The OS behind the actions: How intentions can corrupt a growth path

I'd been finding a good balance here in Pensacola, between being productive at work, getting to the coffee shop and doing some writing, going to the gym, meditation and spiritual practice, gym, walks and other things.  It's made my days very full and fulfilling, I've moved into a place of connecting with my community instead of just escaping into fishing and withdrawal.

I'm moving from a place of loneliness and isolation into a place of integration and genuinely listening to and following my heart.  I've upgraded my wardrobe, my lifting, my writing and my overall life.

All of which brought me to yesterday morning.  I woke up early and decided to "just go" and fish Johnson Beach.  First problem, the road was closed, because I was too early.  Second, it was dark and setting up is a pain at that time.  Third, it was cold in the morning, in the fifties, and I never like fishing in that kind of weather.

And finally, I was tired.  My system was deeply fatigued.  Yes, the new experiences I've added have made my life here more rich, but I hadn't left myself any space to, well, space things out and allow my experiences to integrate.  It was not manic, but in that vein.

And eventually "following my heart" becomes "following the schedule." Natural increases in strength become "max out because that's what I do."  And eventually the body and system have enough.

The body has a way of telling me it's tired or strained.  One is the cortisol spike at 3am.  This isn't a "go with it" event, this is a "you're off track" event.  My system is stuck, either in inaction or unconscious action/reaction.

So here I was, on this beach, in the cold, finding myself not really appreciating the beauty around me, but very much in my head and trying to ignore my body, which was telling me it was tired, cold and sore.  But hey, the glasses and hat are a nice new look.

I managed to catch a couple decent fish, it wasn't a bust, but I just wasn't feeling the experience.  I brought Orion stones and the meditations felt forced.  Everything felt out of place. 

As I was bringing in my lines to go home, one of my poles started bending - a strong but gentle bend.  I thought I had seaweed, but it was sort of moving, very gently.  I kept nudging it in and noticed a sea turtle had become caught in my line.

I kept nudging this gentle creature to the shoreline, worried my line would break or the creature would get scared and struggle and I'd have a stalemate on my hands. Instead, as the turtle got to the shorebreak, she turned herself and extracted herself from the line, leaving my rig and line (and her) intact, and off she went.  

It was a beautiful experience.  Yes, I felt anxiety and concern for the turtle.  I also felt uncertainty.  But I followed my higher instinct and the turtle's movement until we were able to disentangle.  

This was a sign - both that I'd allowed my higher self to get snared by an abusive pattern (which led to my fatigue and presence on the beach in the first place), and how to disentangle.

The turtle is aligned with my higher self - slow, gentle, it rides the currents, it doesn't fight them.  It doesn't overreact with fear, it trusts the process and conserves its energy to act when appropriate.  It carries an innate wisdom that lives in the moment without being owned by it.

And it was that slow, gentle, wise self that got me out of that situation, that saw me off the beach, that came home and went back to sleep until I had my baseline energy back.  This is the pace of my higher self, it is slow, it rides the current.  It is gentle and wise and not governed by fear or reactive patterns.  It is the living embodiment of heart's desire.

And yet this can get snared.  Habit, emotional drain, fatigue, anxiety, these can cause the higher self to get hijacked until a good heart-centered stack becomes another to-do list for the ego and the same things that elevated me now drain me.

The heart has many desires, many new experiences it wants to enjoy.  And yet, a wise higher self knows to follow the current.  There is a time for action, a time for courage, a time for "doing," but stay in the current, move with it, glide, nudge.  The old turtle didn't get there by darting to and fro, or going as fast as it could.  

And that's the wisdom coming through from my higher self: slow down, find the flow and ride it, nudge, don't force.  And know your loyalty is to your higher self, not the individual items on your wish/to-do list. 

 

Pensacola Beach Sunset

The surf fishing on Sunday wasn't anything to write home about.  Nothing but June grass, not a single bite.  But the beach is beautiful and the sunset energy is amazing.

This is my home. I've spent a lot of money and effort to make it my home, and sometimes it feels like it's a waste or going nowhere.  But when I'm out here in my element, it makes sense.  Every time I come out I have to spend some time on the beach, no matter how the time of year or quality of fishing.  I need this energy.

And I need the Pensacola side.  Perdido Key is nice and good for fishing, but the water is murky and it lacks that emerald shine of the Pensacola side.  

Growing up in Southern California, it's taking me some time to get used to south-facing beaches.  Whether it's on the beach or on the kayak (and it's usually on the kayak), the sunsets are extraordinary.  The clean energy, the way the clouds shade the sun with gorgeous red, pink and orange hues, the nature all around, it's a special feeling.

This is my base, the foundation for my energy work and creative flow.  I bring this back with me to California until I can fully move out here and completely meld into this environment.

I have a gym here now - World Gym.  I love it.  It's a lot more laid-back than the UFC in Torrance, which is kind of a madhouse and way too loud, but a good place to lift.  I have a couple coffee shops I like, some areas I like to walk.  Fishing is no longer the foundation, it's something I do, along with other things and the days flow quickly and smoothly.

And this is the source of my current creative and energetic evolution.  The new novels, the emergence of Kaelen'Zur, the personal evolution, all sprung forth from here.  Which really is to say it sprung forth from my heart, my true center, because I chose this.  All of this. 

I finally, fully feel like my true self.  I am home.

An Open Heart Comes When You Stop Giving Away Your Power

 You want to feel a heart opening, a deep connection with humanity? 

Stop looking for it. Stop asking for it. Stop waiting for others to give you permission or approval. Stop giving yourself away in the hopes of an exchange. 

Stop giving away your power. 

Stop telling the world you’re not good enough by training the world to take your power before acknowledging your worth. Claim your sovereignty - not angrily and reactively, but out of genuine love for yourself. 

Know your worth. Feel your worth. Communicate that to the world and accept nothing less. Not out of entitlement, but just this is how it is. 

The world is not scary. People are not looking to reject you. Learn to recognize and avoid truly bad people and bad behavior (especially your own). After that, just know the world really doesn’t care about you the way you think it does. 

Which means you don’t have to live behind armor and masks. You can just be, it’s your birthright. Stop hiding and diffusing your energy behind incongruent wardrobes, nervous tics and habits that are only there to keep people away, and beliefs that just suck your energy and offer nothing. 

You don’t have to judge or assume things about people you don’t know or the world around you. You can let it be - good, bad or indifferent - it’s not going to take your power anymore. You stand on your own, and you can let everyone be. 

You don’t have to feel personally attacked when someone has a different opinion than you, or a different lifestyle. You don’t have to feel threatened, attacked, insulted or feel pity for others. You can let it all be and let yourself be. 

You don’t need to prove yourself or give away your power to be loved or feel attraction from the opposite sex. You don’t owe your employer more than your time, talents and effort. 

And when you stop giving away your power to a world that either isn’t asking for it or doesn’t deserve it, you can stop living in fear and anxiety. You can let your heart truly open and feel the experience around you. You can truly live from an open heart. 

The way we lived when we were children, before we were taught we weren’t good enough. 

Thoughts on the Afterlife

Came across an article about a woman who has "died" three times and experienced the afterlife.  What was interesting is that her interpretation of that post-death experience matches very closely with my own personal revelations, both experientially and in coming into contact with others who have passed.

Fear of death - the fear of the destruction of our consciousness and ego - is normal and natural.  It is also false and unnecessary.  (Unless you are someone who has good reason to believe your punishment in the afterlife will be severe, in which case that fear should be your signal to change your ways.)  It is both a lie created by the ego to control our spirit and a lie perpetuated by society to collectively placate our individually oppressive ego patterns.

Those of us who have seen the truth about death know it is beautiful, sacred, peaceful and a natural part of life.  There is no end, only transitions and death is a transition into something transcendent.  And that "something transcendent" is already available to us in the living world.  The ego does not want us to know this, because that would render the ego useless, it would lay bare the truth, that the ego is weak, knows very little and is governed by base emotions like fear and anger.

As a society, we have collectively created a structure to defend our fragile egos in the face of infinite connection.  Our egos need us to believe their death will be the end of everything, not a step into pure freedom and true life experience. So our egos connect with other egos to create a self-sustaining architecture, all for the purpose of sustaining their illusion of control.

The Teal Flame does not recognize the egoic falsehoods, at the individual or social level.  It's all bullshit.  And just because a lot of people buy into that BS, doesn't make it any less false.  When the stories and fears are placed into the flame, they burn away to nothing, but the true person remains.

Your fear of death is an ego shadow.  Embracing the impermanence is a recognition of the essence of life, which has no beginning or end.  Life is not some chemical reaction or some spontaneous event, it is a universal experience that exists beyond space and time and can manifest in the physical world, but is not limited to that manifestation.  

We are an expression of this universal force, this experience.  Call it God or Source, it doesn't matter because it doesn't have a name.  We are here on Earth as a temporal expression of the divine, and we will continue as such after our death.  And it is this temporal, cyclical energetic experience that makes life on Earth so beautiful.  It is fragile, it is only here for a short time before returning to the infinite.  And it will return and bring forth new life.  

Fearing death is fearing the essence of the divine experience.  Seeking to forestall death through weird artificial means is ungodly.  It misses the point of life entirely.  Our bodies are finite, our lives are not.  In the finite there is beauty.  The mystery of what is beyond is not a mystery - when we can feel past our physical experience and feel into what is beyond our physical bodies, emotions and thoughts, that is the infinite that resides inside us and what we will experience when our physical bodies pass away.

Transmission: I Am the Teal Flame

Buzzing, tingling, full, deep-bass awakening and wide-awake energy last night.  The transmission called my name, woke me from a sleep with nobody in the room but myself and my sweet cat.

She meditates with me.  And sometimes interrupts my meditations by tapping me, to make sure I'm okay.

I couldn't get the name, but I heard "SHA."  I went back to sleep, too intent on sleeping to answer the call.  

In the morning - WHOA! I listened and message received.  Full, tingling, surging, awakening, crystal clear transmissions straight through my body and mind and into my soul, and then out again as my soul answered.

"You are the Teal Flame."

I see it.  I feel it.  I hear it at the soul level.  

The teal flame.  Kaelen'Zur.  The name given in another transmission, one that someone tried to unplug but couldn't stop.

The name I accepted with skepticism, another goofy "Burning Man Playa name."  It turns out to be true - and the exact power to extract the truth and burn away the BS in everything around me.  

No more testing for truth and asking for answers from "someone out there," the flame resides within.  I offer it as my gift - complete incineration with no quarter.  The power of truth, freedom and transformation.

"You are the writer, the creator, the healer, the Teal Flame.  The world will compensate you generously for your gifts.  This is your path, your destiny, your purpose, your truth.  It is YOU."

Not just to clear out my own BS, not just to transform my own life, but to cleanse, transform and heal all I choose to touch, all who choose to go through the flame.

It's not a "feel good" healing energy.  It's not "love and light."  It's a commitment - to burn away anything that's false, corrupt or impure and transform what's left to align with your purpose and destiny.

God laughs at our plans, and the Teal Flame works for God.  It is not going to grant you wishes or so things on your schedule or time table.  It'll clear your shit.  Including the part of you that is attached to that shit or making excuses.  It'll clear false identities and stories.  You may not recognize what's left, but your true self will finally be at home.

If that sounds like too much or too intense, that's cool.  You can't jump in halfway, once you step off the ledge you're in all the way.  So jump or don't jump, that's up to you and you should consider that carefully.

But if you're ready to jump, consider this your invitation to jump into the Teal Flame and start being your true self.

Religion As a Mirror: Are People Inherently Good?

 

Why are atheists passionate about their non-religion?  I mean, if you truly believe in nothing, wouldn’t the appropriate action and emotion be, well, nothing? Why would you bring energy into nothingness?  That makes no sense.  True atheism would be spiritual disinterest with no energy expended whatsoever.

So what causes people to be passionate about nothingness? (And I’m not talking about the Buddhist nothingness, that’s different and does have a religious context.)

I have a working theory, which is that these atheists actually do believe in God, but are so terrified at the thought of their own unworthiness that they violently reject God to protect themselves from the pain of their on spiritual unworthiness.

“If I don’t believe in Hell, then I can’t be sent there.”  But if you don’t believe in hell, then that entire sentence makes no sense. 

Religion, when applied faithfully, serves as a mirror – you see yourself and all your good and bad aspects.  People who reject religion aren’t rejecting the mirror, they’re rejecting the reflection because they can’t deal with the reality of their own imperfections.

This brings me to a fundamental philosophical question:  Are people basically good?

A lot of people, especially people in various forms of “love and light” spiritual bypass will say, yes, people are basically good and “turn evil” through corruption, etc.

But if one removes this distortion and answers the question honestly, the answer is much more troubling.  Throughout human history, people have not been basically good.  In fact, most people are pretty fucked up.  That’s not to say they’re “bad,” but they’re not inclined to goodness.

Thus the mirror test.  Some people look at the mirror with rose-colored glasses and say “I’m all good, even the bad parts are good, isn’t this wonderful?”  Well, no, it isn’t.  Humans are selfish.  They kill.  They fight.  They hurt each other.  They’re lazy.  They’re corrupt.  Outside forces didn’t corrupt people, people themselves did that.

It’s hard-wired into our brains to kill, to steal, to rape, to lie, to hurt.  Our primitive brains tell us we need to do these things to survive and pass on our genes.  The fantasy that people long ago were good people is 100% false.  People long ago were literal savages and did horrible things to others without any second thought.  They had no mirror.  They had no angel on their shoulder.  They were fucked up people doing fucked up things.

And the worst part? Every one of us walking the earth is a genetic byproduct of those fucked-up people.  Nobody on earth comes from a pure, good lineage. We all come from savages.

And when you take off the glasses and realize you’re as fucked up as “those other” bad people, or at least on the same spectrum, and that is in fact the human lineage, it can be jarring.

No, we are not all divine light.  We’re mostly fucked up people from fucked up lineages.  And that fucked-up-ness is literally the reason we are here.

Some people look at that and see hopelessness.  We’re all doomed.  Therefore there cannot possibly be a god, because that would mean God would condemn his entire creation and what would be the point of that?   If we’re products of the universe then the universe must also be fucked up and it’s all for nothing.

Some look at this reality and deny it.  No, no.  Everyone is good, we just need to “integrate our shadow” and recognize the divine light in every other person.  All is one. 

Different justification, same result:  nothing changes.

Religion, when applied properly, holds up the mirror, shows us the evil inside, allows us to identify it as evil and reject it, and serves a path toward eradicating that evil and building a good life.

Now, here some would say, well, we’ll never get this.  Only a small fraction of people on Earth are even mostly good.  Another small fraction are mostly evil.  And the huge majority are in this broad spectrum of “fucked-up-ness” and every time we make an effort to get better, we just fall right off or find some other avenue to vent our evil.

The promise of religion isn’t that you’ll achieve perfection on your own, but that you learn to identify good and evil and set your thoughts and actions more and more toward good.  You’re not perfect, but you seek betterment, not to gain something but to actually become a good person.

That in itself is an act of goodness.

God does not promise us perfection in this lifetime.  God does not promise us that if we go to church or follow his rules that everything will work out just fine.  In fact, all religions “promise” that the world around us is fucked up and there’s no getting around that because it’s literally in our DNA.  What God does promise is we don’t have to resign ourselves to this fate.  We can turn our gaze toward good and move – however imperfectly – toward the good.

Trying to bridge the gap through the “most people are good” delusion ignores the truth and denies the work.  Collapsing into denial is also a lie – it’s saying your DNA is more powerful than God. Which is nonsense.  It’s not easy.  It may feel hopeless at times.  You will fail far more often than you succeed.  But none of that overcomes the truth that goodness does exist and is available to us, no matter how fucked up our reflection in the mirror is.

At this point people will argue that this is exactly the language bad people use to control others.  And that’s true, it is.  Bad people are drawn to power, and especially religious power, because this is the ultimate means of control.  So yes, a lot of organized religion is corrupted and run by bad people.  Not most, certainly not all, but “the devil quotes scripture” in all its forms.

So critics point to bad people who misuse religion to get people to do very bad things.  Yes, this happens.  People also do very bad things for no reason at all.  The commonality isn’t religion, it’s people.  People do very bad things.

Religion can certainly be misused as a trap, but that doesn’t make religion itself bad.  God is still there, even if his word is being misused.  And rejecting God doesn’t make the bad stop happening, it’s throwing away every tool you have to become better than your DNA. 

Rejecting God actually makes it easier for bad people to manipulate and control you.  Notice how communist dictatorships all seek to stamp out all religion and impose atheism.  In order to give the evil complete control they need to stamp out any hope for goodness. Then they can control the language to make evil sound good with words like “equality.”  (“Equality” is one of those “nice-sounding” evil words that literally replaces a good concept (fairness) with a cruel and amoral measurement system.)

Those who seek power – and evil people are profoundly drawn to power – tend to be those most passionate about getting people to turn away from the mirror.  Don’t look at yourself and try to get better, look over here, this is your problem, and I can fix it and then you’ll feel good without having to try to be good.  This is a fundamental aspect of communism, but also every other oppressive, evil structure that has come about through human history.  Evil Roman emperors engaged in this deception.

There are modern “spiritual leaders” who also seek to bypass the mirror, or sell the idea there’s some magic fix where you wave a wand and the “evil structure” vanishes leaving our goodness in its place. And notice how they also seek to appoint themselves as the source of truth and the final arbiter or goodness, often under the false pretense of “freedom.”

The reflection in the mirror sucks.  It’s supposed to suck. That means you can see good and evil and that you don’t like the evil you see.  This is actually good!  It doesn’t mean you should collapse into shame, that’s another bypass.  You see the evil, you reject the evil and you change thoughts and behaviors.  And for this to happen, you need a clean, good, strong, accurate mirror.

And yes, breaking that mirror is very bad luck. 

California Fails on Air Pollution

 https://nypost.com/2026/04/24/us-news/california-dominates-pollution-ratings-with-eight-cities-in-top-25/?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=capost&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=capost&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwdGRjcARZ2EFleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAo2NjI4NTY4Mzc5AAEe3-eJkZbr94f4lc2xVW7whEbddfN3DLFJZRDnyHypXvxUekDitYJD6nfTIWw_aem_qeylSz5vDVkiI3WMD9TQOA

Dirty cities, stupid people, horrible policies. That’s California. 

And it’s only one aspect. It gets much worse.