The Monastery of Miller Lite

What is the way of the modern mystic?

This may be the most significant thing I’ve ever written. Not because it’s the most poetic, but because it’s the contemplation I grapple with the deepest in my life. The shadow that has sat heaviest on my soul for as long as I can remember.
And I’m here to expose it.

I was recently sitting at a table in a small bar - three slices of dollar pizza deep, a perfectly chilled Miller Lite in hand, surrounded by laughter, dear friends, and the woman I've recently started seeing. It was easy. Beautiful, even. The kind of ordinary that makes your heart exhale. I drank in the moment like it was honey.

And then, like a ghost slipping through a crack in the door, the voice came:

"Are you doing enough?" "This isn't sacred." "You can't change the world with cheap beer."

I haven’t done yoga in months. I’m no longer vegan. I can’t remember the last time I meditated deeply. I have’t read any spiritual texts lately. No breath work. No plant medicine. No sun gazing. No daily gratitude journal. I’ve been doing none of the things spiritual people should do.

Suddenly, joy became tension. A concoction of familiar spiritual trauma infused guilt mixed with new aged spiritual expectation flooded my brain. My peace turned into an existential murmur. There I was, in a Phillies hat, making fart jokes, and some part of me was screaming that this wasn't enough. That I was failing at my purpose. That real spiritual people don't find God in dive bars over $2 beers.

This voice has been my companion for years, whispering its doubts every time I taste something that feels too simple, too easy, too... human. And right now, as I'm settling into this world, as I'm dreaming of coffee shops in Lancaster and weekends at baseball games, that voice is louder than ever.

I'm standing at a threshold: between the life I thought I was meant to live, and the one quietly unfolding before me. One has incense. The other has espresso. One is cloaked in robes, the other in routines. And I don't know if I'm being asked to surrender my dreams of significance… or to redefine what sacred service looks like.

The Ache to Be Holy

There's a part of me that aches to be a saint. To walk barefoot through devotion. To be a modern-day mystic who never wavers, never compromises, never gets distracted by the mundane pull of money or comfort. A temple-builder. A soul-architect. A servant of God with no distractions. To walk in the path of Christ. (Aka perform literal miracles by 33)

This part of me dreams of saffron robes and silent meditation halls. It imagines a life of pure service - devoted and uncompromising in its pursuit of the divine. It looks at the great spiritual teachers throughout history and whispers: That should be you. That's the elevated path. That's true worship. You aren’t doing enough.

I’ve tried to consciously build my adult life around spiritual expansion - traveling the world in pursuit of my passion, sitting in profound meditation, diving deep into ayahuasca ceremonies, experiencing the dissolution of ego through bufo, walking through countless programs & trainings that cracked me open and rebuilt me, finding communities who finally spoke the language of my soul and understood my ache. I've tasted the mystical, touched the divine, and returned with poetry in my bones.

So what does it mean when I start craving stillness? When fireworks are replaced with soft glances and regularity? When I find myself imagining Sunday mornings not in prayer but in bed, not in explosive medicine ceremony but in the simple ceremony of making breakfast together?

Is this settling? Or is this becoming? Will this feeling last or fleet?

I've never felt sustained contentment in my adult life. There's always been an ache, a reaching, a sense that I'm meant for something more. I've worn this restlessness like a badge of honor, proof that I'm not settling for mediocrity. But sitting in that bar, with a light buzz, watching my friends laugh, admiring the woman beside me - I felt something I didn’t expect: real peace. And it terrified me.

The Fear of Being Unseen

Let me name the fear with complete honesty: I'm afraid of becoming invisible. I'm afraid that if I choose the quiet life, I'll disappear into it. That my impact will shrink to the size of a coffee cup rather than expanding to the size of continents. That I'll lose the part of me that people seek out for spiritual guidance, the part that has walked through fire and emerged with something worth sharing.

I know there is ego here, and I can feel it pulsing. I want people to see it - that I'm deep, that I've touched God, that I've walked through transformation and emerged someone worth listening to. I've spent years suppressing my spiritual side, and having the opportunity to express it outwardly has been intoxicating. The identity of being "spiritual" became my way of being seen, of being valued, of proving my significance.

But now I look in the mirror and see someone who might just look like a regular guy to a stranger. Someone who wouldn't immediately scream "spiritual seeker" or "mystic in training." Someone who works on websites and plays open mics around town. And part of me panics: If I look ordinary, will people miss my depth? Will they not come to me for the wisdom I've spent years cultivating? Am I not serving the growth of humanity? Am I wasting this one life?

As I sat there surrounded by laughter, part of me wondered: Do these people understand the intimacy with which I've been embraced by the divine? Will they ever know? Do they have to know?

Believe me when I say that I recognize the twinge of spiritual elitism in those thoughts. I am aware of the venom hiding in my own ego. The idea that I am “more than” or “closer to” is a clear separation mentality. But I hold onto it not to divide myself from others, but to fuel the fire of my seeking. I want to know more and become closer to - with all of me.

Perhaps it is simply a wounded part of me that wants to be seen for the fullness of my experience. He feels alone in these environments. He needs to be recognized for all the excavating he's done, the Divine he's witnessed. But what if that need is exactly what's keeping me from the very presence I'm seeking?

The Question of Partnership

This brings me to the woman I'm seeing. I feel deeply comfortable with her. She has done beautiful work in regulating her soul and emotion. I feel like she could truly hold me in a lot of ways. She has indications of spiritual understanding within her, and I also feel her resistances. Her need to lift the veil to her oneness with creation as obsessively as I have is not as loud, and part of me is scared of that.

Scared that she also won't be able to see me in my fullness. That we won't be able to have conversations about the beauty of God in the way that I'd like to with my partner. I contemplate whether this is totally necessary. Must my partner speak this language the same way? I was raised in a home where my mother’s spirituality was always a little “weird” to my father. Maybe I inherited some of that ache as a child - the inability to be fully seen in what is probably the most important part of my identity.

The wound runs deep.

But here's what I am slowly learning: life has its own intelligence. There's a reason this woman showed up now, why my heart is softening toward simplicity right as I'm questioning everything. Maybe the universe isn't testing my commitment to the path - maybe it's showing me what the path actually looks like.

I'm trying to trust that if I'm meant to serve thousands, the trajectory will reveal itself. If I'm meant to write books that change the world, the words will come. If I'm meant to build temples, the stones will appear. But right now, life is offering me something different: the chance to practice presence with one person. To learn devotion through everyday life. To discover what it means to be spiritual not just in peak moments, but in the valleys between them.

The Modern Mystic's Dilemma

My heart and mind create plots of abandoning the world and heading to the Indian mountains, or at least retreats where I can focus solely on self-exploration and God consciousness. It is the pendulum swing of my soul that allows me to taste the opposite story than my current one.

But what if I'm being invited into a paradoxical priesthood - not celibate or silent, but awake and alive and fully in the world? What if my unique offering isn't to emulate the saints of centuries past, but to be entirely myself: someone who has tasted the mystical and chooses to bring it into the mess of modern life?

Maybe the world doesn't need another monk in seclusion - maybe it needs more embodied mystics. People who carry the divine flame into marketplaces, into boardrooms, into bedrooms, into the beautiful mess of human relationship and community. People who can hold the sacred while paying the bills, who can access the infinite while changing diapers, who can serve God while serving coffee.

I feel like I’m being called into a different type of courage. It's easy to be spiritual when you're surrounded by other seekers, when your environment supports your practices, when your identity is built around your journey. It's harder to maintain that connection to the sacred when you're navigating the rhythms of relationship, when you're building something together, when your spiritual life has to integrate with someone else's timeline and needs.

But what if that integration is the point? What if the divine isn't asking for my complete removal from the world, but for my complete presence within it?

Finding God in a Miller Lite

I'm slowly learning to redefine what magnitude looks like. Maybe I won't lead thousands or build a spiritual empire. But maybe I will raise a daughter who feels free to be herself. Or create a space where someone remembers they are loved. Or write something that helps one soul feel seen in their ache for meaning.

Maybe my morning coffee becomes a communion. Maybe my relationship becomes a form of worship. Maybe the way I tend to my partner's heart becomes as sacred as any ceremony I've ever attended. Maybe God is just as present in Miller Lite and pizza as She is in silence and prayer.

The truth is, I've been afraid that choosing love means abandoning my calling. But what if it means finally embodying it? What if the ultimate service isn't grand gestures but deep presence? What if the most profound teaching isn't what I say from a stage, but how I show up in the small moments that no one else witnesses?

I'm beginning to suspect that my fear of the ordinary is really a fear of the intimate. Peak experiences are dramatic, but they're also temporary. They let me touch the Divine without having to live with it day after day. But relationship - real relationship - requires me to be spiritual not just in the moments of expansion, but in the moments of contraction. Not just when I'm high on ceremony, but when I'm tired from work. Not just when I'm inspired, but when I'm irritated.

And maybe that's where the real transformation happens. Not in the mountain caves or ceremony circles, but in the space between one breath and the next. In the pause before responding when someone you love is having a bad day. In the choice to stay present when your nervous system wants to flee toward the familiar intensity of seeking.

But I want to be clear about one thing: none of this is me abandoning my fire that wants to change the world. That part of me isn't going anywhere. It's the part that got me here, and it's the part that will carry me forward. I'm not trying to extinguish it - I’m trying to understand how it wants to burn in this new season of my life.

The Liminal Path

Why my heart clings to the black and white of life I'll never understand. My ego wants to make logical sense of it all, while I know that the liminal is where life is lived. Common life or spiritual icon, devoutly spiritual romantic endeavor or none at all, purpose or failure. Something in me has decided it all has to be either/or.

But I don't think I'm losing my fire. I think I'm learning to tend it differently. Instead of the bonfire of seeking, maybe I'm being called to the hearth of being. Instead of the loud proclamation of "I am spiritual," maybe I'm being invited into the quiet embodiment of spirit.

That whisper of significance still lives within me, but now it's asking different questions. Not "How can I be significant?" but "How can I be useful?" Not "How can I be seen?" but "How can I see?" Not "How can I escape the ordinary?" but "How can I find the extraordinary woven into the fabric of every single day?"

Maybe contentment isn't a destination but a way of moving through the world. Maybe it's not about arriving somewhere but about being present wherever I am. Maybe it's not about achieving some final state of spiritual mastery but about loving what is, even when what is includes dishes and bills and the mundane miracle of another person's breathing beside me in bed.

I'm not done seeking. But maybe I don't have to be loud about it. Maybe the most sacred path now is to bring my devotion into the quiet corners of my life. Into my relationship. Into my work day. Into the breath between moments.

Maybe the monastery I've been searching for isn't in the mountains of India. Maybe it's in the Pennsylvania morning light streaming through windows of whatever life I choose to build. Maybe the marketplace isn't the opposite of the monastery - maybe it's where the monastery goes to serve.

Maybe part of being truly spiritual is allowing your holiness to wear jeans, drink cheap beer, and tell dumb jokes. Maybe the Divine doesn't need me cloistered in a monastery, but embodied at a dinner table. Maybe it isn't either/or. Maybe the grey - this awkward, beautiful both/and - is the only true place we ever live.

And maybe I’m totally wrong about all of it.

So I'm here, writing this to you from that unknown space. From the tension between wanting to disappear into the mountains of India… and wanting to stay right here and build something soft and beautiful in this little corner of the world. As you can read, this place had a lot of questions, a lot of maybes and a lot of “I don’t knows.”

I don't have answers. But I do have faith. That I am guided. That I am not alone. That I am deeply seen even when no one notices.

If you've ever sat in the middle of a beautiful moment and felt the ache of "Is this enough?", I hope this helps you feel a little less alone too.

We are walking each other home, in sacred shoes and silly hats, always somewhere in between becoming and being.

Have you ever felt the tension between significance and simplicity? Between spiritual seeking and human belonging? I'd love to hear about your own navigation of the sacred and the ordinary.