CHAPTER 3
Balance = Equality

Be

Aware

Looking

Around

Noticing

Contradictions

Everywhere

What you decide to do about what you notice shows how in or out of balance you are with the thing in front of you.

We all have what I call the Three Layers of Darkness. Think of them as the things one might find shameful—the thoughts, desires, or memories we compartmentalize.

The first layer is what we will admit publicly. It’s run-of-the-mill. “I enjoy music.” “I get angry sometimes.” No shame here.

The second layer is what we might tell only one other person, under specific conditions. Our private fantasies or regrets.

The third layer disturbs us that it even exists. These are the thoughts most people would never admit to having, even if they know they would never act on them.

Here is the critical reframe: It is in our darkness that we refine our light.

These layers are not a prison of shame. They are a sacred workshop. When we think of ourselves as ever-changing beings, this darkness becomes the place where we explore what changes we might want to make, and why. To integrate it—not to act it out, but to acknowledge its presence—is to achieve internal coherence. A denied fragment is a point of weakness. An acknowledged fragment can be metabolized into strength.

This is internal balance. And it requires a discipline that every martial artist understands.

—

Self-discipline is the cornerstone of every martial art for a reason. The goal is to create balance within so that one may flow. Tai Chi is not about powerful strikes; it is about the flow of motion and energy. Only in peaceful balance can one flow with the energy—not command it. The sword flows through the master; the master does not force the sword.

When we are at balance within, we are capable of being at our full human potential for as long as we can maintain that equilibrium.

Achieving this balance requires leaving simple biology behind and shifting one’s fundamental view. Each human has both feminine and masculine energy to reconcile. We are emotional creatures, and we will be pulled out of balance by life—that is how we experience its fullness. The practice is in the return to center.

This brings us to the most practical, most challenging application of balance: perception.

—

Recognizing gender identity is a function of sex, of procreation capability. Outside of that, it is opinion—a story built on the most common form of coupling for our species.

They are opinion-based ideas. Old ideas. Ideas in desperate need of an upgrade.

To me, the simplest answer is to take an androgynous view of self and others, unless sex is directly relevant to the relationship (which, in a professional setting, it almost never is). I don’t care who you have sex with. It’s not my business. And unless you’re in a very specific line of work, it’s not your company’s business either.

The hardest part of creating this view is dealing with others who live imbalanced in gender identity as a core part of their identity. Our language constantly reinforces the divide: he, she, him, her.

Why not use their names if known?
Why reduce someone to their biology?

I have a friend. When they come over, they bring their dogs. There is no relevance to their biology in that moment. There is no reason for my imagination to go wild. Yet, a list of excuses runs through my mind—just as it does for most of us. The old program whirrs to life.

Self-discipline must be exercised here. We must focus on not reducing anyone to their biology, unless there is a explicit, necessary reason to discuss it.

This is not social politics. It is cognitive hygiene.

It is the practice of cleaning your lens so you can see the person—the consciousness, the skills, the soul—instead of the costume.

—

Therefore, I offer you not just a concept, but a protocol. A single-day experiment. It is the fastest way to expose your own programming and begin the rewiring.

The Androgynous Day Challenge

For one day, put deliberate effort into not noticing biological differences. Take the ideas of “men” and “women” out of your mind. See only humans.

· Dress in an intentionally androgynous fashion. No makeup, no cologne, no heels, no neckties—nothing culturally coded as exclusively “male” or “female.”
· Listen to your language. Audit your pronouns. Use names.
· When your mind categorizes someone, notice it, and let the category go.

What you will learn about yourself is priceless. What you will notice about others—their mannerisms, their energy, their words, shorn of the gender filter—is equally valuable.

This terrifies many people because we have had it rammed down our throats that a man is this and does this, and a woman is that and does that. These are opinions. To seek actual change, you must stop validating opinion as truth.

“Living in gender is living as an animal driven by instinct,” I wrote once. At work, an environment for collective creation and problem-solving, is the last place for this instinct to be in the driver’s seat. We have seen the decades of sexual harassment, the body-shaming, the suffering that “living in gender” has caused in offices. These are the results of perceptual fragmentation.

There is not one emotional state or capability owned by either sex.
Any human is capable of feeling or behaving in any way.

The androgynous view is the first, necessary evolution of perception. It is the internal balance that makes external equality possible. You cannot build a coherent team, a unified “soul of the company,” if you are perpetually seeing your colleagues through a fragmenting, biological filter.

Balance within creates the potential for equality without.
It starts by seeing the human,not the costume.

CHAPTER 4
The Empathic Instrument

Empathy.
Em·pa·thy/ˈempəTHē/: the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

Share.
Feel it with them.

There is a metric ton of material dedicated to trying to make that definition something more complex, something loftier. I, like millions of others, am an Empath. We live that definition in every breath because we were born this way. Being empathetically connected is our natural state. It takes no effort.

For those who were not born this way, the learning is straightforward: to be more empathetic is to learn to open your heart to the other and feel what they are feeling, even for a moment, so you can better understand and relate. Think of it as monitoring the response your words are creating within the other person.

It is not mind-reading. It is field-reading.

To develop this instrument, you must understand its controls. It has two primary dials: the heart and the mind.

An open mind guided by an open heart will find wisdom.
An open mind with a closed heart will only grasp at wisdom.
An open heart with a closed mind will be led by raw emotion into foolish decisions.
A closed mind and a closed heart is a blind soul, wandering aimlessly.

Your goal is the first state. The open heart ensures you care about the data you’re sensing. The open mind ensures you analyze that data wisely, without being swept away by it. This is why the internal balance from the previous chapter is non-negotiable. Without it, empathy becomes either overwhelming (heart open, mind closed) or manipulative (mind open, heart closed).

—

Now, apply this instrument in the hardest room: the performance management conversation.

This is where empathy is tested, not in comforting a friend. Here, you have a mandate to correct, to redirect, to possibly deliver difficult news. The old model sees this as a transaction of authority. The coherent model sees it as a service of clarity.

Having an open heart and mind here is of great assistance. It allows you to soften the blow not by avoiding truth, but by allowing your heart to guide your words toward the person’s capacity to hear them. This is what it means to become intuitive in your engagement. You open your heart and mind to them, and—as I wrote in my original post—you “put yourself in the slave position to better serve them so they can do better.”

You are not serving their ego. You are serving their potential. You are using empathy to find the most coherent path for your feedback to travel from your intention into their understanding, with minimal defensive fragmentation.

This is empathy in action: not as a passive feeling, but as an active tuning process. You are tuning your message to the frequency of the recipient.

—

There is no one on the planet more qualified to assist people in becoming more empathetic than a Master Empath. Not because we are better, but because for us, it is like describing water to a fish. We have never known another way to be. We can point to the currents you have been swimming past without noticing.

But the goal is not to make everyone a Master Empath. The goal is to give every leader a calibrated empathic instrument.

Start by auditing your own heart and mind dials. In your next interaction, ask:

1. Is my heart open? Am I genuinely willing to feel what this might be like for them, even if it’s uncomfortable for me?
2. Is my mind open? Am I willing to have my assumption about this person or situation changed by what I sense?

If the answer to both is yes, you are in the optimal state to connect, to communicate, and to lead. You are no longer broadcasting a signal at someone. You are engaging in a resonant feedback loop with them.

This is the foundation of trust. And trust is the substrate of all high-performing, innovative teams. You cannot build the “soul of a company” on transactions. You build it on these resonant connections.

Empathy is not a nice-to-have. It is the primary tool for building coherent human systems.

CHAPTER 5
The Algorithm of Understanding

S + L = U

Study
+
Life
=
Understanding

How you decide to view your life determines a lot of what you study. From my view, I feel that now that I have attempted to find some clever new “stupid bullshit” to pander with, I can drop the facade.

I personally find the formula articles and listicles I see too much of to be weak attempts at showing off intellect. Intellect isn’t Let me reinvent everything for you. It’s Let me pick that up where you left off or Did you think of this? It is anything that represents further exploration for deeper understanding and discovery.

I have often said that as a Shaman, I see myself as a spiritual scientist and my own biggest skeptic. This allows me not to be foolish in accepting truth from only one source. It also forces me to see what happens, try it again, and see if I get the same results. If not, why not? What was different?

I question “the ever blue holy living hell” out of myself before I ever sit down to write. That’s part of my Life.

Now for the Study.

Anyone who has ever asked me for reference material on spirituality often gets a few things:
A website that is a repository of dogmatic teachings from across the world.
A free copy of a one-dollar book that is a do-it-yourself guide for building your own path based on your study and your life experience.
The meditation I have been giving away for free for years.
A self-Reiki practice.

I give them everything they need to study what they want and check in with their own higher self—so they don’t need me. When it comes to spiritual growth, I never charge a thing to anyone who is serious.

That’s how I apply what I have studied to my life to show I understand what it means to be a Shaman. This is not even close to scratching the surface of the study I have done.

I am constantly studying something, and have been since I was a child. When one seeks to be a student first, one’s life will provide the lessons for all one desires to understand.

—

This is the algorithm. Understanding is not an opinion. It is not a repackaged quote. It is the finished product that comes out of the continuous loop of formal Study and lived Life experience. One without the other is incomplete.

Study without Life is theoretical, brittle knowledge—the kind that shatters upon contact with a real human problem.
Life without Study is a series of unprocessed experiences,repeating patterns without insight.

But when you bring them together—when you take a concept you’ve studied and deliberately apply it to a situation in your life, or when you bring the confusion of your life to your studies with a specific question—the friction generates something new. That new thing is Understanding. It is wisdom that is yours because you have forged it in the fires of your own existence.

A leader who has not studied the people they desire to lead will never get further than being a boss barking orders. This is as old as our species. If your interest in them is not genuine, you will never have their genuine loyalty.

So you Study them. You listen. You learn their stories, their skills, their unspoken fears (that’s the L data, gathered through the empathy from the last chapter). And you bring your own L—your life experience of what motivates, what discourages, what builds trust. You combine that with the S—the studied frameworks of psychology, systems theory, or even the Gyre Field model. The result is a genuine U—an understanding of what that person, or that team, truly needs to excel.

This “U” is what you lead from. Not from a generic playbook, but from a synthesized, living wisdom.

—

Learning is my passion. It is the thing that drives me to never stop studying and to find new things to understand as I live the lesson.

And as you can see, I cast off the formula I started with—S+L=U—and yet those words kept showing their relation as I wrote. Because they are not a gimmick. They are a law.

They describe how anyone, from a Shaman to a CEO, generates credible insight. You are not a repository of answers. You are a demonstrated practitioner of this algorithm. You show your Study by referencing traditions and models. You show your Life in every story of your son, your clients, your time in the military or corporate world. The Understanding is what appears on the page, or in the room with a client.

It is how you can be both the spiritual scientist and the leadership consultant. The process is the same. The substrate changes.

To lead anyone, or anything, you must first understand. And to understand, you must be both a perpetual student and a committed participant in the messy, beautiful experiment of your own life.

This is the engine. Everything else is output.

Copy and paste this for yourself.

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Have a blessed one and be excellent always.