These Life Hacks Will Change Your Life

I think you will enjoy this track, through several stories in my life I share the essence of Zen, through everyday experiences to peak experiences like Surfing Snowboarding, or Skydiving. Within all these, we have an opportunity to change our lives.

Trigger Warning: This practice may include references to death, dying, and the departed.

Transcript

Welcome back once again.

It's nice to get a chance to share my feelings and thoughts over the last month or so.

This is now 2024.

We're in February of 2024 and the year kind of started out a little rough with me.

As Christmas came,

I had to put my puppy down.

I don't know if you've ever watched any of my videos on other sites,

But I had to put my puppy down,

So that was really hard to do and made it hard to get through the holidays.

It's like you don't really realize how hard it can be to lose something you love or someone you love until it happens to you.

I mean,

I know we all have sympathy for others and we know loss is very difficult,

But until it happens to yourself,

Then it's really hard to describe to other people or have them understand what you're going through.

My vet said to me that as we put her down,

And we actually made the vet cry,

The veterinarian.

He actually burst into tears because we were all in tears.

My poor puppy couldn't even walk anymore and she couldn't hold her bowels and everything.

It was difficult for her.

It almost got to the point where we couldn't even feed her anymore,

So we decided the best thing to do was to give her a more humane death.

But yeah,

It was extremely hard for me.

I've had others in the same time frame as myself go through severe loss themselves and have to deal with that and have to strive through it.

But the vet said to us,

Look,

He said,

The first week is going to be hard.

It's going to be really hard the first week,

But it will get better and you'll be able to cope with life as time goes by.

And after a couple of weeks,

You'll feel even a little bit better.

And if it wasn't for that advice from the vet,

I don't know how I would have faced everything I had to face.

I had my puppy for 14 years.

I adopted her from a humane shelter.

So the reasons why I'm even bringing this up is that we all have to go through these hard times in life.

We have to face the difficulties and the most hardest part.

But this sorrow that we have to go through has a beauty of its own,

Too.

It's something that brings you back down to earth.

It grounds you again and helps you to face life even when you're not in sorrow.

So you have this depth to you,

This understanding that everything is temporary and we move on and we all move on through all the losses in our lives.

And I hope this recording may inspire you if you're going through a loss right now,

Too.

But yeah,

So for a couple of weeks,

It was really hard and then it got better,

Little by little.

The memory of my puppy is still ingrained in my soul.

So after a couple of weeks,

It's been a month now since we put Mila down,

Things have gotten much better in some aspects.

Other aspects this year has kind of started out hard,

Too,

Because I had some moles removed off my body.

I had one that kind of magically appeared the same time I went to California in 1998 and had this miraculous,

Enlightening experience happen to me.

And the mole just showed up then and my girlfriend was looking at it one day and she said,

You probably ought to have that looked at.

So I did.

I went to the dermatologist and they did biopsies and decided that the one in my armpit needed to be taken out.

And what that means is that after the biopsy,

I had to do surgery on my arm and it's been a doozy because I am a surfer and I spend a lot of time in the water.

When I feel I can't get in the water or if I can't be in the ocean surfing,

Then it feels like a part of my soul is pulled away from me.

A part of my soul feels disconnected from the universe.

So I've been out for almost a month now,

But in this downtime,

This downtime that I've had not being in the water,

And then of course,

It's kind of like we don't come out and share things a lot of times when we're all happy and excited and everything's going right and everything's going well in your life.

You don't think about your hand,

Let's say,

If there's nothing wrong with your hand.

Or you don't think about your head when there's nothing wrong with your head.

You just don't think about it.

You just go on through life and if you're happy,

Then everything's going great and you don't have to pay attention to certain aspects of your life.

So the loss of my puppy actually gave me the motivation and the time of my arm being worked on to write about some crazy stuff that happens in my life.

I wrote a book a while back called 10,

000 Waves.

And 10,

000 Waves was basically my surfing story and a little bit of skydiving and surfing.

But the 10,

000 Waves book was more about basic lessons in Zen or Sufism or Taoism or Tantra,

Things that I fell in love with along my surfing journey.

And all the stories I shared in the book were true stories that happened to me that helped me understand these ways of the East and become a better surfer and become a better human being all in all.

And after 20 years of skydiving,

I basically decided to hang up my hat.

I feel like I've done just about everything that I've wanted to in the art,

In the sport.

Sure,

I'm going to miss it.

I still have dreams of me packing a parachute and throwing one on my shoulders and getting up in the sky and then the plane never lets me jump or something like that because dreams can be funny like that.

But yeah,

So I quit skydiving and I'm praying that I can keep up with my surfing for at least another 10,

15 years.

I'm praying.

I'm 60 now.

I just turned 60 and it's been a wonderful journey through highs and lows,

Ups and downs,

But I've experienced so much in this life.

I've experienced the mountaintops,

Not just physical but metaphysical.

They have a mountain in Japan in Zen theory called Mount Sumeru.

And Mount Sumeru is supposed to be the center of existence.

But anyway,

Metaphysically and both physically,

Being able to be young enough and get into snowboarding and being able to climb up these mountains and get to the peak,

It's a hard thing to do in the first place because it takes so much out of you.

And since I live in low level areas where I'm right about at the 10 feet above sea level,

Then going up to the mountaintops can be extremely hard.

And there's people that prepare themselves for climbing large mountains like Everest and stuff.

I was just talking to my boss the other day about a friend of his who almost died and he only got up to the second level base camp at Mount Everest.

So it's very scary.

And I developed asthma later on in life,

But it's exercise-induced asthma.

And I have trouble when I get up to the mountain.

The first day I went a couple years ago,

I got up to the top of the mountain and I rode all day and I was fine.

But the second day I went up there,

I was just riding the lift up and my asthma kicked in.

And I knew if I didn't get off the top of that mountain that it was going to be bad.

I had a hard time buckling up my bindings.

I mean,

I was huffing and puffing and felt this feeling come over me that I was going to pass out if I didn't get down to a lower altitude.

So basically I buckled up as fast as I could and shot down the mountain flying as fast as I could.

I think the elevation of the base of the mountain was still pretty damn high.

But anyway,

I got down to the bottom and I got a hold of my inhaler and took a puff out of my inhaler and I was a little bit better.

But it's scary.

So I don't know if my mountain climbing days are over or not,

But I'm okay with that.

I'm okay because I've seen so much and I've experienced so much and I found this love of life that the yoga sutras of Patanjali talk about where when you have so much of an abundance of something that you almost explode with joy and with bliss and with happiness because you've been given so much and you realize these things.

And that's when it can change your life.

That's when the occurrence happens.

And it's not that through practicing yoga and all the asanas and all the postures and everything that you become enlightened.

It's through the abundance of life that God gives back this gift to you.

That this golden we'll say golden supreme light enters your body.

But I don't want to ruin it for anybody.

I want you guys to experience these things for yourselves.

And I don't want to be the one that destroyed it for you or ruined it for you and trying to give you something to look for because if you start looking for it,

Well that's the end all of end alls.

That destroys the entire trip.

It's kind of like people playing a game of football and they just go out and enjoy themselves and have fun playing the game of football.

And then one of the football players when he gets done with the game goes to have a drink with his buddy and he says,

Yeah,

I had a great time playing football the other day.

It was so much fun,

Man.

Me and my buddies,

We just tore it up and felt like we were kids again.

So that buddy listening to this story from the football player thinks,

Well,

Hey,

I want to have some of that fun too.

I want to go out and have a good time and enjoy playing football.

So he goes out there and gets his buddies together and they start playing a game of football.

But the whole time,

This guy that was told the story in the bar,

He's looking for the fun and he doesn't see it.

And we laugh at this story,

But it's the story of all of us,

Kind of,

Because as soon as you start looking for it to happen,

Then it doesn't happen.

I'll share a little Zen story.

If you've watched or listened to any of my tracks on here on Insight Timer or any of the other sites that I deal with,

If you've listened to my work,

Then you might have heard the story about I went to Breckenridge for the first time,

Probably I want to say around 1997,

Maybe,

Or 96,

97 era.

But anyway,

It's 20 something,

20,

30 something years ago.

And I spent three days riding pretty much fresh powder and challenging myself to do better and to go higher and try steeper trails.

And Breckenridge does have some double and triple black diamonds.

I mean,

There are cliffs you can jump off at Breckenridge if you're daring enough.

But the thing is also is that when it's fresh powder,

When it's snowed for three days,

And you go up onto these cliffs and you jump off like a 20 foot cliff,

You land and it feels like you're landing in pillows.

So it's not so scary when you have this pillow to land in,

Because if it's ice that you land in,

It could be a totally different story and the outcome could be completely different.

But since it's fresh snow,

It's not as scary.

But it's a challenge and you keep challenging yourself and you go higher,

You go stronger,

You go faster,

You do things that you've never done before.

So anyway,

I get to the top of one of the peaks after my third day of snowboarding and I sat down on a bench that was right at the top of the mountain.

And as I sat on this bench,

I was just filled with awe.

This is that surplus I was just talking about a few minutes ago,

This surplus of love,

This surge of loving life so much and feeling the beauty of everything.

So I sat there and I closed my eyes and I said this prayer to God and I said,

God,

Thank you for letting me experience this.

This is probably some of the best days of my life being up here.

Everything's new,

Everything's fresh to me.

And what I did was I said to God,

I said,

Why don't you ride this ride?

And then I'll just be the watcher.

I'll just let you use my body and I'll sit back and take a break and let you do all the thinking or however it's going to work.

And I'll just be the watcher.

So I did this.

I donned my goggles.

I got my hat on and snapped up my bindings and I stood up and started sliding down the mountain.

And as I started sliding down the mountain,

I felt this essence come over me.

I felt this spiritual possession almost take over me.

And I started flying down the mountain faster than I'd ever flown before,

Hitting these super steep black diamond trails and just absolutely soaring.

I don't know how fast I was going,

But I was just a witness to it.

It felt like this spirit,

This entity basically took over and I was just watching.

And it was incredible.

I mean,

I just,

Like I said,

I was going so fast.

About halfway down the mountain,

There's this big jump and they call them kickers nowadays,

But it was just a big jump.

And I hit that jump.

I've never hit this jump before in my life,

But since I was going so fast,

I hit it and I soared through the sky 20,

30 feet,

Uh,

Not high,

But long.

Uh,

It was probably about 15 feet high and I just,

I soared and I landed it and I stuck the landing and I say,

I,

It wasn't me.

It was God doing this.

So I stuck the landing and I just kept flying down the mountain all the way.

That was only halfway down the mountain.

I still had a long way to go.

And I soared all the way down to the mountain,

Just going faster than I'd ever been and turning incredibly well and just performing like to my peak.

And I get to the bottom of the mountain and I came to a stop right at the lodge and I said,

Whoa,

What the heck just happened to me?

I mean,

That was incredible.

How could,

How could,

How could that have been?

I mean,

That's crazy.

I mean,

And I said,

God,

You're a pretty good snowboarder.

I mean,

One of the first books I ever read in spirituality,

One of them,

I think the very first book I read in spirituality was the Tibetan book of the dead.

And that can change you for sure.

That can change your outlook towards a lot of things and help you be more meditative and more centered.

But snowboarding,

Uh,

What's it called?

Surfing the Himalayas,

It was called,

Was one of the very first spiritual books I read.

And it was all about this guy named Frederick Lenz that went to Tibet to go snowboarding,

Which is absolutely insane because the,

The elevations are so damn high.

And,

Uh,

We're talking about lots of ice and lots of,

Uh,

Very scary instances you could put yourself into going over there.

But anyway,

Uh,

Frederick Lenz's book was,

Was basically about the basics of Buddhism to put it in short.

Uh,

And they talked about all these different techniques and everything.

So it reminded me when I got to the,

To the base of the mountain,

Uh,

You know,

To remember this experience and,

And enjoy it.

Um,

Then several weeks later,

We went home of course,

And remembering this experience that happened to me on Breckenridge and how beautiful it all was,

We decided to go snowboarding again.

So I'm like excited as hell.

Now,

What makes me wonder is that same thing that happened in snowboarding didn't really happen in surfing right away.

I had been surfing for at least,

Uh,

15 years before I started,

Really started that experience or having that experience in Breckenridge.

And with surfing,

It was always about my wave,

My wave.

Uh,

This is,

You know,

This is me,

Watch me.

Maybe it's a little egotistical centered.

I don't know.

It's just,

Uh,

When you're surfing,

It's,

It's about performance and,

Uh,

You know,

It's,

It's,

It's,

It's,

It was a little bit different.

It was not ingrained in me right away until after this experience on the mountain in Breckenridge.

So we went back to ski Santa Fe.

We were living in Houston at the time,

And it's like a 17 hour drive.

It's this insane long drive.

And I see a lot of times people would make long drives to go snowboarding,

Get a little stir crazy in the cars.

And I see why now it's the,

That amount of driving is crazy.

Uh,

We,

We actually,

I,

I,

We beat that a couple of years ago,

A buddy of mine and I drove from Houston to,

Uh,

To Cali during COVID.

And,

Uh,

That was crazy that luckily we took turns driving,

But we drove straight,

Uh,

All the way to,

I think,

Waco and spent the night in Waco and then woke up the next day and made the rest of the day getting into Santa,

Uh,

San Diego and San Clemente kind of late at night.

But anyway,

Uh,

Back to,

Um,

Ski Santa Fe,

I get to the top of the mountain,

All excited to have God use my body again and to have that experience again.

And I get to the top of the mountain and I don my goggles and buckled up my boots and said,

Okay,

God,

Let's do that again.

I'll let you use my body and,

And you,

You ride and,

Uh,

You enjoy this experience.

And,

And by the way,

All this is,

All this story here is in 10,

000 Waves 2,

Uh,

Which is,

Um,

A really good book I wrote back in 2012.

Anyway,

So I get to the top,

I buckled everything up and said my little prayer and I launched down the mountain only to fly about 20,

30 feet.

And then I caught an edge on something somehow and landed face first in the snow and I got snow up in my nostrils and I was like coughing a little bit because I ate shit so hard.

And I sat there for a second.

I'm like,

Well,

What's wrong God?

I mean,

Why don't you want to experience this,

Uh,

This joy of snowboarding again?

And I didn't understand.

So it left me baffled.

I mean,

I still got up and,

And rode and had a good time,

But it wasn't the same.

And I didn't understand why.

Um,

I didn't understand why until I read it in one of my books,

Uh,

That basically God doesn't like to do repeat things.

And if you think about it,

Uh,

None of us are repeats.

Um,

Even if you believe in reincarnation,

Nothing could be completely the same.

No one could recreate the same person because when that person passes,

They kind of enter the whole ocean because if each person was like a drop,

Then they enter the whole ocean and,

Uh,

That drop dissolves into the ocean and you can't reform that drop completely.

And we believe that,

Uh,

When Buddha died,

That he dissolved into the ocean completely.

He didn't need to make any more lives or he doesn't need to come back.

Even though almost every,

Uh,

Enlightened person says that they will return,

Uh,

To this point,

None of the great ones have ever returned.

Um,

We don't know why it,

There's,

There's a lot of metaphysical thinking as to why that happens.

And I,

I kind of explained it to you right now with the,

Uh,

Drop in the ocean theory.

Maybe,

Maybe miraculously,

Miraculously,

Uh,

98% of you could be regathered into the same being,

But a little bit would change somehow because so much happens,

So much time passes,

So much more snow comes to the top of the mountain so that every,

Uh,

Path down again is going to be a little bit different.

So,

Yeah,

So I'm sitting in,

I'm sitting there in Santa Fe going crazy because just wondering what's,

What happened.

And then I realized that,

Um,

You know,

God doesn't do the same thing twice.

So I learned a trick through that though.

I don't do everything the same thing twice.

Uh,

I changed the experience all the time.

And as I got into skydiving,

I would say my prayer almost the same as what I did on the mountaintop,

Except I'm like,

God,

Let's,

Let's do this jump together.

Uh,

Let's have fun,

Enjoy it.

Uh,

And I'll be the watcher and,

And you rock and roll and,

And we'll have a good time.

And with things like skydiving and surfing,

I started incorporating into my surfing too.

And it became a different scene altogether.

Well,

Usually it was my wave,

My wave,

My wave was now,

Um,

A spiritual experience and a joy for me to share with others more.

Uh,

It changed my outlook as from,

From this,

Uh,

Young surfer to more of a matured surfer who would love to share time with others in the water.

And I've been in beaches where it's really crowded and not thinking I'm going to get any waves at all,

Maybe one or two at the most.

And it turns out,

You know,

I get,

I say my little prayer and I go out about my way,

Uh,

Experiencing this Zen like,

Uh,

Surfing or skydiving or snowboarding,

Whatever you want to call it or whatever you want to do,

Sharing this,

This essence of godliness with me every time I go out in the water.

And over the years,

My friends have given me the nickname,

The wave whisperer.

So it all started kind of like a joke at first because I would show up to the beach at any time I show up to the beach and,

And,

Uh,

It's,

This started really be happening,

Uh,

More since I moved to Texas or back to Texas after living on the East coast for 11 years.

I noticed on the East coast that,

Uh,

When certain at a certain time,

When,

When like certain people showed up at the beach,

The waves got better or something happened where there were no waves at all.

And then they picked up,

You know,

To,

To waist high or whatever.

And people,

We had a great day.

And I noticed that after a while that it was certain people that this happened to now,

Not thinking at the whole time that the certain people might know the best time to go surfing or that maybe back then there were no,

There were no forecast sites.

So it was all,

You know,

Guessing on watching weather maps and buoy reports and stuff like that.

But I noticed that certain people,

When they show up to the beach,

The waves got better.

And I,

I think,

I didn't think it would ever happen to me.

It's like,

Why would that happen to me?

But as I brought this Zen into my surfing,

I would show up to the beach here in Texas.

And some of my buddies are like,

Thank God you're here.

I get in the water and,

And,

You know,

Everybody was saying it was such a shitty day or it was crappy waves.

I get in the water and they get in the water with me.

And next thing you know,

We're having the time of our lives.

It's just the waves get better or sometimes they get bigger.

It just happens all the time.

Most of these old stories of mine are in the book that I wrote back in 2012.

Like I said,

The 10,

000 waves book I wrote.

But the,

The wave whisperer kind of came after that,

After that book was wrote,

Written and,

You know,

So many mystical things would happen to me.

And when I went to Mexico,

I had to laugh about this a little bit because when I went to Mexico the first time,

We had three days of like double to triple overhead waves.

So it was big and it was powerful and it was fun.

And it was,

It was just this incredible experience.

But in the evenings,

If you're not surfing in Mexico,

And I'm not,

I'm not gonna talk about the spot or share with you the spot because then I would maybe upset some locals broadcasting something like this.

So,

But the spot we went to was mostly left-hand break,

Point break.

And if you're in the wrong spot and you weren't paying attention,

These cleanup waves,

They call them sneaker waves,

Come through,

Which are almost double the size of the double overheads that are coming through.

But anyway,

You've heard the term when you're surfing,

Especially like Black's Beach or some of the other waves where places where it gets kind of big,

You hear someone scream,

Outside,

You better be starting to paddle outside.

Paddle farther away from the rocks or the rocky bottom or the coral reef bottom or get out a little bit where the water's a little bit deeper and the wave's not going to kill you because if you don't,

You're going to get washed up and it could put you in a bad situation really quick.

So anyway,

One year in Mexico,

The first year we went there,

After three days of surfing really big waves and having a great time,

In the evenings,

There's really nothing to do except,

Eat your dinner and just sit around a fireplace and shoot the shit and talk with your fellow surfer buddies.

But anyway,

I was sitting there with these two other guys that night and I told them the story that my friends call me the wave whisperer and they kind of laughed at me and I'm like,

I know it's kind of silly.

It's kind of a joke.

It's kind of a joke,

You know.

It's not nothing I take super seriously.

But at the same time,

It just happens so often that I don't know what to think about it.

You know,

It's made me wonder and I've had a couple stories which really made me wonder,

But this one in Mexico was crazy because that night we all went to sleep not thinking about anything.

We wanted to wake up and ride some big waves the next day and we woke up the next day and it was so big.

It closed out the bay.

It closed out the point break.

It was like 30 to 40 feet and just,

I mean,

You couldn't even think about,

I mean,

You couldn't even get a jet ski in there.

It was so white watery and there were no clean lines.

There's just big monster slop and I saw the two guys that I was talking with around the fire and I said,

Well,

Do you believe me now?

We all kind of just laughed at it and it's like,

Yeah,

That's crazy.

All right.

But a lot of these things I'm putting in this new book I'm writing and I think I'm going to call it the wave whisperer,

Even though it's also about a lot of ghost stories that have happened to me throughout the years.

I know I've gone on quite a bit and made this track a little bit longer than the others,

But I hope you'd enjoy it.

It's so much fun to share these stories of my life and help you guys to learn and apply the techniques that I've learned and the techniques that I've shared with you.

Like I said,

God doesn't like to do anything twice and he never creates two people exactly the same,

But no experience either can be duplicated because as soon as you try to duplicate it,

You take all the fun out of it.

Like the football player that tried to tell his buddies,

Hey,

I had fun playing football.

But he's looking for it the whole time and he misses.

So don't go through life missing.

Go through life sharing,

Being aware.

This whole thing about me snowboarding,

Being the watcher was just awareness,

This total awareness.

And when I took it into skydiving,

It was like crazy awareness.

But in skydiving,

You have to be able to think,

But you also have to have awareness of all your surroundings because everything's happening so fast and all at once.

It could be very dangerous if you're not being aware.

So share these things with your friends.

Share my talks with your friends.

Enjoy life.

Have a good one.

Let's make 2024 a little bit better year with maybe this summer will be better with some great waves at Waco,

Texas or something.

Maybe a trip somewhere.

Maybe in Mexico again.

That'd be fun.

But anyway,

Y'all take care of yourselves and enjoy your lives and aloha and blue skies to all you skydivers and namaste to all you spiritual people.

Take care of yourselves now.

Bye-bye.