The only thing I watched the week after my vision quest was Alone. Real people get dropped off in wilderness and record themselves as they attempt to outlast other contenders. It is refreshingly good.

One of the crucified bodhisattvas was lucky and skilled enough to kill a musk ox...with a knife. For real. He shared the land with bears, and was 2 miles from his basecamp, so he had to skin the animal and begin moving it as fast as he could or else lose it to the bears.

Working from dawn till dusk, it still took him multiple days to carry the 600+ pounds of sunlight turned flesh back to his camp.

That is the image that comes to mind when I realize I haven't written a newsletter in three weeks. Somehow, I found myself in a peyote teepee two Sundays ago; 10 days after coming out of my vision quest.

The combination of vision quest + peyote + starting the last class of Mentally Fit all in the span of two weeks is my musk ox.

I had never done peyote before, and the tradition we followed was humbling. We start around 7pm. 20 of us step into a large teepee and find our seats around the central fire. We are to sit up until dawn, and eat fresh peyote buttons every few hours. All through the night there are songs and prayers.

It was hard and beautiful and a story for another time.

28 hours after I leave the dawn soaked teepee, I log in to host the first call of my final Mentally Fit class. There are almost 100 students, and this class marks the last time I will teach for Fit For Service. I've been in this role for almost 8 years now. It is the end of era, and the medicine sprouting from between the students that make the body of this last container is a honor to steward.

I've been spending my free time downloading, reviewing, and distilling the almost 200 hours of recorded lectures I've archived since the start of this class. It's an initiation to watch yourself teach. It's not enjoyable, but I do it because this is my craft and this is how I attempt to help our beautiful broken world. I tell myself I'm an athlete watching my game tape.

I also do it because I have too. I'm called to teach new material, and in order to do so, I have to satisfy the younger version of myself that needed these teachings. To satisfy him, I'm turning this class into a course someone can take on their own time, at their own pace. My younger self who needed this was a tough son of a bitch to sell to, and so I have to make something I'm artistically proud of, and that he'd be impressed by after paying for it.

And in a way that makes perfect sense to me, but might be unclear to most, completing this project will be the final stitch in a at-last-mended wound that has driven me for more than a decade.

This project, turning Mentally Fit into an 'evergreen' course, is akin to creating a floating bridge over the part of a river that almost killed me.

I was a kid whose life was saved by the internet.

It was through podcasts that I heard the first adult men who actually enjoyed their lives; who laughed, were curious, and who had passion.

Then there were the emails and blogs; specifically people like Tim Ferriss totally reorganized my mind as to what is possible.

Podcasts, emails like this one, books and courses were the branches a few who came before me left behind that saved me from drowning in the black river of nihilism and paranoid schizophrenia I got harrowingly close to losing myself in.

A core strand of my desire as an artist has been to try to create my own versions of the tools that saved my life.

So I started a podcast.
And this newsletter.
Wrote a book.
Created courses.

Not to be rich and not to be famous; but because I was compelled by the young man in me that was saved by these tools. Like a hungry dog that catches a scent or a curious child seeing a toy they must touch, something young and bright and primordial demanded I imitate these mediums.

And because of what Mentally Fit means to that young man in me, he demands I make the bridge we're leaving behind the best possible thing we can make in this season of life. So that means reviewing 200+ hours of recordings, clipping, stitching, and revising.

So I haven't written a newsletter in a while. I responded to emails or text messages or DMs. I haven't posted on any socials, and my days feel like a properly filled large cup of soda only American movie theaters can deliver.

But I've never felt closer to my fiancee. I feel like I can read my cats minds sometimes and I'm meditating for 20 to 25 minutes everyday. I'm working out, sleeping well, and crying easily when the song is good or the movie is real.

I feel touched by peyote in a way I haven't felt from any other plant medicine. It's hard to explain but at least once every other day I will catch a smell or somehow just 'taste' peyote again. In a way I can't explain but I trust because of the texture of the inner feeling, I feel peyote's 'hand' in much of my recent luck.

I'm in a momentum, and if you haven't heard from me yet, please extend me grace. I'm in a pocket of teaching, building, and loving.

Song I'm Listening on Repeat

​Ameonna - deadmau5​

Podcast That Made Me Cry This Week

​Tim Ferriss on Diary of a CEO. Specifically the part around the 3 quarters mark where Tim shares the story of why he wrote is article Some Practical Thoughts on Suicide. I cried while I ate my chicken and rice.

All of us who have been close to existing the game of life; if you can connect to that version of you, you will know what to do for the next artistic project. Make something that would have helped that part of you until they are integrated.

In some sense, everything I've done artistically has been that.

Quote I'm Enjoying

“Blessed are the curious, for their curiosity honors reality.
Blessed are the uncertain and those with second thoughts, for their minds are still open.
Blessed are the wonderers, for they shall find what is wonderful.
Blessed are those who question their answers, for their horizons will expand forever.
Blessed are those who often feel foolish, for they are wiser than those who think themselves wise.
Blessed are those who are scolded, suspected and labeled as heretics by the gatekeepers, for the prophets and mystics were treated in the same way by the gatekeepers of their day
Blessed are those who know their unknowing, for they shall have the last laugh.
Blessed are the perplexed, for they have reached the frontiers of contemplation.
Blessed are they who become cynical about their cynicism and suspicious of their suspicion, for they will enter the second innocence.
Blessed are the doubters, for they shall see through false gods
Blessed are the lovers,

for they shall see God everywhere.”

-Brian McLearen

Looking to close the year with a ceremony?

My partner in eternity, Caitlyn Howe is hosting an aya retreat in Costa Rica December 12th - December 19th. I won't be there but I've sat with the Curanderos who will be facilitating and they are world class. If you have been feeling the call, there is no one I trust more to hold you than Caitlyn, and to serve you than the team behind this event.