The mind serves the soul – AUDIO NSFW
The old past, guys, is sometimes is worth revisiting especially if you’re one of those individuals. If you’re one of those individuals that writes a diary or writes notes. I certainly do. You guys know that I write tons of sticky notes. Let’s just jump in to today’s thought, today’s idea. I went deep guys in today.
I was going through some of my old notes after I had taken another wonderful morning, a run in the Radical SR3 race car. It was awesome this morning, guys! It was just so fresh to be out driving that thing man (and I almost killed myself twice, which is why it’s worth driving). But I need more seat time because I need to fix a couple things. I need to fix the aero. I definitely need to work with the aero. I need to adjust that. I need to adjust a little bit more of the ride height, some of the suspension work. I need to adjust the rake. That’s important. There’s a lot of things to work on.
Anyway, so after I got back my wonderful drive in the race car, I was going through some of my old notes and I came across Pygmalion! Pygmalion! When was the last time that you heard that name?
Pygmalion swore off women. Ha-ha-ha! Okay? The brother swore off women. So this is a terrible idea. I mean, come on, if you are a brother, all right? I’m not talking any of the sisters out there. But if you are a brother, you can’t be swearing off women! That’s insanity! That’s insanity. It doesn’t work. If you are a guy, come on, I just find this to be irrational.
SELF-DENIAL
But I think the deeper issue and I think this is worth noting. And I remember writing about this in high school when I wrote about this Pygmalion is what is it with self-denial? You know? What is it with self-denial? I mean it’s almost as if like once you make the decision to have some denial of some pleasure: maybe it’s chocolate, maybe it’s cigarettes, maybe it’s ice cream, maybe it’s pizza. I mean whatever it is. Is it not how the universe works?
That when you say, dude, I’m just I’m swearing off chocolate. I’m swearing off pizza. I’m swearing off milkshakes. Isn’t that how life works? Isn’t it the next moment that you were just craving milkshakes, chocolates, and pizza? Isn’t that how it works?
I can tell you guys from my life. I’ll give you an example. This is a radical transparency, guys. I’m giving you a deeper a window, another window into my life, my past stories. Guys, that’s how it was in my life! I swore off California girls. This is why this is relevant. Pygmalion swore off women. He swore off women and then he created a statue. He had a statue of a woman that he fell in love with and obsessed over. That’s the problem. See? When you swear off women, you get obsessed about these statues.
Anyway, true story. I swore off LA chicks. I knew enough, guys. Come on, guys! I know enough about them LA chicks. I know enough about how them LA do. Okay? And you can send this podcast; feel free to send this podcast to any LA chick that you know and any LA dude that you know. See if this ain’t true. But man, I know LA chicks. They’re just a different breed.
I’m a Southern boy, guys. I’m a Southern boy. I’m a southern boy from Georgia. A Georgia boy ain’t got no business up in LA. A Georgia boy ain’t got no business up in that deep Cali, especially them Asian mafias. The Korean people, (inaudible 05:55) in LA. Ain’t nobody need that. No Georgia boy needs that nonsense.
I swore off them LA chicks. I said it ain’t gonna happen. They just they a whole bunch of suffering. That’s all they are—a whole bunch. Man, I tell you, they’re good look at. Brother can’t deny. Sisters are good to look at. Brothers got two nuns. I got two eyes. I got two eyes. I can see. But brother knows enough to know. You stay away from those. You stay away from those garbrias.
That’s why I swore off LA chicks, and guess what? Lo and behold! Ended up marryin’ an LA chick! Ha-ha-ha! Isn’t that how it works, guys?
What is it with self-denial? What is it with this self-denial that ends up becoming some sort of obsession? By denying ourselves, we become obsessed with that which we are denying.
FASTING
Now, I’m gonna take a quick segue here. This is why fasting is so important. You guys know that I fast regularly, not often. Regularly like every three months or something. But that’s why fasting is so important because it’s the act of overcoming yourself. It’s the act of denying something so powerful that it becomes an all-consuming desire. It becomes an obsession when you fast. Especially if you’re not good at it or you haven’t trained yourself or you just haven’t done enough and gone through the paces, fasting is self-denial which leads to food obsession. All. You. Think. About. Is. Food.
But when you are able to come out of that, when you’re able to go past the hunger pangs, that turn into hunger pains, that turn into mental, literally mental anguish, and sometimes physiological effects, negative, especially if you’re a weak sauce and you haven’t done it before like I was.
People would ask have you fasted before, I’d say yeah I’d done it. But I feel like I’m dying. I feel like I’m dead. Like I can’t do it. I would literally tell people I can’t do it. Thereby, programming myself to say that I can’t do it. Once I grew up and got mature, I realized fasting is a great thing for the system. Segue done.
PYGMALION
I was looking through my notes and I was reading through Pygmalion. George Bernard Shaw made a play about this in 1913 and then it become the movie, My Fair Lady. But long story short, let’s give you the story here so then we can get into what I really want to talk about.
Pygmalion swears off women, creates statue, gives statue presence, dates the statue, loves on the statue, obsessed with the statue. Aphrodite, the goddess of love, blesses Pygmalion and turns the statue to life. Moral of the story? Deny reality. Ha-ha-ha!
Moral of the story:
Deny reality.
Obsess over inanimate objects.
A god would bless you.
I mean this is the craziness of this type of interpretation. But this type of interpretation is actually valid within the spectrum of interpretations. I mean reason being, interpretation is your opinion, bruh. You weren’t George Bernard Shaw. You weren’t the original writer of this idea. You weren’t there so you don’t know what the original intent was. We can merely make assumptions.
But certainly within the spectrum of morals or within the spectrum of outcomes, the spectrum of what are we supposed to take from this story? One of these options certainly is deny reality, right? This guy swore off women, obsess over inanimate objects, obsess over the statue, and Aphrodite or your god will bless you.
Pft! Clearly, this is not the type of lesson or extraction I would take from this story. See, I see it differently. I see it differently. And you say, Peter, where the hell did this… What journals are you looking at? Guys, I have journals, man. I write stuff. I have sticky notes all over the place. And there’s one journal where I was thinking about some quotes from George Bernard Shaw and I also happen to write down that he wrote the book, Pygmalion, which I wrote a small form essay back in high school on.
Anyway, none of that information was in the journal. All it said was Pygmalion. So hence, I’m going deep in this idea. You see, I saw even back then—this is where you need to listen if you’re listening—in high school as a young blood, I saw this story Pygmalion far differently than anyone else. I saw Pygmalion, the statue was his soul. It was a manifestation of Pygmalion’s soul. Pygmalion himself is the flesh.
Let’s look at it differently. Pygmalion is the mind. The statue is the soul. This is important for you to know because knowing this allows you to understand the entire argument that I’m about to create. Pygmalion is the flesh. Pygmalion is the mind. He is the mind of man. The statue is his soul.
You see, Pygmalion didn’t like his reality. He swore off women. It doesn’t matter. Forget that. His mind saw reality and he did not reality for what it was. You might easily be able to see where we’re going with this story, this entire idea. Your mind might not see reality for what it really is. Man, this sucks, bruh! Whatever’s in front of you, whatever I’m seeing, what I’m experiencing in life, it just blows. It sucks! Something has to change.
So Pygmalion didn’t like reality. You know what he did? And this is what I remember writing about. He created his own reality. He created that statue. That’s what he was searching for. He didn’t like the reality he saw so he crafted his own. He found that in crafting his own reality, he found the soul of who he was.
That statue, that soul is what he obsessed over. He obsessed over this soul, this finding himself, realizing what his soul really wants because reality sucks. It isn’t what it’s supposed to be.
I got sold a bunch of goods.
I was asleep for way too long.
I was under the yoke of slavery for far too long.
I didn’t know what I had.
I didn’t know what I didn’t have.
I didn’t know why.
I couldn’t wake up.
I was naïve.
SOUL
Now, I am mature. Now, I’m awake. Well, now that you’re awake, you might not like the reality that’s in front of you. So Pygmalion created his own. He devoted himself to giving his soul his all. Sit on that for just a second. He gave his soul his all, his mind.
Remember, Pygmalion is the mind and the mind is speaking to the soul. And he’s saying soul what is it that you want? What is it that you desire? Who are you really?
Tell me. Talk to me. Serenade me. Explain to me.
I am lost, soul.
You are perfect, soul.
You are blameless, soul.
You are transcendent, soul.
You see reality for what it really is the truth, soul.
I am just a mind.
I interpret.
I get things wrong.
I fuck shit up.
Soul, tell me please.
It is only when Pygmalion has completely devoted himself to the finding of his soul that the statue comes alive. I’ll call that god intervening. Call it the universe. It doesn’t matter. Something responded. Something responded to Pygmalion. Pygmalion created this. He didn’t like reality. He searched for soul. He gave his soul his all. He asked his soul to help him understand and unlock the mysteries of the universe. And when he humbled himself, when he gave it his all, the universe, god responded. And his soul became alive.
You see that’s what you need to understand today. You need to understand that your soul knows you are not a physical creature with a spiritual thing trapped inside of it. You are a spiritual creature first with a body.
Now, you might say, Peter I don’t believe that. Okay. I don’t care. You don’t believe it. It doesn’t matter. There’s a war raging on and the war is between your mind and your soul. If you don’t believe in the soul, let’s change it with there is a war between your mind and what your gut is telling you you should do.
CREATION VERSUS CREATOR
The problem is that this Pygmalion-statue relationship, this mind and soul relationship is a creation versus creator issue. You see one of the problems with the Pygmalion archetype, the Pygmalion story is that Pygmalion created the statute. Pygmalion is the creator. And so thereby assumes that the creation, the statue is obligated to him. Don’t miss this. The creator assumes that they created is obligated to them. This is never the case.
This is never the case in life. When you pour into another person, they’re never obligated to give you anything back. That’s just life. Okay? I am spending probably 20 minutes today doing this podcast. Why? Because it’s good for me. It’s good for my soul. And if you’re listening to it, I hope you get something out of it too. Smash the fucking like button. Share this shit. But, you’re under no obligation to give me any. You’re under no obligation to smash the like button or share it with your friends or your family or colleagues or co-workers, or put it on a company-wide email. Oops! My B! You probably should. I was listening to it. It slipped. Y’all motherfuckers probably need to listen to it too. This is the subtext.
But the created is never obligated to the creator. Now, Pygmalion in the story, he got off, right? The statue and him fell in love happily ever after. But that’s not the truth. That’s not what really happens in the world. What happens is that you will war, you will fight, you will scrabble, you will wrestle with your soul. That is by design.
That’s why you were created with the mind. The mind is so effed up. The journey of life is to help your mind get in line with your soul so that you could be what you really were supposed to be. Because your soul is screaming out inside of you, call it your gut, and saying let me free. Let me be who I’m supposed to be. Why aren’t you giving me, allowing me to give you the greatest life, the greatest 90 years that any man or woman has ever experienced on this flat plane?
LOVE THE SOUL
The minds job is to love the soul, not just master the soul. It’s to love the soul and to understand your soul and give your soul everything. It is your realest reality.
The story of Pygmalion could be interpreted as a very simple, secular, worldly moral. Man swears off X, becomes obsessed with X so much that Y blesses individual with X. All right? Pygmalion swears off women. He creates a statue of a woman. Becomes obsessed with it. Aphrodite blesses him. Happily ever after. Wow! That sucks.
Or one could look at it from a perspective of a high schooler, you’re in high school, you’re still a child. I’m sorry if you’re in high school right now and you think you’re a young blood. You think you’re a young buck. You think you’re something, but you’re still a child, okay? Google it. Your brain isn’t even fully formed until you’re like 24-27 anyway. Some of y’all is going to be like it’s 30-37. Okay.
But in as a high school child, I interpreted Pygmalion as man’s wrestling with this soul and realizing that when the mind becomes one with the soul—the gut—you become unstoppable. Think about that. That’s like Super Saiyan finding your final form. It is the melding of one. You know? Like in the movies where like he has just become one… You know?
So the question for today is simply what’s your gut? What’s your soul asking you? What’s your soul been tap, tap, tapping away on you on? How long have you been ignoring it? How calcified have you become? How desensitized have you become?
I’ll take a gander and say that the most successful people—this doesn’t mean money, just means life—in life are those who have become one, where their mind serves. The mind serves the soul.