Many lands saw Zarathustra, and many peoples. No greater power did Zarathustra find on earth than good and bad.
I found a gem last night, a key…a key of all keys – a masterkey. idk why but i always find new things whenever i have a fight with my parents. my mom got real angry last night over my sitting in front of laptop all day. she first cried and then took away laptop and hid it somewhere. so i was finally left alone with nothing to do but reflect. started thinking over things she said. one of the things was: what will you do in future. i melancholiously smiled over it, for little does she know that my future consists of wandering in mountains. then i started thinking about how she will feel about me for rest of her life. will she regret for giving birth to a coward and escapist like me? have i done enough good in life so that she can feel more good about me than bad? where is that line that separates good and bad, and what can i still do now to cross that line? and then this thought came: its only about making her opinion about me good instead of bad, and this single thing can change all her emotions, thoughts, feelings for the rest of her life in favor of me! just this line and all her energy that was destined to become anger, hatred, cursing will instead transform into love, affection, blessings!
Do you see its power? it can control feelings and emotions that are otherwise way out of our control. it is the switch that can turn demons into angels, and vice-versa.
A situation directly from movies: someone has a girlfriend who suddenly one day said hurting things to him and left him. for the rest of his life he carries hatred for her and for whole womanity in general. but suppose after many years they both meet again and she then reveal a secret that she did that because she had cancer, and she did not want to ruin his life because of that, so she made up all those things and left (i think this example has some technical flaws but anyways). in a moment all that hatred will be gone. in a moment! and he may have spent all those years trying to control it but it won’t shift a bit. and look now. what has changed? just the view of bad turned into good. earlier he thought she did wrong to him; now he think she did that because of a good reason and intention, so she wasn’t wrong. still she left – the fact remains the same, but right or wrong?- that makes all the difference. and not right and wrong from her side, but what is right and wrong in his view.
Nietzsche was such a genius. i had read this quote many times earlier but could never see its such vast implications. all i need to do is change my valuing process and everything related the thing i’m valuing will change. what it requires is one being able to deceive himself. and well, what else have i done all my life other than deceiving myself? i have become quite an expert in this art now.
who knows, maybe through this i may finally be able to control that eternal hatred for others too.
well i get quite excited whenever i find something new, and start expecting great things. i don’t really expect anybody else to try it. why i’m writing all this here is so that it doesn’t wash away from my mind like just another random thought. by writing here everything seems to become quite concrete and fixed and i can forget all about fear of loosing it and can think further. i used to do that by writing diary in earlier times, but that method no longer works…i can easily write lies in it and get away.
2 comments
Yeah, there are no set standards to this reality called life. Everything is a matter of perception and perspective. Thoughts and feelings do not equal universal laws. Everyone is subject to the processing of their own mind based on past experiences, biases etc. It does seem like deceiving your own mind or the minds of others can sometimes work. I feel this way when I look into the zen Buddhism attitude towards life. They say suffering comes from desire or wishing that things were different. If you can just convince yourself that you don’t lack anything and stop wishing for anything you don’t have right this moment, you won’t suffer. And sometimes I stumble over whether this is really a successful way to live, or just a clever way to deceive yourself into happiness. But even if it is all just a system of lies, if you’re stuck in a situation that you can’t change, is it not better to feel happy even if it requires convincing yourself to feel that way, rather than choosing to suffer just because that might be your first natural response? Sometimes I don’t know. I put honesty pretty high on my list of what’s important in life. I sometimes think suffering is better if it’s honest rather than happiness that requires a lie. Of course we all lack things and it makes us suffer. If a starving person lacks food or a lonely person has no friends, is the answer really just to tell yourself that no you don’t lack anything? But then I ask myself why do I bother to try to justify suffering? I’m kinda going off on my own rant here but your post reminded me of the same logic. We can probably trick ourselves and other people into getting positive responses from our brains instead of negative. I just haven’t made up my mind if I agree with this strategy or not. You could tell your mom whatever she wants to hear and change her opinion about you, convince her that you do have plans for the future and that you’re going to be fine. It would probably work.
this one is deeper than simply convincing oneself of something which doesn’t really last for long, for one knows that its a lie deep down. its about seeing the truth of hollowness for yourself, and then choosing good over bad simply out of necessity of choosing one of them.
i once wrote about similar kind of trick that needed one to say to himself that there is no self. but that required kinda blind belief in Buddha which ofcouse is not possible. but here is a man, Nietzsche, a human being who we all know existed (or do we? :P). he has said this statement, and that too philosophically. we all can easily see for ourselves the truth of this statement in our own lives.
Now, when you see (for yourself) that ultimately its about good and bad, and how they rule your lives, and how impermanent they are, that what is good for you is bad for other… when you see they they are ultimately lies you say to yourselves, won’t you give them up?
‘deceiving’ is wrong word that i used. its more like ‘choosing’.