What is going on people?!  Welcome to the start of a New Year.  This is the beginning of a new chapter of your life.  Are you prepared?  How was the year 2019 for you?  Was it amazing?  Was it great?  Was it a year you will never forget?  Or is it already a fleeting a memory?  I hate to tell you this but if you were hoping the year would end so that you could start over there is some good news and some bad news.  The good news is that there is opportunity when looking towards the future. 

     There is nothing better than using your imagination to create something wonderful for yourself.  Now here is the bad news.  This year will likely end up being quite similar to the year before.  We are creatures of habit.  Those dreams you created will disappear like a fading memory.  The only problem is that the dream you had for the future now becomes a memory that doesn’t fade.  It reinforces itself as another failure in our lives.  The things we tell ourselves like we can’t have what we want and justify why that is the case.  Do you know how many of us settle for a life we don’t really want?  Do you know how many of us pretend that we have it all figured out?  When in fact we are fed up and resigned with a life we truly don’t want. 

      The greatest tragedy of what it means to be a human being is giving up.  To give up on your dreams, to stop fighting for what we want in our lives.  Allowing your dreams to end up in the graveyard, the place where most dreams end up. We see the corruption and the injustice that our government allows to happen.  Our politicians and corporations emit a stench of greed and selfishness.  And we as a collective and as individuals don’t believe we can do anything about.  This is the resignation I speak of.  And we are angry and we harness that anger in arguments and debates that lead nowhere. 

     No progress is being made complaining about change.  You are just venting your frustration and I hate to say it but nothing is going to move by sharing your opinion.  They are a dime a dozen. Do you want to know the access to changing the world?  You don’t have to search because it’s the work that you do on yourself, for yourself and often by yourself.  The true access to change is to discover who you truly are and what you are meant to do for this world.  It’s actually just creating your own hero story.  Dun, dun dun!!!!

Hero's Journey

     The game of life is a beautiful thing once you figure out how to play the game.  Here is the tricky thing.  The rules of the game are the hardest to come by.  You come into this world knowing nothing.  You don’t get to choose your parents.  You don’t get to choose what country you live in.  You don’t get to choose what schools you are taught in.  You don’t get to choose what religion your family worships.  You are helpless and one day you become an adult and you realize.  My parents screwed me up! Right?  Even though your parents or grandparents have not figured out how to play the game of life the way it was meant to be played.  Or they did and they didn’t share it with you.  They must not have liked you very much.

     One day you wake up and realize this is not the life I had envisioned for myself and then you find every reason in the book to why things are the way they are.   Even though the real reasons are hidden from you.  No one ever taught the things I’m going to teach you.  It’s fascinating how easy it is to blame others.  To become the victim of our lives.  One of the greatest archetypes of them all.  And it sucks that we have to lie to ourselves in order to validate our crummy lives, not only to ourselves but to others.  We are all pretending on some level or the next.  We wear masks that hide the true nature of what we are dealing with.  We get older and we still act like the children we once were. 

     We are often impostors.  Children pretending to be adults doing the things that were bestowed upon us that we never got to choose.  70% of people hate their jobs.  70% of people are living pay check to pay check.  We are living a cycle of worry, fear, and doubt.  And it’s sad, because we are sad as a collective.  We suppress. We repress. We compartmentalize. We hide our tears often with anger, but mostly we shed those tears in the confines of our own homes.  Men numbs themselves.  The saddest of them all are so constrained they cannot feel.  They don’t know the relief of shedding a tear.  We hide these things because society perceives that release of emotion as a sign of weakness

      Even though it takes great courage to cry in front of a group of strangers.  It takes something to go against the norms of what society expects of us.  The only reason society hates emotion is because it makes the suppressors feel uncomfortable.  People can’t bear to be uncomfortable, even though discomfort is the access to growth.  That discomfort is a sign for you to learn and to push through whatever is buried and hidden inside of you.  It takes courage and strength to break through the barrier of discomfort. 

     What’s on the other side of that invisible wall?  A new human being.   Now some of you may listen to this and believe you don’t fall into this world I speak of.  Even the most positive ones have tricked themselves into living a life they didn’t sign up for.  Those are the hardest ones to reach.  At least the ones who are present to the suffering, at some point are willing to do whatever it takes to overcome that suffering.  The self-deceivers end up stuck in a reality that’s difficult to shift. 

Overcoming suffering

     Here is something important you need to learn -- you are not just a body.  There are invisible components that comprise of you and they include the mind and the soul.  You have a mind and oddly enough in this weird place we live in our minds are our greatest enemies – you could lump all hero stories as one and the same.  The secret to the game of life is to conquer the villain.  Your mind is the villain and the villain goes wherever you go.  It rarely goes away and maybe if you are inebriated you can temporarily quiet the villain in your mind.  

     This is what the hero story is all about.  Conquering your demons.  Slaying the dragon.  You must become the master of your own destiny.  The master of the mind.  Although most of us are locked in a prison with the enemy and we can’t see our way out.  The true irony is that we as individuals are the only ones who have the key to the prison cell.  No one else can set you free except yourself.  Quite a paradigm it is to be a human being.   

      Next. You also have a soul and it’s the essence of who you are and how you project yourself out in the world.  What are you spewing from your underdeveloped soul? Is it hatred, resentment, or fear?  Have you ever come across the presence of a beautiful soul?  A soul so gentle and caring that it calms your entire being? These people are few and far between.  These are the advanced ones who are winning the game.  To win the game one must master the mind and purify the soul.  This is why I created this podcast.   I am here to teach you how to win at the game of life.  This podcast is all about the mind and the metaphysical.  My story is the ultimate hero story.  I’ve seen hell.  It’s a scary place.  If you don’t like the word hell than maybe you can relate to the word chaos or maybe the underworld.

     I can admit a lot, even though I spent my entire life hiding and withholding things from people.  Here is an interesting thing.  I very well know I am capable of evil.  I also know that underneath everything that shaped and molded me what is at the core of my being is pure love.  It’s taken a decade to unravel all of it -- to find the truth.  Most people don’t realize there are underlying truths.  They are hidden and scattered through religious texts, spiritual teachings, and conceptualized in philosophy.  Although until we experience the truth, can we truly understand it? 

      Knowing things intellectually doesn’t really matter at the end of the day.  There is an innate and intuitive connection to truth that allows for peace and love.  That is how you know you are on the path of truth is if peace and love are present in your daily life.  Have you ever heard the saying, “The truth will set you free?”  There is so much behind this saying and if you lived by this statement and this statement alone you would be doing pretty good in life.  There would be nothing getting in the way of your purpose or your potential.  Your relationships would be authentic and fulfilling.  

      Unfortunately for the majority of us, the truth is terrifying.  Here are some things to know about truth.  For starters the truth is never out there.  We will never find the answers outside of our being. Yes we can get guidance and teaching – which is beneficial.  We can get help, we can get support but ultimately the truth can only be discovered within.  The answers are within you and its scary searching there.  Especially since so many things are buried and hidden there. 

     We have aspects of ourselves that we despise.  Aspects that frighten us.  It’s much safer not going into the dark cave.  Who knows what creatures lurk inside the cave?   As we move along I’m going to share the things I’ve discovered which will allow you to have the courage to discover the truth within you.  This process has many names.  Abraham Maslow called it Self-Actualization.  Carl Jung called it Individuation.  The simplest name for it is the process of Self-Realization.  Finding the Real You

Finding yourself

     Here is the first thing I want to teach you.  Most people are asleep.  Even though they are walking around in the world and appear to be awake, they are not.  This may even include you.  Most of what people do is on autopilot.  People aren’t aware of why they do the things they do.  Although I do and I’m going to share with you the secrets that I have learned.  My mission in life is to awaken people from their sleep.  Although this is an abstract idea for most I can share it in a more literal sense -- my mission in life is to teach people about how their minds work and the invisible laws of the universe.   

     When I speak of the metaphysical I speak of the invisible.  The stuff that science has difficulty proving exists although through countless experiences, people have continually shared these invisible truths since our ancestors could speak.  What I will share in this podcast will allow people to become free from the prison they unknowingly put themselves into.  The metaphor of sleep is really defined by the word unconscious.  Put in other terms – not aware.  You are not aware of why you do the things you do and it’s time for you to learn.  It’s time to shed the child that shows up so frequently in our lives and to become the fully empowered adults we were meant to become. 

     The hero’s journey is never an easy one.  You may become unsettled with what you discover within you.  Here are some things you should know.   You must understand that if you are living in discomfort, discontent, pain, suffering, or whatever other negative emotions are present for you – you might as well move forward with pain then remain wallowing in your own self-pity.  You are already living in pain and the reason you aren’t moving forward is because you are afraid of more pain.  Even though there is not more pain -- you build strength.  

     The difficult truth I discovered is that if you’re not moving forward you are actually moving backwards.  Just like if you don’t exercise, your muscles fatigue.  If you don’t use it you lose it.  You don’t remain in one single place, you move backwards and you get to watch other people move forward.  Increasing this huge gap making it that much more difficult for you to want to move forward, because the distance appears so vast to where you actually want to be in life.  If you go far enough backwards you will end up in hell.  This is called rock bottom. 

     Rock bottom is interesting because everybody technically has a bottom moment of life.  This term often gets thrown around easily.  When I talk about rock bottom.  I’m talking about reaching a place of complete loneliness.  Being desolate.  I’m talking about a place where there isn’t a single thing in the future to look forward to.  This is a place where the pain is so immense you can’t help but think about how to exit this world.  I don’t know how many people get to this place or even are able to bounce back from it. 

     All I know is that I was able to and it was damn hard.  The moving forward process is always on an incline.  We are all climbing that metaphorically mountain of life.  Imagine spending 20 plus years climbing that mountain and then finding yourself walking back down because it’s too difficult?  Now a walk ends up into a run until things spiral so far out of control you are tumbling down the mountain and you become so ashamed to be back at the bottom of your mountain now you start digging tunnels into the ground towards the center of the earth.  Trying to hide your existence from the world.

Dreams come true

     This is what hell means to me.  I don’t want any of you to go down the same path I went down.  In fact if you have stopped moving forward this is your wake up call.  It’s time to start climbing back up that mountain.  If you are currently in hell there is another message I have for you.  It is possible to move from this place of hell, hopelessness and chaos.  In fact you can move from this place of hell and salvage your entire life to the point of finding heaven.  

     I’m a testament to that.  It wasn’t easy and I did most of it on my own and figured out the things I needed often the hard way.  It took me ten years, which for some seems a long time, but to be turning 38 and still having another 40 to 60 years to look forward to, it’s been well worth it.  In fact if I had a teacher like me from the beginning, I would have done it in a much faster time.  Anyone that is older if you could have even one year of bliss – wouldn’t it be worth it?  To completely salvage a lifetime.  I know I would. 

     Wherever you are on your journey is perfect.  Even those who are in a really great place, there are always things to discover.  There will always be things hidden from us.  Located in the unconscious.  All I’m trying to do is –- is help shine a light into those dark areas.  Because there is no better way to learn then by hearing another person’s hero story and the steps they took to get there.  I’m currently not wealthy.  I don’t have a lot of material possessions, but I can tell you I spend most of my days either in a state of peace, happiness and emitting love from my heart towards humanity.  I want that for all of you.  Regardless of what you have done or endured in life, there is always hope.  It’s time to scale the mountain and I’m going to give you the tools that will help you scale it more efficiently and quickly than ever before.   

      This is the end of my very first podcast.  I’ve wanted to create this podcast for many years.  In fact I’ve written at least a dozen episodes, all of which I’ve tossed out.  The villain in my head told me I wasn’t interesting, that no one wanted to hear what I had to say, that my content wasn’t good enough.  You want to know one of my greatest talents?  I’m able to hold onto my dreams.  I never truly give up on them.  My dreams continually jolt back into my life, even if they have remained dormant for years. 

     This is my request to you, hold onto your dreams and go down the hero’s journey.  Foster them, protect them, don’t allow other people’s negativity to crush them.  They are yours and you deserve them.  Now you just need to learn how to get there.  That is why I am here and that is why the universe directed you to this podcast.  You will learn what I mean by that in the future, when you are ready.  This is a gradual learning podcast but the wisdom will be sprinkled in at all levels.  Just enough so you can have a taste of what’s to come.  You will find your true self along this journey.  I promise you.  

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