Standing Nowhere
What if the point isn’t to find answers—but to sit with the mystery?
Standing Nowhere invites you into a space of breath, laughter, and deep listening. Through soulful conversations and honest reflections, we explore awakening, healing, and what it means to be human. It’s about letting go, waking up, and remembering who we are beneath the noise. Join us as we sit with the sacred, the silly, and everything in between—from deep chats to spontaneous insight. Come as you are.
Standing Nowhere
Episode 1: I Don't Know What I'm Doing
Content note: This episode includes reflections on personal struggle and emotional hardship. Please listen with care if you’re in a sensitive place.
On his 42nd birthday, Jacob hits record for the first time — not as a guru, but as a fellow human navigating burnout, financial hardship, and spiritual awakening.
In this vulnerable debut of Standing Nowhere — a podcast about mindfulness, personal growth, and the human experience — he shares the raw story behind the mic:
• Why he left the corporate world and walked away from sales
• Surviving poverty, debt, and starting over in Arizona
• Working 60-hour weeks as a delivery driver
• The moment of surrender that sparked a deeper trust in life
If you’ve ever felt stuck, overwhelmed, or unsure of your path, this is for you. No advice, no platitudes — just presence, reflection, and the beginning of a conversation about what it really means to wake up.
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Hello fellow listeners and welcome to the first episode of the Standing Nowhere podcast. As the title suggests, I don't know what I'm doing. I have no clue how to start a podcast, how to do a podcast. I suppose I should get into why. I feel the compulsion to start something that I have no idea how to do. I mean, honestly, it's something that I feel really pulled to do. And yet, when I get close to doing it or sitting down and recording or listening to an episode, because I've recorded a couple of practice episodes, several hours worth actually, None of which I was happy with. I mean, right now I'm just filled with nervousness, right? Uneasiness, a sort of tension, if you will. Something I want to do so badly, and yet I have no idea how to do it. And this is literally the very beginning. This is the first minute, couple of minutes, and we're off to the races. And I don't know what this podcast... is going to look like in a few months or years, or if it'll even be around. But today's my birthday. It's my 42nd birthday, and I thought, well, what better day to start? I've been wanting to start this podcast for quite a while now, several years. It first took kind of a vague form of just wanting to do something with my voice, a recording of some kind. I drove... Well, before I started driving people around doing Uber, I used to work at a call center. People would always tell me, you've got a radio voice. You've got a radio voice. Driving people around in Uber rides, same thing. The desire to record or start a podcast kind of came in and out from other people telling me that I should. Some might say I have an articulate voice or I can be persuasive, but it really depends on what we're talking about. You see, I come from a background in sales. I've done sales for about 15 years. I have not done it in the last seven or eight years, and I don't like sales. I don't like pushing things onto people. I don't like selling things to people. I don't like persuading people. I don't like that feeling at all. It gives me an ill feeling inside. I have a cousin who lives here now. He just moved here to Arizona, and he does car sales. And he told me he doesn't like it either. And he's good at it. He's also an actor. He's done voiceover work. But he doesn't like sales. Why don't we like sales? It just feels artificial. You're just pushing things on people, trying to get them to do something. I did over the phone sales. I've done network marketing. I've always been really good at whatever sales I was doing, mostly in my 20s. But I reached a point where I was saying to myself, do I believe in this or what am I doing? I'm getting people to spend their money to take my advice to do something and it's costing them money and their time. Do I believe in the thing that I'm selling? A lot of the times the answer to that question was no, especially in network marketing. I had reached, I won't say what company it was, but I had reached in the top fraction of a percentile. People rarely ever reach the level of direct marketing, or not direct marketing, but multi-level marketing, network marketing, whatever you want to call it. I would cold call realtors. I had spreadsheets about when to call them back and follow up with them to see if I could get them to sign up. It was a lot of work. It reached the point where I just couldn't do it anymore. I had done it in conjunction with my main job, which was also over-the-phone sales for vacations and You know, the prepackaged vacations where your shuttle and your food, everything's included. And I sold cruises. And then, what did I do after that? Network marketing took off. I started to surpass my main job income with my network marketing income. And then one day came along where I got fired from my main job. And I was really glad that I built up my network marketing business. But it was kind of scary to get fired. And then I did my network marketing full time. And that was really stressful. And that started to decline because I was so stressed and I was trying too hard. So I got another job, also in sales, basically booking rooms for a hotel in Las Vegas, a big hotel chain. And I would get commissions if I upsold suites for the larger ones. So long story short, I've always been in sales. And I'm sick of doing sales. I'm sick of pushing things onto people. So those listening to this podcast, you can rest assured I am not trying to push anything on you. That brings me up to another point. Why am I doing this podcast? Why do I feel so compelled to do it? Well, to backtrack, I had been told in my job over the phone doing sales to... You know, people kept telling me, you have a radio voice, you should do a podcast, you should do something on the radio, you should do voiceover, blah, blah, blah. Constantly, you should do this, you should do this, you should do this. So everyone's telling me, you've got the voice, why don't you do it? Well, what if you have nothing to say, right? So I kind of farted around and did a couple of podcasts, episodes with my brother, nothing at all serious. We recorded them on our phone, and then I did a couple by myself on my phone, and then I did one with my gaming headset on my PC, and that one actually got a couple of hundred listens, and it generated enough money for me to buy a Rockstar energy drink. And I thought, wow, that's pretty cool. If I can just sit down and talk for 30, 40 minutes to an hour or whatever, and make some money out of it, that's pretty cool. But the thing is, Again, I don't want to sell things to people and I don't want to get into something just for the money aspect. I'm not a money motivated person. Ironically, one of the only things that can really get to me in life or stress me out is money. money or financial insecurity. And I've never experienced financial insecurity. Like I have in the last I want to say seven years, but really in the last five years, like after COVID started, I have not felt financially secure. For at least seven years, but especially the last five. After COVID hit, everything fell apart. My ability to earn and down the tubes. I was doing Uber and Lyft at the time. And my son, who has very serious asthma, it was a very scary thing at the time. We didn't know what... What it could do. COVID was still kind of a mystery. So we were all staying home, if you guys remember the quarantine months, and they were sending in the $600 weekly checks, I believe. Not much. For some people, it's a lot, but it was enough for us to get by. And then those fell through the floor. They stopped sending them to me after like three, four months. So I had to go start making money again. And I eventually did bring home COVID to my wife and my son. Luckily, he showed no symptoms. He was only 14 at the time, something like that. My wife and I got pretty ill, though. We were floored for a couple of days. Our sense of smell and taste has never quite gone back. I still feel weird around garlic. I used to always love it. Now I can barely smell it. stomach it? I mean, it depends. But it was a rough time for me. My credit score went through the floor. when the payments weren't coming through, there was a real lull period in Uber and Lyft rides. And I had not had the intelligence yet to start doing deliveries because at the time they were flourishing. Nobody wanted to go out. Everybody was ordering deliveries. And I didn't do that in gig work yet. So I had switched from sales to Uber and Lyft. And then I experienced major income issues when they stopped sending me unemployment. And that was due to a computer glitch. So I didn't get unemployment for about a year. In that year, I was barely able to get by I eventually got my earnings back up to where they needed to be but by that point there was like several months of rent that were like piled up and luckily I had them I forget what the term was it was like what they call the moratorium I was taking advantage of that so that we wouldn't be on the street eventually they did fix the computer glitch and they sent me back owed unemployment, which was in the amount of like 35 grand or something ridiculous. But by that point, my credit score had dropped from the 750, 770 range all the way down to, I want to say 500s, low 500s, maybe high 400s, low 500s. It was terrible. And I had never experienced bad credit before, but holy smokes. And anyone listening to me that has experienced bad credit knows what I'm talking about. Like you become an outcast in society. And I have very strong feelings towards our economic system and especially our credit system. You know, in a nutshell, I will plant a flag in the ground saying that the credit system that we currently have is broken. It is a scam. It is not accurate at all. And it's designed to keep people down. I was rejected for every house that I applied for. I didn't realize having a low credit score meant you couldn't get a place to rent, for Christ's sake. So I couldn't find, you know, I had eventually caught up with my my payments with my landlord. And even though I had been there for four years, never missed a payment once in that time until the COVID incident, in which case I eventually did pay all of it back before we even moved out. He wanted me out and didn't even want to talk. There was no discussion to be had. It was just, you're out, you're done. So You know how it is with landlords. They don't really care about you, especially when they go through a homeowners association or a management company. There's like that buffer between them. It's like, I've dropped some cash into a place. Here, run it for me. And the people inside of it, the family that needs the home, they're just trash. They're just paying my mortgage, which is increasing in value. I won't sidetrack, but it was a big, hot mess. And it made me go through a range of emotions, frustration, and Like my very identity, like who I thought I was just changed overnight. I went from somebody who paid all their bills on time, had everything on auto pay, never really thought much about money, had a pretty decent credit score. And I was never rich by any stretch of the imagination, but I always had enough money to do the things that I wanted to do in life. And suddenly I could barely keep rent or make rent. And my credit score was terrible. No one wanted to touch me. So we got kicked out of that house, had to move into another house where it was like low credit people and it was a really shady business and they put us into a house that was like seriously neglected. The air conditioning unit had a big hole in it and it was sucking in hot, dusty, dirty air from the attic, bypassing the air filter for about 20 minutes. I want to say two months. And eventually when the summer really started to ramp up late July, early August, it was like 80 degrees in the house and the AC wouldn't shut off. So I finally forced that management company to come out and fix the darn thing. Long story short, I went through a pretty big nightmare period over this last seven years, especially the last five. However, about three years ago, I hit my lowest point. I decided after that crappy house that we had to move into with the bad air conditioner and whatnot and various other problems which I won't get into, my mom texted me and she said, why don't you guys move to Gilbert, Arizona out here and be with us? Because a lot of my family had moved out to Gilbert and Chandler in the Phoenix metro basically, little suburbs on the outskirts of the metro. My mom had called me, you know, kind of at the peak of when we were really struggling in Vegas with my new lower credit score, living in the worst part of town. We decided to pack it up and move out. My mom said, you know, you can come live with me for a couple months while you get on your feet. So three or four months with her, we got our own place. And We were really happy when we came out here, not just because we were closer to family, but because it was a fresh environment from Vegas. It was very similar, you know, one desert to another. It might be slightly hotter here, a little bit more family oriented out here. And One of the things that immediately started happening was the reality set in about how hard I would have to work in life, kind of from here on out for the indefinite future. And I'm still in that right now, that extreme workload. Typically, I have to do at least 50 to 60 hours a week to survive. And maybe one or two weeks in the My first place that I got was an apartment, and it was about $2,200 a month. And if I was late, which I was for many months, because... It was hard to live. They would bump up the fees to about $2,400, $2,500 a month. So for the first real year of living in Gilbert, I was paying about $2,400 to $2,500 a month in rent alone. My car, because I had gotten into an accident with my last car when I had good credit and I had to get a new car, they would only give me a car with, I think, 13% or 14% APR. So I'm still paying on that car now. And it's like $472 a month. My insurance kept climbing up and up and up because insurance is also linked to your credit score. So it was like this triple kick in the balls, pardon my language, from rent, paying the car bill, the insurance. All these things were climbing up and up and up because of my credit score. Never mind the fact that I was like a 750, just nearing on 800 credit score for my whole life. None of that matters. Overnight, if your credit score goes down, you're done. And I went from no car bill which was unfortunately destroyed in a, in a lift ride. Um, I was driving on a rainy day and I just happened to drive through a street that was a little more flooded than I thought it was. And I thought I could just kind of go slow and get through it without splashing too much, but it sucked up water into the air intake and blew the motor. It's what a mechanic I think would call hydro locking where your pistons fill up with water. And then of course, water does not compress like air does. So when the pistons go to compress the, uh, they don't compress. So the piston rods bend and snap off and it totaled my car. Six years of paying on that car, building my credit score, and then suddenly my car, my asset was destroyed. Or more precisely, my ass was destroyed in that car. And then I got another car when my credit score was still decent and that car, I crashed into somebody because he turned left when he wasn't supposed to. I got nothing for it and he got a settlement somehow, by the way. You know, woe is me, all these little bad things that happened to me in life story, but I'm grateful for them because after that car got destroyed, I got this car that I'm driving now, which is a Forte. It's a six-speed manual, which I love. It's a little four-banger. It's got pretty good mileage. I love manual transmissions, but I'm paying $472 a month on this bad boy. And the insurance, when I was getting commercial insurance so I could do deliveries for a living like DoorDash and things like that or Uber and Lyft, the commercial coverage for insurance was up to $370. So all these bills were just going through the roof. And the cost of living for food and things like that went up during the four years, 20 to 24. The Biden administration, for whatever reason, got rid of Medicare for me and my family as well. So I've not had health insurance for me and the kids for, oh gosh, six years now, five, six years. So it's been a big change. And I don't say all this because of woe is me, but this is tying into why I wanted to start this podcast. And... Okay, so just to recap, because we're about 19 minutes in now, I'd been hearing from people in my sales career while it lasted, you should do radio, you should do podcasting. Okay, thank you for the suggestion. I have really no interest in doing that. What would I even talk about? And then I switch over to Uber and Lyft rides, and people in the Uber and Lyft rides are telling me I should do it. I'm like, okay, thank you. But again, what am I going to talk about? I don't know how to do that stuff. I've been in sales my whole life, and now I'm not in sales. Now I don't know what I want to do. So I was doing Uber and Lyft and then eventually moved to Arizona. Uber and Lyft didn't work out here because the metro is just too big. So I did deliveries, which is nicer because I can stick in my area, which is like Chandler-Gilbert area, the southeast part of Phoenix. But while I was doing deliveries and experiencing this... this immense pressure to survive and work these extreme hours. Because before, when I was doing Uber and Lyft, before the cost of living went up, I only had to work about 30 hours a week. And I had started smoking cannabis a couple of months or years prior to that as well. So I was kind of like living in this hazy cloud of comfort. I wasn't like a wake and baker by any stretch of the imagination, but I did like to smoke just a little bit when I got home. And I don't advocate for or against cannabis. It's a personal thing uh overall i might lead lean towards sobriety just because sobriety is such a wonderful thing and i don't believe in talking ourselves into needing things you know some people call it medicine whatever but you can get addicted to anything you know Anyways, not to sidetrack or digress, but the first year in Gilbert was really rough because of the cost of living. And I had found myself working more than I had ever worked in my life. And like I mentioned earlier, I'm still in that boat. But at the time, I had never experienced a demand like that before, especially a job like deliveries. I had never been in my car alone for 10 hours, 11 hours a day, sometimes 12 hours a day. And it got to me like it would anybody. Human beings, they say science is finding that we're most productive around 30 hours or less a week. 40 is even pushing it. And I'm sitting here doing 50 to 60 hours on top of being stressed, right? Like I had never experienced stress before, like financial stress, where... you're waking up and some of my listeners can relate to this right now. And if so, this might be a good podcast for you because I would wake up at two or three in the morning thinking about rent, thinking about bills, and waking up almost every day in the red. Because with Uber and Lyft and gig work, you know, in general, you can cash out your earnings on a daily basis. So I'd find myself racing each day to cover what was needed. It was what bills were going through. And then waking up in the red the next day and racing to get out of the red to avoid overdraft fees. I mean, it was a really sickening thing. There's people in the United States or in the world abroad that live in comfort. They've always lived in comfort. They don't know or can conceive of what it's like to live in poverty and what it does to you. Poverty is not something that you are doing to yourself. It is something outside of you that is being pressed down upon you. No one was ever meant to live in poverty. You know, there's some modern day nut jobs that say, well, you got to work by the sweat of your brow. We're always meant to work, work, work, work, work. I'm not against work. I'm against people living in poverty. That's not a human beings in general. It's not natural. Where there is poverty, there is a problem with the economic system. And I'm not going to digress into politics, capitalism, socialism, Marx, all that stuff. I'm not going to digress into that. I'm just saying the reality is if you are in poverty, it is by no fault of your own. Nobody should be in poverty. And I'm not saying like... You don't have to be responsible with your money or anything like that, not at all. Everyone needs to be responsible with their money, their time, et cetera, or at least cognizant of it, but you cannot blame yourself if you are in poverty. Right now, many Americans, well over half, are in chronic financial stress. So if the vast majority of people are in a sickening poverty situation, it's not because of the choices that we're making as people, It is because of a broken economic system. We've got billionaires coming out of the walls, people talking about the first trillionaires about to emerge, and then all of a sudden everyone else is struggling to live. It's not a coincidence. This is not a political podcast, but I will not shy away from telling it like it is. Now, some people are really hard on themselves. They say poverty is a mindset. If you're broke, it's because you're thinking broke. You've got to think rich. And that was a problem that I found myself in when I was in network marketing. And that ties into where I was three years ago at my ultra-low point. And I'm going to connect all these dots here for you soon and kind of graduate as we move towards the finish line about what this podcast is about and who it's for. And it's really going to be for everyone, but especially those suffering from... stress, not just financial stress, but all the stresses of life, you know, fear of death, fear of being homeless, etc. So I found myself in a situation where I had never worked this much before, and I was starting to really feel it. But I forgot, let's go back for a the mindset of poverty where people, you know, there's like the grind set people. I don't know if you guys have heard that That hashtag grindset, G-R-I-N-D-S-E-A-T, you have to have this mindset that you're basically excited to grind yourself to the bone. It's a really sickening situation that we're in in the country. But when I was in network marketing especially, one of the things that they would emphasize was self-help, which actually ironically ties into where I was three years ago and the how I got to where I am now and eventually starting this podcast. So the self-help books that I read were really terrible for my mental health. They were all kind of pointing to you as if you were responsible for all your successes and you were responsible for all your failures. So I tried like positive affirmations. And if you've ever seen that, what is it, Stuart Smalley on SNL back in the day, it might be before a lot of your time that are listening, but there was this guy on Saturday Night Live. He used to always look in the mirror and be like, I'm smart enough. I'm fun enough, and gosh darn it, people like me or something like that. I tried everything, affirmations, positive thinking, everything you can think of in these self-help books. I tried it, and I read tons and tons of books. I'm a big reader. I always have been. And for the first time in my life, I was not really reading fiction anymore. I was reading these nonfiction, quote-unquote, self-help books, which really peaked in the 2010s. There was one book that was really a gem, maybe two. One of them was the... Yeah, there was actually three books that really stuck with me, but I'll just talk about two briefly here. One of them was called Wherever You Go, There You Are. And I can't remember the name of the author, sadly. I've read it twice, but I remember reading that book. And back then when I read these self-help books... in the network marketing companies that I was in, I was always kind of looking at what nuggets can I get out of these books to be a better salesperson, to get people to say yes. I read one book. It was called Go for No. It was like you got to set a goal, not how many yeses you're going to get for the day, but how many no's you're going to get for the day. That way you don't quit. So I would cold call these realtors, be like, okay, I got 10 no's, 10 more to go. I didn't stop until I got 20 no's per day. Imagine cold calling. you know, tons and tons of people trying to get a total of 20 rejections in a day. This is where I was at, you know, many years ago. But these self-help books were doing massive, massive psychological harm to me. They were basically telling me that if I wasn't successful, it was a problem on my end, like poverty was a mindset. And, you know, there's some maybe nuggets of wisdom in that you don't want to think of yourself as a poor person. Like right now, I am financially very poor. You know, like most Americans I don't have a few hundred dollars for an emergency. I'm living paycheck to paycheck. And that's not because of a choice I made. My wife and I, we barely spend money as is. So how can we live almost on vapor and then blame myself on top of it for not being more successful, quote unquote, whatever that means in this country, in this economy, this economic system. So anyways, I read a lot of books that were very harmful to my health and health just even doing positive affirmations, your brain's not really believing them. So the whole time you're saying, I'm a successful person, I'm a successful person, I'm a successful person, your brain's like, yeah, right, you're a fucking loser, you're a fucking loser, you're a fucking loser. And that's what your brain is doing whenever you try to fight against the grain, basically. You're trying to rewrite the program describing who and what you are, and you can't do that, which we're going to get into. And To tie this together, I was at a low point three years ago and Oh, yes, I'm sorry, the book first. Sorry, again, I don't know how to do a podcast, so I'm getting used to organizing my thoughts and having constructive flows here, but I promise this will all come together. So I read this book, Wherever You Go, There You Are, and it started talking about something called mindfulness. Now, when I say that word mindfulness, all kinds of things will pop in your head. Oh, yeah, good way to be productive. Oh, yeah, good way to be better at sales. Oh, yeah, mindfulness, good way to be better at this, better at that. What can we use mindfulness for to get better at, right? And there was another book I read called The Power of the Subconscious Mind, which was kind of, I think, also geared for salespeople. But there was something very, very, very interesting in The Power of the Subconscious Mind book that I read. And these books, by the way, I don't advocate for anyone. Wherever you go, there you are. That's a great book. I recommend that book. The Power of Your Subconscious Mind, don't recommend that book. But there was a nugget that I got out of it, which you can get much, much better from other books. And it was the nugget of being present with what is, being mindful of what is. There was a particular part where it said, and I'm paraphrasing the book here, but it said like, for example, when you are brushing your teeth, you are only brushing brushing your teeth. You are feeling the bristles on your teeth. You are feeling the acidic feeling from the fluoride, the rinsing. You are just completely with what is. When you are walking from your car to your job, you are just walking from your car to your job. You are just feeling your feet on the ground, the wind on your skin. Whatever sensations are arising in the present moment, that is all that you are with. And that really hit me. That really stuck with me. And I didn't realize how much it did at the time. But I found myself kind of curious about that. I was like, wow, that actually feels really good. All the books I've read have not made me feel this good of just being with what is. So I started downloading like hypnosis apps. And this is all years ago before I moved. I'm kind of like digressing and then coming back. It's kind of like a weird, what's a good example? I'm sorry. What was the Guy Ritchie movie where it's like flashing back and forward through time? I don't know. Okay. So anyways, I downloaded these hypnosis apps that were really starting to dive into the mind and like calm the mind down and stuff. And none of those work for me either. They had the same reverse effect. Like I remember there was one app. It was like download this for more confidence, you know, and it would try to hypnotize you and say, oh, you are a more confident person. And it wasn't really– I didn't realize it at the time, but it wasn't really the calming down that was really doing any, or the message that was doing anything for me. It was just the calming down. It was just the being with what is, looking at my mind, watching my mind, becoming the watcher instead of the doer and the planner and the manipulator and the striver. I was, is that a word, striver? the one striving, it was really just the act of watching. And I didn't realize it at that time either, but notes of it, traces of it were just carrying with me as I kept going, stumbling forward essentially. So I get to Gilbert and I find myself working more than I've ever worked, you know, back into three years ago, my lowest point. And And I got to the point where I was so bummed out about how much time I had to spend working and living in my car that I started to get really down. I started to get really sad. I would start crying on deliveries. I would start pounding on my steering wheel. Like, what? how did I get here? It's little old me and I just like to have fun with my friends and spend time with my kids and I'm a lighthearted fellow and how did I get here? How do I get out of here? I suddenly felt like I was in a box or like stories you hear of people who got their leg pinned in an elevator or something and they had nothing they could do except wait, wait, wait. And I had this dark, dark thought, and it popped in my head out of nowhere, and it said, I would love it if a car would take me out. I would love it if a car would just collide with my car and just take me out, or at least cripple me so I can't do this work anymore, and then the next thing will present itself. I was like, it can't. It just can't be this hard all the time. It just can't be. I can't do this. You know, I didn't know what to do. And I texted my friend, my good friend, who's been a friend of mine since I was a kid. And I told him, I said, I put my thought in the form of a text. And I texted him something like, man, it would just be so much easier if I would just get T-boned or something, you know. And I still vividly remember like which restaurant I was in and where I was. You know those little moments in your life that just like sears into your brain, you know? Most people remember where they were when JFK was assassinated or when the planes hit the two towers on 9-11, you know? And I remember the 9-11 incident and I very much remember the day that I finally expressed the desire to not exist, right? And I wasn't suicidal. Please believe me, suicide is a very serious thing. You know, they say in philosophy, the only real philosophical question is whether or not to commit suicide. And I found myself in that position where the idea of not existing was more appealing than existing. And again, I wasn't suicidal because I've always had this love of adventure and No matter what. Like when I was 19, I joined the Marine Corps. And it was just on a whim. I really liked that movie Starship Troopers. And I liked the... one of the main characters, Rico, how he just said, fuck it, I'm going to join. And I was like, let's do it. The Marine Corps is pretty similar to the Starship Trooper people. So I was like, I'm just going to do it. It wasn't for me. And I did my time as best I could and then got out. And I learned a lot from it, made a lot of great friends. But I just have that mentality in life, like, let's fucking go. You know, hoorah, as we say. And this was a new adventure for me. So I had this mentality like, wow, here I am not, you know, Desiring to not exist, or at least the thought appeared in my head, let's ride this out. I didn't want to follow that thought into the end, because that's the end. And what a terrible ending that would be. So I really sat with it, and I was like... I was like, wow, for the first time, I desire not to exist. This is crazy. You know, I've got kids and great kids, three great kids and a loving wife, loving family. I got so much going for me. And that was part of the reason I was down is because I couldn't experience them as much as I would like to. Any human being forced to work even 40 hours a week makes people depressed. Most people are really alienated at their job because they're disconnected from the fruits of their labor. They're not paid enough. And 40 hours gets most people down. Imagine 50 to 60 at least every week in your car alone by yourself. There's many jobs out there like that. And I'm not trying to say woe is me and I've got it worse than all of you. There's a lot of people listening that'll say, wow, that's worse than me. Yeah, that's actually better than I have it. I have it worse than you. So we're not here to compare. Sorry about the bumps here. Because we all have our own story. But I found myself in a situation where I had I had never confronted the idea that not existing might be preferable to existing. I sent the text to my friend, and I just couldn't believe it. And when that happened, I can't even put into words, but it was like... I know some of you are not... And I'm going to talk about this too. Like some people, when they hear spiritual language, they close their ears and they shut down. Some people, when they hear scientific language, they open their ears, you know, their ears prick up and they're like, yes, I can do science language. I can't do religious talk. Just hang, whichever one you are, just bear with me, okay? In the Sermon on the Mount with Jesus, there's one thing he said where it was like, blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. That word blessed or blessed I forget the Greek word. It's like marlikos, marlikos or something like that. It means fulfilled, abundantly living. It's like the most abundant idea of life is what that word means, at least the way it's written in the gospel. Jesus spoke Aramaic. The gospel was written in Greek, but that's what the Greek word means. Abundantly alive are those who mourn. for they shall be comforted. And that's where I was. I was mourning. I was so sad. And it was this deep sadness, deep, deep, deep. And it's one thing to theorize about it or conceptualize it, but it's another thing to really live it. Like when you hear about poor people suffering or you hear about like people in Palestine, you know, that's terrible. And it does... stir a lot of emotions in us, but it's a whole other thing to be there and experience it. Experience versus concepts, totally different, infinitely apart. And I found myself at the bottom of the abyss, at least for me, up until that point in my life. I had never experienced anything lower. And I've experienced plenty of low points in my life. I've had plenty of bouts with depression, all the way back to when I was a kid. Just being a more sensitive, empathic, intuitive, I don't know how to describe myself as a younger kid. I was very, just with what I would, I don't know how to describe it. I was very sensitive as a kid, I guess. And I can still be sensitive as an adult sometimes, trying not to be overly sensitive. But I was very sensitive in that moment, and I was at my lowest moment. And I got to tell you guys, it was not a good feeling. It was not good. I just don't know how to describe it to you. I wish I could. You can see me kind of struggling and flailing here to describe it, but I think I've said enough on it. And in that moment, it was like something opened. Now, long story short, I was raised in a traditional... Christian family with the modern interpretations that Christians have on Scripture, and I'm not putting them down. I'm not saying they're wrong. I'm not here to debate theology with anybody, concepts of theology, but I was raised in the pretty cookie-cutter, standard default, vanilla, you know, do you accept Jesus Christ in your heart? Yes, I do. Okay, you're saved. You For me, I always felt like I had a more personal relationship with God, or at least my idea of God. When I went to church, some people would like to clap and raise their hands and stuff, and I might clap once in a while, but I didn't like to do the raising of the hands stuff. I didn't like to do the performative stuff. I liked to go in my bedroom when it was quiet and just pray or You know, that first day on a new job when you're nervous and you're sitting in the parking lot and you just have those butterflies in you and almost like a sadness or a sad calm. Not a bad sad, but like just a simple sadness, you know? Like a nervousness about the uncertainty that is going to come with your new job that day and you just kind of close your eyes. God. watch, help me, please, you know, just watch over me today and help me get through this, guide my steps. You know, that was kind of always my relationship. It was more, from my perspective, it was the only way I could be authentic. I could go through the motions and do what other people do in Sunday school and stuff, but You know, it was just me and God. It was a personal thing. And I didn't really buy into a lot of the ideas that I had been brought up in. Like, ever since I can remember, I never believed Genesis was like a literal day one, day two, day three, and the fruit. I always looked at Genesis as poetry from Moses writing about the beginning of time in a poetic fashion. So anyways... I was never quite 100% on board with every concept that modern Christians have. And again, no slight towards them. I think they're wonderful people. Just apples and oranges sometimes, right? We all have our own way. And I found myself in that position where even my personal deep down relationship with God, like something was wrong. I was like, how could this be, you know? And it allowed me to open up. essentially. I opened, it was like a flower that was like yearning for the sun. And as soon as the sun hit it, like the petals opened up, right? So there I was working my 50 to 60 hours a week. And somehow, some way, I had started listening to other thinkers, other philosophers, other spiritual people. Because I was really on a search. I was like... what is the meaning of all this? What's the purpose of all this? Why am I here? How did I get to this place where I'm working so goddamn much? You know, I was like, part of me was getting frustrated even. So I opened and I started listening to other thinkers, thinkers of the East, thinkers of the West. You know, I started going to like home church groups in Gilbert, Met a lot of good people there. And just really kind of like lifting the hood on my philosophy on life and my spirituality. And what do I believe? Where am I? What is all this? And I found something. Or better described, I would suppose I should say something found me. I know some people might wince when they hear that. Other people might say, yeah, of course. But I don't know how else to tell you. Something happened, something found me, and everything started to really, really click. And I started driving my usual 50 to 60 hours, but I was completely with it. I was on board with it. And long story short, three years later, I am in one of the happiest places of my life. internally. You know, in Christianity, they might describe it as the peace that surpasses all understanding. And that word understanding in Greek is also understood as comprehension or mind. So a peace that surpasses all mind, all comprehension, all logic. I would say I'm experiencing that right now. You can call it the peace of Christ, the peace of Buddha, the peace of doubt, whatever word you want to insert into this calm and good feeling I have inside right now, I found it, or it found me. And tying this together, that's why I felt compelled to want to do this podcast. And it didn't come about so simple, actually. It was basically about a year in to me really... ceasing my going against the grain and going with what is, that I said to myself, or God, I said, well, I've got a lot of space inside me now. I'm feeling much better. I'm in a much happier place than I was before, that's for sure, much happier than probably I've ever been. And And yet, I'm still working 50 to 60 hours a week. So, okay, God, okay, universe, what do you want me to do? I have space in me. I have energy in me. I have enthusiasm. Where do you want me to take this? I don't know what to do. I'm not going back to sales, and I can't stay in gig work for the rest of my life, so what do you want me to do? And I didn't ask it in a, what do you want from me? What do you want me to do type ask. I was like, okay, what next? What do you want from me? What would you like me to do? Please guide my steps. And to be honest, I was a little emotional at the time. I was kind of like happy but also sad, like, okay, what's the next thing? And inside of me is also that desire to find something that I can do that will support my family and allow me to do what I love. So I am on this delivery while I'm asking these questions, delivering some alcohol on a DoorDash order. And I drop the alcohol off. I get the signature from the lady because you've got to show your ID. And I'm leaving. And, you know, a couple minutes driving away from the lady's house. And with DoorDash, you can text your driver after you've dropped something off. So she texts me. And she says, hey, this might be out of place, but have you ever thought about doing a podcast? You have a very beautiful voice, something to that effect. And she's like, I just wanted to put that out there for you. And I'm like, okay. Now, I was literally crying out to, you can call him, her, it, God, infinite intelligence, whatever word you have for what this all is. I was crying out to that on the way to her house. On the way out, I got a message saying, Have you ever thought about doing the pocket? Now, I've heard that many times before, like I told you guys, the passengers, people in my sales, you know, and it's danced on my mind and I have dabbled in it. But I had never had somebody kind of directly tell me. to do it as a suggestion immediately after I was like literally crying, you know, about what to do with my life. And it would be at least a year, year and a half after that before I finally sat down and recorded this episode. And I had recorded several episodes before this, but I was never happy with them. Because this space that I've now found in myself that I want to share with other people is not like a teacher-student relationship type I am not a teacher, a master, a guru, or anything. I am literally, just like you, struggling day to day to get through life. And I don't know if struggle is the right word, but striving against or for, controlling, dictating my life. I'm right there with all of you. And I just wanted to share... or start a podcast to share things that have really inspired me over the last three years that I want to share because I have been on fire. for the last three years. Like when I tell you I was at my lowest place and it opened me up and I started listening to philosophers and other thinkers, I don't mean that in a casual way. I mean I was literally doused in gasoline and somebody threw a match on me and I'm screaming in flames right now, always like on fire for this shit. Excuse my language. But I literally was eat, sleep, and drink, the study of the mind, of philosophy, of various religions, spiritual practices, and I'm studying all of them, not with the intent of proving one correct or the other wrong. I am more interested in what common themes they all share. And I will tell you this with absolute sincerity, that I have learned that all all of the spiritual paths do say the same thing in various ways. And that is going to be one of the major themes of this show is what is the juice and the nectar that they're all bringing to the table that has been perhaps misrepresented, misunderstood, misarticulated, maybe weaponized. There is a lot of stuff that has gone with these teachings, because the people that bring these teachings to us, they do it in a fresh and spontaneous way. You know, to use the words of Jesus, let not your left hand know what your right hand doeth. You know, he just acted out of his center, his if you will, his empty space inside, his emptiness, as the Buddhists like to say, which Westerners wince at when they hear emptiness. But if you're a Westerner listening to this and you hear emptiness and you wince, don't worry. It's not like you think. It's the most beautiful thing ever, and it's the same thing that Jesus taught and that all these thinkers taught. But what happens after these teachers... teach is that people fall madly in love with them, and they start to build up beautiful surrounding garments and ramparts and, oh, what's the word? I mean, you've seen the churches and cathedrals that have been built. built through the millennia. I mean, it's a serious thing because they're talking about your source, where you come from, what you are, because you are not a little separate thing from this whole universe. You are actually a distinct part of it. You're not a separate part of it. You're a distinct part of it. Just as, say, an ocean has waves, right? the wave in the ocean is not separate from the ocean. When you look at a wave, you don't go, oh, that's a wave, and then there's the ocean kind of underneath the wave. Or if you look at, like when you flush your toilet and you see a little whirlpool form, you don't say to yourself, well, there's a whirlpool in the toilet water, and then there's the water. They're two separate things. I can take the whirlpool out of the water and put it over here, and I can you know, just let the water sit. We can separate the two. You are exactly like that. You cannot be separated from this whole thing that we call life or the universe. And when you really understand that and you go deep down into it, it changes you in a There may be people listening to this who hear what I'm saying, and it rings a bell of truth inside of you automatically. You just know it's true, and it feels good to hear someone say it. And you say, yeah, that's it, man. Yeah. It's one thing to get it like that on a conceptual level. But it's another thing when you start living it on a moment-to-moment-to-moment basis. And that is what trust is all about. Because if I tell you, while you're listening to this podcast, I want you to listen to the words that are coming out of my mouth. beavis and butthead moment right there. No, I'm just joking. But I want you to listen to the words that are coming out of my mouth, but not try to make sense of them. Let your brain do that. It happens automatically. You don't have to try to make it happen. If you're in your car, I want you to feel the seat underneath you. I want you to feel the What does the steering wheel feel like? And don't describe it in words because words are slow and clunky. It's like looking at binary code instead of looking at what the code actually is as represented on your computer screen after it's been processed by your CPU. I want you to just feel directly, direct experience with what is. Maybe you are outside running or walking outside and you're feeling the morning air on your face, you hear the birds singing, whatever that is, be with that completely. The first thing that you're going to notice as you start to practice this is that your mind is gonna start tugging you back. Hey, hey, hey, hey, okay, your seat, that's great and all, your steering wheel, that feels good and all, but we better start thinking here. We better start thinking about that bill. We better start thinking about what we're gonna say to the boss, why the project's not done yet, this, that, and the other. The brain is gonna fight you. to come back up. Now, this is not to say that thinking is a bad thing that you should not do and you should avoid at all costs. I'm not saying that at all. In fact, when thoughts do come, it's important that you be with those as well, because those you could call your sixth sense. You've got your five regular senses, which is sight, what you can see, sounds, what you can hear, taste, obviously what you put in your mouth, your tongue, your taste buds, smell, and of course touch, tactile sensation. And of course the sixth one we could say are mental projections or images or mind activity. Those are the only six things that are ever at any time happening in your life, at any time. It's like Guitar Hero, if you've ever played that game, they got the six notes on the bottom, I think it's six notes, And they just play little melodies. Well, that's exactly what your life is. And it's not to reduce it, but it's to look at it. The way you as a human interact with life is through the six sense spheres. The five in the material world and the six you could say is in the mind. But they are six things coming at you. So when I say feel the seat beneath you wherever you're sitting or your feet if you're walking or the steering wheel if you're in your car, or the sounds coming to your ears right now from me, to be with those completely. And if on occasion a thought comes, which it definitely will, not just on occasion, but constantly, relentlessly, to be with the thought as well. See, thoughts are not a bad thing, but thoughts that you are not aware of, ooh, now there's where we get into trouble. Your thoughts are not you. Your thoughts think themselves. They happen of their own accord. Unless you are completely with them, you are lost. And to be in the moment with what is takes a trust. In fact, it is the ultimate form of trust to be with what is. Because try it. You'll see very quickly the brain, even before you start thinking, you'll start to notice the pull. Oh, I'm about to think. Ooh. And then there's a thought and it'll take you away. And without even realizing it, you've gotten on a bus and you don't know where it's taking you. It could be, how many times have you had a thought of somebody confronting you just randomly? Like you're about to go into Starbucks and then your brain says, oh, what if this guy cuts me in line? Or, you know, this person does this to me. I'm going to say this back to him and then he might do this. And then I'll say, oh, I'm going to have my response plan for him. I'm going to say this. And before you know it, you're off to the races, right? with this whole conflict that you're playing out in your mind? Or worse, what if a thought pops into your head that says, I'm a loser. I'm a nobody. Nobody cares about me. Do I even really care about anyone else? You see, these thoughts happen of themselves. They think themselves. And then you identify with the thought and you say, yeah, that thought, that's me. I'm not asking you to change your thoughts. I'm not asking you to stop your thoughts. I'm simply asking you to notice them. And the more you practice, the more you'll notice them. The more you notice things, the more that your life starts to change. And you'll notice in all the spiritual traditions, the emphasis is on letting go. It's on relaxing. It's on ceasing You're striving to be completely with what is. Buddhism, for example, the Buddha. Buddha means one who is awake. There's a root word in Sanskrit or Pali, abhuti or bodhi, which means awake. So Buddhism is an ism about awakefulness. And you'll notice... Oh, that's what Jesus taught too. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus said, this I say to you, I say to all, stay awake. And you'll notice many of his parables were about wakefulness. You know, the women with the lamp oil. All kinds of things like that. We're going to get into the details about that. I don't want to get too into the weeds just yet. But I will say this as we come to the close here. If you are a nihilist and you believe the universe is random and it's all for nothing and you're here for a little spark or a flash and then you're gone forever, locked up in a black box for all eternity, this podcast is for you. If you are a Christian fundamentalist and you believe that there is a God in heaven on a chair made of gold with a beard, and he's definitely a man, and he created everything. And if you don't believe that, then you're going to burn in hell forever, or you'll just annihilate and disappear forever. This podcast is for you. If you are someone who doesn't like spiritual language, but it's okay to hear... some scientific neutral language, and you're more of an agnostic, and you're just not sure. I don't want to put my chips anywhere. This podcast is for you. The title of the podcast is Standing Nowhere, and that is a metaphor for standing on a concept. If you are standing on any concept, you are lost, because all concepts ultimately fall utterly short of describing reality. Reality is... And you can't give that a name. Reality is, and you can't name that. You can say clap, clap, clap, but that's not. Do you see how completely different they are? So any concept you have in your skull about what's going on, ultimately is false and will fail you and will not keep you warm at night. So the ultimate form of trust, which is another word of faith for faith, is to trust exactly what you see, hear, smell, taste, touch, or think right now. That is the only truth there is, and that is the only thing you can trust. But I'm here to say that you can trust that. So if me telling you that, somehow you're still holding on in the back of your mind that, can I trust it though? Do I really know what's going to happen to me after it? Yes, you can trust it. After all, you are it. You came out of it and you have fun coming out of it and going back to it, coming out of it and going back to it, up and down. Everything is undulating in this universe. Out of the silence comes sound, comes light, comes life. Sorry about my phone there. Ruined the moment for us. Anyways, I hope you guys enjoyed this first episode and rest assured this is going to be the most different episode probably of the entire bunch. It was just a little bit of a background on me a little bit in my head space, where I started, where I'm at now, and just a little taste before we close. I will be deep diving into all kinds of things that I think you will find interesting, or maybe not. Some people are not ready to hear these things yet. You know, the translation of the word repent in old Hebrew is to turn back. And I think that relates to when we're born, we go out into the world. We get obsessed with the material things, all the shiny dancing things in the world. And it's not like they're bad things or that we have to shun them. But at a certain point, you find that they do not fulfill you at all in any way, only temporarily. And then you're on to the next thing. How many times do you see junk piles outside of people's houses on trash collect, you know, junk days, big bulk days for trash and people in neighborhoods? Just hordes of junk. In the West, we're just converting as much material into junk as fast as possible, and none of it fulfills. It's like the end of that movie WALL-E. The whole planet's full of junk, right? Now, I'm not putting down material things, but I am telling you, if you have not figured it out yet... they will absolutely never bring you lasting joy and happiness. And you'll find out there's a difference between joy and pleasure, between happiness and pleasure. It doesn't mean that you have to be an ascetic monk and renounce everything, but you might want to loosen your grip on it a little bit and stand nowhere. Be with what is. For those who have ears to hear, hear. Basically, if you're ready to hear this message, this podcast will find you when it's supposed to. And it's a work in progress. I'm learning about these things myself, but I am... without question, on fire for it. I think part of the reason I've delayed this podcast is to see if my interest would wane. How many times have I gotten interested in something in my life only to abandon it out of lack of interest? But here I am, three years later, still digesting and reading as much material on this stuff as I can. It very much interests me. And in a way that I want to relay it to other people because there are practices you can do. You can call them spiritual or you can just call them practices. The word spirit simply means breath. So Take from that what you will, but we're going to be talking about all kinds of things. I'll be interviewing people eventually, ideally, great thinkers like this, because there is infinite space inside of you, infinite peace, infinite joy, infinite bliss, and all you have to do is look within, to turn back and look within, which is the actual original definition of the word repent. Another word that's been co-opted by modern interpretation to mean feel guilty about. Oh, you should repent. You should repent. You're a bad boy. You've got to repent. No. It means to come back home, to look inside of you. You've looked everywhere outside. Now let's look inside. And you might just find that you are really part of the whole thing and that what you thought was a bad event in your life might actually be a blessing. I'll end on a parable, and then we can go our separate ways. And I'm going to be recording a couple more episodes, but this will be my... First episode on my birthday here, turning 42. I'm in my seventh cycle of my seven-year cycles here. So here's the parable, a farmer and the neighbor. So the farmer wakes up and goes outside to find his horse. One of his best horses has run away. The neighbor looking over says, I'm sorry, brother, that's really too bad. And the farmer says, maybe. The next day he awakens to find that the horse has returned and it has another horse with it. The neighbor seeing this said, brother, that's wonderful, congrats. And the farmer says, maybe. Later that day, the farmer's son is trying to tame the new wild horse that the other horse brought home. The horse bucks him off and he breaks his leg. The neighbor says, that's terrible. And the farmer says, maybe. The following morning, the army is going through his territory, conscripting young soldiers, but they can't recruit his son because his leg is broken. The neighbor says, that's wonderful. The farmer says, maybe. So with that, I'll leave you guys. Don't judge a book by its cover. Your life might seem like a mess right now, but maybe it's a perfect mess, just like it was for me, the perfect mess to bring you inside to find some deep, lasting peace that you didn't know was there. Anyways. This has been the Standing Nowhere Podcast Episode 1. I am your host, Jacob, and I'm signing out. Please like and subscribe and do all the things that you're supposed to do that I don't know what I'm supposed to say to get you to come back. I have a Patreon as well. Under Patreon, Standing Nowhere, I'll try to put links in the description, and I'll try to have better sound quality on my end, less bumps on the table, less four-year-old interruptions and things like that. But hopefully this first episode was not a total loss. I had to do it. I kept this episode procrastinating long enough and I finally did it. And you know what? This episode is not perfect. There's probably some long parts. There's probably a lot of people who tuned out halfway, but I did it. Gosh darn it. And I'm going to try to get better at it for you guys and for myself and see if I can make this into a full-time gig for me or at least a passion of love on the side. And either way, I am okay and I will be okay. Even if I have to work 55, 60 hours a week for the rest of my life, that's okay. I'm happy, very happy, and I love you guys, and blessings.
Music:This voice might fade like dust on the dial But I'm standing nowhere and I've been for a while No hero No headlines, no promises made Just a whisper that won't be afraid Standing nowhere and it feels like home No flags to wave, no need to roam The silence speaks louder than war ever could, and I've never felt so understood. The static is kind, it leaves me alone. No orders to follow, no key. The sky's turning amber The clock's all reset And I haven't stopped walking just yet Standing nowhere Air wide and free No chains, no names The road dissolves The sky turns white I'm still here, nothing to hide Thank you.