- Perfectionism’s Precursor And The Dark Dance Towards Illumination
Nothing is ever dialed in as it should be.
Chaos all the time.
And perfectionism has you doing a demon dance in an imaginary parade.
Nobody cares at all. So take as many shots as you’ve got while air is still coursing through the blood in your veins.
People wait and want for that perfect moment to begin. To where there is no external dramas.
Or stressful unpaid bills.
Or girlfriend in a foul mood.
Or no girlfriend at all for years and none in sight.
You wait for all the areas of your life to be just right.
And they never are.
This is like perfectionism’s precursor.
We want all the scenarios to be just right, but life is chaos and entropy. Going to war against God’s divine order, and you are somewhere in the middle of it all. Trying to build a dream.
Or trying to get to the perfect place from which you can build a dream.
But this is just one more disguise of resistance. The conman, the demonic voice of resistance, has put in your head.
That you’ll get started when everything is just so.
When the externals of the world are dialed in.
But the nature of the material world, of the external landscape, is to be chaotic and noncooperative.
The whole premise seems to be to push us towards our spiritual lives and God, through the coordinated breakdown of externals.
Or ego-based reality. All roads lead to spirit and the eternal (long before death of our bodies we die many deaths along the way).
I mean, if we are, in fact, in some kind of simulation, then I would say that seems to be written into the program.
The only security we can ever rely on is that of the “I Am,” Christ consciousness, God, Presence, Spirit.
The world? People? Jobs? Friends?
Especially these days, it’s more chaotic than ever “out there.”
So what’s this mean for us and our dreams, and perfectionism, and perfectionism’s con job precursors?
It means…
get going and then get good.
It means start tagging the walls of achieving with the graffiti that comes off the top of your head.
Or to put it a less poetic way,
Just start doing stuff.
2
Pushing into a new version of yourself, expanding beyond old limitations.
Trying something new and sustaining the energy of doing it, while being awkward and bad at it at first, is tough.
They call it a grind, or grinding.
Because it’s a battle. It’s a swim against the current of the way things are. And within yourself, there will be voices, both big and small, telling you you are an idiot for even trying.
And so this is why the mind will make up excuses to not start this long and grueling test of will and strength.
It will tell you that you can’t do it because this or that is unresolved. Your living situation isn’t what you want it to be.
You don’t have enough time. You can’t let go of this or that habit.
And that same resistance against even beginning will convert to perfectionism if you overcome it enough to begin.
There will be resistance every step of the way and will shift and convert itself. It will update itself to meet the new levels you achieve.
You will feel like quitting. You will feel like it’s futile. You will go through periods of desert days where you get no feedback. Or negative feedback. It will be like wandering through a strange funhouse at times, where all the mirrors are distorted. And evil clowns jump out at you from behind corners you didn’t see.
The simulation has this written into the code, to mess with you relentlessly if you are mad enough to dare to try and uplevel your life, or your station in life.
If you dare to live your dream, it will make sure you pay for that attempt every step of the way.
Expect it so it’s not a surprise.
3
Two aspects of elevation of the station.
Two aspects of going for a dream.
The inner and the outer.
Let’s start with the inner.
A. Mindset.
We are entering a strange war, and it’s a battle that overwhelmingly people lose.
How then will you convert the odds from being stacked against you, to being in your favor?
- is don’t have any illusions that it’s gonna be easy. Or that it’s gonna be quick. Or that you will be congratulated. Or that anyone will notice or act like they notice at all the big internal hurdles that you overcome.
The world doesn’t care and it’s preoccupied with its own mumbo jumbo.
And for the ones who are maybe paying attention to you,
You can’t expect human nature to be anything other than what it is.
Typically fear-based and threatened by the movements of another.
Unable to encourage themselves, so certainly unable to encourage anyone else.
Expect crickets. Expect negative energy. Expect this.
Not to be negative for the sake of it,
But rather to subvert the tricks the external world plays on us all, when we actually overcome so much to even get to the starting gate of a dream.
2. Still in the category of mindset, we must make meditation, or seeking God, or returning to presence a real priority.
For sustained effort over a long and consistent trajectory, we need a home base to return to.
We need areas of relief and rejuvenation.
This is an ultra, ultra-marathon we are running here.
We need to be able to refuel and restart from scratch, every day for months and months, if not years.
Meditation is a safe haven, where you override and observe the noise of the mind, the negative voices, the ones telling you to quit, or calling you a fool.
You need periods where you observe them from a place of metacognition or presence or I am consciousness, or Christ consciousness, and you can see them for the demonic origin from which they come.
Without these reprieves and these inner work sessions, the voices of the mind will trick you into believing that they are you, that you are burnt out, that you can’t keep going, that you are an idiot for trying, etc.
They will trick you. We must remain vigilant and become daily the external witness to all the inner goings-on.
Meditation is good for this, obviously, and so is deep physical exercise that leads to the ability to meditate, such as yoga, or running.
Breathwork into meditation is our friend as well.
We must build a robust mindset strategy, and by mindset, you could also call this a spiritual practice.
But however you want to frame it, the point is the inner work, which includes breath work and exercise, must be a massive priority. Seeking presence and observing your own inner world invites the love and light of God to help heal the turmoil but won’t absolve it completely, at least not all at once or right away.
But this is a huge area to contend with and invest priority-level energy too.
Seems obvious, but it might not be to everybody.
Which leads to the second category, beyond mindset or spiritual, and that is:
2. Action!
Obviously, in the mindset category, action is required with exercise and meditation.
But this category is more to do with the organized action or actions of achieving the dream itself.
You don’t need endless time, and probably don’t have endless time, to build your dream.
You probably have a day job, or kids, or much of your time spoken for in non-toxic ways.
(It goes without saying that any toxic ways you are spending time need to be annihilated, such as… Endless scrolling, porn, drug or alcohol use, crappy distracted dramatic relationships.)
But assuming a decent amount of your time is spoken for in ways you can’t yet shift, there are always workarounds.
And one of them is:
A. Ultra early wake-up times.
Even if you have to be getting ready for work by 7 am, there is no reason you can’t wake up at 4 am, or even 3-3:30, and put in three or four hours of focused work with that morning energy that is highly clear, focused, and creative.
It might seem extreme, but things that society deem extreme must become no big deal and commonplace if what we want is a life that isn’t common.
And here’s the thing, getting up mad early is kinda fun and subversive.
I’ve lived rock n roll lifestyles for many years.
I would go to sleep at 6 am and wake up at 2 pm.
I lived a vampire-like existence for many years.
And got a lot done in those days as well, made records deep into the night.
And I can tell you now that I always set my alarm for 4 am.
I get a similar subversive thrill.
Because to buck the system is to buck the system.
Society (at least the dark aspects of it) don’t want us to overcome our station, don’t want us to find the heart of our rebellion in going for a dream with military-like persistence and precision.
Rock n roll rebellion has changed with the times.
Today’s rock n roll rebellion isn’t about sleeping till noon.
Today it’s about getting up at 3:30.
And working on a dream.
B. Organize and prioritize activities.
Our goals and dreams in the social media age have become more complicated.
If you are trying to engage in the creator economy, then you have to market a brand, build the product or service, write and write some more, probably make videos, respond, etc.
So many hats these days a new creator or a new business is forced to comprehend and deal with.
The feeling of being overwhelmed is practically automatic and can stop us in our tracks.
When there is too many things to do, it’s easy to do none of them at all and cave into porn or some other negative addiction.
Creating an organized schedule won’t make it easy, and won’t guarantee anything, but it will make it possible.
Daily lists of goals to achieve, weekly lists, and monthly lists are now more important than ever.
The game has changed and now we all must wear many hats, especially when building from the ground up.
Obviously, we aim to build a team.
But until you have that capacity and wherewithal, you are the team. You must be your own army, and there’s no way of achieving this or keeping it organized without organizing it.
(Thanks, captain obvious.)
Seems obvious but again it might not be to everyone and even the most obvious things take time to figure out.
C. Final step. At least this bit of writing is visualize.
There will be endless negativity leveraged against you both externally and internally.
Far from being negative in expecting this, it’s more like being proactively positive.
Or like training for a boxing match.
You don’t expect your opponent to come in with his hands behind his back.
You expect that you are going to get endless punches thrown at you.
But beyond that, we can also remember to visualize success daily, to recast our mind towards our vision fulfilled.
To not only seek silence and presence, and through metacognition observing our own inner workings.
But also then to actively guide our imagination to our wish fulfilled, and not just the end result of our dream coming true, but rather visualizing the activities we must pursue in order to make that happen.
See ourselves waking up early, see ourselves working diligently every chance we get, see ourselves being organized and dialed in like never before.
Proverbs 23:7 KJV: For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he: Eat and drink, saith he to thee; But his heart is not with thee.
It’s difficult to align our hearts and our minds with a unified vision, and to perpetuate and persist with that vision over the course of years.
But that is what it takes. One must wake up daily to an inner calling of finding a purpose and a purpose-driven motivation to propel them forward, to so many odds both external and internal.
So many forces working against them.
Most don’t do it. The rare ones succeed.
So, measures that perhaps seem extreme at first glance, or all-encompassing, turn out to be just the bare minimum of what it actually takes.
4. Comparisons are odious. Don’t compare yourself to anyone, as your story is unique.
Though we can all plug in many of the exact same tactics to get us to where we are going,
where we are going is as individual as we are, and so doesn’t need or want comparison to anyone else at all.
Take my story, for instance.
I’m pursuing new dreams and visions from an older age that many are pursuing as younger men and women.
My mind could terrorize me over this, and often tries too.
It will say, “What a fool you are to be pursuing this now, and if you weren’t a loser, you wouldn’t need to pursue this at all.”
Our inner demons are ruthless. I tend to laugh at mine now, but that wasn’t always the case, and certainly, they can still land a punch in a tired or a wayward moment.
My demons are lying, though, because at what age should we stop attempting to expand into new and interesting dreams?
The answer is, we should never stop that, and the act of doing it is what keeps us young and on a razor’s edge in a good way.
Also, in my story, I have achieved plenty of success in both the art world and music world and made my living off of those pursuits for 30 years, give or take.
That said, I don’t feel like my hunger or drive is gone.
I find it is as active and full-on as ever, but not in a desperate way or “mid-life crisis” way, or all the negative ways the mind will frame things,
but rather in a way that I’m being called to pursue something that is similar to being called in the past, which led to an entire career.
I say this to illustrate the fact that our lives need not follow anyone else’s trajectory or timeline.
Comparison is just one more booby trap on the minefield of pursuing a dream.
Also, what the demons are telling me is a negative is actually a positive.
It makes me relatable to an entire base of people who still have untapped potential and dreams to fulfill into the later years of their lives.
(And there are many such people out there. Countless, in fact.)
I can also document my journey in this realm and be an inspiration to many who are out there who, along with all the typical resistance they have, …also have a bigger and perhaps more daunting past, and are even deeper entrapped by negative habits that have been built up and calcified by the years.
My age isn’t a weakness. It’s a strength.
Not to mention I have garnered success and maintained success in industries that is notoriously difficult to do that in,
but not so much success that I am no longer relatable, and also not so much success that I am no longer actively pursuing goals with relatable motivations to everyone else.
This also is all a strength, but my mind would frame this all as the reason to quit.
This is just to show you what kind of liar the mind is, and the demons within trying to run the show.
We are all unique, so my inner dialog and situation will, of course, be vastly different than yours,
but whatever yours is, no doubt the mind is giving you a laundry list of reasons why you are a fool to even try.
That’s just human nature.
Dig a little deeper and uncover why whatever it’s saying is not only untrue but also probably where your real treasure is buried.
Where we stumble is where the gold is, or like Joseph Campbell says, “Where you stumble, there lies your treasure. The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be the source of what you are looking for.”
It will never be the perfect time to begin, and you will never be in the perfect position, or with a head that isn’t hurling massive abuse at you left and right.
That’s the whole game. That’s the fun part.
