So, yesterday I went live with my friend Sam Goldfinch to talk spirituality, sobriety and rule-breaking wisdom.

I was quite nervous, palms sweating and all.

Blame it on his leonine rockstar mane.

Or maybe on some of the topics we touched upon that stirred stuff within me.

Or perhaps I just don’t know why I was nervous and I’m making reasons up.

Be that as it may, it was a great episode - thanks again to Sam and to everybody who joined live.

Now, who’s Sam?

Sam is a writer, educator, coach, and a deep explorer of spirituality, transpersonal psychology and addiction. He’s the founder of Rebel Spirituality and co-host of the Present & Sober podcast.

Sam and I met years ago through our mutual friend and mentor Jamie Smart, and we’d been meaning to do something together ever since - so this was a long time coming, and maybe that’s why we covered so much ground.

Here’s some of what we talked about:

* Sobriety is badass: turning an apparent oxymoron into a way of flipping the rebel archetype and redefining the word “sober.”

* Sam’s story, unvarnished: drinking from age 12, the years as “the walking, talking spiritual cliché while drugging my way to an early grave,” and the moment at 26 he finally decided to turn his life around.

* Fully human, fully divine: why the goal is not to end up in a permanent blissful state of peace, but to be able to bathe in the whole rich, messy human experience.

* Plant medicine, and taking heat for speaking your truth: Sam’s nuanced, rules-free take on plant medicines, and why you’ve got to make your own wisdom-based way through life.

* The cosmic joke: realizing you were already whole the whole time, that nothing was missing, and that all the seeking was looking outside for something that only lives within.

* The ego’s new costume: how the ego hijacks even “being ordinary” and “being spiritual” and turns them into a new way to feel special.

* Belonging vs fitting in: why belonging to life is innate, why trying to fit into a tribe (spiritual or otherwise) is something we do innocently, and how to stay yourself inside any community.

* Wisdom doesn’t follow rules - one of Sam’s favorite mottos, and how to fully live it (even when that means following the rules).

* A final, provocative question from the audience: if given the chance, would you take the blue pill and go back to sleep?

And we covered a lot of other topics - like why Sam doesn’t dig the word “alcoholic,” my own abrupt awakening at an ayahuasca ceremony in 2011, my journey of sobriety, and more.

And here are the resources mentioned:

Sam:

* Sam Goldfinch - Sam’s website.

* Rebel Spirituality - Sam’s Substack.

* Present & Sober podcast - Sam’s podcast on sobriety, co-hosted with Ellie Crowe.

* Built for Reality - Sam’s project with his friend Scott, dripping out as a weekly YouTube.

Books:

* Clarity by Jamie Smart - the book that brought Sam into the inside-out understanding.

* Creating the Impossible by Michael Neill.

* The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle - the book that started Sam’s seeking at 17.

* The End of Your World by Adyashanti - the non-dual book that told him, years early, that he was already whole.

* Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsch.

* Quantum Psychology and Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson - “more like psychedelic trips than books” (do the exercises).

* What’s Wrong with Right Now Unless You Think About It? by Sailor Bob Adamson.

* Living Reality: My Extraordinary Summer with “Sailor” Bob Adamson by James Braha - the book about a summer spent with Sailor Bob.

Articles & podcast episodes:

* The Ego’s New Costume - the piece Sam read from on the live.

* “Stripping Back Spiritual BS to See What’s Truly Here” - Sam's Present & Sober conversation with Kat Van Oudheusden.

People:

* Jamie Smart - author of Clarity and the mutual friend and mentor through whom Sam and I met.

* Michael Neill - whose course first introduced Sam to the principles.

* Kat Courtney - the plant-medicine teacher Sam mentioned.

* Kat Van Oudheusden (website). Substack: Kat (Katrijn) Van Oudheusden - the no-nonsense non-duality teacher Sam mentioned.

Teachings:

* The Three Principles - the understanding articulated by Sydney Banks.

Support the show

If you like what I’m doing, please support it by liking, subscribing, sharing or leaving a comment. And thank you, because it really does help.

Until next time,Much love,Dario

P.S. If you’d like to explore these themes more deeply, you can find out more about me and my work at dariomartinis.com.

Thanks for reading On Being Aligned! Subscribe for free to get future updates, deeper dives & support my work

So, I’ve faced a lot of resistance with this one.

First, we had to postpone it.

Then, we encountered 45 minutes (45!) of technical issues before pressing record, the video quality was horrible, and the call crashed mid-episode.

Then, I felt very tired and conflicted every time I was trying to edit and publish the episode - for 3 days.

Bad luck? Inner resistances? Big tech sabotaging us?

I don’t know, make of it what you will - but I feel strongly that this episode should be published anyway. Or precisely because of that.

Please don’t expect great production quality, and bear in mind that we were somewhat nervous and had to cut the conversation short - Andrea had a call right after, due to the 45-minute delay.

But if you tune past all that, I think you’ll find a rich, honest conversation between two lifelong friends who’ve been in this for a long time.

Andrea and I grew up together - he’s a brother from another mother (we have photos of each other in the cradle, so I mean that quite literally). He’s also my former business partner: we built businesses side by side for over two decades, topped the Apple Podcast charts in Italy, and did a host of other fun stuff along the way.

We’ve recently gone our separate ways business-wise, but we still co-run an NGO we founded in early 2018 to help people thrive in the digital age - recipient of a $120k-a-year Google Ad Grant.

These days Andrea is delving deep into AI, and co-hosts podcast episodes on exponential clarity with our mutual friend Jamie Smart. We hadn’t really talked about these themes in a while, so this was a genuine catching-up.

Here’s some of what we covered:

* “The guide I wish I’d stumbled on”: why Andrea wanted this to be the conversation he needed when he first started working full-time with technology, and the price he didn’t know he was paying.

* Why cutting all ties with tech isn’t the answer for most people - and what a sustainable relationship with technology might actually look like.

* The tobacco parallel: how the lack of awareness of digital harm when we were young mirrored the early days of cigarettes - simply zero knowledge of the damage being done.

* Hostile by design: how the biggest companies in the world build AI-driven feeds engineered to get us addicted.

* The Rat Park experiment, and why people living fulfilled, aligned lives are far less likely to fall into addictive behaviour than those who are isolated and in pain.

* We shouldn’t outsource our soul and humanity: why handing over your introspection, your judgment, and your sense of right and wrong is a dangerous line to cross.

* The “AI vampire” phenomenon, the cognitive overload of 10x productivity expectations, and how we both burned out using AI.

* Two counterintuitive ideas: 1) be highly disagreeable with AI, and 2) always remember it’s an alien intelligence, not a human being.

* My specific take: as technology accelerates exponentially, the brain alone can’t meet it. We have to tap into something beyond the brain, grow up and awaken spiritually.

And here are the resources mentioned:

* digitalstress.org - the NGO Andrea and I founded in 2018 to help people thrive in the digital age.

* Andrea Deltetto - Andrea’s website, the best place to stay in touch with his work.

* Get Clarity with Jamie Smart - where Andrea co-hosts episodes on exponential clarity in the age of AI.

* Center for Humane Technology - Tristan Harris’s organisation, working to align technology with humanity’s best interests.

* The Rat Park experiment - Bruce Alexander’s research on addiction, connection, and environment.

I’m looking forward to the next episode. If you’ve enjoyed this, please like, subscribe and leave a comment below - it really does help.

If you’d like to explore these themes more deeply, you can find out more about me and my work at dariomartinis.com.

Until next time, Much love, Dario

So, after last week’s live call with Nicola Bird I’ve been struggling quite a bit.

Headaches, nausea, bad moods, emotional lows and a host of other fun stuff that soon made me think: ego attack!

You see, with Nicola we delved deep into the topic of enthusiasm.

And I could feel her. The enthusiasm was palpable:

* I could feel her, meaning Nicola, being enthused.

* And I could feel Her, meaning Enthusiasm itself, in the virtual room with us.

Now, this newsletter doesn’t have a lot of reach for now - just a few dozen subscribers & followers.

So, I know that, for now, not many will be listening to the recording. Likely.

But I also know in my heart that it was a great piece of content and another step in the right direction for me - because Enthusiasm was there.

Enthusiasm was there, and my ego hasn’t liked its life-changing, transformational properties.

Ego attack!

And that’s what, to me, the Wisdom of Enthusiasm is all about.

It’s an inner compass. The inner compass.

The only thing that can ultimately, truly guide us in life to see & discover what’s aligned with our heart, and what’s not.

Once you find it - or it finds you - press on and win onward.

Much love,Dario

Thank you for reading.

If you’re feeling demotivated or disconnected and would like some more clarity, juice, love and enthusiasm in your life (perhaps more than you ever thought possible) you can reach out here for a free coaching chat with me.

I’d love to connect.

I’ve just finished my first Substack Live with Nicola Bird, and I absolutely loved it. She’s a wonderful human being, and my heart was singing all the way through.

Thank you again, Nicola.

And thank you to those who joined us live. It was a last-minute, spur-of-the-moment kind of thing and we didn’t promote it, but there were 18 of you there by the end, and it was lovely to have you with us.

The internet connection lagged here and there, and the video may not look great, but if you tune into the spirit of the conversation, you will hear how much love, enthusiasm and lit-upness was there.

Nicola is an artist, a writer, a Hay House published author, and a serial entrepreneur who has created a successful tech company, a coaching company, and an e-commerce company.

I’ve been following her work for 5 years, and I find her story and mindset deeply inspiring - her willingness to follow her truth, heart and intuition, and her capacity to create businesses and generate income in alignment with that.

Here’s some of what we covered:

- Why Nicola is in “pivot mode” right now, and how “integration” is the word guiding this chapter of her life - weaving together everything she’s learned about business, heart and spirituality into something only she can create.

- Reaching seven figures and feeling absolutely nothing - the wake-up call, the burnout, and the 20 years of anxiety behind the success.

- The “breath of God”: her beautiful definition of inspiration as being breathed into, and why she has more respect for that breath than most people do.

- Following enthusiasm even when it makes no logical sense - and the story of how an inconvenient insight became, step by step, The Floral Project (where she and her community sow, grow and give flowers).

- The core frequency & audience: how honouring your own lit-upness draws the right people to you - and why a core group has followed her across wildly different businesses since 2007.

- How she found Jamie Smart’s book Clarity, became Michael Neill’s apprentice, and watched her anxiety and panic vanish.

- Her framework for how it all fits together right now: the one Truth, the Three Principles, the female experience, and Human Design as a treasure map.

- Why she’d rather commune with that nameless, formless energy than get better answers out of ChatGPT - and how outsourcing our wisdom, decision-making and discernment weakens the very muscles that make us human.

And here are the resources mentioned:

Nicola:

* Clarity by Jamie Smart - book that started her journey into the Three Principles.

* Michael Neill - coach and author; Nicola trained as his apprentice.

* The Three Principles - the understanding articulated by Sydney Banks.

* Human Design - a self-discovery framework that maps your unique energetic blueprint.

Dario:

* “Chip” Chipman - the “magic carpet” idea.

* Bill Plotkin - on soul initiation and vocation.

I’m looking forward to the next episode. If you’ve enjoyed this, please like & subscribe and leave a comment below - it really does help.

Until next time,Much love, Dario

An underground meme-coin crypto conference in Amsterdam. The sudden death of a stressed-out CEO. Turning forty in a few months. Three things that have everything to do with the creative direction of this newsletter & podcast.

In this opening episode, I lay out what's coming: a podcast about daring, cross-pollination, and inspiring stories from people who followed their heart and intuition despite what everyone else was saying.

What it won't be: convincing you to become a coach or content creator, or another corner of the internet validating its own opinions in an endless loop.

Down the potential guest pipeline: an indie videogame designer, a poker prodigy, a heart-centered fashion entrepreneur, a serial entrepreneur, and a surgeon putting it all on the line for a crypto protest movement. And more.

Read the written version at https://dariomartinis.substack.com/p/whats-coming

Today I’m joined by my dear friend and mentor, Jamie Smart - bestselling author, speaker, and executive coach.

He’s a remarkable human being with a long track record of helping others tap into their spiritual nature, deeper clarity, and innate wisdom.

Since writing CLARITY more than a decade ago, he has been championing a new, principle-based paradigm for psychology as a key to thriving in a rapidly and exponentially changing world.

In this conversation, we explore what Jamie calls exponential clarity, misaligned goals, the limits of linear thinking in an exponential world, insight, well-being, and the deeper source of wisdom available within all of us.

In more details:

* what Jamie means by exponential clarity

* why human goals are often misaligned with our own well-being

* the limits of linear thinking in an exponential age

* insight, resilience, and the deeper source of wisdom within

* why the age of AI asks for a deeper kind of clarity and wisdom

* what kind of inner development this moment may be asking of us

This conversation is especially for founders, leaders, creators - and, more broadly, for high-agency people who sense that this moment may be asking for a deeper kind of alignment.

If you’d like to explore these themes more deeply, you can find my writing and ways to work with me at dariomartinis.com.

Thanks for reading On Being Aligned! Subscribe for free to get future updates, deeper dives, and support my work

In this opening episode, I introduce On Being Aligned and share the audio version of the first article from the newsletter, What Kind of Civilization Are We Going to Be?

A reflection on wisdom, alignment, human flourishing, and the future we are choosing to build in the age of exponential technology.