Being more negative
The Mathematics, Economics and Linguistics of Spirituality.
“Inside the mind of you, that is if you’re not perfect”
By
Matt Edmund
So as you might have thought, I chose this title to catch your attention. And why shouldn’t it? Day after day we are told to be positive and to always look at the brighter side of life often neglecting the reasons for which we really feel so disgruntled and beguiled. Yes somedays when I wake up I feel ecstatic, but there are so many where there is this nagging inner question of what’s next? Is this my life? Have I did everything I wanted this past 5 years that I promised myself I would do? I guess I can go into some nice depressing verbosity and assume you will empathize greatly, but I will save the spiritual prose for later, but it is true. How many times I find myself in the “self-help” section, which you are obviously in right now, trying to find a remedy to the monotony of life. Who knows what triggers the spontaneous relapse of the unequivocal need to change. Maybe it is a problem with the ‘ball and chain’ or people at work truly not realizing your true potential. The list is endless, but nevertheless, it will put you in that same spot. This spot is as peculiar as it is precarious. Some see it as a sign that the direction in life in which they are heading is flawed as others might see it as a personal weakness, but at the end of the day you are there. Well, for me, I don’t like this feeling of emotional insecurity and emptiness. I used to neglect it and say I don’t need help, look at me, I know what I am doing. Maybe compare myself against other people in my life or try to justify the reasons. Sometimes I would even get to the point where life seem that it has climaxed and monotony of the American or whatever dream is all I had left. The red flags really started hitting is when I would change my life. Maybe it was my friends, or the where I lived at the time. There was a certain ecstasy of meeting new people and new surroundings but eventually the high would wear off and I would be in the same place where I was before. Looking for something else to get me to change. Roughly enough, picking up and moving, finding new friends, learning something new became harder and harder. It was time for change in my mind and the way I perceived the world. Regardless though, whatever has lead you to pick up this book, whatever inner strife or maybe intellectual curiosity brought it about, it typically means that change is in the air and I will probably have to give up something that I utterly love to do. As I write, drinking an espresso and smoking a cigarette, the inner guilt is killing me, but some things I just won’t give up that easily. Even giving up cigarettes and coffee won’t do anything to stop the cyclical path. It is all on the inside, and from there we take on the next challenge but later and from a different approach. I won’t tell you what to do because that is just arrogance and probably make you hate me and not recommend people to read this, but what I will hope to do with as much cleverness as I can muster up, is to prove to you by simple mathematics and a little spiritual introspection of why the only way to get what you want in life is buried deep inside you and to get it you have to look deep inside.
Upon commencing to where this reality came and where this proof arrived I will have to say that this book is not for the extremities. It is not for the over optimist nor for the severely depressed. It is for the laymen as I consider myself. The college kid who doesn’t have the luxury of just being able to study and not worry about finances. For the kid who doesn’t always come home to pleasantries but often times passed many hard times. For all of us who try to make our own path, maybe through high school sports or the alternative scene that I chose for myself. The kids who didn’t know how important doing well on the SAT was and preparing for college. Us who on Friday nights just stayed out late and drank the night away or did other mind altering things. The kids who might have realized too late how bad certain drugs could ruin your life. How not standing up for what you believed in led to something tragic. Maybe not directly, but the mind laced with guilt, will find ways to prove that it was so. The list is endless, but I believe you know who you are. Because in your mind is the place where all of your realities exist. The only place you don’t have to lie and pretend you are something else. The only sancuatary. So I don’t ask you to divulge the truth of your unique past or true wants, but just to look at it and say, that it is real and no matter what it is, there is always time to make the best. That is the beautiful thing I have learned and it is something that should be valued. It is like a poem, it is just a compilation of words and will be interpreted differently by all. That is why there is no plan for you, but only the proof of what self introspection will promote. To be explained further but to reiterate whatever it is I believe we are an overlooked genre and all the help goes to either the wealthy and well prepared or the poor with no goals. We are the future though and to make that future bright we have to allocate ourselves the best way and to do that we have to be spiritually sound. I went through a lot of my life thinking I was better, that I didn’t belong where I was but one thing you cant change is where you are from, what you can do though is grow to love it, learn from it, and then take the necessary steps to make one’s life worth living.
Quote: “A few drops here and there will create a flood”
Right now though I would like to try, although the task will be difficult to lead you down my train of thoughts to how my proof and logic of being more negative came to fruition. I can only ask for you to bear with me for as in a poem, you might not see the links, but I believe they are there. This and I believe, many can empathize, have been in similar situations or noticed this about certain friends. Certain moments of despair that encompass us during our lives. So after meeting and speaking with so many people, it seemed to me that we all have a battle plan to get through these moments of despair. Some would recluse themselves in their rooms, lights dimmed, CD in hand with a guitar and callous their fingers away to lessen the pain, while others would take bong rip after bong rip until there really wasn’t anything actually to remember. I am as guilty as you on most measures. Maybe it was through peer pressure or the denial of peer pressure. Television taught me about how every girl was pretty so I tried the promiscuous life, which by all means has given me great stories, but really has not done much to alleviate the nagging. The worst to me is the ones who solve their problems by getting a girlfriend. We all know that they attract the single worst thing for themselves. They only get a girl because they want someone to whom to talk, share feelings, and pass the endless loneliness. Someone to make them feel important. This, to me, is the most dangerous because, and I am absolutely guilty as the rest, is when you turn every fault of the girl into something positive. Where you look past all the obvious signs of why the girl might not be the right one. Shit, the only thing that can come from this is pain. If one is lying to themselves about the relationship then truly that negative aura will encompass the whole relationship. I don’t know if you can empathize but I foolishly went down this path. I was living abroad and I thought this girl I met was truly the ‘one’ for me. My intuition kept telling me not to trust her and that who she projects herself to be is not the person who she really is. The problem was I overlooked everything and changed my reality and the reality of certain situations to make the love seem so real. And also, that girl could have been amazing and a relationship could have been strong but I looked to it as the savior of myself instead of something that would just take me to the next level. If I would have had some courage I could have been able to question the girl for who she was and really found a possible best friend or the perfect match. Regardless though, what I want to express is that, I was so confused internally about life decisions that needed to be made, I was 26, I was coasting through life not really committing myself to anything. It was also the point where I was not that young anymore. Like a pussy, instead of just waking up and doing it I looked for something else to try and calm my internal strife. And yes, it was a girl. The worst thing was that I thought she would be the catalyst to my change but it was just a bandaid on a wound that needed surgery. Oh and it just got worse. Of course no other person is going to lead one away from facing themselves. What I did was just keep justifying and justifying. I became a liar to people and most horribly a liar to myself. I will say with all sincerity there were definitely good moments but they no way compared with all of the shit that I went through. It was like a viscous cycle. I was losing touch with my personal life and at the same time continuing to deny the writing on the wall that the relationship was bringing so many problems and exacerbating the original problems that I had. It was shitty. I kept comparing myself to other people because of their fame, good looks, money, and popularity. Whatever it was I could never be enough. Sadly it took me awhile to truly understand that one can never find happiness unless one is happy with themselves. And also, that girl could have been amazing and a relationship could have been strong but I looked to it as the savior of myself instead of something that would just take me to the next level. Yes a cliché, but it is the truth. That is the rough thing too, I barely got out of it. Barely was able to find myself again. That is why I write because in some inkling of spiritual soundness I had the courage to face my demons and realize that running away from a problem and trying to pretend it wasn’t there would ultimately just put me into a spiritual jail. Now back to the point about covering one’s own pain when they know they should be facing their own personal truth whatever it may be. It is not to say that this relationship couldn’t have worked at another time, or the girl couldn’t be amazing herself one day, but the reality is, no matter what, the relationship will falter. It will end up the way it started with lies and deception. This relationship problem is troubling because if it is a friend who is in that situation, one can’t advise them against it because in the short run they are happy and doing better. It is a catch 22 because if you do advise them to break it off they will blame you for their unhappiness. If you advise them to stay with them they will blame you for not speaking your mind in the first place. Many told me things. Like you are a fool or you are smart to follow your heart. No matter what they told me, since I was truly lying to myself, I would spin it in the way that justified running from my own pain. Ok so, whatever it may be, I don’t think it requires me to go further because if you don’t realize the reasons inside your own mind then for surely you have noticed them in your friends. It is always easier to criticize others than oneself. That is the absolute truth.
So now it is time to tell you a little about this book and why there is a need for you to read it. It is simple, living a life of fear sucks and it makes everybody else’s life suck just as bad as the next. Making yourself better is somewhat like chewing gum, it tastes great and gives you something to do, but also, and thankfully helps the rest of by getting to smell something refreshing rather than quincing. This book is not just for you I guess but for all of us. In a sense I need you as we all do. The Socratic path of introspection is not easy so if we all come together and fight for it the effects will be felt everywhere. I need you to bring the positivity, that, when facing my issues and fears seems so hard, I can feel it and use your strength to help me or be helped be the person you indirectly helped by your path. Will thank you now in hopes that maybe not you but someone affected by your path of becoming maybe comes my way and helps me through a weak moment.
So I have conjured up, and it in most eyes, literally, certain ways to analyze spirituality using some basic concepts of economics and mathematics. To reiterate, it is a way to prove why you should be more self introspective and inquiring. It will need a little openness on your part, not a leap of faith, but just trust in it. All I want to do is prove why you should be pursuing a life of conquering fears and loving the benefits of it. trust me, I do not go technically overboard for two reasons. Firstly it is not necessary and to me a waste of time and secondly because I couldn’t if I wanted to. Ego problem as you can imagine.
I. Why being more negative will make your life positive.
a. An intro from where this concept came
b. Understanding being more negative
II. What guys despise in women is secretly what they hate in themselves.
a. Why girls at bars are worthless
b. The necessity of economics to understand
c. What denotes price
d. Lemons
e. The true hidden reason why I wrote this
III. A really weird way to not become who you don’t want to be
IV. The importance of embracing and nurturing conflict
V. How to view your business as your life
VI. Using economics to understand why the world in which live has some hope.
VII. How ideas work; the subtle manifestation
VIII. Of course a little to do about America.
IX. Capitalism and Communism; enemies or distant relatives? (In Spanish)
X. Why you should just be a little better than the rest
XI. Why I hate myself because I am a liberal
a. I empathize too much therefore I am weak
XII. Why learning a second language is the best way to help cure your problems.
a. This is my approach of course.
Why Being More Negative Will Make Your Life Positive
R9
An intro to from where this concept came
Litany Against Fear
I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain
I will have to preface this chapter with experiential situation that brought it about. I was sitting at a coffee shop with a friend with who, in all reality, had nothing in common except the curiosity of learning languages. We rarely spoke in English, this guy was an absolute linguists genius coupled with more motivation than imaginable. At the age of 19 he had already conquered Spanish, English, French, Italian, Portugues and Patawa slowly on his way to having fluidity in Russian and German. I don’t know how he did it and nor do I want to because I just would get frustrated.
Well at this coffee shop I finally realized why I was so glad we didn’t speak in English all the time. The guy was an absolute religious guru. He had the best heart in the world, but he was the worst type of religious devotee; born again. Born agains are a special case because they committed themselves to changing their whole life. They are fanatical because there is not a question in their minds to the validity of their beliefs. How could there be? After transforming themselves completely, getting rid of everything that was not in line with their new lifestyle and convincing themselves that this new belief is that which will set them free. It would be emotionally and spiritually devastating to them to return to their old ways. Not to say that a friendship can not be cultivated and flourish but one must be careful. Anyways, we started speaking in English and the spiritual questions shortly ensued there after. No need to delve into the obvious bantering discourse of which I am sure you are aware, but only to focus on one explanation that he had of Jesus and how through this realization, in his eyes, he finally got it.
To him, the true realization of happiness was one day being completely one with his lord savior. I myself, fount it rather ridiculous, but the way that you could feel the utter joy and passion when he spoke about it was rather captivating. He continued by explaining to me that in his world there were two planes. One was the plane of reality in which we all find ourselves and the second was the plane of divinity. In his eyes the more works by grace that he committed accrued themselves simultaneously in both planes of his life. To him there was somewhat of a personalized marker that would one day, when his time came to pass, enter him until the bliss of divinity. Rationally, it was hard to swallow, but emotionally as a human, it was an utter impact the way he transmitted his joy. Believe me, this wasn’t the opener to the conversation, but the product of endless transitions and branches of a typical conversation. Regardless though, I took something very important from his explanations of the two planes of divinity and reality. For me, not being very religious, divinity entered into me rather differently. Instead of looking at one’s personal reality being made up of their personal physical self and soul, I looked at the personal soul being that of divinity and the physical self being that of reality. To be more clear, the introspective path into one’s own soul has divinity at the end of the tunnel. To me the divinity is the light that is so common to the above expression. . Given that personal divinity is found within, the path has effects. To me the plain of reality is the physical life that one lives. The effect of looking into oneself is felt in the physical plain. In the above description that my friend gave me it was the opposite. By doing good acts on this earth the accrued ‘good will’ points follow upstairs in heaven. Similar to the above, looking into yourself, combating and overcoming fears, will lead to more clarity and to the path of divinity. While doing this, the same accruing takes place in the physical world manifesting itself into many different ways.
So now that you have been prefaced somewhat, I can begin to explain a little of the reasoning from where ‘being more negative’ came. It is somewhat simple in its understanding if you are willing to let go of some of your preconceived notions of what words are supposed to mean.
Understanding being more negative
To begin, a substantial quote:
"In the history of culture the discovery of ZERO will always stand out as one of the greatest single achievements of the human race."
-Tobiaz Danzig
So from the earlier explanation of how doing good deeds in one plain leads to having happiness accrued in another plain comes the basic understanding of becoming more negative. It is drawn from a very simple comprehension of certain mathematical concepts. It all revolves around the number zero and the endless possibilities that branch from it. The number zero represents many things, but in its essential form it is symbolic for balance between a world of numbers that exist and a world of numbers that do not. A fellow German coffee compadre of mine gave me a wonderful explanation of it. He just simply articulated the world of mathematics that is negative. It was effortless; he wrote down the number 1 and said this exists because there are objects that this number can symbolize. The he wrote down a -1 and said this is what mathematicians created to give the balance of things. Maybe it was due to his lacking of depth in the English language, but he continued to tell me that “it doesn’t exist, how can you have something that is in negative space? It only exists in the mind”. He kept saying it to me with the condescending facial expressions and gestures that you get when computer nerds are explaining something to you that you don’t get. Whatever it may be it stuck, but applied to the social fabric of my life.
So now we can delve into this, but first we have to redefine the word negative in its societal context. Looking it up in the dictionary you will get a slue of definitions, but the basic one is having the quality of something harmful and unpleasant. Going through life so many times I would hear somebody tell me not to be so negative or negative thinking will get you nowhere. I ask you, how many times you can recall hearing it. “Don’t have a negative attitude”, someone says or, “this has a negative connotation”.
Maybe I am more of a pessimistic person but the word negative typically means something that is not good. From all of this thinking it helped me to not just think of the word negative but to many other words that are taboo. The word ‘terror’ or many other words that once heard instantly manifest ideas that weren’t originally associated with the word. It took awhile but when I was able to distance myself from all of the preconceived societal connotations of what things were supposed to mean I guess you could say that had a subtle intellectual leap of faith; by changing the meanings of certain words or norms I was able to see reality differently. I truly learned that with seeing things objectively I was able to control my reality. This wasn’t a one-stop-shop for transformation but somewhat of a lightning realization of the power of perception and relativity. In that same flash of intuition I guess you can say that in that moment is from where the title of this book came. I began to think and analyze things for myself and instead of taking things as a given I began to analyze them and internalize them from my point of view. So that is what this book is about. Seeing the exact same things as you have seen before, but just choosing how you want to perceive them instead of believing and accepting the engraining of so many detrimental beliefs.
So, with the favor from you, and to really understand this simple yet possibly effective philosophy, we must assign the definition of negative as being something that only exists in the mind. May it be thoughts, ideas, feelings, memories, emotions, fears, or intuition, but it must pertain to anything that happens in the mind. It is whatever that is intangible that pertains to your life. In reality it doesn’t exist because it is inside of your mind. You might think of it as the building blocks of your soul or the definitive qualities of who you are. It is hard to say that these things that are so dynamic to an individual do not exist, but from a secular point of view, when you die, they really don’t, they only survive in the minds of people still left in the world that had the pleasure to know you.
So on the assumption that negative, when applied to self analysis only means something that is internal we define what positive means in the same context. From a yenyang perspective positive is the exact opposite of negative. It will be anything that is considered external in your life or anything physical that exists in your reality. May it be an awesome friendship, a poor friendship, good interaction with your family. Or maybe something as simple as a nice car, a dream job, a job where you contemplate how bad you wish your boss would run himself into a wall, a good paycheck. To some it could be a conversation with a friend that left you altered forever or a big house. I am sure you get the point. It is what is external in your life because from an empirical point of view it is all that we truly know.
In a more academic sense, old Indian mathematicians used to denote a positive number as a fortune, a zero as a cipher and a negative number as a debt. With a little research you can find that the Europeans didn’t accept negative numbers until the 16th century and up until that time considered them an absurdity. They also were slaughtering people by the thousands for not believing in Catholicism so they don’t deserve that much credit, but that is another story. Basically we have applied the mathematical definitions to a realistic situation. Personal note; I knew high school math class would someday be applicable to the real world. To reiterate, because this is very important, are these definitions:
Negative: Something that is internal and in your mind. It is neither bad nor good it is simply description of what happens internally in your mind. Say it is your soul, your inner self.
Positive: Anything in society that is relevant to your mind.
Zero: the balance in between positive and negative.
O.k. so now I will reiterate a little on the basic building blocks of mathematics to see how truly relevant they are in our own little worlds and not just in the classroom. As I said earlier mathematics in its essential form is basically numbers that create balance. You can think of it as an equation. Something must equal something. From these basic concepts came the elegant mathematics that has made our lives so simplified.
Applied to our lives I propose that we have the necessary tools to analyzing ourselves to ultimately become a little bit more aware of our personal selves to ascertain a richer life - the first process of becoming more negative. I just am going to say this right now, becoming more negative is about creating more personal negative energy. I don’t want anyone to think that I am talking about Chakras or Nirvana or any other of the Buddhist terminology for this is not a book about meditation. It is about creating a type of energy that will attract another type of energy that will create balance in one’s life similar to that of what happens in mathematics.
What I want you to understand is that we accrue negative energy by delving into our personal self and trying to understand the internal workings of who we are – ultimately becoming more aware of who we are. To create this good negative energy one has to face their own personal fears and overcome self deteriorating thinking. The more that these fears and confronted, understood and conquered more negative energy will be created. For example a close friend of mine always had the problem of submerging himself to the bantering of others. He would never stand up for himself and at the end of the day would be unhappy or drink himself stupid. I don’t believe I need to describe this further because I think we all have had a friend similar to this. He would always just allow himself to be bullied but to him he could say that he had good friends but the reality is the friends of his were just shit. They could care less about the guy. It was hard though because he was loosing his real friends by acting so belligerently. It wasn’t until one day when he began to finally see what he was loosing and began to question the reasons for which he was acting so. It is hard for guys to open up but he did tell me how fearful he really was of looking stupid or loosing friends if he really showed them his true personality. Yes this was due to a lot of alcohol and a little ‘I love you man’ but it worked and it helped. His solution to protect himself was to just endure being made fun saving the pain of it for when he was alone. He still had his friends but the really only kept him around because he was always willing to get pissed on. It was a downward spiral for him he was self destructive - luckily his self medication didn’t bring him to die from it.
One day he woke up and decided that he needed to face his demons. He confronted his fear of failure and not being accepted by just being who he was. In that moment, maybe a rite of passage into his spiritual self, analyzed from the ‘building more negativity approach, he created a substantial amount of negative energy. He looked into his own mind and learned more about himself. As you can imagine the majority of his so called friends disappeared out of his life. The great thing though is that the ones that belonged let him know that it was about time he starting acting more like himself. We all knew his potential. Another beautiful thing is that he began to attract a lot more people that liked him for who he truly was. Some could say that his realization was just apart of growing up but with more analysis you could see how paramount it really was for him. He looked into the abyss of himself, confronted fears, and gained a bunch of negative energy. In return, through the laws of mathematics, that energy had to be matched by positive energy. It did, by substantiating better friendships, solidifying current friendships and alleviated the need to for a self destructive personality. In a sense he became a little more aware and a touch more happy. He didn’t have the same life but he also wasn’t killing himself. To me, he found that sometimes what you think you should do, isnt always the best path. He was fortunate; it always gives me hope when I think of him. It helps to reinforce my theory that these subtle ‘personal awakenings’ don’t have to be by chance. They can easily come from just understanding the laws by which they are ruled. Simply stated, he delved into himself, looked at his fears, faced them, let them pass through him, understood them and built and accrued a great amount of negative energy. Simultaneously, this energy found itself in the physical world and help to reinforce his new self.
To me the above is a simple way to understand it but can be trivialized because many people just see it as standard operations in one’s life. I guess maybe just part of growing up. In this next example I will try to use a more realistic approach that to me helps discern the being more negative theory from things that have already been noticed in one’s own life. It comes from the saying I have heard many times from many of my friends and personally out of my own mouth. “Why is it that when you are single and you go to the bars or a party and try to find a girl it is almost impossible, but, isn’t it the damndest thing that the moment that you have a girlfriend you notice so many other girls taking interest?” Is this a common phenomenon that has been accepted as a norm?
Well, I don’t think it is so cut and dry. To analyze this we will look at both situations and then draw a conclusion. I remember vividly as you might so many times going to the bar to try and pick up on girls. Every time I would go with that mentality one of two things would happen. I would talk to girls, get rejected, or by some chance get decently lucky and carry on a conversation to quickly realize that it would be in vain with somewhat of a lemon girl( chapter 2 will shed some light on this terminology) . Getting rejected was the typical norm because to be honest the goal was to hook up with a chic not sit and spend ridiculously amounts of money on overpriced beer. Sometimes I guess I would convince myself that it was somewhat of a contact sport of statistics where the more girls I would talk to the odds of my success would increase. The only problem was that it was mentally taxing and the more girls to whom I would speak the more beers I would drink ultimately altering the thickness of my beer goggles. I guess that is where the term ‘coyote ugly’ came from. It was somewhat of a vicious cycle until I realized that the costs were outweighing the benefits – there weren’t any real benefits actually.
There were those times though when it just so happened that I would go and have outstanding success. I would really not have to do anything about it. It would just happen that I would meet good looking girls effortlessly. They would seem so interested in everything. So that led me to a little introspection. I would think about my current situation when those marvelous occurrences came into my life. Oddly enough it was those times when I really didn’t care. I was completely content with my current situation. Two times stuck out the most to me, the first was when I would sit and hang with my friend Bruce. Although heroin unfortunately got the best of him (RIP) we would sit and strategize ideas on life, business, talk about snowboarding, analyze the world, but most importantly not give a damn about what was going on in the outside world.
The other time would be when my friends would coerce me into going out to the bars with them when they knew damn well that I was happily content with my current girlfriend. I swear, I wouldn’t have to try anything to talk to girls. It was almost ridiculous how easy it was to pull girls. I would have to sit there and stand and hang out with the girls that my friends persuaded to come and talk to us. You could tell that the girls had a genuine interest of who I was and not what I looked like. Good thing. It honestly would piss me off because I didn’t want to be there in the first place and where in the hell were the girls when I was happily single willing to accept almost anything depending on the amount of beer that I had that night.
Another good quote, actually two of them:
“To wish you were someone else is to waste the person you are”
“I don’t have enough time to be ‘too cool’ or be somebody I am not, life is right now”
So when this first occurred to me I thought that maybe it had to do with the conversation that I would have with these girls that kept them so interested in me. Looking back, I realized that I didn’t care what they thought nor was I trying to impress them. I was simply being myself not having the slightest concern of whether or not we were going eventually see each other again. On the other hand, I remember the exact opposite when the same conversation would begin to unfold when I was single. I would always try to say things to minimally impress the girl or say what I thought she might want me to say. I found myself somewhat as playing the role of the actor not realizing at the time that I was absolutely horrible at it. Knowing that of course my success picked up somewhat after the fact but nothing in comparison to the girls that I could of have hooked up with if when I had a girlfriend.
So that led me to delve further into the reasons for which my potential success was so different between the times that I had a girlfriend and the times without. I started to analyze what were the main differences. I realized that when I didn’t have a girlfriend, finding girls to hook up with somewhat engulfed my thought process. On an even deeper side it was that I truly was lonely and wanted the companionship of a girl. Maybe it was that good feeling you get that you have when you know someone really wants to be with you or that simply you feel wanted, but whatever it was it was quite comforting. I found out that instead of wasting my time always thinking about girls or trying to find them, I focused more on myself and doing better at the things I was currently doing. I began to work more efficiently, my grades always improved and I truly feel that I was absorbing what I was learning rather than just memorizing it to pass a test. I found myself being more of a decent person which led to others enjoying the time they spent with me. Overall I was confronting personal things in my life and largely improving myself. Getting back into the things that I stopped doing. I was reading more, writing more and just ultimately enjoying the subtleties of life.
Obviously this example stuck out so much to me when I was conceptualizing being more negative. I found that since I didn’t have to worry about the distractions of wasting my time trying to be someone I wasn’t I found myself confronting myself on a lot of different issues. Instead of hanging out with people I didn’t really care about I was passing the time with quality people, having really good conversations and becoming more of a contented person. My negative energy was increasing and I truly believe that I was attracting all of the good fortune that was coming my way. To reiterate, I will go as far to say that by focusing more on myself, I created a lot of energy that had to be matched by its physical counterpart. That is the beautiful thing about it, there must be balance and by focusing on yourself you can control the balance, or should I say the process that leads to the balance; gaining so much quality positive things in my life. To me this is a very common thing. Not only by focusing on myself I would attract the most well rounded woman; beautiful, intelligent, creative and not too concerned with just the material side of life. Actually, this might come as a shock to some, but it weeded out all of the needless girls that were absolutely a waste of time. Don’t get me wrong, I believe that there is an important place for them in society but not in mine.
So now I want to return to what being more negative is about. It is something that brings with itself a hefty challenge. It does revolve around the realm of happiness. And now I must question you further and I believe it is necessary. Being more negative is not about looking to find happiness. That is the last thing it is about. It is about having faith in one’s self. About having the confidence to know that the more one faces their fears, the more one really tries to understand who they are as a person from their own perspective. Happiness is fugitive and will always wither away if its source is weak. Being more negative, i.e. being more spiritually focused on one’s self is about having the faith that what you know about happiness is wrong. That the preconceived bull shit notions of what you should do to gain happiness is wrong also. It is about knowing from the bottom of your mind and heart that the more you focus on yourself the more you will find happiness, actually the more easily happiness will find you. It will set you free from the shackles of the limiting factors. One could say that happiness and everything you want is abundant in this world. It is around you everywhere. But the only limits are your own spiritual weakness to allow you to see the beauty of what is out there. By confronting and facing your inner demons, your ability to focus will grow abundant. I can only assume that what you previous thought was what you wanted will start to fade. You will be able to look into all of the crap of your life and do what is necessary to right it. And that is the most beautiful thing all it takes is that you solely focus on yourself. Build as much negative energy that you can, you will have every tool possible to confront everything. I remember reading the Dune series and the always referred to the golden path. It is a path of knowing oneself so much. Understanding that the more one questions themselves and does not run from their fears the more of a path they will follow.
FEAR IS THE MIND KILLER
“The Key to change is to let go of fear”
Oh so now we must talk about fear. Because the one good thing about it is it gives you a target to begin focusing on yourself. Things you fear are the things that are holding you back. So many times I have run from my fears and although by avoiding I gained a little happiness I was always regretful of it. Although the smile on my face was strong deep down I knew I acted like a wimp. Although of course I hated to admit I would always be so personally reminded of my own downfalls when I would see it in others. Like when I would see one of my friends completely avoiding confronting their own shit. I would many of times hypocritically fire endless criticisms at them because I knew they were just being fools. I never went away from it because I have always believed the controlled conflict is so much more beneficial that just trying to make people happy all the time but I have gone so weak many of times. Although this next example of running from fears is personally heartfelt I will express it because it is necessary and through a serious loss I truly believe the man who lost it all would want his story told. I will not go into too much detail, but to begin before a dear friend of mine passed away I always used to say to my friends how lucky we were not to have someone so close to us die. I guess I spoke to soon because we lost dearly, and not just us but all who could have had the chance to be in the presence of this spirit.
I will shorten the example not to shorten its importance but I believe I can get the point across easily enough. It is a story I am sure one can easily relate with even if the ultimate loss wasn’t there. Death can come in many forms but the physical one seems to leave the deepest lasting memories. From this I learned that it isn’t exactly that life is short, it is long actually, but it becomes all so long and arduous when you don’t face the fears that are holding you back and become who you should become. So now I shall begin because I think it is pertinent. So my own personal failing happened quite some time ago and of course time has helped me to see things much clearer. I was 21 years old and just freshly released in the world of drinking and fun times. I had just started a clothing company and was getting heavily involved in the music world when I met a guy who was evenly ambitious in both our pursuits of good times and success. We were both just young and dumb but loved enjoying the life. It was one of those instant friendships that it seemed that every day passed was similar to weeks with other good friends. This friend of mine was an amazing musician with a heart of gold. He truly lit up the room with his smile, voice and warmth in his demeanor that let people know they could just be themselves. But I need to explain more about him. He was truly an artist who grew up in the predominately white suburbs of Arizona where football, drinking and girls are the status quo. He loved snowboarding and also loved even more to have a good time. Music and snowboarding helped provide an artistic outlet but unfortunately at a younger age he found heroin to help in the same way it has done with so many musicians. I don’t know if you know or have friends who have tried the drug but it is a bitch. I never tried and never will but I have seen its destruction. He fought it though through the love of friends and family.
I met him a couple of years after his days of heroin and that is where the story shall continue. We had endless fun. To the point that when both of us would walk into a party we would instantly have so many people just come and want to be with us, talk with us and just enjoy our presence. I am not saying that we were just so amazing but we were just reckless in our pursuit to support people and have a good time. We brought it about and supported it and we could feel the affect on others. But let’s be honest here, the party has to end sometime. We were living and drinking every night enjoying a rock start life without doing the hard work. Yeah we would put on fashion shows and concerts but this is where the story begins to turn. Time and time again we would spend hours talking of all the things we wanted to do and accomplish. My friend had endless plans to do wonderful things in the music industry and he had every tool necessary except one thing -the confidence that he could continually write music. The more we talked the more I realized that he hadn’t written new music since his times of heroin. It didn’t matter though, the music he would sing was just brilliant and captivating. I remember we had another person in our reckless drinking crew who was as gregarious as us. He was a bit different though. He had unbelievable courage to tell us that he wasn’t drinking any more. He saw how all we would do is just talk about the glory and not work hard for it. Also, I think deep down he saw how dangerous it really was. A vision and intuition I only wish I had the courage to let myself see.
I guess I ask you now, have you ever been so afraid to stop doing something because you were so afraid things would change? Maybe with friends or a relationship? Afraid to get to know someone better in fear that they might not like you if they really get to know you or if they do realize that the perceived fun times would just inevitably go away? If you haven’t then I applaud you but if you have then maybe you can understand how I was really just a weak person. Of course the whole world would just tell me how I was doing great artistic fun things but deep down I knew the truth but was so afraid to do anything about it. Well it is easy to look back now as the old adage says, hindsight is 20/20 but lost in the moment everything is distorted. So as the anecdote unfortunately climaxes I remember there was a time when we were sitting at my parents house and he started showing me his new music. I can only tell you that I could feel an essence of utter desperation in fear in him. He was so afraid that I would not like it and although I knew intuitively the reason for it I was too afraid to say it. God, a little bit of honesty and courage could have done great but in my moment to shine, out of fear of being open with a friend or turning off the music of my fun rock star life I just played it cool. All he wanted to hear was me telling him, brother, I don’t care about all of this shit, I respect the hell out of you as a person and I will be here to support you no matter what. That even if he quit playing music our bond would never falter. That although he wrote so much of most amazing work on heroin doesn’t mean he cant do it again. But I didn’t and I just kept pretending that everything was ok and that smiles and laughs, although fickle were better than dealing with real problems.
The last night I remember with him was when he asked me to hang out with him because he needed to talk with me. I told him for sure not a problem. He picked me up, and we went to go talk but at that moment there was a party. Again, we let the good times roll and went and drank even though neither of us really wanted to. Well that night he disappeared and relapsed. One time doing heroin ended it all. You can imagine the horror of it all but it so impacted so many. The world truly lost someone special. Although I do not hold myself accountable for his death, these things happen and cant be stopped but shit, I know that are endless drinking, fear of change and inability to just wake the fuck up helped put all the pieces together for just a shitty finale. I wanted to share this with you because I had to learn the hard way about what happens when you run from your fears. When you, in the face of being courageous and facing your fears, avoid them for a few empty smiles. Life gave me a chance to take control of my life and I didn’t, I let life control me. It took so long for me to wake up and see this but it really helped me to see how much I was letting my fears control everything. How the deeper I looked and the more I was able to discern I could see how the hand their hands all so prevalent in my motivations and decisions. I know I talked about death and loss and it is hard to talk about it but I do not fear it anymore. The true tragedy is if you let great moments that give you a glance into your true being disappear. Again, I don’t know what would have happened if I did things differently but that was the birth of me and my ability to start taking control of my life and to start understanding that what I thought was happiness wasn’t that great once I got it. If fears are controlling you then when you do get what you want you will realize it isn’t really that satisfying. Fear is the killer of the mind. That is if you let them control you. They are also the harbingers of spiritual growth and change. So now I will tone down the emotions a bit and talk about fear in a more general way.
Now let’s talk about some common fears. I wish and hope you can relate to these but to me they have been the most dire to face and confront properly. I always hate facing these because when I do, it typically means some serious change is in the air. I will not go into all of them but just the ones that seem to cause the most obstacles and ambiguity in life. And when I talk about fears I am not talking about the fear of flying or spiders. Some fears you will just have to live with like I have come to the fact that for whatever reason I am deathly afraid of spiders I will accept it. I am ok with this. Well I digress because there are, I am sure of it, more latent fears that are keeping that one so strong but in time hopefully I will organically face this one through deep thought rather than physically facing it.
What I just want to focus on is a few types of fears that really seem to be at the heart of so many people whether they will admit it or not. To list them out I will say the fear of failure, the fear of rejection due to lack of worth and last but definitely not least the fear of change. So I will try hard to explain these in the terms of being more negative and I again I will ask the favor of you to try and apply them to yourself and how they might affect you. This will not be easy and I have even avoided writing about these because the seriously open up so many areas of my past, present and worstly, knowing this, how if I do not face them will ultimately just destroy the hell out of my future.
So to begin I will jump into the fear of failure. Oh I do so much hate this fear. The great thing about it is that we know we are pushing into realms that are new to us but at the same time that fear that we will inevitably fail because there is always someone better or we are not fit enough to make things work. I have been its mistress many of times in my life and always have grown to resent it. In school, work, relationships and everything else where one is judged on success. Even in writing this book. Actually the fear of failure was the reason I did not finish it so long ago when I started. I was just living in the idea of writing a book and how ‘cool’ it would be. Obviously though and so many times I would confront myself with the always looming presence that people would just hate it and not like it. This fear is just an insidious little night mare. That is why confronting it was what helped me so much in life and not just confronting it but knowing that it will always be prevalent and never go away and that I could now not fear it but embrace it.
Oh and our dear friend the fear of rejection and worthiness. I ask you have you been at a place in your life where you felt that your words were not valued? That the people around you truly didn’t care for you? That you were worthless and no matter what you did the outcome of the event would inevitably prove this feeling? I am not saying everyday life where we are protected but that area where if you truly opened yourself up and were yourself the back lash of your fellow friends, family and colleagues? Or the point where you had the chance to take charge and be a leader but refrained and kept quite since you didn’t believe that you would be taken serious?
And last but not least the fear of change. Not all people have this fear but to me it is the biggest underlying fear that will forever keep you in your endless circle. Change, there are endless quotes about it and yet people fear it so much. We all live our lives and if happiness is not found then we can only assume that the reasons for which are quite obvious. Einstein said it best along the lines of, doing the same thing every day and hoping for different results is the true definition of insanity. As I reread that line I can forever empathize with it but yet have the hardest time actually getting the courage to truly embrace it. I ask again how hard you find it to make changes in your life? How comfortable you are right now? You might not be the happiest but at least your life is predictable. The friends you have might not be the most supportive but at least they are there and you can call them. Maybe your family causes you more pain and you constantly live in the status quo with them but again it is predictable. Why I left this fear for the last is because by not embracing the fact that the only way you will unleash your potential for success and happiness is to build the strongest tools possible in dealing with this fear. It is the fear that is the fuel to all other fears if you ask me. It helps to constantly strengthen the easier fear to overcome. I know this and believe it more and more as the days pass. I have also learned that the more I avoid change but not facing the inevitability of it being the only true constant in our life it always comes crashing down on me in the most vigorous ways.
Every time I look into the past I can see the serious moments that I was living insincerely and how so many times I would fear facing that the life I was living was spiritually destructive something would come as a blow and wake me up typically in the most unpleasant ways. Think about it for yourself, a relationship that you knew was not working out but you kept with it because it was comfortable? I am sure it didn’t end in the most pleasant ways. Friendships that were not based on mutual respect and loyalty? When the smoke cleared maybe you found out how true of friends they really were. The truth is that change will forever happen and to go against it will inevitably cause the worst of it.
So briefly, and with strategy I covered a few of the fears but the list is endless. All of which will do more insidious harm to you each time you avoid them or let them take the steering wheel of your life. I implore you to look at these fears or reasons for which you feel that you are not valued, respected, happy and content with your life? I also asked you to look at the moments of joy that you have had in your past -the moments where you felt true success. Look deep into them and see how you did it. What you overcame. I don’t know you and cant pretend to understand the endless great details of your life but I will say with confidence that you overcame some level of adversity to get them. Whatever it was you had to face something to do it. Maybe a truth of some sort, maybe in the darkness of night before sleep where you can not hide from yourself you made the decision to stop wasting your life and make something happen. Maybe it was more subtle but happiness does not come without a price. It is the greatest success and as any success there must be hard work. I ask you what was the hard work you did and use it as a proof to see my logic on why there is no other path and desire one should have other than becoming more negative.
Why again and again I will come back to this because there is the proof that your are the only person who can bring happiness and that the more you look deeper into yourself you will find what truly brings that to you. My mathematical logic is simplistic and with its simplicity shows how truly difficult it is to master. You should and spirituality are so connected to your success in relationships, job, hobbies and everything else that is tangible in your life. The constant roadblocks gaining personal spiritual happiness and the beautiful things that come with it are these needless fears that will work endlessly and tirelessly against you. I just want to prove this to you and make you aware because from that knowledge you now have a choice. From there it is up to you to make the most of your life and time. Ok I know that might have been intense but life is no joke and each day wasted given in to fears is another wasted day of your life. I said before that I don’t know you but maybe one day I will or maybe be graced by someone who had the pleasure of knowing you. The outcome of it will be good or bad based on how you live your life. We are all connected so I know that the more people who take a stand against bull shit in their life and become more negative the better chance that our coming together either directly or indirectly will so positively affect me and give me more strength to keep following and finding my passions. So I will tone it down a bit but just wanted to make a few points about this. But I am selfish and have realized that I can not survive alone and need the support of family, friends, acquaintances or just the random smile that I get just walking down the street.
So now I would like to take a more objective approach by analyzing a company from the same perspective. Through college I ran and still do a clothing company named 137. I guess you could say that I am entangled in the fashion industry. On that note, understanding fads, it is simple to say that to be successful in this market you have to get really lucky. All it truly takes is one famous person to wear your clothes and all of the sudden you have a growing company with a huge amount of demand. Thinking this through, and applying this theory, I looked at our company very objectively. I viewed it as a human being - an entity that has the potential to grow or self destruct. I saw everything internal to the company as being negative and everything positive was the perspective that the public had of the company. I always noticed that the company would become decadent every time we really started focusing on solely becoming rich quick by trying to find the easy way out. Basically just trying to find someone famous to rock our gear so in turn we would be seen as cool. Or when all we wanted to do was sell, sell sell, eventually we would lose touch with the one thing that made our company so different, unique and awesome. Literally, once this half ass perspective took its toll I would find myself eventually wanting to put the company to the side.
Also because we were losing focus, trying to take the easy way out to gain as much as possible. It was the quickest way to avoid the hard truth that anything in life that has worth must come from hard work. It was like clock work what would happen. We would focus on just selling but in the end we would lose focus and then after a little while come back with the idea that we needed to focus on who we were and what we represented. It was to me though all so obvious from where I success would come. Only a fool thinks that they can just come up with an idea and instantly over night become famous and rich. Of course we all have daydreams and insightful moments of grandeur but nothing comes without serious 100% focus. Glory without the work is as inglorious as anything that comes without effort. So after having to realize this endlessly I realized that the only real strength that our company had was the depth of its passion, image, and overall philosophy which was nestled at the very heart of the company. So what I see now I so wish I would have integrated so passionately as I do know with other pursuits I have in my life.
So the way I see things is so differently now. I do not blame myself for not seeing it before because life is about learning, making mistakes, failing and then getting back up again. I now see all of my pursuits as an entity. To explain further I will look at the company as a human being with a soul, personality, success, failure, etc. I think about the foundation of the company as something so key and strong. It is the foundation of its personality and desire. It will only attract results if what is put into it is passion and focus. I don’t want to get into too much detail but I just want to talk about a few examples. Think about one of the trendy lame ass bars that always seem to pop up in popular areas. They have trendy names and trendy decor and typically the people that are attracted them are as lacking of passion as the next. They come and go but don’t have value. The ones that persist have that human feel to them. That sense of legacy and warmth that is the absolute necessity to survive. Really look around where you grew up or live and see if any stick out to you. To me those places did it right, they focused on what made them who they are and let fate take care of the rest. Even writing this I know it seems that it is more and more prevalent it is. In this day and age it information is everywhere and people have so much more knowledge than before. The people that succeed are the ones him find that special interconnectivity. In a sense they focused on the spirit of the company. The stronger the spirit the stronger the attraction. Companies that are more negative always last longer and grow. Companies that only focus on the physical, in the sense one can say profit, lose touch with who they are and indefinitely fall by the wayside.
As you can imagine there is a flip side to this. We have focused simply on the fact that the accrued amount of negative energy will find it’s counterpart in the physical world - ultimately the best way. The question should come up about what happens when too much positive energy is instantly created or the focus is not about accruing negative energy but positive energy? Well, to me, I sometimes look to the business world for this. I thought about the true max of too much positive energy. I imagined myself, or please imagine yourself currently as Bill Gates. All of the responsibility, power, money, control, and the list goes on. No being Bill Gates is one thing but being, instantaneously thrown into the shoes of Bill Gates with your current knowledge, is another thing. I imagined myself having to make decisions of his magnitude, that would have an impact not just on the shareholders of the companies but on the employees and their families also. Decisions, that would change the course of the software industry, decide on the latest technological developments, know how to inspire a multitude of people that are more intelligent. Dealing with people who are constantly trying to prove themselves and in need of support. When thinking about it I know for a fact that I would fail. Not solely because of lack of intelligence but most importantly due to lack of experience and the developed spiritual necessities to be confident enough to make and stand by my decisions.
“people don’t become successful by trying to be successful, the success comes when they follow their true passions because benefit comes from work and with passion there is no work just focus”
-anonymous
Obviously this is an extreme example never to be realized but I think it brings clarity to the point. In this case the positive energy was ultimate power, endless wealth, fame, recognition, etc.. That energy has to be matched in the person itself. It will draw a person into places where they have to act. If they are not spiritually sound then all that will remain is ruin. I don’t want to spend too much time on the grandiose examples because to me they are evident almost to the study where they say about people who win the lottery. Typically if was is depressed, sad, unhappy with life. Or simply they are just going through life always wishing that somehow life would work out better or more so that the ideas of their dreams and realized dreams of when they were young. All of the great things they were going to do and become. The money they were going earn or the respect and fame or whatever the dream might have been. For most of us, not all of course, these dreams didn’t exactly pan out and materialize in the way we once thought. Say this person, able to smile and play the roll of happiness wins the lottery. The studies show that in the beginning of course there will be instant elation and joy for now their dreams of being rich and the troublesome daily financial burdens have disappeared. Over time though, they will resort back to their inner unhappiness because nothing external will change this. It is internal. The same goes the other way around. If a person spiritually content with themselves has an accident where maybe paralysis or a significant part of their life changes, they will have the reverse affect. Instant sadness, depression, feelings that life is just unfair. But, and the key thing is, eventually they will find their way back to their happiness. Their spiritual base is strong and they will find their way back.
To me again the examples are trivial and not life changing but they give us a basic proof that what happens in the ‘positive’ world will have implications may they be positive or negative. The thing to me is simple and sometimes using the extremes helps gives us clarification into the middle. Hopefully you see it clearly that there is only one path although arduous and obviously not easy. Going down the path of constantly trying to find material happiness will just eventually just lead you back to the original place of inner solitude and discontent. Not that I am a complete nihilist and plan for the worse or just the best but let’s be honest with ourselves here. If I am unhappy and win the lottery or come into just a lot of money eventually the thrill will just go away and I will be unhappy. The other side is a bit more spiritual daunting is that if I am just unhappy now and god forbid something just horrible or terrible happens I will go through the hard times but in the end will come out on top. To me the only way to plan properly for the future is to right now in the present to assess all of my fears, obstacles, reasonings for why I don’t follow my passions and confront them now. It is the only guarantee that no matter what happens in life I will be ready to handle the shit out of it. The best part for me is that say I do build as much negativity in my mind as possible and random wonderful things do start happening I will be just in a place of bliss where I can truly just accept with a big smile the sometime random spurts of luck and joy we find ourselves in at just the right place and at just the right time.
Above was just a simple proof to another reason why we should be more negative. It is simple bet to me very informative and as promised I wont delve too much into all of the verbosity that is unneeded. I am still just here to give as many reasons as possible and to prove to whomever has given me their time to take a second and listen to all of the reasons why finding ones passions and happiness is so utterly important.
I will now try to convince through opposite means of what being positive can and do to properly derail one’s own happiness. This I don’t believe is as simple as a proof but nevertheless as important. To help push forward on this I will use the grand ole use of scarcity that is the basic building block of economics and why with it we have the world we live in today.
Now let’s take a look at a present situation about someone’s personal situation. I will talk more about kids or young adults because it is much easier of course but it absolutely can be parallel to whomever we want to apply it. The reason is because someone has to start somewhere and before realizing the benefit of becoming more negative we can only assume that the person’s current situation is filled with multiple problems, obstacles and fears that are currently present due to misguided fickle wants or just simply doing the things in life that one thinks is helping but is truly only hurting. So to begin I will just look at an average college guy. At the university to try and figure out his life and to eventually find a career on day. I will not liken this gent to a wealthy kid who has no worries and has everything paid for but a guy who has to pay his own way, taken out financial loans, works when he can to try and make ends meet. Whatever is the motivational force is what it is but we can assume that there are aspirations of doing great things and becoming someone important in this world. Whatever it may be I am sure if you can empathize directly with this example in your present situation you can find many who can or maybe in your past. Now let’s look deeper into the reasoning of why this guy has taking this path of college. What were the motivational forces? What were the many reasons for which he chose the certain path? Was it due to fear? Some trivial image of great success?
Ya know I will bet the further that we delve into why we do things we will most likely find that the true reason is based on bull shit reasons. I know that is a bold statement but later I will jump into it further how the most menial things in our lives or what drive us to make decisions that have so much impact into how our lives will turn out. I am not being the perfect observer here at all. My passion has always been in the inner psychology and the inner workings of why people do things. I love it and everytime I get a hold of something that pertains to this field I get excited about it. And yet, to my own dismay, and I remember clearly back when I was 21, I chose to study business finance. There was no real analysis in my decision or reasoning but simply I watched a movie called Boiler room about the financial world and all of the money that could be made. In that simple instance I remember saying to myself, “yes, I want to be a stock broker and make a lot of money”. I didn’t have a clue what it was about but some simple little motivation of money and fame changed everything. I didn’t question myself but I put in motion a life path that would forever change me. I took all of the classes and worked my ass off but in all honesty I was never so excited and motivated to really learn any of the things I was studying. I kept finding myself just trying to get everything done as fast as possible so I could do things that I found of interest. Eventually I found myself in the realm of economics after getting to the point where I finally realized the implications of my poorly thought out decision. Regardless though that decision, cut off so many possibilities for me. If I would have known then what I know now of course I would have just changed my path in what I was doing and really thought out very clearly about what truly made my heart move. That is not the case but at least now I can realize that and hopefully through my life, studies, experiences verbalize the reasons why one should maybe truly think about things a bit differently. Differently meaning more in the sense of asking personal hard questions and really digging down deep to the reasons why we do things and in hope that by reading this, you are not too late and can find a way to become a bit more self analytical and find your path a little quicker than I did and save yourself the unnecessary unhappiness of simply justifying a decision that should never have been made in the first place. Hopefully that little anecdote can help to better understand but let’s get back to our made up person that we can potentially empathize with or can possibly just simply look at and analyze.
So say this person like me, made decisions based on just simple fears and pointless incentives. Let’s say for example the person chose to study marketing. I do apologize if you yourself are studying marketing but to me, in the business world, when kids don’t have a clue what they want to be when they grow up they always choose marketing. Well at my university at least it was the typical out flow of all of the fraternity guys who recently watched mad men or wanted to work in a big firm. I am sure that if finance wasn’t so math intensive they would have chosen that but marketing is the next best thing. It gives the promise of a big future of working for a big company, being professional, making a lot of money without really having to do math or work that hard. A perfect degree for those whose ideas of college weigh more in the realm of just having fun rather than preparing for the future. Regardless please take no offense if the reasons you are studying marketing are less fickle but if you are studying this or another degree for that matter for some awkward pointless reason please begin to start asking yourself the true reasons for which you are doing this. Please start to take that jump into personal inquiry. I promise that you will uncover many things. Some good, some bad but the the gain of negativity will show you the way and the path will become much clearer the further you question.
Tangent time(as most conversations always jump around I will do the same)
Ok I think this is prevalent to take a tangent. There is a certain thing call asymmetrical information that causes the majority of the problems when people are trying to buy goods from a seller. Actually it is the preface for the second part of chapter 2 but I think it is good to extrapolate a bit here because I like many wanted to study marketing but chose economics instead. The reason for which is similar to the reasons for which the nobel prize was awarded to George Akerlof in 2001. If we look at Arizona State University and their marketing degree from the WP Carey school of business. If you look at the product being offered, the education received, there is a strong case that students who are highly interested in studying marketing would naturally choose a different area of study due to the ‘bad driving out the good’ when it comes to students. We can look at it as the following. I am sure you have heard the term lemon car. This again will be the basis for the second part of chapter 2 where I will use the term ad nauseum. So why are there lemon markets and or cars called lemons? Simple, there is a basic assumption that when somebody buys a nice care they wouldn’t sell it a year after given the investment. So we can assume that a person who is trying to sell their car that quickly after purchasing it there must be some reason for it. What this does in turn is the following. Not all people who sell their cars do it because they are defective but since there is a perceived notion in the market that this is the case, they will never get the true value of their car’s worth. Therefore they will not even sell their car on the open market which will in turn only leave ‘lemons’ in the used car world.
So now to finish this here tangent the marketing degree, in my eyes, has become a lemon market which really pisses me off. Knowing that it is a degree where the majority of people just randomly choose it based on bad logic automatically creates the assumption that the level of students, classroom discussion, classmates will ultimately just bring down the learning experience and it will just become mediocre. For me this is just sad because marketing is superb but can easily be mastered without spending 4 years. What would make it so great is the attraction of amazing students and teachers which will ultimately make the experience amazing. Ok, enough said about that but think about it not just in the marketing realm but also in the realm of other majors. Sadly I know many that studied communications but there is a stigma about that. It is what college girls study when they don’t have a clue what else. Not to worry though I will go into this much further later. Tangent over.
So now we have this guy and he is studying marketing based on some trivial reason and let’s say he is a hard worker and wants to do well. The thing is no matter how hard he tries there will never have the strong passion. Not saying that there wont be robust moments of inspiration and clarity but I am sure there is just a constant questioning of why he is doing this. Why everyday he gets up and goes to class but just to save time of a long story let’s just pretend we can fast forward into the future and to the life into which this will turn. This guy will not question but continue down this path. Will most likely have some great stories of his college years but eventually will go off to work at a firm of some sort if he can some how prove that he is worth it. There will be a point of no return and I can only give one guarantee that given the lack of passion and clarity with which he made the all so important decision in life, as he goes through life, the same lack of passion will continuously follow him. This is inevitable. How can one truly find success unless one’s heart is so deeply involved? There is one truth that people can look through the bull shit in life. Maybe not consciously but people know if someone’s heart is fully into something. If it is not and the work and path one takes is just done half way then the results will always just be the half ass results with which one put in all of its work. I guess we can even argue this and say, there is a chance that he will find great success but let’s be honest and bring it back to the prior example of winning the lottery. By all statistical means the chances are very low and given that he will be in the same passion void life and profession eventually the success of whatever it turns out to be, maybe a promotion due to scarcity of other quality talent or whatever there will come a point where he will hit a plateau. This isn’t due to lack of intelligence but there will always be people who are just as smart, work just as hard and the biggest difference will be that the other people passionately love their work and job. With this success will always be fugitive and something that will come tomorrow.
“many battles in life are lost ant but a war never comes without causalities”
Ok I know the above might be obvious and with its lack of detail will be hard to truly personalize. How can one possibly analyze and understand one life is simply in a couple pages in a word document. I regress to say thought that the only goal was to preface the next point and to help give insight into what happens when we foolishly protect something ‘positive’ in our life and what it does to our own spirituality. Everybody has to start somewhere and when one does start analyzing their own life and spirituality we can only use the help of others maybe through personal contact, a book, a lecture but mostly our greatest resource is our past and our present thoughts. So knowing this we can talk about again the duality of this book and why becoming ‘negative’ is so important. Again I will say that there is a balance to everything and things will find balance whether we like it or not. We can either control how things balance or leave it to powers unknown to us. But the one truth is that there will be balance and if we live our lives by the basis of constantly finding the ‘positive’ energy of life, ie, a job, money, social status without spiritual clarity well we will get some of the positive things and they will require the same equality in the ‘negative’ realm.
So above we analyzed just a normal guy and how his life would turn out all in the matter of two pages. Again I laugh at this because I will feel utterly offended if someone tried to sum up all of the complexities of my life in a simple description but time is scarce and I hope no one takes it too seriously. It is a great example though because now we can look at what happens when one tries so hard to protect their ‘positive’ or physical things they have in life that deep down they know are just soulfully and spiritually insidious. We can use the profession but also I will take it further and discuss relationships. To me this has been such the cause of so much mental insecurity and self doubt if you haven’t already realized but I am not here to pretend that I know the internal workings of both men and women but I am wise enough now to admit that I was wrong many of times in my own regard and through trying to protect something that was causing me pain only brought so much more pain and even worse almost derailed and destroyed the great things that I did in my life that were the outcomes of being a more ‘negative’ person. Firstly lets look at his profession. This guy who we will now just call John is living his life and trying to find meaning in it. He is in the university, enjoying life, partying and just doing what every other kid should do in his late teens and early twenties. The future is far away and all of the glories of life that will come with it are a distant tomorrow as he just enjoys and lives life. Regardless though he has to live and do the day in day out work to further his degree. What is wrong with this one might ask and if I was him I would comfortably and confidently say nothing. But I want to look further into this. Here is a guy who is going to class everyday studying something about which he isn’t truly excited. He is basically just memorizing the material of every class in hopes to just get good marks. But keep in mind what is happening to his soul, his spirit, his happiness? If one is just trying and studying something in which they are truly not interested one must find an outlet. The soul must breath and find liberty. Where I will go now might be farfetched but I believe one can empathize easily with it. When life gets mundane and unhappiness feels the inner workings of ourselves typically the next best thing will suffice. In sales theory they call it the contrast principle or social contrast. If you want someone to buy something at x price just tell them that a price that is greater than x and then after menial debate and negotiations you can drop the price to x which if you would have said in the first place would have been too high but now through a form of contrast seems good. This same thing happens and in the equalization of the the positive(physical) and negative(spiritual) world. The breath of the soul will match the positive but in a way that is not actual growth but more in the form of justification. I am not sure if the expression, ‘the end will justify the means’ but to me it is what one naturally does when they are on the wrong path. We are all the centers of our own little universes so to admit that time spent has been wasted is more difficult that one thinks. An existence with an undertone of pride one could say.
So where we find dear John is at a peculiar place. Now he must choose to constantly justify and find reasons to alleviate or satisfy his inevitable needs to find a lost happiness. In a way I, as probably you, have been consumed by technology in your lives and world. In regards to this, when one has made a decision to live their lives based on poor decisions everything from that point will constantly be tainted by the original bad decision because they will be living in a life, or a frame of life, that has moments of clarity and happiness but forever which succumb to the inevitable broken base. What I brought technology is because I look at it like this. A metaphor of spirituality by using a computer. I will not go into a tangent because I see it as very applicable. Now I look at John with basic issues and lack of clarity in his decisions. Because the farther one progresses from the original problem or decision the harder it is to get back and resolve the underlying issue. It is like the junk drawer with ever ending cables. They get so intertwined that sometimes it seems impossible to really untangle them all.
So the basics of a computer are simple enough. It works in based on a system where there is hardware and software. You have the hard drive, the motherboard, and various types of memory. I am no expert but trained enough in high school to understand the basics. (My friends and I even started the nerd revolution in our A+ certification class. It was unbelievably awesome and will maybe talk about later). Anyways, so how it works is simple, you have a hard drive which is ROM(random access memory) where the majority of the software is stored on the computer and partitioned as our mind does it. We have the motherboard which does all of the controlling and then finally there is RAM(random access memory). Then of course there is the software. This is how all the hardware comes together in a usable way to present itself to the world in a unique way. Now I will not ask you to take a leap of faith to understand this because I see it as simple. I just want to analogously equate a human mind and the way it functions to a computer. Think of the ROM(random access memory) as your brain and the way it functions. Think of it as all of your memories, all of your past thoughts, experiences from a kid, good times and bad times. Etc. Basically a recollection of all of everything that happened to you. Think of the mother board is how you process and get to the information, in a sense your brain. Now the key thing to a computer is the RAM. This is the Random access memory. It is the memory that allows you to jump through multiple programs at once. To access key parts of the ROM(hard drive). Think of this now as your intelligence. How quickly you can process information. One might think there is the ‘processor’ as the key component of speed and I do not disagree. It is what process all of the key information that is in the present but in a complex mind it can only process the information that is being fed to it. The smartest person in the world without any instruction, information, is as mentally strong as a common 7 year old with the internet this day and age. So now I want to look at the RAM. Think of the RAM as your ability to go through all of the past things you have learned, your experiences, thoughts, etc. The more RAM you have the faster you can gather information to have it processed. Think of it like yourself. Think of mathematics. All of the endless years studying and the grand amount of information learned. Once you learn it is there. The more RAM you have the faster you can seep through your past experiences and recall the information quickly. In the old days one’s computer was always judged by the amount of RAM it needed because of the intense applications that are out presently. And we need as much RAM(intelligence) as possible to properly analyze the immensity of the wealth of information presently out in the world right now.
So with no further adieu I will explain why this analogy was presented. I just described how a computer works under optimal situations. Now though I am sure we have all experienced what happens when our computers get a virus. Things just get sluggish. There are the serious viruses that cause a complete shutdown of the computer but I am talking about the malicious ones like adware, spyware and all of the little ones that just embed themselves into the systems software and just causes havoc on it. Things just get slow. One cant jump through programs fast enough. The computer will freeze more and all in all it is just a serious pain in the ass. Now understanding that our brains, although much more complex, our subject to the same problems. I see the lack of spirituality or the lies that we tell ourselves as little pieces of adware and malware in our brains. It slows our ability to properly analyze, make proper decisions, miss key points and details. It slows us down. Once the virus gets into our internal human software we are forever subjected to it until we clean it out. Some viruse are just on the peripheral but some get deep into the system and cause havoc.
Now I look at John with his poor decision that unbeknownst to him has changed his whole life for the worse. He put in a virus into his system and each day he continues falling away from his happiness and true path, he lets it grow bigger and bigger and entangle itself even deeper into his personal psyche. His ability to process information and make future decisions will be highly and progressively inhibited. That is why in one istance, he will never be able to excel and reach his true potential. He will subjected to his bad decision for years to come. The thing that scares me most is what happens to people when the virus gets to overrun the whole system? This is scary because with a computer we can just clean the hard drive and reload the system getting rid of all of the viruses but with humans it is different. We cant just do this. Sometimes our minds will find a way which is a complete nervous break down or other horrible measures but that is why I think it is so important for John, or you that is, to really question what is going on in your life and whether you think you are truly happy with what you are doing.
Tangent time.
“The really only valuable thing is intuition”
-Albert Einstien
Ok I wanted to go off on a tangent because I wanted you to ponder something that came to my mind when thinking of this certain analogy. It is along the lines of intuition. That silent little guiding force that tells us what to do and not to do. And every time, for me at least, I don’t listen to it I end up kick myself in the ass and ultimately regretting not trusting my instincts. That made me think, what if, say our brains, truly catalogued and categorized everything we have ever done in our lives? They say we only use 10% of our brains but what about the other 90%? I am not trying to prove a point right but just trying to raise a thought for you to ponder also. So I was thinking that say our minds remembered everything. What if you could at any given point remember exactly what happened and most importantly the exact feeling and pain or joy with it. Life would be absolutely superb. All of the things I read, the moments of clarity that I wish I always remembered at the right time but only seem to remember many hours, days or months after the moment when that useful information was so needed. If I had instant recall I would have not endlessly made the same mistakes over and over again. It would be a dream.
What if though that what I said above was true. The reason I believe this tangent is worthy of our time is because personally I’ve noticed myself have so many awesome connections in my brain. When my mind is clear of all of the needless worries, fears, problems, overblown problems that only help to deter my focus and other needless worries. I am astonished how clear and concise my mind works when it is free from all of the crap. The majority of my ideas have come from heightened level of clarity and the ability to recognize certain patters from highly dissimilar topics. My mind was clear and I was able to see the connections. Maybe I am wrong, maybe I am right but I will say that my cognitive and mental processes are on fire when I delve deeper and start unwinding all of the needless emotional baggage that I have created in my life. And I know so clearly that every time I do go against my gut feeling things always come back to bite me in the ass. In a sense, intuition is your reasoning but at the speed of a computer. But as a computer it must be fed good information and have the ability to quickly analyze this. Another quote I really grew to appreciate:
Intuition makes much of it; I mean by this the faculty of seeing a connection between things that in appearance are completely different; it does not fail to lead us astray quite often.
-Andre Weil
This quote to me really shows how truly great intuition is. For most of us, and when I say most of us I mean almost everybody, our minds can not keep so much information readily available. This inhibits us because when we are analyzing a certain problem that is very complex and seems that we can not understand; maybe it be in school, personal, relationships or whatever it is, chances are if we could draw from all of our experiences we would be able to understand them so much easier. Again this quote above to me just shows one very clear thing. The ability to find connections between two subjects or things that really should not be connected. To me, I do live by this theory on intuition. Because in my moments of clarity, those times when I really overcame my fears, solved problems, chose honesty over deception, gave up personal ego and pride to better see things were all of the times things just made sense. My mind was freed from the shackles of endless pointless personal problems. It was in this instance that I made the connection between computer functionality and human spirituality. Absolutely two different things but one moment of utter discernment just provided such unbelievable clarity. Intuition is such a useful misunderstood guiding force and everytime I trust my gut things always work for me. That is why, from the the analogy of a computer and spirituality one must do all that they can to get rid of the viruses that block us from our true potential. That block our mind from using more of its potential. Insights and moments of clarity are unbelievable in the way they can make you feel.
Tangent over.
So now I would like to just reiterate what has been spoken in this chapter. It is to be more negative. Meaning to be more spiritual. The logic is simple in the sense that through the universal truth that every action has a reaction and that no matter what happens we will always be accountable for the decisions we make. With being more negative, to me, gives us control. This whole chapter is a proof that wants you to know that there is no easy way to become happy as I am sure is something with which you can easily relate. Listen though, you are not simple and you are not just a number. You have the endless ability to help many after you help yourself.
I just, in a sense, used simple mathematics to help prove how we are so interlinked from how we view ourselves and what we gain in life. I just ask that you try it. Quit worrying about how life is unfair and look inside yourself. Find out some of the things that you would want to do in life and find out what is stopping you. The one thing I will say is this, you might realize that what you thought you wanted in life will start disappearing and with your evolved awareness your future will start to change. Don’t be afraid of this. Remember that change is inevitable and will come whether you like it or not. Embrace it. It is hard and that is no doubt. Think of it like this. In Alcoholics anonymous they say there are 12 steps to rid yourself of your addiction. I think that is definitely misleading. I agree that there are 12 steps but the first step is equal in length as the last 11. Yes this is daunting and it stops people from making positive changes in their life but do not fear because if you can, and I know you can as well as you do, once you take that first step of becoming more negative everything will just start to fall into place.
Now we move on to the economics portion of spirituality which I will delve into mostly about relationships and definitely will have some fun with it. To me it is for an overlooked group of people. Those who need to realize that we are somewhat victims of this thing we call society.
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