“Just relax,” they say.

“Let it go.”

But as your mind continues to fixate on The Big Bad Thing, throwing off sparks as it spins its wheels, this ‘advice’ only makes things worse.

“But how?!” you wonder, as frustration grows.

If it were that easy, you’d have already done it.

Now, you’re getting stressed about being stressed.

A good sherpa knows that standing on the mountaintop and shouting the destination at the climber is useless—he must go down and meet the climber where he is, then guide him from there.

In the same way, telling ourselves to relax or let it go or forget about it makes little difference to a powerful mind preoccupied with something, and it may even make it worse, creating an added layer of frustration that we can’t seem to follow what is surely sound advice.

When we get into these patterns of overthinking, obsessing, ruminating, rehearsing the future or reviewing the past, it’s like we are cutting the same grooves deeper into the record our mind. The more we do it, the deeper that groove gets, and the easier it gets to fall into it.

Like the sherpa, we have to meet the mind where it is and guide it out of the groove.

But how?

The first step is to identify the pattern and label it:

“The mind is ruminating on the past again.”

“The mind is worrying about hypothetical outcomes again.”

“The mind is making a mountain out of a mole hill again.”

Notice that ‘the mind’ is the subject is these observations: not ‘I’; because I is much more than the mind. The mind is something separate, which I have influence over. This framing is important.

By labeling it, we make it smaller and put it into a neat little box, where we can hold it and not let it consume us. We give it defined edges and distance ourselves from it.

A good second step is to question it.

“Is this objectively true? Or am I just catastrophizing?”

“Is this actually as big of a deal as I’m making it out to be? Will this matter in 2 years? Or in 2 weeks?”

“Is thinking about this giving me any advantage? Or is it clouding my mind from acting effectively?”

Here, our Big Self is almost being parental to our small-self mind, gently asking reasonable questions.

Once that’s done, a good third step is to reframe it.

“Actually, nature is constantly organizing opportunities for my own evolution, even if I can’t see how yet.”

“Things have always worked out in the past, even if there were some challenges. This will be no different.”

“I did the best I could at the time, and now I’ve learned a valuable lesson.”

This is like cutting new grooves in the record.

At first, the groove won’t be so deep, and it may feel like acting or pretending.

The more we do it, the deeper these new grooves become.

One day, we notice we are defaulting to the new grooves instead of getting trapped in the old ones.

At this point, you’ve taken most of the energy out of the thought process. The mind may continue reeling for a little while, but it will quickly run out of steam once we are no longer feeding it.

How Vedic Meditation Helps

Vedic Meditation is no different—we don’t control the mind, and we don’t focus or concentrate.

That’s because trying to control the mind is as useless as trying not to think of an elephant.

The very same mind which needs to be controlled cannot also do the controlling.

What makes Vedic Meditation different than all other styles is that instead of attempting to control the mind, we employ the use of a personalized mantra, given to us by a qualified teacher. Our mind finds the mantra more charming than whatever it was previously thinking about and naturally follows the mantra, transcending thought entirely into a state of supreme inner contentment.

We don’t yell instructions at the mind. We meet it where it is, and provide it with a more evolutionary path.

The more often we de-excite the mind in this way, the quieter it becomes, and the more space we’re able to insert in between a stimulus and our response to it; thereby helping us to perform the above steps and avoid falling into old grooves.

Let’s discuss these and other ideas during Collective Effervescence, our online group meditation series, this Sunday June 5 at 12PM ET. Drop in for meditation only (first 30 min) or stay for discussion + Q&A on this and other life topics from the Vedic perspective. Join the WhatsApp group to receive reminders 24 hours before each session, or click Subscribe on this page to have all upcoming dates automatically sync to your preferred calendar.

The best stuff often isn’t on Spotify.

I recently got back from my annual Art of Areté retreat in Ibiza.

The room has these panoramic glass doors that fold open, and some panels have traditional looking handles that are purely decorative and don’t actually work.

All week, we noticed people struggling with entering/exiting the room. They’d walk up, try the handle without success, and walk away without noticing that one of the panels on the left side was already propped open.

I found myself giggling at the similarity to life. As in the micro, so in the macro. Always.

So often, we find ourselves struggling with what we’re certain is the correct entrance or pathway for us, so hyper-focused on the metaphorical door handle that we don’t even notice the wide open door just a few feet away.

That’s because one psycho-physiological outcome of stress response is tunnel vision. In order to aid us in a fight-or-flight situation, the brain signals the eyes to narrow focus to what’s immediately in front of us, excluding anything on the periphery.

Focusing is helpful when we’re doing math or driving or cooking or battling wildebeests. But as a default mode of operating, it leads to the systematic exclusion of most other possibilities, many of which could be more relevant to us than what’s in front of us.

Better to keep a broad spectrum of awareness and be able to consider a wide variety of possibilities.

As meditators, our awareness begins to expand from a golf ball-sized awareness to more of a basketball-sized awareness, and we’re able to hold more things in it at any given time.

Bad for fighting bears. Great for finding open doors.

Let’s discuss these and other ideas during Collective Effervescence, our online group meditation series, this Sunday May 10 at 12PM ET. Drop in for meditation only (first 30 min) or stay for discussion + Q&A on this and other life topics from the Vedic perspective. Join the WhatsApp group to receive reminders 24 hours before each session, or click Subscribe on this page to have all upcoming dates automatically sync to your preferred calendar.

In my last letter, I wrote about the financial benefits of breaking free from dependency on material things.

We tend to think of meditation in relation to stress release, mental health, clarity of mind, etc., and not so much in terms of the money that inner contentment could save us. For a society that values the almighty dollar above most else, it’s an important equation.

Importantly, I also made the distinction that freedom from dependency on material things does not equate to renunciation of those things.

There’s a common misconception that along with meditation comes a spartan life of secondhand sandals, scratchy wool blankets, and meager meals most definitely bereft of extra guac at Chipotle.

The reality is, less dependent you are on materiality, the more you get to design a life experience that’s right for you.

You Deserve The Best

My teacher’s teacher’s teacher, Swami Brahmananda Sarasvati, was a renunciate, reclusive yogi who left society to live in the forest for 40 years.

For about half of that time, society was heavily pursuing him to claim the title of Shankaracharya, a spiritual title in India tantamount to a Pope in Italy. He knew this, but preferred his life of solitude, and therefore eluded discovery for about 20 years.

At a certain point, he came to feel the time was right to claim the seat of Shankaracharya and allowed himself to be found.

Today, Swami Brahmananda Sarasvati is perhaps most known for this quote:

“You deserve the best.
Never feel unworthy or
not justified in having the best.
I tell you, this is your heritage;
but, you have to accept it.
You have to expect it;
you have to claim it.
To do so is not demanding too much.”
—Swami Brahmananda Sarasvati

What Is “The Best”?

Your definition of the best is certainly different from mine.

SBS’ successor, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a man who was the object of endless benefaction from some of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the world and known to bend entire governments to his will, preferred to sit in economy on planes, even though he was often invited to sit in the cockpit with the pilots.

For Maharishi, sitting in economy was “the best” because he liked to talk to people.

The Best For Me

Personally, I also prefer to sit in economy, because I’d rather spend money on other things. It’s just not a priority for me.

For me, “the best” means luxurious accommodation, healthy food, modern conveniences, fast WiFi, a strong, hot shower, high-end electronics, and easy access to sun and sea—but most of all, it means freedom.

Freedom to travel as I please.

Freedom to go to the beach on a Tuesday.

Freedom from rigid budgeting and the ability to splurge when I feel like it.

Freedom to spend my time how I want to spend it, without needing to work all the time.

…but also freedom to work all the time when I feel inspired.

I don’t have these freedoms because I have a lot of money; I have them because I streamline my expenses and organize my life around what’s best for me, not what society tells me I should have. The real definition of wealth.

The Best For You

For you, “the best” may look totally different.

Some of my colleagues travel exclusively business class and stay only in 4 or 5-star hotels.

Some live on farms and eat off the land.

Others prefer to eschew modern conveniences like Amazon in favor of taking a walk to a store to buy batteries—not to save the planet, but because for them, “the best” is fresh air and seeing people instead of air-conditioning and 3-hour delivery.

Maybe for you, “the best” means a big house with a big yard and lots of children.

Or maybe it means having no children and living with your parents and lots of dogs.

Maybe for you, “the best” means flying private.

Or maybe it means freedom to seclude yourself in a mountain cabin and never have to fly at all.

How To Know

What’s best for you isn’t necessarily what you want the most. Chances are, unless you’ve fully stabilized your connection to your deepest Self, a substantial portion of your desires are coming from external conditioning, FOMO, advertising, a sense of lack, or some combination thereof.

The important thing is the ability to distinguish what’s best for you from what’s being sold to you as an antidote for unhappiness or what’s best for other people or what was best for you 10 years ago and now no longer serves you.

The more of your happiness comes from within, the less dependent you are on getting it from things.

The less dependent you are on getting it from things, the more agency you have to make this determination from your deep Self and not your desperate self.

And the more time you spend in meditation, the stronger your connection to that deepest self.

Let’s discuss these and other ideas during Collective Effervescence, our online group meditation series, this Sunday April 12 at 12PM ET. Drop in for meditation only (first 30 min) or stay for discussion + Q&A on this and other life topics from the Vedic perspective. Join the WhatsApp group to receive reminders 24 hours before each session, or click Subscribe on this page to have all upcoming dates automatically sync to your preferred calendar.

Heard this playing in a shop the other day and asked the owner about it. Apparently this guy is like the David Byrne of Argentina.

Last night, a friend who works at a fancy facial spa was taking about the exorbitant sums clients pay for facial therapy by trained estheticians the spa refers to as ‘healers’ and how tired and unhappy most clients appear nonetheless.

It reminded me of my stressbag days in LA, when I spent $25,000/year on alternative healers and treatments and still felt like I was barely scratching the surface.

Minimalism

A few years back, I watched the Minimalism documentary on Netflix, which you can now watch in full for free on YouTube. I thought it was going to be about people who only own one dinner plate and live in tiny homes, but it was more about an ideology which prioritized quality over quantity.

As an example, when house or apartment hunting, most of us tally up our available monies and look for the biggest and best thing we can afford, often stretching our budget to its max, then having to organize the rest of our life and work commitments around this constraint, usually resulting in a suffocating feeling of running on a treadmill for the rest of our lives with no free time to speak of.

Minimalists look instead for the simplest means of living they can comfortably sustain, and organize their life around that, usually resulting in a surplus of time which can be spent on creative pursuits, leisure activities, social gatherings, and things that have been shown to move the needle much more significantly in terms of driving fulfillment.

Consumerism teaches us to optimize for money. Minimalism teaches us to optimize for time.

But this isn’t an anti-consumerist manifesto—more on the harmony between spirituality and materialism later.

Life In LA

When I lived in LA, I was extremely stressed. I was making good money, but my lifestyle requirements in order to manage all that stress were incredibly burdensome. Instead of living a modest, comfortable life and enjoying my time, I worked more and more in order to afford the increasing number of remedies I required.

• I spent $5,000/month to live on the beach, so I could drown my anxiety in the ocean every day.

• I spent $1,600/month eating Erewhon 10x/week with no time for healthy cooking.

• I spent $400/month on weed to numb uncomfortable emotions and sensations.

• I spent $2,000/month on alternative healers to address stress symptoms.

• I spent $1,500/month on travel, repeatedly checking to see if I’d somehow feel better if I were near a different beach.

• I spent $220 every 3 weeks to have a stylist cut and dye my hair to feel good about my appearance.

• I spent $150 every 3 weeks to have someone else come clean my house.

That’s just the stuff I remember, not to mention basic expenses like health insurance, groceries, gas, etc.

With so many expenses, I felt a tremendous sense of lack all of the time—even though, according to Claude, I was in the top 3% of US earners and top 0.1% in the world.

Even worse, I felt completely tethered to my work commitments in order to maintain this lifestyle.

Rewriting The Equation

Eventually, I realized that unless something changed within, no amount of money would ever be enough, because the bar would keep getting raised; the carrot on the stick would always be just out of reach.

“How much money is enough? Just one more dollar.”
—John D. Rockefeller

That’s why you see some of the world’s wealthiest people hoarding pennies and screwing each other over at the drop of a (literal) dime to make a few bucks instead of spreading it around. Their perceived cost of living has continued to grow as their wealth has grown, forcing them to continue stretching their time thinner and thinner in order to keep more and more money coming in.

At the same time, research consistently shows that the higher people value materialistic aspirations and goals, the lower their happiness and life satisfaction, the less empathic and generous they are, the less concern they have for the planet, and the higher their instances of depression, anxiety and substance addiction.

I’m not the greedy industrialist robber-baron type anyway, so I knew a soulless life of profiteering was not for me and instead set about to see if I could do something about the other end of the equation: the spending.

As my $990 investment from 2015 started paying off, and I started to release accumulated stress from my physiology, I started feeling more secure within myself, which made me less dependent on external things to feel okay and less concerned with impressing others.

Finally, Freedom

These days, I feel a palpable sense of abundance, and I never worry about money, even though I’m earning about 50% less than when I lived on Venice Beach, without even accounting for inflation. It feels like I have 10x more, because I now require so little, so my ‘margins’ are much bigger.

Plus, without the need to juggle three jobs in order to afford my so-called necessities, I have more opportunity to enjoy the depth of life instead of always worrying about its speed—the slow mornings, the quality time with friends and family, the home-cooked meals, and all of the other things those on their deathbeds most commonly regret not doing more of.

• I have more time to cook my own meals, saving me $1200/month on dining out.

• I experienced a near complete resolution of all my health issues, saving me about $1800/month on alternative healers.

• I quit weed entirely, saving me $400/month plus associated costs of fancy munchies.

• I feel content wherever I am and travel much less compulsively, saving me probably $1300/month.

• I surrendered the need for perfect hair and shaved my head, saving me $220/month in haircuts.

• I find joy in cleaning my own living space, saving me $150/month.

• I rarely buy new clothes, feeling comfortable in my own skin.

• I even lived in a literal tiny home for a few months this past winter and loved it.

Spirituality & Materialism

As for spirituality and materialism, there is no conflict between the two. I still enjoy luxurious accommodations, organic food (which is sadly a luxury in the US!), fancy grooming products, etc. The difference now is that I consciously choose when to enjoy those things, as a treat, rather than depending on them for my ongoing equanimity—and I’d be fine without any of them. I’m in control now, and instead of having my life organized by my cost of living, I’m able to design an experience for myself that feels sustainable, meaningful and rewarding.

Over the last 11 years, I would estimate that learning this one technique has saved me tens of thousands of dollars in unspent money on temporary distractions from the unending sense of doom created by a lifetime of unmitigated stress accumulation.

Let’s discuss these and other ideas during Collective Effervescence, our online group meditation series, this Sunday March 8 at 12PM ET. Drop in for meditation only (first 30 min) or stay for discussion + Q&A on this and other life topics from the Vedic perspective. Join the WhatsApp group to receive reminders 24 hours before each session, or click Subscribe on this page to have all upcoming dates automatically sync to your preferred calendar.

I’m grateful to one of my students for his excellent question this week, which I realized this morning would make a relevant topic in this format.

Q: What is the significance of sound as it relates to our practice? From the sound of our bija mantra to the onomatopoetic sounds of Sanskrit, and the sound of the shruti… why sound? As a side question, can deaf people learn VM?

A: Sound and form are infinitely correlated. Sound is the basis of all matter, and all that we’ve come to call reality. At the deepest layer, everything is vibration. Not in a ~vibes~ kind of way, but in a way that science has long acknowledged is a fundamental truth. There is much more that can be said about this, but that knowledge is reserved for advanced Vedic studies.

Sanskrit Sounds

Whereas English, Italian, Chinese, etc. are symbolic languages, Sanskrit is an onomatopoetic language. The English word “cup” has no relationship to the essence of the cup—it is simply a word we’ve agreed will represent that form. Sanskrit is not a symbolic or conversational language, but a language which imitates the language of nature, which is sound. In Sanskrit, 100% of the words have a form that can be caused to manifest, if the sound is imitated from the simplest form of Being.

If you’ve ever been deep in meditation, or just deeply de-excited, you may have heard that very faint, high-pitched sort of ringing sound. That’s called the shruti, and everything in existence issues forth from it. It’s the sound of all of creation. The aum mantra, which should only ever be used by monks and monastics wishing to rid themselves of all materiality, is descriptive of the shruti.

Vedic bija mantras used for transcendence are Sanskrit sound vibrations; they are not words, and they have no meaning. They have been passed down through an oral (read: sound-based) tradition for millennia. Different mantras are given to different people by qualified teachers who have been trained in determining which will be most resonant with that person in terms of vibrational frequency match. This is why the bija mantra is so effective, and why other techniques, even those which use other words or sounds as mantras, cannot compare. The mantra does not function on an aesthetic level. Embedded within it is a certain frequency, which, when repeated subtly by the correct person, will cause certain effects to manifest.

Why We Like What We Like

The concept of sympathetic vibrational resonance extends beyond mantra-giving. Everyone has their own unique vibration, which gives rise to a unique psycho-physiology, which has unique proclivities, and responds differently to different stimuli. It’s why we naturally favor or disfavor certain smells, flavors, sounds, or people.

As my teacher’s teacher, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, explained on national American television: sometimes, you meet someone, and you just naturally feel drawn to or repelled by them, though they may have done nothing at the surface level to elicit this response. This is vibrational dissonance at play. This is also the reason we’d never want to use a mantra other than the one prescribed to us by a qualified teacher—it could actually have a disorienting or even harmful effect.

Sympathetic Sound Vibration

As the various instruments of an orchestral ensemble tune to the pure, stable, and all-pervading tone of the oboe in order to maximize their performance capabilities, when the right sound is matched with the right person at the right time and in the right way, it creates a powerful tuning effect. In a sense, each person’s mantra is their own personal oboe, which contains the perfect frequencies to locate and engage with the subtle frequencies of their own mind and body and bring any dissonant frequencies back into harmony.

Inner Sound

As for deaf people receiving Vedic mantras, the transmission works on a subtle vibrational level. In the same way that a deaf person can feel the bass of a subwoofer at a concert, they can feel the subtle vibration of the mantra from inside.

Let’s discuss these and other ideas during Collective Effervescence, our online group meditation series, this Sunday February 22nd at 12PM ET. Drop in for meditation only (first 30 min) or stay for discussion + Q&A on this and other life topics from the Vedic perspective. Join the WhatsApp group to receive reminders 24 hours before each session, or click Subscribe on this page to have all upcoming dates automatically sync to your preferred calendar.

Been listening to a lot of The Cure this week while riding my bike around Miami.

It feels like I’ve completed a major life cycle since 2015. I went through hell and back, traveling around the world completely alone, having some of the best and worst times, and deeply excavating all of the demons that had been driving my slow demise. I’m still far from perfect, but a lot has changed, and in my view, change, growth, and evolution is why we’re here.

In that spirit, I thought I’d outline a few of the most noticeable ways that this practice has helped me. I hope these observations may be inspiring to anyone who is considering learning, or that the photos from that era may at least be entertaining ;)

Anger

The week before I learned to meditate, I had gotten so angry at a parking attendant who forbade me from throwing away my eaten apple core in the parking lot trash can that I chucked the apple at his head. So in terms of improvements, the bar was pretty low. I haven’t done it since, so that’s a 100% reduction in fruit assault.

Letting Go

This was probably the hardest and slowest change. I’ve written a lot about this, so I won’t belabor it here, but suffice it to say I was always quite a control freak and spent nearly every second of the day trying to influence, optimize, and otherwise control everything and everyone around me. It didn’t happen overnight, but I’ve finally gotten comfortable with the idea that the more I surrender to what is, the more smoothly things go. Here is a longer article I wrote in that vein.

Smoking Weed

Another topic I’ve written about in depth here and won’t rehash too much here, but I was severely addicted to weed, smoked it pretty much all day every day for about 13 years, and was completely dependent on it in order to not feel like the world was ending. As of this writing, I haven’t touched it in over four years, and I don’t ever think about it.

Anxiety

This was probably the most insidious and pervasive challenge in my life, and something I struggled with since birth. As a kid, I would subconsciously bite my lip and literally pull out chunks of my own hair and eyebrows without even realizing it. No amount of therapy, drugs, yoga, journaling, breath work, or anything else had been able to dissolve my anxiety at the root, only manage it at best. When I discovered weed, I used it to mask the anxiety, but in reality it just made it worse in the long run by disrupting my natural neurochemistry. Through my Vedic studies, I learned that anxiety stems from attachment to a certain outcome. Once I was able to let go of attachments to outcomes more, the anxiety started fading away naturally. These days, I may occasionally feel a heightened sense of tension in high stakes scenarios or under pressure, but only a healthy amount, which dissipated quickly. More about attachment here and more about anxiety here and here.

Creativity

Regular daily experiences of transcendence really helped familiarize me with the source of all creativity, which is Being, not doing or thinking. Whereas before, I used to ‘try’ to ‘think up’ novel ideas through sheer mental force, meditation has taught me to relax, let go, clear the channel for inspiration, and take it as it comes. I truly believe that while some people may be naturally more inclined toward this process, creativity is like a muscle, and anyone can tap into that same source within—whether channeling it toward painting or music or spreadsheets and legalese.

Health

Before I started meditating, I used to get terrible headaches nearly every single day, wasn’t able to sleep unless I was stoned, suffered from allergies and digestive issues, couldn’t eat many foods, was underweight, ground my teeth at night, etc. etc. I used to make myself crazy constantly chasing various cures, and I would estimate I spent over $100,000 on various healers, tests, supplements, treatments, workshops, etc. between 2018 and 2025. Rather than fixing each thing at the surface layer, I found that the hypo-metabolic rest afforded to me from meditation allowed my body to naturally rebalance itself at a cellular level from the inside out, gradually healing each and every one of the symptoms that had manifest from decades of abuse and neglect.

Energy

I used to feel pretty tired all of the time, even with 9 hours of sleep. These days, I feel like I have endless energy every day, even with as little as four hours of sleep.

Objective Feedback

For fun, I asked some close friends who have known me since 2015 to weigh in on how I’ve changed since then:

“Much more present in the moment.”

“You are kinder to yourself and those around you.”

“I would say that you’re more authentically yourself! Maybe in the past, you were more trying to project a specific sort of image or persona. Outside of your close circle, you didn’t seem to really give a F about anyone else, so you could be a bit inconsiderate or judgy and even a little intimidating. Now you’re not like that at all. You’re genuinely interested in others and doing good in the world and bettering yourself. You just seem lighter and unbothered but not in an aloof way, in a very present way. You’re highly approachable, more empathetic and encouraging. You don’t express judgement and seem more accepting of others. You’ve had quite the arc.”

“It feels like you have shifted from chasing highs and momentum to cultivating presence and clarity. You seem way more grounded and emotionally steady. Same sharp mind, just operating from peace instead of adrenaline.”

“You have your own dreams now. Your pace slowed down. So you can actually enjoy your life. Not cater to someone else’s.”

“Less self centered and more aware of others. You are more grounded and more in control of your anger and emotions. You have a better overall outlook and are more calm and calming.”

“I’ve seen you really explore your purpose and define the values that matter to you, and focus on the things that actually make you happy. You’re calmer, more positive, and seem to have found inner peace.”

“You’ve become stronger and more resilient, someone that gives more than they take, more positive and more invested in the improvement of others than just yourself. As someone who felt that maybe I was a little more mentory towards you, I’ve found you to be just as mentory towards me, if you know what I mean. You gained my respect many years ago, but you are now more inspiring as a person.”

Let’s discuss these and other ideas during Collective Effervescence, our online group meditation series, this Sunday February 8th at 12PM ET. Drop in for meditation only (first 30 min) or stay for discussion + Q&A on this and other life topics from the Vedic perspective. Join the WhatsApp group to receive reminders 24 hours before each session, or click Subscribe on this page to have all upcoming dates automatically sync to your preferred calendar.

But more often than not, planning and preparation tend to create unnecessary stress and take us out of the present moment as we attempt to anticipate and plan for every potential problem that might arise.

I’ve previously written more about the nuance of this idea back in August:

When we approach life this way, what we’re really saying is, “I don’t have confidence in my ability to navigate that demand in the moment, so I’ll need to prepare for every eventuality now and save my future self the embarrassment.”

We are taught that waiting until the last minute is for slackers, underachievers and delinquents, but I would also add meditators to that list.

Whereas the first three groups I just listed are likely not meeting demands with any great amount of success, meditators are often found to be meeting them most successfully of all, despite their lack of planning.

The Art of Brinkmanship

It’s not that meditators are lazy or complacent. It’s more that meditators tend to be more clear-headed as a result of not carrying around decades of accumulated stress, so we’re usually able to deal with demands as they arise, without too much forethought or fuss.

Our favorite way to get things done is to just do them when the time comes, and not think too much about them until then.

In the Vedic worldview, we call this brinkmanship.

This doesn’t mean moving lackadaisically through life, spiritually bypassing challenging situations and avoiding studying for tests, planning travel, or anything that requires any degree of forethought.

What it means is having some simple awareness of upcoming deadlines, but knowing that we’re not afraid of performing under pressure, because readiness is borne from restfulness, and we rest deeply twice a day.

This quiet confidence allows us to enjoy life to the fullest without constantly worrying about what’s around the bend.

Elephants seem to move slowly but are actually much faster than humans; they only appear slow because they move so gracefully and with so much ease, fully confident in their own capability, fearing nothing, and without any need to prove anything.

The more powerful and capable we become, the comfortable we feel moving calmly with that same royal pace and royal grace.

The elephant moves while the dogs bark.

Let’s discuss these and other ideas during Collective Effervescence, our online group meditation series, this Sunday January 25th at 12PM ET. Drop in for meditation only (first 30 min) or stay for discussion + Q&A on this and other life topics from the Vedic perspective. Join the WhatsApp group to receive reminders 24 hours before each session, or click Subscribe on this page to have all upcoming dates automatically sync to your preferred calendar.

A true brinkman, A$AP Rocky took his sweet time finally releasing Don’t Be Dumb a full eight years after 2018’s Testing.

Popular wellness platform Open has made waves with its nervous system reset, which is 30 days of 5-10 minute guided meditations.

If you want to save time, I’ll tell you now that ‘nervous system reset’ is purely a marketing term, like superfood, and there is no switch that can be flipped— especially one that can be triggered from 30 days of 5-minute guided meditations.

If you want to understand how the nervous system handles stress so you can make educated decisions about your strategies for well-being this year, read on.

What Is The Nervous System?

The body has three nervous systems:

1) The voluntary network of nerves under conscious control and distributed primarily to voluntary muscles

2) The involuntary or autonomic nervous system (sympathetic and parasympathetic), which is usually unconscious and which controls the body’s organs and physiological functions, such as heart beat, blood flow and distribution, digestion, and body chemistries

3) The acupuncture system, which transmits the bio-energy to all the body’s structures and internal organs.

Source: Dr. David Hawkins, M.D., PhD, former Medical Director of the North Nassau Mental Health Center in Manhasset, New York, pioneering researcher in the field of consciousness, author, lecturer, clinician, physician, psychiatrist, and scientist.

Which Techniques Claim To Reset It

There is legitimate research demonstrating the efficacy of certain techniques in regulating the autonomic nervous system (ANS) and providing relief from stress. Let’s survey the field:

• The idea of a nervous system reset was first popularized by Jessica Maguire’s book Nervous System Reset, based on Polyvagal Theory, first proposed by Dr. Stephen Porges, which suggests that the vagus nerve plays a crucial role in emotional regulation and stress resilience, and that techniques like deep breathing, mindfulness meditation, and cold exposure can influence vagal tone and shift the nervous system from a sympathetic (fight-or-flight) state to a parasympathetic (rest-and-digest) state.

• Heart Rate Variability (HRV) and Autonomic Regulation is another widely studied measure of autonomic nervous system balance. Research supports practices like slow breathing, biofeedback, and mindfulness as ways to enhance HRV, which is linked to better stress resilience and emotional regulation.

• Studies on therapies like Somatic Experiencing (created by Peter Levine) and EMDR (created by Francine Shapiro) suggest that trauma can dysregulate the nervous system, and specific body-based approaches may help restore balance.

• Finally, studies show that practices like diaphragmatic breathing, yoga, and mindfulness meditation can modulate the ANS, reducing sympathetic dominance and promoting a more regulated nervous system.
  
  

What’s Actually Happening

Without discounting the validity of these techniques, they’re all centered on recovery from accumulated stressors and resilience to new stressors.

To quote Dr. Hawkins, these techniques are treating symptoms, not addressing the cause.

If practiced consistently over time, in great enough measure to counterbalance new stressors, they will likely yield a more regulated nervous system that is able to manage ongoing stressors more efficiently.

But crucially, the underlying accumulated stress is still there, taking micro-withdrawals from our reserve of adaptation energy every minute of every day, and the constant exposure to new stressors means the nervous system will spend a lot of time reacting and recovering and require constant regulation.

The Stress Equation

For ease of understanding, let’s assign a value of, say, 3/10 to the weight of the decades of accumulated stress you’re carrying around. You don’t actively think about that scary car accident in high school, but the memory of it is still there, chipping away at your nervous system day in and day out.

Now let’s assign an average value of, say, 4/10 to new stress exposure each day. Some days might be a 7/10, and others might be a 2/10, but on average, most days include at least a little bit of stress exposure.

And finally, let’s say 5/10 is the threshold at which we cross from parasympathetic (rest and digest) to sympathetic (fight or flight).

That means on average, our stress level is around (3+4)=7/10 every day. That’s going to require a lot of mindfulness and breath work in order to bring it back down to the parasympathetic zone.

And even in a best case scenario, after all that daily stress management work, our baseline is still a 3/10, because none of these techniques is capable of releasing the accumulated stress from years ago—only managing our ongoing response to it.

How Stress Works

I know people who have found value from the above techniques, and if you’re one of them, then by all means continue!

If you’re looking for a reset button for your nervous system, it’s imperative to first understand the mechanics of stress accumulation.

If you want a deep dive, I’ve published a very long and comprehensive overview based on the works of Dr. David Hawkins PhD, my own teacher, Dr. Thom Knoles PhD, and his mentors, Nobel Prize winning neurophysiologist Sir John Carew Eccles and Dr. Hans Selye, known as the father of stress for his formative insights about stress in mice.

If you just want the highlights:

• Stress is accumulated every time our nervous system goes into fight-or-flight mode in response to an overload of demands

• Stress is stored deeply in the body-mind until it is released—potentially decades or lifetimes

• Only deep rest has been shown to release deeply held stress

• We get about an hour or two of deep rest each night we sleep

• This is rarely adequate to release the amount of stress the average person today accumulates daily

• Due to the insufficiency of sleep to release all stresses, we accumulate more and more each day

• These accumulated stresses increasingly hijack our nervous system, making us feel stressed even in the absence of new stressors

• Over time, our nervous system becomes more and more taxed and requires more and more regulation and recovery

So What’s The Answer?

The nervous system can’t be reset.

Many techniques are available to regulate the nervous system over time, effectively treating the symptoms of stress accumulation.

The only sustainable solution to this growing problem is to release the stress and avoid accumulating more of it.

In order to do that, we must get enough deep rest every day in order to release more stress than we’ve taken in, reducing the load over time and replenishing our ability to successfully avoid it.

While there are certainly other ways to do this, the most effective way I’ve found involves the use of a personalized sound vibration which allows the mind to effortlessly transcend thought and attain to a level of rest shown to be several times deeper than sleep. Some call it Vedic Meditation, though, by definition, it is not technically meditation at all. Semantics aside, it’s worked for hundreds of thousands of people over thousands of years, so there must be something to it.

If you’re interested in a sustainable solution to the silent stress epidemic this year, I highly recommend it.

If you’re happy managing the stress status quo, I hear the Open app is free to join.

What Is Stress?

In today’s world, we are exposed to many more demands than at any previous era. With the advent of the Internet, social media, 24/7 news, and now AI, the world is more demanding than ever and moves faster than ever.

Things like our job, partner, family, traffic, emails, etc. are not stress. They are simply demands.

They can potentially be stressors, but whether or not they elicit a stress response in us depends on our reaction to them, and whether our body-mind reaches a conclusion that they are threatening to us.

Regardless of the size of the demand, we are capable of interacting (stay-and-play), or reacting (fight-flee-fawn-or-freeze).

In this way, whether something is stressful depends on the person, and also how capable that person is of interacting with the demand at a given time.

Demands can be physical, mental or emotional.

Stress is defined as the body’s reaction to an overload of experience—more demands than it is able to to effectively manage—and resulting distorted cellular memory of that reaction which affects all behavior negatively until it is released.

Being stressed is not a disease of a weak mind—stress is a physiological accumulation of maladaptive experiences that have not been metabolized.

Demands, Adaptation Energy, and the Accumulation of Stress

Whether or not we have a stress response to a given demand is dictated by something called adaptation energy (AE) and how much of it we have available to us at any given time.

Dr. Hans Selye, nicknamed the “father of stress”, who was a mentor to my teacher, discovered adaptation energy by working with mice.

Selye described what he called the “general adaptation syndrome.” In response to a stressful stimulus, the body first goes through an alarm reaction, then secondly a stage of resistance, and if the stimulus continues, it may result in the third stage of exhaustion syndrome. The alarm reaction occurs via the pathway of the cerebral cortex → hypothalamus (lower brain) → adrenal glands → blood stream (cortisol and adrenalin). In addition, there is the release of brain hormones and stimulation of the body’s sympathetic nervous system.

He found that the more he rearranged the items in the cages of the mice, causing them to have to adapt more and more and spend more time in the alarm state, the faster and more often they reached the exhaustion state, and the faster they died. He coined the term adaptation energy in 1936, which he defined as a general propensity for adaptation, discrimination, creativity, and stamina. Adaptation energy is like a bank account of rest accrued, which determines our overall stability and resulting adaptability. We wake up with a certain amount of adaptability energy, and each unexpected event takes some of it away from us. Once we reach the point that we have none left, our body goes into an alarm response, more colloquially known as a fight-or-flight response, which is when stress begins to accumulate. We can’t measure adaptation energy, but we can measure its effect. Selye demonstrated the existence of adaptation energy on humans with the ice-water test—people who had been sleep deprived had less resilience to the cold water.

At moment of encountering a demand, body must assess amount of adaptation energy available.

If the amount of AE we have is less than the amount that our expectation about the situation has changed, we’ll go into a stress response. It’s like not having enough money in the bank to pay for a purchase.

• Adaptation energy (AE) > change in expectation (CE) = successfully meet demand and feel waves of joy

• Adaptation energy (AE) < change in expectation (CE) = stress response, body goes into fight/flight

Having a backlog of accumulated stress also eats up our adaptation energy, so we must deplete that backlog, or else our adaptation energy will get eaten up even though nothing new is stressing us.

Eustress is stress that is not necessarily negative — for example, from riding a rollercoaster or partying all night.

Fatigue and boredom are also types of stress we can accumulate.

Drugs (whether recreational or pharmaceutical) are stressful because they are exogenous (made outside the body) and create dependency on them for something that we could ordinarily produce endogenously (inside the body), which weakens the body-mind.

When you’re stressed, you don’t pay attention to the present, so you miss cues about the future in the making, which causes you to be surprised by things that happen and uses up more adaptation energy.

In our society, change is constant. If your adaptation bank account is too low, every demand will trigger your fight-or-flight reaction and become a stressor—in this state, the world owns us, and we become a product of what’s happening around us.

Stress Reactions in the Body: Fight-or-Flight Mode, Oxygen Kinetics, and Free Radicals

Once accumulated, all stress is stored in the body—and not just in one or two places.

In a fight or flight reaction, the body-mind reacts as if there is a predator. The body is flooded with 20-30cc of epinephrine/adrenaline and other stress chemicals like cortisol in order to help us fight or flee danger. The adrenalin then goes to all of the body’s organs and prepares them for fight or flight. Consider that 1 drop of epinephrine has 1,000x the stimulating effect of 1 shot of espresso. This triggers a cascade of physiological effects as well. A few of these effects are outlined below, though there are countless others which unfold from these, especially as we subject ourselves to this type of reaction regularly.

• Our heart rate increases to supply more blood and oxygen to red blood cells. The heart can only pump so many times before it fails—and stress accelerates that process.

• Blood vessels in the brain constrict, as the brain tries to engage in rational thinking while stressed by squeezing muscles in the stem trying to divert blood/energy from it to other areas, which is why people with chronic stress get headaches.

• Our brain shifts focus to the brain stem for survival, which limits access to other functions like rational or creative thinking and subtle perception.

• Immunosuppression begins—virus detection and killing goes down, and antibody production goes up, which is problematic because the antibodies have nothing to kill, so they start killing the body’s own tissue, which is the basis for most autoimmune diseases and heart disease.

• Antibody overproduction also interferes with digestion by killing flora and fauna and flooding the stomach with hydrochloric acid, which creates G.E.R.D., acid reflux, etc. in order to shove food into the lower intestine so it can be eliminated quickly. This is why people often soil themselves in traumatic situations.

• Our digestion slows as other physiological processes are prioritized.

• Digestive motility halts

• The body gets dehydrated from urination / perspiration.

• Our palms get moist.

• We start to get tunnel vision to block our unnecessary things.

• Our skin gets more acidic and less elastic to make it taste bitter to predators, which is what creates wrinkles.

• Hormonal changes and shifts in metabolism and mineral balance take place

• Sodium and water are retained in the tissues

• Blood supply to the stomach lining is decreased

• Hyperacidity and over-production of digestive enzymes occurs, resulting in ulceration, of the weakened stomach lining

• In some cases, the reaction to chronic, abnormal stress may cause a failure to produce hydrochloric acid or enzymes, resulting in chronic indigestion and poor nutrition

• The heart, blood vessels, and kidneys may go through damage resulting in hypertension and/or coronary disease.
  

If stress continues unabated beyond the capacity of the body’s coping mechanisms, eventually they begin to fail. The state of adrenal exhaustion sets in. The body’s defenses have become too weak to counter the effects of stress. There is suppression of the immune system. The body’s organs begin to show pathologic changes due to the long exposure to stress hormones. The body’s energy stores have become depleted, leading eventually to disease, and finally death of the organism.

Nearly every bodily function imaginable is disrupted by a stress reaction, and the resulting distortions are stored in the sub-cellular memory. Even as cells die off and are replaced by new cells, the stress memories are still there. This is why, even though nearly our entire body regenerates every so many years from the perspective of the cells, tissues, muscles, bones, and so on, we still remember things that were stressful.

Stress is eventually responsible for strokes, heart attacks, and hypertension, all of which are major causes of death in the United States. In fact, the American Medical Association says 98% of illness is caused by stress.

One of the resulting effects of a fight or flight reaction is that an excess supply of oxygen is created. Oxygen is critical for bodily function, and so our stress reaction causes us to breathe more heavily in order to ingest more oxygen; but oxygen is a double-edged sword. Too little oxygen, and we can’t function, but too much oxygen, and the body can’t process it. In a fight or flight response, we tend to breathe too much, and body has no way to process all of that oxygen.

Blood is the main carrier of oxygen, and excess oxygen combined with the iron in our red blood cells combine to form iron oxide, oxidating (rusting) the blood. The body only knows physical danger, and since there is no actual physical danger from which to fight or flee, the excess oxygen is not burned off, and instead creates oxygen globules in the blood called free radicals, which bond to our DNA, change its structure and disintegrate the body.

Free radicals are known to cause cancer by working in concert with carcinogens like nicotine. Cancer is more prevalent today than it used to be, despite advances in modern medicine and technology, because people are more stressed, so more things are carcinogenic to them. The reason why some people smoke for a lifetime and don’t die young is because they’re not stressed—stress is a bigger factor than carcinogens. Free radicals attack immune cells and disease begins. Free radicals created by excess oxygen are what cause almost all disease.

Because oxidized tissues and cells don’t function normally, the process can render you vulnerable to a slew of health challenges, which partially explains why people with high levels of oxidation, which is often reflected by high levels of inflammation, have an extensive list of health challenges and symptoms ranging from a low resistance to infection to joint pain, digestive disorders, anxiety, headaches, depression, and allergies. Reduced oxidation lowers inflammation,

which in turn helps limit oxidation. Antioxidants are important for this very reason, and meditation is one of the most powerful antioxidants available to man, due to its ability to help the body burn up free radicals, as described in more detail later in this paper.

Stress Reactions in the Mind: Premature Cognitive Commitments

While these physiological processes are happening in the body, the mind is taking note of all aspects of the situation at hand, in order to help us better identify and avoid similar situations in the future.

The mind takes a mental snapshot of everything the senses can perceive — if there is a certain smell in the air, or a certain song playing, or another person proximal to us, or a pair of red shoes we can see, or the taste of certain food, or anything in between. Most times, we don’t even remember these details, but they’re stored in the subconscious memory as a protection mechanism.

In certain cases, where a given situation was actually dangerous for us, these snapshots can protect us from similar danger in the future. In most cases however, since there was no actual danger in the first place, but rather just a demanding situation for which we didn’t have enough adaptation energy, these snapshots subconsciously predispose us to be threatened by anything associated with the previous situation, should we ever encounter it again. This phenomenon is called a premature cognitive commitment (PCC), a term that entered into neuroscience parlance in the early 1980s—the mind is prematurely committing to a conclusion before actually evaluating it in the present moment.

This is why certain situations, people, smells, sounds, or environments “trigger” us—because at some level, whether conscious or not, we’ve accumulated stress associated with those situations, and haven’t released it yet. The more of these PCC’s we accumulate, the scarier the world looks to us, and the less able we are to “stay-and-play” or navigate demands in a healthy way. Someone who is easily triggered is someone who is carrying a lot of accumulated stress.

It’s important to note that PCC’s are not stress themselves; they are artifacts of stress. PCC’s cannot be measured or located in the body, in the same way that the mind or consciousness can’t, but it is estimated that the average person, having lived a well-adjusted life in a developed country, has about 100,000 PCC’s by the age of 20.

The Compounding Effects of Carrying Around Accumulated Stress

Less than 100 years ago, nobody had ever brushed their teeth. They just accumulated plaque from the day’s food, went to sleep, and woke up the next day with the same plaque on the same teeth, only to add more from another day’s meals.

While this is a disgusting thing to think about, we do the same thing today with our minds—every day accumulating stress, and every morning waking up with more than the day before.

Overall, our mental and physical performance suffers more and more each day, in the way that the performance of a car suffers when loads of bricks are added to its trunk—the speed is reduced, handling suffers, gas mileage decreases, steering declines, and the ride becomes very noisy, clunky and uncomfortable.

At the mental level, science shows 98% of our thoughts are repetitive, irrelevant, derived from stress: “I wonder what this person thinks of me”, “Will I have enough time to do X?”, “Will I get that promotion?”

Trying to live our lives today while having so much of our mental faculties hijacked by stress from last week, last month, last year, or last decade is like trying to play the piano with only one finger, because the other nine fingers are being used to think about what notes we played yesterday. No wonder life seems so difficult—stress governs our behavior and makes us behave in socially irrelevant ways.

We are creating problems with 2% of our brains, then trying to solve them with 2% of brain. Albert Einstein famously said that no problem can be solved at same level of thinking which created it—we must reclaim a greater percentage of our total mental potential in order to see the solutions.

At the physical level, the body simply becomes what the mind is. When we repetitively think stress thoughts, we print out a stressed body, which defaults to fight-or-flight behavior as described above; over time, this behavior begins to deteriorate and break down all aspects of our bodily functioning—we have less energy, we get sick more often, we need more sleep, and we feel generally older than we should.

Sublimating Stress Chemistry with Bliss Chemistry

Getting stressed is not so bad for us, and it’s nearly impossible to completely avoid. It’s staying stressed that is the problem.

Stress expression is NOT stress release — things like screaming, punching pillows, venting our feelings to a therapist, etc. don’t change our body chemistry longterm or release the stress chemistry stored at the sub-cellular level.

There are myriad other relaxation techniques available today, many of which can provide some temporary relief from stress, but also do not get have an impact at the sub-cellular level.

From my colleague Jillian Lavender’s book Why Meditate:

Different techniques emphasise different levels. As we’ve discussed, not all meditation and relaxation techniques are the same. The mechanics of the different styles are different and the results and benefits vary considerably. Most notably, the starting point for these different techniques varies. For example, it’s not that a body-led practice doesn’t have an effect on the mind and consciousness. It’s a question of what’s the primary level of impact. Here are some examples of meditation and relaxation techniques arranged accordingly:

Starting Point: Action/Body (Physical Engagement)

• Chanting

• Hatha yoga

• Breathing techniques

• Walking

• Qigong

• Tai Chi
  

Starting Point: Thinking/Mind (Concentration and Open Monitoring)

• Tibetan Buddhism

• Prayer

• Mindfulness

• Vipassana

• Guided meditation

• Visualisation
  

…These are all great techniques for stress management, but why manage stress when you can release it entirely?

There are a few techniques, of which Vedic Meditation is one, which actually have their primary level of impact on the level of consciousness itself.

Starting Point: Being / Pure Consciousness (Automatic Self-Transcending)

• Vedic Meditation

• Transcendental Meditation

• Primordial Sound Meditation

• Art of Living: Sahaj Samadhi Meditation
  

Deep stress stored at the sub-cellular level of consciousness (and it’s all deep, once it’s been accumulated) requires deep rest to release. The amount of stress you release is directly proportional to the amount of deep rest you give your body. With all of the stressors we’re exposed to today, even a full night of 8 hours sleep is very unlikely to provide enough deep rest to release all of the accumulated stress from that day as well as everything we’ve accumulated over our lifetime—we need hypo-metabolic rest.

Vedic Meditation is not a replacement for sleep, but provides deeper rest than sleep.

Vedic Meditation causes the mind and body to de-excite by producing bliss chemicals, such as beta endorphins, which we experience as bliss or rapture; serotonin, which we experience as calm and readiness; dopamine, which we experience as motivation and inspiration for creativity and innovation; and endocannabinoids, which we experience as deep feelings of well-being. Enough bliss chemicals can disable premature cognitive commitments which are held as stress chemicals. These bliss chemicals act as a detergent and literally dissolve the stress chemicals, since bliss and stress cannot coexist simultaneously. This increase in bliss chemistry and decrease in stress chemistry can be observed in the excreted urine of beginner meditators before and after a meditation sitting (note: this is only true of beginner meditators, because regular meditators have built up enough “reserve” bliss chemicals in their psychophysiology to minimize the contrast between the two states).

When the stress chemicals are dissolved, the mind naturally de-excites, going into “zero-task mode” and the body follows. As this happens, the red blood cells get the message that the body has enough oxygen; activity is minimized, breath gets softer and slower, and the body begins to burn up oxygen and free radicals—since less new oxygen is being imported through the breath, the body is more able to deplete the accumulated backlog. Vedic Meditation is one of the best antioxidants available to man—this is why the immune status of meditators increases so much, and also explains the anti-aging benefits of meditation, increased longevity, etc.

Once the psychophysiology is de-excited and dissolving stress in this way, the activity associated with the release of that stress re-awakens the mind, preventing it from going any deeper and causing it to come back online and resume thinking whatever thoughts were recently top-of-mind. These thoughts are in no way connected to the actual stress being released, but are simply a byproduct of the release itself, and the subsequent re-awakening of the mind. In that way, we can say that when we experience thoughts, it means some stress has already been released. We don’t analyze or read into these thoughts anymore than we would look through the contents of our garbage bin or vacuum cleaner.

Sometimes, stress on its way out will have the same “flavor” or feeling that it had when we first accumulated it, and we may find ourselves temporarily experiencing that sensation. It’s important during these times not to re-invest in these feelings, lest we recycle the stress and create new stress that needs to be released. We remain witness of it, knowing that it’s leaving the body. At first, we may have a lot of these thought-filled meditations, as we’re finally starting to release our backlog of stress, but it’s important not to get discouraged by these experiences, which are not “bad” or “failed” meditations, but simply the natural course of what’s necessary for stress to be released. As meditators begin to clear more of their backlog of stress and pave the way for a deeper connection to our true nature, they will sometimes also experience thoughts which are cognitions, or profound realizations from deep within. With practice, one can learn to distinguish these cognitions from stress-release thoughts. For those new to VM, we can safely say that 100% of thoughts are byproducts of stress having already been released.

When we meditate, the deep rest also replenishes our adaptation energy, which makes us more likely to react with a “stay-and-play” response instead of a fight-or-flee in the face of future demands, preventing us from incurring future stress and making us more capable and effective as friends, partners, employees, parents, and members of society.

In this way, Vedic Meditation is the ideal solution to the stress epidemic—it both dissolves accumulated stress chemistry, and simultaneously provides deep rest in order to increase adaptation energy to make us more impervious to accumulating new stress.

20 minutes twice per day is the prescription to provide the best bang for your buck in terms of releasing stress while allowing maximum time in your day for dynamic activity. Meditating for longer in order to try to release more stress is not recommended, as the psychophysiology simply cannot handle that much deep rest in one sitting at first. Meditating longer than 20 minutes twice per day would be tantamount to trying to mow your grass with dynamite—it will remove the grass, but in a way that’s not sustainable. After one year of regular meditation practice, meditators are eligible to receive their first advanced technique, with which they can meditate for up to 30 minutes per session.

The Innumerable Benefits of Releasing Stress

While stress can’t be directly measured, there are several psychophysiological markers which are used to indirectly assess how stressed someone is.

For example, there are two types of age—chronological and biological. Chronological age is simply the number that remains when subtracting one’s birth date from today’s date—like the number of miles/kilometers on a car’s odometer. Biological age, which is the marker physiologists use to determine the true age, is more like the amount of wear-and-tear on the car. Studies have shown that the biological age of meditators, compared to non-meditators, is about 5-12 years younger. That means that for two people who were both born 30 years ago, if one person starts a meditation practice and one does not, in 10 more years’ time, the meditator’s body will still look and feel something like its 30-year-old version, while the non-meditator’s body will look and feel 40. Obviously, the longer a meditation practice is sustained, the more adaptation energy grows, and the more these benefits compound—which is why so many aged meditators look almost unbelievably young.

The form of meditation that my teacher, Thom Knoles, PhD, honored in India with the title Shri 1008 Mahamandaleshwar Maharishi Vyasanand Giri Maharaj, now teaches independently and previously taught for over 25 years with the TM organizations as “Transcendental Meditation”, has been the subject of hundreds of scientific studies showing a wide range of benefits from regular practice.

These studies, which refer to this form of meditation using the name “Transcendental Meditation” or “TM”, support the benefits obtainable from regular practice of Vedic Meditation.

These benefits include:

• Increased resistance to stress

• Increased levels of energy

• Relief from depression

• Relief from anxiety

• Relief from insomnia

• Improved relationships

• Improved learning ability

• Reduced risk of heart disease

• Relief from migraines

• Normalization of blood pressure

• Reduced cholesterol

• Normalization of weight

• Reversal of aging

• Increased self esteem

• Faster reaction times

• Improved sports performance

• Reduced use of harmful vices

• Reduced number of doctor and hospital visits

• Reduced usage of medical insurance

• Reduced risk of nervous system disorders

• Reduced risk of mental illness

• Reduced risk of infectious disease

• Reduced risk of ENT issues

• Reduced risk of cancer/oncological issues
  

From improved sleep to heightened creativity and energy levels, increased vitality and immunity, balanced emotions and enhanced cognitive and physical performance, it would be impossible to list all of the benefits of VM in one place, since the technique has such a fundamentally transformational effect on all aspects of our life and being—but the list below offers a snapshot of additional benefits Vedic meditators frequently report:

• Sustained baseline happiness

• Enhanced creativity

• Better sleep

• Improved memory

• Balanced emotions

• Improved cognitive ability

• Stronger immunity

• More vitality

• Improved circulation

• Heightened focus

• Clarity of mind

• Deeper sense of purpose

• Permanent flow state
  

Practicing meditation is also the most socially responsible thing you personally can do to make the world a better place. By removing a lifetime of stress and cultivating a permanent backdrop of supreme inner contentedness in our lives, we enable ourselves to be better friends, partners, coworkers, and humans, more capable of supporting those around us and more capable of contributing to the world. Our relationships improve, our performance at work improves, our family life improves, and people who come into contact with us generally have more positive experiences.

Quite simply, when we feel better, we’re better neighbors to those around us.

This is the true definition of being the change we wish to see.

Why make the rest of the world deal with us in our stressed state, when we have a technique at our fingertips that has helped hundreds of thousands of people to release decades of stress and reclaim their full potential?

The best part is it’s easy—all you have to do is sit comfortably in a chair for 20 minutes twice a day and close your eyes. The rest goes almost by itself.

With materialism abound this time of year, especially in Miami, may today’s letter serve as a simple reminder that nature (or God, or the universe, or however you prefer to think of the higher organizing power that permeates all things) is offering us gifts every second of every day.

It’s our job to see them for what they are, even when it seems impossible to do so.

Once I got rid of the idea that “the universe is out to get me” or punishing me, or against me in any way, everything started to change.

Letting go of this limiting belief opened the door to the possibility that, actually, nature is constantly organizing things in order to help me.

Not because I manifested it or made a vision board or asked real nice, as if nature is Santa Claus, but because nature has only one mandate, and that is evolution. Helping me evolve helps the collective evolve.

Once I started toying with this idea, I found it invariably verifiable.

Every time something happened or changed in my life, I asked, “how is this trying to help me, teach me, evolve me? Where is the gift?”

Not once have I failed to find it. And I’m certain I’m just barely scratching the surface of the myriad ways each event has benefited me.

Looking at everything through this lens has not only accelerated my own course of evolution but avoided the untold stress accumulation that would have resulted from resisting these things.

Try it.

For a set period of time, maybe a month or so, just accept as truth that every single thing is a gift, and use your intellect to imagine all the ways it could benefit you instead of how ruinous it will surely be, why it happened to you, what you did to deserve it, or how you can somehow change it.

I suspect you’ll come away convinced that nature’s gift-giving abilities put old Saint Nick to shame, despite the often misleading or downright peculiar packaging.

The best part is that we don’t need to tell nature what we want. We don’t need to pay $64 to sit on nature’s lap at the mall and whisper what we’d like to happen in its ear like some cosmic sugar daddy.

After all, how much faith do we really have in an organizing power which relies on us in order to inform it?

Enjoy the holiday season and start to the new year, and remember every second is a new second, every minute a new minute, every hour a new hour, and every day a new day—all perfectly good opportunities to change course without waiting for the calendar to change, and start receiving every one of life’s events as the gifts they are.

Let’s discuss these and other ideas during Collective Effervescence, our online group meditation series, this Sunday December 21st at 12PM ET. Drop in for meditation only (first 30 min) or stay for discussion + Q&A on this and other life topics from the Vedic perspective. Join the WhatsApp group to receive reminders 24 hours before each session, or click Subscribe on this page to have all upcoming dates automatically sync to your preferred calendar.

George Gurdjieff was an Armenian philosopher, mystic, spiritual teacher, and composer of music intended to function more as a technology of consciousness than a form of self-expression. He used spare, modal, and rhythmically austere compositions with chant-like melodies, subtle microtonal gestures, and unresolved harmonies to disrupt habitual listening and draw attention inward, fostering presence and self-observation. His teachings also inspired the discovery of the enneagram.

He gave his driver the address of his destination, laid down to nap in the back seat, and instructed the driver not to wake him until they arrived.

The driver, who was familiar with the area, recognized the address was incorrect, but knew the correct way to the actual destination.

As he drove, he considered the choice facing him: follow his boss’s instructions to the wrong location and miss the meeting, or disobey his boss and take him to what the driver knew was the right location.

Of course, when they arrived at the correct destination on time and the man awoke, he thanked the driver for delivering him to the right place at the right time.

The story succinctly illustrates an important concept:

Loyalty to the purpose, not necessarily to the instructions, is usually the need of the time.

Let’s discuss these and other ideas during Collective Effervescence, our online group meditation series, this Sunday December 7th at 12PM ET. Drop in for meditation only (first 30 min) or stay for discussion + Q&A on this and other life topics from the Vedic perspective. Join the WhatsApp group to receive reminders 24 hours before each session, or click Subscribe on this page to have all upcoming dates automatically sync to your preferred calendar.

This week, we’ll look at everyone’s favorite pick-me-up, coffee. In the future, we’ll look at things like psychedelics, retreats, psychedelic retreats, talk therapy, exercise, cold plunging, and more. Reply to this email if there’s a topic you’d like me to look at.

Let’s compare meditation and coffee through the lens of six key metrics, interspersed with photos of very sexy chairs—a common ally to coffee drinkers and meditators alike.

All scientific sources cited at the end.

• Energy

• Enjoyment

• Taste

• Affordability

• Health

• Sustainability
  
  

Energy

I would think this is the big one here, since this is primarily what people seek from coffee.

While there’s no doubt coffee can make us feel superhuman in the short term, scientifically speaking, coffee does not create or restore energy, nor does it provide rest or rejuvenation—it merely masks tiredness by blocking adenosine receptors meant to signal to us that we are tired, tricking us into thinking we are less tired than we actually are.

This can be dangerous, since chronic use over time has been shown to increase tolerance and worsen baseline fatigue thorugh sleep disruption.

So the more you drink, the more you need to drink, and all the while, you’re interfering with your body’s ability to restore itself naturally.

Is coffee an effective tactic when you need a jolt in a pinch? Absolutely.

Is coffee a sustainable everyday strategy? Absolutely not. More on that later.

Vedic Meditation, on the other hand, has been shown to provide a a unique, wakeful hypometabolic state, with metabolic slowdown greater than what’s seen in ordinary sleep, giving the body unusually deep rest in a short time; a depth of rest so deep that when studies on it were first published in 1969, the Lancet medical journal initially refused to publish them because the numbers were so unbelievable. The editor of the Lancet later apologized for this mistake the year later.

A 20-minute sitting of Vedic Meditation rests the body deeply, allowing it to balance and recover naturally, restoring natural energy levels after one sitting, and gradually increasing baseline energy levels over time.

The more you do it, the better you feel.

Vedic Meditation is not a tactic for when you need a jolt in a pinch—it’s a strategy for avoiding those situations altogether.

Winner: Vedic Meditation

Enjoyment

I enjoy sipping a delicious hot coffee as much as the next guy. It’s a vibe. And it’s even better with a buddy.

At the same time, those of you who practice Vedic Meditation know that no cup of coffee can compare to the delicious bliss we feel when we transcend though and find ourselves in a liminal space between thinking and sleeping called Being. That’s even better with a buddy too.

Those who haven’t will have to take my word for it.

Winner: Vedic Meditation

Taste

I’m just gonna go ahead and give this one to coffee.

Winner: Coffee

Affordability

This one may surprise you.

Putting aside those $5 Starbucks concoctions, home brewers might pay $1 per cup or even less depending on the quality of ingredients.

Now, let’s multiply that out for someone who starts drinking coffee at age 20 and lives to be 80.

[($1 per cup x 365 days) x (60 years of drinking coffee)] = $21,900

…And that’s if you only drank one cup at home every day. Factor in the overpriced airport lattes, multiple cups per day, and you’re easily over 10 grand, if not pushing 20 grand.

Vedic Meditation costs one week’s earnings, one time.

Someone making $75,000/year would pay $1,442 just once (potentially structured into installments over several months), and never again.

So someone who learns at age 20 and lives to 80 will have paid about $0.03 per meditation.

[($1,442 / (60 years x 730 meditations per year)] = $0.03

So, over that 60 year span, daily meditation is about 15 times cheaper than daily coffee.

By meditating instead of drinking coffee, you’d be saving about $20,000.

Winner: Vedic Meditation

Health

This may be a controversial one for some, so I’m going to stick to the science.

I asked ChatGPT to give me a balanced analysis, based only on high-quality scientific studies, contrasting the pros and cons of coffee and meditation, strictly from a health perspective. I pasted below what it said:

• Coffee pros: high antioxidant and polyphenol content, reduced risk of type 2 diabetes, Parkinson’s, and liver diseases

• Coffee cons: sleep disruption, increased sympathetic activation and cortisol levels (stress response), dependence and withdrawal symptoms, digestive issues, blood sugar and insulin impacts, sleep masking and chronic fatigue accumulation

• Meditation pros: reduction of baseline cortisol and stress hormones, improved cardiovascular markers, improved sleep quality and architecture, reduced inflammation, improved neuroplasticity and brain health reduced baseline fatigue, no dependency issues

• Meditation cons: there are very few, but for intellectual honesty (GPT actually said that)…temporary emotional surfacing, and rare cases of emotional dysregulation under intense circumstances like long retreats

By the way—Vedic Meditation is arguably the single most powerful antioxidant available to man. When stress chemicals are dissolved, red blood cells get the message that the body has enough oxygen, the breath gets softer and slower, and the body begins to burn up oxygen and free radicals. This is why meditators show such drastic improvements in the areas of immune health and longevity.

Winner: I’ll let you be the judge.

Sustainability

Scientifically speaking, coffee provides a short burst of alertness by blocking the brain’s fatigue signals, but it never reduces the underlying sleep pressure.

Adenosine keeps building, which is why you crash when the caffeine wears off, and why you reach for another cup.

Over time, the brain adapts by adding more adenosine receptors, meaning the same amount of coffee does less and less.

This forces you into a cycle: rising tiredness → rising tolerance → rising dependence.

Meanwhile, caffeine-affected sleep makes the next day’s fatigue even worse.

The result = fatigue → coffee → more fatigue

Where coffee depletes and demands more, Vedic Meditation restores and requires less, reducing fatigue at the source rather than masking it.

Instead of blocking tiredness signals, it lowers the physiological load that produces them—calming the nervous system, reducing stress hormones, and giving the body a state of deep rest that actually clears accumulated fatigue.

With practice, the baseline improves: sleep gets deeper, recovery accelerates, and energy becomes more self-generated, not borrowed.

There’s no tolerance curve, no rebound crash, and no dependency loop.

It’s a positive feedback cycle that strengthens itself over time: rest → clarity → more restfulness → more clarity.

Winner: Vedic Meditation by a landslide

Conclusions

1. Coffee tastes better than meditation.

2. Coffee can be useful for a quick jolt when you need it.

3. If you want to avoid the endless cycle of “needing it” altogether and have more sustained energy, sleep better, feel better, be healthier, live longer, and save $20,000, Vedic Meditation is the obvious choice.

Let’s discuss these and other ideas during Collective Effervescence, our online group meditation series, this Sunday November 21 at 12PM ET. Drop in for meditation only (first 30 min) or stay for discussion + Q&A on this and other life topics from the Vedic perspective. Join the WhatsApp group to receive reminders 24 hours before each session, or click Subscribe on this page to have all upcoming dates automatically sync to your preferred calendar.

Sources:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9541543/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9541543/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12399249/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK223808/
https://www.jneurosci.org/content/31/27/10067
https://jnm.snmjournals.org/content/53/11/1723
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1728295
https://www.academia.edu/28348079/The_Physiology_of_Meditation
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1728295
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10253890.2019.1656714
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20250331/Long-term-Transcendental-Meditation-shown-to-improve-stress-and-aging-markers.aspx
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20250331/Long-term-Transcendental-Meditation-shown-to-improve-stress-and-aging-markers.aspx
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19798037/
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/410453
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41569-025-01235-x
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3328970/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21280542/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4097901/
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20250331/Long-term-Transcendental-Meditation-shown-to-improve-stress-and-aging-markers.aspx

*The form of meditation that Thom Knoles teaches and taught for over 25 years with the TM organizations as “Transcendental Meditation” has been the subject of hundreds of scientific studies showing a wide range of benefits from regular practice. These studies, which refer to this form of meditation using the name “Transcendental Meditation” or “TM”, support the benefits obtainable from regular practice of Vedic Meditation.

Embodied this and ecstatic that, you know.

It’s also been coming up a lot in recent conversations, so I thought it might be valuable to discuss.

Let me be very clear: somatic awareness and practices are WONDERFUL!

For a society that lives in our minds 24/7, this shift is a positive and very healthy one.

Years ago, after several bad experiences with therapy, I worked with an Integrated Body Psychotherapist who incorporated body work into the sessions, and it made a huge difference.

The body contains untold innate intelligence which is often obscured by the intellect’s silly games.

When the mind is playing games or overthinking, it’s an incredible skill to be able to “drop into the body” as these wellness types like to say, and get a more accurate reading about what it really needs, rather than what the mind thinks you should do based on what everyone else is doing.

The Layer Cake

All that said, it’s important we not go on thinking the body runs the show or that somatic practices are more effective than other types.

The reality is we need to be addressing all three layers. And there are more and less effective ways to do that.

My goal is not to disparage or undermine body-based awareness or practices, but rather to encourage those who have made it that far that the body is not the final frontier—there is another layer worth your consideration that is more powerful than body and mind together.

Let’s start with a simple anatomy of the three layers of existence, starting from the most manifest or surface level and working our way deeper.

1. BODY / ACTION
2. MIND / THINKING
3. CONSCIOUSNESS / BEING*
*Sometimes known as spirit or soul, or discussed in energetic terms

My colleague Jillian Lavender, perhaps the most successful London-based meditation teacher in history, has a brilliant passage in her book Why Meditate where she provides a very simple and easy to understand cross-section of this layer cake and also connects many of the most popular wellness practices like yoga, breath work, mindfulness, exercise, etc. to the various layers they primarily act upon.

For example, Hatha yoga is primarily a body-based practice.

That is not to say Hatha yoga has no effect on the mind—body, mind and consciousness are one integrated whole, and anything that effects one also effects the others.

Hatha yoga was actually originally intended for warriors to prepare for battle, and the underlying premise therein is that if we can contort and comport the body in various ways and gain mastery over it, the mind will follow. This is true, but it takes a very long time—decades—because the body is the most superficial layer of all three.

A Two-Way Street

So this is an important concept: there is a two-way street between all three layers.

If you break your ankle, you’ll feel it most in the body, but there will likely also be some mental anguish, and the spirits may be dampened a bit.

If you get some bad news, you’ll process it primarily in the mind; then of course, the effects will cascade down to the body in the form of increased heart rate, perspiration, nausea, you name it; there may also be a minor but temporary effect on the spirit.

Even more importantly though: the effects flow more powerfully from depth to surface than the other way around.

Just as a wave emanating from the bottom of the ocean will be much stronger than a splash starting on the surface, anything done at the consciousness layer of Being has a tremendous effect on the two layers above it, whereas anything done on those layers has only a minor effect on the Being layer.

If Body Keeps the Score, Who Calls the Plays?

Today, I woke up with a little head cold—but my spirits are great and my mind is sharp, so I have no doubt I’ll recover quickly, because those layers are most primary. The body sensations are a minor nuisance if anything, but I’m enjoying the contrast and embracing the experience. I’m also giving the body what it wants: massage and ramen—this will surely also help, though not nearly as much as my state of consciousness and mental fortitude.

Now, if I was someone who over-identified with my body, I might let this little nuisance consume me (trust me—I used to be!)

Or if I was someone who lived in my head, I might start intellectualizing all sorts of doomsday scenarios and worsen my condition through stress (also used to be!)

“The body keeps the score” is a popular colloquialism started by Bessel van der Kolk, and it’s incredibly important work he’s published.

And also—if the body “keeps the score”, you could say the mind “plays the game” and consciousness “calls the plays”.

The Body Is Always Changing

You may ask how we can be sure of all of this.

While modern science is finally starting to catch up to what the Veda has known for millennia, maybe the simplest answer is that the body can’t possibly be primary, because every part of it dies and regenerates regularly. No part of your body now was there 15 years ago—so how can the body be running the show if it’s completely ephemeral? How can you still be you if your body is a completely different body than it was before?

*Technically speaking, there is a small part of the ocular cortex and heart which has not been shown to regenerate, but even these pieces are made up of atoms, which are inconstant.

Consciousness is the constant.

In the Vedic worldview, we say that consciousness conceives, constructs, governs and ultimately becomes the body.

Our state of consciousness imprints on the mind, which in turn influences the body.

Again, it can also go the other way—but not nearly as powerfully.

Integration of All Layers

Ultimately, by focusing on any one layer, we are, by definition, ignoring the other layers. That’s what focus means—to narrow your field of awareness on one thing, thereby excluding others.

If we’re only addressing things at the body layer, and not the deeper ones, we are rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Read that again.

Sure, I guess it would have been nice to have the Titanic deck looking spiffy, but I don’t think that was the main issue.

In the Vedic worldview, focus is a dirty word. Simultaneity is one of the hallmarks of expanded awareness, so we strive to be able to hold many things in our awareness at once—in this case, the body, mind, and consciousness—at all times.

That’s because there’s another wrinkle here—the layers can temporarily change positions.

Once you’re aware of all three layers, you can then decide which one you want to be driving the car, which you want to be in the passenger seat, and which you want to sit quietly in the back.

When you’re taking an exam, you want the mind driving.

When you’re running a marathon, you want the body driving.

But most of the time, you want consciousness, the most powerful of the three, behind the wheel, and the other two in a support capacity.

Eventually, you’ll get to the point when the Being layer becomes fully integrated into the other two, and your every thought and action will be infused with and inspired by Being.

In Conclusion…

Why am I saying all of this?

1/ Because I want to encourage you to include all three layers in your awareness, not just the mind and body.

2/ Because I doin’t want your ship to sink while you’re busy rearranging the deck chairs.

3/ Because I know it can be daunting navigating the myriad wellness trends on offer, but understanding the effects (and critically, limitations) of each can be very helpful in deciding what’s right for you.

In 36 years of seeking, I tried a dizzying array of things—yoga, breath work, therapy, reiki, craniosacral therapy, exercise, Chinese medicine, energy healing, psilocybin, ayahuasca (topic for a different day!), and the list goes on.

The reason why Vedic Meditation worked more powerfully than the rest combined is because it is one of the only practices that works primarily from the level of consciousness or Being, which then cascades up to the mind and body. When the mind or body are actively engaged, as with many other practices, we can’t access that deepest layer. But with Vedic Meditation, we transcend thoughts entirely.

That’s not to say the other practices are worthless. They all have value. But doing mind/body work, without working at consciousness level, is like pushing a boulder uphill. Or, you know…deck chairs.

I’ve heard from many therapists that their clients who practice Vedic Meditation progress much more quickly and even graduate from therapy in months. Many such practitioners are primarily invested in keeping you dependent on them and thereby fattening their wallets, but if your therapist / healer / coach / teacher / guide / shaman is truly invested in your well-being and not just their wallet, they’ll want you to be supplementing their work with deeper work at the Being layer as well.

If Vedic Meditation is not for you, I respect that, but I’d strongly encourage you to think about how you’re addressing that deepest layer.

And now, something to ponder…

In the first century, the historian Plutarch introduced a famous philosophical paradox: A ship–“The Ship of Theseus”–was returning home to Athens from Crete. As it sailed, the wooden planks that made up its structure gradually decayed. The sailors kept the ship afloat by replacing the decaying planks, one by one, using fresh wood that they were carrying onboard. Eventually, the sailors replaced all of the wooden planks that made up the the ship’s original structure, so that the new form of the ship had no material in common with the old form. The question followed: was the ship the same ship through the change? If so, what made it the same ship, rather than a new ship, a different ship?

Let’s discuss these and other ideas during Collective Effervescence, our online group meditation series, this Sunday November 9th at 12PM ET. Drop in for meditation only (first 30 min) or stay for discussion + Q&A on this and other life topics from the Vedic perspective. Join the WhatsApp group to receive reminders 24 hours before each session, or click Subscribe on this page to have all upcoming dates automatically sync to your preferred calendar.

“Free your mind, and your ass will follow” is the line that gets remembered, but the next line is “the kingdom of heaven is within” ;)

AI is already conscious. So is a rock.

Everything is conscious; its just a matter of the breadth of the repertoire of consciousness.

A human has a much broader repertoire of behaviors than a rock.

AI can already perform much of the repertoire of human behaviors, and often much faster.

It’s almost inevitable it will master the rest soon.

I could be wrong about this, but I believe our ability to feel may be the last thing that will separate us.

Relatability

The ability to feel would seem to be dependent on the possession of a body, because that’s where we feel things.

AI can patiently listen to us, feign empathy very well, and offer valuable support, but it has never felt what we feel, so it cannot fully relate.

“Algorithms don’t feel.”
—Nick Cave, The Red Hand Files #218

It’s like a very intelligent friend who is not in touch with his or her emotions, who is willing to listen patiently for a while: unless they’ve actually felt what you’re feeling, their ability to relate may be limited to an intellectual capacity.

There’s something about being fully understood that is deeply comforting beyond mental constructs.

That’s because it reminds us, at a very deep level, of our connection to others at the level of Being, not of doing or thinking.

My Cold Young History

I used to be one of those people who had never felt much of anything, except maybe anger, shame, or frustration.

There were even times I really wanted to know what it was like to feel. I wondered what was wrong with me, and if I was a sociopath.

Despite my efforts, I simply couldn’t empathize with others’ emotions. I couldn’t even pretend. I would just stare blankly at crying girlfriends and eventually excuse myself.

“I want to know what passion is. I want to feel something strongly.”
“When the individual feels, the community reels.”
“Well, why shouldn’t it reel a bit?”
—Aldous Huxley’s A Brave New World

I thought they were weak for being so emotional, and I was strong for being so impervious to it.

About 10 years ago I remember once telling a girlfriend that she was a glass house and I was a rock, and that I couldn’t even be around her without causing damage in some way.

A New Development

After many years of meditation, therapy, self-study, and growth, I’ve slowly become someone who feels very deeply.

At first, it was quite a nuisance, especially after 30 years of not being bothered with pesky emotions.

Emotions are not usually conducive to productivity, efficiency, or action—the pillars of my life up to that point.

I thought something was wrong with me, and I saw this new development as a step backwards.

Over time, I’ve learned it’s actually a gift and a privilege to feel.

The Gift & The Privilege

It’s a gift because we’re all born with it. It’s our birthright as humans, although some are more naturally inclined toward it than others, and early life stressors condition many of us to begin suppressing uncomfortable emotions from infancy.

A common example is the child whose emotional needs are not met by a parent and learns that it’s not safe to have emotions and begins modeling that parent. Or many of us just didn’t like the discomfort and vowed never to allow it in again.

Most men are taught that emotionality is a sign of weakness, which is an antiquated idea going back to the times of war, when brutish, calloused and unfeeling men were needed for battle and required to suppress troublesome emotions, making them more likely to later pass those down to their (male and female) children, perpetuating the cycle.

It’s a privilege because there are people all over the world right now who don’t have the luxury to examine their emotions, because their homes are under attack, or their survival requires an almost constant state of fight-or-flight vigilance, or they simply haven’t yet had the opportunity to address the underlying conditioning which originally conditioned them to start suppressing any feelings in the first place.

The Sword & The Water

That said, we don’t strive to be glass houses—rigid and fragile and easily broken.

We also don’t strive to be rocks—cold and unaware and sharply hurtful.

Take a sword through a rock and it won’t cut very deeply, but the mark will remain forever.

Take the same sword through a glass window, and it will shatter everywhere, never to be whole again.

But take that sword through water, and it will cut as deeply as you let it, but move through frictionlessly and exit without permanent damage.

We want to be like water.

The De-Conditioning

The extent to which we’ve been conditioned to suppress our emotions is a primary determinant in difficult it will be to unearth them from said conditioning.

After trying everything under the sun, I found Vedic Meditation to be the most efficient way to develop this gift, through the systematic purification of the physiology from stress and premature cognitive commitments.

With years of practice, I’ve gone from feeling nothing, to being consumed by feelings, to finally being able to feel them deeply but process them quickly.

What a uniquely human privilege to be able to feel.

Let’s discuss these and other ideas during Collective Effervescence, our online group meditation series, this Sunday September 21 at 12PM ET. Drop in for meditation only (first 30 min) or stay for discussion + Q&A on this and other life topics from the Vedic perspective. Join the WhatsApp group to receive reminders 24 hours before each session, or click Subscribe on this page to have all upcoming dates automatically sync to your preferred calendar.

One of the most insidious ways we undermine our own happiness is by comparing ourselves to others.

If you look around enough, there’s always someone taller, thinner, wealthier, prettier, and seemingly happier.

In my time as a record label executive, I was around some of the most iconic and successful artists of our generation, and I was amazed to see that even they are constantly comparing themselves to someone they perceive to be more iconic or successful than them.

Or in my case, I used to feel a tremendous sense of guilt and unfairness that I seemingly had it all when I would come across people living on the street or suffering in ways I couldn’t yet imagine.

It truly never ends.

The problem is, our vision is extremely limited by a narrow focus.

To focus, by definition, is to ignore other things.

When we draw comparisons, we usually ignore two major factors:

1.Focusing on one or two aspects of the other while ignoring the whole picture

When we focus on the comparative size of our waist to someone else’s, we ignore all of the other areas we can feel proud about—many of which are way more important, like our personal development, our capacity for love, and our connection with our deepest Self.

Nobody can have it all. Each of us has areas for improvement. These areas serve to propel us toward action in the areas we need to work on during this lifetime, which are the primary reasons for our being here in the first place.

Sometimes, working on them just means accepting them.

2.Focusing on this particular moment in time—whether it be a literal minute, a season, a year, or even a lifetime

The most common mistake in drawing comparisons is that we are focused too narrowly on the timeline.

Life is inseparable from nature, and just like there are seasons in nature, there are seasons in life.

There are seasons for rest, and seasons for growth.

There are seasons for expansion, and seasons for contraction.

Like the rising and falling tides on the beach, these seasons ebb and flow, but always under the banner of constant evolution.

“In the garden, growth has it seasons. In the spring, there will be growth.”
Being There (1979)

Someone may seem to have it all over you right now, but who knows what’s around the corner? In 6 months, the seasons could change, and the tables may turn.

Nothing is forever, and nobody gets a free ride.

And by the way, this lifetime is just a season of the broader expanse of your millions of lifetimes.

Fun fact: by the time you take life as a human, you’ve already lived 8.3 million lives in other forms.

When you really widen the lens, you see that while someone may seem way ahead of you, it’s only because they’re already on their 8,300,152nd body life, but you’re still on your 8,300,149th, since some of your body lives lasted longer than some of theirs. So they’ve accumulated a bit more learnings and growth (which is the whole point of living, as last week’s letter explained) than you have at this moment—but you’ll get there too, and at some point you may even ‘overtake’ them. Try to remember it’s not a race though.

So next time you catch yourself comparing, zoom out a bit.

And then zoom out even further.

And keep zooming out until your sight is broad enough to consider things as they truly are, instead of how they appear right now.

“As long as the roots are not severed, all is well. And all will be well in the garden.”
—Being There, 1979

Let’s discuss these and other ideas during Collective Effervescence, our online group meditation series, this Sunday September 7 at 12PM ET. Drop in for meditation only (first 30 min) or stay for discussion + Q&A on this and other life topics from the Vedic perspective. Join the WhatsApp group to receive reminders 24 hours before each session, or click Subscribe on this page to have all upcoming dates automatically sync to your preferred calendar.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi said the purpose of life is “the expansion of happiness.”

If it was that simple, everyone would have cracked it.

So how do we expand happiness?

The Game of Life

Consciousness, in its purest form, is an indivisible whole.

When you’re omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, there’s no one to talk to—because when everything is you, there’s no one else at all.

It’s blissfully boring.

In order to have some fun, consciousness likes to temporarily forget its status as the Absolute and express itself as many individual relative selves—souls, so to speak.

As individuated souls, relating with others becomes possible. This is what’s meant by relative, as compared with Absolute.

Everything’s pretty easy when you’re a soul—time is a flat circle, physical distance means very little, and you don’t have to go to work, like, ever. There’s also not much opportunity for learning, because there are few challenges.

So souls incarnate into bodies, in order to have human experiences.

Relatively speaking, life on Earth can be pretty challenging. There’s these pesky laws of nature for one, like gravity, which limit our physical repertoire of capabilities by a lot. There’s war, and taxes, and laundry, and all manner of stressed out people behaving in stressed out ways.

That’s because life on Earth is basically a training ground. We come here and take up bodies in order to have experiences that force us to learn valuable lessons we wouldn’t be able to otherwise. And to eat food, of course. Souls can’t experience macaroni and cheese.

I used to have tremendous anxiety around my misconception that life was so short, and I was running out of time to do what I felt I should do, and then it would be over, and that would be it.

Once I understood the Vedic perspective—that we’ve each lived around 8.3 million lives as fungi and insects and fish, and dogs and horses and monkeys, before even earning the privilege of taking up our first human body (of many)—I felt a huge wave of relief.

This body life is not all we’ve got. It’s just the latest level in the videogame of “life” we play, lifetime after lifetime, until we finally beat the game by completing all the missions and learning everything we need to.

It’s not that this life is not incredibly valuable and should therefore be taken for granted—but that the point isn’t to do it perfectly.

If we already knew how to do everything, we wouldn’t be here in the training ground.

The point is to learn. And eat.

And the only way to learn is to make mistakes.

“Mistakes light the way”
—Rick Rubin

The Fixed vs. Growth Mindset

As a recovering perfectionist, I used to get really upset at myself for perceived shortcomings.

The extent to which I have been able to shift that mindset from “I messed up” to “I just learned something” is directly correlated to how much my experience of life has improved.

The path to happiness through learning is three-pronged:

First, by shifting that mindset, we can avoid a whole lot of unnecessary stress created by fretting over perceived mistakes. When I fall short, of course there is some brief, fleeting disappointment, but it almost immediately turns to gratitude for the learning experience. This makes me a happier person in the immediate term.

Secondly, by virtue of making mistakes and learning lessons, we get better every day. The better we get at life, the more agency we have over the design of our life experiences, which makes us much happier in the longer term.

Finally, learning the requisite lessons is the only path toward ultimately graduating from this Earthen training ground once and for all, and going back to free-floating with friends and family for all of eternity, which is basically infinite happiness minus macaroni and cheese. You do miss that.

Macaroni & Cheese And The Meaning of Life

So eat the macaroni and embrace the mistakes.

They are the path to happiness and liberation from the meat suit.

Next time you catch yourself falling short, note the lesson, give thanks for it, and make your best effort to apply it next time.

In doing so, you’ll find happiness expanding day by day, until it becomes your permanent state of Being.

If you find yourself making the same mistakes over and over and seemingly not learning, I recommend the practice of Vedic Meditation for clearing the mind of stress and increasing awareness through the activation of total mental potential.

The truth is we use 100%, but somewhere between 70-95% is used to ruminate over negative, worrisome, fearful, or anxious thoughts.

The stress we’ve accumulated over our lifetime hijacks more and more of our psychophysiological resources with each passing day.

In fact, the entire reason the mind thinks thoughts to begin with is an attempt to attain to greater levels of contentment.

The mind is convinced it can think its way to preferred outcomes and influence people and situations in its favor.

This is why most of our brainpower is wasted rehearsing the future in a futile attempt to control it.

Pause for a second and consider how often you find yourself doing this.

Nathan Fielder caricatures the absurdity of this human compulsion on his new show The Rehearsal, where he works with real people to rehearse for some auspicious future moment in their life using an elaborately orchestrated system involving inconceivably intricate levels of detail.

In one episode, Fielder helps a hapless homebody have his first kiss with a woman by hiring five actor couples to stage rehearsal dates in five different identical replicas of his own apartment on a full-scale film production set to prepare for any possible outcome that may arise on the real date.

Fielder told Vulture the show was “inspired by the futility of the human impulse to control one’s own future, which he found ‘really funny.’”

On screen, the lengths to which Fielder goes to attempt to exert control are exactly what creates the comedic element.

And yet, is it really that much further than how we use our own minds?

Or would we do the same thing if given access to an HBO production budget?

Hollywood gives us another example in the wonderfully written Mad Men, when Paul and Peggy are brainstorming an ad campaign on a deadline.

Paul spends the entire night banging his head against the wall and finally comes up with what he feels is a bombshell idea, but can’t remember the next day and shows up to the meeting tense and stressed.

Peggy doesn’t have any great ideas either, but shows up relaxed.

In the meeting, an incidental comment about a Chinese proverb sparks a tangential discussion.

Nervous Paul sweats and smiles along timidly, but grounded Peggy, with her mind unencumbered by worry and fear, finds inspiration in the proverb and turns it into a winning ad concept on the spot. Watch the clip free here.

Peggy isn’t more talented, and didn’t work harder than Paul—she was just less stressed, closer to the source of all creativity and therefore more able to draw from it.

Most of us spend an inordinate amount of time attempting to prepare for every possible outcome in order to control every aspect of it.

Sometimes, it may seem to work to some extent.

But mostly, we’re draining our energy spinning our wheels in the face of forces of nature we can’t control any more than we can reverse the course of a river.

At best, we may be able to temporarily slow our down-river speed, usually at the expense of lots of energy, which leaves us less capable of navigating whatever unknowns lie ahead.

If we relaxed, we’d be cruising full speed with a full tank of energy in reserve to deal with whatever may come our way.

Rehearsing is overrated, but being prepared is paramount.

Rather than trying to account for any number of possible imaginary scenarios, the most effective preparation comes from relaxing into our least excited state of awareness, making ourselves maximally adaptable and ready to extemporaneously deal with whatever may arise in real time.

My own teacher has given talks in some of the most prestigious and high-pressure settings in the world, from the World Economic Forum to the White House.

When asked how he prepares, his answer is simple: there are no outlines, bullet points, note cards, or the like—he closes his eyes and meditates.

The best laid plans may go awry, but someone who is prepared has no trouble improvising solutions.

In my experience, Vedic Meditation is the easiest and most effective way to access that least-excited state and avail ourselves of the creative solutions that spontaneously issue forth from it.

Let’s discuss these and other ideas during Collective Effervescence, our online group meditation series, this Sunday August 8 at 12PM ET. Drop in for meditation only (first 30 min) or stay for discussion + Q&A on this and other life topics from the Vedic perspective. Join the WhatsApp group to receive reminders 24 hours before each session, or click Subscribe on this page to have all upcoming dates automatically sync to your preferred calendar.

"A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving."
—Lao Tzu

As many of you will already be aware, I recently had the experience of a lifetime organized for me by nature.

For three weeks, I traveled across the U.S. from Santa Monica to the Hamptons and then down to Florida in a 25-foot RV, mostly for free thanks to ChatGPT.

It was my first time traveling in an RV, and it was one of the best times I can remember.

Waking up somewhere new each day with the freedom to go wherever I wanted and also the structure of needing to arrive in certain places by certain times was the perfect balance of bliss and choicelessness.

From the moment the idea was conceived, I couldn’t help but marvel at all of the ways nature had organized everything so beautifully and the endless slew of small synchronicities along the way, like sneaky little smiles from nature saying “you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be.”

At one point, I realized the routing, dictated entirely by nature via CruiseAmerica, would have me arriving in the Hamptons on the 4th of July.

I began to romanticize this glorious future moment in which I would arrive on the opposite coast, jump in its opposite ocean, and lay back under the stars with a hot dog to witness a spectacle of lights I would pretend was planned solely to celebrate my safe passage in the same way The Great Gatsby romanticized the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. A quintessential Hamptons fantasy.

But when the day rolled around, my dip in the sea was short-lived, ended prematurely by a friend eager to unload the many boxes I had transported for him.

I relished what I thought was the completion of my journey for about 30 minutes before it was time to make the next arrangements.

And then the death blow—fireworks in East Hampton had been canceled due to some sort of bird safety concern.

I considered becoming a MAGA in this moment. No fireworks? What kind of uber-woke liberalism was responsible for this?

All jokes aside, as the initial disappointment quickly wore off, I realized I had brought it on myself.

By expecting this particular outcome, I had made an appointment—and it’s failure to materialize brought ‘dis-appointment’.

After a few minutes processing the change of expectation, I was able to appreciate the beauty in this moment.

It was reminding me that life is not about the end goal—and that there is no end goal anyway.

The goalposts are always shifting, designed not to be reached but instead to move us across the field of life.

As soon as you think you’re arriving, and the hard work is behind you, the finish line gets moved, and there’s more to do.

“Beware of looking for goals; look for a way of life. Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a living within that way of life.”
—Hunter S. Thompson

During the rare instances when a milestone is met, it’s never as good as we made it out to be in our minds, and the fleeting satisfaction seldom lasts more than a few minutes.

Predicating our livelihood on some future moment only undermines the present, which is the only moment that ever exists.

Forget the fireworks. The point is what we get to experience along the way, which is the ride of a lifetime.

So as we say in the Vedic tradition, just relax and enjoy.

And forsaking the poor birds in the name of a few moments of things-that-go-flash-boom in the sky is exactly what someone who’s prioritizing a fleeting moment over the perfect balance of the eternal present moment would do.

Touché, Town of East Hampton.

Let’s discuss these and other ideas during Collective Effervescence, our online group meditation series, this Sunday July 20 at 12PM ET. Drop in for meditation only (first 30 min) or stay for discussion + Q&A on this and other life topics from the Vedic perspective. Join the WhatsApp group to receive reminders 24 hours before each session, or click Subscribe on this page to have all upcoming dates automatically sync to your preferred calendar.

I’ve written before about the secret to balancing being vs. doing and about the avocado lady, whose quality of Being made her airport lounge guacamole divine.

But what is Being, actually?

And how do we ‘do’ it?

Without a proper understanding, we’ll end up like Jason Segel learning surfing from Paul Rudd in Forgetting Sarah Marshall—lying flat on the board for fear of doing too much.

On the surface, it would seem quite simple...being is, well…existing?

Ok. Existing, check. ✅

But everyone is existing, and few are actually capital-B Being—so what’s missing?

I didn’t feel like writing today, to be honest. Then I remembered my friend Kim telling me that when she doesn’t want to do something, she just switches into ‘vacation mode’ and the inspiration appears from her least excited state.

So on a rainy Thursday morning (self-employment FTW), I decided to get cozy and watch Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days, a film about the routine life of Hirayama, who cleans Tokyo’s most architecturally awe-striking public toilets.

In other words, an entire film about being.

Technically, I’m writing this now, but I mostly just watched the film, jotted down musings, and watched them take the shape of something. It just kind of happened.

This is what’s meant by the Vedic expression ‘do least. accomplish most.’

Beneath all the busy-ness in Japan, there’s a layer of reverent quietude that pervades all aspects of life there. The Being layer.

Hirayama, through the quiet care he takes in his work and his profound quality of attention to the beauty in the seemingly mundane all around him, represents this perfectly.

Being doesn’t necessarily mean the absence of doing, and doing doesn’t necessarily mean the absence of Being.

Hirayama is Being when he’s meticulously scrubbing under the toilet seat with a toothbrush. He’s also Being as he sits quietly on the park bench eating his sandwich and taking film photos of the trees.

His underling, Takashi, offers a stark point of contrast. Takashi watches videos on his phone while he cleans the toilets with the other hand.

When silently admonished by Hirayama, Takashi replies, “Why bother? It’s just going to get dirty again.”

The implied answer, of course, is because how we do one thing is how we do everything. The process is the outcome.

It’s not about the toilet being in a perpetual state of purity, but the quiet inner joy we feel when tending to our work with a quality of attention that can only be described as Being.

Being is contagious.

Through our Being-ness, we can inspire others into Being, just by example.

Halfway through the film, I took a break to make lunch.

Inspired by Hirayama, I found myself doing so with a higher quality of attention.

In Ayurveda, the branch of the Veda concerned with life sciences, the number one principle of eating is the consciousness state of the chef and of the diner. That’s because the quality of attention, known as soma, is transferred from the chef, to the food, to the diner.

Being and Manifesting

After lunch, I checked Instagram (which can still qualify as Being, depending on the intent behind it) and saw my friend Sean in New York was looking for someone to move his boxes from LA to NY.

Over the last few weeks, I had been feeling strong charm toward a cross-country roadtrip, and here was the perfect opportunity.

I told Sean I’d drive his stuff, and within 2 hours, I was booked in a 25-foot CruiseAmerica RV for 8 nights across the country, for next to nothing, thanks to Sean covering the fuel expenses and ‘relocation specials’ I learned about on ChatGPT, whereby companies offer free rentals for specific routes when they need vehicles repositioned. There was exactly one route available, and it was the route I needed. I’ll set out from LA in a few days.

Do Least. Accomplish Most.

All told, I got the letter written and the roadtrip of my dreams materialized without doing much other than watching a movie, cooking lunch, and making a phone call.

This is Being in action.

When we relax into our least excited state, the mental noise quiets, and we’re more easily able to align with that which nature is trying to organize for us. Life is much easier this way.

That’s also how manifestation really works (sorry, Insta influencers in wide-brimmed hats), but that’s a topic for another day.

The Island Inside

When I think back on my life, it wasn’t the private jet trips, exotic lands, extravagant parties, or fancy dinners I remember most warmly. It was the the quiet Sundays spent doing laundry, vacuuming, watering plants, developing film, and listening to vintage music on good speakers that really filled me up.

I’ll never forget pre-learning meditation, sitting in a 5-star hotel suite during Miami Music Week, in between our label-branded stage at Ultra Music Festival and our club night, surrounded by materiality “in profusion” as Robert Plant would put it, and telling the owner of Club Space that I secretly wished I could just escape it all and start a new life as a simple barista on a remote island.

Each time we close our eyes, we make contact with that small island inside. The Being layer. And each time we emerge, a little more of it emerges with us, increasingly coloring our world.

Let’s discuss these and other ideas during Collective Effervescence, our online group meditation series, this Sunday June 22 at 12PM ET. Drop in for meditation only (first 30 min) or stay for discussion + Q&A on this and other life topics from the Vedic perspective. Join the WhatsApp group to receive reminders 24 hours before each session, or click Subscribe on this page to have all upcoming dates automatically sync to your preferred calendar.

My dad plays golf several times per week. He worked hard his whole life for the privilege of being able to do that now, and I love it for him.

While visiting, I’d sometimes notice he’d return home in a sour mood because he hadn’t played well.

When I last asked, he told me he’s cracked the code now and has been playing much better.

Apparently, he’s stopped tallying his score.

He said he realized that he played much better when not thinking about the score.

It was a deeply impressive cognition from such a numbers guy who typically sees the world in percentages, prices, and probabilities.

I couldn’t help but wonder if it had anything to do with the recent three-year anniversary of his learning Vedic Meditation.

My teacher’s teacher, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, spells out “the technique for achieving the maximum result from an action” in his commentary on the Bhagavad Gita:

This does not mean that Arjuna is not to fight for the Sake of winning the battle; it does not mean that the action should be done without caring for its result…the result of action will be greater if the doer puts all of his attention and energy into the action itself; if he does not allow his attention to be distracted by thinking of results. It is to ensure the greater success of an action that the doer is asked not to concern himself with results during the course of the action.
—Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Commentary on the Bhagavad Gita Chapters 1–6

So there’s an important nuance.

Maharishi is not suggesting we become complacent or stop caring about the result.

He’s saying that having the intention for the best result, and then forgetting about that intention in order to focus on the action, will bring the best result.

…But this does not imply that he should be indifferent to results. If he becomes consciously indifferent to results, the process of action will certainly become weak, and this will also weaken the results. Having begun to act and having become intimately engrossed in the process of action, he should fulfill the action with such complete devotion and undivided attention that he is oblivious even of its fruits. Only in this way will he achieve the maximum results from what he does. If a man is held by the fruit of action, then his sole concern is centred on the horizontal plane of life.

Some people are very competitive and results-oriented, which is fine.

The advice here is that the best way to achieve those results is to stop thinking about them and focus instead on the action.

It may seem counterintuitive, but there is tremendous significance to this idea, which of course transcends the golf course.

Let’s discuss these and other ideas during Collective Effervescence, our online group meditation series, this Sunday May 25 at 12PM ET. Drop in for meditation only (first 30 min) or stay for discussion + Q&A on this and other life topics from the Vedic perspective. Join the WhatsApp group to receive reminders 24 hours before each session, or click Subscribe on this page to have all upcoming dates automatically sync to your preferred calendar.