The Skin Sheds When It's Ready

There's a version of yourself you can see clearly — and then there's where you actually are right now. That gap can feel like failure.

This episode begins with a story about a declined card on my wife's birthday, a Lord of the Rings book hidden at the bottom of a Target basket, and the quiet shame of walking back to the car with nothing. From there, it becomes a reflection on vairagya — the falling away of desire — and why transformation can't always be forced.

You can't rip the skin from the snake. It sheds when it's ready.

With reflections on patience, habit, self-compassion, and a closing reading from Thomas Merton.

Transcript

The Birthday at Target

The Falling Away

Loosening the Grip

The Chinese Finger Trap

Episode 40 Feels Like Episode One

Jacob 0:00

So it was my wife's birthday and I took her to Target. I told her, you know, honey, I can't decide what to get you this year. Why don't we go to Target together and um, you know, we'll just see what you want and we'll just have you pick out something fun. So we walked around Target and she liked the idea. She picked out some clothes that she wanted to get and um a few things for the house. It was it was nothing major. You know, we're pretty frugal people, and um I had taken a look at the account before we left because uh if you live paycheck to paycheck like me, you know, checking your account is something you have to do to see how much money's actually in there. And I looked at the figure and I thought, you know, there's no way we're gonna spend this much, we're totally fine, you know, but I had the number in my head just in case. So we go and um she picks out a few things. I picked out something really nice for her, too. It was um a Lord of the Rings book trilogy uh with beautiful uh golden lace and artwork on it. And I uh had kept it a surprise. I kept it like at the bottom of the basket. I covered it with something, and uh we get to the checkout line, and we are scanning all the items. I run my card through, and it says card is declined. Insufficient funds. And I thought to myself, there's no way. I just checked it. So sure enough, I pull up my my Chase app and um the money was gone. I think there was like 30 bucks left in there, maybe 20, I think it was 26 bucks was in my account. And my car insurance had billed um a little earlier than it normally did. To make matters worse, I had taken a day off earlier in that week that would have covered um the insurance, but I failed that day. Um and these were not non non-essential items, you know. It was it was a birthday gift, and and um we weren't spending that much, but um it was super embarrassing and I felt terrible, and I was scrambling to figure out some alternative way I could pay. Um I I looked in one of my um little microtransaction apps that some people that poor some poor people like me have, you know, uh to see if I could microfinance the transaction. And it said I could, but I would need to put like$35 down or something just over what was left in my account because my credit that's another story. But long story short, uh we walked out of Target with nothing. And I remember the walk back to the car was so utterly embarrassing. I just wanted to cry. And we get in the car, and she just puts her hand on my leg and just looks at me and just she tells me not to worry about it. Don't worry about it. I love you, it's okay. She was so calm, so graceful about it. And all I could think of is just what happened. I used to be the guy that provides, was able to provide. And um, it was just so embarrassing, and I felt like such a failure. Um, you know, imagine driving your wife to the store and saying, hey, let's go get you something for your birthday, and then spending that time there, getting her excited, and then declined the register. And it just punched me in the chest so hard. And then the thought, oh, I took a day off earlier this week, too, uh, that I could have worked, and that would have covered it. I just felt like the biggest failure of a husband. And um I had this image in my head of always being able to provide. And thus far I always had until the last few years, things have gotten a little tough. You know, things have changed. And now the vision of me providing financially, um, at least in a stable manner, it it's a future image I have of myself. And the gap from where I am now to where I want to be, that's the journey at the moment. So, yeah, what's going on, guys? It's Jake with Standing Nowhere Podcast. Uh, pleasure to be back. This is episode 40. Wow, 40 episodes. How about that, huh? Holy smokes. We're coming up on a year already. Cooking with gas. Starting to get a few more uh downloads every day, starting to grow a little bit. I appreciate you guys listening out there. Some things did come to mind though while I was driving this morning, which is about um uh something called Viragya, I think if I'm pronouncing that right, which is an old Sanskrit word, which means the falling away of desires, not the forcing of them, the falling away. And I'm kind of going through that. We all are, I guess, um, to some degree, to varying degrees. But for me right now, you know, there is um there has been the desire for financial security for a long time, which I have not been able to fulfill. But uh the big thing for me is you know, I I have the vision of the person that I want to be, and it's down the road. There's like that gap from where I am now to where I would like to be. And it's a difficult balancing act because part of me wants to get there quickly and just kind of force my way through it. But, you know, going back to that word virag Viragia, uh, the falling away of desires, it it's like there's the there's a saying that you can't rip the skin from a snake. You know, it's gonna shed when it's ready to shed. And when it comes to um a lot of the desires that are holding me back from the person I want to be down the road, um, you know, I've had this relationship with them over the last three plus years now, trying to really be present with them and mindful of them. Um, it's kind of like a love hate, you know. Like in the morning, I really enjoy having an energy drink to get me going, get on the road, and um at the same time, it's not a good habit to have on a daily basis because you don't know all the chemicals in an energy drink. I would like to be a person who doesn't drink an energy drink every day. I don't mind caffeine, but I like cleaner sources like green tea or you know, a caffeine pill or something like that. And um, the person that I want to be down the road is also somebody who um has resumed their training exercises, you know, three times a week to uh to stay on the healthier side. You know, I'm in my 40s now, uh early 40s, but I got to keep the ticker running strong. And the best way to do that, of course, is uh resistance training, get your heart rate up, get some cardiovascular movement in the body. You know, that's what that's what I'm going through right now, and that's what I'm talking about right now with you is just that gap between where you are and where you want to be. And we gotta understand that our habits, they're gonna kick themselves. And right there, you probably heard the same voice in your head say, Well, wait a minute, if I don't do something about it, it's not gonna fix itself. But there's the trick you know where you want to be. I know where I want to be. I want to be eating whole foods, training three times a week, you know, I want to be a little lighter on my feet, and I'm not there right now. And I've and yes, I I quote unquote, I gotta make it happen, but at the same time, how many times have we tried a New Year's resolution and it failed, right? And I spoke about this on a New Year's resolution episode. You know, it was a quick episode I did uh where the word resolution is really about loosening the bonds that hold us. Most people get it backwards, like uh resolve is like squeezing something and controlling it until you resolve to make it happen, like your resolve is strong. But it's actually a loosening. And for me, that that really points me to uh the distinction of uh patience, you know, understanding that there's a difference between or a distinction between um you know patience and what's the word I'm looking for, like suffering, you know. Um you you have to understand that you can't pull a flower up out of the ground to make it grow faster. Your habits, you know, they say Rome wasn't built in a day. You know, so if you have a lot of pounds you gotta lose, or you have to work on your spending habits or whatever, insert fill in the blank. You have the target and there's the gap. But it r it really involves being patient and understanding with a gentleness we can let go of our need to control, which is actually making it worse. Tying back to that word resolver, I believe is the original word or the Latin word to loosen the bindings of. It's like these desires have you in the grip of them. You're bound up in them. So you've got to loosen them. But you can't force them, you can't force a knot to come loose, right? You gotta have patience. You gotta pick at it, you gotta look at it from different angles, you gotta slow the clock down a little bit. And how do we slow the clock down? When we when we uh pay attention to what we're doing, when we're really with it. We can look at it and say, um, you know, maybe after that meal, I don't have to have uh two, three, or four nutty bars, peanut butter bars. That's like 650 calories of sugar that's gonna be squirting through my body before I go back to work. I don't need that. I just had a full meal. I don't need a dessert. Just a little tiny maybe I don't need that right now. Or maybe it looks like me uh indulging in it and giving in. Oh, but then I'm I'm mindful of myself. How do I feel that I gave into this? Well, I don't feel good that this sugar has a little bit of control over me. That doesn't make me feel good. And oh my blood sugar's spiking right now. Oh, now it's crashing. I don't feel so good. Slow down, turn the clock down a little bit. Slow the clock down. Look at it. Take a good look. How do you feel about it? I remember listening to a lecture from Osho once, and he was talking about people who couldn't quit smoking, and he was like, Why you know, if you are willing to shorten your life with an activity, then delight in it, dance in it. Um you know, don't uh don't dwell in your conflict, just look at the activity that you're doing while you are doing it. How does it make you feel when you inhale the smoke into your lungs? You know, he was like, breathe in deeply, look at it. How does that feel? Let it let it flow out of you. How does that feel when you exhale the smoke? Aurobindo Aurobindo said, after you fall on your face, you stand up, brush yourself off, and look sheepishly at God, and you get on with it. You move on. You know, it's these desires that feel stuck to us or aversions it's like a Chinese finger trap. You know, the harder you try to pull away, the more it grabs you, the more it latches on. So the key is to loosen the grip. You know, they say let it go. That's one way to put it, but you could also say let it be. Be still. It's got you right now, right? Just picture the thing that you're hooked on or is hooked on you. It's got you. So just let it be for a minute. For a while. Let it be and be with it. Just let your mindfulness particles infiltrate it. To quote uh Tick Not Han, he always used that as a reference. Let the mindfulness particles infiltrate it. Just think about that thing that's stuck on you. You've been trying to get it off for a while. That thing you can't quit. Maybe it's your phone, maybe it's food, maybe it's both, whatever. Maybe it's porn. You name it. Not working out, not sticking to your gym membership. Golly. It's tough to be human, right? There's all these things we want to do. There's this future version of ourselves, and there's the gap between where we are, where we want to be. It's okay to have that target, but that doesn't define our happiness. Happiness is always found in this moment. You know, I had the re the realization the other day. I was looking at uh my my podcast, and I was like scrolling through looking for something, and I was like scrolling through the episodes, and I was like, wow, this is a long list. How did I do this? And and the answer was just one episode at a time, you know, like first episode, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm still trying to figure this out. I just hit record and I'm still hitting record every day, and I got work to do. I got to figure out, you know, this and that, how to get guests. But it was like that huge list that I made. It I just had that realization. It was like all I ever was focused on was just this moment, just doing the best possible episode I could on that specific day or that week. And that's what I'm doing right now. I I've had a busy couple of weeks and um busy week last week, just trying to relax. And um I I want to keep the momentum up and I love podcasting, and sometimes I have to give myself space. I have to give myself permission to fail, permission to make um my less than greatest episode, you know, permission to um just be me, right? And it and understand that it's okay. The whole I the whole uh the whole idea of spirituality really is that uh we want to get our minds into the the state of being okay with the present moment. Not in a sense that you're okay with um sloth or uh you know, that's the ego trying to reinsert itself. Uh you're still gonna do the right thing, but you've gotta wherever you are now, that's that's reality. That's what is. And that may not be the perfect you you have visioned, envisioned down the road, but it's you right now. And all you have is now. So if you just focus on the now, you're gonna naturally gravitate towards where you need to be and where you want to be, one little step at a time. And you won't really notice the change because it's always now, but then you'll look back and you'll see, wow, I went from procrastinating, starting a podcast for a whole year, 12 months of blank, to I've done a podcast for a whole year now. But did I really do a year of podcasting? I mean, I'm at nine or ten months now. I didn't really. I only just ever podcasted right now. This is episode 40, but it feels like episode one. I just sat down and started recording. So wherever you are, guys, and wherever you want to be, just understand that that gap will close when it's ready to. The skin can't rip it off the snake. It's gonna shed when it's ready to shed. And I know I I can feel it coming, but right now, I'm okay with right now. I'm um I'm at peace with it because peace is only ever found in the now. A radical love for right now, a radical appreciation for this moment. When's the last time you said to yourself, thank you, uh breath? Thank you for this last breath I had. It was great. And the next one I'm about to have? Take a deep breath right now. Feels good, thank you. In the meantime, let's enjoy the moment and understand that that that version of ourselves that we're aiming for, it'll come. And I'm gonna try to remind myself of that. It's easy for me to get on the mic here and talk about it, but it's another thing to do it. And um I can't wait to have uh more people on this podcast. Guys, I know I keep talking about it, but I am just really excited for that. Um and uh remember to love yourself and love the people in your life right now that are around you, supporting you, loving you. It feels good to reciprocate that. And I'm gonna leave you guys with a little inspirational quote that I had written down for this episode from uh another one from Thomas Merton. He says, Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results the opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea, and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything. Blessings to everyone. I will see you guys next week.