Important Quotes: “Feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we’re holding back. They teach us to perk up and lean in when we feel we’d rather collapse and back away. They’re like messengers that show us with terrifying clarity, exactly where we’re stuck. This very moment is the perfect teacher, and lucky for us, it’s with us wherever we are.” -Pema Chodron“You can begin from your very weakness. That’s your strength. It’s not your big ego and your big will that is the strong thing here. It’s your it’s your sloppiness, it’s your weakness. It’s your foolish side that is your strong suit.” - Alan Watts “The hostile attitude of conquering nature ignores the basic interdependence of all things and events—that the world beyond the skin is actually an extension of our own bodies—and will end in destroying the very environment from which we emerge and upon which our whole life” -Alan Watts “What you resist persists.” -Carl JungIf you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” -African ProverbKey Takeaways:Pleasant emotion generated through delusion often will feel uneasy, contrived, or like you’re trying to talk yourself out of the agitation or discomfort the current feeling is creating. If this comes up, take a moment to reflect deeper.Pleasant emotions generated through intention feel effortless, balanced, and present. Often times when pointing in the direction of intention, you may not even acknowledge or even notice the feeling due to being present in the here and now.Look to your weaknesses and flaws. These are the parts of yourself that you attempt most to hide. Look to your anger, your sadness, your fears, your frustrations, the things you dislike most about yourself. What are these emotions really trying to tell you?Zen Stoic Intentions and Delusions Episodes:Embrace vs. Resistance: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-zen-stoic-path/id1571381944?i=1000532944170Understanding vs. Controlhttps://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-zen-stoic-path/id1571381944?i=1000533054692Discipline vs. Expediencyhttps://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-zen-stoic-path/id1571381944?i=1000533815367Sincerity vs. Performancehttps://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-zen-stoic-path/id1571381944?i=1000533951153References:Jordan Peterson - The Story of Buddha: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycIAW0M2-NQ101 Alan Watts Quotes: https://secularbuddhism.com/101-alan-watts-quotes/ The Enlightenment of The Buddha: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVKK-WVW2uwWhat We Resist Persists: http://www.shoshanashea.com/blog/2018/6/11/what-we-resist-persistsAlan Watts -Waiting For Magic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ReD00p6IC8

 Marcus Aurelius Quotes: “When jarred, unavoidably, by circumstances, revert at once to yourself and don’t lose the rhythm more than you can help. You’ll have a better grasp of the harmony if you keep on going back to it.” “Not to feel exasperated, or defeated, or despondent because your days aren’t packed with wise and moral actions. But to get back up when you fail, to celebrate behaving like a human- however imperfectly- and fully embrace the pursuit that you’ve embarked on.” “Pride and outward show is an arch-seducer of reason, when you think you’re occupied in the weightiest business that’s when it has you in its spell.”References:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu0xDtK3g3Q&list=PLzKrfPkpj5olfny8ao7uoBTydABymwEdu

Marcus Aurelius Quotes: “How easy it is to repel and wipe away every impression which is troublesome or unsuitable, and immediately to be in all tranquility.”“Your mind will take the shape of what you frequently hold in thought, for the human spirit is colored by such impressions.” “The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”References:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu0xDtK3g3Q&list=PLzKrfPkpj5olfny8ao7uoBTydABymwEdu

The Lion and the BoarAn Aesop's Fable  On a summer day, when the great heat induced a general thirst, a Lion and a Boar came at the same moment to a small well to drink.They fiercely disputed which of them should drink first, and were soon engaged in the agonies of a mortal combat.On their stopping on a sudden to take breath for the fiercer renewal of the strife, they saw some Vultures waiting in the distance to feast on the one which should fall first.They at once made up their quarrel, saying:"It is better for us to make friends, than to become the food of Crows or Vultures, as will certainly happen if we are disabled."http://www.taleswithmorals.com/the-lion-and-the-boar.htm

Brandon is a certified Corporate Based Mindfulness Trainer through Potential Project, Dually Certified Mindfulness Coach with the ICF & IAC, he also holds certifications on Proper Ethics and Ethical Conduct when teaching mindfulness courses by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn. He is the founder of Modern Mindfulness, China’s largest mindfulness community with over 8,500 active members and 1,000 active members in Austin, Texas. Brandon has also founded and manages The China Trainer’s Community, China’s largest community of English speaking corporate trainers of Fortune 500 companies. Brandon has experience in Corporate Based Mindfulness Training and Mindfulness Based Coaching with a wide range of clients and organizations ranging from the U.S. Government, the New Orleans FBI, and companies such as Volkswagen, Chevron, Disney, LEGO, Alibaba, and others. He has also recently founded, and trail blazed a new service in the mindfulness industry: Mindfulness Based Consulting, with the simple goal of helping mindfulness teachers do their work full time.https://www.modernmindfulness.com/

“The philosopher’s school is a doctor’s clinic: you should not go there expecting pleasure but rather pain.” – Epictetus“Philosophy does not propose to secure for a man any external thing. If it did (or if it were not, as I say), philosophy would be allowing something which is not within its province.” -Epictetus “Let philosophy scrape off your own faults, rather than be a way to rail against the faults of others.” -Seneca"This is therefore to say that the transformation of human consciousness through meditation is frustrated so long as we think of it as something that I by myself can bring about, by some sort of wangle, by some sort of gimmick. Because you see it leads to endless games of spiritual oneupmanship. And of guru competition. Of my guru being more effective than your guru. My yogas are faster than your yoga. I am more aware of myself than you are. I am humbler than you are. I am sorrier for my sins than you are. I love you more than you love me. There’s this interminable goings on where people fight and wonder whether they are a bit more evolved than somebody else and so on.” -Alan Watts

“Reason gives each side time to plead; moreover, she herself demands adjournment, that she may have sufficient scope for the discovery of the truth; whereas anger is in a hurry: reason wishes to give a just decision; anger wishes its decision to be thought just. … The sword of justice is ill-placed in the hands of an angry man.” — Seneca"You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger." -Buddha"Say to yourself at the start of the day, I shall meet with meddling, ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, and unsociable people. They are subject to all these defects because they have no knowledge of good and bad. But I, who have observed the nature of the good, and seen that it is the right; and of the bad, and seen that it is the wrong; and of the wrongdoer himself, and seen that his nature is akin to my own—not because he is of the same blood and seed, but because he shares as I do in mind and thus in a portion of the divine—I, then, can neither be harmed by these people, nor become angry with one who is akin to me, nor can I hate him, for we have come into being to work together, like feet, hands, eyelids, or the two rows of teeth in our upper and lower jaws. To work against one another is therefore contrary to nature; and to be angry with another person and turn away from him is surely to work against him." -Marcus AureliusReferences:https://dailystoic.com/keeping-your-cool-40-stoic-quotes-on-taming-anger/

We’ve all felt the deep existential fear of death before. Sometimes it makes us feel alone, afraid, and even lost.Imagine what life would be like if you could be at peace with your own mortality, so much so you could actually enjoy a strawberry in the face of death itself.     The fear of death and lack of presence is where suffering persists. Those who learn to truly become present are those free from the burden of the fear of death, and thus can truly live. “We really shouldn’t be here at all. Considering that we are here, and considering that we really won’t be around all that long, even if we die of extreme old age, should instill a profound sense of appreciation for the present moment. There is no staying off that cliff; there is no avoiding those tigers forever. The mouse of inexorable time is chewing away at our lifeline moment by moment. The only choice is whether or not we will notice, eat and enjoy the strawberry. Because whether we enjoy or ignore it, we’re still getting eaten by that tiger.”-Dr. Munr Kazmirhttps://medium.com/age-of-awareness/the-tiger-and-the-strawberry-b73de1dccf19“Tigers above, tigers below. This is actually the predicament that we are always in, in terms of our birth and death. Each moment is just what it is. It might be the only moment of our life; it might be the only strawberry we’ll ever eat. We could get depressed about it, or we could finally appreciate it and delight in the preciousness of every single moment of our life.” — Pema Chodron

Musicinstagram.com/2.weeks.noticeinstagram.com/drone_phonetikhttps://2weeksnotice.bandcamp.com/https://soundcloud.com/2_weeks_noticehttps://open.spotify.com/artist/0YU0zQW5R8hehPzbBy9W8sClothing: @yeet.stuffhttps://yeet-stuff.com/

In this episode, I share a disorienting experience I am currently going through and think through it in real-time over the podcast, using Zen, Stoic, and Zen Stoic principles to bring myself back to my center.