Finding Balance between the Matrix and Spirituality

photo: in 2003 at my first annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos. I was playing with another “YGL” friend. We got to the main stage when everyone left and pretended we were keynote speakers. I learned blogging there with Joi Ito. I was 29 years old.

For the last 3 years, I have been 300% learning spirituality deeply immersed in indigenous or ancient worlds.

I almost stayed in the jungle. I love it there.

I am not sure what to call what I learned, some would call it “shamanism” but that’s a russian word that has nothing to do with the tribes I learned from. They don’t like it and I don’t really like it either.

Staying in the jungle or coming back and spending all my time doing ceremonies and spiritual work would be negating my past.

I built many businesses and invested in hundreds of entrepreneurs, built a conference that I ran for 12 years. I started “blogging” in 2003 (my dear Japanese friend Joi Ito taught me at the WEF) and ever since loved sharing on the Internet.

Since I came back in June I write, participate in our community on discord and now I am building a new conference.

I am full on back in the matrix working on starting a business, inviting speakers and selling tickets to make everything possible.

The last week I spent more than 10 hours a day on my computer doing all of that. Nothing spiritual left. N-A-D-A. Well, almost. It felt this way anyway.

This morning instead of going immediately back to my to-do list and incoming messages I sat in the trees without looking at my phone and started singing. I sang really high for an hour. No plants needed, just my voice. I reconnected in a matter of minutes to the spiritual world I saw in the forest. I took some distance from my to-do list and the issues of the matrix that I need to go through or solve. I pushed away any stress that the conference is Oct 14-15 in Paris so my mind tries to tell me “why did you chose it so soon?”. It is perfect that it is only in 7 weeks, it forces me (and our team now, of volunteers and full-time that gathered in a few days) to focus and it’s going to be great.

What I need to do is very clear to me:
-don’t fall back into 300% “matrix” only doing business like you were doing in the past
-don’t spend your life learning spiritual paths and trying to become anyone (or a “shaman”).

I am 50. I am old enough to know who I am and stop searching to become someone. I became nobody in the forest now I can just be myself.

With discipline I am both an entrepreneur building in the matrix and a spirit who learned (a little) to navigate in the world where we go when we dream and where we we die.

Balance.

Every day some singing, meditation and spiritual work, perfect as I wake-up. Then full-on to-do list and navigating the matrix.

I will navigate the matrix better with what I learned in the spiritual world. As Ram Dass says, like a scientist I can use a microscope to see what I need to see using the spiritual tools, then I don’t stay in that view, I integrate what I learned and apply it to my life.

“If you get the message, hang up the phone. For psychedelic drugs are simply instruments, like microscopes, telescopes, and telephones. The biologist does not sit with eye permanently glued to the microscope, he goes away and works on what he has seen.” - Ram Dass

I have a body and I was born in the city and not indigenous in the forest for a reason.

A “spiritual” note now:

There are a few friends in the community who want to learn some indigenous songs. I sang “Wakomaya” at the end of this podcast episode as it’s the best known Yawanawá song and the first one I was taught to learn.

You can find indigenous singing this song of course (I shared one here) and I recommend you learn and listen to them or go to the forest meet them as I did.

I do not have permission to share my hundreds of ceremony recordings from them but I have permission to use my own voice so this is what I can offer. It is not perfect. I find it fun to mix “matrix” thoughts about entrepreneurship with sometimes a song at the end.

Feel free to ignore it entirely, that’s why it’s at the end.

My podcast is on Apple Podcasts and Spotify