The Cult of Zyzz

Zyzz

If you are Australian you may have heard of a young man popularly known as Zyzz (Aziz Sergeyevich Shavershian). Zyzz, who was born in Moscow and moved to Australia with his family at the age of two, developed a cult following on the internet by cleverly marketing his major product: himself. Or more accurately, his body. Through his daily regimen of tough workouts, Zyzz transformed himself from a skinny kid into a 100 kilogram bodybuilder. He also sold protein supplements, was a part-time model, stripper and personal trainer. In his videos (see the video tribute to him, below) he can be seen flexing and strutting around, almost always with his shirt off.

In his videos Zyzz can be seen extolling the virtues of being a ‘sikunt’ (see video to work that out), becoming ‘aesthetic’ and shredded (high muscle definition), and having people ‘mire’ (admire) you. And of course there is the payoff that you can ‘bang bitches’. In one blog post he wrote of walking down the street in Bangkok without a shirt while the Bangkok women were admiring him. At that same time he also wrote of his pride in having increased his muscle mass by ten kilograms in the previous year, going from 90 kg to 100.

Zyzz has a legion of die-hard followers who worship him. If you look at the comments on his YouTube videos, many of his fans speak of him as being a god, or of erecting statues of him, of them sensing him around them as they workout. They encourage each other to get shredded, get aesthetic, be a sikunt, and bang bitches.

For those who dare to comment critically on Zyzz, his followers vent forth with a barrage of Fs and Cs, saying he only encourages people to live a healthy lifestyle and believe in themselves.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdBoybKnzZw

The big problem is that Zyzz is now dead. He died in August 2011 of a heart attack in a Bangkok sauna, leaving behind a 100 kilogram aesthetic corpse. He was 22 years old. Apparently, he had a genetic heart condition. He had experienced symptoms in the months before his death, including high blood pressure and shortness of breath, but apparently did not take the problem seriously enough.

I have spoken before of ego falls, the way that life – or the universe – corrects our self-delusions. The more we go into delusion, the greater the ego fall tends to be. In Zyzz’ case the correction was massive and fatal.

There was a big difference between what some fans try to represent him as, and what he actually was. Rather than living a life based on health and fitness as some claim, it appears he was a walking time-bomb. He was a regular user of anabolic steroids. He denied this when confronted in the media, but he can be seen clearly joking about his shriveled testacles in one of his videos, a common side-effect of steroid abuse. Thailand, where he died, is where many bodybuilders go, because steroids are legal and freely available at ten percent of the price of most western countries, where they are illegal.

He also smoked a packet of cigarettes a day, according to some people who knew him.

The cult of Zyzz is a cult of surfaces. It is not the depth of the human being that counts in such a philosophy, but the body, and the power, attention and fame it can bring.

Yet at a deeper level, the consciousness contained in the cult of Zyzz corresponds to a state of psycho-spiritual development. During this phase, the individual can become lost in self-obsession, vanity and narcissism. It has strong correlates with the rebel archetype. When Zyzz extolls his fans that “you are sikunts”, what he is saying is that they are rebels – people who reject the values of society, and choose freedom. Rebellion has a healthy expression, but only when anger at disempowerment, control and alienation is used to break the shackles that society imposes upon us. It can be a call to break out of depression and a sense of hopelessness. But in its unhealthy expression, it can be regressive. The rebel can become anti-social, hateful, self-obsessed. It can perpetuate the alienated ego state. Or become self-destructive. I am not saying Zyzz became all these things. Howevber, these are common characteristics of the problem I'm referring to.

In a sense, the cult of Zyzz reflects that there is something vital missing in our society and education systems. They are devoid of spiritual processes which might allow our youth to find something within themselves that is deeper than body image. The simple teaching of presence – being here now – would greatly alleviate this problem. When a person exists with presence as their default position (as opposed to the the mind and ego), then the shallowness of vanity is easily recognized. How simple it would be to teach presence tools to the young. Yet it is not happening anywhere in public education.

This will sound disrespectful, but Zyzz' death is a gift for the fans who worshipped him, who bought into the delusion. But the gift will only be for those who see through the surface, and acknowledge the lie behind the cult of Zyzz.

Indeed, this is what lies behind all ‘advances’ in spiritual ‘development’: we see a delusion, admit it for what it is, and choose to let it go.

Marcus T Anthony on H20 radio

Today I chatted with Dia Nunez on the H2O blogradio from New York. We chatted about changes in society, spirituality and education, shifting minds and the nature of ego. Dia is a great host and I think you will enjoy the talk. You can hear the talk at the following link.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/theh2onetwork/2012/05/01/discover-your-soul-template-marcus-t-anthony-phd-part-2

Blessings,

 

Marcus

New Release: Discover Your Soul Template

I am delighted to announce that my new book Discover Your Soul Template is finally out.  This is a reworking of my book Sage of Synchronicity, with some tweaking to enhance the overall presentation and readability. Discover Your Soul Template is a volume which teaches you how to develop your Integrated Intelligence – the spiritual intuition which we all have, and which can help us discover our true life purpose. I have had very good feedback about the book so far. Ervin Laszlo, one of the world's great system's theorists, kindly wrote the foreword.

To celebrate, here is an extract, below. It’s a somewhat humorous tale which exemplifies the idea of how we can unconsciously create drama and suffering in our lives, when we don’t assume responsibility for our Soul Issues.

Blessings,

Marcus

DRAMA DISEMPOWERS

The failure to love yourself completely and assume a high level of responsibility for your emotional energy leaves you vulnerable to end­less interpersonal and psychic battles. If you fail to rein in your need for drama, you disempower yourself. Drama depletes your energy, distorts your focus, and takes your attention away from what you want to create. It also robs you of any chance of being fully present. The higher your propensity for drama, the less creative energy you have left to manifest your dreams.

Some time ago, I was involved in a doozy of a drama. The situa­tion involved a certain think-tank and the development of a report for a powerful international organization. As a member of that group, I was invited to participate. The discussion was all electronic, involving emails and other web media. As it turned out, my contribution was minimal, as I was busy at the time, and much of it was beyond my expertise and interests. After several weeks, a final document was prepared.

Many of the contributions had been rambling and the whole dis­cussion was quite disorganized, so one group member, Sean, bravely volunteered for the onerous task of putting all the ideas together into one intelligible document. This huge operation took him a month. When the document was ready, Sean asked for comments from other participants. Feeling guilty that I had not really contributed as much as I should have, I offered to proofread and edit the document. This is where the drama started. 

The document I received was rather shoddy, with multiple prob­lems. I felt numerous changes needed to be made. Yet time was running out because we had to submit the report in only a few days. So I went through it with a big red pen (so to speak), and made many recom­mendations for changes. I then sent it into the group leader, Harry, to see what he thought. Harry was aghast. He said that everyone was too busy to go through all my recommendations, so they would just have to leave it.

Here is where my ego checked into the hotel. I was annoyed that my voice had been ignored. Then another group member, Chang, came for­ward and stated that he also thought the document was well below pro­fessional standard. Harry reiterated that other members had looked at it, and hadn’t noticed any real problems. Sean wrote that if Chang and I were not happy with the document, we could have our names removed from it. He then blurted out that in all of his professional career, with multiple publications as a writer and academic, he had never received the kind of criticisms that Chang and I had put forward. He was indig­nant. His ego had checked into the hotel too.

Things were now getting pushy at the hotel check-in desk. Chang marched in and started clanging the bell at the front desk, demanding service. He sent emails and made postings saying that he had published twice as many books and papers as Sean, and that Sean had no right to submit the paper without his consent, nor the right to erase his name from the paper.

I tried to be diplomatic, and posted several times apologizing for any misunderstandings. I got no responses, which again pushed my but­tons. Ignored yet again! Now I was trying to wrestle my ego and stop it from grabbing an axe and running around the hotel foyer. 

My part in the drama sprang from a childhood issue. My parents were particularly strict, believing that children should be seen and not heard. My father had little time for love and nurturing. Children were basically tools for fixing stuff around the house and a cheap source of labor for the family business. Anytime I complained or acted up, I was silenced with physical punishment or sent to my bedroom without din­ner or TV. In my father’s defense, sometimes I got water if I was really good.

Chang’s soul issues soon became clear to me. He wrote me an email.

Did he start off with an analysis of the situation, or telling me how to resolve the problem? That would have been the rational approach, after all. But no! He got straight into telling me about his childhood and how everyone at school beat him up because he was different. 

There it was in black and white. Chang’s investment in the drama sprung from his wounded child. Yet Chang had no intention of accept­ing responsibility for that hurt, and working toward healing and group harmony. No, he wanted attention and sympathy from me, and justice from the group for being wronged.

By that point I had worked on the issue, having completed several sessions of Connecting with the Ego and Wounded Child, so I had pulled my emotional energy out. I had taken responsibility. I worked on some deep issues with my father and elder brother, especially some anger and sadness that were lingering within me.

Because I have a commitment to honoring Spirit and a vision to focus upon, I didn’t let Chang pull me back into the drama (which is what he wanted). I checked out of the hotel, which wasn’t easy, as there were bully boys at the door trying to push me back inside. I wrote a polite email to Chang telling him I was sorry for his childhood mis­treatment, but suggesting that we should focus on resolving the issue. Before I sent the email, I checked the intention behind it (by letting my ego speak, and correcting it), and acknowledged anything that was ego-based. The intention that underpins action is very important if you want to resolve dramas, for even as you are saying or doing one thing, energetically you may be doing the opposite.

Sean was eyeball-deep in the muck of drama too, reacting from his soul issues. My sense was that his father had punished him also, and the criticism had generated a fear reaction, followed by anger. Where there is anger, there is fear. Eventually it all died down. The blood was washed from the hotel carpet. In a final irony, I learned that Chang and I had been given the wrong document—an earlier draft, not the final copy.

There was also a broader group dynamic at work. All of us in the drama had been seduced by the ego’s desire for power and attention. We were looking for greater recognition. The paper was our passport to global-level power. It was about face, status, and prestige. Entire cul­tures are built on such ego stuff. However, as soon as you buy into the collective ego narrative, you become a channel for darkness. Our group was generating a vortex of dark energy, which we were all being sucked into. Our egos were being used as a channel through which dark energy could pour.

The “higher” you go in circles of power, the darker the energy tends to get. Many powerful organizations and world leaders are magnets for dark energy. Some individuals are particularly prone to becoming ensnared within such consciousness fields if they have major unresolved issues of pain and abandonment. For it is through the ego—and in turn the wounded child—that dark energy manipulates us. This is one rea­son why the world is so screwed up—ego and dark energy run the show.