“Vacations too… how perfectly named that is… a vacation, an emptying out… that’s what dhyāna is, an emptying out of all the static clutter and junk of one’s life and just settling into an undefined sort of tranquillity.

That’s what Lila’s involved in now, a huge vacation, an emptying out of the junk of her life. She’s clinging to some new pattern because she thinks it holds back the old pattern. But what she has to do is take a vacation from all patterns, old and new, and just settle into a kind of emptiness for a while. And if she does, the culture has a moral obligation not to bother her. The most moral activity of all is the creation of space for life to move onward.”

— Robert M. Pirisig, Lila: An Inquiry into Morals

Favorites of the Month

Music: Collections from the Whiteout (Album) by Ben Howard

Podcast Episode: Elizabeth Gilbert on The Tim Ferriss Show

For a list of all-time favorite internet things, dig my Needlestack.

Howdy friend,

I hope these words find you alive and kickin’ tonight, tomorrow, or whenever it is that you find them. I’m beaming you a smile through the electronic tether tonight and want you to know I am truly grateful for you sharing in this monthly moment of written connection.

This April was a great sort of spiritual bypass for me. I want to tell you all about it because it just might be the thing you are looking for in the arc of this pandemic.

It began with an accidental phone call. The owner of a newly renovated Airbnb just outside the gate of Joshua Tree National Park called my buddy and I’s real estate photography company a five-hour drive away in Phoenix. Thinking quick, he asked said owner for five minutes, rang to see if I would be in, and set me up with a weekend getaway in exchange for some photographs. What a bro!

Contrary to my wandering ways pre-pandemic, I somehow had not left the state of Arizona in over a year. I had no idea how cooped I had become. Stuck a third of the way through flight school, working hard at the real estate photography business to gain back my financial footing, and living under my parent’s roof for over a year during the coronavirus, often times I did not know up from down. There were moments of clarity, soaring above the great fog, but I would inevitably descend back into it. The silt had not been moved down the stream of life for far too long. I was bearing the doldrums, stuck in place with little figurative wind for my figurative sails.

That three-day weekend in Joshua Tree — that “emptying out of all the static clutter and junk of one’s life and just settling into an undefined sort of tranquillity” as Robert Pirsig perfectly pins the point of a vacation — was just what was needed.

I arrived on Friday afternoon, drove right on into the park to the first trailhead I could find, and set out on a serendipitous jaunt. All the baggage came right up: racing thoughts, worries, frustrations, unresolved problems, sudden loneliness — a stiff cocktail of negativity — the muck and the mile of cooped-up-covid-mind. A few miles out, away from everyone and alone with the stillness of a foreign desert, I found myself doing pushups and planks and repeated leaps to the top of a boulder to soothe my frenetic spirit through intense physical activity (how I have particularly learned to cope the past year). As the sun was getting low, the storm within me finally subsided. I was decently spent and found ease as I walked back to my Element. And the ease just kept on easing: beyond the temporary physically spent ease, into something bigger: a long-held great weight shucked from my shoulders kind of ease.

After that dark afternoon alone in the desert, I had a ball like I haven’t had a ball in a long time. I cooked dinner with a beer in hand listening to classic rock at sunset. I ran fifteen miles super early the next morning, not running from my demons, but grinning and laughing with the whole of the world as I passed by joshua trees, over desert mountains, and through sandy slot canyons. I spent the afternoon in the cranked, cool air conditioning of the Airbnb with ideas streaming out faster than my pen could put them down. The next day I did the same in the afternoon shade of a sandy-floored boulder mountain cave while eating apples and hatching plans for my return to Phoenix.

I left Joshua Tree with big strides in the outline of the book I’m working on, a pocketful of article ideas, and that plan I enacted with the rest of April: move out, balance the book writing and the real estate photography, and get back into the currents of life. I found a sweet deal on a cheap room in “rural downtown” Phoenix next to the warehouses and train tracks and planes coming in for landing just south of our backyard. While the house is much smaller and better kept, it reminds me of the house in the movie Fight Club and it feels so right. I have not felt this excited and alive in a long time — thanks be to a random phone call and a weekend getaway.

If you’re feeling clouded, confused, stressed, stuck, pent up, or any other of those unfortunately common coronavirus negative emotions, I am writing you to say: vacate your usual patterns for a few days. “Create the space for life to move onward.” Take in the great sky as your thoughts race by and wonder what’s the point of their racing. Sit in the shade of a tree and feel its eternal ease. Time alone in the great outdoors is like this void devoid of the karmic sludge, given enough time and approached right, it’ll suck that sludge clean out of ya.

During these pandemic days, I don’t think I’m not the only one who’s forgot to break my patterns and allow for this spiritual bypassing. Go vacate! It needn’t cost much (camping is surely the cheapest, easiest way to swing it). I double-dog dare ya.

With love & stoke,

Ethan

P.S. The article below is particularly worth a read! I think it’s one of the most universally important (and often unconsidered) ideas I’ve ever written about. I just brought back comments on the blog… would love to hear your thoughts!

Things I Created This Month:

The Question of Yes or No

Yes or no — which is best? It’s a question that appears to need more context, but actually doesn’t.

Rather, the question of yes or no is about our unconscious tendency to lean towards saying “yes” or “no” when opportunity presents itself in life.

If you really think about it, even a slight preference towards saying “yes” or “no” to the unfathomable amount of potentials we encounter throughout a lifetime is probably hard to overstate. For this reason, many have argued for conscious consideration of our often unconscious answer.

The kicker is everyone seems to advocate for a different answer.

Read On >

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