True happiness is gained when you stop competing with others. It's not about having a perfect life but rather about accepting your fate with joy - whatever that fate may be. No matter how difficult. When you stop resisting your enthusiasm and accept your suffering as the *essential makeup of your perfected self*, that is when you unlock its deeper meaning. And where your hardships begin to make sense in the grander intellectual design of your story. Your [[Sacred Amnesia|torment]] is a prerequisite to what you are destined and fated to become. Without this torment - you are unable to access your highest potential. A man conquers his torments by accepting them as both [[On Gratefulness|self-inflicted]] and essential to who he is striving to become. Here, life says, the world lay before you in all its infinite possibilities, and the might and will of gods are given to you freely to choose which path to take. But the lesson of every path is the same, because all paths are one and the same path - it can either be your path, or someone else's. Guess which one, my friend, you are destined to walk. Which one you are fated to decipher. Eventually, when you've walked many paths, you begin to understand that what you're enthusiastic about is what you're fated to do - regardless of your options. But don't take my word for it. Why? Because you are rather unable to do so. Humans are stubborn animals and we must mostly learn from our own adventures. What isn't experienced is seldom truly learnt. But all paths and roads will lead you back to where you started - the dreams of the past, the desires of the present, and enthusiasm about the future. The one thing that could possibly convince you to step out of your enthusiasm is the idea that what you are enthusiastic about somehow doesn't matter - or that it isn't feasible as a lifestyle choice, or that it isn't realistic somehow - through statistics and logic. But it always is, because it is the inherent imprint of 'you' on this decaying world. It mustn't be feasible, or realistic, or logical - these are all limitations of societal, collective, dogmatic thought. How can something that has never been done before ever be presented as feasible, or realistic, or logical? What then is the purpose of doing anything at all other than the path of least resistance? You are new fruit to this world, understanding that is rather essential. Primarily - essential for the well-being of others and, most importantly, essential for your own physical health. In fact, it is the only lifestyle choice you have - in your heart of hearts, you know this. To align yourself with your fate is to find lasting happiness, whatever that fate may be. Not only this, but it is nigh-impossible to find yourself in a healthy body without following that narrow and fated path. Sickness and illness is misalignment. Not misalignment with some abstract idea of "Self", but misalignment with your truest and purest desires, your ambitions and pursuits. It's easy to fall into comparisons, and to feel some sort of fake elation when we dominate others in this or that arena of life - but you will remain an architect of your own misery for as long as you follow this path. Conflict is what steals your precious time from doing what you came here to achieve, and to learn - and excess is what steals your attention from what truly, deeply matters. For example, I lived the first portion of my life in an animalistic way. If someone did me wrong, or if I felt somehow disrespected by them, my hours and days would have gone into avenging that useless offense, or out-competing them, or humiliating them somehow - my mind was possessed and occupied with reactionary thoughts - I became a slave to my emotions, and I begun to behave and act out in ways that were detrimental to my health. All this energy - gone into willing yourself into doing the things you don't wish to be doing, instead of remaining on your path. Wisdom means understanding that it is the fragility of our own egos, your own weaknesses, that forces us to live in this reactionary state - where you are winning something temporary but losing eternity, losing time. In truth, that meaningless, angry wailing is just another escape from the lesson of that initial offense, the lessons we ourselves summon from life - to teach ourselves, and to remind ourselves what truly matters. Look around, study the battlefields of your life, the fading glory of that arena will always have a bittersweet ending. You will realize that you have lost your most precious gift in this world by pursuing the things that did not truly make you happy - but slightly, temporarily satisfied. That precious thing is [[The Nature Of Time|Time]]. And wasting our God-given time in vain, know that your souls know this - is the cause of depression, illness and sickness and spiritual exhaustion. It is a sort of spiritual grief extended into body and mind. You know that thing in the back of your mind that you know you should be doing instead of what you're doing right now? You are the guardian of that thing, the sacred keeper of the beauty it represents. That is why it lives within you. That beauty has sprouted within you as the seed of who and what you are, what you represent to this realm. That is the purest and most beautiful thing about you - your quiet gift to this mortal world. But you can only earn it, and then freely give it away - by staying true to your fate. Your desire is meant to show it to you. Your intuition is meant to guide you to it. Your enthusiasm is meant to empower you to attain it. And the quaint whisper of your conscience is meant to reorient you when you've strayed too far from the path. ![[20260108_225543.jpg]] It is said that when a holy man departs his place of service, he takes whatever blessings he carries with him, that God leaves alongside him. Methusalem is a holy man's name. And when he left his desert village, from within his desert huddle, it was seen by others as a betrayal of sorts. Or, at least, that's what the people are willing to believe, and you will find that people are willing to believe many things - some things even more fantastical than the idea of divine sentiment. In this case, it is that when the guide abandons his flock - the flock is then led astray, that its destiny is forever altered, and that it is now meant to be lost and forced to wander forever on. The wells dry up, the ground becomes more hardened, and the blessing of rain never seems to come. The crops rot out and die, and the temples empty themselves of both worship and prayer. So why would Methusalem, a holy man, leave? In search of brighter shores, perhaps? Or perhaps he's had a dream or vision, a desperate mirage amidst the scorch? And where would he have gone? Surely a walking cane and a week's worth of supplies could not have taken him far, right? Surely, the bones of Methusalem, right now as we speak, litter the endless shores of the unyielding desert plane, destined to be carried away and grinded down into dust by the elements and all kinds of wretched predators lurking in the night. He must have perished, and he probably has. This is what the people believe. Because this is what the people must believe. The old man is in the sand because he *is* the sand, his ashes scattered to-and-fro by vicious winds and tempests. Most likely, this is his fate. Perhaps, the fine people muse, that is also why their temples crumble and reduce themselves to ruin. Perhaps their priest-man's strange and untimely voyage has beckoned and sent forth the wrath of their one or many gods. But what are they to do? They can try to appease their divine rulers, of course - but how can they? They have no words with which to do so; no soothsayer to chant and prophecy the ancient and healing touch of genuine blessing. No, they are left to their own devices. Their own knowings and unknowings, their indifferences and defeats, and the occasional, trivial, everyday victories granted to them by the spirits of gambling and chance. The confused man looks to the stars. He looks for omens and signs, he reads and interprets the passage of the seasons and of the heavenly bodies, and he vies with relentless fervour, in hopes of benefit, to squeeze out whatever rhythm or pattern he can from their cautious cosmic dance. He studies the logical, ponders the names and meanings of things. He is a scholar of every complex formulaic art and bears the makings of a true and tested scientist. Yet his crops have failed, regardless, and his spirit is not at ease. There is a great weight that he feels, one he can no longer ignore, under which his soul is being crushed. Over and over and over again. This is the weight his emptiness. The burden of his lack of purpose. To him, the wanderer's journey is one of self-deprecation and foolishness. When life is either pain or piss, why must the so-called wizened man increase his suffering even further - and willingly so? Why must the wise man leave when leaving is not at all the wisest thing to do? Well, some others do say, of course, in hushed tones and whispers, that old Methusalem has not died at all. Some say, in their ridiculous foolishness, that the man, in fact, yet lives. That he has made allies of coyotes and wolves, and that he lies down on rock and stone for slumber, and talks to birds both large and small as they soar through the skies for guidance, and that he lives with the scorpions and the snakes - and that their venoms do not harm him, but instead caress his skin like soothing balms. They say that the hills and valleys themselves conspire against the throes of mortal creation and open mystical pathways for him when nobody else is looking. They say that the Lord, his God, has swayed the very grass and the rivers of sand beneath his feet to shift and to trance in the most mystical of ways, so much so that a simple man of faith could be made to conquer the desert itself. So that he is able to reach into the lands that lie beyond that desert of the self - lush and green and blessed with silver, pure-crystalline creeks. For whoever believes, they say, these same pathways are given. They are made known to him through mystical means. Because he will have made a temple of himself, emptied himself of weakness and sin, and will have made space for divinity to find its home within his tiresome vessel. For whoever might test their faith and walk into the merciless grip of the unknown, armed with naught but hopeless faith and surety of purpose - does inherit the gifts of his own determinations. So, why then, must the wise man leave? He must leave so that others may think to follow. So that the brave and bold few among the trudging masses might find that same narrow path he treads. So that they might discover the significance of their own purpose and faith. And so that they too might, one day, walk into the darkness of the desert, only to come out unscathed - and having granted themselves the greatest gift this our mortal world can offer: Their quiet proof of God's presence and grace. ![[Pasted image 20260415203608.png]]