There is one other thing to know...when you have expressed yourself to the fullest, then and only then will it dawn upon you that everything has already been expressed, not in words alone but in deed, and that all you need really do is say Amen!
Several times now I have stressed the fact that whatever “it” is one gets here at Big Sur, one gets it harder, faster, straighter than one would elsewhere. I come back to it again. I say, the people here are fundamentally no different from the people elsewhere. Their problems are basically the same as those who inhabit the cities, the jungles, the desert or the vast steppes. The greatest problem is not how to get along with one’s neighbor but how to get along with one’s self. Trite, you say. But true, nevertheless.
We are always in two worlds at once, and neither of them is the world of reality. One is the world we think we are in, the other the world we would like to be in.
Things not only look different, they are different, when perfect sight is restored. To see things whole is to be whole. The fellow who is out to burns things up is the counterpart of the fool who thinks he can save the world. The world needs neither to be burned up nor to be saved. The world is, we are.
Until we accept the fact that life itself is founded in mystery, we shall learn nothing.
Develop interest in life as you see it: in people, things, literature, music-the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.
To be a poet of life, though artists seldom realize it, is the summum bonum (the highest good). To breathe out more than one breathes in.
Every great sage has maintained that it is impossible to impart wisdom. And it is wisdom we need, not more knowledge or even "better" knowledge. We need wisdom of life, which is a kind of knowledge that only initiates have thus far been known to possess.
The enemy, the archemeny, is the man who speaks the truth. Every realm of society is permeated with falsity and falsification. What survives, what is upheld, what is defended to the last ditch, is the lie.
The nearer I get to the grave the more time I have to waste. Nothing is important now, in the sense it once was. I can lean to the right or left, without danger of capsizing. I can go off the course, too, if I wish, because my destination is no longer a fixed one. As those two delightful bums in Waiting For Godot say time and again:
"Let's go!"
"Yes."
And no one budges.
Everyone has his own reality in which, if one is not too cautious, timid or frightened, one swims. This is the only reality there is. If you can get it down on paper, in words, notes, or color, so much the better. The great artists don't even bother to put it down on paper: they live it silently, they become it.
I discovered eventually that, after giving time and attention to them, (people) what I said made no difference. I maintain that advice is futile. One must find out for himself. It sounds cruel but it isn't.
You have to get to the point of no return before coming up again. There's no God protecting you. In the end you have to come back to yourself. It has got to be you doing something, whatever you decide upon. Do what you think you have to do and don't try to follow somebody else's pattern because he was successful. You can't be that way. You are You. You're absolutely unique and each one has his own destiny.
We can learn as much as we wish, listen to the greatest masters and so on, but what we do, what we become, is determined by our character.