Take your share of the world. Drink your fill and drink it whole - consume it, fill your belly with it like a lion with its prey. Chomp off the biggest piece, chew it down, consume it, devour its juicy flesh. Climb the height of each ambition, leave no stone unturned, no heart unconquered, no feat unproven, no slight unavenged. Win the prizes and the accolades, claim the mansion and the statuettes. Seek and find power, ascend the pyramid, stride the red carpet stained with the blood of those who fell short before you - have their sacrifice pave your way, their failures lending to your triumph. Seize it, revel in it until it sickens and intoxicates you - that very river of blood you walk on. Crawl if you must, clutch at the stars, arms outstretched like the naked branches of a tree, longing for the warmth of the unreachable. And when you've reached the apex of that primordial place of desire - as the very angels that fell - and all you feel, despite of it all, is the same lowly, empty desperation that drove you there - that same profound nothing... Only then will you understand the way. Only then will you come to know the great masters. Only then will you learn the virtue of selflessness. For that which isn't selfless is nothing at all. ![[IMG_1728.jpeg]]