EVOLVING INTO ADULTHOOD

In childhood, our inner structure is formed unconsciously as a result of the influences from the world we experience around us - from parents, family, school, media, politics.

This structure does not disappear when we become an adult. The decisions, beliefs, stories, and patterns, all remain there and become hidden under the cloak of the pieces of paper that show how we’ve ‘grown up’ - the diplomas, the degrees, the licenses, the certificates, the awards, the photos.

None of the institutions in Mainstream Culture from which these papers come, offer the space to examine the inner structure, so what we do is pile new floors on top of the same foundation that we built during childhood (and even before then). It’s like adding more and more new stories to an ancient building - probably not a very safe strategy.

TRUE INITIATION

The process which calls each of us to look at this inner structure is what I will call a True Initiation. Although Mainstream Culture doesn’t offer them, they exist. These kinds of journeys are only available at the edges. These are the activities you hear about that your family & friends would think you were crazy for considering.

It’s almost as if being called crazy is a measuring tool for True Initiation, and in some ways it absolutely is. If your family & friends are willingly indoctrinated into Mainstream Culture, and you have to go to the edge to find True Initiation, then they should reasonably fear for your wellbeing. Because to an indoctrinated person, going to the edge means you could fall off and die.

Why go for it?

The simple answer is that you won’t die. At the edge is actually where you begin to live.

Anything that is not the edge is a repetition of what has already been. It is mechanical, and that which is mechanical is dead (This is not an argument against having a daily practice because committing to a daily practice may be one of the edgiest things you could do. For others, abandoning their daily practice may be the edge.).

This is not about what’s right or wrong. It is about choosing to go to the hidden places where we must meet our deeply unconscious ways of being.

As an example of what happens when we don’t go within, we are told the story of the Puritans journeying off to discover a new world. They were explorers seeking the next frontier with a desire to create something new. It is true that they wanted to create something new, but they were not explorers. They were refugees of a horrific culture that tortured, mutilated, and enslaved anyone who did not conform. They ran away to create something else. The result, however, was a carbon copy in the “New World”. The foundation of the United States of America was formed by a traumatized group of people unconsciously propagating the same behaviors (torture, mutilation, and enslavement) that created their own trauma.

Why?

Because just saying “I’m done with this” does not make the inner structure disappear. It just makes it unconscious or as the spiritual community would say, ‘leaving it in the shadow’.

Creating something different requires a conscious dismantling & rebuilding process. The former precedes the latter. This means that the dismantling process goes first. It is the doing of undoing.

YOU CAN’T DO IT ALONE

The inner structure is wisely built with blind spots. These are meant to make it all make sense. This is why you need a team to reflect back what you can’t see about yourself.

On the other hand, a team is also the easiest way to remain blind. A team that is about reinforcing and collective head nodding may be one of the most dangerous forces in this world - collective reinforcement.

THE ONLY WAY TO START IS TO GO!

All of these words can lead to a lot of confusion. This is one of your inner structure’s most powerful strategies to make sure that nothing happens. And yet, you can only take the next step on an evolutionary path. That’s because each next step on the path is only revealed by taking the one that precedes it.

So, GO!

BOXINESS

I want to share about something that is quite uncomfortable to me, for many reasons. One of the first big discomforts about it is that I don’t know what language is ‘correct’ or ‘appropriate’ to use, so I’m just going to say it in the way I know to say it while taking great care for the humans of whom this speaks.

This is also where the conversation about the edges of our box (belief systems, identities, psychology, ego) starts to emerge, and what happens when we meet those edges whether by our own curiosity or the invitation from others.

Over this past week in the mountains of Costa Rica, I have been spending a lot of time at a community that is centered on providing a new space/voice to queer humans. The Gayborhood started to rub on the edge of my box well before I arrived here. Just from hearing the name I had thoughts like ’Why do they need to segregate/identify themselves like this?’, ‘this must be a great excuse to have orgies all the time’, ‘gay men have a lot of trauma’, ‘this is going to be a messy space’, among others.

Beyond that, I thought that those thoughts were authentically mine and truly something I had to look out for. This is the beautiful way that we create a second layer of beliefs around our beliefs - the second layer of security.

The way it has gone has had no bearing on this fantasy that my box had created, causing it to go completely and gracefully liquid.

Not only was I received with so much love and curiosity, I was offered a brave space to notice how much my deep, mechanical strategies hold me back from going farther than the safety of what I know to be safe/known (yes, that was intentionally written that way and I welcome you to read it again).

During a day of connection, I was faced clearly with the realization that throughout my childhood I created a wall that only allows me to connect with men in certain ways. As I moved through the space and came close to another man, I felt the point where my body would start vibrating to the tune of ‘this is too much’. It was like being a doll with a pull string reaching it’s maximum length and then getting yanked back. This wall arbitrarily limits my ability to go any deeper and take risks in order to experience what else is possible. It’s like I have a flat-earth map where if I were to venture too far off, I would fall off the end of the Earth and die. It really feels that way and I’m only able to see it now.

What would happen if I allowed my sexual energy to get activated with another man?

Surely, I’d die. The connection is not so obvious. It goes something like this: if I do this then I will be classified as [blank], and if I’m classified this way then my tribe will abandon me, and if I’m abandoned then I will be eaten by a bear or a wolf or another tribe.

There are layers of this that are from this life. Yet, this “I’ll die” thing is a story that clearly goes back further than this lifetime.

And it can end today. Right now.

It ends when I declare that these parts of me are not me. It ends when I take that step off the edge into the unknown even though these parts think I will die. It ends when I decide that this map I’ve been carrying is not the only map.

And the words don’t substitute the action of challenging the edges. The next step is to take the next step - to create the experiment.

So, I took that next step and entered into the void. I said ‘YES’ to an invitation into a temple evening.

What I discovered was that I have created such a solid foundation within my center that I can sit in the groundlessness of the unknown with a beautiful grasp of my experience. I learned about these men in a way I was not able to before. I connected to some of the deep pain of being a queer man in this age and the connection to my own pain. I saw that my pleasure and presence are not dependent on the outer circumstance - they never have been. I watched my walls dissolve with such ease and grace - that after several years and hundreds of hours of practice, the liquid state can come more smoothly.

Because I entered a space with a different context; because I was able to notice what was going on within me; because I could create a gap between my beliefs and reality; because I had the courage to take the next step; because I’ve cultivated the power to consciously use my feelings, this new territory of love, connection, brotherhood, and fun is now available to me.

The purpose of doing this and documenting it is less about my own liberation and more about carving a new path of deep presence for us all to walk together, together.

My proposal to you is to take time to discover what flat-earth map you’re living in. What is something that you believe that if you do it, you’ll die. It is where a piece of your authentic/true self has been hiding. It is a territory rich with gold waiting to be mined. It is where the healing of this planet begins (HINT: your fear has a message for you).

AWAKEN THY SOUL 2022 UPDATE

Charlotte and I are in a process of learning a new lesson on humility, perseverance, and responsibility.

THE SHIT:

It is not easy to admit that we were unable to call in enough souls for our April 2022 immersion. We went through some waves of deep unworthiness, committed ourselves to do the Emotional Healing Processes to get the gold that this experience was trying to show us.

THE GOLD:

I (Jeff) had a story that my worth is directly connected to my accomplishment or failures. The process took me back to a moment when I was 7yrs old and we were on the boat coming back to the marina. I didn’t tie the lines correctly and I didn’t spray the boat down the way I was supposed to and I felt rejected for it. It was something so simple, yet so profoundly impactful for the lens through which I’ve been seeing the world. I made a decision that if I failed, I wouldn’t be loved. I let go of that old decision and made a new decision that failure is valuable and necessary for my growth.

I (Charlotte) learned that what felt like a rejection led me through a process to make a new decision that rejection was actually sacred re-direction. This process took me back to past relationships where I was rejected (left/dumped) and at the time i made a story that rejection means I’m a failure and the universe doesn’t support what I want. I made a new decision that rejection is sacred re-direction. I am learning to really surrender to a greater plan than the one I have. I trust there is something else happening for me, my evolution, and the future folks that join this initiation.

THE APPLICATION:

Doing (and holding space for) Emotional Healing Processes is an incredibly powerful tool to alchemize the pain, blocks, and resistances you feel in your life. They allow you to extract the deep wisdom of your emotions by opening them up fully and taking an experiential look at where they got started. It’s like plant medicine without the substances.

Learning this technique is an invaluable part of the AWAKEN THY SOUL experience. It is a superpower for all humans to cultivate this skill, whether you are a guide/teacher/therapist and see clients/patients, you have a romantic partner and struggle with blocks and resentments, you are a parent who can’t seem to connect emotionally with your children, or work with a team that gets stuck often.

So with excitement, we let you know that Awaken Thy Soul: Initiation into Radical Living is happening in July 2022! 

Send us a DM if this resonates for you and you’d like to explore the new dates. We are now scheduling connection calls with those that are ready to take the leap and up-level their lives.

PUSH & PULL

I’m in the middle of what I can safely say is the most challenging separation of my life (being separated from my mother at birth was probably the most challenging, but I haven’t been able to remember that experience consciously). It has sent me to a place of self-doubt and confusion that I haven’t known in a very long time. It has sent me into deep reflection of my life and the people I see around me trying to figure out where the hell I went wrong. How could I lose the woman of my dreams, the first woman I have ever wanted to create a life and family with?

When I look around at humans in the world, I notice that there are those who are either mostly pull or mostly push. This is not about defining their being, rather where they’re at in a given moment or phase.

There are those who bulldoze and there are those who keep their head down thinking they can’t, or they aren’t good enough, or they need to wait for permission.

The modern culture system does a really good job of creating pull people - those who were beaten so deeply into fear by school, TV, parents, religion, etc. that they rather just be told what to do. They are the machines that keep the system running. The ones who wake up, go to work, go shopping, watch TV, go to bed, and do it again.

Some of these people become alcoholics, partiers, drug addicts, gamblers, whatever is needed to forget about what life could really be like.

This was me in my 20s, too scared to do anything for myself - thinking I was living because I went out all the time and traveled to NYC and LA to party with people there.

And then something shifted. I had this experience of finding something important to tell the world that was much greater than myself. I woke up to a new set of options. I beat the unconscious fear. Through many new practices, I slayed the dragon, awakening deeper connection to my own power to choose from more than what was offered on the menu.

Or so I thought.

What has started to become clear to me now is that in my life lately, it’s mostly push. I come up with plans, I don’t check with anyone about them, and I don’t want to wait for anyone to approve. I just have a big GO for whatever I come up with. For the past 4yrs I’ve been telling myself this story that this is what sovereignty means. In an American mind, that all sounds great. It’s exactly what capitalism is all about - do more, create more, GO, GO, GO!

What I thought was me breaking out of the system was just me playing a different position on the same team - like going from a lineman to a quarterback.

Then, an exercise came into my life that finally showed me what was going on. 

In a training space, I stood face-to-face with a man about my same height and weight. The exercise was about conscious anger. We were instructed to put our hands on each other’s shoulders. The only instruction we were given was to use our anger energy to push against each other. I thought to myself, “I’ll finally get the chance to express all of this anger I’ve been feeling about the terrible break up I’m going through”. 

The trainers gave us the GO and I fucking went! I pushed this man all the way to the end of the room. I had so much RAGE in me that I was basically horizontal as I pushed. Eventually they yelled STOP and asked, “why are you fighting with your partner? They are your partner. If you push this hard, your partner will withdraw, and you will fall.”

I collapsed to my knees. I finally saw it. I wept deeply as this new realization entered every cell of my being.

I’ve been pushing so hard on the world that if anyone withdraws, I’ll just fall on my face. And somebody did withdraw. Not just anyone, the most important person in my life - the greatest love of my life. She left because I was too much push. I landed flat on my face. For over a month I’ve been devastated, defeated, confused, lost.

Now, I can see that I gave my center completely away to her. I relied on her. I was pushing all of me on her, which required her to push back in order for us to remain standing.

A useful push must come from your center. To go for something without being centered will end up in a personal disaster. Ironically, the process of learning that required a few face plants to really get it.

Face planting sent me back into a pull energy for a while. For the past month, I was seriously doubting myself again. I lost so much confidence. I’d been questioning everything.

Now, I am still on the ground, but my face is no longer in the mud. I’m not over what happened, but I’m able to see what I need more clearly and to communicate it in a different way. I’ve moved out of the doubt. I’m now on my knees regaining my structure and reestablishing my center.

Un-cover Your True Self - FORBES ARTICLE

I’m incredibly proud to have been featured in FORBES with an important message about a different way of living.

The article is in Spanish HERE.

This is the translation in English:

The Hebrew word for barefoot is phonetically translated to ‘yahef’. Although it is the word used for barefoot, what it literally means is ‘without covering’. So, I’ll invite you to take a journey with me into what this means and what it says about how the concept of value is transforming in our world.

We’ll begin back in the World War II era. My family comes from Eastern Europe and in a span of about 20yrs they had to pick up whatever they could grab in order to flee two of the most terrible dictatorships in history, first Hitler and then Castro in Cuba. This might be seen as the unluckiest circumstances, but they were lucky enough to see a trend early on and make a run for it before it was too late, and at the same time leaving behind their communities, possessions, business, pretty much everything except what they could carry.

This pilgrimage was set in the middle of the largest revolution in the history of modern humans. It was the beginning of the age of consumerism. Our basic needs (in the first world) became so deeply and easily met that we didn’t have to spend all day working anymore and so big companies capitalized on opportunities to occupy our time with shopping and experiencing. 

Then came me, in 1988, raised through the peak of this culture of consumption. I spent the first 28 years of my life acquiring. I was always trying to be someone.

Here’s the thing about being a consumer - it is not our natural state as humans. If you take a moment to look deep within and really check-in with yourself, each of you can admit that you were put here on Earth to be of service. Metaphorically, humans are meant to be more like stars than like planets - to radiate rather than to consume. Then, how is it possible that we ended up here?

The answer is simple, we were told many stories that changed our perception of ourselves. They were practically shoved down our throat (just like at the advertising trends over the years). And the subtle, overarching message of the stories is, ‘you are not good enough’. If you have this ‘lesser than’ image of yourself, then you must acquire external things/experiences in order to be ‘enough’.

The above is a simple explanation, and the result is something very messy and hard to accept. We humans have created layers of stories to cover ourselves up because of the belief that who we are is not OK. We go around wearing masks that are so well crafted that we can’t even see them. We are quite good at seeing other people’s masks, but not our own.

To give an example, one of those masks is ‘my feet are inherently weak and fragile’. And so we need supportive shoes. Now, I’m not saying that wearing shoes is wrong or bad, but the shoes that our society has given to us and that we have accepted are devices that do not honor the truth of what our feet are capable of doing - what they were built for. I say this humbly as a result of having studied medicine, written research studies on foot & ankle reconstruction, and co-founded a large foot & ankle medicine practice.

When I discovered the truth about what I’ll call natural foot health it was like God or the Universe or Source or whatever you want to call it, delivered to me my service to humanity. I was meant to share this message with the world. As I connected more and more with this mission, the masks that I had been wearing started to peel away. Anything that I was doing that took energy away from this had no place in my life anymore.

What began for me as a way to transform the way foot & ankle care was delivered and educated became a journey into the deeper levels of being human in the context of the modern world. These days I carry the title of healer (which is distinct from the title of physician). For me, a healer supports people in removing the layers of what they think they need to be in order to reveal the beautiful essence that is their being. It is real, root-cause healing - that occurs on an emotional level.

The questions that I close this inquiry with are, what is more luxurious than living in your truth? What would it be like for you to live without covering?

With love, 

Jeff ‘Yaheff’ Shub, MD

THE GREAT RETURN

This barefoot thing is not about feet.

It’s about the hero’s journey.

As a society, we went on an exploration of what was possible when we didn’t have to spend our time figuring out how to get enough food.

It’s been fun to interact with new technology and at the same time it has left us with an emptiness inside.

Every conversation I have with people who have made the big changes in life to RETURN to a more natural/spiritual way of living is unique and always includes a story about how unfulfilled they felt.

The thing they thought would make them happy out there, didn’t.

Big surprise.

It was always there, where they least expected it..

Within.

With that remembering comes a shedding process. For me, it started with my shoes. It started with returning to the knowing that my body was built perfectly to take care of itself and get stronger through the challenge of being left to do its thing.

And with that also comes a releasing of the “you’re not good enough” story that big industry implants in our brain from a very young age that gets us to buy shit we don’t need.

Reclaim your perfection.

HOW ARE YOU DOING IT NOW?

INITIATION INTO ADULTHOOD

All Indigenous Cultures that I know of had their ‘rite of passage’ - a ritual initiation where the irresponsible patterns of childhood were shed in order to make room for new, responsible patterns.

As a child, we are not supposed to be responsible. We are supposed to be children. We are supposed to be cared for. In exchange for that care, we take on the stories, personality traits, quirks, patterns, beliefs, etc.. of our caretakers. It’s the unspoken contract between caretaker and child.

And then our physical body matures, our mind transforms in its capability. We look grown up, but there is so much left to develop in order to fully embody adulthood.

Where is the emotional body training? When do we learn to connect with our feelings? To distinguish feelings from emotions? To look inward for answers?

What about the energetic body? When do we learn to sense what is needed? To strengthen our intuition? To develop our sacred practices?

We don’t and so we live in a world full of large children. Humans who are physically and intellectually powerful, yet emotionally and energetically empty - lost.

I’m one of those lost boys and the way I’ve started to find some semblance of truth is by finally coming back to the most powerful statement I’ve learned..

I DON’T KNOW

And that is why (and from where) I create these workshops/trainings - to give myself the opportunity to learn and develop what has not been taught, with a circle of humans who choose to do the same. And to do something about the lack of rites of passage that have left us starving.

We use our anger about the way things are to take each step courageously into the unknown with the powerful wisdom of fear directing the navigation and with our sadness we connect on deeper levels than we’ve ever known possible.

Radiant beings emerge from the ashes.

HOLDING SPACE

What does this mean to you?

To me, it’s another way of saying “being a human”.

I’ve noticed that as I move through the world, people share their hopes, struggles, desires, feelings, etc. with me.

And that sharing would leave me with a choice that I didn’t know I had, to hold space.

I used to think that when someone shared with me they were asking me for help to “solve the problem”. There was only one thing to do, give advice.

I realize now that 99% of the time, people just want to feel heard and seen. They just want someone who will actually listen.

If only listening was that simple. It’s not.

First, listening requires a sort of emptying of self - thoughts, voices, etc.

And then we must know that there are different forms of listening to choose from. We’ve never been trained to do any of them except what is called “neurotic listening” - listening with intent to respond.

In the workshop on Saturday, we will explore more responsible kinds of listening:

1️⃣ Adult Listening

2️⃣ Possibility Listening

3️⃣ Discovery Listening

4️⃣ Listening to the Field

And more responsible kinds of speaking:

1️⃣ Adult Speaking

2️⃣ Possibility Speaking

3️⃣ Dragon Speaking

4️⃣ Discovery Speaking

5️⃣ Speaking from the Unknown

The point is, you can only make a conscious choice if you know you have a choice. 

GREAT SPACE HOLDERS SEE MORE POSSIBILITIES BECAUSE THEY PRACTICE.

Gaining Freedom from the Known

During my travels through Costa Rica in February 2020, I spent a few days at Rayos del Sol, a retreat property in Nosara. There, I attended a barefoot foot nerd retreat hosted by The Foot Collective and Caveman Strong.

The owner of Caveman Strong, Tyler Touchette, is one of the most interesting people who I connected with during the trip. He wasn't very outwardly spiritual, to be honest, however we connected deeply around the book he held in his hand most of the time, Conversation with God. This is a book I read a while back and has had a deep impact in my life.

On one of the last days of the trip, he came to me with this book here and told me, in so many words, that he knew this book was meant for me. He gave it to me as a gift and I'm so grateful to him for it.

I left the retreat to head down to Envision Festival which was a 7hr car drive down with the Shaman who had led the Inipi Ceremony (sweat lodge) at the retreat center.

You may not know this, but Shamans are notoriously unreliable.. I think they do it on purpose.

Anyways, I was dropped off by a cab driver in the middle of nowhere in the jungle to wait for the Shaman to pick me up. During the three hours I spent waiting, I consumed the entire book and in that moment my life was changed. In that moment, I realized I was sitting in total stillness in the middle of the wild waiting for a Shaman to drive me down to a permaculture festival.

What a life I'd blossomed into!

The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation

This book was gifted to me by my dear friend, Fabrizio.

He's been recommending this book for a long time.

Giselle and I spent July/August 2020 in Tulum where we rented a three-bedroom apartment to welcome the Miami tribe to come stay with us.

Upon arriving in Tulum to stay for a week, Fabrizio brought it with him to finally get it in my physical awareness.

Fabrizio is shirtless unless proven otherwise, such is the photo :)

Thanks, Fabrizio!! 

The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation

MEDICINE IS CORRUPTED

Every time I post something about the evils of healthcare, there are a few people who comment about a serious illness they have that requires treatment by a doctor.

I honor them and feel such a high level empathy for them and their doctor who surely feels the pain of not having the tools to cure their patients.

The truth is that the tools exist. They live within us and within books/inventions that never make it out because the intention of our “health” system is TO MAKE MONEY.

You, who have a serious genetic disease, will never be properly treated by big healthcare. You will be kept alive with enough suffering that you keep coming back, but not so much that you die.

There are solutions out there that your doctor will never tell you about because they probably don’t know, and the few that do either leave medicine or don’t tell you because they have fallen prey to the sociopathic, money-driven society that we live in.

Wake up! Seek more! Look within!

This is an outstanding video by Kimberly Carter Gamble of Thrive Movement International, the creators of the movie Thrive.