I've been thinking about self criticism and the inner voice at the same time I started reading Michael's manuscript. During the Pandemic, he felt like my older brother, a deep inquirer into the human psyche, wrestling to channel his voice to inspire our culture with a full humanity. That culture was on a different channel and we each held the dissonance in our own way. Beneath all those conversations, even the misattunements and disagreeable words, we wrestled to find a path through the absurdity.

---

"These alternative writing communities are full of some of the best people I've met, and yet they inherit the same mainstream toxicities."

"Okay, but still, how could you use consideration of audience?"

"How could you stop being a bitch?"

Taken aback, a smile covering the tension, I pause and try again, "Well, I think that editor has a point, how can you get a book published that teaches about sexual shamanism without some foreplay?"

The humor warms him a bit, "You keep asking with those Joe¹ how/what questions, like B- always does; that voice-in-the-head work didn't do it for me."

"Isn't that what this is about? Your editor touched a nerve.. because.. you.. you're ashamed you're a sexual deviant?"

He looks daggers at me. I waver within the intensity. I am on to something? Am I off base? Across from me in the kitchen dining room, Michael is brewing with murderous thoughts, decades of being misunderstood. The air hums with a disorienting viscosity.

---

As I drove home that night, I thought to myself: I must not understand, he knows something I don't. No, I know something he doesn't?! If only he could accept his self-judgement (then he could accept me)? Something must be wrong with me to say something like that, to elicit such animosity, or wrong with him to be so sensitive, so intolerant of intolerance.

I know Michael's voice lives on with me, but am I doing him justice? During the lockdown, when we would get triggered talking about politics or whether I was being inconsiderate as a friend, when we got triggered, the intensity imprinted itself, and I must believe that was in some way the surest teacher of friendship.

This dialogue started in response, both to Michael but also that perennial question, how can we befriend negativity? This last week I've heard time and again people beat themselves up, I tried to encourage them, they would double down. Somehow, "be nicer to yourself," hasn't felt enough. So, I look to Michael, who recently lost his life to cancer, his spirit I know, has some wisdom for us yet.

Micheal and I met through the personal development world of the SF Bay Area, and really got to know each other through Joe's leadership training. By then he had been on a deep inner journey, having already spent a decade practicing Tibetan Buddhism, he had a sort of kid-in-the back-of-the-class attitude about the Joe's way of teaching non duality. For me it was a revelation, Joe's reclamation game had me practically shouting in delight, yes I am a slave to my dad, it's great. Being able to speak the dreaded words and to be heard and held in compassionate eye contact, That weekend sitting in zazen during morning meditation, each invocation to presence tore back the layers of my Papier-mâché world.

Ironically, what helped me break through these judgements didn't land with Michael. My cranium had been filled with self recrimination for a long time, I'm lazy, I'm shy, I'm sickly, a whole crowd of diminishment. Reclaiming them really did help me make better friends with my shame. But for Micheal, it was how Joe taught groups that piqued the curious cat in him. Looking up to him, I wondered if he was beyond shame, so I checked, "Yes, I have lots of shame" he said, "its voice is like how a rationalist would shame an anti-vaxxer."

Having experimented with alternative schooling with his Boston friends after graduating MIT, Michael had a grounding intuition that society could trust children's natural curiosity and growth, and that we could make informed decisions with healthy and self honest institutions. Speaking to a cohort of young people with Sleepawake he had this exchange:

"Tell me the last time you lost your sense of self"
"Well, I love boardgames"
"You love board games, take that seriously, and get curious about what worked about it"

It's a simple formula he applied to his personal journey. Admittedly, board games are tame relative to what called to Michael. Sex, death, afflictions and the search for love. His Manuscript grapples with it all in humor, one draft is tentatively titled American Shamanism. When the editor got back to him, she was dubious, and shared, people would find it hard to relate. He knew all too well it wasn't mainstream. On the dearmoring arc with Deer Tribe, he talked about it like a comic book origin story: he had bitten by a radio active spider, yes it was weird, but also the night of two snakes, the Nagual, it was a weird he could lose himself in.

And yet I judged him, lost in his otherness, and if we learn anything in spirituality 101, it's that the outward thrust has its inward turn and that brings us back to Joe's projection work. Let's apply it here: I am sorry for projecting, Micheal, that you won't be listened to because you are an oversensitive weirdo — when in reality — I won't be listened to because I am an oversensitive weirdo...

It lands, the words resonate in my chest as a somber heart break, the sensation wells up to my eyes. It's not the final word, not true, not false, it's a belief I hold.

When Michael got his cancer diagnosis I was struck with how unfair it was. But in one of those ironies of life, it was the tragedy of that fate that showed how deeply he had woven his love. He he had been on his personal journey to understand shamanic healing, to liberate himself and others, I thought it mattered whether his writing was relatable to a mainstream, while the whole time there was an inspired band of fellow travelers, that yes, thought it strange — strangely wonderful.