DISCOVERING THE INTERNAL HIGHER MAN.

By Alexander James

While going through The Order of Pan what resonated with me the most was my time spent diving into Nietzsche’s philosophy. Being raised by a single mother who had a different “dad” for me every week household stability was severely lacking. I grew up around drunks, drug addicts, and overall abusive, violent, and belligerent people. There came a time where I had to use extreme violence to protect my life. This, I think, played a role into my rambunctious, and discontented, attitude throughout my life. Nietzsche proclaimed the death of God a couple hundred years before my birth. No one ever told me that God was dead and that life inherently had no meaning unless I created my idea of meaning to my own life. My first introduction to anything dark and mysterious was at the ripe age of eight when I saw the first Hellraiser film. The idea of this magical puzzle box that brought “Angles to some and Demons to others” into the physical realm fascinated me, and there were many nights I would wish for that mysterious puzzle box to end up in my hands. Little did I know I am the box. Understand that the cenobites, as they’re called in the movie, aren’t  flesh and blood grotesque physical entities but rather the manifestation of the inner self of the individual opener of the box. This realization has already had major consequences for me. I’ve always been the loner who played by his own rules and had a personal measure of success. What I didn’t know was how I allowed it to affect me without attempting to change to the situation from being the victim of bullying and abuse by thinking  “well  I’m different from everyone I don’t fit in, so I deserve it.”. I now have a new perspective on everything as I’ve started to gain an insight into both my virtues and weaknesses. This perspective allows me to continue to seek ways in which I can keep improving myself. At one time my first response to any slight I think is against me was an instant violent or belligerent reaction, and it was those reactions that led me into my own personal hell on earth, a hell I wish to no longer live in. Now I have a guide to choose how to carry myself in the face of adversity, how to conduct myself in victories and overall, how to deal with living life. You see, life has no meaning as this universe doesn’t care about me, you or anyone else’s suffering. I no longer want to suffer through life until I die and, I now hold new ideals on morality, success, and ultimately life itself that gives existence a personal meaning to me. The the only thing that matters, in the end anyway, is that my life has meaning to myself. We came into this world alone; we leave this world alone. I have to make the best of it in order to make it bearable in the face of tragedy, inner turmoil, self-doubt, and the highs and the lows that come with it. How can you know the sweetness an apple when you haven’t tasted the tartness of the lemon? The beauty I find in this is that I now have a choice in deciding when I fall into the trap of the dark side of my psyche a choice I never knew I had.