(a story that invites your own investigation — names and details are fictional)
The house waited at the end of a rutted track, white paint giving way to the honest wood beneath. Wind threaded the gums into their soft whispering; magpies stitched black-and-white notes across the sky. Inside, the floorboards made small comments with every step. When the kettle found its low hum, it sounded like a promise that nothing urgent would be required tonight.
They arrived in the unshowy way of people who had already tried other doors.
Rowan—the facilitator, more gardener than guru—set a cup on the long table and spoke like weather. “Let’s not chase. Let’s see what’s here and let it name itself.”
Miles came first, shoulders carrying old weather. Sera slipped in behind him, one thumb absently rubbing the hinge of her jaw. Arlo paused on the verandah as if consulting a map only he could see, then stepped through. Mateo entered with Lucía, whose careful Spanish-to-English translation would render each sentence twice, as if meaning were a bird that could land in more than one language.
The house—which preferred listening to declarations—seemed to approve.
1) Miles and the Door That Keeps Reappearing
They sat where the light could travel. Miles spoke like someone who had already rehearsed the confession.
“It keeps happening,” he said. “A phrase, a look—suddenly I’m caught. I know what it is even while I’m in it, but I’m stuck there longer than makes sense.”
Rowan’s head tilted, not as challenge, more as invitation. “It sounds as if part of you believes this should not be happening.”
Miles blinked. “Of course I do.”
Rowan nodded toward the simplest ground. “What if the first step is accepting not-acceptance? Not as a lofty virtue—just as a weather report. Resistance is present.”
The words arrived like a key that didn’t promise a castle, only a door.
Miles tried them on. “So the recoil can be included.”
“Included and named,” Rowan said. “And when a trigger has you on repeat, it often means there’s a sentence underneath it—an old certainty your body trusts more than your intelligence does.”
Miles looked down, then laughed—exasperated with himself and oddly relieved. “I watch it dissolve. I feel better. And still the same corner finds me a week later.”
“Because the scene ended,” Rowan said, “but the sentence kept living.”
They let that land. The room understood the economy of such things: how a person can be brilliant and still obey an unexamined belief delivered long before they had the words to refuse it.
Pocket Investigation — Miles’s Note
Close your eyes for ten seconds. Where does your body prepare to be “right”? Throat? Belly? Eyes? Whisper, Resistance is here. Then add, And the noticing is here too. See if that changes anything.
Miles’s face loosened half a centimeter. That is not small.
2) Mateo and the Road Beside the River
When Mateo spoke, the others leaned in—not for drama, but for the density that certain lives carry. Lucía translated without thinning anything.
“I’ve been on a spiritual path since I was a boy,” Mateo said. “I studied teachings through translation. Sometimes I felt like a student repeating the same grade. Stubborn with reality.” He smiled at himself—kindly.
Rowan asked, “Did you ever wonder why it took the time it took?”
“Many times,” Mateo said. “Then life answered me without theories. A year ago my wife died.” Lucía’s voice held. “We faced it consciously. We talked, we held hands, we sang a little. Even with understanding, my body still tried to hold her to life.”
The room shifted, as rooms do to make space for honest grief. The kettle clicked itself off, then forgot to matter.
“I learned,” Mateo continued, “that comprehension and instinct can share the same heart. You can see clearly and still clutch. The clutching isn’t a failure; it’s an animal movement. It softens when seen.”
He touched a small bead in his pocket—as if to confirm he was allowed to have both: the bead and the clarity.
“The love didn’t end,” he said, looking at the floorboards as though they could welcome the truth. “It changed offices.”
No one tried to improve the sentence. Lucía’s breath wobbled once, then steadied; two languages had carried the same bird to land in the same place.
Pocket Investigation — Mateo’s Note
Recall a loss. Let the animal in the chest have fifteen seconds: heat, clutch, surge. Name it instinct, not wrong. Then ask quietly, What here does not need time or words? Wait for the answer that arrives by not moving.
3) Arlo and the Weather Called “My Life”
Arlo’s voice had the clean timbre of someone who liked the truth even when it misunderstood him. “I woke anxious,” he said. “I keep pushing against everything. On good days I can see events as just happening. On others, it’s all happening to me.”
Rowan’s nod was neither agreement nor correction—more like a handshake with the report.
“I notice how fiercely I prefer a certain shape for my life,” Arlo added. “When it doesn’t match, it feels like I’m being punished.”
“We all come with a lens,” Rowan said. “The trick is remembering it’s a lens. We rarely witness ‘what is.’ Mostly we witness our angle.”
Arlo snorted. “I also got this belief somewhere: if I don’t make what I want happen, bad things will. It’s not a thought; it’s in my bones.”
Rowan offered a story light as a match. “When I finally saw my parents as unevolved kids—sincere, limited, trying—the spell loosened. I stopped arguing cases in a court that didn’t exist.”
Arlo looked almost offended by how much sense that made. “My mother and my three-year-old have the same tantrum sometimes.” He paused
Pocket Investigation — Arlo’s Note
Hold one preference in mind (work, love, health). Whisper, Preference is here. Feel what tightens (jaw, belly, shoulders). Then whisper, Outcome is unknown. Wait ten seconds. Track what loosens. Add one more line: They are doing the best they can at their current altitude. Notice if the heart gives you back a millimeter of air.
Arlo breathed like someone who had just found a hidden pocket in an old coat. He didn’t call it peace. He called it room.
4) Sera and the Science of One Breath
Sera had been talking with her shoulders all evening; now words joined in. “Overwhelm,” she said, not as a complaint but as a diagnosis. “Chest heavy. Jaw tight. I tell myself I’m ‘staying with the sensation,’ but I’m actually negotiating with it—asking why, how long, what does it mean about me.”
Rowan’s eyes warmed. “The mind wants biography. The body wants a witness.”
Sera made a small sound that might have been a laugh or a cough. “I keep chasing why. It becomes quicksand.”
“Try what,” Rowan said. “Not philosophically. Precisely. What is happening, right now, in the language of contact, temperature, and motion?”
Sera closed her eyes. “Weight under sternum. Heat at cheeks. Teeth pressing. Breath… short and high.” She opened her eyes. “I didn’t fix anything. But something isn’t fighting me back.”
Rowan nodded. “That’s a form of intelligence—seeing without sentencing.”
Sera stared at the tabletop like it had just introduced itself. “I also keep choosing doing over being,” she admitted.
“Humans can hold two views in the same breath,” Rowan said. “Be a lab for one minute. Let both be here. See which one costs less oxygen.”
They timed the minute together. When it ended, Sera’s shoulders had fallen a centimeter. That is not small.
Pocket Investigation — Sera’s Note
For sixty seconds, speak only what a voice-to-text sensor could verify: warmth at sternum; tingling at lips; air on wrists; jaw pressing. If meaning intrudes, tag it story and return to description. After the minute, ask: What changed on its own when I stopped telling it who it was?
5) Rowan’s Plain Thing (trust, mistrust, and language that lets air through)
Between stories, Rowan tended the air. “We talk about trust as if it were a substance,” he said. “But most days it’s vague. Mistrust, though—you can measure it. You can watch where a thought feels ninety-five percent true and is still wrong by lunchtime.”
He pulled a small box from his bag—just a simple tap-and-guess game. They took turns predicting a tone (high or low), rating confidence, and seeing instant feedback. The room laughed at itself: so sure, so often, so human.
“This is healthy doubt,” Rowan said. “Not cynicism—calibration. The goal isn’t to never believe a thought. It’s to (a) check how real it feels, (b) notice the body that’s believing it, and (c) verify with the world when you can.”
He let the box go quiet. “Language helps here. English keeps offering you subjects and objects—someone doing something to someone. Useful for building bridges and lawsuits. Less useful for seeing what’s happening in your chest.”
He offered three swaps like a mechanic offering wrenches:
Judgment → Description
“He’s disrespectful” → “He spoke loudly at 8:12 pm; my heart sped up.”Trait → Event
“I am a failure” → “There’s tightness at chest; a thought is saying ‘failure’.”Noun-self → Verb-world
“I am breathing” → “Breathing happening; shoulders rising; air moving.”
“Try one minute of verb-first,” he said. “See how the room changes.”
They did. The room changed.
Pocket Investigation — Language Minute
Pick a hot sentence and produce three versions: (1) describe-only, (2) verb-first, (3) alternative hypotheses. Speak each aloud. Which makes the body lighter by even five percent? Use that version for a day.
6) The Texture of Discoveries
Evening climbed the windows. They did not rush to wisdom; they let practice change the texture of the room.
Miles felt the precise hinge where non-acceptance announces itself—like a latch in the throat—and discovered that naming the latch reduced its authority. The trigger was still a trigger; it just got less good at pretending to be truth.
Mateo showed everyone how love keeps its job after a body quits—how instinct clutches and comprehension bows out, and how both can live under the same ribcage without canceling each other.
Arlo found dignity in preference and comedy in expecting the universe to honor it on schedule. The line Outcome unknown didn’t feel like surrender; it felt like dropping an anvil.
Sera learned to call off the cross-examination and file a field report instead. Sensation didn’t vanish; it stopped auditioning for the role of moral.
Rowan kept returning them to the plain thing: What is happening? And whenever the mind tried to turn that into a philosophy, he gently returned it to the body for inspection.
No one pretended these were grand victories. They were right-sized discoveries: the kind you can put in a pocket and use at the sink.
7) Night Notes (the part that isn’t a conclusion)
They carried their cups to the verandah. The paddock rested like something that didn’t need witnesses. A night bird said its name the only way it knew—by making the sound, not explaining it.
Miles said, “The door keeps reappearing. I can stop being shocked to find it. Accept not-acceptance. Then look under the rug for the sentence.”
Mateo said, “Instinct held on. Love kept being.” He lifted the bead in his pocket and let it drop, a tiny bell no one needed to interpret.
Arlo said, “Preference is present. Outcome unknown. Apparently that’s livable.”
Sera said, “What is happening? Warmth, pressure, breath. For a minute, that’s the whole universe.” She grinned, a little stunned by how enormous and small that was.
Rowan didn’t summarize. He slid four lines onto the table like toast and butter:
Look at what is actually here.
Notice how quickly a story arrives to own it.
Let the story be late to its own party.
Watch how the body changes when reality doesn’t have to compete with a headline.
The house disliked applause. Fortunately, none was offered.
They put on jackets. They rinsed cups. They left the way good weather leaves—without boasting, leaving behind a change you only notice when you breathe.
8) What the Morning Kept
Dawn returned like someone who had never left. The kettle resumed its low hymn. The house exhaled. Evidence that the night had mattered remained in ordinary places: the shape of how a chair was pushed in, a folded towel, a room somehow larger without gaining any square meters.
If you had walked in then, you might have found a note beside the kettle in Lucía’s careful bilingual hand:
Aceptar la no-aceptación.
Accept non-acceptance.
Under it, smaller:
Pocket Field Kit
Miles: “Resistance is here… noticing is here too.”
Mateo: “Let the animal move; ask what doesn’t.”
Arlo: “Preference present; outcome unknown.”
Sera: “Describe, don’t sentence.”
Language: “Try verbs first.”
Trust: “Calibrate confidence; practice curious doubt.”
Plain Seeing: “What is happening?” (Answer with the body.)
No doctrine. No vows. Just doors in a house you already live in.
The track took their tires; the day took their work. And each of them, before lunch or after a hard phone call or while washing a single spoon, remembered to test one thing:
Is this an image, or an event?
They found—again and again—that the difference was everything. Not philosophically. Physically. Enough to make room. Enough to make the next honest breath.
For more pointers and suggestions, check out this link to vince-bot using the website as its knowledge base.
Vince Schubert YouTube Channel
Free online meetups every Saturday at 9 pm (Sydney Australia time)
and one each Monday 7 am ( Sydney Australia time). This meeting starts at 6am and is only available to paid Substack subscribers.
and each Wednesday at 4 pm (Sydney Australia time)
and every Friday 7 am (Sydney time) - never published. Only available to participants who request it by email.
You can check your local time here:
Or visit the website for countdown timers to each meeting.
Please note that it's always the same time on the same link. Arriving late and leaving early is fine.
Click here to Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86991485768?pwd=WkIvNk9zS1Q0VlVMR3lENW12Um5DQT09
Here is a link to all of the published recordings.
Audio files can be found here:
& 2024 files here; https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1_bEDgZlbsVBW4EK9u4hVAFzW9jIVCBwN?usp=share_link
There is also paid 1on1 (& also 2 on 1) guiding here: With vince &/or Marius
Although the website still requires a lot of work, there are resources here; WakingUpWithVince.com
..and more here; WakingUpWithMarius
If any link doesn’t work properly, please let me know. vinceschubert@gmail.com
Given the multitude of small costs (that add up to something significant) required to produce these offerings, please consider donating whatever you can comfortably afford. Moneys over and above running costs are directed to the establishment of Suan Jai Sanctuary.
..and remember - lots of little bits make a big bit. ❤️