My true self was very quiet when I was younger and only began speaking up when I was at the point where I’d had enough, where I knew there was something better for myself but I wasn’t going to find it going through the linear path.  The more I went down this path, the more clear this voice became and the more in charge of my life he became.

The anxious version of myself was a product of my environment – family, school, social, work and other external sources, and the internal feedback mechanism that reinforced these patterns.  While it’s a painful and unhelpful version of myself, it’s familiar so it “feels right.”

For a period of time I believed the anxious version of myself got me some early success in life, but now I don’t see it that way.  It facilitated my achieving some externally-based benchmarks – good grades, good university, passing some professional certification tests.  But was that really success?  No, not really.  Grades mean nothing.  Being in an elite college is overrated.  A certification for a career I never liked that has created mostly unhappiness and rewarded me with very little is actually counterproductive.

So the anxious version of myself fooled me into thinking I was gaining something from being like this when in fact it really did nothing good for me.  This is a realization that just came to me.  Kind of powerful.  That’s going to sink in.

But when things get uncertain or difficult, the anxious part of me would make my life miserable – all kinds of worry, lack of sleep, insecurity.  But recently things have been happening that are providing visible, tangible proof that yes, things are getting better.  Much better.  My heart, my higher self, is right, and the anxious part of me hasn’t done much good in my life.

It’s been a pretty long stretch where the voices saying I was wrong, or I was a bad person, or I was on the wrong path, were getting louder and louder.  Then boom – confirmation that everything my higher self had been saying was right.  The people saying I was a bad person, or foolish, are wrong.  The parts of me listening to them are wrong too.  My heart was 100% right.

Yes, I am exactly on the right path.  People who tried to ruin my life are falling by the wayside – either realizing their error, finding better things to do, or getting their asses kicked by karma.  That part of me that listened to them is also disappearing. 

Happiness doesn’t come from going down the predictable path of success.  I never found success on that path.  But switching paths, as I began to do about seven years ago, and really in earnest about four years ago, can take a long time to yield success.  And in the process there was a lot of pain and challenges. 

I knew in my heart this was the right path and things would turn around and get much better.  And in some ways it has been getting much better and opened up massive spiritual powers, even in the beginning.  And in others it’s been a slog.  But by listening to my heart things have become consistently better.  But there was always a cloud over all of it, some big, nagging problems that allowed the doubt to continue.

Then this weekend those stuck things unstuck.  The cloud lifted and the truth came to my vision so even my ego self couldn’t deny the truth of it  My heart was right.  Against everyone and everything, my heart was right.  And my anxious self is completely wrong.  Everything is going exactly as my higher self said it would. Even the crazy stuff.

My motto is “follow you heart, let everything else go.”

And it’s 100% right.

Through all this time I felt stressed, was anything really bad happening?  No.  the worries were over nothing.  The things that actually happened were aligned with my heart.