The Great Work Begins

I wonder down here on the ground so far from the stars and so far from where the Universe is apparently expanding this very moment effortlessly, what I was born for, for what do I live and of what shall I become when only my thought remains? Will I cherish and hold onto all this suffering? I wonder when I lie in bed and cannot scratch my back what it will be like when I can do nothing but think, and watch as my body decays? Will my mind be fluid and effortless and expansive as the Universe? Will I be free and traveling without fear or care, in hand with a Creator and a God I have sought for so long? Or will I be what I fear most? A small, infinitesimally small mind, grown stale and rank feeding on it's own fear and self-loathing until nothing is left of love? Is that not then, Hell, to have lived and learned nothing of what it means to be great and broad and full of possibility? If this is to be my fate, that I should bind myself to such a Hell and to such an end, instead of pressing always to the new beginning, then let it be said again as it was said before: better had I never been born! If I have nought the courage to wrestle my Angel than better far be it had I never been born. So, God, where are you? Creator, where? Will you reach out and take my hand and run with me through the starry sky, keeping pace with my thousand thoughts a second as crashing and exploding the Universe and We keep rushing ever forwards? Or will I leave you, let go your grasp and leave myself spinning only slowly around and round on this one small world in one small galaxy in my one small mind, rotting in my one small body, writhing and scratching, and wondering why?

Surely, I was never given a mind to destroy itself with such doubt and self loathing, nor a heart to rake only with fear, nor a soul to damn for all eternity? Surely, I was given such gifts to brazenly stoke the Fire and catch the flying embers, every one, with the grasp of these small pale hands of bone and flesh, and with these eyes of temporary sight, and with this lesser mind of men; I am still to count and value and hold each firey end so that it ends not, but travels faster than I can see, laughing, to You.

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If there is a bedrock principle of the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.
—Justice William J. Brennan

Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy /is/ worse than the evil. /It/ makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage its citizens to be on the alert to point out its faults, and /do/ better than it would have them? Why does it always crucify Christ, and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels?

-- Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our Light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to manifest the Glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own Light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

-- Neslon Mandela

A schoolmaster will prefer to have a couple of dumbheads in his class than a single genius, and if you regard it objectively, he is of course right. His task is not to produce extravagant intellects but good Latinists, arithmeticians, and sober, decent folk... As their personalities develop, they create their art in spite of school. Once dead, and enveloped by the comfortable nimbus of remoteness, they are paraded by the schoolmasters before other generations of students as showpieces and noble examples. Thus the struggle between rule and spirit repeats itself year after year from school to school. The authorities go to infinite pains to nip the few profound or more valuable intellects in the bud. And time and again the ones who are detested by their teachers and frequently punished, the runaways and those expelled, are the ones who afterwards add to society's treasure. But some--and who knows how many?--waste away with quiet obstinacy and finally go under.

-- Herman Hesse, "Under the Wheel"