SENECA

The human is born dependent and then acquires many dependents itself. The body is the first and foremost; requiring feeding, clothing, cleaning and much time for sleeping. While it is your obligation to accept its dependency, you have a duty to reject its tyranny. 

"My food is not tasty enough, my clothes not fine enough, my soap unperfumed".  

You will hear the philosopher say: “Hunger is cheap, it is the palette that is expensive”. So, limit the limiters and reserve some time to transcend your situation, daily, at least for a little while each time.  

Notice too that in a crowd of people, it is quickly determined who is the wisest and all defer to that person so that he or she may make the acts of the whole group proper and decent. Similarly, one hour spent worthwhile makes the whole day worth your while. For to banish anger, anxiety, fear, envy, greed and hate from your being is the basis and ultimate act of heroism, accomplished hour by hour, deed by deed, moment by moment; requiring nothing but your own self; away from constant dependency and into eternal liberty. 

Restlessness is yearning: desires unfulfilled. Desires are either within oneself and within reach or without oneself and out of reach. You have been told that “what nature requires is close by and easy to obtain; all that sweat is for superfluities”. - (Seneca) 

Do you not see how they soil themselves with acts of greed due to their desire for wealth when they could give themselves frugality, which is needed both in wealth as well as in poverty? Do you not see them degrade themselves with acts of flattery, when they could make themselves worthy of their own approval, which is needed both in fame as well as in obscurity? They seek without what they are neglecting within and make themselves undeserving of it. 

Stop your perspiration for gratification; there is only one good: that which you can give yourself. There is only one bad: that which will make you morally worse; and only you can allow that. 

We are born crying, unknowingly, for attention and continue the practice, knowingly, for quite some time; some do forever. Anyone who gives us what we are crying for, we take to be a friend. We must be careful what we wish for; attention is of the same nature as the consciousness from which it emanates. The attention of a dim and lame consciousness will further darken and deform the consciousness that desires any and all attention. Like really does seek like but it is up to us to determine our like, to improve our own self and to then give free reign to seeking. 

Once a likeable like is found, we must commit fully: this is a fellow, this is a friend, and it is unto them that we practice the appropriate virtues such as generosity, in time and in resources. Those who are too generous with their generosity find nothing to give to those who deserve everything. 

This commitment should be awarded not only to whomever is at the top of the class, but to those who cross the threshold too; expect that even the top may fall short of it and do not be afraid to dismiss the whole class. You are looking for gold, not the next best thing in the dirt. 

It is high time now for us to outgrow the toys and trinkets we have become accustomed to and to not replace them with other playthings. It hardly does any good to throw out the toy house and to go on desiring one in full scale; rather, learn to be at home where you are now and to make your home wherever it is that you must take your leave to, sooner or later. 

And is death not where we are all headed? Does the master not say that “to learn how to live is to learn how to die”? Go on then to your final aim, leave the toys and distractions to those who have a need for them. In your own case, if you see them playing with wooden swords, be reminded of courage, if you see them emulating domestic duties, be reminded of the household and governance that is the universe, of unity and of infinity. If they trip over their toys and cry, be reminded of transience and that profane pleasures are always followed by tears. As you wipe their eyes, be reminded of kinship and your common nature, that you are born for each other. 

“Will you not play with us, have you had enough?” It is not that I had enough, but that I want more. I realize that I do not yet have the highest Good: I am still afraid to die when I could rejoice in life; I am still harsh with others when I could be kind to myself, I am still greedy for what I can’t have when I could be rich with what I do have. I am not yet simple, honest, just, modest, kind and reasonable. 

“Come then, let’s make a start today and I will surprise you with the resonance of your echo; how once spoken, these things ring out and become amplified both within oneself as well as in others.”

If I still hold the belief that I have been born into my identity, that identity is something that one can be born into at all, that one’s identity needs to be expressed, showcased and in any way affirmed by anyone or anything, then I am still a very little soul. 

If I still talk about the past conquests of an army that marched in the name of some governing body that administers the patch of land that I was born on as being “my” conquest and “our” patch of land, then I have walked into a cage, for I have made the imagined identity of a mob consisting of past, present and future people my own; their pride, fears, complexes, glories, defeats, dreams and horrors are brooding within me now too. 

If I still think that, much like the victory of a small nation must be recognized by at least most of the world to become history, my little self too must be affirmed, confirmed and recognized by at least most people to become my identity, then I am still very weak. Each objector and denier of global or personal history threatens my existence then; and indeed, don’t wars break out over this? 

The world is not so mean as I make it out to be. My struggle for existence, my fight to be allowed to be, is self-imposed while my true self is always ready to receive whatever higher good I come across: that which neither needs confirmation or affirmation nor even looks for it. 

If I identify with honesty, will I not be honest? 

If I identify with kindness, will I not be kind? 

If I identify with justice, will I not be just? 

Who can affirm me in this; who can deny it to me? And whether I would prefer to be the citizen of this or that country, a part of this or that culture, would that country and culture not benefit from me as an honest fellow, a just citizen, the most? 

I must stop then, at once, to put my worth within the reach of others and start to put it higher, higher still, where it belongs and where no one can touch it. This is what they mean, do they not, when they say: know thyself. 

It is an occasion of utmost joy and pride to the learned person to come to the realization that, a year ago this time, they were being foolish, ignorant of this or that, so silly. They shake their heads with a smile on their faces. The shake refers to the past, the smile to the present and the combination hopes to repeat itself a year from now, and forever thereafter. 

While foolishness is within all individuals and merely indicates the absence of rational and proper thought, genuine fools are those who are hardened in their condition and try to escape their better judgements. They have a deep-rooted aversion to any instance of the realization of having been foolish; a realization they could only avoid either by being born wise or by never replacing the present thought with the better thought, act and belief. The prior is impossible, the latter is consistent foolishness. So it is that their very aversion to foolishness becomes their method for becoming fools. 

Test yourself, examine your beliefs; perhaps they are still worthy of you or perhaps they no longer deserve you. Both a failing and a passing grade in this examination is desirable since you will either have rid yourself of fault or have maintained correctness. The only undesirable condition is that in which no examination takes place, for it is here that faults hide, survive and even thrive to the detriment of the best part of yourself which desires to be on its way to liberty, tranquility and happiness. 

Get into a habit, then, of rejoicing at the discovery of a fault just as much as at the preservation of a virtue. On this highest journey, each step is the justifier and enabler of the next and prior step; the left foot needs the right foot and the right, the left. Often the right is borne out of the wrong. 

Epictetus points out that when two pieces of coal are put together, one burning, the other cold, either the cold one starts to burn or the one burning goes out. So it is with minds too; are we not put out and put off by those who only smolder or have never had a fire in them at all? And are we not ignited by those who emanate heat, spark, light? 

Also, even when we experience a certain burning and are lit with ideas strong enough to transfer to others, are we not in peril if dropped into a pile of cold coals, a crowd of people, a gathering of indolent minds? It takes an exceptionally bright and hot coal to face an unlit pile and to ignite them all, let alone to have any fire left of and for itself. 

We must stay away, then, from piles of people, hordes of coal, and admit them, if at all, only one at a time; either because they stand a good chance of lighting up or because we stand a good chance of burning hotter through the company of a brightly lit mind. 

Our forms of entertainment too are great hordes of people in disguise. Do they not sneak into our homes and minds, speak to us, affect and defect us? Much of the so-called entertainment value of popular entertainment is derived from depictions of conflict, intrigue, violence, betrayal, indulgence in bodily pleasures and depend on drama overall. Notice that the more popular a form of entertainment is, the more it relies on this kind of drama and that there is no such drama without vice and that no type or degree of vice is good for us. 

Here again, our absence is required; for no one can reform another without having reformed oneself and no one can reform oneself without communing with oneself and no one can commune with oneself without foregoing association with the crowd. We are called back in due time to join society again in a state better for ourselves and better for all others. Here is your transmutation; from cold to hot, dim to bright, extinguisher to igniter, vice to virtue, merely alive to properly living.

In the renovation or conservation of a room, one does not confine the discerning gaze to any one wall but steps back to see all that needs to be done. The grander the scope, the further one must step back so that the mind may wrap itself around its own ambition. 

Similarly, all that is truly loveable, is best loved from afar. How easy it is to love humanity when viewed, rather than in the context of centers of towns and the busyness of today, in the frame of continents and millennia instead. So many glowing ideas, shining acts, a species like no other, existing despite unfathomable odds and united through time and space.  

If I look backwards with the scope of millennia rather than minutia, I look forwards with the same long sight. I cannot feel otherwise than wanting to see this amazing trajectory continued, the potential to be actualized and enlarged; the star of humanity to radiate, whether lone or among others, brimming with curiosity, honor, tolerance, kindness, intellect, mortal yet divine. 

How difficult it is to love humanity, on the other hand, in close quarters with those engaged in a quarrel, one owing another a sum of money or apology, unable or unwilling to make the transaction and the resulting feud, the preceding resentment; I want nothing to do with it.  

The greatness of the species is not apparent in every individual. But sample broadly and you will learn what there is to love about it. Learn what there is to love about it, and you will learn to incorporate all that into your own self. If, during life, you have attached yourself to these greatest ideas; If you have dedicated mind to reason, ambition to justice, pleasure to kindness, desire to honesty, mortality to immortality, finity to infinity, your best to the best, then you will stand not as a human, but as humanity; and though your body must perish, all that there ever was to love about you will live on. 

Those slight course variations early on in a journey and the vast drift they cause toward the end; simple misunderstandings and their deleterious effects on the way to the good life and the misconception that the price of wisdom is asocial behavior or even hatred of humankind stemming from an inability or unwillingness to participate in life: this is not quite right as well as disastrously wrong. 

It is true that the wise do not need friends, but to suppose that they do not want them, that they do not love calling on them and even desire their warmth, is akin to arrive at the Americas when the destination was Asia. 

Who can enjoy a proper pleasure more deeply and deservingly than the one who is adorning their heart with it rather than stuffing a hole with it; one who is not miserable in its absence and all the more grateful in its presence; one who holds their friend’s hand not out of a need but out of affection? 

This is the wise person: always content, whole and fulfilled in the present moment and in no nervous need of others, but wanting those who are also complete without others; two closed links in the chain of fellowship. “I have a friend, I will enjoy their thoughts and being; I presently do not have a friend, I will enjoy my own thoughts and being. For if I cannot enjoy my own self, I cannot enjoy another; if I cannot enjoy my own self, another won’t suffer me either.  

Although I do prefer one outcome over another, I will be happy with whatever since life handed it to me and I know that there is no other building block for happiness than the material of life. I do not need you, I want you!”. 

 What one escapes, another seeks; what is dangerous for one only furthers another and there is nothing more sought after for some and despised by others than this: time with oneself. 

It is here, in the open arena of thought, that the true nature of the spectacle of one’s mind is determined; a stage play, a bloody battle, a symphony, a competitive match. If what you see here would not even be worthy of its admission fee in the physical world, remember that the performers act out, sing and express only that which is to the taste, liking and nature of their sole patron: you 

If you are in constant avoidance of this internal stage of thought and being, you are in futile avoidance both of who you are as well as who you should be and occupy the gap of conflict between proper spaces; for the last hour of this performance is mandatory and you will have to endure the culmination of these avoidances, sins and the very nature of the person whom you have your most direct connection with: you 

The time is now to meet the cast, players, performers and to reform them once and for all so that, after the final curtain falls, you may cheer and applaud rather than boo and cuss. While it is them who are on stage and in the arena, it is you who is on trial with an omnipresent, incorruptible, most competent and unavoidable judge: you.

Those too are friends whom we will never greet and meet, whose bodies have decades and centuries ago rejoined the oblivion from which they had spawned, but who dwell in our adoration for having been not only humans but humanity. They are those who became worthy of their place in the Universe by having used their bodies to navigate their minds through the physical domain onto which they exerted the highest ideas existent in the Universe which they honored and improved thereby. 

Ideas rule the Universe; they may result in this or that tree, but the concept of a tree never dies even if the last extant tree should drop its final seed or send its concluding pollen onto depleted ground. 

So it is that such ideas as honesty, justice, temperance, piety and friendship never die because they have existed in at least one such person who has received them and taken them out of dormancy and into active practice. Humanity being the forest comprised of such individuals who see the eternal and universal plan and decide to grow into a physical tree that not only can lay root, but does lay root, that not only can sway with the wind but does indeed brave the storm and perpetuates its physical seed in order to propagate its ideal wisdom. 

Fill your mental domain with all the friends who have demonstrated their sincerity, acuity and fidelity to the highest ideas. Pick freely too, not letting continent or century seperate you from that which knows no such boundaries: kinship. Once picked, keep them always with you and your conscience will drive you to be nothing less than them, for no one sins in the presence of a friend who abhors it; not only because they fear to lose their friend, but because they fear to lose the idea, ideal and virtue of friendship.

We fear not being granted another day as much as we take that day for granted and so it is that tomorrow is both our biggest uncertainty as well as our strongest presupposition. 

There is an area in human experience in which this fear is justified. Those who are on the heels of freedom, who have discovered the door to their intellect and divinity within, but did not yet enter it, have reason to dread not waking to another day; for the prize is so near. They are sure it exists, yet they lack possession of it. And so fear gives them the urgency to make haste towards the edge of finity and to cross over into themselves. 

This is a sweet fright for it is the last angst they will feel and its elevating effect makes it right and proper. Otherwise fear is improper and misplaced since those who have not discovered that door can hardly find a reason to live while those who passed through that door can hardly find a reason to fear.

The challenger has arrived and goes by the name of present circumstance. But present circumstance knows not how to challenge eternal intellect; how to meet in the same arena: wanting to face the challenge, we descend to it and this is part of our downfall. Eternal intellect stoops down to become unexamined impulse; low enough to come within reach of the missiles of present circumstance. 

Each report made to us of incoming difficulty, misery, drudgery, poverty, severity, tragedy is yet another costume of the one and only challenger to achieve the single and same aim: to get us to count today as a loss and to hope to be able to start living tomorrow. 

Yet, this too is a bounty that the Universe bestows on us: that even the challenger is sent to us not as an enemy but as a friend; or rather, that the Universe is so bountiful that we may find it within ourselves to receive the challenger as a friend. That bequeathment of the bounty is the work of the Universe; the proper dispensation and use of it is ours. 

And the proper use of a challenge is to unveil the opportunity for advancement within it: if the challenge is overcome, we have advanced; if the challenge is failed, we have advanced towards advancement. Where is pain, where is misconception, where is conflict, where are unexamined beliefs; is it not the challenger who does us the service of pointing these out, which is something that we had not been able to do, otherwise it would have already been done?

The validity of any endeavor is determined by the desire that motivated it; for there can be no motivation for, and compliance with, an action that does not hold the promise of the fulfillment of a certain desire.  

There are those who desire desires based on their desirability to other desirers. All such comparison-based desires are hollow, shallow and futile: they bring forth a constant state of anxiety interrupted only by short moments of a sense of victory based on nothing other than the defeat of another.  

It is not about the prize but about the differentiation that the prize brings: "You and I, formerly competitors and therefore similar, now, loser and victor and therefore dissimilar." To try to become dissimilar, to achieve distinction like this, is fatal because it necessitates competition and competition turns fellows into competitors and competitors into enemies and enemies into each other. 

To fight fire with fire and to take an eye for an eye are ruinous actions practiced only between enemies. And so it is that the purpose is defeated: all those who were seeking differentiation become more similar and even identical, perfect mirror images, exact reactions to actions, equal weights on a scale, as ugly as the other, as mean as the other in a game of ever-increasing hostility and ever-decreasing humanity.  

To desire differentiation is to desire smallness also, for the Universe is singular and infinite while all that desires to be apart from it is multiple and finite. To desire similarity with infinity is to become infinite and all that is infinite is too plentiful to fight over, too beautiful to soil with the ugliness of battle; it is away, above and out of competition.  

The path that leads beyond competition is picked clean of gold but littered with sharp stones meant to prevent the enemy. Those who have survived the path without fatal cuts to their feet, have their predecessors with restraint, clemency and rationality to thank, but they are thankless and they show no such grace to their brothers, sisters and children who have no other path to walk on also. They see not the sharp stones on the path but only the gaps between them and they see no reason to clear the stones but to fill the gaps. They choose to point to stones as justifications for more violence rather than to gaps as opportunities for peace.  

To move beyond competition, to reject ugliness is the only human victory and prize worth chasing; all else consists of unjustifiable means to defeated purposes. 

Any physical existence is the vehicle of an idea; the way that it is activated, realized and practiced. All those who go, want to go first and then implement that drive; there is no implementation without conception.  

Similarly, the human body is the vehicle of the human mind. In this sense, the body is servile, but the mind has no vehicle without the body and the body has no direction without the mind; a co-dependent hierarchy. Take care then to care for your body, for it has use; but take care not to make it your primary care, for then it is not useful. 

Both the neglect of gear as well as the coddling of it is unbecoming of an athlete and there is no greater athleticism than the aerobics of the mind that leaps into and circums the Universe in timeless and universal thought; and there is no greater shame than to protect with dormancy that which should be used to avoid dormancy.

When sages point to the within as the container of all that is truly good and truly bad, they speak a Universal truth, but not necessarily a personal truth. It is akin to stating the simple fact that rock has no inherent monetary value and that it is plentiful anywhere on earth either on or below the surface. 

Within the walls of my kingdom, however, I stock it, all commerce domestically depends on it, and certain colors of rocks are prized beyond their weight. It is I, the king, who values it and makes it valuable to those who value me, my subjects. So it is that a Universal truth is kept untrue locally. 

Philosophy too is kept untrue in the locality of the minds of certain individuals and, much like the propped up monetary value of rocks which does not extend past the border of the kingdom, individual truths only reign in limited fashion and keep our economy odd and illusory. If my economy is hardly sustainable within my own walls, it is faulty; if my thoughts are similarly faulty, they are hardly sustainable.  

Once I empty my pockets of rocks, my economy is freed up to receive that which is valuable not only to a personal extent but to the Universal one; and what is valuable on the Universal basis is of the highest Good, Worth and Significance. By tearing down the walls of my kingdom, I do not diminish it, rather, I extend its reach to include all of the Universe; by letting go of my local truths, I do not lose myself, rather, I align myself with the Universe 

Philosophy is not the invention of truth but an alignment with Truth, the discardment of individual and local truths and their replacement with Universal Truth; the relinquishment of resistance to what is greater than oneself. It is the admiration of a rock not for its monetary value but for the fact that it was molten billions of years ago; and the fact that it will be molten again and that this life of yours, even the life of your entire species, is merely a blip within its own existence which in turn is a blip within the existence of existence. 

Remember also that Truth is not a fact taught in schools but Freedom learned in souls; that everything that is truly holy will visit your church, bow before your altar and pray in your direction. And that everything that aligns you with Nature is holy; that everything that is holy is natural. 

The firmer we hold on to possessions the more they take possession of us. The tight grip is not one of security but insecurity; for only those who are afraid hold on to things stronger than themselves, and all externals are stronger than oneself since they are tied to fortune which dispenses and recalls everything that has ever been given and taken.  

To be ill-prepared to let go is to be well committed slavery: “I will go wherever fortune drags me and I will be loyal to it even if it beats me, drowns me, starves me, burns me, crushes me, abuses me; for I am dependent on this master and I am nothing by myself”. 

You should be so lucky; to be nothing is to be receptive to that which has given being to fortune herself: Divinity. When has fortune killed anything that could not be reborn? When has it demolished anything that cannot be rebuilt? And when has anything ever perished that could not be thought of still?  

Fortune can kill a human, it cannot give birth to humanity; and if it shall pick us all off one by one, humanity is still possible; in the soup of some star, infinite dormant Reason will give birth to finite active reason once again. Socrates will come once more, ever-more, and take possession of infinity within finity, immortality within mortality and he will utter the same proof of inner Divinity to outer fortune: “You can kill me, but you cannot harm me”.

If you are overwhelmed by worry, fury and resentment, why do you trust that the eternal afterlife does not exist: if this life is all there is, either you believe it should be miserable or that it could not be any other way – you are resigned to painful ephemerality or meaningless oblivion.  

If you are consumed by dread, anger, and regret, why do you trust that the eternal afterlife does exist: if your existence will continue forever, either you believe that you will experience these things infinitely or that you will be stripped of most of your own self – you are resigned to endless torture or final perishment.  

If you would rid yourself of these things, as anyone who has ever been rid of them has done, you would experience either heaven on earth or heavenly earth. Those who do not find heaven on earth do not qualify for heaven as one does not qualify for honesty without truth; those who do not find meaning in life do not qualify for happiness as one does not qualify for temperance without moderation. 

It would be cruelty if it was not happening unintentionally: that our very accomplishments are diminished by the prizes we receive for them. What is wealth and fame other than the approval and reward given by the many to the few, and what else is approval and reward, for those who are ill-prepared for them, other than the diminishment of the work for which they have received these things. Nothing can be said during applause, nothing can be produced during payment and the profane business of collecting accolades takes the place of the divine busyness with the work that garnered them. 

Those who produce work in obscurity for posterity must be aware of this incoming likely detriment; a return to obscurity by way of fame, a return to poverty through wealth, a return to oblivion via the discovery of oneself by others. To prepare to receive anything divine must include the preparation of being received by profanity for it. 

Fortune has something to do with our attainment of the highest Good, since we cannot seek what we do not know exists, but to lose it is our doing entirely; for the highest Good is lost in one way only: neglect.  

Pinch yourself; wake again and again to the reality of being a member of a species that is capable of being the family and species of any member that honors the idea of honor, is true to the idea of truth, just to the idea of justice. These ideas are more real than reality itself, or they are the first real things, since they exist even where and when nothing else exists.  

Can I point to a physical location in the universe where truth is not possible, where justice is inconceivable, and if I fail to do so, can I point to a reason why they cannot exist within me here today? Am I really the only point in the universe in which these things are impossible? If I am perturbed by the absurdity of my justifications for the lack of justice within me, I should make a start at once to find true abundance; that which is timeless and universal, and I will have it; for in the realm of ideas, starting is finishing, trying is achieving and wanting is having.

The height of human dignity is civil service, which is exercised in two distinct but related realms of existence, the physical and the spiritual. 

Those who take care of us with their civil service in the physical realm see to our needs of drinkable water, passable roads, protection from those who are disobedient to the law and their own human dignity.  

This is crucial but not enough, for even though a physical road enables travel to a physical destination, physical travel is only right and proper if it is undertaken to make progress in the spiritual realm: to say that one spiritually communed with God solely because they physically visited a church is blasphemy. 

More importantly than the maintenance of physical roads in the physical realm is the maintenance of the idea of progress in the spiritual realm. For we have repeatedly lost, for hundreds of years at a time, not the ancient Greek statues themselves but the knowledge and skill of producing them. In the spiritual realm, we need those civil servants who remind us of the proper use of roads, of travel and of deliverance. 

If then the height of human dignity is civil service and the height of civil service is spiritual civil service, the foundation which all of this rests on is the care and attention that the civil servant gives to themself. 

If the one who clears the roads and the one who frees the sculpture of the excess marble that surrounded it does not take care of themself, becomes sick bodily or disillusioned spiritually, they cease rendering their services and we forget their knowledge.  

Also, did they not attain this knowledge and their spiritual inspiration for themselves, by themselves. No one has ever become just for someone else, no one has ever become honest to benefit another. Selflessness comes from true selfishness and what benefits society is what is to the benefit of every individual that it consists of. 

The words of the wisely dying on the unwisely living: 

As things are, they would rather hold themselves in contempt than by the hand; they choose meeting the expectations of others over meeting with their own approval and their preferences lead them to what they thereby deserve: a life of misery. But nothing immiserates them other than misery; nothing constrains them other than constraint; nothing worries them other than worry; nothing gives them grief other than grief; and grief, misery, worry and constraint have no existence without their accomplice who is the person preferring them by perceiving them as a matter of course and of resentment. 

Is it really bad for one and good for the other that rains fall on both, or is it right for all. All is right which they could have neither caused nor prevented and all that is right is necessary and all that is necessary is important and nothing that is important, necessary and right could be against their nature. All that prevents them preserves them also; all that constrains them guides them also and nothing that preserves and guides should be viewed as prevention or constraint. 

How often have they pleaded with the Universe to give them that which it did not go on to grant them and how often have they come back to it with gratitude for going against their wishes? They must repent from wishing; for they did not know, do not know, will not know what is best for them until it is given to them and surely, the Universe did not give them this mind as a tool for resentment; surely, it did not give them this life as an object of resentment; surely, it is not the world that fails them but their worldview.

Expecting to find joy without looking is futile. Expecting to find joy and not finding it is frustrating. All who experience frustration or futility are looking for joy in the wrong place, otherwise they would find joy instead of futility or frustration, and all who look for joy in the wrong place, look for it outside of themselves. 

Has anyone ever found the qualities of a piece of gold outside of itself?  

“It is pure, bright, resistant to corrosion”.  

Was Emerson not all of these things? And were these things not intrinsic to his being? And was he not joyous; joyous because he made himself golden, golden because he made himself joyous? 

We can be golden because we can be dirty; we can be joyous because we can be frustrated. It is our choice that enables us or that dooms us. Since choice is with the chooser, to choose to look away from choice is to choose to look away from oneself and those who cannot even stand (to look at) themselves, shall fail to find joy.

The most elastic object on earth has proven to be the human mind; nothing else can adapt to all circumstances by stretching to their circumferences. You have noticed that there are those pricked by death who seem to have been pricked by a splinter; it’s hardly anything to them. 

You have noticed too that there are those who are pricked by a splinter who seem to have been pricked by death; it is everything to them. They are identical in chemical makeup but differ in spiritual disposition: one stretches into acceptance, the other contracts into resentment. 

Demonstration: imagine one of your current worries actualized and feel the resulting resentful contraction. Now add to this imagination the knowledge that you will meet it with a clear conscience and feel the expansion; how much more bearable it has become.  

To face death, exile, loss with the knowledge of having done nothing wrong and that to do no wrong is totally up to us; this is why they preach virtue: there is not a single thing that is better without it.

What hold people back are not their particular faults but the general inability of putting faults into service. Shyness may prevent the uttering of many right words, but it is also a muzzle for rashness and foolishness.  

Listening is reformation forced on oneself, speaking is reformation forced on others. To reform, one must have listened; to speak, one must have been reformed and who could be better candidates for reformation than the shy: they are intent on listening and reluctant to speak. 

Shyness accepted in this way is the scalpel of its dissection into two parts: underconfidence and confusion. Once divided, they are mastered. The mastery of underconfidence is humbleness; the mastery of confusion is skepticism and both are integral to wisdom. For if those who shall humble themselves shall be exalted, those who will question themselves will be freed. 

Faults are our apprenticeship years, wisdom our years of mastery; and we must achieve graduation via exaltation: pride to humility, anger to clemency, envy to goodwill, resentment to joy, fear to courage, fault to wisdom, vice to virtue. 

In general terms, the path towards freedom is opened up not by the solution of contradictions, but by the dissolution of the mind that sees contradictions. In particular terms, the knowledge of oneself is attained not by becoming more familiar, but by becoming increasingly unfamiliar with oneself. 

Is it not true that during the renovation of a room, the more is fixed, the less familiar it becomes? And to evict the angry fool, the envious haggard, the resentful maniac is crucial to the initial surveyance and eventual renovation of one’s own room:  

“You made promises and I harbored you. You insinuated that I would have to be desirous in order to receive, furious in order to accomplish and begrudge in order to revenge. We have dined and schemed, slept and thrashed, bathed and maligned together and you have made yourself familiar to me.  

I see the state of the room of which you have been tenants. You have brought nothing but destruction; I do not wish to know you, but to forget you, to become unfamiliar and to not even recognize you. For only the familiar recognize each other and I am no longer one of you. You have upset my neighbors and you have convinced me of my neighbors’ intolerance and avarice; you have made me stomp and thump; you have made me noisy and feisty; you have turned my home into a camp and the world into a battleground. I will lay down the weapon that you handed to me; I will use it no longer, neither against my neighbor nor for your eviction. Rather, I will make this room unbearable to you: I will make it silent and peaceful, sparse and dignified, clean and bright. 

Whoever else is concealed in their filth will be thrown out together with it. There will be no more corners, recesses or abrasions in this room; nothing for pride to stick to, for jealousy to tuck in, for rage to grind on. I will no longer allow countrymen, kinsmen or bogeymen entrance, for every time they enter, too small a patriotism, too large a pride and too deep a fear enters with them. This room is not exclusive to me, for I know not who I am, it is more so to the exclusion of those who I am not, for I know now who they are.” 

Constantly remind yourself how small and fleeting your troubles are and how grand and eternal the ability to do so is. What demonstrates better that the world is perception and that it is you who perceives the world; that you rule the world.  

Only make sure to never make planet Earth your world, for once you decide to rule soil and water, you will only create mud. Instead, occupy yourself with fertility and hydration since soil and water are the physical manifestations of those ideal concepts. Think to what end there should be soil and water, fertility and hydration, and serve that end.  

What can you do to rid yourself of an infertile mind and the drought that you have felt all this time; the deep thirst that no water can quench. Go after every possible solution; experiment, examine and exalt the highest ideas to find your everlasting peace in all that is Universal, Eternal and of benefit to the highest part of your being and call this mode of living philosophy. 

The purest innocence and the brightest wisdom is in ignorance. Those who choose good over bad are heroes; those who see no other option than good are sages. We must learn to remember to forget; each time we encounter one of our sins, to turn away from it and then to forget it. This wise ignorance resembles the ignorant wisdom of children and animals: those who did not choose their innocence and are unaware of it.  

Even those who walk make no progress if they are in deep rumination on superficial concerns; for all their wisdom, they see that they are running, but not that they are running in circles. For all their ignorance, animals do not run in circles, because they do not know how to run in circles unawares.   

The shriek of a hawk ripped through the curtain of thought and thus it spoke without knowing it spake; thus it corrected the sinner without knowing of sin:  

• “Imminence and importance and it is dark already. I rip to feed and I feed to rip. My needs are unrelenting; I am tending to a life that is always in pending. I seek what I need and I feel it only when I bleed. It is you who can read so heed what I spelled out to you in deed.”  

• “I do not walk, but churn. I thicken that which repulses me, I worsen that which I mustn't be. Clearly, pain is perpetual but sin is habitual; it is sinful to perpetuate but merely painful to habituate. Rather pain than sin, rather now than then, here than when.”

Our biggest fear is to be a deviant and deviating even from the sinful ways of others has become a terror.  

• “What is it that prevents you to come over to virtue?” 

• “Come over to virtue, I? when you have sinned in the past and he and she are still sinning and yet others will sin tomorrow and all the days of our lives?” 

We have put likeness to others above liking our own self and we have traded the hard exalting climb of friendship for the easy gourmandizing descent of enemyship; for only enemies let vices land and flourish on each other, not realizing that the encouragement of a sin is a sin and another sin since it ruins oneself while aiming to ruin another. So it is that all enemies have this in common: they are sinners and are like each other. And all friends have this in common: they are deviants and unlike sinners. 

Us, who have never loved anyone more than the one who showed us our folly, no wonder we do not yet love ourselves: we aim to keep others like ourselves and ourselves like others.

All that is asked of us is to accept reality, for all else is delusion, and all that is not delusion is what is occurring presently and what is occurring presently is change, always, and change is necessary by the very fact that it occurs and all that is necessary is acceptable. 

The full bowl changes into an empty one and our hunger changes into satiety; and it is shameful to look at the bowl instead of the incoming spoon, for the mouth only accepts one bite at a time. To look at the bowlful is to take the spoonful for granted, but how do we know? 

To have eaten one bite at a time, with attention on the spoon and not the bowl, is to have conducted the meal properly. To have lived with one’s attention on the present moment rather than past regrets or future worries is to have conducted a life properly. Such a life is satiety and lets go of the dishes willingly.  

We have a silver spoon in our mouths even though the Universe never owed it to us; we awoke to yet another day even though life never owed it to us.

The abuser finds it easier to abuse others for they find it harder to love an abuser such as themself and they punish themself by giving abuse to others and withholding love from themself. It is a strange act of selflessness: to deprive oneself of love and to ensure becoming even less worthy of it by dispensing the opposite of it to the innocent or the unrelated. 

The lover finds it easier to love for they find it impossible to abuse; not for the injury that it would cause others but because of the injury it would cause themself; the injury of becoming an abuser. It is a strange act of selfishness: to repent from abusing others in order to qualify for love oneself. 

This too is one of the faux contradictions of philosophy that must be overcome in order to overcome.

To assume that happiness is located in the future is to be convinced that the pencil will be found in the other room, and no amount of looking at the desk will reveal it sitting next to the notebook. 

To believe that happiness will take a long time to be achieved is to believe that it takes a whole notebook to spell “happiness”, and pages will run out before delusion; drowning the one word that initiated the writing. 

To fear that happiness is too complex to be attained is to fear basic rules of language: when turning “happy” into “happiness”, the “Y” must be removed and replaced with “I” and then the “I” must be removed and replaced with nothing.

What comes out of the mouths of our chosen few are tired words gliding on used air and we are idolators for inhaling this pollution by others when we could take in fresh air and exhale truth ourselves. These sounds have been wafting out of them since antiquity: “eloquence is me, originality is me, capacity is me, vision is me; to be dazzled by it is you, to cite it is you, to be limited is you, to be blind is you.” 

We are in danger of having spent all our lives in idolatry if we do not commit to what we have always known: “I am equal in capacity to Capacity, in intellect to Intellect, in vision to Vision. An idol has no more God in it than I do, there is as much Idea in the expression of it as there is in me and any well-formed expression of an idea is common property; even if it comes from me, it is not only mine, even if it comes from you, it is not only thine. I will forget memorization and I will become accustomed to familiarization. One does not memorize one’s own name; one simply knows it!”

Inconsistency is conflict, conflict is anger, anger is insanity. Consistency is harmony, harmony is peace, peace is happiness. But ours is consistency that ruins all consistency: the consistency in word and deed. 

I gave you a word: friend. I gave you a deed: friendship. But you have let yourself down since then; you have become unfriendly and you sank friendship. Shall I go down with it, shall I die on this hill of consistency called "loyalty”? 

My service is not to a particular citizen, but to civilization; not to a particular friend, but to friendship. So my consistency should not be in word and deed but in effort: a loyalty to the effort of exchanging what I have known to be true with what I have come to know to be truer.  

Truth over tradition, clarity over custom, examination over convention. I wish my consistency to gratify not you and me, but that which makes me worthy of you if you are worthy of Friendship.

The greatest good is universal. This is why swindlers have invented rarity; their goods are decaying into worthlessness; whence they came from. 

The truest truth is timeless. This is why charlatans call for urgency; their truths are quickly slipping into irrelevance; thence they came from. 

The friendliest friendship is impersonal. This is why the lonely have enemies; their friendship is being consumed by hate of the unknown, hence it came from.

Nature has proportioned and delimited everything that happens to us to be either severe in duration or severe in intensity, never both. 

Below average intelligence is severe in duration, but is easily handled. It is us who make it severe in intensity by berating ourselves to be worthless fools. Truth is, the slow who accept their lack and take their time do much better than the fast who rush; and the fast always rush for they think themselves capable. This is how those with lower intelligence can become abundant in the very thing that they lacked: understanding. And how those with higher intelligence can become abundant in the very thing that negates their skills: pride. 

Death is severe in intensity, but the process is quick. It is us who make it severe in duration too by fearing it all our lives. Truth is, to learn how to die well is to learn how to live well. All that is immortal is infused into mortality; all those who think timeless ideas, think them within time and all those who see universal truths, see them from the patch that they stand on. We cannot perceive without contrast: dark and light, silence and sound, bad and good, health and illness, scarcity and abundance, wisdom and slavery, death and life. 

To feel severity in duration as well as in intensity is to carry one too many things, but it is never too late to let go because Nature’s laws are immediate also: no one has ever shed something that they should not have carried and did not become lighter; instantaneously.

Reason; I have been seeing you all my life, but in servility to those who thought it best to reach unreasoned ends with reasoned means. They accounted systematically, profited maximally, invested astutely and reaped again methodically. They called their wishes good and wished for goods; and you grant all wishes, for who should reach for something with reason and be denied its grasp? They have reached for thrilling greed and noxious pleasure; for crushing wealth and crippling honors; and they were served a life of blight as well as the further misery of thinking that these things were happening against their wishes. 

I see now that it is not you in servility but those who put themselves in the servile position of being your master. If they treated the work of life as reasonably as they treated their work of bread, they would see that it is not those who use reason but those who obey it who get what they want because they want what they get; and one can never not get what one wants if one wants what one gets.

Revolutions are the burstings of thresholds of evolutions. There has been an accumulation of change that can no longer be contained by the current order. The revolution is welcomed only if there has been such a long and steady cementation of fundament. This work is silent, modest and involves no rehearsed gesticulations and articulations; not even a raised voice. 

All revolutions led by the arousing flag and the rhythmic movement of passions go against the feeling of those involved, are feeble yet violent, earth-shattering yet short-lasting while the grandest, most worthwhile and just revolutions are those which can neither be aroused nor silenced: the revolutions of the individual within the individual.