Hug the Universe 2.0 — It’s Our Birthday, and We’re Back
A short story about bumps in the road, losing a friend, and staying the course
Life’s a pretty wild ride, isn’t it? I think we’re fortunate that our bodies and minds are so adept at healing because otherwise we’d all just be bruised blobs of mush before too long.
I originally launched this website on my birthday in 2016. I created it because I wanted to connect with others, share ideas and information that helped me overcome a lot of gnarly stuff, and to grow as a person and a writer. I wrote tens of thousands of words, published around 18 articles, got a lot of beautiful feedback, had a long list of additional content I was going to complete and publish, and then I shut the site down. A little over a year after I launched it.
What’s that about?
I had spent the 15 years prior to launching this site undergoing some pretty intensive personal development work. It was a process of disassembling and then rebuilding myself emotionally, intellectually, spiritually, and also physically. My initial thinking for the site was that I’d keep things light and just talk about the interesting philosophy and personal-growth concepts I had come to understand, all without really revealing anything personal about myself. But the amount of time and energy it took to dance around my personal story was unsustainable.
What I wanted to share wasn’t just “let me tell you about some stuff I just read in a book,” but “here’s what I used and learned through overcoming some really dark stuff. I’ve tested this and it works.” I realized that my story is context, and context was the connective tissue that was missing.
So the project took an uncomfortable detour. It wasn’t easy for me to tell people “Hey, I was raised in an apocalyptic religious cult. Oh, and my dad is a violent and sadistic man who went to prison for child molestation. Oh, and my mom is mentally ill and was horrifically abusive to me. Oh, I’ve also been dealing with a debilitating neurological chronic illness for over a decade now.” I don’t want to be seen as broken or to be defined by negative associations with the people who brought me into this world, but those things are big parts of what made me who I am.
It sucked at the time, but the process was illuminating. When I got out the other side, I understood things at a much deeper level than I had previously. But, digging that deeply back into my personal septic tank was re-traumatizing. I had the love and support of my dear friend and mentor, Eric, as I went through the process, but not even that was able to stave off the existential crises triggered by all of that turd-archeology.
So I decided to take the site down. I thought it had served its purpose, and I was worn out. I was in-between jobs at the time, so over the next few months, I focused on looking for work and also helping Eric with the marketing and distribution plans for the books he was writing. And then the worst thing I could have imagined happened. Eric died. Very unexpectedly.
The disappearance of someone who saved my life
If you’ve read the Hug The Universe series on consciousness research, then you’ve met Eric. He consulted on the accuracy of what I discussed in my series on the work of David R. Hawkins and Power vs. Force and provided the consciousness calibrations for Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in the third part of the series. He also let me interview him about his own research and writing for my series on the fascinating physics of Truth that is at the core of Hawkins’ and Eric’s work.
I discovered Hawkins’ work while I was living in Seattle and was deep in the process of dismantling my identity and the worldview I had inherited from my parents. Hawkins’ work impacted me unlike anything else has and completely changed the way I see and understand everything. I met Eric a few years later when I moved back to California, and that relationship radically expanded everything I knew and understood about Hawkins’ work and discoveries.
For 10 years I worked very closely with Eric on my overall personal development, including addressing the neurological disorder I developed in 2006. He was the most brilliant person I’ve ever known. And beyond being an exemplar and a mentor, he was the closest thing I’ve ever had to a big brother.
Eric was endlessly generous, open-minded, curious, and committed to the well-being of others. He had devoted his life to the discovery and understanding of Truth, and he was writing several books about all he had discovered during his many years of client work and consciousness research utilizing the tools and methods that David R. Hawkins had first discovered and developed.
Eric wasn’t just a friend; he had saved my life. And I couldn’t have been more in support of the work he was creating. I mean, I was a pudding-cup of proof that it worked, and I wanted to do everything I could to help him spread what he had discovered and was creating. And we had developed and started executing extensive plans to do exactly that.
Eric’s death just kinda tipped my little tugboat over. I spent the next year-or-so feeling fairly freaked out and reassessing everything I thought I understood about how life worked. How could someone so beautiful and who was actively creating such amazing, beneficial work just be gone? He wasn’t dawdling. He wasn’t putting things off. He wasn’t saying “I’ll write those books someday.” He had spent years creating this incredible body of work and was just about to release it into the world.
And then, poof. He was gone.
Eric said something to me once that I wrote down so I wouldn’t forget. He said:
Your persona is not lasting, but the impact of your life can be. -Eric Burlingame
I’m one of the people in whom the impact of Eric’s life lives on. Eric didn’t make me who I am, but he was instrumental in helping me uncover, access, and express the best in me. He taught me what true intention looks like, and I absorbed everything I could from him during the 10 years that I knew him.
That’s something I’m really proud of. I didn’t take any of the time that I had with Eric for granted. I didn’t let any of it go to waste.
Relaunching Hug the Universe
So, here we are. It’s 2020, today is my birthday, and I’m relaunching Hug the Universe. The break that I took gave me some much-needed perspective on what I want to create, and it reinforced my commitment to seeing it through.
As you poke around the site you’ll find a hand-selected collection of (slightly refreshed) original content. Nothing essential has been changed about these posts, only minor polishing and edits to bring them current with where I and Hug the Universe are today.
I’m picking things back up where I left them and planning a lot of new stuff, and I’m really excited to share all of it with you. I hope that you love it.
The writing you can expect to find is about helping, healing, and the supreme value and importance of living our lives with intention. I miss Eric so much, and I’m determined to continue being a ripple of good in the world that’s a worthy reverberation of the impact of his life.
