Updates, Lessons, and What I’ve Learned

It’s been about 9 months since I last sent a note like this. I stepped away from public writing to focus on living, testing, and paying attention to my body. I want to share the ideas, teachers, books, and lines that shaped this period.

These months stripped things down.

I stopped chasing output and focused on alignment between how I think, how I live, and what I release. I learned to wait until understanding settled before speaking. That choice changed how my work feels and how life responds.

1. One principle guided everything: integrity precedes expression.

That lesson deepened through teachers like Jiddu Krishnamurti, U.G. Krishnamurti, Nisargadatta Maharaj, Ramana Maharshi, Epictetus, Kapil Gupta, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Meister Eckhart, Simone Weil, Anthony de Mello, and David Whyte.

Jiddu Krishnamurti’s line stayed close and resonant with me since I first came across it:
“Truth is a pathless land.”

I’ve noticed that no structure guarantees clarity and no system replaces attention. I stopped leaning on explanation and returned to watching how things unfold in daily life.

Books, if you know me, played a role that reinforced this shift. The Music Lesson reframed practice as listening. Art & Fear exposed how avoidance hides behind productivity. The Art of Creating emphasized removal over addition. Sun and Steel revealed devotion through repetition, even where I disagreed. The Bhagavad Gita framed duty without attachment. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius returned me to conduct. Tao Te Ching refined patience. Thus Spoke Zarathustra warned against borrowed values. The Prophet framed wisdom through simplicity, and work is Love made visible. The Creative Act clarified trust in process.

Each book pointed toward lived consistency rather than clever insight.

2. Creativity shifted.

I stopped releasing work before it felt complete. I learned to sit with ideas longer. Editing replaced constant or forced expression. Fewer pieces carried more weight. Rick Rubin’s influence echoed here, along with Victor Wooten’s line:
“Music is not notes. Music is intent.”

Hint: I’ve very recently picked up learning, making, and creating music. More on that in the future.

Intent became the measure. If intent felt diluted, forced, inauthentic, the work stayed private.

3. Pressure reshaped decision-making.

I’ll keep the details of this private, but I still feel that there’s some value worth sharing. Difficult moments removed excess. They exposed weak motives. They forced honest choices. Epictetus framed this clearly:
“Do not seek events to happen as you wish. Wish events to happen as they do.”

That stance changed how I met friction and resistance. I stopped asking how to escape strain and started asking what strain revealed. Pressure became a form of instruction.

4. Time emerged as an ally.

I stopped forcing the egoic story in my mind of visibility. I stopped measuring progress through response. Saturn themes across astrology, the 6/2 profile in Human Design, and long arcs in Vedic cycles all pointed toward patience. Growth for me unfolds through phases, not bursts. Waiting became part of the work rather than a pause between results.

A line from Lao Tzu stayed present:
“Nature does not hurry.”

Since I moved to the countryside in late May, I have invested a lot of time into observing nature, from trees to birds to ponds, and found that to be true. Taoism may be the main philosophy that I have been in alignment with during all of this time.

That sentence shifted how I approached timelines, projects, and expectations.

5. Spiritual seriousness replaced seeking.

I lost interest in ideas that sounded good without stabilizing behavior. I stepped away from language that floated above lived experience. Zen teachers, Ramana Maharshi, and Nisargadatta reinforced this orientation. One line stayed close:
“You are not what appears. You are what notices.”

Observation became the practice. Silence did more than reading. Attention did more than effort.

6. Relationships simplified.

I leaned toward fewer conversations with greater depth. David Whyte’s work supported this direction, especially his focus on presence and honesty within connection. I noticed how trust forms through reliability rather than intensity.

7. Authority changed shape.

I stopped trying to position ideas, and completion became the measure. Gene Keys work reinforced this, especially themes around joy and authority arising through lived responsibility rather than display.

A line attributed to Meister Eckhart stayed with me:
“The eye with which I see is the same eye with which I am seen.”

That idea collapsed the separation between teaching and living. Nothing remained to perform.

8. Mentors guided without interference.

Jiddu Krishnamurti dissolved reliance on authority. U.G. Krishnamurti dismantled spiritual ambition. Nisargadatta pointed toward identity inquiry. Ramana Maharshi emphasized stillness. Kapil Gupta focused on rigor. Epictetus framed conduct. Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu refined non-force. Meister Eckhart stripped language. Simone Weil demanded attention. Anthony de Mello emphasized awareness. David Whyte restored meaning through language.

None of them offered comfort, but each demanded responsibility.

These quotes worked as anchors:

“Truth is a pathless land.”
“Music is intent.”
“Do not seek events to happen as you wish.”
“Nature does not hurry.”
“The ability to observe without evaluating is intelligence.”
“What you seek is in the seeing.”
“Attention is devotion.”
“Live according to nature.”
“Silence completes understanding.”
“Integrity has weight.”

I returned to these lines during moments of doubt, disturbance, or any other reflection periods.

9. Joy changed definition.

Joy no longer meant stimulation or relief. Joy showed up through alignment between thought, action, and result. Through studying my Gene Key information, Gene Key 58 reframed joy as vitality born from correctness. Which means, when alignment held, energy followed.

10. Work gained weight.

I measured progress by coherence rather than output; therefore, projects took longer, but my satisfaction deepened. I trusted fewer ideas and followed them further.

This update is not an announcement, just a marker in my journey.

I’m sharing this because many of you follow similar paths: long arcs, refinement, seeking clarity. If you stepped back this year, you didn’t fall behind. You might have aligned.

The question I return to stays simple:

Does what I release reflect how I live?

I’ll be sharing more again, slower and with intention. If you’re still here, thank you for your patience and attention.

P.S.

Some wisdom that I have allowed to come through me that may benefit you!

“There are only two valid endings of creation:

1. Release → if it still carries life 2. Archive → if it served its purpose privately.”

“Most effort is an attempt to feel justified for existing.”

“Writing is how I listen to life thinking itself through me.”

“Surrender the false (the conditioned self, the striving mind, the anxious becoming), and you will discover that life creates through you effortlessly. Your art will become truer, your business clearer, your expression freer, and your life more aligned with the intelligence that animates all things.”

“Accept the moment as it is. Reality is not the problem. Your addiction is.”

“No one can make you upset. Your emotions are triggered by inner programming.”

“You can choose peace over upset. You’re not a victim of your reactivity.”

“One way is ‘burn the whole house down.” Another is ‘clean up the wiring so you can live in the house without setting it on fire.” Both are valid, depending on the moment.”

“That is what it means to be free: see everything, feel everything, love everything, cling to nothing.”

P.S.S.

Books I’ve read, listened to, and some people who have been mentors in my life without knowing it:

Books

1. Striking Thoughts: Bruce Lee’s Wisdom for Daily Living

2. The First and Last Freedom - Jiddu Krishnamurti

3. The Enlightened Heart - Stephen Mitchell

4. The Enlightened Mind - Stephen Mitchell

5. Perennial Wisdom for the Spiritually Independent - Rami Shapiro

6. Zen Guitar - Philip Toshio Sudo

7. Bhagavad Gita - Stephen Mitchell

8. Wisdom of the Ages - Wayne Dyer

9. God Makes The Rivers To Flow: An Anthology of the World’s Sacred Poetry & Prose - Eknath Easwaran

10. Reflections - Hermann Hesse

11. The Art of Creating - Joseph Nguyen

12. Walden & Civil Disobedience - Henry David Thoreau

13. A Joseph Campbell Companion - Diane Osborn

14. Twice - Mitch Albom

15. The Adventure of I - Tania Kotsos

16. Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life - Wayne Dyer

Plus any other books I have mentioned.

People

Natalie Goldberg, Kapil Gupta. U.G & Jiddu Krishnamurti, Hermann Hesse, Rumi, Aldous Huxley, Meister Eckhart, Bruce Lee, Lao Tzu, Anthony De Mello, and a few others I may be forgetting