If, as we die, we replay the 'highlight reel' of our lives, yesterday will make mine. On June 20th, 2024, I opened the first Dharma Artist Collective.

On the last day of my first darkness retreat I asked whatever it is that listens when our hearts open, "What ought I give my life to?"

I needed help. At that point, I had been wrestling with Existential Risk Theory for about 6 months.

It killed my dreams. It took me awhile to realize it, but exposing myself to ERT killed my dreams of being an author and psychoanalysist. The scope of my life was centered on myself and my family. I was going to make my money, get my house, and live the life of a writer.

I still might do that, but I knew, for my relationship with my soul, I'd need to find my multi-generational project.

So, in the darkness when I asked 'what ought I give my life too?' -- I meant what multi-generational project ought I put my life and passion and intensity behind?

I was really asking for hope. I needed a story, an image, a symbol that could stand in front of the voices in my head that despondently whispered:

humanity is fucked

you're naive

you think you can help?! look at you, don quixote

The response I got from the darkness was "The Regenerative City Project."

I then said those words out loud in the darkness I had been in for four days:

The Regenerative City Project

And as 'project' left my mouth, a large piece of wood in the fireplace snapped in half.

I instantly began to laugh and cry at the same time.

That moment, still to this day, is the most moving synchronicity I've ever had.

In the darkness I saw a city on the horizon. It's a new kind of city, one where the first impression isn't a concrete tumor on the face of Gaia. The first impression is a sigh of relief...somehow, finally, humans have figured out how to balance a complimentary symbiosis between architecture and wild nature.

I'm a few miles from the glittering city, on a hill, appreciating the horizon. A building in the middle stands out. It's the city's hospital. It looks part temple, part museum, and part greenhouse.

I can feel in places inside me I didn't know I had that my dharma is to help set the foundations so that someone, someday, can walk into that building one day.

Partly because I didn't want to feel alone, but mostly because the future will be a collaborative project, I began thinking about what kind of container could call these people in, and help us grow into the type of people who could do these kinds of things.

The Dharma Artist Collective is the first iteration of my answer to that question.

DAC is a kind of gym in the shimmer for artists to train their focus.

Turn the jewel, and one of DAC's other faces is that it is a new kind of guerrilla resistance to the colonization of our generation's minds by technologies that in 100 years may be looked back on as crimes against humanity.

Turn the jewel again and DAC is a kind of proto-guild for the new schizophrenic renaissance we find ourselves in. We're teaching each other how to be great artists in the shimmer.

Turn it again and DAC is a new kind of university, a new kind of dojo, one that produces a new kind of artist. Part medic, part athlete, part magician, part strategist.

My dream for DAC is it becomes a new kind of meta-game that transcends me. As a game designer, I've always admired Alcoholics Anonymous. It is, in my eyes, the cleanest open-sourced meta-game that helps humans wake up, clean up, grow up, and show up.

I have a dream that one day there are DACs in every major city, in thousands of pockets in the Shimmer, and that they are all dreaming of new, more beautiful horizons while training a new wave of focused artists.

I'll be talking about it more, but here are some things to know:

1. The first iteration of DAC is open to the public until July 20th, or until we reach 350 members; whichever comes first.
2. After that, we're closing the doors for a few months.
3. When we reopen, DAC will be $100 a month. I'll explain more some time why that price is the way, but it is the way.
4. The first 350 members will be grandfathered at the current $49 a month membership.
5. I'm in here almost everyday hosting dharma sprints. If you want to be in a community of artists training their focus like athletes and learning how to leverage the Shimmer, we're here.

Song I'm Listening on Repeat: Kendrick Lamar Live June 19th Concert​

I've never seen anything like this. I don't think anything like this has happened in the history of music. Hiphop is a game and 'beefs' are a part of the game. Kdot dominated without violence, and then used this moment to bring together major players of all the gangs in LA (the last 20 minutes of show) as a symbol of unity in the city he was born into.

It lands in me as a historic moment in a genre of art that has nourished me more than almost any other.

Documentary I'm featured in: Anti-Cult​

Two of my most talented friends, Max and Cody, created a documentary about Fit For Service. We let them record for a year, and then gave them complete freedom creating the story they saw. Love or hate FFS, I think you'll enjoy the film.

Quote I'm Enjoying