Summary

How much we struggle and writhe with our own mind, how many times we are annoyed by our own lack of doing! How many times have we proven ourselves to be unpredictable, untrustworthy - not to the world but to ourselves! And worse, we turn to ourselves, to our brothers, we shout: ‘Have you no shame in that? Have you no willpower?’ But what if willpower isn’t enough? How many times did I will, but did I not have enough power to will - at least not long enough! I tell you only few men in the history of our species have had the privilege to become who they are. To begin your hero’s journey, to one day do what others have not, what others cannot, we tell ourselves to fight against ourselves, we believe we must suffer. But I tell you, only a weak mind can learn to fight himself more viciously, and be surprised he ends up paralyzed. Oh! To be a good master! Oh! To be a good slave!

Body

In the year 217 BC, Hannibal, the general of Cartago - already in his time considered a military genius, was obliterating Roman armies, marching on to burn Rome to the ground. Those who couldn’t afford to flee, piled up within the city gates. Rome was swept by panic. The Roman Senate, realizing the imminent destruction of the city from within and without, appointed Quintus Fabius Maximus as dictator, rei gerundae causa, "for the matter to be done". Fabius claimed the Gods had been neglected too long and had to be appeased. He commanded the burning of harvest, the slaughter of livestock and for the people to carry out precise rituals. Whether or not Fabius was a religious man, he was a military genius too! He had deduced - and never assumed!- that what would bring his own people and army to blindly move at his command, and to do it willingly.

To get out of his bed, to treat his skin, to work out, to do the dishes, to leave his phone untouched… How many times does the weak mind hear his own command, but does he willfully ignore it, revolt against it, even dare to reason against it? Is it every hour, or every minute of every day? There is no sign stronger that our Western culture is infected with weak minds than the encouragement that he receives who justifies his doing only by his feeling - how inconsistent and unstable his feeling may be! How it arouses him, that he has thrown off his own chains. But how long before he becomes restless, resentful, before he cries out that he doesn’t know where to go! How hungry he will become for his own guidance!

Worse than revolting, the weak mind has learned to trick himself! He begins to paint but only paints one layer! His only measure is to make the guilt, the uneasiness he feels bearable.

Oh! To conquer and possess yourself – to execute what you know to be good for you without question, without complaint – is there a greater purpose to your life, to your day?

But you cannot master yourself, if you cannot become a good slave too! To fulfill the task at hand to the best of your ability, to blindly obey any command you gave yourself! To be a good master, oh but to be a good slave!

Most of all my heart mourns when I am in a room with those who listen to their own laughter, and who have taken an oath to let their laughter travel as far as it can be inhaled. I feel their eyes full of lust looking out of the basement window along the feet of the city. I suffer to see their shoulders groan under the throne of their tyrannical mind. To look like a fool and laugh, to command yourself to do and to rest… To be a good slave, oh but to be a good master!

When something has finally revealed itself to him who has begun his hero’s journey, when an idea becomes transparent, when he runs along its borders, how exhilarated he becomes! But he is annoyed when he meets with any resistance to get to the other side! What is he then, but a fly bumping into glass? How is it possible, he didn’t consider the resistance to get there? Where he has seen a task and judges the act of solving that task to be simple, he cannot spark more easily the fire of a revolt within himself than to also consider its execution to be simple!

To ask yourself permission to clean your toilet, to ask yourself permission to approach a girl in the street, it is a privilege to be experienced by him who is completely in possession of himself.

To lift, to run, to go in the woods, to follow the stream, to catch the sun on a winter morning, it is to find the window wide open. To know and to command myself to turn to that clarity, that serenity in which I can breathe endlessly, where to venture is a necessity to my survival, to bring myself there, that is my ritual. That is where I bring myself, and where I come to follow me, my will, willingly, wholeheartedly, where it is beyond my power.