Like one of the greatest pyramids in the world, The Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, nobody knows how The Pyramind was built. The structure of this book, The Pyramind, is mysterious as well. While I will share my personal story that comes from my own brain, heart, mind, and life experience, I honestly can’t say exactly how and when I built The Pyramind. 

The Pyramind was unexpectedly birthed into this world on a vibrant sunny day in Venice, CA. On February 16, 2019.  my vivacious Japanese-American cousin, Gavin Masumiya, and I were brainstorming our value proposition for a digital community that we were building. The community was called Intense Freedom, FOCUSING on an inside-out approach to life, deep human connection, vibrant self-expansion, and playful engagement in the real world. As we designed our marketing language, we were referencing a pyramid that showed different categories of value propositions for consumers. This pyramid was a roadmap to build value into your business. This is when the lightbulb went off in my head. What if we created a pyramid for how to experience intense freedom, a simple personal roadmap that anyone could follow? Thus, we shifted FOCUS from the consumer value proposition pyramid and created our own pyramid of the fundamentals of Intense Freedom. At the time, the pyramid had three levels: AWARENESS, WONDER, and EXPRESSION. Together, these words formed the memorable acronym AWE. We hoped to give this three-step pyramid to future community members. As I typed my notes into a Google document, it just so happened that I committed a beautiful typo in the word “pyramid”. I accidentally inserted an “n” as the second-to-last letter. And thus, the name PyramiNd was birthed. I smiled and thanked my fat fingers for this Mysterious mistake. While we kept working on the community, I kept building the Pyramind. Soon enough, I had grown the Pyramind to four levels, and I was incredibly excited about it. The Pyramind would not leave my mind, and I kept building more levels and inserting more gateways. As a voracious student of life, I deeply enjoy this process synthesizing, structuring, and sharing wisdom with others. As fate would have it, our digital community, Intense Freedom, never got off the ground. For various reasons–the ultimate of which is the absolute perfection of Mystery–we scrapped the project. 

But Connor couldn’t scrap The Pyramind. Since the conceptual ideation that glorious day in Venice, The Pyramind and I built each other for the next 11 months. As I kept exploring how to live and love, the Pyramind served as my beautiful bucket, a structure in which I could drop my wisdom. Everything I held dear and fundamental to life was inserted into the Pyramind. Like the Mysterious Pyramids of Giza, I can’t say when building the book actually begin. All I can say is that I felt the enormity and beauty of The Pyramind, and it was too good to keep from the world. So, I started writing. But, my excitement for life and commitment to service were quite distracting. Should I create the other digital curriculum I was designing? Should I keep hosting experiential dinners? Should I just FOCUS on my day job, building a social learning company to impact millions of students and adults worldwide? Over Christmas break in 2019, anxiety plagued me despite being in the PRESENCE of loving family. Even my vibrant 81-year old auntie, Lorraine, shared her concern that I appeared to be struggling with something. So, on January 12, 2020, I was walking Linda Mar Beach in Pacifica, California, my hometown. My dad, Jerome, and I loved our sunset strolls. As I neared the North end of the beach, I neared a turning point in life. Without my conscious attention on the sandy beach, a decisive inner voice piped up, “Write the book.” I am not sure who was directing who, or what was directing me, but the gavel had been smacked. I obeyed this inner directive and shifted the FOCUS of my life towards writing the book. 

Since then, I have written the book and the book has written me. My writings have taught me about the Mystery. And my struggles in this journey have told me what to write about. I truly believe that this book is part of my personal curriculum as a human being where I learn what I uniquely need to learn, so I can share those gifts with the world.