Dear friends,
May this message find you with peace and grace.
In this moment I am, staring at the mountains, hearing the flow of a river, gazing upon vast blue skies.
Resting in stillness. Doing by being, a seeing of each moment.
Reflecting.
This past year has been a process of emptying, undressing, and disassembly. Everything experienced prior culminating in a magnificent lesson in humility and letting go, while falling in love with the unfolding of life.
A season of removal.
An emptying of bad habits, and unnecessary beliefs.
A stripping away of untrue things, like the ideas that were held so tightly of who ‘I’ am, what I ‘know’, and what I ‘should’ be after. A breaking of vices and addictions, and of continuing self realization.
Unclothing and diving naked into the truth of the moment.
Often we cling to lesser things without realizing that the better fruit is attained not out of reaching, but by removal. That we are the fruit in which we seek, but we are also the hands that are playing keep away.
Vast containers that fool ourselves into believing that we are meant to be filled with something other than the inside of what we already are, so we outwardly search.
Going around collecting experiences and moments and calling all of that stuff our “person”, and then we drink that potion, and trade that juice.
Always the best effort has been given to present my self as authentic and transparent as possible, and in that unknowingly, there lied a tremendous problem.
Being authentic and transparent is impossible to do when focused on the wrong things, from the wrong place.
It’s simply something impossible to ‘do’.
It is however something to be.
If the devil can’t make you bad, then the next best thing is to be made very busy.
And while this Baron Batch guy saw himself as ‘The Artist’, while taking pride in his ‘hustle’, Grace was silently stepping in perfectly designing a punch in the face to knock off the false mask that was creating unnecessary self distortion.
A punch that brought him to his knees and threw him into the darkest place he had ever been. A punch that forced everything that was not pure and true to bubble into sight to be confronted.
In hindsight it is clear that such discipline from the universe is not out of punishment but out of tremendous love and grace.
There is something better for you than the person you believe yourself to be.
There is a presence.
Because of the thickness of the ego that existed from the experiences that had been invested in by belief in imagination and memory, this had to be one mighty punch, for this person saw himself as a fighter, a competitive warrior that life had hardened in such a way that he saw an art form in not only taking blows, but creating with them.
You see, this Baron Batch ‘The Artist’ guy that was being identified with had survived and in his mind triumphed over countless obstacles, setbacks, and painful moments, a “forger of his own destiny”. A person who had accomplished every goal he ever set out to tackle, and from this an internal story was weaved where he became a legend in his own mind.
The savior of himself.
Ha.
Pshh.
In the midst of this arrogance Grace smiled allowing this belief to be cultivated, and illusory fruit to grow in the form of what others would call “success”, only to silently wind up and deliver a loving ninja chop to dismantle all such false ideas.
We are all thirsty for peace of mind, but so often confuse this with physical comfort or stability, so we create plans and strategy, and imagine things that we believe will bring us closer to this imaginary place perceived so commonly everywhere else but within.
The moment we begin to externally search for something that can only be filled from within, we go on a journey that ultimately leads us back home to where we always were to begin with.
This is the beautiful human love story we are all part of.
About a year ago the lid of this vast container opened, and out spilled the collected illusory magical experience juice potion that was Baron Batch, ‘The Artist’.
A presence much more powerful within began to wake up to the truth, realizing that this Baron Batch ‘The Artist’ guy was pretty whack, and simply full of stories. And that this presence was not him, nor his mind or its thoughts or stories told, and the reality that existed before the eyes was simply a projected reflection of the inner climate of a imaginary character that was not real.
This began an inward journey of purity in the pursuit of truth.
A year ago the dormant presence shook the being clothed beneath the imaginary character being played, and a presence began to observe the experience of the early stages of what can only best be described as ego death. The stripping away of the layers of imaginary ‘person’ being carried. To everyone who at the time was within close vicinity this looked like a psychotic break.
And that actually is exactly what happened.
Baron Batch ‘The Artist’ guy was suffocatingly drudging through an imaginary reality, and the inner being couldn’t take it anymore, it had enough.
By the Grace of God this occurred, and Grace can come in the form of darkness.
This came in the form of two concise inquiries or well placed punches to the face by Grace, at the precise and perfect time to finally be received and not simply fought with, or viewed as another obstacle to overcome.
“Why are you choosing to suffer?”
“Why are you punching your self?”
The first little sip of truth.
It was both beautiful and terrifying.
At the time ‘I’ saw ‘My’ self as all of these things that in hindsight are quite comical. A businessman, an entrepreneur, an artist, an athlete, competitive, ambitious, and the list could go on and on.
And people may say, hold up, those are things that happened. And yes they did happen, simply moments that happened in an imaginary past, that pull like the moon does the tides on an imaginary future, nothing more.
A hamster wheel.
Just this imaginary mind stuff.
Just these stories that were believed to sound good referring to moments that happened in the past that were useful to walk around with.
Just some experiential juice potion traded within conversation.
We learn to act and look like the things we want, we learn to sound like we desire to be seen, and can get pretty good at it, but there is no hiding from that which is truly inside. There is no escaping the inner calling of what we truly are.
Vast containers aware, that unknowingly know that the only way to be full is to be emptied.
Harmonic frequencies in need of fine tuning.
Divine sparks.
Beings within fleshy vessels sailing through time and space, searching for peace of mind, from the mind, without realizing that the mind is simply an experiential tool to be disciplined wisely, observed and considered, not to steer or believed with its opinions and stories told in the form of what it thinks it sees, knows, and prefers.
Serving as sort of a pre designed broken compass in a purposeful way, that after leading astray so many times, eventually is looked at closer only to see that its just sitting there looking right back at you, saying something like, “What? I am not you. Ha! you thought its my job to lead you? This works the other way around. Ive just been here having a good time.”
Once this was realized things got sketchy. It was a slippery slope to realize that not only ‘I’ couldn’t be trusted, but it was actually wise not to anymore.
Confidence without wisdom is chaos, movement without discipline is wasteful, words without presence are deceiving.
While becoming more present by the moment to moment discipline of the distractions of both imagination and memory, ‘I’ began to stop investing in the thoughts that were constantly bombarding in the form of belief in personal story. This was like seeing for the first time.
I stopped seeing myself as anything other than a being whose daily work became the moment to moment discipline of the mind, by meditating on the question as to what is right and virtuous within each moment, while investing all energy into being, not a person but a presence, not the mind, but a moment.
And while being this presence, ‘I’ became ever more aware, beginning to observe each thought from a vantage point of consideration and contemplation, posing the continual self inquiry of, “Does feeding this thought with belief bring the presence that ‘I’ am closer to bliss or psychosis?”
“Is this thought just a story I’m telling myself, or an observation of the moment?”
These became very useful filters as to what thoughts were necessary or not. Beneficial or deceiving.
In this transitioning from a character within his own mind seeing from this lens, to the awareness of the lens that existed simply as a character experiencing moments moving through it, life immediately changed.
And it got dark before it got light.
In a hurricane of realization that took place over the next six months, a pit of darkness and depression was battled every moment in a way that had never been dealt with before. As if the person ‘I’ could no longer play the part of was grieving over the loss of its character.
As this realization grew that the part being played was not real, It also was realized that it should not be trusted.
Realizing that the person being identified with was nothing more than unnecessary weight within a self created hamster wheel, the ambitious goals and temporal things that were once cared so much about and invested in with so much energy and belief, were no longer of interest or importance.
‘I’ no longer cared about the business, brand, or character that had been built, realizing that ‘I’ was the culprit of every bit of stress, frustration, and darkness that currently existed.
Every memory and prior experience poured out, and instead of looking and seeing the world outwardly through the lens of a persons ambitious goals, there now was tremendous space for it to be perceived inwardly. Like a necessary sickness had been vomited out, beneficial to finally see what had been inside, useful to properly consider the diet that ‘I’ had been on.
A vast container realizing it was not the contents it held, only emptied to see the truth that emptiness can be most content, and that without carrying around all of the imaginary ideas, goals, and labels, life still happened, just without all of the previous stuff attached.
The story I had been telling to myself and others was no longer needed.
Deep within it was realized that nothing external that had been pursued up to that point in life was important anymore, and never truly was. Because of this, a presence deep within got a taste of its self.
This did not feel like finding anything, it was simply ceasing to play dress up any longer because ‘I’ had finally been seen, no longer celebrated by belief.
And things got dark before they got light.
If anything it felt like being stripped naked. At first there were all of these items like shame, guilt, frustration, fear, jealousy, pride, and anger because everything was forced into confrontation.
These projections manifested in the way reality was presented, so at this time which was about six months ago I began to spend considerable amounts of time in solitude.
And these items weren’t things I could just walk away from because they had been cultivated and fed by habit. It was seeing what was actually there for the first time.
Like woah…I am not awesome, I stink.
It was gross.
You know, its like trolls live under bridges for a reason.
Thriving there while not being believed in.
Never would I have thought myself to be any of these things until I saw that what I thought I was, I wasn’t. Once I stopped feeding myself with this story I made up, it was all out in the open, things that only I could really see, things that only I could begin to work on by being aware of them.
It makes sense that if you are telling your self a story, you see yourself as the hero. No one wants to believe they are the troll underneath the bridge.
And for so long the mind was believing ‘I’ was this good guy. Set out to do good things, for good reasons.
“The Artist”, people love that dude.
‘I’ love that dude.
And why wouldn’t ‘I’ love him? He served as the magical juice potion that filled the presence of the vast container. He was Captain Culprit from the pulpit, that was navigating with Napoleon complex the stories of the mind.
The presence now is thankful for him, he was necessary to see, useful to realize untrue.
What was previously dark and heavy began to become light.
Often we choose to feel special rather than feeling peace, we seek importance rather than calmness, imagining that purpose is something to be done, not a presence to be filled by the emptying of what we believe our characters to be.
The terrible ways I had treated people without seeing it because of the justification from this imaginary character, and his silly imaginary purpose. If you are reading this and that ever happened to you I ask for your forgiveness. ‘I’ was ignorant.