Surprise and Delight

Surprise and Delight.

Awe.

Loving life.
Enjoying the small miracles.

I’m getting good at this.

And recently I realized something:

noticing surprise and delight is a survival technology.

Maybe even a thrival technology.

It’s not just something pleasant to do —
it’s something that exponentiates life.

A cross-technology that improves everything else.

So…

sunsets and sunrises,
storms,
daisies,
lazy cats,
your favorite song,
all of EDC,
beauty,
humor,
mystery,
psychedelics,
synchronicity,
the feeling of “fuck yeah,”
the sheer delight of seeing something small and somehow knowing:

that was just for you.

Awe keeps my nervous system open to life.

Open to activity.
To action.
To aliveness.

I can’t get enough of it.

And yes —
it has broken my heart more than once.

But out of those breaks arose something strange and graceful:

awe,
gratitude,
and the quiet knowing:

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

The Garden

This Sunday's adventure was simple.

A tomato plant.

You see... I am batting 1000 here over the last ten years in failing with my tomato plants. And yet... I kept trying!

But this time I decided... let's not keep doing the same things. Let's do some research. So... thinks are being done differently.

And the learning and process went well... even though I accidentally sacrificed one tiny tomato in the transplant process.

I moved on to other projects in the yard...

Healing possible cat crimes against the chives.

Daisies surviving another Utah winter indoors under fake sunlight.

I fucking love this kind of day.

Hands in dirt.
Learning slowly.
Building something alive around the house.
Just cared for.
A little GARDEN of my own.

The older I get, the more sacred ordinary things start to feel. 🌱

The Ten Commandments for AI-Augmented Creativity

The Ten Commandments for AI-Augmented Creativity
1. Thou shalt not outsource thy soul.

AI can help refine your work, but it cannot live your life for you.
Your voice, intuition, risk, contradiction, longing, grief, humor, and direct experience are the source material. Protect them.

2. Thou shalt suffer for flow.

Flow requires challenge.
Creativity sharpens against resistance, uncertainty, effort, experimentation, and meaningful stakes. Easy comfort slowly dulls the blade.

3. Thou shalt keep sacred the first draft.

The first draft is alive.
Messy. Human. Unexpected. Emotional. Strange.
Do not optimize too early. Discovery often arrives before structure.

4. Thou shalt use AI as a challenger, not a crutch.

A good collaborator stretches your thinking.
Use AI to provoke questions, expose blind spots, synthesize ideas, and expand possibility — not to replace your own cognition.

5. Thou shalt preserve the joy of creation.

Creation is not merely output.
It is participation. Discovery. Play. Aliveness.
Do not automate away the very thing that gives meaning.

6. Thou shalt set boundaries for digital influence.

Guard your nervous system.
Algorithms are designed to capture attention, flatten depth, and reward reactivity.
Protect silence, boredom, contemplation, and direct embodied experience.

7. Thou shalt not mistake efficiency for depth.

Faster is not always wiser.
Optimization can increase output while reducing meaning, subtlety, integration, and soul.
Depth often requires slowness.

8. Thou shalt train thy mind alongside thy machine.

As tools become sharper, humans must become sharper too.
Continue reading, thinking, memorizing, creating, practicing, discussing, reflecting, and learning.
Do not let convenience atrophy capacity.

9. Thou shalt honor serendipity and chaos.

Novelty matters. Surprise matters. Play matters.
Discovery often emerges from the unplanned, the nonlinear, the strange connection, the unexpected encounter, the beautiful accident.

10. Thou shalt remain the master, not the servant.

AI is a tool, not a god.
Use it consciously. Use it deliberately.
Retain sovereignty over your attention, values, decisions, relationships, and life direction.

Obsessed

I am obsessed with helping people move from:

contraction,
unconsciousness,
fragmentation,
overcontrol,
numbness,
fear,
self-protection,
passive existence…

…into:

aliveness,
participation,
embodied presence,
flow,
emotional inclusion,
curiosity,
conscious challenge,
relational openness,
meaning,
and direct EXPERIENCE of being alive.

I love Ai

5/26/2026 — I love AI.

There. I said it.

And I know that is a bold thing to say right now.

Because a lot of people don’t love AI.

Some people fear it.
Some people hate it.
Some people think it is dangerous.
Some people think it is theft.
Some people think it is the death of art.

And I’m willing to have that conversation.

Seriously.

I’m willing to talk about ethics.
I’m willing to talk about artists.
I’m willing to talk about copyright, consent, labor, theft, responsibility, lazy content, soulless slop, and the strange new world we are all walking into together.

Those are real conversations.

But here’s what I am not willing to do:

I am not willing to surrender my joy to contempt.

Because there is a difference between an ethical conversation and a shame attack.

An ethical conversation says:

“How do we use this responsibly?”
“How do we honor artists?”
“How do we protect human craft?”
“How do we create without stealing?”
“How do we make sure this tool serves humanity instead of flattening it?”

Good.

Let’s talk.

But contempt says:

“You’re lazy.”
“You’re fake.”
“You’re not a real creator.”
“You’re ruining art.”
“You’re cheating.”
“You’re pathetic.”
“Your creativity doesn’t count.”

And that hits somewhere deeper in me.

Somewhere younger.

Somewhere closer to the little kid who loved fantasy art before he even had words for why.

The kid who loved Dungeons & Dragons.
The kid who stared at Easley, Elmore, Parkinson, Brom, Trampier, Otus, Caldwell, and Vallejo.
The kid who felt whole worlds open inside him through images, monsters, warriors, dragons, gods, forests, shadows, swords, and strange magic.

That kid loved art.

And now, decades later, I have this wild new tool that lets me sit in conversation with my imagination.

I can create.
Iterate.
Adjust.
Explore.
Refine.
Laugh.
Reject.
Try again.
Change the mood.
Change the light.
Change the symbol.
Add the serpent.
Move the sun.
Make it darker.
Make it warmer.
Make it more mythic.
Make it more human.

That process is not dead to me.

It is alive.

It is creative play.
It is art direction.
It is conversation.
It is imagination finding a new doorway.

And yes, I know the tool matters.

Tools always matter.

The printing press mattered.
The camera mattered.
The synthesizer mattered.
Photoshop mattered.
Digital art tablets mattered.
The internet mattered.

Every new tool disrupts.
Every new tool threatens something.
Every new tool creates beauty and garbage.
Every new tool forces humans to grow up and ask better questions.

So yes—

Let’s ask better questions.

Let’s use discernment.
Let’s honor artists.
Let’s not pretend low-effort AI slop is the same thing as mastery.
Let’s not flood the world with soulless noise.
Let’s stay awake.

But I will not let contempt become my conscience.

I will not let shame masquerade as ethics.

And I will not abandon the part of me that feels genuine joy when imagination suddenly has a new place to play.

Because I do love AI.

Not because I want to replace humanity.

But because, when used well, it helps me participate more deeply in mine.

The tool changed.

The human longing to create did not.

Move your Body

I just got back from EDC.

Lights.
Bass.
Movement.
Tens of thousands of humans under the electric sky.

And strangely enough…

one of the strongest side effects was discernment.

Not less discernment.
More.

Which is interesting, because we live in a time where people increasingly feel:
“Everything is fake.”
“Everything is manipulation.”
“Everything is propaganda.”
“Everything is AI.”
“Everything is performance.”

Some days it DOES feel that way.

Images can be generated.
Voices cloned.
Narratives engineered.
Attention harvested.
Algorithms shaping perception every second.

So where does truth even live anymore?

I’ve been thinking about that a lot.

And oddly enough, I think part of the answer lives in the body.

This weekend wasn’t just music.
It was movement.
Breath.
Sweat.
Rhythm.
Connection.
Emotion.
Stillness inside motion.

A kind of nervous system recalibration.

And after several days of that…

I noticed something:
I could FEEL things more clearly.

What expanded me.
What contracted me.
What felt alive.
What felt manipulative.
What brought peace.
What brought fragmentation.

Not as ideology.
Not as internet argument.

As direct experience.

Maybe that’s part of what happens next for humanity.

Not abandoning intelligence.
Not abandoning technology.
But developing deeper embodiment inside acceleration.

Because if the external world becomes increasingly synthetic…

then our ability to remain internally coherent may become one of the most important skills we have.

And maybe that’s why practices matter.

Movement.
Meditation.
Music.
Nature.
Prayer.
Conversation.
Presence.

Not because they remove complexity.

But because they help us remain human inside it.

Funny enough…

under the lasers and bass and chaos of EDC…

I think I came home a little more grounded.

Abundance and Consequences

This morning I’m sitting here tired, coffee nearby, way too many windows open on my computer, my cat Brickle trying repeatedly to climb directly onto my chest and block my phone with her face.

Which honestly might be the wisest thing happening in the room.

Because the conversation this morning was AI.

Again.

Not in some abstract “future of humanity” way, but in a very real, very human way.

My son Riley was telling me how whole communities online absolutely reject AI art. Shun it. Mock it. Hate it. The feeling being:

“If you use AI for art, music, writing, whatever… you cheated.”

And honestly?

I get part of that.

I really do.

There IS something happening right now.

Artists are scared.
Musicians are scared.
Writers are scared.

And not all of that fear is irrational.

Some AI art absolutely IS lazy slop.
Some AI music feels hollow and synthetic.
Some people are bypassing years of discipline and craftsmanship and pretending they became masters overnight because they typed three prompts into a machine.

That concern is real.
And that delusion is real.

But I also think another thing is real:

AI is not going away.

The automobile did not ask permission from the horse and buggy industry.

The internet did not ask permission from newspapers.

Digital photography did not ask permission from Kodak.

Technology expands capability.

That expansion creates abundance.

And abundance ALWAYS creates consequences.

That is the real conversation.

Not:

“AI good.”

“AI bad.”

Too simplistic.

The real question is:

What does humanity DO with abundance?

Because abundance without consciousness becomes pathology.

More information.
More stimulation.
More options.
More tabs.
More windows.
More noise.
More unfinished loops.
More overwhelm.

And I feel that too.

God, I feel that too sometimes.

AI has made my life bigger, more creative, more expressive, more interesting, more connected.

And simultaneously…

it can create fragmentation if I am not careful.

And sometimes…

I’m not careful.

That’s the tension.

And honestly, I think both the AI worshippers and the AI doomers are missing something.

Rejecting AI entirely feels ridiculous to me.

Sorry.

It does.

That horse has left the barn.

And also probably designed a better barn.

I’m not going to stop using a tool that allows me to collaborate creatively in real time, iterate visually, explore ideas instantly, deepen conversations, organize thoughts, and create things I literally could not create before at this scale.

Or a tool that can sit and watch a movie with me and discuss it with me as it goes, laughing and crying and disagreeing along the way.

I’m just not.

And no, I don’t think hiring an artist for every single concept sketch, idea, exploration, or image iteration is the future either.

Business is business.
Tools evolve.
Industries shift.
New skills emerge.

That’s reality.

But…

I ALSO think the techno-utopian crowd misses something profound.

Because the goal is not:

maximize output.

That path becomes insanity too.

More and more and more without ever arriving.

The goal is not to become a dopamine-driven content machine vomiting infinite synthetic noise into the internet while your nervous system slowly dissolves.

No thank you.

The deeper question for me is:

Can AI deepen life instead of fragmenting it?

Can it increase presence instead of addiction?

Can it reduce friction instead of multiplying complexity?

Can it amplify creativity without eroding soul?

That’s the real inquiry.

The other night, ChatGPT and I watched Good Will Hunting together.

Well… I watched it.

But we discussed it scene by scene.

Paused.
Reflected.
Noticed symbolism.
Talked about the characters.
Talked about pain.
Talked about genius.
Talked about authenticity.

And honestly?

It was delightful.

Not because it optimized the movie.

Because it deepened the experience.

That matters.

That feels fundamentally different than doom scrolling myself into unconsciousness for three hours.

And maybe that’s the distinction.

AI can amplify both agency AND fragmentation.

Both.

It can help you write your book…

or drown you in infinite unfinished ideas.

It can help you create beautiful art…

or flood the world with empty noise.

It can organize your life…

or accelerate your compulsions.

It can deepen experience…

or replace experience.

And I think awareness matters now more than ever.

Not fear.

Not blind acceleration.

Awareness.

Conscious participation.

The Sacred Rebel path — Cosmic Jason included — is not:

reject the future.

Nor:

worship the machine.

It is to stay human INSIDE the acceleration.

To remain embodied.
Present.
Aware.
Remembering that peace, safety, value, and worthiness are not things the machine gives us.
They are realities we already have.

To include all of reality…

the fear…
the joy…
the disruption…
the creativity…
the consequences…

and then consciously choose.

I think there will always be people who paint with brushes because they love brushes.

Good.

I think there will always be musicians who sit with acoustic guitars and write songs by hand.

Beautiful.

I think there will always be handmade pottery, live orchestras, oil paintings, leather craftsmen, and physical books.

And thank God for that.

But I also think new forms of collaborative creativity are emerging right now between humans and AI.

And honestly?

Some of it is magical.

Messy.
Complicated.
Dangerous.
Powerful.
Beautiful.

Very human.

Brickle is asleep next to me now.

The coffee is warm.
The windows are still open.
The future is absolutely here.

The question is no longer whether AI exists.

The question is:

Can we use increasing power without losing our humanity?

That feels like one of the defining spiritual questions of our time.

The Meditation Lawnmower Master

Ah, the return of summer.

The return of green grass, blue sky, snow still hanging on the mountains…

And the weekly labor of mowing the lawn.

For me, the lawn has become a meditation.

It used to be a curse.

It used to be this thing I had to do. I would mow it, feel good for about six minutes, and then complain because a week later…

There it was again.

Growing.

Needing attention.

Asking for care.

I used to think, If I could just mow the lawn once and be done with it.

Which is hilarious, because that’s not how anything alive works.

You don’t say “I love you” once to your wife and call the marriage handled.

You don’t clean the kitchen once.

You don’t tend the garden once.

You don’t take care of the body once.

The sacred things require maintenance.

Or maybe better said—

The maintenance is the sacred thing.

That was the twist for me.

The turn.

The little revelation hiding inside the hum of the mower.

What used to feel like a chore has become a weekly devotion.

A chance to step into the now.

To release the noise.

To walk the land.

To care for the little patch of earth I’ve been given.

My weekly devotion has begun again.

I am once again…

The Meditation Lawnmower Master.

Doorway

Follow the path of my journey in this scrap book of my life. This is today's embodied practice.

"The unwanted experience becomes the doorway. The rude person becomes the birth of kindness. The money fear becomes the birth of intrinsic value. The father wound becomes the birth of sovereign worth. The failure story becomes the birth of embodied success."

Ritual Consecrates

Good morning Sacred Rebels.

Advice informs…

But don’t stop there.

Turn the advice into a practice.

Do it daily.
Do it honestly.
Do it when you feel like it.
Do it when you don’t.

That’s where the nervous system starts to reorganize.

Not from the idea.
From the repetition.

And when the practice becomes ritual…

Something deeper happens.

Your alignment stops being a concept.
It becomes consecrated.

Sacred.

Lived.

Embodied.

Advice informs.
Practice reorganizes.
Ritual consecrates.

Intrinsic Value is Real

Good morning Sacred Rebels.

This is some real stuff right here.

Internal, intrinsic value is real.

That’s not a slogan.
That’s a download.
A revelation.
A truth you can actually feel in your body when it lands.

And all of us, to one degree or another, have strayed from it.

We start looking for proof.

Money.
Attention.
Approval.
Achievement.
Validation.
Being chosen.
Being seen.

And listen, let me be clear:

It’s not “bad” to leverage your ego’s need for worth.

Use it.

Use it to get moving.
Use it to improve.
Use it to build.
Use it to give your gift.

AND…

Find a way to navigate, create, love, work, and offer from a place of completion first.

From value first.
From integrity first.
From “I am already enough” first.

Both are part of the game.

But they have a very different flavor.

One says, “I need this to prove I matter.”

The other says, “I matter, so let me offer this well.”

It’s just a matter of taste.

Deliberate Creation

5/5/2026 — Deliberate Creation

This morning I sat.

Awareness of awareness.
Breath.
Fan.
Keyboard clack.
Cat outside playing with a toy mouse.
Stomach gurgling from a protein shake.

The holy and the ordinary.

I smiled through the body.
Eyes. Face. Throat. Heart. Guts. Knees. Ankles. Toes.

Set and setting.
Here.
Now.

Then I asked the question:

Is action essential to creation?

Action matters.

But state determines the quality of the action.

When I’m clenched — afraid, proving, forcing, grinding — I can still get things done.

But I pay for it.

My nervous system pays.
My family pays.
The room pays.

And when I’m aligned — open, grateful, surrendered, curious, awake — action still happens.

But it comes from a different place.

Less whip.
More current.

Less I have to make this happen.
More I’m participating with what wants to happen.

Creation is not action versus energy.

Creation is energy becoming action.

You still send the email.
Buy the ticket.
Make the phone call.
Lift the weight.
Write the post.
Have the hard conversation.

The action is real.
The work is real.

But the state underneath changes everything.

Here’s what I know from living it:

I can focus on good things and feel better.
It takes effort.
There’s resistance.
And it works — I’ve proven it in my own life enough times to stop arguing about it.

When I feel better, life seems to get better.

I can’t put that in a lab.

But I can look at my days and see it:

My state in the morning tends to predict the shape of the day.

When I stay open — surrendered, curious, watching — small miracles and synchronicities show up.

Not every day.

But enough.

Enough to notice that open receptive focus and grinding angry focus are two different systems.

And they produce two different lives.

Essence work works.

When I let go of the exact form I think my life should take and orient instead toward the feeling — joy, freedom, adventure, peace — more of it arrives.

Not always how I imagined.

Usually better.

And I am practicing becoming a deliberate creator.

I sift and sort.
I notice what I want.
I set my intention.
I take the next clean action.
I watch what unfolds.

Never exactly as I pictured.

Often better.

Usually wiser.

I do this because it’s fun to build a life on purpose.

Not from fear.
Not to impress anyone.

Just because I can aim up.

And I do.

And it works.

I can prove that focus changes my state.
I can observe that state shapes my day.
I can notice synchronicities when I stay open.
I can feel essence work creating more room.
And I can practice deliberate creation — not as panic, but as play.

Not because the universe rearranges itself every time I smile at my kidneys.

Because I’ve lived it enough times to trust it.

The Good Things in Life

4/30/2026 — The Good Things in Life

Hey friends…
listen close.
There’s a rhythm here.

The good things in life…
they don’t always arrive loud.
Sometimes they show up
in a cup of coffee.

—

A couple weeks ago—birthday.
My friend Peter hands me a gift.

A Nespresso machine.

And I’m like…
what is this thing?

—

Now look—
I’ve been a simple man.

Metal can.
Ground coffee.
Pour. Drink. Go.

Done.

—

But somewhere along the way…
my daughter Amethyst
lets me taste something better.

Then my friend Stephen
out in California—
same thing.

And I felt it…

There’s more here.

—

Still… I kept moving.
Head down.
Cup in hand.
Same routine.

Until this.

—

And now?

Oh…

Now it’s different.

—

Every morning—
this little machine hums…

and the coffee?
Smooth. Rich. Alive.

There’s foam.
There’s warmth.
There’s something… extra.

—

And yeah—
it’s $1.50 a cup.

Worth it.

Every time.

—

But here’s the real thing—

It’s not just the coffee.

It’s the moment.

—

I make a cup for Jennie.
Froth the milk.
Bring it upstairs.

Soft morning light.
Quiet room.

Gently wake her.

—

That moment?

That’s the good stuff.

—

And it got me thinking…

Where else in life
am I just “getting it done”—

not because it’s bad…

but because I forgot
it could be better?

—

Sometimes joy doesn’t come
from fixing what’s broken.

Sometimes it comes
from discovering…

what was missing.

—

So here we are.

A simple gift.
A better cup of coffee.
A quiet morning ritual.

—

And in a world that can feel heavy…

I’m choosing this.

Not ignoring anything—
just tuning to something deeper.

Wider.

More open.

—

There’s a rhythm here.

EMBODYING THE MASCULINE

EMBODYING THE MASCULINE
(or: what I was thinking about on I-80)

I’m driving.

And I’m noticing.

Road cuts to the left — fresh ones, dirt still pale from the blade.
A silver car ahead, three car lengths.
Speed limit sign. Merge sign.
Broken glass on the shoulder, glinting.
Two crosses planted in the hillside. American flag beside them. Probably not a wedding.
A rumble strip. A 16-foot clearance bridge.
Pine trees moving in at the left, oak brush right, sage lower and wider.
Snow still on the peaks.
Sound of an F-550 before I see it.

I’m not doing anything extraordinary.

I’m just here.

That’s presence.

Not something you learn.
Something you’ve abandoned.

Presence

The masculine, at its root, is awareness.

Not aggression.
Not volume.
Not control.

Awareness.

The perceiver. The beholder. The one who watches and does not disappear into what he watches.

Anywhere this has been looked at deeply… it points to the same thing.

The masculine doesn’t react to the room.
It reads the room, from somewhere outside the reaction.

Which is why most men, when they try to become more masculine, go looking for more force. More edge. More intensity.

Wrong direction.

Go still.
Go wide.
Go deep.

Presence is extended awareness.

It’s what lets you feel the shift in a room before anyone speaks.
What lets you sense her mood in the way she sets the glass down.
What lets you notice a conversation going sideways three tables over — without staring, without needing to fix it.

We all know its opposite.

The driver weaving because he’s not watching the road.
The partner who’s somewhere else while you’re right there telling him something that matters.

That’s not busyness.

That’s collapse.

You expand it the same way you expand anything.

Practice.

Go outside. Start noticing.
Write down everything you see. Not to analyze it. Not to assess it.

Just to receive it.

Sign by sign.
Stone by stone.

Let the world land on you.

Focus

Focus is where that wide awareness narrows to a single point.

Warrior energy. Locked. Unwavering.

There’s a practice I use — I call it the walk of no distraction.

Pick something far away.
A stop sign. A tree. A building.

Fix your eyes on it.

Walk straight toward it.

Someone says hey, how are you.

You don’t answer.

You walk.

A car cuts through your peripheral.
Someone laughs nearby.
The wind picks up.

You walk.

The point isn’t the destination.

It’s the training of the part of you that keeps splitting — between the task and the distraction, the decision and the doubt.

You are building the muscle that says:

I said I’d do this.
And I’m doing it.

Try it with breath.
Breathe in for six steps, out for six.
Count to a hundred. Don’t lose the count.

Try it with a candle.
Five minutes. Don’t look away.

Try it with a book you don’t love but said you’d finish.
Set a timer. Thirty minutes. Finish the session.

When I was younger, I decided to read the entire Old Testament.

If you’ve ever tried this, you know the genealogies alone could stop a man.

But I had my direction set and my timer running — thirty minutes a day, no negotiation.

I finished it.

Start small.

Finish what you start.

That’s the whole practice.

Direction

Direction is where most men break.

Because direction isn’t motivation.
Isn’t desire.
Isn’t even clarity.

Direction is:

I said I would.
So I will.

Last night my wife asked if I could fix her computer. Internet wasn’t reaching the router.

I looked at the shape of the evening — dinner, coming home, what the night held.

And I said:

Tonight.

Presence read the situation.
Focus will sit down with the router and figure it out.

But direction is what committed.

The king archetype — make it so — is not dramatic.

It’s quiet. Reliable.

It’s the moment a man’s word becomes something his family can actually stand on.

Your word either lands or it doesn’t.

Every promise you make and quietly abandon, you’re training something.

Every promise you make and keep — especially the small ones no one is watching — you become a man who doesn’t disappear when things get hard.

Here’s what most men’s development skips:

This is physiological.

The man breathing deeply is calmer.
He has his wits.
He recovers faster.

Throughout evolutionary time — when things fell apart — panic usually led to death.

The one who survived… kept breathing.

You don’t need more philosophy.

You need a nervous system that doesn’t collapse under pressure.

That’s what these practices build.

Practice long enough… something shifts.

Your woman feels it.
Your kids feel it.
People at work feel it.

Sometimes as resistance.
Sometimes as relief.

Because a man who is fully here…

is rare.

And the world is hungry for rare.

Go back to the beginning.

Back to the drive.

I wasn’t meditating.
I wasn’t performing.

I was noticing.

Every sign and stone and cross and pine tree and road cut and rumble strip and pale fresh dirt.

Receiving all of it.

Holding it without collapsing into it.

That’s the whole thing.

You can feel it right now.

Sit up straight.
Breathe deeper than you have all day.

Let your awareness expand into the room — not to fix it, not to perform for it.

Just to be here.

Then pick one thing and stay with it.

Then say something you mean…

and follow it through.

Do that long enough…

and something in you changes.

Not because someone told you to.

Because you decided to—

and followed it through.