Hello Folks, the Asylum goes into its last lap from this point onwards. Going to get more intense and more liberating.

So I’m hunkering down, getting into Bankai. No more updates until Day 90. I’m off Twitter and Facebook as well.

Wish me luck and see you on the other side.

King.

Yes! Just passed a huge milestone in one of my metrics. Most excited I have been about personal development in more than 10 years. The next milestone will have me positively ecstatic.

Resisting the urge to do a war dance. Bring. It!

“There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.”

- Bruce Lee

So 60 days. Wow. Wow. Wow. Counting down to the exit. The only problem is… I have accepted this… self-inflicted pain. Except, it’s not pain anymore. I don’t even look at the door with longing anymore. My back is turned to it, with an acceptance that is as painful as it is liberating. It feels… good. Like the darkness and echoing emptiness and alone-ness is the perfect place for me. To think. To breathe. To grow. To simply be. I think I just might stay in here.

“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche

I passed the halfway point of my Asylum two days ago. And on that day, a close friend asked me if I was also halfway with what I had set out to do.

My answer? Yes and no.

It’s been a painfully exhilirating 45 days. I’ve shut out and thrown out lots of things that I deemed unneccesary from my life. Some as a proof to myself that I am not addicted to those things and others as a refusal to conform to weaker and lower standards and expectations of myself. I have made huge progress in some areas, much more than I expected. And in others, I have made pathetic progress.

But what counts is that I am halfway the journey. And now that the pain is wearing off, now that I am comfortable with the journey itself, its highs and lows have evened out into something much better than I expected. And I am starting to enjoy the journey immensely, despite the fact that I know that the next phase is going to be be harder than anything I have done before, which means that this moment of peace is essentially as short-lived as it is useless.

It is a beautiful view from here, this temporal chasm, where the infinite stretches out in all directions. And I like it enough that 90 days now seems small and petty. Perhaps I will push it to 120 or 150. Who knows…

Only time will tell.

The bottom line is, will this pay off? Will it eventually be worth it in the end? I don’t know. I’m just going with what I believe is the right thing for me to do right here, right now.

PS: Forgive the ambiguity of these Asylum posts. The details of what is going on are far too many and too intricate to even bother with a proper explanation. But hopefully, after I am done, the results will speak for themselves. If not.. oh well.

Happiness is like a butterfly.
The more you chase it, the more it eludes you.
But if you turn your attention to other things,
It comes and sits softly on your shoulder.
 - Henry David Thoreau

Hello Heavenly Father, how are you? Is the world stressing you? Are you happy with us? I hope so. Thanks for that whole Jesus thing by the way, it still blows my mind each time I think about it.

Meanwhile, thank you sooo much for another day. I woke up to the birds chirping and it was beautiful. I have this pounding headache and I think have a nasty cold brewing, but hey, this too shall pass, no?

Thank you for standing by my side, even when I don’t deserve it. Especially when I don’t deserve it.

Today is going to rock, but as always, all I ask for is your guidance and wisdom.

Now let’s go change the world, eh?

ehovah Jireh
My provider
His grace is sufficient for me
My God shall supply all my needs
According to his riches in glory
He will give His angels
Charge over me
- Don Moen – Jehovah Jireh

Ages ago, I used to tell people that I had a falling out with my dad because he was a tough man, a slave-driver who wouldn’t see me for who I was and who always pushed me to do things I had no interest in.

Now, after far too many years without him, I look back and realise it was simply teenage angst. That time of your life when all that drives you is raging hormones and a rebellious devil-may-care attitude towards the world. Especially towards family.

My dad passed away in 2003, I had just barely made 20. In my rebellion, I had moved out of home at 18 and started living my life, my way, trying to see what this world had to offer.

Today is Father’s day, and this is a letter to a man who both terrified me and inspired me and who I desperately wish was still allive.

—–

Dearest Father,

Let’s first get one thing out of the way: I miss you and I love you. Much more than I thought possible and much more than I can tell, through written or spoken word.

I long for your wisdom each day, which I now see for its true worth. Days and nights long, I have stared at the ceiling in absolute terror at what lay before me, and all I wished for was to talk to you again, to simply ask you how you would have done things, or sometimes, if you had some spare cash lying around to bail me out.

The world is a hard place dad, and now I know and see why you always had a frown on your face while we were out gallivanting during school holidays, even when I’d foolishly ask you why you never got holidays like us and you’d simply reply, “because we need food on the table” and I’d walk away puzzled. The world has changed so much, and it is a world that needs fathers to guide their children. Fathers to teach their boys how to be boys and their girls how to be girls. It’s a sad sad place, and yet, dad, it is a wondrous place.

So very much has changed since we had that argument about Post vs Email, where I, starry-eyed technology ardent, struggled hard to explain to you, die-hard traditionalist, how communication was now so much faster! You were happy with opening your post once a month, and getting a handwritten letter or two, and I was happy when every five seconds, an alert popped up, “You’ve got mail” and I could open it and read it there and then. Smileys and forwards and silly do-this-or-something-bad-would-happen-in-the-next-ten-minutes messages. While we now communicate across the world in real-time, the information overload has gotten so much worse. There’s now Facebook! And Google! And Twitter! Monstrous machines that seemingly know everything about your private life and constantly drown you in information and yet we embrace them whole-heartedly. We give up the very essence of our lives to them, throwing away our undergarments of self-respect and culture and tradition and privacy and intimacy, all in the name of staying connected.

It is sad, and it is beautiful, and I don’t know if you would have embraced it eventually, but I know, knowing you, that you would have been shocked.

The past two weeks have been absolute chaos.

I discovered two truths that despite my strongest efforts, and despite all outward appearances, have left me utterly and absolutely broken. The details, of course, will never see the light of day, at least not on a blog. But suffice it to say that almost every single day has been a test of my resolve to continue with this. As if life itself is taunting me, mockingly asking me if I really have what it takes to become what I dream of, what I hope for. And in the process, caused me to question the very sanity in what I am doing.

The urge to just open the door and walk away and embrace freedom. Freedom to be normal, to be average. Freedom to accept things the way they are and do just enough.

But the problem is; it doesn’t stop there. Slowly, we sink back into our old ways, and compromise more and more, and do less and less, until we are so used to our mediocrity that it becomes the new aspiration. And following shortly on the heels of that is moral decay and a intellectual apathy.

This is a freedom that chains me to a lifetime of regret. And I will not have that. I will not be eternally haunted by hindsight.

The Asylum. It’s a 90 day stretch, but it’s a lifetime commitment. It’s a refusal to be mediocre, it’s a refusal to accept defeat. It’s an acknowledgement that yes, I am deeply flawed – we all are – but it’s also a refusal to let the flaws control me. It’s a look back at what is past and an understanding that I cannot change the mistakes I made along the way, the friends I lost, the small simple things that I ignored that would have made a world of a difference to someone somewhere, but knowing that I can learn from that, and at the very least, make amends, and at the very most, look forward with the knowledge and wisdom gained from the errs of yesteryear.

The Asylum is many things to me. I cannot fully explain it all. But one thing that is obvious, is that it is not a pleasant place. It is much worse than I expected, but I am 30% there. My journey has started, and I cannot turn back. Not now. Not ever.

No matter what life throws my way, I will stand.

I will protect this house.

“The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.”

- Rocky Balboa

When you set off on your journey, there is much cheering and celebration, for everyone walks with you for a while, and you have all their strength with you.

But the journey gets lonelier with each step, and each footfall brings you closer to despair, and the cloak of loneliness and weariness weighs heavily around your shoulders.

The cold bites in the darkness of night, the bitter rain stings like never before.

And all you think of is how much worse does it get? And when does the dawn, bright with promise and relief, come?

I will not lie, lest you delude yourself. It gets worse. Much worse. And the dawn is yet far. But there is no turning back.

You know the purpose of your journey, you know the reward you seek. Will you return to your old comfortable self? Or will you seek your destiny, no matter what?

So stand.

Through the darkness, through the pain, stand.

Now, more than ever, stand.

All great and beautiful work has come of first gazing without shrinking into the darkness.
– John Ruskin