“We Never Guess. We Look It Up.”

Think and Grow Rich #4: Specialized Knowledge

We’re just back from being Guests of Honor at Worldcon in Chicago. It will take me time to depressurize and sort through the experience. What I can tell you that I am changed.

A lot of changes. I think this year is a threshold in my life. There are four things I care about in the world:

1. My connection to the divine
2. My family
3. Writing
4. Martial arts

If the meaning of life is to seek joy and be of service, then I have to ask, in each of these categories, how I address these two things. More, how do I resolve what many think to be a contradiction between the two.

Joy and service. In the arena of spirit, this relates to the ineffable, but we can dance around the edges of the question. “What was the shape of your face before your parents were born?” is the kind of question that points in this direction. Spirit as what remains when all illusion is removed. Enlightenment as the door of perception that ordinarily opens at the moment of death. All religions relate to this one way or another, to varying levels of clarity, often dealing more with social rules than the pure “thing itself.” The “Big Boat” being the rules of being in the world, often versions of the “Three Gates” or the “Eightfold Path”. Or you can look beyond them to the unraveling of the ego cocoon, finding the ultimate answers to the questions “Who am I?” and “What is True?” Jed…