The spirit, the camel, the lion, and the child

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
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Matt Gregory
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The spirit, the camel, the lion, and the child

Post by Matt Gregory »

What do you guys think of this?
I name you three metamorphoses of the spirit: how the spirit shall become a camel, and the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child.

There are many heavy things for the spirit, for the strong, weight-bearing spirit in which dwell respect and awe: its strength longs for the heavy, for the heaviest.

What is heavy? thus asks the weight-bearing spirit, thus it kneels down like the camel and wants to be well laden.

What is the heaviest thing, you heroes? so asks the weight-bearing spirit, that I may take it upon me and rejoice in my strength.

Is it not this: to debase yourself in order to injure your pride? To let your folly shine out in order to mock your wisdom?

Or is it this: to desert our cause when it is celebrating its victory? To climb high mountains in order to tempt the tempter?

Or is it this: to feed upon the acorns and grass of knowledge and for the sake of truth to suffer hunger of the soul?

Or is it this: to be sick and to send away comforters and make friends with the deaf, who never hear what you ask?

Or is it this: to wade into dirty water when it is the water of truth, and not to disdain cold frogs and hot toads?

Or is it this: to love those who despise us and to offer our hand to the ghost when it wants to frighten us?

The weight-bearing spirit takes upon itself all these heaviest things: like a camel hurrying laden into the desert, thus it hurries into its desert.

But in the loneliest desert the second metamorphosis occurs: the spirit here becomes a lion; it wants to capture freedom and be lord in its own desert.

It seeks here its ultimate lord: it will be an enemy to him and to its ultimate God, it will struggle for victory with the great dragon.

What is the great dragon which the spirit no longer wants to call lord and God? The great dragon is called 'Thou shalt'. But the spirit of the lion say 'I will!'

'Thou shalt' lies in its path, sparkling with gold, a scale-covered beast, and on every scale glitters golden 'Thou shalt'.

Values of a thousand years glitter on the scales, and thus speaks the mightiest of all dragons: 'All the values of things - glitter on me.

'All values have already been created, and all created values - are in me. Truly, there shall be no more "I will"!' Thus speaks the dragon.

My brothers, why is the lion needed in the spirit? Why does the beast of burden, that renounces and is reverent, not suffice?

To create new values - even the lion is incapable of that: but to create itself freedom for new creation - that the might of the lion can do.

To create freedom for itself and a sacred No even to duty: the lion is needed for that, my brothers.

To seize the right to new values - that is the most terrible proceeding for a weight-bearing and reverential spirit. Truly, to this spirit it is a theft and a work for an animal of prey.

Once it loved this 'Thou shalt' as its holiest thing: now it has to find illusion and caprice even in the holiest, that it may steal freedom from its love: the lion is needed for this theft.

But tell me, my brothers, what can the child do that even the lion cannot? Why must the preying lion still become a child?

The child is innocence and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a sport, a self-propelling wheel, a first motion, a sacred Yes.

Yes, a sacred Yes is needed, my brothers, for the sport of creation: the spirit now wills its own will, the spirit sundered from the world now wins its own world.

I have named you three metamorphoses of the spirit: how the spirit became a camel, and the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child.

Thus spoke Zarathustra.
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BMcGilly07
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Re: The spirit, the camel, the lion, and the child

Post by BMcGilly07 »

The Camel represents the taking on of the apparent burden of a Truthful existence, representing a sort of dark night of the soul where all things toiling and heavy are taken on. The water of life that is truth will sustain the Camel through the barren land of finitude which has been sucked dry of the former apparent life of the ego. By internalizing one's focus on the nature of self, all else besides becomes void of its former distractions, worldly joys and escapes from the life of Truth. The tree is a tree, a woeful thing.

The Lion is the resumption of the Will by understanding one's position among the ceaseless flow of Reality. By reclaiming one's will through the application of right understanding, the Lion reclaims life itself from the jaws of melancholy and ignorance of his former existence as a passive Camel taking on all things heavy. The tree is not a tree, it is infused with the same substance as the Lion himself.

The yes saying child with the mirror is the Lion cleansed of ego in a twofold sense, egolessness of self and all others. Affirming only what he knows with child-like innocence and zeal, the truth of self nature. The tree is a tree.
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skipair
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Re: The spirit, the camel, the lion, and the child

Post by skipair »

I totally relate to this!!!

Good as a reference (zen-like, motivational)

Bad as something expected to tell you anything real (no conception is real)
Ataraxia
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Re: The spirit, the camel, the lion, and the child

Post by Ataraxia »

BMcGilly07 wrote:The Camel represents the taking on of the apparent burden of a Truthful existence, representing a sort of dark night of the soul where all things toiling and heavy are taken on. The water of life that is truth will sustain the Camel through the barren land of finitude which has been sucked dry of the former apparent life of the ego. By internalizing one's focus on the nature of self, all else besides becomes void of its former distractions, worldly joys and escapes from the life of Truth. The tree is a tree, a woeful thing.

The Lion is the resumption of the Will by understanding one's position among the ceaseless flow of Reality. By reclaiming one's will through the application of right understanding, the Lion reclaims life itself from the jaws of melancholy and ignorance of his former existence as a passive Camel taking on all things heavy. The tree is not a tree, it is infused with the same substance as the Lion himself.

The yes saying child with the mirror is the Lion cleansed of ego in a twofold sense, egolessness of self and all others. Affirming only what he knows with child-like innocence and zeal, the truth of self nature. The tree is a tree.
Seems to me a fair appraisal.

Mountain, no mountain, mountain.
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jupiviv
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Re: The spirit, the camel, the lion, and the child

Post by jupiviv »

The camel is that phase in which we want to shed all the joys of worldly life in our search for truth. However, this process of shedding is actually a burden, because our ego wants all those joys the more we distance ourselves from then. The more we move away from the ego, the greater its pull(the Power of Gravity.) The going into the desert is when we go reject all worldly pleasures and stop being deluded by insignificant details of the empirical.

The lion is that phase in which immense strength comes from being attached to nothing("Being nothing..."). The great dragon is society, with all its traditions and values, and it orders us to abide by its norms. We defy it and create our own values, our own values, think for ourselves, and reach our own conclusions.

The child is the phase in which we lose attachment even to ourselves - the self which we created with so much love, and which we so love. We understand that we have understood only one world, and infinite others await our understanding. We understand that nothing is ultimately real, not even ourselves.

This is enlightenment, for now we are truly nothing, and so gain All. The false "I" dies, and we resurrect in spirit, and embrace the Father.

The "sacred Yes" is affirmation of A=A.
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