Can we please stop performing enlightenment?

… and start discovering it again?

Lately, I’ve been sitting with something. Feeling it in the rooms I walk into, seeing it on the feeds, the stories, not just on island.

There’s this strange phenomenon I’ve noticed… and I say this not from cynicism, but from curiosity. I’ll call it ‘the performance of wisdom’. The role-play of healers and leaders. People acting out what it means to be “awake,” “evolved” instead of humbly living it, surrendering to it, or discovering it for real for real, like a child discovering it can walk or ride a bike.

And I get it. We’ve all studied the scripts, read the sages, and learned the language. But when the words, techniques, potions, and certifications become props, costumes, and signals, something essential gets lost.

Daniel Day Lewis, astute method actor who could shape shift and be almost unrecognizable from film to film

It’s like watching a play where the actors are so deep in character, they forget who they really are. It’s seductive.. but at the same time, I wonder if there a kind of possession taking place? Where did you go Daniel Day-Lewis?

And I say this with aloha… and a little weariness. In honesty, i’d rather be sold a men’s work course, a therapy session, and maybe my birth chart > Over a neon plastic t-shirt, a Tesla or a corporate job—any day!! At least we’re talking about growth, meditation, and Ram Dass, not handbags and Beyoncé. So this problem is really just “new earth problems” and part of our collective upgrades, perhaps.

Although what I’m really craving isn’t more “I’ve got it all figured out” or “it’s this way” energy. It’s not more plant medicine prescriptions and $3333 life coach subscriptions. Not more pseudo-therapy delivered in a sage tone. I’m not interested in borrowed wisdom sold as original truth by delululemons. No thank you!

I’m not looking for gurus with good looks, envious lifestyles, perfect lighting, polished words and big followings who claim to “live the full spectrum.” The perfectly branded persona. The ones who preach, ‘it just gets better and better’ as if spiritual depth is just another upgrade in lifestyle performance.

If I’m honest. I’m hungry for presence. For emergence. For the kind of wisdom that shows up messy, curious, and real.. collaborative. The kind that’s co-created from the depth and polarities of life with open hearts and humble minds. Where no one knows the answer, and yet somehow, through dialogue and listening, a new consciousness is born—not from someone, but through everyone, through essence. Not from mind, but from heart and soul.

That’s what I trust. I’ve seen it before. I know it’s real. We touch it daily, the formless. 

Maybe I’m just feeling a call back into the mystery, the not-knowing, the exploring, the birthing. What comes is not mine. It’s free and uniquely its own.

And this is my journey: to cipher what’s mine to carry, and what’s not. To walk with guardianship, not performance. And as I do, I vow to craft keys, not cages, to open doors to truth, not lock away the sacred.

With aloha!

(this article came from journal today)