Are you mean? Are you good at it? What kind of meanness do you have? Are you inconsiderate, self absorbed, critical of others? Do you see what doesn't work first and endlessly complain? Do you know better than anyone else, or at least handle yourself better than they do? Does someone feel disappointed by something you have failed to do or can't stop doing?
Are all these actions and ideas really that 'mean'? Indeed they are very 'average' and all of them are based on not wanting to be average. They are sourced from concepts of "incomplete" and "not enough" and the idea that we should all aspire to be better, more, improved than we seem to be.
Are all these actions and ideas really that 'mean'? Indeed they are very 'average' and all of them are based on not wanting to be average. They are sourced from concepts of "incomplete" and "not enough" and the idea that we should all aspire to be better, more, improved than we seem to be.
There are several ways to accomplish this - comparison and competition are most often applied. The former stands where you are and makes others less while the latter races against others to produce something more first.
Those who practice being lucid embrace the notion that there is no outcome better than the ones we were born to manifest and this includes being mean (average). In fact, there is no 'worse than', only apparently different outcomes and all the steps that lead up to them.
To be lucid to this is to give new meaning to the word 'Be' which has, in the spiritual arena of personal growth and self development, been synonymous with emptiness, higher self, and purity of thought and mind, free of competing and comparing in the world. But that is not accomplished by becoming different than we are, it's about embracing and being all that we are. This simple truth transforms the vision of personal growth and self development as we have known it, to see it for the trap it really is. For to Be is to eliminate a base-line that draws comparisons over which we may cross to "beat the odds".
The 'odds' are not our enemy but thinking they are makes them seem so. We are all born to be perfectly good at what and who we are. There is no shortcoming which isn't in and of itself complete, no mistake which isn't perfect, and no perfection void of these for anyone save for a few in all of history who were born that way.
If we aspire to be like these masters, a Buddha or Christ, we will see it is not to aspire to be without error but to accept error as part of our perfection and acknowledge that each of us in our own way makes any error in just the right way. Both Buddha and Christ made repeated mistakes in order to learn (and teach) this simple truth.
If we aspire to be like these masters, a Buddha or Christ, we will see it is not to aspire to be without error but to accept error as part of our perfection and acknowledge that each of us in our own way makes any error in just the right way. Both Buddha and Christ made repeated mistakes in order to learn (and teach) this simple truth.
Over and over again each master counsels the students to embrace the failures they carry lest they spend their lives living the consequences of limiting themselves to getting 'better than' rather than fully Being.
On the way to this most logical conclusion many of us will spend our lives attempting to alter and change our meanness in order to be less offensive or more of some imagined state that is better than their original fault-filled condition.
Truly, that is like asking a seed of corn to grow into a five course meal when it would have produced perfectly good food as it was. Not a banquet in an of itself, just one part of a meal, likely to be served up with hot dogs and hamburgers though sometimes included in a soufflé.
It's easy to think a soufflé is a better dish than corn on the cob but both are good food. While different they both include corn, and fit together with other things (like steak) which, if not as they were meant to be, will leave either dish wanting.
Personal growth and self development is about 'wanting' and in order to 'want' you can't possess, so attempting it doesn't work except to serve as the means for exhausting the latent tendency to act as if we're not enough.
The three strings of five is a formula for a new form of personal growth and self development, acceptance and appreciation. We may use these to see the comparison and competition that runs through the old, but we can "Nevermind" the tendency to find fault in these and free ourselves from these attempts to be "other than" we truly are.
Instead of being and seeing a collection of faults which must be eliminated or improved, we can see that that every 'I, you, we, they, this' - 'always, never, should, could, can't' - 'have, think, feel, say, do' (does) everything absolutely perfectly including living a meaningful life. Then we will be able to find the meaning of life many never find, as we see that while we were off looking for it, it was with us all the time.
For the love of life Be lucid. ;)
For the love of life Be lucid. ;)
