Steve Sinatra

No one wants to talk about their differences. They tend to connect over the ways that they are similar and avoid the ways they are different. This can be found in stereotypes like what you should and shouldn’t talk about at the dinner table. No religion, and no politics. Talking about our similarities is nice and defiantly feels good but it’s the differences that I find have greater potential for deep connection, which I believe is the intention that underlies why we are interacting with each other in the first place. 

We are all unique like snowflakes or someone’s signature but I believe there are way fewer differences between people than we think there are. We get hung up on all the nuances of our individuality instead of remembering snowflakes are all made of snow or how all signatures are penned with ink. Why can’t we speak of or dialogue about our similarities and difference with the same degree of openness? Because our differences often feel exposing, like taking a band-aid off of a raw wound. They can touch emotional wounds of shame or guilt and so many more. Emotions that we have come to have unhealthy relationships with and subconsciously avoid like the plague. Think about when you start to question and ask someone why they do something? Add in the variable of money and people really start to emotionally squirm. Ask them why their product is worth the asking price. Directly you are just asking about the value to price ratio. Indirectly you are challenging them about the integrity of the product and why it is valuable. You are asking them to reflect or stand behind what they believe which is indirectly a representation of them. If they are aligned with what they believe and the value of the asking price they will have no issue sharing and explaining to you how they arrived at that number, the margins, the process, everything. Why? Because they want to create and support what they value, including valuing themselves (their time, energy, effort) and sharing with you the reasons why that is true for them. Let me give you an example of this. I went to the farmers market this past weekend in Franklin, TN. I had been enjoying the Remedy Bone Broth product a lot. I am also trying to find ways to reduce my expenses right now to support bringing my financial house into balance. This process for me requires a lot of asking myself what is of value to be spending my money on. In this case, I had found a Bone Broth from a brand that looked pretty good (Bonafide) and was only charging $7-8 for 24oz where Remedy was charging $16 for 30oz. From a very honest heartfelt place, I asked the sales rep at the Remedy booth “Why is there such a drastic price difference between the two products”? What is contributing to the price tag on your product? The sales rep proceeded to share with me all the ways that they make sure the quality is absolutely the best it can be. Visiting the farms that they source the bones from to evaluate the farming practices, recycling and reusing as much as possible, using the bone varieties that they have learned have the most amount of collagen to keep the protein count as high as possible and so much more. I could feel his sincerity as he spoke to me. In hearing all that in addition to my experience of the product aligning with what he shared, I happily spent the extra money on the product. In speaking about the differences we had the opportunity to feel a connection and find a deeper resonance with each other. This led to a sale of the product and peace of mind for me that it was worth what I was paying. To make a trade-off I get one of the Remedy bone broth and one of the Bonafide to help offset my expenses a bit.  

As you can see when people are doing what they love and love what they do it’s represented in the quality of the product, in the way they speak about what they are doing, there is an openness regarding sharing information and supporting themselves, others, and their community. If this is not the case people say evasive things like “that’s just what it costs” or maybe they are secretive about their ingredients or processes. Why? It could be a lot of reasons. Maybe they don’t know about the product or maybe they are just a pawn in a big company and they are just needing to earn an income to make a living and took whatever job they could. Maybe they do know and are scared you are going to steal what they have worked so hard to create and take their customers and business – which means they make less money, which means they have to find a new way to grow and evolve to stay relevant. With the way the system is I understand how and why people end up in that fear-based place. I find myself there often. More than I prefer to be.

At the core and/or center of the tension between differences and similarities is opportunity. Every time we choose to engage with someone else and share/discuss both our differences and similarities the opportunity emerges for connection vs. disconnection – between the person and themselves, the seller and the buyer, the seller and their product. Why? Because at the heart of all of what I am dancing around in this article we desire to connect. Not segregate, but segregating is often what is happening. We let our differences define us and others with sharp rigid edges that jab, judge, and feel yuck. We don’t even realize the ways that we are segregating because we are scared to be vulnerable. Scared for someone to see a piece of us that we keep concealed and tucked away. Why? Because we are afraid they will not accept us for who we are if we show them all of ourselves. I am guilty of this most of the time but I’m looking at it. I’m growing my awareness around it and shifting. 

Only in some of the most intimate relationships over very long periods one baby step at a time do we lift the veil for each other and show all of who we are. It’s really really scary. As long as we only show the pieces of ourselves that feel safe then we are going to be limited in our ability to connect. It will feel and is very surface level. We walk away from interaction saying that was fun but I still don’t feel fulfilled? Why? Because you are putting your best foot forward and trying to hide the other foot from them. Walking funny in hopes that they don’t see that part of you instead of saying here I AM. This is ME. The good, the bad, and the ugly. That is UNBELIEVABLY vulnerable to do. Why? Because we can’t control if someone else chooses to still love us when we put ourselves out there like that. Many of us are not emotionally prepared to stand tall and true in someone saying I don’t choose you for being that and watch them walk away or even out of our lives. That can be emotionally crushing and difficult to rebound from. Why? Because from that state of being our happiness depends on someone else. As Anthony De Mello says “That is the evil”. We depended on people day in and day out for all kinds of things but when we depend on other people for our happiness, “that is the evil” to ourselves and them. This is not all your fault. In all walks of life all over the world, this is the way most humans are behaving. We are depending on something or someone for our happiness. We don’t realize that our happiness comes from within. We are happy first and then anything else we desire follows that. Most people have it the other way around. They say to themselves “When I have this I will be happy, when I have (insert person) I will be happy. As soon as I lose that thing or person I will be unhappy. I will change myself and I need to abandon myself and who I am to keep this person or thing in my life so I can stay happy”. Letting go of whatever or whoever that attachment, is unfathomable to most people. I’m struggling with it daily. I was broken up that my dog Kona just turned 6 years old and based on the average life span of her bread she is already more than halfway through her projected life span. I became depressed and sad about the idea that I wouldn’t have her around anymore. My happiness depends on her right now. I’m not ready to let go. I want to be with my children and I don’t want to let go of a relationship with my co-parent. My happiness depends on them more than I feel comfortable with. We can’t wrap our heads around the reality that without the people, circumstances, and situations that we are attached to we might have a better quality of life. Alternatively, it might be keeping the people but letting go of an attachment to a job. There are a lot of ways we can hold on or let go with the ultimate letting go being of the human experience and passing on from this life. Imagine the possibility of doing that by choice instead of the body giving out? What if Jesus didn’t rise from the dead? What if he never died and was in deep meditation and then turned his flesh body into light and transcended the human experience? (Here is a drastic difference in perspective than the common interpretation of how the story is told. I’m vulnerably sharing. You can choose to be curious or just stick with what you know. Either way is ok) 

Another example of holding on vs. letting go and being vulnerable is when people who identify as gay come out of the closet. They are exposing themselves to the possibility of not being accepted. You can prepare yourself for there being people that won’t accept you. The trade-off could be SO liberating and SO worth it to move through the tension. You are choosing to be you and no longer holding on to the people. You are no longer contorting yourself to keep them happy and keep you happy. You have surrendered to who you are in whatever moment and if people stay, it feels SO much better because they are staying for you with no filters and no façade. The relationship has room to breathe and is not so tense. It’s easier for everyone. If they choose to walk away and not choose you for you is that someone you want in your life? 

Back to the original point. By choosing you and by being you, you have room and space to talk about your differences. Reflect on them. Room for understanding each other. Room to agree to disagree. Room to not just have one conversation about a topic but an evolving conversation about a topic. You are not trying to cram as much into every day and you can slow down enough to recognize what is important to you and how to value yourself and others. Using the differences to connect and unify. Sharing something vulnerable and someone saying, “I do that too”. Few things feel more connecting than someone saying to you from a heart-felt place “I’ve been there”. I know what you are feeling. That makes you feel connected. I believe we all are whole (connected and disconnected simultaneously but experiencing different perspectives of one unified consciousness). We just deny this truth far too often and it leaves us feeling alone and less than whole. You are whole, you are enough. Be well.    

Take any idea. Where does it come from? What is the source of that idea? You? Someone else? Something else? Let’s say it’s how long should I walk the dog for every day? Some might say I’m gonna read an article or a book to know what the “experts” say. Do you then take it on as a belief that it is true, whatever you read or are told? Do you just walk the dog for whatever duration you are told is the “right” amount and don’t reflect on whether the results of doing what you were told resonates with you and/or your dog? I find we tend to “check out” and not be present. We are not evaluating and refining our routines and habits. We don’t aim to get them to a place where we feel good and content with the results. We are overwhelmed constantly with SO much everything that we shut down and just let a lot slide. Even if you do feel good about the results how long does that last? Is it sustainable? Or do you become bored – eventually dissatisfied with the results and desire to try something new and different?

What I’m ultimately speaking to is the variable of growth and how each of us to some degree constantly feels a desire to grow. Those that don’t get pushed along by the universe typically. They are the victim of circumstance because they are out of the pocket on the back or low side. Kinda like when something breaks but it’s still hanging on by a thread and being dragged along. Then you have those that are so tenacious that they are trying to pull the collective forward when it is not ready like a mom pulling a child along by telling them to hurry up when they are wanting to stop and smell the roses. Between the two is the sweet spot. The pocket where we can grow through nutation. (Nutation – an oscillatory movement of the axis of a rotating body (such as the earth)) 

We have to get back to the source of everything, you. You are the control center. You decided what information comes in or out and you decided what you hold as a belief or what you choose to let go of. Kinda like a quality control tester for a company deciding what meets the standard or not. But who sets the standard? You again. Who can change the standard? You. Are your standards too high? Are they too low? Are they high but ungrounded with the reality of what it will take to achieve that standard? Or low and ungrounded – out of touch with reality and won’t get you to where you think it will? “If I just keep working, one day I’ll get there” we might say to ourselves. Not if you’re aiming at the wrong target and don’t have the foresight to see that your trajectory is off.

My grandfather said, “success is aiming for and hitting a target you can’t see”. This resonates with me. Back to the thought of where does an idea come from? We have an idea and/or a vision. What does it take to create that vision? We don’t know. It’s just an idea. You might say “I want to go for it! I want to create this idea into reality”. Then you have to ask yourself “what is the next step to getting there”? Do you make a plan? Do you ask others who have been there what it takes to achieve this? Has it been done before? Is it the same as the way you want to do it? Probably not. Why would you just copy someone else verbatim without eventually doing it differently? Even if it’s building the same thing but offer it for a lower price. Or, knowing there is a demand for this product but there is also a demand for a higher quality version for it. This is all growth. People having ideas and making efforts to improve and do it differently. 

Will everyone agree with what you are doing? No. Especially if it challenges the status quo of what people accept as their current paradigm or belief structure. What is the first thing a person says to something that challenges their belief system? “Prove it to me”. They don’t want to believe. Seeing is believing to a non-believer not believing is seeing. (This topic is a slippery slope and I could write a whole post just on this). Maybe I will. 

This happened to me recently. I told someone I could make a pendulum move from a standstill and they didn’t believe me. They asked “can you prove it to me” I decided at that moment in front of this person with my dad as an onlooker that I was going to show them it was possible. I had done this before plenty of times in private 1-1 coaching sessions and in front of friends. What happened? It didn’t work. I couldn’t make the pendulum move at all. I immediately felt deflated, embarrassed, and stupid. My thoughts started racing to wonder what variables were contributing to it not moving? As the quantum physics theory suggests, did it not move just by the observation of others in disbelief and not being open in their hearts but closed off and not believing? Was it my fear of performing under the pressure of an audience of disbelievers and not being committed enough to my belief? As you can see there are so many variables that even when we can recognize we are the control center and quality control tester for information we still can move through a success and failure process as we determine the formula of thoughts, emotions, and actions that create the manifestation of the original idea we had. 

What ideas do we have that we don’t believe in? Where are we limiting ourselves in the space and permission to grow? The journey of an idea’s creation from inception to manifestation means failing a lot before we find what works. To be very vulnerable, my business and how to lead a happy balanced life is one that I am stumbling and falling through every day. It’s hard to trust that the people who are coming to me are ready for information that already works even if I don’t have the whole concept or formula fully formed. Like I said earlier, I’m having to retool and refine a lot of pieces where the trajectory is off to hit the target I’m aiming at but can only see in my mind’s eye. This is challenging. Especially when along the way you are doing your best to communicate to your loved ones what you want when the reality is you can see a vision but all the grounded actions that happen on a momentary, daily, monthly, weekly, yearly basis to create that are still unclear. Closing the gap between an idea and the grounded actions to manifest it into the 3D reality of the human experience is the essence of who we are as powerful creator beings. It’s taking the idea from above and the grounded actions from below and marrying them in the middle to create something beautiful. The pocket. As above so below.

I have learned to not trust others before I have even allowed them to be trustworthy. I didn’t use to be this way. I use to say to myself and others “I trust you until you give me a reason not to”. What led me to distrust others so much? When I detected incongruencies in what they said and what they did. This was a big red flag for me. Like when someone would say to you “I promise to… or I’ll call you back… and then they never do what they say they were gonna do. They say when you prompt them “OH MAN! I’m so sorry I didn’t call you back.” The reality is you were not a priority to them but they communicated to you you were when they said I’ll call you back or I promise I’ll… That feels yuck. Slowly over time, I began to hear the words people said but they fell on deaf ears. I didn’t believe them in my heart. I had been let down too many times to continue trusting people meant what they said. 

So why would someone say they are going to do something and then not? Let’s give the other person the benefit of the doubt and say they did have the intention to follow through on their promise and/or call you back when they said they would. This clearly to me is someone who is doing too much and has too many spinning plates. Whatever is the least important or of least value to them is going to fall and shatter. They could also be the type of person that never actually had the intention to follow through on the promise or call you back. This person is too afraid of the confrontation and the yuck feelings to say something like “I would love to but I have too much going on right now and don’t want to make a promise I know I can’t keep right now”. Instead, they placate you to make you and them feel good in the moment instead of checking in with themselves and being honest with them and you in how they can show up. 

Now you might say these things are not a big deal. On the surface, they are not. However, these surface-level interactions could be triggering much deeper emotional wounds that are a very big deal and could be a ceiling between where you are in life and where you could be. As an example, I’ve been journaling through a deep-seated feeling of abandonment. Some impactful memories came up was a time that my mom deprived me of connection with her by locking herself in her bedroom while I was pounding on the door when I was very young (feeling of abandonment). The time my dad was driving me to school and was trying to lecture me on the importance of raising my grades. When I told him that wasn’t important to me, he proceeded to get angry, yell at me and reach over from the driver’s seat to me in the back seat and hit me (feeling of abandonment). My grandfather told me repeatedly throughout my childhood to only pursue music as an avocation, not a vocation (feeling of abandonment). At the core of all of these situations, I was trying to be and express who I was to them and in so many words or actions that led to me not feeling ok to be who I was in that moment. That all felt and read to me like abandonment. It’s not my intention to point the finger or single them out. I have done the very thing I am terrified of many times to my partner who was showing up for me in so many ways. I was so closed off I could not overcome my trapped emotions to do what was best for the family and support her supporting me. An example of this was getting the ZZ Ward gig and being able to make money for the family but I would have had to miss the birth of our second child Myles. I couldn’t do it and I lost the gig. (feeling of abandonment for my partner). I love my parents and my family very much. I wouldn’t trade my parents in for any others. My dad shifted from worrying about my low grades and getting angry about it to calling me his rock star son. My grandfather called me one day out of the blue and validated my career path and the choices I made by seeing himself in me. Sharing that the best experience he got was on-the-job experience throughout his career, not in school the way he wanted me to do it. My mom to this day will often drop everything or bend over backward to connect with me. 

People say to just be yourself. To do what you love and love what you do. There is a shadow side to this because everything in life has duality. If you are doing exactly what you love and loving what you do and the other person is not you are going to be a bright mirror reflecting to them all the ways that they are not choosing that. I was much more ignorant back than I am now. I see a multitude of reasons why people sacrifice themselves for the ones they love in their life. That is not an easy choice and can make anyone feel trapped. The systems of society are designed in such a way to trap and control you, not set you free, and support you to be the best version of YOU. That’s a bigger topic for another time and outside the scope of this blog post. In the case of my parents, in their heart, they want what is best for me but they might quietly resent the fact (not even consciously) that they were sacrificing and providing for me while I pursued the opportunities they never got. This would manifest in some of the circumstances and responses that I shared earlier. These quiet emotional killers hurt deep within for different reasons for each person involved. They build up and get stored in our bodies and affect everything and anything we do. My parents might have shifted which means something changed and energy did come to a resolution to a degree but the emotion from those events from childhood can still be trapped. You could still be carrying them around. If you are saying to yourself when that shift occurs “It’s about time they saw the light. I was right the whole time” then you are probably still harboring trapped emotions around the original event. If you feel your heart open up and a tear of gratitude fall from your eye for both of you and say “I’m sorry I was so stubborn and I appreciate you taking the time to call and share that, it means so much to me and I still love you very much”. That is being in a state of grace and letting go of all the baggage that you’ve been carrying around for so long.

So why does that all matter? Because like I mentioned earlier, the surface level comings and goings are a big deal if they are taunting a volcano of emotions beneath the layers of bedrock you have created to protect yourself from exploding or feeling the pain of the root of that little surface interaction that didn’t feel very good. Most people typically shrug it off and say “it’s ok that you promised and/or said you’d call but you didn’t”. We aren’t holding each other accountable. Telling them how that made you feel and/or going back and looking at your stuff on your own and saying that bothered me what happened. What has me so upset about that that I’m not seeing or am ignoring? How can I shift it? Something as simple as someone not calling you back one time could be the sweater thread to something as big as a lifelong feeling of abandonment. Interfering with things like your ability to leave your family to work because you feel you are abandoning them. Your ability to not feel safe when your partner threatens you emotionally so you stay small instead of standing tall so she won’t leave you. Not letting yourself be in a relationship, of any kind, with others because you are afraid to connect. If you don’t let someone in emotionally they can never abandon you but you will feel very very alone. This all can arise out of a simple text message of someone saying I’ll reach back out to you and we’ll hang, I promise…  

As souls, I believe we make contracts with one another before coming into the human experience. If you’d like to learn more about that I recommend going to http://www.stevesinatra.me.sourcesciencesound/resources and checking out the book Journey of Souls by Michale Newton or Sacred Contracts by Carolina Myss.

I have many special people in my life. We all do. But we don’t always perceive them that way. We oscillate between liking them and hating them. Rarely do we touch grace and LOVE them. Not the l can’t live without, have to have, I’m nothing without you kind of love. I’m talking about LOVE, whole, complete, and objective LOVE in the full sense of the word. The good, bad, and ugly and the roles that we play for each other as the complementary opposites to facilitate growth. 

Let me offer you an example. I was feeling a lack of gratitude for my co-parent Kerry. I decided to reflect on that some this morning. In doing some mental writing exercises that I offer my clients that I work with I shifted from feeling ungrateful to overflowing with love and gratitude for her in about 10min. Instead of running the polarized story, I was telling myself I opened my heart to the bird’s eye view and the complementary opposite of what I was seeing happening.

Like in a game of tug-o-war as long as there is a relatively equal amount of tension on both sides of the rope there will be little to no movement. Not enough to see a measurable gain in any direction. For 4-5 years there has been a massive amount of tension between Kerry and me. We both have been pulling on the rope in the equal and opposite direction of what felt natural for us and resisted the opposite perspective and approach. For Kerry, she desires grounded stability in her life. Things that make her feel safe, secure, and stable. All the ways that we have moved around geographically changed cities, changed homes, not knowing where the money was going to come from to pay for things, changed directions in our plans as a result of my contribution to the choices of the family were torture for her. To be in a relationship with me she was constantly and continually disregarding these desires and casting that aside to choose our relationship and our family. For me, I desired freedom, excitement, fluidity, the thrill of chasing the wind and or throwing the hell marry passes into the end zone and trusting it would be caught for a touchdown. To me, that was living life. Experiencing the edges of being human and pushing the limits of what is perceived as possible. I felt so trapped, confined, and restricted in all the ways that she was asking me to slow down, be present, confront my fears, and deal with my emotional baggage which for me was torture. To be in the relationship with her I was continually disregarding these desires and casting them aside to choose our relationship and our family.

The reality is Kerry is one of the most if not the most special people in my life BECAUSE of how she challenges me. She has loved me in a way that no one else has. Being the ground and anchor attached to a rocket ship heading for outer space is HARD. It’s hard either way, to let go or hold on to anything. The ground, her to me, me to her…imagine the opening scene in mission impossible Rogue Nation where Ethan is holding onto the plane as it takes off into the sky. THAT is the type of tension I am describing. She has managed somehow to be strong and steadfast for long enough for me to meet myself and begin to move toward her in the middle. Through everything, I could throw at her, every way I manipulated and squirmed out of putting my feet on the ground she was a ROCK. For better and for worse. I have begun to see that I can’t have what I want without what she wants and vice versa. We chose to play tug-o-war as each other’s complementary opposite until we both surrendered and met in the middle. I don’t know anyone else who is a worthy adversary in that back and forth than her. I see the value and importance of the role she has been playing in my life more than ever. I am grateful at this moment for her more than ever. I wouldn’t ever replace her. Few people have loved me the way that she has. I feel much happier with some stable ground in my life and so will she. Perhaps she will feel safe to experience some freedom with that stability too and somewhere in the middle there will be balance. 

I’ve decided to take a trip back to Nashville for a month. I want to see what it will feel like to pursue music again. This was no small decision.

I find myself crying this morning, a lot. I feel “gutted” as they say on the British Baking Show. (something I’ve come to enjoy thanks to my partner Kerry) The idea of having to leave my kids and my partner for a month to take this trip feels uncomfortable and upsetting. The tension between sadness from being apart from them and relieving because I’ll be creating more opportunities to make money and support my family, as well as feel creatively fulfilled has felt like a hard growth edge. That’s even after Kerry mentioning to me that she would be willing to come to visit with the kids. When I was in my twenties and touring all the time I quietly feared being in this very position. Hearing the stories from other incredibly talented musicians who were out touring because that’s how they knew how to make money. I was grateful that I was not confronted with that choice and did not envy them. They were away from their loved ones, away from their kids sometimes months at a time. At the same time appearing happy with the choices and doing something they loved. I couldn’t understand how this was possible.

I was crying the whole time I was walking my dog Kona this morning. Worrying about things like what if I have fun and enjoy myself without them too much. Am I taking this trip for me or them or can it be both? As you can see I slip into this analysis paralysis pattern. This happens with many of my thought threads. It feels like my kryptonite right now and a debilitating pattern I’m working on shifting.

Some things that have been helping me with this and light in the darkness are a few resources and some self-experience.

1. The first of the four noble truths of Buddha. To live involves suffering. That helps calm my mind and know that what I’m feeling is ok to be there. I don’t have to get attached to the thoughts I’m having (The Second Noble Truth – The origin of suffering is attachment). I can just be still and let them be there. I can watch as they pass by the same way you watch a car pass by while waiting at an intersection for the light to change.

2. An excerpt from the Book “I AM That” chapter 47 where he talks about watching the mind. Something that I’ve heard repeatedly from many teachers along my path but it didn’t stick. When I read this passage at the time that I did it began to sink in on a deeper level. The key part reads as follows:

Maharaj: “Realize that whatever you think yourself to be is just a stream of events; that while all happens, comes and goes, you alone are, the changeless among the changeful, the self-evident among the inferred. Separate the observed from the observer and abandon false identifications.

Questioner: In order to find reality, one should discard all that stands in the way. On the other hand, the need to survive within a given society compels one to do and endure many things. Does one need to abandon one’s profession and one’s social standings in order to find reality?

Maharaj: Do your work. When you have a moment free, look within. What is important is not to miss the opportunity when it presents itself. If you are earnest you will use your leisure fully. That is enough.

Questioner: In my search for the essential and discarding the unessential, is there any scope for creative living? For instance, I love painting. Will it help me if I give my leisure hours to painting?

Maharaj: Whatever you may have to do, watch your mind. Also you must have moments of complete inner peace and quiet when your mind is absolutely still. If you miss it, you miss the entire thing. If you do not, the science of the mind will dissolve and absorb all else

Your difficulty lies in wanting reality and being afraid of it at the same time. You are afraid of it because you do not know it. The familiar things are know; you feel secure with them. The unknown is uncertain and therefore dangerous. But to know reality is to be in harmony with it. And in harmony there is no place for fear.”

3. The self-experience part. It’s what I like to refer to as dark forces or heavy energy removal. In watching the ways that the mind behaves I don’t believe that it’s all coming directly from us. In my daily practice of learning about and removing heavy energies, I’ve closely observed the mind and thoughts before and after I clear something. One of the biggest ah-ha moments I’ve had is when I clear Transmortals completely. My thoughts automatically become much more still. I feel like I can hear myself think again. To go even further – the times that I fully cleared everything that is heavy energy thoroughly and completely my mind feels so still and peaceful that when I would even begin to engage the mind in a thread of thought it would feel uncomfortable and almost like a lot of work instead of just BEING. I feel Lao-tzu said it best in the [“Tao Te Ching” chapter 48

“Less and less do you need to force things,

until finally you arrive at non-action.

When nothing is done

nothing is left undone”

What that means to me is we spend so much energy feeling the need to take action but for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction – that also requires another action to complete a task. For example, if I choose to use a plate when I eat then that means that in order to restore everything I’ve used to a state where it is ready to be used again I will have to clean the plate and put it back to its resting place. Alternatively, if I eat an apple without cutting it there is less to be done to consume the food so there will be less undone after nourishing myself. To me, that whole idea falls under the concept of essentialism. There is a book that I love that talks about this called [“Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less”. So, clearing dark forces helps still the mind in my experience too.

All these resources and experiences that I mentioned point toward resilience being a key ingredient in life. To let ourselves fully experience something, learn from that experience, and then grow from it.

Wherever you are in your path can you take a moment and start to watch the mind? As the Maharaj was saying – separate the observed from the observer and abandon false identifications. As I move through my current emotional wave I feel I am doing just that and it doesn’t feel easy at all.

Where does that leave me at this moment? A bit confused and wondering if I can let go of my ever-tightening grip or attachment to this need to be perfect and figure out all of life. Something I logically know is impossible but am often catching myself grabbing another book, reading another article, listening to another podcast – which inherently in itself is not bad or a problem. It’s good to want to learn and grow. But when you finally catch a glimpse of a sub-conscious pattern with-in yourself of trying to make everything perfect (something unattainable) because you see that people respond to you in a way that feels good when you are “achieving” something (like playing an instrument well), all because at your core that you feel broken and you need to be fixed (like so many things in advertising and society leads us to believe), because you don’t remember that you are enough just the way you are…then when and how you are consuming information is worth beginning to re-evaluate.

The light at the end of the tunnel is that as I do the deep dives and peel the layers back I know I am reconnecting with who I AM at a deeper level. That search and rediscovery of myself feel worth it.