The Art of Flux Thinking

Understanding yourself is by far the best gift bestowed on man. Our ability, or rather our potentiality, to know who, what, where, how and why we are, is by far the only thing of value. All else is fleeting, vulnerable, perishable and of no value. Matter can change and so all things material are never enduring. Memory can be forgotten or misguided by our interpretations, so memory is not enough. Thoughts come and go; they are fleeting. Even life itself is fleeting. The only things of value is who, what, where, how and why you are. All these things can be explained with the simple revelation of the essence of your existence. By essence I mean perception without clouding, perception of the true nature of a thing without the mist of delusion or deception.

Notice how I say, revelation as opposed to knowledge. Revelation has the implications of experience as well as knowledge. To know is not enough; you must be in the moment, present with that which you know in order for that which you know to be revealed to you. Otherwise, if you lose the presence, it was not revealed to you at all, that which you know was nothing other than imagination or memory. When something is revealed the distance of time is taken out of the equation, it all happens in the now. Reflection thus is not capable of revelation; it is merely capable of remembering, for it lacks the presence required for revelation. Consequently, imagination is rendered ineffective too, for that too in-itself has the distance of time. When you imagine, you create events that have not occurred, you do this by using the constituents of events that have occurred and are stored in your memory. Thus, imagination is rooted in memory, it is a chimera of past parts of your experiences brought together to create an illusory whole which you attribute to the possibility of the future.

When the knower and the known come into contact there is a bridge that is built, knowledge is created, that bridge is between you and that which you know. So the knower and the known are in relation to one another (much thanks to Osho for this understanding). You have the knower on one side, that which is known on the other and the processing of knowing connecting the two. You can almost picture a bridge between knower and known, and the bridge is called knowing. Now for this knowledge to happen with existence, the bridge must be instantaneously created, it must be created in the delay of no time. This is because the essence of existence is not rooted in the imagination or reflection, it is a revelation. You cannot imagine or remember what existence is, you can only experience it in the moment of its revelation. To reveal something to someone, they need to be there in that moment to see it. The very process of knowING, the “ing” shows that it is a process that happens now, it is in the present moment, it is not in the “knew” or in the “can-be-known”; it is knowing, it is in the now.

This word revelation of which we are keen on means, for something to reach a disclosure, for something to be revealed. Revelation is the only road to one’s own existence, to one’s own individuality and escape from delusion. You are deceived if you think that you can find a path to the essence of your existence using reflection or imagination. We shall venture into the reasons why. First and foremost, in order to avoid confusion, I will try and be clear on the use of the word existence in this article*. Existence is closely linked to the word, “being”; for something to “be” it must have the minimum capability of contemplation, in other words it has to have some value in the realm of thought. However, simple contemplation is not enough to render something as existing, just because I can think of something it doesn’t mean it has to exist, e.g. the Unicorn. There is another level to existence, it needs justification in the form of experience of the relation between itself and the thinking-thing (human being) that can accommodate it in its thoughts. Put in other words I need to have come across that which I have in my head somewhere in life** in order for that thing to have the value of existence. Thus all things that exist can be contemplated, but the value of existence is given when they are manifested as adhering to the objective world.

When you are engaged in the process of reflection you are using your memory. You are reflecting upon something that has happened in the past and you are reflecting on it now. By doing this you are creating an illusion, the illusion is in your mind and is very subtle. The moment you remember an experience, you are simply bringing into existence something that doesn’t exist, you are giving life to something that is already dead. The subtlety of this is very exquisite. Think about the past for a second; what is it? The past is the sum of all “nows” that have gone and are weeded out of existence, back then they had existence because they were in the now. All things located in the now have existence, once the now has gone, their existence has gone with them for the moment that has just past can only be re-lived via memory, strictly because it has just passed. When you die, you have past, your moment has gone, your existence as you know it has gone, however you can still exist in the memory, someone can bring you back into existence by thinking about you, but ask yourself this, do you really exist or are you nothing more just a memory, something non-existent? Similarly all things that have passed are non-existent, they are not existent, they are nothing more than things that have passed being brought back into existence by the memory, and this doesn’t however make them any more existent. The bummer with this is that you are using your now-moment, a thing with existence to think about a past-moment, a thing with no existence. So to think about a past-moment in the now-moment is to reject the now-moment, to reject true existence for false existence. Each moment spent thinking about the past is a moment wasted in something non-existent. This is because you cannot occupy two spaces in existence at the same time, you are given one, so you can only use the now moment once at one time, how you use it is your choice; can think about the past/future or you cannot think at all and simply be. You can be in consciousness. It becomes a loss of existence when true existence is preoccupied by false-existence. How many true existences have you lost up till now; how many are you losing constantly?

Imagination, the other culprit of this loss of existence, is nothing more than a manipulation of memory and experience. Imagination takes parts from the past or memory and creates a whole out of those parts. Think of things that are imaginative for a second, for example the Unicorn, it is a creation of different creatures that have been seen, parts of each creature are taken out and a whole new creature is created by the parts. Anything created by the imagination is as existing as the Unicorn. Imagination does this constantly; you can never imagine something that isn’t related to something that you have experienced, it mandatory for you to experience something in order to create something imaginative. This use of the imagination is done constantly when thinking about the future, whenever you think about the future; you are imagining how it could go. You are trying to create a now-moment by using the parts of now-moments that have past. You are building a future with the blocks of the past. This too is a form of non-existence, primarily because the past parts you are using do not exist. Not only that but the future now-moments that you are creating are non-existent for they are merely now-moments that have not happened yet. How can something that isn’t happening have existence? So remember always, a whole created by parts that are nonexistent leaves the whole itself nonexistent, for something created from stone cannot been seen, without delusion, as made of steel. That which is created by something cannot be seen as created by something else, without illusion.

The only thing that is worth the value of existence is primarily anything attached to the word “now”. Now is the only revelation there is. The now moment revealed in the absence of mind, in the presence of pure consciousness is the revelation we are all seeking. The now moment is the bridge required in order for existence to meet with the person in-existence. It is the only way for the relation between the knower and that which is known to happen, and the irony is that the moment this happens, the knower and the known vanish, leaving you only with consciousness, and out of that consciousness the essence of existence is sprouted. So the gift of existence is this, the past and future, are merely projections, the now-moment is the only truth. Projections are helpful for living a causal life, a life of transition from one moment to the next, a life of cause and effect. A life of Samsara. To escape that life, to go beyond it, to reach the absolute, more is required. A surrender to the now moment, a surrender to existence, a surrender to consciousness, is mandatory.

Namaste.

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* The notion of existence is an extremely delicate concept, and one must be very careful of its fragile nature lest it break and cause problems. I will not venture here into the intricacies and implications of this word because it would require an essay, so for precision sake I will be as brief as I can in my usage of the word. Take care not to mistake my use of the word Existence with that of an Existentialist, the differences are immense.

** By life I mean everyday living, in the realm of experience, the physical world as opposed to the metaphysical. The existence of metaphysical entities are not a subject I am engaging in here.

The simplicity inherent in everyday life is so paradoxically sophisticated that it is enough to inspire insanity. Think of the word ‘desire’, a very simple word, derived from Latin and French; it means “to yearn or to long for”. This word is easy to spell, easy to understand and very fool-proof in its use. However, this is only a deception, a mere facade that hides the gravity that this word holds in an individual’s way of life. Desire is the catalyst to almost any and every action by an individual, it goes without saying that an action is determined by a desire. However, in order to fully understand the gravity of desire we must first undertake the quest of meditating on the causes of desire, if there are any.

To desire something, first you must lack it. In order to want or need something, the necessity or the desire must be there. The necessity is always inspired by a division or a feeling of incompleteness; you must first have a lack in order to have the desire for the fulfillment of that lack. Say you’re moving from A to C via the road B. A is the lack of something, C is the fulfillment of that lack, and B is the desire for the fulfillment of that lack. In order to get from A to C via B, you must have A, it is a necessity for the lack to exist if you are to have the desire to fulfill that lack.

Let’s consider A for a second, the lack of something in an individual. To lack something is to feel incomplete; it is to be in parts and to desire to become whole by either bringing those parts together or finding a part that is missing. Now incompleteness is usually felt in the body or the ego. The ego desires something and we give in to that desire, same with the body. We feed a void created either physically or mentally. We shall call the ego and body, desiring machines. These desiring machines both have a certain rank; one of them is more important and more real than the other. The Body as a desiring machine when kept under control has the importance of keeping you alive and able to get from A to B. So a moderated bodily desire is harmless.

The ego desiring machine however is faulty. First and foremost what I mean by the ego is your perception of yourself, you’re view of who you are; your character. These perceptions of your personality arise from experiences. Experiences are created by certain choices an individual made in the past which lead to an outcome that was worthy of remembrance. First you need to remember who you are, which is created by what you did. Memory is mandatory for the creation of an ego. You did things a certain way in the past on account of habit and you saw patterns in this way of behaving. These patterns constitute the build up of your character, i.e. I am a person that sleeps late and wakes up early, I am lazy, I am smart etc. So you could say having a personality is like creating a theory. Most theories are created by observations about certain patterns happening a certain way in the past and making the assumption that these patterns will continue to happen the same way in the future. If theories are based on assumption of the relativity of past to future and the same causes are also the causes of the personality, then the personality likewise must be based on assumption of the relativity of past and future. Like causes create like effects. The ego thus is nothing more than a fabrication that is only able to stand erect on account of probability rather than certainty. To be more blunt, the personality is negligible and fictitious; you can be whatever and whoever you desire, because who you are now is nothing more than what you created.

If the personality is based on an assumption its existence is only a probability and not a certainty. If its existence is a probability and not a certainty then the personality has no objective or constant existence. The word existence is used rather vaguely so I will try to explain what I mean by existence. Existence here is viewed as the ability to be recognized as being the way it is without the presence of doubt, in other words an indubitable presentation of a particular phenomenon or object. So if you saw the ego and said yes that is the ego and it can’t be anything else, then the ego has a constant or objective existence. Existence thus is an indubitable state of being. In this little text there will two types of existence referred to, imaginative existence and objective (constant) existence. Imaginative existence is a chimera-like state of being of a particular object, in other words a particular creation with parts that have objective reality, as in the case of a Unicorn. A Unicorn is only real in the imagination; it has imaginative existence and consensus, not objective existence. This is because the Unicorn has the body of a horse and the horn of a rhinoceros, its parts exist as constant but the Unicorn doesn’t. The other type of existence is objective existence, this is the state of being of objects independent of the mind in that whether the mind was involved or not, these objects would still continue to be. For example, I know that my computer exists independently of my thought of it, when I close my eyes it will remain there and when I open them it won’t disappear, same with people and other objects outside the mind. I won’t go into detail as to the philosophical problems with the mind/body relationship or the implications of solipsism; I’ll leave those long and compact arguments for another time.

Now the personality has distinct imaginative existence mixed with the probability as opposed to certainty of the future to continue as it has done for the past several or more years (depending on your memory of yourself). In other words the personality is nothing more than a creation or a chimera, and also a bad one at that. If the personality is merely a creation, and the desires that you hold so dearly, and so solemnly, the ones you aspire towards constantly are nothing more than a creation of an unstable phenomenon, then you are in deep shit.

Picture this; you create a machine to control you. This machine is faulty but it continues to control you and creates desires out of its malfunctioning. Your life becomes miserable, a drag and above all you have an infinitely deep hole that you are unable to fill on account of the endless faulty desires that arise from this malfunctioning machine. You can’t cope with anything because a faulty solution maker will make faulty solutions.

Some machines are so sophisticated that they appear to give excellent solutions, in the form of desires, to every problem that arises, and after much anguish they do. The desires are so seductive that you are unable to cope with the gravity of their persuasiveness; you instantly stop and fall into a hypnotic state. You get a thought that comes from this machine which is so powerful that you are lost in it, you become identified with that one particular thought and now it has captured you with its sophistication — you think you have solved the problem. Once the desire has been fulfilled, something else goes wrong and yet again after much anguish another desire equally strong is created for the solution of the new problem that in turn captivates you, and you continue like this for eternity. It is a painfully persistent cycle of misery mixed with desires, with more misery, with more desires, etc. until you stop and realize that, “shit it’s broken, I broke it and now it is fucking me up”.

To find that your desire-producing machine is broken is like finding a needle in a haystack. For some people it takes many lifetimes — if you are comfortable with the idea of reincarnation. It is difficult to spot on account of your creating it and then forgetting that you did. After a while you begin to accept your creation as being reality, as it is the only thing you have known since you could remember. A person who creates delusion and forgets that he created it, after a while begins to accept the delusion as reality.

The beauty is that it is necessary for us to create these delusions. Many people have lost their minds in the search for the absolute. The mind would rather you were in utter delusion and functioning well enough to get from A to B, rather than going bonkers. So the ego is handy, it does serve a purpose, the purpose of keeping you alive. However, we’ve come to a stage in our human evolution that it is no longer necessary to try and remain alive, life has become easier and easier when it comes to survival. Now we face a new problem, the problem of infinite dissatisfaction.

The problem of infinite dissatisfaction is inspired by the never ending faulty desires of the self-created personality. Now we are in a state of misery; we can never be blissful. The irony of it all is that this misery will be completely and utterly oblivious to you unless, somehow and by accident, that same broken machine accidentally creates the desire in you for the escape of this vicious cycle. The paradox is that we are counting on the wrong machine to create the right answer. One might say that it is a beautifully scripted play, a drama beyond any Euripides or Sophocles play.

Our only means of escape from the cycle is in the eternal cause of the cycle. It is like relying on an extremely compulsive liar to tell the truth. The probability is ridiculous but the phenomenon is exquisite, the beauty is infinite but the wait is excruciating. This, folks, is the paradox of desire. You are trying to escape from an inescapable trap by relying on the thing that put you in there in the first place. This is the elegance of desire; you can’t trust it but you have to in order to be in bliss.

As a final note remember that:

“If you understand all the above on an existential level, then you are already on your way to the absolute. The journey may be difficult, but the destination is better still.”

Interesting word; it means a cleansing, derived from the Greek word for purity. Catharsis, catharsis, catharsis. How does one experience a catharsis? How does one experience a true catharsis, one that will truly blossom purity?

I have been trying for just over a month now to make the existential acquaintance of this very astounding word. My results are less than positive. My understanding is more than required. My stairwell to enlightenment is ever increasing.

There’s a beauty to the ego, it has a certain mechanism of self-defense that it would leave anyone astonished. The moment its life is threatened it sets itself in self-destruct. It reminds me of a movie with Arnie called Predator; when the predator saw its death arriving it had but one last thing left to do, to take its enemy with it. So the predator, cool as can be and with a laughter that can move you into tears utters, “Shit happens…” and then activates the bomb on its arm which blows up anything within a certain radius. The ego is very much the same, the moment you try to let go of it, it promises your death. In order for the ego to be released, you must first die, that is its claim and there is no other way.

Now the death demanded by the ego is a very scary one, at times it is a physical death. A lot of suicides out there have happened on account of the ego and no doubt that the mind involved was so attached to what he had created that in the end it drove him to death. However, the death is not always physical, it can be emotional, it can be perceived and it can be any other form of death. The absolute form of death required varies from person to person; this is due to the subjectivity of each individual. One thing remains constant however, that is that a death is certainly required. In order for something new to be born, something has to die. You cannot accommodate two persons in one body without the risk of insanity. It’s interesting also that our very fascinating dual world works in the same way, you can’t have two opposites present at the same time; it’s a paradox, try and picture night and day existing at the same time.

A death is required for the ego to be washed away. Can catharsis be a death, can letting go of all emotions linked to past events be a death which will kill the ego? Or do I need to first kill the ego in order to be able to experience a lasting catharsis; an absolute and durable cleansing? This is the dilemma that I am left with. Each day something inside dies, the more it dies, the more pain, the more pain the more I feel that I am holding on to something. Could it be close now, or could it be that I am experiencing the very formal loosening of a few screws?

I cannot be sure, I can never know. That is the beauty of life; you just can never know. The truest statement a human being can make is “I don’t know…”. If knowledge is impossible and truth is impossible, then why do I bother? What is the point, what am I holding on to? Why bother getting up and breathing? Most importantly, who am I?

Who, or rather what is this thing that finds the need to get up, go take a piss, wash, have some breakfast and then either do fuck-all for the rest of the day, or, do something to just make time pass, like say get a job and then die and leave behind all the material shit you “possessed” as well as the bucket of kids you had with a woman you didn’t even like? What’s the point? That road leads nowhere. A Buddhist will probably read this and say, “damn that’s one bored soul, his past lives have clearly done it all and now they are coming to their senses”, these being that “nothing truly fucking matters!” Everything is just the same shit different day.

A butterfly is a very interesting creature to me. It spends a good part of its life crawling and chewing on leaves; sounds cool. Once it’s had its fair share of leaves it builds a hard shell around it where it sleeps comfortably and (I’m guessing) unconsciously. Now while it is sleeping in there, it’s going through vast changes; in fact its changes are so dynamic and so rapid that you’d think you’re witnessing a miracle. Once it’s done sleeping, once it’s had enough of changing, its cocoon is getting too trapping for it, it begins to struggle its way out. It struggles so hard and so fast that you’d think that it had forgotten that it created it itself, it would seem that it thinks that somebody else put it in that cocoon. It struggles and struggles and struggles, and out of nowhere it feels a crack. It realizes that it can escape and struggles ever harder and faster in order to break free. The smell of the trees and flowers is closer now, it can even see a glimpse of sunlight. It picks up even more pace and the cocoon breaks open. It flies out. For the first time in its life it realizes what it truly is, what it is and what it can become. It sees its true potential once it has actualized it. It experiences the freedom it was born to create, the freedom of flying.

The butterfly is a beautiful creature, artistically formed in both appearance and life. The interesting thing about the butterfly is that it is very similar to us. Our life and the life of a butterfly have such distinct similarities that it is almost frightening. Anyways enough for now, more to come.

Immediately I can see a paradox in the previous post; here it is.

Love, presupposing that it is true and absolute not something false and bourgeois; also happens to be the highest achievement. This rather distinct notion (from the societal norms) of love requires that you give yourself up, you hand in all that is inherent in you as almost a sacrifice in order to truly reach that achievement. If you are willing to give yourself up totally then and only then can you claim to be truly humble, for then you have love, the absolute, there is nothing higher; because then and only then can you be true, without bad faith, when you are stating that you are not that great. You must first be in a state of absolute pride, and this can only happen when you’ve grasped the absolute achievement (real love), from that position can you truly claim to be humble without bad faith. Any other humility is a masquerade, for you have not grasped the absolute, the pride you claim without being in a state of absolute pride is a false pride; for inside, you will not feel the urge for pride but rather the urge for pain as you are still to reach your potential, your actuality; like our buddy Bill. Likewise from that state a false humility will arise, on account of the false pride. You can’t have absolute pride when there is more to be achieved. Actualizing your potential is reaching the absolute; from that position can you truly feel pride without the flux of emotions Bill felt. Consequently from that position also you can attain absolute humility.

Now lets delve briefly into the implications of “you are not that great“. The first word in that sentence is key, the word “you”, it presupposes that there is a “you” in the first place; it presupposes that “you” has a personality, a composition, a concept of itself, a what-it-is. Thus the personality has not been relinquished either, you have not given it all up, you are holding onto something, an anchor; your personality. Saying that you are not that great, presupposes also that there is greater, in this presupposition lies the key element. If you believe that there is something greater, then you still have something to achieve, there’s more to reach, or in other words, and in the concept of love, there is more to give; you haven’t given it all. Thus, you haven’t achieved love, for love is the highest achievement in this context.

There is a paradox, if you have absolute love and then are humble about it, you are accepting that there is something higher than that, thus you haven’t achieved the absolute. First you need the absolute to be able to have humility, once you have the absolute and claim humility, you are accepting that you have not grasped the absolute; thus the paradox, have absolute to be humble, be humble and lose the absolute. This automatically renders my last post ineffective; you may not need to be enlightened to be humble.

You will argue, but you can be humble of something that you have achieved without having achieved the absolute. I will argue that it is not true for you are in bad faith; you can only be humble in response to something you can be proud of, but that which you can be proud of doesn’t in actuality exist, as shown in the case with Bill. He wasn’t proud of his achievements, he wanted something more, he didn’t attain the absolute and so he was in bad faith. He was in flames on the inside, but smooth as can be on the outside.

Does humility exist then? Of course, it does, but not without madness and self-deception; madness in that you are using it from a position of pain and self-deceit. Even then it does not fulfill the true nature of humility, for it misses the necessary element of pride. What have you to be humble about when that which you use to be humble about is something that you yourself do not see as something to be humble about? Lose pride and you lose humility, they are aspects of the same coin, one presupposes the other. You can never be humble about something that you can’t equally be proud about. This extends even further, claim true pride and you lose true humility, claim true humility and you lose true pride. When one end is chosen the other disappears and thus in turn the former end disappears too as shown in the paradox. True humility is impossible, so the only other alternative is bourgeois humility that is contaminated with bad faith. What to do? I have no idea. If I can’t chose a side adequately and authentically without straight after losing it (paradox), then what can I do? I leave it to you do decide, my part is done.

This post concerns itself with the notion of being humble. What is humility? As always, I will first start with the use of the word, for it would make no sense to go into abstract concepts, and the implications of a word, unless we first understand what the word is meant to symbolize. Thus, first and foremost we must untangle the word; how is it used, why is it used, when is it used and what does it mean to be humble?

Humility is a state* of modesty; modesty is the condition of being demeaning to oneself in the form of politeness by undermining one’s achievements and/or capabilities in order to be deemed socially savvy; in other words, to under-value yourself in the form of seeming polite, and in order to avoid looking like a prat. Immediately we can see an inkling of societal norms in the mix; but before we delve deep into societal influences of being humble, let’s first look at the personal usage of the word, the subjective use of the word. Thus, to be humble is to undermine yourself in the face of others in order to show your reverence and hope to appear social. Humility always arises from a desire to be proud. You want to be proud but to be a good social creature, you must be humble. Thus, first you need something to be proud of in order to be humble. No pride, will in turn equal, no humility. Humility is in direct response to pride.

Madame, Simone De Beauvoir, has aroused in my understanding a concept of subjectivity that I have never before seen; she has made me realize the importance of one’s situation in judgment and development of theories. It is important to state my point of view before interacting with another point of view - mainly to avoid partiality and bias, as well as contamination of a concept with my own feelings and projections. Thus, here it is, I am a man, I am twenty years of age and I argue against the insipid use of the word humility. Let the thought experiment, followed by my ideas, begin.

Here I am, I have a job, a house, a wife that is sexy and angelic (thank god), children that are great (bless them), a good job that I am about to be promoted in and I am genuinely loved by all that meet and know me; you could argue that I have the perfect life. Every time I am introduced to others that perfection perpetuates like the wind in a cold, rainy, December morning. I greet them, I tell them of my life, but I leave out the details; I want so desperately for people to see the world from my point of view, the struggles, pains and repressions I suffer to maintain such a perceived perfection. Most think I am content and overwhelmed with happiness, they know of my situation, my life, they know of my superfluous successes; my indistinct and rather non-existent failures, and they love me. They love the fact that I always look for faults in myself and always down-play the successes. Yet deep down they know not my situation, they know not my desires, my worries, my angers, my delirium. They disregard them; they assume that they’re non-existent. The doom of perfection is the doom of non-understanding, non-compassion and non-empathy. How can you empathize with someone who has it all and is bathing satisfactorily in perfection? We strive for it, we imagine it as the end, so how can we see a disappointment in the subject that has conjured that end; how can you, when you are so seduced by it? It is impossible, an end is an end simply because it implies fulfillment, in the sense that there is no more to go for - that is it. Thus, when they are looking at me, they do not see me, they miss me; they see my face but never my heart.

I greet, with a smile on my face that hides the waterfall of tears lying behind; the tears that hold the smiling posture up. I am humble they say, I am humble and unique, they meet people like me everyday yet none compare to me. They love me. What do they love? Are they seduced by the veneer I have placed in front of me, the look of perfection that hides the blemishes of despair lingering beneath the tantrums of anguish. My insides roar with dissatisfaction, my outside expresses the opposite. I have learned one thing, this is the only way. Either risk being you from the inside out and be hated, or risk being you from the outside in and be loved, but hate yourself. The dichotomy is unavoidable, madness is the only escape from it, madness or enlightenment, and they are both closely related. Why you ask, why when I have it all? What do I have exactly - I ask back? I have surrendered, I have given up myself, the one thing that I really have and the only thing I have, for something mediocre, for something common place, for society, for somebody that doesn’t deserve it, and now I am paying for it. I am paying to be what I am, and this what-I-am is any other, but definitely not me. Thus I am dissatisfied, and you will be too. However, here have it all if you want it; have it all and the price you pay is yourself, are you willing to? If you are, then you can have it.

Before getting into my philosophy of humility, one last statement. You can never know humility without first being mad, or enlightened. I will elaborate in its right place.

We all have desires, wants, needs, and an inner world blossoms full of them. They are like wild sunflowers illuminating the field bestowed with them, with a pleasant outburst of yellow that lightens your gaze as it drifts over it. This world is hidden; it is hidden because it is all you have. It is your last bit of privacy, your last anchor should all else on the outside fail, your vulnerability. You protect it like you protect a child from any threat, you are willing to sacrifice yourself for it, and so you go on protecting it. The irony is that although you protect and hide it, it is all you have and thus it is all you can give; and you need to give it. Love requires giving; you need to be willing to give it all in order to love. If you want love, and thus fulfillment**, then you must be willing to give, to give it all, and all is yourself, it is opening yourself like a bud in the presence of the sun. When light beckons you will either bud (give), or keep and die; you will either let it in and illuminate you, or risk spending the rest of your time in darkness. This inner world then - that is all you have and is all you defend - its release is the only means to fulfillment.

The man above clearly decided not to give, he kept, and now he is in darkness. You will contend, “but hang on a second, he did give, he just said that he gave up himself for perfection, to have it all, isn’t that the same thing?” the quick answer is, no. He didn’t let the light in, because he didn’t give it all totally, once you give it all you have nothing left, then there is only two roads you can go down from then on; madness or enlightenment, both are needed for true humility. He didn’t really give it, because deep down he was still holding on to something, he was stating his pain because what he was appearing to be was not what he truly was, so something inside of him endured. To be truly humble and say, look at me, I am actually not that great, things are not great because I gave them all up, you must say this with the knowing that it is true, you have nothing at all, for you have given it all up. When you give it all up, you have no thing to be boastful about, you have no thing to feel proud about, for you have no thing to cherish and show as your achievement, the only way true humility possible. For then, you are humble, then you are truly humble because you are not hiding any thing, it is all there and yet that all that is there is actually nothing because you have given it up previously. You will argue, but how can I be humble without having something to be humble about? It is a very interesting question, and I do not refute that it is sound and well observed, but you do have something to be humble about, but that something is not a thing, it is more than a thing. You are now in love, and this love is not a “thing”, it’s a true and transcendent*** achievement; you may be either mad and in love, or enlightened and in love - the “same shit different asshole” as my mate Fred would say - but you are in love and so that is the biggest achievement there is, that is the true perfection, that is definitely something to be humble about it. All other forms of love are false, and a masquerade for attachment and insecurity. This humility however is ever more holistic, it is a humility prized, for it has reached an end that is fulfillment inducing. It is not a masquerade for a lack of fulfillment, au contraire, it is the disregard of the achievement of true fulfillment, one that is deep and prized not by the society and the external world as common sense knows it, but by the collective consciousness, by each and every heart. The disregard of the achievement of true and absolute love, the highest pride there is, that in turn leads to true humility. All else is false and done in bad faith****.

Thus, true pride can only be achieved from letting go of everything you hold dear and grasping absolute love. Out of that pride can you be in a state of readiness to experience true humility, without fear of bad faith as shown by the man, whom we shall call Bill.

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*State is a position one takes under a particular moment in time and the conditions arising from that position. In a state all factors, such as time, constitution, place, subject etc. are integrated as parts to form the condition or position called a state.

**Of course, I am presupposing that love is fulfilment, and thus can lead to happiness. Who knows, I’ll let you be the judge of that. I am willing to accept all criticism around this notion.

***Transcendent here denotes something that rises above the commonality of everyday life; it rises above the norms and above something that is already there and/or defined or even predefined. Similar to a rising above.

****Bad Faith is used here to denote self-deception. Not to be confused with the more abstract usage by Sartre and other Existentialist thinkers; although still adopted from them.