Standing Nowhere

After six months away, I’m back. This episode is an honest update on where I’ve been: why I stepped back from the show, what happened when I tried to climb the ranked ladder in Overwatch while practicing presence (and lost it in a zipper-merge shouting match), a summer of 60-plus-hour weeks in gig delivery, 35 pounds lost, and the job I almost landed.

I also talk about what faith means to me when things are hard (trust, not belief), why I think AI mimics the way our minds work, and where Standing Nowhere is headed: looser episodes, more guests, and more of whatever’s on my mind, with plenty of spirituality still in the mix.

If you’re going through a rough stretch too, you’re not alone in it.

Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this, subscribe and leave a review. It helps more than you’d think.

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📧 Email: [email protected]

Standing Nowhere is a contemplative spirituality podcast exploring mindfulness, meditation, and what it means to be human through vulnerable storytelling.

Awareness is the greatest treasure in my life, and lately I've felt it getting covered up.

In this episode, I talk honestly about the habits that have been dulling that clarity — caffeine, late-night routines, social media, comfort habits, and the constant pull to stay stimulated.

This isn't a self-help episode, and it's not a grand declaration that I've fixed anything. It's more of a life update: a recognition that some habits don't need to be ripped away by force. Sometimes they're just ready to fall off when you finally value presence more than what's been covering it.

Along the way, I reflect on the Buddha, Jesus, Paul, Lao Tzu, Alan Watts, and Osho — all pointing, in different ways, toward the same thing: awareness isn't something you manufacture. It's what remains when the noise starts to drop.

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📧 Email: [email protected]

Standing Nowhere is a contemplative spirituality podcast exploring mindfulness, meditation, and what it means to be human through vulnerable storytelling.

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.

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⭐ Leave a review: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/standing-nowhere/id1822619607?action=write-review
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🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@standingnowherepodcast
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📧 Email: [email protected]

Standing Nowhere is a contemplative spirituality podcast exploring mindfulness, meditation, and what it means to be human through vulnerable storytelling.

Jacob thought the reason he hadn't done more interviews was scheduling. But one night it hit him — it wasn't really the schedule. It was fear. Not fear of talking to people, but fear of what they might bring with them. Grief. Pain. Loss. Truth.

In this episode, he traces that fear back to a Lyft ride in Las Vegas he's never forgotten — a stranger gets in the car, bursts into tears, and shares a story of devastating loss. From there, Jacob reflects on compassion, what it really means to suffer with another person, and why this may be exactly where Standing Nowhere is meant to go next. Closes with a reading from Osho.

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🔗 All links: https://linktr.ee/standingnowhere
⭐ Leave a review: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/standing-nowhere/id1822619607?action=write-review
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🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@standingnowherepodcast
💬 Discord: https://discord.com/invite/4yfaU7x4nF
📧 Email: [email protected]

Standing Nowhere is a contemplative spirituality podcast exploring mindfulness, meditation, and what it means to be human through vulnerable storytelling.

For most of my life, I never questioned it. I was Jacob. My thoughts, my experiences, my feelings — that was me.

Then meditation started doing something I didn't ask it to do.

In this episode I'm talking about self — or more precisely, the growing suspicion that the self you've spent your whole life protecting might not be what you think it is. I share the moment this cracked open for me mid-delivery, crying alone in a car, and trace the thread through Buddhism, early Christianity, the language we use every day, and what years of daily Zazen practice have quietly done to my sense of who I am.

This is not a lecture. It's an open thread.

Closing with readings from Thomas Merton and Ramana Maharshi.

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⭐ Leave a review: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/standing-nowhere/id1822619607?action=write-review
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🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@standingnowherepodcast
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Standing Nowhere is a contemplative spirituality podcast exploring mindfulness, meditation, and what it means to be human through vulnerable storytelling.

We act on what we perceive, not what's real. And we rarely know the difference.

In this episode Jacob examines perception at every level — the stories we tell ourselves about who we are, the assumptions we make about strangers, the myths nations tell themselves about their own goodness, and the deepest illusion of all: the mind's projection of a divided reality onto what is fundamentally one.

Along the way: a gas bill that wasn't overdue, the astronauts who saw no borders from space, the Vedantic concept of Maya, and three traditions — Jesus, Lao Tzu, and the Third Patriarch of Zen — arriving at the exact same place. Plus St. John of the Cross, Meister Eckhart, and a 13th century Persian poet whose civilization is being bombed right now.

The rope was never a snake. But try telling that to your nervous system.

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⭐ Leave a review: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/standing-nowhere/id1822619607?action=write-review
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🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@standingnowherepodcast
💬 Discord: https://discord.com/invite/4yfaU7x4nF
📧 Email: [email protected]

Standing Nowhere is a contemplative spirituality podcast exploring mindfulness, meditation, and what it means to be human through vulnerable storytelling.

 Most of us spend our spiritual lives in the hearing and understanding phase — and never quite cross into direct experience. In this episode, Jacob opens in real time, frustrated after seven false starts, becoming the thesis of the episode before he even names it. From sitting on a cushion at 6:30am to waddling through a grocery store in compromised underwear, this is what direct experience actually looks like. Why belief won't keep you warm on a cold night. Why 100% of your thoughts are outside your control. Why the dreamer is not separate from the dream. Closes with a wisdom reading from Thomas Merton's New Seeds of Contemplation. 

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⭐ Leave a review: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/standing-nowhere/id1822619607?action=write-review
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🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@standingnowherepodcast
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📧 Email: [email protected]

Standing Nowhere is a contemplative spirituality podcast exploring mindfulness, meditation, and what it means to be human through vulnerable storytelling.

What do you do when relief finally arrives — and you find yourself reaching for a new kind of misery? In this episode, Jacob explores the concept of the inamorata: the beloved we can't quit, whether that's financial stress, comfortable numbness, collective atrocity, or the systems we refuse to dismantle. From a little girl named Sara in Iran, to AI being used for mass surveillance, to Anthropic's complicated stand against the Pentagon — this episode asks one question: are you awake, or are you just managing your awareness? Featuring Thich Nhat Hanh's "Call Me By My True Names." 

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🔗 All links: https://linktr.ee/standingnowhere
⭐ Leave a review: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/standing-nowhere/id1822619607?action=write-review
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📧 Email: [email protected]

Standing Nowhere is a contemplative spirituality podcast exploring mindfulness, meditation, and what it means to be human through vulnerable storytelling.

You don't need a retreat, a monastery, or a perfect morning routine to practice.

In this episode, Jacob explores what it means to stop running — not from responsibility, but from the present moment itself. Through reflections on early mornings, financial stress, gig work, and parenting on tired legs, he unpacks the difference between surrender and avoidance, and why real practice happens right in the middle of your ordinary life — not outside of it.

At the heart of the episode is the story of Dipa Ma, a woman who lost everything and found profound spiritual realization while raising a child in a tiny Calcutta apartment with no door on the bedroom. Her life points to a simple but demanding truth: you don't need to escape your circumstances to wake up. You need to meet them fully.

This episode covers:

• Meditation in daily life and what it actually looks like
• The identifying trap and spiritual bypassing
• Surrender vs. passivity — and why they're not the same thing
• Parenting as presence
• Acting from stillness (wu wei)
• Closing with Tao Te Ching Verse 48

If you've ever felt like you need to fix your life before you can practice, this episode is for you.

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🔗 All links: https://linktr.ee/standingnowhere
⭐ Leave a review: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/standing-nowhere/id1822619607?action=write-review
📷 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/standing.nowhere/
🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@standingnowherepodcast
💬 Discord: https://discord.com/invite/4yfaU7x4nF
📧 Email: [email protected]

Standing Nowhere is a contemplative spirituality podcast exploring mindfulness, meditation, and what it means to be human through vulnerable storytelling.

What happens when you're a daily meditator and still choose petty revenge? After a brutal morning of delivery work and a no-tip pizza order to a 4th-floor apartment, I left the food outside—fully aware I was being petty, watching myself make the choice, unable to stop it. This episode explores the uncomfortable truth about spiritual practice: you don't become perfect, you just become aware of your imperfection.

I share the raw moment of choosing anger over maturity, the internal battle between Buddhist noting techniques and actual rage, and what Ram Dass meant when he said "falling off the path IS the path." We dive into holding doubt, despair, and anger in awareness without trying to fix yourself—because you can't lift yourself up by your own bootstraps.

Drawing from Buddhism, Taoism, and Lao Tzu's wisdom about waiting until the mud settles, this episode is for anyone who's ever questioned whether their practice is "working" or felt like a spiritual failure. Sometimes the stumbles aren't detours—they're the actual path.

Topics explored: mindfulness practice, spiritual imperfection, anger management through awareness, doubt as discriminating wisdom, trusting the Tao, gradual transformation, self-compassion, Buddhist noting technique, spiritual bypassing vs. real practice

Want to share a thought?

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🔗 All links: https://linktr.ee/standingnowhere
⭐ Leave a review: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/standing-nowhere/id1822619607?action=write-review
📷 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/standing.nowhere/
🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@standingnowherepodcast
💬 Discord: https://discord.com/invite/4yfaU7x4nF
📧 Email: [email protected]

Standing Nowhere is a contemplative spirituality podcast exploring mindfulness, meditation, and what it means to be human through vulnerable storytelling.