HIGHER POWERS, FAITH AND IDOLATRY

I’ve written before on how my formal educational background is politics, with an undergrad and masters focused on political science, and that, prior to that, I was the top theology student in my Catholic high school, which was somewhat scandalous being that I achieved that having not been Catholic.  I bring all that up because, as a high school student deciding on what major to pursue in college and having zero interest in going into any sort of theology related field, I picked politics because it appeared to be the next closest thing.  I bring all THAT up because one of the key characteristics of both areas is the determination and control of what one believes in.  The parallels and overlaps are honestly rather fascinating, and a mastery of one tends to allow a significant understanding of the other.  And you, as a trainee, can take the lessons from these two fields to understand the significance of what you vest your faith in as a “higher power” and how it controls the way you think and act.

For instance, now I'm just confused...

What (or who) we believe in is always the most important part of Western religions, and this is easily observed in the 10 Commandments.  Start with number 1 (paraphrased, because it’s funnier that way): “I am your God: don’t have any other gods”.  Ok, cool, what’s the second?  “Don’t say my name in vain”.  Ok, this guy is a real big deal, got it.  Number 3?  “Block off your Sundays (or Saturdays if you’re sticking with the Old Testament…or Fridays if you want something slightly more “modern) for me”.  Alright alright, so apparently this dude is a REAL big deal.  Ok, let’s just skip to the middle here.  What’s number 5?  “Oh yeah, hey, don’t kill people.”  Well f**k me, we spent a 3^rd of our commandments just spelling out how big a deal God is and it’s only halfway through that we find out we shouldn’t be killing each other?  You’d think that would be pretty high up there, no?  But that’s the point: figuring out what and who we believe in is HUGE, and needs to be established before we can move on to the important stuff.

The US Bill of Rights has a similarly hilarious bent to it.  First, it should be understood that the Founding Fathers never saw fit to include a Bill of Rights because everything that was in the Bill of Rights was already IN the Constitution: you just had to read the damn thing.  But, just like how folks won’t spend an afternoon reading a training manual to avoid spending 5 years screwing around in the gym, people demanded a “cliffnotes” for their doctrine of government.  And again, what do we see in the first amendment to the Constitution?  Freedom of religion.  The citizens of the United States KNEW the significance of being told what they could and could not believe in, and they wanted to decide that for themselves.  They knew that, once the government started controlled who and what we believed in, the controlled pretty much everything.  This was the FIRST amendment, meaning it was the very first thing they came up with when they were deciding “what protections and freedoms should we be allowed”.  Know where they decided to protect themselves from cruel and unusual punishment?  The 8th amendment.  Meaning they first went “Hey, the government shouldn’t get to tell me what I believe in” and then, several hours later, they said “Oh yeah, also, the government shouldn’t be allowed to rip out my fingernails”.  Know when they decided that humans shouldn’t own other humans like property?  The 13th amendment: in 1865, about 80 years after they wrote the original Bill of Rights.  THAT is how crucial they felt it was to determine what they believe in.

When you can write "all men are created equal" while owning 80 of said men, you get to have a smug look like that

I bring up all this rambling history to point out that for millennia people understood the significance of believing in a higher power and the sheer power such belief held, and it’s why you, as a trainee, need to embrace the significance of this.  Faith is an incredibly powerful tool in the toolbox, and its absence hamstrings several trainees.  Some folks out there are training atheists: they refuse to believe in anything.  In turn, these folks constantly undermine their own progress, because as soon as they read or hear about an effective method, they immediately spring into action to find something that disproves this very same method.  And there’s no shortage of that information out there: if you want to find it, you can.  Soon, these folks exist in a world with no higher powers: nothing to vest their faith in, and they suffer existential torment and an inability to self-actualize.  In their attempt to be “too smart to be fooled”, they’ve robbed themselves of the power that faith and fanaticism grant to so many others.

In the middle of the spectrum, there are those that have faith in “the way”.  This is to say, those that have vested all their faith in the higher power that is their program or coach.  You’ve seen these before, and we’ve had derogatory terms for them as well such as “HIT Jedis” and “Cultfit”, but it’s also true for the Westside or Die crowd, Deep Water, 5/3/1, Juggernaut, etc etc.  And as I wrote above: you can EASILY find something online that “disproves” all of these methods if you were so inclined.  HOWEVER, those that are truly “bought in”, the real deal fanatics and zealots, those that have fully vested their faith in the “higher power” that is the program, simply don’t care.  For sure, those that are simply paying lip service in their attempts to “get into heaven” will always have that lingering doubt and never get to fully realized the benefit of this real deal faith, but we’ve frequently observed the benefits that the real fanatics experience with their faith in “the way”.  If you can find a way that you are willing to give yourself to, you will be all the better for it.

I bet the Mentzer brothers would feel PRETTY silly to find out now that HIT doesn't work

However, I suggest one alternative course of action: make yourself your own higher power.  Have faith in oneself, and a strong, firm, unflinching belief that, no matter what, you will overcome and succeed.  Have an ego, be prideful, be arrogant, all of those things that other entities tell you are sins and evils.  Why?  Because THOSE entities want to have control over you, and they do so by not allowing you faith in yourself.  Nietzsche wrote about this in his Genealogy of Morals, of how the ruled are taught one sets of morals while the rulers another, and what you choose to believe in will greatly alter where you fit in those categories.  If you believe that, no matter what course of action you take, you will somehow make it work, chance are, you’ll be right.  If you’re always doubting yourself, wondering if you’ve made a wrong decision, using “I can’t”, coming up with excuses, examples and justifications for why you will come up short and fail, that’s exactly what you will do. 

You are the only being on this planet like you.  You have so much potential and ability if you choose to tap into it and employ it.  But, ultimately, you need to believe in yourself FIRST before you can do so.  And, specifically, as your own higher power, you have to believe in the thing you can BECOME, rather than the thing that you are.  Sure, who you are now may be small, weak, frail, etc, but that is not who you can become.  So long as the belief is there that there is something great within you that needs to be realized, you have the ability to accomplish great things.  Put your faith in yourself and worship at your own altar.