I want to feel good in a world that sometimes feels like it has gone crazy

the comedian who cried, practices to hold a new frequency, and scoring a cottage on the sea

Santa Ana Cathedral, El Salvador

Ahhh well. Here we are again. Last week I felt I was in the midst of a murky process to write anything meaningful for you. So I pulled out a draft. A good draft. And sent it to you.

Some of you read it. Some of you liked it.

And most of you didn’t open it. I know who you are. You are the ones who want to hear from the front lines. You are the ones who don’t care if what I say is messy. You want to feel things. You want to explore. You feel less alone in your own transformational, sometimes terribly confusing, exquisite, sad, delightful, painful, mysterious chrysalis-experience of life.

Or maybe you want to feel like my life is messy and you feel better about yours that way?

So I am going to write to you from the edge of it all right now.

Let’s start with my current practice.

My current practice is to see if I can hold a higher frequency state so that I don’t get caught in energetic hooks that come my way.

What am I talking about you ask? (Or maybe you are right here with me and want to know how to do that…perhaps those hooks are all too familiar to some of you?)

Well, I am talking about care. Care can be great. Empathy can be great. Sensitivity can be great.

Those things can also be doorways to other people reaching out for a fix. They want you to listen to them, and they don’t want to change. They want your time, but they have nothing to offer in terms of inspiration or delight. They want to feel less alone because they feel like a victim.

And because part of you has felt that way at some point, you get sucked in and you find yourself sitting with someone who feels like Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh. And it doesn’t feel good. And because you felt sorry for them, and are hanging out with them, you find no one you do find interesting wants to hang out with you.

For example:

I walk into a monthly Bitcoin meet up at the local hotel here. The Bitcoin price in fiat currency is on the rise right now and people are excited. For some of us, we remain excited despite price movements either direction. Either our net worth is rising, or there are buying opportunities. It is a strange way to come to see the world.

But regardless, like in any Bull Market, most people are happier when things are rising.

So, the meetups are getting crowded lately. It is also high season here, so that probably has something to do with things as well.

In I come, to this large, outdoor covered space, filled with tables, overlooking the sea. There is a stage. And I am surprised to see the room already full. Packed in fact. I didn’t think I was late. I thought I was early…

But there is one table in front near the stage with a lot of open seats. I know someone there. Someone I like. Someone who also has some Eeyore energy. I have felt a bit sorry for him in the past. He has told me he hasn’t many friends.

I don’t want to exclude him.

I don’t want to avoid the clearly open space, waiting for me.

So, I go sit there.

Now, let’s step away from that scene into another for a moment.

In this scene I am on a group call on my computer and a friend has just shared her realization from our time together.

Her realization is this:

“I can orient myself to places of safety and welcome. I don’t have to go into those other places.” — M

That is key to keep in mind as I continue my story with you here. The story that shows you what happens when I didn’t follow my friend’s wise words above. When instead, I thoughtlessly plopped myself down into an empty chair in a space that was less safe and welcoming than the rest of the room.

So, as I was saying, I go sit there, with Eeyore and some other people I don’t know and can’t hear anyway. It is very noisy. There is a DJ today and he is blasting tunes, good tunes, from a speaker right in front of me. This is common in El Salvador. People think a space is fun if the music is loud. They do this even in restaurants that are almost empty.

You know when you go to a party and you feel like they want you to have fun, so they put a speaker in your face and blast music at you until you are shouting to be heard?

That is a thing here.

This time, the music was good. That helped and it was still too loud for me.

I try to talk to Eeyore and struggle to share my recent excitement about my work on the healing light product of my new friend, Guti.

I am not looking for feedback. Simply sharing how happy I am and what I have been doing.

But Eeyore sees this as an opportunity to vent some of his general discomfort with life. He says a few critical things. He mentions he doesn’t believe in lights like that. His comments are not just comments, but feedback, pointed strongly towards me.

Later Eeyore decided that was not enough and messages me more reasons Guti’s light is terrible.

I don’t care what he thinks.

I was just trying to share why I was happy.

But this is what happens, when I allow myself to orient myself to Eeyore energy and get caught in it.

I get frustrated.

I get drained by it.

If I don’t catch myself, I can get defensive and argumentative. This gets me caught even more, like those vines in the Harry Potter movie called Devil’s Snare. The more you struggle against the thing, the more it increases it’s grip on you.

Energetically, more of those little hooks come into my field and drain me.

So let’s talk about the help I am getting with this. Let’s talk about Alex.

I am working with my new coach,

Alex Buta

. And Alex and I have a goal. The goal is for me to work through a block I have towards something. Something around success, and receiving money. Really, I believe this block has to do with owning my value, regardless of money. It is about owning my own energy. It is about embodying what is known as a secure attachment style.

Which means it is about doing what my friend said, and orienting myself in a room to the place that feels good for me to be, and not necessarily the place with the most needy, unhappy person wanting to do some venting.

Because when I orient myself towards them, they are able to hook me. I am not fully filling up my energy field with my own frequencies. I am not owning my value and sensing what is good for me.

In fact, it is worse than it sounds.

Because I think what really happened is I have some similar, residual Eeyore energy in me. That place in myself looks at the crowded room full of talking people and assumes they are all busy, engaged, and in little circles of belonging. In those circles of belonging, my own child-like victim place says there is no place for me. My victim place imagines none of them really want my company.

But I know Eeyore at the open table does.

Eeyore likes me.

And in him, as Alex helped me discover, I see a little bit of myself that has felt similarly lost, alone, and unloved.

It isn’t Eeyore’s fault he hooked me.

So, Coach Alex, after pointing this out to me, leaves me with something to practice this week. The image is something like this: I am to imagine myself inside an egg-shaped bubble of my own energy. Any grey tendrils of energy that come towards me, wanting to get in, are simply deflected. I am to feel how I am different from other people and how that is perfectly fine. Alex went even further than this and told me I am a teacher. I am here because I truly am different, and that difference is a good thing. I am here to own my frequency and speak from that place.

That tendril energy just doesn’t belong.

The path of others is not mine to solve, fix, or provide opioid doses of myself to.

People can come towards you to vent, to get you caught up in their story.

You know the feeling when they have hooked you.

You feel drained.

Maybe a little resentful.

Maybe even sorry for them.

No one likes that. Not them and not me.

So I need to own who I am and allow them their journey.

I need to feel my own frequency state and look over at them and tell them without words that they have the capacity to be free from the Devils Snare they are in and I am not going to jump in next to them.

I can coach them if they are asking and it feels resonant to me; I can discern if they feel ready. I can show them how to relax and stop participating.

But not if I allow them to hook me.

Now, as you may have noticed in your own life, when you lean into doing something new, or changing something in yourself, a lot of the “old” thing you are attempting to change will show up more, not less.

This has been happening to me.

Unsolicited advice has come my way. (I have gotten defensive rather than simply breathing and allowing it to be).

A person who agreed to do something for me in exchange for some work from me has not done it yet, and instead has asked for more work from me, for free.

I got caught in my old pattern and “helped” them.

No boundary….but it is coming. Don’t worry.

Another friend told me about a place for rent on the cliff above the beach. I went to see it. I spent a number of hours with the owner who also drove me to see another very expensive piece of land he wanted to sell in another location.

It was a hot, multi-hour journey.

The place he showed me here seemed like it would have fulfilled my dream of living on a rocky cliff directly over the beach, but he wasn’t committing to rent it to me. He said he would get back to me in a few days. He said he had to talk to his family first.

And I have to admit I had a tiny reservation about it. It was drop-dead gorgeous and he needed to build a kitchen. Something in me felt the tiniest bit not-100% about it. The walls were thin. I asked him if it could withstand hurricane winds? That is the part of me that was questioning things. I told myself later that that part of me was absolutely ungrateful and crazy. I told myself that those thoughts are why in the end, he called to tell me they didn’t want to rent it long term.

Photo of the place I didn’t get…with a private pool overlooking the Pacific

I was very disappointed. At the same time, my toilet quit working in my room here…for days.

It wasn’t easy.

My mind told me there could not possibly be another small place right on the beach I could rent. This is a very, very small town and I can see every house on the beach. Mostly there are hostels or highly expensive homes on Air B&B that rent for $550-$650 a night.

I figured I was out of luck and I was angry something in me had some doubts about the beautiful, private spot I had seen above the sea. I thought maybe that part of me had foiled the whole thing.

But I didn’t give up.

I talked to guides in my head and I kept doing the egg-thing. I felt how I wanted to feel in my body. I imagined it, and I felt it. I had no idea how it could come to me. It made no sense. But I did it anyway. I felt my soul’s energy and I told myself I was a teacher and I was different and that was ok. I imagined tiny threads of hook energy turning away when they came close to the egg-shell of me.

And this is shocking to me. It is shocking to my mind. It is like one of those times I read other people writing about manifesting things and think: it can happen to them, but not to me.

However, it has just been a few days and I have just rented a new tiny home for three months. Right on the sea. With a pool. And a real bed with a thick mattress and a lovely kitchen and a hard wood ceiling. It has AC and huge window-doors that open wide so all I will hear at night are the waves, crashing.

It is better than the place I didn’t get.

I just had to wait, trust, and listen to what I really wanted to feel. I had to own something. I had to own my feelings and let them guide me. My mind had to take a back seat.

Which is absolutely new and because of that, not always so easy.

Photo of the table in the bedroom of the place I will be renting by the ocean…the title says it all. Trust me, it is lovely.

But it worked! At least, so it seems. I am still here in my current place for six weeks. My toilet may get fixed tomorrow and I am not so sure. The owner is talking about taking it off and looking at things. Then he plans to stick it back on with some caulk. I am not to use it for 12 hours.

So, I will have to go downstairs to pee.

But here’s the thing.

I know what I want.

I want to see what it is like to live on a cliff in El Zonte, overlooking the beach.

This seemed like an impossible thing.

And then, this impossible thing happened for me.

So I know that life and the universe is much, much more than it seems. I am holding onto feeling what I want.

And right now, God is sending me a lot of practice opportunities.

That is a gift, even though it doesn’t always feel like it.

Coach Alex and I discussed some of my recent challenges with Eeyore and my original disappointment with not getting the the place I wanted on the sea. Alex guided me back into a childhood experience I felt I had already worked on enough. You know what I am talking about don’t you? I am sure you have similar things. Things you felt you had processed and integrated until your coach points out that maybe there is something Eeyore-like in you that you see in the Eeyore friend across the table. And then…that image…from that situation you had already worked the shit out of floats into your mind…and you decide to mention it because you know it has shown up in your awareness for a reason…and you don’t want to mention it because you have worked on it enough and you know you are through…but it is still there while your mind thinks all those things…so you go back in, once again, and you feel it, and you tell your intuitive coach about it and….

We worked on it more, a little bit differently.

And I am continuing to practice the Egg-thing, despite my sense that I am fumbling around trying to catch a ball and feel like I don’t even know what a ball is yet.

If you feel like this, I think it is a good sign.

I think it means you are right there, working your edge just like me.

It is an unfamiliar place.

But that is what we want isn’t it? To hold a new frequency state, and a new experience of the world, we have to change and it is going to feel unfamiliar at first. The process is going to be messy.

You see, the man who showed me the beautiful place and decided not to rent it to me after talking to his family really did listen to me. I think he really cared and wanted me to get what I wanted, even if it was not from him. And so he sent me information it is very hard to get here, about nearby properties I could check on…for a rental or buying opportunity.

Trying to find and buy property here feels like fish food in a field of piranhas. Property hunting often feels like a feeding frenzy. So the man who said no to me really did like me. He gave me some fish food…just for me.

And in the end, I got something better than my mind could imagine. Even my dysfunctional toilet has helped. It helped motivate me to keep looking and doing weird energy things that felt strange and impossible.

Which brings me to the comedian with the tear on his cheek.

You see, recently, I saw an opportunity to go on an adventure with some interesting guys. At that same meeting with Eeyore, I eventually managed to attract another friend who came to sit with me.

This friend is more like Tigger than Eeyore. He is enthusiastic. He is happy, optimistic and passionate about the future he envisions for the world. He is young and living according to his beliefs. He, like me, moved to El Salvador. And he, unlike me, charged off to create another circular Bitcoin economy here in the mountains of El Salvador. He is busy podcasting about it. He is busy interviewing people and being interviewed. And he eventually plopped himself down at the table, right next to me, in the front of the room.

We like each other.

I often forget he is younger than me. I just look in his eyes and I know that despite my new anarchist leanings (I blame you and your blog here,

Christopher Cook

, for that), we like each other. He is libertarian and has hope for a candidate in the US to fix things. He might be right. And it doesn’t matter. Because we are not friends trying to agree on things. We are friends with hope, who are following through on our beliefs in both similar and different ways.

So, Tigger eventually moved next to me, right before the Minister of Education for El Salvador got up to speak.

Now, this felt momentous to me. Here I was, in the front row at this hotel, with a man who had a lot to do with the education system here. I was very interested in listening. So was Tigger.

Minister of Education began speaking. He spoke of how they were going to teach children about economics and how money really works.

(I could feel a cheer arising in me). Eeyore was still at the table, and his energetic state was simply fading away, out of my field. I was a Tigger, with Tigger sitting next to me.

Tigger glanced at me with a huge smile on his face and his sparkling brown eyes gazed into mine. He felt the same thing.

This Minister of Education was aligned with both of us. He was speaking of things we both knew, could literally change the world.

Tigger and I started clapping.

We were the the first people, and mostly the only people doing this.

It was like the things Minister of Education was saying, the momentous things, were not landing in the other people. They didn’t get it. Not yet. Not deeply.

Not like Tigger and me.

One statement after another was said.

The children would learn about fiat money. They would learn how Bitcoin worked. They would learn how to use it and how to store it safely.

The children would grow up in a different reality.

(Tigger and I were holding ourselves back from jumping up and down and we were close. Our eyes kept meeting. Our smiles got bigger. We continued to stand out from the rest of the room. Our energy was a pocket or a bubble of something, something new. And we were cheering.)

My enthusiasm and joy led to me being invited on stage to pull raffle tickets for the drawing they have at these meetings. People win T-shirts and hardware devices to store their Bitcoin.

But what they win doesn’t really matter. The thing that is interesting to me is that I freed myself for a time, from the negative hook that had been affecting me. I was back feeling my joy and my own energy. And that happened partly because Tigger sat next to me and reminded me of it.

Now, you are probably wondering when I am going to get to the comedian with the tear? You are probably wondering why I digress so much in these stories?

And I understand. I wonder that too. I could say I am sorry and really I am not. This is the way my mind and creativity flow. It is kind of random and I have had to learn to live with it. To embrace it.

Don’t worry.

I haven’t forgotten you or that story.

The meeting ended and I decided it was time to leave. People were still talking and I felt complete. But then I saw another friend behind the stage, over by the bar. And so I wandered over to say hello on my way out. Which led to me overhearing my friend, a software developer I really like, talking to a comedian I had heard on stage at the Adopting Bitcoin Conference a few months ago.

This comedian was funny. Probably more funny to me than anyone else in the room as he lived in LA and was making jokes about yoga that only a 30 year long California yoga practitioner like me could fully receive. I know there were times I was laughing my ass off and the people around me looked just the tiniest bit confused. It didn’t matter to me.

So, now, I heard the comedian and my friend making plans to go visit some pyramids here the next day. It felt like a guy thing. Another guy near them started talking about it as well….and you know…it’s me right? I love adventure and I want to start exploring this country more. And pyramids? Gosh. It was enticing.

So I asked them to take me.

I won’t go through the details.

Let’s just say that the next day, I found myself on an adventure with three interesting men. I thought my developer friend would be driving us all in his new/used black Mustang with the V8 engine. But it seems the seating was inadequate.

So, the comedian drove a rented Kia and I bounced along in the back seat next to a young man who told me about how he had fought to uphold his principles and follow his heart during the recent lock-down things despite his families’ protests.

He was a hero to me.

By nightfall, we were sitting in a wood-fired pizza restaurant with great reviews next to a beautiful cathedral and I was asking the comedian about comedy.

I have wondered for a long time about humor. I know most comedians seem to have some darkness they have experienced. Something around that allows them to be funny. I have heard laughter spoken of (coldly in my mind) as trauma release. But I knew it was more than that. I knew it was a joyful thing. And aspects of it were still a mystery to me.

I thought this day would involve a lot of it. I mean, a comedian in a Kia, who I knew was funny, was driving.

But, like most things I expect God to provide, I was gifted something that was not what I thought it would be.

I asked the comedian next to me about laughter and he told me two stories.

Neither is funny. At least not to me.

But they matter a lot when I relate them to my new Egg-thing, my new practice of attempting to fully own and embody my own soul frequencies.

The first thing he said was that he had been outspoken around recent events in the US. He said what he believed. For that he was put on what he called, “A LIST.” He is sure he is still on THE LIST. Which sounds like something that came out of The Ministry in the book, 1984. But unfortunately, I think THE LIST is a real thing.

It is because of my feeling about the reality of this LIST that I still cower a little bit inside and do not type certain words in this story. I want to name that. I know you know what those words are. And I know you know I know you know them. So it is interesting that I am afraid to write them. I am really afraid of the issues I might have to face if I do. Kind of like inviting those unwanted texts that recently came to me.

I hope as I learn the Egg-thing, I am able to free myself more from speaking.

But here is an example from said comedian, of what happened to him, when he decided to say what he thought. (And I assume some of this was done comedically).

He had a show coming up in New York City. There was a billboard on Times Square (and if you have never been there, these billboards are big in size and also in energy). These billboards advertise things like New Year’s Eve, or Broadway Shows, or Music Events with FAMOUS PEOPLE. They are famous-people-kind-of-things.

So, funny comedian now slides fully into my famous-people category as he is speaking next to me. I decide his attractiveness fits right in with his stage presence.

He says that he had a comedy show coming up and so there was a picture of him on a billboard on Times Square, with information on how to get tickets. That was it. Photo, where to buy a ticket. No information on what the comedy would be about. Nothing.

They told him it was disruptive. They told him it was NOT ALLOWED and they took it down.

So, he tried again.

This time the billboard had a picture of his face with a ? over his head and a phone number.

That was fine.

That billboard remained.

Which is why I think about my words when I write now.

But I digress.

The comedian had not taught me about laughter, but he had further validated my sense of the profound implications of the censorship going on in the world.

When I asked him to teach me about laughter, he told me about a documentary he had made about his time going to Afghanistan to do comedy for the troops there. He told me why he became anti-war. And by the end, when he was telling me how after a day of comedy, a day of listening to young newly-dismembered men tell him their stories because he was one of the only people who seemed to care and really get it…he and the other comedians would meet and do a comedy show just for themselves. And they would laugh, hard.

I watched a tear roll down his cheek as he told me this story.

He didn’t brush it away.

And I really took that in. The tear moved slowly, gently, and screamed its message to me.

I know that tears matter and I know that it takes a lot of personal work to let them flow in front of people and not brush them away.

I felt the depth of work the man next to me had done. Work for others. Work on himself. All in the name of….comedy?

The day wasn’t funny and it was special.

And somehow it relates to my Egg thing.

Although I can’t tell you how quite yet except to say how important it is that we all become our own soul-embodied eggs. So we can discern for ourselves what feels right. So we can survive in a world full of hooks and negativity. So we can laugh, and be expansive, and alive and free….

And so eventually I can type words like vaccine, speech, alternative treatments, health, and controversy….

And not feel like I will be put on A LIST that will ban me from being seen.

XO

Here is to another week of becoming a butterfly.

May your journey be unfolding, unexpected, and full of love and care for all you are experiencing.

Feel free to add any banned words that come to you in the comments. It seems like both a bold, and a kind thing to do.

And maybe if you want, try the egg thing.