YOLO!

I feel a little fucked up right now and shit like

Mad pain, mad pain inside a nigga heart and shit

I mean all this, all this, drugs, money, sex

Shit ain't really, it ain't fulfillinin' me

It's like I lost a lot of things

I'm not supposed to sing in tune

And the shit kinda broke me down a lot

And I'm just tryin' to hold on, shit but like

I don't know which way to really go

I don't know which way to go

Right, left, up, down, back, forward

 I feel like a Motherless Child

It's like, I know I got a lot of weight on my head

I know I gotta, I know I got the weight of the world on my shoulder

You know?

And I just wanna rise

But I don't know what the fuck man

Ahh man, it's like, it's like, you know like?

I'm tryin' to add shit up, tryin' to do shit right

Tryna build

The Gods is teachin' me

They tryin' to tell me, "Yo, yo Bobby, yo Bobby

You gotta study God"

I don't know what to study, I don't know what to be

(are you listenin'?)

I don't know what to do, I…

Here is the whole song if you wish to hear it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jm9GKaYI3vI

Above is only the intro to the song Build Strong by the RZA of the Wu Tang Clan.  He is a genius after all.  I first found this song years ago while I was going to college.  I go back to it from time to time, or should I say, it comes to me from time to time.  If you knew me at all you would think I wrote the lyrics to this song.  It is meaningful to my life in every verse, in every word.  It would be better to ask, "How did I not write this?"   Even more important to ask, if I could have written it, how did he?

I am a Missouri born white boy.  A redneck.  A hippie.  I walk barefoot most of the time.  I was raised a river rat.  Poor and white trash.   I still to this day have a terrible disdain for money.   Money is the single greatest source of suffering that results from material objects.  The RZA obviously does not disdain money.  

He was born in Brooklyn, NY.  I was born in Columbia, MO.  The cultures we come from could not be any more different if you tried other than the fact that we are both American.  How did this happen?  How is it possible I could have written this song myself?  How is it possible that this song is completely relevant to my life, yet a black man from Brooklyn wrote it?  I doubt very much he wrote that album with poor Missouri white boys in mind as his audience.

I realize this song might not be meaningful to others as it is to me, but that is the point.  The lesson described in this song must be learned by all.  Perhaps if this song does not hit home you have not learned it yet?  Perhaps you have learned it but from a different person from a different life who did something similar and it affected you in the same way.  There is no one way, that is the point. 

I've thought about this a great deal.  It haunted me for months.  How is it possible?  I would just listen to the song over and over again.  How did he do that?  How did he know exactly  precisely without a single error how I felt?  The conclusion I have come to is that we all have to learn the same lessons in life, but that we all learn them in completely unique ways.  If one thinks deeply at all this conclusion should smack right in the face of public education and religion.  Both of these institutions attempt to force everyone into one way of doing something.  Conformity is perhaps the single greatest detriment to education.  It is the single greatest reason it is so difficult to find an actual educated human being.  Almost everyone has conformed.  Almost everyone got tamed and only a very small few actually grew up.  This is why legitimate spiritual leaders seem so mystical to the masses.  They are the rare ones that actually grew up.  Nothing mystical about it.  Just plain old grown up human beings. 

Remember this and never forget it; there is no one way, but there is only one answer.  Ultimately that is. 

Like me, like this song implies, "I don't know what to study, I don't know what to be.”  No one does actually.   If we prescribe to some determined path, failure will ensue.  If someone tells you the way then you are immediately off your own path.  Your way is your own, and only you can find it.  If you are looking to someone else to guide you, you are lost before you take the first step.  This does not mean that one should not seek help from others, it means that ultimately it is up to you to pick your path. 

No one can lead you once you make the decision to be free.   There is no freedom in being led.  The very nature of freedom requires one to take sole responsibility for what they do.  This is why they say only those with no freedom can understand what freedom actually is.  If you have never lost your freedom completely then it is almost impossible to see how all those around you are determining your actions.  We can only perceive ourselves through the eyes of others.

If you are a baby who is crawling, unaware yet that you will walk, it would be pointless for me to show you how to walk.  Or is it?  Surely your mind is prepping, unconsciously, for the next step in your own evolution.  I have read many books that point this fact out right in the beginning of the book.  They say something to the effect of, "For you to have this book in your hands is evidence that you are seeking more."  Obviously right?  Just like those books, if you find yourself in my proximity your mind was seeking it whether you knew it or not.  Can you truly think deeply about how this phenomenon occurs?   It is happening within you every second of your life.  Everyone at this given moment who is in your life is there for your own personal evolution.  One either listens to it or they do not.  The brain cannot undo knowledge.  The mind cannot undo what has been done.  The thinking part of the mind can willfully ignore reality though.  It is the collection of experience, through the eyes of others that defines our lives, but there is no freedom in that. 

You gotta break free.

I gotta break free.

We gotta break free.

To know the Way, is to know one's Self.  That is the apex of spiritual rules, but it does not happen overnight.   A lesson that must be learned by all is that one cannot know one's Self without first undoing what was done in childhood; indoctrination.  Regardless of who you are, or where you are from the culture got to you.  Even those raised by spiritualized adults suffer this fate of indoctrination by culture.  A child cannot discern reality from illusion.  A child simply absorbs knowledge without questioning it.   We were all indoctrinated whether we wish to realize it or not.  If you are unwilling to realize this fact you will never get very far spiritually. 

It is exactly like it says in the Bhagavad-Gita As It Is.  The following is by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada who gives commentary on the versus of the Bhagavad-Gita. 

"In the pursuit of self-realization, one has to follow many rules and regulations to control the mind and the senses and to concentrate the mind on the self. All these procedures are very difficult, bitter like poison, but if one is successful in following those regulations and comes to the transcendental position, he enjoys life as though always drinking nectar."  

What he did not say in this paragraph is that the rules and regulations are different for every human on the planet.  He, like all other spiritual leaders, attempts to say that his way is the way.  He too falls short of the truth.  Bitter like poison he says, and on this point he is correct.  It is a bitter pill indeed.  Extremely bitter.  I always warn those, who seek me out, of the dangers ahead.   I tell them quite clearly  that once you take this path it cannot ever be undone.  Once this path is chosen great loneliness is inevitable.   To grow spiritually is to suffer.  It is to suffer just as if one was ingesting poison, except here one must do it intentionally.   Like eating healthy food simply because one should, not because it tastes the best.  If one is not willing to do this, there is no help for them.  They will never be free. Weak people never ascend.  According to the Gita they come back in the next life as animals as karma for not living up to being a human being. 

Personally I fear letting it all out.  I fear letting go fully.  Who will like me?  I am already almost unbearable.  Even my closest friends can barely stand me for more than a day or two at a time.  What will happen if I do what I must? 

Here I chide myself, honestly, who cares?  I am going to do it anyways, suffer that is.  We suffer regardless of the path.  The trick to retrain the mind to not see suffering as suffering.  Can you see the illusion?  Can you see that fear is determined by others perception.   I am tired of being afraid of my potential.  I am tired of holding myself back.  Aren't you?  The RZA seems to be unafraid.  He put it down in a song, but can you hear countless others afraid to do that, saying to themselves, "no one will like it."   The effects of that song on the minds of others will ripple on forever.   We all need to make our own ripples.  As the kids nowadays like to say, "YOLO!"  There is no freedom in fear.  This is why spiritual masters say one cannot be afraid and know god simultaneously.  It simply is not possible. 

I gotta break free.

We gotta break free.

You gotta break free.