Why I train, why I be! & just one guide in such reflection

Finally! A day to blog.

Spartan Race has their little #whyirace which is awesome, and hopefully gets people to ask their why beyond the medals, mud, or even just the "fun" experience on the mountain, but that's not where my why has started.  I've inflected by feeling on my reasons and motivations even before explicitly describing them.  When I applied to the United States Naval Academy during my junior year of High School, I learned to give rise to those feelings via effective communication, or whatever my lack of communicating that was.  After most of my interviews finished, I talked to a Naval Academy grad who said I need a "story".  That "story" may have been developed better, but it doesn't matter to me as much as how I feel my identity in my memory's story (see Locke on identity as composing of one's explicit memory).  Today as I apply to American Ninja Warrior's College Team edition, I see the importance of "selling" oneself - the artificially created importance to "success".  The Dalai Lama has preached we should be more compassionate instead of desiring or striving for material success.  And many people who might be called gurus emphasize the move to simplicity of commitments and material possessions - see one of my favorite trainers, Mark Divine - so that one may serve each commitment wholeheartedly and for good reason and to leave the world a better place.

So I try to steer myself away from extrinsic reasons and feel around for the intrinsic ones.. A meditation requiring focus, simplicity, and few distractions.  Among some of the things I've felt as good reasons for training, racing, involving myself in the community (particularly of Obstacle Course Racing or OCR, but also in classical Yoga pursuit - read the Yoga Sutras and familiarize yourself with the eight limbs of it if you think it's another stretching routine - and in fitness, in life) are that I can help other people, inspire people to move as they see me move, keep myself moving, healthy, disciplined, and also be more conditioned to save lives.  I plan to serve in the military and the Peace Corps or as a humanitarian for a while, and so this training is integral to that.  But even if I did not have those goals, I would still believe it is right to be training, to be capable of aiding yourself and others.  If you do not have the ability to carry someone out of a burning building, they will stay in the burning building, and more help will not always come.  Self-reliance and self-discipline do not simply revolve around the self if the self is situated in a social justice environment...

That is our natural environment.  A social atmosphere.  Altruism is actually an evolutionary theory now, and I am happy to say I took a course in Social Evolution under Robert Trivers, who proposed that theory!  So let us enjoy helping others by situating ourselves to be self-reliant and in that sense, most effectively interdependent! These whys might be put into mathematical formula one day, but no formula will ever give us the feelings which we experience with a specific, yet ever changing activity - we will be more uncertain about all of time's collection in activities when we focus on a moment of an activity in time and vice versa. These whys are special to us for that reason: we cannot actually encapsulate them and reproduce them, or truly compare them, for every moment is born anew.

These whys may not be described effectively by language.  I think J.S. Mill and even Emerson might say that these whys for their intrinsic good should be pursued for how they make one feel without any need for words or quantification of pleasure (more so Emerson than Mill maybe), but it is nice to explain (rather, attempt to) the preparation, pursuit, the reward and the good done in what one does.  A phronimos (essentially possessor of practical wisdom) would do things because they would understand by their good nature that these things benefit others and themselves:

  In many discussions, the word "habit" is attached to the Ethics as though it were the answer to a multiple-choice question on a philosophy achievement test. Hobbes' Leviathan? Self-preservation.Descartes' Meditations? Mind-body problem. Aristotle's Ethics? Habit. A faculty seminar I attended a few years ago was mired in the opinion that Aristotle thinks the good life is one of mindless routine. More recently, I heard a lecture in which some very good things were said about Aristotle's discussion of choice, yet the speaker still criticized him for praising habit when so much that is important in life depends on openness and spontaneity. Can it really be that Aristotle thought life is lived best when thinking and choosing are eliminated? (From the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

These whys can't always be quantified, explained, communicated, or even reflected on to begin with. So don't worry too much about if you cannot tell right away what it is you are doing or why or how long you should be doing it.  But if you feel rather than seek,  you should learn from nature how to walk and how to act.

Back to simplicity, the reasons why may not readily present themselves because of the distractions about.  But if you really meditate on these ways, letting go of the material distractions about you, then you will start to "get it".

Start letting go. Start feeling, not why or what or when or where, but it.  THE supports of nature itself, the daos.

Simply,
Grant

http://www.goodwill.org/

Here's a deeper talk with Mark Divine on the feeling aspect I've discussed, and on "manhood" but clearly can be felt either as a man or woman or human hood.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DfVyY8R2BI

Gotta do it raw

There's something about everyone's first that is incredibly overtaking.  Firsts being in regards to literally anything! I was just reading over some of my impressions and reflections of college and its many "sins" not too shortly after I started, and realized that a lot of the things that I desire to do now are things I really didn't care much about because I didn't experience them at all before, nor did I have any friends who told me that it was important to try those things. Yet, not trying those new experiences with a raw nakedness and unknowingness leaves you naked and unknowing for when you actually may try them later, or they may happen to you later in a way which you do not enjoy.

So to the virgins of drugs, sex, even exercise, forms of music, etc., you are to decide whether you wish to try it now or later, when the odds may not be in your favor. Though to stay a virgin to them also protects you from the desire of wanting more later, whereas not to stay one can go many directions.  Ultimately, I believe you should find a good intrinsic reason to do them, and not to do them just to do them.

Having done some things, I can say I enjoyed them, but naturally, I want more of them, I want to have them in the most pure form, the most enjoyable form. Some form that actually positively changes how I look forward, more than backward.   I want a lasting unity in spirit, something that despite physical time and space separations, I can feel like it is a part of my identity. It depends on how you value these things, but across the board, it is shown that people who can choose delayed over instant gratification tend to do better in a number of aspects in their lives.  Sometimes you get wrapped up in the moment, and that is good, but sometimes you should also realize that that snowball in that moment may not end well for you or others in the future.

I have not found the love of my life, or the time of my life, but I do have moments of love and ecstasy.  I could string those moments together, isolated from the times of trials and tribulations. However nice that may sound, it is not what I really need or can actually enjoy.  Because as physically temporary as those raw, absolute, connected moments are, they are not nearly as sweet without the pain.

...The scraping of my sensitive, soaking heart, and tearing of it's tissues to leave stringy sinews across varied venues...

I am raw, my soul has saw - not yet all. But it has been in awe.

Without that rawness created by the pain, I don't think I could truly feel as connected as I do in those moments - because that connection is healing all of my open, raw being.

It takes a delicate, yet controlled balance to feel this, but it is not quite something you can understand through language or demonstration.
You just gotta do it raw.

"..Faith comes in moments; our vice is habitual" - "The Over-Soul", Ralph Waldo Emerson

Why have I been losing faith? A positive direction to the question & my Ultimate aim

So I haven't been too reflective lately, in fact others have been reflecting a lot for me - thanks to a long call with my mother and then my stepfather, brother and some talks with good friends, who have seen in a different subjective perspective (still subjective to their relations with me, but closer to being objective from how I see things & you can never be perfectly objective as a human observer), and this all has helped me very much in standing strong with my intuitive faith.  I did journal the other day on "Why have  I been losing faith?", and it didn't help me too much in the respect that I didn't cheer up, although I did "look up" and "open up" - I was reminded I can find many interesting perspectives and observations about the natural world (something I thank Emerson for fueling, especially reading his intricate but echoing poems often).  Essentially, I am grateful for the support around me, and I want to be able to provide the same for others since it has helped me so much.  I want to provide windows to issues, so people can consider which ones to look out of when solving their problems. 

In other news, I feel ready to do, and less inclined to talk of it.  I wish to experience more so as to then be able to reflect on after (or not reflect at all, just enjoy it as is), to really have something tangible to understand.  

Ways I have been connecting my self through experience:

Getting slightly more serious about schoolwork - the interest in bio is rather, eh, but I can kindle it.

Going to rock climbing team practices regularly 2x2 hour practices a week, but only two weeks left :(

I feel challenged on a totally different level at these, which I crave.  On partner exercises, I will always ask for harder and it become enjoyable when you immerse yourself in the social aspect of it - my partner has the power to push me further than I could myself, literally, we throw eachothers' legs down to the floor and we have to keep them off the floor, like in a leg lift. 

Going to the Yoga and Reiki club one time a week for peace and control. 

Still doing OCR (obstacle course racing ) practices virtually every weekday morning, some days I have actually not seen anyone else at practice and gone back to sleep because I have fallen out of my strict bedtime ritual from last year - never not in bed later than 2300 to get up by 0630.  This year, I can be up as late as 0130 and sometimes later..

Calling and not being afraid of talking to my family and sometimes strangers, even if it goes no where special, just being able to loosen up from my introverted self and actually do things and connect to people that I can sometimes doubt my being able to engage in. YOU ARE NOT ALONE. YOU ARE LOVED, AND CAN LOVE.

Ideal Ways for me to add in connecting myself:

I would like to connect more with OCR friends, ordinary people who wish to better themselves through physical and mental training, deeper philosophy conversations with people (my stepdad is great for that), writing more creative things like poems for the Huntington poetry club I go to now, and also definitely reading more philosophy and non fiction.. and even fiction (I miss my Deltora Quest and Ranger's Apprentice reading in middle school and earlier.)

Ultimately you may ask, what am I interested in all of these things for?  Well, I wish to enter the life of the coach, the teacher, but also that of the lifetime student.  I will always seek new knowledge, but I wish to help others establish a baseline, or a set of experiences that will illustrate to them the beauty and strength they can find in life.  I wish to do this in as big a way as I can, and in as micro a way I can, every day, or one day, but find how I can do this every way possible - I have been blessed with a taste of good, and worked hard to find the good I feel now, and I wish to find a way to allow others to do the same.  This may be vague, but my questions will only specify, and they are quite lengthy for this post now.  I will leave this there.

For now, ask yourself, what have I done or sought or felt today or all of those, that made or could have made a difference in others' lives or even just temporary feelings?  And ask yourself, how temporary really is a mood, when it carries actions taken that are influenced by those moods?  

One last thing, don't forget to smile and choose to do and feel good!

Very Respectfully and Sincerely,

Grant Tamutus

With each form, a question

I hope at this point reading my blog you can follow my reflections a little more closely, and that you may also reflect while reading, which I'm sure is explicitly done in most of my readers' minds.

I bring this up because I don't want to give you a story which you have no use for.  My intention is rather to offer you a telling of yet another pattern that reflects the rest of the Universe and is but one pattern which the Universe chose to form in the instances of my telling.  It is with this knowledge which I invite you to reflect on, to allow to sit in your mind and meditate upon, or to simply enjoy on face value, but preferably to get you to something which is readily transferable to how you reflect and act.

Also, know the a difference as Locke says in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, between those who blindly accept truths and those who actually investigate truths when they are given to them.. Now they may seem evident to you, like your belief in God - for example, Jesus as the begotten Son of God.  But why do we believe these things which others have been told, who tell us, but have not actually seen that which they are talking about? Now I will not be here to sway your beliefs with evidence of erased history which is quite interestingly left out from what you are told in Sunday School, but just understand that 1) What any principle describes for you is by no means a description of every instance, that is, you cannot prove it, but you can reject it, 2) By totally accepting any principle you leave out desire to learn principles which surround it and may be in more cases applicable or probable to be true, that is, you accept ignorance to some degree and finally 3) What even is your understanding of a term which you have not experienced to be able to describe but have second-handedly heard described? that is, if someone told you what "x" is, but their explanation was dependent on their experience of it, then their explanation of it may not be what you would experience of it, and it can be accepted even when you did not have the experience, but you won't truly understand "x" until you actually experience "x".

"Truth has been my only aim; and wherever that has appeared to lead, my thoughts have impartially followed, without minding whether the footsteps of any other lay that way or not." - Book 1, Chapter 3 of the Essay.

Be critical, it's good for you and others.  Don't be "minding".  It's for the truth.

My religion (part 2/2 on My "dealings" with feelings)

I was raised and confirmed Lutheran Christian, and I did enjoy my experience within the church.  But I never really felt like I could feel a relationship between myself and God.  I just couldn't force feed myself love I didn't feel like was there for me. I believe in Love, a transcendent Love, but I could not feel it just in myself.  The teachings and parables of the Bible deeply intrigued me, and I have my Sunday School teachers and my family to thank for raising me with such a benevolent and loving community, but it was only the love of the people I could put a finger on at first.  When I realized the Love Jesus had was for the children of God, I then realized that's the Love I should focus on spreading.

Later after reading Ralph Waldo Emerson, I found many of my implicit ideas of Love manifest explicit in his works, viz. that of nature's offerings.  Nature gives us absolutely everything we could ever need to live.  It also is bound together by some kind of "Universal glue" as you might call it, the laws of nature, and all nature is is a constant balance of different forms from the same basic essence.  Nature gives us so much to look at, yet reflects the same idea everywhere: balance.

I go to the Unitarian Universalist Churches ( http://www.uua.org/beliefs/what-we-believe/principles ) as of recently because of my own interest, also my stepfather the philosophy professor goes, also Emerson was a Unitarian minister back in the day until he rebelled to write and philosophize some more, also it's all freaking inclusive!  I could not think of a community more in line with my values than one which allows all.  I don't think all NEED to go there to practice, I simply believe all should realize we are at base made of the same, worth the same to an earthquake's "judgement", and need to stop dividing ourselves based off of stupid differences in ideology or form ( http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc-quick-cuts/watch/bernie-sanders-gets-personal-on-religion-629654595662 )

You might wonder how I worship.  I worship every day, every moment, and the subject of my worship is exactly that human element which connects us all, it is not just a human element either - it connects us to the very dirt on our soles, and the "Sols" of the sky.  Let us be one with that.  It's comforting and simple to me, that's all I need honestly.

Sure we won't take down all the walls and distinctions that divide us as humans, but we'd damn do better if we tried.  If you understand that people can't simply generate ideas, that they can only form ideas from what has been presented to them by their experiences, then understand that the morally unlucky by accident of birth can't simply generate the ideas and therefore belief to carry out action and become habit so that they'd simply go "rags to riches", B1TCH35, you're missing the point.  It frustrates me that people may think that others are absolutely responsible for their own success in a world which deprives many others of the opportunities and the proper experiences which allow them to have success. You may be lucky enough to believe otherwise, but that doesn't mean you can tell me exactly what everyone else actually knows explictly and can act on.  So I merely believe we must do whatever it is to take down these distinctions and this unwillingness to take care of others when they have no one who took care of them homeless or starving or without love.

Personally, I have found it hard sometimes to see love in certain places.  And I'm not saying to be unrealistic.  There are threats in this world, and I simply see action on them as a balance requited for the future good of humanity.  Do good, and take care of the bad.  We need to learn the right way to evaluate those together, so we don't have all these interpretations and all these directions we fight and keep away the potential for harmony.  I honestly don't even know though if half the people in my ethics class however, are intending on contemplating that for more than a 30 minute homework assignment.  If we don't live this everyday, what is this?  It's fucking sad.  How do you challenge those people to actually invest and care, when they don't even know themselves or know their cares or know how to care?

I believe in love, Love, luv, but only that which connects, not that which allows for separation, and believe in your love for your material purposes, what good is it actually to the whole?  Is it connecting at the expense of separation?  Maybe for now, that's the best we can do.

Just realize pure love is love for all.