“BE Your F*cking Self because the world is going to sh*t anyway, so what have You got to lose!”
This is my new mission statement for The Captain’s Log because I think it neatly represents its values — Authenticity, Courage, Understanding and Humour.
“Be yourself” is a bumper sticker that’s become a meaningless cliche. That’s why I felt the need to jazz it up a bit with some colourful language.
When I say “BE your Self”, I’m not talking about the personal self — the sense of “me”. He’s just a friend helping us find our way back home to the Self — The Captain or pure creative spirit within all of us that knows the way.
This journey, from the personal self to the universal Self, is life’s great journey. Because if we don’t know who we are, then what the fuck are we even doing here? Parading about, running on autopilot based on someone else’s version of what life is meant to be about for us?
This is why the world is going to shit — no one knows who the fuck they are or what they stand for anymore. There is no one driving the ship. We’re all too busy and distracted by the spectacle, the “narrative”, the current “thing”. Or just too jaded by it all to give a shit.
To “BE your Self” doesn’t mean to define yourself within a narrow set of parameters and say ‘that’s me’ all tied up in a bow. That’s limitation. That’s putting yourself in a box.
Sure, we must present to the world, so it can easily recognise what we bring. That’s just the game we’re playing, but our role is not a representation of our true nature— that’s something only we can discover for ourselves.
At the core, to “BE your Self” is to remain undefined. Being itself is undefinable; hence why language can only ever fail when attempting to get close to it.
It doesn’t mean we don’t do anything, either. It means that whatever we do, is rooted in the being that we are. Rooted enough that we can reach out and play the game of life without fear of suffering or forgetting our common source.
The cynical mind might disregard this as nonsense, but whole cultures and schools were dedicated to this journey in the past. Some still are, even though they may now only exist on the banks of the mainstream. This is changing, and with good reason. We’re self-destructing in its absence.
And what a fucking journey it is to “BE your Self” because it means you have to wade knee-deep through the layers of delusion and conditioning that pervade our inner and outer worlds. Worlds we have inherited or unconsciously built with our minds rather than our hearts.
But even our delusions can help us to awaken. Perhaps more so than anything else because they poke at us incessantly so that we might remember.
I think we all share a sense of humanity being in crisis. Everywhere you look there seems to be a crisis. So much so that the real crisis may just be that we’re being lulled into a sleepy subdued state of denial and apathy by the sheer number of crises we face.
Crises this, crises that. Jesus Chrises! What would he do these days anyway? Surely, he’d open a can of whoop-ass and love the shit out of all the corrupt politicians and corporations. Then he’d turn around and give all the naysayers a good kicking and say, “buck up and take some responsibility for YOUR life and YOUR planet instead of obfuscating it away to a ‘they.’”
Maybe that’s the real crisis — one of responsibility. Either we all are responsible for the way things are, or none of us is. I don’t know about you, but I know which perspective will be responsible for any solutions.
Deep down, I know the real crisis is a spiritual one and, by that reasoning, one of authenticity. Because to truly be authentic, you must first know your Self — an inherently spiritual quest.
It sure seems like this should be a natural process for a human BEING. One that is fostered and nurtured as we travel through life in its various stages. But in a world that has drifted so far from the natural, such a task is now optional, available to those who sense its importance or are brought to their knees somehow.
Instead of prioritising something so fundamental to our happiness and well-being, the systems we reside in would much rather we remain lost in our lower nature so we can consume, exploit and fight each other in endless new ways. They’d rather we keep manufacturing cogs for a clapped-out machine than foster the innate genius in human beings.
It can seem like the stance that “everything is fucked” is truly justified. It does seem that way sometimes. It can also be like, “who are we to do anything at all about the complex issues we face as a species?” It can all seem too overwhelming.
That’s why “being your fucking Self” might well be the answer. It is within everyone’s remit to go within and examine themselves. It is immediately accessible. And the more that do so, the more chance that the machine will restructure itself to better suit humanity’s actual well-being.
We don’t need to fix anything on the outside. We need to realise the nature of what we are and then BE that because the external world is just a reflection of what’s going on inside us.
So, that’s my mission. Be my fucking Self. I figure that enough of us can do that with some success, then it will give permission for others to do the same until a snowball becomes an avalanche of authenticity that sweeps the globe—cleansing it from the inside out, of all the bullshit that keeps us stuck and disconnected. The greed, self-interest and “control-freak” tendencies of the ego mind. We’ve all got one, so there is no one to blame out there.
“The only way out is in”. To know our Selves we must turn inward. Only then can we BE our fucking Selves. In my opinion, this is and will prove to be the most effective way to navigate the shitstorm that is life on planet earth.
