Reflection After Meeting Elliott Hulse!

Today was the grand opening of Strength Camp Acworth, GA. There was a free workout, BBQ, and we got to meet Elliott Hulse, the founder of Strength Camp. Elliott Hulse has been in my life for 7 years now. His advice on youtube helped me become the person I am today and it was a pleasure to meet him. I would have been happy just to meet him, but me and a few other guys got to talk to him for over 2 hours about life. These are some reflections of a few of the things that resonated most deeply with me.
Matt, Elliott Hulse, Marshall (me!), James
left to right
I have been on the spiritual path for about 2 years now, and have been pretty insightful as a child. Some of my humility was lost because I actually thought I knew enough where no insight in the field of personal development could blow me away. I've heard and pondered so many amazing ideas that it just didn't seem possible that there could be something in that field could shock me. Elliott managed to shock me.
Following stoic thought patterns, I came to realize how important logic and rational thinking is. I began to be of the opinion that being rational could get you to intuition and intuition could get you to logical conclusions, but my former implicit trust in this esoteric entity had faded. These characteristics are shown in the brain, right and left, intuitive/artsy and logical. How, how, HOW could we rationalize our way to a comprehensive world view while we are missing half of the equation. I was floored and laughed for a solid minute(I laugh and yawn when something deeply resonates with me).
These moments really go to show how deeply the things I am influenced by shape me. When I was firmly on the spiritual/religious path of knowledge, I knew that intuition was the highest truth. Concepts like God or The One or The Universe seemed too far out to be reached logically. Only deep personal experience could share the truth. Now that I am more focused on western thought, I came to believe that logic is a very important part of this overarching knowledge, and actually thought that if you could be rational in every aspect of your life, it would run smoothly. It is amazing how many smart people can say something completely different and make a case that can compel you to switch your mind. Then your consciousness sees these ideas, your mind thinks them, and your body feels them. Perhaps this just goes to show that the only meaning there is to life is the meaning you create.
Another major topic we talked a lot about subjective vs objective realities, and with the western thought process, it is very easy to forget that everything is different. Just because we use science and can break nearly every action down to its biological and chemical happenings, doesn't mean we there is no mystery in life. Just because something can't be objectively proven doesn’t mean it isn’t real.
Which is impossible?
  • A man once ate an entire airplane
  • A human can hold their breath underwater for 22 minutes and 22 seconds
  • Everything we interact with is 99% empty space
These are all true!!! But if someone hadn’t done it, then you wouldn't believe it was possible. Not everyone can do everything. People have different strengths, weaknesses, experiences, ideas, reactions to the same event. We can’t over generalize about our experience. I grew up in Brooklyn, and half black and half white, and now go to a fancy university. How in the world can I tell someone in the countryside of Thailand how to live their lives? This was a big problem (one of many many many) with colonialism. Europeans over generalized and dramatized their views and had the weapons to kill those who did not follow their plan. So they went around the world and f@#ked it up by putting systems that sort of worked in Europe in places with extremely different cultural and physical landscapes. There is no such thing as an objective reality. There are things we believe now that we call facts, but who knows what science will disprove in 100 years. In these facts, people's experiences of them differ. 50 grams of sugar makes me feel sick, my little sister get super hyper, and a diabetic person possibly in life threatening danger.

The moral of this is to be humble. Sit down. You aren’t as smart as you think you are. No matter

how much you know you will never know everything and no matter how much you’ve seen, you

can not experience everything. On my journey, I’ve come to accept this and am just excited for my

opportunities to grow and share.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Mind Body Prescription

Image
M.D. John Sarno shows us just how important it can be to heal emotional and mental wounds for the sake of the body. In “The Mind Body Prescription,” he shares the concept of psychosomatic disorder/illnesses, their causes, effects, and prevalence. The basic idea is that, evolutionary, it is better to suffer individual pain than to let out uncontrolled emotions which could cause us to lose our pack and thus our lives. Counterintuitively, the pain created by the mind is our body’s survival mechanism. Most people live in a setting where they can express their emotions without horrific repercussions. He told a story of a woman who was severely abused as a child and suffered from chronic pain of which doctors could find no physical evidence. Within days of learning his method, she had a major emotional release and her pain began to subside. An interesting sidenote is that psychosomatic illnesses change from society to society and based on time period; whatever pain is most common will be t
Read more

Yamas of the Yoga Sutras

Image
I have been thinking about the yamas, also known as abstentions or ethical restraints. The five yamas are ahimsa (non violence), satya (truthfulness), asteya (not taking what is not given to you), brahmacharya (celibacy), and aparigraha (renunciation of unnecessary possessions) (243). Ideally, according to Vyasa (a commentator on the yoga sutras), all other yamas are for “purifying ahimsa” (nonviolence). This first limb, along with the second limb of niyamah (moral constraints) are thought to correspond with karma yoga, says Iyengar in the foreword (ix, directly after table of contents). According to the Bhagavad Gita, any one of the four yogas, karma, jnana, bhakti, and raja, is capable of leading to enlightenment. Karma yoga is the path of action, following your dharma and observing ethical and moral constraints. Through practicing karma yoga, you help everything on the path to peace. Hindus believe Hinduism is the key to a fulfilling, happy life; so spreading hinduism to as man
Read more