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As we hang on for dear life and

struggle to pull ourselves up, we


forget how we ended up in the
struggle to begin with. The basics
of growth are not something to
buy or acquire, they are something
to find within.

Written by SolidStance

Man in the Making


The journey of all men begin with discomfort, failure and the unknown. It is only when
we embrace these challenges that we finally become the men we were meant to be.

Because we humans acquire all good things by pain,


the person who is himself unwilling to endure pain
all but condemns himself to being worthy of nothing
good.
-Musonius Rufus
Table of Contents

Part 1: The Basics of Success


Vice
The Larger Perspective
Why Do We Fail? Why Do We Succeed?
Shame, Regret, Guilt: You Failed
How to Build Willpower
Affirmations: Why and How to Use Them
Why Can’t I Do This?
Embrace the Suck
Men of Iron and Steel: The Wisdom of Robert Speer

Part 2: Man of Meaning


The Excellent Man
The Ebb and Flow of Life
Excess, Deficiency and the Mean
The Stoic Man
Man in the Making
The Fitness Standard

Part 3: A Sacred Earth


The Final Chapter
Purpose
Final Conclusions of Nofap
Justice
A Sacred Earth
Introduction

In the years of working with young and middle-aged men and attempting to get them
clean from porn abuse, I found that there was a reoccurring theme throughout the com-
munity no matter their caste, color or creed: these gents were not growing up. Men
everywhere seem to be stuck in childish or adolescent standards that lack responsibility
and purpose. It was this realization that manifested my writing, my style and in the end
my overall maturity as a man in the making.
During the writing of my first manual, I went from a soft nurturing voice into a disci-
plined militaristic version of forceful thought and focus in order to snap these struggling
purposeless boys into shape. It turned out that many guys got much more out of this style
of training than the softer methods, so what started to emerge was a small militia of civil-
ian-soldiers ready to head straight into battle and begin fighting the urges and weakness-
es they so desperately needed to erase from their lives. It was with this war-like—eve of
departure—mentality, and their regular progress, that kept me writing and also kept me
growing as a man.
Yes we are at war. Inside us this very moment is a force trying to take over our lives. Tak-
ing responsibility for your actions, having ownership, means you have agreed to fight back.
Man in the Making is a compilation of my work over about 200 days beginning when I
myself was coming out of personal battles and struggling to find a way out of the darkness
I created in my life. This is my offering to those souls who have come forward with a prob-
lem just as I did. These short articles will hopefully give you insight into an aspect of your
life that has caused some confusion. Try to read them a few times before thinking you have
grasped the full meaning, and just like any manual it will be good to keep it close for reg-
ular study and reflection. My goal is to invoke creative thinking for you to expand on. I’m
not writing out, nor do I have, the answers that will solve all problems that plagues man.
What I’m doing is asking you a series of questions that aren’t always being asked in today’s
world: Who are you? And, what are you all about? Knowing the answer to these questions
will move your life forward and get you marching in the right direction.
The previous three manuals—Manual of Success, Man of Meaning and A Sacred
Earth—have been compressed and rewritten into this one resource for you to read, study
and reflect on. I wish you the best in your journey and may you realize that you are pure
strength itself.

SolidStance, Brother in arms and friend to all men everywhere.


No great human in history has ever
said the phrase “I will never fail.”
What they say is “When I fail, I will
get back up and try again”

Part One:
The Basics of Success
Vice

What makes a man unique is his ability to seek and find great knowledge in his short time
on Earth. Women have a biological need, and a time-tested clock, to eventually start a
family with the best possible mate for her social value. This is a reality that everyone ends
up facing at some point as they mature into their roles. Men don’t tend to use hyperga-
mous values when determining a mate, and actually have a much closer relationship to
love rather than the woman’s idea for logical family strength vs weak selections. Women
are not less important than men and if that was your conclusion based on what I previous-
ly said you have misunderstood. We have roles, we have genders and we have biological du-
ties that make each gender and role harmonious if played out accordingly. Trying to fight
this reality has led woman, and a great deal of men, to frustrating lives and unresolved
issues. Pew research has found this true in a recent study of stay at home spouses.
This is where working on ourselves gets difficult beyond what we have spoken about be-
fore because it dives into man’s most intimate weakness: self-pleasure.

Vice
vice |vīs|

noun

immoral or wicked behavior.

• criminal activities involving prostitution, pornography, or drugs.

• an immoral or wicked personal characteristic.

• a weakness of character or behavior; a bad habit

The last definition available for vice is the one I am referring to throughout the article. I
also wouldn’t use vice in a religious tone implying that God is in some way offended when
man is morally corrupted and He is planning on smiting the wicked. Damage to ones own
self is indeed selfish as he is the very thing worth saving but in my opinion God is fine and
dandy with you using self-pleasure as a way to distract yourself from what you should ac-
tually be doing. I don’t believe in hell or sin, so don’t mistake my views for religious fanati-
cism. Perhaps I am a fanatic of self-reliance and discipline.
In our search through life we end up seeking some sort of wholeness or some complete-
ness that either rebuilds us after losing our way or our learning is new as we reach an age
of maturity—usually that means the age we stop partying and start to realize we have to
do something with our lives and actually make something of ourselves. In other words, we
build a more personal conscious as we get older and doing immoral things begin to actual-
ly feel immoral. But we aren’t monks. We never signed up for some sort of purity vow and
to never ogle a beautiful woman again. Right? Yes and no, actually. Our highest potential
tends to naturally avoid licentious behavior.
Historically great men statistically outnumber monks by an incredible margin, they will
almost always be civilians. Even Epictetus, renowned Stoic philosopher, began life not as a
civilian but as a slave and eventually was freed. He then taught some of the most profound
truths ever written. Socrates was considered a madman and fool by many of his peers,
yet today we consider him the father of Western philosophy. His disciple Plato was just
a man—no monk—yet he demanded perfection of himself and his teachings are said to
have been around for 2400 years! The same goes for Aristotle, Seneca, past U.S. presidents,
Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Michael Jordan, Robert Speer, Sarvapelli Radhakrishnan,
H.D. Thoreau, and of course the list is endless as long as you are connected to the Internet.
I didn’t list one monk yet these men have shouted from the rooftops about discipline,
austerity, hard work, virtue and honor. Not one of them was under vows to be ordained
as a priest or monk of any religion yet they proclaimed a monk-like virtue molded their
character to fulfill their dreams and become men of meaning. Self-mastery does not mean
you become perfect. It means you sacrifice that which is easy for that which is hard.
On the path of self-mastery we invariably come across the fact that our biggest obstacle
is ourselves. That happens because it’s true, but also because nothing outside of us is going
to dramatically change what we are made of. No one approached Michael Jordan as a child
and asked him to be the greatest basketball player of all-time. No one did that for him
and no one has done that in order to create a self-made man. All of the magic comes from
within yourself, and it is usually just a mixture of discipline, self-denial of pleasures and
consistency.
What we want to happen on this path is progress, not perfection. Virtuous and strong
men do not avoid failures, pitfalls and distractions—what they do is overcome them over
time. Anticipating failures can be a powerful tool to keep you from entering despair and
frustration as you take a few steps towards your goal and a few backwards. No boxer ever
enters a ring expecting a perfect match and never to be hit. He trains for the hit and is
determined to get back up; progress not perfection.
Self-mastery, complete effectiveness and downright virtuous duty means we are on the
path of self-denial, otherwise known as sacrifice. We give up those things that are no lon-
ger any use to us and to our goals. Let someone else enjoy the childish things, but for us we
have work to do. It takes constant effort to retrain the mind and body to obey our every
command. The waking hours aren’t enough, sleep and dreams must also be a place of puri-
ty if want to completely own up to the duty we have as men.

Excessive Pleasure
“I keep crying out to myself: Count your years, and you will be ashamed to desire and pursue the same
things you desired in your boyhood days. Of this one thing make sure against your dying day—let your
faults die before you die.” -Seneca

If you spend time masturbating to pornography you are still living in a child’s mind. I
know that is hard to hear when we have been conditioned since youth that masturba-
tion is normal, and it may be for a very young man still learning about his body, but as we
grow older this habit must end before we waste valuable time. While you are triggering
your brain to want spikes of impulses and arousal based off a screen of pleasure, people
are training, eating better, reading more, watching their children grow up and becoming
who they were supposed to be. There is no valid argument that says you couldn’t be doing
something more productive than using pornography.
Much has been written about excessive pleasure and it goes beyond masturbation. Over-
eating, laziness in physical and mental activity or vegging out, retaliation for pleasure’s
sake, all the way to theft and drug/alcohol abuse enter into the pleasure or dopamine cen-
ters of our life and create an illness that takes us away from the men we ought to be. This
book hopes to outline the need to rid ourselves of every vice and replace them with virtue.

“For moral virtue or excellence is closely concerned with pleasure and pain. It is pleasure that moves us
to do what is base, and pain that moves us to refrain from what is noble. And therefore, as Plato says,
man needs to be so trained from his youth up as to find pleasure and pain in the right objects. This is
what sound education means.” -Aristotle

We are reeducating ourselves. This path means remolding the clay-like mind into a mirac-
ulous pot of ever evolving mastery. Once reshaped the real adventure of manhood begins.
After we have become stable we can begin to help others and become a leader. Before
self-mastery we are just flopping around in lower states of mind, unable to control fleeting
thoughts that enter the mind.

“Away with those disordered pleasures, which must be dearly paid for; it is not only those which are
to come that harm me, but also those which have come and gone. Just as crimes, even if they have
not been detected when they were committed, do not allow anxiety to end with them; so with guilty
pleasures, regret remains even after the pleasures are over. They are not substantial, they are not trust-
worthy; even if they do not harm us, they are fleeting. Cast about rather for some good which will
abide. But there can be no such good except as the soul discovers it for itself within itself. Virtue alone
affords everlasting and peace-giving joy; even if some obstacle arise, it is but like an intervening cloud,
which floats beneath the sun but never prevails against it.” -Seneca

If you can’t say out loud what you do in the hours you are alone then you are not a lead-
er. You can’t be the example if you let the animalistic instincts take over to have their way
with your body. Wisdom is gained by letting go of vice, letting go of self-pleasure, letting
go of lazy and unproductive behavior of any kind. To be constantly effective and a man
people can depend on is exhausting but it is your destiny.
“There is dishonor in yielding to the evil, or in an evil manner; but there is honor in yielding to the
good, or in an honorable manner. Evil is the vulgar lover who loves the body rather than the soul, in-
asmuch as he is not even stable, because he loves a thing which is in itself unstable, and therefore when
the bloom of youth which he was desiring is over, he takes wing and flies away, in spite of all his words
and promises; whereas the love of the noble disposition is life–long, for it becomes one with the ever-
lasting…

…And this is the reason why, in the first place, a hasty attachment is held to be dishonorable, because
time is the true test of this as of most other things; and secondly there is a dishonor in being overcome
by the love of money, or of wealth, or of political power, whether a man is frightened into surrender
by the loss of them, or, having experienced the benefits of money and political corruption, is unable to
rise above the seductions of them. For none of these things are of a permanent or lasting nature; not to
mention that no generous friendship ever sprang from them. There remains, then, only one way of hon-
orable attachment which custom allows in the beloved, and this is the way of virtue; for as we admitted
that any service which the lover does to him is not to be accounted flattery or a dishonor to himself, so
the beloved has one way only of voluntary service which is not dishonorable, and this is virtuous ser-
vice.”

-Plato’s Symposium
The Larger Perspective

In dealing with recovery of any nature we must change our view and hold a larger perspec-
tive than we held before. Our concept of “me and mine” has to be expanded—it has to be
about all of us. Holding this new larger perspective we can begin to sense what it’s like to
be counted on and be a part of something bigger and greater than the individual “you”.
Much like playing team sports or being in a military unit, or even part of a law firm, if you
make an action that negatively affects your life then everyone else is affected as well. In
remembering that we are not alone but a part of a grand scheme—even if we start small
with direct family—we begin to lose the sense that our actions don’t affect others. We lose
some of our selfishness and some of our ego as we attempt to incorporate humility into
our character.
For too long our individual weaknesses have been allowed to grow without being put in
check. Man has gone without notice from outside sources because he can choose to live
in a bubble and the sense of community is fading. So what can we do to feel responsible
for not only ourselves but others? We must look at this experience we call life as a whole.
We are all with each other when we are working, eating, sleeping, and especially behind
a computer screen. We as man are a part of the entire population of men, that includes
youth, middle-age and old alike. We all must exist in each other’s minds and perspectives
in order to get control of the situation. It has been about the individual you for so long
that hurting yourself through bad habits and weakness doesn’t really matter anymore. I’m
here to say it does matter. I’m writing this because I used to think like you. I used to think
that our own individual actions or private battles don’t seep out beyond our mind. Of
course this isn’t the case and when you are weak others can sense it.
So in thinking from a larger group perspective we can see that when you succeed, when
you conquer your desires and become a master over your mind, body and emotions, then
we all succeed. The whole group is uplifted. And you can start small as well, in fact you
must start small just like you must walk before running. Remember direct family, then
go on to thinking about neighbors and then acquaintances—eventually it builds to every
human on earth. Everything will feel slightly better than it did yesterday. Those closest to
you will be uplifted and might not even know why. But it’s because you are doing every-
thing in your power to improve and so naturally that energy emanates to your immediate
surrounding area.
The opposite is also true. When you slip up and lose control everyone in your circle will
feel it too. Your tribe will sense that the overall morale is lower. This is what it feels like to
be living and fighting with a military unit or on the field with a soccer team, on the ice or
on the court. The group mentality means everyone makes the goals of the operation hap-
pen. We no longer stand out as individuals since our actions now have the potential to ef-
fect the many. This is why I like to say “Your win, is my win, is our win.” “Your strength, is
my strength, is our strength.” I truly believe it and I think it’s this mentality that has finally
given me the upper hand over all my previous issues and bad habits.
To succeed at this or any goal in life we have to support and uplift the people around us.
We become a representative for anyone who falls to any addiction or bad influence. Men
stand for any man who has experienced loss or confusion, and you are bettering yourself
for the whole. Empowering others will eventually be one of your most powerful weapons
in the ongoing battle of your life. It can’t just be about you or me anymore, life has to be
much bigger than that.
This is how the saints of old have lived. This is how they struggled day in and day out
to help others while slowly losing awareness of themselves. Once you start living for oth-
er people life takes on a whole new meaning. By thinking of others we improve our own
situation because we are part of that whole that we are working to uplift. Trust is the high-
est form of human motivation. Helping others makes you responsible; that responsibility
gives you purpose. That purpose gives you drive; drive will bring challenges. Conquer the
small challenges little by little and build willpower. You become motivated to continue
and change yourself in the process. So try to earn someone’s trust and be motivated by it.
Know that others are depending on you. The only difference between you and a saint is
the amount of people you end up reaching. Improve yourself and go from there.
What can you do immediately? While you are taking the small steps needed to accom-
plish your goals you should focus on every other aspect of your life, focus on every little
thing that can be improved. Wake up earlier, try making your bed for once. Start to emu-
late soldiers, it makes a big difference. Make that bed and get moving like you are march-
ing towards resistance. Analyze each step of the day and each interaction. Smile more and
become aware of what you look like as you interact with people.
You got up with drive, made your bed and are now looking your best. The next step is
to eat right. Fuel the body with what it needs and don’t overdue it. Eating more than you
need will make the body sluggish. Drink plenty of water and get moving. Going to work?
School? Be the best at whatever you do. You might meet someone in the process who has
the same or similar goals and if the two of you make a match then you can team up. You
never know who in your life is going to need your strength, so always be ready.

There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat and we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.
- Shakespeare
Why Do We Fail? Why Do We Succeed?

We fail at our aspirations for a few reasons, one being that the bad habits we’ve picked up
are a secret. With mobile devices that can connect almost anywhere, we have the opportu-
nity to bring the Internet wherever we go. Normally with an addiction like narcotics, one
has to actually leave their residence and purchase something in order to get high. With
pornography it’s at our fingertips day and night. The same is true for video games, an over-
abundance of junk food—modern society has made vice something anyone can attain at
any time for little to no effort or money. That is why I feel that secret habits are one of the
most difficult kinds to break. Coming clean is usually one of the first steps we take on the
path of self mastery but in the end no one else can stop you, it must come from you.
The other reason we succumb to weakness is poor self-esteem. Young men are bom-
barded with social media’s gorgeous elite and no longer think highly of themselves to live
comfortably in their own skin. The overwhelming number of youth thinking that pornog-
raphy and living like a slug is normal is probably the highest in history. “I’m just me, who
cares?” “What does it matter if I run myself down to the lowest depths of thinking and
feeling, I’m not important.” These are thoughts many young men I’ve talked to have had
and believe deeply—which leads to why we succeed.
We succeed when our self-esteem is lifted. When someone arrives in our life to teach us
who we really are then the healing can begin to take place. Often times this can be some-
one we don’t even know or will ever meet face-to-face, but we take them on as a mentor
and grow in self-expression and self-assertion. “I matter as a person” will become the new
perspective as this individual begins to grow up and take on new responsibilities. The key
to success is eventually knowing that you are essential to someone else’s life in some way.
Holding yourself in a higher light is powerful but it takes awareness. We must experi-
ence enough of the pain before we understand who we really are—pure energy and pure
strength. When we realize how strong each of us really is we can start to take responsibil-
ity for our actions and endure. We can see how our actions affect those around us because
everyone looks up to us in one way or another. Some look up to us for our humor, some
see us with a strong work ethic or others may re-enact our demeanor when we are at our
best, and at our best we are unstoppable.
When we stay focused and attain right living, right thought and right action, we become
what most would define as noble and courageous. We actually defy what culture is telling
us is normal and we begin to embrace the suck. Understand that we are working to be-
come role models. Once you believe that greatness is your natural state, all that’s left to do
is act on it and claim what’s rightfully yours. In a sense, your failures of today will be the
teaching for someone else tomorrow.
Shame, Regret, Guilt: You Failed

Delayed progress, going backwards, stuck, stalled and frustrated: we have all been there.
Eventually we hit rock bottom and realize we like the strong healthy version of ourselves
when life is more clear and free. On the path of self-mastery there are side tracks, slippery
slopes and rough weather. We will fail over and over again while we discover just how far
we can push ourselves, that is not an option. The trick to success is not getting into the
guilt frame of mind or the perspective that there is no out and that you have no options.
There is no advantage to feelings of guilt, shame, regret and anger. These are natural side
effects when we slip and fall, but in and of themselves these emotions hold no actual ben-
efit and no advantage. Do yourself a favor and cheer up—stay positive. Exuding self-confi-
dence is reassuring, feeling angry or frustrated could possibly lead to a chaser and binge in
whatever weakness you struggle from.
If we stall temporarily then we must try even harder, we don’t go backwards and binge.
We don’t just keep eating junk food or watching porn or skipping the gym because we fell
off our disciplines. We become the boxer and get back up after getting knocked down. As
we climb this difficult mountain we must expect difficulties and set backs, it’s going to
happen but how we make up for it. How fast we get back up to fight another day makes
all the difference. There is a great learning in a relapse or a mission failure. It proves to our
subconscious what it might have doubted. Again and again we learn what makes us hap-
py and what doesn’t. Sometimes we have to overeat to remember what being that full and
sick is like. Eventually we will catch ourselves and say, “You know what, I’m done with that
option. I know what if feels like and that is not how I act anymore.” When this happens
then the change has already begun to take place.
Success is inevitable, yes I truly believe that. I believe we are all moving toward success no
matter what. The quicker we can get back up the sooner we can throw that next punch at
the enemy. To those that just relapsed or recently edged to porn or overate or missed a few
gym sessions, let’s take a quick look at what to learn. We can use darkness to inspire us, we
can use motivating light to keep us from going dark, but sometimes we need to just step
back and reflect. Instead of pumping yourself up and getting motivated—which is fine
sometimes—think on the situation as a learning experience. Now that it is over we can use
reason and logic to determine if what we did was good.
Remember that motivation and inspiration are good, but it is not the be-all to recovery.
We have to use a multitude of skills to overcome our weak nature and to overcome every
other challenge in life. There is no set time for any one tool. We need wisdom to guide us,
to help us choose which tool to bring out of our arsenal. Wisdom is the timely application
of knowledge. We have gained much knowledge from our last relapse. Learning from the
experience means using that knowledge to better ourselves on another occasion, another
test. Once you apply this knowledge when needed you have used wisdom. Each time we
use wisdom we become wiser. Wisdom does not take time, we simply observe the current
moment with peace and calm then act from that calmness.

Write it Down
When the moment comes and you are no longer as strong or determined as you were
yesterday, write down what’s going through your head. Find clarity through the fog and
use the pen or the keyboard to guide you. What were the events leading up to the upset?
What steps can you take in the future to fulfill your actual mission?
I sometimes ask the young men I work with if they have actually decided to become bet-
ter versions of themselves. Remember that you have to come to the realization that the is-
sue you wish to be free from will never again be a part of your life. Have you ever thought
that before? Make it your affirmation to hear what that sounds like and see how you feel
afterwards. “I will never eat until I’m sick again.” “Watching porn is no longer something
I do.” Sometimes it can shock our system to realize that we never fully decided to stop our
vices.
Over a period of time our vice of choice can become a cancer that slowly feeds and
grows on our being. It’s there in the back of your mind waiting to come out when the tim-
ing is just right. You can sense it too, I know because I can sense my vice like an equation.
When I’m in the right place and time in a certain situation the beast will begin to come
out and prepare to strike. Is it anger? Can you feel frustration on the back of your neck?
There are signs that our higher self sends to us to keep us on the right path. Full maturity
and manhood means becoming aware of those signs and heeding their warning.
Relax and get some good sleep. The sun rises if you fail or succeed and the world will
continue to turn with or without you. Each one of us has to make the choice to step out-
side and participate in the capacity we want. No one is forcing you to succeed or fail and
no one will ever be able to work on your inner mind like you can. You are only one failure
away from total success. Make it an obsession to conquer your lower nature and let them
be your teacher for the future. Everything is our teacher. Some things teach us what to do,
others teach what not to do. The choice to obey is yours, choose wisely.
How Do We Build Willpower

We need willpower in order to move. Without willpower we couldn’t move the body out
of bed in the morning—it’s that integral to our survival. But having extraordinary will-
power to conquer addictions or bad habits takes training. How do we train and build
willpower? One of the most common ways we can do this is through our day to day ac-
tivities. Each task we perform we must complete it and leave no stone unturned. Leaving
open-ended tasks sends a message to our mind that we are allowed to do things and never
finish them, that ends today. We start something and we finish it or we make a full and
complete plan on how and when the project finishes—plain and simple.
Do every task or project better than you expected. By outperforming our own expec-
tations, trying just a little harder and pushing just a little bit more, we build willpower.
We make the weak part of the mind know we do not do things half-hearted. Putting the
cap back on the toothpaste; turning off light switches; not letting laundry pile up—these
things are not separate from willpower. Everything we do better than before enhances will-
power. When the urge to become our old self again comes, our training will kick in and
trigger resistance since pushing harder and going the extra mile is no longer unfamiliar to
us. The same technique can be applied to exercise called progressive overload. If you under-
stand how to break down a muscle and rebuild it then you understand building willpower.
The foundation of willpower is profound because the more you use it the more you
have in return. It is not like a bank account where using more and more funds depletes it.
Willpower is a driving force of constant action that when used actually comes back to us
in larger amounts; but we have to use our will in order to get more. Willpower is also the
same as energy. The real us is pure energy, pure willpower. Once we tap into that we can
achieve whatever we train for, but we must cultivate it. We have to keep using willpower,
keep using our energy, keep using our awareness to observe what’s going on around us and
react with reason and logic, not instinct. Once developed we get real inner strength that
reflects in everything around us.

The Will Makes Up Our Being


Is it really so hard to imagine that we are pure energy? What goes against this theory? In
others words: there is a life force flowing through you, as you, and that is called willpower.
Just because you have or are willpower doesn’t mean that it can’t be used against you. Will-
power is not a force of good or evil. It is a neutral force just as the sun is a force to shine
light on whatever is in its path. Willpower can be focused on your highest aspirations or
your darkest secrets and fantasy. Learning to redirect energy towards the mission your life
is calling for will result in constant replenishment. Your energy—your willpower—never
ends.
Affirmations: How and Why to Use Them

Defining Affirmation
An affirmation is by definition the action or process of affirming something or being af-
firmed. Speech is powerful; humans create negativity and frustration by speaking some-
thing negative every day. The opposite is also true, where by we can create positivity
through positive speech. We use affirmations all the time and we even think them too.
Men can easily create sadness or defeat just by thinking and saying outloud that their cur-
rent affliction or challenge is real and happening in their lives. It’s time to change that. It is
time to become aware of how powerful your thoughts and speech really are.
Changing our language can reverse the training we have been taught by others when
growing up, and by ourselves, and uplift our current situation, changing the pattern of our
day-to-day life for goals that we want and concepts that we want believe in. Science is also
validating what powerful and effective people have been saying for thousands of years: our
thoughts and our speech help advise the brain on what to see and do next, or simply how
to react to given situation. But the brain is flexible and our electrical signals and reaction
super-highways can be rewritten and recoded to suit a more productive outlook­—we are
doing this all the time.

Think, Visualize and Feel


How do we use affirmations? Is it simply a matter of speaking something new or is there
more to it? The key here is to think, visualize and feel what you are saying. As we are
speaking out a belief or concept we think it, then concept is then visualized as happening
and felt in our nervous system. Feeling an affirmation is abstract but over time this begins
to happen naturally as you become more trained and aware of your own speech and pro-
clivities.

Getting Better at Anger


The three steps to successful affirmations—think, visualize and feel—are a major part of
our life already. Let’s give an example of a common emotion for young men who don’t
have proper training in expressing their reason and logic. When you are upset at someone
else what does that feel like? Remember a time when you were especially angry, maybe
someone you interact with regularly set you off one day for some reason. Anger behaves
like poison coursing through our veins. What are you thinking at that specific heated mo-
ment? Cursing them out or fighting as a type of fantasy is perhaps running through your
mind. And what then comes out of our mouth? You could start to speak out an expression
of frustration such as “Man! This guy is really being an asshole!”
You’re feeling frustrated; thinking about the hurt that you are going through and visu-
alizing a situation that somehow grants you redemption or retaliation—this is a powerful
experience that your brain is recording, but realize it is also avoidable through control.

Rewiring Our Brain


Going further into the consequence of our frustrated episode we just had, judgment now
gets connected in the brain from our most recent experience and a pattern has been made.
The electrical connections in the brain now follow that route that, when triggered, leads
to this new passionate sense of frustration and anger. If you happen to see the same person
again in a relatively short period of time, and especially if the situation goes unresolved,
a reaction will automatically occur without any affirmation needed. Our memory is trig-
gered by sight and we can recreate the entire feeling all over again. Our affirmation of hate
and anger was successful. You have just been able to prioritize and execute a basic function
of success—creating the experience around you.
Now turn that around to your advantage. Turn that energy into something that actually
benefits you. Use the skill that you have practiced unconsciously, and consciously use it for
good. We know affirmations work because we know the above example of anger has hap-
pened to us before. Anger is also not the only emotion that you can relate to either. Think
about things you do and say regularly—those are your self-fulfilling prophecies. Favorite
foods or restaurants can trigger happy memories and feelings of satiety, or certain smells
can trigger objects you once coveted as a child. You’re creating your own circumstance and
creating how your brain reacts to those and future situations all throughout your life.

Positive, Powerful and Effective Speech


Start listening to language. Listen to others, listen to yourself, observe how the mind
thinks when confronted with a challenge and how the body reacts to resistance. Are you
overwhelmingly positive? Or are you more or less just getting by and hoping no one asks
too much of you.
“I am the master of my mind, body and emotions.” That’s is an effective and powerful
affirmation to retrain the subconscious mind. I feel strength, I see it in my mind and I
speak it out. I am the master of my mind, body and emotions. Try it now and say it over
and over. I am the master of my mind, body and emotions. See yourself crossing the finish
line, lifting that last rep, getting the job, shaking hands with your mentor, resolving all past
issues, befriending that person finally, approaching your future loved one. Every day, day in
and day out, speak something to yourself that you want. Be creative and be realistic. Think
it, feel it, say it. I know you can succeed.
Why Can I Not Do This?

What if you are not succeeding and days or months pass without any resolve or progress?
You get stuck in a loop over and over again. Constant failure is not that common, but
what’s more is the sense of not progressing as fast as we’d like, and that’s due to low self-es-
teem and having a poor sense of time under tension.

The Social Mirror


At some point over the course of our lives we have all been misguided and have been told
who we are by the people around us. Parents, teachers, siblings, friends, neighbors, any-
one and everyone who can speak has told us something about ourselves—even things we
didn’t think or know we were. That is called the social mirror and it is other people’s re-
flection of themselves that they see in you. The social mirror is wrong.
People around us are projecting their insecurities, their fears, their regrets and their re-
morse onto us and they do this without knowing. Someone close to you will say, “Oh, you
can’t do that. Ya, I tried already, didn’t work.” That may be true for them but not for you.
People generally don’t feel good when they see someone else succeeding at something they
have tried to do before and failed. So what they do is project their own self-doubt and low
self-perception on you and slowly it builds in your own mind as who you are and what
you are or aren’t capable of. The social mirror is based on false or irrelevant information
and experience. You are not those people and you are not what they said you were. You are
not the social mirror. No one else can change the fact that you exist and can accomplish
whatever you train for as long as you are putting in hard work and expecting practical and
achievable results.
Maybe you haven’t actually done a whole lot in life and maybe you’re just too young.
But this law is true for everyone: there is an unlimited amount of potential in you. Deep
inside you right now is limitlessness—there is no end to what you can accomplish. You
can do and be whatever you put your mind to. Be careful though, because having that
potential means you can gravitate toward character traits that pull you down. Man has the
potential to do just as much bad as good, so use this power wisely.

Staying Away from the Social Mirror


Do not be a product of the social mirror and do not be swayed by things outside yourself
since you are in control. Be wise. Don’t even be swayed by me saying you’re limitless. Feel
it inside you and experience it for yourself. Don’t just listen to motivation, actually be mo-
tivated. Happiness is often too temporary to enjoy for that long, seek contentment. Hard
work breeds contentment because you are able to hold on to concrete things that you have
worked hard to sustain. Exercise and the result of being healthy is a good example of that
contentment principle.

Making the Final Decision


Constant failure, or your perception of getting stuck and not progressing, is also due to
not ever thinking you were going to improve in the first place. Maybe you were only going
to change your diet because of someone else’s projection or desire. In self-mastery there
has to be a real unshakable resolve to stop doing whatever is making you unhappy. In the
beginning we dance around the issue. Eventually our search for self-indulgence starts again
and we go through what could be months of validation for it. We have to have a firm reali-
zation that we are not achieving what we were born for and we want to stop living a life of
mediocrity. We have to want it bad, like a hunger or thirst. It has to be your mission all day
and night.
This idea of becoming better or pushing through resistance is not for the faint of heart
and that is easy to observe in normal human behavior. Most people do not want to feel
uncomfortable or unbalanced in their life. They want to just go about their routine with-
out ever having their beliefs questioned or their experience pushed to deeper depths. This
publication and this writer is saying the opposite. You need to push your beliefs, you need
to push against resistance and you absolutely need to create meaningful stress in your life
in order to exceed beyond the normal.
An overweight person doesn’t improve their health by thinking about it every now and
then. Someone who actually wants to change has to get up with the idea in mind that
their whole day is centered around a new diet, a new exercise plan, a new shopping routine
and paradigm shift. Everything in their life must revolve around that goal.

Begin With the End in Mind


You have to be OK with the fact that vice is no longer part of your life and you have to
come to a final decision as to what the goal you are striving to achieve is. That’s called
beginning with the end in mind and it is a necessary foundational tool to succeed at your
goal, because in order to succeed at something you have to know what you are striving for.
Remind yourself daily or hourly in some extreme cases about what you are trying to
achieve. Have systems in place to prevent you from failing. Keep good and honest people
around you who have similar goals. And most importantly have a reasonable timeline to
assess progress. Don’t get let down by stalls in progress, just keep going. Becoming the best
version of yourself and mastering the basics revolves around consistency and the unwilling
resolve to move forward no matter what. We naturally seek pleasure and comfort but most
things that change our life are hard, unpleasant and uncomfortable.
Embrace the Suck: Getting Comfortable with Life’s Challenges

Defining The Suck


Today and every day you are going to wake up, walk outside and enter a world filled with
different kinds of people with different thought sequences, different pasts and different
paradigms. There is not going to by any perfect situations to guide you. Your attitude will
be tested, your opinions and feelings will be challenged by others and someone at some-
time is going to attempt and crush your personal world view. Welcome to the Suck. Wel-
come to an arena that can be used for personal unfoldment.
Life is supposed to present challenges (The Suck) for our benefit. Situations arise as we
move about the world in action. People we work with, fragile tools and sturdy machines,
our feelings—all of these appurtenances of life will at some time or another change shape
or break, leaving us slightly confused or upset. Embracing the suck means getting comfort-
able with life’s hard-hitting nature and even holding out your chin while saying “Hit me
with your best shot.” Once we accept the reality of our own uniqueness and can rationally
express ourselves without excessive emotion we can move about the world with ease. This
natural flow of existence becomes noticeable to others, we pick up like-minded souls as
friends, the law of attraction increases, supervisors increase dependency and/or promote;
all these seemingly “good luck” occurrences are just a natural result of Suck embracement.
Another word for this new personal attitude is effective or proactive.

A Word On Discipline
I love discipline, you could say I’m a little obsessed with it. Let me explain a bit about the personal
disciplines I use on a daily basis.

• I almost always wake up by 4am.


• Sleeping-in for me means 5am, year-round.
• I take regular uncomfortable and shocking cold showers.
• Every day begins with meditation and worship of my deity.
• Each meal I eat is measured to the gram or to the cup and I track every macronutrient.
• No day is complete without at least one hour of difficult bodyweight training, weightlifting and 5
miles of walking.
• I use self-denial for foods I want to eat because I am the boss, not the tongue.
• Why live this way? Because it is hard. It’s not the easy, comfortable or quick moments in life that
build long-lasting character. It is the hard, uncomfortable pressure in hot-house conditions that
molds us into great men. Making our own private lives that much more challenging will make the
outside world a breeze.

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they
are easy, but because they are hard.” - John F. Kennedy
Embracing the suck means dealing with all the crap life has to offer with a smile. It means
digging down deep inside our hidden courage reserves and pulling out each morsel so we
can live another day. When the process is regular our willpower grows—we actually have
more than we started with. Taking from our will is not like withdrawing money from a
bank; after a while you would be fully depleted and depressed, unable to go on. When we
use our willpower on a regular basis our reserves actually increase. Each task done better
than expected builds more strength and more courage to face a slightly more difficult ex-
perience.

Inherent Stoic Values


The trouble starts when we aren’t aware of negative reactions to hard times. By clinging to
hardships with regret or remorse, wondering why bad things happen to you, nothing is ac-
complish or learned. We take no wisdom away from the situation. Not everything is going
to be shiny and perfect even when you embrace the suck, and the point is that it doesn’t
have to be. Eventually you will be able to keep going and stand back up after taking that
right-hook from life. It is not that these moments will never happen, on the contrary they
have too, we just aren’t hesitant about moving forward. We then begin to fully embrace
the suck as we drudge through life’s sticky and painful situations.
Never feel sorry for yourself. There shouldn’t be a glimpse of sadness in your mental ca-
pacity. When the suck of life comes you just have to bear down and plan your next move.
This is a perfect moment for an affirmation to get you by. One of my thoughts during
tough times is remembering the fact that I am making changes in life and making pow-
erful moves rather then just keeping quiet and not making a sound or bothering anyone.
Making a difference in your life is going to become obvious to others at some point. Even-
tually someone will notice a different routine or attitude and immediately project their
fears and insecurities on you. Your doing good, keep going regardless of the haters.

The Sucks Foot-soldiers


Why are there haters? Well, you should know since you and I were once haters of some-
thing, or someone, at sometime in our lives. That fact might be a little embarrassing, but
it is true if you look back far enough. There was a time in our past that we didn’t fully
support someone we knew, or perhaps didn’t even know, because they were succeeding at
a faster rate then we were. Maybe we doubted them secretly or maybe we even told them
they couldn’t sustain the pace. Being a hater is just a natural part of growing up and feeling
jealousy. The key is to let haters have their doubts without letting it disturb your vision.

“He who takes his orders gladly, escapes the bitterest part of slavery—doing what one does not want
to do. The man who does something under orders is not unhappy; he is unhappy who does something
against his will. Let us therefore so set our minds in order that we may desire whatever is demanded of
us by circumstances, and above all that we may reflect upon our end without sadness.” - Seneca

Embracing the External and Internal Suck


Mastery comes when the Suck no longer takes our cool from us. Sure, we may react to a
situation beyond what was needed, but the master can reel himself back within seconds.
A few key words in an overextended discussion can be, “Let me clarify,” “What I mean is,”
“I agree, but I’m still seeing it from this perspective,” “You have a lot of experience in this
area, what do you think about this?”
We can use language to disagree and install our point to our supervisors or loved ones
diplomatically. The challenge comes when we give the other person no oxygen at all, or
little space to also put their view in perspective. Letting people know they matter and that
you are listening, not necessarily agreeing, makes a huge difference in interpersonal com-
munication.
Challenges are not based on people alone, but when they come from ourselves—our
vices or weaknesses—we don’t need to include anyone else or whine/mull about it. Em-
bracing the challenge in those situations requires practice with our willpower, mantras or
affirmations to turn our mind around, maybe even a support group that focuses not on
the problem but on cleaning up every other area of life. From my experience though, true
embracement of personal issues is finally resolved in the chambers of our own wisdom.
Rarely will an external influence give us capacity to complete something. In almost every
situation where no one else is needed, we must cross the finish line alone.
Men of Iron and Steel: The Wisdom of Robert Speer

In a small book of lectures appropriately titled The Stuff of Manhood Robert Speer outlines
his philosophy of excellence, specifically that which pertains to the nature of virtue in a
nation and of Man. His perspective radiates out from what each of our personal morals
should demand, to the ideals and ethics of society as a whole. In his first lecture titled
“Discipline and Austerity” Speer drills into the reader the fact that whether we agree or
disagree on military training, the nation must decide if it agrees with basic principles of
self-discipline, obedience and enjoying hardships. His words have a powerful, intoxicating
effect. We cannot deny the truth in which he speaks this first paragraph,

“Whether there should be compulsory military training in America is a question which some people
will answer yes or no according to their general theories and others according to their observation of
the actual effects of such training on moral character.
“But whatever our views may be on this familiar question, whether we regard military service as
ethically helpful in its influence or as morally injurious, we cannot differ as to the need in our nation-
al character of those qualities of self-control, of quick and unquestioning obedience to duty, of joyful
contempt of hardship, and of zest in difficult and arduous undertakings which, rightly or wrongly, we
consider soldierly, which we attribute in such rich measure to our forefathers, and which the moral exi-
gencies of our national task to-day as peremptorily demand. To put these primary and elemental needs
as sharply as possible, let us call them discipline and austerity. Our American character needs more of
both.”

Speer is not wrong about what man ought to bring himself to, but neither does man fall
short permanently. Life is cyclical in nature and as it rotates around it repeats itself. In oth-
er words, man is always returning to himself in an act of self-mastery. The genius in Speer’s
words is never going to be cliche because someone is always coming up out of the grind of
life having fallen and gotten lost. Another person will always be succeeding in life, ready
to take on new challenges as they get absorbed into their purpose. Both situations require
constant effort. On one hand, the fallen spirit must yearn to rise up; and on the other, the
triumphant man must continuously remind himself of his roles and goals in life; service to
others then becomes his main goal.
Man’s need for discipline is compared to military training due to it being an eternal
reference point. When we are confused about where to go we can always refer back to a
soldier’s perspective, and it syncs well with redefining a man’s lot in life because men are
inherently attracted to the qualities and character of solid, concrete and personal perfect-
ing systems. You didn’t know that, did ya? Man in and of himself will naturally hold the
seed of mastery within him, but whether it grows and blooms into a fully formed structure
of dynamic effectiveness is up to him.
Easy Way or Hard Way

The whole point of discipline and austerity is to become unshakable. Why do we want to
become unshakable? Because life, while sometimes seeming to grant us our every wish, is
not that easy when we start to reach beyond what we are normally capable of. Once we
endeavor to pass the gate of our surroundings we enter into an unknown battlefield. There
is competition, jealousy, backbiting, ladder-climbing, cut-throat politics and consumer-
ism. Life never held simplicity, it only seems that way because we are always yearning for
a greener pasture. “Oh things were simpler before cars.” Oh ya? Ever heard of the occupa-
tion of picking up all the dead horses in the neighborhood and hauling them off to a glue
factory? Right, imagine that.
Speer’s book doesn’t beg us to tie our shoes and tuck in our shirts, it says that one day
you won’t actually have a choice. Boy either becomes man or he becomes bum. If we don’t
grow up with discipline then at some point in life we need to grab a hold of it like your
manhood is falling off a cliff. Grab hold until your hands bleed and never let go.

“For a man to love himself so much that he never thinks of his neighbors, to blind his eyes so com-
pletely to consequences that he can live for the passing moment,—this is a very easy philosophy, and
the man or the woman who is able to practice it will seem, for a while, to live in the sunshine, a fine
butterfly, smooth-going life.
“All this is easier than to say, not, What is my impulse? but, What ought I? not, What do I like? but,
What is best for all the world? not, What is the easy way? but, What is the hard way over which the
feet go that carry the burdens of mankind, that bear the load of the world? But, though it is the easy
way for a while, there comes a time when it is no longer the easy way.”

Your mind is going to seek the easier way. The mind’s job is to keep you safe and sound but
your will grows weak while the mind is allowed to take over and wrap everyone in a spe-
cial blanket of safety.

“Everything is all right, we are all safe and no one is struggling or getting tired,” the mind will say. As
soon as a challenge comes along we will crumble. It could be at work when your boss asks you to push
on a new front and expand the department, or in traffic when someone tails you and all you want to
do is slam on the breaks and force them into a collision—as if that helps. From small to large tests of
our capacity, life finds a way to see what we are made of. Those who wish to have smooth sailing instead
of a bumpy road can have their mediocrity. But, my friends, our real joy lay deep within the caverns of
self-mastery.
“There comes a time when, having always indulged ourselves, we can’t break the habit; when, never
having taken our lives in our hands and reined them to the great ministries of mankind, we discover
that we cannot. We find that we obey our caprices; follow any impulse; cannot stick to any task; do not
know a principle when we see it; have no iron or steel anywhere in our character; are the riffraff of the
world that the worthy men and women have to bear along as they go.
“Now I suggest that we put all this positively to ourselves, for every one of us knows that we are tread-
ing near some of the moral realities of weakness and need in our day and nation. Why should restraint,
obedience, the authority of duty and God be let into our lives? In order that out of all these things
self-control may come. And why should there be this submission and control of our lives by duty, and
truth and God ? Well, the reasons are obvious, the moment we begin to think about them.”

If you have ever had the opportunity to be without vice then you know exactly why we
seek virtue: contentment. To abide in your own greatness is something to behold. Man
truly is an island of self-sufficiency and worth, once he reaches the shores of his own vir-
tues. We can find these people in society or in stories of great heroes or those who acted
bravely when called upon.

“The men and women who will not run away from any task, who stand steadfast in truth, upon whose
every word we can rest our whole soul, grew out of a certain discipline and education.
“And it is this that gives freedom. There is no freedom outside of character. Liberty, as Montesquieu
says, is not freedom to do just as we please. Liberty is the ability to do as we ought. And the freedom
that we need is not the freedom of caprice and whim and listening to our impulses. It is the freedom
that enables our eyes clearly to see what right is, and then empowers us to do it.”

Much of the trouble that we face today can be found in social media. Social media, or
any form of instant communication, is a type of drug. Instagram might not look like your
typical narcotic, but when you dissect what happens in the brain when these instant grat-
ifications take place, your brain lights up with dopamine and you get excited, one scroll
after another. Down the labyrinth of notifications, instant change and novelty— right in
your hand. A screen in front of your eyes made of fake light projecting a picture show of
fantasies. Get away from it as soon as you can.
The light of a starry night sky is better and more healing than anything a digital picture
can offer. How can you even have a conversation on Reddit without constant refreshing of
the page, god that is depressing isn’t it? If you never train yourself to charge up on nature
and silence then all of your energy will be pushed out as you seek another form of excite-
ment. The Internet alone is truly a grand phenomenon that when taken to excess is a sure
cause for illness. When used with discipline, though, these things can be a game-changer
in regards to work and social systems. But if you don’t have any inner capacity for strength
or restriction these things will drag you along in its endless variety.

“And we must learn in this school the things we value and desire most : purity and delicacy and refine-
ment of character, for they cannot be acquired elsewhere. So much social standing nowadays is uttered
in terms of self-assertion and indulgence and the ability to have any whim or caprice gratified. This sort
of self-assertion, this caprice, is regarded by many of us as the highest mark of social authority, whereas
we know it is precisely the opposite, that it is self-restraint and self-control and self-surrender that mark
the finest lives.”

The Need to Fight


Some of us have grown up in angry homes and angry communities. Either kids are fighting
at school, parents fighting in the home or we see high emotions and anger in politics and
world events. People can be base, crass, rude and ineloquent creatures that think it is ok to
lose one’s cool and fight fire with fire. They are wrong and they look ridiculous.
Children retaliate. Little boys and girls name-call and use silly one-liners to attack a
schoolmate. Adults were supposed to grow out of these habits and make their mind into
a respectable place where discussion and conversation can happen healthily. Getting back
to virtuous manhood means we have to get a little more intellectually astute and a little
less brute—only a little. By default I think men are more aggressive, more protective, more
demanding and certainly the male sex is physically stronger and prone to defending that
reputation. There’s nothing wrong with learning how to defend oneself, many great men
were also boxers, but we have to know when and where to throw punches.
Getting angry, or even getting overly emotional, shows clear as day that you are prone
to let your defense down and let the pleasurable or gratifying nature shine through. We
only resort to that because we do not yet know what it feels like to out wit someone or be
the bigger man and let something go. The bigger man wins in the long run, the angry fool
remains the same. If you are to exude leadership then you have to be the kind of man that
knows right from wrong and does not answer to any immoral decision. This goes into the
private arena as well. If you are willing to act towards pleasure over wisdom, you are sure to
show weakness in the public.

“Our modern ideals of what constitutes high social and national standing and character say : ” Fight
fire with fire. Dishonor releases honor from itself. He struck you foul ; strike him so in return.” But the
man who had learned self-restraint in the school of God’s loyalty and truth, who understood that pow-
er is ours, not to use for self-seeking, but for the good of men and for God’s honor, would not stoop to
any such disloyalty and shame.
“Once more. Whose judgment is of any value? What does passion bid me do? What is my whim or
caprice for tonight? No men will ever come to you and me if we have not been trained in the school
of moral discrimination, if we have not looked on ethical principle and duty in deciding the question
whether each thing- is really right for us and for the whole world. If we are to be men and women to
whom people will come for comfort and strength and guidance, to whom our own children can come
with assurance that they will get the truth, we must be men and women who now place ourselves be-
neath the firm discipline of God.”
Speer brings it back around to the nation:

“Now I have put it—this matter of our need of discipline—in the most personal and individual way,
but it is our great national and corporate need. The body of a nation can only exist through the ordered
discipline of its members and the spirit of a nation like the spirit of a man needs to be cleansed of all
the lusts of willfulness and self-indulgence. The spirit of our American nation needs such cleansing.”
Robert Speer is a religious dude. He is a staunch man of Christ and I don’t relate to Christianity, but I’d
like to end just as he does at the end of the first lecture with his idea of “taking on a cross of our own.”

This idea of taking on burden for the purpose of getting stronger is so profound it can’t be
left out. By living too easily we actually stunt our growth and delay its progress. Take away
the cross idea and you have a foundation in which to live, if you are secular or a follower of
another faith.
If you don’t have a burden, or cross, or karma, or any trouble—start to take on service for
others and selflessly help and mentor for others. Take their cross or their karma or their
trouble and make it your own. Build yourself up mighty and strong and reap the rewards
that life holds.

“No strong man was ever made against no resistance. We develop no physical power by putting forth
no physical effort. All the strength of life we have we get by pushing against opposition. We acquire
power as we draw it out of deep experience and effort.
“Those of us who were not born with a cross must find one, those whose lives have been smooth are
deliberately to find ways of roughening them, so that we may know a life of power and fellowship and
can go out to real work, and be prepared for that greater life and greater service which await us else-
where than here.”
Success comes down to that one mo-
ment when you can either choose the
higher path or the lower. At that mo-
ment you are alone, choose wisely.

Part Two:
Man of Meaning
The Excellent Man

How does one even begin to explain that the inherent nature of man is goodness? Over
the span of history, countless philosophers, sages, wisemen, deep-thinkers, poets and
novelists have dove into the subject with their entire soul—often giving their life to the
subject. The outcome has revealed scriptures, autobiographies and vade mecums on man’s
destiny in this world. It sounds dramatic I know, I’m kind of a dramatic guy. But the sub-
ject has been a passion of mine for over ten-years and I want to share some of it.
I started writing on man’s purpose and excellence about two years ago, for people who
struggled with addiction. My own life had been interrupted by challenges of the mind so I
sought to set things straight again and started helping myself by helping others. The Man
of Meaning chapter is an offshoot of that work.
There is not really one way to explain man’s meaning; there isn’t even one easy way of
choosing what path to follow. Why? Why is there a constant struggle for identity in con-
stantly changing times? Well, that’s life. Our own experience is the very pen that records
history, the challenge comes when you don’t realize you are holding the pen—you are in
charge and you are writing with each moment that passes.
These things were taught to us when we had tribes. Before the world globalized we had
wisemen of our village, leaders, heroes and even fathers that passed tradition and culture
to their sons. Most of that is gone now and we have to learn things on our own. There is
no wisemen to seek wisdom from, no tribe to give a rite-of-passage to your adulthood.
Men are no longer maturing in the same way and we are rife with feminine boys who are
in adult bodies. We don’t spend as much time as the mind needs in nature, and we certain-
ly don’t know many trades or skills that make us physically and mentally strong. Rare are
the Richard Proennekes and Thoreaus, man’s men who stood for what all men invariably
stand for: self-sufficiency. A man used to know how to do things because his dad taught
him. His dad knew because his dad taught him, it was a matter of survival to pass on the
wisdom. As that beautiful culture dies out, we must recognize and embrace becoming our
own men, all on our own.

“The real man smiles in trouble, gathers strength from distress, and grows brave by reflection.”
-Thomas Paine

Historically Great Men


History has given us a few road-maps to find our own destiny. The great thinkers and men
of purpose have recorded their manuals, or had disciples do the recording, in hopes that
it might spread to another poor soul who needs guidance. The basic message usually boils
down to a few themes: slow down and reflect, inquire and avoid excess.

“And we must consider, each for himself, what we are most prone to—for different natures are inclined
to different things—which we may learn by the pleasure or pain we feel. And then we must bend
ourselves in the opposite direction; for by keeping well away from error we shall fall into the middle
course, as we straighten a bent stick by bending it the other way. But in all cases we must be especially
on our guard against pleasant things, and against pleasure; for we can scarce judge her impartially. And
so, in our behavior towards her, we should imitate the behavior of the old counselors towards Helen,
and in all cases repeat their saying: if we dismiss her we shall be less likely to go wrong.” - Aristotle

What religions teach of grace from God and temple priests laud is that there is divinity,
there is glory and man is inherently connected to it in some mysterious way. Over the past
ten years I have had an opportunity to study this so-called Grace, both within and out of
religious contexts. I came to the same conclusions you might find in Plato’s works: I know
not…and that’s ok.
Besides, how can I explain what others have already done? Can’t I just point to the near-
est book from Aristotle or Seneca and have you gain insight? Yes and no. I’ve learned
that everyone takes in knowledge in a different way, much like different linens will absorb
liquid differently. Every once-in-a-while you find some piece of writing that speaks to you,
even if the message is similar to your school teacher’s or maybe even parents (although
parents hardly know the meaning of courage and honor these days).
Different people write down the same message because they use different words to do it.
Like the cloth, people’s minds are all focused in different areas. So, if I can relate justice in
a more simplified way than the Republic does, well perhaps someone would claim I am a
worthy teacher. But in truth I only drop the liquid like I can, it’s you who are able to ab-
sorb it.

Historically Great Works


As I’ve mentioned, Plato’s Dialogues are a timeless masterful work but there are many
others. Walden from Thoreau, the Ethics from Aristotle, Meditations from Aurelius, the
Letters and Essays of Seneca, Epictetus has two notable works—The Discourses and The
Enchiridion. From the Eastern mystic Hindu tradition we have The Upanishads, Patan-
jali’s Yoga Sutras, the list goes on and on and on—each man explaining truths of their life
experience.
Why bother? Because we need to keep our mind sharp. My message to you is going to
be to keep educating yourself. Our mind tends to atrophy the less food we give it. Feed it
knowledge and the mind will perk up and respond with more hunger. Developing a steady
and constant study period will do your search for truth and stability well.

“A man, any man, will go considerably out of his way to pick up a silver dollar; but here are golden
words, which the wisest men of antiquity have uttered, and whose worth the wise of every succeeding
age have assured us of—and yet we learn to read only as far as Easy Reading.” - H.D. Thoreau

Becoming the Excellent Man


“Thus any one can be angry—that is quite easy; any one can give money away or spend it: but to do
these things to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right object, and in the
right manner, is not what everybody can do, and is by no means easy; and that is the reason why right
doing is rare and praiseworthy and noble.” -Aristotle
I’m going to be forthcoming with you: This is tough. Changing your nature, attitude,
character, emotional reactions and overall life skill is really hard. Even the guys that appear
to have a natural ease in flowing with life, they work at it constantly; I also have a theory
that they are all a little nuts. Developing yourself is difficult because we missed the train-
ing during youth. With new technologies come new ways of life and new ways of living.
Obvious, right? Actually I think the patterns and trends of society happen incredibly fast,
but our ability to cognize the change is the slow part.

Great men throughout history have given their own guidelines for living and the common
one is slowing down. That can be said many ways:

• Get back to nature


• Study writings
• Study yourself
• Study others
• Learn a skill
• Learn how to do nothing
• Relax

All of those things mean slow down. Stop for a second and evaluate your life, your words
and even the way you breathe. Are you taking full breaths as you read this?

“Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from
sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude
and stillness, while the birds sang around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling
in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller’s wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of
the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work
of the hands would have been.” - H.D. Thoreau

One of the issues I have with writing about self-improvement is that I’m still improving
myself. In fact, I need to do a lot of work. I get frustrated with people or deadlines, or I
have a mind that likes to wander and seek pleasures that I know my soul doesn’t really care
for. The reality of this book is that I’m trying to help myself by writing down stuff for you.
This makes me responsible.
Becoming Responsible
This teaching has brought me oceans closer to my goal of becoming an excellent man (I
promise to define that eventually.) Once we become responsible to others we almost get
a moral obligation to be good men. Of course that assumes one has morals. For the most
part we can assume we all want to be good and honorable men, each with good qualities
of character and having good decision making skills. The trick here is simple: once a skill
or knowledge is acquired begin teaching it. Others will soon hold you up to a higher stan-
dard and make it known when you trip over your own advice. There’s nothing wrong with
being kept honest, it is one of the key training obligations we receive from our peers and
from healthy male bonding.

Absorb Knowledge and Reflect On It


One of the many profundities of Socrates was that he boasted the he knew nothing. Yet in
his humility was a child-like nature of inquisitiveness and I believe that is what made him
so great. To not know anything means you are totally open to what comes and can move
through life with fluidity. It also shows a great respect to the unknown aspects of life, of
which there are a great many. While Socrates went around inquiring as to what men said
they knew, he was absorbing all kinds of knowledge through questioning and reflection. If
you learn nothing but this one thing, then please heed this advice: Saying “I know” is one
of the most annoying and childish things I have ever heard. When people feel that you
know something you won’t ever have to declare it.

“Follow me then, and I will lead you where you will be happy in life and after death, as the argument
shows. And never mind if some one despises you as a fool, and insults you, if he has a mind; let him
strike you, by Zeus, and do you be of good cheer, and do not mind the insulting blow, for you will never
come to any harm in the practice of virtue, if you are a really good and true man. When we have prac-
ticed virtue together, we will apply ourselves to politics, if that seems desirable, or we will advise about
whatever else may seem good to us, for we shall be better able to judge then. In our present condition
we ought not to give ourselves airs, for even on the most important subjects we are always changing our
minds; so utterly stupid are we! Let us, then, take the argument as our guide, which has revealed to us
that the best way of life is to practice justice and every virtue in life and death. This way let us go; and in
this exhort all men to follow, not in the way to which you trust and in which you exhort me to follow
you; for that way, Callicles, is nothing worth.” -Socrates
To Explain The Unexplainable
While this book proposes to teach what a man of meaning ought to know, let me be clear
in saying we realize the difficulty ahead of us. Please forgive any mistakes and grammatical
errors, of which there will be many, and do give some effort of critical thinking instead of
accepting everything written. Go out and study yourselves to see what is true for you. Be-
sides, all we can offer as writers is the ability to help you think for yourself. All we can do
in the end is inspire you to become better and find your eventual goodness.
Getting stuck along the way is natural. In fact, I propose that difficulties and hardships
make life worth living and I would go even farther to say that those are the things we are
living for. We struggle to learn and grow, then we teach by example and give a few pointers
along the way. The little joys in life are not presented to you, you must find them in the
quiet and stillness of nature and in yourself.

“The first great thing is to find yourself, and for that you need solitude and contemplation, at least
sometimes. Deliverance will not come from the rushing noisy centers of civilization; it will come from
the lonely places.” - Fridtjof Nansen

A man of meaning is a man that exudes excellence constantly. His very action from mo-
ment to moment comes from his soul. He knows himself because he has sought out
who exactly is doing what with his body. The man of meaning knows where he is going
because he has a goal in mind. Justice, courage, love and moderation follow him like the
appurtenances of a carpenter wearing his tools across his waist. The excellent man uses his
birth-given faculty of reason to always guide him. He knows the emotions are a part of the
mind only, not of the soul.

“The first great error to be thrown away is a common one—acceptance of the physical body as the real
self when it is only an expression and channel, instrument and vehicle of the Self.” - Paul Brunton

You are indeed excellence itself. The successful path for a man is to root out and remove
each little appearance blinding your view like a leaf can hide the sun right in front of the
eyes. Those walls of challenge were put there to build your strength as you knock them
down one by one. What’s left was there the entire time: You.
We will go forward from here and attempt to better ourselves and see if this writing can
produce some responsibility in me. If someone happens to learn, well then that is fine and
merry too. My aim is to be a man of character. Someone who can be trusted, who can be
calm in the heat of the moment, remain modest when others seek pleasure, strength when
society says it’s OK to be weak. I seek to be a man of meaning, and by god for the sake of
your happiness I hope you do too.
“The excellent man, then, as we define him, will have this required property of permanence, and all
through life will preserve his character; for he will be occupied continually, or with the least possible
interruption, in excellent deeds and excellent speculations; and, whatever his fortune be, he will take
it in the noblest fashion, and bear himself always and in all things suitably, since he is truly good and
“foursquare without a flaw.” -Aristotle
The Ebb and Flow of Life

I got a message from John Gail, one of three writers of a blog collab I’m part of, mention-
ing how life has swept him away in collecting honey for the hive, and he would be too
busy to write for a few weeks. Stefan, the other wiseman, is also busy but that’s nothing
new for him. Yes life just happens to fill our precious time every now and again; this is a
good thing.

Idle Hands
When we are out of duties we become a bit lazy and irresponsible. Back when I used to
write about addiction I came to the conclusion that most young people weren’t really
addicted in the traditional sense of the word. Often we just get slothful and gluttonous
when our time is not filled with something better; or worse—no one depends on us for
anything.
Becoming an adult is not just physical. Just because we arrive at a certain age on a certain
day doesn’t mean we actually matter more to someone else than we did the day before.
Basically you can still be an ass the day after turning 18 or 21, that number doesn’t mean
you’re an adult. To me, being an adult can happen any time after single-digit-life.
In the past, pre-teens and teens had enough responsibility to the point that when dad
was gone the next in line was “the man of the house” and back then that actually meant
you were really in charge. That meant you were in charge of protecting the home because
you were trained to shoot a gun responsibly; that also meant you were in charge of cattle
herding, feeding animals, working with dangerous equipment around a farm, gathering
produce that your family survived on, et cetera.

From The Atlantic:

“Work for men was more widespread, more dangerous, worse paid, and, well, just more annoying.
According to the 1920 census, 85 percent of men over 14 were in the labor force, compared with just
69 percent for men over 16 today. It was the dawn of scientific management, with factory workers in-
troduced to a brand new office colleague, the time clock. Manufacturing workers averaged 55 hours at
work per week, 10 percent more than self-reported averages today. And the jobs were more dangerous:
With a fatality rate of 61 deaths per 100,000 workers, the workplace was about 30 times more danger-
ous than it is today.”
A Man’s Man
Back when men were Men we actually had people depending on us because they just
couldn’t perform the same tasks. Our strength, stamina, testosterone and know-how actu-
ally meant a lot more in physically demanding times. This still exists of course because not
every part of the world is like a cubicle, but technology has softened us up some and made
us all goopy and creamy on the inside. Even kids are developing less resistance to germs
because they don’t get as dirty as we used to, for shame!
All this boils down to a simple point: The more we observe our habits and proclivities,
the more we need to adjust and refine our goals towards higher meaning and purpose. Be-
fore that we’re a little dumber. Becoming responsible for others is usually a clear sign that
we are adults. Responsibility will create meaningful dependency, dependency will create
trust, that trust will inspire and motivate you and a dynamic cycle of improvement devel-
ops into a meaningful existence.
If you have no one to need you then you can do whatever the hell you want without any
consequences….right? Well no, actually, you have to go back to my other posts to remem-
ber that man himself, as an island, is the very thing worth living for. The effective man isn’t
actually effective or worth much to anyone else if he himself is not a pillar of strength. If
you are weak-shouldered and get some weight of burden from someone then both of you
are going to buckle under the load. The trick to a meaningful existence is to improve your-
self to where excess weight and capacity becomes natural.
We can learn through challenges, and sink or swim training works for some individuals,
but it’s not an absolute truth. We don’t actually learn anything if we haven’t the guts to be
honest and observe our weaknesses. The blade in all of us needs to be sharpened daily else
it goes dull and no longer cuts. We all need to train and retrain ourselves regularly in order
to become and remain powerful men that people need around. That’s why I said before
this isn’t easy. If it were easy then becoming a certain age would magically transform you
into a full-blown adult, capable of wisdom and improving the lives of those around you.
Not that simple.

Here is a list to get you going in the right direction. Ideally these are things your father
taught you as you built that deck together, but unfortunately the fathers, tribes and
role-models are becoming extinct.

• Go Outside Everyday

Each day you need to find yourself alone and in nature somehow. Being in a crowded city
is no excuse. There are parks and coasts and roads that are built exclusively for this purpose
and I have seen them all over this world. Get there and start walking. Collection of your
thoughts is mandatory because the world is helping scattering them all over the place.
Social constructs and past education has screwed you all up. Ads, billboards, commercials
and scantly clad broads have changed you for the worse. Get outside and start walking:
Daily.

• Exercise Daily

I don’t care about any rule that says there are “rest days,” you can figure out a daily split of
lifting/cardio/lifting/random sport to recover and keep you busy and in shape. If you are
reading this and cannot see a straight line of sight down to your member then it’s time to
get in better shape, no more belly fat. Stop eating junk, drinking crap and living like a slug.
Get moving, get fresh air and feel your strength again. The last few generations have got-
ten weak and pathetic. Every man should know how many pushups he can do, 40 for me,
and should be able to get down and do them.

• Watch for Beta-Attitudes

The whole alpha/beta world is a real science but has gotten skewed for gaining skills on
how many women you can rack up in the bedroom, aka Game. That in itself is beta in my
opinion. No amount of external pleasure can compare to the glory of self-mastery and
discipline. Watch your language and stop apologizing for everything. Relax around peo-
ple and be comfortable with looking dumb on occasion or talking too much. Just do your
own thing and stop looking for group approval.

• Eat Correctly

Nutrition is a major world and requires many posts and comments about getting it right.
For now I will say stick to whole foods and ditch the high fructose corn syrup. If you can’t
understand an ingredient list, then forget it. Make some bread yourself and eat it. That
leads to the next one:

• Make Your Own Stuff

Becoming a craftsmen is about getting back to what your body and mind sharpen itself
with. By crafting bread from dough, beer from barley, chairs from wood and the hundreds
of other arts you begin to sharpen yourself like a machine. You have gotten soft, your mind
and your body, so you need to keep them fresh. Again we lead into the next rule:

• Read From the Greats

Reading from the wisemen of history will move you in ways I can’t explain easily. There’s
no absence of wisemen or resources from the past and Google has made everything avail-
able to you. If you want the PDF instead of a bunch of book links to Google Books, just
type PDF at the end of whatever you are looking for.

• Do Things People In Your Circle Don’t Do

In other words: Be Original. If you are a gamer, play some oddball game at the end of the
day that makes you think differently. Any other game then a FPS will do. Another way of
saying this rule is: think outside the box. You currently reside in a set number of move-
ments on any given day, and they will all be repetitive and “safe” if you track them down.
Stop it. Be spontaneous and courageous. Go nuts and just be gone for the day. See what it
is like to pack a lunch and just travel on foot or drive and camp. You will finally sleep bet-
ter by using up some stored-up energy.

Last but not least there is one main rule of them all for complete adulthood, manliness,
courageous, Stoic, philosophic key to all of life, read carefully:

• Do Not Let Pleasure or Pain Get the Best of You

Keep going no matter what.

“This it is to have studied what a man ought to study; to have made desire, aversion, free from hin-
drance, and free from all that a man would avoid. I must die. If now, I am ready to die. If, after a short
time, I now dine because it is the dinner-hour; after this I will then die. How? Like a man who gives up
what belongs to another.” - Epictetus
A Sense of Duty

“Be determined not to curse anything outside, not to lay the blame upon any one outside, but be a man,
stand up, lay the blame on yourself. You will find that is always true. Get hold of yourself.”
- Swami Vivekananda

If you haven’t already realized as you read through the pages of this book, improving
yourself through struggle, educating yourself constantly and living a non-duplicitous day-
to-day makes you strong enough to become the leader of your life. You don’t have to lead
anyone else. The idea here is that you improve yourself, you live that way and peace comes
from within as if you drank some sort of magical potion.
It’s counterintuitive to think about how struggle is good and brings eustress in our lives.
Eustress is the kind of struggle that when dealt with appropriately, builds us up over time
to make us as strong as a pillar. Once you start shifting from, “I hope today is easier than
yesterday,” to, “Give me your best shot, life,” then you are on your way to using challenges
to your benefit instead of letting them tear you down. Oddly enough that is our purpose
in life, and whether you do it alone, with your spouse or with God through religion,
doesn’t really matter. The thing about religion is, you aren’t leaving everything up to the
deity; you actually have to put in the work to succeed. In that way the two paths of suc-
cess—going at it alone or with aid—are similar. Either way you have to dig deep and work
hard at it.

Reading From the Greats


I have been reading Walden by H.D. Thoreau and can’t help but write about it. There’s
nothing more meaningful than spending time alone in the woods and collecting wisdom
from within yourself. This wisdom is brought out by nature, its calm attitude has a way of
reflecting that which we seek in ourselves.
Thoreau uses the term “Sense of duty” a few times throughout the book which is some-
thing I have written on before. Man’s call to duty or service to himself and those closest to
him will lead to a satisfying life experience. A selfish life is not necessarily one that doesn’t
involve anyone else, it simply means one does not live with self-respect or honor. Damage
to ones own self is indeed selfish as he is the very thing worth saving.

His thoughts on the cabin morning routine he went through for two years:

“I did not read books the first summer; I hoed beans. Nay, I often did better than this. There were
times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of
the head or hands. I love a broad margin to my life. Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken
my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the
pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sang around or
flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some
traveller’s wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons
like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been. They were
not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance. I realized what the
Orientals mean by contemplation and the forsaking of works. For the most part, I minded not how the
hours went.

“The day advanced as if to light some work of mine; it was morning, and lo, now it is evening, and
nothing memorable is accomplished. Instead of singing like the birds, I silently smiled at my incessant
good fortune. As the sparrow had its trill, sitting on the hickory before my door, so had I my chuckle
or suppressed warble which he might hear out of my nest. My days were not days of the week, bearing
the stamp of any heathen deity, nor were they minced into hours and fretted by the ticking of a clock;
for I lived like the Puri Indians, of whom it is said that “for yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow they have
only one word, and they express the variety of meaning by pointing backward for yesterday, forward
for to-morrow, and overhead for the passing day.” This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no
doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found want-
ing. A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardly
reprove his indolence.” - Thoreau

Can you imagine? Getting away from the rush of life to find that the very faculty that
causes peace of mind lies right within you. We don’t need to go anywhere really, what we
need to do is observe what goes on around us. You can find peace in the middle of New
York City or in the desert of Arizona, the difference is what you are aware of. Of course,
we need to start with the hardness level on easy and work our way up; but there isn’t any
excuse.

“Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily
observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life, to compare it with such things as we
know, would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. If we respected only what is
inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets. When we are unhur-
ried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute exis-
tence—that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality. This is always exhilarating
and sublime.
“By closing the eyes and slumbering, and consenting to be deceived by shows, men establish and
confirm their daily life of routine and habit every where, which still is built on purely illusory founda-
tions. Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live
it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure. I have read in a Hindu
book, that “there was a king’s son, who, being expelled in infancy from his native city, was brought up
by a forester, and, growing up to maturity in that state, imagined himself to belong to the barbarous
race with which he lived. One of his father’s ministers having discovered him, revealed to him what he
was, and the misconception of his character was removed, and he knew himself to be a prince. So soul,”
continues the Hindu philosopher, ‘from the circumstances in which it is placed, mistakes its own char-
acter, until the truth is revealed to it by some holy teacher, and then it knows itself to be Brahman.’ I
perceive that we inhabitants of New England live this mean life that we do because our vision does not
penetrate the surface of things. We think that, that is which appears to be.” -Thoreau

The profound depth that Thoreau reaches in Walden is oceanic. To dive deep into one’s
mind and come out wiser is rare indeed. There’s a Stoic-like realm to Walden, and specif-
ically you can see it in the quote above. Man is bombarded with life like wave after wave
crashing into his consciousness, that he hardly has time to grasp air before he is smacked
down again. Without going anywhere we can start to observe and pause, observe and
pause. Try this: the next time someone speaks to you, don’t say anything. Just gather your
thoughts and remember that what’s happening is an appearance, it is outside yourself. Usu-
ally when we speak after pausing we engage someone on a deeper level with more respect.
Our first reactions to something can be the worst, as if the interlocutors of our life are out
to get us in some contrivance of theirs.
The Stoic philosophy saved my life some years ago. The fact that nothing outside myself
could cause me to suffer was so liberating, I keep the philosophy with me and attempt to
use it each moment. Sometimes I miss the mark, but that learning is part of life. As long as
we are aware of the struggle being good for our progress then we never struggle in vain. If
someone wasn’t aware enough then they might sweep more junk under the rug or behind
the t.v. But, when you are always observant, even in a fiery rain of emotional entangle-
ments, there is a lesson to be taken away.
Excess, Deficiency and the Mean

Aristotle’s Approach to Finding Our Balance


Aristotle has an almost mathematical-like approach to determining how we should act, to
whom, at what time and in what context. The reality is that as we determine who we are,
we have to start acting that way. If our goal is to become the excellent man, to become a
man of meaning and live a life that fulfills us, then we have to systematically learn what an
excellent man does, and to whom he does it to, and when, and to what level of passion he
gives these things that he does. This is difficult, but that is why we praise the man of great
competence and temperance.
Thus any one can be angry—that is quite easy; any one can give money away or spend it:
but to do these things to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the
right object, and in the right manner, is not what everybody can do, and is by no means
easy; and that is the reason why right doing is rare and praiseworthy and noble.
Our greatest power, or internal capacity, is to choose
The choice is ours, but what do we do? In Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics he outlines a
method for answering this question by using three positions—two of them are extremes
and within those extremes lay the mean, or moderate trait. For example:

• Extreme or Excess Attitudes


• Arrogance
• Loquaciousness
• Anger
• Gluttony

These very real character traits are a part of our emotional/intellectual system and they
tend to flare up when something we are invested closely in, such as a project or activity in
our lives, is threatened; the result is one or several of these excessive traits comes out. We
lose our cool and depending on how badly the flare up happens we look and sound ridicu-
lous.
The unfortunate aspect of all this is it doesn’t matter if you are right. No one remembers
the person who flips out and loses it, even if you were mistreated. We need to keep calm
under all circumstances if we are to be looked at in a higher standard and become the man
we were meant to be.
Oddly enough this includes the private battles. Stephen Covey uses the term private
and public battles to differentiate those times when we are alone and when we are in pub-
lic. The trick with the alone times is they tend to reflect our attitudes in public. If we are
losing our ability or faculty to use reason when we are alone then we tend to expose our
weaknesses in public. If we can’t keep a moral standard when no one is looking, chances
are we are going to slip in public and slide down into savagery in front of others. Let’s fix
that now because that is something children do.

The Approach
Looking at the opposite or deficiency:

• Cowardice
• Silence
• Apathy
• Aversion

A man will lean towards one of these extremes or deficiencies in a situation. The happy or
excellent man who knows what they are about and who wishes to command a presence in
a moderate and wise way needs to do is act out the mean of the excess or deficiency. That’s
moderation and that is the struggle in which we are in. Here are the balanced epithets to
which we esteem:

• Humility
• Articulate
• Passionate
• Modest

“There are, as we said, three classes of disposition, viz. two kinds of vice, one marked by excess, the
other by deficiency, and one kind of virtue, the observance of the mean. Now, each is in a way opposed
to each, for the extreme dispositions are opposed both to the mean or moderate disposition and to one
another, while the moderate disposition is opposed to both the extremes. …so the mean or moderate
dispositions exceed as compared with the defective dispositions, and fall short as compared with the
excessive dispositions, both in feeling and in action; e.g. the courageous man seems foolhardy as com-
pared with the coward, and cowardly as compared with the foolhardy; and similarly the temperate man
appears profligate in comparison with the insensible, and insensible in comparison with the profligate
man; and the liberal man appears prodigal by the side of the illiberal man, and illiberal by the side of
the prodigal man.”
The Goal
No matter which category you fit into—the excess or the deficiency—we want to shoot
for the opposite, NOT the mean. This is counter-intuitive but it is what Aristotle has
suggested. Why? Our nature is always gravitating towards a certain trait. Either we were
raised a certain way or experienced a life-changing event when we were young that shifted
our frame of view and we no longer are balanced towards something or someone.
The easiest way to sum up what Aristotle says is: when we gravitate towards the opposite
trait we end up falling somewhere near the middle, and the middle is our goal. You can
relate by going over your memory and viewing an attempt at going for a middle or mod-
erate trait. What happens is not always our fault, but our training is so ingrained that we
slowly drift back to where we started, we drift back to the extreme or deficiency. Aristotle
suggests that by overcompensating we will detach or demagnetize ourself from the previ-
ous habit and end up in moderation.

“But it is a hard task, we must admit, especially in a particular case. It is not easy to determine, for
instance, how and with whom one ought to be angry, and upon what grounds, and for how long; for
public opinion sometimes praises those who fall short, and calls them gentle, and sometimes applies
the term manly to those who show a harsh temper.
“In fact, a slight error, whether on the side of excess or deficiency, is not blamed, but only a consider-
able error; for then there can be no mistake. But it is hardly possible to determine by reasoning how far
or to what extent a man must err in order to incur blame; and indeed matters that fall within the scope
of perception never can be so determined. Such matters lie within the region of particulars, and can
only be determined by perception.
“So much then is plain, that the middle character is in all cases to be praised, but that we ought to
incline sometimes towards excess, sometimes towards deficiency; for in this way we shall most easily hit
the mean and attain to right doing.”
The Stoic Man

“‘What,’ say you, ‘are you giving me advice? Indeed, have you already advised yourself, already corrected
your own faults? Is this the reason why you have leisure to reform other men?’ No, I am not so shame-
less as to undertake to cure my fellowmen when I am ill myself. I am, however, discussing with you
troubles which concern us both, and sharing the remedy with you, just as if we were lying ill in the same
hospital. Listen to me, therefore, as you would if I were talking to myself. I am admitting you to my
inmost thoughts, and am having it out with myself, merely making use of you as my pretext.” - Seneca

Why do we have to continue to speak of correct manners, appropriate behavior and of


courage, virtue and justice? If we were perfect and all-knowing then we wouldn’t be in an
earthy coil, wrapped up in family issues, personal weakness and interpersonal disharmo-
ny. It is because man is constantly evolving that we recapitulate the teachings of the more
evolved and wise—this is how we become wiser.
Not every man is a Stoic, but every man has Stoic principles within him. Every man is
born with certain abilities that he can either use to his advantage or let them lay dormant
in the caverns of his being. I suggest we create an ebullition of guidance from within as we
study men who were more aware of their reasoning facilities than the current generations.

Becoming Aware of Our Own Wisdom


Self-mastery is the key to all success in life. Everything begins within you—every hope,
every dream, every idea, every fantasy—every step forward that you take begins with you
agreeing to it. If we can accept that everything stems from you allowing it to, then we can
understand why our success depends on self-mastery. Why? Because if each thing begins
from you, then you need that starting point to be clear, correct and precise. Once this
begins to take place in your life everything will slow down a little and you will begin to
observe two things:

• You decided to be where you are: mentally, physically, emotionally


• You decide the future

Stoicism has a few key principles, and within each one of us these principles exist already.
There is no accumulating Stoic ideals, only revealing what was there the whole time. We
have right now:

• The faculty of pursuing an object and avoiding it


• The faculty of desire and aversion
• The faculty of using the appearances of things
Stoicism teaches that Man is not animal but soul. Being soul and not body we can think
and act appropriately. Thinking and acting as something separate from appearances means
nothing inherently affects us. Whatever bothers you is your decision.
Socrates believed man’s ignorance lay in his inability to measure. Specifically, he felt man
could not measure pain and pleasure in both the short term and the future. We constantly
seek pleasure with pertinacity. For some reason our untrained mind is like water and flows
to the spot with the least resistance. Keep an eye on it and soon you notice what Epictetus
warns about in the first chapter of his Discourses. Do not act on what appears pleasurable
and observe to see if it is true or not. If it isn’t lasting, then avoid the pain. This teaching
is simple but the practice is what separates adults from “boys in men’s bodies,” as Seneca
would say in his Letters.
The way to self-mastery is simply observing yourself closely enough so that each action
comes from either a well thought plan or idea, or an adjective-free state. By adjective-free
I mean a state of mind where we have not pre-judged the person or situation with ill feel-
ings. Often times we send ideas to our mind through a filter of qualifiers, “My neighbor is
(insert such and such qualifier based on past experience),” “I feel pain during long, boring
meetings and can’t concentrate.”
You have chosen to create your neighbor in a certain way, so you see that in each experi-
ence. You have decided a business meeting is long and boring as real concepts, all created
by you. The meeting itself never said its duration was extended or that it wasn’t that excit-
ing of a meeting. The thing itself never speaks for itself because it is of Nature.
When philosophers speak of Nature with a capital N, they are speaking about the reality
of life you see around you. This is most easily captured in the nature outside, e.g. the trees,
grasses, sky, etc. Nature is still and calm, moving along in its own path without any help
from man, so we can use it as an example of self-sufficiency. But nature also refers to the
way we are, and especially the way life is, before we color it with explicatory language. We
over analyze to the point of losing the original meaning, which when left alone isn’t really
all that complicated.
The man of self-mastery simply uses nature, or the moment in between speaking, to fill
his mind, actions and thoughts. When we can slow down and observe we can begin to
sense a deeper appreciation for just being alive.
Self-mastery isn’t about performing a few new tasks and taking cold showers to become
a civilian marine. What self-mastery requires is patience and having the ability to be OK
with failing, as long as we observe ourselves close enough we will begin to become uplift-
ed, motivated and self-redirecting on life’s course.
“But do you yourself, as indeed you are doing, show me that you are stout-hearted; lighten your bag-
gage for the march. None of our possessions is essential. Let us return to the law of nature; for then
riches are laid up for us. The things which we actually need are free for all, or else cheap; nature craves
only bread and water. No one is poor according to this standard; when a man has limited his desires
within these bounds, he can challenge the happiness of Jove himself, as Epicurus says.” - Seneca
Man in the Making

When we lose our tribes, our wiseman, our leaders, our fathers—even our own chances
to be tested for courage and strength—there is only one option to carry on with meaning
and purpose: we become the Chief of our own tribe. We must become the wisemen that
can lead the youth in our future and test ourselves for virtue, courage, strength and honor.
There should be no regret in our thoughts from an action that doesn’t suit us. If we argued
it was from passion, if we missed an opportunity it is because a greater one presented itself.
When our will is tested we have only one choice and that is to exercise our ability to freeze
the situation and act it out as we see fit. Becoming the Chief of our own domain, our own
mind, will bring its own rewards and wisdom that we can later rely on.
This idea of leadership has been the dream of man ever since we first walked the planet,
and that dream is dying as man is removed from the open-lands and clear prairie skies,
replaced by sky-scrapers, endless machines, broken printers, work-place dynamics, trivial
quarrels—all things that demand nothing from us but normal, everyday compliance. We
aren’t tested anymore and are values aren’t being put out on the line for everyone to be-
hold. The day-to-day has gotten a tad boring as we perform routines that we wish someone
else would do. For the futuristic-technological-revolutionary, you are in no better time
and place to act out your vision; however this is really a small percent of the human pop-
ulation. And it’s not that technology isn’t a miracle in itself, but it brings about a type of
societal dependence. Man relies less on his own capabilities and potential as technology
advances to fulfill the roles man once got his hands dirty with.

“The center of every man’s existence is a dream. Death, disease insanity, are merely material accidents,
like a toothache or a twisted ankle. That these brutal forces always besiege and often capture the citadel
does not prove that they are the citadel.” – Gilbert Chesterton

Molding our destiny to include past virtues with modern comforts


Man as an island reigns power over one thing: himself. It is his own mind, character and
attitude towards life that he has complete control over. What a man wishes he can fulfill—
whether that be virtuous or corrupt is up to him alone. No outside influence can deter-
mine us. We can of course be influenced, but nothing acts on us without our approval.
That is man’s birth-right and that is man’s greatest power. The dream of man is not a com-
plex idea since we all essentially desire to be content, wise and put to good use.
We want to be asked to do things and relied upon, that is our nature as providers. When
something else is able to do it for us, we can either adapt and create another potential for
need or become idle and let our vices take over as we waste away. The daily routine of man
who worked with his hands, and the Chief who led his tribe, a father who had to provide
food for family—all of them lived their life based on life-or-death skills. There was no
doubt if the hunt was on or if a horse needed to be broken in—every day presented itself
with a challenge that man had to solve. Today’s decline in masculinity is now obvious: life
or death challenges that goad us to our highest potential have been taken away.
There’s another way to living life that brings thrilling adventure and unknown potential.
The daily grind can become a sought for event when a test of strength is upon us and our
abilities become needed. Once we have responsibility—to ourselves and to others—a day
will go by in a series of moments that will leave little to desire. The key is to creating our
own walls so that we may find a solution, climb over it and conquer a challenge. When
no challenge is presented we have to create one. When life has gotten too easy we have to
make it hard.

“Let us calmly and in a manly fashion to to work, instead of dissipating our energy in unnecessary
frettings and fumings. I, for one, thoroughly believe that no power in the universe can withhold from
anyone anything he really deserves.” - Swami Vivekananda

Wake Up Early and With Determination


The single most powerful technique for taking back our lives is waking up before the rest
of the world does. In those quiet hours of contemplation man can finally sit down and
find himself, undisturbed by the earthquakes of others’ thoughts, problems, rules, egos and
bullshit. The times in life that you truly own and have for yourself are the darkest hours of
the morning. There you can be you, man, and think your own thoughts or choose to not
think at all.
The start to every day is the second we open our eyes. Any time we wake up and roll over
to get 15 or 30 more minutes, our day starts off with doubt and hesitation. Start the day
by making your first choice one of will and without question. “I’m going to wake up at this
time, whether the body likes it or not.” Talk to your weakness and tell it to wither and die,
because eventually that is exactly what it does. Without giving weakness energy, just like
haters, it has nothing to sustain itself and so it disappears just as quickly as it came.
This discipline of waking up in the dark morning hours, at least an hour before having to
begin your routine of normal “getting ready”, is unmatched by any other discipline as it
will never get entirely easy. Cold showers, gym training, eating right; all those disciplines
become natural over time. Waking up early, in my 11 years of doing it on a daily basis, is
something that the body fights with you constantly. Evening life fluctuates so much that
the morning routine will feel easier on some days, hard on most—good.
Wake up, slug some water that sits right next to your alarm clock and get the hell up with
passion and be ready to conquer anything.

“It is well to be up before daybreak, for such habits contribute to health, wealth and wisdom.”
- Aristotle

Control the Mind


After you get into the swing of waking up early, the next step will be to enter the stage of
Ritual. Ritual has been shown in studies to project success into the users life with either
placebo or actual effect. Scientists are having trouble calculating the “Why” in different
cultural rituals throughout the world, but the data shows that the people who use ritual
on a regular basis succeed in their projections if the ritual becomes a part of the equation.
Ritual can be as simple as a specific kind of coffee drank at the same time each day, in the
same place. For me that is a double-shot of espresso, black as cigar ash at 4am everyday.
This period begins the collection of focus one needs to fulfill goals and prepare for what is
about to happen. What is about to happen? Whatever the hell you set out to do.
Controlling the mind during this morning ritual will show results the first day it is done.
The first time this ritual is missed the effects are equally as obvious. Messing around with
the ritual and getting sloppy will show in your mood and in your mind throughout the
day. You will be off, and for those without a ritual right now have probably been off for a
long time. It’s time to grow up and separate yourself from young people who need mom
to get them up and ready for school. As an adult, and as a man-in-training you need to
understand responsibility when no one is looking, when no one needs you. In a sense, our
highest self always needs our complete attention and respect.
Sip your coffee, still your mind and observe your breath. The room around you, the dark
starry night, the kitchen counter—all of it needs your observation. Be still and enjoy being
with yourself. Oddly enough this calm never really leaves you once the Ritual is estab-
lished.
Create a Private Spiritual Connection
At some point in your day you need to contemplate on ideas that go deeper than the in-
stinct or intellect. Beyond the basic needs of food, procreation, activity and rest, we need
to expand our thinking to go where there is no need or want of anything. In the area of
contentment is where man breeds the thoughts that can potentially change his life. Mo-
ments where we think nothing except our place in the universe can’t be forgotten, else life
becomes a constant carrot-walk with one step in front of the other, never really going past
the carrot.
What goes beyond your job? Even beyond family, friends, education, money, all of it.
What is the force moving wars, traffic, commerce, what is the force behind your heart-beat
and breath? These are thoughts that bring you from a myopic sight of reality out into areas
of thinking that can naturally de-stress the entire musculoskeletal system and even lower
blood pressure. Without detaching from the normal grind we will just get overly tense and
end up in a poor mental state. The Chief, the leader of the pack needs to have the over-
view, and keeping the overview means big thinking. “Where am I going in life?” Instead of
“Where am I going for lunch?” Both important questions, both need to happen at some
point. Make the bigger questions happen daily.

Learn a Skill/Craft/Hobby
After work or school and when off in general from other duties, man needs to know how
to use his hands. The main reason is for mental peace and clarity, but in close second is
so he is not an incompetent jackass. Plumbing, light-electrical, masonry, wood-working,
general building and construction—these skills are not that hard to grasp the basics from.
Replacing a toilet is not rocket-science and you should know how to do it. One day you
will need to take care of a house, that means knowing how to paint it, care for the siding,
fixing the lawnmower, replacing the leaky p-trap underneath the sink: real basic stuff that
any half-brained fellow should be able to master. No one is asking you to build a bay win-
dow, that is the skill part.

“Every man needs a skill he can be passionate about.”

We not only provide for others, but men also provide for themselves. If you were alone
in the woods you would construct blades from wood and metal, so in today’s world you
could essentially do ten times more badass skills that are game-changers for your life. Per-
sonally I focus on baking sourdough breads in a wood-fired oven. I had to learn how to
make an efficient, long-burning fire to heat an oven to 900F and slow-heat the oven to
saturate the stone floor. That is all after the learning of working with sourdough cultures
and flour. When I’m not baking I focus on making my own beer. I guess you could say my
passion is zymurgy.
Creating and crafting with your hands is an essential part of self-mastery. Without con-
structing the elements of this world we end up mentally and physically atrophied, be-
coming useless to any part of society. If learning with your hands doesn’t work, then learn
skills in the mind. Become an excellent speaker, writer, historian or debater. Become a Ben
Shapiro and study until you can’t see straight.
Skills and crafts are highly underrated, especially for the snowflake play-pretend genera-
tion of young men in the world today. Essentially we have now a whole culture that went
backwards in style and made their pants too tight to sit down in. The craft of the chil-
dren-in-disguise today is to reshape their hair every week and shorten words from “situa-
tion” to “sitch.” Good luck with that. For those that are ready to grow up, feel free to shave
the beard, tuck in your shirt, tie your shoes and stand up straight. Men ought to reflect the
soldier in dress, attitude and know-how.

Exercise Daily
Physical fitness is the last part of the daily challenge. There are many more walls to put up
in our lives, but physical fitness goes back so far it has become an eternal strategy for elite
living. Be ready for any challenge life offers—either physically or mentally—by daily push-
ing the body past its limits.
Weightlifting, cardio and bodyweight training are the most effective forms of physical
workmanship and culture. They have the most carryover to any other sport or life-activity
and can be cycled through when in periods of rest from one another. Daily training can
also be described as a solitary time of personal perfection. In the gym or track we test our-
selves, by ourselves, and are under no man’s guide but our gut instinct.
Knowing how far to push and hurt takes experience, but more importantly it takes
knowing who we are as men and what we are all about. There is a tendency of obsession
that can come over the fitness enthusiast. I know because I was once addicted to fitness
heavily. You know when you have gone beyond healthy when you feel like less of a per-
son if you miss a day of training. Relax. Fitness does not take over normal life for the non
pro-athlete. We have jobs, family and responsibilities that go far beyond exercise. What
exercise does is amplify all other areas of life. It is the one activity that allows us to keep
going with everything else we love. Basic fitness also improves mental clarity and overall
happiness. I believe the real benefits of physical fitness go beyond the body and into men-
tal and spiritual health.
The Fitness Standard

Should I do weight-training or just bodyweight training? Do both.

The two systems of training are so different that when used together the athlete has more
capacity for strength rather than using one of them alone. A complete and balanced rou-
tine cannot be created with weight-lifting alone since the major pressure applied is on
the muscle tissue itself—lacking in real joint strength for serious weight smashing. Body-
weight training focuses on a full range of motion, putting pressure on joint mobility and
tendon flexibility—lacking in targeting hypertrophy in muscle tissue due to your body-
weight never changing drastically.
The main component in increasing difficulty for body-weight movements is leverage, but
the average trainee will be unable to move quickly enough to more advanced positions to
create hypertrophy compared to a simple weight-lifting program that adds weight to the
exercise every set. But, the bodyweight trainee is setting his joint strength up for future
heavy loads and safer lifting in the future.
The blend of weight-lifting and body-weight training has withstood the test of time for
athletes of a variety of sports and they continue to be the strategy for modern-day coaches
and Olympic athletes. Let’s go over the most basic routines for both, creating a founda-
tional knowledge that can later build to much more complex routines. However, at the
core level of training hides a profound truth: a simple routine is going to outperform any
complex or sudo-advanced techniques. Over time the greatest in the gym have simply
either added more weight to the same exercise or decreased the leverage making a simple
pushup into a full planche.

A Note on Machines and Isolation Movements


Unless you are an advanced lifter, get rid of any machine or isolation training . Machines
specifically are for those athletes either carb depleting for a physique contest or so pla-
teaued that they can’t add any more weight to their sets and need a change (in that case
the program is messed up by not adding a deloading cycle). The principle behind this is
based on testosterone recruitment needing large amounts of pressure placed on the body.
The less strain and stress on your biceps, for example, the less testosterone recruitment will
be needed and possibly less hypertrophy results.
Machines have been created for the carb-depleted athlete in order to prevent injury in
a weakened state. More mass and more efficiency in general will be supplied from multi-
joint compound movements from free weights. You will get a better pump in the gym and
more potential for hypertrophy if you perform barbell curls instead of one-arm dumbbell
curls.

The Last Weight-Lifting Routine You Need


Thanks to Casey Butt, Ph.D., you never have to worry about a complex strategy for gains
in the gym—he’s already done the work for you.

• Squats
• Bench Press
• Bent Over Barbell Rows
• Overhead Barbell Press
• Stiff-Legged Deadlifts
• Barbell Curls
• Donkey Calf Raises
• Reverse Crunch, subbed with any ab work that uses the entire body.

That is it. Anything else will not be as effective for a basic goal of mass and strength. The
beginners use less weight and sets, the advanced just increase weight and sets with a slight
change in movements. Dr. Casey outlines his 3-month program on his website. You can
thank me in 3 months, but you will probably see results in 1.

When you get near the last month of the routine, Casey subs the old routine for some new
work:

• Front Squats
• Incline Presses
• Pullups
• Upright Rows
• Tricep Extensions
• Wrist Curls
• Ab Work

Make sure to Google him and read his rules and resources pages. He backs every claim
with science and peer reviewed studies, having some incredible detail for the training rou-
tine as well.
Body-Weight Training
Body-weight training is simple, but advertising for programs and overall BS has made it all
confusing for the beginner. The foundation for all body-weight training are in the follow-
ing movements:

• Pushups
• Dips
• Pull/Chin-ups
• V-ups

Within each of those exercises lay hundreds of more complex and demanding leverages
and ranges of motion—they all stem from those 4 exercises. Every man should be able to
perform the following routine:

• Pushups: 5 sets of 10 reps


• Pull-ups/Chin-ups: 3 sets of 8
• Dips: 5 sets of 5
• V-ups: 3 sets of 12

I consider this routine a warm-up for myself and those that I train. I have also encountered
people in the past who could not actually do one pull up or one pushup. You can imagine
how shocked I was to see that for the first time, having believed my entire life that not be-
ing able to perform such basic tasks would be impossible (surely everyone can do a push-
up), not so. Every man should know exactly how many pushups he could perform spur of
the moment. Pulling up your own bodyweight should be a basic task for regular, everyday
life.

A Word on Cardio
30 minutes of sweat, 3 times a week: Cardiovascular performance is one of the easiest
exercises to perform. If you can walk then you can do cardio. Do not underestimate fast
walking. Olympian, drug free bodybuilders throughout history have been known to em-
ploy fast walking for 30 minutes everyday before contests.
Shreddedness, Vascularity and the Six-Pack
Nutrition, plain and simple. If your diet is not on point then chances are you will have a
subcutaneous layer of fat and water, possibly excess glycogen stores as well, giving you a
fuller but fluffier plumpy look instead of being vascular and ripped. Sorry, but if you are
not one with your macros you won’t be getting too lean.
You have to understand macros to really tone down and get the last of the fat gone. The
veins coming up to your belly button and the bicep ropes climbing down to your forearms
all pop out from low fat and water underneath the skin. To get there you have to get rid
of the chin and lower abdomen fat stores, while maintaining a regular cardio schedule to
constantly look dry.
Intuitive eaters can get close, but you have better chances of tracking macros. It’s pretty
easy once you get the hang of it. Those with high metabolism and are born skinny and dry
looking, well, you are a hard gainer so sucks for you in that area.
Take a moment to just breathe. Enjoy not
being around anyone and away from this crazy
world. A few minutes of that and you realize:

I Am the Master

Part Three:
A Sacred Earth
The Final Chapter

What a predicament we find ourselves in, stressed, worn out and powerless. It is these
moments we find out who we really are. What if we could change all of this? I believe we
can. In fact, I believe we must in order to survive. You see our most challenging trials bring
us to our greatest efforts—they bring out the best in us. We do not focus on changing the
bad moments in life, we focus on changing our reaction to those moments. Then, and only
then, does it not matter what life brings us and we become the master once and for all.
Each experience is your teacher. We live and learn by watching what happens around us.
Pausing that moment and watching our reaction to it gives us a choice. We either succumb
to the teacher or we become the master of the moment.
In this short book I have tried to describe to you the desire and causes of what afflicts
many people. Understanding the core of the tribulation will bring peace of mind. A solu-
tion to our sorrow is knowing. Once we know we become stronger than any sorrow. I give
this understanding to you in hopes that it gives you peace once and for all. This is truly
a sacred earth and we are truly sacred beings. When we become fortunate enough to ob-
serve our weakness it becomes time to find our strength.
In a most unusual manner these manuals have come out of spontaneously written arti-
cles that began with flashes in my mind. We learn of basic concepts outside of ourselves
and slowly the inside changes. The Basics of Success focuses on that outward concept of
change and getting the idea that we are something much greater than what we have been
seeing in the mirror. Man of Meaning focuses on practical ways to implement that change
and dive deeper into the realization that we need meaning and purpose in life in order to
carry out our dreams. Concluding my small body of work is this last section before you
now, A Sacred Earth. Instead of waiting for time to pass and collecting those short arti-
cles in a compilation, I have written most of this material in sessions of varying lengths in
order to complete the work and move on.
Just as every war must come to an end, my attempt to help others ends with these words.
I hope that over the course of my short term that I was able to help a few good souls out
there. May you flourish for the rest of your days, however many lives that may be. We are
all like stars in the end. We are created, we soar through the galaxy in a whirling light and
eventually merge into the very material that we were created from. Thanks for the support
as this journey unfolded. Thank you for realizing that you are in fact limitless and that you
are powerful beyond measure, creating success with hard work and determination. Thanks
for showing that you’re a man of meaning and purpose and that we are all here, together,
on this Sacred Earth.
Purpose

What is your purpose? Big question. I love asking big questions. We have asked the small
ones too much. We have under-reached for too long.
Man seeks something greater. He looks for it in all the small things that life has to offer. A
pleasure fulfilled here and there makes for a bit of happiness, but the longing for a great-
er purpose lies hidden deep within. Most of us are born with some kind of intrinsic fear
that took no training to appear. Living right inside of us this fear lies dormant and con-
trols most of our major decisions in life. It speaks to us, making sure we stay on its course
and not drift into the unknown. Maybe it is a fear of losing something. My biggest fear
growing up was homelessness. I don’t know why; I didn’t have any logical reason to end
up homeless, but the fear was there from the beginning. Of course, one day I ended up
homeless and it was one of the greatest periods of my life. Now listen, I’m not condoning
becoming homeless! What I am saying is that you should face your fears. The mind has
a tendency of taking ideas far beyond reality and making them out to be something they
actually aren’t.
One of the many tricks of the mind is to magnify thought. The mind can zoom in on
one single aspect of an idea and repeat it over and over again. What usually happens in
reality is something completely different. The magnification ends up either not happening
or happening so fast that there wasn’t time to suffer from a possible fear. Thus, the threat is
over and you realize whatever it was you feared wasn’t that bad after all. The trouble begins
when this happens with every thought we have. Everything we think about can be magni-
fied through this fear filter, and worry can overtake our sanity. Fear then controls us with-
out our even realizing it, and our true purpose in life is pushed aside and buried, maybe
never to be found again.
Don’t let this happen to you. If it already has, then become aware of the mind’s power
and put it back in your control. Notice the little things that it wants you to do. Obser-
vation is the first awakening of the soul. Begin to observe the mind and how it reacts to
every situation. Notice the hundreds of judgments it makes every day. Looking at a situa-
tion can spark a like or dislike in the mind, hatred or regret, conceit or disgust. All of these
feelings can happen in an instant and create how we react to the person or group for years.
Slowly you will regain control of the mind and not let it push you around. A thought will
come and you will analyze its true meaning and whether it agrees to your goals and pur-
pose. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. What matters is that you will have the final deci-
sion, not the mind.
It’s your purpose, not mine
Something in you is waiting. Right now there is some dream lying dormant, waiting to
explode. Each dream of purpose rises up to the surface of your mind like a bubble. Having
full control over the mind, one can now begin to analyze the dream and decide if it is time
to expand it further or let it sink back down for another time. That is how thoughts work.
They live inside you as a giant library of possibilities. A page from your inner book of
ideas and thoughts floats to the top when it gets light enough and wants to be resolved—
thought through fully. When you dismiss the thought it doesn’t magically dissolve. The
thought actually goes back into the inner library and waits until ready to rise again. That is
why it is so crucial to fully resolve issues as they come up.
Billions of people are living with unresolved thoughts inside, unresolved emotions, fears
and regrets. They can build up inside and create a sickness without us knowing where it
comes from. The scary thing is, the longer you leave an unresolved issue, the deeper into
the inner library it goes. Recent situations will come up more frequently. Pushed aside
long enough, a thought will only surface once in a while giving you fewer and fewer chanc-
es to resolve it. Eventually it does not come back unless you search within and pull it out
yourself. This can take years of searching within oneself, years of self-evaluation. The solu-
tion starts by not letting that happen anymore.
Your purpose awaits. Write it down and make it your mantra. Don’t let it sink down un-
der the weight of the mind’s worry. Work at it slowly even if it is years away. Cultivate the
qualities one needs to fulfill that dream. Everyone’s purpose begins with a thought. The
ones who succeed in living out the life they want are skilled at observation. They recognize
the thought and the feeling that comes with it and don’t let it sink back down. They
capture it, save it, make it their mantra and run with it. They don’t let others persuade
them to leave it alone. The great ones have a sense of urgency, a passion that looks like
obsession—maybe it is an obsession. To be really great at something we need to obsess for
a while, just until we make it an internalized habit and then we can relax and not think
about it so much. It becomes a reflex or habit over time.
Imagine greatness, observation, and fearlessness becoming a reflex. What if you could
create multiple dreams of purpose and execute each one? It doesn’t have to be compared
to anyone else’s dream. It doesn’t have to be scaled from high to low. If it is something you
want, then go get it.
Underneath the sea level one can see most of the iceberg’s mass. Above see level we see a
small part of it. We humans, with our character and attitude, have a hidden nature within
us. Think of it as the great mass of the iceberg underneath the sea. When we are in the
moments of life that we have heavy emotional investments in we act from that hidden
nature. Your eventual unfolded purpose will be completed using that nature hidden deep
within. Bringing it out of yourself will be the time when your purpose becomes clear. Your
soul knows when to unleash it. Do not fear, all things come to everyone. If you are feel-
ing lost and confused do not worry. Your own soul knows what to do, that hidden nature
within knows exactly when to come out and fulfill your goals. It only takes an instant. It
could be tomorrow, it could be ten years from now. But eventually it will happen.
Final Conclusions of Nofap

Man has been afflicted with vice since the beginning; with the dual nature of reality we
have always experienced the good along with the bad and vice versa. As we roam and
evolve we must carry the joys and burdens that come with having a physical body. With
every learning experience our evolution must come through hurt, pain and suffering. A
child learns to not fall by falling and scraping the knee. A boy learns steadiness and bal-
ance by getting knocked off his bike, skateboard or rollerblades. A teen learns his tolerance
for alcohol by taking it too far and getting sick with friends. And so a man must learn how
to reach his true self by living a lie and experiencing moral illness.
Over the course of your nofap journey you will undoubtedly hear about all of the ups
and downs, supposed superpowers that some are having from long streaks, the aid of cold
showers, an influx of energy and attention coming from the opposite sex, relapses, bing-
ing, brain fog, wet dreams­—and if those are relapses or not—edging, regret, power, new
found hope in life and suicidal tendencies from the hopeless. All of this comes with the
culture of nofap.
What is nofap anyway? Most of what we know comes from a subreddit that a college
student created and eventually lost control of and over time it became unmoderated and
open to interpretation. What you see is the result of thousands of young men trying to
explain why they are seemingly addicted to porn and masturbation and how they either
succeeded or failed over and over and over again.
In the course of my own history regarding nofap it is plain to see how I started right at
the very beginning. From finding out that others like me existed, to getting a badge for the
first time and helping others as noble fapstranauts. I have seen high streaks, god modes,
leaders pulling up the weak with encouraging advice, tips on how to do what they did,
criticism for why we do it, the haters, the couples, the powerless and the folks just want-
ing to try it out for fun. The history of nofap will repeat itself, just as most history does as
history is just one long cycle of experience. So, let me do you a favor and end all that now
by writing the final conclusions of the nofap path and the last overview ever needed.

Getting away from the word “Addiction”


Someone at some time lied to you, it happens. From someone’s experience of a hopeless
incessant binging lifestyle came the theory that we are addicts for masturbating to porn
too much. While there are some extreme cases of people out there unable to leave their
house and go to work because of porn, the majority of PMO users will never go to such
extremes. Most of us will get stuck for months or years in an endless cycle of porn that
gradually decreases over time until we finally stop. Yup, one day this won’t be an issue for
you. You are stuck, lacking purpose and meaning, and need a good nudge in the right
direction.
Often times young people live myopically. They don’t see the larger picture but only
see a small constricted part of their situation and microscope it so it looks really big, but
it’s not: relax. Other people actually have way bigger problems and habits than you do.
Some people kill, steal, rape, live in prison, or actually are addicted to fatal narcotics such
as heroin. Let me ask you, have you ever sold your body for a chance to PMO? Have you
ever considered fighting someone to clear the room so you can masturbate? Or how about
possessions. Have you ever given up and lost major assets in order to obtain porn. If it
wasn’t readily available would you perform those acts of addiction? Probably not because
your not an addict. You don’t crave porn to the point of sickness, vomiting, blurred vision,
cold sweats, hallucinations or fits of rage. That’s what an addict would do. Still think you
are one?

Educating yourself
One of the most liberating experiences we can have is educating ourself. Once we learn
something new there are thousands of little electrical currents firing off in your brain that
create new channels of structure. The same thing happens when you develop a new habit,
good or bad, or even do nothing. The act of nothing can be registered in the brain. On
this journey, usually in the beginning of discovering nofap, we educate ourselves and it
feels amazing. Finally we can intellectualize what has been happening to us and why we
act the way we do. Liberating right? Read, Youtube, study study study until we are nofap
professors.
“Ask me anything” you say. You learned about what your brain does regarding porn.
Your brain treats many situations similarly and we learn that we do this because of this. I
guess that’s it. Now that you learned what is happening and you know the consequence,
then it’s all pretty cut and dry. No more porn for you, right? Well no, not really. Most of us
don’t care in the heat of the moment. Why? Because we can’t feel the negative right away.
Our brain is not that clear or visible to people in the beginning stages of observation. We
can’t see the habit being formed unless we actually were to reflect on our past and become
super observant of ourselves, something that our youtube video about PMO didn’t tell us.
Unfortunately the body is capable of extreme amounts of injustice to itself. The sheer pow-
er of a body is immense. Ever think about that when you see an obese person?
The skeletal system, the small joints, none of it gives in but adapts to the hundreds of
pounds being placed upon them. It is really quite something how we can a take a beating!
Knowing that we can see how we quickly recover and that the side effects won’t really be
that bad, we keep watching porn and masturbating to it. Feels good too, except there are
a few shitty side effects like brain fog and we become numb to the world around us, same
thing happens to stoners. Ejaculating to porn on a regular basis feels good enough to keep
going and feels bad enough to want to stop. Thus we are caught in the cycle.

Frustration, Anger and Resentment


This is bullshit, right? The one thing that feels so good and it comes with a bunch of lame
consequences. AND to top it all off it’s everywhere. Sex, tight clothes and beautiful people
are everywhere. It looks good to consumers and it makes money, lies look really sexy. We
end up in the stage of external blaming: it’s societies fault. “What can I do? I am a product
of this place and I am just a normal guy. I have instincts and I have a healthy sexual nature
and I am being taken advantage of ” You say to yourself as you sink down into your habits.
Some people now get semi-political and fight the system. “Take down porn!” We get the
idea that if we get rid of porn or reduce it’s omnipresence that all of our problems will be
solved. What we don’t realize is that the problem isn’t with porn, nor is it with society. My
friends, the problem is with us. This is usually the last place we end up. Once we realize
that we are the problem then we can let society do it’s own thing and it will anyway. Again
we can look at history and learn from the past. Big tobacco was fought after finding out
smoking brings certain types of cancer. Big auto was fought after finding out cars really
weren’t that safe. The list goes on and on. The truth is you could fight Big porn. Ya, you
could spend years of your life and income and get a warning label on porn. “Danger: Us-
ing porn has caused some people to not think clearly or even become obsessed and mas-
turbate constantly.” Would that make you feel better? Would you save lives? Probably not.
Saving people from cancer works in some cases, but I still smoked as a teen. Seatbelts are
life-savers and police enforce the use of them, but does that stop everyone? No. And why
should it? Remember people have to learn from hurt, pain and suffering. You can’t fight
that and you can’t change it. Reality sets in and we learn that instead of fighting Big porn
we should fix ourselves first and then go from there.

Motivation and Shutting Porn Out


Now you are pumped, I can feel it. At this point you have made it long enough for a streak
to take hold and you are ready to run through a wall. You are at the stage of being blindly
guided by motivation alone, pure motivation. Actually you can ride for months on pure
motivation. You have got the best blockers that a browser can have, your phone is all
locked up with your friends password and the sky is more beautiful than any sky you have
seen before. What could go wrong?
Eventually porn becomes available. Some how the situation arises, possibly from an acci-
dental search for shoes, and you find yourself looking at some porn. Image searches almost
can never be fully blocked, apps on your phone can smoothly sneak past Open DNS filters
and you end up with your heart about to beat right out of your chest and you get aroused.
What happened? You were so motivated I thought you really had this? After being desen-
sitized even a clothed women becomes enough. You relapse and the dark cloud of misery
surrounds you yet again—and this time you are really confused.
Look, you can’t run from technology. The truth is we are evolving as a global community
with the help of technology and it is really fascinating. One of the biggest lessons of nofap
is the fact that blocking sex doesn’t work. You can’t succeed in getting rid of it unless you
actually move to the forest and become a woodsman. That would be pretty cool but that’s
not what you need. You need a way to be free of this habit and you need to figure it out
fast. Delete your Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, all of it. Shut yourself off as best as you can.
Any luck? Whoops, you needed Facebook for work, or even better your work is based on
computers and you need technology to excel. Hi, welcome to the World.
Sorry, you can’t run from tech. Just like you couldn’t run from cars when horses were the
mode of transportation, nor could you have run from T.V. when all you wanted to do was
listen to radio. T.V. would be bad for sure. Get used to tech and get used to all the amazing
wonderful things that come from it. This is truly an exciting time to be alive. Balance is
key.

The end is in sight


I see most people get stuck here. This is one of the last stages nofap has to offer. At this
point we start getting good at regular streaks and we can easily start to live a normal life.
We make progress and we are ok with defeat. After a relapse we count the days and notice
we got farther than ever and are going to get back up and go even longer. Not only is this
one of the last stages of nofap, it’s the hardest.
Once we “reboot” a little, that is to say once we realize we are a normal dude and our
normal self is pretty awesome, a relapse doesn’t actually take us that far down into mental
anguish. What is happening is our mental state is done with being depressed and we pick
ourselves up from a seemingly bad situation. In the end we come to realize that all the neg-
ative side effects from regular PMO was our poor self-esteem, poor mental attitude and
inability to get out of the mud. You are evolving. How did you do it? From hurt, pain and
suffering. You got burned so many times that now you keep your hand safely away from
fire. You are tough and no matter what you are going to succeed.
The challenge with this stage, and really that of all other stages, is that we haven’t yet
begun to work on other aspects of our lives or on our character. Remember that myopic
young person vision that we talked about? We sort of did it with this bad habit. We fo-
cused on it so much that we didn’t realize we have way too much time on our hands. We
didn’t even notice that while we were doing good it wasn’t from permanent change, it was
just temporary progress. That’s where self-help, self-empowering communities comes in.

Finding your purpose and meaning in life


The last conclusion of this habit, and that of all other issues we face in life, is the realiza-
tion that PMO, or gaming or gluttony, is all a necessary step in our own evolution. All of
this pain is actually there to help us. This is the stage of change. This is the learning that
most people fail to experience. Why? Because it doesn’t just equate to young men and
porn. This is a much larger issue that relates to how we handle life, how we think of our-
selves and how we deal with stress. Most people will never make it to this stage fully.
“But you said earlier that we would all stop eventually.” Yes, PMO, I believe, will not be
conflicting us forever and there is a breaking point for a lot of users. Mostly as a natural
maturing that takes place. What I am talking about is the followers in life. The people who
eat too much junk, who turn on the T.V. right when they wake up, who get angry in traf-
fic, who never resolve issues with family members. All these forms of problems carry over
to the unhappy person, with or without porn use. They help reduce the person’s self-im-
age, they help destroy the person’s resolve and most importantly they turn the person into
a non-believer. Not everyone is ready to change the way they are and even though we may
defeat PMO, the next challenge awaits us patiently. If we don’t figure out our core values
then the next challenge in life will bring us down again.
Kind of sad, right? Well it depends on how you look at it. In the bigger picture, no, not
really. We are all doing exactly as we should be in our stage of evolution. You see, you can
actually replace this article’s use of PMO with any other vice. Any form of weakness could
be applied and it comes with the same stages. The key to not relapsing again is to uproot
any and all forms of wrong behavior from your life. Once we change the way we handle
stress, once we are able to love ourselves and others, once we are able to become a produc-
tive member of society and contribute, then we will not be conflicted anymore. The simple
way of saying that is: Grow Up.
Finding yourself is not easy, it takes an extreme amount of work and resolve. But the
final conclusion is: that’s what needs to happen. Eventually porn will seem dull to you.
You won’t even have time to think about it. Don’t you want to move on from this chapter?
Isn’t this struggle getting lame? I know I am tired of talking about it. There is so much to
do and experience. Imagine never getting in a serious fight with someone. Imagine being
so grounded and well behaved and powerful that you eloquently resolve situations right
as they come up. The art of relating to other humans is really very fun and becoming that
person is exciting. That is what you have to focus on. That is what nofap should be about,
not about not-masturbating but becoming the person who isn’t interested.
Desire is life
Desire is what wakes us up in the morning. We won’t be able to destroy desire no matter
how hard we try; what we must do is redirect it. We have to change our values and make
our actions reflect them. Those that get stuck again and again have not yet reconstructed
their value system. In fact, reconstruction of one’s self-image happens regularly for truly
effective and powerful people. Sometimes I go through weeks of daily reconstruction. We
must ask ourselves constantly: “What am I about?” “What do I value” “Who am I?” These
are powerful questions to ask yourself. Just when you have an answer things end up chang-
ing, but that’s the fun of it all. That’s the excitement that life has to offer. Think about the
future. One day someone is going to ask you how to do something and someone is going
to need you, I promise you that. Be someone who can be counted on and trusted. I trust
you already since I know what is inside of you—I want you to see it for yourself.

Man of Honor
After we get out of this challenge we have many other experiences ahead. Becoming the
man we idolize is a matter of effort, dedication and constant reminder. The mysteries of
living a courageous life unfold as we take each day and make it our arena for success. There
is no dull moment if we are totally present. Build, create and invent at every opportunity
you get. Live life as a man of honor and let go of fear and regret. Our confidence and un-
derstanding of the mind, the path of nofap and our eventual mastery are what each and
every man stand for and it’s what makes us stand out. There is no doubt, no guesswork
and no wonder about where we are going. Success is inevitable for each and every one who
makes the conscious decision to reflect on our situation, understand what the real issue is,
work hard constantly to rebuild our self-image, expand our mind and the minds of others
and live the best life possible.
Justice

When we said earlier about this path being difficult, that harmonizing ourself into stu-
dents of mastery was challenging, we meant it. If you are thinking about improving and
uplifting a wiring mechanism that has been formed over decades—your brain—then the
“easy” is over, let it go. What we have ahead of us is hard, but it is our destiny. The other
path is one of least resistance and slothfulness. Bullshit your way through tasks and hope
no one bothers your routine. Good luck with that.

For the rest of us, let’s look at what it means to acquire the virtue of Justice.

Plato’s Republic
Let’s begin by reflecting on Plato’s meaning of Justice. I capitalize Justice because we are
referring to the whole being of man, not just a virtue or single characteristic of attitude.
Justice is a major theme throughout Plato’s dialogues (which I highly recommend you
give a read, they are many in number but each one stands for something important) and it
appears that Socrates’ whole life was spent on inquiring into the nature of justice, courage,
love, honor, piety, ignorance—and the opposites. So, we were talking about Plato’s Socra-
tes and we were mentioning the big Justice. Here we go, read slowly:

“But in reality justice was such as we were describing, being concerned however, not with the outward
man, but with the inward, which is the true self and concernment of man: for the just man does not
permit the several elements within him (courage, wisdom, temperance) to interfere with one another,
or any of them to do the work of others,—he sets in order his own inner life, and is his own master and
his own law, and at peace with himself; and when he has bound together the three principles within
him, which may be compared to the higher, lower, and middle notes of the scale, and the intermediate
intervals—when he has bound all these together, and is no longer many, but has become one entirely
temperate and perfectly adjusted nature, then he proceeds to act, if he has to act, whether in a matter of
property, or in the treatment of the body, or in some affair of politics or private business; always think-
ing and calling that which preserves and co-operates with this harmonious condition, just and good
action, and the knowledge which presides over it, wisdom, and that which at any time impairs this
condition, he will call unjust action, and the opinion which presides over it ignorance.”

Stunning, isn’t it? What an amazing writer Plato was. On a sidenote, we can’t really be
sure Socrates said everything to this degree or if it is anything he said at all, but we know
there was a man named Socrates and he did go around questioning everything. Eventually
he annoyed the wrong people and was tried for corrupting the youth, a serious offense in
those days. Today, I would imagine many idols in the media are guilty of corrupting the
youth but we as a society don’t restrict or restrain as much as we ought to, but I digress.
See how highly Socrates considers Justice? Do you ever think of yourself that way?

Imagine going about your day looking into each action and wondering, “Is this gas station
clerk ringing up our order with courage? And have I acted Modestly towards my appe-
tite?” Ha! Of course we don’t think that way, but imagine if for one day you did? Imagine
then that you obeyed the laws of Justice. What would your day be like?
Plato, and philosophers in this Golden Age, often describes matters of the soul to a scale
of music, hence the sentence “…and when he has bound together the three principles
within him, which may be compared to the higher, lower, and middle notes of the scale…”
There is a tuning idea there, as if we are taking bits a pieces of our nature, of which Soc-
rates says there are three major ones—courage, temperance and wisdom—and refining
each one so they harmoniously are in sync with one another. The tuning of them, and the
consequent action that follows, is justice. The opposite is ignorance. What if you do a bad
thing on purpose? You might ask. Well philosophers like Socrates believed that man was
inherently good, and that even wrong action was done because the doer believed they were
doing good. This makes terms like good and love absolutes. They are true in every circum-
stance.

“When he has bound all these together, and is no longer many, but has become one entirely temperate
and perfectly adjusted nature, then he proceeds to act, if he has to act, whether in a matter of property,
or in the treatment of the body, or in some affair of politics or private business”

No matter what we do, we do so with justice. We act in accordance with nature and good-
ness if we harmonize ourself. You see here is the catch: We must define ourselves as coura-
geous, modest and wise, and then all our actions reflect this person. We don’t micro-man-
age ourselves, or as Covey says we aren’t walking on ice around people. We just are. We are
good, noble people who act well. The details then become the joys of life.
In Plato’s Republic, Socrates, Glaucon and Adeimantus yearn to know what justice is;
not only its meaning and what it is not, but if justice is worth having as opposed to its
opposite. There is an argument at hand that injustice might be the more powerful position
in life, one which a winner would choose. However, most cannot hold to this as they are
virtuous philosophers and so they seek to dive in to the meaning of justice.
We left off at the whole man or the big picture of Justice. Harmony within oneself using
the 3 tenants—modesty, or temperance, wisdom and courage. There are whole dialogues
on each of these virtues, and even virtue itself and one day I should love to go over those.
But for now we must finish the current conversation on justice.
“Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of phi-
losophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue
either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their
evils,—no, nor the human race, as I believe,—and then only will this our State have a possibility of life
and behold the light of day.”

This famous statement now requires explanation by Socrates’ audience. They ask: “Who
then are the true philosophers?” To which Socrates says: “Those, I said, who are lovers of
the vision of truth.”
Sometimes I think this quote “Until philosophers are kings…” can be used for the micro-
cosm instead of just the macro. Maybe it describes the state of our mind, the family unit,
the community and it expands from there. Could it also mean that society won’t have
peace until each one of us become harmonious within?
In going over the meaning of opinions, we hear a short dialogue explaining who is not a
philosopher. This beautiful quote comes describing just that, while at the same time again
defining this “lover of wisdom.” On a sidenote, in Greek dialogues like this, the opposite
of an answer must be dissected and proven correct for it to remain true. Thus we know the
inquiry is correct and absolute.

“And are not those who are verily and indeed wanting in the knowledge of the true being of each thing,
and who have in their souls no clear pattern, and are unable as with a painter’s eye to look at the abso-
lute truth and to that original to repair, and having perfect vision of the other world to order the laws
about beauty, goodness, justice in this, if not already ordered, and to guard and preserve the order of
them—are not such persons, I ask, simply blind?”

The antithesis of the philosopher is a soul with “no clear pattern.” In what way are you
lacking in a pattern? Have you felt lost before and “unable to look at the absolute truth”
like a painter looks at a piece of art? There is beauty and good all around us but we often
miss it.

Plato, now far into the Republic and explaining various truths, writes as Socrates and says
of the soul and the fullness that resides in it:

“Whereas, our argument shows that the power and capacity of learning exists in the soul already; and
that just as the eye was unable to turn from darkness to light without the whole body, so too the instru-
ment of knowledge can only by the movement of the whole soul be turned from the world of becoming
into that of being, and learn by degrees to endure the sight of being, and of the brightest and best of
being, or in other words, of the good.”
The power and capacity of learning exists in the soul already. Is there no more a thing to
say after hearing something like that? This reminds me of another teaching of Socrates
when he says there is no new knowledge, only recollection, for the soul is immortal. An-
other common theme in the days of polytheism is Gods and deities roaming the inner
worlds, living out dramatic lives awaiting Earth’s souls to join them. There is a divinity in
man and soul, while at the same time the play of good vs evil.
In the second half of the quote we are reminded that the soul learns in stages and that
we must adjust to the “sight of being.” Being and becoming are two stages of unfoldment.
From youth to maturity we strive to become something. Here we learn that being already
exists. We are inherently good and need no further “becoming.” Open up to it and see
what is right in front of you.

Now almost finished with the Republic, Plato takes you through one last look at the na-
ture of one who controls his appetites:

“But when a man’s pulse is healthy and temperate, and when before going to sleep he has awakened his
rational powers, and fed them on noble thoughts and enquiries, collecting himself in meditation; after
having first indulged his appetites neither too much nor too little, but just enough to lay them to sleep,
and prevent them and their enjoyments and pains from interfering with the higher principle—which
he leaves in the solitude of pure abstraction, free to contemplate and aspire to the knowledge of the
unknown, whether in past, present, or future: when again he has allayed the passionate element, if he
has a quarrel against any one—I say, when, after pacifying the two irrational principles, he rouses up the
third, which is reason, before he takes his rest, then, as you know, he attains truth most nearly, and is
least likely to be the sport of fantastic and lawless visions.”

The above text should be read several times. Revel in its eloquence.

Another line from Socrates: “He has to be master of others when he is not master of him-
self ”
Isn’t this hard to hear? To think that when we lose ourselves to the instinct or base mind,
when we act against our own higher nature, we become owned to others priorities. When
we don’t have control over our own self we lose the rights to it.
The end and final thought of the Republic is on the soul and its immortality. I will end
here due to time. Enjoy the last sentiment from Socrates and pull from it what good you
can:

“Wherefore my counsel is, that we hold fast ever to the heavenly way and follow after justice and virtue
always, considering that the soul is immortal and able to endure every sort of good and every sort of
evil. Thus shall we live dear to one another and to the gods, both while remaining here and when, like
conquerors in the games who go round to gather gifts, we receive our reward. And it shall be well with
us both in this life and in the pilgrimage of a thousand years which we have been describing.”

That is justice and that is where we want to be. Maturing into a man of meaning and pur-
pose is not a fun, lighthearted sidetrack from your daily routine. This is a man’s quest to
finding himself and getting on with life the way it is supposed to be lived. Every moment
has to be analyzed. Every thought needs direction or else we start to slip. Once you actual-
ly make this disciplined life a habit, then you become unshakable.
A Sacred Earth

One of the greatest fulfillments in life is changing someone else’s for the better. To get
them on a new path—just like someone did for us when we couldn’t see—is one of the
highest efforts we can strive for. Living for oneself is not enough. There is an emptiness
that originates from only caring for one’s own situation. We build the most strength when
we have the weight of others leaning on us; it is then that true greatness comes out. When
we are alone on the path we gain little. Nothing is there to impress our mind with our
needed success. It is when others depend on us that we improve the most. It is then that
we sacrifice everything and our character shines the brightest. We are the great mass of the
iceberg inside; hardly seen but keeping everything afloat.
Try to understand the feeling of changing someone’s life. Ever play with a child? If you
really make them happy by entertaining them you have changed their life for the better.
They don’t have much experience or awareness so it is relatively easy to do. To change
an adult’s life, you must first have experienced their pain and worked your way out of it.
Then you must be able to eloquently transmit the relief you gained onto them. You don’t
have to have all of the answers or steps on how to succeed, but you must be able to send
the feeling to others. That feeling is going to be what changes their life. There is a power
in your words because, as you write to them, you will transfer the soothing vibration into
the words. As they read they will feel what you felt and the change begins to take place. If
you live a life of duplicity it will not work. The reader can sense if what they are reading is
genuine.
Isn’t it amazing to think that you could turn someone’s life around? What greater thing
can there be? You truly become lost in others as you lose your sense of personal accom-
plishment. This sparks a chain reaction that comes back to you and lifts you higher than
any other path could have taken you. Having children is so special because helping them
mature is a part of the job. Why stop there? Once someone catches the spirit they take
flight and become the motivator and then the person you changed becomes the one
changing others. This goes on and on and on until a small network of people are changing
the world. You don’t have to think analytically about all of the outcomes or possibilities.
Simply live to transform others and you will see it all happen. You will finally see how life
is meant to be lived.

In a time far beyond we used to have teachers, leaders, role models, fathers and gurus: we
used to have masters. In those times we learned from someone much greater than our-
selves. That person was more experienced, wiser and was able to guide us as we matured.
Today we are all ronins. We are born into a society that is guru-less and thus have become
masterless samurai. We have skills but no one to help us see that. We have strength, but no
one to help hone that strength into wise action. Instead we are taught to be our own mas-
ter, our own guru. How can a young inexperienced mind teach itself experience, wisdom
and courage? Can that which has not yet known honor understand it—let alone teach
itself ?
You are all fallen saints. You are misguided masterless samurai and you need a war. You
have a body fit for strength and a mind molded for wisdom yet no one is there to guide
you. You have the wrong Master. All things, people and events in life are your teacher. You
should be weary of the one you accept as your master. For too long you have chosen weak-
ness, procrastination, gluttony and laziness and you have let it control you. Where is your
will? Are you actually a bodysuit of powerless flesh?
We are without the heroes, fathers, sages and wisemen in the modern age. We lack role
models and leaders to show a better way. Our lineage is misplaced and without a home
to rebuild—become the sage yourself. Become the role model. Look up to the great ones
of history and follow in someone’s footsteps. Once you get strong enough start making
your own. You were built for greatness yet you lack the purpose to fuel the drive to con-
quer your demons. Is it true? Can’t you feel it? What is it that wells up inside of you? That
energy is pure will, pure diamond dust reality that can only be found by living with right
speech, right action and right thought.
Push yourself this week. Push the boundaries that only the risen saints rise over. Be kind
when you could have attacked; be soft when you could have been harsh; apologize when
it isn’t your fault; back away instead of creating more hurt. No one remembers the beast,
they only remember the saint. As you go through the weeks and months keep the army
in mind. Keep them with you. What army? The army of the disciplined, the army of the
strong. We each lead our own barracks and we each fight our own war from different
trenches. Together we fight from the larger perspective. Start helping others one day in-
stead of being the one helped. One day starts right now.

Responsibility creates purpose. That purpose creates drive.


The drive is willpower and then there is one victory after another after another.
This is self-mastery. This is the path of evolving through challenges.
After this challenge is finished a more difficult one will take its place.
It has too because that is why we are here: to evolve through challenges.
When the foundation is built, the challenges may get harder but you get tougher.
Living like this creates wisdom. Eventually ones own path is no longer as important and helping those
who are just starting out becomes the greatest challenge. Changing other people’s lives becomes the
final goal. All of it is right there inside you, the entire time, just like it is inside of me.

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