Einstein revolutionized our understanding of the Universe.
His Theory of General Relativity – how the force known as gravity actually bends the fabric of spacetime – is mind blowing.
We owe so much to his simple and elegant formula E=MC2.
Since I was a kid, I thought that the experience of life is a collective, and personal delusion. We convince ourselves of the damndest things. And when you really take the time to try to understand the brain and the universal order of things, you’ll realize it’s true.
Reality is a persistent illusion.
Einstein figured out that time is relative to the observer.
And, later, I’m going to show you how our experience of life is more of an echo than an present moment experience, because modern life, and language distort the information our mind through the senses collects.
We’ll dig into it on the next page.
Stay with me here.
The way you experience time is deeply flawed. If I were your coach you’d get sick of me telling you to slow down.
I’d ask you “What’s the most valuable resource in the universe?“And follow up with, “Who controls it?” so often you’d feel like screaming or punching me in the face.
When you hire me as your guide, it is highly probable that you will hate me every now and then. Maybe more. And I am cool with it.
My job as your coach is to help you reorient your self to Self – plant your attention smack dab in the center of an evolutionary process where past and future meet.
Inside you is a center of gravity, a place of Pause, a Sacred Space, the space of knowing, and I want to guide you to there. It’s the space between waves, the space between notes, a primordial silence, where awe and wonder rest easy, and joy springs eternal. And before it feels like you’re swimming in battery acid before you discover it.
Since I’m the one shoving you in the battery acid and laughing while saying – “isn’t it great?” – hating me is just part of the process.
After all, me as your coach, I poke and prod the Identity, push you into the pain, and make you look under the bed, in the closet, and for the monsters hiding in the shadows.
It’s tough. An impulse will come up for you to stop reaching out to me. Quit. Take a break. Lose momentum, and go back to the way things were. And that’s why I charge upfront per quarter with no refunds.
It could a year to “get it.”
Some choose to keep me around longer, so if you’re thinking of becoming a client, understand it’s a process. Takes time. Don’t expect instant results. And I only work with a handful of people at a time.
My job in this life is to practice loving my life and helping other people do the same. So, I’ll remind you over and over again…
Life is a practice.
Practice who you’ve been, or who want to become. Choice is yours.
At first, with this practice inside of Soul Surfer School, like with anything you learn — driving a car, riding a bike, how to be present enough to please someone else sexually — it’s scary and somewhat frustrating.
Changing patterns, processes, and moving this that and the other around, and bumping up against the same things over and over, wanting badly to fix it, and hearing me say…
“So What? Should we drink a cup together?”
That shit gets pretty annoying.
Then, one day it isn’t and you pour us a cup, because you realize that you don’t have to be a slave to your own impulses. It is possible to just show up to whatever shows up, without being invested. You learn to just get on with it and handle your business.
If I were just teaching you, I would help you focus your attention in what shows up and help you figure out how to stop letting it get sucked down the stream of ‘self consciousness.’
It’s a process. Daily practice. And it won’t feel like much progress for a while. People close to you might be the last to notice, you might not either, until you start to feel lighter, looser, and more relaxed about the same stuff that used to send you over the edge.
Doesn’t matter if you’re working out, making music, telling stories, or building bridges – Tension is part of the creating process.
Build your capacity for tension, and your life feels magical, a new normal manifests, and a new adventure waits.
The brain is a time traveler – jumps back and forth – past, and future.
As you interact with the world around you, most of it is a story you’re telling yourself. Noise. Cascades of chemicals run through the body providing the foundation of your so-called reality.
Your job is to tune into a space of awareness.
My job, as your guide is to coach you through the sticky spots, to remind you of your Essence, and ask you about lip service.
Just know…
The GAP triggers anxiety and depression
Don’t get me wrong here, in no way am I suggesting here that all anxiety or depression can be solved by “Being Present.”
Mindfulness is not a miracle cure.
I am not 100% convinced that we have the ability to actually be present and on time, all of the time. If we do, we can’t stay there too long.
For me, it’s more about being present with my internal response to what has happened most recently — being as close to the present moment as possible, so I can glean whatever lesson my reactive nature is trying to teach me, and adjust how I show up.
Practice Soul Surfing means showing up daily, noticing the conditions of the world around us as well as the universe inside.
It’s about riding the waves that surface through whatever you are experiencing, not about control.
It’s about riding out the waves all the way to emotional clarity and mental clarity – a practice to help navigate life more skillfully, by accepting the lessons that come when failing to do so.
Observe the cause and effect of your daily life objectively.
Don’t take life so personally.
Just practice modifying the patterns of your daily life.
Start by eliminating as much BS as possible. Become aware of what you tolerate, what aggravates, and what you use to soothe yourself. Little by little, eventually, you will engage with your life differently, and create stuff that matters.
I’m willing to bet, to some degree, for a moment or two at least, you have, more than a few times in your life experienced a sense of who you really are, deep down… the feeling of being home, right where you are.
If not, medication and therapy might help as well.
Whatever it takes.
Life is short. Do what your future self needs. The point here is…
A GAP exists between who your current experience and your desired experience — It’s an illusion.
How you imagine you feel when you get there, have that, or get the gold star, money, love and perfect body, those feelings, are not there, in that, everything is already in you.
That GAP creates a tension. Tension will try to resolve itself. And for people who aren’t wired or trained from birth to just lean into the pain and get on with it. That’s where goal setting usually falls apart.
We’ll discuss this further later, and throughout the next few years.
Understanding tension and how it plays out is pretty important.
Tension isn’t bad. Neither is Pressure. But, telling that to your brain, is a hard thing to sell. The biocomputer is filled with a few hundred thousand years of programs designed to identify threat, seek safety, eat, and fornicate.
Another layer designed to feel connected, and craves a sense of belonging.
And finally, the top level of thinking is for creativity, visualizing the future, and planning the steps to make shit happen.
It’s all about distinctions. Nuances. Like wine tasting, you can take it too far and become a self-righteous prick who just spouts off random word salads and says shit like… “oh, this smells so earthy, a little fruit forward. Notice the hint of pears and zinc” while tasting a Bud Light.
Point being. Don’t get sucked into the analyzation of the patterns you discover. Just notice nuances. Enrich your pallet. Make your own distinctions, and you will see that your life, right now, already has complex notes of joy, freedom, and abundance waiting for you to sip.
It’s like Goldie locks. Reality is the porridge, and we’re looking for just right – he experience of “The Power of Full Engagement” so we can be in the zone – that transcendent state.
Train your mind to access an amazing, readily available state of Flow.
Just know that the limbic system gets in the way.
The struggle between our animal impulses and our logic and reasoning is real.
Daniel Kahneman, one of the world’s leading Behavioral Scientists tells us that the brain processes the world in an instant through emotional response, and backfills logic. Some people are hyper-logical. But, emotions and identity still run their lives. Even if they don’t realize it.
Robert Greene wrote two great books — Mastery and The Laws of Human Nature. If you were to read just one of those, pick the latter. Learning those laws could upgrade the way you see yourself and the people around you.
We will get deeper into those books, and the Goldilocks Method of breaking out of your comfort zone at some point in another program.
Let’s stay on point here, and circle back around to stories, hero journey’s, and the guardians of the secret realms. The Gatekeepers.
Cool thing is, today, at least for Americans, Gatekeepers are relics of the past. Want to be an artist, writer, creator, film maker, actor…. Get on with it. Build your own platform. Express yourself. Ask for money. No one is stopping you from living a life of freedom other than you.
Kevin Kelly talked about this years ago. Get your 1,000 True fans, create your own economy.
Build that big enough, and the industry will come to you.
So, let’s talk about three different turning points in all transformational journeys.
Threshold One
Before you even begin – A refusal of the call, your mind fills up with all the reasons why you are not good enough, it’s not the right time, you don’t have the skills, you are just (fill in the blank).
Or..
I’ll start that diet on Monday….
After You Cross the First Threshold
Shit falls apart pretty quickly.
Here’s Joseph Campbell talking about crossing the first threshold and going into the belly of the whale…
The water motif — the subconscious
It’s why surfing became my metaphor, and why I Soul Surfer School became my creation. What Campbell is saying, what I’m trying to show is, inside you lies a dormant and powerful force, and it is in the darkness that you will find it.
One of these things happen when you cross the first threshold.
- The self falls to pieces and becomes fragmented until later when it’s resurrected
OR - You kill the Dragon Power (but you have to drink it’s blood and absorb it’s power)
Fragmented and Unbroken
Ever feel fragmented?
Like different parts of you are in a war. You want one thing, your actions create something else. You can’t seem to figure out who you are or be who you want to be.
That’s normal — you’re not broken.
Nothing needs to be fixed.
You don’t need to protect anything.
The summer of 2018, I rewatched the Bill Moyer Interview Series with Joseph Campbell and realized being broken is the first stage of being free. Once you get used to the tension of the void — you stop trying to fill the space in between your ears with speculations and fantasies.
The less you identify with the stuff that comes from the abyss through you, the more you are able to create what you want to create.
Either path, as Campbell describes it, leads to the same thing:
“transcendence of your humanity and re-associate yourself with the powers of nature, which are the powers of our life, from which the mind removes us.”
The power of your creator
Did you notice how Campbell describes the mind — a secondary organ of a total human being.
Your brain doesn’t run the show. It gets in the way of a much deeper and richer experience. Learn to fight the impulse to put that secondary organ in control.
Campbell further explains your brain “must submit and serve the humanity of the body.”
In other words… you are than just your own opinion of yourself.
You are magical, and on a journey unfolding moment by moment basis, blip by blip, expanding with spacetime.
The power of creation flows through you. And you have access to the most valuable resource in the universe — Attention and your own imagination.
Human attention, imagination, and ingenuity built the world you think you know, and is building a better tomorrow.
Maybe on Mars.
Anyhow…
The story goes. A normal person living a normal life somehow receives a call to adventure. It comes from within or from the outside, wherever.
The call pulls the hero past the first gate, they leave the comfort of the known world and into the belly of the whale, down the road of trials, where they gather a team, face some trials, and slay some dragons.
At some point, they enter the inner most cave.
The motif of death and rebirth is found in most of our mythologies since someone invented story telling.
It’s the story of our own transformation.
The story of what is possible when we kill the Identity and live our true nature and purpose.
Ever seen Star Wars?
At one point in Star Wars, Luke, the whiny little punk dirt farmer who kissed his own sister, is running around doing flips, jumping from rock to rock with Master Yoda Strapped to his back.
They stop.
Yoda: “That place. Is strong with the dark side of the Force. A domain of evil it is. In you must go.”
Luke: “What’s in there?”
Yoda: “Only what you take with you.”
Have a look.
The Second Gate (Threshold)
After you dive into the Abyss and get in touch with your Essential Self, it’s damn hard to want to go back and engage with the ordinary world.
The Journey back home is sometimes more dangerous than the initiation.
All sorts of events will make you lose what you’ve found. In many stories, we get some sort of magical flight to transport the hero back to the original realm. In others, they have to fight their way back and guard the treasure with their life.
Point being, it’s damn hard to maintain your “zen” in the real world.
This manifests in our personal transformation as a frustration.
“I feel really good on the Yoga mat, but I’m still have road rage.”
Me – when I’m not practicing
The reason for that is the identity is like a mythical creature called a Hydra, when you chop it’s head off, two more grow in its place.
So, when we work together, part of my job is to help you see the distinctions between identity and essence, help you see the tricks you play on yourself.
Then, to remind you that you are not your thoughts or your emotions, and you are already whole. Now.
The Universe is in a constant state of flux.
Humans too. We feel it. It’s scary.
But, we need to embrace it, otherwise we’ll spend our lives soothing the tension rises just before the magic happens.
You can spend a lifetime wishing life were something else, worrying about shit that don’t matter, and miss moments with people that do…
… worse yet, you might never experience the thrill of creating stuff that matters.
Third Gate to Cross
The thing I love about water, surfing in the ocean, or paddling on a lake, is that you can show up to the shore in the same exact spot every single day and never really experience the same.
Normal doesn’t exist.
You just show up to what shows up.
Two articles from the 1970s, my experiences on a surfboard that my buddy Shaun Flowers shaped, helped inspire the creation of Soul Surfer School.
One article, the transcripts of an interview with Timothy Leary about his lecture called “The Evolutionary Surfer” gave me the framework and mental model to use surfing as a metaphor for living a life I love.
The other article was on Wikipedia Soul Surfer —
“…to pursue surfing not just as an athletic endeavor or as a sunny day diversion, but to try to glean whatever lessons you can from the practice.
It means being aware of your surroundings, and respectful of the people and places that you interact with.
It means being patient, mindful, kind, compassionate, understanding, active, thoughtful, faithful, hopeful, gracious, disciplined and…good.”
In 2011, when I thought my first book was ready to release, the working title got changed from “Zen Bartender’s Guide” to “Soul Surfer’s Guide” at the last minute.
I had no clue about Bethany Hamiton’s story, until after the book was published and a friend said… “Soul Surfer, like the movie?”
Anyhow…
About the abyss
Campbell taught us that, if you choose, you can dive into the Abyss, touch the divine, glean a lesson, and bring that wisdom to surface.
Then, do it again. Over and over. And in doing so, you engage with this world, the people around you, differently.
When you see the inner workings of you, the delusions, and when you come into your senses compassion just sort of happens.
Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.
Lao Tzu
That third Gate is a bitch.
People will suck you in, put you in your place.
They’ll have their own experience of you that has nothing to do with you, but it’ll suck you into their drama if you let it.
That’s where a coach comes in handy, helping you stay mindful, thoughtful, and actively creating stuff that matters, by helping you stop focusing on dumb shit.
In the next chapter, we’ll go over a quick review of human history, systems theory and how it could change your life, and you’ll get an overview of this system that works for me.
And as a hat tip to some hater dude from Byesville, Ohio, I call it…
The Tao of Tim — a process of ongoing incremental improvement.
It hast three main pillars: Pause. Get Stoked. Flow.
And I bookended it with a Framework for creating things that matter, and along with a formula that I created after watching an Documentary on Einstein and getting an understanding of his General Theory of Relativity and what it means for us.
Hope this helps!
Love your face!
Tim
PS Click here if this resonates.