I’ve been a huge pro sports fan since I was a lower case j, and my hometown teams captured my attention and held it. 

“If you’ve seen the present then you’ve seen everything—as it’s been since the beginning, as it will be forever. The same substance, the same form, all of it.”

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

We should resist the impulse to suppress heavy negativity. Instead, continue noticing heavy negativity—without judging it—and intensely focus on how it makes the body feel, especially in the lower abdomen. Calling the type of negativity we’re experiencing by its name, such as anger, despair, or jealousy, deepens our awareness of it. This process can be painful. Smiling, resting the tongue on the roof of the mouth, and gentle sacral breathing help us ride the waves of emotion. The more we notice negativity without judgment, the more space we create around it, gradually melting it into Presence. 

I loved fairy tales as a little kid and still do as a big one. My favorites are the ones where the hero gets wishes, and they all go horribly wrong. Like King Midas getting the golden touch, and instead of becoming the richest man in the land as he desired, he becomes the poorest when he turns his family and all his homeys into gold.

When we think someone’s behaving like a jerk, no matter how jerky, we should treat them like we would a child who did the wrong thing and didn’t know any better: with love and justice.    

The iconic Saguaro cactus is my favorite plant. Tall, tapered, mighty, majestic, fierce, flowering, phallic, and feminine. It’s got everything you could ever want in a plant (and more!) rolled into one succulent specimen. I hug them sometimes, even though I know I shouldn’t.

I mostly keep it positive, which isn’t hard to do. After all, I’ve been blessed with loads of good fortune, which I appreciate because I’ve also experienced loads of pain.

When someone does a thing we think is wrong, we should remember that we have it in us to do the exact same thing. If we were them, we’d do precisely what they did because that’s what they did. We’re no better than anyone else. 

The higher mind is the gateway to God’s infinite intelligence. When the higher mind guides decision-making, we always do the right thing. 

We create our suffering. When we choose to stay negative, we either (a) think it will help us get what we want; or (b) we’re getting off on playing the victim. Staying negative has no useful purpose and is therefore unintelligent. 

Last weekend, my wife’s folks took us to a fancy musical production of my favorite Christmas play, a Christmas Carol. The play’s main character, Ebenezer Scrooge, hits so hard I call it Scrooge.

I had the time of my life camping inside the Grand Canyon on the Havasupai reservation. My wife, my best friend, and I spent three days dancing with rainbows in the blue-green waters of Havasupai Creek, and chasing waterfalls in red rock canyons on hikes with bridges, ropes, chutes, ladders, stars, sunsets, moonbeams, and butterflies. It was magical.

I rocked with several crews in high school, including the jock crew, the stoner crew, and the artsy crew, to name a few. They overlapped and folded into all kinds of fun Venn diagrams, including ones involving my egghead crew.

My egghead best friend is all about college. He attended a fancy, expensive one (on an academic scholarship because he’s super smart) and thinks college is something young people should do.

The white side of my family is freaking out about what’s coming next.

Humans are magical. We’re the only species that uses spoken language to communicate. We cast energetic spells with our words, which carry immense creative and destructive power. We must, therefore, take personal responsibility for being impeccable with the Word.

I don’t love being hot. I don’t love being cold. I prefer warm but not too warm, like on a mellow May morning while sipping chamomile tea on a veranda overlooking the sea-splashed cliffs of a sun-kissed isle nestled in the Mediterranean Sea.

I watched the Ancient Apocalypse: The Americas documentary on Netflix with my wife. It was fun, informative, one-sided, and mega trashy. I loved it, especially the wacky Keanu Reeves parts.

My wife does psychedelic plant medicine all the time. At this stage of her spiritual journey, she spends about as much time in the astral realms as she does in the three-dimensional experience I share with most other humans. Some of our friends in the plant medicine community dial it up a few notches and only touch down to Terra Firma long enough to do the ca$h money dance and plan out the next launch into the cosmos.