And it occurs to me that those who have a lot of spiritual wealth have little to lose, and those who have little have much to lose. It is the opposite of economic wealth.
I have from time to time quoted a Sufi saying to the effect of “A Sufi begs to give you everything he has”. This is because spiritual wealth doubles in the giving. If I give you everything, we have both doubled.
And you cannot remain still. I think this is one hidden meaning of the parable of the talents. The one poor servant who hides his one talent–afraid he will lose everything–gets yelled at. I always felt some pity for him, since his decision was not all that irrational.
But spiritually, the more you have, the easier it is to risk, and the greater the reward. The less you have, the more afraid you are, and the less you risk. When you risk less, you do not stay the same, you become smaller. Perhaps the parable should have had the coin shrinking in size while buried.
All of us, I think, have either an expansion or contraction bias. You can make different decisions in different contexts, but the underlying affective habits and overall Gestalt ultimately will move you bigger or smaller, wiser, or number.
What you want is to feel, deeply and directly, the connections between the movement of the world and the movement within you. You are of the oceans, and you are the ocean. There is no need to cry out for the distances: they are already here, all of them. The gap is always within you, somewhere.
And inherently, an expansion bias is a risk bias. It is a dance with the unknown. How could anything which can only be seen through growth BEGIN as a known? It can’t. Everything which will one day be good must first be a stranger, and at that perhaps a stranger who startles you from the shadows.
And the primary risk I mean is 1) not putting everything into fixed boxes, which creates the risk of confusion and feeling overwhelmed; 2) not shutting down emotions. You have to allow everything, invite everything, WELCOME everything. You cannot be defending a fixed conception of yourself. You have to be willing to not know where things are going, not know what comes next.