Eric, ERIC, Eric…..
So bright, so young, so talented, so daring! Flying! And without even a credit card or any other safety net.
I welcomed you to the thread, and predicted your great success. And I know it awaits you, no matter how impatient you are.
Because we once both dwelled in the Constitution State, I beg for the opportunity to be your Rabbi, to help you with an entry strategy. I believe it is required of me by karma.
It is terribly disorienting to be transported in space and time, Eric, to a magical kingdom, not one of Mickey Mouse, much less one which holds sacred the bottom line of numbers.
Eric, you are not in Kansas any more, not even in Connecticut, like the Connecticut Yankee of yore, you are among the Knights of the Round Table, who are searching in an enchanted forest for Silverbacks to clutch tightly and Kings to hold lightly and Princes to slight, and serfs to Lord over, and monkeys to laugh at, and chimps to play with and then abandon. And while the Bottom Line remains here a recognizable transformation of the Holy Grail, for these brave Squires and Knights, it is not the key to this magical kingdom.
Your native intelligence and burgeoning knowledge are no longer, I fear, enough, BECAUSE King Arthur, transformed into the avuncular UF, by the wise seer Merlin, who had already, and so nicely too, pointed out the errors of your way, just before the King withdrew Excalibur from its sheath,and has spoken. Not even Merlin could forestall the deadly cut and thrust that the wise and just King, sworn to protect his loyal subjects from the infidel, delivered as the dreaded "RTFM!" That "F," I feel I must tell you, does not stand for "field," as in "field" of dreams, unless those dreams are horror filled nightmares. Instead, it is the universal adjective, the eff word.
I hope that it did not eff you up too badly. I want you to return to play here, dancing joyfully along the tops of ideas, so I can enjoy your nubile, fertile mind, as I, now old and past my prime, relive the carefree days of my own daring youth, remembering joyful, exciting dreams of when the world was my oyster, long before I lost all my teeth.
Of course, I know that you know, whether it is conscious now or still unconscious, awaiting the time and place, a dream, in the bath, or whatever, to suddenly pop into you mind, that errors are the most precious gift that the human being can create for themselves, precious because they permit us to learn something new, providing a golden opportunity for a fresh insight!
I know, because I have made so many errors by age 65 that I almost have a corner on the market. Luckily, I left a few for you to learn from. But, sadly for me, everyone that I did not learn from, I seem to keep repeating, and many of them are so shameful, sometime humiliating me, other times driving me to despair, alienating me from my fellows, leaving me in foul moods, which I take out on my loving wife, further humiliating me for my lack of self control, my impatience, my brashness, and my stupidity. I often have to ask myself, "how can a bright man be so dumb?" Sometimes, although not nearly frequently enough, I learn something, and suddenly I am young again.
Now I assume, clever lad that you are, that you have already learned the obvious part of the lesson: You are correct to assume that we invest in whatever because we know that stock price tracks financial figures over the long run. Your "surface" error, and the one that matters least, was to fail to realize that, at least in this magical place called Camelot, (and there is not a more congenial spot) that "investment potential" is equated with Gorilla criteria, that this hearty, brave band of Knights and Knightesses share a common belief in the potency of the game, how else could mere ideas become a magical kingdom, a uniting and, yes, freeing belief that the Gorilla game models the real world, magically opening a trail through the mists, far better than a mere Royal Road, that leads to the wisest and strongest Silverbacks of all, who will sustain us by their GAPs and anoint us with their CAP, and that, so blessed, we will all dance joyfully together, drinking Tekboy's wine, on Sir Dancelot' starlit terrace.
That must be so obvious that I hardly need repeat it, when I have a vastly different karmic mission. An error is a golden moment. A shining instant for learning that may be missed but still recovered in the deepest sense. The deep meaning of all human errors, once coupled with the exquisite gift of reflection, is that it gives us not only an opportunity to learn, but more also, an opportunity to learn how to learn.
If you were my very son, and I lay dying, I could not hope to give you a better gift. Unfortunately, it is not mine to give. You, Eric, must discover this boon for yourself.
Kuan Shi Yin, as you may know, is called the Chinese Goddess of Mercy. In any case, as you may or may not know, she is a feminine version of the already androgynous first Bodhisattva, Avalokiteshvara. The big A, as I, an American, am want to call him, who, after many lives, attained so much grace and wisdom that he saw this world for what it is and is not, who, facing east, collapsed the existential paradoxes into their nothingness, who having trod the path until he found enlightenment, who,thus, was free to embrace his hard-sought and well-won Nirvana, but, and it is a very big but, instead cast his eyes down on this troubled world, a world that is filled with the distress of desire and populated with the human, existential inevitables-aging, sickness, and death, and seeing our tears and pain, the Bodhisattva felt empathy and sympathy for the plight of the rest of us, seemingly endlessly stuck on the wheel of life, unable to learn life's lessons and attain sufficient grace or wisdom to leave it behind, given his enlightenment and this insight into our need for his grace, he made his merciful choice to remain in this life for our sake, and with his help and through his grace and our own genuine quest for enlightenment, now we may achieve Nirvana too.
It was Kuan Shi Yin, who as I prayed for her mercy and grace, caused me to know that if I wanted to learn how to learn that I should attend to the teachings of the Dalai Lama, who as you may or may not know or you may believe you do not know but you know in your unconscious mind whether you know or do not know that you know what you know, is a living reincarnation of the Avalokiteshvara. Dutifully following the path she lay before me, I selected one of his wise sayings for the quotation on my peoplemark page. It is this saying, which I use as a mantra while meditating, that links our karmic destiny. It is:
"Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly."
With all due respect,
Don |
