MasterSelf: Year One
MasterSelf: Year One
By Garrett Dailey
Copyright © 2019 by Aion Media
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review.
First Edition February 2019
Illustrations copyright © 2019 by Garrett Dailey
Published by Aion Media
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Dedication
To You-
To be free at last, at once,
in mind and body, and in soul,
To rise above the pavement, cracked,
out from the pit, that darkest hole,
To taste the air on mountains high,
at heights so seldom known to Man,
To feel the breath of Heaven pure,
and take the sun within your hands,
To give up all that is not true,
all falsehood, wicked, left behind,
To see with open eyes again,
and walk the path out from the blind,
To know the song of love by heart,
and see it sung in every tongue,
To wake the hope that sleeps in dreams
of cynics old and lovers young,
To hear the heartbeat of the night,
and feed the pulse that beats by day,
To touch the clouds at evenfall,
and paint the sunset on the gray,
To embrace the joy and fear as one,
and know despair as dearest friend,
To love the pain that brought you here,
and kiss your wounds, they too will mend,
To reach at last that which you seek,
but find your prize within the chase,
To seek a fortune in this world,
that wealth and power can’t replace,
To you, my love, to you,
I wish each blessing I have spoken,
For you, my love, will find a way,
beyond a heart once broken.
Foreword
It's both incredible and funny to see how far you have come. I remember the day we went to Barnes and Noble and we had this crazy, long conversation. You came to pick me up and we listened to awesome music on the ride over. When we are at Barnes & Noble in the mall, we walked around for a while, and we talked about just everything- I remember two topics that have stood out to me over the years. One was talking about the archetypes, and that was really the beginning of our future conversations about our philosophies on life and people.
The other topic that I remember is our conversation about you moving to Valhalla. We were talking about how you wanted to move to Canada and go and join a commune and experience this crazy thing. You'd been thinking about it for a while, and I remember telling you to do it! It was so exciting to me that I had met someone else who was just as willing to live a fulfilling (though maybe uncomfortable) experience as me. You seem like you understood that life is short and filled with opportunities to make it an incredible experience. This was different, compared to a lot of other people I met, because most people talk about plans and ideas, but they never really seem to have the passion to make it real.
During that conversation, I had a little bit of insight that made me both very excited for you, and also a little bit nervous. I think that it's obvious that you are pretty brilliant. However, I have seen that oftentimes brilliant minds tend to wither rapidly. They tend to default into a place of misery that is hard to escape. When I meet people with minds like yours, I try to keep in mind that they could really go either way. I could tell by our conversation (and the conversations we had previously) that you were capable of doing incredible things.
I was hopeful that you would.
That was four or five years ago now, and it was awesome to see the progression and how rapidly you went from, “I'm unhappy here,” to moving to a whole new place and a totally different experience. Then, shortly after you moved and struck out on your own, you went to the desert, living in a tent and fulfilling something I had seen in you the day that we had that conversation. MasterSelf was just a baby then, and it was this crazy haphazard website with these random people who were brilliant and driven in their own respects, but who were ultimately not you, and maybe had their own interpretation of the philosophy that you had created. Despite that, we maintained a small team that is still going strong today!
I am forever grateful for being able to call you my friend, and watching this awesome journey unfold. I appreciate that when I was unsure of whether I really had a place in your creation you were so willing to not just show me that I did, but also to be relentless in your invitations to join something that I really wanted to be a part of. I know that MasterSelf can help other people because it has helped me immensely. It makes me so happy to see that you are publishing that first year of articles into a book, mostly because I can have them on my shelf to return to time and time again whenever I need the reminder that to save the world we must master ourselves, first and foremost.
I can’t wait to see what the next few years brings us.
Thank you for everything.
-Tia Jones
Preface
MasterSelf began with a phone call in June of 2017. I had recently moved to Colorado and, at the moment, was living in a cheap hotel room at a truck stop between Pueblo and the Springs. At the time, I was waiting to start for a job that my buddy got me at Microchip Technology in CS, so I had an abundance of free time and a serious lack of stuff to do.
I ended up calling my friend Arda Cole, and in the ensuing conversation he mentioned that he was thinking about starting a weightlifting blog. I was about two days into a journal (that I managed to keep up for exactly three), and I suggested we combine forces and make a blog that covers the whole scope of self-improvement stuff. Within the week, we had a site.
If I remember correctly, I wrote exactly one article for the site in the first five months. We actually really didn’t do much of anything as far as actual site content went in that time, but we did start growing the Facebook page (which in retrospect was a massive waste of time and money) and planning all sorts of complicated schemes.
The site didn’t really become anything useful until I moved to Reno to start working at Tesla at the end of October, 2017. As you’ll soon learn, I lived in a tent in the desert between the city and the factory, and the only internet access I had was via the Starbucks on the edge of town. Sorely lacking for content ideas, I decided to start chronicling my time in the tent, and that led to a habit which I still have to this day- going to Starbucks and writing for this site.
What you’ll find in this book is that first article from June, and almost everything that went on the site from Oct 17-18. I’ve omitted things like album reviews and the several clickbait-y listicles I wrote for SEO purposes, because I respect you as a reader. What’s left is the beginnings of my philosophical writings and observations, as well as a few stories about the strange experiments I did during the year. Unlike most books, which are more or less consistent in quality over time, I can almost guarantee that this book gets better as it goes, as before I started writing for MasterSelf, I hadn’t written much of anything.
I chose to end this book with my article, The Birth of the Hero: Towards a New Ideal, because that piece basically encompasses the entirety of what the year represents- the beginning of a definition of a new goal to strive for. The vast majority of what you will read in this book is, in one way or another, related to that theme. Much of what I’ve written on the site since that article has been fairly different in focus.
Thank you for taking the time to support Aion Media and MasterSelf by purch
asing this book. I hope that my writing, in at least some small way, will help you to get closer towards self-mastery, and perhaps even inspire you to find the Hero within.
-GCD
Introduction
Beginning the Journey of Self-Mastery
Above the temple at Delphi it was written, “Know Thyself.” Ours is a world that has forgotten this advice- this is a land gone blind. Ancients, wise men, and the teachers of old have spoken these words, words which today go unheard. Now, no longer are we in the times of sages and mystics. Gone today are the prophets, and messiahs. The veil has been torn, and no more are those who would lead us from ignorance towards the truth. We are leaderless, masterless, and alone.
What is one to do in the face of this cold reality? Many are the paths provided, dry and paved by time. Would you prostrate yourself before the priests, preaching hypocrisy and proselytizing dead dogmas of dead gods? Would you pledge yourself to the tyrants, sacrificing sacred liberty for the security of a cage? Would you put yourself on the market, selling your soul for hollow possessions and wealth? Would you give yourself to your whims, chasing fleeting pleasures and fleeing the burden of responsibility? Would you lose yourself in the mob, never to question or think? Would you surrender yourself before your fear, and cower before the Truth of Life?
Or would you seek another way?
As a wise man once said, “Truth is a pathless land.” There is no clear trail, the signs are fallen, and the landmarks are few and far between. However, there is no other road by which to reach the destination, and even those who have been there can only take you so far. The voyage belongs solely to the Seeker. The prize can only be claimed alone.
This is the journey of self-mastery.
Understanding and the Self
We can only understand others to the extent and in the way that we understand ourselves.
This is the law of true empathy.
Through self-reflection, self-study, and self-improvement, our eyes are opened to the the struggles of others- because we face, or have faced, these same struggles personally.
Almost universally in the legends of mystical or religious traditions of the past, we see the image of the “wounded healer.” This figure is born as an individual who is faced with what should be a fatal injury or illness, yet is able to manage to find or develop the ability within them to heal themself. In doing so, the gods bless the individual with the power to heal others. They are granted the role of a shaman, medicine man, or messiah who is able to heal the sick or cleanse the soul of the people.
This myth is symbolic of the idea that through the acceptance, understanding, and conquering of an apparent tragedy (emotional trauma, a broken heart, the loss of innocence) we earn and are granted the power to cure the ill and give strength to the weak. This is what the redeemer and teacher figures like Christ and the Buddha, respectively, represent- the person who has defeated their own demons and can thus see and exorcise the demons of others.
An example of these concepts is the unfortunate and all-too common story of an individual who commits suicide, and the friends and family of the individual had no idea that said person even was suffering, let alone to such a terrible extent. How tragic it is that those who do not know despair themselves are blind to and helpless against the despair in another.
The seemingly innocuous phrase, “It takes one to know one” comes to mind, although in a different and darker context. Only those who are or have been broken have the eyes to see what the broken look like. Only those who have repaired themselves have learned the skill required to help repair another.
The greatest way to understand this is to reflect on a quote often attributed to Gandhi, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” There isn’t any evidence to suggest he did say this, although it may have arisen as a paraphrasing of a longer quote that I will touch on later. Regardless of the origin, the sentiment is excellent- although very simplified and apparently widely misunderstood- or even ignored.
What does it mean to actually be the change? Let’s begin with the opposite- the hypocrite, a person who does not practice what they preach. A religious leader who chooses to demonize the sins of others rather than to face the demons within themselves. A political activist who seeks government legislation to determine the conduct of others, rather than to act rightly themselves and serve as an example. A leader who asks something of his people something he would not or could not do for them.
To quote Matthew 7:3,
“Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.” Only the one who has cured his own blindness and opened his own eyes should be trusted to take the responsibility of helping another do the same. No one wants a blind surgeon or a sick doctor- no one needs the advice of someone who doesn’t understand the problem.
The closest quote officially attributed to Gandhi is as follows,
“If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. … We need not wait to see what others do.”
What Gandhi means with this is that as we slay our own demons and treat our own wounds, we become an example of the correct way to be- a role model, an inspirational figure, or an ideal that others can learn from. It means that to genuinely affect the world in a positive way, we cannot simply complain about the way things are, point out the flaws of others, or talk about the way the world should be.
We are creatures blessed and burdened with the power of will, and fundamentally the first and last person responsible for our own life. If we cannot take the responsibility to be the best that we can be and to strive towards a noble morality, how could we possibly be qualified to know how another should live or how the world should be?
Heal yourself first, and perhaps we can prevent those sick with misery, suffering, and grief from going undiagnosed until it is too late.
Ask not the world to change- change yourself and you have changed the world. As we are a part of the world, so is the world a part of us. Perfect the world within you and you will have given the world without the greatest gift you possess-
your actualized potential, your ability to be great.
Greatness is what the world needs most right now.
Who is the Master of your Fate?
Imagine you’ve had the worst week of your life. Your car broke down, you’ve been laid off at work, and you aren’t going to be able to make the rent for the third time in a row. To top it all off, your significant other has been cheating on you. Not a great time to be you, right?
What would you do in this situation?
“It’s not my fault that my car broke down, engines fail all the time- and if that company wasn’t so greedy, they wouldn’t have laid so many good employees off. Obviously, I can’t make rent because I’m a victim of fate here, and I didn’t do anything to deserve being cheated on! Life is cruel and I’m just an innocent victim, it’s not fair!”
It’s easy to understand this mentality, and I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve thought this way. When bad things happen, the last thing anyone wants to do is to think that it’s their fault. There’s a reason that the question, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” is so common. Everyone wants to believe that they’re the hero of their own story, unable to do wrong and free from any guilt. Of course, when something good happens, we’ll be the first to take the credit.
See the double standard?
In 1954, psychologist Julian B. Rotter coined the idea of the “Locus of Control.” He discovered that every person makes a decision, consciously or unconsciously, regarding who or what they believe is in charge of their lives. Some people have an external locus, and they believe that things like destiny, God, fate, or even random chance are responsible for the direction that their lives go.
A great example of this idea is in a riddle posed by the eunuch, Varys, in George R. R.
Martin’s epic ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ (better known to TV viewers as Game of Thrones.)
He poses a scenario in which a mercenary with a sword stands in a room with a king, a priest, and a rich man, and has to decide which to serve and which two to kill. The idea Varys presents is where a man sees power- where is his locus of control? Does he believe that money, the law, or the gods are the most powerful? The obvious answer here is that the man with the sword (the individual with the ability to choose) holds the power.
That idea of the power of the individual represents an internal locus of control. These individuals believe that they are in charge of their own choices, and that they are ultimately the cause of what happens to them, good or bad. A great example of the internal locus is given in the famous poem, Invictus, by William Ernest Henley:
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
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