A Missiom Statement
The Poeta Bellator, Latin for Warrior Poet, is an archetype that has always resonated with me, long before I was mature enough to grasp its depths and comprehend its intricacies.
It was one that has been applied to me by others throughout my life, in addition to some less savory monikers, because of my seemingly contradictory love for both literature and physical culture.
Indeed, as I grew, what began innocently enough, a vague comparison made because of my interests and hobbies, would grow to encapsulate my sense of self and, eventually, become the very path leading me out of profound personal darkness and despair.
I feel that the modern world is lost, adrift and directionless, bereft of purpose and meaning, for a few simple reasons.
The first of these is that we shirk adversity and hardship, whether external or internal, encountered or self-inflicted.
Some of us don't, and those that refuse have become some of my best friends and most trusted confidantes, family by bloodshed rather than blood of birth.
We train, strive, introspect, and create, because no matter the medium, any act of self-expression is laudable and cathartic.
Those that do avoid struggle and pain itself find no kinship with me, or those like me, simply because we can't relate.
Since leaving the Navy, I've encountered a kind of somnambulance out here, witnessing golems and constructs, soulless, hollow, and vacant, trudging through life empty and wavering, only appearing to be human.
They possess no inner-life, the spark of existence snuffed out by endless streams of alcohol, narcotics, and pleasureful pursuits.
I'd call on everyone if I could to rouse their slumbering spirit, to find salvation, physically, mentally, and spiritually, the way it was introduced to me.
Lift ponderous weights, perform actual, arduous calisthenics, more akin to the gymnastics of the Warrior cultures of antiquity than the soft, effete "circuit training" so common now.
Sprint until your lungs threaten to burst from the exertion, then smile self-effacingly because that was your warm up.
Practice a martial art, or several, getting back in-tune with your body and the harmonious violence, beautiful and blunt, that it's capable of, knowing all the while that in turning yourself into a living weapon, you're tempering your baser, weaker nature, transcending what you were to realize what you may yet become.
Read, widely and voraciously, indiscriminately and promiscuously, until you wake up several years later and discover that your formidable erudition has earned you the fabled title "Renaissance Man".
Journal, so that you may know yourself, because introspection and self-analysis are the only true pathways to peace, enlightenment and perfection, God's perfect gift to remove negative, sabatoging thoughts and feelings before they take root, manifest malignantly and threaten your self-labor.
Lastly, but most essentially, pray. What this looks like is completely up to you, unique, subjective and, above all else, personal.
Though I'm Christian, I neglect churches as a whole because of the radical adherence to dogma that I've encountered there.
What begins as a service and worship of God inevitably degenerates into a cult of personality, with a fallible, opinionated human being as the figurehead, bastardizing The Word Of God for their own insidious agendas.
Disgusting, and may they burn in Hell for their heresy.
My own relationship with Christ, and the resulting Jesuism of my adolescence, is deeply intimate and private, something that no man or woman could ever seize from me or damn me for.
So it must be with you.
Throughout my life I've known Christians, Catholics, Methodists, Calvinists, Baptists and Episcopalians.
I've met and befriended Wiccans, Odinists, Satanists, Atheists, Agnostics, Spiritualists, and even a fucking self-professed Jedi.
Their beliefs all differed greatly and wildly, but they all derived intense and fervent purpose from their individual beliefs, and this caused them to strive for more in this world, to rise above the common man and refashion themselves into something greater, a Phoenix rising triumphantly from its own ashes, a product of the reincarnation of self-immolation.
There's really not much more to say.
Im not here to start a movement or group, a club or organization. I just want to speak my truth, to give light to my voice in a world crippled by commodification and disconnect.
Maybe in the process I'll help a few people the way that my predecessors assisted me, by showing me that, yes, there is an alternate choice, a different route that focuses on self-development, rather than self-destruction.
I'll see y'all out there.
