That time I got KO’ed into the shadow realm

I didn’t even know what country I was in.

The doctor was sure I had been roofied or something.

Concussions don’t typically lead to 24 hour memory loss.

But I didn’t know what I did for work. Or anything from the last 7 months.

And every couple minutes I asked my wife, “Hey where are we? What are we doing?”

But I was somehow able to still crack jokes.

And I could remember only the loving things about my life.

This did not fit my worldview at all….

I recorded the video above walking around the Catalonian mountainside.

In case you’re wondering why I haven’t published in a long while…

We moved off-grid in some months ago. I spent the summer building out our solar panel infrastructure, compost plumbing, and pallet deck:

I also had the space to do a lot of soul-searching in this time.

Wondering how I want to spend my next years.

And I realized…

Goal setting has never made me happy.

It felt like an apostate moment.

Goals and discipline have been my religion for twenty years.

Admitting this, honestly, has been more of a shock than when I left an actual cult.

Goals, I realized, have always suppressed my creative unconscious.

Whereas the best things in my life have not come from any target set in my mind.

And all this reminded me of my experience of getting KO’ed and losing my memory…

I tell the detailed story in the video above (and on all the podcast apps ).

Here’s a summarized version:

I was in a dark time.

We had just moved to Mexico from what was a dream life for me in Thailand.

I wasn’t adjusting to family life very well. I missed my friends. I was stressed about money for the first time in awhile.

I had a lot of grievances. My wife and I were fighting a lot. I was working really hard to get myself out of the rut, but kept hitting walls.

Some spiritual texts would say I was very much operating from my ego.

Even when I was the deepest in hippie-dom, I had a hard time accepting the “Everything is Love” bit.

Nature doesn’t operate that way.

Fear is the most natural emotion.

“Love” is something social mammals evolved to have so they wouldn’t eat their offspring… isn’t it?

So it really didn’t make sense to me that my brain would prioritize positive things over practical fears.

The unspeakable nature of reality

Alfred Korzybski (a very not spiritual guy as far as I know), argued that one of the worst features of human cognition is that we too quickly translate perceptions into words.

This reduces a real complex event into an abstraction; a simplified image that only highlights what we assumed was important.

Most of us prematurely remove detail (and nuance) before we really know what’s relevant and important. Worse, many then confuse their simplified image.

These semantic disturbances are the cause of many issues such as:

Internalized shame— We try to live up to an ego identity that doesn’t fit reality.

Relationship arguments— Our partner “fails” to live up to “right” behavior.

Pretty much every intrasocial conflict… racism, tribalism, misunderstandings all come confusing real people with their imagined communities.

Whereas real reality is unspeakable.

And here’s where the the father of general semantics runs into all the ancient spiritual teachers…

The ego needs to label things as a means of control. Your ego itself is an abstract representation of who you “are” (which is an unspeakable Self).

Judgements are abstractions. Goals are abstractions.

Goals, as they are typically oriented, suppress the creative unconscious.

They imply “the present isn’t good enough” or “I can’t trust the future” or both.

This grievance (ego judgement/label) prevents your unconscious from taking you where you want to go.

A new orientation

Ok, so goals and “intentions” (viz: hippie goals) are out.

But how to then orient life?

And, honestly, even if true, the whole “everything is Fear vs. Love” is still kind of corny…

But I realized, it’s corny because these are abstract labels made to fit a certain context.

Nature might not run on “Love” vs. “Fear”.

But it does run on a real dichotomy that could use better words…

Danger vs. Peace.

Stuck vs. Flow.

Or most concrete,

There’s a problem vs. Everything is Totally OK

The most profound “inner work” I’ve done in the last years has been with horses.

Actually, I’d credit horses for helping me out of my depression in Mexico.

Horses reflect the state of your unconscious back to you better than anything.

As a prey animal, any tension they experience = “There’s a problem.”

That can be a direct threat, an unknown being nearby, or the pull on the reins from its rider.

Horses therefore will do anything to “find release”; To get back as quickly as possible to “Everything is totally OK.”

That’s not exactly “Love,” but its the unspeakable state from which us humans experience love from.

So my new orientation to life, without goals is:

How can I find release?

Release = where my ego is not controlling, and my unconscious is free to drive.

In work, this looks like inspiration and creative ideas vs. feeling resistance about tasks on my to-do list.

In family, its feeling loving (vs. annoyed), even in disciplining moments.

In physical training (and this is a new one), it’s striving towards nothing in my body bothering me vs. hitting performance goals (which often had led to my injuries.)

In day to day experience, it’s noticing when I naturally feel like being present rather than urges to escape in phone/sugar/etc. etc.

My KO experience reminded me that Release/Peace/Flow/“Love” is in fact the natural state. It is what’s deeper than rational fears.

The quicker we can get to that, the quicker we reach an optimal state.

And perhaps, an optimal future.

Ruwan Meepagala has coached hundreds of men succeed with women since 2013. His Ruwando Podcast: Psychology for Men with Brains and Balls has reached hundreds of thousands since its creation. Originally from New York, he’s lived all over the world and currently resides in Spain with his wife and two kids.