Kill the method.

By “method” I mean anything that you do or use to propel yourself, any practice that breaks down the things that hold you back, or brings greater meaning to your life. Think: yoga; meditation; plant medicine; religion; teachers/gurus.

Kill it.

Because methods are traps. They can bring so much goodness and growth to our lives, are invaluable in that way, but at a certain point that goodness leads to attachment to the method, which turns into the opposite of the desired outcome.

For example, there’s a painful irony in people deeply attached to yoga, or strict adherents to Buddhism: methods that espouse non-attachment, and attachment as suffering, so often turn into the exact attachments they warn of.

And this is nothing about the value of the method, but the attachment therein. I believe in methods as incredible ways to develop intuition, compassion, wisdom, and deepening. I think everyone should study many methods, and take from each one. Find all the methods that can add to your life. But then, kill it.

Be spiritually promiscuous.

And it’s not just about the attachment. Another problem with methods is that they go away. Gurus die (or get thrown in jail for sexual harassment); drugs run out. Practices lose their effectiveness: following the breath becomes hollow, poses become empty. Dogmas or given beliefs within methods become the exact things that hold back deeper truths and understanding.

The context that you’re in (your method) is almost never going to shine light that you can’t see beyond that context: only other methods, and ultimately yourself, can do that.

And when shit falls apart, as it inevitably does… when the house of cards we built collapses… when injustice and unfairness and chaos and death land at our doorstep… we need to be more than our method. We need ourselves, that deep and sought after connection within, to lean on. You, not your method.

And you are not your method. You are so much more.