A very pensive child who is very well-loved
will almost always have the same realization:
‘I am insignificant!’
This is the closest thing to realizing the whole universe!
It is a path, that if not taken, could have harmful consequences for the genuine understanding of all that is!
For truly, we are, in sheerly physical terms, insignificant!
There are literally billions of galaxies, and the Milky Way is but a small, relatively insignificant part of the entire whole!
Compared to the discovery of Einstein, each person is but one insignificant member of society!
Even the things most significant to one individual are not always significant to the entire society. Far less is the society significant for the global ecosystem, or the ecosystem for the solar system, or the planets for the Sun, or the Sun for the other stars, or the other stars for the entire galaxy, and so on for other galaxies, and perhaps other universes!
The mind-blowing fact, such a child already realizes, and it is a remarkable achievement!
Ironically, this is just the type of child that achieves great things in our society!
Now, the first choice for most children is to encourage them to be well-educated. To know their times-tables. To read literature.
But for this child, the potential is greater. And it begins with accepting that the child has great knowledge.
The child has knowledge that his or her own life is insignificant!
Don’t dilly-dally. Make a decision. Lovingly accept your child’s conclusion, or instead set them on the road to arrogance, where they are sure to find some form of failure!
The road from insignificance may be greater.
The world will be in proportion.
Significant things will seem mundane compared to what they are capable of thinking.
They are likely to know about the future, about how people work, and about themselves.
So, path 1 is insignificance.
But, not everyone is capable of taking it.
It is on the insignificant path that people are apt to discover real significance---significance that is contrasted with everything else in the universe!
These people have real perspective!
They know what counts!
They haven’t lost track of objectivity!
They are at a stage beyond all academic objectivists!
II. The Path of Greatness
However, the second (lesser) path is greatness.
This is usually a different beginning than insignificance.
Freud we might say, found his greatness from insignificance.
But it doesn’t usually work that way!
The path of greatness is the path of significance-only.
Prodigies achieve universalism. Seekers of significance, however, have an endless hunger just for significance.
It is the path of arrogance, or competing ideas!
It is a path of words, and other applications, which ‘construct’ reality!
Reacting against great things (which are ‘constructs’) very often leads to a sense of depravity. A sense of loss of reality.
Some, like Nietzsche, blame the system, and create an anti-system!
Others, perhaps like the 20th-C. logicians, conform to some of the assumptions, and build their own assumptions on top of them!
The degree of intelligence and wisdom applied to the system is what seems to get results!
But, at some point, the system succeeds or fails, and one’s own life succeeds or fails with it!
It becomes advantageous to see the system as trivial, or the results as important!
One must live for scones, or else for stratagems!
The great man is forever imitating the child prodigy. Child prodigies have the real wisdom of genius! Only by learning from them can one achieve the impossible!
The impossible becomes a good bet on how to achieve what otherwise only the self-declared insignificants would achieve!
Knowledge becomes a learning process.
One must gain education, and a wide range of book-learning.
It would also be helpful to have encounters of intuition and beauty.
Something like love or madness may be necessary, to give appeal to it!
Something like intrigue, perhaps, or a bizarre personality!
Imitating the child prodigy is not easy. It is somewhat absurd!
The world becomes absurd is one of the few things one can say in public!
One becomes a dusty personality!
It is really better to aspire, gradually, the same insights the prodigy makes!
One can turn it into a spiritual movement!
One can exaggerate!
One can prosper on how the prodigy thought himself insignificant!
One can, so to speak, stand on the shoulders of giants!
It is always possible that what they did was not great.
Maybe the only significant thing the prodigy did was what you observed!
It probably isn’t true, but at least you can hope!
Meanwhile, there are others who think you are a prodigy!
It may not be true, but if it’s true to someone, then it’s significant to you!
Remarkable things can be achieved by ‘greatness’!
If you remember the prodigy is great, then you may even become greater!
It may be a lie, but it may also be true!
III. The Path of Cleverness
There is a path of greatness, and a path of cleverness, but one cannot choose both!
You may be surprised, but the prodigy and the great person are not always clever.
The prodigy is concerned only with what matters, and the genius is concerned only with what is true!
The path of intelligence follows after them, and it is not necessarily worse off than the genius!
The trouble is, clever people have a choice about life.
They can try to ‘wag the dog’ so to speak, and own the system, or they can try working outside the system.
Usually, working outside the system results in failure. It may happen as a last resort, or because they are particularly blessed!
One might even concern oneself with spiritual matters!
In either case, they are confronted with a difficulty.
They did not take their advantages for granted.
That’s what trickery says.
They are on shaky ground.
In truth, they have to work pretty hard.
Perhaps, the question arises, they are not even really tricksters at all.
They must still work for a living, most of the time.
They overcome poverty through some process or other, or they work the system and become rich slaves who always had money and always worked for it, or sometimes they’re just talkers who blow money around like it’s a very cerebral Christmas.
Whatever the case, trouble is not gone. The more it is evident, the less trouble there is, somehow.
The real tricksters are sitting on a pile of money. But it has little to do with emotion. They’re some cold fish.
The key thing is, they interpret the interpreters. They know how to have substance. They are great learners. Meaning is no object. These people can do their homework.
This may be the path where one gives in to temptation.
But not all the time. Not every time. Not all the way.
Tricksters know how to hold back when they can get a better deal another way.
IV. The Way
The fourth way is the emotional way.
This is what is meant by humility.
But, more clearly, it is the role of meaningful spirituality.
It is the path in which the little things count.
It is the path in which small, significant things happen.
It is also the path where one recognizes the ‘big picture’.
Usually not all of it. But some significant part of it.
It is a way where one knows how to interpret the world.
Where things fall into place.
Where one knows why things matter.
It is a very reasonable way.
It may be a private and a public way.
These people set limitations.
They notice magical events.
They love other people like themselves.
They can predict what is going to matter in the future.
They are not dopes, or not precisely.
They have the best of all possible worlds.
They know how to make shrewd bargains.
They have most of their sanity.
They are admired by other people.
They stay on top of the world.
They are unconditional lovers.
They know how to have friends.
Being in a spiritual way is not a means to an end.
Unfortunately, to the crude mind, it just happens to be so.
But in truth, it has a rationality.
These people are reaping the rewards of their labor.
They have learned to appreciate life in all of its conditions.
They have suffered much, and learned much.
They are tired of suffering.
But they do not toil for nothing.
They are good people, who understand as best they may, how to live, and what to profit by.
SPIRITUAL TEACHING
The type of ethical thinking which takes place in a given dimension is related first to the current dimensional level, second to the second-most dimensional level, and so on, until all the levels are related.
To know the types of ethical thought, one must know the ethical levels corresponding to each dimension.
The dimensional levels I know are:
1. Essential perfection.
2. Non-negation.
3. Complexity.
4. Aesthetic perfection (meaning).
5. Potential power (truth-perfection).
Thus, for the third dimension, what is required is first to acquire complexity, second, not to negate complexity, and third, to acquire perfection. Another possible stage is not to negate the perfection, and a fifth possible stage is to complexify the perfection, which should ideally be done on the way to acquiring non-negated complexity.
In the fourth and fifth stages, the process is the same, although it requires aesthetic perfection and power, respectively.
THE INITIATION OF SOUL IMPROVEMENT
Initiation is one of the key themes of spiritual improvement.
The sooner one begins initiation, the sooner one earns Soul Points.
I see this as relating to the life of oneself and one's children.
Basically, if one doesn't set a standard on how to live, then one cannot acquire prestige for improving one's future life.
The goal of life is at least to improve the future, which depends on initiating the path to self-improvement, enabling one to acquire soul-points.
One way to do this is to avoid forms of physical love, which have the reputation of degeneration.
Initiation is one of the key themes of spiritual improvement.
The sooner one begins initiation, the sooner one earns Soul Points.
I see this as relating to the life of oneself and one's children.
Basically, if one doesn't set a standard on how to live, then one cannot acquire prestige for improving one's future life.
The goal of life is at least to improve the future, which depends on initiating the path to self-improvement, enabling one to acquire soul-points.
One way to do this is to avoid forms of physical love, which have the reputation of degeneration.
1st Mantra: "Wisdom before youth before age before indulgence"
2nd Mantra: "Gradual improvement is the wise way..."
3rd Mantra: "Strong just as a tree"
4th Mantra: "Have concern"
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