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This week we are presenting some broad stroke reflection points and a brief background on how this project came to be. Hopefully, this one email has an inoculating effect on the other obligations that exist in your inbox.
Be well!
Today’s Lineup:
Introduction - Surrendering the Unearned
Side A - Kellen
Side B - Myka
Side C - Process
Surrendering the Unearned (Book)
INTRODUCTION
Myka: What first started as a conversation → grew into an idea(-balm) → that became a collaboration → which was supposed to be a book → but ended up just being more conversations → and now . . . is this on-going, open ended, series - thing.
One question that has often come up is,
“Why did the book become an email newsletter?”
A short answer would be, it evolved into one. A longer answer would be, this project is an example of the effects of its own application. In order to progress from one stage to the next,
We had to surrender the unearned.
Side A
Kellen: The contemplation of this topic started with a feeling.
A vague, undefined quality of life that I could not place. In hindsight, that feeling was dissatisfaction, but at the time, it felt like frustration. Attempts to relieve this feeling were short lived. Below the surface there was a realm of shadows that I could not articulate.
A gentle suffering.
It was like imagining a house in which most of the rooms are useable. The outside is presentable to the neighborhood, but there is one room, at the risk of sounding too cliché, the basement, that has not been attended to.
I made my way down the stairs to find that nothing had been organized. There were piles of unlabeled boxes, materials and papers without any categorization. Books were half opened on top of desks. Quotes without any context were written on the walls.
The only way I could really clean out my basement was to get help.
As the cleaning process began to take shape, the materials in that imagined basement started to have some semblance of relatedness. Books and papers began to fit into self-organizing categories. I didn’t have to force their similarities. They became increasingly transparent. In this search, the question of value could never truly be articulated. Its subjectivity would lead to dead ends and hamster wheel pedagogy.
To begin a conversation, a dialogue, with no real motivation or outcome other than to share what was on our mind, our associations, judgments, fears and confusions. I sat with Myka many times at Kahala Mall tables that limited us to 45 minutes. We would buy something to drink, sit, and open our minds and mouths.
Other times we would pull out tatami mats in his garage and train, sitting in sweat, reflecting on what feels important to bring from inside the mind to being heard by another. In our conversations about what we valued, we became increasingly conscious that this was not definable through understanding, reading, or consuming.
The value would have to be created, spoken about, worked with, and practiced.
Nothing will tell you what value truly is. Or maybe it is everyone that will have an opinion on what you should value. The solution to a problem around dissatisfaction, deadness, ambivalence, or confusion requires not only consumption, but more importantly creation.
Side B
Myka: One day, in between a Jiu Jitsu round, I remember talking with Kellen about a quote I heard from some podcast about psychedelic experiences,
“Beware of unearned wisdom.”
I interpreted the quote as an explanation of the dangers of things like gossip and google. Gossip, being a form of unearned wisdom that can corrode and tarnish one’s perception of others based on indirect information - which may or may not be true. Google, being unearned wisdom in the form of a preposterously powerful tool that puts a planet’s worth of information at your fingertips - which at times, also may or may not be true.
It is easy to feel enlightened by either gossip or google, but the wisdom granted by both is by all definitions, unearned. That quality of unearned-ness doesn’t subtract from its total usefulness, it just gives it an * asterisk.
Unearned Wisdom is *sometimes helpful in specific instances and *sometimes harmful in others.
Ultimately, unreliable.
That concept took a strong enough root in Kellen’s mind. The next time we met up, he presented a variation of the quote I shared that was something along the lines of,
“All reality is comprised of four things, Peace, Wisdom, Love, and Freedom. And within this framework, maximal suffering (or a hell-like state) was comprised of Unearned Peace, Unearned Wisdom, Unearned Love, and Unearned Freedom.”
That combination of the Unearned would produce a perpetual state that would be defined by always having those things, but never enjoying them.
This analysis of the nature of suffering resonated deeply with me. It seemed to provide an explanation for how and why people with so much could feel like they had nothing at all. I was confident that it would be enough to sustain an entire book. Because of my background in creative writing, my first role for the project was to help Kellen with scaffolding the writing. That meant providing prompts, pushing ideas, and organizing part of the chaos that comes with creating anything novel.
Around that time, I received a strand of Buddhist Prayer Beads and was told that one practice for utilizing them was to focus and meditate on each bead. Using half of the beads to focus on “releasing” and the other half to focus on “manifesting.”
An exhale and an inhale.
I combined the prayer bead practice with Kellen’s idea and the result was the first iteration of an application of the concept.
Releasing the unearned and manifesting the earned. Letting go of things that weren’t truly mine, and in that newly opened space, inviting things that could potentially be mine. It wasn’t specific at all, but with that small daily habit of softening my attachment toward the unearned, I noticed a lessening of my own slight gentle suffering.
Side C
Over the course of a year, we met weekly.
Sometimes in person, other times over Zoom, after Kellen had moved (twice). Much of the workflow was spending portions of segmented time meeting to interpret and refine the concepts of Wisdom, Peace, Love, and Freedom.
What are these things? How does one earn them? What does the unearned quality look like? What are the effects of the earned versus the unearned? What is value? What makes it to the page? How much needs to be expressed?
Rather than bounce around without form, we focused on one concept at a time, thoroughly inspecting the idea and then creating material. And once the process felt like it was beginning to stagnate, we’d move onto the next theme.
Each chapter effectively felt like a different season.
When working on the Wisdom chapter, it was a season filled with abundant learning and at times, general foolishness.
When working on the Peace chapter, it was a season of paradoxically tremendous non-peace (stress) punctuated by soothing and fulfilling acceptance.
When working on the Love chapter, it was a season of transformation and reactivity.
When working on the Freedom chapter, it was a season of both explorative boundlessness, but also uncertain wandering.
Each season brought a newfound focus and appreciation for each these concepts.
Surrendering the Unearned (Book)
Occasionally, people would ask,
“How’s the book coming along?”
Experientially, the idea was getting sharper. There was a general sense of reduced suffering with increased mood. And overall, the project was continuing to be tremendously fulfilling.
Despite this, there was an inverse progress to pages ratio.
The more we refined the material, the further it felt from being book-like. We continued to meet and converse, but rather than talk about pages and chapters, we returned to talking about life. The seasons of Wisdom, Peace, Love, and Freedom feeling less like chapters to work through and more like passing themes to live in.
Slowly, it became more and more apparent . . .
Maybe we need to surrender the idea that this project was meant to be a book.
Maybe we need to surrender the unearned validation and acclaim that comes with “working on a book.”
And the moment we decided to do that, suddenly the project was new again.
A shorter form would require tighter writing. A stricter deadline would promote greater discipline and accountability. An email newsletter would let us share this project with more people and actually present the material. Ultimately, by shedding the identity of it being a book, we gained much more room for creative expression.
After we surrendered the unearned value, all that was left was the earned value.
The conversations weren’t a regression into the “planning” stages of writing, but rathe, a call to form to what the project always was.
