Avarice

What do you choose to believe in? Is it things that already exist, things you can touch and smell and see, or is it impossibilities?

The people I know living full lives, lives full of power, they choose to believe in impossibilites.

My friend the internet marketer, who started out from nothing. Making a few hundred dollars a month. He got stuck here, for a year. Finally, he chose to believe he could make $10,000 a month with his tiny business. Within a few months, he made that $10,000 in one month. He believed in another impossibility, and he now makes that in a day.

My friend who is riding is bicycle across America. He started out a frustrated liquor store clerk who could barely pay rent. He choose to believe he could ride his bicycle across America. Now he is on his way towards becoming another philosopher king, another source of great power and goodness in the world. And he’s more than half-way done in his ride across America.
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Time never flows in a straight line, it bends and veers. I can remember being sixteen again, sitting at a picnic bench just like this one. Writing and daydreaming. The same as I’m doing now.

Can we ever move away or closer to our inner selves?

I left home at 18 on a vision quest. I wanted to find, I wanted to seek, I wanted to experience adventure and come back with something real. I searched for the answers to the great questions:

Who am I, what is the nature of this world, what is the nature of this self?

I left, I traveled, I gave, I lost, I changed. And I failed.

No immediate wisdom came from the journey, no inner transformations and no wisdom grew closer. Just a little less sure the nature of things, and caught in the same cycles of self-doubt and insecurities.
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I used to know a poor man who had these dreams. Every night, he would see his entire life from before its beginning to after its end. And every morning, he’d wake up embarrassed at his selfish life. He would wake up and tell himself:

“This selfishness is what I need to master. When I do, I will be rich and I’ll be happy. People will love me.”

But then the selfishness would always come back. He was a mess. He would talk to people, and as he talked, he would try to remember his life and how it played out.

Eventually he grew tired of poverty and loneliness. He thought:

The world wants style and poverty and rebellion in a cute little package. It wants fakers and liars, slapchops and snuggies, billionaires and drug habits. I will become that billionaire. Those monkeys will be on my back. Can you see them? They’re made of gold, they’re like nothing you’ve ever seen. I am a shiny new thing.
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It’s happened. A part of the internet has been censored within the US. If you use AT&T, you can no longer view img.4chan.org. There was no warning, and it was probably made to seem like an accident. But the censorship of 4chan by AT&T, a company already sued for spying on US citizens cannot be an accident. We’re being tested.

Of course, 4chan is by no means a tame or innocent website. It is, instead, an example of how horrible and awesome the internet can be at the same time. It hosts everything, from nude pictures to pictures of cats. it is a public message board, and people upload anything, and often start online activist movements through it. They tackled Scientology a few months ago, and exposing deaths covered up by the church. It is, most basically, a beacon for free and open speech online. With all the dirtiness that entails.

So AT&T, having been accused of working illegally to spy on people, is now blocking an obvious activist website. What should we do?
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I spent most of today thinking about all the things that are wrong in my life. I was just in a really negative mind set, focusing on all the shitty things I don’t like. I don’t know how it happened or why, but when I got some coffee, things changed. Maybe I really do have an addiction to caffeine. Because before I was miserable.

I don’t like that I’m a dramatic nerd either. I focus on things and get myself worked up emotionally for horrible reasons. When I was falling into that dark little area, I was completely aware of it, and completely incapable of doing anything to stop it.
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As the fire burns my skin, I can’t help but laugh. Abram stands there, horrified, but I feel no pain. I overcame the pain long ago, but he still worries.

Look.

What is the most important piece of your life? Is it the people you love, the things you do, or the gifts you leave behind?

What does your face look like from the inside? Is that you in there or is it me?

I met a weak selfish man named Abram two years ago. He convinced me to lie, steal, cheat, and murder. He is an empty man, a confused devil, and he brought me to god.
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The question is often asked: Where is the mind [or attention] to be directed? When it is directed to the movements of the opponent, it is taken up by them. When it is directed to his sword, it is taken up by the sword. When it is directed to striking down the opponent, it is taken up by the idea of striking. At all events, they say they do not know just where the mind is to be directed.

Some would say: Wherever the mind is directed, the whole person is liable to follow the direction and the enemy is sure to take full advantage of it, which means your defeat. It is after all better to keep the mind in the lower part of the abdomen just below the navel, and this will enable one to adjust oneself in accordance with the shifting of the situation from moment to moment.

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For the first couple years there’s no escaping it, you’re gonna suck. You’ll fall down a lot, you’ll get hurt all the time, and you’ll realize you’ve got no chance in hell of ever being good at skateboarding.

And it’s here, if you’re smart, that you’ll give up. Start wearing some skate shoes and dressing the part, but quit actually going the park and rolling around. Find a couple friends and play video games and talk about skateboarding instead.
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For a long time Siddhartha had lived the life of the world and the pleasures without actually belonging to it. His senses, which he had deadened in his ardent samana years, had reawakened. He had tasted wealth, tasted lust, tasted power. Yet for a long time he had remained a samana at heart; Kamala, the clever woman, had correctly recognized this. It was always the art of thinking, of waiting, of fasting that guided his life; the worldlings, the child people, were still foreign to him as he to them.

The years ran by. Enveloped in well-being, Siddhartha barely sensed their disappearance. He had grown rich, he had long since had his own house and his own servants, and a garden on the river, outside the town. People liked him, they came to him when they needed money or advice; but no one was close to him except Kamala.

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