Good Men Love Women Who Cook and Clean. Deal With It.

There was Feminist Outrage ™ on Twitter over some long-haired dude who put out what was essentially a list of things he required in a girlfriend.  Apparently women who didn’t feel they met the requirements were upset.  Because – damn, there goes your shot at this random Twitter guy??

Or is it because this guy and his list might convince other guys to follow his lead and start asking for certain standards in their partners?

I guess that’s the big fear – that quality men will start asserting themselves and coming up with requirements for the women they choose to spend their time with.  And since the feminists proudly lack those qualities, that would mean said feminists would also not receive the attention of said quality men.

Well, sorry ladies, but it’s already happening.  The guys who have value are waking up and asserting themselves when it comes to standards.  And they’re finding that most feminist women are seriously lacking.

Knowing how to cook a meal is a basic requirement of being a functioning human being.  And it’s a quality that most American women under 30 (and far too many over 30 for that matter) now lack – because of laziness, being raised by crappy parents, and a fucked up belief that cooking food is somehow repressive to women.  Knowing how to wash clothes and clean your home – also very basic life skills everyone should know, but most women under 30 fail at miserably.

But the thing is, people still need to eat.  We still need clean clothes and we should live in a reasonably clean home.  Life on a basic level hasn’t changed.  Also, these things should be done by individuals, not hired out to services.  Eating out or ordering in every day is ridiculously expensive, impractical and unsustainable for an average person (not to mention it's unhealthy and will take years off your life).  Maid service is also not for average people.  Basic economics hasn’t changed.

And let’s face it, affordability aside, wasting money on paying someone else to cook and clean is just that, wasteful.  It’s what wasteful rich people do, not what average functional people do.

So a man who is quality – who has a good career, a good social life, who is desired by a lot of women – he can (and should) be choosy.  And you find among those men “cooking and cleaning” are very high on the list of things these men look for in women.

Whining on Twitter and Facebook, hashtagging, bitching and complaining – doesn’t change this.  Guys who have choice generally choose women who cook and clean.  And those “woke feminist” guys – well, they’re turning out to be as lame and unsatisfying as one would expect from men who center their lives around catering to the whims of women. 

(As an aside, I've noticed it's the "woke feminist men" who gravitate toward weird sex workshops that focus entirely on clitoral stimulation, and seem to be especially popular it woke feminist hotspots like the San Francisco Bay Area.  Because they are sooooooooo bad as sex and being a fucking man they think placing extra attention on the obvious symptom of sexual dysfunction will somehow lead to good sex.  And then they can't understand why their women keep cheating on them...)

But even though women really disrespect those men who do their bidding, women like having them around.  They like having the borefriend who will do their chores, cook for them, clean their place for them, and look the other way while they cheat on them with the guys who won’t do any of that crap. 

The problem is those wussy boys are looking around and noticing that their lives suck.  They’re noticing that other men are having it a lot better.  This whole dynamic used to be under-the-radar but now more and more of the “alpha men” are reaching out to help the “betas.” 

And this is very bad news for women.

There is PUA (“Pick Up Artist”) coaching where men who are successful at dating help teach less successful men.  There are other offshoots of this coaching modality.  There’s advice all over the place (some crap, some good), and certain themes keep coming up.

More importantly, men are starting to ask themselves what’s important in a relationship, instead of just looking for the next lay.  It turns out for most men “what makes men happy in a relationship” hasn’t changed much over the generations. 

A good cook is high on the list.  So is a partner who is agreeable and supportive.  A woman who maintains a clean, organized home is a good catch.  A woman who is nurturing and wants to be a good mom is very high on the list.  Interestingly enough, “career success” doesn’t rank on the list.  It’s not that men don’t want their partner to work, they just don’t care much what she’s doing at that job or how well she’s doing it as long as she’s happy and it’s not impacting any of the other things.

Basically, men of quality want women who are the exact opposite of what feminists tell women are important qualities.

And what’s happening when men don’t find good choices in their neighborhood? Well, more and more the men who have options are looking elsewhere.  Either they start looking in Middle America, or they look overseas.  South American, Eastern European, Asian and even African women are becoming more and more popular with American men.  Because they don’t have the attitude problems of Western women.

For a long time, looking for a partner from overseas was very problematic.  The quality of the women – and men looking – was very hit-and-miss, and the quality of platforms (places for potential partners to meet) was poor.  But over the past ten years this has changed.  Technology has made it much easier not only to find people all over the world, but to get to know them very well.  Online dating services have become far more savvy, international and now intra-nationally focused. 

A lot of this has been fueled by the increasing wealth and overpopulation of men in China and India who NEED to look elsewhere, but the demand in the West has been skyrocketing as well.  This is because the typical “horror stories” of finding a foreign bride are being replaced more and more with “success stories.”  Men are seeing their friends and neighbors happily married and raising families with their foreign brides and it’s removing the stereotype of “lame Western dude marrying foreign woman out of desperation,” especially when they see those guys living very enviable lives.

Oh, wait.  There are women in the world who cook and clean and take care of the home.  And they’re good mothers and treat their husbands really well.  Meanwhile I’m struggling with these angry, lazy, flaky, entitled women who can’t even take care of themselves much less anyone else.  Hmm, let me take a look at one of those websites…

Then some average-looking nobody on Twitter posts a “list of requirements in a wife” and women flip out.

But people can flip out all they want – men more and more are raising their standards and finding that Western women raised in feminist ideology are falling far short.  And they’re not bending their standards, they’re casting a wider net. 

We can already see the results, and it’ll only get more pronounced.  We have “two Americas,” the one that lives in the progressive urban feminist bubble and the one that doesn’t.  Yes, there are geographical divides, but there are also vast cultural differences even between neighbors. No, urban areas aren’t a monolith.  The progressive feminist model may be the most dominant and visible one, but there is a very strong countercurrent even in urban areas.  And that’s not even accounting for the people who get fed up and just move to other parts of the country or world.

And no amount of Twitter hashtags or Women’s Studies classes will change human nature.  More and more society is becoming stratified between the more attractive and successful men who value “traditional relationships” (and the women who desire to partner with such men) and the far less successful and desirable men who continue to suck up to women and parrot ideologies they don’t even really believe in because they think sucking up is the way to get laid.  A lot of this is simply because men who value themselves are more attractive and men who value themselves also have high standards for themselves and others.

Apparently “valuing oneself and having high standards” is offensive and politically incorrect, because it excludes those who don’t make the cut.  But then again, happiness is derived in large part from self-confidence and being good at focusing one’s time and energy on things that are worthwhile – which would include things like “priority lists.” 

Which is another way of saying that the “two Americas” is also “Happy America” and “Unhappy America.”  And judging from the attitude of the social justice Twitter mob, it’s not hard to figure out which is which.   Guys – if you want to be happy, ditch the political correctness and keep the “list.”

Men's Improvement: The Addiction of "Wanting to Be The Best In Bed."

I thought about not posting this.  I was afraid of the negative response I’d receive – from people I know, from the usual neener critics in my life.  But I have something to say. It may be edgy and controversial, it may elicit some drama from critics and people whose sacred oxes I gore.  But upon reflection, I feel that’s all the more reason to say what’s on my mind.  Having this space and constraining myself because the response might be inconvenient defeats the purpose of being here in the first place. I’m not here just to create controversy, but if something controversial or edgy needs to be said, I need to say it.  So have at it, critics…

There’s nothing wrong with mediocre sex.  The problem is being a mediocre person and staying in mediocre relationships.

I realize what I just said there is blasphemy in the SexTantaWeirdo communities, but it’s the absolute truth, so let me repeat.  There is NOTHING WRONG with mediocre sex.  In fact, in the overall scheme of things it’s a GOOD THING.

Let me explain.  The huge majority of connections you’re going to have in your life are going to be “average.”  The reality is human nature really does follow a bell curve, and most interactions are going to fall into that huge “middle of the curve” bell.  And that includes sexual connections.  Most people are not an amazing connection, just average. 

Now your average might look different than other people’s, but there’s still an average.  You’ll have some encounters that are amazing; you’ll have some that are just not good; and you’ll have some that are fun but basically… okay.  And that’s actually a good thing.  Every encounter shouldn’t be off the charts, that’s actually kind of a messed up goal and will take you to messed up places.

The SexTantraWeirdos are, well, after careful observation I’d say really fucked up, egocentric and psychologically disturbed dudes.  They’re, as far as I can see, mostly losers in life who have attached this ridiculous significance to “being the best sex she’s ever had to every woman I meet.”  And what do they have to show for it?  An oversized ego obsessed with sex, massive insecurity that oozes out everywhere, no money or in debt, and an abundance of fucked up drama relationships.

Like, UNBELEIVABLY. FUCKED. UP. Relationships.  The kind that make “mediocre” look awesome by comparison.

So they’ve constructed lives where they’re good in bed and shitty at life.  This is NOT a healthy lifestyle.

Also, and this is the really odd counterintuitive, many of these guys really suck at meeting new women and interacting like normal human beings. You’d think men who were gods in bed and put so much attention on this area would actually be pretty good at meeting new women, but a lot of them really suck at it.   Or they’ve created weird Tantra-quasi-prostitution circles.  It’s pretty fucked up.

Look, here’s the thing.  If you’re an insecure guy whose life has pretty much sucked as long as he’s been alive, then cultivating the ability to make women feel AMAZINGLY good in bed is going to sound like the magic ticket out of Loserville.  And it does feel really good, from an ego standpoint.  Maybe too good.

But in the long run it’s foolish and destructive.  Obsessing over this aspect of life will not get you out of Loserville.  The best you’ll get is a 30-year mortgage on a penthouse suite in a nicer area of Loserville.  Maybe you can aspire to being Mayor someday.  You’ll have pretty high status among the residents or Loserville.  But at the end of the day, there’s going to be a moment of reflection when you have to acknowledge your life is a fucking joke.  And at that point, you might not be able to get yourself out.

Being a really good lover is awesome.  Maxing out that skillset on every single woman you meet – not smart.  Making it your goal in life to be the *absolute best lover* for every woman you ever meet – really dumb.

Think of it this way.  You learn a martial art.  You get really good and now you have this great skill.  Hopefully you integrate that skill to create a fuller life with more strength and confidence.  Because if your goal was to use your power to kick the ass of everyone who ever did or does you wrong, or running around trying to prove you are the most alpha fighter in the world (and we know people like this, right?), your life is going to suck, perhaps permanently so.

Most people kind of intuitively know obsessing over one thing in life is not healthy, but the temptation to obsess over sexual performance for men is a powerful drug.  You get that “high” from doing that, and it’s hard to maintain a balanced perspective.  Especially if you’re a man who hasn’t had any taste of success in other areas of life.  Men need to feel they’re good at something, and feeling he’s good at making women feel good… feels really good for a man.  And if he hasn’t had experiences of feeling good about himself up to that point, it’ll be addictive.

I’ve noticed the men who fell into that obsession earned a reputation for “being good,” and were surrounded by some of the shittiest relationships and psycho women I’ve ever seen in my life.  They’re so obsessed with not being normal that they have no idea what a normal, healthy relationship looks like.  (They’re actually quite nice, really.)

I realize this runs counter to men’s ego, but it’s better to dial back a little at first and gauge her energy.  See if you and she are compatible first.  In most cases, you won’t be that compatible – it’ll be kind of “meh” – so why would you want to try to make her obsessed with you?  There can only be two reasons – one, you’re so insecure you need validation from everyone, even people you don’t like that much or two, you’re so insecure about finding another sex partner you have to invest all your energy into making *this* one *the best* even if deep down she isn’t really what you want, because deep down you fear it could be the last sexual relationship you’ll ever have.

In either case THAT’S REALLY REALLY REALLY FUCKED UP. 

If you and she are an “average” connection, then mediocre sex is fine.  Really. You two have fun for a while and then move on without much hard feelings.  She should be allowed to forget about you and you should have enough maturity and confidence in yourself to let her forget, if she’s not someone you want to remember.  And you should also have enough maturity and confidence to NOT SETTLE out of fear or low self-esteem.

Being able to dial it back, be cool, and let her go is a sign of confidence and maturity.  And in the long run it’ll actually make you a better lover.  In fact, I’ve come to the conclusion that the best move a guy can learn if he want to be really good in bed is learning when it’s not working well and letting women go with grace.  Moving on is a very important and largely underdeveloped skillset.  Obsessing over “being the best” will get you typecast as, well, that weirdo who is obsessed about being the best in bed.  It reeks of insecurity and it’ll severely limit your life in a lot of ways.

Plus, it feels a lot more natural to offer something really special when the connection is really special.  Things work a lot better, and you have a strong attachment with someone you actually enjoy being with, instead of one of these psycho one-sided attachments.

Let me put a finer point on this – INTENTIONALLY trying to be the BEST.LOVER. EVER.  with women you don’t feel the same way about – it’s selfish and abusive.  It’s not “giving,” it’s taking.  It’s YOU putting your EGO ahead of someone else’s feelings.  It’s manipulative and deceitful.  It’s fucking uncool.  And if you’re the guy who constructs his life to be that guy who NEEDS to be HER BEST, no matter what, it’s going to come out.  And guess what?  You’ll be surrounded by women who are the same – they just want to use you for their own benefit.  (Or women you’ve turned into psycho stalkers out of your abusive ego needs – congratulations, asshole.)

And some guys will say – SWEET! Yah, immature, selfish, short-sighted boys will say that.  And guys stuck in Loserville who never grow up and never make anything out of their lives.

If you’re a man who wants to get better at sex, you might initially look up to those men who are “every woman’s best,” but eventually you’ll reach a level in your life where you’ll see those “men” for the pathetic men-children they are.  They’re not strong men worthy of respect, and at some point you’ll realize you have a lot more going for you than they do and kick yourself for ever looking up to these guys. 

Now look, for a lot of men (most men) “mediocre sex” is all they know.  And that’s not okay.  You want to get good at this and step up in life.  It’s part of being a quality man.  PART OF, not ALL OF.

What I’m saying here is, yes, learn the skills.  It’s good for you.  But be aware of the ego trap.  

Addictions come in many forms, and this one can be particularly difficult to overcome.  A good sex life is an important part of a good life, but it is only part.  It is not the foundation, and it is certainly not the main or only aspect of a good life.  Notice where the ego wants to draw you into obsession and imbalance, or where you’re using one aspect of life to compensate for deficiencies in other aspects.  Balance and perspective are essential to living a good, happy life. 

Some Basic "Spiritual Ground Rules"

Some people might be confused by my Twitter posts.  I like to troll.  Not mean-spirited trolling, just adding to the silliness of the “news” that’s out there.

Truth is, politics doesn’t bother me.  It’s amusing, it’s annoying, but it’s largely irrelevant from my daily life and completely irrelevant from my higher purpose.  All this “discussion” about feminism, #metoo, Black Lives Matter, it’s all just mindless entertainment.  None of it matters in the higher scheme of things.

That being said, I sometimes feel the need to put warning labels out there, lest people who follow me get the wrong impression or drink the poison.  So let me put this out there clearly – ego-based stuff only leads to problems.  You cannot resolve your ego problems with more ego, they can only be resolved at a higher energy source.

In other words, arguing over politics and pointless social theories will not bring you an ounce of happiness, much less guide you to your higher purpose.

There.  You’ve been warned.

For me this is such an essential element of my life that I forget this is a truth where few people live. And thus my Tweets could be dangerously misleading instead of mindless entertainment or education-through-shock-value.  I engage in political debate as a social exercise.  Yes, I have opinions.  No, they don’t mean anything, but sometimes they can be a way to connect and interact with people I would not otherwise meet.  Which can be interesting, or at least diverting.

It’s not who I am.  It’s not my mission.

In fact, I’ve made a point of disavowing “self-help leaders” who have strayed from spiritual truth into the ego of politics and social controversies.  Destin Gerek used to be one of the most embodied, spiritually-based “self-help” people I knew.  Deep down I believe he still is.  But there’s no denying his public message and coaching modality has shifted into the ego-based.  He sees the media and claims these are real problems – he’s internalizing things that aren’t his to internalize.  He’s engaging in very base ego-based argument and social media mob stuff.

That isn’t embodied growth.  It’s ego-based bullshit. It wouldn’t matter if it was just My Buddy Destin, one of many guys who say some things I agree and disagree with.  But in the past he’s helped men to resolve their ego-based problems with identity and connection at a higher level – which is why I supported him.  Now, he’s lost in the ego stuff and I have to wait for him to either come back to the higher level or not on his own time.

This is one example.  It seems the election of Donald Trump has thrown many people who were struggling to operate above the ego right back into the pit of egoic patterns.  This is what happens when catalysts come along – people who have weak spiritual grounding come crashing down.

But I’ve gone on and on enough about people who are falling or the chaos caused by the increase in the vibrational energy (of which Trump is just a symptom).  I want to step back and set out some basic truths, the basic warnings and guideposts you need to get through all this.  Then maybe you’ll understand where my silly Tweets and political trolling posts come from.  And more importantly, where you need to be going in all this.

Bottom line, the essence of our spiritual journey is a simple question:  Am I serving Source, or Self?

That’s basically it.  Eckart Tolle talks about dissolving Ego to get rid of pain and feel better.  Because, from a spiritual standing, Tolle is full of shit.  This isn’t about “feeling better,” that’s an ego-based outcome.

So let me back up and give you another fundamental foundational truth:

Your problems can only be resolved at levels above the problem.

What this means is all your ego-based problems cannot be resolved through more ego.  You can’t argue your way out of your problems, or analyze your way out, or self-pleasure your way out.  More money, more things, more ego-based connections, more pleasurable diversions, these will not resolve the fundamental sufferings of the ego.  They’ll only add to them.

However, Tolle is right in that letting go of the ego from a higher level WILL resolve the ego problems.  But doing so to simply “get rid of suffering” will only bring you right back into suffering.  “YAY, my ego is dissolved – OH CRAP! It came back.”  And you’ll be on that up-and-down ride forever.

Another foundational truth:  

People who are on their spiritual path are fundamentally happy, precisely because they are pursuing something above the level of happiness.  

Happiness is not joy, it’s not a state of being, it’s a lifestyle choice.  It comes when one has moved past ego-based living and is living at a higher level.  And at that level, happiness comes naturally.

If all you care about is pursuing joy through experiences, you will find some joy and long periods of longing for joy.  That’s ego.  If you are dead-set on avoiding pain, you’ll experience some non-pain and long periods of pain.  This is how desire works.  The absence of ego means the absence of that kind of desire.  You’ll still experience joy, pain, pleasure, sadness and everything in between, but without the judgment or longing for things to be a certain way.  You accept your temporal states of being as such in the present moment, and can do so with an underlying sense of calm and higher purpose.  And that underlying sense is what I refer to as “happiness.”

Happiness is really just a higher state of living, above the ego state.  It’s a requirement for those on serious spiritual paths.  You’ll notice all the more evolved spiritual people are naturally happy, even in their suffering.  Because they’re living outside their ego.

From this place, ego-based arguments and such (everything on Twitter) is irrelevant to one’s life.  The news media means nothing.  Politics – meh.  It’s entertainment, it’s a diversion. It’s annoying at times.  It also is an access point to see the truer nature of people it serves to “unmask” people who hide under masks.

And that hiding under masks is something a lot of coaches do.  I don’t mean to pick on Destin, but seeing him fall back into ego patterns has me question whether his “higher coaching self” was just a mask that I bought into so heavily I made it a reality for me.  I don’t think so, but time will tell.

The thing is, wherever you are in your spiritual journey, the ego is still going to snare you from time to time.  Sometimes I feel tired and stressed.  Sometimes I feel lonely.  Sometimes I feel angry, or sick, or experience physical pain.  Sometimes I’m enjoying sensory experiences and lose presence.  Sometimes I fall into habit or argue or whatever.  We all do. 

The difference for me is I’ve trained myself to operate at higher levels.  So I know how to get myself back there.  I catch myself and can do things to realign my energy.  But I’ve had years and years of training and practice at pretty high levels – something most people haven’t had.

That’s not me being prideful, it’s just the reality.  An untrained person seeking spiritual development might find some of the things I say and do to be downright unhelpful or dangerous.  So again, always go back to the basic question: “Am I serving Source or Self?”  

Also learn muscle testing or pendulum testing to ascertain the higher truth of things. 

Never take anyone’s word on things ever.  Because even the most well-meaning people operating at the highest levels slip up, and you don’t want to get snagged in their net.

I’ve pointed out a lot of the BS out there, and I’ll continue to do so.  Consider this the very basic ground rules for spiritual development. And keep in mind your service to Source is going to look far different than mine or anyone else’s.  (Take a gander at Etienne’s blog and what he’s being called to do – it’s pretty “out there” compared to what most of us are being asked to do.)  I think it’s important to keep in mind, as much BS as I point out, there’s plenty of it right here coming from me or anyone else. 

In the immortal words of Bob Dylan, “Don’t follow leaders.”  

If you’re serious about spiritual development, you need to step up and be your own spiritual leader or you’ll end up back in the bucket with the other crabs “searching” for the rest of your life, and who knows how many lives after that.

Hope this helps, and don’t take my Tweets too seriously.  I don’t.

Happiness: Stop Worrying So Much About "Safety"

One of the things people who want to squash happiness do is insert unnecessary worry over "safety."  The media will magnify the "unsafe" things out of proportion and then "experts" follow suit.

But worrying about "safety" interferes with the natural process of life.  Some basic concern and precaution is warranted, but too much fear-based activity interferes with freedom and life. 

This video highlights some of the extreme "over-worrying" that goes on.  And the common-sense rules that apply to kids apply to adults as well.  Focus on living, not "being safe" all the time and living in a fear-bubble.  You'll be more connected with nature and feel happier.

Happiness: Who and What Makes You Happy?

A happy life is not measured by external reference.  There is one and only one measurement of a happy life, the owner’s subjective experience

.

It’s both simple and challenging.  Our only impediment to happiness is our own perception – very simple – and yet often very difficult to change.

What you do, how you measure up to others, what others thing of you, how much money you have, how many friends or whatever other measurement you use means nothing in relation to happiness.  Whatever measurement you use, there are many others “better off” according to that measurement who are more unhappy and many others “worse off” who are more happy.

There is no objective measurement of happiness based on empirical evidence.  It is a singular experience that comes down entirely to your attitude.

I’ve struggled with this myself.  Society wants to convince you happiness is “out there,” either through the accumulation of accomplishments or the new status symbol – “experiences.”  But a big bank account or lots of awards or lots of stamps on your passport does not lead to happiness.  Nothing outside of you will lead to happiness.  Happiness comes first before the enjoyment of other things.

And whether you realize it or not, you have haters.  There are people you know and people you don’t know who have a personal interest in seeing you unhappy.  They will go to every possible length to convince themselves, everyone around them, and (if they can) you that you are miserable, for whatever reasons they can come up with.  Because they’re unhappy and can’t figure out why, so they resent your happiness.

How dare you be happy when they have more money, or more friends, or a “better” job (whatever that means), or better “life experiences.”  If they’re miserable with their “superior” lives, then you can’t possibly be happy and, as haters, it is their job to show you that you aren’t happy, you’re just crazy.  Or settling for mediocrity.  Or brainwashed.  Anything they can get you to grab on to.

And “they” represents not just your personal haters (and you have some, everyone does), but the larger society that desperately wants and needs you to be unhappy, to be constantly reaching for something else to feel fulfilled.

Even people who claim to have your best interest at heart are playing this game.  Often your biggest fans are also your biggest haters. 

This is one of the main reasons I walked away from the “personal coaching” modality.  All the coaches I’ve seen, even the ones I personally like the best, operate from this model of unhappiness.  They sell their services from the place of “you are unhappy, you are unfulfilled, so TRANSFORM YOURSELF and you can be happy like me.”

As someone who has spent a LOT of time and money on coaching, I can tell you happiness will not be found by “changing yourself.” 

That’s actually a bold statement that runs directly against every coaching pitch I’ve seen.  So let me repeat this so it sinks in:

There is nothing you can do to “change yourself” that will transform you from an unhappy person to a happy person.  The only way you will move from unhappiness to happiness is to choose to be happy.  Everything else you do to make yourself “better” is just another form of status-seeking that won’t bring happiness. 

Now, that’s not to say happy people don’t seek to better themselves, they usually do. But there’s a big difference between improving on a happy life and trying to be happy through change. 

You don’t need anything that you don’t already have to be happy. You don’t need to improve your social standing, or performance, or anything else.  Being happy can happen for you right now.  The poorest person with the least “going for them” can be happy, and often are. 

Waiting for your haters to “come around” won’t do you any good.  Haters are gonna hate.  Consider them your reference point for unhappiness.  I have haters.  Some are people who feel hurt by things I’ve done in the past and, instead of letting it go and just being happy, have chosen to hold on to their wounds and cheer for my failure and unhappiness. 

Others are people who believed deep down that “being the best” would bring happiness and can’t understand why that isn’t working for them.  They have to constantly show how their lives are “better” than mine and expect me to feel bad.  I don’t.  I’m happy for them.  Which seems to just piss them off even more.  Which makes me a little less happy for them, since they’re obviously not happy people.

And there are a ton of people I know who aren’t haters, but they’re not happy.  They’re desperately trying to be happy, to look happy, to get by and hoping somehow this elusive happiness will find them.  That’s most people – maybe you too.  They image-craft on Facebook and Instagram, talk about their awesome life, and you get the sense they are one bad break away from a complete meltdown, they’re just barely keeping it together. 

You Don’t Need to “Do Something” to Be Happy

The “status symbol” now among first-world people is “experiences.”  How many pictures of “stuff you’re doing” around the world do you have on your social media?  How many stamps in your passport?

Those things are nice, but they aren’t a measure of happiness.

I’ve done a lot of things in my life.  I’ve had a wide variety of experiences, good and bad.  A lot. And I can tell you it’s not the “what” it’s the “how” that matters.  If you’re unhappy and taking a lot of vacations, all you do is take your unhappiness with you everywhere you go.  I know people like that – very unhappy people but they’re always going somewhere, usually trying to run away from themselves.

Conversely I know others who do very little and yet they’re very happy.  Some of the happiest people I’ve ever met are poor and never traveled out of their province, much less the country. 

I hear people say “do what you like” to be happy.  The truth is, it’s more about liking what you do.  Changing the “what” just changes the scenery around your unhappy state, but you can’t run away from you.  On the other hand, if you adopt a lifestyle of happiness, you can find good in any experience, even the most mundane. 

This is one of the lessons of Buddhism.  When you stop, slow down and meditate, you’re not “doing anything,” yet it is here one can find self-acceptance, happiness in other words.  People who meditate are happier, even though they are “doing” less than others. 

You can have a series of “adventures,” running from one thing to another, and never get much from any experience.  And you can have a handful of experiences but experience them deeply because you’re centered and not “trying to be happy.” 

Nobody Else Can Make You Happy (or Unhappy)

I had to mute all the coaches I know because their marketing is all about “hire a coach to be happy.”  Which won’t make you happy, just more likely to get sucked into their funnel and spend a LOT of money “trying” to become happy.  Unhappy people spend a lot of money trying to be happy.  First world problems.

It’s bullshit.  A coach can’t make you happy.  If you’re already happy, a coach can help, but if you’re not, you’ll likely just be unhappy with a coach.  And the harsher truth is most coaches aren’t happy.  They’re still “trying” to be happy and imagine themselves further along some “path” to happiness.

There is no pathway to happiness.  It’s a way of being.  Nobody else can give it to you or show you the “pathway,” you have to accept yourself and choose to be happy.  There’s no other way.  There’s no “graduation” to happiness.

Conversely, nobody else can make you unhappy.  Haters are gonna hate.  Whether you choose to listen is up to you.  Some people are mean.  Everyone has a bad moment.  Whether you choose to absorb those slights is entirely your choice.  Bad things happen.  Whether you choose to keep going or let them stop you is largely up to you.

I have a friend who has an anniversary for every bad thing that’s happened in their life.  And some of those bad things happened a GENERATION ago.  But this friend (who I’m considering de-friending) chooses to keep commemorating those things on the calendar and bringing the past into the present (and only the unpleasant stuff too).  I can’t even relate to this way of being, but at any rate, this is a choice to keep inflicting pain in your life.  You can let things go, even bad things.  It doesn’t mean you’re dishonoring people or disregarding past trauma, you’re just choosing to heal and focus on the here and now. 

And here and now, whatever bad thing that happened in the past is not happening now.  It’s over.  It’s not actually happening to you now.  By choosing to relive the past, you’re re-injuring yourself when you could just as easily forget it and move on without the pain.  Stop torturing yourself with your past and let it go!  Nobody is “making” you torture yourself, YOU are doing this ONLY to yourself.  Only you.

And that’s the bottom line of happiness – it all comes down to you.  It’s a choice you make in every moment.  It is a practice learning to un-learn the habits of unhappiness, but in the end it’s just a choice.  Nobody and nothing can take that choice away from you.  It’s you and only you.

Hey Chicken Littles - The Sky Is Not Falling!

For the past two years I’ve been suffering the Chicken Littles telling us how the world is going to end and everything is going to doom us.  Well, it’s been more than two years, but acutely for two years.  All over social media, even in general conversation there’s this thread of irrational fear of the End of the World ™.

And yet, the world isn’t ending.  In fact, by every rational measure things continue to get better, despite whatever horrible thing was supposedly happening or going to happen.  The sky doesn’t fall, the sun comes up and life goes on, usually a little better than the day before. Maybe we’re too tired and stressed to really appreciate it, but the truth is there nonetheless.

All this worry and panic and hysteria just end up being self-torture (and torture of others who have to endure the emotional outbursts) and unnecessary stress and fatigue.  But life goes on quite well nonetheless.

Oh, you say, but there are Real Problems.  Sure.  The world has always had problems.  The fact that we have the luxury to examine some of these problems and blow them far out of proportion in our own lives speaks to how few “Real Problems” most of us have. 

There have always been problems.  Some of them big.  None of them probably directly involving you.  Because while the world has problems, they’re fewer and smaller in magnitude than ever before in human history.  The world is wealthier than ever before in its history, and that wealth is spread more broadly than ever before – a higher percentage of humanity is in the middle class or higher than at any time in human history.  A higher percentage of people are free from war, disease or extreme poverty than at any other time in the history of man.

In fact, for all the hysteria and focus on “problems,” the world is on the cusp of eliminating extreme poverty in this generation.  For most of human history, extreme poverty was just the norm except for a very few.  The whole world was poor.  Pretty much everyone suffered serious diseases – most people didn’t make it to thirty.  Dying in childbirth was a very real and common “problem” for women, even wealthy women.  Wars were common, prevalent and far more destructive in terms of casualties (both soldiers and civilians) than now.

Yes, the world has the capability to effectively wipe out civilization with immensely powerful weapons, but since those weapons were invented and used (only twice in combat), the magnitude and severity of wars has steadily declined and the world’s wealth has increased exponentially.

And this wealth manifests not just in bank accounts, but in what is available and what humans are capable of doing.  The massive increase in wealth has allowed record percentages of students to graduate from universities, a luxury that wasn’t available when poverty was the norm.  This wealth has allowed every country to massively extend the length and quality of human life.  Electricity and indoor plumbing are the norm, even for “poor people.”  Access to music, books, cinema, television, Internet, email, text, news, and other information and entertainment that used to only be available to a small number of wealthy is near universal. 

Wealth isn’t just money, it’s the sum product of society.  Higher wealth means more expression in all its forms.  Look at the abundance of entertainment, much available completely for free on YouTube or through streaming.  The world music scene, movies, television, videos, all the multitude of expressions (who the hell heard of things like Tantra or meditation even 40 years ago?).  Universities, online learning, libraries, so much information available from so many sources, much free or very affordable.  Think about that – you can teach yourself a new trade, network with other students, and get yourself work with that new trade, all for very little money – at home, in your free time.  In Asia.  This was humanly impossible just a generation ago.  You can teach yourself a new language, talk to people in the other country, then go visit (or move to) that country, on less than a middle-class income.  Even in the 1980s, that was entirely out of reach for the average person.

People freak out about the environment, but the fact that we can spend time and energy tending to the environment shows just how far the world has come economically.  Environmental awareness is a byproduct of wealth – poor people don’t have the time, energy or resources to pay attention to these things. 

Wealth isn’t making the planet less livable – it’s what’s allowing the planet to be sustainable and thrive.  There are six billion people on this planet.  Because the planet is wealthy enough to afford that size of humanity.  If the world were as poor as it was 100 years ago, there is no way the planet could sustain even 1/5 that population.  And it wouldn’t – 100 years ago most babies died in the first year and most people didn’t make it to 40.  Plagues, famine and wars regularly killed off people when the population would get too high.  It is the unprecedented wealth that has allowed humanity to grow, sustain and thrive, and for the planet to continue to live and grow.  (And we are even able to clean the place up – the world environment is actually significantly more clean than it was a generation ago.)

But people don’t take a step back to look at the bigger picture.  Instead we tend to focus too much on small imperfections and blow them out of proportion.  We convince ourselves that a small problem is a big, insurmountable problem and panic.  Then when the sun keeps coming up, we quietly move on to something else, never learning the bigger lesson.

And I’ll admit I’m as guilty as anyone.  I’ve spent my life losing sleep and panicking over things that mattered little in the short-term, and mattered none at all in the long-term.  I woke up from this illusion of panic only a short while ago in relation to my life.  I used to wet the bed just like all the Chicken Littles.  And it brought me nothing but unnecessary sleep deprivation, personal anguish, relationship strife and general unhappiness for no good reason.

It’s because I went through all this and learned the lesson that I can say that the world is really a happy place, but we humans are a terribly unhappy species.  And the paradox is the wealthier the world becomes, the more happiness there is, and the more unhappy we humans become.  It’s like we long to be poor and miserable and seek to return to the wretched lives of our ancient forefathers, no matter how stupid, irrational and self-destructive that is.

Happiness is all around.  Being happy is simple, but because of our human nature it is not easy.  Humans are not good at stepping back and embracing the joy of interconnected abundance.  Instead we actively seek out disconnection and disparity.  We try to be unhappy.

Buddhist teaching speaks to the human nature that seeks out unhappiness.  I’m not here to push a religious philosophy, only to say the sooner one learns to accept the self-defeating, happiness-defeating nature of humans, the sooner one can learn to un-learn human nature and embrace happiness.

Because once one is free from the self-destructive patterns of human nature, happiness is easy.  Whatever your current position in the world, abundance is prevalent and happiness is everywhere.  We are blessed to be humans on this planet in this time.  Humanity is blessed.  And whatever your circumstances, you are blessed.  We all are.

I am a voice for happiness.  I am walking that path and I want to show the world the way. 

The path of happiness is peace, stillness, grounding, gratitude, abundance, interconnectedness and a conscious un-learning of our toxic human nature that leads us to unhappiness and death.

The world is not going to end.  In fact, it is getting better every day.  Humanity is getting better. You are, too.  Embrace it.  Learn to love this world and this life, to love humanity and embrace your connection to the abundance of humanity and the universe.

Humanity is going to be growing and thriving for a long, long time. Your time, however, is considerably more limited.  It’s time to be happy now.  Join me.

A Clear Mind: Relating to News, Politics and Social Media

If one is going to find real happiness and not just survive, but thrive, during this period of energetic upheaval, a clear mind needs to be the foundation.  It is the lifeblood of presence, mindfulness and the good that flows from that place.

One must be careful about information consumption in order to attain and maintain a clear mind.  Yes, meditation is important, but it won’t work if one then turns around and absorbs all the toxic garbage floating around.  This toxic information will create confusion, distortion and toxicity, as well as creating implants that are very difficult to clear. 

Let me talk about two of the most troublesome sources of toxic information – social media and news media.  Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and all the major news sources in all their forms, are extremely toxic. It’s gotten to the point where the media is basically theater.  Etienne Charland has a good article on the theater of Charlottesville here.

Connecting with people is all fine and good.  And staying informed about what’s going on in the world is important.  But neither of those things require daily access to social media or the news, much less the obsession and addiction we’re seeing in many people these days.

I’ll admit I’ve been as bad as anyone about overuse of news media and obsession with political theater.  At one point in my life it was my identity.  I’ve learned that current events are mostly distortions of reality – the media focuses on small things an exaggerates to create effect.  But it’s not actually what’s going on.  To properly view current events, one needs to be able to view them from a distance and see how the events fit or don’t fit into the larger scheme. This isn’t possible from daily (or hourly, or worse) following of headlines.

I would advise looking at the news no more than once a week, maybe even once a month.  Very little going on daily is of much long-term consequence, it’s better to view the information from a detached perspective.  Avoid headline-skimming and actually dedicate yourself to reading and gaining insight. One quality national weekly/ monthly and one quality international monthly is sufficient to stay informed without being sucked into the toxic morass.  And you’ll know more than 90% of the headline-skimmers about what’s actually going on.

In politics, focus on your truth and avoid the horse-race.  Most of what passes for political news doesn’t look much different than gambling write-ups.  (In fact you’re likely to learn more useful things from the gambling mags.)  Turn it all off.  Instead, focus on your truth and work on advocating for truth, instead of getting sucked into pointless team sport.

Politics has changed society, often not for the better. In the US, government has become considerably more oppressive, restrictive and corrupt.  The ways in which government has restricted our freedom have multiplied exponentially while the benefits of said government have decreased and costs have increased.  Society continues to be increasingly penned in and watered-down in the name of “safety” and “not hurting feelings,” quality of service continues to deteriorate and tax burdens continue to become more oppressive.  In California, it is impossible for an “average family” to maintain a sustainable “average standard of living” on an average salary.  If you’re not wealthy, you’re poor, and we have the government to thank for this. (And California government services are horrible – their solution, of course, more taxes.)

We pay taxes, both visible and invisible, to pay for invisible problems like “solving global warming” while cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco live in festering garbage and raw sewage.  Really.  They live in poop.  Cleaning up actual garbage has been replaced with solving an “environmental problem” that can’t be solved and isn’t actually a problem, at least not in the sense it’s being presented.  We could clean up real garbage that lying all over the place, but instead we tax people into effective poverty to clean up absolutely nothing in the name of an imaginary problem and call it “progressive.”  We have solar panels on our houses and feces in our streets – this is not sane behavior.

The pattern is easy to see.  It’s real, and it’s a problem.  It’s a political problem.  But won’t be seen, or resolved, but staring at stupid headlines about what Donald Trump tweeted.  But it needs to be addressed.  The solution is to ignore all the spectator sport aspect of politics and focus on reality – getting with other people, pointing out the problem and advocating a solution.  None of that requires a lot of time reading the news or watching TV. 

As far as social media, the disconnect between the intended and actual result is even larger. Here we have a situation where every attempt to connect to people (which is why people are on social media) actually creates more disconnection than if you did nothing.  Going 100% off social media will actually create more social connection.  But we’re so afraid to let go of the illusion we will hold onto social media and convince ourselves that cinderblock is a life raft. 

At this point I don’t know if there is a way to utilize social media that actually creates connection.  Except pulling the plug.  When I went to Thailand and couldn’t access Facebook, I found social connection.  While news has some value, I’m not sure I can say that for social media

.

I used to think it was good for staying in contact with old friends.  But I never used it that way – I never actually contacted them. Nobody does.  It creates this illusion that people who don’t give a shit about each other are actually connected, to the point we value these “connections” over actually connecting with people who care who are all around us.  We’re so afraid of being lonely if we lose these fake friendships we create artificial loneliness.

But if you don’t engage with social media, nothing bad happens.  You’re bored for a few minutes, then you quickly find something else to do and forget it.  Until you think “oh, I should post this on Facebook or Instagram.”  All I see on social media are people desperate for attention and others trying to sell stuff to desperate people (who themselves are usually pretty desperate).  I can’t think of a good reason to use social media if one is trying to maintain a clear mind and have a social life, since it has the opposite effect on both outcomes.

The summary of this lesson would is the following:

·         *Avoid daily browsing of the news.  Avoid emotional, habitual and “click-baity” consumption.  Focus instead on weekly or monthly deep and rational understanding of the news;

·        * Avoid all social media. Actually connect with real people instead;

·        * Avoid the emotional, competitive aspect of politics.  Focus change energy on actually creating change – create and refine your own philosophy, listen to your heart, and work to effect meaningful changes through actual action and engagement.

Doing these things will free up space and clarity in the mind throughout the day.  Clarity isn’t something one practices only through sitting quietly for a long time, but through the cultivation and execution of a lifestyle that makes such clarity and presence a value held above others. 

Post-Thailand Epiphanies

Spending time in Thailand gives me a new perspective, both on a micro and macro level.  Being in a completely different part of the world that generally doesn’t care about the pointless BS that dominates American media (not that Thai media lacks in any way for pointless BS, just that it’s their BS, and I can’t understand what they’re talking about anyhow).  Staying in a pretty remote part of Thailand made any contact with media difficult if not impossible.

Apparently I picked a good week to be off the grid and not able to pay attention to what was going on in the US.  I missed one of the most annoying and energy-draining media weeks ever.  Too bad I had to return before the eclipse, it would have been nice to miss the hippies going on and on about that, too.

On a micro level, I was separated from the day-to-day stuff at work, the TV, the annoying scheduling issues, money issues, things that don’t matter one bit. I was also separated from technology to a large extent.  I didn’t miss any of that.

I know you can’t hide from your problems, but you can create some distance, even if temporary, and gain a different perspective.  When I’m in the middle of everything, it’s hard to differentiate between what’s truly important and what isn’t, and I end up wasting energy on unimportant things.  I come back and have a much better sense of what I need to do and what I can let go. 

I know I tend to worry too much.  I’ve always known that.  But this time I had some experiences, one in particular, that shifted my attitude.  Things just aren’t going to bother me anymore the way they used to.  Everything is different.

I’ve said that a few times - everything is different.  And each time, things were different, but certain patterns stayed the same.  This time those patterns were challenged hard and they didn’t survive the challenge.  Everything is much more clear.

So what’s the big takeaway?  None of this shit matters.  Both at the micro and macro level, none of this shit matters and isn’t worth worrying about.  The news media is so distorted it’s basically fiction.  All those stories about how the world is coming to an end?  Not happening.  All the worrying about my job and money and stupid personality issues – none of that matters for shit either.

It’s possible – and even pretty easy – to go off the grid and have a happy and fulfilling life.  Yes, even an intellectually fulfilling life. You think that news media is keeping your brain challenged?  No, it’s making your brain atrophy while fooling you into thinking you’re using brain cells. 

It is not difficult to live a happy life.  There are tons of people who have a far more difficult life than us first-worlders and they have happy and fulfilling lives.  We worry about all kinds of crap that is either never going to happen or it won’t matter if it does.  We do stupid things like obsess over health insurance when what we really need to do is turn off the TV, get off the internet and go for a walk and hang out with friends.

Before this last trip I’d been worrying about retirement.  It’s so stupid.  We spend all this energy stressing over trying to keep our comforts and we never enjoy anything.  Then one day we have outlived our ability to enjoy those comforts and in the end they didn’t matter anyhow.

We really don’t need much in this life.  And the additional things we add become exponentially more expensive to obtain and bring increasingly diminishing levels of happiness.  My rich friends work 90+ hour weeks and for what?  I used to curse my “low energy” and lack of desire to work and work to make a fortune.  Now I consider that personality “flaw” to be a gift.  The huge majority of wealthy people I know are unhappy, and the few I know who are would be just as happy in the middle class.  I see a lot of pursuing of wealth and status and very little actual being in happiness.

And I’ve been as caught up in that crap as anyone.  I can cite my backstory, but service to a lame backstory is just lame. I am not my backstory.  And it’s easy to change a backstory – every new action quickly becomes a new backstory, and they add up.

I just cleared out my “sent” folder in one of my email accounts.  I hadn’t touched it in a very long time – late 2008, in fact.  So almost ten years of junk in there.  Most of those years were pretty unhappy, but it’s clear now most of that pain was self-inflicted, or at least self-perpetuated. 

So how do I know these old patterns have changed, or destroyed (if new patterns have yet to emerge)? For one thing, I’m noticing how differently I go about my day, in many ways.  Even my bedtime and sleep patterns are different. I look at people differently, and I feel different when I’m doing that.  I communicate differently.  It’s like a part of my brain that was acting out of fear or something like that was zapped and I see things differently. 

I look back at some of the old stuff, like nine years of emails, and I really don’t know why some things seemed so important then.  And it’s one thing to feel different because I’m in a better place and another to just not care about those things.  My “bad places” were almost entirely due to my psychic self-torture or worrying about things that weren’t relevant.

 

None of it matters.  That doesn’t mean fall into despair and do nothing.  It means follow your heart, it will be okay.  Stop holding onto things that make you unhappy because you’re afraid.  Say what’s on your mind, communicate openly, take care of the things that really matter, then let it go. Mistakes are okay, dwelling on them is counterproductive.  Self-torture is a poor teaching modality.  Being wrong or making a mistake is not a sin that requires repentance. 

Don’t measure yourself against others.  Don’t try live someone else’s life – chances are they’re not living their own life either.  If you can’t find happiness within, you won’t be able to see it in others – so if you’re unhappy, you’re just going to be comparing yourself to other unhappy people.  And if you’re happy, you won’t be comparing yourself to anyone.  So even if you’re unhappy, just don’t compare yourself to others and it’ll be one less thing making you unhappy.  

A clear mind is the foundation of a happy life. Social media, news media, politics, gossip, drama – these things blur and distort the mind without offering any value or nourishment.  Better to be bored than occupied with things that distort a clear mind.

Being Happy, Not Looking for Happiness

It’s dawned on me lately that I’m really happy.  Not just that I feel a lot of periods of joy (which is a neurochemical process and not to be confused with real happiness), or that I sometimes feel happy, or becoming happi-er (which is a nice way of saying “less unhappy”), but actually and truly happy.  This is my natural state.

In this place of happiness, I can feel sorrow, grief, frustration, anxiety, joy, and all the other emotions.  But they’re now all housed in a place called “happiness” that is my home.  So when I say I’m happy, I mean I actually… happy.

And I also realize I haven’t been here in a long time.  Maybe not since college, where I had a brief stint of happiness for four years before going into the abyss.  I’d written before that I finally feel like myself after decades of feeling various degrees of lost, wandering, struggling, searching and “seeking.”  I’m home and I’m happy – with myself and my life.

Readers will note that some of my recent posts don’t seem all that happy.  (Or maybe you can notice the underlying state, but it’s hard for most to perceive.)  It’s difficult to explain the concept to people who attribute joy to happiness.  Joy is that euphoric feeling, but it’s neurochemical and as such very temporal.  It usually is followed by an emotional trough, a neurochemical hangover.  Joy is great, but the pursuit of joy and the up-down cycle is really unhealthy – it’s like binge drinking. Happy people don’t seek joy, they let it come to them and they enjoy it in the moment.  Unhappy people pursue joy in the hopes of finding happiness and usually find neither, or joy comes at a very high price.

So what about my critical posts?  Well, the great thing about being happy is I don’t need attachment.  I can look at my life and relationships clearly and evaluate whether things/ people currently in my life are contributing or taking away from my happiness.  One can’t evaluate those things from a place of unhappiness. 

So when I “came home,” I unpacked all the stuff I brought with me and started going through it.  It turns out I have a lot of great treasures, and I also have been carrying a lot of crap.  Normally I’d just toss the garbage without much thought, but a lot of this stuff are things I’d made an integral part of my identity during my “seeking happiness” stage.  I think it’s valuable to acknowledge that things I publicly held out as “this is me” are in fact not contributing to my happiness.  And doubly so when those things are advertised as ways for people to “find happiness.”

I realize I may be overreacting in some of my criticism, but I feel a lot of regret, and a certain amount of resentment, for wasting my time and money on things that were sold as “growth” which actually served to hold me back.  And I feel compelled to warn others to avoid the mistakes I made.  Because as I look at these things now, I don’t see any students of these modalities “graduating” to happiness.  They’re mostly all unhappy people pursuing joy and validation and basically doing what I did – spinning their wheels wasting time and money on magic beans.

Yes, in the process of returning to happiness, I discovered some practices and beliefs that greatly aided in my healing and finally finding my way home.  But these few very good, very valuable things were in the midst of much larger and more powerful toxic patterns that were a real disservice.

I’ve been very hard on a lot of the “growth” and “spiritual” gurus I’ve come across, because I really want them to stop and take a hard look at themselves and what they’re doing.  People who pursue joy are not happy – by definition.  It’s taken me a long time to really get this.  People who “receive” a lot of joy are only on the more short-term-successful end of the unhappiness/ happiness spectrum.  The “coaches” are for the most part no happier than their students.  In many cases, they’re actually much less happy.

The metrics of happiness most coaches use, which are basically flashpoints of temporal joy-receiving, perpetuate unhappiness.  I was stuck in this negative-feedback loop for a long time.  Longer than I needed to be.  Ultimately what got me out was an extended period of literally doing nothing other than the things I had to do keep my life going and take care of the people who needed and loved me. I disconnected from all of it, sat with that voice saying I was missing out or bored or lonely and did nothing until my mind and spirit healed itself and I felt myself again.

And it shouldn’t have to be like this.  I think it’s bullshit that wounded people who haven’t dealt with their own crap, but who have “Facebook success” are running around selling their crap advice to other wounded people.  I don’t think people do this on purpose, or that these people are bad people, but process and results are still toxic – it doesn’t matter if the intentions are good or not, you’re still producing toxic crap.

So yes, from this place, I’ve been venting.  And posting warnings.  It’s what my higher self says to do.  And I believe it’s the initial stages of formulating something that actually works for people, that actually helps people come home to their happiness.

And frankly, I feel ashamed for a lot of my journey.  Ashamed for buying into the BS, ashamed for not listening and respecting my higher self that repeatedly warned me I was off-track, ashamed for the hurt I caused others, and mostly myself. I lost good years of my life and thousands of dollars chasing rainbows and unicorns and I’m here to warn you so you don’t do the same.

You want to really evolve?  Stop eating bullshit.  It’s good for plants, but toxic for people.  Just stop.  And just because some people are finding a lot of joy from eating bullshit doesn’t make it any less toxic.  Take a careful look at their lives.  Bragging about joy on social media is usually a good indication of deep unhappiness.  Image-crafting is a sure-fire sign of unhappiness.  These “successful” people have periods of joy, maybe many, and yet when you get close you can feel the unhappiness, the festering wounds, the “I’ll-do-anything-to-not-be-me” obsession.  They’re slowly dying from poisoning from a steady diet of BS, and they sell it as ice cream.  And your money doesn’t make them any happier, either. 

And you’ll try it and find some joy and then be more unhappy than ever.  Just like trying drugs.  Because they’re just pushers.  (Some of them push drugs AND coaching, and the overlap isn’t a coincidence.)

So yes I want to warn people.  I’m not better off for spending years fucking over my life and wasting money under the guise of “evolution.”  I learned some things – some valuable things for which I’m grateful. But the experience sucked.  That part of me that feels this way is solidly grounded in my truth.  And it puts me at odds with people and modalities that I’ve identified with and endorsed for a long time.

Part of me hurts for that – I don’t like doing things that hurt people I care about.  But I spent decades hurting the person I should have been caring about the most, but was treating like absolute shit – myself.  These things I did really hurt that man -and all of it was unnecessary. 

So if I can keep you from getting sucked into that cycle and find your way to a truly happy life, I’ll do it.  Because I am happy now.  And it’s a lot easier than you might think to get here.