The main thing is for saturday and sunday, very yin days, to be as tranquilo as possible. Glide and stumble in a light hearted way, keep your qi in your channels and the mind inside the body. Do not over exert as this time of high fire year/season can bring up injuries and toxins to purge. If u get sick or injured, take it as a sign to ritually purify and exorcise. But again, not overly aggressively.

Friday was the most yang day of the 3, so hopefully you got all your chores done. If not, let go for a bit, or, be very forgiving with yourself this weekend whilst not being complacent or indulgent.

Very Yin days where no forward progression can/should be forced, and when fire is on the rise (peaking at summer solstice but then radiating out in decline towards Autumn Equinox), can be like a quiet retreat in the woods. Stay cozy, light a safe fire, dont drink alcohol, maybe fast or eat very simply, gaze at the night sky.

This coincides with ritual purification for offerings to ancestors in ancient china by emperors and heads of clans/families.

Hygiene hygiene hygiene!

When you look back, you always only have your own conduct and ignorance to blame. Toxic positivity is the same as toxic nihilism. We all have our imbalances and just learn to work with them with foresight rather than only hindsight.

Eating cold foods, or excessively damp, greasy foods, not sleeping early enough, is how you add burden to your system and then crash, get sick, etc.

You can enjoy yourself, unless your idea of enjoyment is the binge purge cycle.

Know when enough is enough and how to feel satisfied!

Can you use fire intelligently or will you complain about being burned out?

Considered Chaos

The Body Is the Final Frontier of Capital

“(...) All the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.” Pascal, B. (1965). Pensées. Fragment 139…

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9 days ago · 68 likes · 1 comment · Eugene Healey

Nonduality as Neuro-Decoloniality

The Material Comes From & Returns to The Immaterial, Thus, The Immaterial is The Material and Vice Versa. There is no Spiritual Category.

As i await the impending doom news about what my orthodontic future has in store, i must use my precariousness & anxiety as energy towards a dignified pathway.

Perhaps this one phrase is everything. An eternal mobius loop of anti-capitalist decoloniality, a poor brown child screaming from a razed frontier zone, an ancestral hauntology which echoes off of grey bone walls.

I summon a breath, another, another, and situate myself inside of the fire.

The fire is external and internal simultaneously, but first I must attend to what is happening within the confines of my flesh. Only through a particular sequencing, a particular process and structure can i actually practice, actually glean the correct data with the correct narratives… and already i can see i have lost you, dear readers.

Because what IS correct?

It is definitely not what you and i have been taught culturally, economically, religiously, fascistically.

I have to keep backing up. Right back up into the abyss.

I have to keep reframing and defining things accurately in order to even superficially describe what I aim to describe in this writing.

All the while knowing, with near certainty, that some reading this do not have the reading comprehension skills, nor the somatic fluency to really hear me.

Yet, writing and speaking/singing is a way to cut through. To use the mind and its verbal diarrhea as an ally instead of as the great distractor. This is the edge on which our societal tower of babel is perched. Can we reclaim the mind as true ally instead of enemy? Why do we all have such terrifyingly extreme and fractured understandings of the word mind and what it attempts to describe? Where does the colonialism end and our original face begin?

In many traditions, what I am attempting to describe has been cordoned off in the fortress of religion. Yet there is no religiosity here, but the precursors to it.

The mind, human minds, can create gods and devils.

Thus, since we were first born some 300,000 years ago, the struggle has always been to win the hearts and minds (same thing in Daoism) of our fellows and urge them towards the better angels of their nature. And if we fail in this task, we are left beaten, raped, killed and enslaved. If we succeed, egalitarianism exists.

This is not theory. This is proven indigenous, historical and political anthropology. From the horse’s mouth.

Our minds are the terrifying force which is externalized as raging and fickle gods and myth.

Traditional oral storytelling is both a moral and ethical curriculum, as well as a psychoactive reflection.

To externalize is to begin a process of perceiving the mind in all its extremist range.

But how do we continue that process?

This is the issue.

To continually externalize (project, abstract, dissociate, etc) is not a complete cycle of process. It is like being stuck inhaling forever. Or eating but never being able to take a shit.

We are often driven to meditation, mindfulness, zen, yoga or various other pick-and-choose nonsense because we finally sort of admit we have a problem. But we ascribe that problem as something to solve and not the key itself. We are still stuck in the inhalation/consuming mode of externalization, which is also always future-oriented. We believe without examining belief. We desire without examining desire. We fear without examining fear.

The experiences we don’t like and the experiences we do like only exist in the present moment, and the present moment is absurdly inclusive. The world (nature) is tough as nails, bitter, impersonally frictional. Everything costs. We sneer at this discomfort and begin our descent into madness because we cannot hold paradox (the poetics of reality). We cannot hold the present moment as an inclusive, cyclical process. We cannot use the mind to view/perceive itself, because it has been de-ranged and its options have been limited (neuro-colonized). A crisis of mental imagination but a crisis of embodied imagination as well.

The economic and cultural decontextualization of ancient practices has further atomized the ecosystem which seeks to integrate itself.

We practice meditation or embodiment in very siloed ways — without the understanding of the whole, we fixate on parts and make them gods. We re-invent internally and consciously, with our language, the very bizarre hierarchies we claim to hate. We use language and thinking as weapons against self and other, while using the same language and thinking to justify how well-meaning and smart we are.

The mind (heartmind) is the test itself. The initiations we crave or avoid exist within us, always, and everything else merely stimulates it. Which is to say, all rituals, initiations, or practices are ways to create some quality of tension so that we can actually use the mind on itself. To create a fire whose flame is hot enough to force us to do something uncomfortable which we would not normally do, because we are complacent and prioritize energy conservation.

However, it is extremely easy to corrupt this process and turn it into yet another future-oriented, self-optimization slop-goal for domination and hoarding. The MORE Monkey TM is always latent within us, existing only to look for opportunities of capture.

The backwards step is not about self-soothing, it is not about feeling good. But it is not necessarily about feeling bad either. It is just about feeling, and then about something beyond feeling. If we are fixated on avoiding discomforts and chasing desires, we will only ever window shop, join cults, perform para-socialness as normative relating, manically oscillate and spike our emotions, project and scapegoat self and other. We will continually enact colonization on automatic and blame others for our perpetual dissatisfaction.

Look, silent, seated meditation is wonderful for getting the sensory attention back into the yin of the body, the physical tissues and liquids of reality. But it is not the only way. Music, dance, singing, acting, there are many roads to coming home to your senses, but because the mind is necessary to integrate, the mind can also co-opt, hijack and invisibilize it’s own habits, until the thing you really believe you’re doing is just another way to avoid doing it.

Both the body and the mind contain multitudes, and by that i mean all the shitty shit-shit you hate about shit. Some people cling to this western bullshit concept of trauma precisely because that concept implies and reifies colonial narratives they are familiar with: sin, impurity, salvation, release, being dommed by a perfect parentified force, and of course that insidious fiction called social darwinism, the ideas that people with bad circumstances earned and deserve those circumstances. The cults of trauma, somatic and western wellness are rife with these biases masquerading as sanity, as wholeness, as progress.

All colonial.

But the answer is not to just to stop at renouncing.

Zen master Dogen’s quote above names one useful beginning action: “Cease from practice based on intellectual understanding, pursuing words, and following after speech…”

But this quote alone doesn’t describe the entire process. Once one has understood that the way they think is not the only way of thinking, that there is a “thinking” of being in the body with less mental distraction, one will still have to communicate to self and other using words! Therefore, how will one integrate speaking, language, mental cognition, etc FROM A PLACE called the body, which is land? How will one use language from a nondual animist experiencing?

For modern people, many without the privilege of somehow being able to escape the digital maelstrom and social shitshow of constant yapping, there must be a way to practice right now, with exactly the situation as it actually is.

And there is.

But it will entail feeling uncomfortable, unfamiliar, confused.

You cannot have your way and get what you want.

This is the big reveal.

The world arrives all at once.

It is our colonized and immature habits of mind which categorize and oppositionalize that whole-world-all-at-onceness into a totally de-ranged and unsatisfying and incoherent mess of emotions and narratives which we then weaponize while claiming heroic victimhood.

Mind.

Fire.

Desire.

This is a gateway, a mirror, a prison, a field, a situation, a paradox, an emergence, a blank figurehead.

We project onto it, from it, while seeing it appear as otherwise.

By really getting into it, we will find what we don’t want, but what we actually need to become human.

And suckers are born every minute.

There’s no way out of the game. You can pretend all you want and still wonder why poor you is so fucking fill-in-the-blank lonely/sad/bored/crazy. You can still feel like a special little victim every single day until you die, throwing tantrums and voting for bullies who will murder children to make you feel powerful.

No one is coming to save you.

The fragile mind that requires, nay, DEMANDS that all beings and things in their purview are under their domain is the value system of colonization. The mind and the body must be integrally suffused into each other. Yang must enter/warm/circulate yin, not burn it up, dominate it, control it or escape from it. Yin must enclose/support yang, not freeze it, stagnate it, undermine it.

Zero gods or weird spiritual phenomena required.

Dignity at the center. Wit and Flexibility as an overall approach. Modesty as basic care and protection. Curiosity, Creativity and Confusion as appetites. Reciprocity as Relationship.

if you’ve read this far and are gaining value from my work, consider donating to

http://paypal.me/daresohei or https://venmo.com/u/Dare-Sohei

Pith series summer 2026 links

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

I found myself directing my friend’s one-woman show opening July 4th weekend here in Portland - Lobotomommy (scroll down to the last section) - which i think i came up with the name/concept for in a text thread? - and they totally fucking ran with it and have created an epic dark sci fi comedy piece about modern motherhood.

It’s a good fire horse year thing to attach yourself to collaborative momentum, and find the people who have the power/qi/resources you do not, but that you can assist to the level of your constitution. Now obviously summer yang is peaking and the next few months will be about managing it’s decline (the dragon’s tail) and not constantly starting new things, but there is still time to cautiously and curiously open up to the possibilities of ACTION, even if last year’s snake qi was extremely closed and/or stagnant.

It’s been great to be able to use all the skills i learned and honed in san francisco bay area, and mix that with my nondual animist decoloniality in a creative way with an actor/writer/person who completely gets it, trusts the process, and has their own wisdom horse to ride. It’s in times like this that the old parable “too soon to tell” has its obvious clarity, as I had really closed the door on physical acting, teaching and other associated endeavors due to to the terrible confluences of fate, health, societal madness & stupidity and economics. Being in the creative process without the burden of also having to be the actor/writer etc is nice, because i find myself at my limit, in a good way, without feeling like i’m going to burn out.

It’s made me reconsider what is possible for me in this kind of creative space, the idea of an “idea doula” (cringe maybe but possibly accurate for my skillset and demeanor), and transitioning into Voice Over work as a means to sustain my head above the waterline in late stage povertyism. The road to any career change or even basic-ass survival in the current state of society and generational lack is long and ultimately fruitless in terms of access to meaningful resources, but this nightmare bardo is nothing if not a training area for miserable spirits that were forced into incarnation by other miserable spirits called parents/ancestors.

Working on a play about motherhood turns the corkscrew eye toward mothers and ancestors, and the naked hubris of hormonal youth which births children with no real stability. The baby producing madness of agricultural peoples just popping out kids as a war of attrition against time, oligarchy, patriarchy, malnutrition… (Hunter Gatherer peoples - matrifocal - have on average 1 kid every 4-5 years, while patriarchal agriculturalists have on aveerage about 1 kid per year.)

I’m not speaking ill of the dead or soon-to-be-dead, just musing about the fucking insanity of giving birth to children without having the actual means to nurture them in such a world. I’ve had to make my own kind of “peace” with incarnation, and i don’t recommend it — incarnation i mean. But we have to play the ball where it lands, including this many-faced hell realm.

Bottom line, some people get a good hand, and some people do not, and creating a society where those with good hands and bad hands assist each other, aka actual RECIPROCITY (gan ying) is potentially the only shot at sanity we have. It really does take a village, but that means being a villager, not a consumer, individual, or “influencer”. But no one really listens to what poor people have to say, do they?

Chop wood, carry water.

If you’re in the Portland area around the July 4th time, there are 4 shows, July 2-4th Show at 7:30pm & July 5th Show at 5pm, at Coho Theater in Northwest.

02 Assorted Tings

Rope incense from women owned worker initiatives in the Himalayas (amazon link, non-affiliate). If you have an incense burner with a small hole for putting stick incense in straight up, you can jury rig a large paperclip as a hook for the incense like so:

Finally finished the animated series Scavenger’s Reign. Weird, cool, horror tinged, very creative.

Now to finally finish Bee & Puppycat - also very creative, but with 10,000% more sweetness & whimsy.

A Garden of Spheres, Volume 1 by Linnea Sterte is up for an Eisner award. Linnea’s illustration is peak. Unreal stuff. Their instagram’s here.

Elastic magazine, a premium, once-a-year art magazine project. Issue #2 is out now. My favorite kind of art-book-thing: graphic design, illustration, speculative fiction/writing/poetry, archival documentation…

Eunoia By Christian Bök, a really bonkers book to read out loud. Pure linguistic shenanigans. Each chapter contains short paragraphs using only one vowel sound. This shit does amazing things to the brain, mind and tongue.

Some of my past writing was recently published in this anthology: Defending the World Tree, A Journal of Animist Awakening Volume 1 from Severed Branches Press. Thanks for including me!

03 Mish Mash

Having some brand new dental issues, will be at the dentist a lot for a while. Not fun. Totally derailed my already perpetually derailed flow this last week and still trying to come back to some kind of non-anxious state. But this also coincides with the dreaded first of the month and rent being due so, difficult.

Just taught class 2 of 4 in the seasonal lab intensive co-hosted with Kaila June of IMS somatics. Teaching online is a total bummer and i’m remembering why i have such a love-hate relationship with it, no offense to the students, they are all great. More fuel to the fire of trying to to switch careers. The healing/teaching industry is the pits tbh, even if i am good at it and what i teach is technically valuable, the economic, marketing and audience capture part of it is fucking awful. Totally unsustainable and similar to giving up a career in theater, i now have to work through the material and emotional nuances of giving up of this career i’ve cobbled together to get out from under the thumb of wage slavery and bosses and time cards. Incarnation in the American Underclass is really stupid.

May my heart be the sword which slaughterers all gods and my tongue be the flame which burns the cold voids.

The waking dreaming and the sleeping dreaming share a contiguous dream body which is not isolated into a single shape or form nor identifiable as a self identifying with the actions or states experienced by the dream body.

The mind of the waking dreaming self which does identify is not the entire Mind, but a shard, a replica of the collective body dreaming and following its own momentum.

The mind of the sleeping dreaming self is also not the entire mind but an opportunistic exhalation, a counterpart to the strict and rigid anxieties of the waking dream self.

Via the contiguous dream body one can experience the softening of the hardness that resists your real nature.

This is not mystical nor religious, not spiritual nor transcendent, neither winning nor losing in the dualistic and extremist sense of these words.

It is an unfathomable incomprehensible movement in which ecosystem and organism are not and never were separate.

However, tell these things to an immature, colonized mind and watch the addictive, diabolical, self-abusive phantoms appear as habits and contents of mind which seek to defend some false notion of itself from the total inclusive pain of the natural body.

Waking or sleeping, alive or dead, the continuous dream body is a movement which is not barred from traveling-experiencing.

It holds no ultimate intentions, no final desires, no claims to power.

Yet it follows a momentum, a precedent of ancestral impulses, called fate.

Like a river running to the sea, sometimes becoming a swamp, sometimes a desert.

There is no time limit, no deadline for fate to run its course, apparently transforming into states of victory and defeat.

The opportunity of a human life is the opportunity to participate with this flow which already is.

And sometimes one spends their whole life resisting.

Waking, sleeping, both, only one, sometimes, never, etc.

To participate with is an improvisation of absence and presence, of positivity and negativity.

If one plays the ball where it lands, that is it.

Resolving fate via negativity.

Resolving fate via positivity.

Resolving fate via participation.

This is the path of the dream body.

Practice wherever you end up.

Play wherever the ball lands.

Participate with the phenomena of appearance and appearing.

Do not pretend otherwise unless you can watch the pretending.

You are not above or below anything.

Sickness and death. Healthiness and life. Pain and pleasure.

Everything is on the table.

notes: this got stuck in draft when i thought it got published. i’ve added a series tag header to all parts of this series to help with intended reading order.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Quick recap of context:

We are in yin water snake moon in yang fire horse year, 2026 bce, and i live in the colonial heart of empire called the usa as a generationally poor, chronically ill mixed race american “male”. I’m 46 years old, in the final phase of my life, and have no family or assets. I am fundamentally alone, quintessentially a member if the American permanent underclass. I was lied to, indoctrinated by whiteness too. But perhaps unlike some of you, i began to see the bribes and refuse them. This has led me to my Story State Action model of decoloniality and nondual animism.

Ok.

I see the old men at the bus stops.

Limping, pot bellied, surviving.

I see the old women walking the streets.

Pushing carts, lugging groceries, eyes inward and vigilant.

I see the archetypal American struggle in their dark eyes. The kind of struggle that’s left after youth has abandoned them. The skill of giving as little fucks as possible because the world is a cruel place and hope is now known to be an accomplice to this cruelty.

There is a dignity even here though, some defiant hatred lying in wait under the callouses and wrinkles. A sword turned inward, a rigged heart.

I have been riding the bus a lot lately.

And all that transient time is only really good for writing and meditating under its liminal pressures. Like this you’re reading now.

I’ve been riding the bus more recently because i’ve developed new health issues. My mother’s genetic inheritances are catching up to me, and my teeth and gums are degrading. Periodontal disease. On memorial day i developed a kind of cyst in my gumline. My acupuncturist said it’s old pathogenic cold qi trying to resolve itself.

Last week on a random tuesday i thought i would die for a few hours. I laid down in the evening with an imagined coin toss as to whether i would wake up in the same dimensional reality. My symptoms flared to their highest point, i could barely coordinate my limbs, thought i was going to pass out on my feet. My entire central nervous system was overwhelmed by the emergence of something. Another something that’s the same something i’ve been attending to for years now. And every new problem, every new emergency, every new setback is another bullshit opportunity to look at reality for what it really is.

To lock myself in the prison cell of the present moment.

To place my mind — my attention, perception, awareness — into the site of intensity, into the site of the most undesirable experiences and know that there is very little to nothing i can do to change it and so attempting to transform the situation via visualization, affirmation, magical thinking or jumping into the constructed past or imagined future is worse than useless. Worse than useless, it is a kind of violent madness. A delusion of the highest order.

To be alone and to be alone with the naked terror of the body. No religion, no ideology, no solutions.

Just motherfucking reality.

How did i learn this?

It would be dishonest of me to say that i invented any of this. (I didn’t)

It would also be dishonest of me to say that I’m any good at it. (I’m not. I am American after all and we are nothing if not soft and fragile whiners. No, Americans do have some specialties but resiliency is not generally one of them.)

No, this comes from a particular lineage of daoist dream methodology, which i am possibly primed for due to early childhood experiences and ancestral precedence. It’s definitely not like certain other dream methods which promote exhausting wish fulfillment and lucid dreaming.

The point I’m pointing at is that there is no salvation in fantasizing about salvation unless you can stay totally present with what and why you are fantasizing the salvation in response to.

Heaven and hell exist at the site of most rupture, not in the aftermath of repair.

This does not mean one should go around rupturing deliberately or ignorantly, just that rupturing happens and it is an opportunity, though not at all valued within a set of colonial values.

Pain, fear and hunger/desire are wisdom teachers and we avoid, resist and transform them to the detriment of our sanity.

Of course, some unskilled jackass will try this with no self-dignity and “go crazy” and blame me or the practices. Cliche. Boring.

The practice of dreaming into the site of the present moment intensity is neither a reducing nor an amplification process, yet both can occur simply because of how and where we place our awareness/intention/attention.

It is like sitting with a child having an autistic meltdown or someone detoxing from hard drugs or many other similar situations.

The bodymind may seek relief via extremism in any direction. The spirit may seek relief by flying into any number of extreme places. The supposed past, an imagined future, reasons, excuses, justifications, insights — all fabricated by the desire to escape the situation as it is, to escape the feelings, sensations and the habits of mind, culture and miseducation that have led to this moment. The lies we were made to believe as children, the lies we were made to believe as consumers, as citizens of the holy nation state.

To be able to place the mind into the site (body/pain/present moment/etc) requires familiarity with all of your pathetic habits of mind.

It turns out that chronic repeated stressors can actually assist with this if we stick it out long enough or are forced to stick it out long enough and we have the correct view of reality that does not delude us.

But don’t expect any rewards or validation from any other human being or from the current economic system.

Nature is naturally unfair.

Society is supposed to be a way to design culture to buffer the natural unfairness of nature, not amplify or exploit it.

Humanity once had that and we may have it again if we survive our own addictions.

In the meantime, I can’t wait for society or any better conditions to appear.

There is only the material conditions, and the stories, states and actions generated in response to those material conditions.

There is only the prison cell of the present moment.

I don’t think i’ve really even scratched the surface of what is possible with this dream method. But i am also modest as to what even can truly be accomplished given the circumstances. It is enough however to have simply been afforded the opportunity regardless of the disgusting situation of society and interpersonal relationships.

Connected to that, one of the best political anthropology video creators is back making amazing videos. They are currently doing a 4 part series that is a really great synthesis of work and i cannot recommend it enough to help people confront the idiocy of common false narratives.

Watch em and toss em some money.

Super Playlist Link

A Banal Paean to the Work

Like an unknown movement beneath a darkened cloth

Attend with all your senses to it and do not stray

Relax without collapsing

Concentrate without gripping

See without looking

Look without seeing

Do not imagine

Let imagining be free and do not chase it

Sinking and floating for duration

The mind goes in yet

Do not overly narrow

The mind goes out yet

Do not overly wander

Nothing to fix, nothing to transform, nothing to understand, nothing to realize, nothing to heal, nothing to gain

The sky changes colors yet the sky never really changes

All manner of images emerge

Stay with the unknown movement beneath the word, idea, story

A faultless flame, an unconquerable abyss

The stenches of life and death

A figure screaming and no end to it

A figure orgasming and no end to it

All extremes become tedious in their own false logic

Fixating on better and worse recreates itself effortlessly

It is the easiest thing in the world to continue this struggle to control

Dark mirror reflecting everything

Who decides which reflections are real?

The human spirit eats itself

Inhale reality, exhale reality

Experience original natural and drop all pretenses

if you’ve read this far and are gaining value from my work, consider donating to

http://paypal.me/daresohei or https://venmo.com/u/Dare-Sohei

Pith series summer 2026 links

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

All experiences and emotions have a vital flow that exists beyond the realm of narrated morality.

Hate follows the laws of nature —generation, birth, maturation, peak, decline, dissolution, void — in an immortal cycle of time and space.

Therefore hate and love are the same at the level of this vital flow. The difference is in the morality story and the sensory preferences of the individual or mob.

The sun in its nearly inexhaustible fusion process does not defeat the dark sky, and the dark sky does not devour the sun. The moon reflects the bright light of the sun into a cool luminosity.

None of these are ever in opposition — earth, sky, sun, moon.

Therefore the myriad diseases of humankind occur only when elemental expressions are imbalanced and excessively rigid.

Beneath every word used to describe emotions and preferences lies an eternal cycle, inclusive yet unequal, following a burgeoning and diminishing pattern, naturally, without fail and without exception.

No hierarchy of value.

The real value is in the dance of parts and wholes.

Heaven and hell exist as perpetually constructed simulations made by the mind of human beings.

Both extremes are craved and desired in an oppositional framework, the basic symbolism of nature reduced to a crude ideological dogma in the mental dream of people.

Feel and experience the entire cycle of something without creating narratives around it. Feel the cold heat of hatred as a response to the call of millions of children being oppressed by brainwashed dogs. Feel it go through its entire cycle without losing your integrity by resisting your own pain, fear and hunger.

Allow the sun to rise and set, knowing it is not the sun itself rising and setting.

Allow spring to emerge after winter and summer to end and become autumn.

All the places you cannot let go of or cannot bear to experience are the places of your own fate work.

Pith series summer 2026 links

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

audio:

Read more

(So, maybe technically it’s a 5-class series if you include yesterday)

Details & how to sign up below

I am treating this as an experimental somatics lab - these are terms from the creative dance, performance arts and theater worlds.

The overarching intention is that you use these tools/prompts/experiences/games, which are crafted around this bigger theme, to explore your own body/mind/artistic center.

This is not a healing system TM. This is not tHeRaPy. This is not a path to your personal bespoke salvation.

This is a thematic exploration of Story, State and Action from my pedagogy.

There will be opportunity for solo and non-solo exploration, feedback, etc - using a variety of movement, meditative, mental and physical prompts - all scalable to your body and experience. There will be space for writing/drawing/journaling as well.

The sign-up and tech are “low-fi”. Like how we all did this stuff 5 years ago.

If you want to sign up, you send your fee to my venmo or email, including your name and email, otherwise how will you get my emails?!

I will send a google doc with zoom links, as well as ways to access recordings. The google doc will be updated over the course of the 4 weeks. Those who are joining now, will also get access to yesterday’s introduction class, (and are expected to watch it!)

Seasonal Intensive package: Intro + 4

sliding scale $60 (minimum)/110 /160 (true cost) /210 (pay it forward)

all costs USD

(If you were part of class last night, your costs are different - email me or kaila if you don’t have access to that info)

https://venmo.com/u/Dare-Sohei

http://paypal.me/daresohei

Schedule - next 4 Fridays 3pm PDT to 4:15-4:30ish PDT, 5/22-6/12 2026

Maybe I will see you in… The Lab!

A wittle moobdoorb for being so good on the devil’s internets

Thematic worb cloud activ8!

Link to relevant previous article on the Nature of Mind

Would be really helpful/awesome if you can join and/or spread the word.

Sign Up here: https://somakineseschool.pages.ontraport.net/playingwithfire

Preface
Potential Frameworks for Mapping “Levels of Mind”

As a means of mapping and framing, we can ascribe this approximate framework:

MIND/Basic Space

1. (The) Mind of Nature. “The mindless mind”. Dark-enigma, ever-present origin/Absence-presence, “Dao”. Death as Life. Beyond mental comprehension. Total inclusion with no absolute differentiations or oppositions. The mother of Time (movement) and Space (form) as we experience them. Non-local. “Original Mind A”

Mind

2. Nature of mind. “The selfless self”. The capacity by which mind is generated and functions. The capacity to reflect. Meta-awareness. Can be felt as a potentially localized phenomenon yet should not be mistaken for the feelings. “Original Mind B”

mind

(what virtually all westerners, post-modernists, dualists, materialists think about when they think about the word mind)

3. Habits of mind.

4. Contents of mind.

We can also conceptualize these “levels of mind” in the metaphor of a mountain spring streaming downhill. At the top of the list is the source of the water, and it moves downstream ending at contents of mind.

One must recognize that no map or model is the living relationality that the map or model seeks to approximate.

There is no one who hears the birdsong,

and no one who sings it.

There is singing.

Overview
Levels 1, 2 & 3

The nature of your mind is always present. The nature of your mind contains all downstream effects — states, narratives, behaviors — of your mind. The nature of mind is cosmological. It is not theological or mythological.

The nature of mind is what all non-dual animistic traditions are trying to get to. An awareness and recognition of what is always already present, inherent and original. We can call this original mind. Original mind and the nature of mind are not yours. They are not individualized. They are phenomenological, ecosystemic, cosmological.

Original mind and the nature of mind are what we could consider to be the wellspring of all sociocultural constructed systems and phenomena— all religions, all mythology, all narratives, etc.

Original mind and the nature of mind are what we could call the big view or the view or the right story. They contain all other smaller stories within. Learning the right story allows you to navigate the complex, internalized, perceptual biases of your biology, physiology, neurology, etc.

Original mind and the nature of mind are not merely human, however because we are human currently, we will talk about these things from a human-centric point of view.

Please keep in mind that all other beings and things, forces and processes also have or are aspects of original mind and nature of mind. Reality itself is original mind and nature of mind.

Original mind and nature of mind are the ever-present origin of all the downstream aspects that you and your culture use various words to describe. The self, awareness, consciousness, personality, mind, etc. However, these words are slippery and prone to capture by various (dualistic) agendas.

The model I am offering — the Story State Action model — is a cosmological view and framework for relating with reality in a nondual, wholistic, inclusive, expansive and accurate way. A decolonial way. A natural way. It may help you break free from cultic thinking, when beliefs are fused with identity. This model may help you move away from belief and identity as addictive and habitual processes (habits of mind). You may see the benefits you gain from your harmful and inaccurate stories, states and actions. You may be able to relate with discomfort, pain, fear, hunger and desire — intensity — in ways that are flexible, expansive, inclusive, playful, open-ended, grounded, centered and imperfect.

You may be able to analyze your habits of mind to understand what they are, why they exist, what you gain from them, and how to eventually change, transfer or shape them, from a place of acceptance and naturalness.

You may no longer seek escape from being a normal, imperfect human. You may be able to notice how the concept of and desire towards exceptionalism drives most harmful societal issues.

Contents of mind - Level 4

Contents of mind are the individualized, symbolic and isolated parts of reality that the mind can hold in its attention or perception.

Contents of mind are the “things”, and nature of mind has the capacity to “thingify”. Nature of mind can isolate and separate mentally and perceptually. It can decontextualize. This is one of the abilities of mind.

Contents of mind are generally what we fixate on, and what form the basis of belief and identity narratives. Contents of mind are the separate symbols and symbolic patterns that we use to construct stories.

Contents of mind also include the perception that our mind can go somewhere, can travel distances and in different directions.

All of these feelings-perceptions are comingled as aspects of mind, contents of mind, and habits of mind, which in turn are all aspects of nature of mind.

Contents of mind focus and concentrate. Narrow the field of perception in order to survive (feel safe) in a material plane or material layer-of-reality.

This material layer is governed by many habits of mind, the habits of mind ingrained in the cellular memory and functions, the autonomic systems of the body that govern breathing, heart rate, blood pressure, blood sugar, balance, survival, threat detection, and cognitive prediction, etc.

Most humans are comfortable, familiar and “stuck” in their contents of mind and their habits of mind.

These are the “places” where addictions, trauma, epigenetic and ancestral patterns reside and exert influence (habit, familiarity). Not all of these are negative, but when they run the show or drive the body, there can be negative consequences. When the identity is fused with these contents and habits, many strange and de-ranged behaviors can occur.

Contents of mind and habits of mind tend to create overarching narrative structures as a form of “upper/middle” management. Religions, philosophies, metaphysical explanations, mythologies, paradigms, biases etc. These incomplete/inaccurate stories can serve as a bulwark against the effects of being purely driven by contents/habits of mind. However, these incomplete stories can also serve as negative indoctrination methods and as political manipulation. Religions are still downstream from original mind and nature of mind. They can be a way to develop towards original mind, but they can also serve as political and socio-cultural means of controlling human behavior towards various agendas.

End of Introduction

For embodied dialogue and learning, join the online workshop on May 15th.

the videos are talking about these dates.

part 1 is here. Substack has a time limit, which i didn’t know, so after will be the full talk as an instagram reel.

part 2

okay - i am available for divination, consultation, etc. on these matters and how to integrate this into a modern, western life.

audio:

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The main TLDR is that i need to know the best times to host some live Q&A sessions about my Story State Action Model. There’s more questions at the end of this article!

I am considering doing some kind of live mini-series again for this year. It won’t be the astrology stuff, that will continue to be pre-recorded. The focus of these live classes/sessions would be around the the Story State Action Model, and how to think with it, design with it, and use it to neuro decolonize.

I don’t want to host live sessions without knowing who will show up, etc. So this has to be sustainable and useful for me as well as for you. Something like starting with maybe three 90-minute sessions. One for each node of the model, to really focus on it. Something like that. It’s a work in progress.

The sessions will be donation based, no one turned away etc on zoom.

What times would you be up for joining?

Is this something that would be useful for you? What themes are most valuable?

I really need your engagement/collaboration in order to continue my work on this substack.

If you know anyone with a podcast or audience that would be interested in interviewing me as a guest, i also need those kinds of relational connections.

Here is the super profesh video me & made for y’all: 90 minutes

It covers our thoughts-feels-vibes for spring equinox to summer solstice 2026 from a western (Hellenistic x Evolutionary) astrology meets eastern (decolonial daoist polestar-tongshu) astrology lens.

Gogogo sign up for Julia’s new substack at themagicisyou.substack.com

Below are some very short, pith takeaways that may not make much sense unless you watch the video.

Also, please like, share, subscribe and comment! It really helps!

From Julia xoxo

March & April:

Foggy Fire as we adjust to the longterm asks of Neptune and Saturn in Aries. vibes of frustrated & restrained forward movement + intense discipline on whether your actions are aligned with the energy you actually have

Late April brings Uranus into Gemini, a brand new 7 year cycle. Expect some bonkers, cuckoo crazy next-level tech acceleration opportunities to crack open your mind

May & June are largely calm with an opportunity to be in the body & ground out the madness.

From Dare oxox

Remember that i do a much longer monthly video on the moons, but the smol overview is that the struggle/obstacles of tiger moon continue in the yin metal rabbit moon from 3/19-4/16 - this rabbit moon has an internally-oriented qi which sees resources diminishing (hello global war, supply chain issues, rising oil prices, etc).

This transforms into a yang water dragon moon from 4/17-5/16 that has a vibe of lurching & erosion, yang water plus earth = turmoil, mudslides, thick & turbid muck. Externally oriented but thick with oceanic earth. But summer also officially begins this moon on 5/5, with auspices for compliance - listening to divination/ancestors/wind/breath. Big cosmic x terrestrial vibes here.

The yin water snake moon brings an inspiration of fresh, heavenly qi from 5/17-6/14 as auspices for (shorter) travel, excursions, finding joy with others in mysterious/sublime ways are promoted - a natural increase of what is truly valuable and naturally arising. This may be a very quintessential month in the fire horse year, as internal yin water (kidney, sexual organs, self-discipline) cools off some of the external yang fire (heart-mind) of the horse year. The innate feelings of freedom of the fire horse may finally feel present in this moon, but with an internal bent. What is the joy of self-regulation? Going to bed early, dreaming, keeping chill, yet moving freely.

This brings us right up to summer solstice, a yang wood horse moon in a yang fire horse year 6/15-7/13. Wood feeds/mothers fire, so temperatures definitely increase - heat, light, radiance, passion, excitement, aggression, lust, sex, etc reach their apex (Fighting/Fucking), which may become too bright, too hot to manage. This yang wood horse moon is great for art-making, decorating and ornamentation that is simple and elegant - bringing out what is the true values of things/events.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Redistribute, Restrain

Reminder that polestar astrology sessions are open!

The Video:

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But how will you specifically with your natal-ancestral qi-blood-fate-karma handle the wind and fire of this most yang of yang years? What are you being directed to focus on? What is undermining you this year? What do you need to watch out for in the blazing heat of 2026?

My books are open for daoist polestar astrology sessions. If you are new, you can navigate up to the tabs (open my substack in a browser, not the app) to read some articles about the system and logistics. (3 hour initial session, etc)

For returning clients, you should know the drill, 2 hour sessions, optional divination, email me to begin booking. Dariussohei0@gmail.com

Let’s make ourselves available for mercy this year!

🐴 🔥 💨 ☀️

Video version:

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• This is part 1, version 1.0

• This article will not show up fully in email, nor will the email contain future updates.

• This article on 2026 year of the yang fire horse will be put up in parts and updated over time.

• The ongoing/full project will live in the craft document link accessible via the web. https://darepolestar.craft.me/2026yangfirehorse - let me know if somehow you can’t access it.

• Assorted audio & video additions/editions forthcoming.

• Please like, share and comment to show your appreciation, and/or donate at paypal.me/daresohei of venmo at dare-sohei

• Happy Lunar New Year!

i’ve talked to a handful of people the last week or so. A variety of themes have converged. Pattern recognition is a form of bias, but in some senses it is also data. Here are some of my words around it all.

Snake year was harder than anyone could have imagined. The “shadow reckoning” bit down and didn’t let go, the snake’s fangs (small and infantile as they may be, being a yin wood snake) secreted some kind of desperate poison into the veins of blood memory.

All the inherited karma that comes part and parcel with being born, those terrible feelings that live in the dark bowels of the gene pool, all the desires of what we crave and what we avoid, were like sugar in the gas tank.

Movement was futile this year. All attempts at progress were illusory delusion.

In the last gasp of the year preceding the tiger moon on feb 16-17, the blood is still being filtered. Things are still heavy with the grime of incarnation.

The whiff of yang qi in the environment now appears like a mirage, a craving. Addiction to release, relief, relapse. A longing for the youthful hubris that lives inside the colonized mind to run free. To run off a cliff.

The horse year appears on the horizon as a savior to the optimizer.

Short term dopamine.

Blinders on.

Running with the herd over endless grasslands.

The picture of manifest destiny, the long legacy of the eurasian steppes, that place which birthed modern empires and warfare.

We forget history at our peril.

Seven generations down the line.

You have to realize now that your life, your actions in this very moment, are the ghosts that future generations will have to exorcise.

They are not happening in the future.

They are happening now.

Just as the ghosts consuming you, us, are the present actions of the ancestors being expressed.

Time is not a straight line.

But all of that conjures up excuses for the addict, the colonizer, the idealist.

Maturity, maturation as an endless, ongoing process, is the taming of the horse, but also the capacity to see which wind, breath, spirit, desire you are riding on and which are riding you.

The snake is not done yet.

The black blood has not yet bled out.

The internalized poisons muse still be sat with.

The abyss stares back because the abyss is reality. To sit in ceremony is to relate with the animus of reality. There is no one coming to save us. There is no future/past. There is only the unimaginable trickery of the mind as it relates to nondual reality. And many of us are really addicted to failing the test of relating, and addicted to the scapegoating, finger pointing and excuse making of failing the test of relating.

Wrong Story.

We love it.

We can’t ever get enough of it.

We crave the stimulation of it.

The heart is a mirror.

You want to run, to feel the joy of health and strength and power. To feel anything other than the void of source.

You crave healing without craving the process of doing so.

You have misplaced the sanity of value.

And so you live in a world of trick mirrors that reflect false views and wrong stories as an entertaining distraction to beauty making, wisdom relating, spirit protecting.

This is what we have done with our inherent freedom.

Yet we are not satisfied.

We eat and eat and eat but never produce nourishment.

In 12 more years the snake will return.

What will you be then?

2.2.2026 yin fire goat day in a yin earth ox month in a yin wood snake year. written in yin earth rooster hour.

1. The hard truth is that my health has been very difficult in terms of living in a capitalist society. My fatigue and pain have been extreme all year, to the point where i really do not know what i can aspire towards in the future. It’s a day-by-day thing but in reality, i am forcing myself to survive right now, write this letter, when i would rather be laying down in the dark.
   My liver and chong mai (lower spine channel) are very weak, causing me lots of distress. One can do the right things and still fail, i am reminded daily. Of course, that failure is really a failure of cultural conditions. Humans have set this all up. The consequences should not be surprising to anyone, and yet i see that they still seem to be. Shock is yet another clever dissociative mechanism, after all.

2. Plans for any February astrology and fire horse year write ups are on hold for now. I really don’t know what to do as i deal with such an extreme level of exhaustion and likely vitamin D deficiency amongst other compounding factors.

3. a very good horse year write-up can be found here: Into the Heart of the Sun — Tiger Eye Astrology. I’m not sure what I could really add in this moment.

4. I am being interviewed about the world of Red Dust on Patrick Farnsworth’s podcast/substack Last Born in the Wilderness on Thursday (it is a very yang qi environment day, in fact one of the most yang qi available days in this chunk of time). My intention is to follow through on this statement: "Neuro-decolonization in the World of Red Dust: Critically Thinking Beyond Fear & Desire"

5. In a time of hysterical hyperbolic urgency and the frantic panic-stricken dualism of white people, nothing has actually really changed. The reality is still the same reality that has been operating for decades, possibly centuries or millennia. I repeat, nothing much has really shifted. Human delusion is still running the show. Dualistic oppositionalism is still the de facto stance. As long as regular people are still clinging to hope, salvation and silver bullets, nothing ever will change. The shift has to happen in the hearts of each person, relating with Land, Time, Death & Nature in a non-mystical way. Thinking that we can merely reform or replace institutions based in dualistic materialism will never really do anything except kick the can down the street. You have to give up hope but maintain and increase dignity.

6. So, what can really be done? I plan on getting through some of my ideas on that in the interview, try and unpack that more, but realistically it is very simple: The Stories, States and Actions of each person create the atmosphere of humanity. If you haven’t examined what Stories, States & actions you participate in that are addictive, delusional, petty and selfish, then what can you really expect? It’s likely your own identity & colonial values are a big part of the problems you seek to solve outside yourself. Sobriety is painfully uncomfortable and this is why we define it as optional, for “those” “other” people.

ok that’s all i can think about for now. let’s try and all wake up to reality in every moment of emotional intoxication.