From The Desk of Maverick Brenton.
Subject: What is True Strength?
I Have A Question For You…
This Question, Is An Important Question..
It’s a question I must ask myself every single day.
Not because I do not know the answer, but because I must constantly remind myself of the answer.
For it is very easy to forget.
Every morning when I wake up and every night when I lay my head down to sleep - there’s a voice that trembles along the walls of my soul and makes it’s way into my mind - a voice that carries the question inside it.
It’s this question that determines what you end up doing with your life.
It’s this question that determines who you end up becoming.
It’s the question you can’t avoid asking, if what you seek is glory.
It’s a question you can’t answer dishonestly, for that is a great sin.
The question is very simple:
Where Does Your Strength Come From?
Answer that.
Answer it truthfully.
Where does it come from?
I am not talking about your physical strength and I am not talking about your mental strength.
I am talking about all of your strength, every fibre of your being.
The REAL you, your true self, the warrior - the artist.
Your mental, your physical and your spiritual strength - as a whole, singular force.
Where does it come from?
Does it come from the outside world?
From material possessions?
From people?
From a status that has been hung upon you by society, for some worthless piece of paper?
Or.
Does your strength come from a place deep down inside you – deep within your being?
Does it come from your soul?
From the essence of who you are as a man?
From principles?
From a place eternal and untouchable to all hands but your own?
You must answer this.
You must answer it truthfully.
If your strength comes from the outside world – it is NOT your strength.
Why?
It can be taken away from you at any moment.
It is not strength - it is an illusion.
It’s an image that appears mighty on the surface, but an image that is nothing more than an image - it’s a veil which hides the truth.
The truth that your manhood is built upon a foundation that is resting on wooden beams rotten to the core, which wobble in the lightest breeze.
Behind the veil - your strength is fake - YOU are fake.
Your life is nothing more than a carefully constructed drama, acted out by your carefully crafted persona.
Yes, that’s right.
I’m talking to you motherfuckers who just pretend - those of you who live out your life as if you are nothing more than a display cabinet, filled with toys and ornaments for the foolish public to gawk at in their primitive envy of you.
Guess what?
You can lose your status. You can lose your money. You can lose your stuff.
Everything in the outside world can be taken from you.
Then what?
What are you going to have if your strength came from all those things outside yourself?
Nothing.
That is what you will have.
You will have nothing.
You will be shattered to the core.
Those rotten beams that propped up your false life will fall away beneath you.
This is the problem with drawing our strength from things in the outside world.
It can all be taken away.
When our sense of self comes from our possessions in the outside world - we make ourselves weaker.
We don’t own who we are when we do this.
We give away ownership of who we are to the outside world.
We allow the outside world to tell us what we are worth, what we should do and what material possessions we need, in order to feel complete.
Do you understand this?
When your strength comes from the car you drive, the money you have and the things in your life – you give away your control.
You make yourself weaker.
You spend money you don’t need to spend.
You forget who you are…
All that bullshit in the outside world means nothing.
The glitz and the glamour and the girls and the money.
It means NOTHING.
It’s just the reward.
When those things become the source of your strength - what you have is not strength.
What you have is an image.
While you are waving your trophy around in the air and showing off to the world - change is occurring beneath your feet.
You are dancing upon thin ice that could easily break.
When it does break, which often happens when you dance on it - you will drown because you will not know how to swim.
Life will punch you in the fucking mouth and sit you on your ass.
You won’t get back up either.
You’ll stay down and you will get shit on.
Why?
You don’t have true strength - all you “had” was an image.
You’re a fake.
A coward in disguise.
You’re not a man.
What you need is true strength.
Strength that comes from the inner world - deep down inside the chasm of your being.
The strength of Malcolm X.
The strength of Frederick Douglass.
The strength of Nelson Mandela.
The strength of Louis Zamperini.
True strength.
Strength that comes from deep within.
From a world that is sacred, enchanted and available only to you.
The strength that you discover when you have absolutely nothing left in the outside world and you are forced to go within.
Strength that comes from knowing who the fuck you are.
That is true strength.
That’s a man you won’t hurt.
That’s a man who will die before he compromises his principles.
You can kill him, you can maim him and you can take everything from him - but you will never own him, for he cannot be owned by anyone but himself.
That is true strength.
That’s **beauty.
**
That’s the warrior lining up next to his fellow man, drawing the cold steel of his sword to fight the enemy of his freedom.
That’s the brave soul risking his life for what he believes in, despite what everyone wants him to believe in.
That’s the mark of true manhood.
That’s an ideal worthy of worship.
That’s courage.
That’s the man all men want to be.
Not the boy who dances around waving his little trophy in the air.
Not him.
It’s the man who faces the darkness and walks through the fire with a smile on his face.
It’s the guy who is covered in mud and blood and sweat and pain as he fights for what he believes and refuses to give in.
It’s riding into the sunset on horseback, towards your death - in the name of who you are and the principles you stand for.
It’s the soldier who dives on the grenade and blows his life into the wind, to save the man next to him.
It’s never compromising.
It’s never giving in.
It’s glory - dead or alive.
That is True Strength..
True Strength is no ornament nor is it a decoration.
It’s eternal and marvellous and powerful and inspiring.
True Strength inspires all those who are lucky enough to witness it or be graced by the man or woman who possess it - for it is a force that is felt and never forgotten.
It’s branded into the minds of all who felt it.
We think we don’t value these things anymore because we never see them in our safe little world, but acts of courage and bravery and pure passion still touch our hearts.
They move us no matter our race or colour or upbringing - for mankind is one.
What inspires one of us, inspires all of us.
Why Do These Things Inspire Us?
I don’t know why.
I just know, there’s something magical about True Strength.
Something inspiring that touches the deepest depths of your heart when you see it.
Listen my brothers, we can and must stand for who we are and what we believe in.
We must fight for something.
We must stand for something.
We must have real purpose.
Or.
We will lose ourselves and that is the worst torture there is.
A man must know his worth, he must know who he is and he must know what he stands for.
A man who does not know these things needs to suffer so that he can discover these things within himself.
Without these things, you have nothing.
True Strength only comes once you know who you are, what you want and what you stand for.
Once that is clear in your mind and your heart - you will know because you will feel it.
You will still be mortal and you will still bleed.
You will appear no different from the outside.
But.
Now you will be strong my friend.
The fierce roar of conquerors from ancient times will now echo within your soul.
Fire will burn in the whites of your eyes - for there is a hero inside you, trust me.
The purpose of your life is to find that hero and free him from the underworld so that he can give his gift to the world.
We must know who is in the mirror - that’s the most important knowledge of all knowledge.
It’s all that matters..
So..
Forget the material world my brothers.
Forget the things you think you need.
True Strength is not found in the material world and neither is true purpose.
You know what I say?
Fuck your things and fuck your image.
Fuck your cars.
Fuck your money.
Fuck your material possessions.
Fuck your worthless status.
Fuck your fake persona and fuck your fake ass smile.
Let me see your character.
Let me see the holes in your heart.
Let me see the scars on your back.
Let me see the pain you have felt because the pain is all that matters.
Show me a man who’s face is covered in blood and mud.
Show me a man who is willing to fight until death for what he believes in.
Show me a man with principles that are stronger than the strongest iron.
Show me that man.
I will bow my head before him and I will kneel at his side as a grateful student of his glory.
That’s a man there.
That’s no fake.
That’s True Strength.
That’s why all this bullshit outside yourself means nothing.
You can lose all of that.
But.
You can never lose the only thing that matters – knowing who you are and what you stand for.
That’s all that matters.
That is all that matters.
That is it.
Without that knowledge, you have nothing.
You’re lost.
You’re still a boy.
You have no real power.
You have no True Strength.
The world will kick you around like you are nothing.
You will listen to the outside world and you will ignore the inside world.
Great things can only be done when they are being done by someone who knows EXACTLY who they are.
Someone who is willing to die for who they are.
Do you understand this?
Once you know yourself and you are determined with your heart and soul to fulfil the call of destiny coming from within, the universe will wet it’s cosmic panties and be all like:
“Oh dang, this dude ain’t messin, we better pull some mystic zen master shit and reveal the secret path for him so he can get what he be after”
No joke.
Maybe it doesn’t say that.
Maybe it doesn’t say anything.
I don’t think it has panties either..
It probably doesn’t because that makes no sense at all.
But..
It will help you on your quest because fortune favours the bold and destiny only kisses the lips of men with True Strength.
So..
You must KNOW who you are and you must stand for something.
When you wake up in the morning, do you know who you are?
Really?
Who is in your skin, what does he stand for and what do you really want?
The only way to know this is by going on the journey and connecting the dots of who you are.
You must piece together the puzzles of your past and work out who that guy in the mirror really is.
Who is he?
What does he want?
What does he stand for?
Inner strength is true strength.
It’s the only strength there is.
Everything else is nothing more than a decoration.
Material success is like an ornament on a Christmas Tree.
The tree itself is knowing who you are and knowing what you stand for.
Without these things you’ll be hanging your ornament on some cheap plastic piece of shit that you picked up from the supermarket because they had a clearance sale.
Know who you are.
Know what you stand for.
Have a really fucking nice Christmas Tree because it just makes Christmas better.
When I get out of bed in the morning, I have something more valuable than riches.
I have knowledge of who I am.
I know exactly why I am on this planet.
I know exactly what I stand for.
But.
I have to remind myself who I am - every single day.
Why?
Despite my outward appearance, I’m scared to death on the inside.
Really…
I’m absolutely terrified.
I’m afraid I’ll never accomplish my mission.
I’m afraid I’ll never become who I could be.
I’m afraid I’ll fail the Gods of Destiny.
You see..
When you discover your voice and you learn who you truly are - you don’t become a fearless, untouchable warrior who is afraid of nothing.
Nope.
You actually become vulnerable.
Your heart opens.
It opens to you and the world around you.
It speaks what it wants, you listen and you do what it wants instead of what others want.
This is hard and that’s ok.
It’s ok, as long as what your heart wants is GOOD and PRODUCTIVE.
If you’re secretly a psychopath wanting to bring death and destruction upon the entire universe like that Thanos motherfucker in the Avengers…
If that’s what your heart wants, then..
Umm..
Well I would get that seen to by this afternoon because you’ve got some shit you need to sort out.
If you’re not the next Hitler or Stalin or Thanos - read the following words carefully:
True Strength is nothing more than self-expression - taken to it’s extreme. It’s ripping open your heart to the world, showing the world what’s inside and then deciding to only listen to what’s inside - no matter how hard that becomes.
When you find your true voice, the curtain drops and you now see the path you must follow.
You start the long walk.
You open the door to Narnia.
You brush aside those soft little leaves and you peek into the Garden of Eden.
You enter into the magical world of YOUR TRUE SELF.
It’s both beautiful and utterly terrifying.
Why?
I will tell you..
It’s beautiful because it’s pure magic.
It’s terrifying because now you are living for something.
Now you know who is in the mirror and now you know what you have to do.
There’s a purpose to your life and the fulfilment of this purpose becomes your life.
It becomes your RESPONSIBILITY.
It’s scary.
That’s what happens when it happens.
That’s what growing up is really about.
It’s about embarking on a journey, suffering at your own hands and washing up right where you started - with the key to the secret room..
It’s The Hero’s Journey.
Google that shit.
It is EXACTLY what I did.
You will be a lost cause until you do this too.
You will be haunted at night by the wonder of who you are and it will not be nice.
It will manifest itself as a feeling inside you that something is off because something is off.
You’re a stranger to yourself!
You could be 40, 50 or 60 years old and still feel this - your age means nothing and you will feel that feeling of confusion until you answer that call coming from within.
You know exactly what feeling I’m talking about and do not pretend you don’t know - just face it.
Face it because you need the key to the secret room and to get that key you must go on the journey and you must suffer for it.
**
So..**
I have to take a deep breath and I have to remember WHO I AM every single day.
I have to stay focused and patient and calm.
It took me many years of REAL LIVING to even scratch the surface of who I am.
I am still figuring it out because it’s an endless journey.
The moment you think you’ve got it in the bag - you’ve lost.
I’ve put one of the puzzles together but now there’s another puzzle and that’s just how it works.
To complete the first puzzle, I had to go on an adventure called The Hero’s Journey.
It was exciting and fun and miserable and lonely and painful - there were lots of titties and tears and it was pretty cool.
I felt like Indiana Jones hunting down a lost temple as I lived my crazy life and searched through my past, trying to connect the dots.
Some people labelled me mentally ill because of my adventures..
I was just doing the work they never did though - I was learning who I was and living my life and it worked.
Suck on that you miserable bags of cockroach shit.
Eventually, after four years of adventure - it all made sense.
Well..
It made some sense..
Life is confusing and it goes deeper than you think.
I used to think I was my car, my bank account and everything else that existed in the outside world.
But.
I was never any of that bullshit.
Never.
I was always that little boy who wanted to build things and write cool stuff.
That little boy who valued freedom and loyalty more than anything in the world.
I was always him and it never changed.
I just forgot who I was.
I had to lose everything and have nothing left, to see that what I lost was actually nothing and that I already had everything inside myself – that is when everything changed for me.
That is when the fire began to burn like never before.
That’s when I found my voice.
That is when I began to bleed who I was.
Understand this, my friend.
It isn’t that you don’t know who you are.
You have just forgotten who you are, because it’s always been there - deep within you.
So go within.
Forget everything in the outside world because none of it matters.
The ONLY thing that matters is connecting the dots and learning who you are.
A man who knows who he truly is and needs nothing from the outside world to feel complete - that’s a man you cannot hurt.
You can take NOTHING from him.
That’s a man who has True Power.
That’s a man with True Strength.
Until Next Time.
Filed under · Motivation
