This rhythmic music pulses lightly upon my ears. My mind quiets. And my face begins to lose all expression.

Today the message is clear and simple: friend, let your flag unfurl.

Let go of that knotted mess you palm between your hands, covered in soil and twigs for how often you’ve let it drop to the ground, only to fret and pick it up again. That knotted mess is the desperate ego-plea to Know: the childish whims we grow into believing that claim that there is one solitary path to be walked — the “right” one — and many other paths that we must desperately avoid — the “wrong” ones.

The ground beneath your feet is all you ever need. The path you seek is what you already stand upon. Your life is happening right now and all around you. This is “happening,” my friend Syndee says in God Whispers on the Wind. You path is here. It’s happening today. And you don’t need to know why it’s beautiful or how it shall work out or what the bumps and rocks that gash the soles of your feet “mean” to start dancing upon it today.

Let your flag unfurl.

There are colors bound up in you like the head of a lily that rises to the sun in these spring mornings. Blooming can only be achieved when you let go and allow layer upon layer of your deepest, most honest self open, open, open and unfurl toward the ground.

These are some ways that I have found to be most helpful in teaching yourself how to unfurl your flag:

1) Stop comparing yourself to others.

Stop comparing your hardships and struggles to those of your friends or strangers, and take solace in the fact that each of us suffers equally. Suffering is no competition, and comparing suffering to suffering is a win-less game.

And awakening to the truth of your soul is even less of a matter to be compared and contrasted against others. Do not compare your awakening to the awakening of others. We are each learning, growing and going at our own pace: life is not a race to the finish (for the winner would be dead the quickest) and your mission is to be your most authentic self, to shine, to flourish.

There is enough sunlight to soak the entire earth.

But letting go of comparison to others is a wildly terrifying prospect for your worry-mind. We fret that if we cannot compare and contrast ourselves against others that we might “be left behind,” or that we won’t be able to understand “how we’re progressing.”

Two flowers stand beside one another. Do you sit there and think, “This one is more beautiful, and that one is ugly by comparison.” Or do you sit there and say, “That these flowers stand here is what beauty means.”

2) See yourself in others.

It’s not enough to stop comparing yourself to others — a product of insecurity, doubt and fear that dawns in the worry-mind. To flourish, you need to go steps further.

You need to see your story in the story of every other soul you encounter. You need to see your face in hers. You need to feel his heartbreak just like your own.

These threads of compassion, empathy, relatability and connection are the most fundamental elements of human love — and by tapping into them you continually deepen your own capacity to give love and receive it.

3) Believe you are worthy of everything you deserve, desire, and more.

Are you deserving of everything you desire? Tell me, why are you not? The same source of divine energy that courses through you — we are all, at our core, merely energy, after all — courses through me that courses through the everyone and everything.

Do you truly believe that God frowns upon you, that He should smite you and cast you into the bowels of a fiery hell for the earnest dreams and meandering wishes and hopeful desires that are genuine, good, and exemplary showings of love of self and our world?

Do you believe there is some secret difference between you and someone who “has more than” you? Do you believe life is unjust or that life frowns upon you for karmic injustice you have committed?

Goodness, if you refuse to live for fear of yourself then take this broom and sweep my chamber floor, for the ants that crawl upon it will teach you what it means to be determined to live!

Sweep until you find God there — and, if you cannot, at least my chamber shall be clean!

Those ants are more noble and holy and than those who preach down to you from their mightiness to reprimand you for your sins, your faults, your ineptitude — they who tell you that you cannot or should not taste and touch and feel God in everything you do.

Do you not see it — those feeble-minded men who tell you to live in fear of yourself for the sins you might think or commit are not your friend, they are your oppressors and they use your own fear of yourself to stop you from truly living.

They do not speak for God. You speak for God in who you are, in what you dream and in the love you live. That IS God.

When many flags unfurl across the wind, what’s born is a grand cascade of light and colors in dance. The feeble minds of men fear that betwixt the flags, the wind will be lost.

But there is enough sun to soak the earth. And more than enough wind to let every flag to unfurl, to let dance, to let shine.

How ironic, or perhaps silly, that I find myself speaking once more of religion and politics when I am so far removed from associating these days with either.

And yet theirs are the flags that we raise and drape; those that rise and fall.

And whether or not you are a woman or man of the state or an institution of belief, I wish to leave you with this:

In this enlightened and empowered age, our outward oppressors are few and far between — and yet, our inward oppressors still lie in our way. Your state is your worry-mind that tells you its logic will maintain order and control — when control is an illusion and order is bound by our love for one another. Your religion is your waning self-belief (that wishes to be told what to do, for it feels safe) and is still uncomfortable accepting the idea that you deserve all of the love and happiness and peace that exists in this universe, and more.

Damn that priest, curse that system.

Unfurl your flag. Show me you. And I’ll show you what beauty lies there.

The subtle, nerve-stricken shake in each hand. Short breath. The sudden swell of tears to your eyes that you can barely bite back. Like nothing else matters. Fear. Panic. Confusion.

Terror.

I was sitting on that flight from Los Angeles to Boston and watching Argo on demand when I heard a passenger two rows in front say, “Something serious is happening on the ground.”

He walked back a few rows to another passenger on the aisle behind me, hunched over his seat, and began to watch his television with him. “Turn on Channel 4,” he said. A New York City news channel.

Back to my own console I switched off from the dramatic reenactment of the Iranian hostage crisis — an event that sparked one of the bigger culture clashes in the last thirty-some years — to see another unfolding presently: the Boston Marathon bombing.

The news channel’s red “update bar” was seared with white or yellow lettering, forming sentences my eyes ran across but couldn’t quite comprehend — I thought that something was wrong, that this couldn’t be real, that I mustn’t have switched away from the movie I was just watching.

“Explosions at the finish line of the marathon in Boston.”

Within seconds my disbelief gave in to heartwrenching disgust; the feeling of smallest, the feeling of total defeat. “…Why?” I felt the tears begin to well up in my eyes as my heart shattered for the souls on the ground, and as the faces of my dozens and dozens of friends who always attend the marathon on Patriot’s Day flashed through my mind.

“It happened again.”

The political, global, social and “real world” implications rocketed through my mind — like they always do. Ten thousand dominoes that’ve fallen over twelve years since it last happened, they all came rushing back. Stacked up again.

But then, the tears paused.

Because this was still happening.

Because I remembered where we were.

That we were flying there, heading to Boston.

On a flight from Los Angeles to Boston on a Monday afternoon, it all came rushing back.

Twelve and a half-years ago. A blue-skied day. Four planes. Cell phone calls made in the sky. Last goodbyes and I love you’s.

“Let’s roll.”

A news story being watched from miles away suddenly became a reality that I and my fellow passengers were approaching quicker and quicker with each passing second. And as recollections of 9/11 bubbled back to the surface, a new gamut of dreadful possibilities paced through my mind.

I looked around that plane and wondered if any fellow passengers who I had smiled at and sat next to were, in fact, prospective hijackers. I wondered if there was an explosive on board. I wondered if a handheld missile on the ground was pointing at us as we landed — I sat in my window seat watching a terrorist attack unfold and quietly contemplated a very distinct reality that something was happening, and there was no time yet for any tears or grieving. We still had to survive.

In the space of those ten seconds, shock turned to terror and terror turned into a quiet, honest acceptance that this plane, its passengers and me upon it might meet our final demise on that Monday afternoon.

So I just sat there and waited.

There haven’t been a whole lot of times when mortality has felt so real. No real illnesses or near-miss car accidents, no severe airplane turbulence or “You got lucky, kid” reprimands.

But last Monday afternoon, it felt pretty real. Maybe it wouldn’t happen on the plane — maybe something awaited on the ground. Maybe leaving the airport, maybe on the bus to downtown Boston, maybe on my Amtrak train to Rhode Island, maybe something. 

Gradually, passengers turned the channel in their seat-back consoles from whatever they were watching to the news to see what was happening on the ground. Everyone on that plane was probably from Boston or had family in the area. Everyone was quietly horrified, then stricken with fear, and then we all thought of our loved ones and family and friends, our neighbors and fellow Red Sox fans and local Dunkin Donuts servers.

And slowly, one by one, those next thoughts drifted to settle upon us, our status, and one another — in the sky.

There was no panic on the plane — hell, neither the flight crew nor the pilots even acknowledged what was happening in our destination city.

But perhaps there’s no place that feels more vulnerable than on an airplane in the sky as a terrorist attack unfolds — in the plane’s destination city. All you can do is accept it. And then you accept that you’re not through — not yet. You still need to stay on your guard, to wait for the moment that you need to spring into action and fight for your life, and for what’s right.

But before that, all you can do is sit and wait. And think.

And what I thought was,

“…it’s all rushing back.”

Not just the feeling of fear and the taste of terror; not just memories of twelve-and-a-half years ago. What came back was my reason for being here at all — what set me off on this path. What came back were the questions — am I doing my part? Am I honoring my calling? Or am I failing?

I didn’t give it much thought on that flight. I couldn’t. I was too focused on what might come next — waiting, waiting to survive, or waiting to die trying.

Our plane idled in circles over Massachusetts for a few minutes. Eventually we landed. The news was on all over the airport and security was through the roof. Hundreds of police personnel cordoned off hallways and on-ramps, lining sidewalks and street curbs. Baggage claim was one knot of fear and every suitcase suddenly looked like a bomb.

I had a train to catch out of Boston, but catching that train didn’t seem like a great idea. I made the decision to somehow get my friends’ apartment in South Boston. And the only way to get there would be public transportation.

I got on the bus while the T was still running. The bus was packed, but silent. Struck dumb. I stood beside a blue-and-yellow jacketed marathoner, she was emotionless and drained and in total disbelief of what was happening — what she must have seen. A tense ten-minutes later and the short trip to South Boston was over. I started walking to meet my friends, who were at the bar.

I walked through the bomb sniffing dogs and watched wary eyes run over me with luggage and backpack in tow. Blue police lights were flashing everywhere. Hotel guards lined sidewalks to prevent non-guests from entering. It felt like a warzone in your own backyard. The tears surged back to my eyes, then — for I felt out of harm’s way, and I was back in Boston, and my friends were near, and I had survived for now and my feet were on the ground, and this disgusting new reality began to feel all too real.

I found my friends. I downed two beers. I tried to exhale. But on the bay beyond the bar’s tall glass windows, a Coast Guard boat with the mounted M249 rifle in front gave pause to any hollow relief that a single breath might provide.

But in the chaotic week and days that’ve followed, I’ve come back around full circle to wonder,

Am I doing what I’m supposed to be doing?

Playing games with words and stories? Facebook groups and email lists?

Has my path intended to lead me here, or did I go astray? Did I miss it? Misstep? Veer off?

The attacks in Boston last week brought all the memories from the last twelve years rushing back to the surface. Everything was there, all at once. Every memory, personal and political. Every news story made by other men and women and every choice I had made, myself.

Quitting and starting over. Depression and inner battles. Essays and 300 blog posts. Books and speaking gigs. Heartache. Breakups. Traveling for love and meeting new loves. I felt the first inkling of determination to stand up and do something. I felt the dawn of my passion and inner drive. I recalled the binding of souls through story, the essays on empathy and the books on the nature of compassion; the Buddhist teachings and Dalai Lama quotes, the yoga poses and friendly hugs, the risks taken and hundred business failures, the arguments had and debates from which I walked away.

And in these last few days, I’m still asking myself, “Is this really where I’m supposed to be?”

What of leadership and service? What about true giving, inspiration and change? Am I doing that? Am I avoiding it? Missing it? Failing?

What of that tattoo on my shoulder that follows me wherever I go — my own reminder to be the quiet leader, to lead without followers; to stand, whether before the room or behind the crowd, and give by example from selfless love, compassion, and understanding?

I look at the world that surrounds us and surely it’s not for me to save, but when these horrors of inhumanity and murder unfold — all the senseless violence, the ego-bound deceit that claims lives and shatters the joy of millions — I find myself earnestly pondering whether I am doing my part for the good of this world or if the bad is making greater strides than I.

Am I failing? Can’t I be doing more — more that matters, and more that matters more right now? Where did I go wrong?

All of these thoughts have been batted about in this head of mine. The questions often crop up from time to time. But after last week, the questions feel so much more real. Immediate. Pressing. And necessary.

Because I’m afraid they’re true.

I’m afraid that my shifts away from leadership, leading without followers, leading from love and the leadership game that I felt so called to share has been met by one a big white flag — my failure, my defeat, my avoidance.

I’m afraid that the world still burns and that what called to me most earnestly in youth is being ignored. I am in terror, indeed — that I’m not doing my part to lead as I can, to serve as I should, to give more than what I am capable of giving,

On a flight from Los Angeles to Boston on a Monday afternoon, it all came rushing back.

Last week I told one of my writing clients a story about a conversation I had with a friend a few weeks ago. My client was struggling with the idea that maybe the promises that writing had made him were lies — or, that writing was just some bit of a vehicle to get what he truly wanted. I told him he was probably right.

I recalled the conversation between my friend and I from a couple of months ago — a conversation on love and family, partnership and what matters most in life. And that conversation entailed some raw and real admissions that so much of what we do, I do truly believe, including why we dream and what we’re in pursuit of and striving for and building and struggling with and worrying about often feels like one big, empty expression of what we’re all so deservedly desperate for as human beings in this human experience: simple love.

We write to feel love and God and connection to the Universal. But writing itself is not what we seek.

We go to college because we dream of a better life for our future children and ourselves. But education itself is not what we seek.

We go to court as lawyers, we fill out customer service surveys, we buy the new car with heated seats, we dance and we drink, we get married and sleep around because we want to feel love, fight for love, stand up for love and share love, connect to a love deeper than our skin and shake with love in unabashed, truly-alive excitement. The details of how we get there really pales in comparison.

It’s all about love.

And there’s nothing wrong with that.

But for some reason, when I recalled that conversation last week with my client it somehow felt… dirty. Wrong. Like an admission of guilt. Defeat. Betrayal. Even if I know it might be right. And some part of the admitting that to myself felt like I was saying everything I’m doing and all of the pursuits are just hollow games that don’t quite matter a damn.

…But then it all came rushing back.

The truest and most lasting form of leadership that exists is one that is bound by raw and real humanity — tears and hugs, conversations and simple efforts, laughter and being present with who you’re with.

It lasts because it’s love, and leading with love is a form of leadership that is not bound by follower counts and job titles, status or fame, manicured suits and megaphone speakers or even election votes.

It carries on in every soul it touches. It grants every soul a chance to emulate that loving example by their own choice, will and abilities — whether or not they consciously choose it. Even if they emulate that loving example just because it feels so damn real, so honest, so true, so good.

The leadership that lasts the longest is not bound of measures and metrics; it’s liberated by leaving them behind.

Live your endless love in the work that you do, in the world in which you play, in the words you write and the songs you sing. Damn it, the leadership that lasts the longest is not called “leadership” at all — because when the effect of the service, compassion, understanding, giving and bravery that you offer to the world goes unnoticed, you give others the truest chance to learn it and take up the torch to lead, themselves.

Not because it’s ordered or commanded. Not because they’re seduced by the allure of power and wealth, fame and acclaim.

But because it is right and true.

Because it is love.

Every day you live it, you send a quiet force, a spark, a chance out into the world that surrounds you — that spark is one that other human beings can sense, can touch, and some day will indeed pick up and carry themselves upon their own torches, before marching onward into the night.

Last Monday afternoon, I thought that I might die.

Plenty of people closer to the senseless, gutless, inhumane acts of murder that occurred in Boston thought the same — and faced it more truly, bravely and courageously than I ever did. But this is not about who’s suffered more, faced more or overcome more. This is about the glaring reality that we’re in it together.

And that we do everything that we do — I write, you write, we work and play and fight and dream — not because they’re petty games or wishful thinking or hollow expressions in the pursuit of love.

We do it all because we’re in it together. Because we six billion human beings each need a million different means that all lead to the same place — to love, to one another.

Unfold your soul from the knotted hell of ego, fear, arrogance, dollar signs and meaningless righteousness. Your truth has no time for the games and pedantic drama. Your spirit feels like it is dying because of these wandering whimsies that seem to promise you the safety and comfort — but they mislead you.

You know it’s not what your heart demands. You know there is a depth of love greater than great awaiting you to tap into it, to taste it, to touch it and become the very cup itself that is passed around and shared with the world.

You hear what I say but in a few moments, we’ll slip back into “neutral” where we’ll suffer for days upon days with crippling self-doubt and worry about where to go and what to do, what choices to make and all the possible implications. Stop.

If the outcome is the greatest expression of love you can imagine, go and do it.

Choose it today. Just don’t delay. Begin right now before this moment is gone.

Let go of everything else. Stop telling yourself the excuse-riddled stories — this is not who you really are.

Who you are — the heart you have, the soul that wants to shine, your divine messages, an experience in life deeper and far simpler than you ever thought existed — is waiting.

Say what scares you.

That is how you know it is good.

Do what terrifies you.

Fly, even in the face of murder and pain, because you’re there; because your instinct knows you can help, damn it, even when that little voice in your head claims you can’t.

Bite back the tears for just a while longer.

There’ll be a time to entertain the fear and accept the tears — but right now, there’s too much work to be done. Stands to be made. Your duty to uphold. A mission to live that refuses to wait another incarnation or a man in a robe’s gentle permission or some religious book to tell you you’re more than worth it to want it — for you to finally choose to live it.

…is it all coming back to you now?

Yeah.

By now, you probably guessed it.

This was as un-hypothetical a situation as my “hypothetically cracked tooth” that I suffered a few weeks ago. It happened to Jacob and me last Wednesday as we embarked on a 4:30 AM drive up to the top of 10,032-foot Haleakala crater or the “House of the Sun,” a massive volcano that forms more than 75 percent of the island of Maui, to see the sun rise over the clouds.

We realized that we were running out of gas about halfway up the mountain.

And all this begs a very important and honest question:

What happens when the journey sucks?

What happens when the journey downright feels like shit, or makes you tense and nervous and undeniably anxious, or throws you for a complete loop? When the plan doesn’t work out as you had expected, and have to improvise on the fly?

How do you react?

And what, if anything, can you do to reclaim the journey as “the greatest reward” — even through the muck and the shit?

Between my work with The Literati Writers and recent travels between New York City and Rhode Island and now abroad to Hawaii over the last six months, I feel like a broken record riffing on the journey being the greatest reward.

Why?

To me, it’s all about how you align your minutes, hours and days with a truly rewarding sense of purpose, peace, joy and fulfillment.

What that actually means is taking the time to enjoy each day; to live from a place of truth that feels raw and real, and without expectation or apology; to honor your soulful wants, core needs and deepest desires as often as possible.

The journey becomes the reward when you engage in a concentrated practice of living what you believe and embodying your values in every interaction, conversation, smile or adventure — for better or for worse.

Of course, talking about “the journey being the reward” is easy when things are great.

It’s easy when you’re watching every sunset over a Hawaiian beach and meeting new people from around the world every day.

So what actually happens when the journey sucks? When you’re so thoroughly inconvenienced — as with a partially broken tooth, a missing author-interviewee, a goon picking a fight with you at a bar, or a car that’s running out of gas on top of a 10,032-foot volcano crater on Maui?

The dramatic sequence of events began with a little something like this:

Ding.

“What was that?” I asked.

“Low gas light came on,” Jacob replied.

“That’s not good.”

“Naw, that’s a great sign!” Jacob commented with his occasionally-inappropriately-timed sarcasm.

We had come too far to turn back — and there was no shot that we were waking up at 4:30 AM again. A stressful half hour of “Do We Have Enough Gas to Reach the Top?” later, we reached the summit. It was 5:45 AM and a balmy 39 degrees fahrenheit.

Standing there above the clouds at 10,023 feet as the first light of the day hovered lightly over the horizon, the only thing on our minds was,

“How the hell are we going to get back down to the bottom?”

Is there gas up here? A siphon? Someone who will help us out? Are we shit outta luck? Will AAA drive all the way up Haleakala to give us gas — and is there any chance that it would take less than 6 to 8 hours for them to get here?

Minutes later, the sun crests over the horizon. That “sudden blip” of orange orb that jumps into view is always quite the sight to see. You’re literally seeing the Earth’s rotation; participating in an ancient ritual as old as time itself, honoring the day, the warmth, the provider.

And in that passing moment, there are no problems.

…until you gotta turn around and start rolling your car downhill.

Luckily for you, this is where we start to have some video evidence of what happens “when the journey sucks.”

Jacob started to record this video during our slow downhill roll over thirty miles of winding mountain roads to the nearest gas station. As you can tell by my first act as star of this video, (my middle finger – I dedicate that one to you Ash), I was not all that pleased with the videographic endeavor. Although, in my defense, I thought Jacob was taking a picture…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Be forewarned — the video is not all that exciting. But it is a real and somewhat hilarious documentation of what happens “when the journey sucks” — in this case, as two guys coast downhill for thirty miles, above the clouds:

• 0:04 – I flip off the camera
• 0:10 – Jacob explains the current situation
• 0:39 – First f-bomb is dropped
• 0:51 – I optimistically explain, “…30 miles to a gas station… this SUCKS… we’re not gonna make it.”
• 1:10 – Jacob describes, “…Two miserable, ungrateful, entitled, spoiled, snobbish fuckin’ bastards…”
• 2:30 – Using bodyweight to get the car rolling downhill
• 3:15 – Musical reference to Gangstar / Blackstar and I prove just how un-hiphop I am
• 4:25 – “If you’re still watching this right now, you must be a boring person”
• 4:50 – Hitting the gas pedal in neutral
• 5:32 – A Jeep kills our momentum
• 5:40 – Jacob peels his banana
• 5:46 – Taking a turn with too much speed
• 6:13 – iPhone cuts off video

When things go wrong, you just gotta ‘roll’ with it.

(That’s a rolling-car-downhill pun. Get it?)

But “rolling with it” is exactly what’s so tough when you’re improvising on the fly. When things go wrong, you lose your presence. You start to second-guess, question, overthink and worry. You get self-critical (even when it’s justified) and start to ask yourself things like “How did I let this happen?” and “What will people think if they find out about this?”

When things go wrong, or at least differently than expected, all you can do is make the best of that unplanned, even unwanted situation by doing your damndest to tune into the present moment.

For Jacob and me, it was the hilarity of laughing at ourselves and getting it on video for you to enjoy — rolling downhill and hoping for the best.

All you can do is forget everything else except where you are and who you’re with, presently. Forget your expectations and your assumptions. Forget the jokes you had planned out and the questions you had thought through, forget the pre-emptive nostalgia you thought you’d feel and let it go.

Forget everything that never happened and focus in on what is happening, now. 

What is here, now. Who is here, now. 

Find your presence. Breathe deeply. Remember where you are. Reflect on what matters — and how it could all be so much worse. How you’ll look back on this if you champion it — versus if you get dragged down into negative town.

And that’s how our expectations for the future mislead us. An expectation is a preconceived judgment, and from that judgment, I truly believe that some piece of the beauty of “simply living life” becomes lost. Expectations distract us from where we are. And who we get to be with. And what magic quietly lies in the spaces between where we strive to be and where we already are.

Even when the journey sucks, you can still honor it — by releasing yourself from judgments, expectations, and finding presence wherever you are.

Even a long coast downhill.

You deserve to experience the hum of passion that courses in your veins when locked in a conversation with a total stranger.

You deserve to encounter the guttural vibration of anticipation when your eyes lock upon another’s — for the very first time.

You damn well ought to feel the exhilarating breath of sea-swept air that drops in from the blue sky upon a magnificent, new landscape — one that you’ll never see again, because other landscapes are awaiting you.

When I talk of artistry, I’m talking about how you deserve to live.

Artfully. Feeling God in every moment. Flowing in experience after experience. Touching the brilliance and beauty that life has to offer– now.

Is it an ideal? Surely.

Hyperbole? Maybe.

But unrealistic? Why should it be?

Life doesn’t wait for anyone. And your actions, thoughts, words and decisions won’t suddenly start honoring exactly what you want and need and dream of until you begin to honor them, today — finding the space, the time, a moment, a chance, a break in the clouds or a smile across the crowd to take a risk, to dare, and to let go of whatever comes of it.

Your journey is being walked, right now. How are you walking it?

You don’t have the time to waste trying to convince the nonbelievers, or awaken the small-minded judges, or make the righteous self-saboteur change their minds who claim to maintain the ways of the world even as their own patched up walls of “normalcy” and “order” crumble down around them.

I’m telling you that you deserve to experience the liberation and lightness, the freedom and simplicity of being. Take the deepest breath you can. Imagine every breath feeling like that.

Artful.

Artistry can be tapped into from anywhere — artistry is chosen in life, and living in elegant brush strokes and liberally-strewn smiles can happen everywhere; anywhere you look. Art is where you are, in how you live and breathe, how you chat with strangers. Artful living is the source that courses through your veins with unapologetic fervor; the knowledge that you are alive, grateful for this chance — opening and awakening and expanding into a deepening state of truly joyful being.

I lose myself in all this rambling. How many times can I say the same thing I am called to say?

Artistry is reflective of an experience that your soul is desperately craving, and no compromise upon that spiritual desire will satiate the hunger until your thoughts and actions, your life’s decisions, your words and song, your dares and cares to find alignment with that yearning.

What you yearn for is to experience what you love in life, wherever you go.

Isn’t that it?

Don’t you wish to feel like you are expanding into the space around you like a star that glows in the night? Don’t you feel like you deserve to be awakening to who you truly are – and what purpose you’re here to serve in life? Don’t you wish to see yourself in every face you pass upon the street? To taste God upon the lips of another?

What your soul demands is to unfurl itself from the mess and muck of worry and fear that have bound you into some static definition of what “ought” to be, when everything that could be

This is why you struggle and long. It’s why you so often feel distant from whole; hungry for what’s more.

There is a fundamental depth that lies beyond your desires: these are not petty wants and feeling wishes for “more” things and fame and acclaim but a critical, uniquely personal element of soulful yearning that is so hard to understand (let alone define) because it is rooted in how you wish to live every day — and how you wish to experience life, itself.

And only from honoring that calling will you experience what you desire — and deserve.

This is artistry: the top-to-bottom, never-ending experience of living a life so damn full and whole and alive that you can touch it.

You’re on the path already.

It’s not a place that can be found.

It’s where you are, presently.

And what matters is how you walk it.

Don’t you deserve to feel the artistry in everything you do?

Feel my hand against yours. Raise your glass high. Look up into today and inhale the sky into your heart. Sweat longer upon the mat. I could go on. But what’s more to say that you don’t already know?

Time was, I woke in the morning with dread in my heart. I fell asleep that night depleted and defeated; worn and desperate for the space within my head to be cleared of those invasive thoughts and where, in slumber, my imagination could run free and dream.

A slow fade, the daze… A flash. 

And awaking once more.

I couldn’t do it for very long. I knew I’d never last. I knew I’d waste away into nothing living that lifestyle that drained me so heartily of any ounce of purpose or meaning.

And the honest truth is that I could afford to escape it. I had the privilege. The comfort and the opportunity. I’m not a champion or a survivor. I’m not an example or a leader for having left a lifestyle that I grew to loathe. The truth is that I didn’t need to suffer in that state of depression and unhappiness, devoid of the soulful longing that demanded I stand up, that I be me, that I put pen to paper, and experience where life’s journey wished to take me.

So I left it.

But what I’ve learned over the last four years is that it’s not just the circumstances that burden you over your journey. It’s your expectations.

Expectation robs you of presence. And presence is where any and every opportune ounce of magic, experience and love is found in your journey.

You rob yourself of your journey when you expect, anticipate and over-analyze your journey to death. You rob yourself of the joy of the body beside you when you over-think every possibility through to a possible conclusion, and then try to work backwards to choose the “right” words and actions and decisions to force that outcome to appear. You rob yourself of the love that is begging to infiltrate your ears and chest when you entertain all of your ego’s worries and fears.

Expectations are the hardened, imaginary standards of who your soul-mate will be or immediately relegating a new person entering your life to some peripheral level of friendship or acquiescence before you even get to know them.

Expectation robs you of the magic of what could be. The magic is lost before you give it the chance to become anything, at all.

And I truly believe that your expectations are as much a catalyst of discontent and longing than the circumstances that burden you. Expectations burden you because they rob you of truly experiencing every opportunity as a gift; every face as a piece of the Universe; every silly dance, extra drink, haphazard pickup line and moment of wandering from opening up your world to more than you ever knew was there — readily available, ripe for the picking.

Letting go of expectations means letting go of them. Choosing to not entertain them. And instead, letting the juices of that ripe moment run down your chin — without regret.

These days in Hawaii, meeting amazing new souls before me, I feel these reflections bubble up in the silent pauses between breaths of sharing who I am and what I do and where I’ve been.

I pause in those gaps of conversation and think about how I’ve gotten here. And then I think back to reflect and question how my own expectations in recent years have deceived me, hurt me, let me down — and outright stolen from the joy of a journey I was so desperately longing to live and experience when I was stuck in a rut four years ago.

Some of those expectations were things like…

• Thinking that by showing up, I would win. Showing up is a bare minimum. It’s fundamental, and a base requirement. No one gets a trophy for showing up. It’s just what you invest, commit to, and continually do time after time — just to give yourself any chance of getting where you wish to go.

• Believing “a” break, “a” book, “a” moment would make everything else easier. Think of your favorite author, entrepreneur, celebrity, well-off friend or peer. You think they’ve “made it,” right? And that everything else gets easier and simpler thereafter, right? Wrong. It doesn’t get easier as you go along. It gets more complicated and complex. It gets heavier and headier. It gets tougher because you have more dollars, more eyes, more lives, more responsibility and more fall-out riding on every word, decision, action, effort or launch. Popularity ain’t freedom; it’s enslaving.

We expect for different reasons. Sometimes out of naivete and other times out of ignorance. Sometimes we expect out of hope. Other times we expect as a hollow defense-mechanism — as if a preemptive strike upon the future at the cost of the present.

Expectations are not the wit and logic of a dreaming mind but the fear-bound worrywart of a heart that longs to experience more of life, more love, more faces and places — all that beckon our simple presence, and nothing more.

And what I’ve found is that life, work and play are all the more rewarding when we can pull those distant meandering expectations of tomorrow into a present state that honors everything you hope for “some day” but can feel, taste and touch, presently.

How to detach from expectations

Honestly, I’m preaching from an easy place today. It’s a lot easier to honor your journey “wherever your journey takes you” when you’re somewhere new, beautiful, exciting and invigorating — full of life and new faces, names and chances. ”Putting yourself out there” a lot easier when the environment reciprocates at nearly a moment’s notice.

That’s how it was when I lived in New York City last year. That’s how it feels now over the last few weeks here on the Hawaiian isles. Back in Rhodey, over in small-town USA, or being in any location or populace that’s overly comfortable and familiar… it’s usually not the case.

When you don’t have travel or an infusion of “newness” to honor where you are, all you need to do is to shift gears and enter a gentle state of pursuit.

Continually “put yourself out there” in personal efforts or spiritual practices just as you would a new environments. Shake up your routine and break an easy, automated habit — even where you pick up coffee in the morning.

And make the practice an internal one, too.

Instead of listlessly meandering into expectations of what tomorrow ought to be, cut a few hours of time every day to venture into your bliss, today. Instead of wondering whether or not he or she will ever call, kick back, read a book, eat some damn chocolate or watch a few episodes of Seinfeld. For work and creation, let go of how the next book or blog post will be received by readers and friends and spend an extra hour making it special — because of how much you love to say it.

Pursue different ends as limbs grow from a tree.

Concentrate each push outside of yourself as an extension from your core — a piece of you, never bigger than your whole; never so much as to throw you off kilter. Know that a storm will come and break an arm or two — when you least see it coming. Honor your journey by pruning often. Keep upright. Rise ever upward — with your feet rooting more and more deeply into the earth beneath you. Stand. Give shade. Make a home.

All of this is where my journey had taken me. Every ounce of that past is as much a part of me now as it ever was. I honor that with these words I share with you, today.

So honor where you journey takes you, friend.

Detach from what was, without regret. Detach from what might be, so that anything and everything truly can be. Invite opportunities, conversations, collaborations or simple friendships with openness and in a state of light-heated acceptance of everything and everyone.

Instagram Photo: Leaving my mark on the wall of travelers at Seaside Waikiki Hostel. 3/30/13