Adam Has a Podcast Episode 3; Energy

AHAPS;EP: Energy

By AJAC

*low hum* Intro plays fade into *ohm chant*...fade out…*quiet*

A: “Are we the vessel or are we the thing that dwells within? Is who I am the container or the energy that the container holds within it? 

To put it simply; would the kool-aid man’s consciousness originate from the pitcher or the kool-aid within?”

A: “This is a question mankind has been trying to answer since the dawn of self realization. A question so strange and abstract that it has taken the whole of all collective human civilizations thousands of years to develop a baseline of common understanding with experiences, imagery, and words through which I am able to form only an analogy to the true question at hand.”

A: “It is a question that is so abstract that how it is asked and how it is answered will vary from person to person. Some people ask questions such as the one I have and really think that they are the container while some people really think that they are the stuff inside. Then there are some people who are either so advanced or so simple that they don’t even consider the question and they just are.” 

“If you're from the former group, the one that questions, and you clicked on this looking for some clear cut and concrete answers to what is life then I’m sorry I don’t really have any for you but what I can tell you is what I’ve experienced and learned and I can hope that it inspires you to think more deeply about your own life..  I can give you stories from my life and I can tell you how I made the pieces fit together like a puzzle to make a larger overall picture, but I can't tell you what or how to believe or make you believe anything. If you came here as an unbeliever or a believer looking for answers then i can't give you much but what I can tell you is to go one of these days and take a shower in the dark and then you'll know beyond the shadow of a doubt that there are things in this world that you can feel and experience but cannot see, but that is knowing and knowing is only a very small part of believing. 

            A: “It's usually an experience with something like this,  something that is unknown, that can't be seen, or easily explained away that starts people on their journeys of questions and answers. This something will be a piece of the some thing that is the sum of all things; the sum, the whole, the total, the big picture. This summed thing will set you on whatever paths you need to be on to complete your picture and the larger picture overall.” 

A: “This summed thing is something elusive that humans have been trying to define in our languages for centuries; it’s chi, qi, aura, haki, mana, vibes, energy, bio and static electricity, lightning, thunder, sound waves, gravity, electromagnetism, physics, matter, anti-matter, atoms, bossons, hadrons, fermions and on and on. All of them, just attempts at defining and characterizing the minute differences in how each wave and particle of energy is able to exist in an effort to answer the question, what is existence? What am I, what is us, we, it, this? It is not a question that is easily answered in an hour”

A:” It has been a while since I’ve made a podcast and it is purely because of this episode. Writing this has made me feel stuck more than once, like I’m playing a game of Tetris and there's an upcoming piece that doesn’t really fit perfectly anywhere and I have to decide the best place to put it so I don't boof up the game. I easily forget that oftentimes it is those pieces that don’t really fit anywhere to complete a row right away that are laying the foundation for future rows that will propel the game forward. I wanted to make this episode about energy before I made anything else but I also didn’t want to be a hypocrite talking about shit I didn’t actually have a firm grasp on or embody. I knew that if I wasn’t bringing the right kind of energy then there was no use bringing any energy at all and so I looked in the mirror and decided *insert uncle iroh speech*

A: “ Over time I realized that those kinds of questions were more difficult to answer than I initially thought. Days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months. I needed to look back on who I thought I was and who I really ended up being, reconcile the differences between the two, and figure out who I wanted to be moving forward. On more than one occasion I asked myself why I even wanted to make this podcast at all and the answer was always a simple one. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. I can be a lot, I’m even too much for myself sometimes. There were more than a few times that I spent more than 8 hours just sitting and writing this darn thing. I’d get hungry and know I’d need to eat but I was so hyper focused I couldn’t stop. I wanted this to be perfect, the perfect culmination of knowledge and experiences to answer all questions, I wanted hearing this to make all people feel good about themselves and to then go and treat others with the same kind of goodness. In these moments this, this was my opus dei, my work of god, my purpose, my only meaning for existence, I needed to take medication on those days but the point stands true. I wanted this podcast to be something that was more than human but helped me express my humanity. I wanted to be able to capture those fleeting stories and moments that get lost to time. An extension of myself that will help me achieve more than I could on my own. 

A: “I can talk until I’m blue in the face and pass out. It usually ends up being too much to comprehend in natural, normal conversations and the points get lost. On a personal note, I end up recycling topics whenever I meet someone new, which can be interesting for the new person but gets pretty boring after a while for me. I’ve had to learn that the golden rule to conversations is that less is more. But with a podcast the rules can be way different, heck there doesn't even need to be any rules. And that aspect makes podcasting very liberating for me, it's a place where I get to break those mental conventions and just talk about whatever and if some of the topics do come up in natural real life conversations then I can just plug my podcast instead of going on a long, possibly annoying rant. On a podcast there's no pressure wondering if I’m boring or scaring the listener or talking too much. Listeners choose whether or not to click on the podcast and they can pause, rewind, change my volume, and fast forward to their heart’s content which won’t bother me because I'm not sitting there personally and having to do it all with my brain. Which also means I can reliably say the same thing over and over if someone is having trouble comprehending me or if they want to hear it again. Can you say that again is my kryptonite, I don’t know what I’m saying all the time, sometimes I’m just a conduit for the universe. All of this made podcasting seem like a very alluring venture to me but I also began fearing certain drawbacks for instance: it being a recording means if someone doesn't understand how I phrased something I can't go back and reiterate the point with different wording. This made me realize that I needed to establish open communication channels through which my listeners can ask questions and contact me before I moved forward with any more podcasts. I made the email AdamJCappello.info@gmail.com for listeners to email me any questions or ideas or even if you to want to be a guest just send me an email and I will get back to you, you can find the email on WWW.AdamJCappello.org where you can also find a lot of other cool stuff like the B.O.R.E.D. or basic online repository of educational displays! It’s a place where you can find A.N.S.W.E.R.S. or arts, noteworthy stunts, writings, experiments, research, and showcases of showmanship. A.N.S.W.E.R.S. can be anything from articles to essays and poems you wrote all the way to sculptures or maybe even just a cool doodle you did at work, submit anything really please it's looking really barren right now.”

A: “Ok so I established open communication channels and organized a website for my various projects and links, but did I really want to move forward with making more podcasts? The idea is alluring but what is the reality?”

A: “There were a few times where I clicked on one of my first two podcasts and immediately cringed. I wanted to delete the whole thing and start over again. I felt like I did this every time I didn’t see myself or did not like the self I saw in old photos or posts. I didn’t want to do this anymore, I’m realizing now that it's actually a really good opportunity to show people how a person can change over time. I think it would be fun for someone in the future to someday stumble across my first podcast and realize hey that's just a generic sound sample being used as an introduction. Then they’ll find the second one and be like wow he mixed his own intro this time and only a few weeks apart, maybe I should start doing stuff like this too it seems easy enough. Then they start making their own whatever it's called in the future. Then they go on to listen to episode three and now we've reached the present moment where I’m like 

*insert spongebob dialogue*  through space and time. That would be sick.”

A: “I want people to know and learn from an example that yeah sometimes you kind of suck at stuff at first but if you keep going, believe in yourself, practice and don't give up then you will get better over time. It is why I wanted to put a lot of effort and good energy into making this episode. I wasn't just lollygagging about, I spent all this time between episodes thinking about what it is that I really wanted to say and what are the best ways to convey it and I realized that the best way is probably the time tested tradition of storytelling.”

A:'' Everything you taste, touch, smell, think, hear, or see is an electrical signal created by chemical reactions in your brain in response to external or internal stimuli. Every single thing you experience,  you are experiencing through the lens of your own senses and every single thing you experience leaves a mark in one way or another, even if it's just the movement of an atom. The brain and consciousness are like clay, it is sticky, moldable, you can’t touch it without leaving a fingerprint. Some people are so sensitive that they can detect even the most minute changes in the earth's magnetosphere which in turn influences their actions. Other people just call it spring cleaning.``

A: “When I was three years old my dad started teaching me how to meditate, or “patience practice” as we called it. His claim to fame is that I was able to sit still and meditate for 15 whole minutes without moving at three years old. He taught me how to control my breathing, slow my heart rate, and have total awareness of my consciousness. He told me “everything is a piece of the puzzle, it's your job to figure out where the pieces fit”. This in essence means that all things are connected and once connected correctly will make up the whole bigger picture that is life. He explained to me christian, buddhist, and hindu ideals like reincarnation and how no religion is exactly right or wrong and that they too are all pieces of the puzzle; that when put together correctly will give you a better sense and understanding of what God really is. He taught me to always keep an open mind because the next piece of my puzzle could be from anywhere.”

A: ”Coincidentally also when I was three a parent had a mental health crisis. This put me in the position of needing my meditative skills far sooner than I anticipated. Being a little over 1,095 days since birth I did not have many pieces to put together from external experiences. I decided that maybe I needed to look inward. I remembered as far back as I could but once again only being a little over 1,095 days old, it wasn't much. Almost like a straight line from birth to this experience plus some side quests of buddhist ninja training for whatever reason. But in that moment it was all I had so to me then It couldn't have been for whatever reason, to me it was for this reason. Having a young and unconstrained mind I thought if I cannot find my answers from looking back then maybe I can find them looking forward, it's the same mechanism as remembering just in a different direction, right? so I looked forward with as much might as I could muster, and then in my head I saw it like a memory, older versions of myself as if they were looking back as I was looking forward. I saw myself as a young adult and an older aged version. This was all the information I needed to know to assure me that I would make it past this moment and many more, but it also made me worry. It made me wonder if reincarnation meant that I would be reliving this life over and over and over again. Was I looking forward or was I just looking back into the last time I lived this life? Was I trapped in some kind of cycle where all my decisions were preordained? Where I'm made to think I have free will but I truly had no agency of my own? Was I inadvertently and unconsciously traveling along some predestined and solidified path thinking I got to make the choices? I guess this is where it really started, the questioning, the wondering, the defiance in the face of god. I told myself if that were true then I would do everything in my power to make this the last time I had to live through this life again. I will be free. 

Looking back I didn't really live up to that at all times. There are plenty of moments I wish I could go back to and change or live again but maybe my three-year old self was right. Maybe I just have to forget that stuff and free myself to move onto new stuff.” 

A:” I often look back on that memory fondly, if not as a reminder that my mind may be so strong that it can see through space and time itself but more so that my imagination is so so accurate and detailed that I can look in the mirror today and see what I pictured then. 

This was one piece of what would become many pieces.”

                A: “For some reason the pious importance of going to church every Sunday was heavily stressed in my younger years. I didn’t fully understand why it was that we needed to go every sunday. When I asked and the answer was in order to avoid hell I didn’t like that very much. Going there and being forced to go felt wrong to me, how they operated felt so far from god that it made me not want to believe in their god at all. This made me deeply dislike religion as an institution. Later on the steeple got struck by lightning and the priest was ‘relocated’; so you know what I think God and I are about on the same page with stuff and things going on here sometimes.”

A:” I spent many years trying to refine my mental prowess often to the point of a headache. I would blindfold myself and try to see without my eyes like daredevil. I trained my reaction speeds to be as fast as possible. I tried many many many times to control fire with my mind to no avail. I tried to predict things like the endings of tv shows as fast and accurately as possible. Some of it didn't work, some of it did, some of it felt like it could work just not right now. So I kept trying and I kept learning as much as I could from anywhere I could.” 

A: “When I was around 13 years old I hit my head pretty hard and was on doctor ordered bed rest for about 6 months. During this time I couldn't get my balance, I was super sensitive to lights, smells and sounds, and I couldn't think cohesively. It was also right around this time that I thought of what I thought was a really memorable and funny Mike Tyson joke. I said if I ever meet Mike Tyson I'm gonna tell him this joke. I did not think that writing this joke down would be necessary because it was just that funny and memorable. I also forgot math! I had to reteach myself math and algebra at that! This was one of my first experiences with a meta-physical setback. A meta-physical setback is something that is more than physical and maybe even unseen but can still affect your physical body. A meta-physical set back can stem from a dissolution of your mind and body cohesion, your body and your mind uncooperating. AT this point in time my damaged physical brain couldn’t keep up with the energetic inputs and outputs from the world around me. In the same way that a calculator moves around electrons in the form of ones and zeros to calculate 2+2=4 my physical brain could no longer. The spirit was willing but the flesh was weak. I could still read the numbers. I just couldn't move them around in my head like I had been able to before. I needed to do out every calculation on my fingers or on paper, even 2+2 needed to be done out each time I encountered it until I fundamentally understood it as equating to 4 once again. It was more like memorizing the solutions to equations than really understanding them. Over time and with practice I began to understand the solutions and how to get there like I had before but it wasn't without a great effort. This struggle had taught me many life lessons that I still use today, the most important of which being that perseverance is key when wanting to attain a goal. Some days you make a lot of progress and some days it feels like you’ve made none but if you keep at it, day by day, you'll reach your goal in no time. Looking back now I also realize that I wouldn't know most of these things if I had not lived through the experiences that taught them to me. I think that goes for saying that stories are great and all but nothing is better for helping you understand yourself than writing your own story or making your own experiences to draw knowledge from.”

A:” During this time since I couldn't physically leave my bedroom I got really into astral projection. Astral projection is supposedly when one is able to detach their physical self from their conscious self and send their consciousness wherever they please. Most people experience this while sleeping as a type of lucid dream where they are flying above their surroundings. They say when you're Astral projecting that there will be a silver cord that connects your astral body to your physical body and that you shouldn't lose sight of it or go too far from your body since you're basically leaving your body as an empty vessel. 

A: “Being one that already has expressed a want and desire for total freedom from cycles and constraints I did not heed this warning. I wondered how would I know if this is real if I am limiting myself to things I’ve already seen and know? I thought I wanted to see something that I couldn't possibly conceive of, I wanted to see the edge of the universe!”

A:'' I meditated, I focused, I left my body, and I kept going and going and going. Zooming out further and further seeing my house become a spec on the surface of the Earth, farther out past the moon, farther until the Earth became a pale blue dot and then farther, and farther to distant galaxies and planets and stars and nebulae. Further on out I went until I could go no further, until I reached what I thought was the end. A thin white colorful yet colorless line extending in all directions around me sat before me. I reached out to touch it and in the same instant something yanked me through the cosmos back to Earth which was then followed by a terrible nightmare. I won't go into too much detail but I experienced a deep sleep paralysis, during which it felt like my astral body was being sealed into my physical body, like I broke a rule and it was my punishment for going too far. If anything I’m a sleepwalker not a sleep paralyser so this experience was really odd for me, I had never consciously experienced sleep paralysis like this before and it was terrifying. The moment I was able to break free I ran away screaming and refused to go in my room at all for at least 3 days. I was scared to even try astral projection for a good long while after that.``

A:” Once I got over the fearful experience I tried astral projection once again but found that it was difficult to leave my body if at all. At first I thought of it as some kind of curse but as I learned more I realized that it was more of a blessing. Astral Projection is a form of escapism and there are better ways to use your energy besides focusing on escaping. This is when I got really into sleight of hand magic. I figured I should focus on something that combines both mental and physical dexterity. Also they probably wouldn’t be calling it magic if it didn't have at least something to do with actual magical energy. 

A: “Sidebar: I’ve been trying really hard to finish this so I deleted all my social media and replaced my distractions and scrolling with Tetris and honestly Tetris is making me lose my mind worse than any amount of doom scrolling, shitposts, or astral projection ever could. At Least with social media I’m seeing different stuff and I might learn something or see something thought provoking but with Tetris. It's all just blocks, it's all the same. The Tetris arena is being burned into my retinas, I’m seeing Tetris everywhere man, my keyboard is tetris, the space between my shelf and tv is tetris, it's all tetris. All the pieces falling into place around me, closing in on me, suffocating me. I feel trapped in the Tetris. What even is astral projection at the end of it all? It's working your brain to imagine all the things you’ve seen in life to such perfect detail that you can walk around in your own mind while tetris on the other hand. What even is tetris? Its fitting blocks together that fall out of nowhere in a special way so that they disappear back to nowhere? How is that useful or applicable to real life in any way? Ohhh I can pack my freezer really efficiently but hey guess what you could get the same kind of spatial reasoning results from just accurately looking at your environment and imagining different plans of action? I guess tetris could make you act better under pressure and help you make quicker beneficial decisions but that too can be achieved through mindfulness. So I ask again what benefit does escaping into tetris give me? Tetris just feels like it's hijacking my limbic system so I’ll just keep playing more Tetris forever, like that's how the Tetris lives, how it survives. Tetris is programmed like a virus for the mind feeding off of your attention and electricity and giving you no benefit in return. I have learned and no more tetris for me, I’ve had enough, thank you.”

A: “Back to what I was saying”

A: “Through physical magic I learned that all magic is the art of making the unseen seen. If you apply this principle to anything it will become magical. A good magician will not ignore the tenets of their craft simply because they are more gifted or skilled in another area. I needed to learn that first hand. You can’t think your way out of a box, it takes a plan AND action. It is the same way when you practice a trick thousands and thousands of times, you won't actually know if it’ll work as a trick until you try it out on someone else. ”

A: “Okay sidebar again real quick jumping to 2023 I saw a guy at starbucks and he was shuffling a stack of cards and in my head I was like please ask me if I want to see a trick please because I wasn't sure if he was a magician or just a dude with a gambling problem and I thought I was making it obvious by staring at him like please ask me if I want to see a trick but he didn't ask me and I got kind of disappointed but then later on that day I went to take a piss at a ralphs and on the ground was my my favorite card the ace of diamonds, I was mind blown I couldn't believe it! Did this guy just mind freak me from miles away? Had he been following me? Was I going to pick up the card? No because like this was a grocery store bathroom floor but man that was a cool experience. Alright enough of that time we”

*back in time by huey lewis and the boys*

A:” When I was about 16 I needed to have a ganglion cyst removed from my wrist. The cyst was so large that it inhibited the use of my dominant hand. What was projected to be a 45 minute surgery ended up being about 2 hours. The doctor said that the cyst and my nerve were tangled together like a pair of headphones and that she had to move slowly and meticulously in order to get it free without damaging my nerve too much. I still can’t feel part of my palm to this day.”

A: “Another round at the Sidebar; as the anesthesia started to take me down and they rolled me into the operating room I started to freak out and tried getting up to leave. All I remember before passing out was “hey strap this guy down and turn on the gas”. It must’ve been something in the initial cocktail they gave me because as soon as I was done and woke up in recovery I was in a panicked gotta go mood, got dressed and didn't even realize my hand was all messed up, started walking away. They stopped me and were all hey we gotta wheel you out and I tried refusing. I did not like whatever they gave me, or maybe I just didn't like being held down and cut open. I don’t know, I'll let you put those pieces together.”     

A:” This cyst removal completely took away the use of my hand for about 2 months. During that time the muscles and tendons atrophied in some places and fused in others resulting in a hand that looked like that butler’s hand from the scary movie two. It took a lot of physical therapy to be able to get my hand to lay flat on a table again. My dexterity was pretty much gone. To me this meant that sleight of hand magic would have to take a backseat while I built up my dexterity again. It made me think maybe it's time I focus on the psychic and energetic aspects of life again. It was coincidentally right around this same time that I began discovering cannabis.”

A:'' Whenever you ingest any kind of chemical you're taking your life into your own hands. With chemicals such as water or milk it's very difficult to hurt yourself unless you ingest it improperly, in large amounts, or in the latter case unless you're lactose intolerant. With recreational chemicals, or “drugs” as they're colloquially referred to, this threshold for harm can be way lower and vary from person to person so the risks won't always outweigh the perceived benefits. In some instances it takes smoking marijuana only once for it to trigger latent mental health disorders in teens and young adults. With that said, the first time I smoked weed I didn't really feel any different. I remember it was the middle of the winter on a half day from school and it was so cold that the water in Lake Quannapowitt had frozen mid wave. I thought this was the most unique and exotic place to try weed for the first time. I went out on the ice, plotted a course, smoked, and went back out on the ice until I got too cold. I was kind of shocked that I didn't feel drastically different. The most that happened was that my vision got more vivid at times. I thought I'd see ghosts or something but nope it just turned on the HDR filter for my eyes. After the frozen lake we went to go see Split where at the end I got really pissed off when they connected it to Unbreakable. I got so mad that I was tricked into watching a sequel film that I started yelling in the theater but at that point the high had worn off and that is something I've definitely done sober before and since after. ”

A: “I was told that sometimes people don't feel high until their second time smoking. It has something to do with how their bodies need to get acquainted with the substance but by the time they do smoke that second time they will get crazy high because their bodies will be acquainted with the chemical but won’t have a tolerance for it. That super chill and cool story of my first time smoking marijuana is usually drowned out by the crazy high story from my second time smoking weed.”

A: “It was about a month or so later on a snow day that I decided to try smoking again. My friends and I made plans to steal trays from McDonalds and go sledding on the freshly fallen snow. We went to McDonalds, got food, the trays, and then my friends wanted to go to the graffiti train tunnel behind McDonalds to smoke. Another friend and I decided not to smoke but we wanted to see the graffiti in the tunnel. We followed them, but after a minute of looking at graffiti I changed my mind and decided to smoke. Since they had been going for a minute already, holding the bong was like a small hand warmer. They were excited to have me smoke a bong for the first time, as I began to breath in the smoke they started to chant go go go, which fueled my hubris. 10 seconds of warm marijuana smoke on a subzero day paired with having asthma and absolutely no tolerance to THC or smoke was a formula for disaster. The warm air from the bong made my lungs expand just in time to receive a heavy dose of co2 and smoke, smoke that then triggered an asthma attack and cough reflex. A cough reflex that was so strong in conjunction with such rapid constriction meant I couldn’t breath at all. No smoke out, no air in. Luckily when I fell to my knees trying to force myself to breathe my friends put 2 and 2 together and remembered I have asthma and ran to go grab an inhaler. I wanted to go to the car, I knew that the warm air and sitting would help me catch my breath but I could feel my body running out of oxygen. I tried walking to the car and was met halfway with the inhaler. This provided some relief but I couldn't get the medicine deep enough into my lungs and I knew I needed the warm air of the car to help open up my lungs. I got to the car and as I opened the door to sit down I began reliving the same exact instance of opening the car door and going to sit down over and over and over and over again feeling like the current moment was only moving nanosecond forward each time it replayed. This repeated to say a thousand times is conservative. They call this a time loop or time echo in science fiction. As I finally got to sit down I remember sitting but still feeling like I was in the act of going to sit as if I was feeling some kind of echo but relating to space rather than sound. I was very confused. I just needed to sit there, recover, and figure it out. ”

A: “Soon as I finally started to settle in and relax my friends scrambled to the car and were in a rush to take off. They were starting to pull out of the spot and I couldn't formulate the words to convey that I needed to chill here for a second and catch my breath so I summoned all of my strength and tried to put the car in park but I only made it as far as reverse and passed out. While I was passing out I remember them all yelling at me for doing that. Looking back I wonder why they didn't understand the message that I needed to stay in park and figure out what was going on with me. After passing out I remember waking up as a baby and reliving my entire life over, except it was moving second by second and if something was wrong it would restart and I would experience it all from the beginning again. It was everything but I remember nothing besides the memory of going through the experience and faint glimpses and recollections here and there. For instance I relived a conversation with my brother that I didn't consciously remember until after this experience. I could tell you where and about when it took place but I don't remember exactly what was said consciously anymore. This happened for my entire life. I would have to relive it if something wasn't right all the way up until the present moment when I passed out, at which point it switched to going at an accelerated blurring rate all the way to the end. It ended in darkness. I sank into the deepest, blackest, darkest void I have ever experienced.  It felt like my computer had been unplugged. I remember being a kind of formless awareness, I remember the first thought train so vividly. I thought “it is so dark here; where is everything? Wait, what was everything? Was this darkness all I've ever known? No, this isn't everything. I have a body, I just don't remember what it looks like anymore… but I can feel it, yeah I can feel my body, it's separate from all this blackness”.  As I realized that I could still feel the outline of my body I noticed this teeny tiny, small, little speck of light. It interested me so I moved closer. The closer I got the warmer and better I felt. Closer and closer, I started to feel like I was vibrating. It was so warm, so radiant, the closer I got the more beautiful it got until I was so close I could touch it. I reached out and as soon as I touched it I woke up in the car hard as fuck and threw up my Shamrock Shake out the window, well I tried to make it out the window at least. I included the fact I was hard because they say when a man dies they go erect and I think I definitely experienced some kind of death. I then drifted in and out of consciousness and everytime I woke up I felt like I was waking up in a different universe. There was this one point where I woke up and looked down at my hands and saw I had very hairy monkey hands and I remeber saying to myself “fuck I woke up in the wrong universe I gotta go back in” and then fell back asleep.  When I tell people about the experience they say something like “that sounds like an ego death” or whatever but death is death and I was riding the river styx. This experience made me realize that marijuana has some kind of connection and could be another piece of the puzzle.``

A: “ Following this path I got really into weed at the end of high school and into college. It is a kind of perfect combination of Witchcraft, Alchemy, Magic, and Science a combination of all of my favorite things. For me it only made sense. THC is a substance that when taken unlocks the healing powers of herbs, spices, and fruits. Something about THC tells your body to identify terpenes like limonene in an orange, as a medicine! Isn't that some Witchcraft shit right there? None of your potions will work without the special activating ingredient. OKay that's a lie, limonene will always be antimicrobial, whether THC is present or not, but limonine’s anti-inflammatory and other effects in the body are significantly increased by the presence of THC. While I'm talking holistically this is a good point to interject that one time someone told me to be a Healer and I called them dumb. Healers, in the colloquial sense, aren't much more than grifters or therapists with crystals and I kind of despise the concept. Healing is not something that can be sold and done from the outside with the wave of a magic wand. Even real licensed doctors can't heal your infection without giving you antibiotics, that you yourself then have to ingest and spread throughout your body. You can partially guide someone through healing but that is a mentor not a healer and I don't want to be either, I just want to tell silly little stories and make people laugh. While laughter can help facilitate healing it's not my true and total purpose. Everything you experience is framed through the lens of your own life. Your own perspective. People refer to this as the ego or mind's eye. It translates everything you see, smell, touch, or sense into something you can understand and comprehend.  What you experience may be different to you than to everyone else. This means that if you experienced something that you may need to hear from then it is you yourself who is best equipped to bring true healing and change not Crystal healer 457 on Instagram. ”

A: “For example, during the course of writing the script I was filled with a random abject terror. I addressed the situation and deemed no real tangible threats and refocused my mind. Now because I know how to alleviate my fear does that mean I know how to heal your fear too? No! I don't know your body, what you're afraid of, or why! I could tell you how I manage my own fear but that might not work for you and your situation. You might be super afraid of bears right now and a Healer would say something like “fear is only in the mind, this too shall be overcome” without asking why you are even afraid of bears. You might be afraid of bears because you are being actively chased by a bear. The answer in that situation would be to listen to your fear and run. Although in those situations, questioning things isn't really much of an option. Your mind will focus solely on getting you out of that situation, no questions. It's not just bears that can do that to your mind, anything you fear enough can trigger a fight, flight or freeze response. Now, a mentor can help lead you to figuring out for yourself what you need to figure out but anyone who is claiming to be able to just take your problems away with the wave of their hands or a puff of this peyote is usually just harvesting something from you. Whether it be money, psionic energy, or even just time and companionship. They're taking something that they really probably shouldn't be. ”

A: “An Uber ride can be a way better source of energetic exchange than any internet guru. I've taken plenty of Ubers where the Vibes were just immaculate. I've discovered one of my favorite songs in an uber, Bette Midler's “Rose's turn”, I have a rose tattoo on my wrist so I get going to that song and Bette sends it home. ”

A: “But looping it back, the same is true for weed. Weed does not work for everyone. Some people use weed medicinally, some people use weed recreationally, but you can't just fix things unless you apply a deliberate effort. Weed can help bring things to the forefront of your mind or help push them away to the back. This can help you focus for the moment but things that need to be addressed will always come back up again until they're addressed. I smoke pretty much every day. It helps take away headaches and pains but more over my favorite reason is that it makes me a little bit more lighthearted and goofy. Does that mean I use marijuana recreationally or medically? I do not know, but what I do know is that when I was really depressed and I tried to quit weed  it sucked but when I started feeling better overall, I just forgot to smoke. ”

A: “Another thing I personally enjoy about marijuana for me and from my experiences is that sometimes it helps facilitate deep meditations and if I don't have the time for a deep meditation weed helps me jump into a meditative mind State without much effort and helps maintain it. I'm not sure if it's from my prior experiences with meditation or maybe that it's just a function of THC or maybe a combination of the both but it helped me open my awareness in my mind far wider than I have been able to before. I could smoke weed while sitting in the park and enter such a deep state of meditation that I would become aware of everything going on around me with headphones on and eyes closed. I could sense what was going on so deeply that I could feel someone look at me, I would turn my head and open my eyes to meet their eyes and then just go back to meditating. It was fun! I loved to test my awareness in those kinds of ways. I could feel when there was no one around and I'd open my eyes to see just that and feel a great sense of accomplishment and belonging. I tried talking to geese and making friends with squirrels. Through that I learned that awareness is in all living things. I learned animals can sense the emotion or energy of people and know who to go to and who to avoid. This one time I saw a guy sitting in the park so focused on his work and so at peace that squirrels were climbing in his lap to eat out of his bag of corn nuts. I felt upstaged as the squirrel whisperer, but moreover it showed me that yes there is something more to all of this.”

A: “ Around 19 years old I discovered that marijuana could help me facilitate this form of Ultra condensed awareness followed by a release or influx of energy. At first this would make me pass out and when I tried to describe the experience to people they told me it was probably hypoxia or a lack of oxygen. One of the first few times it happened I was smoking with a girl in my dorm and I passed out right into her lap. It felt like I fell into that black void again and I was shapeless awareness once again. I started to freak out because I couldn't find my way out but then I heard her giggling far off and as if through water and I headed towards her voice and woke up in her lap. ”

A: “This was my something. I needed to figure out this energy. What it was and how to release it. I needed to understand it and for that I needed to understand myself more deeply. I was finally starting to feel in tune with the world and myself. I was ready to start my journey. ”

A: “What helped cement this feeling that I was on the right path was that one day while skating from my dorm to the train station I skated by a red piece of string. I said to myself “that looks important, I should go back". I turned around to pick it up. When I got to it, I realized It wasn't just a string but a bracelet of Saint Benedict's protection medals. These are my favorite little catholic doodads. They supposedly help protect you from negative spirits and bad energies. I felt like I was right where I needed to be. That I was blessed and protected on my journey. I wore it on my right wrist.”

A: “ I was so amazed by this I told anyone that would listen to the story. Everyone was all like “wow so cool” and inflated my ego. When I told my dad he told me that I should not have picked it up because what if the person who had lost it went back looking for it, then I would have technically have stolen it from them. I felt bad because he was right so I told myself when the time was right that I'll let it slip off my wrist for someone else to find. This deal with myself made me feel better. although it was tough keeping to it.”

A: “ One time while I was skating in Boston I felt it slip off my wrist. I caught it and put it back on. Almost immediately right up the street I skated over a sewer great and fell. Remember how I said I kept it on my right hand? And remember how I said to this day I still can't feel part of my palm? Well I think all of that was God’s way of setting up a long con because my palm landed right on one of the, what was apparently hollow, metal tassel beads used to secure it and flattened it into a scoop. This razor sharp scoop was then sent deep into my unfeeling palm. I immediately remembered that I broke my promise to myself and was gifted a forever piece of the bracelet lodged into my palm for my insolence. The bead was so deep in there that I had to squish it out like a metal pimple. I was outside of BU on the side of the road screaming and squirting blood like some cheap student horror film. One lady went to stop to help me but got close and was like yeah you're gonna be fine and walked away. I cleaned it out as best as possible and scrubbed the hole but there's this speck inside my hand that I still can't get out. I had a very painful reminder that next time I should just let it go.”

A: “ I was enamored by this new energy I was learning how to release, for no other reason than that it brought me peace and made me feel in tune with the universe. At first it was very difficult to call upon and release this energy. I practice day in and day out. I noticed that if I used it too much one day, I couldn't access it as easily if at all for the days and sometimes weeks afterwards. The recovery time got shorter with practice. For example: at first I'd be able to do it once and pass out and then be unable to use it for a day or up to a week afterwards. After a while I was able to do it without passing out but still had a long recovery time before I could do it again. After more practice I could do it twice in a row without passing out with about a day of recovery time. This trend continued with practice but I noticed I wasn't really able to do it without the help of marijuana. This bothered me. Was it something I could do? Or was it something that the weed does? Or was it a combination of both?”

A: “ During this time of training and learning the Boston Common and public gardens became an energetic epicenter for me. I would go there to get grounded, meditate, skateboard, or just hang out and relax. I figured all of my questions could be answered through meditation and experience.”

A: “I went through a lot of kismet experiences there.  One day my dab pen, Juul, and phone all died so I went looking for an outlet. FYI BTW if you ever need an outlet in the Boston public gardens, you're not going to find one. Not even on the light poles. You have to go across the street to the common and find one of the maintenance boxes that a homeless person had previously pried open. Which is exactly what I did. I was sitting there and I was like man what do I do now. I looked around and there was a couple canoodling right in front of me and a field trip going on behind me so I just looked at the ground. I'm looking and staring right back at me is a four-leaf clover. I found like 17,  I even found a five leaf clover that I still have. I had so many that I wanted to give them away but everyone I offered them to didn't want it or anything to do with me. That day I learned that if you're sitting in the dirt stealing electricity people are going to judge and avoid you. That was one of the more common sense answers that I was able to glean through mindfulness. ”

A: “When I wasn't purposefully meditating I liked to keep my senses open to see what I could pick up on. It was mostly funny little awkward scenes. Those moments where you hope no one was looking. Yeah. I saw a lot of those moments. There was this one time in particular on Easter Sunday where I ran out of weed and was a little edgy so I went walking through the park to relax. I walked by these dudes giving a park sermon and this kid was arguing with them. He said “baptizing is a modern indoctrination tactic that they added later in the bible. Jesus couldn't have been baptized if he was the one who started the religion. Who would have baptized him then? himself?”. This take was so off that it stopped me in my tracks. I had to say something but then I took a moment and thought " well these guys are preaching here and they have the good book right there in front of them. I'm sure that they'll get the right answer”.  I sat there and I listened. They said this and that and I was about ready to say something and just as I got ready to interject somebody finally said it, “and another thing John the Baptist was Jesus's cousin! they grew up together, Jesus ordained him to baptize all followers of the religion including Jesus himself!”. I felt relieved yet the kid had more to drive on about but lept on my interjection and said “do you want to see a real example of faith? I stopped because you said something wrong but then I trusted that these guys would be able to correct you and say the right thing and they did; that's faith”. They collectively came together in not caring, which seems to be a reoccurring theme at times for me.  Although this time I piqued one dude's interest. His name was Matthew.  We had a nice conversation. I guess I looked kind of disheveled and homeless because he straight up asked if I was homeless. I said no but he was adamant about telling me about this shelter. It was right up the street and I could see it from where we were standing when he pointed at it. He asked if he could show me it and walk me through the registration process. Our conversation was being drowned out by the hubbub going on around us so I said sure. He left his wife with his stuff and I grabbed my stuff and we walked down the street. He told me about all their amenities, how they are able to help people in tough situations and the reason why it doesn't have a sign. It was interesting but the corridor of the buildings and the shape of the park funneled wind directly down the street and made me so cold I couldn't listen. Matthew noticed and felt bad seeing me shiver, I told him not to worry and that I was always cold. He asked if I had heard of the Wim Hof method of breathing. I had heard of it but I never tried it. He told me how to do it and then said lets try it now. When I tried I collapsed. He caught me before I hit the ground. This was it. This was the first time I was able to release the energy on command without the use of marijuana. I was astonished that this random person off the street taught me how to utilize my energy. I finally had another piece. I Told Matthew about the whole situation, how thankful I was that he helped lead me to an answer. I asked how I could show him my thankfulness, he said "pass it forward”.”

A: “ This was not the last time that someone had walked up to me and tried to teach me a breathing technique. This one time I was doing a photoshoot in a different graffiti tunnel in Cambridge Massachusetts. This old guy walked up to us talking about '' I started this place you know”. I'm not the type to shun people away so I asked him to tell me more. Turns out his name was Peter Valentine and his name was literally on a plaque attached to the wall. He told me how he started the graffiti tunnel, how he got it sanctioned by the city and recognized as an art installment. At the end he leaned in close and said, "Do you want to learn how to be immortal?". Google this guy; he definitely looks like a guy that would ask that kind of question. Obviously I said yes. He told me about a similar breathing method to the Wim Hof. I said “wait a minute I know this I use this to release energy”, he replied “well then you know all there is to know then”. He's dead now. So much for immortality but he did teach me an important lesson. It's easy to get lost in the sauce and no one is responsible for how you see reality besides yourself. Ironically after Peter walked away a blind man walked up to me, he could sense my inhibition, the fact that I was holding myself back. He walked up to me and said " you know this is one of the only places in public where you can scream all you want and no one is going to look twice, come on scream with me”. That's what I needed, not another breathing technique or some metaphysical stuff.  No. I just needed to let it all out for once. It felt great. We got some great photos too, you can check them out under the headshots category on WWW.AdamJCappello.org. My photographer was great too. He even caught the exact moment the blind guy went for a fist bump and I went for a high five. We're all a little blind in some way and gifted in others.``

A: “ Lots of people have gifts that they sometimes just don't give enough credit to. Yeah, you can be musically gifted but why does no one think about the gift of good time management skills. If you're bad at time management then you know how much effort it takes to show up on time to places yet some people can just do that? I can't blame my poor time management skills on just being a skill issue alone. Sometimes I, or the universe, stops me dead in my tracks.  This puts me in the right time and place for something else but usually not what I was planning for. For example, one time I was skating on The Greenway towards the public gardens when I threw a wheel. I guess I didn't tighten it enough? I had to stop and find the wheel and the nuts and thankfully they were jammed into each other so that was easy but I still had to sit there and put my wheel back on.”

A: “As I'm sitting there I look up and I see someone who looks like Matthew walking up to me carrying a gator skin guitar case. I called out " hey Matthew'' but the guy didn't look. As he got closer he looked even more like him so I said again " hey Matthew remember me?”. The dude was confused and said " I'm not Matthew " and I harked back “do you have a twin named Matthew because you look just like this guy " and we laughed. We got to talking and he was an interesting dude. I don't remember his name but for this we'll just call him Matt two.  He was odd, he said stuff like “if you jerk off to someone's Instagram it will make them horny for you”. I took this with a grain of salt and since Billie Eilish has still not messaged me back I would say that this too served as a good reminder of how easy it is to get lost in all of this sauce. He sat there and played guitar and I asked him if he was homeless, he said " no I'm doing an urban study on how accessible resources are to homeless people and I'm living the experience firsthand”. His face and his story made me think of the shelter Matthew showed me. I asked if he would like to go to see what they have to offer. As he followed me over there it felt very cyclical, like the closing of a loop. Like I didn't need to feel like I owed someone anymore. It felt complete. I also kind of felt bad for Matt 2 because for some reason there was an unusually high number of people out helping the homeless that day and everyone he told his story to would just shit on him and tell him to go home, I mean I agreed with them but still they didn't need to be so mean especially where he was just trying to do good.``

A: “ Sometime in between all of this I lost my bracelet. Although I didn't let it go without a tussle. I went out drinking with my friends. We were driving along the beach when I found the perfect bush to piss in.  We parked, I got out, pissed, and ran back to the car. When I got back in the car I noticed my bracelet was gone. I made all of us look around for maybe 25 minutes when one of my friends spoke up  "Adam are you sure you even wore it out? ". This infuriated me, I didn't like having what I knew to be true questioned so flippantly and apparently this pissed off God too because I looked up about to say something heinous and right there on a bush branch right in front of me hanging was the bracelet. I plucked it from the bush and said “fuck you, I know what's real".”

A: “ I then proceeded to lose it later that night frolicking on the beach, most likely during the Roman Candle fight.”

A: “ When my sisters and I went to visit our mom in California we went to a local makeup shop. I went along for the ride. While we were there I noticed red string bracelets hanging up, could it be? it was! It was a Saint Benedict's protection medal, this time laid in gold. I couldn't contain my joy when I asked how much. She saw how excited I was and said “for you free”, my second most favorite string of three words.”

A: “ I lost this one too!”

A: “ After I got back to Massachusetts my roommate invited me to the club. I don't really like clubs, for some reason people always read my energy wrong and perceive me as a threat. Or maybe clubs are all about posturing? I don't know. When I told my roommate this he told me that I would be fine and that it was not actually like that and was probably all in my head.”

A: “The video he took of me doing karaoke and getting a bottle thrown at me proved me to be right. There was this one point during the night that I remember saying to myself “the devil lives here”.”

A: “The next morning I woke up to realize that I lost not only my dignity but the bracelet as well. My roommate then apologized for not believing in me when I said that I just put out a vibe that people at clubs don't like.”

A: “ At this point in time my understanding of things began to progress to such a point that I saw losing the bracelet as more of a blessing than a bad thing. I figured someone in that club must have needed that protection more than me that night and I was beginning to grow too attached to the idea of the bracelet itself without understanding what it was actually supposed to represent. What did the Latin even say on a Saint Benedict's protection medal? How does it protect me if I don't know what it means? Was it just a false comfort? I learned all about protection charms and how they're prevalent in almost all cultures around the world, whether it be a cross, a four-leaf clover, a medallion, an eye, or even a specific rock or crystal. I've always been interested in rocks but this supercharged that infatuation. I learned how different crystals could interact with the frequency of certain chakras. How stones like topaz, black onyx, or tiger's eye have been used as protection stones in different cultures across time. I understand rocks a lot better than I understand words or symbols. I don't get how simple symbols are able to protect you but I can fathom that maybe the atoms in a rock or a crystal can somehow on a Quantum atomic level interact with and affect the atoms in and around you. I get how a chunk of Matter in a crystalline structure may be able to block, capture, channel, and redirect certain energies or frequencies. I mean, isn't that what a crystal radio is? isn't that just what a photodiode is? Why couldn't these Concepts and uses be applied to rocks and furthermore humans?  Human bones are made out of calcium which is a type of non-ferrous metal. Those metal rods are surrounded by tubes filled with circulating charged iron particles. An electromagnet is a non-ferrous metal like copper wrapped around a ferrous metal like iron. It could be possible that our bodies somehow produce an energy or frequency we just can't detect with our technology yet. This made me question, could you use certain crystals in conjunction with your antenna-like-body to perform specific tasks like the transmission or reception of data? Was crystal healer 4557 actually onto something? I started to get into learning about crystals, their metaphysical properties, and how I could utilize them. I carried around like a 5 pound bag of rocks in my pocket and for some reason it made me feel better and more secure. Whether it was psychosomatic, Quantum physics, or the mere fact that I had a bag of rocks at the ready incase any shit went down I don't know but what I do know is that for some reason being into rocks makes women more attracted to you or maybe it just gives you a common interest to talk about.”

A: “ It was around this time that I started seeing someone. From first-hand experience I can say it's not a good idea to start dating someone when you are in the middle of changing and doing inner work. It will probably not work out. For example, I thought I was getting pretty good at reading energy and controlling my own. When I was younger I found out that if I held myself internally in a certain way and went to scare someone that it would be extra effective. Now that I was older I was learning that this happened with all emotions and feelings. When there is an act of true intention there will be a reaction of retention, the other will absorb your intentions. If you intended to scare them truly, then they will be truly scared. ”

A: “Well it was October, I was getting into the spooky spirit and I thought it would be fun to scare her since she liked scary movies. She was laying on my bed on her phone minding her own business. I internally set the intention to scare her, jumped on her, started tickling her and I was like “I'm going to eat you nom nom nom”. To me it sounded like she was laughing and was all “hahaha stop it” but then she snapped and went “get the fuck off me”. I backed right up and put my hands in the air like she was a cop and I was black. I was confused. She turned around crying and I quickly said “I'm sorry I didn't mean to do that, can I give you a hug” and she snapped again “stay away from me”. I said “all right I'll give you space I'm sorry I didn't mean it like that”. On the inside I thought oh I know how to fix this, went to my computer and played this song” *insert green day*

A: “ She got up and left. I was standing in the doorway like "what's wrong with Green Day?”

A: “ I don't know what the fuck was wrong with me, I focused too much on the chakras and forgot how to person properly. I learned once again that it is indeed very easy to get lost in the sauce.”

A: “ While we were together one day we were on a walk through my neighborhood around dusk. We were walking by a car and I looked on the ground where their headlight was iIlluminating and right there, as if in the middle of a spotlight, was a red string bracelet! This time it was made out of Tigers Eye. Was this another piece? I saw it as a sign that I was putting together the right pieces correctly and it felt like an answer to my questions about protective charms. " Do you know what this means? " I shouted as I picked it up, of course she didn't know, so I explained the whole thing to her. Yep. Looking back now and putting together those pieces I understand why she ran out of my house.”

A: “ I lost that bracelet too, well I know where it is I just don't want to touch it. I told my dad the whole red string bracelet story too and showed the bracelet to him. He went “awe that's cool” and proceeded to then rub it on his balls, bare skin. I was angry at first but being the Intellectual that I am, I realized that he said it was cool before he rubbed it on his balls like how a monkey or a dog would when they see something that they like. At the end of the day it's just a bracelet and a really good end to the bracelet story, so I told him " you know what? I'm just going to give that to you” and gifted it to him.”

A: “ That was a good ending but endings are always hard for me. That's something I've really come to know about myself overtime. The endings of books, TV shows, movies,  relationships, or podcasts even. It's so seldom that you get such a good ending that you'll just sit and watch the credits roll and chew on it. Peanut butter falcon, Amadeus, La La Land. That's a cursory list of movie recommendations that have made me sit and watch the credits. Endings always bring about such weird complex emotions. In Buddhism they say humans experience 108 emotions. One originating from each of your six senses; smell, touch, taste, sight, hearing, and conscious awareness or your third eye. Each of these emotions is multiplied by whether they are pleasant, neutral or painful.  These 18 emotions are then multiplied again by the factor of whether they are generated internally or externally for a total of 36. These 36 feelings are then multiplied one last time by a factor of three for whether or not they occurred in the past, present, or future for a total of 108 emotions. I've often wondered what the 108th emotion would be. I thought at one point I had experienced all emotions but I realized that was just number 42, a mixture of hubris and irony. In Buddhism it is suggested that we are simply vessels for experience and that the idea of a self is an illusion that will only bring about suffering. When you attach yourself too much to what you think you should be, you keep yourself from experiencing what you truly are. This is an oversimplification of a concept they refer to as the 3 universal truths. In Buddhism they believe all we have is the here and now and that we should be present with the current moment. To stay present and in the moment is to be enlightened. Buddhism suggests that enlightenment, to be enlightened from the weight of your problems, is a way of life not simply an end goal. To be enlightened is to be dedicated to traveling light. It's not always easy leaving things behind or changing your ways but over time you get used to this change, Buddhism refers to this as the impermanence of life and is another one of their attempts at giving answers for unaskable questions.  Enlightenment or being enlightened is how you act in accordance to your higher thinking along your journey. It can be a very intrinsic part of the journey, so much so that it feels as if it's all the journey is about but it's only a tool to get you from point A to point B, much like all religious practices.”

A: “In Hinduism they teach you that the self or Atman is an extension of the Brahman or supreme being. Brahman is a metaphysical concept for the single force that binds all things in existence together. The word Atman translates to essence, soul, or breath and is seen as the driving force and Immortal part of your soul. It is the microcosmic equivalent to its intertwined macrocosmic partner Brahman. I enjoy thinking of it as saying that life is the breath of existence itself and like breath, life will return from where it came. In hinduism some sects believe that the soul and the physical body are separate entities. That it's the Atman that drives the physical body to action. It's believed that when a person is living in true alignment with their Atman or soul then they will be free from suffering. It's suggested that one's role whIle here on earth is merely to experience the different perspectives of the self. To be self expressive. Which makes sense when you think about it. We would all technically have the same Atman so when the Atman returns to the Brahman do we really want to bore the Brahman by living all the same exact experiences over and over?”

A: “ While they both approach the idea of the self differently, both religions suggest that the ultimate goal is to transcend individuality, to live in harmony with one's true Divine nature and to be at peace in the present moment. Endings and goodbyes are simply a Divine part of nature I need to learn to embrace and make peace with.”

A: “When I was 21 I worked at the aptly named dispensary Ascend. I wasn't expecting to have a lot of transcendental experiences from working here but day after day it really felt like this job was truly preparing me to “ascend” to different levels within myself and the world around me. This was the largest legal dispensary in Boston Massachusetts and we were right in the middle of North Station. It was constantly busy and I never knew who I'd see walk in next. There was this one time that the slut whisperer or kirill was here, or whatever his name is now, stopped in. I had been following him since I was like 16 and thought he'd die of liver failure before I ever got to meet him but there he was right in front of me! It was really cool meeting him, granted it was at work but he was a really sweet guy. Not what I expected from his online debauchery. He even let me take pictures with him!”

A: “There was another time where I'm pretty sure Mary-Kate Olsen came in and I'm pretty sure because her license said Mary-Kate Olsen on it. I said “you're not THE Mary-Kate Olsen are you?”, she blushed with a reply of “nooo I wish” but then she started dropping Mary Kate Olsen trivia that only Mary-Kate Olsen would know. I started feeling really bad because I didn't actually know any of it and she could tell by the confused look on my face and I could tell by the look on her face that I was probably disappointing the real Mary-Kate Olsen. I stopped doing the “ you're not really this person” when people came in with famous names but after that. Well except for those Kennedy guys that kept picking up almost everyday, they were in so often that I felt like it was my obligation to ask. One guy did the same thing where he was all nooo but then started dropping a bunch of Kennedy facts. The other guy was straight up “yeah and what of it?” but the third guy was probably my favorite with the reply of “it's just a popular name”, which at this point I knew to be thoroughly true. ``

A: “Since this was the largest dispensary in Boston at the time, it was also where Mike Tyson decided to do the press release for his new cannabis brand. I got so excited to meet him only to realize that I had forgotten the super funny and memorable joke from when I hit my head at 13. I still wanted to give him something like a joke that could bring joy to his day in a sense because the show Mike Tyson Mysteries has made me laugh on some pretty shitty days. I ended up showing him a picture I took of a really weird looking pigeon. He told me that it was actually a rock dove and I got to shake his hand. I'll just leave out the part where I interrupted a conversation of his with some boxing fans to show him a picture of a pidgeon. I don't think I should add that, oh I'm still recording? I'll just edit this out.”

A: “ It was while at work that I found out about a cannabis convention. I wanted to go on my day off but no one wanted to go with me, even after I offered to buy tickets. I said screw that I'm not going to miss out, I'm going alone. I had a lot of fun, I learned a lot, and got a bunch of free stuff. Of course all things come to an end and eventually it was time to leave. I left the convention center and went to find a nice place to smoke the joint I brought with me. I saw a jazz Trio on the street but I just kept walking. I got a half a block away before I stopped and realized “ hey wait a minute. I'm by myself and I love jazz. Why did I just keep walking? I'm gonna sit down, enjoy some jazz, and smoke this joint”. I found a nice place to sit kind of off to the side. I sat there enjoying Jazz and people watching. ”

A: “I noticed two friends, one kind of looked like me. They were saying goodbye to each other. I thought to myself "look a goodbye. Goodbyes always make me sad, look at this one. It looks happy and I don't even know these people yet I still feel a twinge of sadness at the sight of their parting ways' '. I then went back to looking around. A few minutes passed before I decided it was a good time to spark up. Puff puff puff puff, I took way too big of a puff by accident and tried to hold it in while explosivly coughing. In my suffering I looked up and met eyes with none other than the dude who kind of looked like me who said goodbye and walked away. Except he was walking from the opposite direction, like he too looped around. He looked at me concernedly but I held up the joint, pointed at it while laughing and said “you know how it is' '. He did indeed know how it was so I offered him a puff. His name was Tom.``

A: “  This is where it started to get a little strange for me so I'll have to add some context to make it make sense for you. Sometimes during very deep meditations I am able to glean certain information. Whether it be information I already know and absorbed somewhere some way, information that I am able to put together from a bevy of pieces, or sometimes information that seemingly comes out of nowhere. One time in particular, I focused on how to conceive of what a Multiverse experience would be like for everyone and if I could convene with a “counsel of Adams' ' to give me advice like I was on Rick and Morty or some shit. imagination be damned, I got there. It was like I was sitting at the head of a circle of “Adams' ' looking through Windows floating in space and all of them were yelling at me. Not mean things but harsh things I thought I needed to hear to be better. Although one in particular stood out, it was a paralyzed multiversal version. He said something to the effect of “look at them, now look at me. You are in the best position out of all of us, the rich guy doesn't have it more figured out than the poor guy and neither of them have it as figured out as the rest of them. Look around, there's a reason you are sat where you are sat, you brought this together, you brought this into being. None of us would be here telling anyone anything if you weren't the one to help facilitate this. Screw whatever it is that the others are trying to put on you, that's theirs. All you need to know is that you need to totally believe in yourself and then you can do anything you set your mind to. You don't need to be better, you're already the best''. This meditation session ended with an intense headache in the back of my head that persisted for weeks. I thought maybe it was stress or maybe I had hurt my occipital lobe by simply seeing too much. Whether it was imagination or metaphysical I was blown away by the advice I received. It was that advice that prompted me to go out on my own and go to the convention.”

A: “Tom and I had a cool conversation. He said a few things that I had gleaned from meditations in the weeks prior. We had a lot of similarities, we even went to the same College, although I enrolled a year after him. The weirdest part was that he just blurted out “the fact that I can walk again is all the undeniable proof I need that God truly exists". Understandably I was confused and asked him to elaborate. He told me that he played lacrosse his first year of college, that in the middle of a game he had gotten hit in the back of the head with a ball and was paralyzed for over a year. As soon as he said that my headache lifted. So abruptly that I did some blurting out of my own. It was so shocking to suddenly have relief after weeks of just learning to live with it. This signified to me that we are all connected in some way or another. I started saying that and he stopped me and said “man if you're going to tell me that we're all connected then shut up”.  He had me there. Yet it made me realize that our belief systems and the exact words we use in our meditative, scientific, or spiritual practices dictates how we perceive things. We might all just be drawing from the same source data but we're all wearing different glasses and perspectacles so it looks different. While in the “Council of Adams” the visiting parties probably weren't multiversal versions of me but more than likely were other gifted psychics trying to access their own multiverses. It's just a coincidence that the easiest way to think about a Multiverse or universe and how you're connected to it is to think about its largest or smallest parts, like the atoms that make up your body for instance. Oh man! it wasn't a council of Adams it was a council of people who can't phonetically separate the sounds Adam from atom. There were probably a few Atmans in there for good measure too!”

A: “It made sense that he said to shut up. If he was meditating with the belief that he accessed the Multiverse and thought he was talking to himself then me saying something such as we're all connected sounds dumb and undermines his belief. I decided to change the conversation and asked him if he was the guy I'd seen say goodbye earlier. He was. I told him what I had thought when seeing them say goodbye. He told me goodbyes and endings are a part of life I need to make peace with, that nothing lasts forever and that I shouldn't expect it to. We don't know how a lot of things in life will end so isn't it nice to know how some things have ended?”

A: “ This time instead of dropping an esoteric quote I'd like to read one from the bible. I had a pretty difficult time when my nana died. I knew it was her time and that it had been coming for a while, but reality is different than ideals and concepts. On the Uber ride back to my apartment from her funeral, my driver's name was John. I thought this was a funny little coincidence because my dad's name is also John. He could see I was upset before I said anything. He started a conversation about some random bullshit and I'm talkative so I bit. He said something to the effect of “a man’s semen is their source of power and energy. Some women get addicted to consuming this power and turn into evil succubuses”. I said “oh yeah I know what you're talking about they're called semen demons”. He said that our energy, what some call a soul, is a constant. It remains forever going from body to body experiencing life from all perspectives. He told me that he had memories of being on Earth before. That he was a general, that he could remember his name, and the terrible things he had done, I resonated with this. He told me we come back to earth not only to make amends but to experience life again. That this new chance at life was a form of God showing us unlimited and total love and forgiveness. I asked “what if I want to change in this lifetime? Do I still have a chance to change it now?”. He said “yes of course, you can do anything with enough determination.” I told him that I had just left my Nana's funeral, that I felt like I hadn't loved her enough or didn't show it enough, that I felt like I had failed and let myself and others down. He said this to me “my favorite quote from the Bible is  ecclesiastes 1:4 ‘one generation passeth away and another generation cometh; but the Earth shall abideth forever’ it means people come and go but there will be things that remain constant like the earth and the love that you shared with your grandmother whether she is here or there. For now she is there but as the generations move her time will come again just as yours and mine has. The exact actors and the set pieces in the play may change but the characters and the play itself will always remain the same”.”

A: “Recently I lost my way a bit. I thought "what is the point in being thankful for everything? So many bad things have happened. Why should I be thankful for those things?”. I began to get bitter and that bitterness began to turn into an annoyance at things that wouldn't have bothered me before. Small things had suddenly turned into big problems that made me overflow with emotion. Love and hate are very similar feelings. They can be confusing to navigate. What one can accomplish with love another can accomplish with hate. Nobody is inside another person's head. We don't know how people got to where they are or what they did to get there but when asked, everyone who got somewhere will tell you that love is the way because of how destructive and energy consuming hate can be. But if you have an excess of energy and understand the necessity of destruction, then hate will seem like the way to go. It will really really seem like the way to go. Maybe sometimes hate and anger will get you out of tough situations so it feels like a necessity but this is just a confirmation bias caused by the addictive nature of hate and anger in its attempts to try to reinforce its position in your brain, just like Tetris. I got lucky, I saw myself and I saw someone I used to be, someone I tried so hard to change from being, someone I knew I didn't like being and didn't want to be. “How did I let myself get back to this?” I questioned. Then it dawned on me, sometimes you have to lose your mind a little bit to even know that you had one in the first place. The fact that I was even able to notice that I was backsliding is something that others can't do. I can change because I did change, I realized that being angry at everything is just as useless as being overly thankful for everything. The goal shouldn't be to be a lover or a hater but to be clear and balanced so you can clearly set your goals in your sights and deliberately move towards accomplishing them. Burning and freezing are both extremes of the same thing, temperature. Too much hate can make you think about how impossible or difficult tasks are or will be. Too much love will make you linger in the task forever to avoid ending it. To be able to balance yourself on the thin lines that connect all things means that you can see where they intersect and how they can act together in the accomplishment of a goal that neither side alone could accomplish. When you make balance your home you will always be able to see through the fire and ice.”

A: “ I don't really want to end on a sad story so here's another quick little story.  I reached out to this guy to ask if I could talk about this. He never got back to me even with it being like almost a year later so for the sake of this we will call him Darwin because he helped me realize the evolution of my vibe sensing capabilities. When I first moved I got a job in an office building. The place I worked for was in a shared office building meaning many different companies operated out of the same floor we were on. My boss gave me the lowdown on everyone. He told me that nobody liked Darwin and that I should avoid him. Since I'm not one to be prejudiced because someone else told me to, I asked why and my boss told me because he is loud. I thought that was a very childish and dumb reason so I made it a point to be very friendly with Darwin and say hello to him very loudly so he wouldn't feel bad about being a loud person. One night I was working late and Darwin showed up. I said hello, he shook my hand, and then went into his office and closed the door. I started feeling really strange after shaking his hand. I started having intrusive thoughts that made me very uncomfortable and they were disturbing me. I tried really hard to clear my mind and focus on my work. A minute later I hear just the loudest, dirtiest, saddest, tell me how to do it porn audio blast out of his office. I was like noooo that's what they meant by loud?! They should have told me he listens to porn loudly, not that hes just loud! I wouldn't have been so nice! it did make me realize when they say intrusive thoughts are not your own that they could have meant it literally. They could literally be propagating from outside sources and our brains are just antenna picking them up. Darwin was probably throwing off pheromones, or an aura, or some kind of frequency that I picked up and got triggered by. I quit like a week later. I felt like if those were the kinds of realizations I was going to get from being there then I was better off somewhere else.”

 A: “Writing this was difficult. It took 9 months of planning and three straight days of writing plus like another week on top of that to get it all into a cohesive Manner and I'm still leaving out so, so many things. Some things I still can't even find the right words for. This took a deliberate and consistent effort, day in and day out thinking about what it was that I wanted to say, how I go about embodying the ideas I wanted to talk about, and if what I'm saying is the right kind of energy. I found sometimes you can't even lead a horse to water, so maybe it's not my job to lead horses. It's not my place to tell you what you should think, say, do, or believe, but it is my job to live as authentically and as true to myself as I can and maybe in the process of doing that I'll end up inspiring others to take agency over their own lives as well. Watching TV is fun but making TV is fun too! I hope more people can bridge that connection between consuming and creating and how fun both can be. I hope I've inspired you to broaden your horizons, to try new and fantastic things to share with yourself and the world. Remember stay safe out there, I love you for listening and more importantly I hope you love yourself too. Keep it easy peace.”

A:“ Oh! One Last Thing Before I Go I'll be posting a series called sound e-scapes. It's a collection of ambient sounds I thought sounded relaxing and comforting. Check them out when you have some time and want to relax. “