Birthdays

Today is my birthday. What is the difference from one day to the next? Apart from weather and external events a day is a day. It’s something to which we either give meaning or to which meaning is given without our conscious participation. Today I’ll change the number representing my age on the About Me page. What will that mean? It will mean I have today completed sixty-two years in this body, on this earth. It will mean today I begin the sixty-third year in this body and on this earth. It will not mean I am wise or kind. It will not mean I have gained anything through my survival. Some might say nothing means anything until we give it meaning. What’s more is that the meaning we give it doesn’t have to be its real meaning. Yes, there is real meaning because we live in a created and ordered universe. What is real meaning? Is it meaning that doesn’t change? If so, then why are there so many things that change meaning? It is because there are two meanings. One is the real meaning assigned by the creator and the other is a place holder meaning that we put over top of real meaning.

This morning I was standing in the kitchen preparing my breakfast when I an interesting realization that caused me to smile. After all these years I’m beginning to like me. I don’t mean love me the way we all love ourselves no matter how much we lie about it. This isn’t self-love. It’s more like self-acceptance. Something that has consistently eluded me. My life is not perfect by any standard of which I am aware, other than the idea that everything is perfect the way it is and we do not realize it. The work of esotericism has a subtracting effect on us. Instead of adding to us it takes away from us. It seems ironic that this should be the case as most people come to esotericism to get something not to get rid of something. That’s how I got started. Perhaps this helps explain why so few find it desirable to continue what they’ve started. If we had nothing else in common we would all still share incomplete octaves. We start things and then do not finish them. We change our minds about things because we don’t have anything that could properly be called a single mind. Instead we are divided into many different minds according to our desires, which we mislabel wills.

I am less than I was. If you have learned to see the plague of yourself you know why I was smiling. Why I will smile periodically throughout the day and for many days to come, if I live long enough. If I don’t I will be satisfied knowing that I am less today than I was ten years ago. To many this may not seem a worthy goal but to a few who understand it will be real. Today is another day. Today is the only day because there can never really be another day like it. We have to be here for it to realize it and that’s so hard to do. We’re called away by so many hopes, dreams, desires and past associations that being here for now is out of reach most of the time. We can be different. Not more but less and less is more when we come to see the plague of ourselves.