I wrote what's essentially becoming my core thesis. We're all subject to addiction, today more than ever. Follow it down, and it's not just substances and screens, but thinking patterns themselves. This is what contemplative traditions have been pointing to for millennia: you can set down compulsive thinking and discover what’s been living you all along. This one's about how to actually do that, and what it feels like to live less in your head, and more intuitively.

Jed McKenna, Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing

The smartphone era will look, in retrospect, like the smoking era The intelligence era will look like, who fucking knows, but for all its advances in medicine, it will cost us as embodied beings

Most cravings are misdirected prayers

Much of the software running our minds is built to problem-solve. When it doesn't get updated toward a sense of safety, it keeps scanning for threats, resulting in ambient catastrophic thinking. This can be the major stuff: I didn't get promoted, thus I'll forever be a worthless failure. Or more moderate: she left me on read, thus I'm clearly too much. But where it's most sneaky is in the little, mundane stuff. You're on a Zoom, your colleague's expression changes, looking distracted or even slightly annoyed, and because you're the one talking, you conclude you must've said the wrong thing – oh shit, what did I do, here I go yet again – and all of this is happening while you're still speaking. This kind of minor psychic rupture happens all the time, and it compounds, deepening the division within the self. Regardless of whether it's major or minor, the practice starts with just noticing how often thinking goes catastrophic, or, in parts language, how often a protector gets activated. As presence deepens, you might be shocked, as I was, by just how often the mind’s chatter is pure catastrophe. But that noticing is essential; you can't stop a pattern you don't know exists. From there, first celebrate the catch, as a quick inward yes right when you notice is what trains the reward system to look for the next one. Relax the body and brain. Then see if you can view the arising negative thoughts as energy that needs to clear from the system. You could say it's prior psychological conditioning, karma burning off, or just old code still running, but whatever you call it, it has momentum, and it's surfacing now to be released. Meeting the thoughts with compassion, instead of another round of self-attack, is what makes them a non-problem. And it's what finally gives the system the safety it never had, so the scanning can stop and the charge starts to drain out. I've found it helps tremendously to bring loving attention to all this, never force. Seeing the arising of negative thoughts as a natural process of intelligence, part of the healing and coherent order of things, helps you get out of the way and let it move, creating more unity in the self.

My son is two today, and when I look at him, I see a poem the earth wrote to keep me alive

If you want to increase your surface area for magic, start keeping a synchronicity journal. It can be a simple note on your phone where you track the date and the uncanny moments that feel beyond coincidence, when it feels like the universe is winking at you. Jung, who coined the term, believed synchronicities occur when the membrane between your inner world (the unconscious) and the outer world becomes porous, and what comes through feels like a secret message meant only for you, hence the wink. He also believed they occur around crucial life moments, when the unconscious is welling up, giving you a sign that you are on the right path. Yet most people miss them. Mostly because they were never taught what to notice, or how. And the more you do notice, the more the membrane thins out, until it feels like you’re in on the game of life, which was, for Jung, the path of individuation, of becoming more whole. So the journal basically primes your system to notice more of these magical moments. And the noticing is how you find yourself inside a living, intelligent, untamed universe, flirting back with you.

Rare break from dad life to get in the water with my guy @jonnym1ller

These workshops have been a blast. Running it back this Friday - join us to discover that you can move, act, speak, and relate without thinking about it luma.com/f1fzj1hp

Overthinking is always pointing at a deeper unmet need – the topic, as urgent as it feels, is just the form the need assumes when it can’t be felt. Underneath, you're trying to get something, avoid something, prove yourself right, reduce uncertainty, or, most typically, manipulate a feeling. All of it is an earnest, yet futile attempt to negotiate with reality. Whenever you catch yourself in the act, pause to feel, relax the energy behind the deeper wanting, maybe even remind yourself the answer won't come from spiraling, and the thinking tends to settle on its own.

Overthinking is always pointing at a deeper unmet need – the topic, as urgent as it feels, is just the form the need assumes when it can’t be felt. Underneath, you're trying to get something, avoid something, prove yourself right, reduce uncertainty, or, most typically, manipulate a feeling. All of it is an earnest, yet futile attempt to negotiate with reality. Whenever you catch yourself in the act, pause to feel, relax the energy behind the deeper wanting, maybe even remind yourself the answer won't come from spiraling, and the thinking tends to settle on its own.

Gents: I'm leading a men's retreat June 4-7 with @schlaf @CryptoMindcare. Incredible new venue in the Catskills, NY. The first one we did over MLK weekend went so well that we decided to run it back. Classic men's work, meditation, embodiment, healthy local food, saunas, hot tubs, and some guaranteed fun. We have a couple spots left, including a scholarship rate. DM for more details.

For a fun prompt to notice how psychedelic experience already is: pretend you took a big dose of mushrooms an hour ago. Soften the corners of your eyes into one wide cyclopic eye. Notice the room breathing. Feel the breath like a wave of energy. Read the vibes around and within you as if they were psychic braille. And pretend everyone you encounter is an old friend sent specifically to you from the universe.

Literal proof that smartphones are a far more dangerous drug than MDMA

It took me far too long to realize I was unconsciously creating division around the potentiality of experience. As if I were ranking moments by their spiritual juice, believing retreat, surfing, seated practice, sitting with clients, post-retreat glow, a long walk in the woods – those were the ripe ones, the ones where surrender, transcendence, God glory were actually on the table. Whereas being tired after a long ass day, making and cleaning up dinner, wrangling the kid, or god forbid, feeling sick – those were clearly the bargain bin of consciousness. But this is a false dichotomy, just a story the mind tells. Once I started catching how I was limiting myself in this way – and I was doing so unconsciously and quite subtly – my system saw something it has not been able to unsee. I had heard ten thousand times it was all in this moment. I understood and was working with that as much as possible. But in hindsight, I was practicing it selectively, especially when I wasn’t feeling good. Every moment, every single mutherfucking one of them, is bursting with the same insanely vast potential – for love, truth, bliss, peace, whatever. How could it not be? And if you're a former striver like me, that means just noticing, just relaxing into it, because my ego loves to work too hard. All you have to do is trust that the potential is there at all times, which, fortunately for you and me, it is.