What does it actually look like to stay present when you're driving 10–12 hours a day, feeling lonely in your car, grieving lost friends, and still trying to create?

For this milestone episode, I tried something different—I asked Claude to generate 6 spontaneous topics about my life that I'd never seen before, then hit record and responded from the heart with zero preparation.

What emerged was a raw conversation about staying mindful through exhausting work, creative expression as survival, what loss teaches us about impermanence, the difference between loneliness and aloneness, gaming as a spiritual practice, and what I'd tell my 25-year-old self about cherishing time with the people I love.

No outline. No safety net. Just coming back to presence, over and over again.

In this episode:

• Staying mindful while driving long hours in the gig economy
• Why creative expression matters even when no one's listening
• What losing friends to death and distance taught me about impermanence
• The difference between being alone and being lonely
• Can gaming be a spiritual practice? Bringing mindfulness to Overwatch
• What I'd tell my 25-year-old self about being present with my kids

Mentioned in this episode:
My Green Day covers from 18 years ago as a newly divorced single dad:
https://www.youtube.com/sephiros888

Want to be a guest or share your story?
Email: [email protected]

If this episode resonated with you, a 5-star review and a comment go a long way in helping the show reach more people who might need to hear it.

Come back. Keep coming back. That's all it is.

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This week, I couldn't lock in a guest—and honestly, I've been struggling to lock in much of anything lately. Backsliding on habits, drowning in self-blame, stuck in the gap between where I am and where I want to be.

Then, while decorating the Christmas tree, I realized I'd completely forgotten one of my son's ornaments. The one he made at five years old. The one with his tiny handprint pressed into paint. He's 19 now. He's moved out. That time is gone.

In this solo episode, I explore:

• The cruel irony of finally waking up to what matters while everyone around you is on screens
• Why holiday traditions are more than corporate capitalism—they're markers that say "this matters, these people matter"
• How Leonard Cohen's "Anthem" taught me to forget my perfect offering and ring the bells that still can ring
• What it means to practice gratitude not as toxic positivity, but as returning—again and again—to what's real
• How to hold creative work (like this podcast) with mindfulness instead of getting lost in numbers and ego

I share what I'm genuinely grateful for: my wife's patience through financial hardship, my kids' loving hearts, the four guests who've trusted me with their stories, the miracles hiding in plain sight (like a full rainbow on a delivery day).

This isn't about maintaining gratitude in adversity. It's about returning to it. Coming back. That's the practice.

Featuring readings from Leonard Cohen's "Anthem," 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, and closing with Thich Nhat Hanh's reminder that the real miracle isn't walking on water—it's walking on earth.

If you're in the gap too, I'd love to hear from you.

—

📬 Share your story: Leave a comment or review—I read every one

🎙️ Previous guests: My mom on forgiveness, Kate on surviving abuse, Rafi on loss and art, my brother on gentle spirits in a harsh world

🙏 Gratitude: Thank you for walking on this earth with me

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This one is more raw, intense, and emotionally unfiltered than usual — because real healing rarely looks clean.

 A late-night conversation between two brothers doing their best to stay present in the middle of real life.

It wasn’t planned. It started as a late-night hangout with my younger brother Jeremy and turned into one of the most honest conversations we’ve ever recorded.

Jeremy has lived through more than most people twice his age—eight car accidents, addiction, financial collapse, and the kind of fear that gets into your bones and never seems to leave. His nervous system runs hot. His thoughts move fast. He feels everything intensely. And for most of his life, he’s carried all of it alone.

But beneath all that intensity is a man who keeps coming back to one question:
 What does it really mean to die to yourself?

In this conversation, we talk about trauma and the way it reshapes your body. We talk about fear, paranoia, and intrusive thoughts that feel like they’re trying to take over. We talk about gig work, exhaustion, fasting, sobriety, and the thousand small ways people try to numb their pain when life won’t let up.

Jeremy speaks in the language of faith—Jesus, the enemy, the fruits of the Spirit. I speak in the language of presence, ego, and mindfulness. But both of us are pointing toward the same thing:
 letting go of the stories that keep you afraid, and learning to trust the moment you’re actually in.

Nothing here is rehearsed or polished. It’s raw, unfiltered, and deeply human. I edited out a few loops and darker tangents, but I left the heart of Jeremy’s voice exactly as it was: vulnerable, intense, and honest.

If you’ve ever lived in survival mode…
 If you’ve ever been stuck in fear…
 If you’ve ever felt ashamed of not being “farther along” in your healing…
 If you’re running hot, tired, or spiritually burned out…

I hope this conversation meets you right where you are.

Topics include:

• What “dying to yourself” means beyond the concept
• Trauma, hypervigilance, and why your fear actually makes sense
• The cost of gig work and financial instability on the body
• Addiction, cannabis, sobriety, and numbing pain
• Letting go when you feel like you’re failing
• Heaven and hell as present-moment realities
• Intrusive thoughts and the battle between ego and surrender
• Stuck points—and how to move through them with compassion
• Why “you are enough” is not a platitude but a practice
• How two spiritual vocabularies can lead to the same place: presence, love, and letting go

If you’re in your own stuck point right now—emotionally, financially, or spiritually—I hope this episode helps you feel less alone, and reminds you that even in the chaos, there’s a deeper place inside you that hasn’t been touched.

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What do we do with grief, synchronicity, and the strange ways love keeps showing up?

In this episode, I sit down with one of my oldest and closest friends, Raphael “Rafi” Rozenberg. We met in 1997 and have lived through almost everything together—high-school chaos, fatherhood, marriages, losses, and all the weird twists of life in between.

Rafi opens up about growing up in an Orthodox Jewish home, the accident that changed his father forever, the years of miscarriages he and his wife endured, and what it was like to lose both his father and his brother Pete. We talk about the shock of Pete’s passing, the long slow process of grief, and how you keep putting one foot in front of the other when life keeps breaking you open.

We also talk about the strange synchronicity around Pete’s birthday—how a meditation that morning brought him to mind, and what it might mean when the people we’ve lost show up in ways we can’t explain.

From there, we explore the path that led Rafi to his creative calling: becoming a full-time artist who designs and paints intricate 3D-printed sculptures. His business, Dungeon Master Minis, is a stunning example of turning pain, beauty, and obsession into craft.

If you want to see his work or support what he’s building:
🔗 Website: https://www.dmminisus.com/
📸 Instagram: @dmminisus
🎵 TikTok: @dmminis

If the show resonates with you, it would mean the world if you’d follow the podcast in your favorite app or share this episode with a friend who might need it.

I close this episode with a reading from Thich Nhat Hanh, offered as a kind of quiet blessing for anyone carrying grief today.

Thank you for being here.

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You've been defending this "you" your whole life—getting offended when criticized, proud when praised, anxious about what others think. But what if the self you're protecting doesn't actually exist?

This episode explores ego and the illusion of the separate self. Not as abstract philosophy, but as something you can observe right now. Watch your thoughts arise. Did you decide to think that? Or did the thought just appear? If you didn't choose it, who's the "you" that claims ownership of it?

The paradox: you have to become somebody before you can become nobody. Spiritual development requires building a healthy ego first—integrating your shadow, becoming a functioning adult—then seeing through it. Like climbing a ladder to realize you never needed the ladder. This isn't nihilism (everything is meaningless). This is emptiness (no permanent, separate self—just awareness watching the show).

I share how my depression and burnout dissolved my ego enough to finally see through it, how suffering cracks the shell of the separate self, and why the exhausting work of maintaining your image can finally stop when you realize there's no "you" to defend.

Featuring J. Krishnamurti on "the observer IS the observed" (no separate watcher), Nisargadatta Maharaj's "I am not this body, not this mind—I am the awareness in which all this appears," Ram Dass on "I'm loving awareness," Thich Nhat Hanh on interbeing (you can't exist separately—you inter-are with everything), Paul on "I die daily" and "it's no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me" (ego death in Christian language), Jesus on "I and the Father are one" (dissolving separation), Buddha on anatta (no-self), and the Christian mystics who saw the same truth but called it "union with God."

We discuss: why language creates the illusion of a separate "I" (pronouns make you think there's a doer behind the doing), how thoughts think themselves without a thinker (just like digestion digests itself), the exhausting work of maintaining your self-image, why suffering dissolves ego faster than any practice (when you're in crisis, "you" disappears and only awareness remains), what remains when the separate self relaxes (spoiler: everything, but lighter), and how anxiety is just ego trying to control the uncontrollable.

If you're exhausted from defending yourself, struggling with self-doubt, feeling like spiritual practice hasn't touched your core suffering, or sensing there's something deeper than the "you" you've been told you are—this one's for you.

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I can't afford to take time off. But I also can't afford not to take time off. That's the bind I've been in—and maybe you're there too.

This week, I hit rock bottom. Burnt out, behind on bills, working 50-60 hours a week and still sinking. My body finally said: Stop. Now. So I took an unscheduled week of rest, even though I couldn't afford it. And that forced pause revealed something I'd been missing: rest isn't the pit stop before getting back to work—it's the finish line.

Drawing from the Hebrew tradition of Sabbath and the writings of Abraham Joshua Heschel, I explore rest as the point of being alive—not a luxury you earn. We also dig into the guilt that comes with stopping, the trust required to let go of control, and the strange grace of rock bottom. When you can't fix your way out anymore, surrender becomes the only option—and that's where transformation happens.

In this episode:

• Why the Sabbath is a commandment to trust, not just to stop
• Rock bottom as the doorway to surrender
• How rest reconnects us to our center
• Carrying that rest back into work

Featuring insights from Heschel, Rumi, Meister Eckhart, Alan Watts, and Lao Tzu.

If you've ever felt like you can't afford to rest—or like your life will fall apart if you stop—this episode is for you.

Stop. Rest. Trust.

If this resonated, a rating or review truly helps the podcast reach others who might need it. Thanks for being here.

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In your twenties, it’s easy to feel like you’ll always belong somewhere — a friend group, a workplace, a Saturday night ritual that feels like home. But what happens when those circles fade, and you suddenly find yourself everywhere in the city… yet belonging nowhere?

In this deeply personal episode, Jacob shares the story of poker nights and found-family friendships, the sudden loss of someone who helped anchor his world, and the quiet isolation of gig work that left him feeling like a ghost — unseen in restaurants full of laughter and connection.

And yet… that ghostly invisibility became the doorway to something unexpected: aloneness — not loneliness — but a deeper, more courageous way of being with yourself.

Through grief, silence, and a chance encounter with the teachings of Alan Watts and Ram Dass, Jacob uncovers what it means to lose borrowed belonging… and slowly rebuild connection from the inside out.

This isn’t a story about giving up — it’s a story about remembering who you are when no one is looking.

Topics:

• When community feels like home… until it doesn’t
• The slow erosion of belonging — and why it hurts so much
• How crisis can become a turning point toward a truer life
• The difference between loneliness and aloneness
• Practical ways to reconnect with yourself and others

If you’ve ever felt invisible in a room full of people — this one’s for you.

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Three years ago I was broke, sharing an apartment with scorpions, and couldn't see a way forward. Then I discovered that laughter—the real, spontaneous kind—can be a powerful spiritual practice.

In this episode we explore why ego and humor can't coexist, and how laughing at yourself transforms everything from meditation to life's hardest moments.

What we cover:

• The scorpion story and the spiritual breakthrough that followed
• Why heaviness is "spiritual death" and lightness is life
• How to spot the cosmic joke in your own struggles
• Ancient wisdom on softness vs. rigidity in spiritual practice
• The line between toxic positivity and genuine humor

Featuring G.K. Chesterton's idea of "divine delight," Taoist wisdom on yielding over forcing, and practical ways to bring levity to real-world challenges.

If spirituality has started to feel heavy, this is your permission to lighten up without losing depth.

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Working 63-hour weeks with no AC in my car, behind on bills, applying for IT jobs I'm not sure I'm qualified for, and terrified every podcast episode isn't good enough. That's where I've been the last two weeks—and that's what this episode is really about.

This isn't a theoretical discussion about fear. It's me working through financial anxiety, self-doubt, and the paralysis that comes when you're drowning but still have to show up every day. I share the spiritual practices that actually help me face my demons instead of running from them: gratitude in impossible circumstances, grounding in the present moment when your mind is screaming about the future, and learning to trust when you have zero idea how things will work out.

We explore fear as "contraction around imagined loss," why facing your demons wakes you up instead of destroying you, and how to take faithful swings without being attached to outcomes. Featuring wisdom from C.S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters, the Bhagavad Gita, Thich Nhat Hanh on befriending your inner Mara, Thomas Merton's prayer of unknowing, and Psalm 23.

If you're stuck in financial pressure, job hunting anxiety, imposter syndrome, or just feeling like you're failing at everything—this one's for you.

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I've quit alcohol and cannabis. Kicked my energy drink habit that was costing me $150-200 a month. But I still can't stop buying ice cream at the end of brutal work days. And I'm obsessed with making this podcast perfect, going back to edit old episodes when I should just let them be.

This episode is about attachment, desire, and why we can't stop wanting things even when we know they're not making us happy. It's not about becoming a monk or renouncing everything—it's about nothing owning you. We explore the difference between healthy desires (like wanting to help people) and the burning attachments that enslave us (scrolling, shopping therapy, substances, perfectionism).

I break down what "sin" and "repentance" actually meant in Aramaic and Greek (spoiler: they're directional statements about being off-center, not moral failures). We look at why the relief from buying something comes from the cessation of wanting it, not the object itself. And I share practical experiments for letting go: delaying cravings, befriending your withdrawals, and the "don't tell the devil your plans" strategy that actually works.

Featuring wisdom from James and Ecclesiastes on the vapor of things, Krishna's ocean metaphor in the Bhagavad Gita, the Buddha on unshaken mind, Meister Eckhart and John of the Cross on divine union, Rumi's furnace of stress, and Paul's secret of contentment. Plus my own ongoing struggle with frozen pizza and productivity addiction—because I'm not perfect either.

If you're trapped in any cycle of wanting—substances, screens, food, achievement, perfection—this one's for you.

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