A Man Is Born In Chains, But He Can Become Free.
(Written Jan-99, edited Jan-02)
Freedom Through Discipline. First mentioned in my journals June 14, 1993, this approach to liberty remains a cornerstone of my philosophy today. Preparing for my first overseas venture, in concurrence with a rising financial success, it was largely due to the spectacular results of a physical training in mid-1993 that made me consciously aware of it. Through an intense organic interplay, the more I trained my body the higher my thoughts soared, which had me striving to articulate the elation I felt physically.
My May-June-July 1993 journal entries, for the most part, vividly show a radically altered state of mind to me today (in contrast to pre-May93): self-assertive, confident, bold, adventurous -- a new power grasped, with the burning desire to master it. Tasting self-achievement and self-liberation beyond that of mere subsistence (as what was experienced in Vancouver 1991) -- that of flourishing and growth -- was something I had not felt in years (since childhood?), if ever. For the first time in my life, I had consciously willed this -- my success -- into existence.
Such an experience, altering and lessening the degree of a fractured internal state, reveals itself (journals and letters) in the way I attempted to break out of the religious/self-less 'moral code' accepted by me during this time. I can picture myself curled up, squished, in a transparent closed box barely big enough to fit me -- angrily frustrated -- battering the sides of it in an attempt to escape its confines. With as much space as there was, and as much momentum as the muscles of my body could generate -- throwing myself against its walls to break free.
At this time (1993), the 'walls' of that box -- the superstructure of an altruistic religious philosophy I had earlier embraced to stabilize myself and to grasp the world with -- were too strong, too firmly entrenched in my mind for me to break free. While I would momentarily weary of this struggle to shatter these mental chains, the precedent had already been set. In the months to follow, with strength renewed, I would rise again to constructively and rationally smash my way out of a 'self-imposed', suffocating universe … again and again stretching the dimensions of that box. And the more I stretched it, the more room I had to mount an even fiercer attack the next time around.
The ideal for which I fought? To solve the contradictions and riddles which plagued me, to fuse my mind and body into one harmonious state of existence. A natural harmony for a thinker and creator who as of yet in 1999 is still unaware of his full potential and abilities. Who sees himself as part of an ongoing intellectual (and therefore biological) evolutionary process: a piece of the universe attempting to understand itself.
Thus, in both the personal and the generic sense -- microscopically and macroscopically -- I think the man that is today is but a pale shadow in light of what he is to become tomorrow.