These are simple words that describe a very difficult state to maintain in a fast-moving, complicated world.
We live in an Information Age. Never has information been so readily accessible at any time in the history of the world. Alas, never has misinformation, too, been so readily available for public consumption. Misinformation in service of creating a cadre of consumers, replete with negative self images, feelings of inadequacy, and a state of ennui, that leaves us seeking answers outside ourselves, trying to find happiness in material possessions, doctor-prescribed addictions, and God.
Return to Focus Center Balance (FCB)
It’s hard to stay here in this circle. We are comets hurtling through the universe, maintaining our unadulterated path until we, and ultimately our path, may become subject to the gravitational pull (GP) of other celestial bodies. Everyone exhibits some level of gravitational pull; it takes many forms and has many names, such as charm, influence and attractiveness. Some are affected by our GP, while we are sucked in and veered off course by others. Still others are black holes to us, where we are lost to ourselves and the rest of the universe.
Meninism and this site/blog seek to develop your GP in a sense. By finding your focus / center / balance, one will develop their GP and things in life such as happiness, enlightenment, satiety, money and women will come to you.
Maintaining the path is difficult and requires great discipline. Every day something or someone will exert pull on you, but it will be your cognitive decision to allow yourself to veer course.
If you have set out a goal to honor the temple that is your body by exercising and not filling it with crap, then you have no one to blame but yourself if you eat a Krispy Kreme donut in the office kitchen. As much as you may hate to admit it, the schmuck who brought in the donuts isn’t to blame. Your office buddy who told you that they were there isn’t to blame. Your other office buddy who ate two and brought you one as well, isn’t to blame. You have only yourself to blame if you stray off your path.
There will always be people who want to go out for drinks, go out to dinner and eat like shit. What are your goals? What are your plans? What is your path? How will they influence you?
Can someone be a bad influence on you?
I love how people say this about others, absolving themselves of the responsibility and guilt of having made bad decisions for themselves, allowing themselves to be sucked off course.
What you say “they were a bad influence.”
What I hear, “I wasn’t strong enough to not be influenced by someone else. I don’t know exactly who I am, or what I want. Furthermore, I am not strong enough to admit to myself that I made the wrong decision to include this person in to my life and be subject to their gravitational pull.”
Now don’t you just want to kick your own ass for projecting your weaknesses on to someone else?
You must take responsibility for your actions. Do not take up residence in others’ spheres of influence, particularly when they are negative. Do not become subject to your own whims and cravings, much less someone else’s.
How difficult is it to maintain your path?
Maintaining the path is difficult and requires great discipline. I hesitate to say that it is a struggle, but it is certainly not easy. In fact, to know what is right, do what is right, to seek truth and to live right, is the hardest thing a person can do. It requires really examining yourself and being honest with one’s self about your actions and desires.
It is a constant struggle because of the discipline of encountering multiple GP’s every minute of every day. But struggle is discomfort. Comfort is that level where we don’t encounter hardship or adversity and where no growth can come from. Comfort makes you soft and weak. Comfort is weakness.
Humans seek comfort. We seek weakness. Eating fast food is easy. Watching television is easy. Not thinking is easy.
Discipline is hard. Work is hard. Exercise is hard. Thinking is hard. Eating right is hard. Living right is hard.
Growth requires discomfort, hardship and adversity. You must tax your spiritual, psychological, intellectual and physical systems in order to fully realize your potential.
Following is easy. Leading is hard.
Addiction to consumerism, religion or drugs is weakness. Seeking and finding answers, becoming subject to some one else’s GP is easy. There are many who will exert upon you in order to extort from you.
Addiction is the ultimate escapism. You either don’t care what reality is, or you are provided one. This is the case with organized religion. It is the answer key to life, but these are not hard won answers. Swallowing it whole is a cheat. This is why so many that practice exhibit a discipline equal to the fiscal conservatism of a newly minted millionaire via the lottery or the US Government with our tax dollars. They didn’t earn it, of course they wouldn’t have a stake in it!
It is one thing to be told what to do, an entirely different thing to seek, find, acknowledge and know what is right. How can you turn your back on what is right when you have worked so hard to know it? How can you blame anyone but yourself when you do wrong? A fallen angel did not tempt you.
How do I maintain my path?
Required to maintain your path will be a state conducive to FCB.
This state will consist of adequate amounts of sleep. You cannot maintain the path if you are tired. Fatigue makes cowards of us all. If you’re hungry, you’re likely to eat whatever is front of you. If you’re tired, you’re more likely to skip a workout.
Sleep between 6-8 hours a day, every day, even on weekends. Find the time that best works for you. Bio-rhythms cycle between 3 and 4 hours. Any more than 8 will shorten your life, literally and figuratively. It is proven that the most successful people, get the less sleep on average.
Meditate
Meditate daily. This will help maintain FCB.
Focus on disciplining your mind, blocking out thoughts, sounds and other distractions. This can start at as few as 10 seconds per day, but should gradually increase. This is your mobile sanctuary. It is not escape. It is a training of the mind, that slows down the spinning that results from the myriad of information and influences one experiences each day. First thing in the morning and at the end of the day are great times for this.
Breathe through your nose and in to your belly, nice and deep. Focus on the cool air as it passes your nostrils while breathing in through your nose. Push it down in to your belly. Now exhale pushing with your diaphragm. Focus on making both inhalation and exhalation long and slow. Discipline your breath, do not be subject to it. Hold your inhalation as long as you can. Slow, easy and long. Feel your body. Feel the energy coursing through you.
These 2 very simple things will help you to achieve FCB on a daily basis. This is the proper state in which to maintain your goals and your path. By incorporating these things you will be able to fall out of the rat race and focus on that which is important…you.
- bg
Friday, April 6, 2007
Thursday, April 5, 2007
More Man Card Violations
Violation of these rules may lead to swift revocation of your man card -
1) You don't talk about diets. Men are never under any circumstances to refer to being on a diet.
2) You must never drink diet tonic water. Besides it tastes like shit. And if you're gonna blow $10 and your diet (that you're not talking about!) on premium vodka, you might as well enjoy it.
3) Vegetarian just looks like it has the word vagina in it. You're a carnivore; deal with it. The only time you do not consume meat is during a cleansing fast.
4) Past the age of 25, movie posters on your wall, framed or not, is strictly forbade.
5) You may never use the phrase "If I won the lottery...", daydreaming is for girls about weddings.
6) You must never watch figure skating. That goes double if it's not competitive and is exhibition or the skaters have costumes on.
7) Learn to live more simply; take cold showers. Your ancient ancestors didn't have water heaters and they weren't pussies. If they were, you wouldn't be here. They didn't go without warm water so that their far-offspring would be a bunch of pansies.
8) If you must cook, cook only when there is an open flame. Baking is for women and the French.
Denial of earthly comforts is the key to understanding and appreciating ourselves and the world around us. Through abstinence, you will begin upon the path of enlightenment.
Comfort is the weakness that all humans seek. In order to be enlightened, you will need to deny comfort and weakness; seeking to develop yourself will lead to hardship and discomfort. Only through discomfort will growth come. Only through growth will enlightenment come.
- bg
1) You don't talk about diets. Men are never under any circumstances to refer to being on a diet.
2) You must never drink diet tonic water. Besides it tastes like shit. And if you're gonna blow $10 and your diet (that you're not talking about!) on premium vodka, you might as well enjoy it.
3) Vegetarian just looks like it has the word vagina in it. You're a carnivore; deal with it. The only time you do not consume meat is during a cleansing fast.
4) Past the age of 25, movie posters on your wall, framed or not, is strictly forbade.
5) You may never use the phrase "If I won the lottery...", daydreaming is for girls about weddings.
6) You must never watch figure skating. That goes double if it's not competitive and is exhibition or the skaters have costumes on.
7) Learn to live more simply; take cold showers. Your ancient ancestors didn't have water heaters and they weren't pussies. If they were, you wouldn't be here. They didn't go without warm water so that their far-offspring would be a bunch of pansies.
8) If you must cook, cook only when there is an open flame. Baking is for women and the French.
Denial of earthly comforts is the key to understanding and appreciating ourselves and the world around us. Through abstinence, you will begin upon the path of enlightenment.
Comfort is the weakness that all humans seek. In order to be enlightened, you will need to deny comfort and weakness; seeking to develop yourself will lead to hardship and discomfort. Only through discomfort will growth come. Only through growth will enlightenment come.
- bg
The Foundation
In the Beginning - Meninism
The Foundation - the bedrock upon which Rome will indeed be built, will be laid by the experience of intense self reflection and disciplined practice in the field. This ultimate goal of the foundation will be the formation of a World View; a World View being deeper than stupid behavioral tricks, simple self awareness, or slogans catchier than The Clap on a hooker's futon. While this World View may indeed contain such elements, Nirvana here will be defined as the identification that there is indeed "no spoon"; the safety nets of rote memorization no longer needed; the training wheels of validation removed; the hazy gauze of prior learning unraveled, leaving us to see the world as it truly is...limited only by ourselves.
While the transformation of the mind's eye from that of a tight fist, to that of an open, honest, objective eye should be viewed as a destination, with myriad paths, forks and dead-ends, in order to free our mind's eye from the Louis Vuitton baggage of the endless barrage of marketing images and the feminization of today's man we determined to set forth one path. The gradual awakening (opening), unlearning and reeducation of the eye will be for the most part, so discreet as to be undetectable moment to moment. But the initial shock will be eye-opening indeed. It will also be the most superficial point, the awakening. The emphasis will be placed on the external, with the larger (macro) goal being the gradual shifting of the internal paradigm. Emphasis will be placed initially on tactile elements, in order to disrupt the current negative flow, in order to awaken you as if icy water had been poured on you. The tangible will be necessary to open the eye, to awaken it, but if the shift does not occur at a more profound internal level, the void will cease to disappear. One would become simply a computer program, automated without a sense of self-fulfillment. Like a computer program, you would know what to do, maybe occassionally achieving the desired result, but would never reach Nirvana, or a lasting state of satiation. The unquenchable thirst that fills you, would not be sated, and you would still crawl the desert floor of your previous existence, without the existential water to ease your restless soul.
Social
Psychological
Sexual or Romantic
Philosophical
Physical
Intellectual
The addressing of each and every one of these is crucial to your development, and none of them can be ignored if the whole is to be considered. Whether you want to succeed in Business, with Women or a Special Someone, or just have the desire to make yourself a better person, all of these must be considered. Once awake, your eye will never be able to sleep again.
- bg
The Foundation - the bedrock upon which Rome will indeed be built, will be laid by the experience of intense self reflection and disciplined practice in the field. This ultimate goal of the foundation will be the formation of a World View; a World View being deeper than stupid behavioral tricks, simple self awareness, or slogans catchier than The Clap on a hooker's futon. While this World View may indeed contain such elements, Nirvana here will be defined as the identification that there is indeed "no spoon"; the safety nets of rote memorization no longer needed; the training wheels of validation removed; the hazy gauze of prior learning unraveled, leaving us to see the world as it truly is...limited only by ourselves.
While the transformation of the mind's eye from that of a tight fist, to that of an open, honest, objective eye should be viewed as a destination, with myriad paths, forks and dead-ends, in order to free our mind's eye from the Louis Vuitton baggage of the endless barrage of marketing images and the feminization of today's man we determined to set forth one path. The gradual awakening (opening), unlearning and reeducation of the eye will be for the most part, so discreet as to be undetectable moment to moment. But the initial shock will be eye-opening indeed. It will also be the most superficial point, the awakening. The emphasis will be placed on the external, with the larger (macro) goal being the gradual shifting of the internal paradigm. Emphasis will be placed initially on tactile elements, in order to disrupt the current negative flow, in order to awaken you as if icy water had been poured on you. The tangible will be necessary to open the eye, to awaken it, but if the shift does not occur at a more profound internal level, the void will cease to disappear. One would become simply a computer program, automated without a sense of self-fulfillment. Like a computer program, you would know what to do, maybe occassionally achieving the desired result, but would never reach Nirvana, or a lasting state of satiation. The unquenchable thirst that fills you, would not be sated, and you would still crawl the desert floor of your previous existence, without the existential water to ease your restless soul.
Social
Psychological
Sexual or Romantic
Philosophical
Physical
Intellectual
The addressing of each and every one of these is crucial to your development, and none of them can be ignored if the whole is to be considered. Whether you want to succeed in Business, with Women or a Special Someone, or just have the desire to make yourself a better person, all of these must be considered. Once awake, your eye will never be able to sleep again.
- bg
Fallacy of ‘Friends’
Remember the show ‘Friends’? Chandler, Monica, Rachel, Ross, Joey and Phoebe? Three guys, three girls, adjacent apartments, all of them platonic best friends. Not until season five or six does any romantic interplay exist between any of the characters.
Though a fan of the show, I look back and wonder how realistic the premise was. Can three attractive women maintain a healthy romantic relationship with anyone outside their incestuous circle of male friends once their boyfriend discovers he is in competition with three other men for her time and attention? Conversely, would any women tolerate dating a man who is thick as thieves with three beautiful women he claims are his ‘best friends’?
The question tugs even deeper. Though male-female platonic friendships do exist in Pussified and Scrobotomized America today, what do they say about the men and women that inhabit them? Is it different for men than for women to have platonic friends of the opposite sex? Is it ok for either once in a committed, monogamous relationship? What about exes that the person you date may still be close to, “as a friend”?
Has the line between men and women been so blurred that not only is the workplace and the household gender-neutral, but now once-sacred male bonds and once-unbreakable female friendships have been usurped by mixed-gender friendships that purport to be of the same dynamic.
How many women these days do you hear describing their slew of ‘best friends’, half the names of which are male? Men, too, have succumbed to the false notion that the more female friends they have the more desirable they look in a woman’s eyes.
We’ll start with this issue first, then move on to the deeper issue of platonic mixed-gender friendships and why they wreak of mischief.
Undeniably, men that relate better to women on a friendship level generally come in two varieties: Homosexual and Pansy. The first is obvious--Gay men crave the friendship of women because they themselves are wired with a feminine bent: attraction to men, obsession with all things fashion, design and appearance, a disdain for the disheveled and disorderly. The commonalities are endless. The pansy, on the other hand, is the straight guy who can’t close the deal, so he figures he’ll hang around long enough, be the shoulder to cry on and the ear to yap into until one day, tired of the “jerks and deadbeats” (read, real men), and imbibed with the right concoction of booze, pills and self-pity, she might hand down a sympathy lay to the hapless schmuck.
Short of those two, no straight man who has any aspirations beyond a Level 3 existence, has more than at most 2 female acquaintances, both of whom he has bagged. Here’s why: Most straight men with multiple female friends crave female validation. Like their female counterparts, they are attention-whores. If a man can get intellectually, recreationally and/or conversationally from a woman what he lacks with his male friends, he is, to be sure, one of two breeds of man; Homosexual or Pansy. Women, be wary of the man that divides his time between returning missed calls to female friends and staying in touch with exes because “their friendship is so close.” Real men don’t stay around long after sex has ended. This should sound neither chauvinistic nor offensive to women, but rather should serve as a benchmark for the degree to which your man is insecure and/or needy. Remember, as a general rule, men do NOT stick around long after sex has ended, nor do they stray while it is going on.
For women the story as old as Methuselah. The fag hags are by and large the women so emotionally vacuous yet desperate for male attention that they surround themselves with the flattery and praise of gay men innocuous enough not to demand anything at the end of the night. Avoid these women like a Priest would a daycare center.
Next is the women who just have a lot of male friends. Don’t kid yourself here, boys. Unless the men fall into one of the two aforementioned categories—Gay or Pansy—and you can tell quick if they do, this woman has either blown them or spread for them. Any man who would tolerate being in a relationship with a woman who insists on maintaining “friendships” with the strangers she’s blown who probably hope to one day experience seconds, is, well, not much of a man.
The point here is that there are very few cases in which mixed-gender friendships are just that—a genuine human connection between two people of the opposite sex that is longstanding and built on substance, shared common interests and platonic fondness for the other rather than random sexual chemistry and/or neediness. The word ‘friend’ is sacred and overused in our society. A Level 5 Player has friends that number in the single digits and can usually be counted on one hand. People that tell you they have more are doubtless using a liberal definition of the word and therefore probably aren’t very good friends themselves.
Level 5 Players do not tolerate women keeping in touch with male friends as much as they refuse to keep in touch with their own. Again, in rare cases, genuine bonds are created between men and women that transcend romance and passion and exist somewhere in the platonic realm of kinship. But they are rare.
For their part, should women tolerate a man who keeps in touch with his exes? No. This man craves validation and feels the need to walk the relationship tightrope with a safety net lest you break his heart and he be left alone. His constant need for love and validation keep him from breaking contact with those women that accepted and loved him. This man, at best, is operating at Level 3.
Keep in mind, however, male-female “friendships” have only recently begun to take vogue. By recently, we’re talking the last 25 years. While no official study has been done to tabulate the average number of opposite sex friendships the average man or woman counts as having, it is surely higher than the days when contact was cut the day someone was spoken for.
From a Meninist perspective, the issue begs whether or not women, not unlike vaginized men, have become so Scrotumized that they indeed relate better to men these days than they do their own kind. This issue is a non-issue. For the sort of women we are talking about—power-walking, chain-smoking maneaters that fill Marketing Director chairs and executive boardrooms, if the Beware sign is not clear enough to avoid, God be with you.
Similarly for women. If you are the type of women that gravitates to Old Reliable, the vaginized doormat of a man, because he is safe and won’t challenge or cheat on you (not synonymous) you are saying something about yourself, not him. Step outside that comfort box, honey, and see if you can keep the interest of a real man (Level 4 and up) for longer than it takes to swing your legs back shut.
If not, revert back to the Pussified Man that will reply with ‘yes, dear’ to everything you say. And when he wonders aloud who’s the guy on the other end of the line you’re talking to at midnight, you can always count on that old standby…
“Honey, he’s just a friend.”
Pffft.
- al
Though a fan of the show, I look back and wonder how realistic the premise was. Can three attractive women maintain a healthy romantic relationship with anyone outside their incestuous circle of male friends once their boyfriend discovers he is in competition with three other men for her time and attention? Conversely, would any women tolerate dating a man who is thick as thieves with three beautiful women he claims are his ‘best friends’?
The question tugs even deeper. Though male-female platonic friendships do exist in Pussified and Scrobotomized America today, what do they say about the men and women that inhabit them? Is it different for men than for women to have platonic friends of the opposite sex? Is it ok for either once in a committed, monogamous relationship? What about exes that the person you date may still be close to, “as a friend”?
Has the line between men and women been so blurred that not only is the workplace and the household gender-neutral, but now once-sacred male bonds and once-unbreakable female friendships have been usurped by mixed-gender friendships that purport to be of the same dynamic.
How many women these days do you hear describing their slew of ‘best friends’, half the names of which are male? Men, too, have succumbed to the false notion that the more female friends they have the more desirable they look in a woman’s eyes.
We’ll start with this issue first, then move on to the deeper issue of platonic mixed-gender friendships and why they wreak of mischief.
Undeniably, men that relate better to women on a friendship level generally come in two varieties: Homosexual and Pansy. The first is obvious--Gay men crave the friendship of women because they themselves are wired with a feminine bent: attraction to men, obsession with all things fashion, design and appearance, a disdain for the disheveled and disorderly. The commonalities are endless. The pansy, on the other hand, is the straight guy who can’t close the deal, so he figures he’ll hang around long enough, be the shoulder to cry on and the ear to yap into until one day, tired of the “jerks and deadbeats” (read, real men), and imbibed with the right concoction of booze, pills and self-pity, she might hand down a sympathy lay to the hapless schmuck.
Short of those two, no straight man who has any aspirations beyond a Level 3 existence, has more than at most 2 female acquaintances, both of whom he has bagged. Here’s why: Most straight men with multiple female friends crave female validation. Like their female counterparts, they are attention-whores. If a man can get intellectually, recreationally and/or conversationally from a woman what he lacks with his male friends, he is, to be sure, one of two breeds of man; Homosexual or Pansy. Women, be wary of the man that divides his time between returning missed calls to female friends and staying in touch with exes because “their friendship is so close.” Real men don’t stay around long after sex has ended. This should sound neither chauvinistic nor offensive to women, but rather should serve as a benchmark for the degree to which your man is insecure and/or needy. Remember, as a general rule, men do NOT stick around long after sex has ended, nor do they stray while it is going on.
For women the story as old as Methuselah. The fag hags are by and large the women so emotionally vacuous yet desperate for male attention that they surround themselves with the flattery and praise of gay men innocuous enough not to demand anything at the end of the night. Avoid these women like a Priest would a daycare center.
Next is the women who just have a lot of male friends. Don’t kid yourself here, boys. Unless the men fall into one of the two aforementioned categories—Gay or Pansy—and you can tell quick if they do, this woman has either blown them or spread for them. Any man who would tolerate being in a relationship with a woman who insists on maintaining “friendships” with the strangers she’s blown who probably hope to one day experience seconds, is, well, not much of a man.
The point here is that there are very few cases in which mixed-gender friendships are just that—a genuine human connection between two people of the opposite sex that is longstanding and built on substance, shared common interests and platonic fondness for the other rather than random sexual chemistry and/or neediness. The word ‘friend’ is sacred and overused in our society. A Level 5 Player has friends that number in the single digits and can usually be counted on one hand. People that tell you they have more are doubtless using a liberal definition of the word and therefore probably aren’t very good friends themselves.
Level 5 Players do not tolerate women keeping in touch with male friends as much as they refuse to keep in touch with their own. Again, in rare cases, genuine bonds are created between men and women that transcend romance and passion and exist somewhere in the platonic realm of kinship. But they are rare.
For their part, should women tolerate a man who keeps in touch with his exes? No. This man craves validation and feels the need to walk the relationship tightrope with a safety net lest you break his heart and he be left alone. His constant need for love and validation keep him from breaking contact with those women that accepted and loved him. This man, at best, is operating at Level 3.
Keep in mind, however, male-female “friendships” have only recently begun to take vogue. By recently, we’re talking the last 25 years. While no official study has been done to tabulate the average number of opposite sex friendships the average man or woman counts as having, it is surely higher than the days when contact was cut the day someone was spoken for.
From a Meninist perspective, the issue begs whether or not women, not unlike vaginized men, have become so Scrotumized that they indeed relate better to men these days than they do their own kind. This issue is a non-issue. For the sort of women we are talking about—power-walking, chain-smoking maneaters that fill Marketing Director chairs and executive boardrooms, if the Beware sign is not clear enough to avoid, God be with you.
Similarly for women. If you are the type of women that gravitates to Old Reliable, the vaginized doormat of a man, because he is safe and won’t challenge or cheat on you (not synonymous) you are saying something about yourself, not him. Step outside that comfort box, honey, and see if you can keep the interest of a real man (Level 4 and up) for longer than it takes to swing your legs back shut.
If not, revert back to the Pussified Man that will reply with ‘yes, dear’ to everything you say. And when he wonders aloud who’s the guy on the other end of the line you’re talking to at midnight, you can always count on that old standby…
“Honey, he’s just a friend.”
Pffft.
- al
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