Perfectionist
I’ve been listening to Russ’s “Perfectionist” lately and it resonates with some feelings I’ve been having.
It makes me think of all the ways I’ve attempted to project a “perfect” facade even when I perceive my internal landscape to be far from it.
Ultimately this stifles the flow of creative energy. It is selective vulnerability (from vulnerabilis meaning “wounding”).
“I’ll show you these wounds but not those wounds. Definitely not those wounds.”
Over the past couple of months of writing emails again and posting on social media, I’m aware of the shame wall that still wants to hide things. The free-flowing river of creative energy all of a sudden becomes frenetic and scared to share freely.
And yet, the creative channel is one stream, freely flowing… freely moving.
Like the breath, it moves naturally, without us needing to do anything.
It doesn’t have a personality, it just wants to flow.
Splitting it or stifling it by hiding things only makes matters worse because emotional health is energy in motion.
Water that doesn’t move, collects algae.
A stream that flows, cleans itself.
I was reminded of this, this past week when my romantic partner shared with me that seeing my imperfections made her feel better about her imperfections.
… I literally can not hide anything from this beautiful woman, not even my thoughts - she is psychic AF 😂.
There was a deeper connection that occurred. We felt so much lighter because we were seen in the realness… the totality. Not just the “prettiness”.
The parts we deem “positive” and the parts we deem “negative” coexist, like day and night because they have to… it is natural law.
The paradox is that the perceived imperfections in us actually create the perfection (from parfit: “complete, finished, ready”) of who we are.
We can’t claim our best parts without also claiming the parts of ourselves we aren’t proud of.
Some of my greatest shame in life has come from sexual wounding to struggling with debt and mismanaging my own finances. I’ve beaten myself up through an 8-year chewing tobacco addiction to more recently: numbing out with tech-generated dopamine and food when I’m emotionally overwhelmed.
Overall, it is not the mismanagement of money or smashing pizza like I’m Donatello 🐢 that is the problem. It is the layers of self-judgment that turn a neutral experience into a dark and negative experience that can be problematic. This negative charge can run rampant and erode the architecture of the individual and collective system like corrupted computer code.
What’s hilarious is that the aspects of myself I’ve judged the most have actually turned out to be seeds that birthed the greatest gifts I have ever received… because they are part of the curriculum that is uniquely designed for each and every one of us.
These gifts are usually difficult to see in the moment and reveal themselves down the road.
This is the Divine design… a natural and magical alchemy that turns lead (pain) into gold (gifts).
At the end of the day, we are all a bit f’d up because we are all human. We’re all going through a different flavor of the same stuff because it comes from the same place and it is all steering us to the same place: the truth of who we are… which is sooo uncomfortable.
Keep going!
Your superpowers are my kryptonite.
My superpowers are your kryptonite.
That’s why we need each other yo!
The journey of self-love is a journey (not a destination) of accepting the totality of who we are instead of just the parts that we really like. There are opposites in the favorable parts that actually create the conditions for the favorable parts to exist… so I’m grateful for all of it.
And as Russ says: your bruises are also your muses.
Creating with Numbers
Sometimes the simplest things in life can be a meditation that lasts a lifetime.
This is how I felt when I started working with numbers on a daily basis last fall by using a tape measure to cut wood.
Up until then, I rarely thought about numbers, much less their importance. Maybe it was me blocking out all the trauma from 8th-grade Algebra 😂.
Regardless, I took them for granted.
Then I realized that from phone numbers to time and space, to money, to music, to the computer code that allows us to text our friends… numbers are everywhere.
It got me thinking: “Why though?”
Hmmmm…
Numbers bring order, because of their inherent order. 1 always comes before 2, 2 always comes before 3 etc.
Numbers are predictable and reliable and there is no guessing what they mean. They are what they are.
They are low-key ordering and structuring everything in our reality.
Could you imagine a life without numbers? It would be chaos! And music would sound awful.
Thank God we have them cause I neeeeeeed my music. (Here is a 🔥 Bonobo set btw).
We can use numbers intentionally in our life knowing their inherent order, strength, and definiteness.
We can use them as a consistent framework to bring the formless imagination into form.
Their stability can create a limit that creates a sturdy structure to give form to our ideas and creative energy. For instance, a numerically defined goal with a date tied to it.
We can also align our attention to numbers when we are emotionally overwhelmed and can’t think straight: Counting to 10, breathing 4 deep breaths then starting over… or going on a run for 5 minutes. This can help us ground our own energy.
The stability of the number acts as an anchor for when the ocean of emotion gets rocky.
So when life gets chaotic and overwhelming, know that sometimes the simplest things like numbers, breath or Nature can be just the meditation we need to bring us back to the calm found in the present moment.
2 Ways to Make Your iPhone Less Addictive, Immediately.
1. Make it less attractive
The colors within the phone are eye candy and make the display highly pleasurable. They are more vibrant and attractive than the natural colors we see in Nature.
How to make the display less attractive: Turn your right side button into a “greyscale toggle switch” that turns your phone from color to black and white whenever you want.
Go to settings
Click Accessibility
Scroll to bottom. Underneath “General” click “Accessibility shortcut”.
Select “Color Filters” so that there is a checkmark next to it.
Test by clicking the right side button 3 times.
WAHLA.
2. Add friction points
The iPhone and the apps that sit on it are getting more slippery because attention is fluid and it flows like water. To slow down the waterslide, you can add your own friction points which will create resistance to the flow of your attention. This can help alleviate the gravitational “pull” of your energy into the phone.
Ways to add friction points:
Turn off Face ID and use a passcode. The more complex the passcode, the more friction.
Go to settings
Click “Face ID & Passcode”
Toggle off the “iPhone Unlock” switch underneath “Use Face ID For”
2. Use a case that requires you to open it like a book to get into the phone.
3. Put the phone in another room, in a drawer when you want to focus.
4. Delete and reinstall highly addictive apps whenever you want to use them.
Organic Growth
“Study the science of art; Study the art of science. Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.” // Leonardo Di Vinci
—
In this famous quote, Di Vinci points out the two poles that create one unity:
Masculine Energy (Science) + Feminine Energy (Art)
Studying “the science of art” can also be understood as: studying how masculine structure directs the feminine creative flow.
Studying “the art of science” could also be understood as: studying the feminine creativity that goes into developing the masculine science.
Art without structure falls apart.
Science without the magic of creativity is stagnant.
Both energies are needed for organic growth.
Then what is the essence of these two energies? How can we play with them? How can we use them consciously?
Through observation, Nature shows us Universal laws… Then all we gotta do is copy.
4 Lessons from Carpentry
It all begins with an idea.
Building under a Master Carpenter and working amongst the forces of Nature in the Appalachian Mountains this past year gave me the creative Masculine teachings my soul needed.
In a chapter out of my own Surrender Experiment, this opportunity was a massive pattern interrupt to my regular scheduled programming of attempting to create outside the realms of any real structure.
Along with some old wounding, I held a belief that structure is limiting to creative expression.
Boy was I off.
In any creative pursuit, a structure is required otherwise nothing can grow.
Carpentry is the Masculine science to the creative act. It is the science of building wooden structures. The principles of carpentry can be used in building any structure because they work with Nature’s principles.
Here are 4 lessons I learned:
1. Numbers and Geometry are the underlying Masculine structures of Nature.
They are the bones. Numbers are strong, sturdy, orderly, and never change. The geometry of the line marks boundaries in space that the mind naturally understands. We can work with numbers and geometry to help ground our own creative energy because of how defined, stable, and real they are.
2. Respect Water, Respect the Feminine.
When building a house, an immense amount of respect is given to water because of how destructive it can be when it is not contained and directed appropriately through the house. A leak can erode the integrity of the structure and it can also wreak havoc on any energy system. Water is only allowed to come into the house through 1 entrance: the main water line… if it enters the house in any other way, it’s a problem.
3. Stability in Nature comes from the right angle.
The square 📐 is the most important tool in carpentry, because it is used to determine right angles and ultimately, the stability of a structure. The square is what creates the lines for strong, stable physical structures to be built. Energetic strength comes from aligning ourselves and our projects with the architecture of Nature.
4. Tools are to be used with respect and presence.
In the same way a skill saw can cut your arm off if you aren’t paying attention… our modern-day tools of phones, computers and all the other pieces of technology at our disposal can erode the power of the human mind if they aren’t used with presence and awareness.
Identity Collapse
In 2010, I experienced my 1st identity collapse.
I had just graduated from Georgetown University where I played Wide Receiver and Running Back on the Football team. A few weeks after graduation… reality hit me like a linebacker.
I walked in the door of my parent’s home and in a potent moment, my entire life converged into a scary realization: I wasn’t who I thought I was anymore.
I wasn’t a football player anymore.
I wasn’t a student-athlete anymore.
I dropped to the floor.
Structurally, I felt the architecture of my psyche dissolve, similar to how sugar cubes dissolve in water. Everything I thought I was, fell into the deep abyss of nothingness and physically, I fell with it.
I felt immense sadness and cried because of how much football meant to me.
I feared falling into the abyss… the unknown… the mystery.
Football was my life.
It was my core identity until 1 day it wasn’t.
I reminisce thinking about my early days of soccer, basketball, and then football. I tried baseball but I sucked at it. I couldn’t hit a beach ball with a tennis racket. It’s hilarious thinking about that now, but as a young boy, it was frustrating.
Football was my first love.
Once the sadness dissolved after graduation, then came the anger.
I was pissed no one told me this type of psychological collapse was going to happen at the end of a sports career. And at the time, I certainly did not hold a state of consciousness to gno that this was going to turn into one of the biggest blessings of my life:
This moment gave birth to a question I never asked myself up until then…
“Who am I then?”
This simple question was the spark that set me on a lifelong journey in search of the Truth with a capital T.
“Who am I?” became the thread that I am still asking myself to this day, 13 years later. It’s a focusing question laced with curiosity that orients me towards seeking out what works and what doesn’t. What is true and what isn’t.
Over the years, similar collapses would happen. They never got easier, they were just different… and each contained a beautiful gift that I usually wouldn’t realize until a few years down the road.
Flowing with the waves of change became easier once I stopped gripping the wheel so hard and learned to trust the natural process of growth unfolding within me.
Just like an acorn trusts it will ultimately grow into an oak tree… as Nature designed it to.
After these past few years, I am pondering some new questions:
“When everything falls apart, what eternal structures remain?”
“No matter what is created or what is destroyed… what is preserved because it is eternal?”
“What’s real?”
Your true nature is what’s real… the unchanging, yet always evolving aspect of you.
The you that doesn’t need to be anything or anyone other than who you are in your most natural and beautiful uniqueness, as you were designed to be from the jump.
And that’s more than enough.
Simplifying
This past year was undoubtedly one of the greatest initiations of my life and I’m excited to share more about what I’ve been up to now that some of life’s big teachings have coalesced and integrated.
One of the greatest lessons I’ve learned is that the Feminine principle of expansion is always balanced by the Masculine principle of contraction. Just like you can’t keep inhaling forever, you also can’t keep expanding forever.
These cycles come in phases and after 4 years of expansion through the breath and into the creative waters of the Feminine, it was time for the contraction and simplification phase… which for me meant grounding my ass amongst the trees and critters here in beautiful Asheville, NC.
I realized on a deep soul level, that I needed to simplify my life across the board.
So I did just that.
I spent 6 months living in a 160 sq ft tiny home on a 22-acre farm with no WiFi and little cell service.
I disconnected from social media and technology and got reconnected to the Earth.
I got a job building 2 beautiful mountain homes underneath “The Wood Wizard” - a Master Carpenter of 30 years, notorious in the Southeast for his ability to build any physical structure.
For 8 straight months, I did nothing but eat, sleep, call out numbers, measure and cut wood, and build with my hands.
I received an embodied education on the mechanics of the mind through the lens of math and building physical structures.
And I learned about the Masculine principles of precision, geometry, measurement, structural strength, and natural law.
It’s hilarious how perfect this was for me… during my own "life rebuilding” phase of constructing my own stable foundation, I was literally installing 2x10 floor joists on the foundation of a 3400 Sq Ft house 😂.
Crazy how God works.
This past year was exactly what my soul needed and now I am excited to get back to sharing more creations and more stories with all of you in the weeks, months, and years to come.