Idk if it's nature, nurture, or astrology (i got 7 signs in Capricorn lol), but I am not a chill guy.

Idk if it's because my moon is Leo or because I grew up reading mythology and watching anime, but my interior myth-maker drips in dramatics.

The interior me wants dragons and giants, heartbreak and plot-twists. He wants to know the struggle, what it cost, what was lost, and why it was still worth it.

He's the one who loves to ascend on the wings of mania and revels in the mud and shit of the completed descent.

He is the one in me who has gone mad, who almost gave up on life, and is also the smoldering coal that protected my audacity as I grew up in a mono-cropped husk of a culture; where the radio played music produced by rapists and the television aired shows also produced by rapists.

All this is to say, the reasons matter not, I want a mthfckn Renaissance.

I
want a
muthafuckn
Renaissance.

Say it with me, aloud.

I want a muthafuckn renaissance.

Do your eyes water like mine when you finally actually say it?

It's okay if they don't (maybe it's nature, nurture, or my astrology lol).

But for me, it's feels like coming out of the closet; like going to AA for the first time:

There are 4 phases for those willing to take the vow.

Phase 1: Attention Triage
Phase 2: Dharma Maxing
Phase 3: DEVA Pilot Skool
Phase 4: Join The ROC League

Attention Triage is the first phase because, unless you've trained your mind, your life is like Memento.

My brothers and sisters, we were hit by an invisible bomb in 2011. Since then, our capacity to sustain our attention on what is meaningful to us has been fractured. The average shattered mind checks their phone 200+ times a day. That's every 4.9 minutes. These people are the drowning who don't recognize they are in water.

Attention Triage is training your focus like an athlete. You practice spending longer and longer spans deeply focused on what truly matters to you. I call these training periods 'dharma sprints.'

You'll have met the minimum standard of fitness for phase 1 when you demonstrate to yourself you can complete a dharma sprint <90% of a 100 day challenge.

I share how to do this all for free here. Check out the classroom.

Phase 1 of becoming a renaissance player is to triage your bleeding attentional system.

The good news is; it is completely repairable.

So get started.

Dharma Maxing is the second phase. Now that you have little pockets of sustained attention everyday, you can start to renegotiate reality.

The era we are in is called the Schizophrenic Renaissance because, as soon as you get your attention above water and look around, you'll notice you're living during a renaissance.

With sustained attention, you can learn anything humanity has figured out (physics, chemistry, engineering, statecraft, computer science, etc). Through our phones and computers we have access to 10,000 libraries of Alexandria.

It is not as quick as The Matrix, but with sustained attention, you can learn (almost) anything with an internet connection (160 days instead of 16 seconds).

With sustained attention, you can move social classes. If you are reading these words, you are close enough to the culture I'm in, and in this culture, you can start a business and, through sustained attention, can learn to play the game of money well enough to liberate yourself from poverty.

Some readers will have protective parts in their mind flinch and sneer at the poverty to wealth idea, and none of those sneering will be first generation immigrants (it'll likely be self-loathing Americans), because immigrants to the West know what I write is true.

With sustained attention, you can renegotiate reality to such a degree that it terrifies most of us into rigid belief systems that protect us from the shattering weight of our unlived lives.

You'll have met the minimum standard of fitness for phase 2 when you've acquired the competence to renegotiate your reality so that you can give 3-4 hours everyday to your dharma.

For most people this means two things:

1. habit change
2. lifestyle design

Habit change because in order to be savage and creative in your calling, you're gunna want to make as much of the rest of your live orderly and routine.

Lifestyle design because most of us are going to have to either learn to finesse the company we work for, or we will have to become freelancers of some kind in order to have the freedom for 3-4 hours of uninterrupted dharma time per day.

And let me zoom out in case I'm losing you.

Humanity flirts with existential threats.

Our momentum is carrying us towards cataclysms.

Our teenagers and children are already being shredded by untrained shimmer use.

You giving C+ effort at a job you hate is not the mfckn storyline.

It's renaissance or bust, and we need to grow up.

Growing up looks like waking the fuck up from the digital somnambulance, then training the skills you need to start living from your dharma.

Because when you are living in the stoke of your calling, something greater then you starts to move through you.

We do not face these existential threats alone. Providence is available, we only need to learn how to open ourselves to it.

I have found Dharma maxing to be how to do that.

If you want to join an online gym where other people are practicing dharma maxing, we host group work sessions every day.

Phase 3 (DEVA Pilot Skool) is when the Dharma maxing artist decides to grow up and learn how to create and pilot a corporate egregore.

You'd be surprised how many artists would rather bury their head in addiction, gaslighting, relational drama, and self-loathing then accept the responsibility to build and pilot a dharma-infused business.

A more compassionate view would be to say that most people I know have a very limited imagination as to what a dharma-infused business could look like.

I'm committed to helping change that.

Egregores are the most potent psychotechnologies on the planet for reshaping the momentum of our culture.

If you're a serious renaissance player, you're going to learn how to create, pilot, and deconstruct egregores.

A DEVA is a dharma-infused corporate egregore.

DEVA Skool will be the next program I offer. It'll be for dharma artists who are ready to create and launch a DEVA. I'm thinking 3k for 3 months, somewhere around February. If you're interested, stay tuned.

The ROC League is phase 4 and thats as big as I can see from my current POV.

The ROC League will be for the DEVA pilots who want to create new cultural movements. The name may change but I know I want to create a space for the precious few brothers and sisters who not only see the schizophrenic renaissance, but actually reclaimed their attention, are maxxing their dharma contributions, and have piloted DEVAs.

If you're a long time reader you'll know I've had more than a few 'visitations' by something that tells me my calling is to 'build a regenerative city.'

For years I haven't really understood what that meant, then a couple of months ago I had a lucid dream.

I was standing out on a doc that extended from a beach city that felt like a mixture of Miami and this fictional city from one of my favorite video games.

It's morning, the city is to my right, and the open horizon of the ocean is to my left. Then I begin to see it. A huge fleet of futuristic ships and space craft begin to come from the horizon to my left and begin to dock in the port of the mythic city. I am surrounded by an incredible league of ships. It feels like a fleet, and the one directly in front of me is a huge yacht like battleship and a miniature sun begins to form above it.

The light is brilliant. The raw plasmatic power of the nuclear orb fixates me, and something about the intensity of the awe clicks me into lucidity. The moment I become lucid I begin to float up towards the sun, marveling at it as I get closer.

Then I wake up.

This dream comes to mind when I think of DEVA skool and ROC League.

I want to help 10,000 dharma artists become DEVA pilots.

I want to help herald a renaissance.

I can't look away from our existential risks, and I will never be fulfilled being just an armchair critic.

my name is Erick and I want a muthafuckn renaissance.

Song I'm Listening on Repeat

​The video is a nice complement. ​

If you want to learn more about the 4 phases

These 4 phases (attention triage, dharma maxing, DEVA skool, and the ROC League) will be the outline of my workshop I'm sharing at the Afterlight summit. There will be 14 other speakers during the 3 day online event, and for those who get the Legacy ticket, you'll get access to download every live workshop we've managed to record over 6 years of doing Fit For Service.

This will be my final act as the bus driver for Fit For Service. After this we're putting that egregore to sleep, and I'm giving my full attention to the Dharma Artist Collective.

Quote I'm Enjoying

"Social differentiation means being revolutionary in some sense. In the sense of inverting some premise that society at large thinks is good, yet you can show -- through your meticulous study of history -- is actually bad. That moral innovation that's the basis for a startup society."

-Bajali, The Network State

Weekly Journal Prompt

If you had to stand for a single new moral commandment, and were willing to lead a community around that new moral commandment, what would it be?

(mine is that we are morally obligated to leverage the arrival of the shimmer to ignite a renaissance.)