On early Monday morning I arrived back from Europe.
It was an amazing trip that I have a lot to mention.
It was so impactive partially because of the people I met up with from the community.

My travel partner knows about me being in the community and was surprised as how it appears online and how it is different when you actually meet and talk to the people that are involved in it.

To say the least Monday (the day I returned to the States) was a day of crazy shit. There was a ton of stuff that I needed to get caught up on. It was a high stressed day, but I seemed to handle it well. It was one of those days where one thing happened after the other.
The issues seemed endless.

Tuesday was a continuation of Monday and I think that I finally lost my cool when I found out that my identity had been stolen and a lot of damage was done.
After about 30mins I became calm and just seemed to get over it to say the least.
It was almost like Marcello Mastroian in 8 ½ when he gets out of the meeting with producers and dances down the hallway. The bullshit just shed from me.

At around 8:30pm I got a random call from someone I didn’t know and I picked it up.
He told me that he got my number from one my good friend’s phone and that my friend was in the hospital in a coma and was expected to pass away within the next 2 days.
The guy on the other end told me that my friend was in Austin. I told him I was 3 ½ hours away and I would drive down that night.

It is one of those drives where you think a lot.
I was already in an introspective mood considering the travel and dealing with the issues that reality sets in front of you.
The thing is that for the past few months I have been doing quite a bit of change. The more you are involved with the community and the longer you stay in it, the more you will have to change or you sink deep into a huge misery.
Once you meet the prominent people in the community that have been in it for a while it is sadly rare that you see someone who has what you may want.

So on the drive it made me really rant in my own head a lot of changes that face me and ones that I have already made.
My friend in the hospital I have know for a huge part of my life, and is one of my best friends. We both met many years ago in Ca, and somehow both made it to Tx separately.
He is by far one of the most intelligent and interesting people I know. No one I know really comes close.
One things about him is that he was always that guy that was into more of those nerdy things and I was always involved in the arts or something odd or extreme. He actually has always been into the odd and extreme but in a different way.

The thing was that he always was proud to have me as a friend and I have always been proud to have him as a friend.
He was always critical of me in how many of the things in my life I didn’t take to my advantage. I have had so many opportunities yet so little of them I have taken advantage of.
Oddly enough being an instructor in the community fulfills many of these ignored opportunities.
In fact the stuff I have been working on, and the people that I have surrounded myself with are the main reasons for my new perspectives and serenity within all this shit crashing down.

In essence I have been doing what they call ‘Inner Game’ stuff. But that is the thing that has been bugging me, and always had about the community.
People talk about Inner Game, people talk about ego and being in the ‘NOW’, and yet I don’t see it.
I agree that those things are great ideas, but I think people within the community’s interpretation of them has nothing ‘Zen’ or ‘Self-less’ about them.

One of the things that I think we should recognize about the community is that we have this amazing advantage of having a brotherhood and a fellowship of guys. We should be dedicated to growth as individuals and as a group, but we end up on selfish roads that lead to ego fueled battles of who can open, close, or do whatever trick the best.

The community is has for the most part been based on superficialities rather than anything that has to with internal manifestation. I agree that selling superficialities sells, there are many companies that make a great profit on making quick changes to yourself to gain attraction.
The thing is that all the Inner Game stuff I have seen all has to carry that same model of creating superficial solutions and exercises but nothing to gain permanence in one’s self.
Without building a lifestyle around what you are trying to build beliefs in, those beliefs will not sustain.

Next Mon. Sept 15th Jtime and I will be doing a Free Inner Game Workshop in Atlanta that will specifically address much of these ideas. They are different than what is normally talked about in the community, but they work. I also talked with Rebirth yesterday and told him I would be in Ca at the beginning of Oct and I wanted to do another Free Inner Game Workshop when I was there. Anyone who lives in LA, OC or SD that would like to help set this up please email me (eltopoPUA@gmail.com).

The thing is that with all the things coming around in my life, I am more and more convinced that if I am to stay teaching in the community I need to continue on my path of grassroots and lair talks and word of mouth.
I get the idea of streamlining your business and that 4 hour a workweek mentality, but to me my favorite part about teaching is working with people. The bigger the business the less personalized it becomes.

With the experiences that have come my way I realize that my main goal in all of this is to first and foremost help people. Yes I make money at it and will need to continue that; however, I still want to remain as accessible as possible. I want to continue working with lairs and offering minimum cost workshops to help those lairs gain value in how they work and help the people sustaining the lairs.

There are so many advantages that we as a community are passing up getting caught up in our egos and bullshit identities.
As I was driving down I thought to myself,
‘I can’t believe how many times I have not lived my life to its fullest because I am caught up in selfish emotions, and how grateful I am right now to be clear enough to not have them.’

Without bullshitting too much bout morality, I will say that I have always had a talent for working with people and I think many people do. The community is a place where we come to better ourselves at an odd, but understandable angle. So let’s take advantage of that, and build a community where we learn to grow and not just build something better, but let’s go beyond what we are doing and have done.

So I got to Austin and at 2:30 am said hello to my old friend. It was past visiting hours but the nurse was from Fort Worth and let me stay with him since I made the drive down. Wrote him a note and talked to him although he was in his coma. Asked about his condition with the staff.
The nurses told me that when he came in he was in so much pain that they were surprised at how much they had to sedate him in order for him to not be trashing around.
When I saw him, he was on a respirator and although it was inflating his lungs at a choppy pace, he looked placid.
It made me think about how, that pain from when he was admitted had passed and now he was off in some coma induced dream.
That is kind of like life though. There is a beauty to that pain we feel. There is a pain to hold on to it, there is a pain to act on it, but once it is let go of we are free. Then there is a poetics to that pain.

I have said goodbye to many of my friends in the past. It has never affected me too much because of my perspectives on death and considering that when I was 17 had a brief run in with death as well. This time it seemed to more.
I don’t under

stand life and I don’t understand death, nor do I want to. But they are terrific forces that the more we fight em’ the more we are humbled by them.

So with our earthly reality
I leave you with this fine quote I am trying keeps popping in my head!

Igor Stravinsky said in the Poetics of Music
‘To create good music you have to have an ego, but not be egotistical.’