“It may take just a little while for a spot to open up, but you have a home here. If you want it.” Evolve founder and matchmaker Gabe Sapolsky said to me, after a successful tryout, in August 2016.
In the meantime, I had to fly to Mexico to eat donuts and wander through tent-neighborhoods (another story, for another Fightful article), fly to Canada to bear-slap a young man at an afterparty (ditto), and fly to Massachusetts to make a Ring Of Honor date. Which also seemed to mean that I had a decision to make; choose between the promotion that I had dreamt of being apart of, since my first days of training under an alcoholic in a half burnt down building (ditto), and the promotion that was now lead by the man that was responsible for me even having that dream.
Really there was no choice to be made.
I had come to the realization that dreams, like the beings who have them, are also subject to the two most significant, inseparable stages in the cycle of evolution: birth and death.
***
Want to be reborn into the being that you have always had a deep gut-feeling that you supposed to be.
Okay, but it might not be so easy; if you want to experience the joy of rebirth, you have to open your heart up to the idea of loving-acceptance of death.
Step 5: EVOLVE, by surrendering to the endless cycle of birth and death and rebirth and redeath.
In a manner of speaking, reincarnation is undeniable, yet people suffer from evolving pains because they try to deny it.
I’m content in revealing that I have no direct knowledge of the afterlife, so I wouldn’t dare to make public claims on that subject, but I can say, with some certainty, that everyone reading this has been, and will continue to be, reincarnated many times within this lifetime.
Your infant personality had to kick the bassinet so that you could be reborn as your toddler personality. Your toddler personality had to bite the Nerf dart so you could be reincarnated as child. The child is reborn an adolescent; and so on into adulthood, middle age, and old age.
It’s not just the stages of human development either: many aspects of your personality will die within those life stages,and you will be continually born anew with an ever evolving personality.
For example: I used to identify myself as someone who loved video games; a gamer, but now I have an interest in videogames that may as well be divisible by zero. The gamer-me is long dead. As is the (non-professionally) violent-me, the sexually-dysfunctional-me, the meat-eating-me etc. I sit here reincarnated as a peaceable, chaste vegan.
By understanding and accepting the nature of rising and falling personalities within the person, you can happily sit back and watch your old, dissatisfactory ego-structure fall into ruin over time, or willfully burn it to the ground, and rebuild your dream-ego in it’s place.
Allow the past-you to die with dignity, do your best to insure the future-you an easy birth, and allow the now-you to enjoy the moment of being evolved, right now.
***
“Great stuff! You have time to talk real quick?” Gabe Sapolsky asked me, as I came back from my fourth match as an EVOLVE part-timer.
I did have time and we walked to a secluded area of locker room together.
“Are you interested in signing with WWN?” Gabe asked, cutting straight to the point.
“Yes.” I said, without hesitation.
Through the undeniable forces of change, interdependence, faith, and fate, I seem to have begun the reincarnation as an undeniable force myself.
And I ain’t done dying, yet, Motherf___ers!
Seems I am ready for Step 6:
Continue To EVOLVE
You can see part one at this link, part two at this link, part three at this link, part four at this link, and part five at this link.
