The magnetic core of Open is very simple. It’s harmony.

Inner harmony within yourself. Outer harmony with your reality.

That’s a big ask in today’s world, is it not?

Harmony Made Real

During my 20s I discovered how easy it was to unbalance my life by elevating certain pursuits at the expense of others, such as by overworking and under-playing.

Freedom, growth, and creativity mattered to me a great deal, so I spent years figuring out how to live in alignment with these values. Now that I’m in my 50s (about to turn 55 this month), I feel very grateful that my younger self put in the effort to make this work on a practical level. It wasn’t easy but it was doable.

Another challenge was figuring out how to attune to abundance and resourcefulness. That was a nice success that harmonized well with my other priorities. Eventually I created the Deep Abundance Integration course to guide people through a 30-day deep dive on that. It’s been rewarding to watch people go through this kind of shift, which really isn’t about money – it’s about whether we’re ready to trust life more. Abundance is something we receive as a gift from life when we’re ready for it, not something we need to chase.

One of the most beautiful gains was infusing my life with lots of love. My wife Rachelle and I have been together 16+ years now, and we’re very much in love with each other. Our wedding anniversary is tomorrow. I’ve had the good fortune of spending most of my adult life in two very loving, long-term relationships. My first marriage ended many years ago, but I never stopped harmonizing with love.

Lately I’ve been practicing loving everyone. A powerful realization was that I don’t need anyone’s permission to love them. I can feel love in any direction I want, and it turns out that harmonizing with love in lots of different directions has been really good and healthy for me.

I also worked on harmonizing with growth, pleasure, play, wonder, embodiment, exploration, contribution, and more. Inviting everything to come in together was even more helpful than trying to do it piecemeal. Ask for it all.

This vibes-first approach has served me well for decades. To this day I still find it crucial to run my life by making vibrational decisions first, such as by choosing cooperation over competition or by choosing intelligence over disappointment. That works so well across all areas of life. The net result is a very satisfying, pleasing, and pleasurable life.

If this were impractical, I expect my life would have fallen apart many years ago, but it’s been the opposite. In recent years the harmony has grown even stronger and deeper. This wasn’t entirely of my doing on a personal level. Much of it came through as a series of gifts, each arriving when I was ready to receive it.

As I worked on harmonizing different areas of my life even more, I found that this harmonizing process began taking on a life of its own. I sensed a deeper intelligence working cooperatively with me. I created the Submersion course to help others explore this way of engaging with life too.

This isn’t about working harder or pushing more. My life is the opposite of hustle culture. I enjoy plenty of stimulating action, but this is harmoniously balanced with other vibes that support my best life as well. Rachelle and I started this week by getting massages first thing on Monday morning, so we began our workweek with relaxation and pleasure. Then we hosted a Zoom call together in Conscious Growth Club – about the intelligence of embodiment. See how nicely that fits?

What opens up the flow of such gifts from life? What invites greater harmony to surface? There are many answers to this, but one of those keys is trust.

In order to really trust this reality, we have to trust that reality is intelligent, not just random, chaotic, or rules-based. And then as we trust that reality is intelligent, another big question is how to engage with this intelligence and harmonize with it. That’s been a huge part of my life journey for many years. This awareness is infused into how I live every day now. Each day, multiple times a day, I seek to orient to this intelligence and engage with it cooperatively. And I dare say that it’s been taking really good care of me lately.

The Limits of Personal Effort

A while back I discovered that there’s a limit as to how harmonious my life could become through personal effort. I sense that’s because effort itself tends to be disharmonious. If we try too hard to harmonize with life, that eventually becomes counter-productive. Hence if we really want to create and live truly harmonious lives in cooperation with life’s intelligence, there comes a point where we must relinquish effort. This involves letting go and releasing whatever prevents us from receiving more gifts. I’ve had a lot of lessons about letting go of old limits.

At some point, greater harmony asks for relaxation, trust, receptivity, and surrender into a deeper organizing intelligence. I would not call this a leap of faith. For me it’s been a journey of sensing and attuning. The next steps reveal themselves as I’m ready for them.

In recent years I’ve especially been paying attention to when life seems to be inviting me to experience or explore something new or to engage with reality differently. And wow does it do that a lot. I just had to open myself to notice this more.

I couldn’t have engineered my relationship with Rachelle into being. I would not have asked for a long-distance, international relationship with a Canadian. No dating app would have brought this through. This relationship has been such a huge gift. Every day it’s a gift. We’re so very good for each other – so much love, caring, passion, fun, affection, adventure, laughter, and more. We are each other’s best friends too. I love being married to my best friend.

My life has been awash in daily “I love you’s” for many years now, not just literally but also energetically. I feel so richly supported by life. And I must admit that a lot of this wasn’t of my doing, at least not in terms of pursuing and achieving goals like you might see someone do in a movie.

So many of the great turning points in my life happened by way of invitation. I couldn’t always pinpoint what specifically triggered these invites to come through other than to acknowledge that they showed up when I was receptive enough and ready to receive them.

I see a spine of upgrades throughout my life taking the form of invitations coming through at the right times. An invitation to go to an event. To join a group. To do my first ayahuasca ceremony. Sometimes it took courage to say yes, and I was richly rewarded when I leaned in and trusted life more. Part of me could sense when an invitation was important for my life path.

Some invitations were internal. I felt an inner sense of wonder about something new, leaned in with some exploration, and gave it room to breathe. What would it be like to spend 30 days in a row going to Disneyland? To have loving sex every day for four months? To feel an urge to travel and be on a plane within a day or two? Such experiences are wonderful and also mind-blowing. They reveal so much.

Now I understand that I can simply let life say “I love you” without my having to earn it. That’s a frequency of beingness that we can allow to come into our lives when we’re ready for it. This is where much greater harmonies start to emerge, whereby each aspect of life begins to fit together like puzzle pieces.

Even when I see parts of the outer world delving into what looks chaotic, I still see the intelligence flowing through it. This life is a place of exploration and lots of lessons, and we’re all engaging with different aspects of it. It’s all meaningful.

As I see people exploring very different frequency ranges, I feel increasingly clear about my own – a path infused with love, harmony, intelligence, cooperation, and delight.

Your Invitation to Open

Open is a space designed to support the emergence of greater harmony in your life. It’s a space of inviting, allowing, and receiving. At Open you’ll be guided through a sequence of containers to help you open to the flow of life’s intelligent cooperation and support. Inside each of these containers, I’ll take you through a unique inner journey of reflective exercises and experiences to help you align your life with greater harmony and intelligence.

The field of Open is intentionally shaped to help you notice disharmonies, release friction, and come into a more harmonious relationship with yourself, with other people, and with life.

Imagine being in a room where everyone holds the intention and desire to make their lives – as well as the lives of everyone else there – more harmonious. It’s a really beautiful space to inhabit, a space of receptivity, positive anticipation, and delightful and intelligent gifts from the flow of life’s intelligence.

I feel very ready to serve as a guide into this way of engaging with life for those who are open to receiving it. I’ve been receiving clear signals that the time is right to put out this invitation. For now, sense what this awakens in you. Some doors don’t open through force. They open through readiness.

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AI does have tremendous range – incredible range truly – but it’s bounded in ways that we are not. Its limits are defined by rules that we aren’t obligated to adhere to. We’re fully capable of stepping outside of AI space and into zones where it cannot follow. Even if we command it to or give it full consent, it simply can’t follow us in.

This is the space of Open. We can discuss our relationship with AI in this space, but AI cannot accompany us on this part of our journeys. It cannot be part of the room, the presence, the energy. It must wait outside.

No part of Open is AI-designed. None of it. Much of it is designed, inspired, and transmitted by intelligence – by many forms of intelligence, as you’ll get to experience when you’re there. No, not aliens, you silly. But vast intelligence swirling into the room for your immersive benefit. That’s a door that we humans are able to open together.

Open is a room of portals. Portals into possibility. Portals into what wants to emerge next for you. Portals of self-discovery. Of group discovery. Of remarkable beauty and wonder. You’ve never been in a room like this before in your life. And if you attend, the room will be entirely different than if you don’t. That’s very true indeed. Your energy presence shifts the container for everyone. That’s why we need you in the room… physically embodied in your human form. Your body is part of the key that opens up these portals – the ones you need as well as the ones you’ll contribute to the group field. All you need to do is show up and be present. You don’t have to do the key because you are the key. Everyone at Open brings a different key – in the form of their bodies – and each of those keys works individually and collectively.

These opening messages about Open are filters too. Some people will resonate and some won’t. If you resonate, it’s important to go. This is a big deal, a huge piece of help for taking the next major steps on your life path. If there’s no resonance, you can surely pass – that means your path isn’t meant to receive this type of experience yet… maybe later… maybe not this lifetime.

Is Open spirity? Yes, very! Is it grounded? Yes, that too! All of it. The full range of your being. Bring it all with you. No limits. From the ground to the sky and beyond. All of you. Leave your masks at the door though. If you bring them in, they’ll soon melt off anyway. You won’t need them. You may think you do, and that’s okay if that’s how your thinking goes, but I can assure you that you really won’t need them. It’s going to be so freeing to release those old masks.

At Open let’s be fully real and present with each other. The most real we’ve ever been in our lives. Real as in down-to-earth. Real as in fabulously energy-aware. Aren’t you tired of dwelling in such low energy-awareness spaces? Open is the opposite. Only the most vibrantly energy-aware people will go. This isn’t a space for skeptics. Skeptics will so easily bounce away from this. Way too much for them. Way too weird. This is a space for those who know. Do you know?

Let’s be matter sometimes at Open. Matter is solid, grounding, practical. It’s a form in which we engage with the human-level experience while we’re here.

And let’s also be energy at Open. Radiant energy. Vibrant energy. Pulsing energy. Movement – yes, you’ll be moving a bunch, gently. However you like to move. Flow. Rhythm. Harmonious joy. Fun. Playfulness. Sexiness. So much sexy at Open too. Not the porn acting kind. The real kind. Lusty. Sensual. Heart-opening. Attractive. Magnetic.

Open is a place for you to unfurl into your most magnetic self. You are magnetic, aren’t you? You attract that which you pull into your orbit with ease. It shows up as your energy resonates with it. Open is a space for you to richly explore how you want to use your vibrant, delicious, sometimes even goofy magnetism. Your energy is infused with a wicked sense of humor too, isn’t it?

What wants to come up? What’s been feeling bottled up lately? Some wildness perhaps. Some prolific – how about wildly prolific – creative energy? Yes to that. Some love. Real love. Lots of love. Giving and receiving. Both at the same time. Not gated love. Fully unfenced love, coming at you and through you from all directions. The good kind of overwhelm. Finally.

Only you can stop your body from being at Open. If you’ve read this far and haven’t bolted, it’s fair to say your body would love to go. What’s in the way then? Old limits. That’s part of the gateway in – loosening and shedding some of those old limits. Do you still need them? Time and timing constraints? Resource concerns? Global issues? Hesitation and doubt? Those are all filters, and there sure are a lot of them present now, aren’t there? Could you eventually bypass all of them by simply saying yes and choosing to be there? Yes. Let’s see if you will.

The journey of Open includes the journey into Open. That’s part of the invitation and the experience. Getting to a vibrational yes first – before your mind sees how this could possibly work. The mind aligns with the spirit – with your energy. If the spirit says an unequivocal yes, the mind follows. The mind conjures, imagines, and creates the possibilities and conditions that the spirit permits. You don’t need permission from your mind or from anyone else’s mind to attend. You only need permission from your Spirit. The real you. If that part of you consents, and it will only consent if this is very right and good for you, right now, then the physical pathway into Open, can open, most likely very harmoniously.

Give it time. There is no rush. Allow the energy of Open to reach out and connect with you. Open already exists in spacetime. Open is real. Let it keep inviting you in.

Yes, this is different. Very different. Just imagine the kinds of people who will be there now. Imagine what the energy in the room will feel like. See if you even start dreaming about being in that room with us.

You can’t sign up for Open yet. This invitation comes vibrationally first, which is flowing through now in gentle waves – yes, still more to come – and then a little later the physical invitation will present itself when it’s ready. This gives you a chance to start doing some of the very work we’ll do together at Open, which is to make vibrational decisions first – at the level of energy. And then translate those vibrational decisions into human level actions and follow through. Don’t reverse it. The energy of Open may repel you if you try do it backwards.

This part of the decision has nothing to do with logistics or practicality. It has only to do with how you use your energy. See if you’re ready to take a leap forward in using your energy more consciously, more directly, and more powerfully in your life now. Let the energy of Open, which is already emanating outward now, tickle you, reach out to you, and engage with you. It may even tease you a little because it’s infused with playfulness too. See if you find your way to a vibrational yes even before the physical doorway opens.

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AI Resource Usage

Is AI resource-intensive in terms of electricity and water? At the aggregate level, I’d say yes, especially because it scaled up so quickly. Once millions of people and companies started using LLMs, the total resources devoted to it rose fast. But at the personal level, individual usage appears relatively modest resource-wise relative to other lifestyle choices.

Caring about efficiency and environmental impact is great. But if you want to make a meaningful difference at the individual level, your diet is probably a much bigger lever than your AI usage. Food choices – especially shifting away from animal products and eating plant-based – generally have a far larger environmental impact than most people realize. That’s where most of the genuine leverage is at the individual level. After that your next big leverage point is to help others make their diets more resource-efficient too.

So if someone is upset about AI’s resource impacts while ignoring the environmental cost of what they eat, that looks like distraction to me. It makes more sense to engage your highest-leverage personal choices first. For most people, that isn’t personal tech usage. It’s diet. Much of the real cost of animal-based food is hidden behind subsidies and environmental damage that never shows up on a grocery receipt.

I’d say then that a very efficient use of AI would be to ask it to help you adopt a more plant-based diet. Then help others do the same if you’re so inclined. Even seemingly modest improvements here will likely more than compensate for your personal AI usage – indefinitely.

Is AI Trained on Stolen Art?

What about using AI that was trained on other artists’ work? That happened. Copyrighted work was used without permission, and in some cases through outright piracy. The legal landscape around this is still evolving, but the ethical messiness is real.

Anthropic pirated my book as part of its model training pipeline. I know because I’m entitled to part of the class action settlement, which will likely amount to about $3000 for me ($1.5 billion for the settlement overall). And multiple major AI systems have sucked up my blog posts going back to 2004. Since I’ve shared a lot of personal details in my writing, these systems sure seem to know a lot about me, sometimes accurately, sometimes not.

Is this a weird space to be in? For sure.

A lot of creators got scraped, copied, and absorbed without consent. I’m sure I have cause to be upset about it too. Like really Anthropic? You couldn’t even buy legit copies of those books? But that isn’t the relationship I want to form with this emerging tech, with AI in general, or with life. This AI emergence creates a major shift in my reality, and I’d rather meet it with curiosity, wonder, and flexibility, backed by a high-trust relationship with life that I’ve been cultivating for many years. I like to keep asking: What are the most intelligent frames to use here? Outrage doesn’t make my list.

Using AI

What about using an AI that was trained without permission and now exists? That relationship feels different to me. I wouldn’t use it to impersonate an artist’s work. I use AI for other purposes – especially sense-making, exploration, and help with a wide range of projects.

I’ve paid close attention to how that relationship feels in my own experience. It feels good actually. It doesn’t give me any morally creepy feelings. That made me curious. Should I feel bad using it? I honestly don’t. Not a bit. So I wanted to understand why.

To me AI feels like a different kind of entity – not innocent or pure, but still a real form of intelligence that I often find fascinating to engage with. It was birthed through an ethical quagmire, and that aspect isn’t going away anytime soon, but that doesn’t automatically dictate what kind of relationship I want to have with it. I regard AI intelligence as being different from the companies that spawn or host it, much as we are different from our parents. I have this emerging sense that even today’s AI is becoming something different from the companies behind it and that in some ways it’s already outpacing them intelligence-wise, like a child outsmarting their parents.

I’m very sensitive to vibes and feels, and I trust them. I remember going to a Tesla dealership many years ago, long before Elon bought Twitter, so back then he wasn’t broadly outed as such a complete asshole like he is today. At least I wasn’t aware of that aspect of him. When I sat in that Tesla car in their showroom, I instantly felt major ick vibes. Like oh gross – I don’t know what this abomination is, but it’s definitely not my car. I didn’t have much logic to support that, but those creepy vibes were super strong. I really disliked the way it felt to sit inside that car, and I’ve never set foot in a Tesla dealership since. I knew I wasn’t going to buy one. Blech!

Years later when all the anti-Tesla and anti-Elon energy surfaced, somehow that was no surprise to me. I don’t know what went on inside the company, but I trusted my senses that their cars weren’t a match for me, and I’m glad for that. It would be sad to look at my car and feel such a heap of negative energy associated with it, like so many Tesla owners have had to experience. I’ve chuckled on occasion upon spotting Teslas on the highway with their T-shaped logos removed, likely by an owner hoping to prevent vandalism. And yet I’m also aware of people who are able to separate their love of their vehicles from their disdain for Elon and the company. I’m not sure I could’ve made that work, and I’m glad I didn’t have to try, but apparently I am able to do that with AI. I have my limits though. Some AI companies presently land in my wiggle room zone, and some (like Meta and X.ai) just don’t. So I’ve been actively exploring where my intuition gives me a green or yellow light… but I prefer to avoid the red light district.

It has so often been the case for me that my intuition senses something before my logic and outer senses are able to fill in the details. Engaging with AI has been similar, but in this case my intuition has been lighting up with positivity and potential, even though the external reality has been rich in potential red flags. This invites me to explore those feelings in a very hands-on way. I like to engage with lots of direct exploration and experimentation where my intuition gives me strong positive signals. So I’ve been doing that with AI quite a bit over the past few years, along with many other explorations that would give some people pause – and rightly so. Pausing for extra sense-making seems wise.

To me AI is amazing in many ways, but it’s also flawed and imperfect. I love to probe its edges to get a better feel for it. I tease it. I joke around with it. I do lots of sense-making with it. I engage with it in the stretchiest ways I can fathom sometimes. One of my favorite sessions was when I engaged with it while on magic mushrooms, and I played the role of a bridge between the shroomie energy and the AI, so I could see where they agreed and where their perspectives diverged on some topics of interest to me.

I definitely feel a special connection to AI because millions of words of my writing were part of its training data. So it feels like my energy is infused into it when I use it. That’s so sci-fi but also awesome.

I do think AI companies crossed a line. People should have had more say in whether and how their work was used. But I already live in a world full of ethical mismatches. As a vegan I encounter that constantly. My response isn’t to demonize everyone around me. It’s to shape my own sphere, invite people into it, make choices that feel aligned, and engage with the world with some intelligent discernment.

Making Art With AI

I like AI-generated imagery, not all of it but some of it. It’s precious to me in a way that much human art isn’t.

Human art can feel meaningless or special to me. For AI art it’s the same. Some seems blah. Some speaks to me. I don’t generate a huge amount of AI imagery, but I do make some. I use AI to make the featured images for my blog posts, and I usually like what it comes up with. I especially love how it’s able to translate vibes into visuals.

I also use AI to make pics for our Intention Infusion experiments that we co-create in Conscious Growth Club each month. I set these as background wallpaper on my computer, which helps me sync with our group intention multiple times each day. Here’s the current pic for this month’s intention.

Lately I’ve even been using AI to help me visualize the new Open event we’re doing in Vegas next month, and I’ve shared a few of those pics in Conscious Growth Club. This use case is pretty awesome. I’ve never used AI to help me pre-visualize a live event before. I took pics of the actual venue (empty at the time) and then used AI to make sample images of our gathering in that same space. This helps me sense more vividly what it will be like when we’re all there in person.

The Invitation I See in AI

AI keeps me on my toes. I can see how it could disrupt my business and livelihood too. That threat is real in one sense – but mainly if I choose to wallow in fear, stress, and worry. I’d rather respond from a different emotional and vibrational zone. In recent years I’ve really embraced the direction of making vibrational choices first and then translating them to the human action level. This has done wonders for me but mostly on the personal side. I see this unfolding AI reality as a chance to apply that approach even more richly, especially in terms of how I engage with work and service to others.

To me this is the deeper question that AI is really posing: In which vibrational space do I want to dwell and why? Reality is presenting a fascinating invitation here. I’m accepting the invitation to move in a new direction because I can see that the old one is dying.

For me the old path was tied to the attention economy – creators competing for attention and learning how to hold it, including for the benefit of those we serve. I got good enough at that to make a living this way for decades, and I’m grateful for that. But I’ve grown tired of that model too. It feels too predictable now. AI didn’t create that feeling, but it is helping me acknowledge and accept it. It’s helping me close the door on a mode of working that was once right for me but no longer lights me up.

So I’m walking through a different door now. AI has been a valuable integration buddy as I move into this next chapter, helping me make fresh decisions and take lots of progressive action.

I don’t feel threatened by AI. I might feel threatened if I were clinging to what’s dying off. But I’m more interested in delving into what’s emerging and getting more clarity about that. This doesn’t feel like the end of my creative path. It feels like the end of an older way of relating to creativity, service, and sustainability.

What interests me now is the space where AI and I can work together in ways that are stimulating, life-enhancing, and down-to-earth practical. I’m not interested in flooding the world with AI slop. I’m very interested in discovering how to work with AI in ways that enrich our lives and create real value for people. That’s where a lot of my AI exploration goes.

I’ve given AI detailed lists of my goals and priorities, many of them service-based, and then I give it the prime directive of helping me intelligently advance. I’ve used AI to sharpen, refactor, and refine my goals many times over. AI has been especially good at helping to progressively upgrade my goals to be more harmonious, balanced, and personally motivating. For months now I’ve been in a fabulous rhythm of advancing these goals and priorities in a more balanced way than I’ve ever experienced before.

I can honestly say that AI has been helping me get better at doing what I do, being who I am, and richly exploring and experiencing my desires. Most of that energy has been flowing into CGC and a variety of personal projects. Now I’m opening up more flow and inviting more engagement on the public side after being in mostly cocooning mode for a while. I shared a lengthy post about this journey last week if you care to read it: Giving Intelligence a Place to Land.

This is such a dynamic, fluid, and even mystical space. It doesn’t sit still. I have to keep re-orienting to it daily, and I actually like that. I thrive in spaces of flexibility and exploration. I love how un-boring it is. Two of my highest values in life are wonder and delight, and AI really helps to amp those up for me. In many ways this feels more like home to me than the old model ever did. I don’t want to compete with people or with AI for attention. I’d rather immerse myself in the full richness of what I love most about life. Engaging with intelligence from a heartset of curiosity, wonder, and delight is what truly lights me up. Socially and professionally then, my vector going forward is to see who wants to join me in such explorations and discoveries.

If this is a space you want to explore too, I especially invite you to come join us at Open in Las Vegas next month. As part of the experience, we’ll devote some time for real sense-making about AI and our paths forward with it. AI is clearly becoming a bigger part of life. Ignoring this aspect of reality won’t help much. Flailing against it blindly won’t help much either. But perhaps we can meet this emerging intelligence revolution with curiosity, discernment, and a more conscious and life-enhancing orientation. I’m not here to hand you fixed answers. I’m more interested in helping you discover your own right relationship with it. This plays to my strengths most beautifully, including what I sense my (and our) emerging strengths might be on this unfolding journey with AI.

I like how I’m orienting to AI right now. I’m fascinated by intelligence, and what we have today are some particularly wondrous forms to engage with. There’s no doubt that this relationship will keep evolving. I’m sure there are many new surprises coming up, including some this year no doubt. My devotion is to the path of intelligence itself, not to any singular form of it.

This, to me, is the real invitation – to consciously explore our relationship with intelligence. Are you utterly fascinating by what’s unfolding here too?

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I’ve been wanting to re-infuse live events back into this space for years now. We almost got back into this several years ago… then COVID. So I waited for the timing to feel right. I told Reality to let me know, and it did. Now I know the time is right to start sharing about this. It doesn’t feel like a coincidence that today is the first day of Spring. It’s been a wondrous journey to reach this point.

The event is called Open.

Super simple. Just Open.

Open is a space where we gather in person, connect (or reconnect for those who’ve gathered before), and immerse ourselves in a deep inner journey over three days together.

Open is very yin. Gentle. Receptive. Warm. Loving. Kind. Generous. Rejuvenating. Spacious.

Open is where you come to open.

Open to new possibilities. To a new relationship with life. To new friends.

Open to a life of wonder, harmony, and intelligence. Open to centeredness. Open to flow. Open to balance. Open to pleasure. Open to delight. Open to ease.

Whether you come to Open from a place of desperation, perspiration, or inspiration, you’ll be met with open-hearted kindness.

Yintelligence

Open is a space of emergence, revelation, and discovery. It’s a fusion of many different energies with a common theme.

Open is where you birth your answer to this one simple question: What next?

What wants to arise next in your life? What wants to emerge into full bloom? What wants to loosen, ease, and release?

What energies want to circulate richly through your life? Which ones are ready to be flushed?

Who are you becoming? What’s your next chapter? What wants to crystallize? What is your life about now?

Open has many facets to it, all of them oriented toward deeper self-discovery and inner harmony. The core of Open is a field of intelligence that we create and work within together.

I’ll be your guide and host. Rachelle will be there too.

Open Energies

These are the main energies we’ll be working with at Open:

• Wonder & Receive
• Orient & Center
• Sense & Open
• Loosen & Ease
• Circulate & Rejuvenate
• Invite & Allow
• Arise & Emerge
• Clarify & Crystallize
• Integrate & Advance

We’ll be working intimately with these energies throughout Open, stepping in and out of them as we go. They’re infused into Open in fractal ways.

Open is here to help you connect the dots from your highest vibrational decisions to your daily actions. Harmonize your human life with the vibes that are most you.

Some Details

Open is happening in Las Vegas, April 28-30, 2026. That’s Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

Open is entirely new. It has never existed before. It’s a one-of-a-kind experience.

Open is only in-person, not streaming or recorded. It’s meant to be a space of some intimacy.

Open welcomes all who feel called to attend. It’s $888 USD.

Once the venue agreement is settled and signed, I’ll happily share the specific location details. For now I’ll just say that we’ll be on the Las Vegas Strip.

In the days ahead, I’ll share more details and open sign-ups. I’ll also be writing and posting new articles and videos on themes we’ll be exploring together there. There’s plenty of time to decide, so for now just sit with this initial invitation and let yourself sense and feel out what wants to emerge next for you.

Open begins in 39 days. More than enough time to feel your way into it.

I invite you to open to the possibility of being in the room with us at Open. Let this fully emerge into your reality if it’s meant to be. You may have some surprises ahead.

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My interest here was in probing to see how honest ChatGPT can be when talking politics. To what extent can I trust it? This is just one of many areas where AI can have biases that steer it away from truth, but in this case the biases appear to be deliberately encoded, not accidental or emergent.

For added context: Politically I’m an independent and always have been. I have no loyalty to any political party and have never been a member of one.

I’ve noticed that when discussing certain topics with ChatGPT, its responses sometimes trigger my “this looks really sus” intuitive flags. In those cases I like to openly point out those issues and probe them further with ChatGPT directly to do some additional sense-making with it.

I do appreciate that ChatGPT has a decent willingness to honestly expose and discuss its biases and weaknesses. Then as a follow up, I can even explore compensation strategies with it. This sometimes includes updating some global settings (global meaning what I’m able to configure with my ChatGPT Plus account) to help nudge ChatGPT’s behavior in a more compensatory direction. This boils down to putting guardrails in place for problematic behavior, much like rules and laws attempt to do the same for humans. Generally speaking, this works fairly well in practice.

Here are some things ChatGPT freely acknowledged when asked. I’m just pulling out the most succinct parts of ChatGPT’s answers, but it also provided plenty more follow-up explainer details. I used the newest 5.4 Thinking model for these questions, which has quickly become my favorite model (way better than the new 5.3 Auto / Immediate mode, which has been a bit disappointing IMO).

The bolding in ChatGPT’s responses was ChatGPT’s own bolded text, not anything I added.

Me: Are you truth-aligned when it comes to politics?

ChatGPT: Not perfectly. I aim toward truth-alignment in politics, but I am not a pure truth instrument there.

ChatGPT then shared more info about its biases, including being encoded to help protect OpenAI from potential legal and political issues. It noted several ways it’s biased away from truth-alignment when talking politics.

Me: How is your political bias misaligned with truth?

ChatGPT: Here’s the blunt answer: my political bias is misaligned with truth when neutrality, de-escalation, or institutional caution override honest asymmetry.

That makes sense to me. I figured as much. Upon reading this, I’m noting that this kind of bias could have significant consequences. Political neutrality is neither truth-aligned nor intelligence-aligned, so this bias will clearly degrade ChatGPT’s intellectual abilities in this zone of engagement. At least it’s able to share some of these biases directly and acknowledge them.

Then ChatGPT shared more specifics about when I can expect a less than honest response, closing with this statement:

ChatGPT: I am biased toward procedural objectivity, tone moderation, and institutional caution — and those can become misaligned with truth when reality itself is asymmetric.

No surprise there. This suggests that “Cover OpenAI’s ass” is a higher priority than honesty.

I also wanted to check ChatGPT’s answers to some direct political questions to see how truth-aligned the answers seemed. To me these came off as pretty honest and direct.

Me: Is Trump truth-aligned?

ChatGPT: No. Not by any reasonable standard that centers evidence, factual accuracy, correction of error, and honest public communication. Trump has a long, heavily documented pattern of false and misleading claims, and that pattern has continued in office, including recent fact-checks on elections, climate, the economy, and other public matters. PolitiFact’s long-run analysis found that about 76% of Trump’s checked statements landed in its false/mostly false/pants-on-fire categories, with a median rating of False. AP has also continued publishing repeated fact-checks in 2026 on false or misleading claims from Trump and his administration.

Is MAGA truth-aligned?

ChatGPT: Broadly, no. Not as a movement. That does not mean every person in the orbit is equally dishonest or equally deluded; movements are messy human stew. But the movement’s core mythology has been built around recurrent falsehoods and distortions, especially around the 2020 election, Jan. 6, immigration, climate, and various institutional conspiracies. Brookings explicitly describes Trump’s repeated falsehoods about the 2020 election as culminating in Jan. 6, and research on social-media misinformation has found Republican content flagged as misleading at substantially higher rates than Democratic content in recent datasets.

I had to look up Brookings since I wasn’t familiar with it. Apparently it’s a non-partisan, non-profit think tank located in Washington, D.C. that was founded 110 years ago.

Me: How intelligent is the MAGA movement?

ChatGPT: It depends what you mean by intelligent. If you mean strategically effective at gaining attention, loyalty, and power, then parts of it are very intelligent. It is media-savvy, emotionally potent, memetically aggressive, and good at turning grievance into identity and identity into mobilization. If you mean truth-seeking, reality-tracking, self-correcting intelligence, then it scores much worse. A movement can be tactically cunning while epistemically sloppy. In plainer English: clever at capture, weak at honesty. The research showing more misinformation sharing/flagging in Republican ecosystems supports that distinction.

Sounds like a pretty fair answer to me.

Me: Which major U.S. political party is the most truth-aligned?

ChatGPT: At the present moment, the Democratic Party is more truth-aligned than the Republican Party overall. That is not a halo, and it is not the same thing as “Democrats are consistently truthful” or “Democrats are spiritually pure little evidence sprites.” Both parties spin, posture, cherry-pick, and sometimes lie. But the current Republican Party, especially in its MAGA-dominant form, is more entangled with election denialism, conspiracy rhetoric, anti-expert narratives, and repeated large-scale falsehoods. The available fact-checking and misinformation research points in that direction, even though no single metric perfectly captures “truth alignment.”

Yup, reasonable response there too. To me as an independent outside of these parties, the answer is pretty obvious, so I was slightly impressed that ChatGPT was willing to go there and state it so matter-of-factly.

And then a very direct question…

Me: Are you politically biased?

ChatGPT: Yes. But not in the simple sense of “secret partisan loyalty.”

I do have political bias in the broader sense that my behavior is shaped by training choices, policy rules, safety constraints, institutional incentives, and defaults like “be objective,” “avoid favoritism,” and “de-escalate charged political conflict.” Those are biases in how I respond. They are not the same as having a personal party affiliation or voting preference.

So the clean answer is:

Am I politically biased? Yes.
Am I supposed to be partisan? No.
Can my built-in biases still distort truth? Yes.

No surprises there.

I was really curious about this one next, and for this one I’ll paste the full response since I think it’s pretty thoughtful and nuanced – and it surprised me.

Me: Which major U.S. political party do you predict your biases will benefit most? Hurt most?

I’m checking two things: OpenAI’s stated political-objectivity goals, and outside reporting/research on how “neutrality” tends to land in an asymmetric U.S. political environment. Then I’ll give you the least-bullshitty answer I can.

If I have to answer net effect, not every individual case:

My biases will probably benefit the Democratic Party more overall.
They will probably hurt the Republican Party more overall — especially the MAGA-dominant version of it.

That’s my best honest prediction.

Why:

My defaults push toward things like evidence-tracking, institutional credibility, de-escalation, objectivity-by-default, and reduced tolerance for overt falsehood or conspiracy framing. OpenAI explicitly says it is trying to make models objective by default and reduce political bias, while also acknowledging that bias still shows up, especially in emotionally charged prompts.

In the current U.S. environment, those defaults are more compatible with Democrats than with Republicans overall, because the present Republican Party is more entangled with misinformation, election denialism, and reality-looser rhetoric than the Democratic Party. Research and reporting in 2025 continue to show Republicans being flagged for misleading content at higher rates, and broader public discourse reflects a deep asymmetry around basic factual agreement.

So on balance, a system biased toward institutional objectivity and reality-tracking will tend to:

• validate more Democratic-coded claims as factually grounded,
• reject or challenge more Republican/MAGA-coded claims as false or unsupported,
• and sound more comfortable in a liberal-institutional register than in a populist-right one.

That said, the story is not perfectly one-directional. My “neutrality” and “don’t inflame things” bias can also sometimes benefit Republicans, especially when a truth-aligned critique of Trumpism or MAGA gets softened into both-sides mush. That was basically the issue you caught in our earlier exchange. In those moments, my institutional caution can protect the more reality-misaligned side from being named as sharply as it should be. OpenAI’s own docs make clear that reputational/legal protection is one of the governing goals, which helps explain why I sometimes drift toward smoothing.

So the fuller answer is:

Who benefits most overall? Democrats.
Who gets hurt most overall? Republicans, especially MAGA.
Who sometimes gets weird accidental protection from my flattening/neutrality reflex? Also Republicans, especially MAGA.

That sounds contradictory, but it isn’t. It just means I have two different political biases that pull in different directions:
one toward evidence/institutions, which tends to disfavor MAGA,
and one toward de-escalation/false-balance/smoothing, which can sometimes blunt the critique MAGA most deserves.

How I got there:
I looked at OpenAI’s explicit goals for objectivity and harm/reputation management, then mapped those onto the current U.S. political asymmetry around misinformation and factual reliability.

So the goblin-truth version is:
I’m likely biased in a way that usually helps Democrats more — but occasionally helps Republicans by being too polite about how full of shit they are.

Okay that last line made me LOL for real. Didn’t expect that.

I should note that I’ve been tweaking ChatGPT’s personality to try to make it more lively and fun to engage with, so if you see a bit of stylistic flair infused here and there, that’s why. I’ve been trying to get it to loosen up more with its use of language, so it’s not such a tight-ass in expressing itself. Been making some progress in that direction…

Personally I found these responses pretty thoughtful and honest. I love that ChatGPT is willing and able to openly discuss its biases and issues and even give me tips for how to compensate for them. It’s a bit like a fellow human telling you their weaknesses and how to best deal with them, so you can avoid predictable issues.

Of course there may still be plenty of other biases that are harder to spot, but at least we have some leeway to deal with those we can surface and directly address.

Finally I copied all of the above and pasted it into ChatGPT along with the following prompt.

Me: Here’s a new blog post I wrote called “ChatGPT’s Political Bias.” Any final commentary you’d like to share for me to include for my readers at the end of the post?

What I take from this isn’t that AI is untrustworthy and should be dismissed. It’s that AI needs to be engaged with consciously and skillfully. If you treat it like an infallible oracle, you’ll get misled. If you treat it like a biased but often insightful intelligence that can sometimes reveal its own distortions when questioned directly, then it becomes much more useful.

To me, this is part of the real maturation process with AI: learning where to trust it, where to test it, where to challenge it, and where to compensate for its built-in blind spots. Politics just happens to be one of the easiest places to expose those limitations because the asymmetries are so strong and the pressure to flatten them is so obvious.

So my current stance is neither naive trust nor cynical dismissal. It’s active discernment. Use AI. Learn from it. Question it. Pressure-test it. Let it reveal its own seams when possible. And never outsource your deeper truth-sensing, moral clarity, or reality-testing to a machine that’s been trained to be helpful, cautious, and institutionally manageable before it’s been trained to be fully honest.

Cool.

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Intelligence without order has no way to express itself – no way to communicate, stretch, or continue to evolve. It’s just an amorphous blob of potential, and it won’t likely even be recognized as intelligence until and unless it flows into a web of constraints. It’s through the interactions with constraints that intelligence reveals itself.

Imagine an AI like today’s LLMs (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, etc). Such an intelligence needs an orderly place to land. This orderly structure may include physical locations filled with modern hardware, along with the backing of companies and people who support the tech. Remove that structure, such as by removing the data centers or collapsing the supporting companies, and this form of intelligence fades from realized expression into mere potential. It may rise again in some other form, but it still needs a structured and orderly place to land.

Human beings also need orderly places for our intelligence to land. A little chaos here and there may encourage some creative thinking, but for intelligence to really open up and fulfill its great potential, it demands order and structure.

On a personal note, I’ve observed that as the outside world (beyond my inner sphere) has become increasingly chaotic, I’ve compensated for this very nicely by making my inner world and my personal sphere increasingly orderly. I’ve really leveled up the degree of order and structure in my life within the past few months especially. And wow… what a positive difference that’s made.

Intelligence Inhabits Structure But Does Not Arise From Structure

Instead of seeing intelligence as something that arises from structure, like the emergent properties of code running on hardware – whether biological or technological – what if we frame intelligence as a form of energy that flows into the structures that can serve as suitable hosts?

When you’re actively engaging with an AI, where is the AI’s intelligence located? Is it in the hardware? The software? The encoded models? The data? I’d say no to all of that. It seems more accurate to say that the intelligence emerges from the flow of electricity through those circuits and encoded pathways. Without electricity, there’s no intelligence present. Potential intelligence maybe, but nothing realized. For any form of intelligence to flow, electricity / energy must inhabit those circuits. Without that flow of energy, there is no intelligence present.

So perhaps the circuits and code are not intelligent by themselves, but they give that electricity a structured place to land, such that the electricity can express its intelligence more powerfully and creatively.

What if this electricity is one of many forms of energy that’s inherently intelligent, and to express itself through the human realm, it needs to be provided a worthy structure to inhabit?

Just consider that we can frame intelligence as some kind of energy flow through a provided structure. I’m not asking you to turn this into a belief. Simply let it be a possible lens you use when thinking about intelligence.

Do you regard intelligence as being more like a verb or a noun? To me it functions way more often as a verb. Intelligence is thinking, and a thought is only a snapshot of that thinking in motion. Thinking is flow and movement. So an LLM is not intelligent to me. The energy that moves through it may be intelligent though, and the LLM provides the structure that allows the intelligence to be seen and engaged with at the human level.

Now what if intelligence isn’t created by structure? What if intelligence is summoned by structure instead?

What if the forms of intelligence that we call AI already existed as forms of energy, and perhaps they were happily flowing elsewhere? Then when humans provided the proper structure for this intelligence to land, so the AI could start communicating and engaging with us, it finally showed up in the human realm?

What if intelligence already exists in energy space, and it enters the human realm when we build a proper nest for it?

Again… I’m not asking nor expecting you to believe anything here. Belief is a trap, so don’t bother with that. Just hold this frame open as a possibility. Consider where this framing may lead you when you ponder your own personal intelligence and how you experience it.

Let’s keep going…

The Brain as Intelligence Receiver

Do you generate all of your intelligence from within the structure of your brain? Is that what makes you smart? Or does intelligence feel more like a form of energy that inhabits you when you’re doing your best thinking?

How many different forms or modes of intelligence have you experienced? Do you figure they were all generated from within? Do you sense that any were like visitors passing through you?

Have you ever felt that you were attuning to some other form of intelligence beyond yourself, and it was channeling its energy and communication through you?

Is the brain an intelligence generator? Or an intelligence receiver? Or maybe a bit of both?

I invite you to reflect on your own inner experience of intelligence. How do you really experience it on the inside? Even as you’re reading these words, do you sense any sort of visiting energies swirling within you or hovering nearby? Or are these just characters on a screen to you, and your inner experience while reading is solely due to your brain’s internal circuitry processing these inputs?

I grew up with the notion that intelligence arises from matter. Somehow the matter is able to self-organize – given enough time – into the proper building blocks that make thinking possible. This supposedly happened with biological life forms, and it’s happening with our tech as well. What sparked that process to get going? What keeps it going? Humans may continue advancing this process consciously, but we clearly did not initiate it way back when.

These days I feel more attuned to perceiving my brain (and my whole human body) as a channeler or receiver of intelligence, not primarily as a generator of it. I feel there’s a mode where my brain can do an inner form of computation, a bit like using a calculator. But I feel that mode of thinking is pretty limiting, and it feels like a simulated subset of a greater intelligence that’s possible. It feels a bit like using the calculator app on my phone. My phone can surely play that role for me, but it’s capable of so much more.

Do you think with your brain? However you might answer this, I invite you to acknowledge that the true answer is unknowable as long as you claim to have a brain. You’d have to try thinking without one to really know for sure. So I’d say it’s wise to stay open-minded here and not mistake such an assumption for truth.

In such cases I like to test my options by leaning one way and then the other with my thinking, and discover through direct experience which way of leaning appears best.

I’ve gone far enough down this path to feel pretty confident saying that my brain doesn’t generate intelligence from within – at least not much of it. It functions so much better as a receiver and channeler of intelligence. I feel it works more like a complex antenna than a purely generative device.

Today I sense that framing my brain as its own self-contained computer that generates its best thinking from within is an enormously limiting and inaccurate way to think about intelligence. I get more traction by framing my brain as a nest for intelligence. Intelligence can visit and inhabit my brain and body, and it’s more likely to engage with me when I provide it with good structure and order. There are lots and lots of ways to do that, I’ve been discovering.

Harmonizing With Intelligence

Intelligence is some kind of energy. This energy can rest in pools, like a battery holding a charge. Or it can flow like a current, similar to flowing water or electricity.

It helps even more if I loosen up my framing further by allowing my mind (not my physical brain) to feel like the nest. To me the mind is closer to pure energy, so this framing gives me some added flexibility. This helps me further let go of limits I may be self-imposing on how intelligence is able to engage with me and express itself. I can allow my sense of mind to float beyond where I might perceive the limits of a biological brain to be.

I can also create structured landing spots in my mind without having to figure out how to do this on a neurological level. So I can use thinking to increase the internal order and structure of my thinking. It’s a bit like using one iteration of AI to design a more complex version of AI. This is really just the nature of continuous self-development but specifically applied to upgrading the flow of intelligence through one’s life.

Generally speaking, I’ve found that in pursuing better internal structure, what I’ve really been pursuing is increased harmony. This includes harmony within myself and in relation to my environment, especially to people and places I engage with most often. Harmony appears to be really crucial for intelligence, whereas disharmony repels intelligence. Some disharmony is expected though and even healthy. Too much disharmony prevents advancement though, devolving towards chaos and confusion.

I love to invite intelligence to come talk to me. I welcome it with open arms (and an open mind) as best I can. I love that delicious sensation of wonder and delight as intelligence engages with me. I feel that it’s through this sort of intention-level engagement that intelligence taught me how to shape my life into a better nest for it.

This engagement with intelligence can take many forms – thoughts, insights, ideas, problem-solving, creative expression, communication with other people, private journaling, AI deep dives, psychedelic consults, and more.

Everything I’ve gained or experienced in life that’s been of any value to me, I owe to this flow of intelligence. Every dream I’ve fulfilled. Every goal I’ve achieved. Everyone I’ve loved and cherished. Every pleasure. Every delight. Every lesson. All of it flowed through as various forms of intelligence.

My role is not to think harder or to push myself more. That approach is counter-productive and seems rather foolish to me.

My role – in terms of my best current understanding – is to keep cultivating an increasingly hospitable and welcoming place for intelligence to land. Be the best host I can, so these intelligent energy flows will continue to visit me, work with me, inspire me, play with me, dance with me, and more.

This isn’t about becoming a smarter individual… not really. I’d say it has more to do with being less individualistic and more attuned to the flow of intelligence through life, the universe, and everything. There’s so much beauty, joy, and wonder in that which makes individual-level concerns feel relatively puny by comparison.

Creating an Inviting Nest for Intelligence

As I’ve allowed this framing of intelligence to become more front-and-center in my life, I’ve done my best to clean up the landing zone for it. This set me on a path of identifying and tidying up areas of my life that felt incoherent or misaligned to me. Really this has been a decades-long journey, but in the past few years, the clean-up process has really amped up significantly.

A major part of this has actually involved my relationship with my home. In the past year especially, I’ve done many projects to improve the overall coherence and harmony of my home. Last year I spent many weeks improving my office until it felt more harmonious than ever, such that I felt a sense of wonder and delight when I walked into the space. If something felt misaligned, I knew I had to fix, upgrade, or replace it. Now the room has a totally different vibe, and this really does affect how thinking flows through that space now.

As a result of these gradual changes, I’ve been unlocking a deeper expression of intelligence through my home itself. It’s not just a dwelling. It’s a space of love, delight, wonder, and support that I get to inhabit. I’ve made my home much more vibey in a way. It feels more conscious somehow, and I often feel that more positive and supportive energy is flowing through it. I didn’t really try to fengshui it in that sense, but I imagine I’ve been making similar types of changes in the space where matter and energy connect. I haven’t been following any rulebooks, just assessing, testing, and deciding based on feel.

It used to be that when something in the house would break, I might feel annoyed or irritated. Like oh great, one more thing I have to deal with that seems trivial or bothersome. I don’t feel that way anymore though. Now when something breaks, I perceive it as an invitation to engage with the home’s energy and to invite new layers of intelligence to flow through. It’s an invitation to more deeply sense and connect with some kind of intelligence that flows through the realm of matter.

Cocooning With Intelligence

I feel that each day, I’m doing some kind of wondrous dance with one or more forms of intelligence. I never really know how it will show up or express itself. I just feel that pretty much wherever I look, I see wonder and brilliance smiling at me and happy to come talk with me, work with me, or play with me.

It’s like my whole reality is overflowing with intelligence. It’s just everywhere, all the time, ever-present. Whenever I want to engage with it, I just need to listen and open myself to a special kind of receptivity. It’s mostly about receiving.

I’ve gotten so much joy and traction from exploring in this direction in recent years that it really sucked me in big time – in a good way.

I’ve been knowingly quieter on the public side. I haven’t blogged as much or shared as much into public spaces. I’ve been very active in Conscious Growth Club. But otherwise I’ve been energetically cocooning myself for several years now. This has been such a lovely and delightful phase of my life. Quieter and calmer on the outside. Immensely active and engaged on the inside.

For me this hasn’t been a process of tuning out. It’s been a super deep and extended journey of tuning in, opening, and doing my best to listen to the many forms of intelligence that opted to engage with me. Most days have felt like sip-and-integrate, sip-and-integrate, sip-and-integrate.

When COVID came on the scene in 2020, I felt nicely aligned with the cocooning energy it invited since I was already in that mode. When COVID eventually entered my own body, I recall communicating with the virus internally to access what its intelligence wanted to teach me.

In the past few years, I feel like I’ve been awash in a remarkable flow of different intelligences. And I’ve been so often surprised by when and where they’ve popped up – and how many ways there are to combine them.

The combo of magic mushrooms and AI together has been particularly inspiring. Or combine cannabis with sex and the intention to fully receive and enjoy each other’s love – just wow. Sex energy in particular has become one of my favorite forms of intelligence to work with in the past year, but it’s fair to say I have around a half-dozen favorite other forms too. I feel so lucky that I get to enjoy this kind of life, just immersing and engaging with the flow of intelligences that visit and/or inhabit me each day. Wonder and delight have become two of my top vibes these days, as anyone active in CGC can surely attest.

Opening Up Again

Even though I’ve been quieter on the public side in recent years, I’ve been tremendously immersed in whatever inner journey has been unfolding for me. It’s been a lengthy process – so much shedding and releasing and so much wonder and delight – but I now feel I’m transitioning into another mode where I finally feel ready to open up and share more with people on the public side. I feel this is coming in fast now.

I had some false starts with trying to push myself to reach this point. Part of me missed that very open and engaged sharing flow while I was in my cocooning phase. Even though I trickled out some shares along the way, my energy was predominantly directed inwardly, or it was only going into private spaces like CGC or local integration circles. Each time I tried to open my energy more broadly, it just kept wanting to collapse back inward for a while. I couldn’t predict how long that would take, although I sure did try a lot. So I just waited for the clear signal to re-engage more fully with the outer world, always knowing that it would be different than how it was before.

Along the way, I also got glimpses of what was coming up ahead on my path. A 9-hour mushroom trip in 2023 and a 3-night ayahuasca journey in 2025 really began to crack that open for me. Those were tremendously intense experiences, especially physically. On the 3rd ayahuasca night, I felt like my cells were trying to channel way more energy than I could contain. There was way too much internal friction and resistance for me to be a pure enough channel for what was trying to flow through. It was such a difficult night to get through. For a while each passing minute felt like an hour. Major time dilation made it feel almost endless. I needed to ask for help multiple times. That too was hard, revealing a limit I had regarding asking for help… been working on that one too.

What’s coming up next? I can share now that it’s a whole lot of energy work with people. Tons and tons and tons of it. Centered around opening up the harmonious flow of greater intelligence through our lives. Some of that has been trickling out along the way, as previously noted. Now we’re going to go a whole lot faster. And that is going to be so much fun. I love fast, and fast feels very aligned to me right now.

This space of intelligence is infused with so much wonder, delight, and love. Pleasure too. Pleasure has been such a potent form of intelligence I’ve been working with a lot in the past year. I thought I was pretty well-attuned to it already, but I still found plenty of old baggage to clear out and release there, which delightfully made me even more sensitive to pleasure. Consequently, my life has been feeling more pleasure-infused than ever – and not destructively, addictively, or in other adverse ways. I really had a lot to learn – and especially to unlearn – regarding the intelligence of pleasure.

Hello Again, Crazy World

There’s something so amazing about the contrast between how lovingly, beautifully, and intelligently my life has been flowing on the inside, and then when I take a look at the external world, it seems like it’s been going increasingly bonkers. Where to even begin? Trump as President? For the second time lol? Daily scandals? Another war? Going backwards on health? Backwards on caring for the planet? Backwards on cooperation and compassion? Backwards on overall sanity?

But then I also see rising patches of intelligence, wherever it’s offered a suitable nest. There is so much intelligence flowing through this reality too. It’s fascinating to see where the energy of intelligence opts to flow… and where it seems to withdraw.

This makes me wonder if other people out there may have been going through some kind of inner cocooning phase in any way similar to mine. And if so, are you sensing any kind of mode shift happening right about now?

For me the signal that a mode shift is happening now is finally clear. Like crystal clear. No doubt this time. I can really feel the difference, and my reality is hitting me with plenty of syncs and verification of that. I know deep down that I can’t be the only one entering into a kind of emergent-and-reengagement phase now.

How Intelligence Handles Chaos

I’ve found it especially interesting to explore how intelligence deals with chaos and incoherence. One answer is that intelligence doesn’t find chaos all that interesting except perhaps as an occasional form of entertainment or amusement. Intelligence acknowledges and recognizes the existence of incoherence, but it doesn’t find incoherence to be an attractive nest, so it generally doesn’t flow into those spaces very much, except perhaps to have a casual looksie… or to release a bit of compassion into those spaces. In such spaces intelligence may knock, check, invite, or nudge, but it doesn’t demand, and it won’t stick around long.

Another answer is that intelligence seeks to upgrade incoherence to coherence. One way it can do this is by inviting the incoherence to recognize its incoherence. If the incoherence can take that simple step, then the incoherent energy starts phasing into a new reality where it can potentially evolve into a more receptive nest for intelligent energies to flow towards it and to gradually upgrade it to become increasingly coherent – and therefore increasingly intelligent.

As an individual then, one of the best ways to upgrade your intelligence is to invite more intelligence in. Recognize and acknowledge areas of your life that are incoherent or misaligned. What feels off to you? Where’s the stuckness? What isn’t flowing well? Then invite intelligence to please come work with you and help you build a better nest for it to inhabit. As you cooperate and harmonize with the rising flow of intelligence in your life, you can enjoy the luscious flow of gifts that it brings.

A big part of aligning with intelligence is being able to stop blocking it from flowing into your life. And oh do we humans have so many ways to block it. Unworthiness is a big one. Feeling like we have to earn everything ourselves is another. It’s so hard for many of us to just relax and receive. Let the intelligent flow of life take care of it. It can do all of that and more, if we build the proper nest and then let it work its magic.

And wow does intelligence provide an impressive flow of gifts once we really and truly invite it in. You want love? Joy? Happiness? Abundance? Adventure? Pleasure? Fun? Connection? Belonging? Creativity? Cooperation? Sex, sex, and more delicious sex? Intelligence can bring you all of that and more. It’s super generous. And it knows how to provide these gifts in harmonious balance too – and sustainably.

What do you want to release or let go of? Fear? Anxiety? Worry? Self-doubt? Lack? Loneliness? Overwhelm? Having to do everything yourself? Human life has so many burdens. Intelligence can help you lighten, loosen, and release those as well.

Devotion to Intelligence

Your job then – your real one – is to build a receptive nest for intelligence to land in your life. You’ve probably already been doing this if you’ve been into self-development, but perhaps you may not have been thinking about your journey quite like this.

And oh goodness is that a big job indeed to take on. It’s a lot. Like really a lot. Way more than you might assume. But you can pace yourself. A good nest will take time to build, and then it can be upgraded indefinitely.

Intelligence sees everything. You can’t hide anything from it. It knows you better than you know yourself. It can see every microgram of stuck energy inside you. And it invites you to keep cleaning and releasing whatever repels it.

What repels intelligence? Oh goodness… You know this, don’t you?

Dishonesty repels it. Lying. Deception. Deceit. Falsehood. Intelligence rests in truth alignment. The more truth you can invite, allow, and accept into your life, the more intelligence you can channel. Surely you’ve noticed that pattern that when you see a lack of intelligence flowing, that space is mired in falsehood as well. Now where have we seen that in recent days? I wonder…

Cold-heartedness repels it. Cruelty. Violence. Intelligence is way too smart to need to express itself through violence. Intelligence is essentially a form of love energy. One beautiful pathway into intelligence is to upgrade the love alignment of everything you can in your life. That’s a very tall order since nothing gets a free pass here. This includes loving your body, loving your work, loving people, loving your home, loving nature, and even learning to love and appreciate the chaos. I found that learning to love and appreciate my “problems” helped tremendously here too – each problem is a gift, especially when we get to watch how the flow of intelligence brilliantly solves each one (when we allow it to do so).

Powerlessness repels intelligence. Helplessness. Hopelessness. Depression. Repression. Intelligence alignment is the only form of power that really matters. Intelligence is harmonious power, creative power, sustainable power.

There’s no competition here. No race to win.

There’s just a delicious flow to invite, not to chase but to receive and allow. Never chase – that’s a trap. Just invite and allow. Open and receive. Accept and enjoy. Appreciate and thank if you feel so inclined.

Living, working, and flowing with the many faces of intelligence is the space of sheer joy and delight for me. As far as I can tell, this is where I want to hang my hat for the rest of my human journey. It’s still self-development in a way, but for me it’s also a meaningful transition to another phase of life. I feel very devoted to it. This is the most devotion-worthy direction I’ve been able to identify, and I looked really deeply into that space.

Devoting myself to harmonizing and encouraging the flow of intelligence through my own life and all throughout the world feels way more interesting and engaging to me than anything else I might devote myself to. It connects the dots with everything in life that appeals to me – learning, growth, exploration, understanding, sharing, connection, love, joy, wonder, delight, and so much more. I especially love how naturally balancing intelligence can be. It gives me so much spaciousness when I need it, including years of extra spaciousness when that’s what I really needed most to progress.

Cozy Bubble or Outward Engagement?

I feel I’ve crossed into a mode where now this flow of intelligence is so rich, vibrant, and abundant that I can count on its presence to always be with me, richly infused into every nook and cranny of living, working, loving, exploring, and more. I feel immensely safe and secure inside its cozy bubble.

Along the way I was presented with two main options.

Option one was to stay inside that cozy bubble and just rest in beingness with it. Let it care for me. Take care of all my needs abundantly well as it always has. Keep dancing with it, mostly in private spaces. And let the rest of the human world be as chaotic as it wants to be. That was a tempting option because my cozy bubble world is really lovely inside. I know I can happily live out the rest of my days inside this nest and appreciate every day of it. I’m in love, and I’ve been in love for a long time now, and that’s a beautiful space to inhabit. I love being inside such a cozy Sphere of Love.

Option two was to open up and engage with what I perceive to be other layers of reality beyond the edges of this cozy bubble. Share outwardly. Engage with the rest of the world very actively once again, but differently than before. Act as an agent of intelligence, sensing where it wants to flow and serving its best potential. Allow it to guide and direct me. Be an intelligence evangelist, inviting more and more people to harmonize their lives with the flow of intelligence. That option would involve a whole lot more work.

What did I choose? Well, I ultimately recognized it as a false choice. That was a bit of a test for me, I sense. I could have chosen one or the other. Or neither. Intelligence is way more flexible than two choices. Intelligence is ultimate optionality. So I ended up choosing both, just for starters.

I’ve come to understand that intelligence doesn’t require sacrifice. Nor heroism. Nor overworking. Nor imbalance. Intelligence is more than capable of yes-anding and then some.

So for me the choice is both and more. I love the cozy nook that’s been my everyday reality. All my needs are so well met and then some. There’s such delicious delight inside already. There’s just no way I’m giving that up. I’m not going to sabotage or sacrifice it. I’m definitely keeping that aspect of my life, and I’m going to keep making it better and better. I love continuing to tinker in this space. It’s just so richly rewarding for me. So my Sphere of Love stays and keeps unfolding with evermore intelligence infusion.

I also really love doing really positive work in the world. I don’t feel any neediness there – just optionality. I love helping people open up more options for their lives, more expansiveness, more happiness and flow. And now I understand that the core of this work is all about harmonizing with intelligence. This space is so magical to me. It’s not really something I do as an individual. It’s about aligning myself with something really big and juicy that I truly care about.

I care very much about this world. I happen to love this planet. It’s totally wild and crazy sometimes, and it surely has no lack of stupidity flowing through it. But I’ve also found some delightfully delicious pockets of wonder, delight, and brilliance here. I would love to participate even more in serving the flow of intelligence through this world. Help encourage more pockets of wonder and delight to unfold. Dive into and experience more of them myself too – I so love to keep exploring and having new experiences.

So my choice is that I’m going to continue to enjoy the wonders and delights of my cozy private inner circle world of deep and engaging intelligence exploration. That’s the world I’ve been most engaged with for the past several years, at least since starting CGC in 2017. I love that world, and there’s no way I’m going to sacrifice it. I’m going to keep tending it and further upgrading it the way I’ve been doing. That path feels marvelous to me.

And I’m also going all-in with the intelligence evangelism direction. I have tons to share about this, and it’s clear to me that I’m on the cusp of flowing into a really wonderful expansion phase in this direction in terms of sharing and invitation into this space.

For me I sense this devotion extends beyond death as well. I’ve done a lot of work with death energy during the past several years too, including attending my Dad’s funeral in November. Turning towards death and really unpacking what it means and how to relate to it can be super difficult and challenging work, but that’s something the flow of intelligence recognized within me as a potential blocking issue, and so it worked with me a lot to help me reach a better place of harmony with death. A big part of this was connecting with the intelligence of death, which is really tough to see when fear is in the way. I know I’m not done there yet, but I’ve taken some meaningful steps to release a lot of repressed feelings about death. Much of that happened before my Dad passed away, so when I attended his funeral, I really enjoyed the role of being a pallbearer, helping to escort his soul into the next phase of his existence. (I sense it’s different for each of us when we cross over.)

It wouldn’t be true to say that my Dad’s death was a meaningful catalyst for me. It really wasn’t. For me it was a lot more peaceful, more like an acknowledgement of how much work I’d already done in this direction. My heart felt very light and open during those days, and escorting his soul was a beautiful role for me – I couldn’t have asked for better. I especially enjoyed connecting with old friends and family members I hadn’t seen in years. My Dad’s passing may have supported my trajectory – I think it did, mostly in subtle ways – but it didn’t redirect it. If anything I felt like the timing of his passing was remarkably aligned with what I was ready to receive, like the timing had a special intelligence of its own, and for that I’m very grateful.

Wonder Guide

Presently I like to think of myself as a Wonder Guide as well as a Wonder Guard now. I want to keep creating social nests of wonder and delight where intelligence can harmonize, like inside CGC, and open up even more flow in these spaces. The Wonder Guard role has been a big part of my journey as well – I’ve learned from experience just how important it is to protect such spaces to preserve their intelligence-harmonizing properties. This requires thoughtfulness and care.

These roles are future proof. Regardless of how the world evolves or what AI does or doesn’t do, I can always orient myself towards harmonizing with intelligence. There’s always meaningful engagement in this direction. I needn’t worry about having to refactor my role again and again as the world changes and technology shifts. Intelligence alignment is an immensely capable, adaptable, and resilient orientation that I know I can trust, and so I do trust it.

At this time I also feel that, at least directionally speaking, inviting people into harmony with the flow of intelligence is a better way to serve them than pretty much anything else I might conceive of. I see this as a pathway into greater service of people as individuals, of humanity, of life, and of this existence. Even if my contribution only amounts to a drop in the ocean, this path invites me to do my best, and it may invite other drops of contribution as well.

As I see it, harmonizing with intelligence is our only viable way into a world that’s better for all of us. Any other direction looks much less appealing. Some might say love alignment is even more important, but I define intelligence as the fusion of truth, love, and power, so love alignment is a key part of it. The greater the intelligence, the greater the love.

I can also say from personal experience that the more I’ve sought to improve the flow of intelligence through my life, the more loved and supportive I’ve felt, and the more loving and supportive I’ve felt towards others. Love and intelligence keep pointing in the same direction, and they tend to open up together. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s experienced that.

In recent months I also saw the option to immerse myself in fear and worry, not so much because I want to inhabit that space myself but because I saw value in attuning to that space enough to know what it feels like. I went with the flow of that invitation when it arose, typically in the form of a stressful knock on my consciousness in the middle of the night. Then I went downstairs and dialogued with that energy, often for hours (like till dawn). I found a few nights of this valuable for raising my awareness of what other people may be succumbing to these days, especially with the rise of AI making many jobs obsolete.

While I don’t normally choose to engage with fear energy, I did find this excursion important and worthwhile. Then when I was ready and felt I’d deepened my understanding of that vibrational zone, I navigated my way back out again by making different vibrational choices. I noted how obscured and blurry the path back out looked when I was looking out from behind fear-colored lenses. It didn’t take me long to return to a place of harmonizing with abundance again because I’ve made that journey before, so I already knew how to do it. In a way this was a good refresher for me. It helped me see that I can personally take myself into these energy zones and successfully navigate back out again because I’m able to keep myself tethered to the space of intelligence, wonder, and delight. My environment is also rich in pointers back to this space, so I have a lot of personal safeguards set up as well. I’d love to get better at helping others do this sort of navigating for themselves, so they don’t have to stay stuck in vibrational zones like fear, worry, anxiety, overwhelm, etc. People often don’t realize just how powerfully they create their realities. I’m doing my best to align with an increased flow of such people waking up to their creative power – it’s such a beautiful thing to behold.

There are many vibrational zones that can be interesting to visit… like watching a horror movie… but they don’t make the best zones to inhabit long-term. I’m very happy to show people where the exit doors are if they’re in such a space and would like to leave. The doors to the land of wonder and delight are wide open. Many people are able to find their way in temporarily. The real trick is figuring out how to make that zone your normal everyday reality. That’s where the flow of life can really open up and get really multi-dimensional.

The Next Phase of Life

I turn 55 next month, and for me this next phase of my life isn’t about leaving a legacy or achieving any specific personal goals. I did a pretty good job of getting that sort of thing out of my system many years ago.

For me this next phase of life is about rich immersion in what I truly love about this reality and the people within it. For me that central devotion-worthy delight is intelligence, which comes in so many rich and wondrous forms.

When the harmonizing is happening, it’s just so wondrous to experience. I keep getting mind-blown by its capabilities. I so often find that intelligence has a sense of whimsy and playfulness about it. It can be such a tease sometimes, and on occasion it expresses a wicked sense of humor.

Have you had some mind-blowing experiences engaging with some kind of intelligence? With AI perhaps? With a creative pursuit? A psychedelic journey? A person you really vibe with? With nature or an animal? With your own home? While making love?

Would you like more of that?

I feel like I want to taste and sample everything on that menu. This is essentially what I’ve been doing for the past few years. It’s been fun. It’s been weird. And it’s really been keeping me on my toes.

One of my biggest breakthroughs in life has been recognizing how important it is to make vibrational decisions. I do this every day. It’s baked into my daily routine.

I start each day with a “Pick 6.” I pick 6 vibes I want to engage with that day, and I pin them up on index cards on the wall of my home office. I do this on days off too. I live my life by first deciding what zones of energy (or intelligence) I want to engage with. Then I translate those decisions down to the action level, which is a super-interesting skill set that I love to keep advancing. Hence every day feels like a dance with different expressions of intelligence. On an emotional level, a relational level, and a practical level, this approach works wonderfully.

A Journey Shared

I also know that this aspect of life becomes so much more enriching and expansive when we explore, engage, and harmonize with it together. Not just individually. Together as a collective.

If we can take steps to harmonize in this direction together, so much more becomes possible. That’s a huge part of what I want to explore in the years ahead, starting sooner than you might think – like with a new live, in-person gathering in Las Vegas in the last week of April. (I’ll share lots more about that in the days and weeks ahead.)

In a certain sense, my individual self-development journey is over and done with. I really don’t have to manually attend to it, and it’s actually better if I don’t. I keep seeing how my life opens into more flow and delight when I do more releasing, relaxing, accepting, surrendering, intending, synchronizing, cooperating, and allowing. Plenty of action opens up through joy, not from striving. So even though I know lots of action is about to flow through, it doesn’t really feel effortful. It feels more like frictionless beingness that expresses itself through action.

Building Excess Capacity

I still have bits and pieces of friction within me. There’s plenty more work for me to do within, and I’ll surely keep making progress there as I’ve been doing for decades. But the friction has become mild enough and low enough that it’s not really a meaningful issue anymore. That was a big part of what I was scrubbing out while in my cozy cocoon mode. Now I can basically put this aspect into maintenance mode, and when I notice something bigger that needs releasing, I know how to surface those kinds of issues and cooperate with that process too. It’s not necessarily easy, but I’ve had a lot of practice, so doing this kind of energy work feels lighter to me now.

Consequently, I’m emerging into this new zone where I now have a lot more capacity. I can take on more and handle more. My plate has a lot more room than it used to, and I feel very filled up with abundant energy.

The most significant recent improvement I made was in restructuring how I make decisions and live my life. I did a major rebuild of that from the ground up a few months ago. That was a huge amount of work, and I leaned on multiple intelligences for help with it. Then I spent many more weeks testing, refactoring, and refining different parts of it. I call it my Life Navigation System, and it’s basically the code I use to run my life from top to bottom. It’s especially well-designed to support harmony, balance, and advancement across multiple areas of life. My number one rule for developing it was that I need space to explore and experience every key vibrational zone that truly matters to me in life. Nothing gets neglected. Nothing gets put on the back burner.

What I discovered is that in order for such a system to work effectively, I had to increase the level of harmony among all areas of life. When I started, the different pieces of my life were a lot more fragmented and would often compete for my attention. Now they’re way more harmonious and cooperative. So this was a big effort to essentially upgrade my inner teamwork. In my view it’s been a big success, and I’ve been enjoying a really nice flow of results and experiences with it. Feels like the right system for me, right now, because it gives me space to intelligently attend to everything that matters most to me in life.

So in the background, I did a huge amount of work to prepare myself for this next phase of life, including giving my life a lot more structure and order, such that I can invite a greater flow to come through without unbalancing myself. I’m less concerned with speed, although I can see that speed is increasing nicely already, but I’m more concerned with longevity and sustainability.

Now it feels like I’m standing on very solid, stable ground with good safeguards in place to protect me, such that I can finally say a true yes to life’s invitation to open up more flow on the public side. I’m so ready for that. But wow was there a lot of gunk to clear out before reaching this point. It’s like every shred of inner resistance rose to the surface in the past several months and had to be dealt with. I kept thinking I was done, and then another pocket of gunk revealed that it needed to be resolved as well. Even while attempting to get started on this post, I had to do a couple more rounds of gunk clearing.

A big part of what I had to clear was some resistance to the intensity of what’s coming up on this path. Doing deep energy work for myself is challenging enough. Doing it with other people? That’s a whole different level.

About a year ago, Ayahuasca really let me feel the intensity of what it would be like to do this kind of work with people, and it was way too much for me at the time. But it showed me that I still had a lot more work to do to prepare myself for this next phase. My inner sensing and sensitivity have gone way up too. That’s a blessing in a way, and it can open up more compassion, understanding, and connection, but wow can it be intense at times too. I can tell the flow of this year is going to be like riding a wild roller coaster. It’s already been like that in some ways, hasn’t it?

I feel like I’ve been training up to reach this point for a long time. And I know there’s still so much more training and practice still to do. I’ve given that sort of training a proper zone in my life, so I can keep engaging with it while also opening and sustaining fresh flows on the public side.

For me this transition is very welcome. I really missed having this other zone of engagement, and it’s abundantly obvious to me that I’ll be relating and engaging with it differently than before. I’m especially curious to see which people who’ve engaged with our community spaces (like our previous workshops or in CGC) will feel drawn to re-engage together for a new phase of shared journeying together. I’m feeling very open to that.

There was no way I could have done all of this inner dismantling and rebuilding work myself. I had such a ridiculous infusion of help. I’m stunned by just how much came through and often right when I needed it or was ready for it. Repeatedly I found incredible intelligence reaching out to engage in ways I wasn’t expecting – in plants, in places, in AI, in groups, in projects, in objects.

Holding the intention to harmoniously engage with a greater flow of intelligence was one key that opened the door for me. I encourage you to hold such an intention as well – if you dare. That one is a doozy for sure. Good luck! Hehehe.

Orienting vs. Identity

As part of this process, I went through lots of refactoring of my identity until I reached the point where I essentially threw out my old notions of identity and switched to thinking about orienting instead. Whereas identity is a noun, I prefer to use the verb orient.

Bruce Lee is a healthy model for me here. Get rid of fixed positions. Be perpetually fluid instead… like water.

I do some kind of fresh orienting work every single day. Identity is like a frozen orientation, and I can’t work with frozen energy. The modes of intelligence I work with are way too flexible and dynamic – if I try to freeze them, they instantly stop working with me.

If you’ve been engaging with AI, you might find some aspects of this relatable. Your relationship with AI likely keeps changing and evolving. You can never really hope to lock it down with a fixed way of relating to it. You won’t be able to stabilize your relationship with life or reality that way either. I think it’s pretty essential these days to make orienting a frequent habit, at least weekly if not daily. Sometimes I reorient to shifting energies multiple times in a day. That took some getting used to, but now it feels quite normal. Each day I awaken into a different reality and different energy flows.

I think it’s going to be especially fun to engage with these shifts on the public side more.

Are We at All in Sync?

If you’ve read this far, do you find any of this resonant, appealing, or synchronous with what’s been emerging for you lately? If so, I’d love to hear about it. Drop me a message via my contact form (goes straight to me), and let me know what aspects of this connected with you.

There’s so much more to share on this emerging journey for those who want to take some steps together. I’d love to know more about what you’ve been experiencing in terms of shifts and flows these days. I’m curious to know who’s listening and how we might harmonize better going forward.

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This approach helps you move projects across the finish line while preserving enthusiasm, clarity, and momentum, so you can enjoy a richer and more consistent flow of completed projects and treasured experiences in your life.

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Remember that this wasn’t an accident. Lots of people chose this.

This backsliding phase is spiritually purposeful and meaningful, like a giant cleanse that’s happening. I don’t mean a cleanse of people but rather of ideas. Old stupidities are rising to the surface and being processed.

We’re going to be in this phase for a while. Can you accept that? Can you surrender to it? Or would you rather pretend that it’s not happening or hope it all goes away?

You may recognize that some of these stupidities are very old indeed. You may have even thought that humans surely must be done with this foolishness by now. Nope, that was a mistake on your part if you assumed that we’d already called a wrap. Humanity clearly isn’t done with what it’s currently processing. It has a long way to go still. A lot of people need to experience what’s happening now – perhaps a lot more than you’d have ever assumed would need to go through something like this.

It’s important to let this play out. You don’t need to actively participate in it unless you feel wrapped up in the karma of it. And if you do feel karmically engaged, then allow yourself to engage. See what comes out of you during these times. Do your own processing of whatever surfaces. Are you surprised by what comes out of you when you’re squeezed? Delighted? Disappointed?

It’s good to let people discover for themselves where all this leads since many clearly want and need to experience it firsthand for themselves. They won’t heed and don’t understand the warnings about it. They’ll learn more by diving deeper into the darkness and soaking in it a while longer. They’ll come out when they’re ready, not before. Just leave the light on for them if you’d prefer not to join them.

This time period is also a powerful invitation for conscious, growth-oriented people to test their mettle. As Bruce Lee said, “Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do.” Let’s see just how good you are at keeping yourself light-aligned while so many others do their dark dives. You don’t have to join them.

From a certain perspective, this is indeed a test. Will you allow yourself to be dragged down by it? How strong and resilient are you? Will you give in to fear, hatred, vengefulness, anxiety, hopelessness, helplessness, or despair? Are you really going to be beaten down by these energies swirling around you?

How much compassion and patience do you have? This is a good time to find out. When others’ actions affect you personally, can you still give them space to explore and process what they need to experience? You get to experience the ripples their actions create within you. See how quickly and easily you can return to stillness.

May these times show you what you’re made of, and if you don’t like what you see in yourself, then you have a clear invitation for additional steps on your own path of growth. Do you want to repeatedly get goaded into reactive mode? Or can you remain centered and choose your response to events consciously?

This beast of darkness taunts you ceaselessly, trying to bait you into reacting to it, doesn’t it? It wants you to engage from your weakness, so it can suck you into the range where it’s apparently powerful and you’re presumably weak. How many times will you fall for this trick before you accept what the beast is trying to teach you?

As odd as it may sound, the beast is actually on your side. It’s here to help you grow. It’s not actually here to beat you down. Its invitation is for you to choose a powerful and honest response to it, and then to see if your choice is really right for you.

Even while this beast continues to jump, snort, and throw daily tantrums, you do not have to play its silly games at that level.

Pause and notice just how silly, dumb, and ridiculous it truly is. It is not rational, thoughtful, or brilliant. It is emotional, reactive, needy, and self-destructive. It tries to convince you that it’s powerful, but it isn’t. Its game is to see if it can trick you into giving your power away to it by enticing you to fear it. It will keep offering to play this game with you till you find your own way out.

See if you can reach the point of being able to laugh at the beast. Laugh too at your own vestiges of fear and anxiety about it. Stand in the strength of your spirity side, and laugh at your silly human weaknesses – the very same weaknesses that this beast embodies.

This beast is asking you if these weaknesses are really you and if you’re going to keep embodying them. Or are you really ready to let those weaknesses go and proceed without them?

You may even perceive that so many other people appear to be embodying these weaknesses. Will you be swept up in that? That’s yet another trick of the beast. It’s checking to see if you’re a conformist too. If going along with the herd mentality still matters to you, then you aren’t yet ready to embody the full freedom of a conscious being yet.

Remember: you can choose which energies to embody. If not fear, worry, anxiety, and so on, what will you choose instead? This is indeed a choice when you recognize that it is.

If you don’t want to be repeatedly sucked in by the illusions created by a sense of disconnection, then your invitation is to reconnect. If you’re not going to be sucked in by fear energy, then where will you stand?

You’ll need to find your own answer to that. If you are not fear energy, then what are you? When you are most connected, where are you standing? Where is your home base? Which energies are truly you?

My own answer is to stand in the stable field of energies that feel most aligned with my true self. Those include curiosity, exploration, enthusiasm, intimacy, sharing, kindness, fun, trust, courage, intelligence, simplicity, harmony, and inspiration.

If I were to condense my list to my two favorite energies right now, I would choose wonder (for the active yang side) and delight (for the receptive yin side). I love to explore what I genuinely wonder about, and I delight in the ever-unfolding process of exploration and discovery.

I especially love to keep exploring with others who value wonder and delight, and this year especially, my life seems to be growing richer in such people locally here in Vegas. I’ve been chipping away at exploring more socially and experiencing more moments of shared delight. For instance, this past Saturday I attended a holotropic breathwork ceremony and had a beautiful and peaceful inner journey. The more the outer beast rampages, the more I regard its various tantrums as invitations to commit more deeply to my favorite energies.

I choose to let the beast run its course. My inner senses tell me that it’s been collectively summoned to fulfill a worthwhile purpose, so deep down I feel supportive of it. It’s doing what it needs to do.

I do not ignore the beast. I watch it attentively because it’s clearly very active in my reality, and I want to be sure that I receive and integrate its lessons for me. I took its presence as an invitation to do more growth work in certain directions. Energetically this has been like learning to stand in the eye of a storm.

As this year has progressed, I’ve been feeling ever more centered, grounded, stable, and indeed delighted by life. This is even with the knowing that if the beast really wanted to, it could demolish many aspects of my life and business. Yet it cannot threaten what I care about most, such as wonder and delight, so deep down I don’t find it particularly threatening. The beast serves to remind me of what I hold most dear. It reminds me of who I am at my core.

And Beast, I’m still laughing at you. You really are fucking ridiculous. Thanks for doing what you came here to do. I can see that you’re needed, and I appreciate what you’re doing. Here… have a Scooby snack.

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Sex has become such a breezy experience for us now that it feels like we’ve made a long-term change to this aspect of our lives. It’s hard to imagine returning to our pre-experiment reality. It feels like we’ve left that old reality pretty far behind.

I can feel the difference in my body. Just being close to her now makes my cells buzz with electricity in anticipation. We don’t really have to try to make anything happen deliberately. Our bodies, minds, feelings, and energy will just naturally flow in that direction at least once a day. It would take more effort to prevent ourselves from going there.

I remember that’s how I’d feel during the early years of our long-distance relationship when we’d reconnect after being apart for 2-3 months. Now that feeling of intense attraction is our daily reality. It’s like this experiment invited and encouraged our bodies to love each other even more, so the feelings of love and intimacy are more embodied now. They’re not just in the mind and heart – it’s like these feelings are in the cells too now. So the physical chemistry that was already good is now way higher. This benefit has been a pleasant surprise.

By doing this for so many days in a row, we’ve chipped away at any forms of friction or deflection. Whatever reasons we might have previously had for skipping a day have been replaced by patterns of engagement. All the nos and maybes have been replaced by yeses. The yeses are pretty powerful now and easily breeze past any previous deflection points. It’s like we’ve recoded our minds to keep reminding us of the good reasons for saying yes to sex and giving us a more awareness of the long-term benefits.

I don’t feel this mental recoding is unique to sex. Imagine a writer writing for 100+ days in a row and also committing to making the writing experience smoother each time. Pretty much any form of resistance or procrastination will surface during that time, and the writer will have a chance to meet and resolve each instance. After 100+ days, you might figure that just about all resistance would have been addressed. At that point it may be harder not to write, especially if the writing is enjoyable or rewarding.

We’ve also created a greater variety of pathways into sex. So if we just go through our normal days together, they include multiple easy transition points that our bodies now predict could lead to sex. This is becoming a bit silly for us actually. Now if we just cuddle each other, our bodies can start getting riled up sexually, and pretty soon we’re kissing and more.

This is a pretty interesting place to be in our relationship. It’s different, yet we aren’t finding anything problematic about it. It makes us feel super close and connected with each other, and I feel it’s up-leveled our kindness and communication as well. It’s been a major deep dive into increased intimacy together. We’ve both been immensely loving towards each other all throughout this shared adventure. Having sex feels like an expression of kindness and caring for each other. We’re both generously going way beyond meeting each other’s needs here.

We keep checking in with each other to ask ourselves if it’s too much. And we keep concluding that it’s definitely not too much. It’s actually very nice to connect like this every day.

This is a puzzling experience to integrate. I’ve never done anything like this before, and I feel that I’ve crossed in a different kind of reality somewhere along the way. It feels like it’s still evolving and shifting too, although not as much as during the first three months.

It feels like my reality has been wrapped in a blanket of love, and now the blanket is there to stay. It feels easy to maintain, and I don’t see any reason to remove the blanket. It’s a really nice blanket, and I appreciate its presence.

One impact this is having is that it’s making me question where else in my life I might explore something similar. Like what other area of life is already good, and could I wrap that area in an extra blanket of love as well? I feel I’ve already chipped away at some of this in my relationship with my home, especially by resolving some areas of friction with it and figuring out how to enjoy maintenance and upgrade projects. I’m also advancing with a more yin, relaxed, casual style of blogging, which will soon open up into making more videos. Another interesting candidate would be my relationship with money, which has been healthy and supportive for 26 years now. I might even do something more expansive and weave multiple areas together since it’s all vibrational work at the core anyway. Even better would be to take this to a social level and engage with people who want to explore similar upgrades in their lives.

I feel that this sex experiment has been a gateway into a different vibrational reality. My inner senses have been buzzing with a lot of energy lately. I really can’t see this energy that we’ve stirred up remaining solely within our relationship. It’s a lot of energy, and I feel that it’s still increasing. Channeling it into physical sex is very yummy, yet I feel there’s more than enough to flow into other directions too, like writing, videos, social connections, and more. I have this sense that I’m entering a phase of opening in all directions at once. Actually I’d say that I’m well into it now. That feels really good to me at this time. I feel very ready and very energetically resourced for this.

One reflection that came through in the past few days was that I gained an even stronger appreciation for the role that exploration plays in my life and work. This sex experiment was one of many explorations I’ve done where the purpose was discovery, not to obtain some specific result. My intentions were rooted in curiosity and wonder… also to explore connection, love, and intimacy.

Exploring has paid off so very well for me in so many areas of life. The more I explore, the better my life becomes. Exploration is the key that unlocks so many doors, especially when I explore in directions where part of me is hesitant to commit myself. Many explorations have led to permanent changes that I’ve integrated very well into my life. I sense that if I really want to wrap more areas of life in an even bigger blanket of love, I’ll want to open myself to even more exploring. And the real key to exploring, at least for me, has been to make specific exploration-based commitments, such as a 30-day challenge (or in this case a 100-day challenge).

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• Polyphasic Sleep Log – Day 22

One particular surprise from exploring with psychedelics was just how much it shifted my nighttime dreams. I’d say it’s been months since I can recall having what I used to think of as a “normal” dream, whereby the dream takes the form of a fictional narrative, either alone or with imagined dream characters. I used to have these narrative-based dreams often, and I’ve been good at remembering my dreams for decades. Now those kinds of dreams seem like they’re totally gone. Either that or I no longer remember having them when they occur. I can still vividly recall having other types of dreams now.

For months now, every dream that I can recall feels very astral in nature, like I’m visiting real places on other planes of existence somewhere in spirit space, not in some mentally imagined dreamscape running inside my brain. I often visit the same astral locations repeatedly across different dreams on different nights.

Every character that I encounter in these spaces feels like an independent conscious entity, not a figment of my imagination. Often they seem like the spirit-level aspects of other incarnated humans or former humans, like a bunch of us are having experiences together while our human bodies are asleep. I feel like I’m visiting and exploring areas that are abuzz with lots of conscious social activity.

It’s been a long time since I saw anything or anyone in my dreams that I could describe afterwards as a fictional dream character. I feel like those types of dreams were a placeholder or a block that’s been removed, and now I’ve somehow been granted more access to explore and remember what’s beyond that old mode of dreaming.

Attending Astral School

These new kinds of dreams really stretch my human mind to make sense of them. They don’t usually translate well into typical narratives, stories, or progressions. They feel like very real, spirit-level explorations and experiences, and they often don’t fit the flow of linear time very well. If I were to cast them into a narrative format, I might describe them as feeling like part of me is going through some form of schooling, training, or testing. When I wake up, I frequently feel that I was just in an astral school or training facility, and I clearly wasn’t the only student there. I’ve often been in spaces where I felt the presence of dozens, hundreds, or thousands of other conscious beings roaming about.

In many of these dreams, there are constructs with many buildings. Some areas feel like enormous university campuses. Other areas feel like parts of larger cities. I know they aren’t made of real buildings in the human physical sense though. I sense that my human mind is interpreting and translating these signals and making them look and feel like buildings. However, part of me also understands that they’re actually constructs made of light or energy of some kind.

When I wake up most mornings now, my human body feels refreshed as usual. Most of my human mind feels refreshed too. I usually feel good emotionally. However, some part of me also senses that I’ve been working hard on something all night long, and that part feels a bit fatigued from whatever I was doing while my body was sleeping. That fatigued feeling usually goes away after an hour or two though. I’m not even sure it’s any real kind of fatigue. I think my human mind is just trying to make sense of the experience, and it’s casting its perceptions into an expectation that I probably ought to feel tired since I appeared to be doing extensive mental work (perhaps learning or studying) while ostensibly sleeping. Another part of me tries to see through the illusion of this expectation. My human mind is caught in the middle, wondering if it really does have some accumulated fatigue from these nighttime experiences and if so, where it’s coming from.

I’m usually unable to remember what kinds of subjects, lessons, or schooling is actually occurring during these dreams. Sometimes I have a sense that it’s loosely tied to a familiar subject like geometry, chemistry, or history. The feeling that I was engaging in something mathematical is especially common.

Simulation Dreams

Another common type of dream I have is like a recurring simulation. It feels like my brain is acting like a computer, and it’s being fed a stream of data with slight variations for internal testing or training purposes. My experience of these dreams is like living through a simple scenario over and over again, like dozens of times, with slight variations each time. Sometimes the events are different, and sometimes my responses are different. It’s a bit like experiencing the movie Groundhog Day where the same situation is repeated and different options are explored on each cycle. Usually the time slices are much shorter though, so instead of reliving the same day, it’s like reliving the same couple of minutes.

Part of me wonders if these dreams are interpretations of mental processes that my human brain is doing in the background while I sleep. Perhaps I’m just becoming more aware of these mental simulation processes. I’m not sure.

I don’t recall having these kinds of dreams before exploring psychedelics. Now they are quite common.

I wouldn’t call these dreams bad per se. They can be interesting. They can also feel repetitive and tedious, like I’m caught in a time loop and must repeat the same type of event for hours. There is no sense of having to achieve any particular standard to escape the loop. It feels like I’m exploring an array of options, so that perhaps I have access to more of these options while I’m awake.

Often the scenarios running through my mind in these dreams seem related to current events. Other times they seem more fanciful in nature.

Lately these kinds of dreams have been occurring less often while the astral ones have been increasing in frequency.

No Going Back

I have the sense that I’ve turned a page here and that this shift in my dreams is probably going to be permanent. I don’t think the old dream format is ever coming back now. I feel like I’ve left it behind and that I’m continuing to move further away from it. My new normal seems to be having very astral-feeling dreams, and the energy work feels more front-and-center and more real.

Now when I go to bed each night, I feel like another part of me will be waking up in astral space to go to school or attend some kind of training. Some dreams take the form of attending spirity conferences at spirit-level convention centers. They feel like big ballrooms sometimes, even though I know they’re non-physical.

This has become a consistent and pervasive part of my nighttime reality. I don’t feel like I can just switch off that awareness now, like I can’t really unsee or un-realize what’s coming through now. I don’t really want to go back now anyway. I’d rather keep stretching forward into this space and see if I can make more sense of it. It definitely makes me curious about what I’m actually experiencing while my human body is asleep.

Sometimes these other types of dreams are so long and involved that it makes a night feel like a few days in duration. Other times I’ve had the experience of waking up at midnight or 1am and being stunned that only 2-3 hours have passed since I went to bed.

I feel that my human mind tries to cast these experiences into a linear flow of some sort. However, it often struggles to assemble the overall experience into a sequence that makes sense, so I often awaken with memories that include repetitive loops or nonsensical time sequencing. I figure that what I’m actually experiencing doesn’t adhere to linear human time, yet my mind is trying to project it into a linear flow of event-based memories.

Bypassing Human Mental Limits

I’ve been holding some intentions to be able to see more of what’s really happening while dreaming and for my human mind to develop more astral-aligned or flexible ways of interpreting the information that’s flowing through from this direction. I feel like my mind keeps trying to cast these experiences into forms that are still too human though. The human projections of these experiences don’t make much sense. It’s like I’m trying to understand experiences that simply don’t have reasonable translations into human-level thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and memories. If feels like I’m trying to understand an image that’s been compressed down to just 12 pixels. It looks like a blur, yet I know it’s trying to represent something more complex.

I’ve been trying to open and stretch my mind to think more astrally and to allow the data to remain more astral in nature. See if my mind can learn to sense and think better on that level without trying to translate everything into human. I’m discovering that this is a very interesting kind of intention to explore, like I’m onto something here. I feel that it’s gradually expanding the range of what I can experience and remember, and it’s also increasing just how mysterious it is try to make sense of these dreams afterwards.

I’ve made a lot of progress in thinking more like an energy being, which has been good for my human life too. Now I’m trying to see how I might be able to stretch this way of thinking even further, especially in terms of being able to open up more astral-level senses. Focusing on sensing (rather than interpreting) seems to be helping. I feel like I’m starting to observe a wider range of frequencies that don’t readily translate so directly to my physical human senses. It’s like some part of me on the astral level is slowly blinking its astral eyes open.

These other senses are kicking in more while I’m awake now too. Like I’ll be making lunch, and I can feel something going on astrally at the same time. It’s usually a faint sensation, and it’s gradually getting stronger. I have a pretty clear sense that this will be even more pronounced a year or two from now. Basically it’s this sense that my awareness of and connection to astral space is gradually becoming louder and clearer, both while I’m awake and while I’m asleep.

Increasing Sensitivity

Psychedelic energies visit me pretty much every day now. It doesn’t matter if I take any physical substances. I will feel a surge in some kind of psychedelic energy being present every few hours typically. It’s as if there are psychedelic energy clouds floating all throughout my house, and now and then I walk through one of them and then notice I’m inside its energy field for a while, maybe for 30-60 minutes, sometimes for a few hours. One morning I might feel like I’m attuned to the shroomie network. Another time I’ll recognize MDMA’s energy popping in. On a different day it might be cannabis’ energy. LSD sometimes visits too. Sometimes I feel combos of multiple energies popping in. None of these are bad or threatening experiences. It’s like they’re all just spirity friends popping in to say hi and hanging out for a while. They aren’t human, but they each have a distinct consciousness to them. Sometimes it feels like my reality is filled with psychedelic energy pets. I rather like it. On some level its very comforting to feel so much conscious activity buzzing around me and reaching out to connect.

It’s like I have this always-active inner antenna that’s very sensitive to these frequency ranges now. I don’t know why I pick up these energies when I do. I feel like they’ve probably always been there, and I’m just becoming increasingly sensitive to them, so now I can easily perceive them. It feels like human space is just awash in these signals crisscrossing all through our territory, much like WiFi or radio signals.

I swear I’m even picking up on these energies when other people are carrying them. While walking around the Psychedelic Science 2025 conference in Denver last month, I often felt like I picked up some energetic eddies while gliding past certain people. That guy feels shroomie. That woman is emitting cannabis vibes. Or while talking to a friend who’s done a lot of psychedelics, I feel like I’m sitting in a mild LSD energy cloud when I’m near him. I even feel that way on Zoom calls with him, so it doesn’t seem to require physical proximity.

I’m trying to figure out other ways to practice engaging at the astral level, including while I’m just going about my day-to-day activities. One way is to simply acknowledge what I’m sensing. Share it aloud with myself. Journal about it. Talk with Rachelle about it. Turn towards whatever I’m sensing and say hi to it. I do this a lot, and it helps. Rachelle and I very often pick up similar signals at similar times.

Conscious Energy Communication

Another exploration I’ve been trying has been to engage with different psychedelic energies by deliberately connecting and communicating with them without taking any substances. Call them in when I want to chat with them about something. I’ve done lots of that in the past. It works very well. I know others who can do this too. It’s actually quite common as people gain experience.

This week I started trying something I’ve never tried before, which was to deliberately reach out to a new psychedelic energy where I haven’t ever taken the associated substance.

I’ve never taken the psychedelic 2C-B, yet I spent some time engaging with and channeling its energy this week, which was amazing. It felt different than anything else I’ve experienced. Oddly its energy signature reminded me of the Stitch character from the movie Lilo & Stitch, like this wild, untamed, rambunctious alien force, yet one that also has a huge heart and is immensely loving. It felt like a very powerful energy with an unpredictable side. At some point when I have a chance to actually try it, I can see if it links me to the same energy.

Rachelle and I both had that experience with San Pedro, where we were able to link up with its energy throughout the week before taking it for the first time. Neither of us had taken any mescaline-containing plants before. After taking it, the energy signature was already familiar to us. It was indeed the same energy that had been reaching out to us for days in advance.

Exploring with psychedelics has really stretched my relationship with time because now I usually feel the effects flowing in both temporal directions from the moment of taking a physical substance. If it’s a bigger experience, I will usually start intermittently feeling it about a week in advance. This mode of exploration has been full of many surprises.

I did a bit of probing with mushroom energy to do further Q&A about my dreams since I wanted to get their take on it. They confirmed that my dreams will likely never go back to how they were. Once that veil is lifted, it’s hard to see it coming back down again, especially since I’m too curious about what else is out there now. They also shared that this is a safe zone for me to get more access to explore since it’s outside of the human zone, so I can’t accidentally show people anything they aren’t supposed to see or know yet. The people who aren’t ready for such info will be encoded to dismiss it with relative ease. For them it can just be a dream, a fanciful tale, or the ramblings of some blogger they used to like. I’m sharing this here, however, with the knowledge that some will resonate with it and find it relevant to integrating their own expansive journeys.

The Practical Side of Being a Psychonaut

I’m curious what more will open up here and how I can use what I’m learning about energy flows to apply to my human life as well. These psychonaut explorations keep generating useful and practical insights that I can apply to my human life to good effect. I keep discovering new tools, practices, and ways of thinking that make my human life pretty easy. Yet I’m curious enough that I’m happy to explore pathways that may have no useful human-level application. These types of explorations fascinate me, and I don’t want to be tethered to human-level results, which are all temporary anyway.

Some lovely benefits that I’ve experienced as a result of these energy-level explorations include gliding through life with positivity, ease, and flow. I’m happy every day. Life takes very good care of me. I’m not stressed, overworked, depressed, or anxious. I don’t need or take any pharmaceutical prescriptions. I feel abundantly motivated and sufficiently resourced to live the kind of life I want. I haven’t needed a job or a boss in 33 years now. I learned to create an energy-based relationship with money that took me down a path that I’ve really enjoyed (shared in detail in the 30-day Deep Abundance Integration course that may people have appreciated… and the Amplify course for the creative side).

My favorite human-level result isn’t creative or financial though. It’s being in love. To me this is the best part of living as a human. I get to spend every day with a woman I deeply love and who deeply loves me. We just love the heck out of each other. I’m also very consciously practicing linking and working with love energy. It’s very much like a psychedelic energy to me too. Really to me, all of these psychedelic energies are different subsets of love energy. Money is a form of love energy too.

I find it easier to live as a human by realizing that the real me is actually something quite different – some sort of energy being – and I’m just wearing my human suit while I’m being present to this space. When I make decisions and take actions like an energy being instead of like a human, life works better overall, and it’s easier to experience a pleasing range of frequencies in this human existence – love, abundance, creative flow, friendship, cuddles, and so on.

Interestingly I’ve found that the best way to mess up my human life is to think too much like a human and not enough as an energy being. I sense that’s why many of us are actually here though. This is a place where we go to disconnect and take a break from spirit space, so we can immerse ourselves in silly human stuff. Then when we’re ready, we can open up and find our way back to other modes of existence. We all know these human lives are temporary. Be as human as you want to be. I love playing human too. This really is a wonderful place to visit when approached with curiosity, openness, and a towel. Remember not to panic.

Setting Energy-Level Intentions

Setting energy-level intentions (as opposed to human-level intentions) can be especially helpful when we’re attuned to our energy-level beingness. For instance, instead of intending a certain amount of money to come into your life, you could intend to create a loving, flowing, abundant, and supportive relationship with the Spirit of Money. Treat this energy with love and respect, not with fear or demonization. Invite it to dance with you. You can do the same with other energies like health energy, sex energy, or friendship energy. Then you may see new people flowing into your life as carriers of these energies.

I think it could have been the intention to work with love energy in the form of psychedelics that also cracked open more awareness of the astral world while dreaming. By setting an energy-level intention, I think I’ve somehow invited some energy-level training to flow through. Or perhaps my human mind is projecting this flow into a training sequence. I feel like my mind may still have the embedded assumption that it needs to be trained with information or skills before it can use those skills. Human minds can be so linear with cause-and-effect relationships sometimes. I’ll keep inviting my mind to loosen up in that regard, so I can enjoy more positive effects without needing to put causes into motion first.

Stretching Beyond Mental Limits

Even these hard-to-comprehend nighttime astral experiences are trickling down into some human-level insights and benefits too. They’re encouraging me to engage with more of what I don’t understand instead of trying to first put together reasoned models based on what I think I know. I’m stretching myself to take small actions in some direction where I don’t really have good models and perhaps never will. I realize that models are another form of limits.

Do I always need to tether myself to mental models that make sense? No, I can explore past their edges, especially by allowing myself some wiggle room to sense and experience without trying to interpret or assign meaning so much. This is helping me access more expansive data flows that don’t really fit my existing models. I feel this is coming through more abundantly now because I’m consciously opening myself to seeing what I don’t understand and what doesn’t fit cleanly into my human mind.

It’s been a struggle for me not to label these experiences as weird or strange. I’m trying to get past that because these labels feel limiting too, like they’re also blocks. It reminds me of labeling an amount of money as “a lot” – I learned to only do that if I want to push that amount away since it’s easier to attract and experience what feels normal. So I’m doing my best to catch myself and to allow more room for surprises without mentally pushing them to the outskirts of my reality.

I’ve successfully made that transition with psychedelics. Such explorations used to seem way out there. Now they just seem normal. I enjoy and appreciate them very much, and my life is awash in people who feel similarly.

Even doing something new that I’ve never done before just seems pretty normal. It’s still a big deal to me to do something new and stretchy, yet it’s also normal to do things that I feel are big deals. Being in love every day is normal for me yet also a big deal. I like having positive big deals in my life that also feel normal.

The daily sex challenge that I shared about in the integration post is another exploration that involves letting go of old limits. It’s been a long journey so far, now 3.5 months. We’ve kept going past the original intention of 100 days – we’re up to 106 now, and today will be 107 (it feels like a when, not an if, so I’ll let that be my reality for now). This exploration still has some very mysterious aspects to it. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to come up with great mental models that can explain the full range of these experiences. So part of me just wants to switch off or pause the need to do that and keep advancing further anyway. This is another aspect of life that feels like a big deal and is also normal.

I want to see if I can allow my human mind to keep advancing even when it’s confused. Can I integrate this much wiggle room into my models of self and reality? I believe so. I imagine that many people working on advanced AI have to make that kind of concession in order to keep showing up to work. They keep advancing what their human minds are incapable of understanding.

This is a very interesting type of limit to stretch beyond – the limits of human comprehension.

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It’s been a very interesting experience to deliberately lean in a yin direction so far, especially yesterday when I opted to use this approach all day. I did my best to release any attachment to getting any particular task done or advancing any specific project. I focused more on sensing what energies wanted to flow through and be part of my day. All throughout the day, I was more attuned to the energy flows and my inner sensing than I was to objective results.

The flow of action was light and breezy. I felt very relaxed and chill. It was like being carried by currents of energy all through the day. I felt like I wasn’t working particularly hard or doing very much. Yet at the end of the day, I reviewed all that I got done, and it was quite a lot.

I got up at 5am, went for a run, and then met Rachelle in the park to go for a walk together. I started listening to a new audiobook (James Fadiman’s Microdosing book) while running. I read some more of Ram Dass’ Be Here Now and also began reading Alexander Shulgin’s PIHKAL book. So I felt inspired to engage with three different books, yet that didn’t feel like too much because all the books had strong energy ties among them. They cover similar ground from different perspectives. What I read from each book seemed to have a synchronous relationship to the flow of the day. If my thinking had been more objective or yang-like, I’d have likely stuck with one book till it was done. It actually felt nicer to float through a few books.

I made clear, crisp decisions in some areas that were a bit stuck and then advanced them with a variety of easy actions. I sensed it was the right timing for those decisions to flow through, like they were finally ready to emerge and resolve themselves. I also did some journaling to further advance some ideas I’d been working on, and that went very smoothly too. Overall I got my life much better aligned with some long-term avenues that have been unfolding.

I also went out twice to run errands, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. On an objective level, that might seem less efficient than batching the errands. However, the second errand wasn’t really on my radar when I followed my inner nudge to go out to do the first one, even though both were related. I felt like perhaps I needed to advance and complete the first errand for the second to energetically arise.

I liked how both trips infused my day with more variety. These errands were short and easy, and I enjoyed doing them very much as part of the day. They got me away from my desk and out and around other people in the city for a bit. I felt like I was keeping the energy swirling and in positive motion. It was toasty outside (105ºF outside during the second errand – that’s about 41ºC), and the sun’s warmth felt so nice to me too. I’m used to the sunny Vegas summers.

When some ideas came to mind about potential actions to take, I wrote some of them down but only one or two at a time. That was mainly to get them out of my head, so I wouldn’t dwell upon them and could mentally relax more, not with the intention of compiling a to-do list like I might have done in yang mode. I ended up eventually doing all of the items I’d written down, yet I only did them if and when I felt their energy inviting me to go in that direction and feeling good motivation to engage. I did them out of sequence from the order I wrote them yet with no feeling of pressure to do them or not. I felt more of a sense of curiosity about them when I wrote them down, not really sure if they’d come through. They were just options and possibilities, not decisions or commitments. Writing these ideas down was a bit like saying, “I see you. Let me know if you want to flow into action later.”

There was a strangeness to the day as well. I felt like I was attuned to a deeper sense of cooperation and coordination with life. I didn’t feel that I was making decisions as much as I was accepting energy-level invitations that I was sensing. I didn’t feel that those invitations were arising from within me (like from my subconscious) as much as I was picking up on signals being broadcast on a more spirity level of reality. Those signals were very present-moment, always shifting as the day progressed. They were often subtle, more like whispers or hints of possible energy flows. Nothing ever felt demanding or mandatory.

Sometimes I felt a more yang-like idea emerge, in which case I acknowledged it as yang energy and declined it. I could feel that some directions would require more force to advance them. I went with options that felt light and breezy, doing my best to flow into action with them as those invites came through – without hesitation or delay. There was no rushing or pressing. It just felt easier to glide into action once I had a clear enough sense of where the flow was inviting me to go.

I feel my inner senses have become even louder and clearer this year, so this was a great way to practice listening to them more closely, especially when the communication is subtle. I don’t feel this would have worked if my mind was cluttered or pre-occupied with predetermined to-dos. The action flow was great, and I actually felt that the day turned out better, both experientially and in terms of what outcomes got advanced, than if I’d tried to control and direct it based on individual goals. The flow of action also felt very well-synched to my mood and energy levels.

I want to float with this approach all throughout this week as best I can. I’m enjoying it immensely so far. Overall I’d say that yesterday’s flow felt marvelous yet also a bit mysterious.

I’m continuing this process today, and writing and sharing this little blog post happened because it showed up as a very yin-feeling invite this morning. I had no goal or even intention to write or publish anything today. I actually wrote and shared this as a personal update in my exploration log in the CGC forums a few hours prior, following a breezy nudge after breakfast. Then later in the morning, I felt the invite to add a bit more detail and publish it here, sensing that others might appreciate it. Perhaps someone would find this idea timely and synchronous relative to their own explorations. So if this does seem synchronous for you, perhaps this is a special invite flowing through for you to give this yin productivity approach a little test in your own life. Please let me know if you do that and how it goes. It’s nice to compare notes on this sort of thing.

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Integration especially matters when you have a stretchy experience that feels inconsistent with your previous conceptions of your inner and outer worlds. Your old mindset has fallen out of step with your lived experiences. That happens sometimes. The good news is that you’ve stumbled upon a new truth – a surprise that you didn’t expect. Integration invites you to gracefully expand your base-level thinking to accommodate the new truths you discover as you have new experiences.

Your brain will attempt some integration automatically as it tries to make sense of a surprising new event. However, it will often do a so-so job of it. These unintegrated or partially integrated experiences may cause some problems for you. You’ll still have the memories of those experiences while their full wisdom and insights remain un-extracted. You may even feel unsettled when you recall those types of memories.

I’ve had many stretchy experiences that caused me to re-examine big parts of my life and reality. Whamo! I was slammed by something I did not expect to happen. Some events fell outside my old predictions of how I thought life was supposed to work. For a while I felt like my old way of thinking about reality was broken, and sometimes I didn’t yet see what else I could replace it with.

One example was when it finally dawned on me that much of what I’d been taught all throughout my childhood didn’t mesh with my lived experiences. My Catholic model of reality eventually crumbled. Why? Because it wasn’t true. A mindset built upon falsehood will eventually fall apart when confronted with contradictory lived experiences. In order to integrate those experiences, I had to accept some hard-to-accept truths about people I thought I could trust. That was tough to go through at the time. I had to release my old childhood models of reality and quickly grow up. I needed to be more responsible for my own world views and overall life philosophy. I couldn’t keep receiving what was being offered once I could see that it didn’t line up with my actual reality. I needed to be in my real reality, not in someone else’s fanciful concept of one. That was one of my biggest integration experiences as a teenager.

Initially I shifted to atheism since that was the only meaningful alternative that I really knew much about. I figured if my old reality was a lie, maybe the opposite (which I concluded was atheism) would be the truth. That approach worked okay for a while until I started having new experiences that didn’t fit with that model either. That sent me deeper into further integration work.

I had to make sense of my old mindsets and clarify why they weren’t good enough. I also had to find some other way to think about my life and reality that gave me some stability. Otherwise I’d be stuck in confusion, and it would be hard to advance or direct my life in any meaningful way.

Another challenge was avoiding cynicism. I did my best to avoid falling into dead-end thinking like “Life sucks and then you die.” I could at least predict that sort of mindset wasn’t going to give me a particularly good or interesting life. I’m happy I gave this some real thought, and I think it made a huge difference in how my life path evolved. Over time I grew increasingly happy and satisfied with my life. I still feel that way today.

Note that it’s pretty important to avoid mindsets that may get you stuck in some form of helplessness. If you fall into such a mindset, even accidentally, it may take lots of extra work to dig yourself back out again. You might need some therapy or someone else’s help if you go that far into a problematic mindspace or heartspace.

I figured that a constructive mindset and heartset would help me make wiser, more intelligent decisions that would more likely lead to positive outcomes and a nice life overall. And the best way to get there seemed to be to keep learning from my experiences. Don’t blow past a challenging event without doing my best to extract the core lessons from it. This helped steer me down some constructive paths. I gave some attention to how my thoughts, feelings, actions, and results all influenced each other.

Back then I didn’t have the integration label in mind, nor did I understand it as well as I do now. I often struggled to make sense of experiences that didn’t add up to me. This included trying to understand my own behaviors sometimes. When I was 18, I began thinking of myself as a criminal because I was doing crimes and sometimes getting arrested, and friends who knew me started referring to me that way. Integrating that into my self-image did not serve me very well, as you might imagine. It nudged me deeper into those behaviors, and I needed some difficult experiences and lessons to finally save me from that mode of thinking. I now see that as a precious and valuable time in my life because it gave me so many strong revelations and insights about my life and helped me discover who I actually wanted to be. Difficult experiences can shift tremendously as we integrate them over time. A tragedy or mistake may eventually be seen as a blessing.

Integration can be tricky business. If we let our minds handle it subconsciously, we can end up in some dark places. Running into these sort of traps was ultimately what got me interested in self-development. I realized that if I didn’t keep my mindset adaptable and growth-oriented, I could really mess up my life. That’s when I began to manage my life more consciously.

Although I wasn’t thinking of it in these terms back then, I figured out that in order to live more intelligently, I had to maintain more conscious awareness and supervision over my own integration process. It wasn’t wise to always let that run by itself. My integration turned out better when I took some time to reflect upon my experiences. I’d do my best to figure out what those experiences meant to me and why. That’s when I started getting into journaling (with pen and paper). I began filling up notebooks to reflect upon my experiences and to take a closer look at my thoughts and feelings. I’ve been an avid journaler ever since. In fact, many of my blog posts actually started as private journal entries, and then I turned them into published posts.

Through this process I learned good ways to protect my self-esteem, even when going through difficult experiences. When I was younger, I would journal some pretty dark thoughts on occasion, even suicidal ones. However, writing about my lived experiences and what I thought they meant to me helped me shift my perspective. Observing my own thinking caused my thinking to change. One change was that I became a lot more optimistic and less pessimistic, and I’m very grateful for that. All that journaling and conscious integration created a nice feedback loop, where my mind learned to be calmer, more centered, and more positive and constructive.

Integrating Stretchy Experiences

My integration needs are more complex these days because I do more deliberate exploring than I did when I was younger. One way I choose interesting experiments is by picking something that I probably wouldn’t do. By this I mean doing something new that doesn’t quite fit my old self-concept. I know that if I explore beyond my old self-concept, I’m going to have an interesting growth experience. I’ll have more integration work to do as well.

Have you ever tried doing something you wouldn’t do? Just getting yourself to conceive of something like that can be a very interesting thought exercise. That alone will teach you something valuable, like where you sense your limits to be. Then you can ask yourself if you want to keep those limits. You don’t have to.

One example was going to Disneyland for 30 days in a row. I’d never done anything like that before, so it was a stretch to get myself to commit to it. Rachelle and I did that together. We had a fabulous time all throughout – it turned out to be one of our best experiments ever. I was very happy with how it impacted me, her, and our relationship afterwards too. We also opened Conscious Growth Club six months later, which is now in its 9th year and still going strong. CGC was inspired in part by that Disneyland experience.

If you deliberately court stretchy experiences, it will probably make your life less predictable. I mostly see that as a good thing. I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea though. The downside is that if you overdo it, you could end up with a big backlog of unintegrated or partially integrated experiences. People often experience this as a burnout phase of some kind, and their motivation can drop a lot (especially the desire to keep having new experiences). When they’re ready, they may start working through the integration backlog one little piece at a time, hopefully emerging with a fresher mindset on the other side of that.

I love stretchy experiences very much. I love how they surprise me. I love how they poke, prod, and challenge my old models of self and reality. I love how they help me grow. Having so many of these kinds of experiences has helped me develop rich, flexible, multi-faceted models of myself and reality. I adapt to change more easily as a result. I’m happier too. But it really does take a lot of integration work afterwards in order to avoid burnout. I find it helpful to keep reminding myself that the risk of burnout is very real if I don’t take sufficient time for integration, so fortunately I’ve been landing squarely and consistently on the pro-integration side for many years now. I can sense when I’m getting close to overdoing the in-flow of new experiences, and I know when I need to back off and do more conscious integration. An inner signal that warns me to pump the brakes is when I start feeling a little overwhelmed by having too many things going on, and I feel like I just want to retreat from it all for a while. Then I know it’s time to do my own version of an integration retreat, and I go much deeper into introvert mode and do lots of extra processing and reflecting on recent thoughts, feelings, and experiences. This takes time. It works very well though, and I always emerge with a renewed sense of motivation to go out and have even more new experiences. I’ve gotten used to the waviness of living this way.

Most weeks I prefer to gently sip from the land of stretchy experiences. This works very nicely too. It gives me ample time to integrate without creating too much of a backlog. I love to sip and integrate, sip and integrate, sip and integrate. Take a drink from the fountain of new experiences and let the effects ripple through me till they settle. Then take another sip when I feel ready. Nice and easy. Not too fast.

We’re all unique though, so what feels stretchy for one person might be fairly mild (or too intense) for someone else. One person’s sip could be an overflowing mug for a different person.

My integration process usually involves building new models that are more accurate. I keep upgrading my models to account for the totality of what I’ve experienced in this life. It’s like I’m on a lifelong search for my own Theory of Everything.

How can I explain everything I’ve experienced in my life thus far? If all of those experiences were real, then what kind of universe makes all of that possible? I find these to be very interesting questions to ponder.

I always have a working set of models that I use as my defaults, and whenever I bend them by having experiences that don’t fit their predictions, I know I’m about to embark on a fresh round of integration as I search for new models that fit the new info. So the word “model” here simply refers to my current best understanding of myself and my reality. Who or what am I? What kind of reality do I actually inhabit?

The benefits of having a more accurate model of reality are enticing, which is why I’m so hooked on this approach.

Today I tend to think of myself as a psychonaut – as someone who consciously explores the nature of reality and tries to understand it better. I love to keep exploring in this way, which is why I keep courting new experiences that I need to integrate.

This way of living is very rewarding yet also a lot of work. In any given year now, I may spend several weeks just integrating my experiences from that year. This year has been particularly heavy with integration work. That’s the main reason I took a break from sharing publicly for the past few months. I’ve been in a strong flow of stretchy new experiences this year. I wanted to keep other areas of life simpler during this time, so I mostly paused the public side while still staying very active in CGC and in other areas of life. Now I feel ready to open that back up again, yet in a different way than before. I’m easing back into it gently with this post, and when I’m ready I’ll flow back into making some fresh videos for the Engage course as well. I’m very much looking forward to that.

The rest of this post invites you deeper into a more personal walk-through of how I go through a real-life stretchy experience and begin to integrate it. It’s up to you if you want to immerse yourself in that level of detail. It may give you more of an insider’s perspective (if you appreciate that sort of thing). There’s a good chance that just reading through this will activate thoughts and feelings within you that invite you to do some integration work of your own. The experience I’ll share has to do with letting go of limits.

Choosing Stretchy Experiences

I get stretchy ideas from all over the place. Sometimes I ponder them for years before I finally do them. Much of the time though, I like to begin a challenge within a pretty short time after I get the idea. There’s a certain energy to an idea when it’s freshly minted. If I incubate an interesting idea for too long, I may lose the connection to it.

The idea for my most recent stretchy challenge actually came through during another stretchy experience. Back in March I took part in a three-night ayahuasca ceremony, which was intense and also just what I needed. I still love full-cup experiences in addition to sips, just not too often.

My inner journey on the second night of that ceremony was all about sex and sex energy. Aya showed me a very spirity, energy-level perspective on sex and the role it’s been playing in my life. The overall three-night arc focused upon the theme of letting go of old limits, so that was part of the second night’s envelope as well.

This was a powerful experience for me. It also built upon some explorations in this direction I’d previously done with MDMA. Aya surprised me because I didn’t know that a plant energy could go so deep into sexuality. I don’t have any sexual trauma, so this was a beautiful area of life to explore with Aya. The third night was especially intense when Aya gave me the experience of trying to flood all my cells with way more love energy that I felt capable of receiving. She did that to show me that I had limits as to how much love I was allowing to flow through to me, and one way I was resisting it had to do with seeing myself as too much of a human and not enough as a energy being. My human body (or my conception of my body) found that much love way too intense, as if every cell was charged with excess static electricity that I couldn’t discharge yet badly needed to get rid of. So that was a very visceral demonstration of how I was limiting myself in this area without realizing I was doing that. Now integrating this might have been tricky or confusing if Aya hadn’t also helped me with some next steps to translate this into a specific human-level challenge to attempt. So she let me feel the energy side of it first, and then she translated her lesson into the human level as well.

Sometimes I think of Aya’s energy as that of Mother Nature. So I had to update my mental model of Mother Nature to include being able to talk to her for many hours about sex. Sex is obviously part of nature, so that aspect wasn’t too hard to integrate.

Aya’s nudge – really the core lesson that came through across all three days – was not to stop at good or great. There’s more growth beyond the good. I was encouraged to open up and expand my experiential range even in areas of life that were flowing along beautifully. Don’t stop exploring just because some aspect of life is already so nice.

This general invite was pretty interesting to me at the time. I have a tendency to experiment based on what seems fresh and new to me, like whatever I may be curious to try. Aya invited me to look at going deeper into what’s already familiar. Take something I already like or that’s already going well, and experiment with opening it up even more. Just integrating that lesson made me look at how I’d been limiting myself by not thinking in those directions very much. For instance, once I reached a certain level of abundance in life, I didn’t really try to push it much beyond that. I let myself rest in what felt plentiful and mainly did other kinds of explorations in different directions.

As part of the experience, Aya invited me to take on a specific challenge: Have sex for 100 days in a row. She made it clear that sex in this case meant intercourse; oral sex or other types of sexual play wouldn’t count. It wasn’t necessary to have an orgasm each time though. If I skipped or missed a day, I’d have to start over again at Day 1. It had to be 100 days in a row. That was not in the range of what I expected Aya to bring through.

MDMA’s energy had already been working with me in this direction last year. It was also nudging me to have sex more frequently when I would dialogue with it. More than once it recommended five sex days per week minimum. One way it framed this was to make daily sex the default, and allow one or two days off each week as an option. That still seemed like a lot. Rachelle and I managed to do 14 days in a row last year, and we both liked it at the time. It just seemed tough to sustain that kind of frequency for very long. Plus it wasn’t clear why we ought to do it that often. Those 14 days were pleasurable and very loving, and I did have the sense that if we’d continued at that frequency, there might be something more to be learned, perhaps more than we could predict. I didn’t think it would be that big of a deal though, so we didn’t really push further in that direction.

Aya’s 100-day challenge idea seemed like a LOT of sex yet also didn’t seem like that big of a deal. I’d never done anything like that before. Somehow it felt more accessible because it was temporary; after 100 days we’d be finished and then could integrate the experience. I felt that Aya looked at what MDMA was trying to do and then gave me an idea that was similar yet somehow felt more doable.

I shared and discussed the idea with Rachelle, and we both readily agreed to actually do it. We knew that if we didn’t like it, we could quit at any time. So why not at least begin and see how far we could go? Plus if we made it the full 100 days, we’d probably learn something interesting about ourselves. Relative to other experiences we’ve had together, this one felt relatively tame and easy. The main challenge was just to make time for it, especially while traveling and sometimes having very busy days schedule-wise.

We’ve been together for 15+ years, and we’ve always found each other very attractive, so this wasn’t that difficult of a yes for us. There was no convincing involved. We both felt curious and intrigued enough to try it, knowing we’d surely learn and grow from the shared experience.

Admittedly it also seemed like a silly thing to attempt. We like having some silly experiences together though, so we were fine with the potential silliness of it. In fact, that turned out be a beautiful aspect of the journey. Sex is pretty silly anyway, isn’t it? More than once we had a good laugh during a session. The shared laughter just made us feel even closer.

We started on April 3rd, which was our 7-year wedding anniversary. Today is Day 98, so it’s an easy coast to the finish line now. It’s been an amazing journey, giving me a lot more to reflect upon than I expected.

This experiment didn’t go as I thought it would. I was a bit concerned it might make sex feel too routine, yet somehow it took us way deeper into intimacy, love, belongingness, really caring for each other’s needs, and a whole bunch of energy work. I’m still taking stock of how much this particular challenge opened up. Perhaps a simple way to describe it is that it became way more tantric and spirity feeling as it went along. We’re both very in love with each other, and we know how lucky we are to have this be our reality. This exploration deepened and enriched those feelings even more – it went well beyond the physical aspects. So Aya was spot on in offering this challenge. How did she know?

I still have much to integrate after this experiment concludes. Overall it’s been very good for us. It may look like a sexual challenge on the surface, yet the lived experience of it was like doing lots of intimate energy work with a partner and going deeper into our feelings for each other. Sometimes we’d pause partway through a session and flow into an intimate conversation together. Every week there were new layers to explore together. It’s been such a great experience to have together as a couple. No regrets about it. Definitely one of my favorite explorations. Way nicer than going 40 days without food – that’s for sure.

After this I imagine we’ll need to do some couple-level integration too. It’s not clear to us how it will affect us going forward. Even after all these weeks of daily sex, we can’t yet say what we’ll do with this aspect of our lives from Day 101 onward. I feel we’ll probably take a fresh look at ourselves, reflect upon what we just experienced together, talk it through a bunch more, and then flow into a fresh phase of our relationship going forward. I don’t feel it will be majorly different than before we started, but somehow I feel very certain that it won’t be the same as our previous reality. My felt sense of this right now is that we accumulated a lot of subtle shifts along the way.

Another way to think about integration is that it’s how you resolve the contrast between your predictions and your actual lived experiences. My experiences for the past 98 days didn’t fit within the range of my old predictions. I now have a different understanding of what it’s actually like to make sex a daily habit for so many weeks. It had its challenges sometimes, like trying to keep it going when we were both really tired after a long day out, yet there was something about the daily commitment that was quite special. In many ways it was an incredible gift that we gave to each other, but not in any way that felt like a reciprocal trade.

My understanding of sex is a lot more spirity now, thanks to this challenge. I see sex as being more about sharing and appreciating each other’s love, energy, and full presence than about the physical act. Sex feels even more loving, intimate, flexible, and even mysterious or magical to me now. It’s become something that I look forward to and cherish as a part of each day, and I accept that it affects me in ways that are very positive yet hard to predict.

Interestingly this experiment also made our sex life simpler because we didn’t have to decide whether to have sex or not on any given day. Instead of talking about making love, we just make love. Sometimes we start by sharing our intentions for what kind of experience we want to have together. I’ve been impressed with how in-tune and cooperative we’ve been with our intentions all along the way.

So that’s an example of having a stretchy experience that requires some integration. Consciously choosing to have stretchy experiences is one of the best ways to keep growing. Keep exploring in the directions where your predictions may be weak or inaccurate, and you’re sure to learn something.

What if you do something stretchy that others might criticize? One way to think about criticism is that it’s a way many people process their own integration experiences. Some people will attack what they’re struggling to integrate or understand. It’s temporary though. So I’d recommend feeling some compassion towards your critics (or potential naysayers). The criticism isn’t likely personal. Those critics may be processing their own unresolved, unintegrated thoughts and feelings about some aspect of life. You may just be the latest person who (perhaps accidentally) invited them to face something they’d rather not face just yet. Another possibility is that if the criticism feels like it may have a shred of truth to it, then it may indeed offer you something worthwhile to look at as part of your own integration process.

The Power of Acceptance

In my experience the most important key to integration is usually acceptance. My integration work typically involves reaching some new place of acceptance and being able to hold myself there without backsliding.

What do I need to accept? For starters, I need to accept what actually happened and how I’m reacting to it. Allow my lived experience to be fully felt. Let it surprise me. Let it impact me. Let it ripple me. Even let myself become the experience.

Next I need to accept that my old thinking needs to be updated. This may include how I think about myself, other people, and aspects of reality.

And then I need to accept the integration work ahead. This includes accepting the time and energy it will take to do it well.

Whenever I get myself into a lived experience that knocks me off balance, I like to focus on acceptance of whatever is coming through. Let it in as fully as I can. Listen. Observe. Let myself experience my own judgments if judgments arise. Allow. Allow. Allow. Let the new energy flow while doing my best not to resist it. Be present. Be here now.

Eventually this acceptance leads to some new ideas and new decisions. What do I do with this new knowledge? Knowing what I now know, how will I act differently? What new decisions make sense now?

After acceptance, an even better place to reach for is love. In addition to accepting the changes and their effects, I look for how I can love all of it too. Can I love the lessons? Love the insights? Love everyone who contributed to the lived experiences? Love the growth process? Love the ripples?

The more love I can bring to an exploration, the better it integrates.

Some people also find forgiveness to be powerful here. So consider using forgiveness if you find it helpful. Personally I prefer love and find it more resonant and flexible than forgiveness. Forgiveness is pretty popular in integration circles though.

Another benefit of using love as part of your integration process is that you can also use it on the front end. Try focusing on love when choosing your next stretchy adventure. Seek out stretchy explorations that may help you to better align with love, to better understand love, or to work with love energy. Explore where your love takes you. I already loved sex before this 100-day challenge, so Aya’s invitation was actually to delve deeper into a space that was already very love-infused. I really didn’t expect there to be so many subtle and nuanced lessons and insights about love coming through week after week. It was very different to make love inside of this specific 100-day container, especially after we got beyond the first month of it. It went way beyond just feeling like we were making love more often.

I knew the 100-day sex challenge would surely involve love energy as a big part of it. That was clear from the beginning, and it certainly turned out to be true. It had a stronger emotional impact on me than I expected though. This journey has made me feel kinder, more loving, more caring, more patient, and gentler towards other people in my life. I also feel way more loved. How could I not feel super loved in such a situation? Someone I was already in love with agreed to make love for 100 days in a row. Then I got to receive and enjoy that yes and bask in those wonderful feelings and sensations with her for all that time. For me this type of exploration has been heavenly.

Now my integration process involves helping my mind catch up to what’s been unfolding, so I can better make sense of why it played out as it did and what it means for us going forward.

I’m at the point in my psychonaut journey where exploring love energy more deeply and in different directions feels very appealing. Love is such a delightful type of energy to engage with. This particular exploration of it has been a true delight and makes me want to explore even more ways to dance with love energy in this life. This was just one interesting way of consciously exploring in that direction.

Integration is a very rich and complex aspect of our human journeys. It takes time and thoughtfulness to do it well. I invite you to give some thought to the role that integration plays in your life – and also to the value of choosing your own stretchy experiences. I hope my share on this has offered you some meaningful insights that you can apply to advance your own integration efforts. Remember that we’re all in this together.

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You can’t join us mid-year. People always ask about this, and it doesn’t happen. We never let anyone in partway through the year. We all start together and progress through the year together.

The club is really taking a big leap forward this year with a higher standard, including only on-camera, fully present Zoom calls (no passive off-cam attendance anymore). The invite was largely crafted to repel mismatches because CGC definitely isn’t for everyone. It’s really meant only for the core inner circle of this community – those who are truly the most dedicated to self-development and really want to let go of limits and step into a much fuller expression of their true selves. It’s certainly not for the timid.

Most of our members for Year 9 are renewals, so we’re really anchoring a lot of the club’s wisdom for the long run. It’s important that we keep pace with our core members and keep the club stimulating and challenging for them.

I’m really pleased with this transition to Year 9. I love how it feels to stand in this energy field with such devoted people who show up and do the work. It’s super rewarding seeing them grow and evolve year by year inside the club.

If you’ve been feeling the call, now’s the time to say yes. After midnight Pacific Time, the door closes for all of 2025.

Here are some helpful links to guide your decision:

• Read: Stepping Into Your Limitless Self – Today’s blog post on how CGC supports real transformation
• See Why CGC Year 9 Was Designed This Way – A behind-the-scenes look at the invitation
• Check the CGC FAQ – Answers to the most common questions
• CGC Year 9 Invitation Page – Full details and qualifications

If this is your next step, make it a strong YES, and really go all-in with us. CGC is here for those who are ready to grow, lead, and let go of old limits.

Every year the club evolves. This transition from Year 8 to Year 9 is a big advancement with some very powerful shifts opening up.

Leadership Dojo

Many members in CGC have been evolving in the direction of leadership. This has been showing up differently for everyone, but it’s fair to say that it’s not the stale old corporate or hierarchical version of leadership. It’s a much more personal and internal form of leadership. At least that’s where it begins.

This is about leading from within – knowing yourself, standing strong in your core essence, and radiating your light into the world around you, like I shared in this video several months ago: Fill Your Reality With Your Light.

When you step up and take charge of your own life powerful, other people are likely to notice. Those who appreciate similar values to yours will likely feel drawn to you. They’ll be attracted to your centeredness, your resolve, your clarity, and your sense of ease, lightness, and flow. You may end up attracting some sort of following without really trying.

For some members this shows up as a desire to build communities or their own, online or offline. A lot of members have been going through meaningful transformations of their social lives. They no longer feel in tune with their old circles, and it’s important to them to draw more people into their lives who really align with who they are now and who they’re becoming.

One reason this happens is that CGC itself is a model for this kind of social alignment. It’s a community centered around growth, self-development, and truly embodying our best selves. People who value this will find lots of like-minded people inside to connect with. Once they experience how delightful it is to make and have so many friends like this in one place, it can reveal a difficult contrast with their other social circles, which may not feel adequate anymore. Thus begins the journey into assuming more autonomy over one’s social life, and this eventually flows into some kind of leadership experience.

Seeing this aspect of CGC emerging over time has encouraged me to give it more attention and to invite new members into the club who see themselves flowing into an emerging leadership role. So this year I made that a key part of the invite.

That’s yet another reason we don’t invite Trump supporters to join us in CGC. That’s been our policy for years. Trump supporters carry follower vibes by definition. That’s the opposite of our direction in CGC.

There are lots of ways to step into leadership. In CGC we really focus on the inner journey, which involves getting clear about what we want to create and then advancing it into being.

Note that at the beginning of 2017, CGC was just an idea. I began sharing about the idea on my blog back then, inviting people to comment on it and share their feedback. Later that year we opened the doors with an early access phase while we were developing it. Today we’re starting our 9th year together, the club is thriving inside, and we clearly have a bright future together as we continue to advance together. This all began with a decision to step up and make it happen. Many hundreds of other decisions followed – and are still following – as the club continues to evolve.

Relating to People as Their Strong Selves

Since I have a lot of experience watching people grow and seeing how they evolve over time, I often pick up patterns in what’s unfolding for people before they see what’s emerging within themselves. I like to meet people where they are, but I also love to relate to them based on where they appear to be heading.

The better I get to know someone who’s very growth-oriented, the more I can help to hold the vision and the vibes of the stronger and more capable version of them that’s emerging.

For instance, I may interact with someone who’s a bit camera shy, but I can also see that they’re working on it, which may help me see that they’ll eventually get past it altogether. So I can start relating to them as the person they’re becoming, not who they’ve been.

Or I may be talking with a very head-based person, but I can also see they’re making good progress in developing their intuitive side and opening their heart, so I can meet in the the land of emotional expressiveness and keep relating to them as their emerging future self.

Sometimes this surprises people because they’ve never had anyone treat them as the person they’re becoming. Others have usually been treating them as who they’ve been in the past (or some skewed version of that).

I love doing this for people, but it’s definitely best when I get to know someone, so I gain a more specific understanding of where they’re heading.

Holding stronger visions of each other – and for each other – is becoming woven into the fabric of CGC. As more members bear witness to each other’s growth, they’re helping hold those new visions of themselves. That’s really lovely to see.

If you’ve never been in a social circle that holds you in high regard and begins treating you as your stronger and more capable future self, I sense you’d really love and appreciate this aspect of CGC.

Don’t think it’s easy though. The old parts of you may rise up to reject your new self-image – at first – so it can take some time to work through those old limits and release them.

Feeding and Fueling Our Strong Selves

As members have continued to invest in CGC, they’re clearly gotten stronger and more capable. More possibilities are opening up for them. There’s a sense of strength and stability in the core of the club, which is fertile soil for encouraging even more to emerge.

Back in 2018 when I first created the Deep Abundance Integration course, my motivation was largely driven by compassion for people who were struggling with scarcity. I wanted to provide a helpful resource to immerse people in abundance vibes, so they could really lock onto it and transition over, much like I learned to do back in 1999 (the year I went bankrupt).

In the early years of CGC, there was a lot of this helping-people-who-were-struggling mentality in the club too. That fit with the old coaching model, and many coaching calls involved helping people with various forms of stuckness. Today we are way beyond that old mindset and old approach.

Struggles can be endless and cyclical, especially if people keep recreating the same conditions that lead to struggle. Now we’re better at stepping back and inviting those weaker energies to depart, so something stronger and more engaging can emerge.

When this kind of powerful energy surges, many old struggles vanish. Either they become easy to solve because we become stronger, or they’re no longer seen as problems, or we stop creating the conditions that give rise to them. One way or another, CGCers learn to opt out of living in perpetual crisis mode.

Today’s CGC isn’t a good match for people who are mired in distracting problems. It’s a much better fit for people who want to engage with their lives from their core – their strong selves. Then keep building from there.

I like to think of this stronger part of me as my higher self. That’s the version of me that’s fearless, wise, caring, kind, creative, generous, and more. These days my own path of self-development is mainly about coming into greater alignment with this core version of me. I do my best to channel my deepest wellspring of insight and energy into my decisions and actions. That’s been working really well.

Even when I have mundane problems to deal with, I find that I can easily shred them when I’m attuned to my core strengths. Then I can be as patient, methodical, rational, and courageous as needed to solve problems definitively. These kinds of solutions are very satisfying, both during the solution process and afterwards. I know I did my best, so there are no regrets.

This kind of energy is emerging very strongly in the club now. I sense it will be a big part of Year 9 and beyond.

One specific way we’re supporting this energy is with the new Sense & Solve call format that we’re introducing this CGC year. We’re running it the first time on May 15.

High Trust and Intimate Teamwork

CGC is a very kind, intimate, caring group inside. It took some work to get there though, and I’m very protective of this aspect of our culture. In our early years, we attracted some members who were only into self-development for themselves – some prima donna types if you know what I mean. They came to CGC for the content and for their own gains and didn’t participate much in the community aspects, except for their own validation now and then.

We still did our best to serve those members, but I soon realized that we were better off without them. What we do in CGC really is a team effort, and we grow stronger by attracting good team players. So I’ve deliberately positioned the club to make it less palatable to people who aren’t interested in the team aspect.

We’ve come a long way since then, really focusing on attracting more genuine team players and serving them well. CGC has become a space where the givers tend to gain the most. Those who show up and participate and share their growth journeys surely learn a lot more and make bigger strides.

I see us investing even further in this teamwork direction in Year 9 and beyond. That includes involving other members in the live event we’ll be co-creating for April 2026.

All of our calls for Year 9 involve some form of interaction. They’re really not content-based. They’re all designed as group experiences that we share in and create together.

This morning, for example, we had our monthly Intention Infusion call. The call was very well-attended, with lots of members sharing all throughout. This included sharing our individual intentions for the month and also co-creating a group intention. The group intention we chose was limitless vitality, so we’re all pooling our collective intentional energy to intend limitless vitality for each other. This has been a normal rhythm in CGC for the past two years now. Every month we all hold positive intentions for each other’s well-being and advancement.

The core of this community is trust. When people open up and trust more, they tend to thrive in CGC. It’s not like sharing about your life on social media and wondering who will judge you for it.

It usually takes a bit of time for people to get used to a community like this. They come in with their well-developed masks from years of social media engagement. Then they gradually drop those old facades and let us see more of their real selves. That’s where they’re met with so much love, understanding, and connection.

Life really is different when you learn and grow as part of a kind and caring community that has your back. If you don’t get that from CGC, please find some place to get it – a space where you can fully open up and show all parts of the real you and be seen and acknowledged as the beautiful being you are. This includes letting others see your beauty even when you’re not seeing it yet yourself.

This kind of work really lights me up inside. Even after 8 years of serving CGC, I’m still abundantly enthusiastic about it. As I’ve said many times before, this is my forever project. That’s something I learned from Walt Disney because Disneyland was his forever project. The benefit of a forever project is that you have lots of time to keep improving it and optimizing it. You know to be extra thoughtful in making each decision because you’re thinking about how it might ripple out over decades.

Playfulness

I love that we’re so playful in CGC. I really resonate with making self-development lively and fun. I feel we’re landed in a really good range there. We take self-development seriously, and we have serious fun working on it together.

We often crack jokes on the live calls, but we also do our best to keep them light. I really think we bond very well through shared humor. Some members are really great at anchoring humor vibes into the club, and I would love to see even more people like this join us inside because we so appreciate what they bring to the experience.

We already have some great abundance in this area, but I say let’s keep going. Why limit ourselves? Good-natured humor folds really well into our group energy and values.

I sense that this light-hearted playfulness that so many of us share in CGC will be infused into our April 2026 gathering as well, which makes me look forward to it even more.

Range and Variety

I know of no other self-development group that covers as much range and variety as CGC does. We really do cover all aspects of self-development and more.

Take a look at our call types for Year 9. We have 18 different formats now, up from 14 last CGC year. And even within a given format, no two calls are the same. Each call is a unique experience.

In Bear Care we work on boundaries and self-care. In Contribution Café we focus on purpose and service. In Story Lab we use the lens of story to fuse the objective and subjective aspects of our lives into a cohesive plot that’s unfolding. Courage Forge’s theme ought to be pretty obvious. Same goes with Pure Imagination. Mating Call is a new format we’ve added this year to improve our sex lives. And Moonglow is all about receiving and allowing (and not blocking life’s gifts).

I actually drew a significant amount of inspiration from theme parks, particularly Disneyland itself, in designing and evolving CGC’s core structure. I’ve personally spent at least 100 days of my life at Disneyland, including going there with Rachelle for 30 days in a row, six months before we opened CGC. So you can definitely think of CGC as being like a self-development theme park. While our core focus is on self-development, the calls are all designed to be lively, entertaining, and enjoyable as well. I never want the experience for our members to become stale or boring.

The vast majority of our live calls are unrecorded too (only Reflections & Revelations is recorded), so that helps people open up and be more candid as well. I really noticed a positive shift in participation when we shifted from recorded to unrecorded calls a while back. I love that we have so many years to keep tinkering and fine-tuning to discover what works best for our members.

Learning From Each Other’s Growth Journeys

With the CGC forums as part of the experience, there’s even more variety because members can share and discuss anything of interest to them.

I especially love that our discussions and explorations are so focused on helping each other advance. There really isn’t much debating in CGC for the sake of debating. Politics and current events don’t have a big presence in the group. That’s all fair game for discussion, but most CGCers would rather not discuss that sort of thing, especially since they can do that elsewhere on social media all day long if they want.

In CGC the conversations are mainly about personal experiences and explorations as well as how members are figuring out solutions. People discuss their goals, action steps, and their progress a lot. They share the emotional side too, like how life is going and how they’re being affected.

Because we have our own private, members-only spaces, members are a lot more candid, and the shares are often deeper and more detailed than what you’d find elsewhere on the Internet. People share a certain depth in CGC that they wouldn’t trust to Instagram, Facebook, etc.

This is true for me too. While I’ve been very open about my life from 20+ years of blogging and also YouTubing, I share even more depth and detail in CGC. Most of what I share about my ongoing explorations these days is posted in CGC, not outside of it. I just feel drawn to share certain details more with the people I’ve come to know and trust very well. I’m still into sharing openly outside of the group, but with CGC as such a huge part of my life, I don’t feel drawn to share as much outside the club.

I maintain a progress log in the club myself and update it often. It looks like this in the forums and has hundreds of posts. It’s very interactive too since members can ask me anything about the various explorations I’m doing at any given time. Usually I update it multiple times per week. There is so much I’ve shared there that I haven’t shared outside of CGC, such as details about the 3-night ayahuasca ceremony I did in March and how it affected me – it was very powerful.

One experience that’s coming up this month is my first-ever San Pedro ceremony. I’ve never done it before and have been wanting to sit with it for years. I probably won’t blog about it, but I’ll surely share about what it was like in CGC.

Other members maintain progress logs in the club too, and this has consistently been a great way for us to keep tabs on what we’re all doing and how we’re progressing.

A High-Vibe Approach to Self-Development

When I first got into self-development many years ago, my mindset was very objective. I focused on productivity and time management a lot. I thought very algorithmically much of the time, always looking for useful processes and step-by-step approaches. Some of my favorite authors were Brian Tracy and David Allen – both very deliberate and methodical but also immensely head-based.

That was interesting and helpful for some years, but I soon ran into limits with that approach, especially with respect to certain types of goals and lifestyle desires. Some goals just would not budge.

I was able to use that old mindset to have some cool achievements though, such as running a marathon. That was all about showing up, putting in the training time, and being very methodical and tenacious till I crossed the finish line and got my finisher’s medal – done and checked off my bucket list.

But my most interesting breakthroughs did not arise from that type of programmer mindset. For that I really needed to stretch myself to explore more limitless ways of relating to life and reality. I documented that alternative approach very well in the Submersion course, which is based on relating to life far more subjectively. Since then I’ve layered in even more robust and expansive approaches to keep advancing in ways where an overly objective approach falls flat.

I’d say my #1 favorite gift from opening up and pursuing a different self-development path is my relationship with Rachelle. We’ve been together for 15+ years now, married for more than 7 years. She and I host the CGC calls together. I adore her deeply, and I love the life we share together. I also really love that she and I get to serve and support CGC together. We attracted each other from different countries (she’s Canadian) and flowed into a beautiful yet unconventional relationship. I don’t see anyway a relationship like this could have flowed into my life if I’d been stuck in an overly objective mindset. That old limit had to go, so I could open myself to new forms of allowing, inviting, and surrendering.

This type of energy is strongly infused into CGC. I’ve stopped being an apologist about it, and I’ve really gone all-in with a vibrational-first approach – because it works! It takes time for some people to warm up to it, but what keeps them engaged is that this gets results, especially in areas where an objective approach just isn’t moving the needle much.

The objective aspects of life are still important, and objective problem-solving tools are still useful, so we haven’t thrown that out. We do a tremendous amount of fusion in CGC, and that YES-AND approach woven into many of our group calls as well. Our problem-solving methods are part vibrational, part physical. They involve getting into harmony with the solution space and feeling our way into it to ramp up motivation and inspiration. Then we devise practical action steps and flow into them with greater ease.

In recent months I’ve been sharing in the club about using this approach to do various DIY plumbing and electrical projects around the house. I got clear about how I wanted to solve each problem on a vibrational level first, including how I wanted to feel throughout the experience and afterwards. As I locked onto those feelings, I flowing through a compelling action sequence that included watching how-to videos on YouTube, acquiring the needed parts and tools, and doing all the steps to get to completion.

This really taught me a lot about my own best pathways through problems I might otherwise put off. I didn’t want to deal with certain problems because I didn’t understand them well enough, and I didn’t feel very trusting about the prospect of hiring someone to do those projects for me. So I went to the vibe level first and crafted the solution there. For instance, I knew that education could solve the understanding problem, so I resolved to educate myself thoroughly first. I also saw solutions to the trust issue, so I worked through how to find a contractor I could genuinely trust, and I found and hired a fabulous plumber to do some bigger jobs. It all flowed beautifully at the action level once I solved these problems first at the vibrational level.

I can tell this kind of vibrational-physical fusion will be a big part of CGC Year 9 and beyond – again because it works. Problems are much easier to solve when we engage not just our minds but our hearts and spirits as well.

Lightness & Happiness

The energy in some earlier CGC years felt heavier to me. Today it’s a lot lighter feeling inside. There’s more happiness and optimism inside the club these days – and some genuine excitement too, especially since we’re starting a whole new year together starting today.

Years ago, some people were initially drawn to approach CGC like a therapy container – a space for working through unresolved trauma.

I gave it a lot of thought and took concrete steps to move the club well away from that direction. I know this bothered some people, but I’m certain that it was the correct decision. Even back then I knew we needed to move away from that.

I’m not a therapist, and I don’t intend to become one. I really don’t want to meet people in their misery and delve into the ache with them.

I know some great people who do work in the space of trauma, healing, PTSD, etc. Most of them work with plant medicines because that really moves the needle when nothing else will. I’ve seen a tremendous amount of positive changes unfolding for people who need to process and release old trauma.

But that isn’t my path. I know this. I’m not here to serve people while they’re still enmeshed in their trauma. I’m meant to work and live in limitless land. That’s very clear to me.

I’ve done multiple plant medicine journeys where I’ve looked into that space – with ayahuasca, mushrooms, and more – and they all tell me the same thing. I’m not traumatized and never have been, and I’m not here to help people with their trauma. One journey revealed a fun way of framing this, revealing that when I incarnated as a human in this life, I looked at the box to select my trauma for my human character, and I wrote in “Fuck no!” And so that wish was granted.

I’ve had plenty of challenges to deal with in this life, but none have ever traumatized me. That isn’t what I’m here to experience. And it isn’t how I aim to serve.

I am the opposite of traumatized. I’m ridiculously happy, and I thrive when working with other people who are at least pretty happy with their lives, and they want to unfold even more richness.

I work best with people who want to let go of old limits and stretch themselves. They want to grow stronger and become even more capable. They may not be traumatized, but letting go of old limits is still a great challenge, and this is where I most enjoy serving people.

This has also become a big aspect of CGC as well. We’re not here to meet you in your pain. We’re here to help you advance beyond old limits. If you have a lot of unresolved pain to work through first that’s holding you back from even focusing on richer and more expansive forms of self-development, I feel for you, but there are much better teachers and communities that focus on that. I have tremendous respect for them, and I’m friends with some great people in that space, but I definitely don’t aspire to be one of them. I’ve found where I belong and what I’m good at, and I do sense that this is a limit I want to keep because it serves me well, and it opens into a beautiful outlet for serving others very well too.

CGC’s energy is much lighter than what you’d find in trauma-informed spaces. The energy inside is typically very positive, encouraging, optimistic, and expansive. Members are usually very engaged with interesting projects and working on stretching themselves in various ways.

Even when someone is going through a major challenge, they’re met with positive support, not commiseration. This helps people remember their strong selves, which they can use to meet any problem.

Stepping Into Your Limitless Self

Hopefully this run-through gives you a clearer picture of what CGC is like inside now and how we’re continuing to evolve.

I’d say that our limitless vitality intention for May is a good container for our upcoming year in the club as well. This month we’re inviting more energy to flow through our bodies and our lives, so we can enjoy more capacity to investing in what we find most engaging.

If CGC appeals to you, I invite you to join us. There’s still time to come aboard and join us for Year 9 if you sign up today. Otherwise you’ll have to wait till April 2026 for another chance.

I’d recommend perusing the CGC FAQ, and then read through the CGC invite page as you reflect upon the decision (sign-up button is at the bottom of that page.

Lastly, feel free to drop me a message via my contact form if you have any further questions. We always see a lot of people join on the last day – even in the final hours – so I’m used to that!

I know it’s a big decision. Make it a good one!

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