Marco Antonio Alvarez

I write about the work I do around emotional mastery.

[Marco Antonio Alvarez @_marco_alvarez]

@markmanson And one's underwear.

[Marco Antonio Alvarez @_marco_alvarez]

@markmanson The cat meme's did exactly what they were supposed to do.

[Marco Antonio Alvarez @_marco_alvarez]

On What I can control.

Rotating on this water covered mud ball, floating in the middle of nothings…I arise to a new day.

This has been the cycle, day in and day out for almost 17,807 days.

Doesn’t seem like that many, Frankly I have lost count.

There are some out in the interwebs of socials, that like to point out that mid-life is actually 38 years old and change…

While the Jungian’s believe that the mid-life crisis is more like 45ish…or so.

As my older friends who are in their late 70’s look upon us and say “How Cute.”

In my Youth, I thought studying Philosophy would help me get a better handle on life.

That’s not true, actually. It was the one course of study you could show up to class stoned and still get an A.

The true handle came with more pain and experience of living; Growth.

Nothing wrong with that, in fact I find pain to be an amazing teacher.

The world will world and people will people.

We will live through various experiences and through out have various emotions and feelings that come about.

We can’t help it, it’s literally how our brains are wired.

For myself, these emotional experiences were of the utmost intensity.

For example, in my 12th year of life, I experienced the death of my Father, The night I got jumped by high schoolers and a summer partying with older kids in Mexico, i.e.; getting wasted at way too young of an age.

All separate events mind you.

I was never taught how to understand what I was feeling, none of us really were…unless you’re that one kid who had parents that were MFT’s or such and even still, those kids were fucked up too.

If there is to be one thing, one absolute thing that I can pass on to my son, that would be the skill set of controlling our response to the world (inside and out).

As more uncertainty plagues the human condition with the unprecedented technologies before us…

As more power and control is being consolidated into the hands of the few…

It becomes imperative as Rudyard Kipling wrote to his one and only son, “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you…”

We must continually strengthen ourselves; mind, body and spirit.

This in of itself becomes a radical and revolutionary act in the face of a system that wants you fat, sedentary and sick.

Choose the thing that empowers you.

Choose the thing that grows you.

Choose the thing that allows you to fight back.

[Marco Antonio Alvarez @_marco_alvarez]

There are 2 roads one can take in this life…

1) The Path of Victimhood

2) The Path of the Hero

The first path blames the world and lacks any ownership.

The second accepts and takes on responsibility and is free to write their own destiny.

If you find yourself on the 1st path, it’s never too late to forge the 2nd one.

[Marco Antonio Alvarez @_marco_alvarez]

On the cost of everything…

There was once a wrestler named the Million Dollar Man and his tagline was that “Everyone has a price.”

I struggle with that saying more these days than in my youth, for now I have decades worth of data from my own personal interactions with other humans to know, that more often than not, such is the case.

We are a most interesting species.

We can be exemplars of some of these highest virtues known, such as beauty, truth and justice…whatever those means.

All the way down to some of the most heinous acts imaginable and unimaginable.

We are contradiction and paradox incarnate.

I have seen posts of people implying that they would be willing to sacrifice their child’s innocence for the good of the country and others posting they are willing to burn it all down for the sake of their children…

Just so we’re clear, I would burn it all down for the sake of my child as well.

We can not be neutral in this life.

One must pick a side, or one will be picked for you.

We are bombarded constantly with propaganda for this and against that.

Our direction and reality is dictated by a class of people that is so detached from the rest of us, that we are looked down upon as ‘eaters’, as ‘consumers’…

And we are kept complacent and confused via a multitude of sources of entertainment and distraction…all in the name of progress.

What is this price that we are willing to pay for this idea of convenience in our lives?

What is the price that we pay when we willfully look away, for the overwhelm is already too much and let alone that in our lives, where we are just merely trying to survive day to day.

Just go about your business while you conduct business.

Just go buy more shit.

To fill your houses with more shit.

Planned obsolescence is a real thing.

While the rest of us suckers, ‘play by the rules’, the kid fuckers write them.

[Marco Antonio Alvarez @_marco_alvarez]

On Identity…

The mask you don is dependent upon the context/situation you find yourself in.

The term “Persona”, was the word used for Theatrical masks in ancient Greek and Latin plays.

We now exchange the word 'mask' for 'role'.

We often hear ourselves speak in terms, that one’s life is like a book, a movie and more common now, like a video game.

All having in common basic elements of story-telling, which Joseph Campbell has written an excellent book about that in “The Power of Myth”.

Every Story, like most lives, has a beginning, middle and an end and during this timeline the hero, gets the call to adventure, faces adversity, gets beat down, retreats, has a training montage, goes back, and wins.

Sound familiar?

During this Story of yours you will subsume a series of roles that may or may not be appropriate for the task at hand…but fret not, your results will let you know if the correct role has been chosen.

We are all mulit-faceted creatures. We are all crazy diamonds, carbon based life forms animated by the divine spark to live out what ever adventure comes our way.

And like any good actor, we get lost in our roles, we bring to life the lines that were handed to us or if we're smart about it, the lines we wrote ourselves.

Yet, you are not the mask. You are not the role you play, just like the actor is not the character they play.

Nothing is as it seems.

Depending on your scope of magnification, whether it’s micro or macro, you realize the levels to reality and this current one where you are reading this is just one of an innumerable many.

We often hear a lot of certain platitudes around ‘identity this’ and ‘identity that’, without a deeper introspection into the subject…just enough to sound cool, just enough to make it seem we know what we’re talking about and just enough to ‘get someone over the line.’

But what happens when you strip the veneer and societal plaque?

Are you overwhelmed by existential dread and angst from the loss of anchor that came from your precious identity?

Once beyond the initial loss of gravitas, do you find yourself freer than ever before?

Or has this just been an exercise in mental masturbation with no real effect, except to get you thinking about things you might not normally think about and to potentially see through the absurdity of it all?

Who knows.

[Marco Antonio Alvarez @_marco_alvarez]

The ‘set-back’ or ‘interruption’ you’re upset about, is part of the work.

That little voice in your head that is speaking ill of the slow driver ahead of you is your teacher.

The increase in patience and strength that you asked for is being delivered to you in the form of these ‘challenges’.

The degree to which you decide to stay open to these experiences will dictate the speed that you embody, not just intellectually know…but embody and exemplify the lesson.

It is all part of the great work.

This is nothing groundbreaking, this is nothing new. And yet, we must be reminded of timeless truth again and again.

In this age of distraction and disconnect from our deepest selves, it becomes imperative to pay attention and become deeply aware of our internal dialogue and emotions.

Start with the breath.

Simple meditation.

There is beyond a plethora of videos and books on mindfulness, from Zen to Yoga.

Keep it as simple as possible and start small and make it a habit.

This is where we begin.

[Marco Antonio Alvarez @_marco_alvarez]

On “Why”…

A particular word, that can stand alone and in it’s solitude it assumes the stance of a never ending question.

The eternal 3 or 4 year old, asking “Why” ad infinitum to the chagrin of an already stressed out parent.

I remember a quote from a philosophy class in response to the eternal ‘Why’ and it was something along the lines of, “Hell is for those who pry into the mysterious of life.”

Damn, dude. Forget that I even F’n ask if you’re going to be that way.

Jokes aside, let’s return to ‘Why’.

We ask Why to understand; because tell me how any of this makes any sense, outside of a grand master plan of a divine force that is responsible for creating the universe?

We want the answer to make sense to our so-called logical brains.

And yet, we also thrive in the absurd of it all, as well.

Why do you think we love to laugh?

Why do you think comedy is so essential to our lives?

Because in some weird way, the cosmic joke makes sense…if one must explain the joke, you’ve missed the point…usually due to a lack of age-experience, cultural-moral context.

Kinda like Taoism…the tao that is spoken is not the true tao.

This kind of philosophical inquiry is the kind you take on while high on somekind plant-based, after the bong rip and you look at your buddy and go, “What?”

This kind of philosophical inquiry is the kind that doesn’t happen when you just got done training hard and you’re fully present with a pounding heart, no time to think, just do.

Very Zen.

What benefit is there to an ever-lasting gobstopper of a ‘Why’?

To get the other/self to the point to where they say, “Because I/they say So!”…(that’s an appeal to authority, no bueno)

Or to get to, “I don’t know, let’s sit with that for a while.”

Ah, much closer to what Socrates supposedly said, “All I know is that I know nothing.”

But, why though?

[Marco Antonio Alvarez @_marco_alvarez]

Self care is a non-negotiable.

If one desires to advance on the path of self mastery over emotions, then one must prioritize the care of self.

Yes, you are a spiritual being having a physical experience, the good ol’ Ghost encased in grey matter, protected by a skeletal mecha suit covered in meat.

And this meat puppet of yours requires care.

Are you working it out? Walking can suffice.

Are you feeding it well? Stop drinking soda to start.

Is it getting enough sleep? Get off your phone before bed!

Are you being mindful of the things you watch and listen to??

Stop watching the fucking news.

Much like a child, a pet or a plant is cared for, the same holds true for your blessed body.

You may not be ready to treat your body as the temple that it is, you may still be ‘stuck’ in your amusement park phase…

Just know, at some point the rent will be due for the ticket you took.

As they say, easy life now, hard life later…

[Robert Greene @RobertGreene]

What matters is not education or money, but your persistence and the intensity of your desire to learn; that failures, mistakes, and conflicts are often the best education of all; and how true creativity and mastery emerge from all this.

[Marco Antonio Alvarez @_marco_alvarez]

On Feeling…

You’re going to feel what you’re going to feel.

Something will come into your sensory system, via the eyes, ears, skin, nose…and depending on what you’ve been hanging onto that physiological reaction to the external world will then generate some kind of story in your mind to create a feeling around what the body is doing emotionally.

We do this everyday.

Some of us are more conscious about it than others.
And for the majority of my life I had very little awareness or even much of a vocabulary around my emotions and feelings.

A lot of times I was just angry, hungry, horny, sad and occasionally ‘happy’.

I was operating out of default mode.

Going through the motions, chasing pleasure and avoiding hang overs…kind hard to do when you’re trying to do both.

Actually quite impossible, if you partied the way I did.

After a while, things will catch up and some will get off that train too late, health is shot, relationships are shot, ex-wives and kids that hate them and a cancer diagnosis to boot.

We see and hear about it all the time, no big surprise there.

I hated feeling what I was feeling.

A sense of disdain toward self and blame to the other…

A massive sense of dissatisfaction…and on and on.

Only finding relief, with that 1st drink, that 1stline, that 1st drag….you get the picture.

Never seeing a problem with it, until it became a problem, until I got out of control when control was needed the most.

We can’t escape our emotions.

We are hard wired to feel what we feel. An evolutionary consequence of having the kind of brains that we have.

And that’s a great thing! Think about what makes this live worthwhile?

The memories you created and the feelings that are elicited from said actions that create said memories.

We literally live to feel.

We want to feel, our hearts and soul as well as our brain demand it.

This whole physical plane is about feeling.

Feeling everything, all the emotions, devoid of any label as good or bad…they just are.

Cleaning up and taking care of myself, amongst other practices were pivotal in reclaiming this for myself.

This work is ever continual, this work is ever unfolding and this work is of the utmost importance.

[Marco Antonio Alvarez @_marco_alvarez]

On the Sisyphean-Ritualistic nature of reality.

“What’s the point, you’re going to die anyways?”

That’s exactly the point.

The inevitability of one’s release from the mortal coil is the impetus.

We have the distinct honor of existing on multiple planes of reality/being.

We have a witness/observer consciousness that resides in a fleshy suit, that requires sustenance and nourishment from the environment that it has co-evolved in.

Then we have highly advanced neurology that allows us the capacity for abstract thought, higher order thinking, advanced emotional experiences and a drive towards spirituality.

We create art and war.

We have humans floating in a can up in space, while we still have tribespeople who live and thrive with pre-historic technology and ways.

We are a constant contradiction of sorts.

And according to some ancient traditions, this isn’t the first time we been on this ride…nor will it be the last.

The nature of the Universe seems to be ritualistic, meaning that is is cyclical.

That certain things, events and processes repeat themselves over and over again…

Like how that one saying goes, “Lessons will be repeated until they are learned”…

Whether it is the case that the universe will big crunch to big bang, or that multiple universes exist side by side with ours, either one being as exciting and novel as the next…what I do know, somewhat…is that life is a lot like Groundhog day.

The key differentiator being as Camus wrote about Sisyphus, having a sense of authorship/ownership about rolling one’s rock on a daily…

Accepting that this is how it is. This is the nature of reality and what is reality? That which has already happened.

And yet, I’m free to choose something different everyday and that is ultimately rooted in how I see and respond to this reality.

That’s the smile that was upon Sisyphus face.

That despite the absurd nature of the God’s punishment upon him, he still found it within himself to own the act of pushing that rock…day in and day out.

Becoming his own private ritual, finding peace in the mundane and presence in the pain.

Have we been here before? Who knows, it sounds great poetically…

Does it matter? Not really.

What matters then?

How you choose to respond to the thing.

[Marco Antonio Alvarez @_marco_alvarez]

Self care is a non-negotiable.

If one desires to advance on the path of self mastery over emotions, then one must prioritize the care of self.

Yes, you are a spiritual being having a physical experience, the good ol’ Ghost encased in grey matter, protected by a skeletal mecha suit covered in meat.

And this meat puppet of yours requires care.

Are you working it out? Walking can suffice.

Are you feeding it well? Stop drinking soda to start.

Is it getting enough sleep? Get off your phone before bed!

Are you being mindful of the things you watch and listen to?? Stop watching the fucking news.

Much like a child, a pet or a plant is cared for, the same holds true for your blessed body.

You may not be ready to treat your body as the temple that it is, you may still be ‘stuck’ in your amusement park phase…

Just know, at some point the rent will be due for the ticket you took.

As they say, easy life now, hard life later…

[Marco Antonio Alvarez @_marco_alvarez]

Of all the skillsets a man can posse, emotional regulation is paramount to them all.

In a world that is continually telling men to ‘fuck their feelings’, having the ability to acknowledge, recognize and mitigate what is happening emotionally can lead to a life of peace and true power.

[Marco Antonio Alvarez @_marco_alvarez]

On Moments of beauty

In the midst of our day to day, amongst the clatter and distractions of modernity and the desperate vying of our precious attention by the electronic glow of soul sucking technology…

Insert a moment of respite, where you gaze upon whatever it may be and take it in without judgment and see it for what it is…

A moment of creation.

A moment of beauty.

A moment that has been waiting for you, for 13.85 billion years.

This is the scale and scope that we are working, playing, loving, living and dying in.

Day in and day out.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

[Marco Antonio Alvarez @_marco_alvarez]

On Radical Extreme Ownership.

The late and great Alan Watts once said, “What if you were the evil glean in your fathers eye, the night you were conceived?”.

The context behind this quote revolved around a lecture he gave on the matter of personal responsibility.

There are other schools of thought that preach the opposite, “that one is thrown into the world”, as the existentialist philosopher Jean Paul Sartre was fond of saying.

There was a time where I adhered to that view, and it was a detrimental one that is void of ownership and responsibility…

There are plenty of mysteries left unsolved in this vast and great reality of ours called the Universe…

It wasn’t too long ago that we appealed to the authority of the priestly class to define reality for us and the same goes for our modern day physicists…both groups describing reality in the language of their times.

And both groups as they get to the fringe of their knowledge will make a best guess, one clothed as theology and the other clothed as philosophy…

Like the rest of us, making it up as we go along and having faith it will work out…

And so far, despite ourselves and our stories, our visions, our inventions, our data and now even our AI…reality keeps trucking along just fine.

Thought experiment:

Back to the Alan Watts quote, no matter what you experience-witness today…what if you were the one responsible for it?

I do not recommend such a thought experiment if you’re struggling with some mental health issues, please don’t.

But if you’re not, and you consider yourself a relatively stable person, then have some fun with this lens and see what comes of it.

[Marco Antonio Alvarez @_marco_alvarez]

Philosophy, from Philosophia; The love of Wisdom.

Sophia, Goddess of Wisdom.

What is Wisdom? Lessons learned via experiences gained when taking actions that resulted in non-expected outcomes.

You can go to school and sit through years of lectures and read boring ass books by a bunch of dead guys so you can speak semi-eloquently about being and nothingness and at the same time do a bunch a dumb-interesting-exciting shit and live to tell the tale to your son, one day…when he’s old enough.

Or leave an electronic record behind; if one’s demise comes before a preferred time and assuming the servers are still up by the time he's a teenager.

Regardless, perhaps there's some lone soul out there who can benefit from the ramblings of a man who has lived more lives than the common house cat.

Here’s your take-away for today:

You can be both, a Sinner and a Saint, an Intellectual and a Savage…you are meant to be whole in this life.

The only permission you need is your own.

Everything you need has been and will always be inside of you.

As Above, so Below.

As Within, so Without.

[Marco Antonio Alvarez @_marco_alvarez]

A game I don’t play…

“If you could go back in time and tell your younger self one thing, what would that be?”

And deny myself of all the life that was lived at the edge and all the wisdom and scar tissue that came with that!?

No fucking way.

Why would you want to go back?

Why would you want to alter your current trajectory?

I can imagine some extreme scenario’s that I don’t even want to write about, and even still…

This will be a radical position to hold and may be even delusional, but do we not hold to some sort of delusion when it comes to this work of the mind, the work of the spirit?

Is there not some sort of faith that is required that it will all work out in end, despite what you may be feeling in the present?

You may be doing “all the right” things and yet it seems as if nothing is changing and you’re inner 8 year old is screaming, “Not fair, not fair!!”

But allow me to posit something dear reader;

That something is changing, you’re just too damn close to notice…you’re too damn wrapped up in ‘the problem’ to even see the light that has always been there.

G-d, The Divine, Great Spirit, whatever you want to call it is always ever present and is always with you…

Yet it is us, we are the ones that inadvertently block that light, that energy to shine and flow through…

Start with Gratitude.

If you’re able to read this with your eyes, it means you’re not blind.

If you’re reading this from a smart phone, it means you have enough to afford one.

If you’re reading this from bed, it means you have a warm bed to sleep in…

So on and so forth…

Of course there’s plenty to cry, bitch and moan about and there is equally and if not more to be thankful for.

Sit with this.

Breathe with this.

Be with this.

[Marco Antonio Alvarez @_marco_alvarez]

What I have found time and time again;

The true test of this work is found in the ability to keep showing up despite oneself.

Despite what one is feeling in the moment, or how one is perceiving the day as going, etc.

When I can sit in the discomfort, without judgement, without needing to “fix it”, and accept it for what it is; a passing thought, a passing emotion…like a cloud in the sky.

That’s where the level up occurs.

That’s where we grow and push the boundary.

You don’t level up when it’s all Hunky Dory.

You don’t grow when it’s all cozy and comfy.

How could you?

You get stronger by not fighting what is wanting to move through you.

Start by paying attention:

Start with your breath.

Plenty of YT videos on this, pick one you like and start there.

[Marco Antonio Alvarez @_marco_alvarez]

“Spiritual Being having a Physical Experience”

Aboso-fucking-lutely, and you still need to take care of your body.

The “ultimate performance hacks” are the simplest ones; Get plenty of sleep, eat well, drink plenty of water and move your body daily.

This alone vastly improves your ability to regulate hard emotions that arise during difficult moments in life.

Each day you have a choice; take better care of yourself or keep doing the same shitty things over and over again.

You’re death is inevitable, but not the quality of life you have while still alive and that starts from the inside-out.

Now go for a walk without staring into your phone.