Standing Nowhere
A podcast about waking up — not to new beliefs, but beyond them.
What happens when we stop standing on any fixed idea of who we are or what life means?
Standing Nowhere explores spirituality, mindfulness, and the mystery of being human through honest conversation and reflection.
Host Jacob Buehler blends story, humor, and real-life experience as a working father and seeker, drawing from mysticism and contemplative traditions to point toward what can’t be captured in words — presence itself.
No dogma. No certainty. Just curiosity, compassion, and the ongoing discovery of what remains when there’s nowhere left to stand.
If you’ve ever questioned everything and found peace in not knowing — welcome home.
Standing Nowhere
Keep Moving — From Hesitation to Wholehearted Action
Hesitation can feel holy—like you’re safeguarding a perfect outcome—but it often becomes a kind of living death. This episode wrestles with wobbling (that anxious, double-minded stall) and what it takes to move with trust anyway.
From Einstein’s bicycle to the Matrix Oracle, from a boot-camp tower to a spouse’s one-line koan, momentum itself begins to clarify the road. Planning is wisdom; paralysis is not. Early-episode experiments, an AI-editing spiral, awkward first dates, a career crossroads, even Mario’s autoscroll levels—each scene becomes the same invitation: from hesitation to wholehearted action.
Along the way we explore analysis paralysis vs. presence, the courage to “cut off” competing options so a real choice can live, a generosity that doesn’t need applause, and the strange way death—remembered honestly—sharpens what matters now.
Across traditions, the counsel converges: James warns about the divided mind; the Gita points to action without clinging to results; Lao Tzu cautions against overfilling the cup; Alan Watts reminds us that security is a story we tell our breath. Different voices, same current—move, and balance finds you.
The turning point is simple and stubborn: sit when you sit, walk when you walk, and stop wobbling. Decide, move, and let the course-corrections meet you in motion.
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you Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Standing Nowhere podcast. This is your host, Jacob, and I am pleased to be back with you. Today, I wanted to speak about hesitation and fear and trembling, what they call in Zen wobbling or being indecisive, because it's something that I've really struggled with. And I'm going to get into some details on that later in the episode. But for now, I wanted to open with a Hiyokajo story. saying hikajou was an old zen master and his students said What is Zen? He said to them, when hungry, eat. When tired, sleep. And they said, well, isn't that what everybody does? Aren't you just like ordinary people? And he said, no, oh no, they don't do anything of the kind. When they're hungry, they don't just eat. They think of all sorts of things. And when they're tired, they don't just sleep. They dream all sorts of dreams. Thank you. So the lesson that you hear from people in Zen is that when you are sitting, you are just sitting. When you're walking, you are just walking. Above all, do not wobble. And what is wobbling? It's really a hesitation where you're not sure about how something is going to come out or turn out and you hesitate and you're fearful about the outcome of it. You're sort of split into two. You're wavering between faith and fear. Essentially, you're never fully here. You're never fully present or with what is what you're doing. There was a letter that Einstein wrote to his son who was going through some struggle in life. And there's a famous quote that a lot of you may have heard from that letter. He says, it is the same with people as it is with riding a bicycle. Only when moving can one comfortably maintain one's balance. And this is true about everything in life. And this is especially true with your mind. It goes dull very quickly if you don't use it, if you don't read a book, if you don't stimulate it in some way. And it's the same thing with wisdom. Even in spiritual traditions, wisdom, In Buddhism, they teach without constant practice or virya, which is kind of like a spiritual enthusiasm I've spoken about on past episodes. Your wisdom will atrophy. Your ability to see clearly in the present moment will atrophy. You'll lose that ability. It's something that you must be diligent about. not as something you have to do. It's something you should want to do to be present for your life, to stop and smell the roses. And out of that presence comes wisdom. You'll be able to see clearly. But when we're not with what is and what we're doing, fear can arise, right? We can wobble. We go into our heads and we say, what if? What if this doesn't play out like I want it to? What if I get fired? What if she doesn't like me? What if this podcast episode isn't any good? Alan Watts wrote a wonderful book called The Wisdom of Insecurity, and I highly recommend it to everyone. There's a quote from it that I pulled for this episode where he says, "...the desire for security and the feeling of insecurity are the same thing. To hold your breath is to lose your breath." A society based on the quest for security is nothing but a breath retention contest in which everyone is as taut as a drum and as purple as a beat. The same wisdom that Alan Watts is speaking to here is also reflected in the Bhagavad Gita, which is all about action. Action. taking action and not worrying about the result, not being attached to the fruits of the result. And in the fourth chapter, the 20th verse in the Gita, it says, such people having given up attachment to the fruits of their actions are ungrateful. always satisfied and not dependent on external things. Despite engaging in activities, they do not do anything at all. In the West, when we hear that, despite engaging in activities, they do not do anything at all, that sounds paradoxical. How can I take action and do something and I'm not really doing anything? And the best way I can relate this to a Westerner, like myself, is what we call being in flow or that flow state where the action is happening, but you are out of the picture. It's sort of like when you wear clothes that fit right, you don't notice them, right? In the same way, when you are taking action and you're not overthinking it or overly self-conscious, you, quote unquote, disappear. And there is just action. You know, in the language of the Gita or old Christian mystics like Meister Eckhart, they would say that it's just the divine moving through you. Spontaneity. I mean, if action is flowing through you and you're not attached to the outcome, then who is it really that's deciding or taking action on these things? In other words, if you're to not wobble and you have to get out of the way, how is a decision going to arise? Well, you'll notice if you look closely at your decisions, they happen spontaneously anyways. It always comes down to a coin flip, right? In other words, you can take in endless amounts of information, but at some point, a decision will arise. And the longer you wobble about it and worry about it, the more pain and suffering you are going to endure. And paradoxically, the outcome is probably not going to go in the way you want anyways. So if action is flowing through you, who is it that's deciding? Neuroscience, they're doing more and more studies on this that suggests that the brain prepares decisions before we are even aware of them. In other words, we act and then we explain to ourselves why we chose to do that thing. And this sort of reminded me from a scene in the Matrix trilogy. If you're not familiar, the main character, he has tremendous power and he goes to an Oracle asking for counsel and wisdom. And he says to her, if you already know what I'm going to do, how can I make a choice? Because she is omniscient. She knows literally everything that's going to happen. And And she says to him, it's because you didn't come here to make the choice. You've already made it. You're here to understand why you've made it. And for me, that... is so powerful because I can relate that to so many things in my life, things that have happened in the past. I can demonize myself and beat myself up for them and then become extra fearful about future decisions that I'll make. Or I can accept that decisions have simply happened and they happened through what I will call me and they will continue to happen in the future. I mean, no matter what, guys, what's going to happen is going to happen, period. And look at the word decide. Decide. Did you notice how the word decide sounds sort of like homicide or suicide? That's because it actually does share the same etymological root. But what it means at its root is to slay all other options, to decide. In other words, you're killing or cutting off all the other possibilities and choosing something, going with it. And I'm not saying here that what you should take away from this is that, oh, well, whatever's going to happen is going to happen, so I'm not going to care anymore, and I'm just going to completely act instantaneously to everything that comes up. I'm not saying that at all. Planning is wisdom. When I was in the service, we had something called the seven Ps. Proper prior planning prevents piss-poor performance. So you do have to plan, but you also have to plan But when does planning cross into paralysis? We've all heard that term analysis, paralysis, overthinking. There's a fine line. You know, in episode two. After I had started the podcast, I was really excited and I started gathering my thoughts into notes for the second episode. And I gathered more and more and more and I was like, this is going to be the best episode ever. And before I knew it, the outline when it came time to record was so utterly massive. And I really wanted to stick to my weekly schedule. And I said, there's no way I can do this. This is completely a mess. And I threw the notes out and I had to freestyle the episode. Because to me, it was more important to maintain the momentum of the podcast and not get stuck in that analysis paralysis. It was more important to maintain the podcast than to retreat back into that old mindset that caused me to not start the podcast for a long time in the first place, which I'll touch on later. And the episode, episode two, it was imperfect. It was not the greatest episode I've done and I'm still learning. This is only the 13th episode, but it was alive. I got it out there and I learned from it. When I heard the episode played back to me, I was kind of excited. I thought it was good at first. Then I heard it, and I was like, man, this thing is packed to the brim with all kinds of stuff. Because I sat down with my notes, and I had to throw them out. So I'm like, well, let's talk about, I think it was concepts, belief over faith. So episode three, I slowed down. I was a little bit in my head about it. I was like, man, I was so fast in episode two. Let me slow down for episode three. Maybe we'll do a little mindfulness exercise. And then I really liked the pace of that one. So I learned from that one. And I found a few things that could have been better here and there. And then I started to use outlines in episode four onward. But those first three episodes were completely off the cuff. And they were not perfect, but they exist. I published them so that I could move forward. And this is something that still... I struggle with to this day with this podcast. I'll overthink editing. There was an episode I did a couple episodes ago. I think it was episode 11 about anger, and I was overthinking editing the intro. I did a little sarcastic intro that I thought was hilarious to myself, and I thought it would be great. And as many of you guys know at this time of my life, as of this recording, I don't have much free time. So I use, I use AI to help me edit my episodes. I'll, I'll feed the transcript in and then it gives me just highlighted things. And then I go through it. I make the final call of course. And usually it's no problem. It'll just highlight some things. And half the time I'm like, no, I like that. I'm going to keep that in, but thank you for suggesting it. But this one particular edit recommendation in the beginning of the anger episode, it's, I thought it was funny and I wanted to keep it in, but then Chatbot was like, no, you should take that out. Get to the point quicker. And I was like, what? I felt so hurt. So then I went and I took it from ChatGPT and I fed it into Claude, another AI. And I was like, well, let me get Claude's opinion. Let's have the AIs kind of duke it out a little bit. It got to the point where I was like, I had four or five different Chatbot windows open. Ask And I said, I'm clearly overthinking this. I'm asking five different chatbots about advice. You know, what should I do? You know, just be my guru right now. And I wrote down a little quote of what it says. said because it was so good it said and this is deep seek it said make the cuts do the trims render the file and then walk away don't listen again looking for more flaws don't send it to another AI for one more check you have reached the point of diminishing returns the energy that you're spending agonizing over the last 5% is energy that you could be putting into the next episode your Your work is good. Your message is important. Don't let the perfect become the enemy of the published. I love that quote. I was like, man, I got this little AI guru here. So I took its advice. I left it in. I published the episode. And then later I overthought about the title of the episode because at first it didn't gain much traction. So I ended up changing it, actually revamped my title process. So going back to what I said, like you have to plan things. Planning is wisdom, but you have to be conscious of when that crosses over into analysis paralysis. Even this episode, I was doing the outline and I was talking to my wife a little bit about it. She likes to wait till the episode comes out and I'm done with post-production. And I said, I think this episode is going to be really good and instantaneously without any it was just completely spontaneous almost before I finished my sentence my wife says how about you don't worry about whether it's good or not and just do it and I love that I smiled at her I said you're right and I'm going to use that in the episode so thank you honey I appreciate that because I struggle with it I struggle with overthinking I have one of those brains that really hesitates big time I remember one time I was in boot camp. Oh, gosh, I'm dating myself. It's like 21 years ago, and I was climbing what they call the stairway to heaven. It's like this big obstacle course, and I'm terrified of heights. And I was at the top of this obstacle course, and this thing is really high off the ground. If you've ever seen Full Metal Jacket with Gomer Pyle when he gets stuck at the top, that was me. I was literally frozen, and the drill instructor at the bottom, he's like, what's the problem, really? And I was like, sir, this recruit cannot move his body, sir. And he said, okay. He said, follow my voice and my instructions bit by bit, okay? And I was like, all right. And he went through. He's like, move your right arm around the log and hold on to the other side. I was like, okay. He's like, now take your right leg. And I had to just take action. I was frozen. But we get like that in life, right? especially big decisions. But the takeaway is you prepare wisely to the best of your ability, and then you slay the options. You decide. You slay the options and act. And it might be imperfect, but it's alive. It's forward motion. And that's how you maintain balance. On a bike, when you're moving forward, if you feel you're falling to the right, then your body will correct and go left. Same thing. You're going to the left, it'll correct and go right. but it can't do anything if you're not moving. You'll just fall over. And these lessons, they're reflected in everything. It's the same thing with my career. I was really successful in sales and I got really comfortable there and I didn't want to move out of it. Eventually, I was forced out of it, which is another story for another podcast. I didn't know what to do, so I got into gig work. That's where I've been for eight years in gig work. To this day, I still have that wobble or hesitation about going back into the working world, worried that I'm not going to make as much, although my pay have made that a lot easier for a decision to be made because I have no choice now with all the pay cuts gig work has done to its workers. I have to get out of it. I have to get back into the corporate world. And there's that fear of the unknown. I don't know what my next job is going to look like. I don't know what the interviews are going to look like. I don't know what my coworkers are going to be like. I don't know if I'm going to like the work. There's endless uncertainty. amounts of data points that I can pull into my brain and worry about. But none of that will accomplish anything. I have to get my application out there. So the excuses in my head to stay are gone. I have to get back into the working world. And as I mentioned on past podcasts, I do have my resume ready. And I'll be honest, I have not applied for a single job yet since I've mentioned it on the past, I don't know, two or three episodes. I've been working a lot and I've been really enjoying the the creation process of this podcast, this creative outlet, and I've neglected to get my job applications out there. And I'm putting myself out there and I'm saying it and I'm being honest with you guys. And I think anyone listening can agree it's not easy to switch jobs. We like to believe that... the owner of the company takes all the risk. But it's really, in my opinion, the worker. We're risking our safety. We're risking getting fired at a moment's notice. There's a lot of risk that we take. And when you work at a job and you're comfortable there, there's nothing wrong with that, wanting to do good work and get better at what you do. But again, it can turn into a wobble or hesitation, and then you stay in something that you need to get out of, and that creates suffering. And that's where I'm at right now. Some of you listening might be in a similar situation where you are at a job that you need to get out of, but you are afraid of the unknown. And part of that fear is correct. You could go to a job that's worse, where people could treat you worse, your coworkers you don't like, the work you don't like, could be more dangerous. All of those things are valid. But what is not valid is you staying in your job when you don't like it, if you know you need to get out of it. I mean, unless you have absolutely no other choice, but there's a fine line. It's just like when you meet a new partner, too. You know, if you're single out there, the fear of rejection is immense. Just asking someone to go out with you on a date is utterly terrifying because your brain is going to go through all the worst case scenarios. What if she or he says no? And I reinforce to myself that I really am not an attractive person or a fun person to be around. And I should have just stayed home in my cave and played video games or watch TV or blah, blah, blah. I mean, your brain is a dark alley that I don't recommend going down. And that's why forward motion is so important. Get over yourself and just ask. And you'll be glad you did. And you just keep asking. Before I met my wife, I was on one of those dating websites. And I was like, And I went through a lot of dates, but I was able to go on a lot of dates because I was asking people and I got way more no's than yes's, but I still got a good amount of yes's. And sometimes the dates were absolutely terrible, absolutely terrible. And sometimes they were okay. And sometimes, you know, I'd meet someone who I'd see for just a little while and then it didn't work out, you know, all the ups and downs. But eventually, Eventually, I found my wife on that website. I think it was OKCupid. And I remember seeing her picture, how beautiful she looked. And I met her, and we just clicked immediately. And had I not asked, had I said, you know, she's too pretty for me, she's not going to say yes, we wouldn't be married today with kids. My son wouldn't have had a mom, someone to take him in because my son is, not to digress, but he's from my previous marriage and I was a single dad and she took on that responsibility all through my dating. I could have said no one wants to date a guy with a kid, but you have to move forward. You get stuck in your head and it's like you're dead already. When I was drafting this episode, I was playing Mario with my son. He likes to play the old Mario games from like when I was a kid. And they have those levels where the level keeps moving no matter what. And if you don't keep moving with the level, you die. I thought that was a little cool analogy I could throw into the episode. He's like, why is the level moving, Dad? I said, that's like life. It just keeps moving. He's like, all right. Or when I read those Jack Reacher novels, he's a character who's so decisive. He always knows exactly what to do. And the author gives him these impossible scenarios from the start and he detangles the whole thing by the end. And you're always like, how's he going to get out of this one? But there's always these situations where it's like, do we go left or right? And he's like, we go left. And people ask him, why do you always choose left? And he's like, you just have to know in advance what you're going to do if there's no other in He's so decisive about it. And this same lesson shows up in Scripture as well, not just in the Bhagavad Gita, but also in the Bible. There's an interesting verse in... I believe it's Matthew, the 14th chapter, and everyone is familiar with it. Even if you're not a Christian, you get a lot of wisdom out of this. It's when Jesus is walking on the water and all the disciples on the boat are terrified and they think it's a ghost. And he calls out to Peter and Peter says, Lord, if it's you, command me to come to you on the water. So Jesus said, come. So Peter gets out of the boat, starts walking on the water and came to But when he noticed the strong wind and the storm, he became frightened and he began to sink. He cried out, Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him. And he said to him, The interesting thing about that statement is is when he says, why did you doubt? In Greek, that word doubt is distazo. And that means to stand in two places, to waver between paths. So the metaphor or the parable of that story is, are you keeping your eyes on Jesus? Like, do you trust? And I've talked about trust and faith on past episodes. Do you trust this whole process? Even if you're not a Christian, you don't believe in the word God or Jesus as divine, it doesn't matter. Do you trust it? You came out of it. Do you trust it? Or do you waver? Are you standing in two places? This is echoed in another book in the Bible of James. In the first chapter, he says, if any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given to you. But ask in faith. which means trust, trusting faith, never doubting, like that word, testazo, ask in faith, never doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind. For the doubter, being double-minded and unstable in every way, must not expect to receive anything from the Lord, from Yahweh. See how powerful that is. Don't be double-minded, he's saying. Take action. And we've heard that in Christians, they get stumbled by this, and some argue about this in the same book of James. In the Or I think it says, so faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. And that word works in Greek is ergon, which means action or deed. Just like Einstein said, keep moving forward. Take action and just trust it. You can go back and listen to some of my first episodes. They're not as polished. They're not as... I'm not going to say they're not as good. I'm not going to beat myself up, but... This is like an audio log of me stumbling, but moving forward. I don't know how this episode is going to do, but I am sitting in my chair and I am recording it right now. And I'll hear it back and I'll say that was good or I could have done better here, but I'm moving forward. So I'm trusting and I'm moving forward. I'm doing the works. Ergon, action, deed. In Eastern philosophy, they say some people, they think divine yoga is sitting in a cave and meditating. And some people, that is their dharma. But what good is meditating and cultivating inner peace and spaciousness if you're not going to take action? At that point, you are avoiding reality, right? And this is also true in helping people, in generosity. How many times do we get in a battle between our head and our heart about whether to help somebody? And what did Jesus say about this in the book of Matthew? In the sixth chapter, verse three, he says, "'But when you give to the needy, or when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.'" Don't think about it. Help whoever needs to be helped. Period. Don't do it for your ego, for people to perceive you in ways. He has other imagery like don't blow a trumpet in the streets, letting everyone know what you've done. You just take action. If you have a friend or a family member who needs help, you help them. When you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. Be spontaneous. And here's the kicker, guys. You don't have a choice. Not only is the action going to come either way and it'll be worse if you wobble. But one day, you are not going to be here anymore, at least in this form, in this body, in this mind, with these memories and experiences. That's going to stop. We call it death, and it is inevitable. It is that great reminder to take action. You don't have to fear death, but you do have to remember that it is your companion. Hello, it's coming. So stop procrastinating. You know, there's a, if you've If you've ever seen the Hobbit trilogy, you might not have, but there's a scene that I absolutely love in the first of the Hobbit films by Peter Jackson where Bilbo is a little Hobbit. And he looks at the wizard at one point in the film and he says, if I go with you, can you promise that I'll come back? And the wizard says, no. No, I can't promise you that. And if you do come back, I can't promise that you'll be the same person. And Bilbo says, well, then I'm sorry, I can't go. So they all go to sleep that night and the next morning he wakes up and he sees they've all left without him because he chooses not to go with them. And at first you can see he's a little happy and he looks around his house and it's completely empty. They're gone. And you see him just like, yes, back to my normal life. But then he looks around and And he sees his armchair and his books and there's a look on his face and there's no dialogue in this scene. And that's why it's so powerful because he looks around and the music kind of emphasizes this stagnation, this over familiarity with your daily life, this being too comfortable and his face changes. And he gets a longing for that adventure that he could have gone on. And in a moment, it cuts to the next scene where he is fully loaded with his gear and he's running as fast as he can to catch up to the dwarfs. And he eventually does. And that begins the whole adventure. And that's the whole point of those movies is to get out of your hobbit hole, your comfortable little house and understand that Life is an unknowing. There's an uncertainty to it, but you can't be afraid to step outside of your door. And that was my story with this podcast, amongst other things in my life. I prepared for this podcast late in my 40th year. It was when I was just about to move into the house I'm in now and I turned 41 and I was preparing the podcast and I was preparing and I was preparing and I was preparing and I got the cover and I got the skeleton, the structure of the podcast, the microphone, the logistics, and I was just having fun preparing, preparing, preparing. Oh, it's going to be so good. I can't wait to do it. Everyone's told me I should do it. And if you recall in episode one, I had like this, I don't know if you'd call it a synchronicity or whatnot. Something was just telling me, do a podcast. And I felt called to do it. And it would be such a wonderful thing. And almost a year went by and from 41 to 42, I would say I was prepared for this podcast probably a good three to six months in. At that point, I was pretty much overly prepared. And then my thoughts started to turn in on myself and I thought, Why have I not started this thing yet? What am I waiting for? And I would try to rationalize it. I just need to do a little more research. I just need to brush up on my studies of Eastern philosophy or Hinduism or Taoism or make sure I'm really solid in my connections. Because one of the main themes I wanted this podcast to be about is the common themes between all of these traditions. And I just couldn't stop preparing. And it got to the point where my 42nd birthday was coming up in a few days and I hadn't started the podcast yet. And I knew as my 42nd birthday was coming, something awoke inside of me and I had this realization because it was my birthday. I'm turning 42. That's one more year that I could check off that I don't have anymore. Death is coming. And I said, I'm done. I'm done procrastinating. For my 42nd birthday, I'm going to give myself the best birthday present I can imagine, and I'm going to record my first frickin' episode. And I did it, and I had no idea what I was doing. That's why I called that first episode, I Don't Know What I'm Doing. I wanted to really emphasize that. So I sat down, and I pushed record. And I did it. And I launched it. Episode one, I don't know what I'm doing. And I felt alive again. I felt so alive. All of the crust of procrastination was shattered and destroyed. And people were asking me, how was your birthday? And I said, it was the best birthday that I have ever had in my life. And they said, really? What did you do? And I said, I recorded my first podcast episode. And I knew in my head, as I do now, that this podcast might go nowhere. It might become nothing, but I did it. And I didn't just do it for myself. I did it with all the reasons I wanted to start doing it, to help others, to share things that I've learned that have really helped me through an impossible situation. If it helps just one other person, and I kept all that alive in me, and I just hit record, and I did it, and I felt so great. Because death is coming. It is inevitable. i've spoken about this a little bit on past episodes the impermanence of life life moves whether we we do or not there's a parable called the appointment in sumara where a wealthy merchant in baghdad he sends his servant to the marketplace And a little while later, the servant comes back and his face is white and he's trembling. And he says, Master, just now I was in the marketplace and I was jostled by a woman in the crowd. And when I turned, I saw that it was the angel of death that had jostled me. She looked at me and her face went wide with big eyes and a threatening gesture. Master, please lend me your horse for I must escape to Samara to escape her. So the merchant said, of course, I'll give you my fastest horse. And the servant mounted the horse and he raced it as fast as he could away to Samara. And the merchant who was curious, he went down to the marketplace to see if he could find this angel of death. And there she was standing in the crowd. And he went up to the angel of death and said, Why did you make a threatening gesture towards my servant when you saw him this morning? And the angel, she said, oh, that was not a threatening gesture. I was shocked. I was surprised. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad because I have an appointment with him tonight in Samarra. Wow. Oh, you can't escape death. It's coming. And it's not doom and gloom. It's just a fact of life. You came out of whatever this mystery is, and this mystery also contains death. So you can trust death. It's a part of you. It's a reminder that, again, life is moving whether we do or not. And if we are stuck in analysis paralysis, you are like a living death, basically. You're in a living death state. You're already dead. So move. Act spontaneously, especially when it comes to kindness and showing compassion to people and love. Don't overthink it. Be there for people. And remember, there's a wisdom in uncertainty, in unknowing. like the title of Alan Watts' book, The Wisdom of Uncertainty. Life only unfolds when we step forward. There's an unknowing in life that we have to embrace. And really, it's not something to be feared. If you think about it, unknowing and uncertainty and mystery, it makes life worth living. Think of chess masters. You know, when they're playing chess, when they see that the game is over, when they say like, oh, it's checkmate in five moves, what do they do? They end the game because they know the outcome. They end the game. There's an element of surprise in life that makes life worth living. It's that uncertainty of the future that makes it exciting. You can't be afraid of it. Even when you listen to your music, you put your playlist on shuffle because you don't want to know even what your next song is going to be. You want it to surprise you. And when it comes on, you love it all the more. Even God, if you're okay with that word, hides from himself, herself, itself for the pure joy of discovery through you. Whatever this mystery of existence is in the cosmos, isn't that exciting? I mean, you've got people on one side who are nihilists who say everything is random and meaningless. And then you've got people on the other side that say, no, it's all perfectly ordained and wonderful. And there's just this big mystery and people to bait each other and it's exciting. It makes death all the more exciting. Like, oh, I get to see what happens afterwards, you know? Movement, forward motion itself is faith. It's faith and it's trusting. When you take that step, you're saying, I trust it. I'm part of it. I'm not separate from it. It's If you go back to one of my old episodes, I talk about how all separation is essentially illusory anyways. Movement is faith, is trusting. Wobbling, uncertainty, that is disbelief. When you are hungry, eat. When you are tired, sleep. When you sit... Just sit. I always tie this back to being mindful, being present with what is. Because when you are present and with what is, you are in the flow. You're not fighting the river or the current. You're not wobbling about what decision you're going to make or what the outcome could be. You're completely with it. Wholehearted action. That's what Zen is all about. And all the other traditions, as far as I'm concerned, they all say the same thing. And wholehearted, that word heart also means like heart mind, like your complete center of being, wholehearted action. So we act wholeheartedly. And it may not be perfect, but we're okay with that. We can embrace the imperfections when they arise and say, thank you. What can you teach me? So we act without perfection, but fully. We sit when we sit, we walk when we walk, we don't wobble. And as I close out, I want to do a last reading here that really hammers this home. And before I do, as usual, I'd encourage all of you listening, if you can, please take the time to follow the show on whatever app you're in and reach out, share some stories with me. Or if you'd like to have, you know, an interview with me, I think it'd be wonderful if you have a story to tell that could inspire others. So I'm going to close out with Lao Tzu from the Tao Te Ching. He says, better to stop short than fill to the brim. Oversharpen the blade and the edge will soon blunt. Amass a store of gold and jade and no one can protect it. Claim wealth and titles and disaster will follow. So retire when the work is done. This is the way of heaven.
Music:This voice might fade like dust on the dial But I'm standing nowhere and I've been for a while No heroes, no headlines, no promises made Just a whisper that won't be afraid And then 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 alone Static is kind, it leaves me alone No orders to follow, no king on the throne The sky's turning amber, the clock's all reset And I haven't stopped walking I'm still here. Nothing.