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The Uncommon Will of David Goggins

“From the time you take your first breath, you become eligible to die. You also become eligible to find your greatness and become the One Warrior. But it is up to you to equip yourself for the battle ahead.”
David Goggins

David Goggins is probably one of the baddest dudes on the planet. He has pushed himself to accomplish unimaginable feats of physical endurance. Here are some of his most incredible achievements :

In order to qualify for Navy SEAL training, Goggins had to lose over 100 pounds in only 3 months. Terrified of water, he started conditioning himself for hours in a pool every day, in addition to biking, running and weight training to reach his goal.

Hell Week occurs during week 3 of a 24 week intensive training program known as BUD/S: Basic Underwater Demolition/ SEAL training. During this gruelling 5 1/2 days applicants are subjected to continuous intense exercise; testing not only their physical but also mental fortitude. Sleeping for no more than 4 hours in total, and running more than 200 miles, the trainees engage in physical training for more than 20 hours per day. Only 10 percent of applicants make it through the final stages to complete SEAL qualification training.

David Goggins went through Hell Week 3 times in 2 years, the only person in history to attempt this feat. During his final attempt Goggins was suffering from excruciating stress fractures in both of his feet/ankles and had a severe knee injury. His solution was to literally just tape that shit up with duct tape, so his ankles wouldn’t move. This enabled him to push through the agony of running/swimming and lifting until his legs became numb. The final week ended one day early for Goggins when one of his teammates died in the swimming pool from pulmonary edema. You know the training is serious when people are dying.

After this Goggins became obsessed with achievement. Through 3 Hell Weeks he had proved to himself that his body and mind were capable of so much more. “If I can do Hell Week on literally two broken legs, what else can I do?” The “what if?” mentality that he had begun fostering in his mind, drove him towards higher and more astounding achievements.

“I wanted to be uncommon amongst uncommon people.”

Only the most elite athletes with the strongest mental drive and fortitude are able to successfully make it through BUD/S to become a Navy SEAL. But Goggins saw that people get comfortable with their achievements, and never drive themselves higher. He didn’t like that. According to Goggins, “You’ve never arrived”. He is always on the hunt for the next brutal challenge to overcome.

Ultra marathons were now the name of the game for Goggins.

True to his nature, he looked for only the most challenging race on the planet, and that’s where he found Badwater. Badwater is a 135 mile foot race through Death Valley, California that occurs in mid-July and ends at an elevation of over 2500m/ 8000ft. Temperatures here in the summer can reach 130 degrees F (54C). Even seasoned ultra runners have difficulty finishing this one. When he decided to apply for the race, he had never ran a single marathon in his life.

The organizer of the race told Goggins that he wouldn’t be allowed to enter the race unless he could successfully complete a few other 100 mile races first. So he set about to join his first “100miler”. David gathered the supplies for his first run – Myoplex, a type of protein shake, and a box of Ritz crackers. (uhh, water??)

Astoundingly, Goggins made it 70 miles around the track, before his body started shutting down. He sat down and couldn’t get up again. Eventually he forced his way up and limped around the track, but knew at his pace he would never cross the finish in time. His limp sped up, while he reached down into his mental reserves, incredibly finding the strength to pick up the pace and finish the final 31 miles at just over 19 hours. He did one extra lap for good measure, and collapsed. Goggins had pushed his body to the very brink, and discovered a vast inner resource within himself, that he could draw upon from that point forward.

Goggins earned his entry to the 2006 Badwater and placed 5^th, an unheard-of result for a novice runner.

Since that time Goggins has joined in more than 48 endurance events of 50 kilometres (30 miles) or more, placing amongst the top 5 in 29 of them. A full 15 of the events that he placed in the top 5 were endurance runs of more than 80 kilometres (50 miles)!

His personal record for running occurred in 2007 when Goggins ran 205 miles – read that again – 205 miles in 39 hours during a 48 hour championship, breaking a course record by 20 miles!

Goggins once ran eight 100 mile races, 8 weekends in a row. Wow!

On top of all these extraordinary acts, he is also a former Guinness World Record holder for the most pull-ups done in 24 hours, accomplishing 4030 pull ups in 17 hours in 2013. In order to achieve that goal Goggins trained for 9 months, had two failed attempts, and did 67,000 pull ups in preparation.

Interestingly, David Goggins doesn’t believe in talent. “I’m not gifted, I’m just driven… No talent required.”

In his book, Can’t Hurt Me, Goggins talks about a childhood filled with fear, vicious physical abuse; setback after setback after setback. One day at age 18, Goggins decides to take full responsibility for his life and holds himself accountable for having utterly failed to achieve anything. That was the moment he stopped making excuses and started taking action. Goggins talks about how he started to callous his mind, to crave suffering and to not avoid doing hard shit and being uncomfortable.

“I brainwashed myself into craving discomfort. If it was raining, I would go run. Whenever it started snowing, my mind would say, Get your fucking running shoes on. Sometimes I wussed out and had to deal with it in the Accountability Mirror. But facing that mirror, facing myself, motivated me to fight through uncomfortable experiences, and, as a result, I got tougher. And being tough and resilient helped me meet my goals.”
“Because when you’re driven, whatever is in front of you, whether it’s racism, sexism, injuries, divorce, depression, obesity, tragedy, or poverty, becomes fuel for your metamorphosis.”

Goggins started facing serious health issues that forced a break from physical training. A medical investigation uncovered the fact that he was born with a defect in his heart, which resulted in a quarter sized hole between two chambers of his heart! Not only that, but his joints and muscles seemed to be seizing up to the point where he could barely walk up a flight of stairs. Goggins underwent 2 heart surgeries to repair the hole in his heart, and took up an intense regimen of stretching. At age 44, Goggins still competes in races and claims to be in the best shape of his life.

Just to recap, every incredible act this man achieved with his body, he did so with an enormous hole in his heart, and he never so much as stretched his legs before a race!! You may be forgiven for thinking this dude isn’t that smart, but that just makes his story even more incredible. He did it all through sheer strength of will, through an indomitable spirit and an unbounded determinism to see what he was truly capable of. That, is phenomenal.

Goggins thinks that when you feel like giving up, you’ve only reached 40% of your potential.

Just think about what someone with his will could do, guided by reason. Truly, what heights could be achieved with that next-level strength of mental fortitude combined with a sharp logical mind?…

The best thing about Goggins, is that he doesn’t even think he’s special. He just wants to share with the world what he’s discovered about the power of the mind. That everyone has the ability to reach within and pull something remarkable out of themselves.

“Only you can master your mind, which is what it takes to live a bold life filled with accomplishments most people consider beyond their capability.”

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The Darkest Dark: The Sick Mind of GG Allin

Warning: this post deals with violent and graphic content – continue at your own risk.

As your initiation into the shadow world, let’s take a wild and dirty ride through the deranged mind of one of the most infamous names in hardcore punk music history…

GG Allin was a walking taboo who gained notoriety in the 80’s for his outrageous and disturbing music and stage performances. GG’s act generally involved stripping naked and defecating on stage, eating his feces, smearing it all over himself and throwing it at the audience, all the while performing his songs, microphone-in-hand. He was almost always covered in his own blood from self-inflicted injuries. He was known to physically attack members of the audience and was imprisoned upwards of 50 times for assault. GG had even pledged to commit suicide on stage, but happened to be in prison when the prospective date came to pass. His shows inevitably led to chaos, violence, and police involvement.

There’s no doubt about it, GG’s act was extreme, and he quickly attracted a cult following of people who wanted to prove that they were tough enough to survive one of his shows unscathed, while bearing witness to such an appalling and spectacular display of degeneracy.

In a short autobiography GG wrote called “The Sickest of the Sick”, he details the horror of his early upbringing:

“The first 5 years of my life were infested with sickness & violence. It consisted of living in a log cabin… with father, mother, & brother… We lived in darkness. Father hated light… We were prisoners to father, and father was a prisoner of himself. He always had planned to kill brother and I, then commit suicide with mother. This was brought to our attention on many a blistering occasion. Father despised pleasures around the cabin and would consciously not allow any enjoyable items to enter into our home. If he found anything in our possession that we enjoyed, he would take it out in the woods behind the cabin and bury it.”

GG’s father, Merle Sr., dug the graves of his wife and boys in the cellar of their cabin, which remained as a constant reminder of the looming threat of violence and death. On top of that hellish mind-fuck of an existence, GG was actually born “Jesus Christ” Allin. Merle Sr. fully believed that GG would be the next Messiah. And there you have it folks, the disease of religious fundamentalism brings it’s ugly pustule to a head again!

This is a disturbing point worth digesting for a moment. “Daddy says I’m God himself but he’s also going to kill me and bury me in the cellar..” Do you have any idea what that would do to the mind of a child? How could any 5 year old reconcile the chasm of opposing forces developing in his own mind? For GG Allin, he became an adult with a Messiah complex, coupled with an extreme and compulsive fixation on sadomasochism, danger, and death.

“They go to church on Sunday and eat the body of Christ, why can’t my followers come and eat the body of GG Allin?”
GG Allin on Jerry Springer, 1993

Merle Sr. refused to let his family have anything that would bring them any joy at all, and as a sensing type and a dominant, GG would finally get his way by making all the most disgusting and vile taboos into his pleasures and ultimately into his way of life. When GG got older and had escaped the brutal rule of his deranged father, he rebelled by utterly rejecting the superego part of himself, as well as any and every rule, limit and restraint on his behaviour. He fully embraced the pure and unfettered expression of his Id, and all the unhinged compulsions that came with it.

“I’m not doin’ this for the money, I’m doin’ this because it lives inside of me.”

It wasn’t an act for GG, it was the only way he was able to express his early trauma. Unfortunately his denial was so profound that this expression became extremely unhealthy for himself, dangerous for others, and ultimately led to his death at the age of 36.

“That sort of made me a warrior soul at an early age… I distanced myself from people and that’s what makes me strong, because I don’t have to deal with anybody. I’m really content with being myself.”

Instead of consciously acknowledging and processing his inner conflicts, GG externalized his pain, unconsciously spewing the contents of his shadow upon his gawking audience. He appeared to hate the outer world, but unconsciously, he hated himself.

GG Allin personifies some of the deepest and most repressed shadow urges of humanity, and as such, goes down in history as one of the most shocking and vile individuals of the 1980’s and 90’s.

“These people over here would rather shelter their kids, they would rather sensor them, they would rather keep them from the real world. What you see in my show, you’ll see on the streets, you’ll see what’s happening in urban America, not in suit and tie land..”

And there we have it. A kernel of truth at the bottom of a putrefying pit of blackness. People would rather not acknowledge that people like GG exist in the world. They do. And we live in a society that creates them. That is the darkest fact of all.

“Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering”
C.G. Jung

To have a real chance of changing the world, we need to take a real long, dirty look at the darkest parts of our society and figure out how they got that way. For what it’s worth, GG brought a spotlight to the deranged and impoverished mental worlds that most of us will never have the displeasure to set foot in.

In the future Hyperian society, a child just like GG Allin will have actual protection from religious brainwashing and horrendous abuse. A meritocratic government will actually care about each and every one of its citizens, instead of letting them languish in atrocious conditions. There will be measures in place to identify and appropriately guide children with naturally dominant characteristics.

Who knows how GG might have turned out differently if he had been raised in a loving and proactive family, who were living in a loving and proactive society. No doubt he would still have a shadow, but it’s contents might have been vastly different, more manageable and likely, less extreme.

In the universe, there are neutral minds, positives, negatives, and synthesized minds. In the Hyperian world of the future, there will still be negative and positive minds, but everyone will be guided from birth by only the most talented and meritorious synths, towards reason and towards wholeness, to eventually become synthesized minds themselves. We must create Unity in society and that means every mind counts! That is the vision of the future, and the ultimate Hyperian mission.

Next on Dark Matter, we’ll flip the script and look at a highly inspirational and uplifting story; a dissection of an incredibly powerful mind indeed…

Ad Astra!

– Eva

A Universe of Light and Shadow

Welcome to the dark side!

I have a strange and morbid fascination with all things dark and disturbing. I like the darkest places – the dirtier, the grimier, the better. Better still, I don’t even have to go anywhere to find them… For the murkiest place of all is the abyss of my own dark psyche.

And is it ever filthy in here! There’s all these cobwebs and stacks of old boxes covered in ancient dust. Most of the boxes don’t even really belong to me, someone just left them here, and I haven’t had the time to get rid of them.

Sometimes, when I’m feeling brave, I decide I want to open a box. Mostly they are dark and full of shadows, but every once in a while, I find a glistening treasure.

One time, I found a box of old artwork from highschool. I was surprised and delighted to find a whole collection of beautiful art that I myself had created, yet had completely forgotten! On the back of one of my drawings there was a note from my Grade 9 art teacher: “Too safe – challenge yourself more”.

I recoiled at the message from my past as it sunk into my veins.. Was this perhaps the single greatest piece of advice ever given to me in all my life? And I mourned the fact that I had disregarded it as mere criticism when I should have latched onto it like a life raft and saved myself 20 years of wasted time.

And therein lies the crux of Truth. Should one ever stumble across it, will it be rightly recognized for what it is?..

In that same box, I discovered a shadow hiding deep in the bottom corner. There I found an envelope, heavy with the mental content of a lonely and desperate 11 year old. It was full of old pictures, notes passed in class, letters to my cousin overseas, and some curiously absurd memorabilia that, once upon a time, had brought me comfort. Now it brought nothing but pain.

Two of the items were gifts from boys – a dried flower and a pin in the shape of an ice cream. Another was the scrap of a Mr. Sub wrapper that I saved after a trip with some friends. They were the only friends I had, and once, they took me with them on a trip to the city. How sad it was, after everything that happened between us, that I had kept this literal piece of garbage – to remind me that however briefly, at least one person had shined their own fractured light in my direction.

When I lifted the envelope out, I noticed it was dripping. On a closer look I found it was leaking a rancid oil, of the blackest black. It had seeped out into the bottom of the box, coating the bottom of my pile of art. Most of the photos were now contaminated. I gazed sorely at the warped versions of myself.

It was deeply painful to realize just how distorted my view of myself was, at such a young age. All this pain, I knew now, was the result of lies. Lies I told myself, lies I accepted from others. But I had accepted it all as truth, because I didn’t know any better.

Afterwards, when I had collected my thoughts, and the shattered pieces of myself off the floor, I resolved to purge this false image of myself, and any need I still had to feel connected to this distorted narrative of who I thought I was. I put aside the artwork that hadn’t been damaged, and then I burned all the rest of the pictures, notes and memories in a steel drum in my backyard, in a ritual designed to let go of that part of my life. I learned from her many painful lessons, for which I am forever grateful. But it was time to let her go, and make room for something new…

As a Hyperian, I know it is essential to bring not only my own shadow, but also the collective shadow to the light of consciousness, through reason.

And thus we come to the ultimate purpose of this blog: a rationalist exploration of unpopular and taboo topics in the fields of psychology, philosophy, and politics and more.

There is endless Dark Matter in the holos for us to explore, so come along for a dive with me as I plunge deep into the collective shadow, in search of buried treasures of metaphorical gold…

“Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.”
Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”