Spring Cleaning

(upbeat music) , "Welcome to Synchronicity." Third time's the charm. I've recorded this or attempted to record this twice now. First time, and luckily I caught these within the first minute of doing this. First one didn't arm the microphone. Arm the microphone, that that is actually what it's called. I didn't basically say, "Hey, microphone, "are you ready to record what I'm gonna do?" And it wasn't recording. I caught that within the first 10 seconds. Then I did it again, and the phantom power wasn't on. So between arming microphones and dealing with phantom power, it didn't work, now it works.

I'm looking at the waveform right now. Looks spectacular. Hey guys, how's 2024 going? It's a weird one, right? Doesn't it feel like it's been 2024 a little bit longer than it's been 2024? It's better than 2023. I hate to be a binary judgment. This is better than that type of person, but sometimes we can objectively just feel the vibes and the vibes feel this way, right? Is that not the truth? We're gonna be talking about spring cleaning, right? We're getting topical here. Although this can be applicable to any point at any point in anyone's life at Jesus. Was that a stroke? Did I just have a stroke?

I don't think so. I'm okay, my arm feels good. Not having a heart attack, everything's good. All right, cool. Spring cleaning. When we think about spring cleaning, I don't know if you've done this in your life and you've actually physically cleaned up your environs. It's a nice feeling. You start to feel better about the area that you are in. You're like, oh, shit is moving and feeling a little bit better. It's not dirty, it's not messy. I like this out with the old, in with the new, right? Nature appores a vacuum. So when you create a space, it doesn't mean it's just gonna get messy again. Although in my case, it usually does happen and then that's why we do spring cleaning every year, right?

But we're not just talking about physical space and physical things when we're talking about spring cleaning. We routinely need to clean up our mental and spiritual spaces and we don't always do that. We can kind of get stuck and we can kind of get in this loop, in this pattern of, this is just the way things are. This is just how it is and I just have to deal with it. Is the place all fucking messy and a catastrophe and all globbled up? Globbled up? Sure, we're going with that as a phrase. Is that what's going on in my brain and my mind? Is that what it just what I'm gonna have to deal with for the rest of my life?

And we can sometimes feel like that is just the way it is and it's gonna remain like that and there's really nothing we can do. And that's not a great feeling. Feeling constricted, feeling kind of like, you're condemned to a version of yourself and a version of reality is pretty not great, right? That's when I tend to get emails from people or messages from people being like, hey, I've tried all this shit, it doesn't work. I can't change my reality. I can't do these things. It doesn't work because it feels like nothing is happening. Nothing is working. But if you take the time to pay attention, I know we all can recognize the correlation between our mental diet, what we're thinking, what we're feeling and what is showing up in our reality, right?

It's not like there's some loose connection. It's a pretty direct and obvious connection between those things when they're happening. So we need to go through sometimes and really kind of like root out the shit that's no longer serving us. If you're telling yourself a story about yourself and about your life that is no longer serving you, take it out, take it out with the garbage. And I know that's easier said than done. I don't want to make it seem like it's just a simple process of removing trash or removing a mess or cleaning your dishes or doing something like that. That's not what I'm implying.

But at the end of the day, that is the process that we do. We identify something, we say, "Hey, here is a thought pattern. "Here is a belief. "Here is something that I am routinely telling myself "and going over and over in my mind. "And this is leading to my circumstances. "This is leading to what happens to me. "And if you do things to kind of disconnect from that, "whether that is just like detaching from your reality "or pretending like things aren't happening, "that's not going to work either." Or maybe even using willpower. Like, "I will not do this. I will not think like this. "I will not do it."

That doesn't work either. That is usually a very short term band-aid type of solution. And that's not really what we're looking for, right? When we're dealing with reality. We want permanent change. Not permanent in the sense that your life will be forever a golden miracle of love and light, although that would be nice, wouldn't it? It'd be pretty fucking badass. But in the sense that you actually can move upwards in this spiral of ascension. And I use the term spiral of ascension because it is a roundabout process. You go around and around and around and around. And that's just how it feels, right?

You go over similar situations over and over again. Really, this is a method to gain perspective, to gain awareness on situations. You don't just go around and around because it's some hellish, nichean loop that you just have to play out forever. That sucks. That's not what it is. I can promise you because you do have moments of transcendence. You do have moments when you actually move past a place you have been. That's one of the best things about actually setting goals and desires. And I've been speaking a lot about desire lately. Just 'cause once in a while, the algorithm on Instagram and TikTok will show me a lot of Eastern grooves and various traditions there.

And once in a while, there will be just some desire bashing. It'll be like, well, you know, you can have desires, but the best thing to do is have no desires because when you have a desire, all you're gonna do is achieve it and realize that wasn't the thing and it didn't make you happy. Okay, cool. So don't go after things. Don't care about anything. Don't do the things that you think will be nice for you. Is that really the lesson here? To completely detach and become an ascetic and to go become a monk? Is that feasible for everyone in the world? Is that really what we are being asked to do? To me that's not really why you aren't accidentally, you didn't accidentally incarnate into your place in the world, right?

If you were meant to be a monk and you'd listen, if you have the true calling to go be a completely detached, non-attached monk with no desires whatsoever, good on ya. Go for it. I'm not gonna be the one to tell you you can't do that. Please, by all means, it sounds magical. I just know for me, that is not how I am wired and nor will I set the intention that that's how I want to be wired. Watch me cut to me in two years being like fucking living on a hill or a fucking mountain in the Himalayas. It's just, there's no podcast. It's just me fucking with my eyes closed and a goat coming up around me and I'm fucking, is there weed in the Himalayas?

Listen, you know what? I gotta say, listen, weed leaving it all, but I didn't know. And then you get into like the deeper stories of like, you know, the Buddha leaves his family, the leaves of the world behind. These are allegories, right? Do we understand that? That's, you don't actually leave your family. Unless, you know, there's some reason you have, I don't actually do that, right? Take it from someone who left a family for about a month to go pursue a dream in LA and then the pandemic happened and then you found a partner who happened to live 15 minutes from your family and you realized what the fuck are you doing?

Maybe you should actually be around your family. Yeah, you don't really want to do it. It seems like a nice idea. It seems like a vacation type of idea. There's a reason you are in this world. There's a reason you seek out the relationships that you do. There's a reason that you are in and have the issues that you have and it is not a mistake. It is not a mistake. I don't necessarily buy into that God is doing this to you. It's possible. It's totally possible. We did the higher power episode. It's totally possible. I'm not discounting that. But really, at the end of the day, you gotta kind of follow your desires as a springboard to enlightenment or awareness expansion, right?

How else are you going to do it? The opposite way? I don't, I just, I have not found that to be an effective approach. Eliminating desires doesn't seem to be something that I am capable of doing. Maybe you are, maybe that is the path and maybe I just suck at it, right? But if you also recognize that desire can be something you use that helps you get to your destination, well, there we go, there we have something. Anyway, TikTok and Instagram keep showing me that shit. So I keep thinking about it, right? Anyway, spring cleaning. Is it maybe not a bad time to take stock of what you believe and what stories you're telling yourself and what things you really want to let go and what things you want to pursue and what things you want to keep, right?

Can we Marie Kondo this shit? Can we find what brings joy and happiness and let the rest go? Can we do that? Is it possible? I think it's possible. Take stock, get out your journal, get out your good old trusty journal and write this shit down. What do you believe about yourself? What stories do you notice you're telling yourself over and over again? Oh, I can't do it. This is too hard. It's never gonna change. I'm not lucky. I don't have any money. I'm never gonna be abundant. Can't find anyone. If those are the stories you are constantly replaying in your mind, over and over, what are you, what are gonna be the results?

And you may be saying, hey Noah, yeah, I get that, but I can't stop these intrusive thoughts from coming in. Maybe I'm not neurotypical. Maybe I'm neurodivergent. I just have to deal with this the rest of my life. All right. Is that a story? Is that something we can work with? Is it possible to slip in some nice ideas? I am abundant. I am living in a state of grace, no matter what challenges that come across my path. I meet them with equanimity and repose. And even if I don't, I kind of get back to that, right? Like you don't have to, you don't have to perfect 10 every fucking situation in life.

I think this is a misappropriation or a misunderstanding that I hate to blame culture and society, but like, let's do it. Basically we don't have to win every fucking time. Sometimes you learn more in the losses than you do in the wins. I know that sounds like a cliche fucking, you're gonna find that in your tea bag or something, the little things they read in there are fortune cookie, but it's true. And I know if you look back at the situations in your life that you consider to be the hardest, that you consider to be the most challenging, you've learned a lot from those, right? It's not just pain and suffering and misery.

I know that. It can be that too. Don't get me wrong, trust me. It can absolutely be that. Far be it for me to say that that is not something that's a part of life, but we learn from those experiences. If we fight those experiences, if we hold onto those circumstances, we essentially become the equivalent of like a spiritual hoarder. Have you seen the show Hoarders? Like the woman who's like pooping in the thing and she's got all these poop buckets and poop bottles and like the people go in, they're like, what are those? And she's like, it's my poop. And they're like, holy shit, this is fucked up.

You don't wanna be the spiritual equivalent of the lady with the poop buckets, all right? You don't want that in your life, trust me. You go into the Hoarders house and like they're walking on mountains of trash and like, this is my home. They're like delusional. They're great. They think it's fine and good on them that they're not bothered by it, but deep down, you know they are. I mean, it's like, it's fucking crazy. Don't do that to yourself with negative beliefs. We can hoard negative beliefs just as we can hoard poop buckets. So don't hoard poop buckets in a spiritual sense. That's what I'm saying.

Is that what we call this? Don't hoard poop buckets. I'm still gonna call the episode spring cleaning 'cause I think it makes more sense than don't hoard poop buckets, but I do like the title, don't hoard poop buckets. It does sound good. It does sound pretty fucking dope, I gotta say. Maybe we will use that. Probably we won't, but maybe we won't. Anyway, you wanna take an assessment of what beliefs you have. What can you clean out? What can you purge? What catharsis can you go through to get rid of some of these negative beliefs and we're not getting rid of them though. Like they're evil, egoic demons that are latching onto us and parasitically sucking out our good.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. We gently surrender them. We spoke about surrender recently. That's what we're doing. We are identifying and gently surrendering these beliefs so we can find some time and open space to bring in some more beautiful, harmonious. If that's what you're going for, maybe you're not. Maybe you are one of those people who just enjoys the struggle. Be honest with yourself. If that's what you like, if that's what you enjoy, there is no shame in that. But if that's not what you like, listen, I'm not proposing the alternative is that we're just lying on the beach and an island in the sun for the rest of our lives.

As satisfying and as amazing as that may sound, temporarily, trust me, over the long term, you will get bored as fuck. You will still have the desire to accomplish something, to be someone, to do something. So I know we want that respite. I know especially things have been difficult and hard. We want that break. We want that, oh, please come in. And you can have that. That's a feeling you can appropriate just like any other state of consciousness. Just recognize you are constantly doing this. I'm just asking you, please maybe take stock of what you're doing so you don't live out things that feel like they're outside of your control.

I've gotten, I spoke about it on the bonus episode this week. Basically, I had a couple of people reach out. I'm not gonna go into the whole thing, but basically they're like, it's not working. It doesn't work. I don't believe it's gonna work. It's never gonna work. Hasn't worked for me. This is all bullshit, wish I never found it. I was like, oh my God, I hear ya. But at the same time, what kind of timetable are you putting on this thing? If you're really trying to make a major shift in your life, you think that's happening overnight. You think you got the rocket ship to go to fucking Mars and you just built that thing in one day and you're going there?

No, that's not how it works. It might take months, it could take years. Persistence is not something I just say works because it's cool and it sounds right. It's actually the truth. To be persistent in any capacity does work. But you have to do that. You gotta be persistent. You can't just sit back, kick back and go, eh, I tried it for a few months. Didn't really work. Not seeing any difference. I really believed it, but then I didn't. Well, the moment that you didn't believe it, trust me, that is what you are creating. And I know that can be like, it sounds wrong and it sounds foolish, but you have to embody the state of what it is you are imagining.

Yes, the imaginal acts are very powerful catalysts that will help you kind of achieve and resonate with the version of yourself that you are hoping to be, that you know yourself to be. But it also comes with inspired action, gratitude for being that person and also embodying that, acting like the person who does those things. Do you, are you trying to break a habit? Are you trying to change some action that you have done? Then break the habit, do some different things. It's like basically shoving your face with chocolate cake and being like, man, I hope I lose weight. I'm just gonna eat cake all day, 24/7.

And you know, I'll just do the imaginal act, but I'll eat cake all the time and lose weight. Maybe that works for like 1% of people, probably not even 1%. You gotta be honest with yourself about how you're interacting and what you're actually doing in your life. Physically taking different actions in the material world is a very effective strategy for changing patterns and behavior, right? Does that make sense? Actually changing something, getting up, physically moving, actually physically cleaning up your physical space. Jordan Peterson and I have had a complicated relationship even though he doesn't know that I exist most likely.

Loved him, hated him, loved him. Now we're just like, he does something, right? He does something, it's not right. It's okay, but he was kind of right about cleaning your room. As silly as that sounds, it's a very powerful kind of habitual pattern change. If you are constantly living in the same physical state and same physical space and never cleaning up your physical area, what message are you sending to yourself? Is this episode just basically me agreeing with Jordan Peterson? Is this a Jordan Peterson love letter? What the fuck is going on? Oh my God. Basically what I'm saying is we have the spiritual and mental and psychological equivalent of spring cleaning and we should do that to the degree that we want to affect change in our life.

Take stock, what are you storing in your mind? What beliefs, no matter how concretized they may be, no matter how ingrained they are, no matter how much you have attached your identity and just persona and everything about yourself to these beliefs, are you able to let them go and surrender them? Just maybe just a little bit, you don't have to leave them. You can put them down somewhere and come back to them. Not saying to go incinerate these beliefs, but maybe play around with different ones and different ideas, is that possible? Is it something we can do? It just feels appropriate for spring, right?

And if you're in the Northern Hemisphere or you're going through spring right now, I read a report that says winters are ending basically because of global warming. Meanwhile, gosh, do we get slammed with like fear propaganda, nonstop, I am not saying global warming doesn't exist, but before people fucking email me, listen, I got accused of being a Trump supporter and anti-vaxxer, which is going down the list, I am not a Trump supporter, I'm not an anti-vaxxer, I don't know how many times I have to say it. Did I vote for Trump? No, am I gonna vote for Trump? No, am I gonna vote for Biden? No, do I not vote?

Yeah, sorry if that bothers you. Do I think we want, you know, what is it, turd sandwich or shit, what was the South Park thing? I don't know, you heard Jessa the other week. You know, we just, we don't need to do this shit. It's a fucking theater, it's a parade of, we gotta deal with it this year 'cause it is what it is, but at least the NFL is like, you know, there's different cool aspects of it and they throw a ball around and shit. Politics is just throwing a ball around with words and now they're banning TikTok for gum. What are they doing? What is going on? That's why we don't put our faith in those institutions.

Those institutions will exist whether or not we put our faith in them because there will always be a subset of people who put their faith in those institutions, right? Got it? I don't know, always, but currently and for the foreseeable future. I do not think democracy and the, you know, states, national, ethno states around the world, I don't think they're gonna go away, okay? Sorry, I don't think we're getting a dramatic catalyst that changes our world. The dramatic catalyst that changes your world is you examining your beliefs and determining which ones you wanna keep and which ones you wanna like up.

That, to me, sounds like something that's worthwhile. Sounds like something that may actually evoke some positive change in your life and not just be some weird kind of Hail Mary pass that you hope works. Take a look, write down your beliefs. What do you really believe? When you write down something you believe or you think you believe, it's gonna hit you a certain way. You're gonna go, that's bullshit, I don't believe that or I really resonate with that and I believe. So write down what you think you believe and then identify, do I wanna believe this? Is this serving me, is this helping me? Is this actually making me feel like the person I wanna feel like?

Write the shit down and print it into reality. Give it a shot. I think it'll work. Listen, I was gonna try, I was looking at the time like, you know what, maybe I should ramble on for another 10 minutes so I can hit the fictional 30 minute threshold of what a podcast should be. Fuck that. That's a belief and I no longer believe it. Doesn't mean every episode's gonna be this short. I just say, we're gonna do a little spring cleaning. Feel a little spring cleaning, that's all I'm saying. Metaphysical spring cleaning. I think it will be nice for you if you give it a shot. Patreon is rocking. We are doing fun things over there.

Bonus episodes, weekly readings, monthly live streams, music from the podcast. Thank you for everyone who listens to the podcast and says these things about the music or asks what it is. 99% of the time. Actually, all of the time it's music that I've made or edited so you can know that and if you wanna get those songs, they're on the Patreon. This is coming out Wednesday, March 13th. Tomorrow, Thursday, March 14th at 7 p.m. We are doing a crypto 101 webinar crypto. I don't listen, I don't wanna say anything. I've been talking about this for months. Fucking bitcoins up here at like $73,000. What do you want me to say?

I've been hailed, I've been fucking telegraphing that you should be buying this shit for a long time. Hopefully you have. If you have questions, if you wanna get involved, this is a good chance to get involved in that. I will put a link in the show notes for this. You can find it in my bio, Instagram and TikTok and all those places. It's $9 to join that. That's a pretty fucking low entry fee for getting some access to what the fuck is going on. I've been doing this since 2013 and I ain't letting up surprise, surprise crypto link dead. We also on March 19th, will this be, there'll be another episode before this?

Maybe it'll come out that day. There's a group manifestation thing we're doing. You can sign up for that. I will also put the link in the show notes. That's it. That's all I got. I'll see you guys next week. Until then, happy imagining. Bye-bye. (upbeat music) ♪ All the time ♪ ♪ I will not worry for you ♪ ♪ You'll be just fine ♪ ♪ Take my thoughts with you ♪ ♪ And when you look behind ♪ ♪ You will surely see a face that you recognize ♪ ♪ Open your mind ♪ ♪ And not alone ♪ (upbeat music) (upbeat music) The savings are here.

Happy birthday, America.

It's America's 250th birthday.

We're celebrating Alma Thong at Nielsen Nissan.

By giving you freedom of choice, save up to $250 off service.

Save up to $250 off accessories.

With leases for $250 or under.

Hurry to Route 206 and stand hope. Online at NielsenNissan.com.

At Nielsen Nissan, fun is in the driver's seat.

All offers with approval, CDL for details.