Who Are You Being?

Every day I have the choice to be either who I have been, automatically, on default…Or the person I know I really am. And the difference is defined by my state.

I can succumb to the all-familiar uncertainty, discouragement, stuckness…Or I can remember peace, flow, contentment.

This is the practice. It’s the core of anything we do in the world: who we are deciding to be in each moment. It’s also one of the most exacting, demanding practices out there.

To take full responsibility for my state is to become an adult.

Please note: This track may include some explicit/strong language.

Transcript

Good morning.

I am sitting here with my matcha latte,

My favorite way to begin the week,

And sitting with some notes that I just had come to me upon waking,

And it's about who are you being?

Who are you being?

One of my favorite coaches,

Steve Hardison,

Talks about this a lot,

The idea of choosing consciously who you are being in every moment,

Which sounds fairly straightforward,

Potentially,

But it's actually profound because over the past week I've been traveling and I've been doing a bunch of things outside of my normal routine,

So I haven't been as closely focused on guarding my state and feeling close into myself.

I've been out in the world,

And a lot of us are out in the world,

Being influenced by the world,

Being changed by the world,

And I've realized this before,

But I've realized this over and again,

How easy it is to have our state,

Our way of being,

Our being,

Be influenced by the outside.

So,

We are living from the outside in,

Rather than living from within first,

And choosing who we are being.

So,

What does this mean in actual moment-to-moment experience?

It means that there are so many things in the world that could take us off course.

We are all trying to make certain things happen.

We're all projecting our consciousness forward into the future,

Attempting to get whatever it is we want.

More money,

A relationship,

A house.

We are all on a path of goal-seeking,

And oftentimes,

We are not where we want to be yet with that,

And at times,

Especially if we're tired,

This happens for me,

We can get discouraged,

We can start doubting,

We can start looking at our lack of progress,

We can feel stuck,

Start comparing to other people,

And looking at other people's paths,

And thinking,

Well,

They're doing so great,

And why am I not?

Just get into this spiral,

Basically,

And in that moment,

We have abandoned our way of being.

We've abandoned our inner authority to the outside world,

And we do this automatically.

I don't even know how it happened to be such a perverse and ubiquitous thing that we will be going about our life and automatically abdicate our center of power,

Which is our consciousness and our ability to choose who we are being.

We will abdicate that over and over and over again to the outside world,

To circumstances,

To perceived lack of results on our goal-seeking path.

And we don't realize,

I don't realize often,

Until I do,

As I did this morning,

That we've done this.

And it seems to be like training a muscle.

The more that we are able to pause,

Most of us are in a rush all the time throughout life,

The more we can step back and say,

Okay,

How have I been being inside myself?

Have I been abdicating my center of power,

Which is my consciousness,

Have I been abdicating that to things around me?

And maybe you're listening to this and you're like,

Well,

Isn't that just what we do?

Like,

Something's not happening the way that we want it to happen.

So,

Of course,

I'm going to feel bad about it.

Of course,

I'm going to feel a lack of progress.

Of course,

I'm going to feel discouraged or that I'm justified in my complaint.

By the way,

That's a really interesting energy.

I've noticed in myself at times,

This enjoyment of being able to complain.

It's a part within us that enjoys.

I think it's the part that comes from a relationship that you had with your mom or with your dad,

Where you get to feel bad and then maybe you'll be consoled and that's a way of feeling safe.

It's very interesting to just watch how when things are not going in the way that you want them to,

How you might enjoy complaining about it.

I'm just going to adjust something here.

It's important to be able to step back and see this and see how we are being somebody that we don't actually want to be and we're abdicating our power to the outside world.

Now,

This is very easy to talk about and it's actually,

As far as I can tell,

The practice.

It's the practice because there's so many forces and influences coming from the outside world telling us how to be and especially when it just comes back down to attaining our goals.

The lack of progress in those goals seems so rational to abdicate our power to because we have not achieved our goal.

So why wouldn't I feel discouraged?

But I really believe now from having studied various approaches to spirituality that that is the grand mistake because how would I actually be the person who has successfully attained the goal that I'm after?

If all this time I have been being the person who has not attained the goal.

You see what I'm saying?

It's not possible to be two people at once.

It's literally not possible to be two people at once.

So we're all going after things.

We're going after things in our business.

Going after a certain identity we would like to achieve.

A result that we think that once we get it we'll be happy.

And if we are being a person who has not achieved that result right now,

Then we will continue to be that person who has not achieved that result.

Right?

So it's a it's kind of a head fuck to be honest.

It's kind of a spiritual head fuck.

But once you see it like I'm looking at this I got a really awesome big notebook recently and I drew a line down the center of it and on the left hand side I put who have you know who am I being when I'm on default mode.

So if for example I'm going after something that's not happening I'm feeling stuck.

I wrote that.

I'm feeling stuck around this specific goal.

Let's say.

On the other side of the page where I drew the line down,

What's the opposite of that feeling?

What's the opposite of that state?

It is a feeling of flow.

Things are happening.

This momentum.

Okay,

Here we go.

There's results.

There's a feeling of things happening.

It's like the dammed up feeling versus the log jam being blown apart and now the water can flow freely.

Those are two completely different people and those two people are in me right now regardless of what is happening on the external world.

I can choose to feel stuck.

I'm being stuck Noah.

I'm being doubting Noah.

I'm being in my lackful Noah.

I'm choosing to be that guy.

Okay and often what's so insidious about these is we have become so familiar and comfortable and at home with these identities.

We are completely just you know at ease with these old ways of being.

It just feels so comfortable for example to feel stuck.

To feel the lack of flow.

But I still have the choice.

I'm still choosing in every moment to be that version of me.

Meanwhile nothing's changed in the external world and I have this flow momentum.

Things happening.

The waters,

The energies of life are moving.

Wow,

I can connect to that right now.

Nothing's changed in the external world.

There I am connected to this.

Wow,

It feels nice.

Okay,

Completely different person that I am being now.

Who am I being?

Who am I being?

The the single most important question that I could keep asking myself every day in every moment.

Who am I being right now?

Who am I choosing to be?

What is the already existing state within me that I can choose to connect to?

The one that's feeling stuck because of lack of progress,

Quote unquote,

That's the story.

Or the one who is in flow right now.

Because both of those exist within me right now.

This has nothing to do with,

Oh,

If I choose to be the one in flow then the external world will mirror that.

Okay,

Maybe it will.

It doesn't matter.

That's the level I believe we need to get to with this.

Which is funny,

It's like a Trojan horse.

The whole manifestation thing.

Because people think they're getting into it so they can get stuff.

But that's just,

That's the Trojan horse of it.

What we're really doing when we're looking at,

Say,

Oh I want,

What would you want?

Let's say you want a car.

Say you're a car person.

I'm not really,

But if you are a car person you have this specific car that you want and that represents to you flow and things happening and you being who you want to be.

Well,

Focusing on having the car will connect you to this feeling of flow.

Well,

That's just a Trojan horse because it's really about the feeling.

It's really about being who you want to be.

And if you can see the external as just,

It doesn't matter.

It's just this,

Like now it has no power over you.

Now it has no control over you.

Which was the point in the first place.

The point is to be able to connect to the state of being that I would say is your actual true nature right now.

Your true nature is one who is peace.

You're at peace.

You feel this stillness and arrival.

And perhaps there's other things in this space that you feel.

Certainty,

Groundedness,

Connection,

Focus,

Power.

Right?

These are states.

These are flavors of a state,

But I feel that's your true nature.

So it's not about getting stuff so that you can feel that.

It's about feeling that now because that's your true nature.

That's who you actually are and it feels good.

This is something I've been struggling with recently a little bit.

Well,

That's my story at least,

Which is,

Okay.

I've been taking in more material about collapse,

Like societal collapse.

I know this is a bit of a left turn here for a second,

But stay with me.

So the world is doing its thing.

It's going through some kind of worlding moment.

We all feel that.

And there are numerous authors and sources of knowledge who are speaking to the various sides of this collapse.

So how do I stay connected to my true nature when there's external forces,

It seems,

Gathering around vast changes in culture and society?

This has been a piece of tension that I've been holding,

Which tells me that I am in the right place because I really subscribe to what Jung talks about in terms of holding the opposites,

The tensions of the opposites.

When you exist between two different realities and you hold that tension,

That is the most fertile and true place.

He would say a paradox is the evidence of truth.

Basically,

That's my paraphrase of him.

When you stumble upon a paradox and you just sit in it,

Then you know that you have come upon some truth.

Okay.

So the paradox has been for me,

Okay.

There's all this external evidence of the world going through a massive shift,

Whether we're talking about what people say is climate change,

Movements towards more authoritarianism,

AI,

Social unrest.

It's this sense of the pot is starting to bubble.

We are starting to be cooked more and more as a culture,

As a globe towards some change,

Some apex,

Some bubbling over perhaps of the pot.

Okay.

Meanwhile,

I have this understanding of being as the core,

Core practice.

How do I hold those two things?

What I've come to is,

In order to be an adult,

In order to be somebody actually useful right now,

It doesn't mean succumbing to the,

I see this with people who I've listened to recently speak about collapse or societal transition.

The idea that we just need to look at what's happening and be sober in it and feel bad about it,

Perhaps be willing to sit in that complexity and just basically abdicate our state to it.

And I'm saying,

I disagree because as an adult,

I am going to need to be more connected than ever.

I'm going to need to be ruthless in my focus.

I'm going to need to be absolutely grounded and rooted in my ability to stay in peace,

To stay in freedom,

To stay in my groundedness at this time.

And if I abdicate my state to anything on the external world,

Including collapse,

We'll just say,

I don't love that word,

But we'll just say that word,

Then I am not useful.

I am just,

What am I?

I am a leaf in the wind being blown around any place and I'm not useful to anyone because now my state is being determined by the outside world.

And so the paradox is to be able to look at whatever is happening in the external world,

Which could include shifts and changes to the way that we have all been living in to the extent that we can't even imagine.

To be able to look at that soberly and yet stay connected to what I would call God,

Stay connected to true nature.

And not flip on the other side necessarily to,

I'm just going to bury my head in the sand and pretend like it's some other time when this is not happening.

I've been beginning to practice a detached,

Just looking and seeing whatever is out in the world.

It doesn't matter whether it's some big change in the world,

Like cultural collapse,

Or a lack of progress in certain areas that I might want to see and begin to remove my emotions,

Remove my spiritual power from those and take it back into myself to reclaim my ability to choose who I am being.

And what I'm saying is,

This skill of deciding who am I being will be,

Is,

And always has been the number one skill.

And will be the evidence of an adult and somebody truly useful,

Especially moving into the future,

Into the amount of uncertainty that's out in the outside world.

The more certain I am in myself,

Choosing who I want to be within myself every second,

And at times ruthlessly defending that.

That's the meta skill.

So that's what I wanted to share with you this morning.

And I also wanted to share it for myself because like the Tool song goes,

I must keep reminding myself of this.

It seems to be like this back and forth.

I forget it.

I remember.

I forget again.

I remember again.

And over time,

The distance starts to decrease and I begin to stay more and more connected to God and make God my priority.

Make this state of being my absolute focus in every moment.

And work out from there,

Whatever I'm doing in my business,

In my personal life,

In any place,

I am prioritizing my inner reality.

Because in a way,

That's the only reality that I can be sure of.

It's the only reality I have control over.

And my point with all the external stuff that I was just speaking about is,

I am not going to let something external determine what happens inside of me.

That's the aspiration.

That's the practice.

You have to be aspirational if you're going to have a spiritual practice.

You have to see,

Okay,

Ideally,

How would I be?

I would be unfuckwithable.

I hate that phrase.

It's so hard to say.

Unfuckwithable?

I would be unflappable.

It makes me think of,

Have you seen Kobe Bryant?

Some guy's trying to fake him out and puts the ball in his face and he doesn't flinch.

It's like that.

That's evidence of somebody who has made his external reality serve his internal.

His internal state is number one.

You can't fuck with him.

That is the true power.

Not,

Oh,

I've made so many things happen in the external world.

That's nice.

From which has that flowed?

From which space?

From which center of power has that result flowed?

I just want us to think about this every day.

Who am I being?

Who am I being in each moment?

Am I being somebody I have always been?

Am I being easily influenced by the external world?

Am I being tossed about like a leaf on the wind?

Or am I reclaiming my power to decide my state and come back to the state that actually feels like my true nature,

My true home,

The ground of being,

The ground of my being,

My peace,

My inner authority,

My inner certainty.

Regardless of what is happening in the outside world,

Regardless of whatever I have or have not achieved,

I can make my priority a feeling of peace and confidence and centeredness and momentum and power.

I can live in that because it feels better,

Because it feels better.

I'm not going to let anyone external to me tell me that I should feel bad,

That feeling bad is actually good.

I'm not going to let anybody gaslight me into that.

I'm going to feel good because that is the only place from which I can actually be useful and helpful,

Which is my priority,

Being useful and helpful.

I can only do that if I am myself in a state of being connected to God.

So that's what I make my priority.

And that is the ground of if you are a business person,

Or you are running your own thing,

Or even if you're not,

If you have a job where you're interacting with people,

Who you are being is going to be the ground of your service.

That is your actual product to make profane a very sacred thing.

That is your product,

Your state and your energy and how you are bringing that forward.

That is what is actually changing the person.

If you go to a restaurant,

It's not the food,

Even if we think it's the food,

It's the energy on which the food is made.

It's the energy,

The ambiance of the environment.

It's the attention paid to you,

The quality of attention paid to you by the people bringing you your food.

It is that.

That's the actual quote-unquote product.

Our energy is our product.

Our energy comes from who we are being.

Okay,

I think I've said it for this morning.

Time for another sip of matcha after my rant is complete here.

I'll see you again next week.

Keep close to your heart of who you are being.

Talk again soon.

Bye for now.