I started writing because I needed an outlet.
Three years ago I tried psilocybin for the first time and it rocked my world. Nothing could be the same after, it shattered my world view. For months I was aloof to the rest of the world, to the "normal" interactions. I was fascinated with life and how everything was working and it distracted me. It caused me to lose some of my relationships because I couldn't connect on the same level.
But there was no stopping me, I had had glimpses of what I can only describe as the divine in all of life. Single days where I felt like I understood everything and where life was more beautiful than could be imagined. After seeing that how could I not pursue it? How could I not try to figure out how to get back to that place?
Me and my crew visiting the Pacific NW
I explored everything, books, videos, spirituality, neuroscience, psychedelics, ancient cultures. I wandered down the youtube rabbit hole, I spent hours and days reading and devouring everything that seemed like a piece of the puzzle.
At first I had a number of outlets, I had friends with similar experiences and able to talk to me on the subject. And I had a search, I was looking into everything, I was consuming information and experiences. I was driven to figure things out, and that journey culminated with a trip to Peru to visit the shamans and try Huachuma and Vilca.
When I got back it was time for a new journey.
The girl I was seeing for just two weeks got pregnant, and we were in for a new ride. There were ups and downs, a lot of fighting, some good times, I bought a house, and eventually our baby girl was born.
We ended up moving in together, and around the same time almost all of my friends moved away. Where I used to talk to them at nights and discuss spiritual progress, now there was no one. Karen was busy with school and raising our daughter, and everyone else was moving on in their own lives.
So I picked up the computer and started writing on google drive.
Every night I would write, sometimes whatever was on my mind, sometimes I'd do a meditation right in front of the keyboard and write out my experience and ponderings. It was a way for me to talk to myself, to work through things, and to get my ideas of life on paper.
It was a way to express in a world that didn't seem like it wanted my expressions. Spirituality is generally an individual practice, no one can do it for us, and sometimes words just get in the way, it's challenging to write clearly about our experience in life and most people don't want to hear someone else's ideas on it in conversation. Despite this I decided to write on spirituality, philosophy, and consciousness, because those are the topics I'm immersed in, those are the topics I have knowledge and value to add.
I used google drive for a long time, just like a journal. I'd looked into Medium and was about to start posting there when I stumbled onto steemit. That's when things really started accelerating.
I started out just commenting when I got here, I had one or two posts. A few weeks in @taskmaster4450 spotted me from some of the quality comments I was posting. He took me under his wing, offering upvotes as long as I could post everyday, hopefully twice a day. Boy was I in for it, what started out as rambling to myself on google drive took on a new shape. I was formatting content, creating direction with content, and coming up with new content everyday. It really pushed me and made me a better writer. It also showed me how much work it takes to write consistently and to write on new topics.
My writing had to have purpose, it had to be interesting and provide value. And it had to make sense, be applicable to life. My purpose for writing was easy: I wanted to share what I'd learned, to put some of these difficult to understand spiritual concepts into contemporary language, to start discussions to see other people's views and learn from them. I feel like I succeeded at times, getting a lot of people commenting and resonating with my words. Other times I struggled...
Especially lately I've been finding it challenging to write. To put what I'm feeling and what I've learned very recently into words. I don't worry about it, I feel like it's part of the process. We learn, we assimilate, and we grow. We take what we experience and find a way to share it that makes sense. That's the beautiful thing about the internet and steemit in general, we can share and be rewarded for our experience.
It's my feeling that there is a spiritual renaissance happening right now, people are starting to wake up in a number of ways, one of them being consciousness. We are finding out we are far more capable than we once thought. We are finding out that we can evolve not only physically, but mentally, spiritually, and emotionally in ways we only dreamed. It's my feeling that this shift in consciousness will change the world, will allow us to transform it into one of love instead of fear. My reason for writing is to be a part of that change, to help others and work with others along the way, and to add my own individual take on it in case others resonate with my words.
I want to be part of @sndbox because the group seems to be filled with people wanting to make a positive difference. People who I can talk to, bounce ideas off, learn from, and collaborate with. As a member of @sndbox I will be adding as much content as I can, being an inspiration for other creators and people who are on the fence about taking their ideas and making them happen. I feel each of us have gifts to share, it's the sharing that challenges many of us. I want to boost people into believing they can achieve their dreams by being an example and writing about it, creating videos, and developing projects.
I will be writing on philosophy, my style is one of personal experience. I will be discussing various cultures and religions and how they relate to eachother, real world application of spirituality, and even dabble in new age ideas. I also write about life, nature, health, and family, some of our most important tools for learning and growing.
I think of spirituality as self help on steroids, it causes us to see the world in a new light, a clearer view. It's the one thing that affects all other aspects of life, and I want to promote, discuss, and develop it in my own life and the community. I feel like we learn best by working together, and this is something I want to keep learning about more than anything.
I truly hope the @sndbox crew considers me for Summer Camp, I'm dedicated, hard working, and have a unique take on many aspects of life. While my posts have at times been slapped together, I plan on slowing down my rate of posting from 1-2 times per day to one major article every other day in order to create higher quality posts. I feel I could be a major contributor and part of the community if given the opportunity.
Thanks for your consideration,
This article was written for the Sndbox Summer Camp, more info HERE
Good to e-meet, brother, @jakeybrown-- especially since I, too, sense that: there is a spiritual renaissance happening right now
Here is an essay of mine that I hope might speak to you about Seeking the Light through Literature Peace, all ways, Yahia
That was a great read! Your vocabulary is awesome, I learn how to write better just by reading your content. It's fascinating to me how some words lead us to silence our mind, I wrote on this a bit in a previous article. Seems like you already know this very deeply.
I'll be watching for your poems and will have to check you out on amazon or wherever, I might have to start dabbling in poetry some more too, I only did one of those poetry contests and really enjoyed the process.
Little extra upvote for the great article
Thank you, for your attention & encouragement. Yes, reading (widely & deeply)is practice for writing. But, so is living and deep-self-diving —which silence and meditation can afford us.
Seeing your article, I realize I was correct in sensing we face the same direction 🙏🏼
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Great article Jake, I am mostly posting the music and occasioanl poetry now, my blogs have somewhat dried, but its down to you in a large measure that i stuck around and found the success I have done. Your writing and your deep sincerity always shine through in your posts.
( oh and a short p.s ... Paul Hedderman is coming to London next week.. I feel a trip coming on)
Haha, I appreciate the kind words! THere is something to be said for staying consistent and believing in yourself. You stuck with it and now you are doing amazing! I need to stop by your page more often, I've been taking a step back.
Let me know how that goes, is he just doing a few days of talking or what is the event?
Oh, this time I missed your posts. I've been busy with daily life stuff - you know, like the ones you are describing, but not so nice. 😀Today I was about to pack my stuff and quit my job during a talk with my boss, who is behaving like a total control freak. People who are living their lives 100% from the mind are so strange to me and I'm not sure, how long I can stand this BS. Anyway... Thanks for sharing your personal story and posting a picture of you with your lovely family! ❤️
It's funny you should mention quitting, I just walked into my bosses office two days ago to quit. Ended up talking with him about some projects I want to work on, now I'm moving down to 30hrs a week, working three days instead of five, so I'm really excited.
Also been going through some major shifts lately, I was meaning to get into Gene Keys, but the Paul Selig books are resonating with me so much I can't put them down.
Honestly, I think you could start building something online with your background in spirituality, I'm planning on creating something with my newfound time, I think you could too. Have you tried anything like that other than the Gene Key work you do with people?
Yuuup, previously I was taking things personally but now I can just laugh off the nonsense that gets thrown my way. Like I used to worry about pleasing people, now I'm like "why am I feeling bad for this person getting upset based on their own thoughts and expectations?"
Beautifully expressed! Thank you! 🙏
Well, I have been self-employed over 10 years before I took the job last year. I had an online marketing agency together with my partner who has left me and with that of course the agency also went downhill...
The issue with being self-employed here in Austria is, that you have to pay enormous amounts of social insurance fees each months. They are mandatory and make it only reasonable, if you earn at least 2k+ monthly consistently. The funny thing is, that I can do marketing very good for others and I'm also "good" at these spiritual things, but doing both for myself somehow doesn't work out very well - at least not with this expected income. Also I'm at my best, when working with another person, and I havn't found this counterpart yet...
I don't want to justify or complain that this is why it's not working, but these are certainly issues I have to come around. Actually this is the only reason, why I didn't just stand up and leave today, when my boss told me, that he wants to change our current marketing strategy to "Let's just spam people with emails, until they freaking buy!" and telling me to set up a perfect spam marketing campaign over the next 8 weeks. 😀He learned that on a workshop the past weekend...
This is all ridiculous... Anyway... I like the way you are taking your unique talents to the next level and serving your true inner calling.
I'm feeling the winds of change too - just I'm not yet sure, where they are taking me.
Maybe you wan't to write some articles about your insights from the Paul Selig books? I would love to read them. I already feel what my next article will be about - I guess, I will write it on Friday... ❤️
Interesting about the insurance fees... Man, I hate email spam, the real key is to just improve your product and modestly promote it imo, but different people work different ways I guess... That's not fun to do something like that.
I have been meaning to do some videos or writing about the Selig books because I think I have a good handle on them intellectually. I guess I've been holding off in order to really apply it in my own life, but that seems to happen at it's own rate. I'll get an article up soon.
If you ever want to bounce ideas off me I'm all ears, I think in a few years people like you and I will be guiding others in their spiritual practices, or playing a role in holding that level at the very least, so I think the market will be growing. But what do I know ;) some people don't like help when it comes to spirituality and their personal lives
Yeah, even the situation with my boss is a spiritual topic for me. In the end, it's a manifestation of ego concepts in my mind, because I'm aware, that he is of course only one figure in the dream. It's the ego having its final convulsions. 😀
I think writing about a topic is a good way of integrating it into your life. What we teach, is what we need to learn. So go ahead and write and teach! 😀
Awesome post. I really enjoyed the privilege to hear some more of your story. Thank you for taking that step.
I like this a lot. It's funny, but we do need techniques for talking to ourselves.
It is really cool to see how having the support and encouragement from even one person, like @taskmaster4450, can cause us to really take ourselves seriously. It is almost like being accountable, but more inspiring because you know that other people are cheering for you.
You have purpose in writing and in life- your family. Beautiful man!
Hey thanks!
I really appreciate your presence on here, you inspire me, I will be joining you soon on pursuing my passion
My friend is great to see you participating on a sndbox quest! I hope you manage to get among the winners!! :D
Cheers mate!
Thanks for the support!