What a week of power that was. I’m back in LA now.
Big takeaway from the week:
→ Mission > Profit
→ Solve the problem of modern society of our generation
Mission / purpose must be first above any concept of profits.
The problem we aim to solve must be big. Grand.
I think the problem is people detached from the calling of the soul. Phones & devices are sucking up all the Chi.
As an experiment, grab a pen and paper and make a journal entry by hand to illustrate how different you feel rather than stuffing the chi into the phone or computer.
For example, i wrote this journal entry by hand then took a picture of it to transcribe it instead of typing it.
The experience is different.
Parker, a guy I met at Esalen, ensures he places himself outside of the ‘matrix’ so he can look in and affect it.
Unlike 99% of entrepreneurs in our generation, he doesn’t think the answer will be found by being on social media and having a ‘personal brand’.
This is important. He views social media as a major problem to solve. It’s hard to solve any problem if you’re consuming too much of what’s coming out of the devices.
Not having a phone could actually be really beneficial if your goal is to affect change on the collective consciousness.
I missed the nature so much this morning. I feel its absence in suburbia.
Being able to walk outside among trees and dirt and ocean and the air and breeze — a way of living void of the matrix of “stuff accumulation.”
Simple.
What matters is simple. Nature. Place to convene with God in meditation. Aka to convene with the soul — inward — the cord to God.
A garden to grow the food you eat.
Friends, new and old.
The people. Crucial. Conversations with bright, happy, intelligent strangers.
What is the problem we have as a society for this days generation… at its core?
It’s distance from soul. Exacerbated by the devices. Phones, tvs, screens.
When distanced from the soul, the human species will self destruct.
The tendency of the ego is to build things to fill an endless void that only being in contact with the soul can build.
Our only mission is to return to soul inward. Not to build things externally.
We have built away from the soul.
We are so overstimulated.
The beauty and joy is waking up and total simplicity of nature awaits.
It’s just so absent in our culture.
Our kind just makes and makes and makes things from the impossibly satisfied energy of the ego.. which leads to creations that cause us to consume and consume and consume.
Until what? For what?
That is our predicament, when distanced from soul.
That is what we are healing.
-Arlin
Here’s a more official written manifesto i’m working on:
The Problem of Our Generation
We've built the most powerful tools for connection in human history. Yet, we've used them to disconnect from the only connection that matters. The phone is a symptom of our disease. The disease is a generation running from the soul. Each notification, scroll, swipe... every "just checking" it's the ego's attempt to fill a void that only stillness in communion with God can fill. We've outsourced our attention to the algorithms in exchange for dopamine. We've confused dopaminergic stimulation for aliveness. We've made the technological, algorithmic empire our god as we avoid sitting quietly in a room reading a book, or saying hello to a stranger, or going surfing, or for a run, or to learn playing piano or make a painting or simply stare out into the sky at night. We must always be plugged in. Our parents generation had their reckoning and major impact in the 70s - Steve Jobs, Alan Watts, Bob Dylan, Joseph Campbell, Abraham Maslow - they saw the cracks in the paradigm and turned inward. Their problem was different than ours. Their problem was institutional conformity. The corporation, the church, the government, the suburban script american dream they didn't accept or want – everything was externally prescribed to them and they resisted it. The soul wasn't being stolen by devices like ours is. Our parents soul was being flattened by a world that had "figured everything out" and left no room for direct experience, mystery, awe, self discovery. If you're 18-38, ask your parents or your friends parents how much pressure they were under from their parents to conform. To get the job their parents wanted for them. To marry the person their parents would approve of. Ask how much their friends and generation overall rebelled. Ask them what they did and how they did it. So what did they do? They dropped out. They went East. They went hippie. They said fuck your career choice and fuck your religion. This is my life. They fled into the wilderness of nature. They read the Gita and the Tao. They listened to Dylan. They took shrooms at Woodstock. They cracked open the doors that the pressure to conform had sealed shut. The messages of our parents generation are potent still today. But yet they were for a different generation. They didn't have a computer in their pocket designed by the brightest minds on earth to hijack their dopamine systems.
We do.
And so the problem we face is more sinister, hidden in plain sight. Our distance from soul isn't based on cultural expectation... for us it's neurological. Architectural. Baked into the infrastructure of the home, of daily life. Next to our beds. In our homes. On our walls. In our bags, back packs, cars, planes, subways. On our wrists and around our fingers. Their generation broke free from rigid structures. They won. But they didn't replace them with anything - they gave us the freedom they never had – and while beautiful, we inherited freedom without a clear signal or foundation. Of course some did, but then their choice to pass down family values and direction became riddled with infinite choice and no compass. How? The devices. We see infinite culture online. We see people from every walk of life. We see every possibility or way to make money. We see every way to live. Some people are even telling us we have so much choice we can choose our own gender. Our parents had no choice. We are plagued by every choice. Paralyzed with choice, our algorithms fill the vacuum of an inability to decide. The soul of our generation is being fragmented by distraction. Scattered across a thousand tabs. Bled out through endless scroll.
Our parents had a shared enemy: conformity, the Man, the script. They could look at each other and say "we see it too." We don't have that. We've all scattered into our individual lanes. Everyone's optimizing. Everyone's "winning" in their own way. Look around at your friends. One is settling down, getting married, running an ecom store while traveling the world. Another is heads down building a tech company in NYC. Another is deadset on becoming a DJ. Another is day trading. Another just moved to Bali. Another is in law school. Another became a muslim or christian or bitcoin influencer. The internet gave us limitless choice. And the thing that's eating us alive doesn't even look like an enemy – it presents itself as opportunity. The algorithm doesn't feel like poison. It presents itself as connection. So there's no collective awakening. No shared recognition of a problem. Just millions of people, each in their own silo, wondering why they feel empty despite having everything they decided they wanted. We have no consensus on what's wrong – because the thing that's wrong is disguised as what's right.
I've been aiming to solve the problem of the soul for a while. But I didn't see this impediment until an offline friend pointed it out to me clear as day in my face. Now it's clear what the core impediment is. My mission is to gather the builders and creators and most brilliant minds and to create a path back to soul that gives direction to our generation, and to lay that foundation for millenia to come. When distanced from soul, we egoicly set out for control of our circumstances of our reality - many of the bright minds have gotten that financial safety through entrepreneurship. Yet the aim for control is totally self-destructive. And it's hidden. Through endless building of things to fill a void that only being can fill. To be clear, the mission is not anti-technology but pro-soul. My question to the builders of today... what if you built from a different place? No i'm not saying "quit your company and become a monk." But what would you create if you were connected to the source of all energy, the source of all life itself? To know that, you must first experience that connection. And I can promise you, you won't find it by reading another tweet in this algo.
You will only find it by going inward. The compass is inward. The map is inward. The answer is inward. It is life and experience itself. It’s writing thoughts down with a pen and paper. It’s talking to a stranger at a cafe. It’s learning a new instrument. It’s going surfing. It’s opening a cook book and learning a new recipe. it’s going on a roadtrip with no plan. It’s smelling a flower. It is here, now. If you only can be quiet enough, still enough for the damage this device in your hand has done to you to quiet down... and for you to hear the signal, maybe for the first time in your whole life. If that only means you sit quietly after reading this for 30 minutes looking at the sky. Noticing what comes up. Or with your eyes closed looking within. Notice what happens when the compass is internal. Which way. In or out. If we do not reverse the flow, we are closer and closer to self destruction every day. The new way starts with you now. The kingdom of heaven is within.
ps, watch first minute then go run or workout or work
