vryfokkenou

Founder: Bitcoin Ekasi | Co-Founder: The Surfer Kids | Co-owner: Unravel Surf Travel | Grateful 🙏🏾 Recovering Addict 🙏🏾

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Last Notes

2026-07-03 13:37:24 UTC

My son was born in September 2016. At home. In our bedroom.
I thought I understood love before. I didn't.
As my wife labored for twelve hours, I breathed with her. Suffered with her. When she wasn't looking, I cried so hard I felt destroyed. When she was looking, I found strength I never knew existed.
Then he arrived.
I felt everything I've ever felt in my entire life — all at once. Fear. Joy. Anxiety. Relief. A bond so strong it remade me.
Friends told me having a child would teach me "true love." They were right. But it's not just love.
It's everything.
Raw. Unfiltered. Total.
https://vryfokkenou.com/2016/09/22/my-emotional-birth/

2026-07-02 09:22:31 UTC

The abortion debate isn't about abortion.
It's about our inability to make choices without someone else's permission.
Religion threatens damnation. Government threatens prison. Intellectuals threaten shame.
All saying the same thing: You can't be trusted with freedom.
And they're right. Look around.
If government vanished tomorrow? Chaos.
But it wasn't always this way.
We spent 95% of human history — 190,000 years — living without external authority. Hunter-gatherers made their own choices. Carried their own consequences.
Then 10,000 years of being told what to do....
https://vryfokkenou.com/2015/06/14/learning-to-make-choices/

2026-06-27 14:49:40 UTC

Kenya was a blast!
Thank you Nairobi Bitcoin Conference and @nprofile…np6l !!!
https://blossom.primal.net/10bc66db8eac3a554f67420a505515b946d08d6fd7cbae147918cf565880e3bf.jpg
https://blossom.primal.net/09e7d327667b29498512d2bee49ab78de1fc99f48af85f7f9ce8bae745c54c44.jpg
https://blossom.primal.net/c8401920e7636bfbc78b1c1387f6e13c05a3a703872d302cf80c761182b1c277.jpg
https://blossom.primal.net/c697c2ae355c94c8551dd6b63002b86ac067a3efface7ef3fbca308f07b6b9be.jpg
https://blossom.primal.net/09d561176a1c6b721cb5fcba4f886a42d16ace43f33d3914e29e961d78245b74.jpg
https://blossom.primal.net/0a682c2bb12713002d51d977162545a943dc098d8fb8b41f98c9ddfcee09b0bf.jpg

2026-06-25 07:32:50 UTC

Your awareness is the only thing you control.
The only thing that matters.
Scientists won't talk about it because they can't measure it. Can't see it under a microscope. So they pretend it doesn't exist.
But Descartes knew. Two substances in the universe: physical and mental.
Your thoughts aren't just brain chemistry. They're something else. Something prior.
There's an energy field underneath everything. Consciousness itself. Creates galaxies. Creates you. Creates what you're thinking right now.
You can't prove it with instruments.
But you know it's real.
Because you're experiencing it. Right now. Reading this.
That's the only church that matters. Inner space.
https://vryfokkenou.com/2014/02/04/the-church-of-inner-space-explained/

2026-06-17 19:23:21 UTC

My baby boy couldn't breathe. We had to spray saline up his nose. It burned. He fought us with everything he had.
"OK, OK" he whispered through tears. Terrified. Didn't understand we were helping him.
I held him down. Felt his body struggle against mine. And I broke.
Because I remembered being that confused. That scared. Not understanding why life hurt.
That's where my resentment comes from. The incomprehensible suffering of childhood. Still carrying it decades later.
I resent authority. I resent life. I resent everyone's mistakes.
But watching my son suffer something he can't understand — I finally see it. The resentment I'm holding onto doesn't make sense anymore.
Sometimes love looks like violence when you don't understand it yet.
https://vryfokkenou.com/2018/07/08/resentment/

2026-06-17 12:12:59 UTC

We're trained to be children.
Abortion. Homosexuality. Politics. Religion. Everyone screaming about what others should do with their lives.
The real issue? We've forgotten how to make responsible choices.
For 95% of human history — 190,000 years — we lived without governments. Hunter-gatherers making their own decisions. Freedom paired with responsibility.
Then 10,000 years of external authority. Being told what to do. How to live. What to think.
We atrophied.
Remove government tomorrow and chaos would follow. Not because humans are incapable. Because we've been systematically untrained.
Freedom without responsibility is chaos.
Responsibility without freedom is slavery.
We need both. We forgot how.
https://vryfokkenou.com/2015/06/14/learning-to-make-choices/

2026-06-13 07:25:30 UTC

Up and down. Up and down. How much longer will we pretend we have control?
I rebelled against the church young. Hated the rigidity. But it wasn't religion that bothered me — it was the ignorance. The way we weaponize our beliefs. Fight over them. Damage creation with our certainty.
We're all ignorant. Universe too vast. Why argue?
I was a staunch atheist. God was fantasy. Comfort food for the weak.
Then life happened. Events unfolded with uncanny order. Right time. Wrong time. Always teaching.
Coincidence after coincidence. Too many. Too perfect.
Either elaborate randomness or vast intelligence orchestrating everything.
I eventually had to admit it. Had to surrender.
What choice did I have left?
https://vryfokkenou.com/2014/04/18/surrender/

2026-06-12 18:03:17 UTC

I'm at a Bitcoin conference.
I see Michael Saylor is speaking.
I feel zero extra excitement.

2026-06-10 15:02:02 UTC

I meditated this morning. Something happened.
My limbs felt enormous. Then they felt like they weren't there at all. Like sitting on a trampoline with hands floating in space.
I have an English Literature degree. Words are supposed to be my thing.
But I can't describe what happened. Not really.
People say "words can't explain" all the time. Usually bullshit. Usually they just mean "really intense."
But sometimes? Actually true.
Words are signposts. Beautiful sometimes. But they point beyond themselves. They're not the thing itself.
Think about infinity. Everything. The entire universe and beyond.
One word for all that?
Consciousness is vast. Words are a tiny fraction of it.
I'm telling you about my experience. But you're not getting my experience. You're getting shadows. Approximations.
The original lies beyond language.
https://vryfokkenou.com/2014/11/21/words-cannot-explain/

2026-06-05 15:21:38 UTC

Love is the kind that hurts.
Not heartbreak. Not passion. The daily choosing of something that requires you to show up even when it's uncomfortable.
I injured my back as a teenager. Didn't seem like much. But my body compensated. Protected one side. Overworked the other.
By 19 I could barely walk.
Yoga helped. Not because it felt good. Because I learned to work through the pain to heal it.
Some days I had to force myself. Other times I'd quit. The pain would return. I'd start again.
That's love. Showing up for what matters even when every part of you wants to avoid it. Accepting the discomfort. Doing the work anyway.
Real love isn't romantic. It's honest. Forgiving. Painful. And you choose it again tomorrow.
https://vryfokkenou.com/2015/09/06/love-is-pain/

2026-06-03 16:18:13 UTC

The world's a mess. Corruption, war, poverty, species dying.
We think: what can one person do?
Everything, actually.
Because all these problems? Same root. Unchecked thought.
I learned this sitting alone trying to meditate. Simple instruction: count your breaths.
One. Two. Three...
Twenty breaths later I snapped awake — thinking about something completely random. No idea how I got there.
Couldn't trace it back.
That entire chain of thought was involuntary. None of it by choice.
My mind just... wandered. Without permission. Without awareness.
This was my awakening.
If I can't stay with my own breath for twenty counts — what else is running on autopilot?
The mind is a survival tool. Unchecked, it runs on one loop: me, me, me. Collectively, that loop is building the world we see.
But here's the thing: you caught yourself thinking. Which means something in you exists before the thought.
Awareness is primary. Thoughts are secondary.
That's the solution hiding inside the problem.
https://vryfokkenou.com/2015/10/28/unchecked/

2026-05-29 19:31:48 UTC

I watched a video on X this morning. Someone walking through Tel Aviv, pointing at sex shops as proof that Israel is a free country. Western liberal democracy. Look at us, look at them.
I get the point. And I'm not going to pretend it's entirely wrong. When it comes to doing what you want without government interference, yes — Israel offers more of that than Iran does. I support individual freedom. Fully. I don't want to live under bureaucrats who dictate my choices.
But here's the problem.
The West has defined freedom as what you are allowed to do. And that is not freedom. That is, at best, a symptom of freedom.
Real freedom is an internal state. Freedom from — from obsession, from compulsion, from the anxiety and fear your mind generates on a daily basis. And by that measure, the West is profoundly unfree. We live in constant anxiety. Are we good enough? Do we have enough? Do we hold the right opinions? The culture that celebrates individual freedom has produced a population enslaved to consumption, status, and ideological conformity.
This is the paradox the Western mind refuses to sit with: freedom defined in purely material terms eventually becomes its own tyranny.
And then we look east. At Iran, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia. We point and say: they're not free, we are. And from that judgment flows justification for almost anything. But the act of pointing outward — of projecting our definition of freedom onto the rest of the world — is itself making us less free. It is producing exactly the groupthink and moral certainty that freedom is supposed to protect us from.
Neither side is truly free. When the rubber meets the road, both are operating from a place of inner unfreedom. And one could argue — honestly — that Eastern philosophical traditions have historically pointed more directly toward the freedom that actually matters. A free mind. A quiet mind. A mind no longer at war with itself.
Real freedom begins within. It is not a document. Not a constitution. Not a walk past a sex shop in Tel Aviv.
It is an existence rooted in something deeper. Something spiritual. And nothing else can replace that.
https://vryfokkenou.com/2026/05/29/the-west-has-misunderstood-freedom/

2026-05-29 13:42:29 UTC

2026-05-27 20:17:50 UTC

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my agent controls a sub-agent, which talks to a telegram bot - the team he;s teaching engage with the telegram bot, so no, they can't access my agent, but my agent controls the coaching system.

2026-05-27 20:16:38 UTC

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it seems to work fine

2026-05-27 09:53:13 UTC

Stop Using AI. Start Building With It.
Two weeks ago I bought an Umbrel. $500. Plugged it in. Opened OpenClaw. Connected it to Claude. And started building.
I didn't know what I was making. I just started.
Two weeks later: an AI agent running coaching bots for our whole team at Bitcoin Ekasi and the Surfer Kids. 17 people. Tailored coaching. Group chats and one-on-one. Tracking goals, struggles, progress. Adjusting per person.
That was my job before. Me. One person at a time.
The system lives on hardware I own. I built the architecture. It didn't exist. Now it does.
Most people use AI like a fancy search engine. Ask a question. Get an answer. Useful. But transactional.
That's not what this is.
When you stop using AI as a tool and start using it as a collaborator — you see the whole thing differently.
I couldn't coach 17 people simultaneously, remember everything about each one, and be available 24/7. It can.
The risks are real. The disruption is real. But you only see the other side when you actually build something.
https://vryfokkenou.com/2026/05/08/i-built-an-ai-coach-in-two-weeks/

2026-05-22 17:03:50 UTC

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🙏

2026-05-22 17:02:57 UTC

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yes, exactly

2026-05-22 17:01:38 UTC

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🫡

2026-05-22 17:00:42 UTC

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i don't think that's up to us - Bitcoin is not a human structure in the same way that a church, government institution is. In that sense Bitcoin is more akin to a natural structure - when the time comes it will die, that's not for us to decide.

2026-05-20 09:31:29 UTC

I spent years fighting structure.
Schools. Jobs. Society's endless boxes. All of it felt suffocating.
But here's what broke my brain: nature is ALL structure. Atoms. Cells. Seasons. Orbits. Life can't exist without it.
So what's the difference?
Natural structures support life. Then get out of the way. Trees die. Forests shift. New forms emerge from old ones.
Human structures do the opposite. We build them to serve life, then sacrifice life to preserve the structure. Governments murder citizens to stay in power. Religions kill to protect beliefs. Lives destroyed over lines on a map.
Our structures won't let themselves die.
That's the sickness. Not structure itself — but our refusal to let it evolve.
https://vryfokkenou.com/2017/06/08/struggling-with-structure/

2026-05-16 05:56:31 UTC

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I don't think it's a case of serious governments taking cues from SA government, as much as it's a case of SA government being less successful in hiding the psycho-power-addict element of governance, which is just human nature and pretty much universal.

2026-05-15 18:25:16 UTC

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Thanks @nprofile…fg9w appreciate you having us on to talk about this!

2026-05-15 14:07:26 UTC

Quantum physicists say atoms are 99% empty space. Astrophysicists see galaxies held together by something they can't find. They call it dark matter.
They're looking in the wrong place.
You can't see consciousness through a microscope. You access it by closing your eyes.
That quiet space between thoughts? That's your connection to everything. Every atom. Every conscious being. The whole damn universe.
Prayer isn't a scheduled activity. It's noticing those gaps. Letting thoughts pass. Staying within the background awareness that allows thoughts to exist.
The answer isn't out there. It's in here.
https://vryfokkenou.com/2014/09/04/asking-for-guidance/

2026-05-14 05:03:09 UTC

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It was almost certainly partially a result of that, combined with influence from parents, combined with factors that are beyond human understanding. I'm not entirely sure.
Here's what I do know: Recovery from addiction (for me) did not happen because I fully understood the cause. A partial understanding helped, for sure. But recovery was made possible thanks to surrender and acceptance of an as-of-yet not entirely defined higher power. Which in and of itself involves a recognition that I don't fully understand everything, and that's OK too.

2026-05-13 19:08:39 UTC

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Addiction can be caused by many things. Including the natural predisposition of a child and their reaction to environmental factors, factors which, to any other child, would have almost no perceived impact. I have 3 siblings, 2 of them similar age to me, and none of them ended up where i did.

2026-05-13 10:06:31 UTC

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so many assumptions...

2026-05-13 10:03:11 UTC

Two realities. You live in both simultaneously.
Outer reality — the physical world. Events. Things. Stuff that happens to you.
Inner reality — your thoughts. Beliefs. The mental world.
Most people understand that outer affects inner. Phone breaks. You worry about money. Event → thoughts.
But here's what changes everything:
Inner affects outer too.
The placebo effect proves it. Sugar pill. Belief in cure. Body heals. Physical change from thought alone.
Thoughts are forces. Like gravity. They shape reality.
You can't control what happens to you.
But you can control your inner reality.
That's where your power lives.
Most people never realize this. They spend their whole lives trying to control the outside world.
Wrong game.
https://vryfokkenou.com/2016/01/17/controlling-reality/

2026-05-12 14:13:21 UTC

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weed is not a problem. the problem is (or isn't) the reason for using it. i know people who use it in good ways and people who use it in not so good ways. whether it's a problem, remains for the individual to decide.

2026-05-12 14:11:41 UTC

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my parents did a great job, they did the best they could, no resentments toward them

2026-05-11 19:28:29 UTC

I was 14 when I first got drunk. Blacked out completely. Woke up with burst eardrums and two black eyes. No memory of what happened. Still don't know.
You'd think that would scare me straight. It didn't.
I spent years chasing oblivion. Alcohol. Cocaine. Marijuana became my daily religion — wake up high, go to bed high, plan everything around getting high.
The worst part? Weed gave me moral superiority. "At least I'm not an alcoholic." Perfect lie for an addict.
Today I've been clean nearly a decade.
Freedom isn't getting sober. Freedom is accepting full responsibility for who you were and who you're becoming.
The truth will set you free. But first it will piss you off.
https://vryfokkenou.com/2023/09/05/10-years-in-recovery/

2026-05-08 13:01:33 UTC

I'm an addict.
You are too.
Coffee. Work. Scrolling. TV. Shopping. Control.
We think addiction means needles in abandoned buildings. But that's comfortable for us. Makes it someone else's problem.
The real test: Can you stop?
Not "do you want to stop" — could you actually stop and be okay with yourself?
I blamed my job for smoking. Changed jobs. Still smoked.
Blamed the city. Moved to countryside. Still smoked.
Blamed stress. Made money. Still smoked.
Eventually ran out of things to blame.
We're stubborn. We don't change until our lives are on the line.
Right now it's just convenient enough to keep going.
The addiction isn't the problem.
The inability to stop is.
https://vryfokkenou.com/2016/02/14/we-are-all-addicts/

2026-05-06 10:23:59 UTC

I thought my allergies were pollen. Dust. Environmental.
Spent years eliminating triggers. No pollen? Still allergic. Can't be pollen then.
Now I'm almost thirty and I finally get it.
My body is screaming what my mind won't say.
Frustrated with bureaucracy? Allergic reaction. Family drama? Allergic reaction. Remove myself physically but stay engaged mentally? Reaction continues.
The antihistamines stopped working the moment I understood this.
Our internal states write themselves into physical form. So we can see what we refuse to look at.
My allergies are extreme. But the principle applies to everything.
Your reactions have nothing to do with the outside world.
Everything to do with what's buried inside.
https://vryfokkenou.com/2015/08/12/nothing-is-completely-hidden/

2026-05-05 06:11:48 UTC

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this was in 2016

2026-05-04 19:21:55 UTC

The world is cold. Heartless machinery. People as fuel for markets.
So how do you get out of bed?
I live religiously. Without religion.
Forgiveness. Humility. Faith. I practice them all. Daily. Not because a pastor told me to. Because I have to.
Religion became dogma. One book. One truth. Division as control.
But the original teachers? They just wanted to live well. Connected to something bigger.
I can't subscribe to one religion when I'm surrounded by a library of wisdom.
So I take what works. From everywhere.
I pray. Find gratitude. Do it religiously even when I don't feel like it.
That's how I stay functional in a dysfunctional world.
https://vryfokkenou.com/2016/04/10/living-religiously-without-religion/

2026-05-04 19:12:37 UTC

2026-04-29 10:03:02 UTC

Sixteen years ago I signed a paper.
Made a commitment. Legal. Binding. Lifelong.
That night I cried for an hour in the bath. Couldn't stop. Didn't know why.
I was twenty-four. Hadn't cried like that since I was a kid. Maybe never.
Took six years to understand what happened.
Marriage isn't about love. Not the falling kind anyway.
It's about commitment so deep you can't hide anymore. Can't run from yourself. The things you hate most in your partner? That's you. Your own shit reflected back.
It's terrifying. Most difficult thing I've done.
But that commitment — that's where real growth happens. Not the romantic stuff. The hard stuff.
Deep commitment is deep love.
https://vryfokkenou.com/2016/02/01/why-did-i-marry/

2026-04-27 15:46:02 UTC

We've been lied to about happiness.
Not just the consumer lie. That's obvious now. Buy this, feel good, repeat until dead.
The deeper lie: that happiness exists outside yourself.
Think about the cold person getting warm soup. First bowl? Pure bliss. Second bowl? Nothing close.
Material things solve material problems. But beyond that? Diminishing returns into emptiness.
Most people figured out shopping won't save them. Good.
But they're still searching externally. Different addiction, same pattern.
Happiness isn't out there.
It was never out there.
The whole game is rigged to keep you looking anywhere but within.
https://vryfokkenou.com/2014/05/16/care-free-is-not-care-less/

2026-04-27 05:37:38 UTC

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Too many years of being told what to do. Deprivation of freedom.

2026-04-24 12:26:14 UTC

I can't get out of bed anymore.
As a kid? Couldn't sleep past 6am. Too much to do. Life was one giant adventure.
Then something shifted.
Around high school, the magic drained out. More time spent doing what I was *supposed* to do. Less time doing what I *wanted* to do.
Teachers telling me what matters. Society telling me what success looks like. Everyone imposing their directive on my life.
That's when mornings became hard.
Because when you're living someone else's vision, why get up?
The question isn't "what do I have to do today?"
It's "what do I actually want to do?"
Freedom means choosing your own directive.
https://vryfokkenou.com/2017/01/08/to-do-or-dont/

2026-04-16 12:40:23 UTC

No matter the situation, you have only two choices.
Always and everywhere.
Resist, or surrender to what is.
And only once you surrender to what already is do you have any power to influence what has not yet happened.
It is not through resistance to the past or the present that you change the future.

2026-04-16 06:49:05 UTC

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this is insane!

2026-04-16 06:45:48 UTC

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Thank you @nprofile…54t2 !