What I've learned since moving to D.C. (some of which should be obvious): 0100

4951.  When you deny your deep truth to please your woman, everyone will feel your lack of authenticity.  They will sense that your false smile hides an inner division.  Your friends, children and business colleagues may love you, but they won’t trust you since you don’t trust your own core intent.  And, more importantly, your own sense of inauthenticity will burden your capacity to act with clarity.  Your actions won’t jibe with your core;

4952.  If you listen to your woman, taking everything she says into account and making your own best decision then you are acting in accordance with your core.  You are saying, in effect, “My deepest wisdom is leading me to this decision.  If I am wrong, I will learn from it and my wisdom will have deepened.  I’m willing to be wrong and grow from it;

4953.  The attitude of self-trust engenders others’ trust in you.  You may be wrong, but you are willing to find out and, thus, grow from the experience.  You are open to listening to others, but in the end, you will take the responsibility for making your own decision.  There is nobody else to blame;

4954.  If you give up your real decision to follow your woman’s then you will blame her for being wrong, if she is wrong, and you will feel disempowered if she is right, having denied yourself the opportunity to act from your core and grow from your mistakes;

4955.  Be open to changing your feeling based on whatever your woman might reveal to you – through her words or her body language – and then make your own decision based on your deepest intuitive wisdom and knowledge.  You may make the right decision or the wrong one, but whatever happens, it is your best shot and you will strengthen your capacity for future action;

4956.  Every man knows that his highest purpose in life cannot be reduced to any particular relationship.  If a man prioritizes his relationship over his highest purpose, he weakens himself, disserves the universe and cheats his woman of an authentic man, who can offer her full, undivided presence;

4957.  Once you are honest with yourself about your real edge, it is best to lean just beyond it.  Very few men have the guts for this practice.  Most men either settle for the easy path or self-aggrandize themselves by taking the extreme hard path.  Your insecurity may cause you to doubt yourself and so you take the easy way not even approaching your real edge.  Alternatively, your insecurity may lead you to push, push, push, seeking to become victorious over your own sense of lack;

4958.  Your fear is the sharpest definition of yourself;

4959.  Primary fear shows you that you are at your edge;

4960.  Staying with the fear, staying at your edge, allows real transformation to occur;

4961.  Playing your edge allows you to perceive the moment with the least amount of distortion;

4962.  Fear of fear may lead you to hang back, living a lesser life than you are capable.  Fear of fear may lead you to push ahead, living a false life, off center, tense and missing the moment.  But the capacity to feel this moment, including your fear, without trying to escape it, creates a state of alive and humble spontaneity.  You are ready for the unknown as it unfolds since you are not pulled back or pushed forward from the horizon of the moment.  You are hanging right over the edge;

4963.  Own your fear and lean just beyond it in every aspect of your life;

4964.  A man’s capacity to receive another man’s direct criticism is a measure of his capacity to receive masculine energy.  If he doesn’t have a good relationship to masculine energy (e.g., his father) then he will act like a woman and be hurt or defensive rather than make use of other men’s criticism;

4965.  Good friends should not tolerate mediocrity in one another.  If you are at your edge, your men friends should respect that, but not let you off the hook.  They should honor your fears and, in love, continue to goad you beyond them without pushing you;

4966.  If you merely want support from your men friends without challenge, it bespeaks an unresolved issue you may have with your father, whether he is alive or dead;

4967.  Choose men friends, who themselves are living at their edge, facing their fears and living just beyond them.  Men of this kind can love you without protecting you from the necessary confrontation with reality that your life involves.  You should be able to trust that these friends will tell you about your life as they see it, offer you a specific action, which will shed light on your own position, and give you the support necessary to live in the freedom just beyond your edge, which is not always or even usually, comfortable;

4968.  The core of your life is your purpose.  Everything in your life, from your diet to your career, must be aligned with your purpose, if you are to act with coherence and integrity in the world.  If you know your purpose, your deepest desire then the secret of success is to discipline your life so that you support your deepest purpose and minimize distractions and detours;

4969.  If you don’t know your deepest desire then you can’t align your life to it.  Everything in your life is dissociated from your core.  You go to work, but since it’s not connected to your deepest purpose, it is just a job, a way to earn money.  You go through your daily round with your family and friends, but each moment is just another in a long string of moments, going nowhere, not inherently profound;

4970.  When you know your true purpose, which is your core desire in life, each moment can become a full expression of your core desire.  Every instant of career, every instant of intimacy is filled with the power of your purpose.  You are no longer just going through the motions at work and with your woman, but you are living the truth of your life and giving the gifts of your love moment by moment;

4971.  The superior man is not seeking for fulfillment through work and woman because he is already full;

4972.  As you open yourself to living at your edge, your deepest purpose will slowly begin to make itself known.  In the meantime, you will experience layer after layer of purposes, each one getting closer and closer to the fullness of your deepest purpose.  It is as if your deepest purpose is at the center of your being and it is surrounded by layers of concentric circles, each circle being a lesser purpose.  Your life consists of penetrating each circle, from the outside toward the center;

4973.  The outer purposes are often the purposes you have inherited or learned from your parents and your childhood experiences.  The outer circles, the purposes you often apply yourself too early in life, are most likely only distant approximations of your deepest purpose;

4974.  As you dissolve each layer and move toward the center, you will more and more be living from your deeper purposes and then your deepest heart purpose, whatever that is, in every moment.  However, you probably are not living your deepest purpose yet.  You probably need to burn off the karma or fulfill the need, of the present purpose by which you are fascinated and distracted;

4975.  It’s easy to feel disappointed by life; success is never as fulfilling as you think it is going to be.  But there is a reason for this.  Successfully completing a lesser purpose doesn’t feel very good for very long because it is simply preparation for advancing toward a greater embodiment of your deeper purpose.  Each purpose, each mission, is meant to be fully lived to the point where it becomes empty, boring and useless.  Then it should be discarded.  This is a sign of growth, but you may mistake it for a sign of failure;

4976.  You may take on a business project, work at it for several years and then suddenly find yourself totally disinterested.  You know that if you stayed with it for another few years you would reap much greater financial reward than if you left the project now, but the project no longer calls you.  You no longer feel interested in the project.  You have developed skills over the last few years working on the project, but it hasn’t yet come to fruition.  You may wonder, now that you have the skills, should you stick with it and bring the project to fruition, even though the work feels empty to you?  Maybe you should stick with it.  Maybe you are bailing out too soon, afraid of success or failure or just too lazy to persevere.  This is one possibility.  Ask your close men friends if they feel you are simply losing steam, wimping out or afraid to bring your project to completion.  If they feel you are bailing out too soon, stick with it;

4977.  The signs of fulfilling or completing a layer of purpose are these: 1.  You suddenly have no interest whatsoever in a project or mission that, just previously, motivated you highly; 2.  You feel surprisingly free of any regrets whatsoever for starting the project or for ending it; 3.  Even though you may not have the slightest idea of what you are going to do next, you feel clear, unconfused and, especially, unburdened; 4.  You feel an increase in energy at the prospect of ceasing your involvement with the project; 5.  The project seems almost silly, like collecting shoelaces or wallpapering your house with gas station receipts.  Sure, you could do it, but why would you want to?  If you experience these signs, it is probably time to stop working on this project.  You must end your involvement impeccably, however, making sure there are no loose ends and that you do not burden anybody’s life by stopping your involvement.  This might take some time, but it is important that this layer of your purpose ends cleanly and does not create any new karma or obligation that will burden you or others in the future;

4978.  The next layer of your unfolding purpose may make itself clear immediately.  More often, however, it does not.  After completing one layer of purpose, you might not know what to do with your life.  You know that the old project is over for you, but you are not sure of what is next.  At this point, you must wait for a vision;

4979.  Parenting children, as well as any responsible commitment in love, requires that you transcend your own personal preferences for the sake of the larger commitment, for the sake of service in love.  This is a natural part of being a householder.  However, you cannot abnegate your deepest purpose to do so or else you will feel frustrated, eventually resigning yourself to a lesser life than you know you are capable of living;

4980.  Self-resignation will communicate itself to your woman and your children.  They will feel your weakness.  Your woman will begin to take charge more than she really wants, since you are clearly not capable of taking charge yourself, and someone has to do it.  Your children will challenge your capacity to discipline them, since they can feel your own lack of authentic self-discipline.  Try as you might, once you have negated your own deep purpose, your household will become a place where everybody tests your capacity to stand your ground and you will lose;

4981.  A short period of time with a father, who is absolutely present, full in love, undivided inside and sure of his mission in life, will affect your children much more positively than if they spend lots of time with a father who is ambiguous in his intent and has lost touch with his deepest purpose, no matter how much he loves his children;

4982.  Children learn most from their parents by osmosis.  If their father is subtly weakened and compromised, this will flavor their experience of his love;

4983.  It is not the amount of time, but the quality of the interaction that most influences a child’s growth.  Children are exquisitely sensitive to emotional tone.  If you are not full in your core, aligned with your deepest purpose and living a life of authentic commitment, your children will feel it;

4984.  Don’t cheat your family of your fullest core and don’t use them as an excuse to avoid the work it will take to manifest your highest vision.  You can give love to your family and engage your life’s work, if you discipline yourself to act on your deepest desires with priority.  Then, when you are with your family, you are with them totally, since there is no chronically unfinished business in your life to distract you, and no inner ambiguity about where you want to be or what you really want to be doing;

4985.  If you forget your larger purpose, while pursuing the small and endless tasks of daily life, then you have reduced yourself to a machine of picayune;

4986.  To help you remember the triviality of your daily tasks, interrupt your schedule with refreshers.  These refreshers should cut to your core and strip the fat off the moment.  Consider your own death.  Behold an image of the most enlightened being you know.  Contemplate the mystery of existence.  Relax into the deepest and most profound loving of which you are capable.  In your own way, remember the infinite, and then return to the task at hand.  This way, you will never lose perspective and begin to think that life is a matter of tasks.  You are not a drone.  You are the unbounded mystery of love.  Be so, without forgetting your tasks;

4987.  Too many professionals, by focusing on maximizing control, become mediocre at a lot of things instead of becoming amazing at one or two things.  This leads to exhaustion and, in many cases, even becoming resentful of their profession;

4988.  The caveat here is that it’s a huge mistake to hand off too much control too fast.  Don’t get so eager to let go that you create chaos.  You need a good transition process.  You need to adapt and adjust to challenges that arise;

4989.  The reason that most people struggle to change habits is they forget to give themselves a reward.  Without the reward, the brain doesn’t get the chemical payoff from the new activity and, thus, never fills the hole left by the old reward.  Eventually, if no reward is encountered, the new attempt at a habit will fail;

4990.  Make a list of the habits in your life that aren’t serving you.  Write out a new habit for each of the habits identified.  Determine if and how you can utilize the trigger of an old habit to spark a new habit.  Write down a trigger, action and reward for each of the new habits.  Prioritize the importance of each habit and begin implementing them one at a time;

4991.  This is the only life you have and the only body you have so cherish them both and treat them right;

4992.  Never sacrifice what you want now for what you want most;

4993.  Be able, at any moment, to sacrifice what we are for what we could become;

4994.  More people fail through lack of purpose than lack of talent;

4995.  Character is a commitment and can never be less than 100 percent commitment, otherwise, it is merely an interest;

4996.  Integrity is gained by doing what I say I am going to do, when I am going to do it or at a minimum honoring my word by communicating and making a request to the party I am working or communicating with to invent a new possibility;

4997.  The most powerful times to have integrity is when it is difficult or if it stretches you or if you don’t feel like handling it;

4998.  The fastest way to get to where you want to go is to pick the brain of someone who’s already been there;

4999.  Do not ever ask advice of a trusted mentor unless you’re one hundred percent willing to do exactly what they advise even and, especially if, you disagree;

5000.  If you’re offended by advice you solicited, that’s a sure sign your heart wasn’t right when you asked.  If you’re not willing to hear it and follow it, don’t ask for it;

What I've learned since moving to D.C. (some of which should be obvious): 0099

4901.  Part of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport used to be Abingdon Plantation, the birthplace of George Washington’s step-granddaughter, Eleanor Parke Custis;

4902.  Apparently, the “holiday turkey and stuffing panini” at Starbucks makes its appearance after Halloween;

4903.  If you want to find a deeper meaning in your life, you won’t find it in the opinions or the beliefs that have been handed to you.  Rather than trying to be what everyone else expects you to be, live your life by your own rules to be happy and find inner peace;

4904.  The bacon maple doughnut at Sugar Shack (Donuts) (SugarShackDonuts.com) is pretty good;

4905.  Calmness does not mean lack of concern; it means the ability to separate the real from the unreal and thereby to take sensible action;

4906.  There are only two possible approaches to dealing with upsetting circumstances in the present.  One is to change the circumstance; the other is to change the mind which is experiencing the upset.  Sometimes finding the appropriate way to change the circumstances is the most sensible, but there is always another option.  S/he can realize that there is no need to give any sight or sound the power to upset her/him.  S/he can choose to see the disturbance as stemming from her/his mind and not from the event.  Then, s/he can find a solution;

4907.  There are always going to be thoughts and events that try to pull our attention away from the here and now.  Each is an opportunity to practice the all-important art of concentration;

4908.  Freedom from mental freak-outs happens as one’s peace of mind becomes more and more a function of inner resources and less and less dependent upon externals;

4909.  Letting go of attachments does not mean losing anything (i.e., a child does not risk losing his thumb when s/he stops sucking it); it does mean releasing our grip on things and our desire to control them (i.e., it is the grip on wealth which makes a miser uptight and unhappy not the wealth itself);

4910.  Letting go means allowing joy to come into your life instead of contriving to have a good time; learning to appreciate the love and beauty already happening around you rather than trying to manufacture something which you think isn’t there; letting problems be solved in the unconscious mind as well as by straining with conscious effort;

4911.  Many people carry around with them an image of the kind of person they wish they were.  When our behavior does not seem to measure up to our ideal, we grow dejected and then start trying hard to correct it (i.e., perhaps I should take a series of lessons, or a course on personality development, or read a book about how to become less self-critical, or undergo therapy, or join an encounter group).  Such steps are not necessarily foolish, but what is needed is not so much the effort to improve ourselves, as the effort to become more aware of the beauty of what we already are.  As we begin to see and appreciate our essential selves, we manifest automatically that beauty and our true capacities, simply by letting them happen;

4912.  “Abandon” is a good word to describe what happens when one feels s/he has nothing to lose.  S/he stops caring about the outcome and goes all out;

4913.  The true meaning of detachment means letting go of the concern of “self 1” and letting the natural concern of a deeper self take over.  It is caring, yet not caring; it is effortless effort.  It happens when one lets go of attachment to the results of one’s actions and allows the increased energy to come to bear on the action itself;

4914.  In the language of karma yoga, this is called action without attachment to the fruits of action, and ironically when the state is achieved the results are the best possible;

4915.  The ghosts of the past and the monsters of the future disappear when all one’s conscious energy is employed in understanding the present;

4916.  The light which dispels the shadows of our mental projections is the light of our own consciousness;

4917.  When we understand something, we may have cause to be wary of it, but there is no fear.  Understanding the present moment, the only time when any action can occur, requires concentration of mind; the ability to keep the mind focused in the here and now;

4918.  Consciousness is the energy of light which makes an experience knowable just as a light bulb in the forest illuminates its surroundings.  The brighter the light, the more that is known or understood about one’s experience.  When the light is dim because some of our energy is leaking into regrets over the past or fears of the future or is in some way wasted in resisting the flow of life, then one’s experience is filled with shadows and distortions.  But when most of our conscious energy is brought to bear on the present with a sincere desire to understand what is before us, then something called “higher consciousness” occurs.  It is called “higher” merely because more is seen and understood than before.  It is something like walking up a mountain and having an increasing view of what is going on in the valley below except that in the case of increased consciousness you are not only able to see more because of your point of view, but you can also see the subtler details with greater clarity;

4919.  The art of concentration is basically the art of experiencing ever more fully whatever is in the here and now for you;

4920.  Concentration is said to be the master art because all other arts depend on it; progress in this, as in any art, is achieved only through practice;

4921.  There is no life situation where one cannot practice focusing one’s full attention on what is happening at the moment.  Normally, we tend to concentrate only when something we consider important is happening, but all moments are important ones and worth paying attention to for each moment can increase her/his understanding of herself/himself and life;

4922.  In the final analysis it is our state of consciousness which is the determining factor in our appreciation of the beautiful, the true or the loving.  A person may own an exquisite oil painting, but if s/he can’t appreciate its beauty, how valuable really is that painting to her/him?  Another person may own nothing beautiful, but if her/his consciousness is attuned to beauty, s/he is rich because s/he will always be surrounded by beauty;

4923.  The fool is a fool because he doesn’t know how to learn from her/his experience; the wise person is wise because s/he does;

4924.  Every heightening of consciousness enables one to appreciate more fully the experiences which life offers;

4925.  Changes in consciousness alter our lives automatically because it is only through consciousness that we experience life;

4926.  Only when a person is paying attention to something s/he really loves can s/he concentrate her/his mind and find true satisfaction;

4927.  We can’t run and we can’t hide from ourselves because everywhere we go, we’re there;

4928.  Apparently, women lie about their age on dating apps (specifically Italian women from Ischia);

4929.  Anxiety is fixated being trapped in the future and depression is being trapped in the past;

4930.  Sexual attraction is based on sexual polarity, which is the force of passion that arcs between masculine and feminine poles.  All natural forces flow between two poles.  Masculine and feminine poles between people create the flow of sexual feeling.  This is sexual polarity;

4931.  It is up to you: you can have a loving friendship between two similars, but you need a more masculine and a more feminine partner in the moments when you want strong sexual polarity;

4932.  The “mission” or the search for freedom is the priority of the masculine, whereas the search for love is the priority of the feminine;

4933.  Even though all people have both masculine and feminine qualities that they could use in any moment, most men and women also have a more masculine or feminine core.  And this shows up in their regularly chosen entertainments, as much as in their preferred sexual play;

4934.  So, about 90% of people have either a more masculine or a more feminine sexual essence.  They would like to be ravished by or to ravish, their intimate partner, at least some of the time, in addition to having a loving friendship.  This holds true for homosexual and heterosexual people alike;

4935.  About 10% of people, men and women, heterosexual and homosexual, have a more balanced sexual essence.  It doesn’t really matter to them whether their lover is physically stronger or more vulnerable than them.  Sexual polarity just isn’t that important to them in relationships;

4936.  Most people are forgetting that the sameness that works in the office does not work in intimacy for about 90% of couples: those couples composed of partners with masculine and feminine essences rather than balanced essences.  If sexual passion is to flow in these polarized intimacies, masculine and feminine differences should be magnified, not diminished, in moments of intimacy.  When these polarities are lessened due to family and work obligations, sexual attraction is diminished, along with spiritual depth and physical health;

4937.  When you deny your true core, you deny the possibility of true and real love.  Love is openness through and through.  And true spirituality is the practice of love, the practice of openness.  A person who denies their own essence and hides their true desires is divided and unable to relax into the full openness of love.  Their spirit becomes cramped and kinked.  Unable to feel the natural ease and unconstrained power of their own core, they feel threatened and frightened.  This fear is the texture of their inability to open fully in love.  Such a person is spiritually handicapped and obstructed at heart even though they may have achieved a safe relationship and a successful career;

4938.  As a culture, we have advanced in terms of personal freedom, sexual equality and social rights, but we have remained spiritually thwarted and afraid.  For the sake of individual autonomy and social fairness, with only good intentions in mind, we have erroneously begun to deny, smooth out and neutralize our masculine and feminine differences.  In doing so, people often end up denying their deepest core desires, which are rooted in their true sexual essence.  A lot of people today think they have a balanced sexual essence, but in most cases they are actually suppressing the natural desires which spring from their real masculine or feminine core;

4939.  Apparently, women don’t read profiles on dating apps either;

4940.  Stop waiting for the good stuff.  As of now, spend a minimum of one hour a day doing whatever you are waiting to do until your finances are more secure, or until the children have grown and left home, or until you have finished your obligations and you feel free to do what you really want to do.  Don’t wait any longer.  Don’t believe in the myth of “one day when everything will be different.”  Do what you love to do, what you are waiting to do, what you’ve been born to do, now;

4941.  Most postponements are excuses for a lack of creative discipline.  Limited money and family obligations have never stopped a person, who really wanted to do something, although they provide excuses for a person, who is not really up to the creative challenge in the first place.  Find out today whether you are willing to do what it takes to give your gift fully.  As a first step, spend at least an hour today giving your fullest gift, whatever that is for today, so that when you go to sleep at night you know you couldn’t have lived your day with more courage, creativity and giving;

4942.  In addition to the myth that one day your life will be fundamentally different, you may believe and hope, that one day your woman will be fundamentally different.  Don’t wait.  Assume she’s going to be however she is, forever.  If your woman’s behavior or mood is truly intolerable to you, you should leave her and don’t look back (since you cannot change her).  However, if you find her behavior or mood is merely distasteful or a hassle, realize that she will always seem this way: The feminine always seems chaotic and complicated from the perspective of the masculine;

4943.  The next time you notice yourself trying to fix your woman so that she will no longer (fill in the blank), relax and give her love by touching her and telling her that you love her when she is this way (whatever you filled in the blank with).  Embrace her, or wrestle with her, or scream and yell for the heck of it, but make no effort to bring an end to that which pisses you off.  Practice love instead of trying to bring an end to the quality that bothers you.  You can’t escape the tussle with the feminine.  Learn to find humor in the unending emotional drama the feminine seems to enjoy so much.  The love that you magnify may realign her behavior, but your effort to fix her and your frustration never will;

4944.  The world and your woman/man will always present you with unforeseen challenges.  You are either living fully, giving your gift in the midst of those challenges, even today, or you are waiting for an imaginary future which will never come;

4945.  Men who have lived significant lives are men who never waited: not for money, security, ease or women;

4946.  Your edge is where you stop short or where you compromise your fullest gift, and, instead, cater to your fears;

4947.  Perhaps you are comfortable with your life and you fear the lifestyle change that might accompany a change in career even though the new career will be closer to what you really want to do with your life.  You’ve spent 15 years developing your career, and you’re afraid to let go of it and start fresh even though you know that you spend most of your life doing things you have no real interest in doing.  You could be making money in more creative ways, but you spend too much time watching TV rather than being creative;

4948.  A fearful man, who still leans into his fear, living at his edge and putting his gift out from there, is more trustworthy and more inspirational than a fearful man, who hangs back in the comfort zone, unwilling to even experience his fear on a day to day level;

4949.  Make your life an ongoing process of being who you are, at your deepest, most easeful levels of being.  Everything other than this process is secondary.  Your job, your children, your wife, your money, your artistic creations, your pleasures, they are all superficial and empty, if they are not floating in the deep sea of your conscious being;

4950.  You should always listen to your woman and then make your own decision.  If you choose to go with your woman’s suggestion even when deep in your heart you feel that another decision is wiser, you are, in effect, saying, “I don’t trust my own wisdom.”  You are weakening yourself by telling yourself this.  You are weakening your woman’s trust in you: why should she trust your wisdom if you don’t?