Inner Greatness

Did you ever have an overwhelming sense of your own greatness, a sense so undeniable that you just weren’t able to put it back in its box? I was going to say, did you ever feel an absurd sense of your own greatness – but no, it wasn’t absurd. Far from it – there was nothing absurd about it at all. It felt right, it fitted perfectly. I had never known anything to feel so right.

 

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, ‘you shouldn’t be sniffing so much of that stuff, my friend. It isn’t good for you’. Well, you are allowed to have your little laugh, I guess. Go ahead. I’ll give you a moment or two to have your fun. Go on, have a good laugh why don’t you? Laugh it up. Laugh it up. Take a cheap shot – god knows everyone else does!

 

I imagine people might say, well – you don’t seem to be that amazingly great. Not on the face of it. No offence meant, of course, but there’s no actual sign of your greatness. And if you happen to know me a bit better, you might point out to me (in a kind sort of a way) that there’s nothing particularly great about my life, such as it is! Nothing to write home about, that’s for sure…

 

But that’s the whole point really – the greatness that I’m talking about has nothing to do with the actual concrete details of my life, or my situation, which – as I would be the first to agree – shows no obvious sign of greatness.

 

That’s the amazing thing – the greatness of which I speak is completely independent of all physical circumstances and so there’s no way for you or anyone else to invalidate it by pointing out that I’m a mess, or that my life – such as it is – is a bit of a disaster. You can’t invalidate my greatness that way because none of that stuff counts! None of that staff matters at all!

 

Can you imagine how liberating that is? People talk about being ‘too big to fail’ (whatever the hell that means) – well what I’m talking about here is being too great to fail. You can fail as much as you like in fact, but that doesn’t in any way detract from your inner greatness! If anything it enhances it! If anything it sets it off!

 

Sometimes (at incongruous moments such as when I’m doing my weekly shop in the local supermarket) I find myself filled with a sense of unimaginable inner glory. Tears of joy stream down my face as I walk through the aisles. I can hardly see straight. At times like this I recite verses from the Chapters of Coming Forth by Day in order to ground myself:

 

‘Thou knowest the names of the Arits and Pylons’, I breathe exultantly, ‘and the names and the names and the secret names…’

 

Of course I totally get it that sometimes we are terribly afraid of our inner greatness and that’s why we invent all sorts of meaningless social games to play so that we can fail miserably at them and get to feel bad about ourselves. We can then despise ourselves and hold ourselves in contempt (just as others do) and there is comfort in this. There is refuge from the unrelenting torment of our inner greatness. In no way do I disagree with this. I totally acknowledge it. I’ve been there, I can promise you…

 

 

 

 

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