Confidence is something I used to struggle a lot with. There are some people that come to mind who are extremely confident. Not the cocky kind of confidence, just very comfortable being themselves. They seem to have a kind of unshakeableness to them, but that unshakeableness isn't held firmly. It seems so easy.

I've felt uncomfortable in my own skin for most of my life, except for fleeting moments where I thought I was exactly the right body fat % and all the rest.

Most of what I've heard float around is some derivative of 'fake it till you make it'. I followed that line, working with confidence from the outside-in. In a sense, looking for confident behaviours and acting them out, hoping they would quell my inner security (or at the very least, hide it). I believe there was a study that was done that showed if you assume a power pose (like leaning back), your testosterone increases. So there is some science to back that up.

Because I found that was only marginally helpful. It took a lot of effort to try to make sure I was acting the way I should, saying the things I should, acting according to the pattern of behaviour I had distilled from observing other people and science.

But I want to explore something a deeper though. What about genuine confidence? To feel truly in harmony within oneself and comfortable in one's own skin.

During the whole process of trying to think & condition myself rigidly to a structure I had deemed was the best (to get laid, mostly), I was very disingenuous. It wasn't really "me". And so I was creating a new persona because I didn't like the "me".

I'm going to speak to my experience as though it's universal. And I think what I'm pointing at is.

Thought is a conditioned from the past. From a young age, the mind takes in the surroundings. It makes images, based on all sorts of things. Based on what it is taught from parents, the environment, so and so forth.

Eventually, thought creates a self-image. That self-image then becomes an identity. This self-image evolves through time until this moment where it is present as what it is. Perhaps one of not being attractive enough, too short, shoulders not big enough, the rest...

When we identify with a self-image, our whole being is invested in it. The image becomes paramount to sustain, defend, and maintain. If anything comes in and seems to contradict it, and one identifies with the self-image, one feels viscerally attacked. And so, while one is identified with the self-image, which is ultimately an idea, one feels, inwardly, delicate and insecure.

Let me say that in a different way because I feel it is important that this is clear. It is impossible to not feel insecure while one believes themselves to be the self-image, because it is an idea. It exists in a state of conflict simply because it is divided from the 'other'. The moment you identify with an image, it automatically, psychologically, becomes a "my image vs the world". There is no harmony. When there is no harmony. When there is no inward harmony, there cannot be confidence. Because the mind is conflict. It isn't working as a whole. It's fragmented. I'll clarify this a bit later.

Thought has a tendency to re-affirm itself.

Through simple observation into the nature of thought, one can see clearly that whatever is held in the mind, one has a tendency to see evidence for. Thought, belief, become a sort of self-affirming process. As one begins to look in a direction, it starts slowly, but not before long it seems as though suddenly there is a mountain of evidence to support it. We can refer to this as the feedback effect for the sake of this post.

While one is invested from their self-image, there is insecurity. The nature of thought, the feedback effect, re-affirms this self-image. The investment in the self in the self-image, which is the root of insecurity, escapes one's awareness. Rather than existence of the self-image, and the identification with it, being exposed as the root of insecurity, it seems to mind, in it's conflicted state, that it needs to improve the self-image.

Perception is projection.

When one stands in the mirror and looks at oneself, what does one see? Can one ever really see himself? Or does one always see through thought? This is to say the self-image superimposes itself upon the body. But it is almost like a magic trick, because if one is not really seeing, one would believe that he is seeing himself as he is, rather than as he thinks he is.

This phenomena affects everything, not just your own image. Man walks through life believing he sees reality, but in reality he is only seeing thought. Everything thought, as a accumulative mechanical movement, has been learned from the past is stored as memory, in images. These images are always being projected in the present. Because it is always happening, it often slips awareness. We think we are experiencing what-is but we are actually seeing the past in everything. When it slips our awareness, the past develops a sort of illusion of continuity.

Let's explore this a little deeper because this is rather an important foundational block for one to see clearly.

Everything one sees is in the past. Thought has recorded the past as images. These images are superimposed on what-is. Every time you see anything, for example someone you know, thought immediately projects your own image of them onto them. It then bases all of its reactions on the fundamental assumption that it's seeing something actually as it is. This is happening all the time, to everything. Thought is always projecting the past. So long as there is an 'I' that is perceiving, that I being a culmination of images and knowledge from the past, thought is projected, and so one is living in the past.

Everything that comes in through the senses needs to be filtered through a kind of veil of the past, through thought.

So let's bring this back to the self-image. Thought is not aware that when thought looks in the mirror, what it sees is a its own self-generated self-image. Thought believes that what it sees is how it really is. Seeing something fundamentally not good enough, there seems to be a need to improve outwardly.

We can break this from the inside-out as such:

  1. Thought has generated, from the past, a self-image and one is strongly identified with it.
  2. Identification to something weak and flimsy feels insecure. (By this I don't mean a weak self-image as a oppose to a strong one. There is no such a thing a strong self-image. Just in the same way there is nothing you can draw on a sand that won't be washed away by the next wave. By it's very nature, being thought, it has no foundation).
  3. That self-image is projected outwardly, and I believe my body, or my character, is the cause of my deep insecurity.
  4. I work on myself, trying to make myself better.
  5. I don't really feel any different fundamentally. I have been doing this for years and deep down I still feel just as insecure, just as empty, just as lonely, as day one.

The insane logic of this is that one has to work from the outside in. In other words, once my body is manly enough, once I've fully cultivated an air of dominance, then my self-image will change to reflect that. Once that self-image is the way I want it to be, I will feel secure.

But it works opposite. The self-image projects itself outwardly. People have realized this and have changed their self-image - then of course they see evidence for the new self-image, and the whole experience changes. But we want to go beyond that totally. Because so long as you have a self-image, you will feel fundamentally insecure.

Freedom from thought is confidence

The very fundamental essence of MTGOW is men going their own way, as we know. It's a stance against following the groove of society, to the view on life it has imposed upon us, and the one we have subscribed to that have left us miserable. But when we live every day at the will of the mechanical conditioning of thought, we are doing exactly the same thing. Isn't it this all about freedom fundamentally?

Is it really freedom or has the mechanical, disciplining, demanding center of thought simply shifted from one face to another?

When you go out into the world, do you feel comfortable? Secure? Do you feel free? Or do you feel caged in, inwardly, psychologically, inside the very core of your being?

Society imposes rules on men, as we know. How we should be behave, how we should act. We want to free ourselves of those chains. Yet, in our resistance to that movement, thought does exactly the same thing inwardly, and in doing so disguises itself as a friend.

It creates a duality, where there is a struggle against oneself. We stop following society, but we still follow the 'I'. Believing that 'I' to be something higher, or something more free, rather than simply a mechanical movement of thought continuing from the past.

But is it really free?

This is what I'm getting to: the observer is the observed. So the movement of thought through which society has conditioned us is also the one who is trying to overcome it. When I say, "I am free from what society has taught" I am not free from society. Who is talking? It's another version of conditioning. It's thought. Thought which has been molded through the past, through the environment, through the culture... so on.

This center, this 'I', which is fundamentally a culmination of past experience, is making sure thought is rigidly following a pattern. It's past conditioning trying to condition itself. Look at the insanity of it!

Are you truly going your own way? Or are you following the groove of thought that you believe to be yourself at the expense of your own inner harmony?

Let me expand that a bit more. Thought wants to get laid consistently. Thought wants sex, because there is a memory of what a wonderful pleasure it was, and a projection of what a pleasure it would be to have more often. The reason it wants pleasure is because it's daily existence is pain, loneliness, misery. Thought seeks a sort of freedom through sex. It believes that once it gets a proper structure, a method of behaviour, it can have more pleasure more consistently.

But this very structure creates the disharmony that creates the pain, the loneliness, and the misery that it is seeking to escape through sex!

The very "I" that is observing, collecting information, processing, and outputting behavior. That very "I" is the conditioning. Who is reading this right now? Isn't it "I" who came to this page to try to get more information so it can understand how it can get a better structure?

This "I" is the root of all the conflict, the misery that we try to escape through sex. The "I" creates conflict between what-is and what should be. The moment this happens, inwardly, the harmony of the mind is broken. There is no freedom.

I want to propose a deepening of the fundamental meaning of MTGOW. Where going your own way isn't about going against society, but about freeing oneself completely of the past. MTGOW is being totally and utterly free of the jail that the self-image, that the 'I', is imposing. Freeing the mind not only from the chains of society, but from the torment we put ourselves through day after day for promises for fleeting moments of pleasure, which never last more than a blink of an eye.

Is this you? Do you feel utterly miserable inside? Are you seeking pleasure as means to escape what-is?

What do we do with this misery? With this loneliness?

Ask yourself this: have you ever even experienced this moment without thought? Have you ever even experienced loneliness? Or have you been running from its silence your whole life? Have you ever seen the beauty of the trees you walk by every day? Can you appreciate the beauty of a woman without the incessant need to put a dick in her to escape the turmoil you feel inside? Can you go out for an evening with your friends and simply enjoy being with them, their company?

Having seen this, there is an obvious question that arises: How do I get rid of the I?

Firstly, is it clear how limiting living by 'I' is? One must really inquire into whether there is another way of living. A fundamental shift. Not anything superficial.

There is a state of mind, a quality of being, a dimension of existence, where there is inner harmony. Where there is harmony, peace, beauty, loveliness. Simply enjoying being alive. This state of mind is accessible to all instantly the moment it is seen what thought has put together and the chaos and misery it has caused in our life.

It is seen, and in the seeing of it, it's gone.

When the mind is still - not made still, because to make the mind is still is an attempt on behalf of the 'I' - but when the mind is stilled through observation of the fact of all this in its totality, there is that state of mind. That state of mind which is utterly quiet, but totally in harmony. In which there is a kind of listening without division. Taking in that whole of the moment without any 'I'.

Then, there is silence. There is no more image. There simply is the experience of life as a whole. And when there is that quality, it is not stagnancy. There is stillness, but that stillness is movement. Yet there is nobody moving. In this state of being 'nobody' there is tremendous confidence. Because one is not acting according to a pattern that can be damaged or broken, not adhered to an image... one is truly alive, truly themselves, spontaneous, sensitive, responsive. When we are not reacting mechanically from the 'I' we are responding from what arises from the silence of our being. Then there can be true connection with another.

One is totally and utterly free from the conditioning of thought. Free to smile, to feel joy, to live without needing to seek pleasure incessantly, to enjoy the beauty of every moment of life, to experience love without fear. Because love is the state of mind where there is no 'I'. Love is what we are all seeking in pleasure, whether we have the courage to admit it or not.