My Philosophy
“…Of
course it took years to discover that I was just a homespun mystic
from Missouri, just trying to make sense of the world around me.”
I’ve traveled a great deal of this country and it’s neighbors, talked with and worked beside to a great deal of people from all over this planet. And all this has taught me is that to be your self is the highest attainment possible – at least in this realm.
Raised on a farm, I’ve seen and taken a very pragmatic and practical approach to life, living, and survival. While I initially studied to become an engineer (as farmers and artists were usually “broke”), I quickly learned that our school systems were themselves bankrupt of knowledge. While they pretended to control vast amounts of learning and provided research facilities, they were mostly telling you how to think, if not exactly what.
So, for many years (a few decades) I eschewed formal training in deference to informal education – this is the “school of hard knocks”, a rather hard-scrabble educational process. You learn, in the oldest philosophical traditions, by simply looking, listening, and deciding for yourself.
Philosophy, in its roots (which give us truncated meaning, actually) means love+truth – and if you then take the Huna principle, “Effectiveness is the measure of truth”, you have philosophy meaning “Appreciation of things that work.” Very engineering-oriented. But a statement like that also has use on a farm or in a city-based life.
So my very practical/pragmatic view of philosophy extends to real workability, not just metaphysical, mystic, occult-type stuff.
Speaking of which, when you check out mysticism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysticism) you’ll see that work in metaphysics isn’t that far from it, particularly when you state the goal is some version of self-actualization like “enlightenment” or the various descriptions of that linked article. Essentially, you are talking about a higher or greater spiritual state or beingness.
Taking the derivation of mystic further shows that in its base meaning, it encompasses both being “an initiate” (or student) and also a teacher – one who instructs. Of course that fits just fine, since every teacher is a student and every student a teacher. (And I’ve stumped my teachers more often than not, from their own texts and syllabus, by giving them a new point of view for the same data – a new combination they hadn’t heard before.)
While only a metaphor, an argument can be made that we are here to learn and attain understanding, and to teach what we understand.
My studies in the mystic are simply to resolve questions about how things work. To this end, I committed myself to a multi-year study of classic self-help bestseller authors to derive, if possible, a common and underlying system of self-help and personal development. This was successful and wound up with “Go Thunk Yourself!” A follow-up study involved analysis of analysis to see what actually worked in this area, and the thesis for this became “Go Thunk Yourself, Again!” As these gave a logical study sequence, they were combined into a prescriptive study system in “Go Thunk Yourself, S’more!” and I ended those studies for a time while continuing other research.
But by the 10th anniversary of these studies, I had found what I considered to be the “bottom line” of these studies – the additional authors and their principles which explained all I had encountered after that point, and which also showed the gaps in any school of thought or modern “guru” which came along. I had reached the end of my research, since I had essentially found the “universal solvent” and needed no studies.
So this was compiled into a book (from my various blog entries) and entitled “Go Thunk Yourself, Revisited.” As well, it was later updated with additional essays and published as “Freedom Is – (period.)”
My job, then – in this area at least – is done. My current “Farewell Book Tour” is the only promotion I am working on, although it has me more than busy scoping out and creating the content to explain this series to the unknowing world.
I don’t consider that I know best, am any guru, or even a teacher. In fact, I tell you in these books that your own “path” (if you decide you need one) is and can only be decided upon by yourself. Consequently, what I have covered is only what I’ve found to work for me, personally. Your mileage may vary – there are no “typical results.”
I also consider that all the freedom, peace, and happiness you could ever seek are already present in you. All you have to do is to figure out how to let them out. While I tell you my own path in my books, I don’t expect you to find that these work for you completely.
And that is how it has always been, and what has given us such diversity in these humankind cultures of ours.
I then wish you the greatest possible joy, peace, and freedom in your own quest.
“May your road rise up to meet you” and, “may the times you live in be interesting ones.”
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