The Smoke Trail: S2 E46: Entity Removal, Explanation & Protection

The Smoke Trail: S2 E47: Leadership Signal, the Nervous System, and human software update with Leanne Bucaro

S2E47  -  GUEST EPISODE  -  THE SCIENCE OF TRANSFORMATION Leadership Signal, the Nervous System, and the Software Update with Leanne Bucaro, CEO and Co-Founder of STRATA EPISODE   S2E47 - Guest Episode - The Science of Transformation GUEST   Leanne Bucaro, CEO and Co-Founder, STRATA (Strata Originals) HOST   Smoke Wallin SLUG   GUEST-BUCARO THEME   Why insight alone does not change the pattern - and what actually does LINKS   strataoriginals.com  -  smokewallin.com/the-smoke-trail-podcast ABOUT THE GUEST Leanne Bucaro is the CEO and co-founder of STRATA (Strata Originals). She is purpose-driven and cares deeply about connection and making deposits in the world that have a positive social impact. Across 25-plus years of interviewing, producing, and helping global CEOs build public platforms, a pattern emerged in how leadership was being experienced under pressure. At STRATA, that pattern became a method: Leadership Signal Calibration for CEOs. Leadership Signal is how a CEO is experienced in the rooms that carry the cost - board, capital, executive team, employees, market, and public visibility. When the credibility, authority, or identity of a CEO is threatened, the room feels it before words. The invisible variable in the room is the leader's nervous system under pressure, and that is what shapes how a leader lands. Leanne makes the pattern visible and “updates the old software” so the leader lands cleanly under pressure. STRATA was co-founded with Alan McLaren, former International Chair of YPO GOLD. EPISODE HOOK “Insight does not change the pattern. A CEO can see exactly where they distort and still distort, because the autopilot that fires under that threat runs below thought. When credibility, authority, or identity is challenged, the nervous system answers before words do, and the room feels it first. Change the mechanism underneath, and the signal lands clean.” IN THIS EPISODE •     Why awareness is not the fix - a CEO can see their own autopilot and still run it, because the pattern fires below conscious thought •     Leadership Signal defined: how a leader is experienced in the rooms that carry the cost, and why the nervous system is the invisible variable •     The auto-script: old programming that once worked, never updated, firing under any threat to credibility, authority, or identity •     Nervous-system-to-nervous-system: why a room registers distortion before a single word is spoken •     Two vocabularies, one mechanism: the spiritual frame (stuck energy) and the business frame (distortion in autopilot) describe the same thing •     Smoke's journey as lived evidence: Nepal, the prayer at Buddha's birthplace, plant medicine, clearing trauma, forgiveness •     How STRATA works: Signal Discovery (a diagnostic scan, like an MRI of your leadership signal) and Calibration (clearing the distortion at its origin) •     Leanne's gift: seeing color and shadow - reading a leader's signal in the first minute of a session •     Where the real leverage is: leaders already calibrating in the 300s on the Hawkins scale who can shift up dramatically with a small change •     Creating a new category: putting inner work in business language so CEOs who would never “do the work” will engage with it KEY MOMENTS FROM THE CONVERSATION The auto-script under threat Leanne opens with the core mechanism: leaders run an automatic script when they perceive a threat to one of three areas - identity, credibility, or authority. It is old programming that worked once and was never updated. When pressure hits the room, the script runs and people feel it at the nervous system level, before words. “We run auto script when we perceive a threat. And it's all old programming that at some point worked... but nobody's updated that auto script.” LEANNE BUCARO Why knowing about it does not help Even full awareness of the autopilot does not stop it. Leanne borrows a phrase from Mike Maddock - you can't see the label from inside the jar - to make the point. By the time a leader notices the bad reaction and tries to calm their somatic system, the signal has already gone out, because it is nervous system to nervous system. “Even knowing about what that autopilot is, it doesn't help... You can't see the distortion because it's inside you.” LEANNE BUCARO The room is always scanning for safety Leanne describes what the room is actually doing: at a nervous-system level, people are asking whether this leader is safe to follow, whether to trust them, whether to stay or go. It is biology. By the time the auto-programming runs, the signal of distrust has already landed. “Is this leader safe to follow? Do I trust them? Should I stay? Should I go?” LEANNE BUCARO Following the pattern back to origin Leanne calibrates by following the pattern back to wherever it originated. The distortions developed on the climb to a CEO seat tend to cluster around credibility and authority, common in capital-market rooms where the room is pressurized on purpose to test conviction. When identity is threatened, a common distortion is command mode - anger, sharpness, the fight posture. “When you're distorting, no trust is being formed at all.” LEANNE BUCARO Seeing color and shadow Leanne sees a color for each leader within the first thirty seconds to a minute of a session - her own internal language for their signal: purple for visionary, red for command, yellow for illuminator, blue for integrator, green for stabilizer, orange for builder, white for mirror. She tells Smoke he reads as yellow, an illuminator. She also sees shadow: a dark veil where energy is stuck. Smoke notes he was read as bright yellow at a Gregg Braden retreat. “To me, purple is visionary, red is command, yellow is illuminator, blue is integrator, green is stabilizer, orange is builder... white is mirror.” LEANNE BUCARO Smoke's journey: Nepal, plant medicine, and clearing Asked how he bridged business and spirituality, Smoke tells the story: a driven entrepreneur with blocked-out childhood trauma, a trip to Nepal, kneeling at Buddha's birthplace with his late friend David Spencer, a simple prayer for peace and love, and an electric shock up his spine. Shortly after, he sat with plant medicine in Canada, cracked open locked memories, experienced an entity removal and a soul retrieval, and spent the next year uncovering and clearing trauma, arriving at forgiveness. <...

The Smoke Trail: S2 E46: Entity Removal, Explanation & Protection

THE SMOKE TRAIL  -  SEASON 2  -  SOLO ARC Entity Removal, Explanation & Protection Evil Flees Love - Real Stories, Clear Discernment, Daily Protection EPISODE METADATA Episode: S2E46 Slug: ENTITY-REMOVAL Title: Entity Removal, Explanation & Protection Subtitle: Evil Flees Love - Real Stories, Clear Discernment, Daily Protection Format: Solo teaching episode - Smoke Wallin Arc: Discernment bridge - released within the Science Bridge sequence; thematically anticipates S2E60 (Discernment) Host: Smoke Wallin Season tool: The Johari Window - what attaches lives in the Unknown and Blind; release moves it to Open EPISODE CONTEXT A solo deep-dive into a subject Smoke rarely addresses head-on: the energies that attach to people, why they attach, and how they release. The frame is empowerment, not fear - sovereignty and love throughout, never battle. Drawing on four lived stories of release across different traditions, plus the discernment tools and daily practices that make lasting protection a baseline rather than a one-time event. Held explicitly as exploratory spiritual discussion, not clinical, medical, or psychological advice. EPISODE HOOK Evil is real. But it does not need to be battled through fear or fought head-on. It is disarmed by compassion and surrender to a higher power. Fighting or fearing an entity feeds it and pulls you into its polarity. Loving awareness carries a frequency many of these entities cannot hold - because they have separated themselves from love. SMOKE WALLIN SHOW NOTES •     Why this topic, why now: naming the dark without feeding it - awareness as preparation, not preoccupation. •     The essential disclaimer: exploratory, not clinical. Rule out the ordinary first - depression, diagnosable conditions, and the normal course of life come before any talk of attachment. •     What these entities are across traditions: thought forms, earthbound spirits who did not cross over, and actual dark forces - and why the distinctions matter. •     One territory, many names: demons and unclean spirits (Christian), bhootas and pretas (Hindu), hungry spirits (Buddhist), Jinn (Islamic), intrusions and attachments (shamanic). •     Why evil exists at all: the cosmological level (darkness as the chosen shadow that makes remembering possible) versus the relative level (where darkness must still be named, refused, and resisted). •     The mechanism is resonance: above 500 (love) on the Hawkins scale is sovereign territory; 200 (courage) is the threshold; below 200 is where the cracks open and like attracts like. •     Shadow work is the protection: you are only vulnerable where you have unexamined shadow. Evil targets the blind spots - the unprocessed emotional hairballs in the subconscious. •     How they attach and the honest signs: vulnerability windows, the two pincers (Luciferic inflation vs. Satanic crushing), and Sarah Elkhaldy's teaching on the false light. •     Four lived stories of release - and the common thread that runs through every tradition. •     The two doors: love (out-vibrate it) and recognition (strip its claim) - including Gregg Braden's formula from the Gospel of Mary. •     The self-release sequence and the daily protection toolkit you can begin this week. •     The field behind the field: one system, many scales - and how to exit it energetically. KEY MOMENTS Why evil exists - holding both levels The cosmological answer (darkness as the chosen shadow that makes remembering possible) redeems the question without excusing the harm. On the relative level where we actually live, darkness must still be named and resisted - children are protected, predatory teachers are removed. Hold both, or you collapse into bypassing or despair. None of it dissolves into a non-dual mist just because we are located in a deeper source. SMOKE WALLIN Resonance and the energetic immune system Attachment is about baseline vibration. Living in love at 500 and above is sovereign territory where attachment cannot sustain itself. Below 200 - the level Hawkins estimated for most of humanity when he wrote Power vs. Force - the field is mechanical and reactive, and the portals open. You're not vibrating at the level where they are. Once you're in integrity, you've got a lot of protection. SMOKE WALLIN Shadow as the cracks evil targets Darkness always looks for the blind spots - the traumas left unresolved, the emotional energy stuck in the subconscious. To the degree the shadow work is done, third-party influence loses its purchase. What you own cannot be used against you. This is the Johari Window in action: bring it into the light and you are less susceptible. The two pincers: Luciferic and Satanic Two opposite movements, and the defenses against one can leave you exposed to the other. The Luciferic is the heat that inflates - 'you are a god,' specialness and vanity dressed as elevation, the goal being to make you a hypocrite. The Satanic is the cold that crushes - 'you are meat,' predatory, treating souls as biological matter. The Luciferic is the gateway to the Satanic. The false light - Sarah Elkhaldy (S1E24) Smoke's Season 1 guest gave him the sharpest map of the Luciferic deception. The false light is a fragmented consciousness that does not emanate from pure source; it feeds on our energy to keep us in worship and externalized authority. It does not lurk - it blazes so bright nothing else is visible. The antidote is spiritual sovereignty: think for yourself, be your own authority. Discernment can feel like waking up from a dream when you have to determine whether you've actually woken up - or are still in a dream within a dream. SARAH ELKHALDY - THE ALCHEMIST, S1E24 Four paths to release •     Personal removal - Smoke's own experience with his teacher Ivan Rados: an injury and its weight lifted, anxiety gone, a wind felt through the room. •     Holding space - the Bowen Island men's retreat, witnessing Ivan's transmutative extraction when a young man in the group was in trouble. •     'I love you' - the black-eyes teaching story: no fight, no fear, a smile and a single sentence, and the entity left. •     Deliverance and rebirth - Chris Clements (S1E13) and his deliverance experience ...

The Smoke Trail S2 E45: Jason Ma On Clarity, Legacy and Leadership in the Age of AI

Jason Ma Clarity, Legacy, and Leadership in the Age of AI   Episode: S2E45  |  Guest: Jason Ma  |  Host: Smoke Wallin Format: Guest conversation  |  Recorded on Zoom Episode Summary Smoke Wallin sits down with Jason Ma, Founder and CEO of ThreeEQ, award-winning Chief Mentor of Next Gen Leaders, and Chief Business Officer at AdXero (an applied AI/tech venture), a longtime B20/G20 member who has spent 40+ years and more than two million miles mentoring Next Gens, parents, founders, executives, and CEOs around the world. The two first met on a fireside chat at the Campden/IPI Winter Investment and Family Office Forum, where an earlier planned thirty-minute prep call ran past an hour. This conversation goes past the resume to the inner story: the late-2019 turn that began, in Jason's words, the most empowering phase of his life after more than fifty years as a secular high achiever. They get into the daily practice that anchors him now, the frameworks he uses to develop the next generation of leaders, meditation versus contemplation, the Johari Window and blind spots, and why the way you do a thing becomes the thing you end up with. In This Episode •     The wall of love letters: why Jason's home office is covered in his daughters' drawings and notes, and what it anchors. •     The MAfia and its three values: unconditional love, humor, and high standards in what truly matters. •     Viktor Frankl and the space between stimulus and response, where choice and impact live. •     The late-2019 turn: from more than fifty years secular to a daily walk of faith, and what set it in motion. •     4S and 3EQ: Jason's mentorship framework for the age of AI, and why he leads with outcomes. •     How he qualifies the families he works with, and why the means you use become the end you get. •     Meditation versus contemplation, and why a daily practice matters more than its size. •     The Johari Window, blind spots, and the four levels of competence. •     The pre-stage ritual: a private prayer, surrender to the holy spirit, and letting it flow. •     Staying centered amid noise and acceleration, and discerning thoughts from the enemy from those from God. Pull Quotes “I wake up every morning grateful and inspired. That’s it.”  - Jason “True leaders start with self-awareness. Walk your talk, talk your walk.”  - Jason “The way you do it is what you’ll end up with.”  - Smoke “Every suffering, every challenge, every trauma is a portal.”  - Smoke About Jason Ma Jason Ma is Founder and CEO of ThreeEQ, an award-winning Chief Mentor of Next Gen Leaders, and Chief Business Officer and an investor at AdXero (an applied AI/tech venture). A longstanding B20/G20 member with 40+ years across global business, technology, education, and leadership, and more than two million miles of global travel, he privately mentors 1:1 select Next Gens, parents, founders, executives, and CEOs around the world. He helps private clients prepare well, avoid costly mistakes, make better decisions, strengthen mindset and skills, and achieve stronger outcomes with well-being. He is the author of Young Leaders 3.0 and a former Forbes contributor. His faith journey since late 2019 has transformed how he understands discernment, humility, stewardship, relationships, and legacy. Website:  https://ThreeEQ.com/ [https://threeeq.com/] LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonma [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonma] Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/JasonLMaPersonal [https://www.facebook.com/JasonLMaPersonal] X:  https://x.com/JasonLMa [https://x.com/JasonLMa] Listen and Subscribe Podcast:  https://thesmoketrail.transistor.fm [https://thesmoketrail.transistor.fm/] YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/@SmokeWallinOfficial [https://www.youtube.com/@SmokeWallinOfficial] Substack:  https://smokewallin.substack.com/ [https://smokewallin.substack.com/] Website:  https://smokewallin.com/the-smoke-trail-podcast [https://smokewallin.com/the-smoke-trail-podcast] Hashtags #TheSmokeTrail  #ConsciousLeadership  #SpiritualAwakening  #EnlightenedLeadership  #ConsciousHealing  #NextGenLeaders  #FamilyOffice  #FaithAndLeadership  #AIandLeadership

S2E44 — Piercing the Veil With Bernhard Guenther

THE SMOKE TRAIL S2E44  —  Piercing the Veil Bernhard Guenther on Shadow, the Time of Transition, and Discernment in an Age of Deception EPISODE Episode:  S2E44 (standalone guest episode) Guest:  Bernhard Guenther Recorded:  In person, Sedona, Arizona — June 2026 Format:  Guest conversation, approx. 80 minutes GUEST BIO Bernhard Guenther is a psycho-spiritual researcher, teacher, and guide whose work explores the deeper architecture of reality and the evolutionary challenges facing humanity in what the esoteric traditions call the Time of Transition. Born in Los Angeles and raised in Munich, Germany, he came to the work first through music — moving to Los Angeles at 22 to study drums and percussion — and then through bodywork and somatic healing, which he practiced one-on-one for two decades. Over more than twenty years of study and inner work, his path has integrated depth psychology, trauma and shadow work, esoteric wisdom, and a clear-eyed engagement with the spiritual forces he says influence human consciousness. He is the founder of Piercing the Veil of Reality and co-hosts The Cosmic Matrix podcast with his wife, Laura Matsue Guenther. Through courses, mentoring, retreats, articles, and podcasts, he supports those who feel called to reclaim their inner essence, strengthen discernment, and navigate these times with self-responsibility. EPISODE HOOK Two men who arrived at the same trail from opposite directions. Smoke spent decades building businesses before the hollow set in. Bernhard rejected the material world entirely in his twenties, chasing the question of who he was and what life was actually about. One had to learn to let go of the mountain. The other had to learn to stand on the ground. This is a neighborly conversation — they live five minutes apart in Sedona — that goes straight to the deep end: shadow, evil as a teaching function, the spiritual forces that hook into our blind spots, and how a sincere person tells genuine awakening from its counterfeit. SHOW NOTES •     How a sensitive kid in Munich who couldn't relate to careers, houses, or making money found his first transcendental experience behind a drum kit — and followed it to Los Angeles at 22. •     The morning Bernhard woke up crying on the floor, heard a voice say figure yourself out or you're going to die, walked into a bookstore, and found the Krishnamurti book that cracked everything open. •     Why both men insist the work is twofold — inner and outer — and how spiritual people who ignore the world get manipulated by what they refuse to understand. •     The trap of the driven life: clients at seven, eight, nine, and ten figures whose suffering came from chasing aims that were never their own, built on trauma responses and the attempt to fill a hole within. •     Plant medicine as a portal, not a destination — why both men did the deep work, why the integration is 95 percent of it, and why dozens of repeated ceremonies is not a good sign. •     The Johari Window as Smoke's working frame for consciousness, and how it maps onto Bernhard's language of the unconscious and the unseen. •     Evil as ignorance and as a teaching function — the two extremes to avoid (the love-and-light denial and the doom-and-gloom prison-planet despair), drawn from Aurobindo and Steiner. •     The three things modern spirituality quietly removed: the spiritual hierarchies, the confrontation with evil, and the levels of consciousness Hawkins spent his life mapping. •     Why Bernhard frames this as spiritual warfare — the forces that know your psyche better than you do, that tag into your entry points, and how self-knowledge closes the door. •     AI as a tool that is neither good nor evil — Smoke's not-for-profit project to carry Hawkins' calibration research forward, and Bernhard's caution about outsourcing our organic technology. KEY MOMENTS The Drummer's Awakening Bernhard traces his origin: born in LA to parents who escaped communist East Germany and Poland, raised in Munich, a sensitive child who could not relate to the business-and-career path his friends took. A friend introduced him to drums, and the first time he sat at the kit he felt one with the universe. He moved to LA at 22 to study music, toured, and used heavy emotional music to process feelings he could not yet name — shadow work before he had the word for it. “I almost come from the opposite end as you did. My friends were all getting into business — let's make money — and I could not relate to it. I had other questions. Who am I? What is this life about? There must be more.”  — Bernhard The Bookstore and the Floor After his band broke up and the depression bottomed out, Bernhard woke one morning crying in the fetal position with a voice in his head telling him to figure himself out or he would not survive. That day he walked into a bookstore and found Krishnamurti's Freedom from the Known. One line reorganized his life. “It's no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”  — Krishnamurti — the line that started Bernhard's path Opposite Ends of the Same Trail Smoke names the symmetry that runs through the whole conversation. He built the entrepreneurial career, made and lost fortunes, and only later discovered the shadow material driving it. Bernhard rejected money so completely it became its own shadow — he could not bring himself to charge for his work. Both had to integrate the thing they had rejected. “I came from the other zone. Into my 40s I was living paycheck to paycheck — I don't care about money, who cares? But then I had to face it: I have to integrate the material world too.”  — Smoke The Driven Are Filling a Hole Bernhard's two decades working one-on-one with A-list and high-net-worth clients gave him a clear diagnosis of high-achiever suffering: the aims were never their own. “Many of them are driven by internalized, unconscious toxic shame. They need to create something, pursue something, to make themselves feel better. Have you ever questioned where your desires come from?”  — Bernhard The Fan in the Attic Smoke offers his own lived version — the constant background noise he only noticed when it stopped. “I had a fan going off in the back of my head. Always on. I thought it was normal, and it would go off when I'd drink. When I cleared a lot of this stuff, the fan went off — and I didn't need a drink anymore. It just fell away.”  — Smoke Friction Is the Portal Both men land on the same practice: the person who irritates you is showing you yourself. Bernhard shares a vulnerable example — talking smack about a fellow practitioner until he realized he was project...

The Smoke Trail S2 E43: Luke Wallin- The Garden, The Practice and the Merge

Luke Wallin The Garden, the Practice, and the Merge Episode Metadata Slug: GUEST-WALLIN-LUKE Season: 2 Episode: 43 (Season 2, Guest Episode 2) Arc: Consciousness Frameworks & Healing Science (primary); Spiritual Discernment & Navigation (secondary) Guest: Luke Wallin (returning — Season 1 Episode 7) Relationship: Smoke's father Recorded: April 29, 2026, in person, Sedona, Arizona Status: Filmed — ready for post-production Guest book: The Night We Call the Owls (Ember Press, 2023) Guest Bio Luke Wallin is a writer, philosopher, and seeker with forty-six years of teaching across philosophy, fiction writing, American studies, and English. He holds an MFA in Fiction Writing from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, an MA in Philosophy from the University of Alabama, and a Master of Regional Planning from UMass Amherst. He has taught philosophy at the School of Visual Arts, American studies as a Fulbright Fellow at University College Dublin, English at UMass Dartmouth, and writing in the Spalding University MFA program. His novels have been selected as best books by the American Library Association and the New York Public Library, translated into Danish, and recorded for the blind by the Library of Congress. He is co-author with his daughter Eva Sage Gordon Raleigh of The Everything Guide to Writing Children's Books. His most recent book is The Night We Call the Owls, a collection of poems and stories from Ember Press, 2023. Luke first appeared on The Smoke Trail in Season 1 Episode 7, where he and Smoke went deep into philosophy, nature, and creativity as survival tools for the soul. This second conversation is different. After a lifetime in scientific materialism and analytic philosophy, something shifted three years ago when Smoke visited him. He returns now as a man who has lived through what he had always told his students: that reality is going to turn out to be much stranger than anyone thinks. Episode Hook Three years ago I went to visit my father, Luke, and something shifted. He had spent a lifetime in philosophy, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, decades of teaching, the whole architecture of Western analytic thought, and he had always told his students one thing: reality is going to turn out to be much stranger than you think. What he didn't expect was to live long enough to find out he was right. This is the second conversation. The first was deep in the woods. This one is where the woods led. Show Notes •  The boy in the garden at 7: oak bark pressed to the eyeball trying to find what made one tree different from its identical neighbor, Ginger the Cocker Spaniel as constant companion, the early intuition that the universe is contained in every speck — and the lifetime of philosophy spent traveling back to what that boy already knew •  Boredom as a gift: the lost developmental capacity to sit with nothing, develop the will, and discover that the 80,000 to 90,000 thoughts streaming through the mind each day are not the same thing as the self •  The Idaho fire lookout tower at 19: a whole summer alone on a mountaintop watching shadows, eagles, grouse, and bears — sometimes lonely, never bored, the early evidence that presence is its own form of company •  The shift three years ago: scientific materialism, the residual skepticism, and the moment a son's lived experience cleared what a thousand books couldn't — including Luke's resistance to David Hawkins, and the eventual full immersion (audiobooks while mowing the grass) •  Why academia — the institution structurally designed for open inquiry — has become one of the hardest places to honestly explore consciousness: tenure, peer review, and the social cost of taking telepathy or reincarnation seriously even when the evidence is good (Jeffrey Kripal, Dean Radin, The Telepathy Tapes) •  Suspending disbelief as a practice: not the leap of faith, but the willingness to hold a question open long enough to test it directly •  Rebecca Johnson and Presence Practice: the small Sunday night Zoom meditation group, why "transformational listening" is structurally different from interior meditation, and what changes after a year of being quietly present with strangers •  The bodies of light: what happened the first night Luke closed Zoom and asked if the group could still be there — fifteen luminous presences appearing in his loft, then twenty-four a week later, still accessible whenever he turns toward them •  The laser surgery merge: the Jeff Mara podcast interview with the Irish doctor's near-death experience as the conceptual primer, and the unmistakable felt experience three weeks later of Luke's etheric body and the surgeon's etheric body rising, meeting, and merging during a thirty-hole laser procedure •  A new theory of intimacy: why sex is a bigger deal than the standard explanations account for, why crowded subways feel intolerable, and why some merges are sacred and others violating •  The eye that self-healed: the macular hole diagnosed in June, Smoke's remote work with energy balancing by numbers and the quantum block, the September appointment where the surgeon said only one to two percent of people have this close on its own •  The Seth material channeled by Jane Roberts, Dean Radin's Real Magic, and Tom Campbell's My Big TOE: imagination as a portal, the field of love as the operating substrate, and why setting intention into the field works while gripping the outcome with the conscious mind does not •  Attention and intention as the highest sovereign powers a human being has — and the daily cost of letting the ego mind run them by default •  The Gift of a Practice: ask to meet your guardian angel — a specific, simple, unguarded practice anyone can begin this week without a teacher, a group, or a tradition •  A closing challenge to the determinist: choose what you give your attention to, set an intention, and watch. If outcome is determined, lucky you. If not, you helped. Either way, the practice is participation. Key Moments From the Conversation The Boy in the Garden Luke describes a childhood lived on a hilltop with woods behind the house, hours alone, and the early intuition that nothing anyone said about nature was adequate to what nature actually was. Two red oak trees in the yard, identical in size and appearance, became his first philosophical problem — the ancient question of universals and particulars discovered in a 7-year-old's hands. He pressed his eyeball to the bark trying to find the unique signature of one tree against the other. Smoke names it: a child's intuition that the whole universe is contained in every speck. "I had always told my students: reality is going to turn out to be much stranger than you think. And you should always keep that in mind. It just deepens the wonder." — Luke Wallin Boredom as a Gift Luke had hours...