"Pay it forward"

Everyone nowadays has heard of this idea - and if you haven't, look it up - but (from one viewpoint) the reason this world (this planet, this country, this government, this state, this neighborhood, this whatever) is so screwed up, and seems to be getting worse and worse every year, is precisely because people everywhere do NOT "pay it forward," but expect everyone else to "pay me first, and pay me NOW!" This is connected to the Chinese proverb: "Give a man a fish, he eats for a day; teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime." Unfortunately for our species in general, people are satisfied doing the easy thing - giving away their unwanted scraps (fish) - but not the hard thing - learning how to fish, learning how to teach fishing, and then actually Teaching Fishing.

A person could start a whole teaching just on these two ideas (and come to think of it, some already have been), assuming of course they had actually become more conscious, more self-aware, more enlightened, than the many hundreds of millions who are totally satisfied with just giving lip-service to all of it. Dropping off a couple cans of soup and day-old bread you wouldn't eat anyway to the neighborhood monthly "food drive," is NOT paying anything forward, nor is it teaching someone to fish, but since doing the easy thing has become typical - i.e., always taking the most simplistic view on everything (or, to be even more precise, the simple-minded view) - most people never discover for themselves WHAT these two ideas are really about.

The self-centeredness of ordinary humans all over the world has reached a pinnacle that WILL BE surpassed next week, or next year... you can almost set your clocks by it. Sure, many people - who think of themselves as, "more conscious, self-aware, enlightened," and many other similar notions - say they "pay it forward" but in most cases they are talking about the most mundane and ordinary examples - like soup cans and loaves of day-old bread - but of the Extra-Ordinary examples, most can't even think of one.

ALL people - simply by being born a human being - were given The Huge Gift (huge not in size, but in significance), but few there be who realize that, or understand how they must pay it forward, or have the slightest clue what teaching a man to fish really means in the esoteric sense (it's not about physical stuff... but you guessed that, right?) This could be - for some who still need one - a place to start their "spiritual journey." One should not just think or say the easy thing: "Hey, I already understand all about that," for that is the simple-minded view. One must start by realizing that as one is right now - even while reading this bit - they Know Nothing at all, and maybe the only purpose of human life is to Investigate this Huge Gift... of Ignorance.

And, for those few who have actually made some progress in this, they can already hear those four little words that God, Life, Reality, Existence (or whatever you call your Higher Being) whispered many, many years ago... you tasted it, you smelled it, you heard it, you touched it, and you saw it... but Do You Remember It? Investigate!