In the mainstream, it more often than not sits in most minds that the chief force behind ones own greatness resides in ones ability to outthink their competitors. To bring ones own "plans" into being and to beat someone else to a punch-line or a retail store shelf or maybe a book shelf. Enough said on the introductory thoughts though. The degree of greatness that this will refer to won't reside in ones pocketbook, or checking or savings account, but in ones ability to widen their perspective to the things that sit in front of their own eyes, their own minds and senses and not necessarily having had the novel spark to light off a thought of such things. One single thought that things actually could change and might just change, if enough minds put into place the energy, that thing that drives what Plutarch called the elemental opportunity of living things.
Lao-tse a Taoist Philosopher said that "he who is great makes humility his base. Do nothing by self will, but rather conform to the infinite Will, and all will be done for you." Now certainly, much prose of the ages carries with it some meaning that's applied in past ages to past peoples. Some words however, when one understands and resolves them in contemporary times, carries with them much the same meaning and doesn't apply them in a skewed context that would carry no meaning at all. Greatness tends to be more a thing in today’s age that’s usually equated as quite the personal and individual thing. Unless that is when it's applied to the greatest of things that everyone has within themselves. This is the one thing within each person that nobody can take, pervert or make their own, regardless of how much money, time and effort are expended. This is ones soul and spirit and ones drive for completion. In this, it can be understood that Lao-tse’s words regarding humility and what the end result would be can be taken in a literal sense where ones own growth and evolution is concerned.
The paradigm shift that’s so often referred to in writings and thoughts does go far beyond the Vampyric model of the auras augmentation, but rather its evolution to a new stage of self realization and determination. Imagine a life where the incentive doesn’t go away, but the degree of desperation does. A world without hunger for the things that make one feel separate from one another. As the old saying goes for many, "to be in a roomful of people and to feel all alone" is a familiar refrain. What is greatness in the minds of many? Is it the sole thing that one never has, or the thing that currency can purchase? Is it the thing that people bestow on one another or the thing that one sees in the mirror while grooming for another days personal duties? One possibility for greatness is that thing in everyone that stands out and recognizes the inevitability of growth, regardless of ones own limitations. Greatness and growth doesn’t necessarily have to be a members only club.
Many have written of and placed into thought of the differences between those who are enlightened and those that are not. There are those that both claim and avow that many such communities as these, contain individuals who somehow have a spark of sense for what's real beyond the touch, instead of simply relying on their fingertips. This sense of being and the ability to search within themselves for the "other side" of all that makes up this thing that we call, "what truly is" in the here and now, is the spark of greatness. One might even be bold enough to say that regardless of the title one places onto the lapel, Vampire, Therian, Occultist, Pagan, Spiritualist or what have you, the real factor in some sense of greatness for anyone is the ability to believe in the thought that beyond the senses and ones life and ones spirit, that there is an ability to grow and to become something greater and quite possibly that it always was intended in the first place. To become greater than one currently is and just perhaps become what most in todays hum-drum world might truly call great.
Greatness one might say then is that part of everyone that reaches out for something that humility allows them to. The growth of the spirit and the shifting of ones self, to another self. It happens every time someone decides that they have had enough of what was in their lives, whatever that might have been. When one decides that what feels right and good and true, just might be right and good and true. How many times has such an elation of the spirit been described by the many who have searched and found their respective homes in places such as this? One who dares to be greater than the most of the world. One might even say that this drive for greatness will be the force behind such a paradigm shift, and when thought of as it truly is, then the result will be as it always had been intended.
A sense of individual greatness takes on a whole different perspective in such a light doesn't it?
