something is off

and i can feel it

most people don’t realize they’re participating in a false culture. the world often runs on enough sincerity to feel real and enough distance to never be accountable.

and this pattern shows up in business:

in branding.
in marketing.
in how companies communicate.

sure, it may seem right. look right. perform well.

but you can feel something is…off. and you feel it in the way your jaw clenches when you read something. or your body tightens when you feel someone pretend.

the illusion sustains itself because people optimize for the surface (not what is sustainable underneath).

everyone is optimizing to “add value.” but value is now indistinguishable from performance.

this awakening was a gradual process of:

unlearning things I was so sure were true
not masking anymore, and
feeling the world stop making sense viscerally in my body

after reading the book Not in His Image a few years ago, things started to click in my body. but only after my mind tried to understand it first. (I write about this tension in the physics of feeling).

and once it landed, I could feel how the fabric of reality was built on falsity…it’s
a kind of reality that merely mimics truth.

and once you start to feel the “performance” in your body, you can’t go back to the old way of relating and connecting. it’s a sensation that you can no longer override. it’s like something reaching into your nervous system before your mind catches up.

and then you start to see it everywhere; you can feel reactions being engineered. you can see people respond only the way they’re programmed.

many don’t even realize how much of our reactions are patterned.

I can’t see “news” anymore. all I see is psychological operations. I can feel the framing of the before I understand the story: how it sets up tension, introduces opposition,
and quietly leads you to a conclusion.

that’s why news gets attention:

attention responds to performance.
but behavior responds to truth.

i can feel the performance of how I’m “supposed” to react to everything, and it feels like I’m acting in The Truman Show and the audience is waiting for my reaction.

it even happens with good news: a story about humanity designed to restore faith; I feel into the performative empathy of it all. I can feel the puppet strings of conformity, in how the story feels fabricated. curated. like the emotion is decided for me, and all I need to do is act it out.

it’s not insincerity; it’s awareness itself.
and I choose to not partake in performance.

when you’re anchored in your own knowing (gnosis), you no longer see the play; you see the puppets on strings.

there’s a quiet power here, of knowing yourself: I know what I require, not expect.

I align with nothing, things align with me.
and I only trust what’s true within myself.

this level of awareness gets lonely real quick.

I stopped fitting in. I let go of friendships where connection was conditional…where my presence was curated.

I stopped conversing with people who could only relate through edited versions of themselves instead of something real.

I stopped playing along. and it got quiet. clear. like the quiet hum of a refrigerator stopped.

reality crystallizes here…

when I feel the sun on my skin, warm and immediate, like it’s immersing itself into me.

when I feel the softness of my pup, grounding; she doesn’t need anything from me. no performance. just presence. coherence.

I feel an intimacy in this aliveness…not with another person but with Reality Itself:

like a pulse underneath everything
that doesn’t perform…it exists.

this is eros: truth before language touches it.

an inner knowing…not “belief.”
not something you’re taught.

something you remember.

it doesn’t argue.
it doesn’t try to convince.
and it most definitely doesn’t need consensus.

it just…knows.

and once you start trusting the silence underneath the hum, you can’t go back to the noise. you can’t unsee the surface layer of reality.

in this awareness, there’s no self abandonment.

it’s direct. spacious. it’s not perfect.
but you’re living inside something real.

and maybe that’s the point:

not fixing the world.
not waking everyone up.

just living inside eros…living inside out.

even when it costs you everything.
especially then.

and maybe this is why the work I’m drawn to now
isn’t always about creating “better” narratives…

it’s more about removing what’s false
and distilling truth
so something real can actually land.

this is the lens i bring to my work.