Everyone in the world is in search for something good for themselves.
After all life is a joyous adventure amidst triumph and challenges, situations
and opportunities.
Speaking of goodness, it is important to define this idea further. We
all have an idea of what goodness is, mediated by opinions formed upon
experience and information. The idea of goodness can range from envisioning
Holy Men like the Dalai Lama and acts of kindness done to other beings. But
goodness can also be about striving towards grasping blessings, luck and it can
also be about finding oneself in a position of taking advantage of a situation
as much as it can be about money, possessions and aspirations.
As the neo Platonic traditionalist I am, Plato often moves ghostly in
the caverns of my mind, and in terms of goodness Plato’s Form of Good is vital for understanding goodness. For Plato, the Form of Good was equalled with Truth and
Beauty and reflected on source and origin of all forms and ideas. The goodness inherent in the ideal realm of
existence is reflected upon our ‘empirical’ condition moved by change and
opinion in our world. This in turn gives room for everything we are searching
for being potentially good. It comes down to the harmony between character and
action. Lao Tzu commented that we should treat those who are good with
goodness, but also treating those who are not good with goodness and thus
establish a chain of goodness in actions reflected by our character. But this
doesn’t necessarily mean that the particular goodness we are searching is rooted
in some altruistic and self denying ideals, rather I would say with Ralph W.
Emerson that often “your goodness must have some edge to it, else it is none”.
I feel goodness is more easily practiced, experienced and sensed by
those who are adventurers in their own life, because the spirit of the
adventurer is one of interest in all things that crosses the path of the one
that is in search of something good for himself.
The adventurer approaches life with interest. If we approach life with
interest we will enable the spirit of the adventurer to enter as our compass
and guiding rod. The adventurer is the spirit of the Pilgrim, it is he or she
that is constantly present in the moment and is capable of listening to the
wind that moved the leaves along the tracks we passed and gain notion of what
the future holds. I see the beginning of nobility in this attitude and
approach.
To find Self and Fate as we walk the Path rises naturally when we take
an interest in our adventure, but the path itself does not make any distinction
between King and Queen, the poor or the beautiful ones as much as the knife do
not recognize its maker... but I believe the path do recognize goodness and the
noble ones.
In a world where ambition, will and money are the main virtues the world
rides upon it is only to expect that also spirituality and soul searching is
touched by the very same ideals. To be in the world is to be touched by it and
no matter how many bars we set up to keep the world at bay it will continue to
pulsate and fester in your life until you somehow manages to develop a capacity
for discernment.
I believe discernment works in various levels and ways and the first of
these judgments we need to reflect upon is how the good we search for ourselves
can touch others, because I am a firm believer in the axiom that states ‘if
your life gets better, my life gets better’. So, if the search for your own
goodness touches fellow pilgrims in your adventure, your goodness will be even
greater, because goodness is what you will be giving out and it will be what
you attract in your journey.
All too often we seek to restrict goodness, to keep it to ourselves and act
like we are the owners of goodness, but in truth, goodness, like wickedness do
multiply if we give it out to the world.
I believe it is here, in the field of wickedness, many of us allow
discernment to die in favour of judgment and general resentment with the
condition of the world. We see how people indulges into bad character, greed,
breaking commitments and in hungry ways attempt to consume all goodness they
can find in restricting goodness for others. These people are never happy;
rather they are consumed by festering spirits and the ghost of paranoia that
turn their goodness bitter and putrid as they give birth to wickedness.
The spirit of modernity inspires people to take their fill of what they
want; if they are not welcome there is always the possibility of making one’s voice,
will and opinion heard through violence, rebellion or social acts of ambitious
defiance. Surely this have its place and we need to understand the world and
its actors by the powers that pull strings and infuses ideas – still – just
because you declare yourself to be what you hope to be, will not automatically
make you enflesh your hopes. At best you will become a ghost or a shadow, at
worst a clown or a pastiche.
Perhaps what we are lacking in our adventure in the world is a sense of
nobility mirrored in goodness and the spirit of the adventurer?
Speaking of nobility I am not having in mind the corruptions of those
noble of mind, spirit and character who Machiavelli commented about in the 9th
Chapter of The Prince as people who
“wish to rule and oppress people”.
I believe we see a corruption of original goodness in Machiavelli’s
statement, where he takes the pulse of his time – because to be noble is not
about oppressing people because you have the means to do so - I am sure we have
more fitting words for oppression of others...
Linguistically speaking we can embrace the suggestion of the constructed
proto indo European linguistic roots, where ‘to be noble’ is derived from the
root “gno”, which we find in English as “know”. Certainly, to know is related
to be renowned, but it is also related to the cause of one’s renown, and it is
in this field we find ‘the sound of our reputation’. Some feel wickedness speak
louder than goodness. But loud sounds are not necessarily true sounds; often
they are just noises, the vocal sign of destruction, threat, self inflicted
pain or arrogance. Don’t succumb to volume, but rather move yourself to a
better place where the sound of goodness can be subject for your attention.
Nobility is about generosity and it is about seeing ones happy condition
of good fortune as a means to multiply goodness. The noble pilgrim ‘knows’ that
spreading out goodness everywhere will accumulate for the giver and the
receiver. The noble pilgrim is not an oppressor, but someone who takes bread
and breaks it into two to give to someone in need – or his friend – and see how
the one bread multiplied and in this see how shared goodness is a benefit that
can touch everyone.
As you walk the world in search for something good, don’t get tangled up
in the wickedness of the world. The wicked ones are the slaves of the spirit of
misery. They believe to have found gold when they only found the ghost of hunger
in wealth, ambition and position. But since the pilgrimage was hard, selfish
and ambitious they will not admit to failure, but rather they will try to
spread their disease to the world so they can share the misery and wickedness
with whom they meet.
Illusion and Disillusion, Truth and Falsity are the uncanny bedfellows
that invite us to practice discernment, so we can judge goodness from
wickedness and in this we will become the Tyrant Wander or the Noble Pilgrim. It
is all up to our ability of discernment and the state of mind with approach the
world with.
The Noble Pilgrim is the one who seeks the knowledge of what is good and
learn in his or her adventure to discern it from the wickedness of the world
and is capable of preserving the goodness found and sharing it with the world
to call the noble ones to a gathering of harmony where love, beauty and truth
can rest before it reaches out in the world and touches it in the spirit of
goodness, generosity and love.
Birth is just the beginning, as life happens we need to renew ourselves,
so we can initiate our selves again and again to the changing conditions of
heart and world. We do this so all wisdom and goodness that awaits us in this
adventure of challenge, bliss and goodness we know as life can meet us at the
crossroad of all happiness and all wickedness - so we can choose to bring about
the constant goodness.
Shower the world with blessings, just do it, it is good for you. Bless
your nasty neighbour, bless the idiot in the crossroad, and bring solace to
those who hate you, give food and money to the beggar in the corner of nowhere.
Spread goodness to the world, not because the world deserves it, but because
you deserve your goodness to increase and become abundant and spectacular in
blessings of wealth and accomplishments.
This sounds easy, but it is not always so. It is in this we find the
challenge on the Path itself. It is in this crossroad we lose or find Our Self
and as a guide on the Path let me in conclusion remind of Charles Baudelaire’s
observation: “Evil is committed
without effort, naturally, fatally; goodness is always the product of some art.”
Illustration; Ernst Fuchs