The key to living a fulfilling life is to transform work from a serious burden into a form of play, recognizing that life is fundamentally a dance rather than a rigid task. This transformation requires understanding that the ego's constant resistance to life creates unnecessary strain, and that true fulfillment comes from embracing suppleness, flexibility, and the feminine principles of playfulness and joy. The speaker illustrates this through the example of the Brazilian soccer team, which 'danced their way to victory' by bouncing the ball off any part of their body with creative direction, contrasting this with the rigid, efficiency-focused approach taught in schools. The first principle of the art of pleasure is to 'swing'—to approach life with flexibility and playfulness rather than rigidity and seriousness.
Don’t Fall For The Trap - AW On Work And PleasureAdded:
I don't know if any of you witnessed the World Cup in soccer last year television. It was won by the Brazilian team.
>> And I have never seen such soccer.
That's not the way they taught us to play it in school.
As the sports writer in the London Times put it, they danced their way to victory because the whole thing was like very fine basketball, bouncing it off almost any part of the body with the capacity to give it direction with one's back, with one's shoulder, with one's hip, anything, head. It was a a beautiful art, magnificent spectacle.
But you see, we are not taught to do things that way because we are taught that life is serious and therefore must be done in an efficient way. But according to Uklidian ideas of efficiency in ancient times when people worked they used to sing.
Hardly anybody sings anymore except at a performance of some kind or something like that. Imagine a bank teller singing as they were counting out the money.
Oh, the king was in his counting house counting out the money. Five, 10, and 20, 30, 40, 50, why not? What would happen if you were confronted by a singing bank teller would complain to the management, say, "This is money. It's very serious. They could sing about it. Everything will go wrong."
Can you imagine a stock broker's working song?
I uh have seen people I once had my shoe shine in a New York subway. That was a most extraordinary performance.
No. And he was swinging and imagine supposing you were a bus driver.
You know, most people when they drive a bus through city traffic, they are cursing and swearing and being angry and fighting the clock all the way through town. Well, it's a disaster.
But imagine driving a bus with the idea that going from here to there wasn't the point wasn't to get there, but the point was to go and dancing that bus through the streets with an very very skillfully accurate traffic dodging. And when you get to a stoplight and there's a jam, you play a little tune on the horn or you pass jokes to the cab driver near you or you play with the passengers.
See, anything can be turned into juggling, into playing with balls.
That's why we say have a ball.
So, this bus driver is swinging through the streets. And he prides himself in the marvel of his tpsoran art.
But people don't do that because work is not supposed to be pleasant because you get paid for it. You're not supposed to get paid for enjoying yourself.
See, that's what I do.
I think I'm smart.
I talk to you not because I think I'm doing you any good, but because I like talking about these things, and if you pay me for it, then I make my living.
It's as simple as that. I'm a sort of philosophical entertainer.
But that's the point that the transformation of work is swinging it and the curse of work that came in the story of Genesis. You see, work became a curse because the tree of knowledge was the knowledge not of good and evil in the ordinary sense, but of the advantageous and the disadvantageous.
So work then being regarded as a method of getting there effectively.
A lot of businessmen imagine that they are practical people. They say I don't for philosophy and that kind of thing.
I'm a practical man. I like to get things done.
What I mean what is practical?
Well, you made money. But that's not practical until you spend it, till you enjoy it.
And it's very difficult to enjoy money.
Money is a great responsibility.
Besides, if you get lots of it, you're afraid somebody's going to take it away.
It gives you the jitters.
You know, lots of people think that if they had a little more money, their problems would be solved. They get it, then they worry about their health.
There's always something to worry about if you're the worrying kind.
Always. And it can get worse instead of getting better. by achieving all those things you think will stop you worrying.
So the first principle in we could call it the art of pleasure is you must swing.
And that means or at least it looks like superficially that you mustn't take anything seriously.
You must realize that life is a form of dancing and dancing is of course not serious and that's why it's prohibited by Baptists and gloomy people of that kind. They don't approve of dancing.
Even in the Catholic Church, you don't normally see priests dancing.
I mean, it's not because it's sexy. You can dance without partners of the opposite sex. You can dance by yourself, but it's considered undignified.
But what is the virtue in being stiff and rigid?
As Laoer said, "Man at his birth is supple and tender, but in death he is rigid and hard.
Plants when young are juicy and soft, but when old they are brittle and dry, thus suppleness and softness are the signs of life, but rigidity and hardness are the signs of death."
So the feminine in the sense of the lilting, the playful, the curvaceious, the soft is the neglected principle by all us uklidians and it is the principle of life and of nature.
But the problem that exists for rigid people and we all get rigid in the sense of resistance, resistance to life, resistance to change is how on earth do I stop that syndrome which makes me go uptight how do I stop that? Because it's useless almost useless that sensation of totally unnecessary strain that exists all the time. That is the ego, the physical reference of the idea ego just that unnecessary strain as that tells you you exist.
And so that rigidity of holding against life so that I maintain my shape, my form, my place all the time. That constant resistance makes you uptight.
and unable to swing through fear of what will happen if you let it wiggle.
And so therefore, a non-wiggly person is unadaptive in a wiggly world.
And so you get these insectual mechanical behavior patterns that have to go on on regularly, always the same.
Chug chug chug chug chug. And they're not adaptable cuz you're too rigid. You don't swing in the wind, thus you're going to collapse.
Have you ever looked back at your childhood and wondered why you were so different from the other children around you? Perhaps you felt things more deeply. Perhaps you saw things others didn't see. Perhaps you carried questions that none of your playmates seem to ask. And perhaps you thought something was wrong with you, that you were broken somehow, that you didn't fit the mold everyone else seemed to slip into so easily. But what if I told you that those very things you thought made you strange, were actually signs? Signs that you were already waking up to something bigger, something the world around you hadn't quite noticed yet.
signs that your consciousness was already stretching beyond the usual boundaries, like a seed cracking open beneath the soil long before anyone sees the green chute above ground. Let me share with you five signs from childhood that might prove you are already on this path, already sensing the music that most people never hear. The first sign is that you felt everything too deeply.
Were you the child who cried when you saw a dead bird on the sidewalk?
The one who couldn't watch certain movies because the sadness stayed with you for days. The one who felt the mood of a room the moment you walked into it.
Like stepping into water and knowing instantly whether it's warm or cold.
Other children seemed to bounce along.
They laughed. They played. They moved on. But you you absorbed everything. A harsh word from a teacher didn't just sting for a moment. It lived in you. You replayed it. You felt it in your chest like a weight. When your parents argued, even if they thought you were asleep, you felt the tension like a vibration in the air. You couldn't explain it. You just knew this wasn't weakness. Though everyone might have told you to toughen up, to stop being so sensitive.
This was actually your antenna, your instrument for picking up signals that others missed. The awakened soul doesn't have thick walls. It has thin membranes.
And yes, this means you feel the pain more acutely, but it also means you feel the beauty more acutely. You feel the truth more acutely. Most people go through life with their receivers turned down low. They have to, otherwise the noise would overwhelm them.
But you came in with the volume turned up. You couldn't help it. This is how you were tuned. And while it made childhood harder, it also meant you were learning to read life at a level most people never access.
Think of it this way. A musician with perfect pitch hears every note, every slight variation. To someone without that gift, the song sounds fine either way.
But the musician knows they hear what's off. They hear what's beautiful. They can't not hear it. You were born with something like perfect pitch for emotion, for energy, for the undercurrence of human experience.
So if you were that sensitive child, the one who felt too much, understand this.
You weren't defective. You were awake.
Or at least you were waking up. The world tried to teach you to shut down, to build walls, to stop feeling so much, but part of you refused. And that refusal, that insistence on staying open even when it hurt, that was the sign. The second sign is that you asked questions nobody else was asking. Do you remember sitting in church or at the dinner table or in school and suddenly thinking?
But why? Why are we doing it this way?
Who decided this? What if we're wrong?
Maybe you asked these questions out loud and got uncomfortable looks. Maybe adults told you to be quiet, to stop being difficult, to just accept things the way they are. Or maybe you learned quickly to keep the questions to yourself, to smile and nod while inside your mind was spinning with doubts and curiosities that nobody else seemed to share. Other children wanted to know how things were. You wanted to know why things were the way they were. Other children accepted the rules of the game.
You wanted to know who made the rules and whether the rules made any sense.
This wasn't rebellion for the sake of rebellion. This was genuine wondering.
You looked at the world and it didn't quite add up. People said one thing and did another. They followed traditions without understanding them. They accepted suffering as normal. They chased after things that seemed hollow.
And you, even as a child, sensed something was off about all of it.
The awakened soul is born with a kind of cosmic skepticism.
Not cynicism, skepticism.
A willingness to question, to peak behind the curtain, to not take the surface story as the whole truth. Most people never develop this. They accept the script they are handed and read their lines until the curtain falls. But you couldn't.
Something in you kept whispering, "There's more to this. Look closer.
Don't believe everything you're told.
Maybe you asked about death and what happens after. Maybe you asked about God and why people fight over God. Maybe you asked about fairness and why some people have so much while others have nothing.
Maybe you asked about the point of it all, the meaning, the reason we're here.
These are not childish questions. These are the oldest questions, the deepest questions, the questions that sages and mystics have wrestled with for thousands of years. And you were asking them at age seven or 8 or 10. Why? Because your soul was already looking beyond the game. It was already sensing that the ordinary explanations weren't sufficient. The third sign is that you spent a lot of time alone and you liked it. Were you the child who wandered off to sit under a tree while the other kids played tag?
The one who could spend hours in your room with your books or your drawings or just your thoughts? The one who didn't always need friends around, who sometimes preferred the quiet company of yourself. It's not that you antisocial. You could play with others.
You could laugh and run and be part of the group. But something in you also craved solitude. You needed it the way you needed sleep. Too much time with people drained you. Too much noise, too much talking, too much surface chatter, and you started to feel ros, scattered, like you were forgetting something important. Other children seemed to fear being alone. They needed the group. They needed the validation, the distraction, the constant stimulation. But you you went inward. You found something there in the silence that the noise couldn't give you. Perhaps you called it imagination. Perhaps you called it daydreaming.
Perhaps you didn't call it anything at all. You just knew that when you sat quietly, when you let the world fade a bit, something else emerged. A stillness, a presence, a sense that you were more than just your name and your body and your circumstances.
The awakened soul requires solitude. Not all the time, but regularly, like a well that needs time to refill. You were already practicing this as a child, though nobody taught you. You were already learning to listen to the voice that doesn't shout, the voice that only speaks when everything else gets quiet.
People might have worried about you.
They might have said you were too introverted, too withdrawn, too much in your own world. But you weren't lost in your own world. You were found there.
You were discovering that the most interesting thing in your life wasn't out there in the playground or the shopping mall or the television.
It was in here in the vast interior space of your own awareness.
This is what meditation masters spend years trying to teach.
The art of being alone without being lonely. The art of sitting still without getting bored. The art of finding richness in silence. You stumbled into this as a child. And while it might have made you seem odd to others, it was actually a sign of great spiritual maturity. You were a radiant already learning to be with yourself, to listen to yourself, to trust the inner quiet more than the outer noise. The fourth sign is that you saw through pretense and couldn't play along. Did you ever watch adults lie and wonder why nobody else seemed to notice?
Not big dramatic lies, small ones, the polite ones, the social ones.
Your mother smiling at a neighbor. She just complained about your father pretending to like his boss at a company party. Your teacher praising a student she clearly couldn't stand. Other children might not have noticed or cared, but you noticed. You saw the mask and you saw the face beneath it and it bothered you. It felt wrong. It felt like everyone was playing a game and pretending the game was real life. Maybe you tried to point it out once or twice, but mom, you said you didn't like her, but dad, you said your boss was a fool, and you got the look. The look that said, "Hush, we don't talk about these things. This is how the world works."
But something in you resisted. Something in you couldn't fake it. Couldn't play along. Couldn't put on the mask quite as easily as everyone else seemed to. At parties, you stood there awkward, unable to make small talk that felt empty. At family gatherings, you felt like you were watching a performance.
Everyone had their lines. Everyone knew their role, and you were supposed to play yours, but you couldn't quite do it. For when you did, it felt exhausting, like wearing clothes that don't fit.
The awakened soul has a very low tolerance for pretense. It sees the theater and it can't unsee it. This doesn't make you better than others. It doesn't make you more moral. It just means you're operating at a different frequency. You're picking up on the reality beneath the surface. And once you see it, you can't go back to pretending you don't. This is the emperor's new clothes. Everyone agreeing to see something that isn't there, because agreement is easier than truth, but you were the child who couldn't agree.
Not because you wanted to be difficult, but because your eyes work differently.
You saw what was actually there. And what was actually there was often quite different from what people said was there. As you grew older, you probably learned to navigate this better.
You learned to play the game when necessary, to smile and nod, to keep your observations to yourself, but you never forgot. You never stopped seeing. And that seeing, that inability to be fully fooled by the surface story.
That was a sign of your awakening. The fifth sign is that you felt homesick for a place you'd never been.
This is perhaps the strangest sign and yet many awakened souls will recognize it immediately.
Did you ever feel as a child a kind of longing not for something specific? Not for a toy or a trip or a person but for something you couldn't name.
A feeling that you were far from home even when you were sitting in your own house. A feeling that you belonged somewhere else. somewhere you couldn't quite remember or describe. Some children feel this as a sadness. Others feel it as a restlessness, a sense that this world, this life, this ordinary existence isn't quite right. Not wrong exactly, just not complete. Like you're waiting for something. Like you're supposed to be somewhere else, doing something else, being something else.
You might have looked at the stars and felt it. You might have sat by water and felt it. You might have been in a crowd and suddenly felt it wash over you. This ache. This strange nostalgia for something you've never experienced. At least not in this life. The truth is the awakened soul remembers. Not consciously perhaps, not in words or images, but somewhere deep down it remembers that it is not merely this body, this name, this story. It remembers that it came from something bigger, something infinite, something that this ordinary life only hints at. And so there is always this faint homesickness, this longing to return to the source, to remember fully, to wake up completely.
Other children don't feel this because they are not yet sensing the gap between what they are and what they appear to be. They take the world at face value.
They accept that this is it. This is life and they settle into it. That you couldn't settle not completely.
Something in you remained unsettled, remained awake, remained aware that there is more. This is not depression though it can be mistaken for it. This is spiritual memory. The soul remembering itself. And if you felt this as a child, that strange homesickness for nowhere in particular, that longing for something you couldn't name, then you were already waking up, already sensing that life is more than meets the eye, already knowing in some wordless way that you are not just a person living a life. You are consciousness itself, briefly wearing the costume of a person. So what does it all mean? Here we are. Five signs. Feeling too deeply.
Asking impossible questions. Needing solitude. Seeing through the masks.
Longing for home. If even one or two of these resonated with your childhood, chances are you were already an awakened soul or at least a soul in the process of awakening. But what does this mean for you now? Well, it means several things.
First, it means your childhood wasn't a mistake. All that strangeness, all that sensitivity, all that feeling different and out of place, it wasn't a flaw. It was a feature. You were picking up on things that most people never noticed.
You were seeing what most people never see. And yes, this made growing up harder, but it also made you real in a way that many people never become.
Second, it means you have a responsibility, not a burden. A responsibility is here because the world needs people who can feel deeply, who can ask real questions, who can sit in silence, who can see through pretense, who can remember that we are more than these bodies and these stories. The world is drowning in noise and surface and distraction. And you, with your particular way of being, you are medicine. You are an antidote to the sleepwalking.
Third, it means you don't have to pretend anymore. If you spent your childhood trying to be like everyone else, trying to fit in, trying to dull your sensitivity or quiet your questions or hide your need for solitude, you can stop now. You can accept that you were built differently.
Not better, not worse, differently. And that difference is exactly what you're meant to bring to this world. The awakened soul isn't awakened because it's special. It's awakened because it couldn't help but wake up. It tried to sleep like everyone else. But something kept poking it, nudging it, whispering in its ear, and finally it opened its eyes and realized, "Oh, I've been awake this whole time. I just thought I was supposed to be asleep." If you were that child, the one who felt too much, asked too much, needed quiet too much, saw too much, longed too much, then you were already awake.
Perhaps you didn't know what to call it.
Perhaps you tried to ignore it or suppress it or make it go away, but it didn't go away, did it? Because it's not something you can get rid of. It's what you are. And now looking back, you can see that those signs were not problems to be solved. They were invitations.
Invitations to trust your own experience, to honor your own awareness, to stop pretending you're something you're not. The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. Yet everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.
But the awakened soul knows this already. Even as a child, it knew. It didn't need to be taught. It just knew somewhere deep down that the point isn't to get somewhere else or become someone else. The point is to be here, to be awake, to be present to this strange and beautiful and terrible and miraculous fact of existence. So if these signs are yours, if you recognize yourself in these patterns, then welcome. Welcome to a life of being more awake than the culture around you generally prefers. Welcome to a life of seeing what others miss and feeling what others avoid. Welcome to a life of asking questions. that don't have easy answers and finding comfort in silence when everyone else is shouting. You are not broken. You never were. You were just awake in a world that's mostly asleep. And the world needs you to stay awake.
Not to judge those who are sleeping, not to feel superior or separate, but simply to be what you are. To be the one who feels, who questions, who sits quietly, who sees clearly, who remembers home.
That's what an awakened soul does. It doesn't try to wake anyone up by force.
It just lives awake. And in doing so, it gives permission to others to wake up, too. Simply by being itself. Simply by refusing to pretend. Simply by staying open when everything else is closing down. You've been doing this since you were a child. You just didn't have the words for it. Now you do. Now you can look back and see that your strange childhood wasn't a mistake. It was the beginning of something.
And that something is still unfolding, still growing. There's something happening to you right now that you can't quite name. And I need to tell you something about it that might be difficult to hear. This feeling you're carrying, this strange place you're in, it's not a waiting room. It's not preparation. It's not the space before your life begins. It's the most dangerous phase of your entire journey.
Dangerous because most people don't survive it. Not physically, but they abandon themselves here. They quit here.
They convince themselves the vision was never real. And they do it right before everything was about to change. You clicked on this video not for entertainment, not to pass the time. You clicked because something inside you is looking for confirmation. confirmation that this feeling, this strange mixture of certainty and confusion isn't a sign that something is wrong with you. Let me tell you what I think is actually happening. You can see it. The life you're supposed to be living, the person you're supposed to become, it's not a vague dream anymore. It's specific. It's detailed. You can almost touch it. And that's precisely what makes your current reality so unbearable because you're standing here and that future is standing over there. And the distance between the two feels like it might kill you. Some days you wake up and there's this electricity running through you.
Everything feels possible. You make decisions from that future place, bold decisions, and for a few hours you inhabit that version of yourself completely. But then something shifts maybe by afternoon, maybe by the next morning. And suddenly you're back in the weight of what is the bank account that doesn't reflect your vision. the people around you who don't see what you see.
The evidence or lack of it that anything is actually working and you think there's something wrong with this. You think the oscillation means you're unstable, unfocused, not cut out for this. But I want to tell you something that might change everything. This is the place. This exact experience you're having right now. This is the most important phase of your entire journey.
And here's what nobody tells you about it. You will never need to be here again. This is a one-time passage, a threshold you cross once and only once.
Which is why most people don't recognize it while they're in it. They think it's a waiting room. They think it's the space before their life begins. It's not. This is where your life is actually being decided. Let me explain what's really happening when you feel like you're living in two realities at once.
There's the reality everyone else can see. the one with the struggle, the building, the waiting, the not yet. This is the reality that shows up in your circumstances. The reality you have to explain to people. The reality that makes you feel like you're behind. And then there's the reality you feel. The one where the future version of you isn't imaginary at all. It's more real than what's in front of you. You can feel that person's confidence, their calm, their certainty. You know how they think. You know how they move through the world. And on your best days, you make decisions from that place. But here's the problem with existing in two timelines simultaneously. When that future self feels close, you feel invincible. You take risks. You speak differently. You carry yourself like someone who has already arrived. But when the present self reasserts its weight, when you look around and see only the gap, something in you collapses. You feel like a fraud, like you've been pretending, like the distance between where you are and where you're going is a distance you specifically cannot cross. This whiplash isn't a malfunction. This is what transformation actually feels like from the inside. You see, we have this idea that growth is linear. That you start at point A, you work hard, and you arrive at point B, and the whole journey is a steady upward climb. But that's not how it works. That's not how it's ever worked for anyone who has genuinely transformed their life. The actual pattern looks more like this. A surge forward, then what feels like a collapse, an expansion, then a contraction. A day where you feel like you finally broken through, followed by a week where you feel like you've lost everything you gained. And in those low moments, in those contractions, you don't just question the path. You question yourself. You wonder if the vision was ever real or just a story you told yourself to avoid facing your limitations. But here's what I need you to understand. The contraction isn't the loss of progress. The contraction is the integration of progress. It's your system catching up to what you've become. It's the space where the growth actually takes root. Think of it like a muscle after intense exercise. There's a period where it feels weaker, not stronger, where it needs rest and recovery. But that period isn't the undoing of the workout. It's where the workout actually becomes part of you.
Your psychology works the same way. And if you keep interpreting the contractions as failure, if you keep using those low moments as evidence that you're not meant for this, you will walk away right before the integration completes. This is why most people quit when they do. Not because they weren't close, but because being close feels worse than being far away. Now, let me tell you what it actually means to be ready. Because you've probably been misunderstanding this your entire life.
You think being ready means feeling ready. You think it means having confidence, having clarity, having some kind of stable internal state that doesn't waver. And so, you wait. You wait for the doubt to go away. You wait to feel certain. You wait for the fear to stop. But that's not what readiness is. That's not what it's ever been.
Readiness is what you do when you don't feel ready. It's the action you take on the morning when everything in you is screaming to stay in bed. It's the work you do when there's no external evidence that the work is leading anywhere. It's choosing the hard right thing over the easy wrong thing when nobody is watching and nobody will ever know. This is what preparation actually looks like. Not motivation, not inspiration, just the decision to keep going when every feeling you have is telling you to stop.
And here's what you need to hear. You've been doing this. You've been showing up on those days. You've been taking action without proof. And you're probably not giving yourself any credit for it because you're too focused on how far you still have to go. But the distance you've already traveled, the internal ground you've already covered, that's not nothing. That's everything. Because most people never start. And of those who start, most people quit during the exact phase you're in right now. You're still here. That's not a small thing.
You've been so focused on what you haven't done that you've forgotten to acknowledge what you have. The mornings you got up anyway. The work you did when you didn't want to. The times you chose the vision over the comfort. Nobody saw those moments. Nobody applauded. But they happened. And they're the reason you're still in this. The fatigue you feel, the heaviness, that's not a sign you're failing. It's the weight of becoming. You're carrying two versions of yourself right now. The old one that's dissolving and the new one that's forming. And that's exhausting. Of course, it is. But it doesn't mean something is wrong. It means something is happening. But there's a voice, isn't there? A voice that speaks loudest in the quiet moments when you're trying to fall asleep. When you're alone with your thoughts, when the distraction stops and you're left with yourself, and this voice asks a question that feels like a knife, what if it never happens for you?
And you think this voice is your enemy?
You think it's the thing you need to defeat before you can succeed? You try to silence it with affirmations. You try to drown it out with motivation. You try to argue with it, to present evidence, to build a case for why it's wrong. But what if that voice isn't trying to stop you? What if it's trying to test you?
You see, there's something that happens when a person commits to a path that will genuinely transform them. The commitment gets tested, not once, but repeatedly. And the tests don't come from outside, they come from within.
They come in the form of doubt, exhaustion, the seductive logic of giving up. And every time you feel that voice rising, every time you hear the question, "What if this isn't for you?"
You're not being attacked. You're being asked. You're being asked, "Do you actually want this?" Or do you just like the idea of wanting it? And here's how you answer. Not with words, not with affirmations, not with arguments. You answer by what you do next. If this were just a fantasy, you would have found an easier story by now. You would have negotiated yourself into something more comfortable, something with less resistance, something that didn't require you to keep walking into uncertainty every single day. But you're still here, still asking when, not if.
And that tells me something about you that you might not see in yourself. You have faith. Not the clean kind, not the comfortable kind. A messy faith, a faith that coexists with doubt, that gets shaky and uncertain, that sometimes feels more like stubbornness than belief. A faith that doesn't feel like faith at all because it's wrapped in so much questioning. But it's faith nonetheless because you're still in the game. You haven't walked away. And that means somewhere inside you, deeper than the doubt, there's a knowing that won't let you quit. That knowing is the only proof you need. I want you to understand something about the people who have made it to the other side. The ones living the life you're building toward. The ones who turned their vision into reality. They all stood exactly where you're standing. Every single one of them. I spoke with a woman once who built a company that now serves thousands of people. I asked her about the early days, expecting to hear about strategy, vision, the blueprint she followed. She laughed. The early days, she said, were just me crying in my car before client calls, convinced everyone would find out I had no idea what I was doing and then making the call anyway.
That's what the in between looked like for her. Not confidence, not clarity, just action in the absence of both. They had the same vision and the same gap you have. They had days of electricity and days of collapse. They questioned whether they were the exception to the rule, the one for whom it wouldn't work.
They looked at their circumstances and couldn't see how it would happen. They felt the weight, the fatigue, the voice asking, "What's the point?" And they kept going, not because they had more confidence than you, not because they had more talent or connections or luck.
They kept going because they refused to let the doubt make the decision. The doubt was there. It's always there. It never fully goes away, not even after you've made it. But they acted anyway.
They treated the doubt as information, not as instruction. They felt the fear and moved their feet regardless. And that's the only difference. The only difference between the ones who made it and the ones who didn't. The ones who made it let action decide. So, I want to offer you something. A different way of measuring where you are. A different way of knowing whether you're on track. Stop measuring your progress by how you feel.
I know that sounds strange.
We're taught to check in with ourselves, to monitor our emotional state, to use our feelings as a compass. And in many areas of life, that's wise. But in this phase, in the between, your feelings will lie to you. Your feelings will fluctuate based on how much sleep you got, what you ate, what someone said to you, what you saw on your phone, how the weather is, whether you're getting sick.
Your feelings will tell you you're failing on the same day you're actually breaking through. Your feelings will tell you to quit 10 minutes before the breakthrough arrives. Feelings are data, but they're not accurate data. Not right now. Not in this phase. So, stop asking yourself how you feel about your progress. Start asking different questions. Did you show up today? That's progress. Did you take one action, however small, toward the thing you're building? That's progress. Did you choose not to quit when quitting would have been easier? That's progress. Did you resist the urge to burn it all down and start something new just because the current thing got hard? That's progress.
Because this phase isn't measured in breakthroughs. This phase is measured in consistency. In the decision to keep walking when you can't see the path, in the choice to stay in the game when every logical part of your brain is telling you to find an easier game. And by that measure, by the only measure that actually matters right now, you're already succeeding. You just can't see it yet. Here's what I want you to see about where you are. Imagine you're in a forest, dense, unfamiliar, no map, no trail markers, no sense of which direction leads out. And you have only two options: move or stay still. So you pick a direction and start walking. And after a while, you hit a dead end. So you adjust. You try another way. And that's not quite right either. You keep moving. Keep adjusting. Keep hitting walls and finding new paths. Now you could interpret this as failure. You could say, "I keep choosing wrong. I keep wasting time. I'm not good at navigating. Someone else would have found the way out by now." But that would be a misunderstanding because every wrong direction you've taken has taught you something. It's eliminated a possibility. It's sharpened your instincts. It's built your capacity to read the terrain. You're not lost because you're incompetent. You're in a place that can only be crossed by moving through it. There is no map for the in between. There never was. The people who made it through didn't have better directions. They just kept moving when they couldn't see where they were going.
The forest isn't punishing you. The forest is training you. And the training is the point. I want to tell you something that might be difficult to hear but I think you need to hear it.
This phase you're in this between this is not preparation for your life. This is your life and it might be the most alive you'll ever feel because right now you have hunger. You have direction. You have something you're building toward something that matters to you. You have skin in the game. You're not comfortable. And that discomfort is keeping you sharp, keeping you moving, keeping you becoming. And I know you're waiting for the other side. Waiting for the moment when you've arrived and you can finally relax into what you've built. But I need to tell you something about that moment. It doesn't end the uncertainty. It just changes the game.
The stakes get higher. The problems get different. The doubt doesn't disappear.
It just learns new questions to ask. The people who have made it will tell you the same thing. They'll tell you that the hunger you feel now, the aliveness of building something from nothing that never comes back the same way. Once you've arrived, you can't unarive. And many of them miss this phase. They miss the rawness of it, the intensity, the feeling that everything was still possible because nothing was yet decided. So, if you're waiting to feel successful before you let yourself appreciate this, if you're postponing your experience of the journey until you've reached the destination, you're going to miss it. You're going to miss the part where you were most alive. So, here's what I want to leave you with.
The fact that you're still here, the fact that you clicked on this video looking for something you couldn't name, the fact that these words are landing somewhere inside you, that's not an accident. Something in you recognized this. Something in you needed to hear that the place you're in isn't a mistake. That the struggle isn't a sign you're on the wrong path. That the doubt doesn't disqualify you. And the only confirmation you need isn't out there somewhere. It's not in a sign or a signal or someone else's approval. It's in here. It's in the fact that you refuse to stop. That you keep getting back up. That no matter how many times the voice asks if it's worth it, you keep answering with your actions. That's not weakness dressed up as strength.
That's strength. The only kind that matters. So, here's what I'm going to ask you to do. Not for me, for yourself.
Say it out loud or write it where you'll see it or post it somewhere others can witness it. Three words. I keep walking.
That's it. That's the whole thing.
Because in this phase, that's the only declaration. It's a curious thing about human beings. We keep trying to explain ourselves to those who have no intention of understanding. Not because they don't want to hear us, but because they can't.
They're watching a different movie alltogether. And here you are standing outside the theater trying to explain the plot of your film to someone who's still convinced they're watching theirs.
It's exhausting, isn't it? this constant need to justify, to clarify, to make people understand. But what if I told you that the very act of explaining yourself to certain people is like trying to describe color to someone who's determined to see only in black and white? We've been taught that communication is the answer to everything. That if we could just find the right words, the perfect explanation, then surely people would understand. But the truth is far more interesting than that. Some people are so caught up in their own mental constructions, so hypnotized by their own interpretations of reality that your words become nothing more than noise.
And the harder you try to break through, the more energy you lose. It's like shouting into a wind tunnel. The sound goes out, but it never reaches its destination. So, let me ask you something. How much of your life have you wasted trying to convince people who were never going to be convinced? How many times have you repeated yourself, rephrased yourself, exhausted yourself?
All in the hope that this time, this time they'll finally get it. And what happened? They twisted your words. They heard what they wanted to hear. They made you the villain in their story. No matter how carefully you explained yourself, this is not an accident. This is not a failure of communication.
This is a collision between two entirely different states of consciousness.
Now, before we go any further, let me be clear about something. I'm not talking about healthy disagreement. I'm not talking about people who genuinely want to understand you but see things differently. I'm talking about something else entirely. I'm talking about people who are living in a kind of trance, a self-created prison of beliefs and illusions so solid that nothing you say can penetrate it. And the reason nothing penetrates is because they're not interested in truth. They're interested in being right. They're interested in protecting their version of reality, even if that version bears no resemblance to what's actually happening. The moment you realize this, everything changes because you stop taking it personally. You stop thinking there's something wrong with your words.
You realize that the problem was never your explanation. The problem is that you're speaking to someone who has already decided what you mean, what you are, and what you represent. And no amount of explaining will change that.
It's like trying to reason with a dream.
The dream doesn't care about your logic.
It follows its own rules.
Let me tell you what happens when you try to explain yourself to someone trapped in illusion. First, you waste your energy. And I don't mean just a little bit of energy. I mean the kind of deep soul level exhaustion that comes from fighting a battle that was rigged from the start. You pour yourself out trying to be understood and what you get back? Confusion, accusations, more questions. It's a loop that never ends because the other person is not interested in understanding. They're interested in their own narrative. And you, my friend, are just a character in their story. A character they've already written. The ancient wisdom traditions understood this. They knew that not everyone is ready to hear the truth. Not everyone can handle it. Some people need their illusions. They need them to survive. Take away their illusions and they crumble. So they defend those illusions with everything they have.
They'll twist your words, attack your character, and if you're still trying to explain yourself to them, you're actually helping them maintain the illusion. Because every time you engage, you give them something to resist. You give them a reason to dig in deeper.
There's a story I once heard about a man who spent his entire life trying to convince his neighbor that the sky was blue. The neighbor insisted it was green. So the man brought diagrams, photographs, scientific explanations.
He even brought other people to confirm that yes, the sky is blue. But the neighbor wouldn't budge.
Green, he said. It's green.
And one day, exhausted and defeated, the man gave up. He stopped trying to convince his neighbor. He stopped talking about the sky altogether. And you know what happened? The neighbor became furious because without the argument, without the conflict, the neighbor had to face something terrifying. The possibility that he might be wrong. This is what happens when you stop explaining yourself to people trapped in illusion.
They get angry. They escalate. They accuse you of abandoning them, of being cold, of not caring. But here's the secret. Their anger is not about you.
It's about them. It's about the fact that your silence forces them to look at themselves. And looking at yourself when you've been living in illusion is one of the most uncomfortable things a person can do. So they'd rather you keep talking, keep explaining, keep playing your part in their drama because as long as you're engaged, they don't have to change. But you you don't have to play that game anymore.
You can step back. You can be quiet. You can let them have their version of reality without feeling the need to correct it. This is not indifference.
This is wisdom. This is understanding that some battles are not yours to fight. Now, here's where it gets interesting.
When you stop explaining yourself, something shifts. You begin to conserve your energy. You begin to protect what's sacred, your peace, your clarity, your sense of self. These things are precious. And when you throw them into conversations with people who can't receive them, you're wasting treasure.
You're casting pearls before swine, as the saying goes, not because the people are bad, but because they're not ready.
They're not capable of seeing the value in what you're offering. And so they trample it. They mock it. They use it against you. Think about the conversations you've had recently. The ones that left you feeling drained, misunderstood, frustrated. Now ask yourself, was the other person actually listening or were they waiting for their turn to talk? Were they trying to understand your perspective or were they simply defending their own? If it's the latter, then you were explaining yourself to someone who was never going to hear you. and the energy you spent was energy you'll never get back.
There's a certain kind of person who thrives on this dynamic. They love to pull you into endless explanations because it gives them power. The more you explain, the more ammunition they have. They'll take your words, twist them, and throw them back at you in ways you never intended. They'll say, "But you said this when you said nothing of the sort." They'll interpret your silence as guilt. Your patience is weakness. Your kindness is manipulation.
And no matter what you do, no matter how clearly you speak, they'll find a way to misunderstand you. Because understanding you would require them to change. And change is terrifying. So what do you do?
You stop. You stop explaining. You stop defending. You stop trying to make them see because the truth is they already see. They just don't like what they see.
And that's not your problem. Your problem is that you've been taking responsibility for their perception.
You've been acting as though their misunderstanding is your failure. But it's not. Their misunderstanding is their choice. Let me tell you what happens when you embrace silence. First, you reclaim your power. When you stop giving explanations, you stop giving away your authority. You stop acting as though you need their approval, their validation, their understanding. You simply are. And there's something incredibly powerful about that. It's the power of a person who no longer needs to defend their existence. The power of someone who knows their worth is not determined by whether others can see it.
Second, you create space.
Space for truth to emerge on its own.
space for the other person to sit with their own thoughts without your constant input. Space for God or the universe or whatever you want to call that deeper intelligence to work. When you're always talking, always explaining, you fill up all the space. But when you're silent, something else can enter. And often that something else is far more effective than anything you could have said.
Third, you begin to discern. You begin to see who is genuinely interested in understanding you and who is simply interested in the drama. The people who truly care will accept your silence with grace. They'll give you space. They'll trust that you have your reasons.
But the people who are trapped in illusion will panic. They'll demand explanations. They'll accuse you of being secretive, distant, cold. And in their reaction, they'll reveal exactly why you were right to stop explaining in the first place. Now, let's talk about what silence is not. Silence is not avoidance. It's not running away from difficult conversations or refusing to communicate when communication is genuinely needed.
Silence is discernment. It's knowing when words will help and when they'll only make things worse. It's recognizing that some people are not ready for your truth. And that's okay. You don't need everyone to be ready. You just need to be wise enough not to waste your pearls on those who can't appreciate them.
Silence is also not punishment. It's not a way of getting back at someone or making them feel bad. It's simply a boundary, a way of saying, "I will not participate in this particular dance anymore." Because the dance of endless explanation is exhausting. It keeps you small. It keeps you stuck and it keeps the other person stuck too because they never have to face their own illusions as long as you're there to argue with them. Here's the thing about illusion.
It's comfortable.
It's familiar. People build entire identities around their illusions. They construct elaborate mental frameworks to support them. And when you come along with your truth, your clarity, your different perspective, you're threatening the entire structure, you're asking them to tear down what they've spent years building. And most people won't do that.
They'll defend their illusion with everything they have. They'll fight you, blame you, vilify you, anything to keep their world intact. And you know what?
That's their right. They have every right to live in whatever reality they choose. But you have a right too. You have the right to stop exhausting yourself trying to change their mind.
You have the right to walk away from conversations that go nowhere. You have the right to protect your energy, your peace, your sanity. And you exercise that right through silence, through the simple, powerful act of not engaging.
There's an old saying that goes something like this. Never argue with a fool. Onlookers may not be able to tell the difference, but I'd take it a step further. Never explain yourself to someone who has already decided what you are because no explanation will change their mind. They've made their judgment.
They've written their story and you're wasting your breath trying to edit it.
Instead, save your words for those who can hear them. Save your energy for relationships that actually nourish you.
Save your truth for people who are hungry for it. Because there are people out there who will understand you without lengthy explanations.
There are people who will see you clearly without you having to perform or prove or justify. And those are the people worth your time. But what about the others? What about the people trapped in illusion who keep demanding your attention, your explanations, your defense? Let them go not with anger or resentment, but with compassion. Let them have their illusion. Let them believe whatever they need to believe and trust that if they're meant to wake up, they will. But it won't be because you convinced them. It will be because life itself taught them. And life is a far better teacher than you could ever be. So here's what I'm asking you to do.
The next time someone demands an explanation from you, someone who has already decided what you are, what you meant, what you did, pause, take a breath, and ask yourself, will this explanation actually help? Or will it just give them more material to misinterpret?
If it's the latter, stay silent. Let them sit with their assumptions. Let them fill in the blanks. however they want because their interpretation says far more about them than it does about you. And in that silence, you'll find something extraordinary. You'll find yourself, not the version of yourself that bends and twists to be understood.
Not the version that exhausts itself trying to please everyone. But the real you, the you that exists regardless of whether anyone understands or not. The you that doesn't need validation because it knows its own truth. And that version of you is far more powerful than any explanation you could ever give. Stop explaining yourself to people trapped in illusion. Not because you're giving up on them. Not because you don't care, but because you finally understand that some people aren't ready to see. And that's okay. Let them have their blindness. Let them have their confusion. Let them have their version of you. Because the real you, the one that knows, the one that sees, the one that simply is, doesn't need their approval.
Your peace is more valuable than their understanding.
Your energy is more precious than their acceptance. Your truth is more important than their opinion. Remember that. Hold on to that. And the next time you feel that familiar urge to explain, to defend, to justify, just stop, be still, be quiet, be free. Because silence, my friend, is not the absence of communication. It's the presence of wisdom. And wisdom knows when to speak and when to simply let things be. At a certain point, many people experienced something strange they didn't see coming. Things that once delighted them, activities that once filled them with enthusiasm and pleasure, suddenly seem to lose their savor. The music doesn't move them anymore. The food doesn't taste as it used to. The company of friends feels hollow. Even the pursuits they once considered their greatest passions, reading, walking in nature, creating things, all of it becomes somehow flat, colorless, without the spark that once made life feel worth living. And naturally, when this happens, people become frightened. They think something has gone terribly wrong.
They believe they've become depressed, that they're ill, that there's some chemical imbalance in their brain that needs correcting. Or they think they've simply become cynical, jaded, that life has worn them down, and they've lost their capacity for joy. And they ask themselves with genuine desperation, "What's happened to me? Why can't I feel anything anymore?" But what if I told you that this loss of joy, this apparent flatness of experience is not necessarily a problem at all? What if this state that seems like death is actually a kind of birth? What if the disappearance of joy as you knew it is simply making room for something else, something you haven't yet recognized because you're still looking for the old feelings, the old excitements, the old ways of being moved. Let me explain what I mean. You see, most of what we call joy or pleasure in ordinary life is really a kind of relief. It's the satisfaction of a want, the filling of a lack, the scratching of an itch. You're hungry and then you eat and there's pleasure in that. But notice the pleasure depends on the hunger. Without the hunger, the eating is just mechanical. You're lonely and then someone pays attention to you and there's joy in that. But the joy depends on the loneliness. Without the sense of lack, the attention doesn't move you.
This is what the Buddha was pointing at when he said that life is suffering. Or more accurately, that life is unsatisfactoriness.
Not that everything is miserable, but that this constant cycle of wanting and getting, of lacking and filling, of itching and scratching, is inherently unstable. It's based on a sense of incompleteness, of something missing, of not being quite enough as you are. And so we spend our lives chasing these little moments of relief, these brief satisfactions when a want is filled. We call this happiness. We call this joy.
But it's really just the temporary sessation of discomfort. It's like someone hitting you on the head with a hammer and then stopping. And you feel relieved. And you call that relief pleasure. But the question nobody asks is why were you being hit with a hammer in the first place. Now what happens to some people and this is what's happening to you if you're experiencing this loss of joy is that they begin to see through this game. They begin to recognize that all these pleasures they've been chasing are really just escapes from discomfort.
And once you see this, once you really understand it, the old joys don't work anymore. The scratching doesn't satisfy the itch because you've realized that you're creating the itch in order to enjoy the scratching. It's like a drug addict who takes a drug to feel good, but the drug itself creates the need for more of the drug. The relief the addict gets from taking the drug is really just the temporary sessation of the withdrawal symptoms caused by the drug itself. Once you see this pattern, the whole thing collapses. The pleasure loses its appeal because you've seen through it. This is what's happened to you. You've seen through the game of seeking pleasure and avoiding pain.
You've recognized, perhaps not intellectually, but in your bones, that all these joys you were pursuing were really just elaborate ways of running away from yourself, from the present moment, from what simply is. And so now you're left in this strange state. The old pleasures don't work. The old excitements don't excite. You've lost your capacity to be distracted, to be taken out of yourself by experiences and sensations. And this feels like death.
It feels like something essential has been taken from you. Like you've become a ghost going through the motions of life, but not really living it. But here's what you must understand. This state is not an end. It's a transition.
It's the space between the old way of experiencing life and a new way that you haven't discovered yet. You're in the gap. And the gap is terrifying because there's nothing to hold on to. The old structures have collapsed, but the new hasn't yet emerged. Let me give you an analogy. Imagine you've been living your whole life in a room lit by candles. The candle light creates all these interesting shadows on the walls, dancing shapes that fascinate you. You spend your time watching the shadows, being entertained by them, finding meaning in their patterns. This is like the ordinary joys of life. They're real enough in their way, but they're really just flickering shadows created by the limited light source. Now, what happens if someone opens a door and bright daylight streams in? At first, the light is so bright it's almost painful. You can't see anything clearly. Everything is washed out. And all those fascinating shadows that kept you entertained, they've disappeared, vanished in the bright light. And you might think, "This is terrible. I've lost all the interesting patterns. Everything's become bland and featureless. But you're not seeing clearly yet. Your eyes haven't adjusted to the daylight. Once they do, you'll realize that you haven't lost anything. You've gained everything.
You're seeing reality directly now, not just its shadows. And this direct seeing is so much richer, so much more real than the shadow play you were watching before. But it's a different kind of richness. It doesn't have the same quality as the shadows. It's not entertainment. It's something else entirely. This is what's happening when nothing brings you joy anymore. The old shadow play has stopped working, but you haven't yet learned to see in the daylight. You're in that transitional period where the old is gone, but the new isn't yet clear. And this period can last quite a while. It's not something you can rush. Your eyes must adjust at their own pace. Now the usual response to this state is to try desperately to get the old joys back. People throw themselves into new hobbies, new relationships, new experiences, hoping to rekindle that spark. Or they turn to stronger stimulations, louder music, more intense sensations, more dramatic experiences. like someone whose taste buds have become dulled trying hotter and hotter spices to feel something, anything. But this doesn't work. In fact, it makes things worse because what's really needed is not more stimulation, but less. What's needed is to stop running, stop seeking, stop trying to fill the emptiness with experiences and sensations. What's needed is to simply be with what is without trying to make it into something else. And uh here's the extraordinary thing that happens when you do this.
When you stop trying to manufacture joy, you discover that there's something present that was always there, but that you never noticed because you were too busy chasing after pleasures. It's not exactly joy in the old sense. It's more like uh an okayess, a fundamental sense that everything is all right exactly as it is. Not that everything is perfect or pleasurable, but that it's complete.
It's enough. It doesn't need anything added to it. The old joys were based on contrast. Good times versus bad times, pleasure versus pain, excitement versus boredom. But this new state, this okayess doesn't depend on contrast. It's there all the time whether things are going well or poorly, whether you're comfortable or uncomfortable, whether you're experiencing pleasure or pain.
It's like discovering that you've been living in a house your whole life.
rushing from room to room looking for something and then suddenly realizing that what you were looking for was the house itself. It was there all along.
You were standing in it. You are it. But you couldn't see it because you were too busy searching. Now, I must warn you about something. When I describe this state as an okayess or a fundamental sense that everything is all right, you might think this sounds rather dull. You might think, "Is that all there is? just being okay with things. That doesn't sound very exciting. And you're right, it's not exciting in the way the old pleasures were exciting. It doesn't have that quality of peak experience, of highs and lows, of drama and intensity.
But here's what you must understand.
Excitement is exhausting. Drama is exhausting. The constant pursuit of peak experiences is exhausting. You can't live at that pitch all the time. What happens is that you have these brief moments of intensity and then long periods of deflation while you wait for the next high. The lows get lower and lower and you need stronger and stronger stimuli to achieve the same highs. This is the addict's pattern. And most people are addicted to experience, to sensation, to the drama of their own lives. They're constantly generating problems so they can solve them, creating tension so they can release them, stirring up emotions so they can feel alive. And they call this joy. But it's really just agitation. What you've lost when nothing brings you joy anymore is your addiction to this pattern. And like any addict going through withdrawal, you feel terrible. You feel empty, flat, dead. But what you're really experiencing is the absence of agitation. And at first, the absence of agitation feels like death because you've been agitated for so long that you've forgotten what it's like to simply be at rest. Let me tell you about a man I knew once. He was tremendously energetic, always doing something, always pursuing some new project or pleasure. He traveled constantly, collected experiences like some people collect stamps, was always reading, always learning, always seeking out new sensations.
and he was proud of this. He thought he was really living, squeezing every drop out of life. Then something happened. I don't know exactly what, perhaps just the accumulation of years, and he lost his enthusiasm. All those activities that had seemed so important suddenly seemed pointless. Travel bored him.
Books couldn't hold his attention. Food all tasted the same, and he became quite depressed about this. He thought his life was over, that he'd become old and worn out. But then after some time in this state something shifted. He told me that one day he was sitting in his garden doing nothing in particular just sitting there and he suddenly realized that he was completely content not excited not entertained just simply content present here. And he understood that all his previous rushing around had been a kind of running away. He'd been afraid of this simple being here. So he'd filled his life with constant activity and stimulation to avoid it.
And now that all the activity had dropped away, he discovered what he'd been running from. Just this this moment, this breath, this being alive.
And it was enough, more than enough. It was everything. But it wasn't exciting or dramatic. So his mind had dismissed it as nothing, as emptiness, as death.
Only when he stopped demanding that life be exciting did he discover that life is extraordinary in its ordinariness. This is what I'm trying to point you toward.
When nothing brings you joy anymore in the old way, you're being invited to discover a different quality of experience. Not the ups and downs of pleasure and pain, but something more subtle, more constant, more fundamental.
But you can't force this discovery. You can't make it happen. In fact, trying to make it happen is exactly what prevents it. It's like trying to fall asleep. The harder you try, the more wakeful you become.
You have to give up trying. You have to surrender to not knowing, to not feeling, to this apparent emptiness. And this is perhaps the most difficult thing anyone can be asked to do. Because we're so afraid of emptiness. We think emptiness is death, is meaninglessness, is the absence of life. But actually, emptiness is potential. It's the space in which something new can emerge. As long as you're full of seeking and striving and trying to recapture old joys, there's no room for anything new.
You must become empty. Not empty in a negative sense, but empty like a bowl is empty. Empty so it can receive. Empty so it can be filled. But not filled with the old things. Filled with something you don't yet have a name for. Now, I know this is not what you wanted to hear. You wanted me to tell you how to get your joy back, how to feel things again the way you used to. But I can't tell you that because what you're experiencing is not a problem to be solved. It's a transition to be gone through like a caterpillar dissolving in the cocoon before it becomes a butterfly. The caterpillar is finished.
It can't go back to being a happy caterpillar. But it's not yet a butterfly. It's just mush. And if the mush could think, it would probably be quite distressed about its condition.
You're the mush right now. And I'm telling you, this is not a mistake. This is the process. Stay with it. Don't try to escape from it. Don't try to manufacture fake joys to fill the emptiness. Just be with what is. Be with the flatness, the colorlessness, the apparent meaninglessness.
Let it be exactly as it is without trying to fix it or understand it or make it into something else. And gradually, not according to your timetable, but in its own time, something will shift, not back to the old way, but forward into something new.
A new way of experiencing life, that doesn't depend on contrast, that doesn't require stimulation, that finds sufficiency in the bare fact of existing. This is what the mystics have always pointed to. Not some ecstatic state of constant bliss that's just another form of the old seeking, but a deep okayess that persists through all states, pleasant and unpleasant alike. A recognition that you are in the deepest sense all right. Not because everything in your life is going well, but because your life, your existence is fundamentally complete exactly as it is.
The old joys were like trying to improve a sunset by throwing more colors at it.
The new recognition is that the sunset is already perfect, doesn't need improvement, doesn't need anything added to it or taken away from it. It's complete in itself. And so are you. And so is this moment. And so is your life.
Even in this seemingly joyless state, but I must emphasize again, you cannot make this recognition happen. You cannot achieve this state. Any effort to get there pushes it away because effort implies that something is lacking, that you're not already complete. The recognition can only come when you stop trying, when you give up, when you surrender completely to what is. And even then, it may not come. Or it may come and go, or it may come in such a subtle way that you don't even notice it at first. It's not dramatic. It's not exciting. It doesn't feel like you thought enlightenment would feel. It's more like coming home, like taking off tight shoes, like exhaling after holding your breath too long. So, what do you do in the meantime while you're in this state where nothing brings joy? You do what needs to be done? You brush your teeth. You eat your meals. You go about your daily business. But you do it without the expectation that these activities should make you happy. You do them simply because they're what's here to be done. Not with resignation or bitterness, but with a kind of neutral acceptance. And you watch, you observe this state you're in without judging it, without trying to change it. You become interested in it, curious about it. Not in a clinical way, but with the kind of interest you might have in watching clouds move across the sky. Just watching, without needing the clouds to be different than they are. And most importantly, you stop comparing. Stop comparing your current state with how you used to feel. Stop comparing yourself with people who seem to be having a good time. Stop comparing this moment with some imagined future moment when everything will be better. Just be here now with what is. This is not resignation. It's not giving up. It's actually the opposite. It's fully showing up for your life as it actually is rather than constantly wishing it were different. And paradoxically, it's only when you stop wishing things were different that anything can truly change. Because what's blocking the new experience, the new way of being, is your insistence that things should be like they were before. Your nostalgia for the old joys, your memory of how things used to feel, your expectation that life should return to that familiar pattern. All of this is preventing you from seeing what's actually here. Now, let me give you one final thought.
Perhaps the reason nothing brings you joy anymore is that you've outgrown joy as you knew it. Perhaps you've become too big for those small pleasures, too deep for those shallow satisfactions.
Not because you're better than other people, but simply because your consciousness has expanded and the old containers can no longer hold what you've become. A child is delighted by candy. A young person is thrilled by romance and adventure. A mature person finds satisfaction in accomplishment and recognition. But there comes a point for some people when all of these things are seen through, when they're recognized as temporary, conditional, ultimately unsatisfying. And then what? Then you're thrown back on existence itself. On the bare fact of being alive, of being conscious, of being here. And this can seem like nothing at all compared to the excitement of candy and romance and accomplishment. But actually, it's everything. It's the ground from which all those other things arose. It's what was there before you learn to seek pleasure and avoid pain. It's what remains when all the seeking stops. And it's not nothing. It's not emptiness in the negative sense. It's fullness. It's wholeness. It's completion. But it's so simple, so ordinary, so undramatic that the mind overlooks it constantly, always seeking something more exciting, more stimulating, more special. What you're being asked to discover is that there is nothing more special than this, this moment, this breath, this simple fact of being alive. Not because it makes you feel good. Not because it's pleasurable, but because it's real. It's what is. And what is is enough. It's always been enough. You just forgot for a while. So when nothing brings you joy anymore, don't despair. You haven't lost your capacity for feeling. You've lost your addiction to a particular kind of feeling. And in that loss, there's an opening, a possibility, a doorway into a different way of being human. Walk through that doorway.
Most of us live under an unspoken law.
Always be available. It begins early. A child is taught to answer immediately when his name is called. At school, a absent response is punished. In the workplace, we are told to keep our phones nearby. Our inbox is open, our minds alert just in case someone needs us. Availability is rewarded, praised, demanded, and so we grow into adults who confuse availability with goodness. We believe that saying yes makes us virtuous, that answering quickly makes us reliable, that bending ourselves for others makes us lovable. But in truth, constant availability is a kind of prison.
A man who is always available to others becomes unavailable to himself.
He is present everywhere and yet nowhere. Why do we equate availability with love? Because we are told that self-sacrifice is noble. That to be good is to give and to give endlessly. And so we say yes. Yes to invitations we do not want. Yes to tasks that drain us. Yes to relationships that hollow us out. Our lives become a collection of other people's needs. We become like actors on a stage performing roles assigned to us by family, friends, colleagues, strangers. We smile when we are tired.
We nod when we disagree. We show up when our spirit longs to rest. But what kind of love is it if it demands that you betray yourself? The man who is always available pays a silent price. He loses the weight of his own presence. When he says yes to everything, his yes means nothing. His attention scattered everywhere becomes worthless. His presence given away freely becomes invisible. Consider water. When it overflows indiscriminately, flooding every place, it destroys. But when it is directed, when it flows through a channel, it nourishes. It becomes life itself. So too with your availability, scattered everywhere, it is wasted.
Given with discernment, it becomes sacred. And so one day, perhaps without even knowing why, a man decides not to answer. The phone rings and he lets it ring. A request is made and he says no.
A demand is pressed and he steps away.
In that moment he feels fear for he has broken the law of availability.
He has dared to say I am not here for you right now. And immediately the world reacts. Those who depended on his constant yes grow unsettled. They say, "You've changed. You're selfish. You don't care anymore." But what do these accusations truly mean? They mean only this.
You are no longer as useful to me as you once were. The shock of this realization cuts deep. He thought his presence was valued for who he was. But now he sees it was often valued for what he could give. When you stop being available, you hold up a mirror to others. You reveal who was with you for your essence and who was with you for your service. True companions remain. They do not vanish when you say no. They respect your boundaries for they have boundaries of their own. They know that love is not measured in exhaustion but in truth.
False companions fall away. Their affection was never for you but for your availability.
And when your availability ends, so does their loyalty. This clarity is painful, but it is also liberating.
For the man who loses false friends gains space for real ones. The first thing you notice when you stop being available is silence. At first, it feels like emptiness. The phone rings less.
The requests stop. The invitations grow scarce. You feel abandoned, even punished. You wonder if you made a mistake. But slowly the silence changes.
It becomes not emptiness but presence.
For the first time, you hear your own thoughts without interruption. For the first time, you feel the rhythm of your own breath, the pull of your own heart, and you begin to realize being unavailable to the world is not the same as being absent from life. On the contrary, it is the first step toward being truly present. By withdrawing, you become more real. The man who says yes to everything is never fully here. His mind is fractured into a thousand obligations. His spirit is thin, stretched across the demands of others.
He is always present and yet absent. The man who withdraws, who dares to say no, who refuses to be endlessly available.
He becomes whole. He is less accessible but more authentic. He is less frequent but more meaningful.
His presence, though rarer, carries weight. This is why stepping back feels heavy. It is the weight of reality pressing in after years of dispersing yourself into illusions. But the world will not celebrate your withdrawal. For society thrives on availability.
Employers want workers who never rest.
Friends want companions who never decline. Families want members who never set boundaries. And so when you withdraw, you become inconvenient. You disrupt the unwritten agreement that says we will all pretend to be endlessly available so that no one has to face themselves. Your no exposes the lies in their yes. Your silence unsettles their noise. Your absence reveals the shallowess of their presence. And so they resist you. They call you cold, selfish, arrogant. But what they truly mean is you no longer sacrifice yourself for my comfort. The early stages of withdrawal feel like exile. You walk alone. You question yourself. You wonder if you are becoming bitter, if you are making a mistake. But in truth, you are being initiated into a deeper life. The loneliness is not punishment, but purification. It strips away the crowd so that you may finally hear your own soul. And slowly solitude reveals itself as something other than emptiness. It becomes a fullness, a companionship with life itself. The stars bear witness to you. The wind becomes your friend. The silence embraces you like an old companion. You begin to see that solitude is not absence of others but presence of truth. So yes, when you stop being available, you carry a burden. You lose false friends. You face accusations. You endure silence. But this burden is also a gift. For in losing what was false, you gain what is real. In being accused of selfishness, you discover the difference between servitude and love. In embracing silence, you find presence. The weight of constant availability is the heaviest of all, for it is the weight of living for everyone but yourself. The burden of withdrawal is heavy too. But it is the weight of freedom. This is the beginning of the transformation, the first step on the path. The man who stops being available feels the sting of rejection, the ache of solitude, the discomfort of silence. But he also begins to feel something else. The stirring of authenticity, the slow awakening of presence, the whisper of freedom. It is not yet complete. The path is long and the burden still heavy. But the shift has begun. And once it begins, there is no turning back. When a man continues on the path of withdrawing his endless availability, something subtle begins to happen. At first it was only silence and loss, but slowly the silence becomes a sanctuary and the loss becomes a purification. He begins to see that his life was never meant to be a constant answering of demands but a dance with reality itself.
At the beginning he thought that saying no was selfish. But over time he sees that his no is not rejection. It is direction. It is the recognition that his energy is not infinite and that to give it without care is to diminish its power. By saying no, he is not closing the door on others. He is opening the door to authenticity. And this shift changes everything. When he speaks now his words carry weight, for they are not spoken out of obligation. When he shows up, his presence is felt more deeply, for it is not scattered across a hundred places. His time is no longer an automatic offering, but a deliberate gift. The strange paradox is that by being less available, he becomes more present. Those who still walk with him notice this. They may not always like it, but they feel the difference. When he is there, he is truly there. When he listens, it is with the fullness of his being. When he gives, it is without resentment. And this, he realizes, is what love actually is. Not the endless performance of availability, but the offering of one's whole self in truth.
There is a certain peace that arises when you stop scattering yourself. You discover that you are no longer running, no longer rushing to keep up with the demands of everyone else's timetable.
You learn that time itself begins to feel different when you are not filling it with obligations. Moments stretch, breaths deepen, the pace of life softens. You are no longer carried away by the current of endless yes. You begin to walk at the rhythm of your own soul.
This is when the world around you changes. Some people will fade, unable to handle your boundaries. They will complain, accuse, distance themselves.
And yet you notice that others arrive.
New companions who respect your space, who are not offended by your know, but grateful for your authenticity.
Relationships built on illusion and but relationships built on truth are born.
In these relationships, you find freedom. You do not need to perform. You do not need to exhaust yourself to prove loyalty. You can disappear for a time and they will not hold it against you.
For they too have understood that love is not measured in constant availability but in honest presence. Withdrawal also awakens a deeper awareness of life itself. When you are no longer always on call, you begin to hear the quieter voices of existence. The rustle of leaves becomes a conversation. The flow of a river becomes a teaching. The stars above you are no longer background decoration but companions on the path.
You realize that by becoming unavailable to the endless noise, you have become available to the eternal song. The irony is almost comic. All those years you thought you were being good by being available. But in reality, you were absent from the one thing that truly matters, the mystery of being alive. In saying no to the world, you have said yes to life. And this yes cannot be faked. It carries a different vibration.
People may not understand why they are drawn to you now, but they feel it. Your presence, no longer cheapened by endless accessibility, has become rare and therefore precious.
Of course, there will still be moments of doubt, times when loneliness creeps in, times when the old habit of overgiving tries to return. But you have tasted the difference. You have felt the liberation of boundaries. And once you have seen the value of your own presence, you cannot go back to selling it cheaply. Some will still call you selfish. Some will insist you have grown cold. But within yourself, you know this is not true. You are not less loving.
You are more. For your love is no longer diluted by resentment, no longer poisoned by exhaustion. Your love, though rarer, is whole. To live this way is to embrace a kind of nobility.
Not the nobility of pride or superiority, but the nobility of truth.
It is to live without pretense, without performance. It is to know that your worth is not measured by how many demands you can meet, but by how authentically you can stand in the world as yourself. In this realization, life becomes lighter, not easier, for there will always be pressures and expectations, but lighter because you no longer carry the unnecessary weight of pleasing everyone. You carry only what is real. And in that reality, you discover strength. When you stop being available, everything changes. Not only because the world sees you differently, but because you see the world differently. You are no longer trapped in the endless cycle of obligation. You are no longer enslaved to the constant call of others. You have stepped into a deeper rhythm, one that aligns not with the noise of the crowd, but with the music of existence itself. And this perhaps is the greatest discovery that availability when given wisely is not a duty but a gift. That your presence when offered in truth can touch others more deeply than a thousand empty gestures.
That by protecting your time you honor the mystery of life. So let the world call you selfish. Let the crowd misunderstand.
For in their misunderstanding, you are freed. You are no longer theirs to command. You belong only to life, to truth, to the great unfolding dance of being. And in that belonging you find peace.
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