The Personal Struggle of Mastery

[John Paul]

Since deciding to commit to mastery, my sense of a “personal struggle” has not left me. I am currently dramatizing the following obstacles to my practice of mastery:

1. Seeing how low my integrity really is. My laziness, my distractibility, my ego, my lack of commitment to my life in general- a nihilistic depressed vibration, and my still present negative values/motivation (from the LP course, highly recommend.)

2. Seeing how low the integrity of my culture, society, and environment/people around me really is…. The promotion of chasing empty, materialistic things and ridiculing, demonizing things outside of this status quo or doing pretty much anything to avoid the personal practice of mastery in our individual lives. My own low integrity is using this as a scapegoat: it’s everyone else’s low integrity, not mine- and my lazy, depressed ass just buys into it, yep that’s why my practice can’t take off how it should. And yeah, we’re still shoulding.

3. My mental health and associated self-doubt in my capability to destroy all of these demons and be the master. I don’t like the clinical stuff but I may technically have some sort of paranoia. I can’t seem to trust anyone. I create personal conspiracy theories in which I am, unrealistically, the center of the conspiracy and am being conspired against by others. I sometimes get jumpy when my self-care gets to its worse and have random, unique triggers (similar to phobia). I participate in “bad habits” to keep it short and simple. And really all of this is about avoiding certain emotions and when my repression tank is full, isolating myself. Right now I am venting into the journal forum because I feel isolated. 

4. I keep telling myself I need something. It could be a legitimate need or an illegitimate need (an addiction/crutch). Or I create a decision to mull over instead of taking a right action-am I living in the right place? Working the right job? Maybe I’d have an easier time if I just landed a half-ass codependent relationship for the sex… to put it bluntly: from a third-person normie perspective, my life fucking sucks.. I got nothing. But what I got is the knowledge I’m communicating here and the promise of getting to the other side- becoming a professional, self-actualizing, paying it forward, and higher spiritual transcendence. 
 

thanks for listening, good luck with your personal practice of mastery 

 

 

[John Paul]

I don’t know if any distinctions or connections were made by Leo/community between LP and spirituality but I’m definitely finding that in my day-to-day there is a connection: my laziness to pursue my LP is teaching me “epistemology”. I can more clearly than ever see the sole function(s) of the chatter, “mind”. It’s just what classic Leo and other philosophers said.. it’s funny because my mind already “knew” this but only because that meant that it belonged in circles of people that also participated in things related to philosophy/PD, and “spirituality” (the mental masturbation side of it). My mind- my whole fucking world is just a web that’s spinning itself, it’s constantly spinning in order to manipulate me into the actions that most ensure it’s safety and titillation.. it’s really sad (it says to itself to try to remove any kernel of truth from the web of mind)

Where I’m at right now LP is definitely a solo journey.. because right now my LP is really coming down to my personal development of skills which is best done alone, with minimum distractions.. In this way I’d compare it to meditation. Although in the development of skills there is “learning” and in meditation there is not. Still though, any conceptual learning “should” exist only to serve actual practice- developing of the skills.  Anyway, my mind (when it’s not trying to get out of practice/learning) is making a promise to itself that one day this will not be a solo journey, that when I am further along the path that it will intertwine with others. But I don’t know if it’s really true or if it will be truly satisfying the way it’s being promised. “I’m missing ________-friends, a girlfriend, community” and yet the little ounce of me that still takes life seriously and wants to work is isolating the shit out of me. For someone like me it does have to lean toward black and white. If you give my ego an inch… 

[John Paul]

There is literally so much thought in my mind that no post could communicate it. It’s endless mind. As long as I’m practicing and enjoying the process- the end 

[John Paul]

Today I let myself have whatever I want, drinks whatever- as long as I get some practice in. I was barely conscious but actually feel like I had a better practice. Because I gave my devilish self whatever it wanted for the trade of going 100% in practice. This is how low my discipline and emotional health are lol. I think I got close to or around two hours of practice in today and it was honestly solid. I don’t want to have bad habits but I believe in focusing on what I do want instead of don’t want, so.

tomorrow im going to try to go without caffeine or the screens. I’d usually think alcohol and tobacco would be worse but since focusing on what affects my ability to practice im thinking caffeine and screens might be easier to cut out. When im watchin something or using an app, my mind is literally in the most lazy state I could imagine, it’s like dead. And im uncovering the illusion that caffeine helps- at this point it’s just a fix, but since I have smoke I think I’ll be more at ease without it. This would’ve sounded fucked when I was thinking black and white..trying to free up all my head space for practice, there’s no room for shame and dogma.

 

life update: im working a shitty cook job. I say shitty because im not a cook even though im working as one. And there’s other little things I don’t like about it… oh and it only pays 14 per fucking hour. It’s one of my recent jobs that I quickly got rehired at after getting fired from my last job for getting high outside of that restaurant… yeah we are fuckin killin it