Easy to say.

“You’re perfect.”

“I see you as perfect.”

All you need to do is let go of all the thoughts, beliefs, emotions, mental constructs, advertisements, comparisons on social media, and the tap tap tap of that nagging voice that says, “Don’t fall behind. You can still catch up. You can still win!”

Just follow your breath.

Well, notice it first.

Can you?

That thing you do every moment of every day. That very first thing you did when you slipped wet and cold into existence. That thing that will be the very last thing you do before it all ends or you move on to another plane of existence. That thing my father’s body tried to do even after he’d died.

“Be here now.” Thanks, Ram Das. But how do we do that without trying? How do we try without judgment?

How do we believe it’s okay to see ourselves as whole and happy? Unbroken.

If I’m not seeking “healing” what is there left to do?

Without trauma, addiction, and neurotic narcissism, what do I do with my day?

Who will understand what I’m talking about?

Unbroken. Whole. Complete.

The red pill or the blue pill? Which one is the true fantasy?

The earth, the moon, the stars. The sun that will be eclipsed by the moon today over North America. The galaxies, and clusters, and all the missing matter our current comprehension of math can’t explain.

Without a creation myth, how do I cope with consciousness? To know I am, but little else?

It’s not reason or math or science or myth that will bring peace.

It’s faith. It’s jumping into the unknown, the unreasonable idea that I’m good and complete no matter what the other bags of muscle and bone and emotions helplessly tell me and sell me. Forgive their ignorance and my complicity.

It’s an inside job.

One bag of bones at a time.

Just feelings. That’s what this week is about.

Preparing for an ayahuasca plant ceremony is an opening of the raw self.

It’s day 6 of taking away most of the things that help me avoid feelings. Coffee, weed, alcohol, refined sugar, red meat, lots of other things… and, wait for it, ejaculation! Yup.

Just sit there and take it bitch!

Worried about your substack, your husband’s struggles, your relevance in gay men’s culture, your mom’s reality without your dad, your other mom’s torments, your sister’s well-being, your health, turning 59, your motorcycle’s dead battery, that pain in your lower back?

Just frackin feel it!

Being present is no longer masked by distractions; it’s full presence, moment to moment to moment. I’ve even taken the suggestion of staying off social media, well, except Grindr. Is that a social app? Sure. Look at all those bodies and be a tease, “Not today, sorry.”

What’s left is, well, everything. ALL the feelings. This is what it is to be human, buddy.

Is this what it felt like to be a hunter-gatherer? Before tech and know-how brought us all the fat, meat, and sugar we wanted? Tears of joy and grief while digging in the garden? Well, I guess they didn’t have gardens. They were on the move.

But they were tied to the earth.

And being tied to the earth is why I’m going back. That’s why I’m doing my third plant ceremony. After experiencing a mushroom ceremony, I learned about an ayahuasca ceremony in my new neighborhood, on the same communal soil where I bought a condo two years ago, the same neighborhood where I have always hung out with leathermen.

Pacha mama. Mother earth. During the last ceremony, I met You for the first time.

The morning after, in the cool, bright morning Silver Lake air, I touched the bark of a tree growing near a 1920s building. It spoke to me. Much clearer than any wonky telepathic crap Counclor Diana Troy ever used on Star Trek The Next Generation, I was, and still am, connected to everything the tree is connected to. Words fail. But let me try. The expanse of an all-knowingness, a knowingness that is experiential, not intellectual. The tree, the earth, the water in the sky and the seas, each heartbeat in Silver Lake and all those around the world, each being that moves, and all those that grow, and all the essence of earth and sun and stars that have brought us into being. I touched it. It touched me back, and there was no longer a separation between any of us.

Oneness with everything.

A sustained joy bursting from inside me and holding me safe all at the same time.

I guess that’s worth skipping coffee and ejaculation for a week or two.