An Inspired Chat with Steve Turnidge of Seattle

We recently had the chance to connect with Steve Turnidge and have shared our conversation below.

Steve, it’s always a pleasure to learn from you and your journey. Let’s start with a bit of a warmup: Are you walking a path—or wandering?
Thanks for the question, and the opportunity to share!

From the outside, my route probably looks like wandering. It’s only a path as I look backwards – everything happened at exactly the right time to get to where I am now, and I am very grateful for all of these experiences. Sometimes, you leave the house heading next door and turn the wrong direction. You end up going around the block – you still get next door, but gain a lot of experience that you wouldn’t have otherwise.

My wandering is governed by a few observations – for instance, “The Universe Makes the Set List.” I’m a musician (among other things) and primarily an improvising musician. When you are called on stage in this context, you start playing, with not a lot of planning. Playing music in this way does require a lot of listening and awareness of what is going on around you, and having conversations with your instruments.

I like to observe that “Planning is a prison – but prisons provide food and shelter.” I also think (and have been proven out by experience) that the Universe has a better imagination than I do.

I have found that when you do unusual things, unusual things happen – beyond expectations. Going just a little bit out of your normal way of doing things provides great opportunities for learning and seeing what is actually possible. Having your “path” be guided by gratitude and generosity leads to unexpected and interesting results. One of my guiding principles is having an empty calendar and full life. If your calendar is open, you are open to unexpected opportunities.

Not concerning yourself too much with dwelling on the past or being worried about the future leaves a fair amount of mindspace to make decisions in the present moment. There is only one decision you are fully responsible for – and that is your next decision. It’s the most important decision of your life – it determines everything that comes after now. Every other thing is out of your hands. If there seems to not be a decision at hand, then the decision of how deep of a breath to take will do.

The closer we are to the present moment, the more impact our decisions have. Accepting reality, choosing independence and taking action are all activities of every moment. It’s like a rudder on a boat. The moves on a rudder right at the boat moves the boat immediately – if your rudder is trailing the boat your steering is sluggish and prone to navigation errors.

So, I’m actually walking a path that is created step by step – which could rightfully be called wandering!

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I’ve jokingly referred to myself as an omniscient synergist, or an autodidactic polymath. These are aspirational titles, a horizon to aim for. The Omniscient Synergist (which I actually had as a title in one tech firm) is one who knows everything (omniscient) and can make all those things work together towards solutions and forward progress (synergy).

The Autodidactic (self taught) Polymath (wide ranging knowledge) is in a similar position; what you don’t know, learn. Getting out of narrow (if deep) specializations to get the gist of available information and apply it to the task at hand.

Combined with the earlier idea of letting the Universe make the set list, we learn what we need to address the work at hand. As a younger person, I had a great desire to literally be a know-it-all. Realistically, that takes more time than we actually have, so the first thing to learn is what is necessary to learn.

Another seemingly contradictory principle is to “fail fast”. The faster you fail, the richer you get. Minimal time and energy spent on dead ends allows successful strategies to have time to work.

So, when asked what I do, it’s not about the things (the instances) that I do, it’s about the processes to generate those instances. So, over the years I’ve designed circuit boards, am an audio mastering engineer, wrote a couple of published books, been a musician, taught a year long college course on audio technology, been a systems manager, a telephone technician, chaired several committees for years, been a governor of The Recording Academy, started companies and trade associations, designed music distribution systems… the list goes on. What will I do next? It depends on the next opportunity that arises.

How to find that opportunity? Listening for work – not looking for it. Keep track of what friends and acquaintances are working on and talking about on social media. Seeing if I can be of service and offering to help. That lets me achieve what I consider the best metric of success – an empty calendar and a full life.

Appreciate your sharing that. Let’s talk about your life, growing up and some of topics and learnings around that. What’s a moment that really shaped how you see the world?
Fifteen years ago or so, I had a lucid dream experience that expanded my understanding of “my” place in the world, and who “I” am. I wrote it up in my book “Beyond Mastering” and it’s an appropriate story to tell here:

“Living things have many commonalities; among these are the need for sleep, and perhaps dreaming. Dreams are a mysterious land; by nature individual in content, they also account for a fair percentage of our lifetimes. In my experience, dreams are rarely remembered in detail (although up to a certain age, I recall I could remember them well).

One of the aspects of dreaming we may share is the experience of dreaming that we are awake and getting on with our morning routines: up and showered, only to realize we have dreamed the whole thing, and we haul ourselves out of bed for real this time.

One morning, this started to happen to me, but I managed to become just aware enough in the dream to have it hold at the stage of just getting up into the bedroom—and not as far as the shower. I found myself in what I now call “the big room”: the lobby or airlock to the dreamspace. This was the beginning of what I can only assume was lucid dreaming.

Now that I was “awake” and aware of the dreamspace, I could choose what to do there. I decided to look around the room. It was rather nondescript, really, until I reached a doorway connected to a hallway that appeared blocked to me. Nothing was visibly blocking my way, but I couldn’t venture down the hall. This was rather irritating, as I had gained access to this normally forgotten place, so I called out (in my dream) “Who’s down there?”

Surprisingly, in retrospect, I received an answer: “Just me. . . .” Interesting. “Who are you?” I asked. The response: “Your autonomous functions.” Ah. Okay, that made a bit of sense. No need to stumble into the control room of my heartbeat and digestive systems. So the next question was, “What is your name?” Again, somewhat surprisingly, an answer floated up: “Buddy.” Hmm. Also interesting.

This was turning into a most informative lucid dreaming session. So having discovered a separate part of myself named Buddy, I asked “out loud” if there was anyone else there. Again, unexpectedly, an overarching, interpenetrating, quiet voice said, “I’m here.” This voice seemed to come from above me. The naming game had been working, so I asked, “What’s your name?” and the answer came back, “Stephen or Crown.” My birth certificate name is Steven, and I have been told this name means crown. It was a safe bet to call this voice (which I have actually heard often in my life) “the higher self.”

So we carried on with the questions. “Where do you live?” I asked. The response: “In the water in between the cells of your body.” This was very interesting. I had recently been on a hydration kick (since the last time I had had the flu), and I have a sealable glass water container that I take everywhere around the house. At bedtime I fill it up, and I drink as needed through the night. It is generally mostly empty in the morning. Being of middle age, I also have a propensity to visit the restroom in the middle of the night (probably also supplemented by my hydration regime). So I got up, used the restroom, came back and had a few swallows of water, and went back to sleep. I found at this particular time, and have found in many lucid dreaming sessions since, that the water intake highly stimulates this communication state.

Now I had two aspects of myself to converse with. When I first had this experience, I was excited to share and compare notes with friends.

When I related the story of meeting Buddy and asking the higher self his name, my friend chimed in the guess that the higher self would be called Brian. This struck me as confusing, until my friend clarified: Buddy is obviously your body; wouldn’t your brain be Brian? I hadn’t made that connection yet, and it was the kind of obvious key that keeps coming up in this lucid dreaming work.

The conversation with Stephen or Crown continued, and I had figured out a great question to ask: “What is my name?” The answer: “Tab.” Well, that was odd. One of the things I have discovered in these dreaming sessions is that whole stories equal emotions and feelings. That is one of the reasons dreams are challenging to recount. So, Tab. I asked for a little help to understand this, and the vision of a battery-powered device came to mind.

When these items are originally sold, the batteries are often insulated from the device by way of a little plastic tab. This was really interesting now, and I felt I was getting a glimpse of the meaning and order of things, of the bigger picture. It started to make sense: Buddy, the body, was the device, and had everything it needed to take care of itself. The higher self was the batteries, and (it seemed) at any time, the tab (the ego, as far as I can tell) could be pulled, and the battery would activate the device to be used for its intended purpose. For the time being, however, Tab is at the controls: a placeholder, temporarily (across generations) conserving and insulating the battery power of the higher self from the body.

I did find out a couple of rules about this Tab aspect of myself on further reflection. It aligns very well with the concept of “getting out of the way” during performances, to allow music to flow directly through you to the audience.

A vision of this is the idea of stained glass windows. Heavily leaded windows reduce the amount of light allowed through; the thinner the windows are, the more transparent. So I imagine the rules governing Tab to be something like this, where its thickness is not determined or specified. Tab can be thick or thin; the thinner the tab is, the higher the possibility for current to flow from the battery into the device.

The higher self is an orthogonal level of existence to Tab (which is orthogonal to the body). The higher self is an energy source and is fully formed. The only question to be answered regarding the “battery nature” of the higher self is whether Tab will be a conductor or an insulator.

You are not responsible for Buddy’s job, just for Buddy. We often take responsibility for the things out of our control and forget what our actual task is (to make decisions in the present moment based on reality). Much of what we do with Buddy is not what Buddy needs, or would be grateful for. Buddy’s reaction to Tab’s behavior often results in becoming fat and unhealthy. Your body knows more than you do; it is high nobility, the unbroken line of a supercomplex process. Its lineage was here way before you (Tab) were and, depending on your reproductive status, is likely to be here once you check out.

One belief I hold about dreams is that you are the entire cast of characters in each one. The fact that we spend a third of our lives asleep, then often forget (or ignore) what we learn there, is one of our unrealized assets.”

If you could say one kind thing to your younger self, what would it be?
First, I need to find my younger self, requiring a form of time travel. One of my exercises during my lucid dream sessions is to cast my mind back along my long body (the unceasing analog path I have taken since birth and before through the fourth dimension up until the present moment) and re-member aspects of my self, often discovering hidden worlds.

For instance, this morning I visited my childhood, perhaps between four and six years old. My parents were evangelists, and we were raised in a very specific silo. We were in the world, but not of the world. Part of the atmosphere was that we were born in sin, requiring salvation. Our weekly routine was to travel to churches in the state and beyond, where my dad would warm up the audience with a ventriloquist act, and my mom would give the sermon. Before I was born, they traveled around with handbills emblazoned with “He Sings, She Preaches” …

This morning I remembered many times that I would fling myself on the bed, filled with guilt as God was seeing everything I did, thought and said, and was in Judgment of these things. I would cry and repent… and this was at five years old. It was a pretty steady state. That’s a memory I’ve not visited too much in my adult life.

This is when the process of “Thank, Forgive, and Bless” comes into play. I thank my child self for going through these personality tuning events, which, however painful, led to the person I am now. Then, forgiveness and compassion for that kid. No one told me to have that reaction, and I grew up in a very loving home, so there is no blame – that’s just the way it was. It was a particular flavor of suffering. Then, the blessing. It is up to me (now) to do everything I can to make it all worth going through. The experiences are annealing of who I was to become. It led to many more painful moments (as we all share, and most have it much worse). The forgiveness and blessing from my present self allows the hidden hurt to heal. In acceptance lieth peace.

The exploration of those times leads to many other interesting scenes and venues – part of the evangelical circuit was revival meetings, in big tents with sawdust floors; this was the mid 1960s. There is a rich mosaic there, in the past, that were seeds of the person I have grown into. The child is the father to the man.

These memory stores are our treasures. They are the closed off rooms of the memory mansion. At their core, they are our truest possessions. Material things come and go, but our experiences are ours. The choice of whether to explore those rooms is ours. The more rooms that are explored and accepted, the more grand our memory mansion becomes. The “thank, forgive and blessing” of each room clears it of the reactions we had at the time, and allows a parallax view from then and now – putting the events into perspective with depth perception. Greater stability of our whole lives comes from uncovering and accepting those mysteries, miseries, and plenty of joyful experiences as well.

This travel happens from the present moment, where our guiding and stabilizing factors remain – Infinite Gratitude, Infinite Generosity.

Sure, so let’s go deeper into your values and how you think. What truths are so foundational in your life that you rarely articulate them?
The three-fold nature of things as a template for universal truth.

Say you have one thing – a blank piece of paper. That is one thing. Now, let’s draw a dot in the middle of the page. Now, we have the piece of paper and we have the dot. Two things. But – we really have three things – the Paper, The Dot, and a piece of paper with a dot on it. This is now three things.

Two single things don’t necessarily make three things, but consider musical notes. You can play two different notes at different times, and they are nicely individual. However, play those two notes together, and we get a third thing – the interval between the notes. This third thing is quite variable; different intervals of notes generate different feelings, for example.

This is the basic idea of Three-Fold Nature. You have two things, and they are connected in some way. There is typically an internal aspect, an external aspect, and a boundary layer.

These days it is easy to identify with the challenging times we are living in – the external world. If we let the external world make us worry, to sacrifice stomach lining, then our boundary layer is not working well. The closer you follow current events, the more likely long dark nights of the soul and sleep problems will happen.

I’ve found some useful ideas that help with keeping priorities straight and settling down my internal state.

First, regarding the things that are bothersome and preying on your mind, ask yourself a question: “If I live or die, would that make any difference at all to what I am worrying about?” If the answer is no (and it usually is) then you are paying interest on a debt that is not your own. Alternatively, regarding close friends or family members, if you were dead, it would be a major impact on everyone around you. Those are the things and people to keep foremost in your thoughts, plans and concerns – not the things that are far removed from your life.

Second, as you find yourself sacrificing stomach lining at the altar of current events, take note. You are just adding power to the dark forces by misplacing your mindspace and losing the opportunity to be productive and happy in this present moment. I like to imagine moving from that altar to the Gratitude altar, and shift to being thankful for life, love, who I am, who I am with, even breathing!

So, keeping a strong separation of the internal, external and boundary layers is helpful.

I’ve recently had an experience that brought this home to me in a life changing way.

At the beginning of last year, I was walking to the store on a sunny day, and I noticed a thumb print on my glasses lens. I took them off – and the thumb print was still there in my vision! This concerned me and I made an eye appointment right away. It turns out I was getting a cataract, and the optometrist told me I’d need surgery within the next year or so.

I lived with it over the next year, as it progressively got worse. It got to the point where I was functionally blind in my right eye, which was my nearsighted eye that I used to read close up. My farsighted left eye was doing all the work with my glasses on. It was finally time to get a referral for cataract surgery.

When I went in for the checkup, it turns out my right eye was 8 of 10 on blindness, but (surprisingly) my left eye was 6 of 10! I had no idea. So, we set up appointments for surgery for both eyes, a couple of weeks apart.

There was some apprehension going into the surgery, as you would expect, but the actual experience was 10 minutes of a close up laser light show, some manipulation of my lens, and it was done! The results were outstanding – I chose the trifocal option, so I could see very well near, far and intermediate. The new lenses are amazingly clear. I found that even healthy natural lenses are still a bit cloudy… I saw brighter light, brighter colors, and more in focus than anytime in my entire life!

This was a great reminder that no matter what happened in the external world of current events, my internal situation is totally removed from them (unless a pandemic is rapidly coming to your town, but that’s another story). Having every millisecond of perfect eyesight balances out so much external worry. If I was still blind, I wouldn’t be as peaceful as I am now, but this change defined the word “priceless” for me. Things we can do for our bodies help reset the internal/external balance and strengthen our boundary layers.

Okay, so before we go, let’s tackle one more area. If you retired tomorrow, what would your customers miss most?
Retirement is an interesting idea. Work all your life, then don’t. Save up (which is compassion for the future self), then make sure your life doesn’t outlast your money.

I’ve always considered successful retirement as when your vocation (what you do for work) and avocation (what you do for fun) are aligned. If you retire tomorrow and you keep on doing what you are doing today, then you are essentially retired already. That helped me relax into my later years, and I don’t give my customers a chance to miss me!

These days, with the rise of AI and our civilizational shifts, people may not have the opportunity to be on an employer’s retirement plan for long. There are phases where lots of people lose their jobs through the tidal in and out flow of commercial economic convulsions.

The talent pool is sloshing around in our global tub. The icebergs of past social structures are calving and melting, splashing loudly into the talent pool. Individual crystals desire to get back into their familiar ice structures, but temperatures are rising. Glaciers are melting. The talent pool is filling.

Now we each have the opportunity to move from a solid to a liquid state. Our opportunities for flexibility and self responsibility have never been greater. Hydrodynamic pooling is possible. Froth is a challenge. Solid work is being done. Platforms and stages to to expose our modular functionality abound. Signaling our heart’s desire to each other is a required evolutionary process now.

The message you want to present with your public social media performance is: “I am very busy, but efficient, therefore I can solve your issue, whatever it may be” as exemplified in this quote: “If you want a piece of work well and thoroughly done, pick a busy man. The man of leisure postpones and procrastinates, and is ever making preparations and “getting things in shape;” but the ability to focus on a thing and do it is the talent of the man seeming o’erwhelmed with work.” Elbert Hubbard, from The Philosophy of Elbert Hubbard, page 42.

If you find yourself “freshly self-employed” one of the best things you can do for your state of mind (and your future) is to stay as busy and productive as possible.

What to do? Do what you love and love to do. If you have a particular favorite aspect of your life (music, art, programming, flower arrangement, it could be anything) dive into it. If it requires capital, dive into the communities that focus on these activities (they used to be called user groups). If you can’t find a community around your special interest, form one.

If you lose your job, or retire before you are done exercising your heart’s desire, you now have 40 hours returned to you for your use each week. Keep them productive! If you are visibly productive, it is noticed – and there is always someone that needs something done. If they are wise and follow the quote above, you may be the busy person called on to perform.

See what needs to be done, and do it. Identify appropriate allies and form dynamic units to complete finite tasks. Use the results to build that which is to come. We are all responsible for it. Evolve!

Contact Info:

• Website: http://arsdivina.com/
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Image Credits
Jeff Leisawitz, Steve Turnidge