Will to Truth

The lack of desire to solve complex life problems is a result of a lack of will. A powerful will takes these opportunities to grow and become even more powerful, though this transpires as an organic process, a natural unfoldment, rather than a pathological lust for power. The weakened or diminished will, will ossify or stagnate, and essentially give up. A powerful or relentless will desires to know the truth at all costs, because understanding brings liberation.

All liberation must be fought for.

Understanding brings transcendence and expanded awareness. The same problems no longer weigh on the conscious and subconscious minds, freeing up more mental and emotional resources to take on larger, more complex, increasingly universal (as opposed to egoic or personal) problems to be understood and overcome.

The diminished will "lives" life just going through the motions, constantly feeling weighted down, trudging through like a zombie, often seeking all kinds of stimulation, thrills and escapes to reduce anxiety. The greater will, embracing the ups and downs of life, eventually breaks through unencumbered―having transmuted all of life's poisons into fuel.

This process is also impossible to go through without embracing vulnerability.

Those with the facade of invulnerability learn and understand nothing of real value. Their skill is only in repetition, like a robot; something that isn't alive.

Moral of the story: Embrace pain, don't hide from it, but perhaps even more importantly, make sense of it on your own. Create your own narrative which is based on evidence, reason, experience and self-reflection while also being patient with yourself.

Don't be afraid of hell. Map that sucker out while you're there. See how far down the pit goes. Feel how hot it gets.

Originally published on my Facebook page May 23rd, 2017.

Life is for the Living

There are inherent risks to being alive. In our earlier, more humble beginnings, these risks were more immediate and physical in nature; perceived primarily through the 5 senses. Being attacked by a warring tribe, walking off a cliff, starving to death, exposure to the elements, being gored by a boar while hunting etc.

Generally, the strongest/most intelligent (ie: adaptable) in these conditions would be the ones that survived and perpetuated their superior genetic heritage.

In the modern era, the threats we face are not so immediately perceived or understood, and so for most of us (at least the ones reading this), we do not have the same dilemmas of our primal ancestors that brought them to an early, often messy, grave. Today, the main risks and types of death we face are intellectual, psychological and spiritual. Many people die before their bodies do, and a vast majority of those seemingly prior to the age of 25.

Today, the proverbial perilous cliffs, waterfalls and predators - both man and animal - that naturally gave rise to modern man are in the realm of false ideas, false perceptions, false ways of living and general ignorance.

The death of the body is just an ecological formality for the incurious.

Originally published on my Facebook page March 26th, 2016.

Solve et Coagula

A significant component to effectively solve problems of any kind is the ability to accurately identify and isolate relevant variables. If we're working on a problem which throws 100 variables our way and we incorrectly conclude that all 100 are important to the problem in question, our conclusions are going to be wildly erroneous and nonsensical. In short, we would be spinning our wheels and getting nowhere - which could be described as the true "overthinking", or what I've come to call "overnonsensing". Garbage in, garbage out.

Remember all that math and algebra we thought was "useless" in public school? Yeah, turns out it wasn't as useless as we thought it was. Not that everyone who did well in these classes will carry over the skills and apply them to real world circumstances, but what it does do for serious students of life is wire the mind in such a manner as to break things down into simpler fractions, and identify what is important and what isn't; by parsing out useful information from nonsense, from what is true from what is false, which keeps the solidity/integrity of rationality and a foundation of truth intact. We will not be successful getting to the highest peaks of truth by building on a foundation of garbage. Truth must be built upon truth.

Having a strong ability to discern between relevant and irrelevant variables allows us to make sound inferences about situations and events.

This is also how scientific theories and discoveries are made and developed.

God didn't come flying down from the clouds and bestow us with the wealth of knowledge we've amassed thus far by authoring everything. No. These were normal human beings who obsessed and thirsted relentlessly, wanting to understand why things happen the way they do. They recognized the patterns and sought to make sense of them through their ability to reason, the scientific method, and articulated their findings with the creation of new theories, or by building on existing ones. Though it wasn't God that came soaring from the heavens to save Man from his own ignorance in a literal sense, it could be argued that those who made discoveries were divinely inspired. This is why Einstein referred to curiosity as Holy.

"There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, those who do not see."

― Leonardo da Vinci

Originally published on my Facebook page March 14th, 2016.