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What is so important about certain people that they feel so important? If you have an import-export business you know that you have to import and export goods . . . in order to make business. What did those important people ‘import’? And what do they ‘export’?

First of all, this whole ‘importance’ business only works, if there are accepted hierarchial structures in place. People who want to participate in the game have to accept the rules and pay their dues. Which already hints: neither is anybody obliged to accept those rules nor does anybody have to participate in this circus. The rules are a mental condition which expanded to an emotional addiction with the implication that one believes some people to be more important than others.

That implies that there is an up/down ladder, a rating system, on which everyone is to be found. Next, I can place myself somewhere and see if I am accepted in that place. And all the time I am in a comparison race: who is above, who is below, who fights at the same range than me. It is an exhausting and rather dull game. Hierarchies are small worlds filled with competitors and enemies. Why then everybody seems to be involved in it?

To participate you should have especially one thought in your focus: ME! Additionally you have to suffer from a deep emotional defect: that you are not enough.  Look how important I am! This is the basics, this is the ‘importing’ part: anxiously comparing myself to others and then ‘outdo’ the competitors in the ranking. The question if one could just leave that game for good never seems to arise. To its participants it is ‘natural’, it is how humans are. Or so they think.

To support the claim either money or power of any kind suffice. Someone with both may have a more accelerated run to the top of that ladder. An ambitious drive to be ‘on top’ is crucial to the game. By the way, there are differences between men and women. Women often go for a slightly different ranking. Looks for example. But power is always involved. The kind of power that is usually understood as power: control of others, the environment at large.

Which brings us to the ‘export’ part of the business. Because now the ‘game’ has already taken on the form of a serious business. The exporting side of this is the immense effort that many are investing to make an appearance. An important, impressive appearance. An appearance that lets you keep your place on the ladder or even step up! What a triumph if you could manage, right?

One can feel these immense efforts just by reading, watching mainstream media which are all about that. And advertising which also speculates on the emotional deficiency of : you are not enough, have more (our stuff), be more. Then again, does one have to read and watch mainstream media?

Are these efforts worth anything? Actually they cause so much pain that its participants don’t want to look at it anymore and just consider it to be the ‘standard’. With all the consequences this implies: outdo the competition at any rate. If necessary by war.

Ah, how refreshing just to breath! And to pay attention to that breath. Especially to that long outbreath which lets so much importance fade away. If you pay attention to your breathing, that is. And if you do it again and again. Then you might experience kind of an inner ‘weight loss’. And whole new dimensions open up. And a completely new way of perception arises: one of developing in sufficiency.

Is there a scale that could measure how much of my self-importance I have lost after meditation?

This entry was posted on Friday, March 13th, 2009 at 10:43 am and is filed under Consciousness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.