Good morning
I am in need of meditation. "Meditation brings wisdom. Lack of meditation brings ignorance. Know well what will lead you forward, and what will hold hold you back."
The financially dire straights of January have rushed upon me. Now february is here, and I feel as if I am going to drown before I ever reach march. March where the currency flows with the force of a breaking dam. With this kind of boom and bust poverty also comes a whole host of other emotions. Self-doubt eats at my dreams, leaving only bare foundation which beg the question, what have done for this? Do I deserve this? This poverty has been my friend right before every single semester of college I have ever attended. It is a horribly cold bucket of water that I face after finals. Dread is upon me, I have been burnt enough, I hate this part of my life. The difference is 10 dollars a day. I have said this before...
After I say this, I always think, quickly, "besides that, everything is fine." However, the insecurity of my finances lets me see the insecurity of other areas of my life. It is quickly becoming apparent that I am intellectually insecure. In my conscious, I always feel firmly rooted in the electric speed of my response. Along with the speed comes force, and often I can stop other peoples arguments dead. Tangle their mouths so they cannot speak, make the back pedal...perhaps I'm being grandiose. What it appears I can do is piss people off, consistently, and I sometimes like it.
What I want to learn to do is be able to participate in a conversation, but most of the time the people around me say things that I think are wrong. My arrogance is so great that I cannot open my mind to their viewpoint. There are exceptions, people here or there who can get much further with me, usually people with more education. Perhaps, as I blindly believe for no other reason than its a great thought to have, I am just so ahead of the curve that I am surrounded by people who need to do a whole lot more thinking. Their ideas, unlike mine, are incomplete or ignorant of the tremendous nuances and concrete realities of existence. In this once area, politics specifically, I seem to claim an intellectual high ground. Somehow I have come to feel more educated, more aware.
This makes politics painfully lonely for me. So what I want is to humble myself. To be able to listen. I want to see that the spirit of god is within us all, and that others, though younger, older, stupider, smarter, predjudiced, lazy, may have something they can contritubute to my pool of knowledge, that will make me a more effective debater, convesationalist, and diplomat in the scholarly arena.
So money and intellectual humilty, two things I have in short supply.