Your intelligence, cleverness, money, power, and other influences will help you grow and cover the miles at a faster pace. You could call them your strengths that will take you far. It is said that you must remember and focus on your strengths to succeed in life. Every time you face a crisis or need to solve a problem, you become aware of your strengths and talents, some of them completely hidden from you till one day they appear in front of you.
Your intelligence makes you increasingly aware of the world and the context you live in so that you can wisely make use of your incredible strengths. With practice, you keep getting better at leveraging them, till it becomes effortless. The memory of your strengths, however, will bring arrogance to you. The more you remember them, the more you forget your fallibility, the more you forget that your strengths are simply a gift to you and not something that you own.
What is well planted cannot be uprooted.
What is well embraced cannot slip away.
~ Lao Tzu (Tao Teh Ching)
With time, this memory of your strengths will try to uproot you. You will be able to apply them in a way that puts you in an influential position. It will light up desires such that you feel inclined to slip away into a feeling of invincibility. You will want more of the world, both that is available and that which is out of your access. When you want something, you look up in arrogance out of a sense of entitlement as if you always deserved it. The giver must feel obliged to fulfil your wants. You are somebody now, an artificial identity created out of the sweet memories of your strengths and capabilities. In reality, you are simply a glorified beggar, constantly wanting and asking for more.
There is another kind of asking, however, that is synonymous with those who have completely understood their insignificance. They have understood that they are from the ground, belong to the ground, and will end up mixing with the ground. Once in a while, they will take a flight on a hot air balloon, but they will quickly want to return to the ground lest they forget their origin. After desiring all kinds of candies that give them a high, they have finally learnt to seek.
Seeking is not the same as wanting. When you are seeking, you can’t really define what you are seeking. A seeker will know he will transform the moment he is found not when he finds. He is not an explorer who must find the hidden or buried treasures. He is on a discovery just that he doesn’t know what he has set out to discover. A seeker is curious, he is ready to be surprised. A seeker is not afraid of losing, because he is not in control of winning. He can’t win this because there is no battle to be won. He can’t win because nobody is going to lose. He knows, he can’t discover. His best hope is that he gets found. He is simply on a mindless path, no judgement of what he discovers as his truth. He bows not because he is inferior to someone or a destined loser. He bows in humility because he feels blessed. A seeker simply feels blessed about his awareness that he is seeking and out of the possibility of being found.
The 16th century Punjabi Sufi poet, Shah Hussain wrote these lines –
‘Hor Vi Neevan Ho Fakira’, translated as Bow Down in Humility, O Seeker!
Is the brand you are building a seeker? What about you? Brands need to be deeply rooted if they wish to stay for long.
You can find him closer to earth.
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