Today, wherever I go, I will create a peaceful, loving and joyful world. — A morning mantra from Sadhguru.

I went exploring this past weekend, part of a new series of weekly dates with myself. This was found in Old City Park, a place my grandma loved and volunteered at in the early 90s before she passed. It was an absolutely delightful day.

As children we found ways to protect ourselves from vulnerability, from being hurt, diminished, and disappointed … now as adults we realize that to live with courage, purpose, and connection—to be the person whom we long to be—we must again be vulnerable.

— Brené Brown, Daring Greatly

People, 2020

I came across an article this morning by Dennis Sanders entitled “Attention must be paid: the electoral lessons of the working class”:

Trump exposed something that we Americans are loathe to talk about — class. As hard as it is to talk about race in America, we like to pretend class doesn’t exist. But the fact is, it does and it shows itself in how middle and upper income Americans look at low income Americans, especially those who are poor and white. The well educated in American society tend to view the working class, especially the white working class with contempt.

… and earlier in the article:

When you are always outraged, when you believe that we are at the tipping point where American democracy is lost, you tend to miss a lot of other things that gets the electorate mad.

We must practice compassion to heal. This means being fully present and insanely curious about what others are thinking and feeling. This is with full presence and without judgment. We must provide safe spaces for others to let their shields down, to expose their true selves, in order to collectively heal.

I agree that attention must be paid. It must be paid to everyone. We are all equal, whether we choose to believe it or not.

When we practice generating compassion, we can expect to experience the fear of our pain. Compassion practice is daring. It involves learning to relax and allows ourselves to move gently toward what scares us. – American Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön, The Places that Scare You

I rode my bike to the park today to work for a few hours and enjoyed 27 acres of beautifully maintained park largely by myself. Craziness, especially given that we are having badass weather lately.

“Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others.”

“Until we can receive with an open heart, we are never really giving with an open heart. When we attach judgment to receiving help, we knowingly or unknowingly attach judgment to giving help.”

— Brené Brown, “The Gifts of Imperfection”

Goals

I’m working on two fitness goals:

1. Run a sub-20 minute 5k.
2. Achieve the initial goal of the Kettlebell Simple & Sinister program: 10 x 10 one-handed swings in 5 minutes, followed by 10 x Turkish get-ups in 10 minutes, both with a 32kg kettlebell.

Plan

Achieving these will be (hopefully) accomplished with simple weekly programming:

• 1 x 45min easy run
• 1 x 45min hill run
• 1 x 45min fartlek run
• 1 x 90min trail run, intensity depends on the day
• 4 x KB simple practice, increasing weight when ready

Why?

Because running fast is fun! And having a solid body with tons of energy that is ready for anything physical and fun is wonderful too!

I love to go play outside, especially with others. Run. Hike. Ride bikes. Paddleboard. Kayak. Whatever. This minimal program makes all of this possible. A trip to the mountains to run up and down them a few times? Yes please! I’m ready.

This is one of my favorites of all time. Prom / King on the Care For Me album just had me crying once again. Damn. I love this dude.

Working in a park in Farmers Branch, Texas, around 5:30pm. And deciding on mala beads to enhance my meditation practice. My first set. I chose a seven chakra rainbow design … and for whatever reason I’m super excited about this, so it must be more important than I originally thought. Anyway … here’s a flower that is just a few feet away from where I’m now sitting. #adayinthelife

One of my favorite animations …

Don’t think about why you question, simply don’t stop questioning. Don’t worry about what you can’t answer, and don’t try to explain what you can’t know. Curiosity is its own reason. Aren’t you in awe when you contemplate the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure behind reality? And this is the miracle of the human mind — to use its constructions, concepts, and formulas as tools to explain what man sees, feels and touches. Try to comprehend a little more each day. Have holy curiosity.

– Albert Einstein

Our relationships with other people are reflected in our relationships with our things, and likewise our relationships with things show up in our relationships with people.

– Marie Kondo, Spark Joy

I am currently on a journey of finding new homes for the things that no longer “spark joy” for me, discarding the rest. While I’m excited to finally realize “the life-changing magic of tidying up,” for now I’m enjoying the life-changing magic of letting go of all the shit that isn’t serving me.

When you lie to yourself or misrepresent the truth in any way, you increase the stress on your body. After years of misrepresenting your true wants, the increasing stress can lead to health problems. Lying to yourself always breaks down the relationship with yourself, creates stress, and represents the truth as potentially dangerous and threatening.

— Robert Fritz, The Path of Least Resistance

The observation deck at the torch of the Statue of Liberty (that I didn’t know existed until today) was closed in 1916 after German spies blew up a nearby island. A video that explains the Black Tom explosion:

Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive — the risk to be alive and express what we really are. Just being ourselves is the biggest fear of humans. We have learned to live our lives trying to satisfy other people’s demands. We have learned to live other people’s points of view because the fear of not being accepted and of not being good enough for someone else.

— Don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements

The topic of narcissism has penetrated the social consciousness enough that most people correctly associate it with a pattern of behaviors that include grandiosity, a pervasive need for admiration, and a lack of empathy. What almost no one understands is how every level of severity in this diagnosis is underpinned by shame. Which means we don’t “fix it” by cutting people down to size and reminding folks of their inadequacies and smallness. Shame is more likely to be the cause of these behaviors, not the cure.

– Brené Brown, Daring Greatly

There was an indescribably powerful notion that this dimension in which the entity and I convened was infinitely more “real” than the consensus reality I usually inhabit. It felt truer than anything else I’d ever experienced. – DMT drug study respondent

DMT drug study investigates the ‘entities’ people meet while tripping

We don’t change, we don’t grow, and we don’t move forward without the work. If we really want to live a joyful, connected, and meaningful life, we must talk about things that get in the way.

— Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection

It’s all too easy to ignore the difficult aspects of life. But what may not be apparent at first, is that if we don’t deal with the difficult aspects head-on, they will deal with us later. Dive the fuck into the water.

People may call what happens at midlife “a crisis,” but it’s not. It’s an unraveling—a time when you feel a desperate pull to live the life you want to live, not the one you’re “supposed” to live.

— Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection

I like this. “Crisis” never felt right. “Unraveling” does.

My own awakening has been a lot. I feel compelled to process everything that has happened in the past using all of the tools I’ve learned along the way. And from this knowledge I’m able to begin creating the life I really want to live, shedding everything else that no longer serves me along the way.

Do you know the one sign that you’ve woken up? It’s when you are asking yourself, “Am I crazy, or are all of them crazy?”

— Anthony de Mello, Awareness

The action of the child inventing a new game with his playmates; Einstein formulating a theory of relativity; the housewife devising a new sauce for the meat; a young author writing his first novel; all of these are, in terms of our definition, creative, and there is no attempt to set them in some order of more or less creative.

Carl Rogers

Life is not a competition. There is no need to compare oneself to others, nor is there much good to come from it. Let go and create something!

After 5 miles of running to loosen up my body, I had SUCH a good time playing around on the beach tonight!! I would have loved to sit and meditate for an hour. It would have been perfect if it weren’t for the crazy crazy mosquitoes who don’t give two shits about anything other than viciously biting and extracting as much blood as they can stomach. It was super windy and they still found a way. Like, how? Blood is worth it I guess. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Anyway. After a mile of meditating to Alpha waves I threw on King Harvest’s Dancing in the Moonlight on repeat and did just that. Sooooooo free. So beautiful.

This has been one of my favorite Tiny Desk concerts for some time. The music is beautiful, erotically charged, and I love it.

Three takeaways:

1. You are infinitely loved.
2. You are always safe.
3. It is impossible to make a mistake in this life.

I first learned of Dr. Eben Alexander (and this video) from the Don’t Keep Your Day Job podcast interviewing Martha Beck. In the podcast, Beck is about to mention a quote from Dr. Alexander when the host, Cathy Heller, excitedly jumps in to tell a personal story of how SHE initially discovered his work.

The story goes something like this:

Cathy’s grandmother dies. After years of not hearing from her, she decides that maybe this is all there is to life; we live, we die and our body goes into the ground.

And then she decides to give this thought another chance and prays for the first time in years.

Sitting quietly with her eyes closed, she asks her grandmother to give her a sign if she’s still around. Her grandmother tells her (very specifically!) to search for “life after death” on YouTube, and the first video that shows up will have both Cathy and her grandmother’s name, Betty, as prominent things in the story.

What she finds is the video above. Near the end of the story at a critical junction, Dr. Alexander mentions a lady at the orphanage where he was adopted, Betty, and soon learned that he had a sister named Cathy who had passed away several years before.

Interesting stuff. Maybe more personally interesting, but this type of thing happens to me fairly often. Listen to the story yourself below … it starts at 47:48:

When you truly feel equal love for all beings, when your heart has expanded so much that it embraces the whole of creation, you will certainly not feel like giving up this or that. You will simply drop off from secular life as a ripe fruit drops from the branch of a tree. You will feel that the whole world is your home.

— Ramana Maharshi

Equal love for all = the whole world is your home. Gorgeous.

Out the door at 9:22pm. Short running shorts. Black socks. Black shoes. Garmin.

It’s nice out. The heat and humidity have been oppressive for several days, so this is a huge relief. What a perfect time to run.

A few minutes into the night and away from a neighborhood full of trees, the sky is in full view. The landscape is full of spirited clouds with a backdrop of vivid yet dulling pastels. A gorgeous blue-gray cast is quickly turning everything to black.

Run from your glutes. Tighten up your core. Lift your knees. Inhale through the nose. Exhale through the mouth. Breathe.

A delicious scent from blooms on Texas sage comes rushing into my body. Seconds later, a second round from another flower joins in … orgasm.

The topic of musical orgasms arises. A good friend brought this up on a phone call two nights ago. Similar is this experience, if not identical. Whole body chills in waves: a gentle energy orgasm.

Fluid. Light. Controlled. Five minutes in and it’s clear this will be a great run. Inhale in through the nose every two right-foot strikes to the ground. Exhale out of the mouth evenly. Breathe.

A skunk is nearby. You adorable little fuck. Happy to see you, and also happy to see you running the other direction with your tail straight up, as you do. I wonder what it’s like to be a skunk for a night?

Sidewalk under tree cover. Soil washed out over sidewalk. Darkness. Will it be slippery? Keep feet under the center of gravity to prevent slipping. Seven minutes in would be an unfortunate time to fall.

I’m grateful to be running. Except for this bridge. This bridge sucks. It moves just enough to make running across it annoying, bouncing back up ever so slightly as my feet strike the concrete. Stupid bridge. Thankfully you are short.

Inhale through nose. Exhale through mouth. Lift knees. Activate glutes. Tighten core. Relax body.

The path at the community college is almost empty. A few hours ago in the evening light, this was surely a busy place. It’s hard to distance appropriately at that time.

In the dark, a wonder of what it feels like to be a woman in the same situation takes over my thoughts. Is there fear? Fear of coming across a man like myself? Has a past situation caused this fear? Or is it a general fear caused by society? An unfortunate reality for many women. Let the feeling in.

A brief flashback to a deep psychedelic journey. A woman is twenty feet away and deep into her own experience, sobbing uncontrollably. Deep pain. The emotions are intensely raw, and intuition says the only way to help her is to send pure love her way. I’m in a state of pure bliss having just come out of an intense experience of my own. Tears are streaming down my face. The emotions, too complex to process and tears are the only option.

Run up the hill around the garden. Keep the heart rate low. Oh damn, it’s too high! Walk. Heart rate lowers quickly. Begin running again. Avoid frog on path.

An owl is hooting. I wonder what it would be like to be an owl for a night? What would I see? Why do humans run along this path? And why do they never seem to be searching for food?

Into the land of apartments. People. Oh, how lovely it is to be around people. Distance.

An attempt to make my presence known fails as I quickly come behind a woman. She is on one side of the path and I’m on the other. Huge gasp! She immediately says “I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry!” A similar response from me as I wave and continue on my way.

Of course there is laughter on my end as well. I find humor in everything. Of course I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing at the situation. She was clearly frightened, and that’s not funny. She was also cute. Her ponytail bounced as she walked. Clearly, full of energy, happy. And damn me for the unintentional frightening.

My thoughts of what it would be like to be female on a path at night are brought to the forefront of my mind once again. Hmmm. I can’t help but wonder if these thoughts attracted this event tonight?

Back to focusing on form. Inhale through the nose. Exhale through the mouth. Breathe.

The sounds of rushing water. Waterfalls. Couples sitting by the creek in the moonlight. It’s such a peaceful evening. The wish of sharing this run with someone grows stronger. Particularly a woman. Feminine energy is intoxicating.

A feeling sweeps over me. A feeling of missing all of the wonderful people who have joined runs with me in the past. And at the same time there is a feeling of connectedness with all of these people as well. The one-on-one runs are the most missed … those are so incredibly special to me.

Raindrops. The clouds had a little something to give after all. So nice. So peaceful. Hi dude from earlier when entering the college path. You have good energy.

Inhale. Exhale. Relaxed, controlled, fluid movement. Breathe.

Hello again, Mr. Owl. You are still hooting. And now it’s time to pee. A tree is found and a memory from several months ago comes flooding back. A phone call. A wonderful conversation. A break to sit underneath this tree after 10 miles of walking. The weather was much different, the temperature much cooler. Raccoons joined me for a few minutes after coming up from the creek. What a beautiful night that was. What a beautiful night tonight is.

My 45 minutes are done. There is a mile and a half to home and it’s spent walking, attempting to be in the present as much as possible yet reflecting on the past and looking forward to the future as thinking minds tend to do.

So grateful for a run. So grateful for running. So grateful for being sweet to myself and not pounding out a hard run for no good fucking reason. So grateful to be alive.

4.24mi / 45min.

Your potential is activated when you are giving — and by giving, I don’t mean feeding the homeless. I mean being in a state of sharing your unique gifts. To get there, you have to be maneuvering into a state of authentic or honest self. If you are consumed by and/or holding onto all of the shit that has happened to you in the past, it blocks that process.

— John Kim, The Angry Therapist