All right, so today is Sunday.
It is the most spiritually sacred day of the week, at least in my view.
And whenever I’m in LA, which today I am, I like to go to the ashram.
Now if you read yesterday’s email, you probably think I’m some kind of spiritual freak or religious nuthead or something at this point. But I promise you I’m not.
If you’re ever in LA–or you might even have one near you—the Self-Realization Fellowship ashram temple is just so inclusive to every single type of person, every single type of religion.
And when you go, the lectures are not boring in any way. They’re like a transmission of energy. And they just talk about principles that are so relevant to day to day life, to your life, to the spiritual path.
It’s just really nice. Today the lecture was on overcoming “Nervousness”.
Was great.
I’ll probably be doing a longer period of meditation later today, as well as reflecting on the previous week and planning the week ahead using the 8AM app.
What I wanted to tell you about in this email is the night I had last night.
So last night I went out with my buddy Jesse, who’s a fourth-degree Japanese jiu-jitsu black belt. You’ve probably heard me mention him here and there. We were in Bali together too.
And I just had this idea that I wanted to experience something entirely new in the city.
Because I think if you live in your city or your town for a while, you sort of end up going through the motions of your same spots and the same energy all the time.
And I was in this mode last night—this energy of like, I want to experience something entirely new.
I mean, LA is a gigantic city. I wanted to go somewhere that I’ve never even seen or touched or felt.
And I wanted to just have a different dinner experience than the usual that we might do.
So we ended up in Koreatown.
And we get there and sure enough there’s the Korean language everywhere on the signs and Asian people all around us.
We were the only white people. Not that it matters but, you know. Different.
And it just reminded me of how cool it is to live in a big city because you can literally transport to basically a different country with just like a 20-minute drive. It’s the same with Chinatown in New York, sort of.
So we go to one place. It wasn’t really the exact vibe we were looking for. And we noticed the lines were very long.
And then I actually used Elon Musk’s AI tool, Grok, to research and recommend places good Korean places to us.
And Grok started doing its research and going through the list of options that had the best reviews.
And I think what’s cool about Grok—and all of these LLMs—is that you can ask them to do research for you and they’ll actually do it. They’ll read Yelp and TripAdvisor reviews and such.
So we ended up finding this place in Koreatown called “Baekjeong”. Don’t ask how to pronounce. I don’t know how to say it at all.
So we got there and there was sure enough a line down the street.
And we were like, all right, well, what do we do?
So we put our name in. They said it was gonna be like a 30-minute wait.
And I just haven’t waited in lines for a very long time. Normally if there’s a line anywhere, I just kind of shift realities and decide to go somewhere else.
But in this particular case, Jesse and I were looking through the window at the Korean BQQ they had and we saw how good it looked.
And we were like, all right, it looks worth the wait. Fuck it, let’s just wait.
So we waited and it felt like the longest 30 minutes of our lives.
But you know, as Eckhart Tolle says, “there’s no such thing as waiting”. There’s just enjoying yourself in the present moment.
Finally we got in there and there was all this food already prepared for us on our table.
And yeah, it was just… idk… I loved it. It was a very different energy right off the bat.
The little appetizer salad was like this sweet kind of lettuce type bowl and it was very tasty.
And then of course they started bringing out the steak.
We got this combo plate, which was just extremely delicious all around.
On the grill—they have like this metal sort of aqueduct-type thing, which is the best way I could describe it—that’s part of the grill where they put eggs and then corn and cheese.
And all the way around the grill, there’s like all these different appetizers—kimchi, pickled radish, marinated bean sprouts, seasoned veggies, fish cake, tofu in sauce, all kinds of stuff.
I honestly didn’t know the names of half the things. There was like a purple thing. Just a bunch of different Asian stuff.
But the steak was delicious.
They then brought out this sweet sauce steak—or pork. I don’t know exactly what it was. I think it was pork...
I’m Jewish so I’m not supposed to eat pork, but whatever.
But man, it was just sensational.
Then at the end they made this fried rice unlike any other fried rice I’ve ever had. And it tasted like a healthy fried rice. It’s hard to describe exactly, but was absolutely delicious.
Throughout the meal, we started to literally enter this spiritually heightened state, at least that’s what it felt like, where my body just started to totally relax as I was digesting this food.
The other thing I noticed was that there were no carbs aside from the rice at the end. There was no bread. It was just straight protein and also all these nutrients and vegetable-type things that I don’t normally have.
And Jesse and I were saying that you kind of notice when you get food that you don’t normally get, your body kind of picks up on it and just relaxes. Like your body kind of rewards you for it.
So that was really nice. Overall was great.
It was one of those meals that we both had and by the end of it we were like, “Oh, we’re gonna go home and sleep so good.”
And sure enough, when I got home, I think my body was just full of the proper nutrients and I just absolutely had an amazing sleep.
And I even forgot to take my magnesium supplement.
So yeah, my parting message in this email to you would be: if you’re looking to spice things up in your town or in your city, just go somewhere you would never think to go ever and enjoy a new experience.
And your body might thank you for it.
That’s my message.
I hope that you enjoyed it.
Go meditate! Go get on the 8AM app if you haven’t gotten on it yet.
It’s the best habit you could have on a week-to-week basis. And you’ll notice on weeks that you don’t use it how much worse your week is. Lol.
So please be my guest. Sign up for the 8AM app at 8amapp.com.
And I’ll see you in the next email.
— Arlin
