For a long time the seeds of Suicordium have been germinating in me. Here I will try to provide an outline of what brought me to create Suicordium.
Over the years I have implemented several projects with different goals, but each of them felt like I wasn’t getting to the heart of the message that I was trying to convey.
I have long been an advocate of Self Ownership and the empowerment that that can bring to an individual’s life. The simple act of taking full responsibility for yourself brings many rewards. I have experienced a profound improvement in all aspects of my life. Whether it be my personal relationships, my health, my achievements or even my physical aspect – all have benefited enormously from me stepping up and accepting the challenge of assuming responsibility for myself.
Although I was practising what I was preaching, I felt like there was a deeper meaning that I needed to convey, but that I was restricted by how I was reaching out to my target audience.
What I hadn’t realised was that the deeper meaning that I wanted to talk about couldn’t easily be explained to someone else if they had no concept of it. It is a deeper meaning that is part of a deeply personal relationship that is had with one’s self. For people who have never taken the time to explore their own thoughts and feelings, it might appear to them that there is nothing to talk about. In fact to those people, the world appears as a complicated swirl of circumstance that has them caught up in it’s currents. At best they feel helpless to strive against the maelstrom, at worst they are apathetic and do nothing to try to steer a course. They are caught up in a false reality that they embibe through television and mobile devices. The learned helplessness is intoxicating.
Although it is something that is lacking in many people’s lives, it isn’t something that people know how to talk about or ask for. In fact it isn’t something that you can ask for from someone else. It is something that only you can cultivate in yourself and will be unique to you.
The missing component in people’s life was suicordium. Without this there can be no inner peace or greater meaning. Self harmony is the true-north that will serve us to chart a course through life.
Treat Yourself As You Would Have Others Treat You
Most people will recognise this as a derivation of the Golden Rule. The Golden Rule simply states, “Treat others as you would have them treat you.” Most people will see the simple wisdom in this. However, it is often easier to have compassion for another individual than for yourself. In fact, loving kindness meditations that are directed towards yourself often try to leverage this fact. It is typical to imagine yourself as a young child and direct your loving kindness towards this image of yourself. By externalising yourself as a young child it is easier to feel compassion for yourself.
Self empowerment is often sold as you being your own personal drill seargent to scream at yourself to “Get out of bed!”, “Get to the gym!”, “Get to your meditation!” during the whole of your waking day. This method is a 24/7 struggle of willpower. Willpower is often described as a muscle that can be built with constant exercise. The idea being that it is cultivated with discipline and will ever increase over time. Although I have found that there is some truth to this analogy, I have also found that, like any other muscle, fatigue is real. You can fatigue your willpower to such an extent that you just don’t have the strength for even one more rep. At that point your willpower can become your worst enemy. What we never talk about is how willpower has a shadow. Willpower’s shadow remembers how it has been abused. It will try to convince you that you didn’t even want to be doing the things that you were using your willpower to acheive because, let’s face it, if you really wanted to do those things, why all of the shouting, threats and coersion?
Once your willpower has been exhausted it will take some time to recover. If that is the only thing that you are relying on then basically you are basically defenseless before the negative feelings that got you to the position of needing the drill sergeant in the first place.
The only muscle in the body that never fatigues is the heart and, like any other muscle, the more you train it the stronger it gets.
The Heart Speaks in a Whisper
All human cultures talk of how the heart is the origin of love. Many speak of the heart as the seat of true wisdom. The “sacred heart” features prominently in much of Christian iconography. To “Know something by heart” is to have something that is committed to memory beyond normal learning. Or to “Know it in my heart” means to know something to be true whether or not it has been proven to you. The heart could be described as the seat of intuition. Many religious teachings talk of how the heart has the upperhand when deciding on the right course of moral action.
Your heart plays a significant role in your life whether you are aware of it or not. Obviously, if we don’t take care of our physical body our hearts will suffer and we are looking at serious illness. We can also cultivate our heart intelligence and increase its role in our daily lives.
Beyond the purely physical, the heart feels like our true centre; a centre that is not as easily deceived as the head.
When we recognise in our head that the heart is the centre of our Will then we can begin the journey. Once we have realised that this is true in our hearts we become truly empowered.
This is the first step on your road to suicordium.
It is then that we can begin to see, and hence remove, the obstacles from our lives that are stopping us from progressing.
“When we recognise in our head that the heart is the centre of our Will then we can begin the journey. Once we have realised that this is true in our hearts we become truly empowered.
This is the first step on your road to suicordium.”
It takes will, not willpower, to become a Sovereign Self
Jung described the Self as something to be achieved rather than a default state of being. To become a Self required the process of Individuation. For this to happen the conscious and unconscious parts of your psyche need to be integrated. I suspect that this is a never ending process as our psyche is constantly adapting and evolving.
“Forcing yourself through willpower alone is like trying to stave off this year’s hunger by eating next year’s seed.”
Integration is an act of will but not an act of force. I believe that will is centred in the heart. In order to truly integrate, it is necessary to cultivate your will which means cultivating your heart’s voice. Willpower can be thought of as the mind pushing through it’s desires through force. When this is aligned with the heart it can be a powerful tool that feels inexhaustible. When it is not aligned with the heart it can become a dangerous practice. Forcing yourself through willpower alone is like trying to stave off this year’s hunger by eating next year’s seed.
The Suicordium project is the fruit of over 15 years of self reflection, experimentation and evaluation. When I started this journey I was not aware what form it would take but I was aware that along the way I would be required to help other fellow travellers along the way. On this date in 2025, I do not know what the final shape of this project will be but I do hope that it will be a rewarding experience that I will not travel through alone.
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