Lifegasm Book I: Marshall's Promise-logo

Lifegasm Book I: Marshall's Promise

Religion & Spirituality Podcas

In October, 2016 I looked death right in the eyeballs and the truth of the universe/ life/ love/ God/ infinity cracked open before me. Truth is the best news in the world (YOU CAN END YOUR SUFFERING RIGHT NOW!!!) (if your human rights aren't being violated), and this book is my best effort to sing its sweet melody from the rooftops. ******************************************** During my journey, I ended my marriage (amicably). I explored my sexuality (enthusiastically). And I carried on my shoulder an enormous, colorful sugar skull named Maestro—which I’ll explain later. I lived transiently (voluntarily) for the better part of a year, which got me asking A LOT of big questions about private property and human rights and legal versus spiritual freedom. And yet, from the heart of the storm that was my new life, I was finally at peace. I was finally in balance. I was finally... a homeless divorcee with no marketable skills?******************************************** Marshall’s Promise is the first of a three-book series. Each podcast episode is a chapter read aloud, and I recommend you start with the introduction and listen through chronologically. Questions? Find me @evywallace across all social media platforms or send me an email.

Location:

United States

Description:

In October, 2016 I looked death right in the eyeballs and the truth of the universe/ life/ love/ God/ infinity cracked open before me. Truth is the best news in the world (YOU CAN END YOUR SUFFERING RIGHT NOW!!!) (if your human rights aren't being violated), and this book is my best effort to sing its sweet melody from the rooftops. ******************************************** During my journey, I ended my marriage (amicably). I explored my sexuality (enthusiastically). And I carried on my shoulder an enormous, colorful sugar skull named Maestro—which I’ll explain later. I lived transiently (voluntarily) for the better part of a year, which got me asking A LOT of big questions about private property and human rights and legal versus spiritual freedom. And yet, from the heart of the storm that was my new life, I was finally at peace. I was finally in balance. I was finally... a homeless divorcee with no marketable skills?******************************************** Marshall’s Promise is the first of a three-book series. Each podcast episode is a chapter read aloud, and I recommend you start with the introduction and listen through chronologically. Questions? Find me @evywallace across all social media platforms or send me an email.

Language:

English


Episodes
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Chapter 21... Lifegasm Book I: Marshall's Promise

8/4/2021
*Who's Your Daddy?* EXCERPT: Some of my girlfriends raised their eyebrows when I told them the plan, but they knew better than to tell me I was nuts. I wasn’t stupid! I’d survived a good long time in this world walking the road less traveled. Clare admonished me gently when I told her about Mr. Florida: “Ok, if you think that’s safe, godspeed. But I’ll tell you something, Evy, about why I like you as a friend: you’re the opposite of boring.”

Duration:00:32:07

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Chapter 22... Lifegasm Book I: Marshall's Promise

8/4/2021
*The Sugar Skull* EXCERPT: I set up my phone, hit record. But something felt… different. “I know I’ve been calling these meditation videos,” I explained. “But that doesn’t feel entirely true. “Meditation” doesn’t feel like the most accurate word. There is a word, satsang, that translates to “meeting with truth,” but I don’t like to use Sanskrit because it feels like it keeps people out. It’s like if you don’t speak that language, you’re not invited. I haven’t come across a word in English yet that means the thing that I like to do in making and sharing these videos.” I paused. “I think maybe it’s time to tell the story about Marshall.” Until I said it, I didn’t know it was coming. (You can STILL see this video on my Youtube channel, under the title "If It Glows Together, It Goes Together!")

Duration:00:05:53

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Chapter 20... Lifegasm Book I: Marshall's Promise

8/4/2021
*Manhattan, Manhattan, Manhattan* EXCERPT: Online degrees were a dime a dozen, especially those with religious affiliations, so it would have been easy peasy if I self-identified as Christian. But because I was unwilling to earn a degree from a Christian institution, my 4,000 options dwindled to approximately four. And two of the four were Harvard and Yale. So, mere acceptance was already looking like a pitfall. Then, assuming I could jump the hurdles of getting into these schools, the shortest program would take over two years and require a semester or two of prerequisites. Then, assuming I could figure out how to disappear into academia for three years, there was the matter of tuition. Three years of my life and hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt? No, thanks. Not this time around. Author's Note: Hey, sorry guys! I accidentally deleted the old Chapter 20 instead of just updating the audio file, but I've replaced it here in its full glory. I hope that doesn't throw a wrench in your listening chronology, but I have faith that you are all clever enough to figure out how to get from one chapter to the next in the right order, even if the dates of release are a little wonky. Thanks for your patience!

Duration:00:24:31

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Chapter 19... Lifegasm Book I: Marshall's Promise

7/16/2021
*That's Private* EXCERPT: So. It was looking like the institution of private property was a real problem. Private property allows us, one human to another, to say “this is mine, you aren’t allowed to physically exist here, even if you need to sleep, even if you need to eat, even if you need to piss. If you exist here, I can call men with guns who we have collectively agreed have the authority to take you away. Or if I choose to let you exist here, you must give me money. If you don’t, I’ll call the men with guns to take you away.” And when every last parcel of land across the globe is protected in this way, even the “public” land, where does that leave the human people who want to opt out of the money game? Private property effectively outlaws the lifestyle of a nomad, or a hunter-gatherer, or a guru. I myself was willing to work hard and give my life’s energy for the betterment of humanity, and I would have been happy to do it for free… that is, if I could survive in this world with zero dollars.

Duration:00:14:37

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Chapter 18... Lifegasm Book I: Marshall's Promise

7/9/2021
*Giving Thanks* EXCERPT: This would be my first NFL experience, and I was moderately excited to do a thing I’d never done. But I’m not going to go into the details of how the Giants lost to the Redskins that day, or how institutional racism is so embedded in American culture that an official NFL team can still call themselves the “Redskins” with impunity (or could do so in 2017), or my discovery that an important component of spectator sports is shit-talking, or that most people really do seem to need booze in order to unbutton their inhibitions. I’m not going to speak more on any of those things because the most important event of the whole trip was what happened in the car on the way back from the game.

Duration:00:22:57

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Chapter 17... Lifegasm Book I: Marshall's Promise

7/2/2021
*The Sex Club* EXCERPT: In theory, I was familiar with the concept of a spank bank, but I had never consciously cultivated my own inner reel of sexually-charged moments. This was probably because I’d been so ashamed to have sexual thoughts in the first place, especially if the sexual thoughts involved fucked-up cult sex, like in Martha Marcy May Marlene. But how unhealthy was that? I was a thirty-six-year-old human adult and I was ashamed of having sexual thoughts? What the fuck, right? Are human adults not supposed to have sexual thoughts? Or are they supposed to be only vanilla, traditional sexual thoughts? Or are we supposed to have sexual thoughts but just never admit to or act on them?

Duration:00:25:34

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Chapter 16... Lifegasm Book I: Marshall's Promise

6/25/2021
*Jingle Bells* EXCERPT: We spent the rest of the weekend engaging in hilarious, articulate, informed discussions about everything with Madeline and the village. We visited her classroom and got introduced to her reptiles: there was Houdini the ball python, Milkshake the milk snake, ET the red eared slider turtle, and Frogzilla the African clawed frog. We explored the area, from the Padgetts' back yard to the Vassar campus to the extended Hudson River Valley. As an engineer, Jingle Bells was overcome by the superlative height of the Walkway Over the Hudson. He was almost delirious. “WOW!” he said over and over again, with the sheer astonishment that is usually heard out of the mouths of children. “Do you understand how much work it takes to build something this tall? I mean… we never build anything like this anymore. I mean… WOW! It’s so high! Wow, Evy! Look how high we are!”

Duration:00:20:00

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Chapter 15... Lifegasm Book I: Marshall's Promise

6/18/2021
*Things Fall Apart* EXCERPT: If the grocery store was a strikeout, the rest of the week was a losing streak. One of the reasons I’d been so attracted to Little Jack was his willingness to dominate me. As a good feminist, I’d never known I was allowed to want to be dominated. It was never a spoken rule, just an assumption: strong women can’t be held down by men. But, as a lover in Los Angeles later told me, “I’ll hold you down, but I’ll never hold you back.” I’d come to terms with the fact that I was turned on by being dominated. Our bodies are the highest of high-performance vehicles, and, while it’s thrilling to be in the driver’s seat, it’s a novel thrill to sit shotgun; the power of submission is in choosing who you hand the keys to. I am of the mind that lots of us know this to be true even if less of us are willing to admit it. In any case, Little Jack now seemed either unaware of my desire to be dominated or unwilling to act on it, which stood in marked contrast to that blissful afternoon when he’d tied me up back in La Grande. For the record, he had bought fuzzy handcuffs, so I think he thought he was trying to take the lead; we used them approximately once, then they lay dormant. And the thing about wanting to submit is that you can’t just ask for it: asking for it is a form of taking control, and the full dose of bliss comes from not being in charge.

Duration:00:26:35

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Chapter 14... Lifegasm Book I: Marshall's Promise

6/11/2021
*Much Ado* EXCERPT: I was traveling Southwest, my favorite little airline. What makes this scrappy little discount company such a treasure, you wonder? I’ll tell you why. First, they’re just friendly. And that matters. But also, it’s because Southwest made all the right policy choices in all the right places. For starters, they don’t charge you extra for checked luggage, so as long as you pack with that policy in mind, you can kiss all that will-there-be-room-for-my-carry-on anxiety goodbye, not to mention the will-this-suitcase-fit-in-the-airport-bathroom-stall-with-me anxiety for we solo travelers. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Duration:00:12:38

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Chapter 13... Lifegasm Book I: Marshall's Promise

6/4/2021
*London Calling* EXCERPT: At one point back in London, Olivia mentioned how noticeable my weight loss was. And she was right. I’d dropped over twenty pounds since she’d last seen me in Mexico. It was all rather entertaining to me at the time. After decades of food obsession, body-obsession, self-abuse and anger, I’d finally let it all go. Once I discovered the truth of who I really was, I recognized that my value was uncorrelated with my weight. Our cultural fixation on weight loss is really the mind hijacking the body’s conversation (while our struggles with obesity is capitalism’s byproduct, at scale). My body was powerful and miraculous, and I no longer wanted to find happiness by decreasing my dress size so much as I wanted to honor the needs of my personalized movement machine by eating well and exercising regularly. When I stopped filtering my body’s voices through the convoluted filter of my mind and the social tropes which equate thinness with value, I proceeded to watch those twenty pounds fall off almost effortlessly.

Duration:00:18:03

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Chapter 12... Lifegasm Book I: Marshall's Promise

5/28/2021
*The Dating Game* EXCERPT: I’ve been careful not to disparage the men I’ve slept with, especially for qualities that are unable to be changed (like natural endowment, for example) but I want to point out that there are some general, universal guidelines that you must follow if you want to be a good lover. While it is still true that what turns me on is probably different than what turns you on, and that neither of us are wrong even if we would be wrong for each other, it is also true that no adequate lover shows blatant disregard for their partner’s pleasure. The best lovers (in the heterosexual arrangement I was used to, anyway) ensure a woman comes first, but I understood that sex was organic and could wander off-script. As such, if a man comes first, it is still his duty to bring his partner to orgasm. Do you hear me, fellas? Sex feels as good to us as it does to you, if not nineteen times better, when it’s good! And it’s your job to ensure its goodness for us, as it is our job to ensure its goodness for you. Everybody wins! We just have to work together. And I beg you not to make false assumptions about the diminished female libido when her lack of interest is clearly in direct relationship to your disinterest in pleasing her.

Duration:00:26:46

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Chapter 11... Lifegasm Book I: Marshall's Promise

5/21/2021
*Meeting with Truth* EXCERPT: As I looked up at the stars, I reflected on what I’d learned about the sacred essence of shelter: a place to sleep is not like a pair of pricey Italian boots. Shelter is not an indulgence we can live without. So if someone you love asks you to share your roof and you refuse, you’re essentially casting them into the darkness. Yes, we live in a world where that darkness can be mitigated by hotel rooms, but that’s capitalism’s answer to the problem. When someone asks for a place to stay, it means they need a place to stay. At its core, the denial of such a request, especially when it’s coming from someone you trust, no matter what story you tell yourself about why you’ve issued the denial, is, in my eyes, a spiritual crime. This isn’t to say we aren’t entitled to our own boundaries. If we’ve had a houseguest for three weeks and it’s feeling like time for them to move on, it’s okay to give your friend a polite shove off. But to never open your door in the fist place? That’s fucked up if you ask me. I don’t care if our cultural conditioning tells us otherwise. For my own sense of self, I decided that if anyone I trusted ever asked me to share my shelter in the future, once I had a shelter to share, that is, I would do everything within my power to say yes.

Duration:00:13:14

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Chapter 9... Lifegasm Book I: Marshall's Promise

5/14/2021
*Harriet's House of Healing* EXCERPT: My last scheduled night in Colorado came and went, so I’d have about a week to account for before seeing Gangaji. ‘What’s another seven days of shelter manifestation?’ I chuckled to myself. However, it felt wrong to ask my Colorado people to extend my stay with them. I knew it felt wrong because my gut said so. Or my intuition said so. Or my deepest heart said so. Or God said so. Tomato tomahto, God is good. Leaving Colorado was the right thing to do. I just didn’t know where to go. Yet.

Duration:00:08:46

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Chapter 10... Lifegasm Book I: Marshall's Promise

5/14/2021
*My Grandma, The Moon* EXCERPT: I prepared myself for a seven-hour stretch in the car, which wasn’t terribly challenging after so much practice. I had Peaches the artist to keep me company (“keep on it, keep on it, you own it…”) and perfect faith that seven hours was no big deal, that I could eat it up, that it was a privilege to have so much uninterrupted time to myself. And so it was. Road-Trip-gasm!

Duration:00:20:57

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Chapter 8... Lifegasm Book I: Marshall's Promise

5/7/2021
*The Birthday Surprise* EXCERPT: I’d never been into a strip club before (except for that one time in Guam…) because I’d always made assumptions about what they represented and what kind of people spent time inside. Now, of course, I was making a habit of questioning everything. Were strip clubs the naughty, gross, exploitive, venues full of lowlifes that I’d been conditioned to believe they were? ‘Let’s go find out,’ said my deepest heart.

Duration:00:20:23

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Chapter 7... Lifegasm Book I: Marshall's Promise

4/30/2021
*Privilege* EXCERPT: The following chapter was written contemporaneously with its release (that is, in April of 2021).... Now that the book is complete and I am releasing it, in standard Evy Wallace unconventional fashion, as this podcast, it occurs to me that the time I spent wandering and wondering and writing were merely placeholders, giving me something to do until I got here. Now. Now I know what I was born to do, and it involves fighting (nonviolently!) to demand that the birthrights of my fellow human, starting with my fellow American, are honored. My deepest heart compels me to play my part in freeing the 2.3 million American humans held as hostages and slaves in their own country. I’m not saying I’m going to do it alone, in fact, I’d rather not. But so far, in all my research of the organizations, activists, journalists and podcasters who seem in agreement about the untenable nature of America’s armed, authorized power being used against her citizens, to brutalize, intimidate, imprison, and murder, not one of them has suggested any action plan more forceful than “vote!” or “protest!” or “sign this petition!” But, my friends, I cannot in good conscience stop there. Sure I’ll vote. Sure I’ll protest. Sure I’ll sign that petition. But do you ever look back at where we’ve come over the last hundred years, or two hundred years, or four hundred years, and feel like we are water bugs swimming north on a tsunami heading south?

Duration:00:06:40

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Chapter 6... Lifegasm Book I: Marshall's Promise

4/30/2021
*Broken Promises* EXCERPT: It’s challenging to explain my level of hunger, because I was many steps away from starving to death. But there’s a wide swath of human experience that lands somewhere between feeling fully satiated and dying of starvation, and while I was never worried that I wouldn’t have enough, and I’m certainly not complaining, I was more grateful for the miracle of food than I ever had been. I loaded up my plate with cheesy eggs, hash browns, and grilled asparagus, go figure, then found a table outside on the veranda. I even took a picture of myself and my full plate lest I someday come to suppose that manifestation was make-believe and that this moment was a figment of my imagination. Then I tucked my phone away so I could put my full attention on the textures and flavors of the food. Breakfastgasm! When my body gave me the signal that it had had enough, I loaded up Peaches the Prius (newly-minted), queued up Peaches the artist, and readied myself for another seven-hour day in the car. Then my phone rang.

Duration:00:13:37

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Chapter 5... Lifegasm Book I: Marshall's Promise

4/23/2021
*The Spiritual Road Trip* EXCERPT: When I arrived in Utah, I was surprised at how many people were milling about the public park who seemed, by their appearances, to not have reliable shelter. It’s hard for me to call people homeless, because then it becomes their identity, their title, their permanent truth; this same inescapable labeling tends to happen with anyone who has worked as a professional dancer at a gentlemen’s club, which is why all the women I know who have been employed as strippers are exceptionally private about sharing that information. AND DON'T GET ME STARTED ON THE PERMANENT IDENTITY WE ASSIGN TO ANYONE WE'VE CATEGORIZED AS A CRIMINAL! But yes, what I’m trying to say is that these folks in Salt Lake City would probably identify as homeless. I thought the Mormons took care of each other and that a fundamental tenant of their belief system was service? How was it that so many of God’s children, right there in that religious capital, seemed to be without a roof? I knew it wasn’t just a Utah problem, of course. So why were we as humans failing so terribly at ensuring the basic needs of our species get met? Why did we drive past heaps of human people under tarps and tents and think “not my problem,” while simultaneously bemoaning the “homeless problem”? *****

Duration:00:32:05

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Chapter 4... Lifegasm Book I: Marshall's Promise

4/16/2021
*The Goddess Chakra* EXCERPT: In those early months, my learning curve was steep. I learned that sexual needs represent an appetite that is just as legitimate, important, and unattached to shame as hunger. I learned that men weren’t the sex machines I’d been falsely conditioned to believe they were. (As it turns out, men are people, too!) I learned that meeting new lovers and checking the multilayered categories of compatibility takes a lot of energy (i.e., cost), and sometimes my body wasn’t so hungry as to warrant all that work. I learned that you can be the ripest, juiciest peach in the bowl but that there will always be some people who don’t like peaches.

Duration:00:26:45

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Chapter 3... Lifegasm Book I: Marshall's Promise

4/14/2021
*Self First is NOT Selfish* EXCERPT: In walking the walk of my shifted value system, in following the constant call of my deepest divinity, in prioritizing the needs of my own heart and spirit, I was often accused of acting selfishly. My mom certainly seemed to think so. Others who had never expressed one iota of concern for my or my children’s well-being were now suddenly reaching out to offer the unsolicited advice that everything would be okay “as long as the kids [came] first. But I will announce here in stark and bold terms: the kids did not come first. (Collective GASP!) No, sir. For the first time in my conscious, animate life, I came first. And I was proud of myself for prioritizing radical self-care.

Duration:00:04:20