I thought about it. I spend most of every day in contemplation, and an hour a day in Kum Nye, and 10-15 minutes doing my EmWave2. And it seems to me that far more important than book learning is self learning. I suspect Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are, now, roughly the same people they were in their twenties. They know a lot more facts, but they don’t know themselves at an intimate emotional level. I would assume, in fact, that a principle driving factor in their success is the drive within them to AVOID emotional realities which they find difficult to process. Both of them have philanthropic foundations whose activities likely serve as ersatz consciences. But who you are, what matters, is who you are, here, now, and how fully.
I see much in my meditations. Yesterday it came to me that most of my surface personality is really just a play act, a play, and the actors emotions whose role and dialogue is stage managed by a much deeper, highly practical, fully aware part of myself. In most people, what you are seeing is an opera they did not consciously write, and do not realize they are acting out. Some part of them does, but they cannot get to that part without considerable work. That part is the intuition which can be trusted. That part is highly competent, but its job until a certain level of emotional development is reached, is maintaining homeostasis among conflicting, violent, and primitive emotions.
As I like to say, we are not so much different from animals than we like to believe. At the same time, I do continue to believe we are spiritual animals, here for a purpose.
And I would add that it seems to be my task both to cultivate a species of atheism, and a different species of spiritual awareness. Atheism, in that the God of my childhood first beats me relentlessly, then tells me how loved I am. The Christian God first condemns us to eternal fire, then says that he loves us endlessly. The two are not reconcilable.
Spirituality, in that I have really like William James accounts of what to my mind is healthy spirituality, which is a sense of God’s love being present, and a sense of being in time and place which make sense, which work to my good; that there is a plan, even if I can’t understand it. Such people see and recognize that evil can intrude even into otherwise blessed lives, but that if accepted as God’s Will, then true and lasting happiness and peace are possible.