Answering some of my own questions.

It should be of no surprise that the reason that there are few updates, besides not having established a solid habit of doing this yet, is that studying for the bar exam leaves very little time for much else. My time of late has been focused mainly on my studies, as well time carved out for my Karate training and work out. Everything at this point is mainly centered around passing this infernal test, and to that end I have tried to maintain a decent enough diet to stay nourished. I have a small army of supplements that I have been taking as well, trying to just cover as many bases as humanly possible to keep my mind as active and functional as I can. I am doing everything that I can to make sure that the foundation work I did with Eric is not wasted, and that I can continue to grow and move forward on my path to realize my own personal legend.

Remembering the Redwood

In just a short amount of time, so much has changed. I'm still not used to seeing my new reflection in the mirror. I know I have been saying I was going to shave my head for some time now if ever my hairline got bad enough, but honestly I was just stalling for time. Like I said, I'm still not used to it. I've seen people comment on the new photos, how I look younger then before, that I look better. I look at my reflection and I honestly think I look older than I did with hair. Maybe I am finally just seeing myself for my actual age.... which is another topic I'm starting to really grapple with.

You see, I have been given two seemingly conflicting pieces of data in my time. Or, to be more accurate, I've been given hundreds of different data points that I have recently boiled down into two distinct patterns in what some may call an obvious abuse of Occam's razor on my own self image. These two points revolve around my age, being that I am currently identified as being a 27 year old male. I say identified as because I tend to forget my own age, though more often then not I assume I am older then I actually am. I do not think, however, that this is just my ego speaking, but that I honestly just get the time frame wrong and just round up instead of down. A bit part of this I believe to be the assertion that I have heard from countless people throughout my life that I possess, what many call, an 'old soul'. I've been called this by many people, in many contexts, and I am hard pressed to disagree with any of them.

One of the biggest issues I have found with my way of thinking in the past is that I tend to operate from a place of urgency. The feeling of never having enough time to accomplish all that I want to do in my life. This is, of course, flawed thinking, as much of what I want deep down is for the completion of these goals, not necessarily the actual process necessary to come to that completion. At the same time, I tend to feel behind the curve, as it were. The fact that I failed the California Bar exam once makes me feel like I am now 6 months behind many of my friends who have passed. This is, of course, another flawed perception, as I know a number of friends who passed and have not found work, and those that did not pass and have found work already. But instead of looking at the logical comparisons, I tend to focus more on the illogical one of of those individuals who have both passed and found employment. Then there are the much more improbable comparisons of myself to those in my general age range, whom I do not know personally, but who have done simply amazing things already in their short time here on Earth. So much time and energy spent on completely pointless comparisons that only serve to make my own time frame much more warped than it already is.

Be genital, it was my first time... twice.

While I was planning to just put up one big long "here is what I learned in the Evolution Overhaul Healthy House" kind of post, I realized that it would be important to me to put this post up in the mean time. You see, while I have been here, I have been on a body detox and have been exposed to a lot of things that in all truth I had never really seen or done in my life. Now, through my life, I have been lucky enough to have collected a huge library of experiences. This includes my time with the Boy Scouts, martial arts, visiting other countries, the various places I have tended bar, going to an arts high school, college, law school, as well as all the crazy adventures and situations I have found myself in randomly. I have, on more than one occasion, caught myself thinking "how in the great hell did I end up here?" I had this thought when I was sitting in the same room as Neil Strauss editing his book, The Truth, while I was in Vegas a month ago with Neil's people, and now I am once again feeling it as I am doing this week long intensive with Eric, aka Hypnotica. The truth of it is that when I open myself to let this shit happen, open myself up to the universe at large, the best things just so happen to fall into my lap.... so long as I open the sun roof to let them in. I can't just be completely passive here, I have to do SOME action to let it happen. But I digress. 

Now one of the main emphasis's that Eric has put on this whole thing has been on personal health. That is getting in shape, eating right, and the little tricks and techniques a person can do in order to look and feel their bests. His question is a very simple one; what would it be like if the human body was given the most optimal input. This means what would be it be like if you really placed your mind, body, and spirit into the most optimized and efficient state of being? This has lead him to spending the last 5 years or so of his life doing a ton of experiments with his diet and his work out to put himself into that peek physical condition, and he is STILL in the process of doing so. Life is a journey after all. And while I have been here, I have been living on the same kind of diet that he is, which I admit has been a DRASTIC change to my normal mode of operating. 

New Year, new lessons, and new resolutions.

As I write this, I am sitting at the small coffee/breakfast table in Eric's Healthy House. Many who know Eric know him by the pseudonym Hypnotica, as he has become known in the pickup and seduction community. Of course, I first heard about him through Neil Strauss's book, The Game, where he was given the name Rasputin. In the book, he, along with Steve P., where known as the 'inner game' guru's and specialized in transforming men into natural seducers with the use of hypnosis, NLP, and other mental tricks that are highly controversial in the mainstream psychological world as being 'pseudo-science', or 'new age hippy metaphysical bullshit' (depending on who you are talking too). However, Neil describes his experience with them as something different. In his own words, he claims that the work they did on him left him with the sensation of gaining super powers. Having an interest in psychology, the brain, and hypnosis for as long as I can remember, it should seem obvious that I would be drawn to Eric like a moth to an open flame.

Once I tracked him down, realizing he no longer (or never did) go by the moniker of Rasputin, I was entered into a world like I would never believe. I have, to date, all but one of his products (the missing one is the one he did with Steve P that, at the moment, is a tad out of my price range, but on my list of desired purchases). I have also had both the honor and pleasure of working with Eric directly, through a few Skype video chats, and even an in person meeting with the man in his home. I have been a part of his Master's Circle group from when it was opened, and for a long while was a regular contributor to it with my own advancement. I even wound up co-founding a hypnosis group, Mythic Hypnosis, as a result. The man is a legend to me, and I admit that one of my goals in life is not only to be his friend, but to be able to hang with him on his level. And all of this because I got tired of striking out with women.

All of that being said, I still find it hard to believe I am here in the first place. I guess I should explain some of what has happened in the last couple of months, as I have not really updated this, and there is a long story to tell.

Rediscovering my lost direction.

So let's get the awkward part of this out of the way first; I had no idea I had ever created a blog. Mind you, the blog was originally for an English lit class back in college, and was mainly for us to post our thoughts and ideas about the stuff we were reading, but I never really did much of anything with it. I think I might have at one point set up another blog somewhere under a fake name and email account so I can rant and rave about shit, be self important, and assume that people thought I had some good ideas. But that one, like this one from college, went no where fast. I don't know if I can still access that other account, but at least Google is letting me keep this one. Better yet, I can edit it, change the URL, and make the damn thing coherent and look nice (sort of). Over time, assuming I keep this one alive again, I might take the time to really make it look professional or something. For now, it'll be a rough experiment to see if I can't use what ever writing talent I have and make my thoughts interesting to other people. In that light, I have chosen to keep what posts I had already made (save for one that was nothing but pictures of a slideshow for a class long forgotten), just as kind of a benchmark of where I used to be.

And it is a bit funny to me that the subject of those old posts was all about fear, because that's a big part of the discussion I am still having with myself today. The biggest fears I know of, the fear of change and fear of the unknown.

I renamed this blog to be about discovering my personal legend. For anyone curious about that title, it comes from the book The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, which follows the adventure of a young shepherd on his own journey to discover his personal legend. It was a book that came well recommended for me from a number of sources, and yet despite being published in the year of my birth (always a good omen for these kinds of things) I have only recently spent the time to read it. Or, to put it more truthfully, I listened to it via Audible on my way too and from work. And having now listened to it twice back to back, I wish I had read and or listened to it much sooner.

I am not here to summarize the book, and I am not here to give a book report kind of analysis of it either, even if this blog started as a means to do such a thing. No, I am instead going to say that because of that book, I have decided to rediscover my own personal legend before it is too late. I admit that I am not that old, but I can't help but feel still like I have wasted a lot of time and let a lot of opportunities slip by me. I have not always been the most active participant in my own life, and as a result have felt it lacking more often then I would care to admit. As a result, I have not been happy with myself and my level of accomplishment in some time. While I will be the first to admit that it is possible that I have simply set my own standards far to high, leading to a desperate cycle of never being good enough no matter what I do and eventually simply giving up on such a deep level to generate a perpetual feeling of self loathing, I have decided that to hell with my depressive tendencies, I want to at least attempt to do better.

But I finished my second listen of The Alchemist almost a month ago, why am I just not starting to post here at this blog? Well, a lot has happened in that last month. First off, it was the month of November, my birth month, and my birthday I was sick and unable to really enjoy it outside of binging on Fallout 4. Second, I got in trouble at my job as a bartender for following the law and trying to protect the company from allowing a client to do us harm. And third, I found out that I failed the California Bar Exam, a test I have more or less spent the last three years of my life preparing for. All of this combined together with my general disposition for depression and anxiety and it broke me. I was run through the gauntlet of emotions, feeling the extreme highs and lows of my spectrum, and was left shattered, drained, and empty of all life and feeling. So I decided to make a serious attempt to change everything in my life.

Now I am not one for New Year's resolutions. I am not a believer that a single, arbitrary day should hold the key to your future and success. Life altering decisions are meant to be meaningful and impactful, not something to just claim while drinking and then forgotten during the hangover. That being said, the timing of this change I suppose corresponds all too well with that tradition of making promises to yourself for the coming year. This difference of course is that I intend to keep these promises, and make the changes that I have decided to make. And I invite anyone reading this to come with me on this journey into the unknown territory of myself and the new world I am creating.

What you will get here is a brutally honest account of what is going on with my life, and I do not intend to censor any part of it. If you have an issue with anything I say, that is all you, and I do not hold it against you in anyway. Just know that I will likely not care, because what you do with this information is your business, mine is just to write it down. This may sabotage things in the future, such as any hope for a life in politics, but the fact is that if I cannot be honest with myself here, then I have no business in such a life style where I cannot be my most honest and genuine self. You may find things out about me that you do not like, but it is all me, and I will not try and pull my punches just to maintain a reputation. In fact, I hope that by being honest in this way, in showing you my raw self, that I can forge a new reputation that is much more closer to the truth.

I have a lot to say, and I have only used this post as a sort of introduction of things to come. Once I have digested the events of this weekend, I will post again. In the mean time, welcome to the next stage of my life. And welcome to my personal legend.

Fear comes to a close!

My, I have been lacking in these posts, now haven’t I? Sadly, I have about 5 or six blogs all written down in my notes, and yet not one of them posted here. I’m sorry professor, but I guess go out with a bang here. That being said, let’s see if I can try and summarize many of these old scribbling into a new blog that is actually relevant to the discussions, and not an outdated rant as many of these are. Fear, I’ve talked about it before, and I think it’s worthwhile to talk about again. Yes, we did touch upon it during class in our discussion, but let’s dive deeper shall we? I am going to try and avoid things like “why do we feel fear,” or “what does fear do to people,” as much as I can, and instead stab at the heart of another idea, that of “how does one create fear?”Now, some might look at that and wonder if I am demented, but in all honesty, I want to look at this more as a question of what aspects of society are crafted for no other reason than to incite fear into people. To do this, I think it’s worth looking at the concept of crafting social realities, instead of just accepting them as they are presented to us. I would go so far as to argue the idea that hindsight is 20/20, because I think that the clarity in which we see the past, in any way, is actually seen through glasses of some kind, and not by the natural eye at all. What I mean is that we are quick to apply concepts and ideas to any sort of happening as if these ideas were present during the time of their conception. Luckily for us, we have been reading books that have, for the most part, been fully aware of the ideas and theories that they present. When we look back at Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, we know that Twain was aiming directly at the industrial lifestyle, and hit his mark in symbolism and even blunt imagery. Yet, as a counter to this, there are times in which we can take this too far, and apply contemporary thoughts that might end up confusing the text more than the criticisms levied on it during its own time. Handmaid’s Tale, then, perhaps is the best way for us to see this concept in action, as Offred is constantly dividing her opinions between what was acceptable and what currently is. A society structured on a system of oppression and regulation, using the logic and reasoning that the past was bad because it did not have this, then the creation of fear is inevitable. Offred describes the anxiety that is felt by everyone, including herself, in regards to that ever present entity of “The Eyes,” or the fear created by sterilization. Everything is made to be frightening, and much like the idea that man has tamed nature, religion is viewed to have tamed that which is evil and corruptive. If one sees everything around them as frightening, then any entities that stands up as a protective agent against this is seen as a savior. Often, people fear what they do not understand, what they do not know, giving such things power. When a government such as the one presented alters the past to make it unknown to people, it becomes frightening. The Eyes themselves are a secret police, making all those who do not know what they do afraid of them. These fears are constructed for the people, based upon latent ideas and conceptions. However, they are not always natural, and great lengths are taken to reinforce them, such as the conditioning the Handmaids go through as well as the public display of the “punished” on the wall. Remind people what they are afraid of, and they will not seek to understand it, more to run for shelter. With the end of the year fast approaching, many of us fear for our grades, we’re not always sure what they are. But, I would like to leave everyone with this. Fear is what you make of it, and the only way to get past it is to face it. Many of the characters we discussed in class did so, and those who did not ended up with a raw deal. So, have a good winter break, and remember, we have nothing to fear but fear itself… that and carnival workers, those guys are just creepy…

Get ready for a long rant!

Let’s take a moment here to talk about social development. Talking much about Twain and his works, we’ve had many discussions on the subject, and I would like to go into it out of reflection from other classes I have been a part of. Today, we talk a lot about change, we even elected a president based off the assumption of change. Where is the change coming from? Not the idea of how will this change happen, but I am asking more of the ‘where’ and the ‘why.’ It seems to me that whenever there is to be this idea of great change, something else has already reflected on it, and in some cases even implemented it prior. So let’s think, where did it all start? What was the first domino in this long line of cause and effect? I don’t think this line of change has ever actually stopped. I feel I must backtrack a bit to an earlier conversation the class has had, that about the theory in which humanity is moving towards perfection. I call shenanigans upon this idea, as for every voice that tells us we are progressing you have just as many saying that we are moving backwards.



Personally, I say we are changing in a straight line, neither forward nor backwards, but to the side. Change is inevitable, and we have definitely progressed farther technologically speaking from the times before, however, I feel socially, we’ve stayed almost the exact same, just with new labels and reasoning behind them. Of course, not all change is good, but we all know that, but I am always curious to see how much of change is actually revolutionary in the truest sense.
I would like to take a moment and reflect upon this using human experience. Again, I put on my history hat and pull out two periods of our past that might give an idea or two to people on the subject. Now, both periods have something very important in common when compared to the time periods of Twains book, see if you can spot the reasons before I explain why later.
The first is that of the Renaissance. Now, most American’s will picture the English Renaissance at this, normally under the reign of Queen Elizabeth. This popular conception of the time, peppered of course with art and culture from the Italian artists, is not what I am pointing too. No instead I am looking to much earlier, that of where it all began, Italy, where we find a very important result of early trade and commerce of the time. We see the growth of the middle class, those with enough money to break free of the bindings of the poor, but no birthplace to claim for a title in the upper ranks. A return to classical teachings and styles lead to a revival of the individual, as well as a strengthening of a budding practice in Europe known as democracy. Irony will have a part to play when one thinks that while Italy was the focus point of a new age of intellectual thought, the country only unified after a number of wars a couple hundred years later, ending after its defeat in the First World War, but that is a subject for another class. Now, I would like to point out that democracy was by no means new during this time. In fact, many had felt that it was a dead institution from the Greek and later the Roman people. Resurfaced knowledge brought back to Rome from the crusades sparked a new credibility to these assumed new ideas. I am almost tempted to remind the class of our talks of nostalgia and its effects on the present, but I feel it would be a little to cynical in the contexts of a democratic based republic. Regardless, the west returned to democracy, even though it was tempered by Monarchy, and later broken to different forms by revolution and war.
On the other end, let’s look to the east, and a more modern concept of Communism and its rise and even fall. I would hope people are catching onto how both these time frames reflect what we’ve been reading, but again, I am ahead of myself. Now regardless of your own feelings on the subject, please note that I do not fashion myself to be a Communist, at least not anymore, yet my own political bends are not the focus of this analysis. I would like all those who have read the Communist manifesto to help those who have not, as you will have a better understanding of what I will be talking about, at least I hope so. It is no real secret, the Communism that Marx talked about was one born out of a post industrial society, one in which a country would become strong enough to support itself and its people. However, it is interesting to note that both major Communist countries, Russia and China, turned to Communism well before becoming a true industrial country to begin with. This was not Marxism, but Leninism, the idea that Communism could propel a nation forward through development by the will and work of the people. Take a step back for a moment and look with me in hindsight as to what has happened to both places. In both, we have seen an explosion of industrialization, with the leaders of the country trying to pull their countries out of the poor status they were seen to be in and bring them right up alongside their western competition. Yet the closer each country came to that post-industrial goal, more issues within the state came to arise, and in the case of Russia, came an eventual collapse of the USSR. China, however, stayed strong, with new leadership and new ideas, and in a bit of twisted irony, capitalism. Today, we have two countries as much a part of free enterprise as any other, with only one still calling itself Communist. What happened? My answer is thus, the steel age that was championed by both Communism and the World Industrial Revolution gave way to the silicone age, and thus the global uprising of the worker as predicted by Marx was completely side stepped as man walked down an alternate path. The failure of Communism seemed to be the failure to predict human development. Yet as I stand up here on a soapbox, I wonder, we say the revival of democracy, all be it a few centuries after it was first used, could it be that man has yet to rediscover socialism? Could it be the next stage after the globalization that was born of a post silicone age? Time has been known to repeat itself in very interesting ways.
True, I have given a sort of short hand of these ideas, but then again, I could write books on the subjects, and honestly people already have. Now, to draw this long rant right back into the text, allow me to shed light as to why I picked what I did. Both of them are sort of the next stage in human development from the points in the book. We see the Renaissance as a step up from the Middle Ages, and Communism by definition is based on a post-industrial society. If nothing else, I would like to use them to completely fight against Hank and his entire ideology of change. If nothing else, I would like to jump back to the idea that of all change, there has already someone else that has done it. In the greatest of examples, Hank is showing us just that. His country, his time from which he comes from, has already done that which he is trying to do, and has been, to him, successful with it. However, he has been trying to impress all of this upon a society that has not developed in the same way, has yet to reach that point of turnaround in which the ideas of Rome become important again. In a way, Hank has skipped the creation of self awareness in the people in his attempts to create a republic. And what of after? True, it can be said that Twain was not around to really see the after effects of the Communist movements, and obviously his character had no part in this, but what about that idea? I would like to point out that in battles against Merlin, Hank has had to outdo himself every time to try and take favor away from the old conjurer, telling one something about how resistant people really are to change. It took hundreds of years for democracy to become established as deep as it has been, and decades for the ideas of socialism to take any real root. Hank is trying to do all this in one lifetime.
I will cut things short here, as I fear I’ve rambled off already, but let me ask this much. Is Hank really accomplishing anything in the long run? Is his legacy nothing more than a bullet hole in a suit of armor, or is there more too it? What are we given to believe about what happens after, and did history really change at all, even to just Hank?

(Comic provided by www.XKCD.com)