Fortune and Glory

It's been a while since I have written a blog, and I have a burning desire to do so.

Lately I have been thinking a great deal about fortune and glory. My desire for it, my rejection of it, my resistance and self-sabotage in attaining it, but more importantly recognising and remedying the unconscious blocks keeping me from it so that my natural self can flow without constraint in achieving itself.

I have been reading the new book written by hypnotist, Paul McKenna called I Can Make You Rich. An excellent book with plenty of insights that pertain not only to our limiting unconscious relationship with our concept of money, but also to our basic programming towards existence itself. Perhaps I will write more on that later.

I have written a great deal in these blogs on the idea of transformation as creating for you the person that you want to be, like Jay Gatsby for example. Yet always there was a resistance inside of me. There was my unconscious doing what it is suppose to do – protect me from harm. In this case, it was trying to preserve that thing it identifies as "self". The idea of transformation carries with it the connotation that one disapproves of who or what they are and seeks to be liberated by transforming into someone else.

I realised that a better word than transformation is growth. Do we look at a toddler and say, "stupid idiot, look it can't walk or even talk properly." Of course not, because we have an understanding that the child is at a stage of development and will grow, mature, and learn. Likewise, we are still in this process, and yet we have an expectation that the moment comes when we "arrive" and are finished. We are not finished until we die. We should therefore look at those aspect of the past where we could have acted or felt differently and take the same attitude as we do with any other growing thing. See it as a stage of development.

The maturing process is naturally controlled by the unconscious mind. Creatures do not try to grow, they just do so easily and without effort. So often I found myself trying to be the person that I want to be instead of just letting it happen.

In the Eighties there was a film called "Made in Heaven". A young man dies, goes to heaven, and falls in love with a girl. However, her time comes to be born into a body as a "new soul". The only way that this man can be reunited with his love is to be reborn and to find her on Earth. A deal is made and he is given thirty-years to find her, but he has no memory of his time in heaven. The man is born into a poor, white trash family, starts with little opportunities and wastes his life. The film's depiction of heaven was as a place where you imagined where you wanted to go or have and you would go there or the thing would manifest. There is a scene where the man's time is running out, but he still has no idea what he is looking for. An angel character appears to him says something like, "You're wasting time, you've lost yourself, just remember what it was like in heaven, imagine where you want to go and you will go there." Eventually he finds the girl at the zero hour.

The point of this story is that in the process of growth, our imaginations and the accompanying emotions that we associate with those thoughts are the control switches for directing our growth. That's it. Growth is as simple as that.

Yesterday, I began an exercise of re-imagining my life. A person is defined by their style of life, that is, their lifestyle. Look at a person's clothes, home, job, activities, friends, relationships, and tastes and you will discover the person. So I imagined the life I want. What clothes do I wear? How is my home decorated? What is my job? What is my annual income? What activities do I engage in? Who are my friends? What are my lovers like? What do I have for dinner? What music is playing? I imagine my ideal lifestyle as though it was real and I feel the positive emotions of that lifestyle. This exercise tells the unconscious mind, "This is where we are going. This is who we are growing into." And that is what makes it possible to become the person that you want to become.

Growth is effortless. Yes, there may be experiences, actions, knowledge, or skills necessary to grow in the direction that we desire, but these will be pleasurable experiences – not work. They will be acquired naturally. Think of the artist who works eighteen hours a day on a project. He may get tired, but he is fulfilled by the experience of doing something that he enjoys. Life is not meant to be hard. If it is, then you are doing something wrong.

I remember when I first put on a waistcoat and buttoned it up. Perhaps it was not the first time, but for some reason it had a profound affect on me. My mind associated this look of a waistcoat and tie with Victoriana. I felt efficient and artistic and I liked that feeling. In time, my style developed more and more to what it is today. People ask me on the street why I dress the way I do. When I think of it now, I do so because I like the way it makes me feel. If I deem to put a label on it, I called it Neo-Victorian. I associate men in frock coats with Romanticism – the dreamers who make their dream come true. These are those men of industry who built the Brooklyn Bridge or wrote magnificent literature, or frontiered the American West in style. I want to be like those men, so I dress like those men. I want to promote their values in myself, my associations, and in my lifestyle.

This brings me to Tombstone. Once I really liked the film, then it entered my top five, and now it is number one. So often I think of it and find something new, which is why I am always writing about it in these blogs. For me, there is another level of the film that concerns itself with the Victorian attitude towards money.

In the San Francisco telephone directory, Wyatt Earp listed his occupation as "Capitalist". He was always looking for opportunities to make money. In two occasions in the film Tombstone he is praised for his desire to make money. Doc Holliday shares Wyatt's values. When Wyatt asks his friend, "How the hell are you?" Doc replies, "Wyatt, I am rolling." Imagine today if you asked a friend how they were and he responded, "I have money". These days, the cultural atmosphere is so against this notion of rejoicing in another person doing well for themselves. Envy and resentment seems to be the order of the day. There are a few other references to money in Tombstone, such as Wyatt refusing to fight Ringo because, "There's no money in it." But notice the ending of the film. Wyatt is destitute and offers himself to Josie. She replies, "My parents are rich". Happy ending.

Romanticism is ultimately about the individual's pursuit of his values. It is about your life on your terms. It is about freedom. However, freedom without the power to exercise that freedom is pointless. Power is no more than a tool to be utilised in the pursuit of creating and maintaining your values. Money is one form of power, and therefore nothing but a tool in creating values and the lifestyle that you desire.

So as I imagine the life of Logan in my mind, I find my attitude towards money re-adjusting itself and I focus on that very Romantic goal of fortune and glory. I hear Doc's voice in my head, "Wyatt, I am rolling" as though it were me saying it. I focus on the richness of my life now, the wonderfully rich experiences of my past, and I look forwards to a more rich and glorious future.

Here's to happy endings.